26
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
April tucked into the café’s Mega Breakfast Special, which she had repeatedly promised herself she would never order. It was like a super-sized Scottish breakfast and could easily have fed four. But, when under pressure, April ate even more than usual, which amounted to a whole lot of food.
She was made to feel even more guilty when the waitress Martel served it up by saying, ‘Here’s your heart attack on a plate.’
Connor appeared beside her, shaking his head ruefully, ‘Good god, woman, even by your standards, that is one mighty plateful.’
From her customary full mouth, he managed to decipher the words, ‘I don’t care.’
‘Well, just to give you the heads up, the Weasel’s on the warpath because you didn’t phone in yesterday. I don’t mind you ignoring that idiot’s calls, but why did you ignore mine? What the hell happened?’
April stopped chewing and sat in silence. Tears filled her eyes as she then explained how she believed Martin Seth’s murder confession wasn’t true, how DCI Crosbie had confirmed her instincts, and how she literally didn’t know what to do next. ‘I tried calling you, but got your voicemail. I didn’t know what to tell the Weasel. He would have ignored my concerns and splashed it. Then Crosbie would have denied it. So I went swimming instead, which helped give me this healthy appetite.’
Without a hint of humour Connor said, ‘There is nothing remotely healthy about your appetite. I tried calling you back, but your mobile must have been out of juice. You should have kept trying to reach me. We could have worked something out. You really are in the shit. The Weasel wants you up on a disciplinary.’
April dabbed her reddened eyes with the only corner of her napkin that wasn’t stained with tomato sauce and egg yolk. ‘I panicked,’ she sobbed. ‘I want to go back to speak with Martin Seth again, confront him with the facts and see what he says.’
Connor feared for April. She’d once told him how both her parents had suffered from Alzheimer’s, explaining how her folks had ‘forgotten everything – in the end they even forgot how to breathe’. He knew his colleague worried a lot about her possibly bleak future. He also knew many people had their own crosses to bear when it came to their genetic make-up. For some women it was the almost certain knowledge they would get breast cancer, after their mothers and grandmothers. Others walked around knowing their hearts were like ticking time bombs, with coronary heart disease running rife in their families despite good diets and healthy lifestyles.
For Connor it was Huntington’s disease, a genetic disorder which affects the brain. He remembered vividly his gran’s rapid mental decline. At first she had seemed fine, then one day she forgot to turn up at the school gates to collect him. He had been just five at the time, and two older girls had walked him back to his gran’s home. She was sitting on the back porch having a cup of tea oblivious to her child-collecting duties.
Connor still remembered the look of horror as her snot-nosed, snivelling grandchild approached. She’d pleaded, ‘Please don’t tell your mother I forgot you – she’ll kill me.’ Of course, as any five-year-old would, he couldn’t wait to blab all to his mum when she arrived from work to pick him up. There had been a furious row and after that his mum had had to make other after-school arrangements.
Even though he was young at the time, he could still recall his gran’s deterioration. She began swearing a lot at first, which had been unlike her, followed by a loss of inhibition, taking to wandering around the house semi-naked. Her motor skills went, too. She became wobbly and unsteady on her feet, suffered weight and muscle loss, and had trouble swallowing. In the end she just faded away.
A few years back the family curse struck again, this time Connor’s mum Annie began to show telltale signs of the disease. She was now unsteady on her feet, but had good and bad days. Sometimes she was incredibly lucid when he called and at other times she had difficulty putting a sentence together.
Connor tried not to think of the future too much. There was a straight 50/50 chance he’d inherit the dodgy Huntington’s genes. He’d been offered a test by his mum’s consultant when he’d taken her for an appointment but had refused. What was the point? The disease was incurable, despite the encouraging noises scientists made every so often about a breakthrough.
It usually started to ‘kick-in’, as the consultant had put it, when those carrying the gene reached forty. Connor was now thirty-nine, so he guessed he’d learn soon enough. But he would, as the old adage had it, cross that bridge when he came to it. His philosophy was to live in the now, and right now his colleague needed all the help she could get.
In the last few weeks the Weasel had been feeling burnt out. The Seth murder had left him physically drained. He knew cocaine was damaging his body. He’d been doing so much of the white stuff that his septum was starting to wobble loose. But the Weasel felt it was worth the toll it had taken on his body. As the cocaine high began to kick in, he instantly felt better, and allowed himself the luxury of stroking his own ego.
The Daily Herald was at the top of its game and ahead of the pack because of his leadership. His misplaced self-belief would not even allow him to contemplate that the paper’s success with the Seth murder had all been down to Connor and April’s hard work and expertise. No, as far as he was concerned, he had ridden them hard to produce the goods, which they had done.
But now, ‘the old dear had slipped up’, meaning his plan to have her dismissed – without the need for an expensive payoff – and install his mistress in her place had just taken a massive step closer.
The news editor diced up another line of the white stuff and inhaled it deeply, flushed the toilet and walked onto the editorial floor. It had just gone 8 a.m. and the Weasel felt ready to take on the world.
27
A Deathbed Promise
All three of Colin Harris’s mobile phones were vibrating simultaneously. Since he’d ‘put out the feelers’ to find his sister’s murderer, calls were coming in thick and fast from across Glasgow. Harris knew this wasn’t out of loyalty or desire to curry favour with him. It was to do with the £100,000 bounty he had put on the head of his sister’s killer.
He’d had to switch off the phones while visiting his mum’s hospital bed. Old Jeannie had suffered a stroke a few days after April had interviewed her. Harris was no medical expert, but he knew his frail old mum wasn’t long for this world. She looked tiny, with her skeletal body barely raising the starched hospital sheets. Her mind was scrambled from the massive aneurysm on the left-hand side of her brain, which had rendered the right-hand side of her body virtually useless.
But as Harris kissed her forehead to say his goodbyes, Old Jeannie’s strength and lucidity suddenly returned. She gripped her son’s hand tightly. Then with all her might she managed to spit out the slurred, but clearly audible words, ‘Find him, son. Find Jackie’s killer.’
Colin clasped his mum’s bony fingers and promised, ‘I’m working on it, Ma. Night and day I’m working on it.’
DCI Crosbie left the first session with Watt Wilson feeling invigorated. He had a spring in his step and a smile on his face for the first time in as long as he could remember. He could recall Watt hypnotising him with a silver medal dangling on a chain. Once under, he felt like a weight had been removed from his shoulders and all the restraints he had to show as a police officer vanished.
The detective had been able to pour his heart out, rhyming off the numerous frustrations from his professional career to his home life that had been building up inside him, like a big ball of fury, which would erupt with his foul-mouthed rants. He had sworn repeatedly and loudly under hypnosis, but he had enjoyed it. Watt Wilson had encouraged him to swear more and more. In fact, he recommended that every so often Crosbie should drive into the Campsie hills, that give Glasgow its unique skyline, and scream obscenities into the wilderness.
‘That sounds like a fucking
marvellous idea,’ Crosbie had remarked, before Watt had ordered Crosbie to return his swearing alter ego back inside the deepest realms of his mind, like putting a ‘genie back into a bottle’.
The detective felt good. He was ready to tackle his two murder cases with renewed drive and enthusiasm. And he didn’t fear his inner self any more, even though it had threatened to derail his career. Instead, he had been actively encouraged to set it free. ‘Like venting off steam,’ Watt had explained, ‘before you explode.’
‘That old dear, April, was right – you are good,’ he’d said to Watt as he left the hypnotist’s home a happy man.
28
Weasel Words
The Weasel had clearly been waiting for April to arrive. No sooner had she stepped foot on the Daily Herald’s editorial floor, he barked, ‘You. HR. Now.’
By taking matters to human resources, the Weasel was making everything official. The unions had long been drummed out of the Daily Herald, and left toothless after the Thatcher government. New Labour had introduced new laws in the unions’ favour, but the Daily Herald’s management steadfastly refused to negotiate with the likes of the National Union of Journalists. To appease the workers, and stay on the right side of the law, a staff association was formed instead. It was the elected members of this staff association who handled everything from pay negotiations to disciplinary actions. But since it was not funded by contributions from members’ subscriptions, but by the owners of the Daily Herald itself, it was seen as little more than a company puppet.
It was an accusation that always annoyed the staff rep Davie Paterson. Davie was the former Father of the Chapel for the Herald’s National Union of Journalists branch. He was an old-school union type with the ruddy complexion of someone who enjoyed a right good drink. Paterson hated the new breed of managers like the Weasel, being of the firm belief that most problems could be sorted in the department, without official involvement from HR and the staff association.
Paterson looked flustered when he met April and Connor outside the HR department for the hastily arranged meeting, asking bluntly, ‘What the fuck is this about, April? I only got summoned five minutes ago.’
Connor spoke on April’s behalf. ‘April’s screwed up badly. She never called in after a story. The Weasel was waiting to splash what she’d got. They’d hung on all day waiting for her to check in. In the end they needed to get another splash – which I supplied.’
Another call from Colin Harris had taken care of that. Today’s front page read:
Harris: I’ll pay £100,000 to catch my sister’s killer
GANSTER’S BOUNTY BOOST
Davie Paterson sighed and softened his tone, ‘April, old darling, you’re too long in the tooth to screw up like that. What really happened?’
She’d never been the crying type. In fact, April hated how younger female colleagues would turn on the waterworks if things didn’t go their way. But tears welled up in her eyes once more. She sobbed, ‘My bottle went. I had a murder confession on tape which I knew was lies and so did the police. I was getting told to do one thing by the police and I knew I’d have to do the complete opposite for the paper. I just ceased to be able to make a rational decision. I think I’ve finally passed my sell-by date. This is a young man’s game.’
‘Don’t talk pish,’ Paterson barked. ‘Can’t have the toddlers taking over the creche. Then we’d really be in the shit. Right, this cunt is going to hit you with a gross misconduct charge. I want you to say nothing. Let me do the talking.’
Paterson burst through the door of the HR manager’s office, clutching what looked like a caseload of notes. In actual fact they were just photocopies of the last staff association meeting‘s minutes, but it was one of the oldest tricks of the trade to look like you’d come to a fight armed to the teeth. Paterson was a short man – barely five feet five – but his presence filled the room. He sat directly opposite the Weasel and eyeballed him. For all his grand standing of being a tough nut, the fiery news editor could not meet Paterson’s thousand-yard stare.
April took her seat next to Paterson and smiled meekly at the HR manager Patricia Sharpe, an unfriendly and stern type, whom April had learned over the years was Sharpe by name and nature.
Human resources – which had replaced the old-fashioned personnel office – was a growth industry as far as April could see. In the old days one or two strange little accountant types seemed to be able to handle the payroll and pension payments of an entire company with thousands of staff.
Now it appeared you needed a whole department full of strident, young go-getters with university degrees to do the same job. Of course, they’d argue that the job description had changed out of all recognition what with the ever-increasing number of EU employment laws, along with various company initiatives and benefits for staff. April suspected it was a ruse. HR workers were now some of the highest paid within newspapers, many of which were struggling to turn a profit.
Patricia Sharpe wouldn’t have to bother her perfectly coiffured head with what stories she was bringing to the table today, unlike the reporters who were the very lifeblood of the industry. Yet a woman who’d never chapped the door of a murder victim’s family was now sitting in authority over a time-served journalist like April. It just wasn’t right.
Patricia opened the proceedings by saying, ‘We are here because the company intends to start disciplinary procedure against April Lavender for gross misconduct.’
Davie cut her off mid-flow, growling, ‘Aye, aye, we didn’t think we’d come here for the fucking coffee, which is pish, by the way. Kenco this ain’t.’
Patricia had had many meetings with Davie, and was expecting his usual gruffness. ‘Now, David,’ she responded using his Sunday name, ‘you know I’m legally required to adhere to company procedure.’
‘Legally what?’ Davie snorted. ‘This isn’t LA Law, love. Just lay it on the table, what you’ve got and what this is really about.’
If Paterson had wanted to provoke a response, he certainly got it. ‘I’ll tell you what this is really about. She,’ the Weasel said, aggressively pointing his finger towards April, ‘didn’t file yesterday when she was out on a splash story. She didn’t even check in. And for that alone she has no place on my news team.’
Paterson’s face turned red with fury, as he stared silently at the news editor, before exploding. ‘First of all, if you point again at one of my members, you’ll leave here with nine fingers – the other will be shoved up your arse. Secondly, she has a name. It’s April Lavender, and she’s had more splashes than you’ve had your hole, sonny. And thirdly, by saying she has no place on your news team, does that mean she’s now sacked? If so, then why are we bothering our arses going through procedure when you’ve already acted as judge, jury and executioner?’
Patricia Sharpe interrupted, ‘Right, that’s enough. Please mind your language, David – and to answer your final point, no, April has not been dismissed. We want to establish what happened yesterday to see what, if any, disciplinary procedure should be followed.’
Paterson knew HR was backing down. He had won a concession. He then asked for what he had really hoped to gain from the meeting: ‘I want an adjournment to be able to present our case of mitigating circumstances.’
Patricia instantly replied, ‘Granted. We’ll reconvene in two days’ time. Until then April is suspended on full pay. Thank you both for your time.’
Patricia and the Weasel remained seated as Paterson led April outside.
When they were out of earshot, he stopped her and said, ‘You have a stay of execution. Sort out in your head who you’re working for – the Daily Herald or the Strathclyde polis. Then, when you’ve come to the correct conclusion, write your story. You’ll find all is forgiven if you can produce an exclusive splash. Good luck.’
April was in floods of tears as she sat across from Connor in the Peccadillo café.
‘Bastard,’ Connor spat. ‘What an
utter bastard. I’d love to get someone like Colin Harris to take him out. Or better than that, I wish the Weasel would contract some horrible disease. Seriously though, why doesn’t a back-stabbing bastard like him get terminal cancer instead of good people like Badger. Does that make me a nasty person?’
‘Well, you can be pretty cutting with me, but nasty, no. I’d call you many things, but never nasty,’ she answered truthfully. April had been about to give an ‘oh, you don’t really mean that’ response and generally patronise her younger colleague, when she paused for a moment and thought about the hypothetical picture Connor had just painted.
Cancer was an awful, awful disease. She had nursed her own aunt and uncle through it until they were left with the skin hanging off their bones, stripped of all their dignity. Part of her wanted a self-obsessed loathsome individual like the Weasel to experience the same, to see him humbled and learn some humiliation, but experience had taught April only too well. There would always be another Weasel waiting in the wings, ready to take his place. ‘And we thought our teachers were tough,’ she laughed.
Puzzled, Connor asked, ‘What the hell are you on about now, you daft old bat?’
She explained, ‘Remember at school you always had a teacher you hated as you felt they were constantly on your case? Well, I couldn’t wait to leave and be “free” from all that. School was a walk in the park compared to working life. I’ve had more bad bastard bosses than bad teachers. But to answer your question, no, Connor, I do not wish cancer on anyone. However, you reap what you sow. I know it’s an age-old saying, but it’s one I happen to believe in. We are good folk, with flaws like everyone else. Our saving grace is our flaws will never be as bad as the Weasel’s.’