The Red Road (19 page)

He had sent the SOCA report. He wanted the police to come here, get into the safe and find everything.

The police. 0999. No. 9990. Didn’t work either. 9999. The door fell open in front of her.

She laughed softly to herself, surprised, triumphant even. She pulled the door wide.

All the shrink-wrapped cash was gone. Disappointing. Robert had reported the money but had also taken it. How like him. He had left his MacBook Air inside, doubtless with the SOCA report saved on it and a melancholy letter about doing the right thing. She took the laptop out. Underneath it was a slim volume, leather-bound, the first half filled with Mr McMillan’s writing, entries in biro, the pages watered and wavy from the press of his pen. She lifted it out, not looking at the numbers, just running her fingers over the impressions left by him. She shut her eyes, braille-reading his marks. When she opened them again she saw something unexpected at the bottom of the safe.

An envelope. Old. The self-adhesive strip yellow with age. The paper felt crisp to the touch. She let her fingers linger on the edge of it for a moment, unsure about looking inside. This was the back safe. Whatever was in there, it wasn’t good or innocent. She wasted time looking at the wall, feeling the tickle of paper on her fingertips. She shouldn’t look really.

But she did. She took the old envelope and felt inside with scissored fingers. Not paper. Photos. Old ones, thick ones, not on printer paper. Thick, square with a border around them and a bit at the bottom for writing on. Self-developing film. Polaroids, she thought they were called. There were three of them. They spilled into her lap, face down. She looked at the black backs for a minute, hands flat on the skin-warm floor, her tongue worrying her molars. She took a deep breath, held it in and turned them over.

The pictures were of her.

16

Wheatly got up from his desk as Morrow came out to the corridor. ‘Ma’am?’

‘Yes?’

‘Ma’am, I wasn’t sure at the time but come and see this.’ He waved to her to follow him to his desk. He had a still from the car park CCTV streamed into his desktop. A grainy picture showed the front of a small white van parked across the road. The licence plate was readable.

She looked at him for an explanation.

‘The van’s registered to a private individual, Matthew Stepper. He works for newspapers.’

She looked at the screen. ‘And it’s outside here right now?’

‘Aye.’

Morrow and McCarthy stood on the pavement outside the station. They watched the white van wobble, rain bouncing off the roof. They were both trying hard not to laugh. Whoever was inside was pretending they weren’t but every time they moved the entire body shifted. They watched for a while, uncertain they could speak without howling, and then finally Morrow banged on the side.

‘We can see you moving in there. Come out.’

Hissing whispers inside, there must be two of them. Then someone moved again, down to the front, looking out of the windscreen. Morrow and McCarthy moved back so they couldn’t see them.

The van wobbled as the person retreated into the back.

‘Are you doing lengths in there?’ shouted Morrow. She and McCarthy had a good laugh, got it out.

The movement stopped. They waited. Slowly, as if the people inside were sitting down, having a think, the van tilted towards a back corner.

McCarthy knocked this time. ‘Come out or we’ll impound the vehicle.’

After a short while the back door clicked and opened. A sheepish man, short, balding, in denims and a knitted jumper, clambered out into the road. He looked worried. They looked back into the van. He was alone.

‘Who were you talking to in there?’ asked Morrow.

He touched the phone in his pocket. ‘My editor.’

‘You’re a journalist?’

‘I’m a photographer.’ He looked pleased about that, but then maybe remembered that he wasn’t actually a photographer. ‘Well, a researcher. But a photographer, really.’

‘What was your editor saying?’

The man smiled sheepishly. ‘Don’t get out of the van.’

Morrow looked back at the vehicle. It was a rusty, tumbledown mess but unobtrusive. She flicked a finger at it. ‘You want to lock that up and we’ll go into the station for a chat?’

He looked terrified. ‘Can’t we do it here? Work’s hard to come by, I’ve got another two jobs this afternoon and if I miss them ...’

She felt for him and he hadn’t broken any laws. ‘We can do it here if you just straightforward tell us—’

‘Tell you
anything.
’ He sounded sincere.

‘What paper are you working for?’

‘
Scottish Daily News
.’

‘Who’s the editor you were talking to?’

He rolled his chin at a far wall, thinking it through. It was printed in the front of the paper, there wasn’t any point in lying about it.

‘OK, pal.’ Morrow took his elbow firmly. ‘We can hold you for six hours, we’re going in.’

‘No.’ He shook it free. ‘No, not into the station, please. Alan Donovan. Alan Donovan.’

‘Who are you watching?’

‘Y—’ He stopped himself but then said it. ‘You.’ He was looking at Morrow.

‘What’s the story?’

‘Your brother. Danny McGrath.’ He held his hands up imploringly. ‘Look, I just got the photography job, I don’t know
anything
, I mean literally
anything
about this. Nothing.’

‘Donovan called you and gave you the job?’

‘Yeah. Said your brother’s a big gangster, follow her, see if you can snap them together. This’ – he gave her a USB stick – ‘this is all I got.’

He pressed it into her hand.

She was blushing, she knew she was, but she managed to keep her voice steady. ‘OK, Stepper, we found out who you were from your van plates. We’ve got your licence plate, name and home address.’ She jabbed at him with her finger, hesitated, unsure what exactly she should threaten him with. The press were pernickety about threats. They weren’t like other people, you couldn’t tell them to fuck off or they’d print it. ‘So ... off you go.’

She and McCarthy stood shoulder to shoulder and watched him get in the front of the van, embarrassed, smiling. He started the engine and drove away.

McCarthy looked at her. It was awkward. ‘That’s weird. It’s not a secret about your brother, everyone knows.’

It was Brown. He’d tipped off the papers, trying to discredit her for the appeal. It had been done before: he’d probably suggest she was working for her brother, that Brown and Danny were rivals in some way. But it was too sophisticated a move for Brown, someone else was suggesting it, she felt sure. Atholl, maybe.

Morrow didn’t know what to say. ‘It’s not about knowing, though. It’s about how it looks. Bosses just want rid when you get that messy.
Who
’s tipping them off is the better question.’

Back at Morrow’s desk they looked through the USB files. Jpegs, photos of Danny outside her house, giving her the photo, Morrow outside the station, getting into her own car, Danny with sidekicks, young guys who looked a bit like him, copied his shaven head, his casual tracksuits.

McCarthy sat next to her. She could tell he didn’t know what to say.

‘Do you know these guys he’s with?’ she asked, pointing to a gathering of four: Danny with an older guy, Asian-looking, smartly dressed, and next to them two young thugs, one with a big scar running from his lip up to his eye.

‘I know the scar. Pokey Mulligan.’

Pokey was slang for prison.

‘He got a long record?’

McCarthy shrugged. ‘Just his name. Assaults. Does it to order now. And the Asian guy. I think that’s Dawood McMann.’

Morrow had heard of him. Dawood was shifty, everyone knew that, but he seemed to have straightened out in the past decade or so. Opened a string of highly successful sports shops. Gave a lot of money to charity. She wouldn’t think Danny knew him.

She sat back heavily against her office chair. ‘Let’s go and see Donovan.’

Morrow’s knowledge about the declining fortunes of the press was informed ambiently, from jokes on
The Simpsons
, from rumours about the Met involvement in the phone-hacking inquiry down south.

The Met’s inquiry into blatant phone hacking had been started and abandoned several times and each time it arrived at the conclusion that no one had done nothing, so on your way. Shortly after each finding of utter blamelessness a senior officer had been given a well-paid column in one of the newspapers under investigation, or a club membership, or a horse. Even without a glimpse at the evidence it was obvious to Morrow that a recurrent investigation meant there was something in it. And if some of the journalists were hacking voicemail accounts, in a competitive market, with staff transferring from paper to paper, they were probably all doing it. Every police force had corruption issues, but Strathclyde’s were over giant bags of greasy bank notes, not the fripperies of social status. It seemed more honest to Morrow, somehow.

So she knew the newspaper industry was in a bad way but quite how bad really came home to her when they walked into the office. This was a daily national paper yet the open-plan newsroom had no more than eight desks, only four of them occupied.

While the receptionist was showing them into Donovan’s office Morrow asked if everyone else was out.

‘No,’ said the receptionist and walked over to a glass door, opening it and walking in. They followed her and she left without a word, dumping them in the presence of Alan Donovan, editor of the
Scottish Daily News.

He was a small man but sat, pert as a nipple, behind his desk. He looked at McCarthy. ‘DI Alex Morrow?’

‘I’m Morrow,’ she said.

‘Yes.’ He turned to look at her as if he knew that she was a woman all along, and a lot more besides. He plainly knew nothing. ‘Hello.’ He waited for her to say something else.

‘What’s going on, Mr Donovan?’

‘In what way?’

They stared at each other for a moment longer. She half expected him to offer her a column.

‘You asked a journalist to follow me and take pictures of me at my work.’

‘Did I?’ His eyebrows rose slowly.

She couldn’t help but smile at that. She licked her lips, straightened her face and began again. ‘I believe you were looking for information about me. Could I help you with that?’

Donovan leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs. As if the pose wasn’t studied enough he picked up a pen and examined it closely. She half wished she hadn’t brought McCarthy because they were both a little giggly. She hardly dared catch his eye.

‘DI Morrow, what would your bosses say if they knew that your brother was Danny McGrath?’

‘They do know.’

He flinched at that, a single blink, and examined the pen again. ‘How do they know?’

‘I told them.’

‘Everybody knows,’ said McCarthy. ‘Ask anyone in our division. You could stand at the door at a shift change and ask. We all know.’

‘You can print it if you want ...’ It would a disaster for her if they did. The senior ranks still read the newspapers. They were of that generation.

‘We may very well do just that.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘If it’s not a secret, why are you here?’

Morrow stood at the window. ‘It’s a bit thin, isn’t it, as an operation? I thought there would teams of people working here.’

‘There used to be. Not any more. Technology.’

‘Technology ate the other journalists?’

He smiled ruefully at that. ‘In a manner of speaking. It made for more efficient work practices, more of the work got outsourced. Newspapers were fantastically inefficient in the old days.’

‘Outsourced?’ said Morrow, looking out into the open-plan office. ‘They’re introducing that in policing.’

Donovan stood up and came over to her side, looking out with her. He looked a little sad but shrugged. ‘You should do it. It saved us a fortune. Why pay a full wage with pensions and benefits when you can pay for services delivered? Service industries never go on the sick for weeks at a time. They just deliver.’

‘What sort of services are outsourced?’

‘Printing, distribution, financial services, a lot of our art work is outsourced now. We used to have a whole art department. They were a nightmare. Staff of ten and barely two were ever in. They were all taking time off to set up shows and teach. Ridiculous.’

She turned to him, quite close now. ‘See, Donovan, the reason I’m here is that I’m involved in a complicated case with some very sneaky characters. It’s at a pitch now ...’ She was careful not to mention the court because she knew he’d find out it was Michael Brown. ‘It makes me wonder if the timing of this is related to that in any way. I mean, when I walked in here, you plainly had no idea who I am. I wonder if this sudden interest in me is related to that case?’

‘I don’t know anything about any case you’re involved in investigating.’

She had guessed right: Donovan knew nothing about Brown being in court.

‘What I mean is, who prompted you to follow me?’

He raised his eyebrows again. ‘I would hardly be any kind of journalist if I revealed my sources.’

Morrow nodded. ‘Yes. For us the problem of outsourcing is integrity. We’re powerful, got access to information. If we outsource it how can we hold people to account? Do we then need another body to watch them? Aren’t we just creating another level of bureaucracy? You know? Places to lose papers. Places to make massive mistakes.’

She smiled at him but Donovan just looked puzzled.

‘Were you looked at for phone hacking?’

He paled and licked his lips.

She looked out into the room again. ‘Not that any outsourced mistakes would be malicious. People make mistakes. But sometimes with outsourcing, there can be a wilful blindness, recklessness. Take you, for example. Someone might give you a juicy tip, say it comes from a manipulative source with interests in other cases. You pursue it, wilfully. Maybe it could change the course of a case. Bad men get out. People die.’ She looked at Donovan and found him sweating. ‘I’m surprised no one mentioned you in the phone-hacking inquiry, you do cover a lot of celebrity news.’