Killing With Confidence (17 page)

Connor replied,
‘LOM.’

With a quizzical look
April said, ‘LOM?’

He laughed. ‘It’s
your new acronym – Lots Of Misunderstanding.’

‘Now I’ve got a
splash to file.’

32

Dim and Denser

April sat
in the Tesco café at Craigmarloch near the Seths’ family home.
Connor had bought her a large tea, a roll and sausage covered in
brown sauce with a Danish pastry to help her recover from her
ordeal. He sat across from April and urged her to be quiet while he
filed his copy.

April was amazed how
Connor could write thousands of words from his tiny hand-held
BlackBerry. She could barely read the screen unless she was wearing
her extra thick reading glasses. As he sat watching him tap, tap
tapping away at the miniature keyboard, she thought of how she’d
learned to type at De’meers secretarial college, under the auspices
of Miss Denser. She had spent a year there, all for the dubious
honour of graduating from De’meers college as a Denser student.

Miss Denser was a
Miss Jean Brodie type, an old spinster who looked as though she’d
never cracked a smile in her life, never mind slept with a man. The
school specialised in taking the dim-witted daughters of rich
businessmen and teaching them secretarial basics, so that they
could get a job in a large company and go on to marry other rich
businessmen.

April had got in on a
local authority bursary, the only one to do so in her class, and
Miss Denser had made sure she knew it. She tried to make April feel
as if she had no right to be mixing with the upper crust of
society, or wealthy halfwits as April referred to them.

‘Miss Tarte,’ she’d
bellow, for that was April’s maiden name, one she’d been desperate
to ditch for as long as she could remember, ‘you’ve done it wrong
again.’

A phrase that would
follow April throughout her life.

‘You’ve done it wrong
again’ could apply to her doomed marriages and to her decidedly
dodgy IT skills. Hardly a day went by without Connor shouting the
same phrase across the broom cupboard office as she attempted to
use the online archive or their desktop publishing system
Hermes – nicknamed Herpes by long-suffering staff.

‘You know they’re
talking of replacing Herpes,’ Connor had casually mentioned one
morning.

Any technological
changes brought April out in a cold sweat. Whenever she felt she
had mastered an operating system, and by mastered she meant she
could successfully log on and limit her calls to the IT department
to just a few per week, then the company would replace it.

Technology completely
baffled her. She had no idea how the words Connor tapped into his
BlackBerry would appear ‘as if by magic’, as she once let slip, in
the following day’s newspaper.

Connor had taken her
by the arm and pointed to the sky and said, ‘See that big silver
bird? We call that an aeroplane. An aer-o-plane.’

After that she had
kept her ‘as if by magic’ observations to herself.

Miss Denser aside,
the truth was, she had actually enjoyed De’meers college as most of
the girls were all right. April made friends with a couple of them.
She had forgotten their names now, but she did enjoy taking Daddy’s
little princesses to rough pubs they would never have dreamt of
frequenting, then laughing as they would get sozzled and snog the
faces off apprentice tradesmen instead of the rugby captains they
were being groomed for.

But word of one of
these little nightly excursions somehow slipped out and Miss Denser
was furious. With a face like thunder, she made an attempt to
address the class but it was abundantly clear her poisonous words
were directed solely at the young freckle-faced girl from the wrong
side of town.

‘I am told, from a
very reliable source, that certain De’meers college students have
been frequenting the Jacobite licensed premises.’ Miss Denser
couldn’t bring herself to use the word ‘pub’. ‘Let me make one
thing absolutely clear,’ she prattled on, ‘the Jacobite is not an
establishment fit for a student of De’meers college, to be seen
laughing, joking and drinking with young men. Now I know some of
you may not have a reputation to uphold, but De’meers college most
certainly does. And young ladies from De’meers college are
representing our fine school at all times.’

April could barely
contain her tears of laughter. She loved the way Miss Denser saw no
irony in the name De’meers college, but she simply couldn’t help
herself when she decided to play along. April piped up in the style
of
Rumpole of the Bailey
, ‘Miss Denser, these are very grave
accusations, very grave indeed. I myself would never dream of
entering such a tawdry establishment, but I have passed it once or
twice and observed that there is frosted glass on all the windows
and doors. So, I have come to the conclusion that your very
reliable source, who allegedly witnessed students from De’meers
college drinking and cavorting or whatever else – must have
been inside the said Jacobite licensed premises at the time.’ April
finished triumphantly. ‘Perhaps your reliable source could
elaborate more and help us identify who these alleged students
were?’

You could have cut
the atmosphere with a knife as Miss Denser looked as if she was
about to spontaneously combust. The other students could barely
stifle their giggles as they sat eyes down and waited to see what
on earth would unfold next.

Miss Denser marched
to April’s desk and stuck her index finger in her face. ‘You, young
lady,’ she spat, ‘are a bad egg.’

The truth was, Miss
Denser had been rumbled by April. Every week she’d let down her
tightly wound grey bun, swapped her matronly grey suit for more
casual clothes, donned some make-up and headed to the Jacobite for
some very large whiskies.

April and her friends
wouldn’t have recognised Miss Denser even if she’d joined their
company. They certainly wouldn’t have equated her with the ageing
flirt at the bar pinching the backside of a married plumber.

April was wrong about
Miss Denser on one account though. She had slept with a man –
just about every regular in the Jacobite as it happened.

Connor snapped her
out of her reverie. ‘Copy all done and filed. Come on, let me drop
you off at home.’

EXCLUSIVE by CONNOR
PRESLEY

THE WIDOWER of
murdered jewellery tycoon Selina Seth was in hiding last night
after a failed kidnap attempt.

Martin Seth, 39, fled
the family home in Dullatur, Cumbernauld, after three men broke
into the £1.5 million mansion in a bid to abduct him.

Daily Herald
crime reporter Connor Presley was attacked during the botched
raid.

Connor, 39, was
knocked unconscious by one of the assailants and a 58-year-old
woman at the property – who refused to be identified –
was bound and gagged.

Both were taken to
hospital before being released.

Martin Seth’s
whereabouts is unknown.

It is believed a
notorious crime lord was attempting to buy a share of Seth
International – the multi-million pound company Martin
co-owned with his late wife – even though the firm is said to
be in financial difficulties since the brutal murder of Selina, 38,
two weeks ago.

Last night DCI
Crosbie said: ‘We’re keeping an open mind.’

33

Payback

‘Fifty-eight! Fifty-bloody-eight!’ April
remonstrated.

‘Well, none of us is
getting any younger, my dear,’ Connor said, patronising his older
colleague.

‘I am fifty-six, you
moron,’ April seethed. ‘I know it’s a laugh to you, but management
will look at the age fifty-eight in the paper and think, “Jeez, it
really is time we got rid of old April. Look, she’s pushing sixty.
Time to put her out to pasture.”’

‘Should have been
done years ago,’ Connor coughed and muttered under his breath.
‘Look, it’s been a tough couple of weeks for you. You need to relax
a little, you’ve aged terribly,’ Connor added, clearly enjoying his
little wind-up, ‘and anyway, how do you know it was me? Maybe the
subs changed it. Yeah, must have been the subs.’ He laughed, using
the age-old reporter’s get-out clause.

‘And I take it the
Weasel made you take out my name?’ she said.

‘Yip, I argued like
fuck for it. Glad to see many others in the newsroom did, too, but
he said it was company policy while someone was suspended …
blah, blah, blah,’ Connor explained.

The piercing ringtone
of Presley’s BlackBerry brought their conversation to a halt.

Someone other than
April was not happy with the article. Colin Harris was attempting
to keep his temper – and failing miserably. ‘Connor, now
everyone will think I murdered Selina. The fucking cops have been
all over my pad this morning,’ Harris roared down the phone.

‘Consider it payback
for the knock to my noggin,’ Connor replied in an attempt to keep
the conversation jovial.

‘I may be a lot of
things, but I don’t go around murdering women,’ Harris spat,
getting angrier with every breath.

‘I know that, Colin.
And the cops know that, too. You’re top dog around these parts, but
you’re not the law. You can’t go around trying to kidnap legitimate
business people who won’t do deals with you or assaulting
journalists just because you feel you can. You have to stick to
dealing with scumbags. That’s the natural order of things. The
serious crime squad will see through any attempt by you to go
legit. They’ll shut you down, Colin. Repossess everything. You’ll
be fighting them in court for years.’ Connor concluded his
lecture.

There was silence at
the other end of the line until Harris whispered menacingly,
‘Everything was going to plan before you blew it with these
accusations.’

Connor sighed.
‘Colin, think about it. You’re a clever man and more streetwise
than I’ll ever be. Did you honestly think you could abduct the
widower of the most famous murder victim in the land without it
going unnoticed? It’s the Icarus effect, Colin. You started flying
too high and now the heat is melting your waxwings. But you’ll
survive and bounce back, a bit like Lazarus. You always do. This is
just a little glitch.’

‘If you’re finished
with your ancient analogies, this is more than a little glitch.
It’s a fucking shit storm,’ Harris said through gritted teeth.

Connor reluctantly
admired the way Harris was well read. Despite leaving school
unofficially at fourteen, he had made a point of reading many of
the masters during his frequent bouts of incarceration, while his
fellow inmates’ literary scope stretched no further than that
week’s new wank mag.

‘Colin, we’ve always
been as honest as we can with each other, so I’m telling you
straight: we have pictures of the cops raiding your house from this
morning. Just to let you know.’

Harris swore under
his breath before hanging up.



The photos
looked great, thanks to DCI Crosbie waiting until there was enough
light at daybreak for some decent shots by two
Daily Herald
snappers.

Unfortunately for
Crosbie his alter ego hated early rises. He struggled to keep his
inner monologue silent, attempting to cover up the odd ‘cock
suckers’ and ‘motherfucker’ with a series of little coughs. But the
rank-and-file officers were starting to gossip about their
commanding officer being ‘a bit of a nutter’.

Crosbie looked around
Colin Harris’s plush home. ‘Tacky as fuck,’ his inner self said out
loud. Crosbie couldn’t help but agree. From the white shagpile
carpet to the white grand piano, a bit like John Lennon’s in his
iconic ‘Imagine’ video. Crosbie took a step closer to read a plaque
on the piano lid. It wasn’t like the Lennon piano – it
was
the Lennon piano.

‘Fuck me,’ Crosbie
and his inner self said in unison.

‘Did you say
something, sir?’ an officer behind him enquired.

‘Yes, be careful with
that piano. It’ll make us a lot of money,’ Crosbie ordered.

The detective was
enforcing the Scottish government’s Proceeds of Crime Act,
introduced in 2002. It had proved to be a useful law enforcement
tool as the police could seize the assets of known criminal gangs
with the onus on the suspect to prove that their BMWs, giant plasma
screen TVs and homes had been purchased with legitimate money.
Since most of the criminals rarely paid tax it was usually an
open-and-shut case.

But Colin Harris was
no ordinary criminal. He insisted he had earned the bulk of his
earnings from a series of bestselling books about his early crime
career and claimed to have gone straight. In truth the paperbacks
had sold a fraction of what Harris had said they had. However, it
had allowed him to plough his profits from drug dealing into a
series of legitimate businesses. His major problem was that his
legitimate businesses grew at a much slower rate than his criminal
enterprises, which is why he had been so keen to buy into Seth
International. Although an ailing company in decline, thanks to its
late co-owner’s lavish lifestyle, it was still a household name,
and it would have provided Harris with the perfect platform to
launder his illegal money. If it had all gone to plan, it would
have made him a very, very rich man.

Of course, the one
thing many rich men fear is that someone will one day take it all
away. It was the only thought that truly worried Harris. The
eventual outright acquisition of Seth International would have
allowed him to sleep more soundly at night.

As John Lennon’s
piano was carefully wrapped and wheeled into the back of a
Pickford’s removal van, DCI Crosbie gave a wry smile. But his
cheery mood soon disappeared as his other half made another
appearance. ‘You should have kept the piano for me, you stupid
cunt – I play like Liberace.’