Referendum (3 page)

Arbogast was nodding. With the plastic pulled back, away from the body, they could see the man hadn’t been in the best of shape. “He’s so thin; looks like a junkie.”

“Not this one,” Kath was pointing at his arms, “There are no track marks. He was clean.”

The man looked like he had been sleeping on his side and hadn’t woken up. He was wearing a pair of dirty blue jeans, a faded white Iggy Pop t-shirt, and a pair of red Converse trainers. His hands were tucked up under his head almost like he was praying. Beneath him was a pool of dark red congealed blood.

“So what happened?”

Kath moved the man’s right arm out slightly so that she could get a better look at his wrist. A deep gouge ran about ten inches up the inside of his arm, the skin turned out.

“Potential suicide, although I don’t see a blade anywhere.” Kath was looking to see if there was anything obvious she might have missed. Arbogast was starting to think he might have wasted his time.

“Doesn’t look like one for Major Crime to me. I might just leave you to it.”

“There’s nothing here to suggest that he did this to himself.”

“We’re right above the Clyde. Maybe he did the deed and threw it away, a last gasp show of defiance?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Kath was easy to anger and she hated the flippancy of some of the cops, the ones that thought certain deaths were below their pay grade, “There’s a guy lying dead here. You might have missed it but there’s a pretty big event about to take place in this city. Given what we went through last year do you want to leave anything to chance?”

Arbogast sighed. He knew she was right, he was just worn out. Last year he had been part of a major investigation after a suicide bomber killed 15 people during the two minute silence on Remembrance Sunday. It had been part of a wider plan from militant Nationalists to try and stoke up anti-UK sentiment. So far it had worked, and with the Referendum just a couple of months away the concern was that there could be further reprisals.

“I really don’t think this will have anything to do with the terror attack, just another sad case of a hopeless life gone wrong. I don’t want to talk it up into something that it’s not. We can’t afford another panic – especially after what happened last year.”

“Thus spake the King of Compassion. Is that as far as your investigative integrity stretches? We’ve got no idea who this guy is. The wound doesn’t fit any pattern I’ve seen before; doesn’t look like he’d have been able to go so deep on both arms by himself.”

“Do you expect me to believe that someone brought him up here and did this to him? We’re under a bridge in the middle of the Clyde. Someone would have seen or heard something.”

“Unless it was someone he knew.” The words were left hanging as the waters below crashed off the stone supports.

“Well, you’re going to have to give me more than that if this is going to turn into a murder investigation. It’s sad, yes, but shit happens and we’ve got an international police operation getting underway right now, and to be honest, I just don’t have time for conspiracy theories.”

“What’s happened to you?”

“Don’t start, Kath. Just get the body down and tell me what you can, when you can.”

The two stared at each other, willing the other to blink first when they were interrupted by the cherry picker operator; they’d forgotten he was there.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, but you two really ought to get a room. Are we done here?”

“Yeah, take me back down,” Arbogast said, “The lady’s still got work to do.” As the hydraulics groaned back into life, the Detective had a nagging feeling that he wouldn’t be rid of the case quite so easily.

6

Pacing the kitchen floor, Leona McMahon was worried sick. What was she going to do? How could she support herself? It was bad enough with her parents at home but without them she didn’t know what she would have to do to survive. The look of defeat on her mum’s face had been the killer. She’d always been so strong, but with the things the way they’ve been maybe it was only a matter of time before it all went tits up.

She froze when she heard a key turn the lock in the front door.

“Dad, is that you?” But she was worried it might be someone else, one of them. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen table, terrified. Maybe it was the folk from the supermarket.
What if they’ve tracked me down, that security guy was staring right at me.
When the door opened a huge sigh of relief passed through her as her mum appeared, dripping with sweat. She looked terrible and almost fell through into the hallway, before collapsing on the floor, the door slamming shut behind her.

“Where have you been? I was so worried. They caught you though, how could you—“

“Shush, slow down pet. It’s OK, they let me go.”

“Why would they do that?” Leona didn’t understand; something wasn’t right.

“They got their stuff back, so no harm done. We were stupid to get caught. We’d been so careful.”

“We were stupid to do it at all. I thought you’d been arrested. I don’t know where dad is. I thought it was just me, here on my own.” The emotion of the day had finally hit home and her last words trembled as the tears started.

Lorna took her daughter in her arms and told her not to worry, “It’ll be OK. You’re right, we can’t go on like this but we can’t starve either.” Lorna took her girl’s chin in her hand and forced her to look her in the eyes, “Are you OK? I’m back, that’s all you need to go. Things will work out, you’ll see.”

Leona nodded and said she’d be fine, but for the first time she didn’t believe it; couldn’t see what was going to change. She needed to know where her dad was.

Horace McMahon was identified by a fingerprint search on the national computer. His file showed that he had been arrested for theft. Scanning his file Arbogast could see he was dealing with a small fry. Horace had been stopped trying to leave an ironmongers having asked a member of staff to hand him a set of pots and pans from the top shelf. He had simply walked out of the shop with them but hadn’t got far.
Who steals pots and pans?
The arrest date was only six months ago and the crime suggested he might have needed petty cash to feed a drug habit. There was still no word from the morgue on the exact cause of death. The case wasn’t priority so he wasn’t expecting the results for a couple of days. He didn’t expect he’d be involved after they knew for sure but until then he was stuck with the case. Major Crime was being temporarily subsumed by the city-wide operation to man the 2014 Games. With hundreds of thousands of people flooding into the city it was going to be busy. In the meantime Horace McMahon was still dead and his relatives needed to be told. Looking up he could see his partner wasn’t exactly rushed off his feet.

“Fancy a trip to the East End?”

“Is this something to do with your mystery man?”

Arbogast raised his hands in a mock show of the supernatural “Yesss Chrisss. It’sss the straaange tale of the eye of Horace.”

“You’re sick, do you know that?”

“Sorry, Chris; just mucking around. I do need to speak to the family, though, and it would be good to have support. I’m not sure of the family background; it might get a bit rough.”

“Sure. Let’s go break the bad news. Where are we heading?”

“Haghill.”

Haghill had a reputation that was proving hard to shake off. Situated a couple of miles east of the city centre it had been built in the early 20
^th
century as an overspill estate for artisan workers. Heavy industry nearby meant that it had been prosperous at first, but with decline came increased poverty. Today the low prices attracted first time buyers from the professional and working classes, who mixed company with the forgotten generation of the underclass. When Arbogast and Guthrie arrived at 134a Corsock Street neither could be sure which side of the divide they were about to encounter.

7

This time, Sandy Stirrit wasn’t going to take no for an answer. As the BBC’s Scotland Correspondent he’d been bounced out of the biggest story of his career, with the Ministry of Defence threatening to sue the corporation for breaching the Official Secrets Act. Last year Sandy had been invited to cover a security operation at Prestwick Airport in Ayrshire. Police Scotland wanted a reporter on the scene as they closed in on the George Square bomber. But it hadn’t gone to plan and the only thing that had gone off without a hitch was their key contact, who had blown himself up during the sting operation. A cop had been badly injured too. Sandy thought he might be able to unravel the whole sorry mess if only the officer would speak to him.

Sandy had been parked outside Ian Davidson’s house for the best part of an hour. Davidson was, by all accounts, a nasty piece of work. But Sandy had seen the bomb blast at Prestwick reduce the man to a screaming shell. Since then he’d been on sick leave. But he knew what had happened, and had reason to be unhappy. It certainly didn’t look like he was going back to work any time soon.

Sandy had done his homework. Asking around he’d found out that Davidson had moved back in with his parents. With no wife and kids he needed round the clock care which he couldn’t provide himself. Sandy watched, relieved, as the parents finally opened the front door. They were younger than he expected, late-fifties, but were taking an age to get out of the house. They went to their local social club every Wednesday and today was the day. Sandy glanced down at his notes. There was still time for some last minute prep.

1. Davidson – first degree burns to right side of face. Reconstructive surgery – ongoing but incomplete.
   
2. Offer of full Police pension – not yet accepted – why?
   
3. Relationship to GD? Fully developed – link to terror case?
   

Sandy stopped to mull the third point over. It was something that had been bothering him. His estranged friend, John Arbogast, had told him that Davidson had been in deep with the new Chief Constable, Graeme Donald, around the time of the Glasgow bombing, but there had never been any proof of wrong doing. The rumours had been rife but nothing had come to light. Donald had become pretty much untouchable and that was part of the problem. As far as the public was concerned the bomber, Ian Wark, had been caught. He’d been in a coma for the last eight months but word had it that he was starting to show signs of recovery. There were a lot of people waiting to speak to him; Donald would be one of them. In the aftermath of the terror attack the Chief Constable had ramped up security across the country. Stop and search was more common, and it was normal to see armed police on the streets; something which had rarely happened before. The country seemed to have lurched to the right and the argument that there could still be ‘rogue elements’ in Scotland seemed to be enough for people to accept the status quo. But Sandy wasn’t buying it; something stank and he was going to find out what it was.

Ian Davidson was the starting point. Looking up from the safety of his VW Passat, he saw the parents still hadn’t left, there seemed to be some kind of argument with a third person inside. The father went back into the house. About two minutes later he emerged waving a wallet in the air.
Daft old goat.
Sandy waited another ten minutes, just in case they came back, and then left the car.

Ian Davidson hadn’t slept well for months. Tired again, he was agitated that it was taking his parents an age to actually get out of the bloody house. He knew he had to get back out on his own, but he’d rented out his own flat for a year and still had a few months of home comforts to endure. He’d been standing in the bathroom for about 15 minutes. Eight months on he’d had three skin grafts already with more to follow.
Freak.
A large chunk of the right hand side of his face had been ripped off in the blast at Prestwick Airport. The Doctor described it as a ‘full thickness burn’. They’d tried a new technique using something called Matriderm, a treatment which helped the skin stay elastic and moist. They took skin from his arse to cover his face. His colleagues tried to make jokes about that but he didn’t see the funny side. Not when he looked like this.
Freak.
He’d been wearing a see-through plastic compression mask 20 hours a day for 18 months. He still had a year to go but he felt like something out of a science fiction movie. His parents nagged him to keep it on; the mask helped to reduce the scarring from the graft. He’d look just like his old self they’d say. You’re lucky son. But he didn’t feel lucky. He felt like a freak.
The moment of truth.
He carefully peeled off the mask to see how the scarring looked. He knew he shouldn’t but part of him expected a miracle to have happened in the few hours since he’d last looked. It was uncomfortable to remove and took a full five minutes before he could get it off as the lubrication schlucked on the plastic, like feet trudging through mud. Looking at his face he could still see the scar lines which had gouged a deep red vein around his mouth and up to just below his eyes and ears. He’d been lucky, he knew that, but everyday felt like a fresh hell. He blamed himself for it. If only he hadn’t run at the bomber he would still be OK today. But he had.

His self pity was broken by the gentle chime of the double bell downstairs.
Probably forgot their keys again.
Slowly replacing his mask he breathed in deeply and made his way downstairs. He hoped they wouldn’t be back for long. When he opened the door he felt a pang of fear. It was the reporter from Prestwick; the sight of him triggered memories of the night of the accident.

“I wondered when you’d turn up, Stirrit. I suppose you’d better come in.”

8

El Medano, Tenerife

After three gruelling days, Rosalind Ying was determined to beat the climb. Ahead of the start of the Commonwealth Games, she’d taken five days leave from Police Scotland and time out from her lead role in ‘Team Safety’. Her challenge was simple. Put last year behind her, get fit, and get on. When the Games started, around 300 police officers were going to be patrolling the city centre by bike. It was something that gave her the idea to get serious about her cycling. In Tenerife there was nothing else you could do but rise.