Black Mail (2012) (17 page)

Tony O’Sullivan kicked off his shoes and walked down the hall to collect a can of export from his kitchen cupboard en route to the lounge. Flicking on the light he flopped down on the settee, picked up the phone and dialled Sue’s number. As the call was ringing out he ripped the ring-pull from the can.

‘Sue?’

‘It was my fault entirely,’ she stated.

‘Come again?’

‘I forgot the first rule of going out with a copper.’

‘Which is?’

‘Always make sure you’ve got the tickets. You might end up at the gig on your own, but you can impress everyone around you by telling them you paid for an extra seat for your coat to avoid having to queue for the cloakroom.’

‘Ouch! I had that coming! I really am sorry, Sue. I got tied up. You know how it is …’

‘Don’t I just?’

‘I tried calling you at school this morning to apologise but I was told you’d taken your class to the baths.’

‘The secretary told me someone had called looking for me – someone who didn’t even know my surname. I figured that had to be you.’

‘What did you end up doing last night?’

‘I hung around the park gates at Glasgow Green until well after eight. When you didn’t show I went to the ticket office and asked if there was any chance of a spare ticket – which at least raised a giggle. Not wanting to waste a babysitter, I stopped off at my local to see if there was anyone in I knew. There wasn’t, so I came back home.’

‘Your local?’ Tony said. ‘I thought you were TT?’

‘Typical pisshead’s attitude! My local happens to do a mean line in tomato juice and angostura bitters. As I was saying, I went back home and Amanda, my babysitter, told me you’d called to say you were running late. For lack of anything better to do I challenged her to a game of Scrabble. How was your evening?’

‘I spent over four hours at Glasgow airport waiting for a plane that was frozen to the tarmac in Stockholm.’

‘You probably had a marginally better time than I did. I lost at Scrabble to a sixteen-year-old, with the added indignity of paying her ten quid an hour for the privilege of being hammered. By the way, did you know that “alizarine” is a word?’ she stated indignantly. ‘It’s in the dictionary. Some sort of dye, apparently. Triple word score, no less.’

‘Any chance of me making it up to you?’

‘That will not be easy.’

‘How about dinner? You get to choose the restaurant.’

‘Lucky for you that the Chardon d’Or’s booked up solid at this time of year.’

‘How about the Ubiquitous Chip?’

‘Hmm … I suppose I might be open to persuasion.’

‘What night would suit you best?’

‘Hold on a minute. Let me check my engagements.’ Sue rustled some papers. ‘If we could avoid December the
nineteenth next year,’ she said. ‘That’s the date of the next nativity play.’

Tony chortled. ‘How did the play go?’

‘Mary forgot her lines and one of the wise men farted, which nearly cleared the hall. Apart from that everything went well.’

‘How are you fixed for tomorrow night?’

‘Sounds good.’

‘I’ll ring the Chip straight away and see if I can get a table. I’ll call you right back.’

‘Before you hang up, to avoid any repetition of last night’s fiasco, how about we exchange mobile numbers?’

‘Not much point if you forget to take yours with you.’

‘Cheeky beggar!’

Simon Ramsay drew up in Laura Harrison’s driveway and switched off his headlamps. Steady drizzle was falling as he hurried towards the front door. He pressed his finger hard to the bell-push and kept it there until Laura answered.

‘Simon! What in the name of God are you doing here?’

‘Are you on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘I had to see you.’ He stepped inside. ‘I couldn’t risk talking on the phone.’

‘I’m in big trouble,’ Laura blurted out. ‘McAteer’s threatening to cut up rough if he doesn’t get his money by tomorrow.’

‘It gets worse.’

‘What could possibly be worse?’

‘Jude suspects something.’

‘Did you hear what I just said? McAteer’s threatening to slash my face to ribbons if I don’t come up with ten thousand
pounds by tomorrow afternoon. I don’t know where to turn. I’ve been sitting here all day.’ She waved her gin glass in front of his nose. ‘Drinking myself into oblivion while trying to pluck up the courage to phone my father and beg him to let me have ten thousand pounds – and all you have to worry about is that Jude might suspect something!’

‘She knows I was out of the house at the time Mike was killed. She suspects I was involved somehow. If she finds out what we’ve been up to she’ll hand me to the cops on a plate – you know how vindictive she can be. We’ll have to find a way to deal with her.’

‘Deal with her!
Deal with her!
’ Laura’s voice went up an octave. ‘The same way we dealt with Mike?’ She poured gin down her throat. ‘I don’t know how I ever let you talk me into getting involved with McAteer. Look at the fucking mess that’s landed me in!’

‘Get a grip of yourself,’ he said, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her hard.

‘Not to put too fine a point on it,’ she said, twisting herself free from his grasp, ‘Jude’s your problem. If I manage to get McAteer off my back – and God only knows how I’m going to be able to do that – then I might have to suffer the ignominy of having been caught shagging my sister’s husband. But at least I no longer have Mike to contend with. You, on the other hand, are going to have a lot of explaining to do to Jude.’ Turning her back on him, she drained her glass.

Simon stormed from the room and out of the front door, slamming it behind him. Laura heard the squeal of tyres spinning in the loose gravel as he slewed backwards down the driveway. As she buried her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably, the phone rang. Rubbing away her tears, she
tried to control the tremble in her voice as she picked up the receiver.

‘Hello,’ she stammered.

‘Laura?’ The phone froze in her hand. She hadn’t heard his voice in ten years, but she recognised it instantly. ‘Helen called me earlier this evening.’

‘She shouldn’t have done that. I told her not to.’

‘She and Bjorn couldn’t come up with any way of getting ten thousand pounds for you quickly so she decided to phone me. It was the right thing to do.’

Laura choked back her tears. ‘Will you help me, Dad?’

‘Will you tell me what this is all about?’

‘I can’t.’

There was a brief pause. ‘Helen said you need the money by Friday.’

‘That was the situation this morning, but things have changed. I have to have it by four o’clock tomorrow afternoon.’

Jim Cuthbertson sucked hard on his teeth. ‘You don’t make things easy, Laura.’ Laura felt a huge sob welling in her throat. ‘However, if it has to be tomorrow, then it has to be tomorrow,’ he stated in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘I’ll need some time in the morning to get things organised. If I bring the money over to your place around lunchtime, would that be okay?’

‘Oh, Dad!’

‘You need ten thousand in cash, if I understand the situation correctly?’ Laura’s pent-up sob came bursting forth. ‘There’s one condition,’ Cuthbertson said.

‘What’s that?’

‘You come over to our place for Christmas lunch.’ He replaced the receiver before she could blurt out her thanks.

Tony O’Sullivan dialled Sue’s number.

‘We’re on for the Chip tomorrow night,’ he said.

‘Great!’

‘The table’s booked for eight. How about we meet at
half-seven
in the upstairs bar?’

‘If you’re not there by nine o’clock, would you like me to order for you?’

‘Just watch it! By the way, what is your mobile number?’

Charlie Anderson was in his office early, ploughing through his paperwork, when Colin Renton stuck his head round the door.

‘Have you got a minute, sir?’

‘Sure.’ Charlie slid a memo into his out-basket and put down his pen.

‘I followed up on a hunch last night,’ Renton said, a
self-satisfied
smirk plastered across his features. ‘Remember Harry Robertson – McAteer’s uncle?’

‘Of course. Shot in the head and his body dumped in the Clyde twenty-odd years ago – on the same day he taunted McAteer in the pub about his “arse-features”.’

Renton nodded. ‘The murder weapon was never found so I dug out the ballistics report and checked it against the bullets that were lodged in Mike Harrison’s skull.’

‘And?’

‘In both cases 5.56 millimetre shells were used and, according to the boffins, there’s a ninety-nine percent probability that the shots were fired from the same gun.’

‘Nice one, Colin!’

‘From the striations on the bullets the lab guys told me the weapon was an SA80 assault rifle, which was the standard army combat weapon when McAteer did his tour of duty in Northern Ireland.’

‘How the hell would he manage to get his hands on a combat rifle?’

‘Bribe the quartermaster? Maybe claim the IRA had nicked it?’ Renton suggested. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

Charlie depressed his intercom button. ‘Pauline, find O’Sullivan and tell him to come to my office right away. It’s time we did a bit of brainstorming.’

Charlie rolled up his shirt sleeves and turned over to a fresh sheet of paper on the flipchart board. Picking up a marker pen he lobbed it in Renton’s direction. ‘You be the scribe, Colin. No one can read my shorthand.’ Tony O’Sullivan rocked back in his chair and swung his feet up onto Charlie’s desk. .

‘Let’s summarise what we’ve got.’ Charlie strode up and down the office as he spoke. ‘Billy McAteer seems to be the common thread in all of this. Harrison hires him as his muscle and not long after that Harrison is killed by McAteer’s gun – not in a fit of temper, but in a cold-blooded, well-planned assassination. Someone must’ve been paying McAteer big time to get him to bump off his source of income.’

‘Always assuming McAteer knew who he was killing,’ Renton said.

‘What are you driving at?’ O’Sullivan asked.

‘I’ve been studying the forensic report,’ Renton said. ‘From the angle of the shots, the rifle bullets were fired from underneath
the archway of the bridge and Harrison was shot in the back. The sniper might never have seen his victim’s face. Maybe he didn’t know it was Harrison he was firing at? Perhaps he was expecting someone else to be in the park at that time?’

‘Good point! A nice wee bit of lateral thinking there.’ Charlie clapped his hands enthusiastically. ‘That would go a long way towards explaining something that’s been nagging at the back of my mind ever since you told me Harrison had been shot with McAteer’s gun.’

‘What’s that?’ Renton asked.

‘If McAteer wanted to do away with Harrison, why make such an elaborate production of it? He had easy access to him. A bullet in the back, drop his body in the Clyde with a couple of lead weights attached and Bob’s your uncle – no one would ever have been any the wiser.’

‘Should we pull McAteer in for questioning?’ O’Sullivan asked.

‘That is an option.’ Charlie settled down on his chair. ‘But I’d rather not show our hand right now. We wouldn’t be able to hold him for long, unless, of course, we could persuade Gerry Fraser to press charges. What do you think, Tony? Now that Harrison’s out of the way, what do you think the chances would be of getting Fraser to testify against McAteer?’

O’Sullivan looked dubious. ‘I reckon Fraser’s a lot more terrified of McAteer that he ever was of Harrison.’

‘Okay,’ Charlie said. ‘For now, let’s settle for putting a
round-the
-clock tail on McAteer. Colin, get a rota organised as soon as we’ve wrapped up here.’

‘To follow up on Colin’s idea,’ O’Sullivan chipped in. ‘Assuming McAteer didn’t know who he was firing at, then
whoever hired him to carry out the hit presumably knew the score. He must have set Harrison up to be in the park on Saturday morning.’

‘He – or she,’ said Renton.

‘Is that another bit of lateral thinking, or do you have someone specific in mind?’ Charlie asked.

‘Wife beating has been known to drive people to extremes.’

‘Laura Harrison paying her husband’s hit man to do in her old man?’ Charlie mused. ‘Nice touch of dramatic irony – and stranger things have happened. Definitely worth our while having another chat with Mrs Harrison. We should also probe her about the mugging incident outside the cinema. For one thing I’d like to know if she reported the assault at the time and, if not, why not.’ Charlie got to his feet. ‘Tony, you nip across to Bearsden and have a chat with Mrs H. I’m going to have another go at Simon Ramsay. He seemed awfully keen to let me know that he suspected Mike Harrison was a wife beater. How would he know something like that?’

‘And was he acting as a concerned bystander,’ O’Sullivan said, ‘or was he trying to point the finger at Laura Harrison?’

The sun was struggling to filter through the high clouds when Tony O’Sullivan pulled up in the Harrisons’ driveway. Laura hurried to the door when he rang the bell but she was clearly taken aback when she saw who it was.

‘Is this a bad time, Mrs Harrison?’

‘No … Sergeant,’ she stammered. ‘It’s just …’

‘You were expecting someone else?’

‘My father said he’d drop over this morning. I thought it would be him.’

‘I won’t keep you long. Just a couple of questions.’ O’Sullivan took out his notebook and pen.

‘I’d appreciate it if you would be as quick as you can.’ Laura fiddled nervously with her hair.

‘We’re trying to establish your husband’s movements last Friday in case he might have mentioned to someone why he was going to Kelvingrove Park the following morning. We know he arrived at Ronnie McGavigan’s place around eight-thirty for the poker school. Can you tell me where he was before then?’

‘He left for work on Friday morning as usual – around nine o’clock. He never came home for dinner on poker nights. He usually picked up a fish supper or a pizza and ate it in one of his betting shops.’

‘Did he have a set routine?’

‘What do you mean?’