The Good Son (15 page)

“I figured.”

“Daniel Robertson was having an affair with the big man's wife.”

“That's why they killed him?”

“No. They didn't know he was here.”

Lindsay nodded. “So we're back to the suicide. Backing up the coroner, eh?”

“Aye. But it still doesn't make sense.”

“No?”

“Because he didn't just steal Egg's wife. He stole the man's money, too.”

“A final fuck-you, then. This was all about getting back at the big man.”

“Maybe, but…”

“But give me something better.” I didn't know if he wanted me to shut up, or if he was asking for help.

I looked at him. He stood there, completely confident. Puffing on his cigarette and watching me like I was a suspect in the interrogation room.

I'd come to ask for help and he'd dismissed everything I said. He didn't want to listen. Just wanted to hear me admit that he was right. Getting nothing
more out of it than a cheap victory.

I turned to walk away.

Behind me, I heard Lindsay say, “In case you've forgotten, I'm no the bad guy in all of this. Jesus fuckin' Christ, you called me!”

I pretended I couldn't hear him.

On Ward Road, I dialled Robertson's mobile number. I was about to give up when he finally answered: “You alone?”

“Aye. You want to tell me about the fire?”

“Do you still think it's a good idea to go to the police?”

“I don't know if you understand the kind of shite your brother got himself mixed up with,” I said. “That cash, he stole it from Gordon Egg.”

“That's got nothing to do with me.”

“They came to my office,” I said. “They seem to think you and I are in cahoots. If you know something more than you've already admitted, you need to tell me now.”

“I didn't ask for this,” he said.

I agreed to meet him. We were in this together, now.

After he cleared the line, I gripped the phone tightly in my hand.

Thought about Gordon Egg. His associates.

I had one chance to make this go away.

And if it was to work, I knew I'd be making a deal with the devil.

But at least this devil was one I knew.

David Burns came to the front door wearing a thick, dark dressing gown and tartan slippers. He didn't look happy to receive company, even less so when he saw my face.

“I know you,” he said. “You've been here before.”

I was impressed by his memory. Four years previously, when I was still on the force, someone had tipped off CID regarding Burns' involvement in less than legal pornography designed for those of a more animal bent. We'd come round, all official, knocking politely on the door. He'd invited us in like he and the investigating officer were old friends, but with a cold edge to his manner. Even if he was used to these interruptions, he was hardly going to supply us with cups of tea while chatting about the weather.

The DI in charge had talked to Burns with a familiarity that implied a long relationship. This was fairly close to the truth. Back in the mid eighties, as the police upped their campaign to deal with organised crime in Scotland, men like Burns had signed
deals with the authorities to guarantee some level of protection. These backroom deals were complicated, messy and would eventually prove more trouble than they were worth. All the men like Burns would continue to believe they were not viable targets for the coppers even after the initiative was abandoned and forgotten by the chiefs. Small wonder the old man had been unhappy at our unannounced presence that morning. The DI, despite his outward chumminess towards Burns, seemed to take a delight in our host's discomfort and agitation. It was only later that I would discover that he was the same man who had dealt with Burns back in the eighties.

The man who had grudgingly invited us into his home a few years previously had possessed a full head of shocking white hair. These days, he sported a buzz cut to hide a losing battle with baldness, and a great deal of the bulk he'd carried was gone. Despite that, he still looked as though he could snap me in two. And the ice-blue eyes were every bit as penetrating as I remembered.

Sweat stuck my shirt against my spine.

“So,” he said, plunging his hands deep into the pockets of his thick dressing-gown, “you got a promotion? You're plainclothes now? You were just a wee uniform back then. Tell me, are you still busting innocent bastards for trumped up charges of perversion?”

I shook my head. “You were never charged.”

“What a waste of a morning. For all of us.”

“I'm no longer with the police.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet and produced my Association of British Investigators' ID. He grabbed the card. Examined it carefully, his expression dispassionate.

“Must be a fucking pain, having a code of ethics in your line of work.”

“We'll get used to it.”

“Some of yous, maybe.”

“Certain individuals had tainted the profession.” Quoting the party line verbatim.

“You'll no be one of them?”

“I like to think not.”

“Right. They're calling you Britain's second police force these days?”

“Sure. That's it.”

He smiled. “Which makes you a bunch of pricks in anyone's eyes. A bunch of pricks without uniforms.”

I ignored him.

“So did they tell you to sling your arse? Or did you just walk? Out of the force, I mean.”

I stayed silent.

Burns grinned. I guess he didn't mind deciding on his own version of the truth.

“I was about to have some coffee,” he said. “So why don't you come in and I'll see if I like what you have to say for yourself.”

I thought about earlier, in the bookshop. Said, “Actually, do you have any tea?”

“All out. The wife didn't get to the shops today.”

Inside, the house was decorated in a muted, yet homely style. Dark wood panelling, paintings on the walls. Mostly West Coast scenes: dark and stormy ocean panoramas and craggy mountainsides. There had been a great deal of work done on the house through the years and the money showed subtly throughout.

The kitchen gleamed like new. Designed by someone who knew just how much money the customer had to spend. It was not a practical kitchen, but a
statement of wealth and property. Burns had come a long way from his formative years when he had been stuck in the darkest Dundonian tenements, relying on petty crime to sustain him and his family.

But the same bitterness that drove him then still fuelled his actions. Even if he had achieved everything he wanted and more.

He gestured for me to take a seat at the breakfast bar while he trekked to the far end of the kitchen and filled the kettle. He turned back to face me, leaning against the worktop. Deceptively casual. “You can start talking.”

“About two weeks ago, a man committed suicide. Hung himself from a tree out in the Tentsmuir woods. His name was Daniel Robertson.”

“I read the papers, son. What's that to do with me?”

“Robertson worked for an associate of yours: Gordon Egg. A few days ago, Katrina Egg — his wife — came to Dundee looking for Daniel. She didn't seem to know he was dead, was anxious to get a hold of him.”

“If I remember correctly, Egg had a wee Scottish pal he was close to. Friend of the family and all that. I guess maybe he's the same lad. She could have just been worried. Trying to find out what happened to him.”

“Sure,” I said. “It's a possibility. And maybe I'd think so too. Except, she turned up dead within a couple of days.”

“That's a shame.”

“Aye, it is. Murdered, you see.”

“Christ.” No emotion in his voice. All the focus in his eyes trained on me. Like he could see through my skull, make out the thoughts in my brain.

“There are details that won't make the papers.”

“Sounds bad.”

“It was. Somebody had it in for her.”

“Aye. Or her husband.”

“Sure. It could be that.”

“But considering who her husband is and why she was here…”

“Sure, there's that, too.”

Burns nodded thoughtfully. He turned as the kettle clicked, calmly started distributing instant coffee into two mugs. “I hope you don't mind it black,” he said. “Like I said about the wife….”

I waited for him to bring the mugs over, took the one he offered. Kept my eyes on him as he sat himself down two seats away from me on the breakfast bar. He blew on the surface of his coffee, his face neutral, his body language casual, like I hadn't just told him about a woman being brutally assaulted and killed in cold blood.

Death could not shake this man. Not after all he had seen and done.

Rumours and stories. Such as: a local priest with a gambling habit. In debt and presumably abandoned by the Lord, the priest had tried to run out on the men he owed. Burns, at the behest of one of the debtors, tracked down this man of the cloth and arranged an alternative payment. The priest was found in his church, nailed to the cross at the rear of the pulpit. Proper job, too. Through the wrists rather than the palms. A claw hammer had been left at his feet, in order that someone could prise the nails free and let him down.

Never let it be said David Burns didn't have some sense of mercy.

He was older, now, but he had not allowed the
years to soften him.

You looked in his eyes and you could still see the storm raging there. You wondered: what was it that had made him so angry? What makes a man like this keep going?

“The obvious suspect is Daniel's estranged brother,” I said, trying not to back down under Burns's gaze. “He had already been trying to dig up the facts on his brother's life. He wasn't going to be too happy to learn that his brother had been a heavy with some London firm.”

“And where do you come into all of this?”

I ignored him. “I don't think that Daniel's brother was responsible for Katrina Egg's death. There's the question of how her body got in the flat. I believe the property belongs to you, right?”

He sipped calmly at his coffee. He had nothing to worry about. Yet.

“I was questioned about this the other day,” he said. “A police detective by the name of George Lindsay. You know him? I'll tell you what I told the police: I just rent that place out. What goes on inside, I can't be held responsible for that.”

“Aye, so maybe they broke in,” I said. “And that should have been an end to it all. A sad and unfortunate end, perhaps. But an end.”

“I still don't get,” said Burns, “how you've got this coming back to me. Except by rumour and conjecture. I don't know how these bastards got into my flat. Which was, incidentally, unoccupied at the time.” He seemed to take a moment to think about that before adding, “To the best of my knowledge. So I don't see how I can help you, son.” Putting emphasis on the “son”, like it was an insult. “And again, I ask, what the fuck does any of this have to do with you?”

“I represent Daniel's brother. When he wanted to know more about who his brother had become, he came to me.”

“So it's really a step up from being copper? Muckraking, I mean?” He watched me for any reaction.

I gave him nothing.

“Tell me, was he happy when you found out? About who his brother was? The kind of people he associated with?”

“People like you?”

For a second, I thought I'd touched a nerve. His eyes twitched. Barely noticeable, but it was there.

And then he laughed.

“Very good,” he said. “Are you sure you're not still a copper?”

“I'm sure.” I sipped at my coffee.

“You didn't know Kat. She was a fucking black widow spider. She chewed men up and spat them out. It was a game to her, fucking all these hard men and then watching her husband do them over when he found out.”

“He never touched her?”

“No. She was perfect. In his eyes, at least. All these men she shagged, they were the ones who corrupted her.”

I thought about the woman who had walked into my office. Trying so hard to be attractive. Dolled up. Trying to retain the illusion of sexuality.

And I thought about the hardness I had seen behind her eyes. Realised there had been a cruelty there, too. Something I should have seen.

And I had to wonder whether my refusal to see that side of her hadn't been deliberate.

“So I say good riddance to her,” Burns said. “Maybe she didn't deserve to go like that, but a person can
only push their luck so long, eh?”

I felt sick.

Said, “You keep asking what any of this has to do with me. It goes beyond my client, now. Last night I had a couple of visitors. Cockney hard bastards. They threatened me. They shot my friend.”

“I'm sorry.” My own words, my mantra, echoed back at me. With no conviction.

“He'll live.” And, I thought, not that you care. “They said it was a warning.”