Flesh Wounds (5 page)

He was straight-backed, with a determined seriousness in his expression that nonetheless betrayed unease. He looked like he was worried he was about to be told he’d screwed up, but was coaching himself to remain stoic in the face of it. Catherine felt for him. Her jokes with Beano had just been banter, but there was a certain truth in this being out of the guy’s comfort zone.

It wasn’t the body that would have unsettled him. The gory sights McCallister must have seen would doubtless top anything Catherine had ever confronted, and probably have Beano in therapy. But finding himself Johnny-on-the-spot when one of the city’s most notorious crime figures had just been gunned down was not covered in the Traffic Division’s playbook.

Catherine recalled a story Cal O’Shea told, about a crash team finishing up following a prolonged resuscitation and wondering what had happened to the (very) junior doctor who had been carrying the cardiac arrest bleep. As they were leaving the ward they saw him climbing out of a cleaning cupboard. Poor bugger had been walking right past when the thing went off and knew he would be the first on the scene.

‘Detective Superintendent McLeod. And this is DC Thompson. When did you get here?’

‘Eleven fifty-two. Got the call at eleven forty-nine. We were running a speed trap down the Gallowhaugh end of the dual carriageway. Victim was already dead when I got here. I know how to feel a pulse,’ he added, the grim certainty of his tone heading off any question over this.

Catherine nodded. She had little doubt that Constable McCallister had often been there to witness the moment when somebody died, rather than merely surveying the aftermath like she was used to. Nonetheless, he’d only been three minutes away. It wasn’t like the body had had time to go cold.

‘He can’t have been dead long,’ she suggested.

‘There was a delay in us getting the call,’ he replied, a look of irritation on his face, and not at her. ‘The woman in the Focus, a Mrs Chalmers, said the older of the car-wash workers went inside to the office and got on the phone, so she assumed he was calling emergency services. After about ten minutes had gone by and there were no sirens she made her own call, just in case, and that turned out to be the first.’

‘Mr Hairy Biker knew it was an emergency but the number he dialled wasn’t nine-nine-nine?’

‘Stevie Fullerton owns this car wash,’ McCallister replied. ‘His name isn’t on the paperwork – since the Proceeds of Crime Act he probably doesn’t officially own his own underpants – but everybody knows it’s his.’

‘At least when we notify the relatives it won’t be a shock.’

‘Why wouldn’t they phone an ambulance, though?’ Beano asked.

‘Four shots to the chest,’ McCallister said. ‘
They
didn’t need to take a pulse to know he was dead. Whoever they phoned must have told them to sit tight and say nothing.’

‘When did the ambulance get here?’ Catherine asked.

‘A good ten minutes after me. So when it turned up I kept the paramedics back from the body, made sure they never touched anything. Told them to deal with the witnesses instead.’

‘Well done,’ Catherine told him, privately taking back everything she’d said in the car. He had thought on his feet and acted to preserve the crime scene, ensuring the body was left in place.

She glanced towards the Bentley, looking now almost head-on through the kaleidoscope of the shattered windscreen. She couldn’t see Fullerton’s face as his head sat too far forward, just a mop of artificially black hair, the dye job betrayed by a ring of grey roots at the crown.

She caught another tang of something rank.

‘What’s that smell?’ she asked. ‘It’s a bit early for him to stink, rotten as he was.’

‘It’s vomit,’ said McCallister. ‘Mrs Chalmers threw up just outside her car there. She’s okay now. She’s had a cup of tea and been checked out by the paramedics. Marginally more use than the other pair. They’re both pretty shaken up, but on top of that they’re bricking it in case they say anything they’re not supposed to.’

‘Was it you who IDed the victim?’

McCallister nodded.

‘I checked with DVLA that that’s his reg, but I was only getting official confirmation. I recognised the motor – as somebody who sees him driving that thing about here all the time I knew it was him right away. Never seen him looking better, to be honest.’

Catherine watched Laura make her way out of the kiosk, picking her steps carefully and similarly slaloming around what she now assumed to be Mrs Chalmers’s pile of puke. At least she’d held it in until she made it outside of her car, otherwise it would have been a hell of a valet job for some poor bastard.

‘Afternoon, boss.’

‘DI Geddes. An auspicious day, wouldn’t you say?’

Laura glanced towards the Bentley.

‘Not for the late Mr Fullerton.’

‘You’d be surprised. It’s actually a very special day for him. His birthday, no less.’

‘Serious?’ Laura asked.

‘No kidding. It’ll save the widow a few bob on engraver’s fees for the headstone. She can just get ditto marks under the day and month.’

‘Well, somebody really pushed the boat out to give him a birthday surprise. I’ll never complain again about just receiving M&S vouchers.’

‘What are you getting in there?’ Catherine asked, indicating the kiosk. ‘Give me the Twitter-feed version.’

‘It’s mostly the woman’s Twitter feed so far. Metallica boy and Leatherface – that’s Andrew Gerrity and James McShane respectively – aren’t being entirely forthcoming, because—’

‘Yeah, we heard,’ Catherine interrupted.

‘Concerned about upsetting the master of puppets, as it were,’ suggested Beano.

‘More like pastor of muppets,’ Laura replied. ‘To be honest, you haven’t missed anything. You’d be as well stepping in.’

Catherine didn’t like to conspicuously micromanage her detectives, or make them feel like teacher was looking over their shoulders, but today was different. Teacher would be looking over
her
shoulder on this one, so her instinct was to be more hands-on, which was why she had come down to the scene in person. She would do this and then back off. Paradoxically, the bigger and more important the case, the more she was forced to delegate. It was a delicate balance: it was crucial that she didn’t give them any reason to doubt that she trusted their abilities, but sometimes just letting them know she was taking a closer interest was enough to make them all up their game.

They walked over to the kiosk. It looked small from the outside, but denuded of racks and gondolas there was a lot of floor space. Mrs Chalmers was dressed in a navy blue skirt and matching jacket. A laminated lapel badge identified her as working for a bank. Catherine gauged a mumsy late thirties, pictured her hugging the kids that bit tighter when she picked them up from school or nursery later that day.

The witnesses were standing with their backs to the window so they didn’t have to look at the guest of honour out there amid his crown of suds; metaphorical scum surrounded by the literal.

Mrs Chalmers looked up anxiously as Catherine and Beano entered, visibly intimidated by the arrival of authority but instinctively eager to assist. By direct contrast the other two made their own subconscious acknowledgment of rank, stiffening a little against the glass. McCallister was right: they were scared; not of the gunman, and certainly not of her. She doubted two car-wash workers would have any higher involvement in Stevie Fullerton’s operations than the knowledge that he was the unnamed proprietor, but being ringside when he got executed had dumped them at the eye of a storm. All they would feel secure in doing, in compliance with the only instruction they would have been given, was ‘tell the polis nothing’.

Catherine introduced herself and made a general request for a quick recap, addressing it to no one in particular. She knew who would respond and who wouldn’t, and she wanted them to relax, thinking Mrs Chalmers was doing all the driving for them.

‘These aren’t formal statements,’ she added. ‘We’ll get those later. Right now we just need information we can work with.’

Mrs Chalmers nodded, responding like she’d be partly to blame if the perp wasn’t apprehended.

‘I was about halfway through getting my car washed when the Bentley pulled in,’ she said. ‘At that point Mr McShane here dropped the brush he was using and just walked away.’

She looked a little flushed as she said this, self-conscious about grassing the guy up but incapable of lying to the polis. God, Catherine loved the Mrs Chalmerses of this world.

‘VIP customer?’ Catherine asked, to no response.

‘They both started working on the Bentley, and they had just covered it in foam when another vehicle drove into the forecourt. It went right around the side and parked in front of the kiosk just there, facing the exit, engine running, like he was nipping in for a newspaper.

‘I got out my phone to text a friend about something because I thought I’d be sitting there a wee while, so I wasn’t looking at the man as he got out of the car. But then I noticed Mr Gerrity getting down and lying on the wet ground. I thought he was looking under my car, but then I noticed that Mr McShane was doing the same, and that’s when I saw the man with the skull mask.’

‘Did he order you to lie down?’ Catherine asked them. ‘What did he say?’

Gerrity looked to McShane, Catherine unable to quite read the dynamic. He was either deferring to the older guy for an official response or asking whether he had permission to answer.

‘“Lie down,”’ said McShane. ‘That’s all. Two words. It was enough, with the gun and the mask. I just assumed we were getting knocked over.’

‘And no doubt wondering who might be desperate, crazy or just ignorant enough to rob a business belonging to Stevie Fullerton?’ Catherine suggested. She allowed a twinkle of humour to come into her eye, inviting him to betray his agreement with a smile. None came, which told her plenty. He was acting out of fear rather than loyalty. That would make him an easier nut to crack. She just had to make herself a scarier prospect than his employers.

‘What else was he wearing?’

‘Combat gear,’ Mrs Chalmers replied. ‘You know, that camouflage material. Dark green, with a hooded top under the jacket. He had the hood up, which is why I didn’t notice the skull mask when he drove in.’

‘Was it like a corner-shop Hallowe’en mask? Or a more expensive latex affair?’

‘Neither,’ said Mrs Chalmers. ‘It looked solid, sturdy, with mesh instead of holes.’

‘Like a protective mask for paintball or airsoft?’ Beano asked.

‘I wouldn’t know. I thought it was a robbery, though I didn’t see the gun at first. But when he stepped forward, right to the end of the bonnet, I certainly saw it then. It was like slow motion and yet over in a flash. He fired four times into the Bentley. I was just frozen because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.’

‘Anybody get much of a look at the gun?’

Mrs Chalmers looked like she didn’t understand the question, which was okay as it wasn’t really aimed at her. McShane stared blankly, giving a tiny shake of the head, but she caught a keenness flash across Gerrity’s eyes before he censored himself. He was like a kid in class who knows the answer but doesn’t want called a sook by his pals. Gamer, she thought. He knows exactly what it was, because he recognised it from some FPS on his Xbox.

‘I’m not asking for its serial number, just, you know, was it a revolver, an automatic?’

‘Automatic,’ Gerrity answered. ‘With a silencer.’

‘Glock? Beretta? Deagle?’

He shrugged. He wasn’t sure or he wasn’t biting.

‘What about the car, then?’

‘It was a green jeep,’ asserted Mrs Chalmers.

‘Jeep with a capital J?’ asked Laura, not letting the certainty of Mrs Chalmers’s tone trump her perception that the woman didn’t exactly come across as a petrolhead.

‘Oh, is there a … I’m not sure. I just meant, you know, one of those big rugged things, like something out of the army.’

So that was a small j, then.

‘What about you guys?’ Catherine asked.

They both shuffled and shrugged, Gerrity’s furtive glance once more betraying that he was censoring himself; not that she needed any more tells. This was the one area they were most likely to have been given specific instruction on, and she knew why.

‘Did you see what way he went? When he drove out?’

They both shook their heads.

‘Me neither,’ Mrs Chalmers said apologetically. ‘I had ducked down behind the dashboard. I was afraid he was going to come after me because I was a witness. I did hear something, though. A crunch, like his car hit something on the way out.’

Catherine nodded and turned to Beano.

‘DC Thompson, could you take Mrs Chalmers outside and have her describe where this crunch sound might have come from?’

‘Yes, boss.’

Catherine then addressed the paramedics.

‘Perhaps you could make sure Mrs Chalmers doesn’t have a relapse of her nausea or comes over faint if she catches another glimpse of His Holeyness out there.’

It took them half a second, but they sussed the message, and she had little doubt that Gerrity and McShane were way ahead of them. Zoe held the door open for the paramedics, then Catherine rounded on See No Evil and Hear No Evil.

‘Neither of you is much of a liar,’ she said.

They both stiffened, mustering what defences they had.

‘Don’t worry, that’s a good thing. It tells me you’re generally honest. It indicates you’re neither accomplished nor experienced at lying, especially to the polis. And the reason I know this is that the experienced liar knows when
not
to lie. The experienced liar understands something called “plausible deniability”.’

McShane met her gaze, trying to maintain his game face. Gerrity just stared at the floor and looked worried.

‘You didn’t see which way he went? It’s a fucking dual carriageway. There’s only one way he
could
have gone. See? Lying when you don’t need to: very big giveaway. I ask what kind of car the guy drove and you claim you didn’t notice. That sound like plausible deniability to you? You work in a fucking car wash, you look at cars all day. You’re expecting me to believe you can’t ID a make and model in about a tenth of a second? I’m guessing you could tell me how many inches the
alloys
are on any particular motor the instant it drives on to that forecourt. So not only am I damn sure you know what kind of vehicle he drove, but given you were lying down eye-level with the plate, I reckon you know the registration too.’