The Last Witness (32 page)

A few hundred yards further on, a white cabin cruiser listed to one side, its nose already submerged.

‘Hold tight, gentlemen,’ said Newell, as the trim of the RIB changed again.

Daley stared at the stricken vessel with mixed emotions. Could this be a stroke of luck, or was it a ruse, put in place to lure them into an ambush? He was on the point of telling Newell to stop when something caught his eye. In the fading light, he could see a small dinghy making its way to the beach.

‘Over there!’ Daley drew Newell’s attention to the craft. As Newell turned the RIB and made for the shore, Daley watched the team leader of the Firearms Unit release his harness and start removing weapons from the large metal cases that had been lashed to the deck on departure, and had thankfully remained in situ throughout the horrors of Corryvreckan.

As the powerful vessel sped towards the beach, Daley could make out two figures struggling through the surf and onto the shingle. The dingy had been abandoned and was already drifting back into the inlet.

‘I’ll go in as far as I can, but you gentlemen are going to get wet,’ said Newell, eliciting a dirty look from Scott. Daley was handed a sidearm and a bulletproof vest by a firearms officer, then looked on in dismay as Scott eschewed the latter with a shake of the head.

‘Get that on, Brian,’ ordered Daley.

‘Whit, an’ sink like a fuckin’ stone before I get tae the shore? No’ likely, gaffer.’ Scott replied defiantly, just as the RIB slowed, only a few yards from the beach.

As Daley unstrapped his harness, he squinted at the fleeing couple: a man and a woman. He presumed the woman was Sarah MacDougall, but who was her companion?

Taking his lead from the firearms officers, Daley launched himself over the side of the vessel and into the freezing surf. It was so cold he momentarily lost his breath; however, as he staggered towards the beach, a mixture of exertion and adrenaline banished the chill. He had only one objective: to catch the couple who were already heading over the sand and onto the machair beyond.

MacDougall ploughed through the grass, Sarah following close behind. They had heard the powerful engines of the RIB as it drew into the shore; now they listened to shouts from the officers as they splashed through the waves towards the shore.

‘Bastard!’ MacDougall exclaimed as he tripped over a boulder and fell onto the sand, the handgun slipping from the waistband of his trousers. As he struggled quickly to his feet, he saw Sarah grab the pistol and turn to face the pursuing police officers, her arm outstretched as she aimed the weapon at them.

‘No!’ MacDougall cried, reaching out to her just as two red spots flashed across her chest.

A distorted voice roared: ‘Armed police! Stop or we will fire!’

Daley watched as one of the police officers, still wearing a red life jacket, knelt to the ground and took aim with a short-barrelled weapon.

‘Sir, I need your permission to return fire,’ the unit leader
shouted to the DCI, just as a shot issued from the machair and whistled over the heads of the diving police officers.

‘Go ahead,’ Daley roared.

The marksman fired two shots.

For Frank MacDougall everything went into slow motion; even the report of the handgun fired by Sarah failed to register in his hearing. He saw the orange flash from the barrel and a puff of smoke as the gun discharged. Sarah’s shoulder shot back with the recoil of the firearm.

In the same instant he realised that the police would return fire, he leapt in front of Sarah, just in time to shield her body from two shots, which hit him squarely in the back.

The chase was over.

42

Superintendent Donald zipped up the dark flight suit as he hurried across the tarmac of the remote airfield to the Chinook helicopter.

As he strapped himself into a bench seat, alongside other similarly clad figures, he tried his best to quell the nausea in the pit of his stomach. Had he done the right thing? Could this mean the end of everything?

He felt his stomach lurch as the powerful aircraft lifted from the ground then, nose down, began its forward momentum.

For no reason he could fathom, he remembered the tenement flat where he had grown up; on the wrong side of the tracks in a Glasgow that no longer existed. The black stained walls, the fungus that sprouted from the shared toilet at the end of the landing, serving the needs of four families, the room he shared with his three siblings, the cracked old sink in the ‘kitchenette’ – a curtained-off nook, part of the small lounge – and even the black-and-white television his father had staggered home with from the pub at the end of the street, and around which the family had gathered to watch, for the first time in their own home, an episode of
The White Heather Club
. In a word: poverty.

He realised why his subconscious had produced this vision of what he now considered hell: the ends justified the means. No matter the cost, he had left that tenement far behind.

Donald looked across the light deck of the helicopter, his eyes resting on one of the men who sat, shoulders hunched, looking at the floor. Suddenly, as though he felt Donald’s gaze upon him, he raised his head, to reveal a gnarled face. The superintendent’s stomach lurched as he saw the cowering figure in a Glasgow alleyway all those years ago.

The ends justify the means.

The young woman held her father in her arms, his pallor almost luminous in the gloaming. The right side of her face was streaked with his blood.

‘Daddy’ It was a heartfelt plea for him to hold onto the life that was seeping into the sandy grass of the machair.

Scott bent over his old neighbour, tears in his eyes. ‘Frankie, my man, c’mon. We’ll get help o’er here quick smart.’

‘Aye, right, Scooty,’ whispered MacDougall, as blood bubbled from the corners of his mouth. ‘Dae ye no’ think I’ve seen enough men die tae know when ma time’s up?’

‘No, no,’ Sarah wailed. ‘Please, someone do something.’

With the last of his strength, Frank MacDougall held up his right hand and looked at Scott. ‘Listen, will ye dae me a favour.’

‘Anything, Frankie.’

‘Look efter this yin fir me, ye know whit I mean, Brian.’ He gripped Scott’s hand weakly.

‘Aye, of course I will,’ said Scott, forcing a smile.

‘Whit’s so fuckin’ funny?’ gasped MacDougall.

‘That’s the first time you’ve ever called me by my right fuckin’ name.’

MacDougall tried to laugh, but pain took hold, making him wince. ‘Here. In my left pocket,’ he said, his voice barely audible. ‘Help me get it oot.’

Scott did as he was asked and, as gently as he could, fished into MacDougall’s pocket and retrieved a slim box, about half the size of a mobile phone, with a flashing red light.

‘Whit the fuck? Whit’s this?’

‘Jack Daniels, my friend. Jack Daniels.’ MacDougall’s eyelids fluttered. His time was running out. He turned to Sarah. ‘Naebody could’ve wished for a better daughter, I mean it.’ He smiled, then his eyes rolled upwards, leaving only the whites visible, as his hand fell onto the rough grass.

‘Daddy.’ Sarah buried her head in the chest of the man who, whatever the rest of the world thought of him, had been her lovely father.

On the far side of the beach, beyond a huge rock almost thirty feet high, a small boat drew into the shore, engines off, on the power of the tide alone. The passenger, dripping wet, waited until the vessel grounded in the sand, then in the gloom splashed over the side and waded heavily onto the beach, slightly weighed down by the heavy bulletproof vest he was wearing under his waterlogged jacket, which displayed two neat holes in the chest.

Daley looked with compassion at the young woman being comforted by Scott. He thought how alike Brian and the man lying dead on the beach looked: the same craggy,
lived-in faces and spare yet powerful frames. Nagging doubts about his DS would not go away. He hated the feeling.

‘I need to ask you something, Sarah,’ said Daley, leaning down so that he could look her in the face. ‘Do you know where James Machie is?’

She didn’t move, head still buried in Scott’s shoulder. Then slowly she raised her gaze and looked straight at the chief inspector.

‘I killed him,’ she said.

‘How? Where?’ asked Daley. ‘I’m sorry, I have to know. We’ll take an official statement later, but I need to know what took place.’ Seeing the look of admonishment on Scott’s face, he added, ‘Just briefly.’

‘I shot him twice and he fell into the sea. It was as simple as that.’

‘OK.’ Daley stood back to his full height. ‘I’m sorry I had to ask, and I’m sorry for the loss of your father.’

Sarah stared into the distance, as the purple shade of dusk descended.

‘Stand down,’ Daley shouted to the armed police officers, who immediately relaxed, no longer cradling their weapons under their arms and scanning the environs for any potential threat.

‘Whit dae ye make of this thing?’ said Scott, handing Daley the device he had retrieved from MacDougall’s pocket.

‘Looks like some kind of tracking device,’ said Daley. ‘Where the fuck did he get it from?’

‘Aye, and who the fuck wiz trackin’ him?’ said Scott, looking at his boss doubtfully.

‘What did he say to you before he died?’

‘Och, nothin’ really.’ Scott looked down at the body of Frank MacDougall, now covered by a silver thermal blanket. ‘He got me tae take that box oot o’ his pocket, then, well, maybe he wiz delirious.’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Daley.

‘Och, you know, the thing. I asked him aboot it and a’ he said wiz “Jack Daniels”. Aye, just that, twice, Jack fucking Daniels. Maybe a last request? Ye know fine how much he liked the bevy. I wish I’d had a wee flask o’ somethin’ on me. I’d have gied him a drop,’ Scott said, staring mournfully at the corpse on the ground, regret etched on his face.

An officer approached Daley and murmured something to him.

‘Newell says he can’t take us back, not with the dark and the bad conditions in Corryvreckan,’ said Daley. ‘I’ve told them to radio for a chopper. We’ll have to be airlifted out.’

‘I cannae say I’m no’ pleased aboot that, though I know whit the gafer’ll have tae say aboot a’ that expense,’ said Scott. ‘Eh, while we’re on the subject—’

‘Hold on, Brian.’ Barely visible in the gloaming, a dark figure was making its way down the beach. Daley reasoned that it must be a member of the Firearms Unit, though he couldn’t remember any police personnel going beyond the point where MacDougall had fallen.

‘Brian, down!’ Daley roared, as he dived into the sand. He saw the man kneel with his arms outstretched in front of him, with what could only be a weapon pointed at them.

‘Whit the fuck?’ Scott spun around as the gun flashed and two shots rent the air.

Daley flinched as his face was splattered with warm blood.

Brian Scott fell to the ground.

Calmly the gunman got to his feet and began to walk towards them.

‘Jim Daley, my man. Come and get it!’ The voice of James Machie was unmistakable as he repeated the words he had shouted at Daley when he was taken down in the High Court in Glasgow all those years before.

Many things seemed to happen at once. One, then two red dots played on Machie’s chest as he strode forward. A shot rang out, which stopped Machie in his tracks and sent him stumbling backward. Miraculously though, he regained his balance, and set off again. Daley, aware that his DS was writhing in agony beside him, wrestled the revolver from his shoulder holster and squinted into the darkness. Machie’s gun flashed again, and a bullet whined past Daley and into the sand.

Daley focused and took his aim, struggling to find his exact target in the dim light. More in hope than expectation, he squeezed the trigger. Machie stopped dead. His arms fell to his sides, and he toppled face down, blood soaking into the sand from the neat hole in his forehead.

‘Brian!’ Daley struggled to his feet, as a thudding overhead noise grew louder. In seconds, the beach was illuminated by white light and the sand was whipped up as a Chinook helicopter came in to land.

‘Fuck me,’ said Scott, his face lit by the searchlights coming from the aircraft. ‘Ye’ll need tae get me the number o’ that helicopter mob.’ Daley leaned in closer to hear him. ‘That’s some service.’ He coughed blood, and his eyes closed.

The unit commander ran to Daley’s side. ‘That bastard! He was wearing a vest, sir.’ He stopped, looking down at the DCI who was cradling Scott’s limp figure in his arms.

43

Daley stared through the glass wall of the room in Kinloch Hospital. Scott had been too weak for the journey all the way to Glasgow in the Chinook, in which Donald had miraculously appeared with a phalanx of Special Branch personnel; just too late to encounter danger, just in time to take imperious command. Scott’s condition would have to stabilise before he could be taken to one of the city’s main hospitals in a specially equipped aircraft – if he stabilised.

Daley felt a hand on his shoulder. Liz stood behind him, wrapped in a white hospital gown.

‘Oh darling, she said, smoothing his hair. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘He’s not dead yet,’ Daley spat, turning away from his wife, who instinctively removed her hand.

‘What’s wrong, Jim?’

Daley stayed silent, motionless, as though mesmerised by the sight of his colleague – his best friend – battling for his life.

‘Please, darling, don’t shut me out,’ she whispered, running her hand down his back.

‘Do you call
him
that?’

‘Call who what?’

‘You know who. Mark Henderson.’

‘Mark? What’s all this about?’

‘It’s about the truth.’ Daley turned on his heel, his face a blazing mixture of hurt and anger. ‘In my job I have to shut my eyes and close my mind to most of the horrors that go on in the world, otherwise I would go insane. But I can never shut my heart to how I really feel. It’s impossible.’

There was silence, except for the bleeping and wheezing coming from the equipment that was keeping Brian Scott alive on the other side of the glass.

‘I don’t know where you get these ideas from, darling. You know the score between him and me. He’s my sister’s husband. I have to be civil.’ She looked up at her husband, her face the picture of innocence.