46

DC Eddie King was waiting for Susie when she stepped out of Diane Pearson’s office, his face as bleak as the weather and as cold as the rain-soaked stones of the buildings on Cockburn Street.

“Eddie? What you doing here?”

He gave her a look that was slightly more confused than usual. “I got a call from Burns a while ago,” he said. “Told me I was to put myself at your disposal for the next couple of days, help you with anything you needed. Said he’d left you a message telling you, then told me to get my arse up here.”

Susie smiled. Burns. Always playing the angles. So he’d known she was coming to interview Pearson, but why send Eddie? To help? Or to keep tabs on her?

She pulled her phone from her pocket, saw the missed call and message. She flicked the phone off silent, put it to her ear. “Drummond, DI Burns. I’ve been thinking about what you said, thought maybe an extra pair of hands would help. So I’m attaching King to you for the next couple of days, see if he can help you with the legwork. Oh, and don’t worry, this isn’t a way to try and trip you up, if I want to do that, I’ll do it personally.”

She shook her head as she pocketed the phone. Bastard. Even made a favour sound like an insult. But at least he was helping her. Or trying.

King stood watching her like a lost puppy. He was doing a good job of keeping the petulant annoyance out of his expression, but she could see it lurking there, like a shadow waiting to fall. He’d followed most of the CID squad by keeping her at arm’s length, laughed at his share of dirty jokes and gossip relating to the Christmas party. To be told he was now her gofer must have really rankled.

Shame.

“So, what are we working on?” he asked.

Susie looked around the street, spotted a café across the road, near the mouth of Haymarket Close. Jutted her chin towards it. “In a minute,” she said. “First, let’s get a coffee and you up to speed.”

They crossed the road, took a seat at a window table. Watched a slow stream of tourists and business people pass by, heads down against the dreich weather.

A waiter brought over their drinks, giving Eddie a glance just a little too long to be casual, then quietly disappeared. Susie took her time adding sugar to her coffee, letting the silence stretch out.

Eddie slurped noisily on whatever it was he was drinking – some reddish-brown tea that smelled of old sweat to Susie. She glanced around the café – the only other customer was a tall, lanky girl ordering takeaway at the counter – then leaned forward slightly, keeping her voice low.

“What did Burns tell you?” she asked.

“Not much. Just that you had a potentially significant line of inquiry on the Montgomery and Greig cases, but it was tenuous and needed bottoming out. Something to do with a kid who was hit by a tram a few days ago?”

She nodded. “That’s about it,” she said. “The kid’s mum, Diane Pearson, works across there.” She gestured through the window to Pearson’s office.

“But how does that tie in to the Greig and Montgomery murders?” Eddie asked, sounding more confused than ever.

She laid it out for him, watched as he took notes, lips moving slightly as he wrote. When she was finished talking, he took a moment and flicked back through what he had written, then laid his pen aside and gave her a surprisingly appraising glance.

“I see the problem,” he said. “A lot of the facts fit, but there’s no obvious link between Pearson, Montgomery and Greig to explain it. Could be him. Could be any other nutter who managed to get their hands on a rifle.”

She nodded. Made a choice. “What do you think?”

“We need to find Pearson,” he said. “Now. His skill-set is too close to the killer’s for this to be just a coincidence. Plus, he’s got form. But how do you find a man who has lived under the radar for years?”

She grimaced at the cliché – probably cribbed from one of those trashy mystery novels that littered his desk. “Good question. Any ideas?”

“No known associates. Take it the ex doesn’t know anything about his whereabouts?”

Susie shook her head. “No, she says she has no idea where he might be. That he was a stranger to their son…”

She paused, thinking. Something Eddie had just said rattled around in her brain, like a pinball waiting to hit a hole and light up the board.

She was startled from her thoughts by the impatient ring of her phone.

Annoyed, she hit Answer. “Drummond.”

“Susie, Susie, it’s Rebecca.” Her voice was breathless, almost panicked.

“Rebecca? Rebecca, you okay?” Unconsciously, she turned away slightly from Eddie.

He sighed. Typical. Everyone knew Summers and Drummond were close, that they spoke in a shorthand that no-one else understood. Made sense. After all, they had shared interests.

He laughed to himself, made a note to remember the joke. Gradually felt the smile fade away as he saw the tension settle into Susie’s shoulders and voice.

“Wait. What? Who? Yes, yes I know the name, of course I do. But why? How?”

A pause, Drummond crushing the phone to her ear, hand coming up to her mouth as she worried at her thumbnail. “No. I haven’t, have you? Well, keep trying him. You want to meet up? Yeah. Okay, twenty minutes?”

Eddie was distracted from the call by the ping of his own phone. He took the call, sat straighter in his chair as Burns’s voice filled his ear.

“You with Drummond?” he asked. His voice was thick and guttural, as though he had a mouthful of something vile. One of the canteen’s bacon rolls maybe.

“Yes, sir, we’re comparing case notes now.”

“Good, good. But I need you to tear yourself away from the chit-chat. Seems like Stevie McInnis had a falling out with one of his customers this morning. Neighbour called it in, said it sounded like all hell was breaking loose in the flat. Uniforms forced entry, found McInnis with the shit beaten out of him and another wee scrote with a syringe where his eyeball should have been.”

Eddie shuddered. “So why are we looking at it, sir? Sounds like a drug deal gone wrong. Nothing else. And Drummond and I…”

“We’re looking at it because I say we’re looking at it, okay constable,” Burns spat, the venom chilling the line. “And because McInnis is known to associate with Dessie Banks. And if there’s a chance of this leading back to him. I want it. Clear?”

Eddie nodded like a cheap car toy. Dessie Banks. Edinburgh’s biggest gangster. You wanted it, Dessie could get it. Drugs, guns, girls, someone’s legs broken.

“We’ll get right on it, sir,” King said.

He clicked off the phone, turned his attention back to Drummond. Felt a brief thrill of shock at her ashen appearance and confused stare.

“You okay?” he asked.

“What? Yeah.” She looked at the phone as if for confirmation. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just… just…”

“Listen,” he said, avoiding the awkwardness he felt by concentrating on the work. “That was Burns. He’s got something else he wants us to look in to. Seems Stevie McInnis got into a bit of a scrape this morning, left him in hospital and the other guy with an eye missing.”

Susie blinked at him, as though seeing him for the first time. “McInnis? You mean Stevie Leith?”

“That’s the one,” Eddie replied. “Come on, I’m parked on Market Street. Should only take ten minutes to get there.” He stood up. Susie stayed seated.

“You go on,” she said. “I’ve got someone I need to see.”

He frowned down at her. “But the boss said.”

“Eddie, please.” She looked up at him, pleading. “Just deal with this one for me, please. I’ve got someone to see, and something I really don’t want to do. So just fucking deal with it, okay?”

He stood there for a moment. The lost look in her eyes, the confusion.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll call you when I’m done. We can meet up then.”

“Thanks,” she said. She watched him go, disappearing onto the street, everything about him screaming police despite the business suit and fashionably untidy hair.

If only everyone was as easy to spot, she thought bitterly as she followed him out of the door.