4.1.
My father died while questioning a suspect. One minute he was screaming in somebody’s face, the next he was lying on the floor turning the same colour as his uniform. CPR kept him alive long enough for the paramedics to arrive, but he arrested again in the ambulance and was dead on arrival. I was four at the time, and I reckon I was about six before I got it through my thick skull that Daddy wasn’t coming home.
I miss him more now I’m an adult than I ever did as a child.
I think he was a good man. I could be wrong – we tend to idolise the dead until they become caricatures of the person they actually were, and my memories of him are without foundation, mostly based on the stories my mother passed on before she died – but I’m pretty sure about that. He taught me a few things. How to tie my shoelaces.
How to bash in the bottoms of my boiled eggs after eating them so that the witches wouldn’t be able to make boats. What I remember most is his love of the police force. He wore the uniform with pride. I know that’s a cliché, but there’s no other way I can describe it. With pride.
So I guess it was inevitable that I would join up. I didn’t do it the second I was old enough because Mum was dying, but after she was gone I applied and was accepted. And from then until the day I left in disgrace, I wore the uniform as my father had before me. Even after that night on Gallowgate, and all the shit that came after, I loved the force.
So did Joe. Of course, to those on the outside, it didn’t look that way. They thought he was just another cock in an overcrowded hen house, loving the job not for what it was but for the sense of power it gave him.
We first met over ten years ago. I was twenty, just graduated from the police training college up at Tulliallan, still soaking wet behind the ears, still having the time of my life. My first station was in Glasgow’s Pollokshaws, and I was what they called a ‘Woollysuit’ – a probationary constable. My job was pretty simple. I was expected to do what I was told, when I was told, and how I was told.
Joe, on the other hand, was forty-five, a C.I.D. detective with something of a reputation. The word was that he was the copper that Ian Rankin based John Rebus on.
Of course, I guessed straight away that was bullshit. The first Rebus story was published in the mid-eighties, and that meant that Joe would have been about twenty at the time. Twenty is too young to be a legend, unless you’re a footballer or a singer in a rock and roll band.
The whole thing didn’t seem to bother him. As a detective, he was something of a cliché. His hobbies included horses, boozing and womanising, and of course, solving crime. He even looked the part, stamping about the station in a snazzy leather jacket, cracking jokes with people he liked and shouting at people he didn’t.
I’m six-foot five, so I already stood out, but it was Joe that gave me the nickname that would follow me the rest of my career. I was eating lunch in the canteen with the other probies when he stopped at the table. We went quiet, anticipating a bawling out. We were normally so far below his radar that he only acknowledged us to point out how we screwed up. But this time it was something else. He looked at all of us and singled me out. ‘You. Gigantor. You got some civvies in your locker?’
I nodded. ‘Sir.’
‘Go and change. I want your help. I’ve cleared it with your supervisor.’
‘Sir.’
I did as I was told. Before I even left the changing room, the name had stuck to me like a fly on shite. In the space of a month, it had been abbreviated to ‘Gantor’. It didn’t bother me. Could have been much, much worse.
Joe was waiting for me outside the locker room. ‘Come on. We’re going for a drive.’
I fell in step as we made our way to the car park. ‘Where to, sir?’
‘Social call.’
We commandeered a pool car, and Joe told me to drive, ‘So as I can tell you what’s going on.
‘We’re going to see a couple of lads. Jerry and Derek McConnell.
They’re twins, and they’re about the same size as you. They’re seventeen years old, and they’ve both got juvenile arrest records as long as my arm. . . in fact, as long as your arm. Vandalism, fighting, anti-social behaviour, car theft. Both of them have been caught carrying blades. Do you remember the case of Vijay Sarwar?’
I did. Two years ago, the poor kid had been stabbed on his way home from school and damn near died. It happened on a street full of witnesses, but all of them were Indian and under the age of fourteen and wouldn’t say a word. The incident aggravated racial tensions in the area, and the media didn’t help by implying that the police didn’t take what had happened as seriously as they would have if it had been a white boy that had been attacked.
Joe nodded. ‘That was Jerry and Derek. But nobody will go on the record for fear of reprisals. And even if they did, both boys were under sixteen at the time. All they’d get is a slap on the wrists and learn not to get caught.
‘I only found out about the Vijay Sarwar thing because I’ve been digging into their backgrounds anyway. There’s been a spate of muggings on Pollokshaws Road over the past five weeks. Always on a Friday or Saturday, always early in the morning, sometime between the hours of three fifteen and three forty-five, always in the five hundred yards between the Esso garage and the bingo hall, which, coincidentally or not, is also where Jerry and Derek live. You know what I’m thinking?’
I did. ‘The three o’clock bus.’
‘Clever lad.’
Glasgow’s a town that lives for the weekend, and throughout the nineties, late night buses ran all over the city. For the princely sum of one pound seventy-five, you could always get home after a night out.
The Pollokshaws bus route terminated right in the middle of that particular area. The time frame was perfect as well.
Joe continued. ‘All the victims were passengers on that bus, so I showed the McDonnell brothers’ mugshots to some of the drivers, and they all confirm that the boys are also frequent fliers, always getting off at that stop. I reckon they have a night out on the town and then use the bus journey home to pick a victim. Of course, a good defence lawyer will point out that there is absolutely no law against two of our great city’s youths using public transport to travel home after a pleasant evening of drinking mint juleps at the youth club disco.’
I almost laughed at that, but managed to keep it in check, my eyes fixed firmly on the road. From the speed of his speech and the way he didn’t pause to check whether or not I was listening, I suspected that Detective Banks was the kind of guy that preferred all questions to be left until the end of the presentation.
‘Every single victim has been female and alone. There’s been nine incidents that we know about, and the assailants are described as being unusually tall, wearing hooded tops and scarves. That sound like anybody I’ve described to you?’
I guessed I wasn’t supposed to answer, so I nodded, keeping my eyes on the road. You weren’t allowed to smoke while on duty, but that didn’t stop Joe from lighting a cigarette. He pointed it at me while he talked. ‘So far, the attacks show a classic pattern of escalating violence.
The first two victims were just relieved of personal property, the next two were struck from behind before being forced to the ground. Since then, they’ve started frog-marching girls to cashline machines, forcing them to withdraw more cash, and then knocking seven shades of shit out of them.’ He puffed on his cigarette. ‘Their last attack showed another escalation.’
‘In what way sir?’
‘Sexual. On Saturday night they grabbed a twenty year old girl and went through the usual routine. Cash and then a kicking. But then they dragged her to a piece of wasteground and ripped her top off.
Told her they were going to rape her, that she was asking for it going about dressed like a tart. Of course, she fought back, managed to pull the scarf off one of them. She recognised Jerry McConnell. She said she scratched hell out of his cheek.
He blew out a plume of smoke. ‘I personally wouldn’t be sorry if she’d scratched the little bastard’s eye out.’
‘What happened then?’
He shrugged. ‘She ran. . . all the way to the A & E department of the Western Infirmary. She told them what had happened, and I was the one that interviewed her. The poor lass was a mess. They really did a job on her. Broken nose, broken cheekbone, fractured wrist. She agreed that she would testify against them, but she phoned me this morning in tears. After a bit of prompting, she told me that she got a message saying that if she did testify against them, they would do to her wee sister what they failed to do to her. Her wee sister’s only thirteen, by the way.’
‘So. . . nice guys, then.’
‘Salt of the earth. And of course, you know how defence lawyers treat a young woman who goes out and has a couple of drinks in anything more revealing than a suit of armour. They’ll say she was begging for it, then changed her mind halfway through.’
‘But there would have been DNA under her fingernails.’
Joe shook his head. ‘You know what A&E’s like at half past four on a Sunday morning. Half the bloody city’s there with an alcohol related injury. It was a student nurse who admitted her, and nobody thought a thing about preserving any evidence. It was scrubbed away, down the plug hole like Partick Thistle’s chances of avoiding relegation.’
I drove in silence. My mouth was dry, and my heart tripped along in my chest. In my four weeks on the job, this was by far the most exciting thing that had happened. Perhaps too exciting. Everything that Joe had said seemed to contradict what I had learned in training, but I wanted to be a part of it, just so I could see what was going to happen.
‘What if. . . what if the girl is lying?’ I said. Joe looked at me. ‘I mean, I believe you and everything, but it sounds like we don’t really have probable cause to arrest them.’
‘That’s why I told you it was a social call.’
‘But what if she’s. . . I don’t know. . . like an ex girlfriend. Suppose she just made everything up to screw them over?’
‘I saw this lassie. She didn’t make up the two black eyes, or the broken wrist.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘Look, son, I understand if you don’t want to be a part of this. You’re new to the force, and they teach you to do things a certain way. If that’s the case, just drop me off and head back to the station. but there’s a few things you have to understand. Imagine you’re rolling a dice. What are your chances of rolling a six?’
‘One in six?’
‘Clever lad. Now, what are your chances of rolling another six right after?’
‘One in. . . thirty six. Something like that.’
‘Right. And another six after that?’
‘One in. . .’ Mental arithmetic wasn’t my strong point. ‘One hundred and eighty-two?’
‘In the ballpark. Now, my point is this. For our first six, we have two violent young men with antisocial tendencies. Our next six, they live directly in the area that these crimes occurred. All the victims report that their attackers were abnormally tall – that’s another six. We have three separate bus drivers, all who swear blind that our boys were on the bus every single time. They remember them, you know, the drivers. Say that they’re the kind of lads that always sit up at the back of the top deck so that they can have a smoke and cause trouble. So that’s another three sixes right there. And for our final roll of the dice, we have our victim actually recognising one of her attackers. Now, lets do the math. That’s six by the power of seven... works out to something like one hundred and fifty thousand to one that it’s not them.
And those, Cameron, are betting odds.’
I said nothing. I was surprised that he knew my name.
‘Now, the thing is that there will always be some scumbag lawyer that will be able to claim that all I have is circumstantial evidence, and they would be right. And because they’re both still young, even if we got a conviction, we’d be lucky to get more than a couple of months in a young offenders unit. But I think that everybody could agree that both Jerry and Derek are headed down a slippery slope, and perhaps by intervening now, we might be able to prevent not just further attacks on members of the general public, but possibly even prevent these two young mean wasting what might turn out to be relatively productive lives.
‘I’m not going to lie to you; things could get a little rough. But it’s up to you to decide what kind of cop you want to be. Whether you want to be the rule follower, or the one that does what’s right.’
Put like that, it didn’t take me long to decide. ‘I’m in.’
4.2.
After Joe’s description of the McConnells, I expected a tenement flat with wet rot and used needles on the stairwell, a couch mouldering on the street outside. Instead, they lived in a smart detached house in a new estate. But it wasn’t a complete contradiction. Compared to those of neighbouring properties, the garden was unkempt, the grass long, the weeds rampant. Joe nodded as we pulled to a halt outside. ‘Mummy inherited a nice wee sum and decided to invest in some property. Guess she’s used to having the council do all the maintenance.’
‘Where is mummy, do you think?’
‘She’s got a job in a bar. Long hours. Uses it as an excuse every time the boys get into trouble. Daddy’s been gone for years. He saw which direction the boys were heading and moved onwards and upwards.’
Joe stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, and then, remembering he was in a pool car, emptied the ashtray out of the window. ‘Come on.
Let’s go pay our respects.’
Walking up the path, he spoke softly. ‘All I want from you is to stand in the corner and look pretty. I spoke to some of the officers that have interviewed them. Gerry’s bad enough, but Derek’s supposed to be a fucking headcase. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. I don’t think they’ll try anything, but with idiots like these, you never can tell.’
It took forty seconds of persistent knocking before the door was answered. A stick insect with a towel wrapped around his waist and a can of lager in his hand said, ‘I wis takin’ a bath.’
There was a livid scratch running down his left cheek.
‘Gerry, is it?’ Joe waved his badge as he pushed past and into the house. ‘Where’s Derek?’
There was a frown as Gerry registered the badge. ‘What do you want? We haven’t done nothing.’
‘Just a wee chat. Where’s your brother?’
‘Listening to music with headphones on. That’s how I had to get out the fucking bath.’
‘Where? Living room? Kitchen? Shed at the bottom of the garden?’
Gerry pointed sullenly. ‘Living room.’
‘After you.’
‘It’s through there. I’ll just go and put some clothes on.’
The kid made to go back up the stairs, but Joe put a hand on his arm. ‘That won’t be necessary. We’re not going to be long.’
Gerry grumbled as he led us into the living room. The place was a tip, with old newspapers and half eaten plates of food littering the floor. Derek was sitting on a settee eating crisps, an oversized pair of headphones balanced on his head. He whipped them off as we entered the room and I caught a quick burble of techno before he hit the off switch. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
Joe waved his badge for the second time, directing Jerry to the opposite end of the settee. The kid sat down, the towel riding up and falling open. Not a pretty sight, but at least there wasn’t much to look at.
They weren’t identical, but the facial resemblance was there. Both had high foreheads and monobrows. Joe had said they were my height, but after seeing Jerry standing upright, I put them at a couple of inches taller. They were certainly big enough and ugly enough to scare the shit out of the average person. It didn’t worry me. I’d been strong before, but four months of torture up at the police training college at Tulliallan had left me in better physical shape than I had ever been in my life. They were willow trees compared to my oak. If it came to a one on one fight, I’d break them in half.
Joe swiped an empty pizza box off an armchair onto the floor, checking there was nothing unpleasant that could stain the seat of his trousers before sitting down. ‘You know, it wouldn’t kill you guys to do a bit of a clean up around here.’
‘Mum’s at work.’
‘And wouldn’t it be a surprise for her to come home to a nice tidy house?’
The two boys looked at each other and laughed. ‘Fuck that.’
‘I bet she’s proud of you.’ Joe reached into his pocket. ‘Anyhoo, I didn’t come here to chat. I was wondering if you knew this lassie.’
He passed a Polaroid to Gerry, who studied it. I was only three months in the job, but I saw his eyes flick to his brother and back, and understood the significance.
‘No, pal. Never seen her.’
‘What about your brother?’
This time, Derek’s face didn’t give him away. He gave the picture a cursory glance before shaking his head and passing it back.
‘That’s strange. Her name’s Louise Brennan. She lives less than two hundred yards away. Walks her dog past your house every single day.’
Derek gestured to the closed blinds. ‘Do I look like I give a fuck what goes on outside?’
‘Fair enough.’ Joe passed another picture over her. ‘What about this one?’
This time, both their faces remained clear. They looked at the picture a long time before shaking their heads. Derek said, ‘Looks like somebody hit her with a bus.’
‘Close enough. It’s actually the same lassie. The first picture was the
“before”, and what you’ve got there in your hands is the “after”.
Doctors say that she might need reconstructive surgery on her nose.’
‘That’s fuck all to do with us, pal.’
‘So why’s she saying that it was you two fine gentleman?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Go out much at the weekend?’
A smirk passed between the two brothers. Any doubts I had as to their guilt disappeared. Derek ate a crisp. ‘We mostly stay at home and read our bibles.’
‘I’m sure you do. What happened to your face, Gerry?’
‘Walked into a door.’
‘A door with false nails?’ Joe slapped his knees with both hands.
‘Let’s cut the bullshit. I know that it was you two.’
Derek crossed his legs and studied his fingernails. ‘Aye, well. Knowing something and being able to prove it are two different things.
That’s how you’ve not arrested us. You know she’s not going to testify, and even if you make her, she’ll just say that she made a mistake. So why don’t you just fuck off back to your sty and leave us alone?’
Joe looked at me. ‘Don’t you love it? We’re pigs, so we must live in a sty?’
Derek said, ‘You’re a pair of fucking wankers is what you are. You think you can come into my house and play it fucking cool? Try and scare us? Even if you could prove anything, the worst we’re going to get is a year or so in borstal. Warm beds, good food. We’d fucking own the place. We’re fucking laughing at you.’
This from a seventeen year old boy.
He stood up. ‘You can both just fuck off. Tell Louise she’s a good lassie for doing what as she’s told. Maybe one night I’ll go round andpay her a visit. I’ll wait until she’s not quite such a swamp donkey though. . . mind you, they do say ugly birds try harder. She might not be so choosy this time.’
The expression on Joe’s face never changed, but there was something. . . a deadening of the eyes, the muscle in his jaw. He sighed and got to his feet. ‘It’s a slippery slope you’re on, lads.’
‘Thank you, Mr Policeman, for showing us the error of our ways.’
I moved for the door, disappointed that our social call hadn’t had a more conclusive ending. Then something made me hesitate. I turned, just in time to see Joe knee Derek in the balls, the impact like a concrete ball wrapped in wet blankets bouncing off a wall. Derek went down, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. Gerry was up in a shot, the towel falling to his feet. I intercepted him as he moved toward Joe, seizing him, putting his arm up his back like I had been taught.
Joe loomed over the fallen boy. ‘Did you think we were finished?
Did you think that we were just going to go home?’ He planted a vicious kick into Derek’s side. ‘We’re just getting started, son.’
Gerry struggled in my hold, so I increased my grip, jamming his arm further up his back. I had my left hand on his neck, ready to stick my thumb into his brachial artery, a nasty little trick they don’t teach you in Tulliallan but I had discovered on my own. I kept him facing his brother on the floor while Joe proceeded to do to Derek what Derek had done to nine people before him. I made him watch, having to watch myself, not wanting to but perversely enjoying it all the same. This was what it was all about. No paperwork, no warrants, no fucking hours wasted outside the High Court waiting to testify only to see some arsehole that we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was guilty walk away because some dumb twat had forgotten to sign a report in triplicate or whatever.
I’ve seen, given and received a few kickings since then, but in over ten years, nothing has ever come close. Joe fucked Derek up bigstyle.
Ugly, indelicate, but that’s the only way I can describe it. While the boy struggled for breath, Joe flipped him onto his front and kneeled on his back, forcing the arm until the shoulder cracked loudly. Then Joe went to work on the hand, snapping the thumb and fingers one by one like a fistful of twiglets. At some point between the index finger and the pinkie, Derek passed out from the pain.
Joe got to his feet and turned his attention to Gerry. ‘That’s your brother in a cast for the next month. So I guess the question remains. . . what are we going to do with you?’
Gerry was white with fear. ‘Oh Jesus. . . Oh Jesus Christ. . . you can’t. . . you can’t do that. We’re just kids. . .’
‘YOU ARE NOT FUCKING KIDS!’ Joe screamed in his face. ‘YOU
FORFEITED YOUR RIGHT TO CHILDHOOD!’ Spittle landed on Jerry’s face. And mine. ‘You forfeited your right to be children the second you started to commit adult crimes!’
‘I’m sorry. . .’
‘I don’t fucking care that you’re sorry. Louise Brennan doesn’t know that you’re sorry. She doesn’t care. Sorry isn’t going to make up for what you did to her. Sorry is just a word that cunts like you use to weasel out of accepting responsibility for things that you should never have done in the first place.’
Joe looked at me. ‘Let him go.’
I released my prisoner. Gerry spared me one terrified glance before turning his attention back to Joe. ‘Please. . . please don’t. . .’
‘Oh, shut up.’ Joe’s voice was toneless. He went and sat back down on the armchair. ‘I know that Derek’s the brains behind the two of you.’
Gerry bent and picked up the towel, tucking it back around his waist. He nodded frantically, agreeing with Joe.
‘Now, my colleague and I are going to go in a couple of moments, and you can then dial emergency services and get some help for your brother. I think he’s going to need it. They’ll want to know what happened, and I don’t care what you tell them.’ He nodded at the scratch on Gerry’s cheek. ‘Tell them he walked into a fucking door.
Anyhoo, the point is that I have a dozen witnesses that will swear blind that both of us were elsewhere, and besides, everybody knows that the pair of you are pond life. Derek was right. Knowing that something is the truth and being able to prove it are two very different things.’ He looked at the mess at his feet without the slightest trace of pity. ‘You really did bring this on yourselves, you know.’
Gerry nodded. He was at the stage where he would agree to anything that was said. If Joe suggested that it would be fun to get out the baby oil and grease him up, he’d have run to the bathroom in his eagerness to help.
Joe stood up and studied Derek. His chest was moving; the kid was breathing alright. Joe turned his attention to Gerry. ‘Now, I won’t waste anybody’s time by saying that it’s up to you to turn your life around. What I will point out is that I can always come back, and the next time, I’ll hand out some real punishment. To both of you. So if you and your dumb little buddy find yourselves contemplating getting up to something naughty, just remember. . . I’ll find you.’
4.3.
We made it half a mile before I had to stop the car. I pulled in at a bus stop, opened the door and threw up all over the tarmac. I could feel Joe’s eyes boring into the back of my head. ‘Sorry, sir.’
‘That’s OK. And it’s Joe. While it’s just the two of us. You can go back to sir when we get back to the station.’
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
‘It’s shock.’ He held out his right hand in front of him. I noticed a barely perceptible tremor. ‘I feel a little bit like that myself.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s nearly knocking off time. Let’s make a little detour. Take the next right.’
Joe directed me to a pub called Yesterday’s Promise. Never had a drinking establishment been so aptly named. It was on the edge of a mostly abandoned industrial estate and had obviously collapsed onto hard times. Once it might have been a place for tired workers to go at the end of a long day, but as the businesses had moved out, so had the clientele. Exterior paint had long since peeled away to the bare wood, and the once white walls were now a dirty shade of grey. Joe caught me looking and said, ‘I know, it’s a shithole. . . which means there’s not much chance of running into management types.’
Once my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, the place was better on the inside than I expected. Yesterday’s Promise was never going to make the Good Pub Guide – the promise of yesterday apparently failing to become the reality of today – but it was reasonably clean, with polished wood tables and an impressive selection of whisky. The place was deserted except for a barman who was about five feet tall, with a pointy nose and prominent teeth that made me think of a rat.
I was going to order a Coke, but before I could speak, Joe put a ten down on the bar. ‘Two half and halves, Des, and get one for yourself.’
He looked at me. ‘Why don’t you go and grab us that table in the corner?’
I did as I was asked, taking a seat where I could watch the bar.
Ratman – Des, as Joe had called him – prepared our drinks, the ten pound note disappearing into the till with not even an offer of any change. They chatted for a few seconds before Joe brought the drinks over. He sat down opposite me and polished off the whisky in one go.
‘Christ, I needed that.’
I didn’t especially want to have an alcoholic drink – I was still a probationary constable, remember – but my mouth was a desert. I took the tiniest sip of the lager, but my thirst outweighed my sense and I ended up downing half of it in one go. Now that the adrenaline was leaving my system, I was angry. Things had gone too far. Way too far.
But what could I say? Joe was the senior officer, and I had watched without even trying to intervene. And hadn’t there been a little voice in the back of my mind all along, whispering that the little shit was only getting what he deserved? Wasn’t that what I was really angry about?
Joe seemed to know what I was thinking. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t plan for that. I didn’t go in there with the intention putting the kid in a cast.’
‘But you meant all along to hurt him. I mean, why else were we there?’
Joe nodded soberly. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’
‘I could lose my job for this!’
‘That’s not going to happen. Guys like Gerry and Derek don’t call the police. That’s not their style. Besides, I wasn’t kidding. I really can get a dozen people that will confirm we were elsewhere.’
‘But we could have waited! Got enough evidence to put them away!’
For the first time, I saw a shadow of anger on his face. ‘For how long, Cameron? How long would you wait? Until they beat somebody else up? All it takes is one lucky punch to kill someone. Maybe you’d rather wait until they succeeded in raping some poor lass like they tried with Louise Brennan?’
‘No, but. . . ’ I had no answers.
‘Cameron, I’m not proud of what I just did, and I don’t want you to be thinking that’s the way I conduct myself. Most of the time, I behave myself. But every once in a while there comes along something that can’t be resolved by procedure. I didn’t walk into that room with the intention of hurting Derek as badly as that. I thought a wee slap on the face would be enough. But I. . . ’
‘You lost it.’
‘I didn’t lose it.’
‘You fucking well did.’ That was the only way I could account for the sickening level of violence. I remembered the sound Derek’s arm had made. ‘You lost it.’
‘That’s not true, Cameron. It’s just. . . after what Derek said, I realised that this guy wasn’t going to respond to a slap. He was just going to keep doing exactly what he wanted. What he did to that lassie meant nothing to him. Gerry’s nobody. He’s a follower, not a leader.
But Derek. . . he’s got all the makings of a serious psychopath. I’m not talking about your garden variety nutjob. I’m taking about a predatory sexual killer, the kind of guy that rapes and tortures and abuses and kills for the fun of it. Like Fred bloody West. And of course, in Gerry he’s got a perfect audience. I could be wrong, but I think there’s every chance that in a few years we’ll be watching Derek’s neighbours being interviewed on the evening news. They’ll be the ones saying he was such a quiet man, always said hello.’
I said nothing. All I wanted to do was finish my drink, go back home and put this day behind me. Once again, Joe seemed to read my face. ‘Look, Cam, I’m sorry. The only regret I have about this afternoon is putting you in the position I have. You’re young, you haven’t been in the job long. . . it was too soon.’
‘Let’s just forget about it.’
‘That might be for the best.’
4.4.
Of course, we didn’t just forget about it. I never told anybody what happened that afternoon. For the next few days, I expected to feel a hand on my shoulder, hauling me off to a disciplinary hearing. I kept my head down and my profile low, knowing that if what we had done ever came to light, it wouldn’t just be a question of losing my job.
We’d been told what happened to crooked cops in jail, and I had no desire to find out first hand.
It never happened. Two mornings later, my supervisor pulled me to one side and asked how things had gone. I almost blurted out the truth, but managed not to. ‘Fine. It was just a routine thing.’
‘Oh, aye?’
‘Aye.’
‘Joe tell you not to talk about it?’
‘Sir.’
I love that word. It’s neither a confirmation or a denial. It just makes people think that you’re listening.
‘Well, whatever it was, you did well. Joe said that you’ve got the makings of a good copper. And I know for a fact that he’s not easy to impress.’
‘Sir.’
High praise indeed, but it was a while before I forgave Joe for that particular afternoon. I was young, remember, and not as cynical as I am now. At the time, I believed that there had to be a better solution.
Now that I’m older, I’m not so sure. I’ve seen a thousand kids like the McConnells, and most of them continue to re-offend, the escalating violence of their crimes proof of Joe’s theory.
I won’t lie to you; it didn’t quite work out the way we hoped. Derek McConnell died in a McDonalds toilet with a needle in his vein and a Quarterpounder in his cold dead fingers. Gerry is currently doing a four year stretch for breaking and entering. But while they didn’t exactly straighten up and fly right, neither of them went on to commit the sort of crimes that we thought they might.
One thing does bother me. I read somewhere that America didn’t have a serious heroin problem until after Vietnam, but the common use of the drug as a painkiller, coupled with ignorance about it’s addictive nature, contributed to thousands of soldiers being discharged with a monkey on their backs. The supply was created to meet the sudden demand, and a world-wide heroin culture was born. My point is this: if we hadn’t hurt Derek as badly as we did, he might not have become addicted. But then, maybe he would have carried on doing what he did to Louise Brennan. So I guess the end justifies the means.
At least, that’s what I believe. Most of the time.