Donna wrapped up her to-camera piece as quickly as she could after the press conference, the terror of doing a live piece suppressed by the clamour of questions in her mind. That done, and Gary dispatched to the van to edit the footage into an extended package for the afternoon bulletin, she grabbed her phone and called.
‘Hello, Donna, I—’
‘What the fuck are you playing at, Mark?’ she asked, feeling tension creep across her jaw. Seized by the urge to move, she walked down the sweeping hill that ran from St Ninians Road up to the front of the police station.
‘Donna, what are you talking about?’
‘Cut the shit, Mark. I’m talking about that little performance with your new best pal just now. Nice soft question by the way, just the thing to keep the story where they wanted it to go. That’s what your wee tip to me the other day was as well – just another way to help your pals control the story.’
Silence, just long enough to make her think he had hung up. Then he spoke, his voice flattened by exhaustion. ‘Look, if you’re going to shout at me, can you at least do it face to face? I can see you now. Look left. I’m three cars down.’
She turned her head and spotted his car. Hung up without another word and stalked towards it. Considered a moment then got in. ‘Well?’
He looked at her, a mixture of resignation and defiance flitting through his eyes. ‘It’s not what you think, really. But if we’re going to talk, can we do it over a drink? I don’t know about you, but I could fucking do with one.’
He drove to the Golden Lion, a hotel at the foot of John Street, where the redeveloped shopping area of Stirling gave way to the more historic section of the town. He buzzed at the gate and drove into a small car park, the surface of which seemed to consist of pitted tarmac and puddles. They got out and went inside through a small door that would have looked fresh in the seventies, up a twisting flight of stairs and into a reception area that led to a small bar. She got a table as he ordered, glared at his back as he hunched over the counter.
The place was quiet, a smattering of guests taking a break from sightseeing around the town, conversation soft and uneven, periods of silence broken by a burst of laughter or a cough.
‘Come on, then,’ she said, as he slid a vodka and tonic over the table to her. ‘Let’s hear it.’
He looked down at his pint, took a gulp, even though the Guinness was still settling. ‘Okay,’ he said, more to himself than to her. ‘You’re right. Yes, Lucy and I set that question up beforehand. And, yes, the tip I gave you the other day about the first victim was from her as well. But I didn’t give you that to control the story, Donna, I swear.’
She snorted, tightened her grip on her glass. ‘Aye, right. And I take it Lucy wasn’t aware that Ferguson knew Helen Russell?’
Confusion clouded Mark’s eyes. ‘What? No, I . . .’
Impatience rose. Donna took a sip of her drink to dampen it down. ‘So you’re telling me that you weren’t asking planted questions, that you weren’t helping them keep the story pointed where they wanted it? Christ, Mark, has Emma got you so desperate for a shag that you’d drop your pants and your morals for a smile?’
Anger coloured Mark’s cheeks. ‘Now hold on a minute. Yes, I agreed to throw them an easy question but, no, I wasn’t helping them control the story. Course I would have asked about Russell if I’d fucking known. And I was not using you.’
Donna laughed, a brittle sound that drew glances from the few customers dotted around the bar. ‘If that’s the case, then they’re playing you as well. What did Lucy offer you, Mark? An out from Emma? An exclusive with the First Minister? A wee knee-trembler in Bute House? You used to like those.’
Mark opened his mouth. Closed it. Shame drained the anger from his voice as he said, ‘A job. They offered me a job.’
‘What?’
His head snapped up, and Donna was surprised to see tears welling in his eyes. ‘The Westie’s cutting again, Donna, and this time I’m up for the jump. Compulsory redundo if I don’t go – all the senior reporters above a certain pay band are in the firing line. So Lucy got in touch, said that if I helped her out at the press conference, they’d see about getting me a job with the party’s comms team. They need experienced people, especially now with all this Brexit shite and another referendum on the cards any time.’
Donna raised her glass, held a chunk of ice next to her lips. Poor bastard. He really believed the line they had fed him. Christ, what had happened to him? This wasn’t the Mark she knew. She put the glass down, hard, as though it would crush the momentary flare of compassion she’d felt. Not her problem. Not any more. ‘So they gave you the tip-off about the first victim, asked you to get the word out? Did they tell you it was Billy Griffin who had been killed, or did they keep that from you as well?’
Momentary confusion flitted across Mark’s face, before recognition forced his mouth into an almost comical O of surprise. ‘Billy Griffin? Hold on, not Billy Griffin who torched the flags on George Square? How did you . . .?’
‘Your new pals,’ Donna said. ‘I knew I recognized Maxwell Higgins from somewhere, couldn’t pin it down. But then it hit me. It was the day after the referendum and the trouble in George Square, the Yes-campaign press call in Grand Central, remember?’
Mark shook his head slowly, which didn’t totally surprise Donna: he had been running on adrenalin, coffee and post-sex endorphins back then. The press conference had been called by the Yes movement in the Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow’s Central station, partly as a wash-up, partly as a wake. It had been a subdued affair: the First Minister had resigned hours earlier and everyone was still licking their wounds from the loss of the referendum and the trouble in George Square the night before.
There was, however, one moment that Donna remembered. As a backbench Nationalist took the podium and trotted out the standard lines about ‘coming together for the country’ and ‘accepting the will of the people’, Craig Mather, a reporter Donna recognized from the Press Association, stood up, holding aloft a copy of the Westie with Billy Griffin’s infamous image splashed all over it. ‘Does this look like uniting the country to you?’ he asked.
The question was dealt with and the press conference wrapped up hastily. But afterwards Donna had spotted Craig huddled in a corner, a tall, wiry man leaning in, his lips close to his ear. She’d asked him about it later and was told that Higgins was warning him about such cheap stunts: his editor would be getting a call. Donna had later found out that every editor in Scotland had been contacted, Higgins trying to get the picture of Griffin banned on the grounds that it would aggravate social unrest and sectarian bigotry.
All of which had come to her in a flash as Ferguson flailed around at the press conference. Higgins was trying to control the story. Again. It was a leap to assume that it was Billy Griffin who had been killed, but she knew in her gut she was right.
‘You know this for a fact? Got it stood up?’ Mark asked.
‘Not yet,’ she admitted. ‘That’s my next stop: the DCI who was first on the scene. Get him to confirm what I know.’
‘Think he will?’
‘Someone will,’ Donna said, her thoughts turning to Danny. ‘You want to stand it up with your new pals, be my guest. But I want in on it, Mark. This is my story.’
‘They’re not my . . .’ His words petered out as his gaze fell to his Guinness, as though speaking was too much effort. He took a drink, swilled it like mouthwash, then swallowed. Dared a brief glance at her. ‘I wasn’t using you, Donna, seriously,’ he said. ‘Lucy gave me the tip-off about the injuries on the first body. I let you know. Thought it might help you. Seems I was right. Sky TV, after all. Not bad.’
The coy smile he gave her, which she had once found so endearing, looked ugly. Yeah, it had helped all right. Helped her start to rebuild the career her willingness to believe his lies had destroyed. Helped her get a corpse dumped in front of her car.
Some help.
She drained her glass, stood up. ‘Write your story, Mark. Your pals will need it for your CV. And don’t bother giving me any more help. I’ll work this story on my own from now on.’
She left him, taking the short flight of steps that led out of the front of the hotel. Stopped for a moment, looked around. To her left was the Thistles, the main shopping centre in the heart of the town. To her right was the long, cobbled finger of King Street, which led up to Cowane’s Hospital and the castle beyond.
She took a deep breath, decided. Started walking up the hill to the site where Billy Griffin had been dumped.
She would call Ford on the way.