17
Underground, Overground
April was determined to do more than just sit on the cat again as she slumped in her favourite chair at home. As usual, her mind wandered randomly and she decided it was time to sieve through the clutter of her spare room cum guest bedroom. She discovered an unopened box in the corner with a sewing machine inside and remembered how she had planned to start making curtains for herself, her daughter and friendly neighbours.
April had hoped to have become ‘the talk of the area’, seeing people nudge each other out the corner of her eye and whisper, ‘There’s that April Lavender, not only is she a famous journalist, but she can also run up a fine set of drapes.’ That plan came to an abrupt halt the day she went to price some curtain material. The shop had wanted ninety pounds. April flounced off, later telling a friend over a bottle of wine, ‘I could get a pair of ready-made curtains for the same price – we have a lot to thank these sweat shops for.’
Since then the sewing machine had lain abandoned and unloved in the spare room, along with the fondue set and the electronic corkscrew still in its box with its ten-page instruction booklet. Although no cork, however stubborn, had ever managed to get in the way of April and a wine bottle’s contents.
But, one box she was determined to get to grips with was her Netbook, a mini laptop that had suddenly become all the rage. She lifted the flimsy-looking machine out of the packaging and set about powering it up. That had been the easy part as it came with just one cable, which plugged into a power socket. April attempted to flick through the instruction manual, but it was all Greek to her. In actual fact, it was all Greek, as she had accidentally flicked to the G for Greek section instead of GB for Great Britain.
She thought about calling Connor, but knew she would got his usual response of, ‘I’m not the bloody IT desk, April.’ Her second best option would be her daughter, but Jayne could be just as sarky as Connor. She tried her anyway.
‘Okay, you’ve got a Netbook, which should be easy enough. So, who’s your internet provider?’ Jayne asked.
‘Eh?’
‘Who supplies your broadband? BT? Virgin Media? Sky?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Okay, forget that. What you need is a dongle,’ Jayne said, only to be met by guffaws of laughter down the line.
‘A womble?’ April said through tears of mirth, before singing the song to the 1970s telly favourites, ‘Remember you’re a Womble.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ Jayne snapped, ‘what you really need to do is plug in a fucking Womble. Look, no offence, but life’s too short to help with your laptop. Why don’t you enrol in a class or something, where they teach technophobes like you how to work computers? I’ve got to go. I’ll speak to you and your Womble later.’
April repacked her Netbook – minus a Womble – and put it back in the spare room.
Connor had left the Portman that evening buzzing from a mix of good wine and the adrenaline rush he got each time he had a good story. Harris had only parted with his mum’s address on the promise that she would be handled with kid gloves by the best in the business. Unfortunately, Connor couldn’t get the best in the business on the phone. ‘She’s probably bloody eating again,’ he cursed.
He wasn’t far off the mark. April had been unable to find her vibrating mobile from within the depths of her bulging handbag in time as she attempted to juggle a biscuit and a cup of tea at the same time. When she eventually found it, Connor had already left a voicemail. Unable to remember how to access her messages, she called Connor while eating her second biscuit.
He told her, ‘First thing in the morning I need you to get to the Red Road flats to interview Colin Harris’s mum.’
April wasn’t the best with names, but after a second the penny dropped, ‘Oh, the Hitman chappy – okay.’
‘Jackie McIvor was Harris’s half-sister. It’ll be a splash. But we need the mum’s reaction, too. I’ve already cleared it with the Weasel and told the picture desk too.’
‘Right, first thing,’ April promised, brushing the crumbs from her Hob Nob from her cleavage.
‘Oh, and, April,’ Connor added, ‘will you please do me the courtesy of not eating while you’re on the phone to me.’
April laughed and hung up. She checked her handbag, which contained several full notepads and pens – half of them dried up and useless – and left it by the door, attempting to be organised and ready for an early morning exit.
She was intrigued by how this whole investigation was panning out. Whoever had killed Jackie not only had the police on his tail, but now Scotland’s most lethal hitman. It would be yet another exclusive splash from the Special Investigations unit.
18
That’ll Be the Daewoo
April sat in her purple Daewoo estate urging the engine to heat up to take the chill off the morning air. Almost every panel on the ageing car, from the doors to the bumpers, the hatchback and somehow even the roof, was either dented, scuffed or scratched, for April was a truly awful driver who handled any vehicle like a dodgem.
Her main problem was that she was barely able to see over the steering wheel. She was blissfully unaware that Daewoo steering wheels were adjustable and that hers was set to the highest level. She also had no concept of the width or length of the car, meaning she’d always take up two parking spaces in the office car park, usually after rattling her Daewoo off a concrete pillar or someone else’s bumper first.
When she drove, April focused exclusively on the road ahead, paying no attention whatsoever to her peripheral vision. Connor had accidentally discovered this when he saw April out driving one Sunday afternoon. He had pulled up alongside her car on the M8 to give his colleague a friendly wave as she made one of her twice-weekly visits to IKEA, the giant Swedish furniture store at Braehead, on the outskirts of Glasgow. Despite sounding his horn, April’s eyes did not once flicker in his direction.
Connor decided to drive behind her, flashing his high beam lights. Again, April refused to take her tunnel-like vision off the road to glance in her rear-view mirror, although the beam from Connor’s Audi was so strong it illuminated the entire interior of April’s car even in broad daylight.
Intrigued, he tailed her all the way to the IKEA car park, where he pulled up beside her and waited. She still hadn’t noticed him. When she finally got out, after applying another thick layer of lip gloss, April greeted Connor with a whoop of surprise. ‘Oh, it’s yourself. Are you coming in for the meatballs, you can’t beat IKEA meatballs.’
‘April,’ Connor asked, ‘I’ve been following you for miles, blaring my horn, flashing my lights.’
She let out her trademark cackle. ‘Ach, when I get in my car it’s “Thunderbirds are go!”’
But this morning April was trying to negotiate the satellite navigation system her daughter had bought her for Christmas, to find her way to the mum of the murdered prostitute Jackie McIvor. She hated the sat nav and the way it ‘barked instructions’ at her, complaining, ‘I never let any of my husbands speak to me that way, so I’m certainly not about to let a little black box talk to me like that. And, anyway, how would you know the way around Glasgow with an American accent?’
At that moment, another forceful Yankee drawl was speaking in a car only a few miles from April. And Osiris was letting every positively charged word of encouragement sink in. He knew time was short. His next moves would have to be swift, which meant risk, but he knew he could do it.
‘Visualise your goal,’ whined the nasal voice of the life coach, ‘so that you can almost reach out and touch them. Think of nothing else but success – failure is not an option – then go for it. You will succeed only if you have no doubt in your head.’
The CD ended. Osiris gripped the steering wheel of the Ford Mondeo and stared longingly into the distance. Like a light switch being flicked on it became clear to him exactly what he must do next.
19
Old
Jeannie
April took the lift to the twenty-third floor of the Red Road flats – the towering 1960s monstrosities that dominated the skyline of the city.
Glasgow City Council was slowly trying to make amends for this social housing experiment borrowed straight out of the handbook of Stalinist Russia. It was rehousing the residents of the twenty-four-storey vertical housing estates, with plans to eventually pull down the concrete monoliths.
But old Jeannie was staying put. Despite the lifts rarely working, which meant she was virtually a prisoner in her own home for most of the week, she didn’t seem to mind, as long as she had her Sky telly, her soaps, and her weekly dance at the nearby Alive and Kicking social club, where pensioners got a boogie and a free lunch. In fact, the only time the council got an ear-bashing from old Jeannie was when the lifts failed on a Wednesday lunchtime forcing her to miss her weekly social encounter.
The eighty-two-year-old had three children to three different men and used to joke she was ahead of her time from all the young single mums pushing prams around the estate. But she had outlived two of her kids including her eldest son who had drunk himself to death four years previously and now her only daughter, who had been found murdered just days ago. That left her youngest son Colin, who had been a constant source of worry to her all his life. And with good cause.
Colin Harris had rarely been out of trouble. She had lost count of the number of times he’d turned up at her door as a young man, covered in blood. She always kept a wardrobe full of spare clothes for him, knowing he’d need to burn the ones he’d arrived in to destroy the evidence.
She had frowned and voiced her extreme displeasure each time he’d asked her to ‘look after something’ for him. That something usually being a handgun. But she told herself that it wasn’t her precious Colin’s fault. The other boy must have been asking for it. Or attacked him first. All her life she’d been making excuses for her son. She knew he was smart, very smart; it was just unfortunate that his temper got the better of him at times.
And don’t get her started on ‘the polis’. They were always on his case. Taking him in for questioning about this that and the next thing. But that was a long time ago. Her Colin was a businessman now and very successful he was, too. She hated the newspapers for always branding him a ‘gangster’ or a ‘gun runner’ or that horrible nickname ‘The Hitman’. And why did they always have to drag up his past when he’d been acquitted of the murder of Ferguson Junior? Didn’t that fat bastard have it coming anyway, the way he always used to bully her son and call him names and batter him? Ferguson Junior used to strut around the area as if he owned the place just because of who his dad was. But Colin Harris was afraid of no man, just as Jeannie had raised him to be.
April knocked again on Jeannie’s door. She could hear the telly on so she knew someone was in.
Eventually a croaky voice demanded, ‘Whit dae ye want?’ from behind a reinforced door that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a bank vault.
April got into gear, pleading, ‘I’m here to speak to you about your daughter, Mrs Harris. I’m a reporter and I want to help find her killer. I really need to talk to you. Tell me what she was like. Tell me so someone will read about your loss and will shop the bastard who did this terrible thing to your wee girl.’
April may have had many faults, but she knew how to talk to a grieving mother. She’d been one herself, although she never revealed anything more than the fact that she’d lost a son. A female doctor had once told her she needed to ‘open up’ and ‘get her feelings out in the open’. April had replied, ‘I can only function by keeping it bottled, you daft bitch.’ But her loss gave her a kinship instantly recognised by other grieving mothers.
The two women remained silent, separated by a few inches on either side of the door. The deadlock was broken by a strange muffled sound. April tilted her ear towards the door. The sound she could hear was of an old woman crying, followed by the heavy clunks of numerous locks.
April had succeeded once again. She was over the threshold, albeit unwittingly aided and abetted by the ruthless Colin Harris, who’d called Jeannie half an hour before the reporter had arrived, telling his mum to ‘let in the crazy old cow’ when she came knocking at the door.
The Daily Herald front page headline read:
HITMAN HARRIS – I’M COMING TO GET YOU
Gangster’s chilling threat to serial killer.
Exclusive by APRIL LAVENDER and CONNOR PRESLEY.
And underneath:
FEARED gangster Colin Harris last night promised to avenge the death of Jackie McIvor after revealing the murdered prostitute was his half-sister.
The street worker’s body was found just five miles from the body of jewellery tycoon Selina Seth this week, sparking fears that a serial killer is on the loose.
But Harris – one of Scotland’s leading underworld figures – has vowed to find his sister’s killer BEFORE the police.
Harris – nicknamed The Hitman – said: ‘My Jackie had her problems. I tried everything I could to get her off the drugs. But no one deserves to be attacked like that and dumped by the roadside like a dead dog. Whoever did this better hope and pray the police find them before I do.’
On the first two pages inside were similar threats by Harris, followed by a round-up of the case so far from Selina’s death, her husband Martin’s failed suicide attempt, the discovery of Jackie McIvor’s body and DCI Crosbie’s insistence that he was not after a serial killer and was treating the murders as two separate cases.
But it was April’s interview with old Jeannie which stole the show. The pictures of the old woman, floods of tears streaming down her wrinkled face, while clutching a picture of her dead daughter, would have touched the coldest of hearts.
April expertly told Jeannie’s story, that of an uneducated woman born into poverty, who had tried her best to raise three children and was now left with only one. Jeannie mentioned nothing of her years helping to cover up Colin’s crimes. Instead, Jeannie had made Colin out to be the victim and insisted he was only trying his best for a better life. She brushed aside his violent nature with a memorable quote: ‘It’s dog eat dog around here – only the toughest survive.’
As for Jackie, Jeannie spoke about her lifelong battle with drugs. How she had ‘leathered her’ after catching her smoking a joint at the tender age of nine. ‘But no matter how many times I battered her, Jackie just couldn’t stay away from the drugs. In the end I just let them do them at home. I’d rather she did drugs under my watchful eye than in some drug den.’
April’s report gave the readers a snapshot of a world many had never experienced and would never want to. It gave perfect balance to the chilling threat from Colin Harris on the front page. April and Connor’s reporting had wiped the floor with the opposition. They may have been a generation apart, but the reporters had gelled into one formidable unit.
This was not what the Weasel and Bent had planned at all.
Osiris was not in a positive state of mind.
He had just read Connor and April’s exclusive, which contained a threat directed towards him. ‘Who the hell does this Colin Harris think he is?’ he thought to himself. ‘Another self-styled hardman gangster?’
But his bravado didn’t match the true way he was feeling. Osiris was worried. The serial killer coverage gave Osiris a mystique he didn’t truly deserve. He was a most efficient killer all right, but a cowardly and opportunistic one. His victims were the vulnerable: nearly always prostitutes high on drugs. Some even let him strangle them to begin with, as many of their clients liked that sort of thing. By the time they realised this customer planned to be their last, it was usually too late.
But Osiris did not like tackling men. He had murdered one male – a skinny little runt he’d met in a bar in London’s Soho. Like many homophobes, Osiris thought he despised gay men, when really all he was doing was attacking his own inner tur
moil. The weakling had been easily strangled, but Osiris hadn’t even bothered to add him to his kill total, because he’d tried to bury the memories of their sexual encounter. He’d also been very drunk at the time – the early 1980s, long before the days of CCTV. He couldn’t even remember where he’d left the stranger’s body, but it was most probably in the lane where they’d had sex.
But that was the old Osiris. The new Osiris was a professional killer – and ultra careful. For his next move, he had no choice but to throw caution to the wind. Unplanned kills left a lot to chance and exposed him to the very real risk of being caught. That’s why his job, which involved long periods travelling around the country, was ideal for his nocturnal pursuits. But the next stage of his plan made him nervous as hell as he planned to meet Selina Seth’s widower.
‘Why the fuck didn’t we know that dirty prossie was Harris’s half-sister?’ squawked the Weasel later that morning. The editor was in his usual pose, fingers resting on his chin in a V-shape, scowling at April and Connor. ‘I mean, someone must have known. How are we only finding out now?’ he prattled on in mock outrage.
April and Connor knew the bollocking was manufactured, an attempt to make them look bad. April decided to go for it. ‘Jackie didn’t trade on her brother’s name as she was scared it would scare punters off. Who’d want to have sex with the sister of one of Glasgow’s most notorious gangsters? Anyway we’ve found out now, before every other paper. At least Jackie turned tricks for money, what was Selina’s excuse?’ she added pointedly.
If the editor heard her, it didn’t seem to register. ‘Well, I think we should stay on Harris’s case, stake him out, as he’ll have more chance of finding his sister’s killer than the Keystone Cops. I’ll organise the stakeout.’
And with that it was clear the meeting was over. It was also apparent that the Weasel was taking over the running of the investigation. He couldn’t risk the dynamic duo hitting the jackpot again. With no thank-you and no meaningful direction as to what Connor and April should do next the pair were dismissed.
Back in the broom cupboard, Connor moaned, ‘Colin Harris had the best surveillance units from Strathclyde Police on his tail for months before his trial for murder and even they couldn’t keep tabs on him. But now the Weasel thinks a scribbler and a snapper will be able to follow him about in a car as he tracks down a serial killer? I tell you, papers aren’t what they used to be.’
‘Spoken like an old pro,’ observed April.
‘But it’s true. It used to be alcoholics and mad men – often both – at the top of the tree. They were insane but they were newspapermen at heart. They knew what they were doing and more importantly knew what their readers wanted. This new breed act the part, but if you look at the Weasel’s role during this case from start to finish he’s contributed absolutely nothing.’ Connor could tell by the faraway look in April’s eye that he’d lost his captive audience of one. ‘Hungry?’ he enquired, already knowing the answer.
‘Bloody starving,’ she replied.
‘Come on then, lunch is on me. Then I really need to buy myself some running gear for the weekend.’
20
Fighting Fit
April normally found herself at a loose end at the weekends. She would go and see her daughter and granddaughter on Sundays, but today she planned to get in some serious selling on eBay. Her daughter had introduced her to it. Being what was termed a Type A personality, April instantly became hooked. She’d even forgiven Jayne for the username she’d given her, ‘oldsoak69’ and the password ‘gordonsgin’.
April had never thought of herself as a woman with a drink problem. She didn’t crave it in the mornings, and she didn’t suffer from hangovers, although Connor insisted that was because she was permanently pickled. But April enjoyed a ‘good drink’, which in Scotland meant downing enough to fell an elephant.
She wasn’t too fond of beer, but everything else was most definitely on the drinks menu: wine – red/white/rosé, she wasn’t fussed. Whisky – any cheap supermarket blend would do. And gin and tonics had gone from being an exclusive summertime drink to an all-year-round tipple. The same for Pimms. And she quite liked a Bacardi Breezer of an evening, or a rum and Coke. And a cheeky wee voddie and fresh orange also went down a treat. So, really, with all that rattling around her well-stocked drinks cabinet she really couldn’t object to the username.
She felt sorry that Jayne never enjoyed a drink the same way she had – maybe she’d be more relaxed if she had. Her daughter insisted that watching her mother boozing throughout her childhood had put her off. So worried had she been about her mother’s alcohol consumption, Jayne had once videotaped April coming in from a boozy night out with her pal Flo. April and Flo had done a conga through the front door, then proceeded to perform a Highland fling together in the living room. The tape ended with April snoring loudly on the couch.
Instead of being shame-faced by her antics the following morning, April had clipped Jayne around the ear and warned her not to disrespect her mother in that way ever again. However, she had shunned drink altogether over the last few nights for her new addiction, hawking her wares on the online auction site.
After April had cleared out the clutter of her spare room her Womble-less Netbook had been the first to go. Amazingly it sold for just forty pounds less than she had paid for it as it was almost unused. She then decided to raid her loft, and swiftly decided that nothing was off limits from the old record player to some Jack Vettriano prints she hadn’t got round to framing.
April was amazed there was a market for her old junk. Every second morning she had to make a stop at the post office to send various parcels on their way, while her bank account began to bulge.
April would bore Connor rigid with the details of her latest wheeling and dealing on a Monday morning in the broom cupboard. She’d told him last week how, ‘My aunt Jessie had given me some fine bone china when I got married for the first time. It’d been too fancy to use as I was scared to break it. Well, you know how ham-fisted I am. I actually forgot I had it, but there it was, a complete twenty-four-piece dining set. £320 I got for that. Well, it’s better off money in the bank than gathering dust in the attic.’
Disinterested, Connor had yawned and replied, ‘The pawn shop would’ve given you the same and you wouldn’t have had to fanny around with post and packaging.’
April had retorted, ‘And just where is the fun in that?’
In a few weeks’ time Connor would ask April to flog his Asics Gel-Kayano trainers for him on eBay. He would wear them only once after they’d served their purpose.
Connor had lied his way into the blue group of runners for the Great Scottish Run, having told the organisers he regularly ran half-marathons in one hour thirty-five. Being a journo from the country’s biggest selling newspaper, they gave him a free entry. Now he found himself surrounded by 15,000 other eager souls on a bright Sunday morning in George Square, ready to pound 13.1 miles around the city.
Covering crime for the Daily Herald sometimes gave Connor a distorted view of society. In his world it was all knife and gun crime with revenge slashings and shootings, along with drugs and the highly organised criminals who supplied them. Elsewhere in the paper were stories of the country’s increasing adult and childhood obesity, with warnings that we’d soon all be waddling around like fat Americans. But here was the very antithesis of all that. Thousands upon thousands of fit people, most of who were running for charitable causes. There was camaraderie about them, like one massive football team where everyone played for the same side. Connor liked how it made him feel, to be amongst good folk.
DCI Crosbie was thinking the exact same thought as he basked in the feeling of goodwill. Connor and Crosbie had a lot in common. They were the same age, where ambition has been replaced by weariness, but they also missed absolutely nothing.
It was Crosbie who spotted the reporter first. Like many coppers h
e never forgot a face, but this one was out of context and Crosbie couldn’t place him at first. Then the penny dropped. ‘The Daily cunting Herald. What does that fucking arsehole want?’
The crime reporter soon managed to manoeuvre into position alongside the detective. Without giving Connor even a sideways glance, Crosbie enquired, ‘First time?’
Connor had been found out. ‘How did you know?’
Crosbie turned ever so slightly towards Connor and smiled. ‘Well, for starters, there’s the spanking new trainers. Then you’ve left the price tag on your running top, and if you will forgive me for being overly personal, you also have a slight beer belly. I’m afraid you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out you haven’t run a race since school sports day. Oh, and just a little aside, your picture by-line wasn’t taken yesterday either.’
Connor had to laugh. He’d been well and truly busted. He hadn’t run since school and his by-line pic was at least a decade old. But Crosbie’s friendly demeanour gave him hope that he may be able to develop some sort of relationship with him. He took a gamble by giving the cop a taste of his own medicine.
‘Okay. Well, I see a man who keeps himself to himself, who is bound by a sense of duty but hates the politics involved with his rank. Someone who has resisted recent promotion opportunities, because it takes him further away from solving crime and feeling the collar of bad guys. Someone who is determined to catch the killers of Selina Seth and, just as importantly, Jackie McIvor. And someone who hasn’t had a chance lately to run nearly as much as he’d like.’
Crosbie turned to eyeball Connor again, staying momentarily silent. He eventually said, ‘I would have told you to piss off until you said “killers” and not “killer”. Glad to see you don’t actually believe the guff your newspaper churns out.’
Crosbie knew he was being disingenuous to the Daily Herald, a paper he secretly liked. He’d also been reading Connor Presley’s articles for years. He liked his style. His reports were always well informed and well written. Connor didn’t tend to go in for flyers – when a grain of truth is spun up into something it’s not. Some hacks didn’t even start with anything as small as a grain.
In fact Crosbie had often wondered what it would have been like to be in Connor’s shoes. Not that he would ever let the journo know that. ‘Run with me,’ he said warmly, before adding with a grin, ‘and see how long you can keep up with the Glasgow polis.’
As Connor was pounding the streets of Glasgow, April Lavender was also about to indulge in a rare bout of exercise. She looked down at the spare tyres of fat that rippled out beyond her ample bosom, all covered by a straining layer of lilac-hued swimming costume and topped with a matching frilly hat. ‘I look like the Sugar Plum Fairy,’ she thought.
By any standards she was quite a sight. To make matters worse, April was also terrified of water, even though she would only be thrashing around in the shallow end. She felt better when she saw a fellow Sugar Plum Fairy self-consciously make her way into the pool.
‘Glad to see I have another skinny supermodel for company,’ April grinned.
Both women roared with laughter. ‘Well, at least we’re trying – got to give us Brownie points for that,’ replied the stranger, before offering her hand and introducing herself. ‘I’m Celia.’
‘And I’m April. Pleased to meet you.’
With that the two new-found friends entered the shallows together, like a pair of hippos.
Osiris pushed his frame as far back into the driver’s seat as he could.
The prostitute he’d picked up was clearly stoned. She fumbled at his belt buckle and zip, before lazily giving him oral sex. Osiris was barely aroused. He stroked the back of the prostitute’s vulnerable neck, like a cat toying with its prey. She felt him stiffen considerably.
He loved the feeling of life or death he held in his hands. There were more reasons to kill her than not, but Osiris had bigger fish to fry. Osiris came, before grabbing a handful of the prostitute’s hair and stuffing a twenty-pound note into her mouth. Her eyes widened with shock. He slapped her hard then snarled, ‘Now fuck off, you slut, before I change my mind,’ and pushed her roughly onto the street, where she scurried off like a frightened animal.
He always felt dirty after sex and cursed himself. ‘Fucking whore – should have made her a mercy killing.’
The wheels of his red Mondeo spun wildly as he sped off into the night.
21
Bored Stiff
Connor walked through the doors of the Peccadillo café safe in the knowledge that April would be eating and baffling the waiting staff as usual. Even from a distance he could tell that his crime-fighting colleague was tucking into a particularly hearty breakfast. He sat down opposite her, and she immediately started speaking through mouthfuls of food. ‘Oh, hello, how are …’ Connor presumed she’d said ‘you’ but couldn’t quite make it out as she sent speckles of half-chewed breakfast spraying in his general direction.
April talked with her mouth full a lot, partly because she ate continuously and partly because she was always so friendly with folk she treated them like family. Connor often had to transfer calls from April’s daughter Jayne to her phone as both mother and daughter were incapable of remembering April’s direct line. Jayne was usually eating at the same time as her mother on the opposite end of the phone, causing Connor to remark on more than one occasion how the apple hadn’t fallen very far from the tree. Knowing the Lavender girls, they’d have eaten the apple, too.
April was in a particularly anxious mood this morning. ‘Let me tell you what happened with Jayne this weekend. Well, you know how she and Jon are getting divorced …’
Connor tuned out. He’d heard every minute detail of Jayne and Jon’s strung-out separation. He sat dead-eyed as April launched into the next boring chapter of ‘he said that’ and ‘she did what’. It reminded Connor of his own childhood when his own parents had separated. Dad had left for a younger woman and seemed to be very happy with his new arrangement. Mum, on the other hand, made her sole reason for living the destruction of Dad’s newfound happiness. Everything was used as a bargaining tool – birthdays, Christmases, holidays. All of them tinged with the sadness that can only be brought on by increasingly bitter parents who’d made Connor piggy-in-the-middle.
He didn’t dwell much on his past – there was nothing but heartache there. Now, apart from his work, he lived his own life free of confrontation, partly because he’d never entered into a steady relationship. Sure, he’d had plenty of girls, but the thrill of the chase soon evaporated on the third or fourth night they slept together. Connor wasn’t the type to blame his commitment-phobia baggage on his parents. As far as he was concerned his choices meant he was able to live the way he chose, and not having screaming matches every night was top of his agenda.
April gestured to pay her bill, but when they both went to stand up they grimaced simultaneously. Their weekend exercise had left them stiff as boards. April laughed, ‘Look at the state of us – what a couple of old crocks.’
The Weasel didn’t allow the Special Investigations unit the luxury of taking their jackets off before he began barking instructions at them in his charmless style. ‘New week, same old serial killer on the loose.’
Connor corrected him. ‘There are actually two killers on the loose.’
The Weasel continued as if Connor hadn’t spoken. ‘What did you find out from that plod, Crosbie?’
‘Ah,’ said Connor as if he’d only just remembered, ‘that’s something I need to speak to you and Bent about.’
The Weasel visibly bristled. Connor couldn’t tell whether it was from his brazenness at requesting a meeting with the editor or the contemptuous use of his master’s surname.
‘Ten o’clock,’ he snarled and slammed the broom cupboard door behind him.
Connor turned round to see April’s eager face staring bac
k at him.
‘Gosh, this sounds exciting. What are we going to speak them about?’ she beamed.
Connor stared at her ageing moon face in silence for a moment, before muttering under his breath, ‘Different planet – she’s on a different planet.’
Half an hour later, at precisely 9.59 a.m., the Weasel chapped impatiently on the broom cupboard’s door, which was a first.
‘I didn’t think he knew how to knock,’ said Connor. ‘Let the bastards stew a few minutes more.’ He giggled to himself.
April had just nipped off for one of her regular loo breaks, keeping Bent and the Weasel waiting even longer.
Connor decided to get the meeting started without her. April’s flustered late arrival would irritate the fastidious Bent anyway. Striding purposefully into the editor’s office he didn’t bother with any pleasantries – none given, none received. Instead, he quickly outlined the subbed-down version of the conversation he’d had with Crosbie and the special request the DCI had made.
‘And this flatfoot has promised us the exclusive? He won’t go giving it to everyone else at the eleventh hour?’ the Weasel snarled.
‘Nope – doesn’t like dealing with the press, but he seems to have liked our coverage, despite our front page linking the deaths of Seth and McIvor, which was a pile of crap, to paraphrase Crosbie. But he’s willing to overlook that to work exclusively with us.’
Connor let his statement hang in the room knowing full well the two men before him had planned that front page together, despite Connor’s insistence it was inaccurate. They were dumbstruck by his bluntness. Finally, Bent broke the tension. ‘Well, I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. I think your DCI Crosbie plans to use us,’ he said, spitting out the words. ‘I think it’s time the Daily Herald brought this killer to justice since the cops seem to be incapable of catching him.’
Connor protested, ‘With all due respect, we have no place interfering with two murder investigations … It’s not our job …’
The Weasel cut him off. ‘We can interfere with whatever and whomever we want. We’re the Daily Fucking Herald.’
Connor returned the Weasel’s hostile glare. This guy was a caricature of how a news editor should be. His management technique had died out with dinosaurs like Fleet Street legend Kelvin MacKenzie, who bullied his staff for fun and once famously sacked the Sun’s astrologer with the opening gambit, ‘You probably already know this,’ then spent the following thirty years dining out on that same tale.
But here were two living, breathing throwbacks to that bygone era, only, as far as Connor was concerned, they were poor imitations. He was of the opinion that most people worked harder and better out of a desire to impress a boss who was fair, rather than one they feared. But this pair had read the Stick It Up Your Punter handbook too often and were already legends in their own minds. That’s why they felt they could interfere with the country’s biggest manhunt. They weren’t the ones who had to suffer the fallout. They barely left the office and therefore fell into a familiar newspaper executive trait of living in a bubble.
Connor stood his ground with a little psychology of his own. ‘Let’s give Crosbie a try. If he fucks with us then we’ll crucify him. He’ll have to leave Scotland and the force – or both – if he turns us over.’ This fighting talk was enough to placate the Weasel and Bent. Connor left just as April was about to enter the room. He grabbed her forearm and steered her back to their broom cupboard.
‘What did I miss?’ she whispered.
Connor shrugged. ‘Only the latest comedy routine from Dumb and Dumber. But we’ve got work to do. You need to see Crosbie. He owes us one.’
‘And what are you going to do?’ she asked.
Connor put on his coat. ‘I need to thank an old friend before it’s too late.’