The Last Witness (27 page)

Without warning, his mentor had grabbed his arm and pushed him out into the abyss, over the flimsy rail of the scaffold pole. He stared into the emptiness, his heart thumping, as he desperately tried to cling to the scaffold planking with his toes, the only thing, apart from the welder’s grip, that kept him from death.

‘I want ye tae tell me yer a wanker,’ the man had said, as he levered his charge further out over the gap, like a sail on the boom of a yacht. ‘An’ if ye dinnae, ye fuckin’ nancy boy, I’ll fuckin’ let ye go. And dinnae think anybody gies a fuck aboot whit happens tae ye, ya little runt. There’s accidents here a’ the time, know whit I mean?’

Donald could see a group of men, far below, laughing and pointing at his plight. He felt his bladder weaken; the humiliation of his own urine running down his leg and spreading a dark stain across his blue boiler suit had been nothing compared to the fear he felt.

‘I’m a wanker,’ he said quietly, his mouth dry.

‘Nae good,’ his tormentor sneered, loosening his grip on the young Donald’s arm.

‘I’m a wanker!’ he shouted at the top of his voice.

‘Cannae hear ye.’ The welder’s fingers began to slip on the sleeve of Donald’s oily boiler suit.

‘I’m a wanker!’ Donald roared at the very top of his voice, after which he spewed copiously.

Despite his embarrassment, his relief was palpable as he was pulled back onto the scaffold platform, falling onto the wooden planking with a clatter.

‘An’ ye pished yersel tae. Yer a clatty bastard, as well as a fuckin’ self-abuser.’

Donald remembered how he felt that day: the weight in his chest, the fear of death. Most of all though, he recalled the hatred, the silent need for revenge now focused on the man who had perpetrated such horror upon him. It was the feelings prompted by this incident that became the driving force in his life, the sharp spur that prodded him up the greasy pole. The next day, he resigned his apprenticeship and applied to be a police cadet.

Donald looked across at the other vehicle in the car park, detecting no movement. He closed his eyes, and again the years dropped away. He was on duty on his beat in Glasgow’s Townhead. His four years as a cadet were over; he was now a police constable.

There was something familiar about the figure that staggered out of the run-down pub. The man stopped, fumbled in his pocket, and turned away from the breeze, cupping his hand to light his cigarette, before turning in the direction of the young policeman.

Donald watched as the man drew deeply on his cigarette. There was a dark lane two doors along from the pub. The man walked along the pavement and disappeared down this lane, leaving only a trail of cigarette smoke in his wake illuminated by the streetlights. Donald waited for a few heartbeats, then followed him.

‘What the fuck?’ the man exclaimed as he turned round, one hand against the wall as he urinated in the alleyway, momentarily blinded by the bright torchlight that shone in his face.

Donald said nothing and directed the torch beam to the ground, away from the man’s face.

‘Aw fuck’s sake, the fucking polis,’ the man said, as he watched the policeman bend down and pick up something from amongst the detritus in the lane. ‘At least gie me a fuckin’ chance tae finish before ye huckle me.’

The brick was rough and bulky in Donald’s hand. The pitted surface bit into his palm as he smashed it repeatedly into the man’s head. Eventually, the man fell into a pool of his own piss and out of existence.

‘Who’s the fuckin’ wanker now, you bastard,’ said Donald, as he threw the brick at the shattered skull. He walked from the lane, then slowly down the street, running his fingers along the plate glass windows of shops on one side of the street, and scrutinising those on the other side of the road carefully. The radio in his pocket crackled into life.

‘Two one two, your position please. Anything to report?’

‘Swan Street at Canal Street. Nothing doing, over,’ the young Donald replied.

‘Roger, carry on.’

33

Daley stopped at the end of the hospital corridor. Despite himself, he turned into it, then walked past a series of private rooms until he reached the one with a sign that read ‘L. Daley’. Without knocking, he turned the handle on the door and walked into the room.

She was fast asleep. He felt his heart leap. Her thick auburn hair spilled across the white pillowcase. Her pallor hinted at her most recent trauma and current condition. He stared at the upward slant of her button nose, which he found so irresistible. Her small mouth was a perfect Cupid’s bow, slightly open, revealing the tips of her white teeth; a mouth that drew the eye, gladdened the heart and beckoned to be kissed.

He stood, watching his sleeping wife, his heart breaking. The surveillance footage of her at the garage with Mark Henderson was etched in his mind’s eye. The affection between the pair spilled from every frame: his hand in her hair, the way she angled her face up into his. He imagined her pale blue eyes staring up at her sister’s husband with the gaze he had hoped was reserved for himself.

Then came even darker thoughts. Her body entwined with another’s: her scent; the red-brown of her nipples; her long, graceful neck arching back as she gasped in the ecstasy of
release; her fingernails leaving red welts on someone else’s back.

For as long as they had been married, Liz had displayed a much more casual attitude to sex, and therefore, he presumed, to fidelity, than he. It was though that apogee of jealousy – the thought of a loved one being taken, possessed by another – somehow didn’t mean anything to her; as though she couldn’t understand why flesh penetrating flesh could possibly garner a feeling of revulsion and despair.

And now – now everything was worse. Jim Daley was about to become father to a child he could never accept as his own. He had lived with his wife’s indiscretions for years – the memories haunted him – but now there would be a living, breathing testament to her dalliance. The sin of adultery made flesh.

He walked from the room and quietly closed the door.

The countryside hotel was a converted two-storey house, standing just off the road. Faded plastic tables and chairs, with puddles of melting ice, were scattered around an untidy beer garden to the front of the property.

Despite the cold weather, the door to the public bar was propped open with a beer keg. As he walked in, his nostrils were assailed by the sharp aroma of newly applied bleach blended with the more sickly sweet bouquet of stale alcohol.

‘Aye, we’re jeest opened,’ shouted a woman from somewhere behind him.

Startled, Donald jumped, then, in an attempt to impose his authority, slowly walked to the small bar and pulled out a stool. ‘In that case, I’m sure you won’t mind pouring me a large whisky.’

A short, middle-aged woman waddled into view, dressed in a baggy white jumper, grubby black leggings and flip flops. ‘Is that your car outside?’ she asked, bridling at the tone of her new customer.

‘Yes,’ Donald replied. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘No’ really,’ she said with a shake of the head. ‘It’s your licence. Remember, the cops often pop in here for a cup of tea. You know, the guys in the big traffic car.’

‘Oh, do they now? Well, I’ll keep my eye out for them, rest assured. Now, what about that whisky?’

She busied herself placing a small glass under a large optic attached to an outsized bottle of whisky. ‘I heard the boss o’ the polis doon here got flung oot o’ the hospital the day, so you better watch your back.’ She placed the drink in front of Donald, who threw a twenty-pound note onto the bar and knocked back the drink in one gulp.

‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll keep a particular look out for that man, sounds like a thoroughly unpleasant individual,’ said Donald, holding up his glass. ‘Same again.’

As the woman went about her business, Donald took in his surroundings; the usual collection of tatty bar stools and battered copper tables arranged across a bare wooden floor still damp from its cleaning. At the far end of the room, beside another door, was a sign that read Beer Garden, Toilets, Public Telephone.

Donald fumbled in his pocket for the coins he had collected the previous evening in the hotel and recalled one of his mother’s favourite sayings: ‘A drinker’s never short of loose change.’

‘Just going to use your toilet,’ he said to the barmaid as he paid for his next drink. Through the door, he was faced
by a yellow payphone protected by a Plexiglas canopy. His hand shook as he inserted a coin and dialled the number he knew so well. The voice he used when his call was answered was very unfamiliar to him; he kept the conversation short and hung up without saying goodbye.

MacDougall wrestled with the padlock on the hull of the small cabin cruiser. He had been on it before, as a guest the previous summer, when he and the owner, a local man, had sailed around the island of Gigha.

He had become a reasonably proficient sailor in the last few years, and he enjoyed being at sea. The motion of the vessel, the tang of the salty air and the ever-changing panorama were an assault on the senses. The first time he had sailed alone, he had pondered just how far this experience was from the relentless boredom of his youth, spent in a crumbling tenement in Glasgow’s East End. Narrow horizons begat narrow minds; the reasoning was flawless, yet across the generations nothing was done to correct this social dichotomy. It was as though the poor were not only an underclass, but an alternative species, condemned to experience life on a completely different plane. He knew his daughter was living proof that families like the MacDougalls, victims and perpetrators of crime across the generations, could change. He hoped Sarah would take the MacDougall name, at least, to new, greener pastures.

After a few moments, he encouraged the engine into life, released the fore and aft ropes, and eased the craft out into the bay. MacDougall knew this boat was capable of thirty-five knots, at least; he eased out the throttle, all the time looking at the instrument panel. He roughly calculated that
it would take him just under an hour to reach the coordinates that had been texted to him from his daughter’s phone. It was an easy sail, straightforward, no hidden rocks, sandbanks or submerged wrecks. Getting there wasn’t going to be the problem – keeping Sarah alive was.

Machie had chosen the location well. With the infamous Corryvreckan whirlpool so close at hand it was most unlikely that they would be bothered by other shipping. He pictured – not for the first time – James Machie’s face, wondered how the years had changed him, honed his animal cunning, ruthless cruelty, his skill of being able to turn almost any situation to his own advantage. Yet, he had an Achilles heel: arrogance. JayMac had always been guilty of overconfidence, and that led to carelessness. Had Machie not been so relaxed about his ‘contacts’ in the police, and their ability to watch his back, the family empire would have reached new heights and none of them would have been forced into the scurrying retreat of each-man-for-himself self-interest. He would not be on a stolen boat with an assumed name. His sons would still be alive.

He thought again of Sarah. Machie would have no qualms about killing her in front of him. How could he bear to watch the life drain from those intelligent green eyes? Despite being surrounded by death and horror for most of his life, this was one pain that Frank MacDougall was determined not to endure.

A small plate above the console read
Morning Prayer
, the name also displayed along the side of the craft. The irony of this was not lost on the middle-aged man who piloted the vessel out to sea, silently praying for the apple of his eye, his daughter.

34

‘The bosses have been on from headquarters, sir,’ said DC Dunn, as she hurried to Daley’s side in the yard of Kinloch Police Office. ‘There’s been a development.’

Daley followed her through the security door and into the office. DS Brian Scott was standing in the large CID office, a fresh bandage around his head, looking like a tennis player from the seventies. Daley nodded curtly at him. Try as he might, the chief inspector could not accept that the disappearance of MacDougall was not, in some way, down to the collusion of his friend. He had run the circumstances behind the gangster’s flight through his mind over and over again; it still didn’t make sense.

‘Aye, right, there you are, sir,’ Scott said hesitantly. ‘We’ve been tryin’ tae get ye on the blower.’

‘I’ve been in the hospital, so it was switched off,’ said Daley, without looking at his DS. ‘Now, what’s been happening?’

‘A few minutes ago, HQ received an anonymous phone tip-off.’ Scott spoke in a businesslike manner that Daley wasn’t used to. ‘They’ve tried tae trace the call, but it was from a private payphone, and the caller didn’t stay on the line for long.’

‘So, what have we got?’ Daley said, looking impatient.

‘Take a look here.’ Scott led his boss over to a large map of the Kintyre peninsula that took up a sizeable part of one wall. Due to its scale, the cartography was detailed, showing the names of farms, historical features and the like. Scott stood beside the map, then, looking every bit the unlikely weather forecaster, began gesturing at details on the map. ‘Noo, a’ we have tae go on is basically a set o’ coordinates,’ he said, squinting at the large map. ‘DC Dunn, play the audio, please.’

The young officer pressed a few keys on her computer, and a familiar greeting played into the room. ‘Good morning, Police Headquarters, Pitt Street. How can I help you?’

There was a pause, then the sound of a breathy voice. ‘I have information about Sarah MacDougall.’ The man tersely gave a list of map coordinates, then slammed the phone down.

Scott stretched out his hand and landed a thick index finger on a patch off sea just of the coast of the peninsula. ‘That’s just aboot exactly the location mentioned,’ he said, holding his finger at the point for a few moments.

Daley walked up to the map, and looked more closely at where Scott was pointing. ‘What does that say?’ he said, running his finger along a Gaelic word.

‘Corryvreckan, sir,’ said DC Dunn. ‘It’s a whirlpool. Says on Wikipedia that it’s the third largest in the world.’