“THROUGH HERE.”
The man leading Darian wasn’t in uniform, just a plain middle-aged man in a suit. He was involved in administration at the prison at a high enough level to get Darian an unrecorded meeting with a prisoner. He was a contact Darian and Sorley had worked together to cultivate, one of several in the prison they used to keep updated about their father.
He knew the prison in Earmam well, went to visit his father every month. The three kids all went on separate weeks, their attempt to make sure their father always had someone to speak to and a visit to look forward to. He was an isolated man in there, with very few people it was safe for an ex-detective to be around. He always told them he was doing fine, but they didn’t expect him to tell them the truth when he was trying to protect his children from it.
The man, who we won’t name because he shouldn’t have been helping Darian, said, “Your father’s still doing well, far as I can tell.”
“Good.”
“Wait here.”
He had led Darian into a small office on the second floor, sparsely furnished and obviously never used. There was an empty desk with a chair on either side and a metal filing cabinet by the door with the top drawer missing and nothing in the others. There were no bars on the large window, but you’d have needed to learn to fly before you tried to jump.
Darian looked out of the window at the wing jutting out opposite the one he was in, and then down at the yard between them. His father was in that wing somewhere, that sprawling place populated by some of the worst examples of humanity Challaid had produced in the last half-century. The female prisoners were sent down to the central belt, Cornton Vale. The minor offenders went to softer prisons, Huntly usually. The pedophiles were sent to Peterhead because they had a rehabilitation program there and any sent to The Ganntair would have had slim chance of leaving with the same number of body parts they’d possessed upon arrival. They protected the pedophiles, but they sent his father here, among men he had locked up. They had insisted, the prosecution arguing it was necessary to show that Edmund Ross wouldn’t get preferential treatment because he was a former police officer. The family all saw it as an act of malice.
The door opened and a prison officer shoved Randle Cummins into the room with gleeful force. The prisoner looked over his shoulder and tutted as the door was closed, the officer on the outside, and then looked round at Darian.
“Oh, it’s you.”
“Yeah, it’s all me. Sit down, Randle.”
He did as he was told, a dirty look the extent of his protest. He was still as sallow and blotchy as before and now he was picking at a small cut high in his forehead with dirty fingernails. As he sat at the table he said, “What do you want? Come to try and throw more shite at me, have you?”
“Actually, no, I’m trying to wipe off some of the shite you’re already covered in. They’ve charged you with murder because they know they can get a conviction. You don’t have to be guilty, Randle, you just have to do a good job of looking like it, and so far it’s uncanny.”
“It won’t get to court, I know that.”
“If there wasn’t enough to get you to court you would be sitting in your grim little house right now, instead of this relative luxury.”
Cummins blinked heavily and said, “I know what your game is; you’re here to try and get me to say something stupid, try and trick me to make me look guilty. I’m not daft. You say you’re here to help me but I got to help you first, and then you get me to say something that gets me in even worse fucking trouble.”
“You’ve been charged with murder. How much worse do you think I can make it?”
“It won’t get to court.”
“I’m trying to help you here, Randle, but you have to be willing to help yourself.”
“Uh-huh, here it comes, here it comes.”
“I’m going to talk and you’re not going to interrupt me, Randle, got that? They have charged you with murdering Moses Guerra and stealing money from his flat. Within hours of Moses being killed, someone went to the Creags’ unit and paid off your debt in full, leaving a note claiming to be from you. I don’t believe for one second that it was you who delivered that cash.”
Cummins looked like a man whose brain was falling over its own feet trying to find an answer. There was nothing behind his eyes to help him, so he just scoffed and looked toward the window.
“Who paid your debt off for you?”
No answer.
“Someone came to you and told you to take the fall, didn’t they? They’d handle your debts and make sure you were looked after in here, maybe get you out nice and early. Was that it?”
“What the hell are you talking about? You’ve lost it, pal.”
“Someone is making a mug out of you, Randle, and they haven’t had to work hard. What was it, huh? They pay off your debts and you spend a few months in here before they make sure you get released? Is that what they told you?”
“Oh, dùin do chlab.”
“You’re in here and they’re out there and you still think they’re going to come back for you. You’ve been left behind, Randle. The only way the case against you falls down is if someone knocks it over and right now I’m the only one trying. You can scream and bawl for their help all you want but they’ve abandoned you. That was always part of the setup you fell for.”
“You’re more full of a shite than a farmer’s field. I’ll be out of here soon enough, it won’t go before a judge.”
Darian leaned back in his chair and shook his head. Sitting in a prison office, looking at an innocent man making a bad job of trying to look guilty. Whoever he had done the deal with, Cummins trusted them more than he was ever going to trust Darian. They had paid eighteen and a half grand for that privilege, and they were obviously still providing for their patsy. Cummins hadn’t run up that debt on the outside paying for home improvement, and whichever addiction it had fed was probably being maintained in The Ganntair.
“I’m going to keep trying to get you out of here, because no one else will.”
“Ha, you’re priceless. It’s your bloody fault that I’m in here at all.”
Darian stood and led Cummins to the door. The man in the suit had been waiting with a prison officer out in the corridor, the latter leading Cummins back to a life at least as comfortable as it had been outside. The man in the suit led Darian back down toward the rear entrance the staff used and a long walk out toward a back gate that needed two members of staff to unlock. They’d gone to more trouble to help Darian than he thought his payments to them warranted, which made him wonder how much Sorley was doing to keep them loyal.
On the walk to the exit and the taxi ride up to Mormaer Station, Darian was trying to glue together the broken pieces of information he’d gathered. Cummins had wanted to be arrested. The drunken talk about Moses Guerra and taking money from him, the debt being paid within hours of the killing, that was choreographed to imitate guilt. And Cummins was so sure of his position. Darian got the train down to Glendan Station and went into the office for a long, slow day of boringly honest work.