Where the Bodies are Buried (9 page)

‘I understand,’ she pleaded. ‘His front door hasn’t been kicked in or anything, but I really feel very strongly that something
is wrong. He didn’t show up to a very important meeting today. He is a very meticulous and conscientious person. He wouldn’t
just drop off the map like this, I promise you.’

The officer on the front desk had been quietly spoken and reassuring, showing her to a small room just off the station’s main
reception area, where he offered her a cup of tea while she waited. She declined, then wished she hadn’t, as it would have
passed the short but fretful period before his colleague, Sergeant Collins, showed up. For some reason she had expected a
plain-clothes detective, though that was an expectation coloured largely by optimism. When she saw the uniform, she was a
little disappointed, but unsurprised. It immediately gave her the feeling of being processed, among a hundred other miscellaneous
and trivial issues this man would deal with over the course of his shift tonight.

‘Miss Sharp, I appreciate that you are worried for your uncle, and I am well aware of how distressing that can be. You’re
not the first person to be sat in front of me saying the same thing. But that is also why we can’t take any action right now.
I understand that this is uncharacteristic for your uncle, but that in itself doesn’t constitute grounds to suspect a crime.’

‘I don’t care whether there’s a crime involved. I just need some help because I think something must have happened to him.
Why would he not show up to work? He had a meeting that was crucial to his business. He’s not been home in days, his phone
is just diverting …’

Sergeant Collins nodded patiently, waiting for her to let it all out. He really had heard this a hundred times before.

‘It’s difficult to accept, but it’s a hard fact that sometimes people
do
uncharacteristic things. They most frequently go missing simply because they don’t want to be found.’

‘But he would have no reas—’

‘And those closest to them,’ he interrupted this time, ‘have had no idea, no inkling about the reasons that were leading up
to it. It can be money, it can be to do with relationships, but from a police point of view, unless some law has been broken
in the process, they have a right to do just that.’

Jasmine could feel her eyes tearing up as she ran out of reasons to throw at Sergeant Collins’ polite implacability.

‘It’s very early days, Miss Sharp,’ he assured her. ‘I’m sure you’ve thought yourself that there could be a simple explanation
and it’ll all be resolved in a couple of days, even a couple of hours.’

‘But what if it’s not?’ she demanded, her voice close to breaking.

‘Well, when people are trying to find someone and it’s not appropriate for the police to get involved, they often consider
going to a private investigator, though that can be expensive.’

This put the tin lid on it. Jasmine broke down into sobs, her face in her hands. Sergeant Collins put an arm around her shoulders
and offered her a paper hanky.

‘Don’t upset yourself,’ he intoned calmly. ‘Like I said, it’s early days. I only mentioned private investigators as something
hypothetical for the future.’

Jasmine lifted her head and fixed him with a red-eyed but determined glare.

‘You don’t understand. My uncle
is
a private investigator. He’s an ex-cop: detective sergeant, retired, after thirty years’ service. If you can’t push the boat
out for him, then who the hell
can
you help?’

Sergeant Collins bridled a little in surprise, then straightened his posture as though standing to attention. His tone remained
professional, but there was now a softness to it. Sadly for Jasmine, it spoke more of regret than intention.

‘As far as missing persons go, our hands are very much tied by law and policy, but you’re right: this is a wee bit different.
I’ll flag it up on the system that he’s a retired officer and we’ll see what we can do.’

Catherine was eating a sandwich at her desk when she saw Abercorn through the glass partition. He was talking to Sunderland,
but she had little doubt that he was here to see her. She hadn’t officially informed Locust of the murder investigation (though
it was genuinely on her to-do list – albeit quite far down) but there was no doubt Abercorn would have become aware of it
first thing that morning. That he was equally aware that nobody directly involved in the investigation had bothered to contact
him was a given too. How he would choose to react to that was anybody’s guess, but guilt trip, tantrum, humility or trade-off,
it would be a precisely calculated response.

She brushed some crumbs from the sheet of paper she’d been writing on. It was a list of names: Frankie Callahan, Stevie Fullerton,
Grant Cassidy and Craig McLennan. She told herself she was contemplating which one had really popped into Paddy Steel’s mind
when he first heard about Jai McDiarmid, but in reality she knew an interruption was imminent and was trying to compose herself
so that it wasn’t obvious to Abercorn that she had seen him coming.

She moved the sheet of paper to one side with a tut, annoyed at herself for acting like a daft wee lassie. She always slapped
on a fake smile and played nice for Abercorn with the same politic insincerity she did for the likes of Paddy Steel. Unlike
with the crooks, it wasn’t calculated. She couldn’t help it. It felt stupidly imperative that she not give off any sense of
grudge or bitterness regarding the fact that he had been preferred for the job of heading the task force; doubly stupid given
how it had subsequently worked out for their respective stock. The problem was, she was trying to kid a ninth-dan black-belt
kidder, and feared that her attempts to appear magnanimous merely enhanced his impression that she had an even lower professional
opinion of him than did her colleagues.

In the immediate aftermath of the decision to appoint Abercorn, unable to challenge her superiors for an explanation lest
she look even more of a clown, Catherine had gone to Moira Clark instead. Moira
had retired by this point, but was on so many panels and committees that she knew more about what was going on now than when
she was still serving.

‘You’re too useful at bringing in bodies,’ Moira told her, over morning cappuccinos in a noisy café just off Byres Road in
the West End. ‘There’s no greater impediment to career mobility in this line than making yourself invaluable at a particular
task. If I was in Sunderland’s shoes, I must confess, I wouldn’t have given you my vote for this either. Your conviction rate
has an impact on the stats that no chief super is going to be selfless enough to sacrifice. Catherine, believe me, the brass
know your worth. In fact, among the senior officers, your ability to spot a murderer runs a fine line between earning admiration
and creeping them out.’

‘Thanks,’ Catherine told her. ‘That really makes me feel better.’

‘It’s the truth, hen.’

‘I know. So now we’ve got the sugar-coated bollocks out of the way, do you want to tell me the real reason?’

Moira had taken a sip of coffee and nodded, an ironic smile acknowledging that she’d been nailed.

‘You wanted it too much,’ she stated, her eyes meeting Catherine’s unflinchingly, which told her not only that Moira agreed
with this assessment, but that she suspected Catherine would too. ‘That’s the feeling. It made them uncomfortable. You hate
these people, Cath: the Stevie Fullertons of this world, the Frankie Callahans, the Paddy Steels. Don’t pretend otherwise,
and don’t kid yourself that it doesn’t go unnoticed. The brass know what you’re good at and they know how you operate. They
were worried that you’d be happy to keep bringing in heads when you’re dealing with a hydra. They want to construct an anatomy
of the monster. Supply, distribution, revenue collation, where the money goes next, how it’s laundered, how the deals can
go down without money or goods ever seeming to change hands. To do that, there might have to be some unpalatable compromises.’

Moira didn’t need to spell it out any further. Catherine could see clearly why she had never had a chance of getting the post.

‘They needed a political animal. Somebody dispassionate and pragmatic.’

‘Abercorn’s young and ambitious,’ Moira confirmed. ‘He’ll be autonomous without going off the reservation; do what he’s told
but won’t need his hand held.’

‘A yes man.’

‘More somebody who’s smart enough to know when to give his best
impression
of a yes man. For dispassionate read “sly”; for pragmatic read “sell his granny”.’

Moira was the first person to slag off Abercorn in an effort to make her feel better, but in truth Catherine now understood
why they had made their decision, and it burned all the more because she knew they were right. She did hate these people,
and her feelings could influence her judgement and have a deleterious effect upon her professional patience. When she had
scum like Paddy Steel in her sights, she found it very hard to pull back and look at the whole battlefield.

Abercorn’s patience, by contrast, seemed limitless; so much so that he wasn’t perceived to be in any great hurry to actually
prosecute any criminals, hence the derision that tended to accompany any mention of him or his unit.

He tapped on the glass gently and gave an almost apologetic wave by way of announcing his arrival. Huffs and tantrums must
have been contra-indicated by his profiling of forty-one-year-old mothers-of-two.

As usual, he looked like he had spent ten minutes in the toilets preening himself before strolling up and attempting to look
nonchalant. There was not a hair out of place on his sculpted coif and he was slickly dressed, his suit immaculately turned
out and guaranteed bobble-free. Some might say smartly dressed, even suavely, but for Catherine, slick was the apposite term,
the others lacking the necessary connotations of oil. She would admit she could imagine other females finding him good-looking,
though maybe not other female cops. Abercorn reminded her a bit of Don Draper in
Mad Men:
attractive in a classical way, but the wrong side of polished for her taste. Not enough rough edges: all surface, no feeling.

‘Sorry to interrupt your lunch. I heard about James McDiarmid and just wanted to offer any information or insight I might
be able to provide.’

Which translated as ‘I’m over here seeking to hoover up any information or insight your investigation might provide
me.’

Actually, it might not even mean that. Abercorn was even harder to read than Sunderland, but the one thing you could be sure
about was that there was always an agenda. The guy couldn’t ask you the time without there being a subtext in play.

‘I appreciate it,’ she said, trying not to sound too sugary. ‘Any kind
of background will be welcome on this one. The door-to-doors are under way, but right now we’ve little more than a body and
all the colourful context of the late Mr McDiarmid’s lifestyle.’

‘Now that is a broad canvas, isn’t it?’

‘Very. I spoke to Paddy Steel. He’s claiming he has no idea what it was about and that it came right out of the blue.’

Abercorn pursed his lips.

‘I don’t know about the first part, but he’s definitely lying about the second. There’s been a lot of tension lately: suspicion
and counter-suspicion. The equilibrium’s been upset since the polis poked the nest. I know it’s not a popular opinion, as
it was high-fives all round at the time, but the recent spate of scalps taken from the drug world may prove counterproductive
in the long run.’

Catherine knew she shouldn’t bite, but there was something insufferable about the piety with which he said this, as well as
the insult to her intelligence that he thought she couldn’t see how he was disparaging other officers’ successes in order
to put a fig leaf on his own unit’s failings.

‘I’m unable to see how getting drug dealers off the streets can ever be counterproductive to anybody but drug dealers. Indeed,
there is a school of thought around here that would point to the fact that Cairns and Fletcher secured more convictions in
the space of a few months than Locust has managed since its inception. It’s one thing talking about a long game, but people
need to see results or they start to lose faith.’

‘I know it must sound like sour grapes,’ he conceded, with that indefatigable air of reasonableness and fair-minded calm that
sometimes made Catherine want to scream. ‘We’re all polis, we all know how good it is for morale to put a few bodies away.
Cairns and Fletcher chalked up some scores, and I’m not trying to take that away from them.’

‘Good. Because they did it through a couple of unfashionable old-school policing methods known as hard graft and initiative.’

‘They cultivated some well-placed and reliable sources, and fair play to them for that. But it’s a harsh truth that if they’d
shared that information with my unit, we could have got a lot more from it than merely banging up a few mid-level faces and
providing drugs-on-the-table photocalls to maintain the public’s faith, as you put it.’

Catherine could have slapped him for that one. At least he had the decency to be self-conscious about the name Locust. It
was on all the
forms and posters, but he was clearly embarrassed to refer to it as such in front of proper, growed-up polis, referring to
it instead as ‘my unit’. She couldn’t see herself saying it with a straight face had she got the gig, so kudos to him for
that much, but he was still an arrogant tosser, and she’d dearly love to hear him say what he just had to Cairns’ and Fletcher’s
faces. She took a moment to calm herself, but didn’t quite make it.

‘I wasn’t talking about the public’s faith. Us polis need to see results in the short term too. Even the medium term appears
to be beyond Locust. You’ve come a long way in a short time, Dougie, so maybe you don’t realise how it looks to guys like
Cairns and Fletcher, who have been doing the job on the street for decades. Fletch’s mother’s got senile dementia and he’s
spent everything on her care. Bob Cairns put three kids through uni. There’s a lot of cops just like them. They’ve done their
thirty, they’re approaching retirement and they’re skint despite working hard all their lives, yet every day they see these
chancers driving about in their pimped four-by-fours, spending money like water. They need to put away a few “mid-level faces”,
if that’s all they can get, in order for the job to make any bloody sense.’