Crow Bait (17 page)

It was a recreation of his mother’s murder. Staged, photographed.

But the woman’s body wasn’t staged. That was real, he knew it in his gut.

He turned the envelope over in his hand but there was only one word hand-printed on the front:

SOON

Donovan had said it was a funny old world. It wasn’t funny, Davie decided, thinking about his mother, about Joe, Mouthy and all the other deaths, even Lomas. It was tragic and it was brutal.

And something told Davie it was going to get worse.

19

DONALD HARRIS
lay on the battered couch in the Crow’s Nest thinking about going out for a hit when he heard the knock at the door. He’d come back to the flat that morning to shoot up and had fallen asleep. When he woke he tidied up a bit, because even he could see the place was turning into a right tip, then he felt the familiar need build again. His body had used up every last drop of the score deal he’d jagged earlier and now it was beginning to crave more. His flesh began to creep on his bones and that familiar itch in his gut, the one he could never properly scratch, started up again. He still had some of the cash he’d got from that reporter burd, so at least he didn’t need to go out thieving to raise the necessary.

He decided against answering the door. He wasn’t expecting anyone. The people who used the top floor flat all had keys, for the time being at least, until the council came along and boarded the place up. The last tenant had been a mate who’d moved out, headed over Edinburgh way, but she’d left Harris a key. He’d then cut a few more and dished them out to other pals, all for a nominal sum of course, because a bloke’s got to live. If the council ever got around to flattening the place he’d have to find somewhere new, but till then it did him just fine.

The bang at the door became more insistent and he tried to ignore it, but the itch under his skin was growing all the time. He’d have to see who it was and get it dealt with, then he could get out. Otherwise he’d be having the screaming hab-dabs soon.

At first he thought it was that bastard Davie McCall standing there but when he looked again he saw that it wasn’t. This guy was older, his hair greyer, his face more lined.
But fuck me, it could be his dad,
Harris thought.

‘Donald Harris?’ The guy said. Glasgow accent, friendly, didn’t give any kind of official vibe. Harris saw no harm in nodding.

‘Got a present for you,’ said the guy, pushing him hard into the hallway and as he staggered back against the wall Harris was dimly aware that the man was wearing rubber surgical gloves. He started to protest, but when the guy turned those cold blue eyes on him he thought better of it. The man locked the door behind him and pointed through to the living room. Harris obeyed, fully aware now of the damage he’d done himself. Time was he could have put up a fight. Time was he could’ve taken this bloke on, held his ground, did him damage. But no more. Now he was a shadow, a flimsy reflection, of what he used to be.

He was told to sit down in the armchair, while his guest put his gloved hand in the pocket of his black jacket, producing a plastic bag filled with brown powder. Harris knew what it was, of course. He’d stuck enough of it in his veins. And even though he felt his blood quicken at the sight of it, he knew this was not going to be good for him. The man tossed the plastic bag into his lap.

‘Enjoy,’ he said.

Harris picked the bag up and examined the contents. He licked his lips, the junkie within him crying out for it to be coursing through him. But the sensible part of him, the part he thought had died long ago, screamed at him not to touch it. He wasn’t so strung out that he didn’t recognise that this was no gift, this was his death warrant. He held the bag out to the man with shaking fingers. ‘I’m awright, thanks man.’

The guy smiled. ‘No, you’re not, son. Look at you. You’re desperate for it. Every part of your body is begging for it. So take it. Go on. Fill your boots.’

Harris shook his head, still holding the bag towards the man. ‘No, trying to give it up…’

The smile dropped and the man lowered his head, his eyes burning icy holes into Harris’s own. ‘Take it.’ That’s all he said, and Harris knew then that he had little choice. Sure, he could make a break for the door, maybe even get out the living room, but he knew the guy would get him, drag him back, beat the shit out of him. Either way he was fucked.

He drew his arm back and looked again at the brown powder.
Maybe it was better this way,
he thought.
Go out on a high, so to speak
. God knows he didn’t have much to live for, not since he’d first stuck a needle into his arm and felt the glorious rush. His wee mammy would have nothing to do with him, his brother neither. Walked past him in the streets, just like he’d told that girl reporter. Like he was nothing, which he supposed he was. His mates weren’t really mates at all, just junkies. He’d never be able to rely on them the way he used to rely on his gang mates. A junkie’s loyalty was always to the next fix. Friendship meant nothing, family meant nothing, honesty meant nothing, although for years before he’d started using, Harris had little more than a passing acquaintance with honesty.

Once again he looked up at the guy, who was watching him with no expression. ‘Why you doing this?’ Harris asked.

The man thought about the question. ‘Why not?’

Harris frowned. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘Does it matter?’

Harris shrugged, because it really didn’t matter anymore, and dropped his eyes to the bag. He slowly struggled to his feet and shuffled to the small table beneath the window where he’d left his works. As he heated the heroin in a blackened spoon, he glanced back and saw the blue-eyed man leaning against the wall by the fireplace, arms folded over his chest, watching. He looked bored.

20

FRANK DONOVAN SAT
at his desk in Baird Street and stared at the crime scene photographs from the Springburn bedsit. Then he looked at the shots taken in the Oatlands flat thirteen years before. Then he looked at them both together. He’d suspected that the two scenes were almost identical but he couldn’t be certain until he received the file. He’d been right. The way Virginia had been murdered mirrored the death of Mary McCall exactly.

He’d asked Davie McCall if the name John Keen had meant anything to him, just on the off chance. He didn’t think the guy would know the name. Donovan didn’t even think this John Keen existed. There would be men of that name in the city – and they were in the process of tracking them down in order to eliminate them – but Donovan was confident none of them was his guy. He’d told Davie McCall that he was a ghost, and he’d meant it.

Donovan considered what all this meant. Two murders, years apart, with the second being dressed to look like the first. It couldn’t be a copycat because the details of the first murder had never been made public. Unless the second killer was a cop, a notion which made Donovan sweat a little, but his gut told him differently. Of course, in the interests of a thorough investigation, any officer on the scene in Oatlands all those years ago would have to be checked out. That’ll go down a storm, he thought. Davie McCall would have been able to recreate the scene of his mother’s death easily, he would imagine, Donovan being certain it was preserved in his memory like lines in stone. But the younger McCall was no killer, Donovan was certain of that. He could handle himself and maybe someday he’d do someone in during a fight, but not a woman, never a woman. Joe the Tailor had taught him too well. Anyway, he’d been tucked up in Barlinnie the night Virginia died.

So if it wasn’t a stranger and it wasn’t a cop and it wasn’t the son, that left only one possibility.

Danny McCall. The man, the myth. The ghost.

Donovan had only been on the job a year or two when the older McCall murdered his wife, almost killed his son and then vanished into the night. But he knew all about it. The events of 1980 had led him into probing Davie McCall’s background and that, inexorably, led to Danny. He’d asked around, done a bit of digging and managed to get a feel for the man.

He’d been an enforcer for Joe the Tailor and was good at his job. What set him apart from others in his trade was his intelligence, the majority of men in his line of business being dumb brutes who broke that bone or sliced that flesh when their bosses told them. When he was sent out to put a scare into someone, he put some thought into it, coming up with novel ways to intimidate. The famous crucified man, hands nailed to the floorboards, had been his work, although no official complaint was made and no-one arrested. Danny McCall had also led a charmed life with regards to the law, for Donovan could only find one conviction, for mobbing and rioting, when he was in his late teens and running with a street gang out of Dennistoun.

He was thirty-six when he disappeared, that would make him forty-nine now. Where the hell had he been all that time? What had he been doing? And what was he doing back in Glasgow? He was calling himself John Keen, but Donovan would bet his pension it wasn’t the only alias he’d used over the years as he’d drifted from place to place, dodging the Law and Joe Klein. Couldn’t have been easy but a guy with Danny McCall’s smarts would have known what he was doing. He’d’ve made contacts over the years, guys with no liking for the Law, or Joe, who would give him aid. Donovan sat back in his chair and considered what Danny McCall would’ve done with himself all these years. A bit of work here and there, he supposed, for those same men who sheltered him would have found a use for his particular talents. Donovan gazed again at the photographs spread across his desk. Two murders, over a decade apart. Were there more, he wondered? A request through HOLMES, the computer system beginning to link forces up and down the country, would help there.

His phone rang. ‘
DS
Donovan.’

‘Frank, it’s Detective Superintendent Bannatyne.’

Donovan closed his eyes. He’d forgotten to let Bannatyne know he’d spoken to McCall. ‘Sorry, sir, I’ve been wrapped up in this murder, forgot to call…’

‘Never mind that now, Frank. Events have moved on.’

Donovan was puzzled. Did Bannatyne know about his theory about Virginia’s murder? Donovan hadn’t mentioned it to anyone yet, not even his
DI
, but he wouldn’t put it past Gentleman Jack to have some way of knowing. ‘Sir?’

‘You hear about the dead man up Sighthill?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Donovan. Another detective from Baird Street was leading that one.

‘Dead man is Gerald Lomas.’

‘Yes, sir, security guard at a whisky warehouse, I hear.’

‘Yes, latterly,’ said Bannatyne. ‘But before that he was a prison officer.’

Donovan raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t heard that.

‘Frank, Gerald Lomas was the officer who came upon David McCall battering all kinds of shite out of a boy called Donald Harris.’

Donovan felt something cold steal over him. But there was worse to come.

‘And earlier this morning, Donald Harris was found dead in a flat in the Gorbals.’

Donovan’s eyes were on the pictures before him but he didn’t see them.
Davie
, he thought,
what the hell have you done?

*  *  *

‘Davie, what the hell have you done?’

Davie had opened the door to his flat to find the Audrey on his doorstep, her face set hard. Wordlessly she pushed past him and then, once he had closed the door, whirled on him in the hall and fired the question at him like a bullet.

‘What you talking about?’ He asked.

‘Jinky… Donald Harris,’ she said.

Davie was puzzled. ‘What about him?’

‘He’s dead, that’s what about him. So that’s the prison officer and now him.’

‘How’d he die?’

‘Overdose, it seems. But he was an experienced user, Christ he was almost making a career out of it. He was too wise to
OD
. He knew the score.’

‘Aud, it was nothing to do with me…’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

Davie took a deep breath and then expelled it slowly. He didn’t expect her to believe him but he would have to convince her somehow that he was not responsible. He couldn’t bear the thought of her believing him to be a double killer. Not her.

And there was only one way he could think of that might make her understand.

‘Come with me…’

She stood her ground in the hallway, eyes burning with anger, arms folded across her body.

‘Please,’ he said, motioning towards the living room. Audrey relented but her face remained frozen.

Davie picked up the envelope containing the Polaroids from the coffee table and handed it to her. She looked at it and said, ‘Soon? What’s soon?’

He didn’t reply. She sighed and slid the pictures out. She flicked through them, her face turning pale. There was a slight tremor in her hand as she held them out to him. ‘What is this?’

‘There was a woman murdered the other night, working girl.’

‘Virginia McTaggart, I know. How did you get these pictures? Are they police shots?’

Davie shook his head. ‘They were taken before the police got there. She wouldn’t have been long dead.’