Peter Jamieson. Shug Francis. John Young. Glen Davidson. Calum MacLean. Okay, put the first three aside because they’re obvious. It’s the last two. The last one in particular. Fisher’s been thinking about all of them for so long. Trying to get a meaningful investigation off the ground. Get funding, some people to help him. Nothing. All he has is a vague link to the death of Lewis Winter. A death that most people stopped caring about right after it happened. Trying to put these people together. Trying to get information that will clear the fog. Nobody talking.
A few things make sense now. Things that he didn’t know before. Shug’s decided to get into the drug trade, that’s certain. Clears up a few things. Dumb move. He’s trying to get in by taking Peter Jamieson’s patch. Dangerous move. Anything thereafter, Fisher knows little about.
Lewis Winter may have been working for either Peter Jamieson or Shug Francis. It seems more likely to Fisher now–sitting at his desk, months after Winter’s death–that he worked for Shug. He has nothing solid to prove it. It’s guesswork. Jamieson wouldn’t need a guy like Winter. A desperate case. Shug needed him, because Winter was willing to take risks on Shug’s behalf. Which would mean Jamieson most likely had Winter killed. The likely candidate would have been Glen Davidson, but phone records changed all that. That scumbag Greig comes to him and tells him that Davidson’s disappeared. He makes it look like maybe Davidson murdered Winter and did a runner. Fisher hasn’t seen much of PC Paul Greig lately. Keeping his head down. Fisher sees him round the station now and again, but his name isn’t coming up as often as it used to. He’s making an effort to be low-key. Wise move. Fisher longs for the moment that Greig slips up.
When he thinks about a bent copper like Greig, he gets angry. Then he loses his train of thought. Davidson. Phone records. They showed that Davidson called Calum MacLean the day before Greig reported Davidson missing. Think about MacLean. An odd case. A man pushing thirty who doesn’t appear to have had a job in his life. Living on the sick, apparently. Turns up for an annual medical, lies through his teeth, gets away with it. Some people are good at that. Fake mental illness. A bad back. Some muscular problem that no doctor can get to the bottom of. The real smart ones send someone else to take their medicals for them. The doctors don’t have pictures. As long as the person’s the right age. As long as they have the right, identifiable illness. As long as the same wrong person has been doing the medicals from the start, you can get away with it. Some genuinely ill people make good money on the side. Helping criminals hide amongst the unemployable.
MacLean has to be involved in the industry, although none of Fisher’s contacts seem to know him. Questioning those close to him now only alerts MacLean that he’s on the police radar. Far more likely to slip up if he thinks he’s unknown. That’s all he is for now, on the radar. There’s little to nothing against him. Besides, Calum MacLean’s confusing, but there are more pressing concerns.
Toxicology reports on Scott and McClure were a little surprising. Some trace of drugs in McClure, but days old. Alcohol in both, but again, traces of drinks consumed at least sixteen hours before death. Neither had drunk anything or taken any drugs in the day before death. Which would suggest that McClure killed his best friend, and then himself, whilst sober and clean. Fisher’s not sure. Not sure that McClure would do it drunk, less sure still that he would do it sober. It doesn’t give him evidence. It doesn’t give him something that he can meaningfully use, but it builds a picture. These two were clean and sober. Best friends who turned into murderous enemies in the course of a few hours. Nope, not buying that.
Shitty day. Rain pouring down, dark-grey sky. Another investigation going nowhere. Too many of those lately. A cop can get a reputation: a man who doesn’t know how to close a case. Even good cops can get tainted with that. Bad luck plays a part. You get lumbered with a few cases in succession that nobody can crack, and you take the blame. There are a number of bad cops who’ve managed to stumble their way to a reputation as closers. Guys who get the job done. Nothing the bosses love more than that. Cops who don’t deserve their reputations. Fisher’s shaking his head. There are many people round here who wouldn’t even be cops, if he had his way. He would do it differently. Too many people just looking to climb. Looking for a reputation. That’s when he tumbles back into the cliché of the grouchy cop with high standards and a decent heart. That makes him shake his head again.
They’ve spent the day chasing contacts, looking for info. Christ, even DC Davies has managed to look busy. Still nothing. You just keep building that picture. One thing’s become quickly obvious. Scott had a rapid ascent, followed by a quick ending. He was working for Shug, but it hadn’t been for long. A month, maybe less. Scott worked hard and fast. He built a small network quickly, used all the contacts he had, pushed people hard. He took weeks to go from nothing to leaning on Jamieson’s established men. That was obviously the patch he was aiming for. Get rid of people working for Peter Jamieson. Correction, probably working for Peter Jamieson. Hard to prove. That’s the word from his contacts, and Fisher believes it. The problem is evidence. None of these peddlers has ever met Jamieson; a lot of them probably don’t even know that they’re working for him. He’s too good for that. Interesting, though. Lewis Winter tries to muscle in on Jamieson and he’s soon dead. Scott takes the same journey. Building a picture.
Everything done in a hurry. That was the secret to Scott’s success. People didn’t know how to stop something moving that fast. Also the most likely reason for his failure. Everything in a hurry. Mistakes made. The hurry included the gun. Fisher’s convinced of it. Scott wouldn’t have had a gun when he was peddling round the estates or running in a gang. He would have had blades, obviously, but probably not a gun. This clean handgun suddenly turns up lying next to McClure’s body. Maybe, just maybe, he went and got one when he started working for Shug. Scott seems to have been smart. Smart enough to understand that he was going places. Still, it’s likely that the gun had been in his possession for a few weeks at the most. Days more likely.
Pulling on a jacket, out of the building, into his car. He’s checked with almost all the useful contacts he has, drawn a blank. Everyone on the investigation team has. Not surprising. Most of their contacts still thought Scott was working solo. The ned on the bike, most of them called him. They knew who he was, though, which shows he had more talent than most.
Meeting another contact. This one an awkward one. There are some you get, and you string them along as a contact because they’re not worth arresting. The kind of criminal his boss can replace within an hour of you taking them off the street. Better to have them out there as a contact than just have to start from scratch. Then you get contacts like Mark Garvey. Fisher only got close to him so that he could arrest him. A gunrunner. Buying and selling, putting weapons into the hands of killers. A smart gunrunner. Fisher got close, but Garvey knew why. Brilliant at covering tracks, excellent manipulator. Always happy to give the information you want. Always happy to keep your eye on someone else’s business.
Took the best part of the day to set up the meeting. A car park outside a supermarket. Pick him up, drive around and talk, drop him back there. The bigger they are, the more precautions they take. Garvey’s big enough. Should have arrested him by now. No chance has come along. No chance has come along and, if we’re being honest here, Fisher hasn’t chased one. Too good a contact. You shouldn’t settle for having him as a contact when you should be locking him up.
Pulling into the car park, parking by the big recycling bins, as agreed. Sitting in the car with the radio on for four minutes, when the passenger door opens and a figure drops in. Early fifties, but youthful. Probably dyes his hair, silly sod. Should know better at his age. His wife’s in her thirties, apparently. Bit of a smooth operator, likes the sound of his own voice. Smart, though; says a lot of words and none of them meaningful. A useful skill.
Driving out of the car park, haven’t said anything to each other yet. They won’t pretend that they’re friends. Some try–the dumber contacts. They seem to believe that they can create a friendship, and that will somehow protect them. Garvey’s smarter than that.
‘You’ll have heard about Tommy Scott,’ Fisher’s saying to him, eyes on the road. It’s a statement of fact, not a question. If Garvey hasn’t heard, then he should have.
‘I heard. Him and his wee buddy–terrible shame. Happens, though. You know better than me. What percentage of killings are carried out by people you already know?’
It’s a bullshit question. ‘I want to track the gun that was used. I want to know when they got it.’
‘Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t know anything about the buying and selling of prohibited weapons, Detective,’ Garvey’s saying. Keep up the pretence. Deniability. Don’t admit in private what you later may have to deny in public.
Fisher doesn’t have the patience to play at these sorts of games. Might be why he doesn’t have as many good contacts as he thinks he ought to. Most are scared away from an aggressive cop.
‘I can tell you a wee rumour I heard about that pair, if you want, though. Don’t know how reliable, but there you go.’ Garvey’s shrugging.
‘Go on.’
‘Word is, the day before they popped it, they were out looking for a piece. Went to more than one person, couldn’t find anyone who would help them. That’s what I heard. See, kids like that, they have no reputation. People don’t want to risk selling to them. I heard that they came away empty-handed. I guess that events show that wasn’t quite true.’
Fisher’s driving, watching the road. They went looking for a gun and came away with nothing. Not impossible. Still most likely that the gun was their own, but not impossible that someone else brought it into the flat on the night. Someone comes in, kills them and then sets up the murder-suicide angle. Nobody moved them post-mortem. The blood patterns on the walls show they died where the neighbour found them. But maybe not with their own gun. Again, not usable evidence, but building a picture.
‘Anything else you might want to share with me now?’ Fisher’s saying. Share it now, because if I find out you held back on me, you’re in trouble. That’s the implication.
‘That’s all I know about Scott and his mate. Scott was the brains of it, in case you haven’t worked that out. I guess you worked out that the guy called Clueless wasn’t the brains of the business. That one was just a hanger-on. Came as a surprise to me that Scott had a brain. I guess now he doesn’t,’ Garvey’s saying with a chuckle.
Dropping him back at the supermarket. An unpleasant little man. One day Fisher’s going to have to do something about him. There are worse runners in the city, but that’s not the point. Driving back to the station. He needs a target. He doesn’t have a trail of evidence to follow, so he needs something to aim for. Jamieson would be nice. The big fish. Bigger, at least. Bigger than Shug Francis anyway. Won’t be long now until Jamieson makes a move against one of the three big sharks in the local water. The three organizations that dominate. Jamieson has the talent to take one of them down, become a dominant force himself. But there isn’t enough evidence for Fisher to chase him. Lewis Winter and now Tommy Scott. Jamieson benefits from their deaths. Usually a good indicator. Maybe Shug, though. He’s the better option, thanks to that one phone call. His employees screw him over because he’s new; he hits back. The connection with Davidson would make some sense of that. Finding out who MacLean is would help more. Damn it! All going round in circles again. Happening too often. Only there’s one more possible contact now.