Father Confessor (J McNee series) (16 page)

Ernie used to say the attempt by the police to work with men like Burns was the worst idea he’d witnessed in all his years of policing.

But he’d done what he was told. Because he was a good copper. Because he had trusted that someone, somewhere had a plan.

Hard to think of him as ever being that innocent.

“There were problems, of course. The more I told him about Wood –”

“– the more you told him about yourself.”

Burns made a little noise from the back of his throat that I guessed was an agreement. “No-one likes a grass, McNee. Not on our side. Not on… theirs.” I figured he’d been about to say yours, but stopped himself at the last moment.

And he was right to do so.

What was I any more? An ex-cop, sure. And most of the time I guess I still sided with them. Morally speaking, at least.

But I’d done things over the last few years that were at best ethically ambiguous. And I’d dragged other people – like Susan – down with me.

If I stopped to think about it, I don’t know if I could really say what I was.

Maybe there are no heroes in the world. No good. No evil. No black hats. No white hats. Just people who make decisions, right or wrong. The only lines drawn are artificial ones, created through some desperate need to make sense of the world, to mark out behaviour and attitude in a way that is easily categorised.

We walked up a set of metal stairs, onto a gantry that ran across the perimeter of the warehouse. Burns told me what he knew about Ernie’s death. “You want to know why he died? He died to send a message, McNee. He died because he was getting close to Wood, maybe had started flirting with your beloved Independent Police Complaints Commission or just put the man on notice. I don’t know, but I know that he wouldn’t be dead if Wood didn’t see him as a threat.”

Burns seemed to be taking Ernie’s death as personally as I had. Or maybe I was just projecting. Looking for an ally where I was afraid I had none.

We hit the upper gantry.

“How’s his daughter taking it? You and she are close.”

He was vague about the exact nature of my relationship with Susan, as though uncertain what the situation was.

Which made two of us.

“She’s taking it hard,” I said. “Her father’s dead. His reputation has been brought into question…”

“And now one of her friends is in hospital and you, McNee, her… whatever you are… you’re nowhere to be found.”

I could have lamped him. Instead, I bit back some retort about how he was to blame, how he was the one who had brought me here. How none of this would be happening if he hadn’t stuck his fucking oar in. But he had me, Because the truth was I had no idea how to comfort someone in grief. All I knew was what I was doing; following a trail of tragedy to its source. That’s not the official job description of an investigator, of course. In my case, however, it was as close to the truth of the matter as anyone was likely to get.

Burns said, “You’re a marked man, now. You know that Lindsay was supposed to be dead, aye? That they’ll be sending someone after him?”

I nodded.

“I have someone at the hospital,” Burns said. “The police – the ones that aren’t in Wood’s pocket – they don’t know what’s going on. And our man has enough influence that he can send any official investigation into a tailspin.” He was turned away, but I imagined he was smiling when he said, “Looks like you have no-one to turn to but me.”

I said nothing. We kept walking. Our footsteps echoed. But now I was aware of another sound. Somewhere close by. Movement. Not birds or even rats. Something big.

Another person?

Burns shone the light along the walkway. At the far end, against the wall, I could just make out the hunched-over shape of a man. A big man. Chained to a pipe that ran down the wall. He had been beaten, and when the light fell on him, he turned his head as though he could escape it.

But there was nowhere he could hide.

Burns said, to me, “Recognise this prick?”

I stepped forward. Burns shone the light around me. I knelt beside the man. He looked me in the eyes.

I fought the urge to recoil. Remained calm. Yes, I recognised him. “Cal Anderson.”

“He’s been here for a few hours, now,” said Burns. “Not really a chatterbox.”

“Get,” said the man, carefully enunciating as best he could through the blood he was still swallowing and the broken teeth, “to fuck.”

I remembered an old joke about a man in a bar who says that swearing is the first fucking sign of a tired mind.

When his friend asks him what the second sign is, the first man punches him out.

I stood up, “But he’s told you about Wood.”

“Loyalty,” said Burns, “is unusual among shitebags like this one. But so far he’s kept schtum. Maybe he’s not such a bad person after all.” Anderson responded to this with a snort. Spat onto the metal grille of the walkway. Burns said “Then again…” He looked directly at me. “This man is shite. Shite that should be shovelled off the pavements. Taken away so that decent people don’t have to deal with it.”

I said, “What you do is you turn him over –”

“Don’t you get it yet, McNee? If we turn him over, Wood’s going to make any charges disappear. This pathetic little bawbag’s going to get a free ride.”

“No,” I said. “If you turn him over to the right people, then…”

Burns shook his head. “I thought you of all people would have got it by now, McNee, that justice isn’t about law and order. That sometimes you have to bypass all these fucking rules and regulations because it’s just the right thing to do.”

He stepped closer to me.

I didn’t step back.

“I know you know that, McNee. Because we’re alike, you and I. You just need to accept it.”

Burns pushed past me. Knelt down beside Cal Anderson. The other man spat at Burns’s face, but it was a pathetic attempt, as though he had no liquid left. Burns stood up, wiped at his face with a sleeve. “Anger management issues. Christ, but he deserves whatever happens to him. He’s told us all he can.”

“So why show him to me?”

“To let you know that he was still alive. Because I know what happened after the death of your fiancée. You never found the bastard who was responsible. That must have hurt, maybe worse than losing her.”

I wanted to walk away. But I stood there, gripping the handrail, listening to my heart beating. Loud enough that Burns and Cal Anderson must have been hearing it, too.

“Two years ago,” said Burns, “You killed a man and stopped short of killing another. I know the rage you carried then.”

I said, “I got over it.” Sounding too glib, even in my own ears.

“No-one gets past that kind of anger, McNee. No-one. You know about my mother, don’t you? That she died at fifty-five in an arranged accident. That a man I thought was my friend arranged to have her killed just to show me that he was willing to go further than he thought I ever would. The most satisfying day of my life was the day I killed him. Personally.”

“And did that help?”

“Of course it fucking didn’t. What, you expect miracles from life? But it helped channel my rage.”

I said, “Forget it,” knowing what he wanted me to do. In his mind, this was some kind of loyalty pledge. He was initiating me. Or attempting to.

He said, “You can’t walk away.”

“Watch me.”

The further away from him I walked, the darker the warehouse became. My eyes struggled to adjust and all I could see were half-shapes and darker shadows.

Carefully, I picked my way down the stairs. My eyes adjusted enough to see where the exit was. At the bottom of the stairs, I walked more confidently towards the door.

Heard movement from the walkway above.

A roar cut short.

I don’t know if I was aware of movement or if it was a self-preservation instinct. Either way, I stopped, and looked up. Saw something was dropping from above. An impossibly heavy shadow.

I stepped back. Something crashed to the floor in front of me. A sharp crack was audible beneath a sound like someone smashing a jelly with a hammer.

Light shone from above.

I looked at Cal Anderson’s corpse.

His neck was broken, his head twisted so that his dead eyes stared up at me. If I was paranoid, I might have seen an accusation in them. But there was nothing there. No emotion. No life.

If anything, that made me feel more disturbed than blame or hatred.

Burns spoke, his voice echoing, bouncing off the inside of the empty warehouse. Seeming to come from every direction. “You have to find the strength to do what needs to be done, McNee. Or the world will get you. I know you have it in you. I’ve seen it.”

I could have come back at him with something.

But instead I stepped over the corpse that lay in front of me and walked outside. I went to my car, got inside and started the engine.

No destination in mind.

All I wanted was to get the bloody hell out of there.

Susan was at the flat when I returned. She knew something was wrong. There was no point lying. Told her what I could. We sat in the front room, separate seats, facing each other. The setup was combative, but I was unsure if she even realised that. Rain battered against the window.

It was past two in the morning.

I went through the story, through what I knew, as best I could. She didn’t stop me. Didn’t even seem to react. Just listened to the story, face set in neutral.

There were things I didn’t tell her, like Burns offering me Cal Anderson’s life. Or what finally happened to the corrupt bastard. I guess Susan assumed, as I had, that Anderson was dead from the moment Burns’s thugs laid into him.

Looking back, I can’t say precisely why I didn’t tell her. Other than to admit to what had happened would somehow make me complicit. Over years of talking to people, getting their stories, making narratives of their lives that would fit reports or case-notes, I found that so many would change their stories to make themselves look somehow better. Often omission wasn’t even conscious, as though it was simply part of human nature to lie, dissemble and falsely remember the truth.

When I was done, Susan said, “You don’t remember meeting Wood, do you?”

I hesitated. “I’d remember.” And I would. I was sure of it.

“No,” she said. “You don’t. But that’s okay. You were too busy trying to behave like a normal human being at the time.”

###

A long time ago.

Longer than I cared to remember.

I had been the golden boy. Hard to believe, even though I was there. Detective Sergeant Ernie Bright had taken me under his wing. Told me I was a natural copper, but he wanted to teach me more than the mechanics of policing. To get ahead, he said, a really good police nab needs to play the political game. Which is how I wound up at a party, chez Bright, feeling awkward and out of place.

Elaine had been out of town. Had assured me that if I was my charming self, I’d fit in. I didn’t need her to make me seem human. I could manage it for one night. She had faith in me. More faith, even, than the man who wanted me to play the game.

My charming self, of course, had other ideas.

Lucky for me that someone else at the party wanted me to fit in. If only because her father’s judgement and reputation was resting on how all the high heedjuns in attendance took to me.

Susan Bright introduced herself by scolding me for my behaviour. Over a few shared cigs in the back garden, she told me that if I didn’t sharpen up and play the game she was going to kick my arse personally.

Sure, she was small, but she was tough. I got the impression she’d follow through on the threat.

The rest of the evening became a blur. Forced smiles and handshakes. The agony of small talk and political niceties; saying the right things to the right people. The trick, apparently, was never to agree but never to disagree either. I found that making odd noises to show that you were listening, and occasionally repeating what someone just said seemed to work.

I also made sure I had the same glass of wine in my hand for most of the night. Meaning that by the end of the evening, I was parched.

At one point, Ernie shepherded me into a gathering of CID detectives who were discussing a particularly chilling case that had captured the attention of the local press. A woman’s body found out in the woods to the north of the city; mutilated and abandoned. They were finding themselves at a loss for leads after the most promising had petered out due to an oversight regarding the man’s access to a vehicle for transporting the body.

One of the men had been tall and thin; you might have got papercuts if you accidentally brushed against him in the hall. He had big ears and eyes best described as buglike. His skin was swarthy, pocked from teenage battles with acne that had left him looking leathery. This man had been leading the conversation and when he turned his attention to me, he seemed surprised and disappointed. It was the bug-eyes gave the game away: why am I talking to this man? Who is he?

All the same, he introduced himself: “Kevin Wood.” His voice was oily and his over-friendly tones forced. I remember thinking that he sounded afraid of his own voice; working hard to control his natural accent. What came out was not quite RP, but just close enough to be false. At that time, Wood had only just been put in charge of CID operations in and around the city, and Ernie had whispered as we walked across that here was a man worth knowing politically.

All the same, I got the impression that on a more personal level, Ernie despised him. At that time, I didn’t press farther, but I guess even by that stage Ernie had realised that the ugly bastard wasn’t quite the supercop he had built his reputation on.

I think I suggested a few investigative ideas based on what I knew of the case. Thinking that at the very least they’d say they already thought of them. But I needed to say something in order to join the conversation. Fresh voices and all that.

Wood sneered at me, and shook his head as though I was a particularly remedial kind of student. “It’s not worth it,” he said. “This case will be solved by detective work. Not by beat constables and their procedural ideas.”