been?
Becky Stallings
The devil makes work for idle hands, and it’s been said that there’s something dark and Satanic about Mario McGuire. But given the alternative of hanging the flock wallpaper that I’d chosen and was already beginning to regret, I was happy to lend him my soul. There was a second reason why I didn’t mind. I was on the trail of a bent cop. I’m old school Met, and when I come across one of them, I feel that I’m defending my own reputation, not just my force’s. And yes, there was another: I welcomed a distraction from the reality of another chucked breakfast, and an excuse not to go to Boots for a pregnancy testing kit.
The DCS had given McGurk and me a stack of objectives. I did think about calling Sauce in, but Jack told me that he and his girlfriend were going far away for the weekend. Luckily the uniforms were having a quiet weekend, with no football at Tynecastle, so Mary Chambers, the station commander, was able to lend me three of them to back up the one rookie DC that I had at my disposal.
I set them all to work, looking for two needles called Varley in the twin haystacks that were Edinburgh Airport and Waverley Station, checking the taxi companies and one other possibility that Jack had thrown into the mix, car hire companies. I wasn’t optimistic, though, that any of them would turn up anything. Life’s never that easy.
While that was happening, Jack came up with a home address for Freddy Welsh. It was south of the city, out in West Linton, a nice rural village, he called it, that straddles the road that leads to a place called Biggar and on towards Carlisle. We headed on out there, taking Jack’s car because he’s too tall to fit comfortably into mine, and also because he knew where the hell we were going. Neither Ray nor I are country types; we don’t do greenery.
‘How are you and Lisanne getting along?’ I asked him as we drove across the Edinburgh bypass.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Fine,’ he replied.
‘Wedding bells?’
He glanced at me and chuckled. ‘And you?’
‘Not at the top of our to-do list,’ I admitted. Not yet, but that seemed to be changing by the day.
‘Same with us. But unlike you and Ray, we’ve both been married before. Neither of us is too fond of the institution.’
‘What happened to your first marriage?’ I asked. ‘Or don’t you like to talk about it?’ He never had, not to me.
‘I don’t mind. It started to fall apart when I was posted down to Borders Division. Mary didn’t want to go but she was talked into giving it a try. Didn’t work.’ He paused. ‘You’ll never guess who did the talking.’ He was right, I never would have, but he didn’t give me a chance to try. ‘Karen Martin, Andy Martin’s wife. She left the force when she married him and got pregnant. She set up this thing that she called the police partners’ support group, that was supposed to help people like us with job-related problems. It did a bit of good, for a while, then Andy got the Tayside job, they moved to Perth and the group folded. Too bad; she could have done with some support herself.’
‘Would it have stopped him bonking Alex Skinner?’ I murmured.
He laughed. ‘Shhh. This car may be bugged; those Agency guys are everywhere now.’
‘What’s your ex doing now?’
‘She went back to her old job; she’s teaching art in a school in Aberdeen, married to a car salesman and I get to see Regan once every couple of months if I’m lucky.’
‘Regan?’
‘My wee girl. Old George thinks she was named after him. . as if we’d ever have done that. . but the truth is we called her after the John Thaw character in
‘Thank God for that,’ I exclaimed. ‘It would have been weird if it had been the other one.’
‘What other one?’
‘Have you never seen
Jack gasped. ‘You’re joking. And no bugger ever told us? Fucking hell!’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s forgotten about
‘You haven’t.’
He drove on in silence, frowning. I looked at his grim profile and reckoned that my gaffe would cost me a right few drinks in the near future. ‘Where did you get that mark on your ear?’ I asked. I hadn’t noticed it before, but a small piece of it was missing.
‘I was shot,’ he replied, in the same tone he’d have used to tell me he’d nicked it while shaving.
‘Shot?’ I repeated.
He nodded. ‘An armed operation. The subject fired at me before I could incapacitate him. That’s how close it was.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘I was a better shot than he was.’
‘Jesus, Jack,’ I whispered.
‘It wasn’t just me. Another officer fired at the same time. We both hit, and the post-mortem called it a draw.’
‘Jesus,’ I repeated, but I was talking to myself, asking myself what sort of a boss I was. I’d worked with the guy for over a year, yet all the stuff he’d told me was news to me.
‘We’re here,’ he said, interrupting my guilt trip as a sign told us we’d arrived at West Linton. ‘According to the map, Welsh’s house should be up the first road on the right.’
He made the turn, into what was more of a leafy lane than a road. Just looking at the bloody place was enough to give me hay fever. Nothing had a number; all the gaffs looked too important for that. Jack drove slowly reading the names on the signs at the entrances to each of the big plots.
‘What’s it called?’ I asked.
‘Carmarthen. It had to be something Welsh. . and there it is.’
He turned into a wide driveway. There was a big double gate but it lay open. I’m not great with areas, but Welsh’s house must have stood on an acre of land, at least. It didn’t look like one he’d built himself; it was too old, too substantial, although there was a conservatory on the right gable that he might have added.
The blacktop road swung round in front of the house. As Jack stopped I saw that we were facing a massive garage, with two wide up and over doors. Both were raised, and two cars were parked beneath them, a red Vauxhall Astra and a silver Laguna estate. Each had a personalised registration, letters FJW in the three-number format that went out of date in the nineteen sixties.
As we stepped out, the front door opened, and a woman appeared. She had a battle face on, but it softened as soon as she realised we were strangers. ‘Can I help you?’ she said. ‘I imagine you’re lost. It happens a lot.’
I put her right. ‘No, Mrs Welsh, we’ve come to the right address. We’re police officers, CID; we’d like to speak to your husband, please.’
As I spoke a kid appeared in the doorway behind her, a lad, no more than eighteen, but heavyset. He wore jogging pants and a vest, and he was sweating. I guessed that the Welsh family had a home gym. ‘What’s up, Mum?’ he began, shaping up as truculent until he realised how big McGurk is, then thinking better of it.
‘They’re police,’ she told him, ‘looking for your father.’
‘So are we,’ the boy said. ‘He didn’t come home last night.’
‘Graham,’ his mother snapped. Too much information, kid.
‘Is that so, Mrs Welsh?’ McGurk asked.
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, ‘but my husband often stays in town,’ she added, ‘if he has a business appointment that runs late.’
‘So,’ I chipped in, ‘when do you expect him home? We’re not in a rush. We can wait for him.’
‘No,’ she said, sharply. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. I have no idea when he’ll be back.’
