Where the Bodies are Buried (21 page)

Her colleagues must have got some kind of reciprocation from their sensitivity during Dom’s wild years, right enough. Wilson
had access to a lot of very privileged information, and his ability to negotiate secret deals was legendary. The case against
one villain might collapse, then a few months later, another would fall right into the police’s
hands. Nobody would ever be able to join the dots, however. Like a great magician, the point when you thought you had worked
out how he had done it was the point when you were furthest from the truth, exactly where he wanted you.

‘See, you say “mysterious”, but I always interpret that word as “suspicious”. Enlighten me.’

‘Don’t waste your ire on it, Catherine,’ he told her between drags, cigarettes being the only vice he allowed himself these
days. ‘It won’t do any good. It wasn’t even your case, so keep your powder dry for when it is.’

‘That’s just it, though. I’ve got a dead drug dealer in Gallowhaugh and Gary Fleeting’s well in the frame for it. Even if
it wasn’t him, his boss Frankie Callahan is thigh-deep in something right now, I’m sure of it.’

‘I think we can both agree we’d be happier putting Fleeting away for murder than Class A possession. Maybe it’s a case of
“what’s for you will no’ go by you”.’

‘Aye, and maybe there’s something going by me right now, as in over my head. I want to know what I’m missing before I start
putting a murder case together.’

‘I’m pretty sure if you had put
this
case together, it would have flown,’ Dominic said. He wasn’t trying to sound patronising or sycophantic, but he didn’t sound
convincing either. He was trying to lead her off the scent.

‘Bollocks. There was nothing wrong with that bust. The t’s were crossed and the i’s all dotted. That decision wasn’t taken
regarding the likelihood of securing a conviction. It was political. Why did you drop it?’

He took a long draw on his fag, staring out at the rain, acting like this was becoming a bore, but she could tell it was because
he didn’t want to look her in the eye.

‘It’s not at my discretion to say,’ he finally told her.

Catherine responded with a small shrug and a growing silence, making out she was resigned to leaving it there. She wasn’t,
however. He was going to tell her more, because she knew just which button to press.

‘That’s as may be,’ she said with a sigh, ‘but if you don’t give me something, I’m going to have to conclude that it’s not
entirely unrelated to the fact that Gary Fleeting and Frankie Callahan are both clients of your father.’

‘Oh piss off,’ he replied sourly. ‘My dad has represented just about every gangster in Glasgow at one time or other. Hardly
an astronomical coincidence.’

‘Aye, but this is the first time one of his clients was being prosecuted by his son. All of a sudden the charges disappear.
I’m not saying there was anything improper: I’m sure your side got something from the deal. I’m just surprised you—’

‘You’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ he interrupted curtly. ‘You’ve some fucking nerve as well, considering all the
pressure was coming from your end.’

Catherine’s satisfaction at having procured a response was utterly swamped by her dismay at what it told her.

‘My end? Someone in the police brought pressure to drop the case? Who?’

He gave the slightest shake of his head, its subtlety inversely proportional to its gravity.

‘It wasn’t my decision.’

‘Not your decision? I thought you were prosecuting it.’

‘So did I. But you’re right. All of a sudden the whole thing went political and it was out of my hands.’

‘Who brought the pressure, Dominic?’ she pushed again.

‘I’m not supposed to know, and I’m sure as hell not supposed to say.’

He did know though, and he clearly wanted to say. He looked as pissed off about it as she was. Unfortunately, his fag was
almost down to the stub and both their court cases were starting in a couple of minutes.

‘Come on,’ she urged, putting a hand on his forearm. ‘We’re on the same side here. If I’m going after Frankie Callahan, it
would benefit both of us if I knew who might be tying my shoelaces together while I’m not looking.’

His eyes flashed angrily.

‘You don’t need to give me the motivational speech. I had pricks like that ruffling my hair when I was growing up.’

He took a final draw and flicked the cigarette into the wall-mounted bin.

Shit, Catherine thought. That was it. Gone.

They went back inside together, Dominic striding purposefully through the lobby as though trying to put distance between them.
Catherine guessed she wasn’t even going to get a polite goodbye, but he suddenly stopped outside his court and glanced to
the side, as though checking who might be nearby.

‘It’s very secret, very sensitive,’ he said. ‘I’d love to tell you, and I’d love to be prosecuting Frankie Callahan, but I
can’t give you that name. What I can say is that it was not so much pressure as a plague.’

With that, he turned and strode briskly through the doors as though the court offered sanctuary in case she might pursue him.

Way above her pay grade right enough. Way above his too, which was presumably why he couldn’t – or rather wouldn’t – tell
her.

Then she realised that he just had.

Not so much pressure as a plague.

Thank you, Dominic.

A plague of Locust.

Since Ingrams had a pistol stashed in some hidey-hole under the Land Rover, it wasn’t a surprise that he had a well-stocked
toolbox under one of the benches in the back. Having checked beneath the front of the vehicle and declared that the axle was
intact, he produced a short-handled hacksaw and set about cutting away the thick lower trunks of the hedgerow, freeing the
wheel arch.

Jasmine dabbed with a hanky at a small wound to the left side of her head. She had suffered several light scratches from the
glass, little diagonals on her arms no worse than might be inflicted by a toddler’s nails, but the one to her scalp was deeper
and stubbornly refusing to clot. She thought it must have been when she banged her head on the door frame, but she could feel
a lump from that blow a couple of inches higher than the cut.

These minor injuries felt like merely an inconvenience, a mess to clear up that was barely related to the real damage she
had suffered. The shimmering fragments of glass seemed disproportionately trivial by way of wreckage, too. It felt like a
hole had been blown in the very fabric of the world as she understood it, and none of the existing evidence could truly testify
to its enormity.

Everything should stop for now, she believed. There should be about two dozen police converging on this place, closing off
the entire area while they commenced their investigations. She should be delivered into the safe hands of a massive machine,
her role now reduced to that of witness while more capable and empowered agencies took responsibility for whatever had engulfed
her.

Instead, it appeared, the world around her was indifferently getting on with itself. Ingrams in particular seemed concerned
with nothing more pressing than the need to free his vehicle from the hedge. Something about his pragmatism was deeply offending
her.

Several cars passed in either direction. They all slowed to have a look, a few getting as far as winding the window down ahead
of presumably offering assistance, but Ingrams calmly waved them all on. He
clearly didn’t want to have to explain anything to anyone, which prompted a further horrified deduction from Jasmine.

‘You’re not calling the police?’ she asked incredulously, as he held open the driver’s-side door and indicated that she should
climb back in.

‘I’d rather not, no. I think it would be difficult to make a statement about what happened without mentioning that I had a
gun, and that might lead to certain complications for me.’

‘Complications? What about men with shotguns? I’d anticipate that having my head blown off might complicate things quite a
bit. It’s not my problem you’re mixed up in stuff that means you’ve got guns stashed under your car. No, actually, today it
was
my problem, and that’s all the more reason I want the authorities involved.’

Ingrams let her babble for a moment, then started the engine by way of overruling her objection. He pinned her with that stare
as he spoke.

‘First of all, once again, gun, singular. Second, also once again, you’re the one who’s mixed up in something. And third,
if it wasn’t for me having my gun, singular, we’d both be dying from shotgun wounds right now. I’d consider it an act of courtesy
and gratitude, therefore, if you didn’t respond to my saving your life – twice, plural – by dropping me in it with the cops.’

Jasmine said nothing for a while, seething. She wasn’t feeling much gratitude, as she still wasn’t buying the theory that
this was something that was happening to her rather than him. The guy could shoot a gun out of a man’s hands, she realised.
That meant he had chosen not to kill or even wound the gunman, but merely scare him off instead. Why?

Complications. Mess to clear up. Difficult matters to explain to the police. What kind of man was so reluctant to involve
the authorities under circumstances like
this?
And what would he say if she insisted? She needed to know where she stood, and whether where she
should
be standing was as far away from Ingrams as possible.

He interpreted her silence as the end of the discussion and began negotiating the Land Rover away from the hedgerow and off
the grass verge.

‘I need this investigated,’ she said, as calmly and resolutely as she could manage. She required it to sound both reasonable
and decisive. ‘If you’re right, and it was me they were after, then I need protection. I’m sorry that it’s going to make things
awkward for you, but I have to go to the police.’

Her heart was leathering it again, almost as much as when she’d been under fire, and it wasn’t going to slow much until she
heard his response, which didn’t come soon.

It was Ingrams’ turn to say nothing. He edged the vehicle forward on to the tarmac and accelerated gradually, warm air blowing
through the frames of the shattered rear windows. With him not making a further verbal appeal, she began to wonder what he
might do to obstruct her.

‘I can protect you,’ he said eventually. ‘Better than the police. I’ll come back to Glasgow with you, help you look into this.’

Yeah, right, was her first impulse, then she thought of DS McDade and of Sergeant Collins, of how much she had wanted them
to take her seriously, then of that sinking realisation that they would only assist her inasmuch as she was, at best, tangential
to their interests. Ingrams was offering one-on-one assistance. However, she tempered her temptation by asking herself what
reason she had to believe she wasn’t merely tangential to his interests right now too. What motivation did he have to get
so involved, beyond keeping the police out of his business?

‘I thought you said this had nothing to do with you. That you know nothing about any of it. Remember that patter?’

‘I do know nothing about any of it, but it’s clearly got something to do with me now. Your boss goes missing and there’s a
file with my name and the address of the refuge lying open on his desk. You come and see me by way of following this up and
all of a sudden we’re getting shot at. I want to know where I fit into this. Plus they damaged my Land Rover. I’ll be hitting
them up for the excess.’

Jasmine thought about it for a while, dabbing at her head some more with the hanky. The blood was still spotting, and now
she could feel a hard little lump at one end of the cut, something embedded just under the skin. Wincing a little, she dug
at it with a nail and tugged it loose. It came away into the hanky amid a few strands of hair. She picked it clear and held
it between her thumb and forefinger. It was a tiny lump of metal.

‘I think my head took a chunk out of your door,’ she said sceptically. ‘Sorry.’

‘Shotgun pellet. Must have been a ricochet. Technically, you’ve been shot in the head and survived. Congratulations.’

She dropped it as soon as she heard the first two words, horrified.
It disappeared into the footwell and rolled beneath her seat among a thousand fragments of glass.

‘Okay,’ she decided. ‘No cops. You can come with me, but no guns either. Singular or plural.’

‘This is Glasgow we’re talking about,’ he replied, his accent sounding all of a sudden like he belonged to. ‘I’m not going
there without one.’

‘Then you’re not going there with me. In my experience, men with guns attract men with guns.’

‘Your experience? Your experience of being around men with guns amounts to the past hour.’

‘Yes, and one hundred per cent of my experience has involved me ending up getting shot at by other men with guns.’

‘And as you just saw, they’re a lot less lethal if you can return fire.’

Jasmine knew he was right, that she was being irrational, but even the memory of how the pellet felt between her fingers made
her squirm and shudder.

‘Just tell me there’ll be no more guns,’ she said. ‘Lie to me if you have to.’

‘I won’t lie to you,’ he replied, though he left it at that.

They didn’t speak for another mile or so. They came to a large roundabout, which was when it occurred to Jasmine that they
weren’t going back the way they had come, but had carried on their original course.

‘Aren’t we going back to the refuge?’

‘I’m going to get the part I need for the shredder.’

‘I thought you said you needed a new shredder altogether.’

‘I was being shifty and evasive, remember?’

‘I don’t mean to sound needy or inconsiderate, but in light of recent developments, can’t it wait?’

‘No. It’s important if I’m going to help you. Rita’s used to me taking off at short notice, but if I leave work unfinished,
she’ll worry about me. I only ever want her worrying about running the refuge.’

Jasmine marvelled at the concept of anybody actually worrying about the welfare of someone as scary and dangerous as Ingrams,
then it occurred to her that maybe he did a little more for Rita than she had let on.