65

Burns sat across his desk from Susie, red hair glowing in the desk lamp he had trained over his head. His lips moved soundlessly as he read her reports, absently gutting a cigarette and flicking tobacco off the pages. When he reached the last page, he closed the folder slowly, placed his hand over it and looked up at Susie, eyes bloodshot from a lack of sleep and too much coffee.

“I thought I told you to stay the fuck away from that wee shite McGregor?” he said finally.

Susie felt her cheeks begin to burn. “Yes, sir, you did. But it just didn’t work out that way. McGregor contacted me when he was en route to Mrs Pearson’s house. Given the cryptic nature of his message, I felt I had no option but to investigate further.”

Burns snorted, rubbed his fingers together as he added to the growing pile of tobacco on his desk. “And it never occurred to you to contact the local station and get them to send an officer to Mrs Pearson’s address?”

“Well, I, ah…”

Burns took his hand off the folder, held it up. “Forget it, Susie, I’m too tired for bullshit. You should have reported it as soon as he got in touch. He left a fucking crime scene, for fuck’s sake, you knew he was a person of interest. You’re just lucky Pearson was so willing to spill her guts when she woke up.”

Susie nodded, remembering the scene that had confronted her when she arrived at Pearson’s home. The living room looked as if an earthquake had hit it, shattered ornaments twinkling on the floor, furniture upturned and jostled out of position. Doug sitting propped against one wall, his face puffy with tears and bruises, blood oozing and pooling around the jagged stump of an ornament sticking out of his leg. Opposite him, Diane “Frankie” Pearson lay crumpled on the floor, murmuring and cackling between quiet sobs of pain.

Susie had arranged ambulances for them both, called the local station and had them cordon off the whole street as a crime scene. By the time the ambulances arrived, every house had a light on, the blue strobes from the emergency vehicles bouncing off the opening curtains and freezing curious faces in their glare. They were taken to the Victoria in Kirkcaldy, which had the closest A&E, put in private rooms with officers on the doors.

After checking on Doug, and making sure he kept his mouth shut so he didn’t say something to land himself in any more shit, she went to check on Diane Pearson.

She was lying propped up in bed, white-blonde hair fanned out on the pillow behind her. The dark, angry bruises creeping across her face seemed to merge with the gloom of the room, leaving only her eyes glittering from the shadows. The doctors said she had three broken ribs, a hairline fracture of her left leg and had lost at least four teeth. Thinking about Doug’s mangled hand – three fingers broken, the thumb dislocated and the bones in his palm fractured – she wished it was more serious.

Pearson looked up, smiled through bloodied lips when she saw Susie slip into the room. When she spoke, her voice sounded amused, almost mischievous, and it made Susie’s skin crawl.

“Ah, Susie, good to see you again. How’s your friend? I didn’t hurt him too badly, did I? I hope not. He seems like such a nice boy.”

Susie saw her watching her, the cold amusement and calculation. She was trying to get a reaction. Fine. Fuck her. She wasn’t going to get one.

“He’s fine,” she said quietly, slipping into a chair beside the bed, making sure it was just out of arm’s reach, even with the cuffs chaining her to the side rail. “However, he did make a troubling accusation about you. That you were somehow involved in the death of Charlie Montgomery and linked to a known drug dealer in the city?”

Diane threw back her head and laughed, the sound of bottles crashing into a recycling bin. Susie could see bruises trailing across her neck like wine stains, made a mental note to make sure Doug’s statement had a line in it that he felt he was in “mortal danger”. Which wasn’t much of a lie.

“Oh, Susie, Susie,” Diane said, the manic laugh giving way to the occasional amused snort. “Mr McGregor really is a clever, clever boy.”

She looked off out the window, the glow from the street lights making her bruises look gangrenous. “There’s no point in denying it now, I suppose. After all, I’ve got what I wanted.”

Slowly, she told Susie everything, as if it was a secret she had been holding on to for years and was dying to tell. About how she had found Paul and got to Dessie Banks through him, sold drugs to the patients she was supposed to be helping. How she had got in touch with Gavin not long after he had been released from prison, using Paul and Dessie as go-betweens so they weren’t seen together. “After all,” she told Susie, her eyes dead and calm, “it wouldn’t have done for a respected counsellor to be seen with a convicted murderer, would it?” So they met in a flat Banks had arranged, with Danny getting the first real chance to meet his dad. “They spent hours together reading comics,” Diane told her, as though she was sharing gossip.

When Danny was hurt, and Greig had reacted in the way he had, she had snapped. Contacted Gavin, set him on a killing spree for them all. “It wasn’t hard, Susie – he loved Danny more than life. He never asked for a DNA test, you know, even after I told him about Greig. He didn’t care. Danny was what he wanted him to be. Our child. His son.”

So she had cashed in her favours with Dessie and got Gavin what he needed. But Charlie was all hers. After all, Gavin was capable of shooting a coward and dealing with an old man, but taking out a relatively fit man? “No, that was woman’s work. Gavin was there with me in spirit, though. He gave me a spare bullet to give to Charlie as a memento.”

Burns coughed pointedly, bringing Susie back to the present. She sneered in disgust as she saw him shovel a handful of the raw tobacco into his mouth. He smiled and nodded towards her.

“Better than smoking,” he said. “You know you’ll have to get her statement verified, don’t you? And will that little scrote who was dealing for her corroborate all this?”

“Yes, sir,” she nodded. “We got the records from Diane’s office, which shows he was a client of hers. We’ve also got her business card in the belongings taken from Stevie Leith’s flat. Stevie never met her face to face, he only ever dealt with ‘Frankie’ on the phone. But with Dessie Banks backing her up, he wasn’t going to say no to her.”

Burns nodded slowly, chewing on his tobacco like it was a succulent steak. “Dessie Banks,” he murmured. “I’ve been waiting for years to have a shot at him.”

Susie said nothing, waited as Burns enjoyed a private fantasy. Finally, he refocused on her, almost surprised she was there. “Okay, get the paperwork done on this ASAP. I don’t want any slips, especially with the Chief watching.”

Susie shifted in her seat slightly. “Sir, ah, about that…”

Burns looked at her coolly, seemed to read her thoughts. Sighed. “I don’t know, Susie, I really don’t. The Chief has a thing for you for some reason, though I’ll be fucked if I know what it is. He’s still pressing me to keep you on the sidelines. This,” – he tapped the folder – “will help, but that little shit McGregor being involved is going to create a world of problems.”

A world of problems, Susie thought. That summed Doug up perfectly. The contact who was also a friend. Sometimes. The friend she had set up with another friend. So why did she feel so… jealous? Did she want more with Doug? Maybe, but was it a price worth paying? Lose a friend, and, given what Burns had said, her career. And for what? And, anyway, what feelings had Doug shown for her – or Rebecca, for that matter? She knew his type: all charm and easy smiles, more focused on his career than even she was. So what was she playing at?

“…I said you’re dismissed, Drummond.”

Susie started in her chair. “Sorry, sir, just thinking. Thank you, sir.”

He nodded, shovelled another wad of tobacco into his mouth. “Go home, Susie, get some rest. And think about what I said. McGregor might be handy, but he’s not worth it. And cutting corners like this is only going to get you in the shit.”

Susie murmured agreement, closed the door gently behind her. Walked through the almost empty corridors of the station, Burns’s words echoing in her ears in time with the click-clack of her heels.

He’s not worth it. This is only going to get you in the shit.

She pushed the thought away, changed course for the locker room and the trainers and running gear she kept there. She could run home in less than an hour, sweat out thoughts of Doug and Rebecca and Diane Pearson’s dead, leering smile long before she reached the front door.

Everything else, she could worry about tomorrow.