Wullie uncrossed his legs, played with the perma-crease in his trousers. ‘That profile, I’d say was missing one thing… These bastards usually have someone looking out for them, someone covering their tracks.’
‘A wife you mean?’
‘Maybe, aye… Or a parent. A sibling… It’s a lot to organise, a lot to get right for one person. It’s also a lot to go wrong, and with as much heat on the bastard as you’re applying I’d say he could do with someone to help cover his tracks.’
Finding the killer was a big enough ask for Brennan; finding his helper could wait till after the event, he thought. But, it was something to think about, even though he had plenty to think about as it was. ‘Look, there was something else I meant to ask you…’
Wullie’s expression changed, he seemed to lighten around the shoulders, relax more. ‘What was that?’
Brennan twisted round to face him, ‘You got anything on Jim Gallagher?’
Wullie shrugged, ‘Big Jim… Never liked the prick, is that enough?’
Brennan laughed, it was good to have another of his opinions endorsed. ‘Join the club… No, it was just something Charlie said.’
The old man playfully landed a punch on the DI’s arm, ‘Och, he’s meaning the raffle thing from years back. Fucker staged a raffle at the station, charity thing y’know, but he fiddled it so that himself and two vice ponces picked up the prizes… Was a big stooshie at the time, but Jim’s a fly bastard and everybody knows it.’
Brennan bit, ‘What do you mean, fly?’
‘Just what I say, he’s a bit wide. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but he’s not the only copper on the force like that
… A lot of it will have to do with his upbringing, couldn’t have been easy that. I always cut him some slack for the boys’ home stuff.’
‘Boys’ home?’
Wullie creased his brows, ‘He was brought up in a home, an orphanage, Dungarn it was, a right shit-hole… I think his parents died when he was about five or six, was a car crash in Fife, nasty business.’
Brennan picked up his pint, held it before his lips, said, ‘Really, I didn’t know that.’
Chapter 38
DI Rob Brennan woke to the sound of the traffic’s hum on Leith Walk. His neck ached and there was a solid, persistent pounding in his left temple. Was this the result of the few pints he’d had with Wullie the night before? He didn’t think so. He could still handle a few pints, hadn’t fallen that low, yet. He pushed his stocky frame off the sagging bed; the springs wheezed. As he looked down at the thin, flattened pillow he realised the culprit of his discomfort. He patted a hand on it, attempted to ruffle the contents, but it failed to make any difference to the deflated item. Brennan shook his head, felt another pang of pain in his neck, and rose. The springs sighed this time. He looked down at the bed and tried to remember the reason why he was living this way; how he had come to this sorry pass.
Brennan knew he was lonely, knew the symptoms. At times like this, disparate thoughts came to mind, floated, formed their own surreal mosaic. A laundry ticket, once lost, found tucked in a fold of his wallet. A girl he once knew called… now what was her name? She had played tennis and her parents were well off. His first watch — not a digital one — he’d wanted a digital one but his mother had said, ‘No, Rob, they’re just a fad!’ Then there was the summer holiday, paddling on the shore. A wedding day — his wedding day — and the sense of dread wondering would she show? ‘Why not, Rob?’ his brother and his best man had said. ‘She loves you, doesn’t she?’ Brennan stopped himself, flattened out the spiral of his thoughts. What was love anyway? He loved his wife once; he had a dog he loved once… and a brother.
The older Brennan got the more he found himself questioning. When he was younger he was filled with assumptions; random musings on everything and anything, arrived at from he knew not where. These opinions of his younger self became appropriated, became stamps of his own personality; he had had these thoughts — whether or not he had originated them didn’t matter — they were opinions he wore like laurels. As he watched those laurels wither and die he discarded them, wondered why he had ever become so proud of them in the first place. And if he was being honest, felt an inward shame at the shallow vapidity of his sometime immaturity. He had moved on now, certainly; he was no longer that callow youth, or the preoccupied careerist determined to distinguish himself among other fools. But what was he now? He looked around the grimy bedsit that he couldn’t bring himself to call home. Brennan felt like a failure, not because of the meagreness of his lodgings, nothing so superficial. He felt a failure because he had reached his forties and never felt less sure of himself, of who he was or where he was heading. At least in the past he felt like he was in the right — even when he was assuredly in the wrong — but now, he didn’t know a thing; least of all himself. An old line from a play he had studied in secondary school came to him, ‘This above all: to thine ownself be true.’ Brennan smirked. He felt lost, if he was being truthful to himself.
On the road to Fettes Station, DI Rob Brennan attempted to distract himself from what lay ahead with the antics of a shock jock on the radio. He tried hard to tap into the show, to give himself over to the bear-pit atmosphere that had callers queuing up to rant at the host, but he couldn’t do it. The subject of the show was the country’s swing towards a nationalist government. The rights and wrongs of independence, of Scotland separating from its larger southern neighbour. It was a topical subject, a worthy subject, but the DJ treated it as mere entertainment to rattle the masses. That sort of thing was for other people, thought Brennan, not for him. It was not worthy of any space inside his mind, not alongside the brutal killing and mutilation of young girls that he would soon have to disburse to an expectant media. He was discomfited by the thought of what awaited him; knew that any contact with the press was likely to bring trouble in equal measure to reward. But this was the pass he had arrived at. There was a time when any action was better than inaction and that time had been reached; Wullie had said it himself the night before — this killer will strike again. Brennan didn’t want to have another murder on his books, or his conscience. The memories he carried from the scene of Lindsey Sloan’s murder were never far from the front of his mind; as was the pain of her grieving parents.
In the car park Brennan stilled the engine, turned off the radio and reached onto the passenger’s seat to retrieve his document wallet. Some bubblegum wrappers caught his eye in the footwell — they had been left there by Sophie the last time she had been in the car — the sight of them dug at his heart. For a moment, Brennan had to ease himself back in his seat, draw a deep breath. It was at moments like this he realised how hard it was not to have his daughter in his life any more. He had grown accustomed to their regular daily sparring and its absence felt like a part of him had been excavated. He removed his mobile phone from his jacket, toyed with the idea of calling her but rejected it. She would be bemused by a call from her father at this hour, at any hour. As Joyce had said, he had brought this on himself. He returned the phone to his pocket and opened the car’s door.
Inside the station Charlie looked up from the front desk and tapped a finger off his forehead, ‘Morning, Rob.’
‘Charlie.’ The DI approached the desk and readied himself for the morning’s first bulletin.
‘The hack pack’s in.’
Brennan nodded. ‘Good numbers?’
‘Telly crew and the usual suspects…’ He leaned over the counter, folded his arms, ‘Fucking Benny’s in there already, giving the glad hand.’
‘It’s his job.’
Charlie turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘I thought it was yours.’
Brennan knew Charlie well enough to pick up the subtext to his chatter. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
The desk sergeant looked down the hall, nodded. ‘You better get moving, mate; way it’s looking Jim Gallagher’s going to be fronting things.’
Brennan felt a flash of heat in his chest, his shirt collar seemed to tighten suddenly. He knew Charlie was watching him for a reaction, and he knew to hide it. ‘I see.’ He let the words escape slowly and eased himself away to the corridor. ‘Catch you later, Charlie.’
‘Away to kick up are you?’
