To Tell the Truth (18 page)

The driver eased the car into the exit traffic and onto the motorway towards the city. Rosie looked at her watch. Four-thirty. She had to meet the mystery man with the muffled voice and the prison pass for Frankie Nelson at seven in the Saltmarket. But first she would go into the office and touch base with McGuire before heading to her flat to dump her bag.

Rosie came out of the revolving door into the marbled foyer of the
Post
and climbed the open staircase to the vast expanse of the editorial floor. She lingered just for a second on the top step, drinking in the immediate sense of comfort of being back in the familiar hub where she belonged.

It was five in the afternoon, and editorial was just beginning to bubble with the urgency that could spill over to hysteria as the hours and minutes ticked towards the edition deadline. The news editors had phones glued to their ears, listening to reporters on the ground talking them through their stories and occasionally barking with frustration if the hack wasn’t telling them everything they wanted to hear. Let’s not spoil a good story with the facts. Go back to the door and tell that fat fucker threatening you with the axe that you are from the
Post
and you are not scared of him or anybody else. That was the kind of encouragement legendary news editors used to dish out in the old days.

The bank of news reporters sat hunched over their computers, or had phones at their ears, faces concentrated, scribbling shorthand notes, in an island of fifteen desks as though they’d been cast adrift to change the world.

It used to be a sight to behold when reporters still used typewriters, and at five in the evening the cacophony of twenty Olivettis rattling like machine-gun fire was deafening as hacks – well, those who were sober enough – battered out their stories.

These days, the reporters may have been driven by the same desire, the same sense of chipping away at the coalface of truth, as the old hacks used to put it, but the scene before Rosie now could easily have been an insurance office. There was little banter because everything was done in front of a computer. No real conversation, just a kind of battery hen operation, with people churning
out copy. It was the silence you noticed more than anything.

But the place sparked to life just like in the past when there was a big story on the go. And right now, the story was in the Costa del Sol. Rosie hoped she wouldn’t have to be here too long. One or two reporters looked up, surprised to see her, and gave her the thumbs up. She waved back, but didn’t stop by her desk, next to Reynolds. The crime reporter had been stewing with resentment ever since the kid went missing and he was told he would not be required to go to Spain on the story. McGuire was emphatic on that. He couldn’t prove that Reynolds had been feeding corrupt police chief Gavin Fox inside information from the paper during the last investigation that nearly got Rosie killed, but he was convinced he was guilty. He’d told Rosie that Reynolds would sit out the rest of his time flat on his arse doing crime statistics, until they could find some deal to get rid of him.

Beyond the reporters, at what in newspaper parlance was the backbench where all the decisions were made, McGuire stood listening to some of his sidekicks trying to sell him a page layout. His hands were deep in the pockets of his pinstripe trousers and, in his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he looked like something out of an old movie about the newspaper industry. All he needed was a cigar clamped between his teeth. He was pointing to the dummy page – the broad sheet of paper they used to draw out the ideas for the page before it was done on the computer. He turned around, and seeing
Rosie, gave her a wave. She headed to his office, stopping briefly at Marion’s desk while she waited for him.

‘Hi, Marion,’ Rosie said. ‘Thanks for all your help over there – and for that stuff about the old guy.’

‘No worries, Rosie.’

Marion handed her a piece of paper with the phone number. Rosie put it in her pocket and leaned over Marion’s desk.

‘Hey. You fancy a quick coffee once I’m finished with your boss? I want to talk to you a bit.’

‘Sure. Give me a shout when you’re clear and we’ll go downstairs and have a cuppa.’

McGuire came breezing up with a smile on his face.

‘
Hola
, Rosie,’ he greeted her, motioning her into his office ahead of him. ‘You’ve got far too much of a suntan for my liking. I thought you were supposed to be working.’

‘Well, I was there for a month before you called me and broke up my holiday, pal.’ She’d missed all this banter.

He went behind his desk and sat down, looking at post-it messages Marion had stuck there for him. One by one he read them, crumpled them, and tossed them in the direction of the bin.

Rosie sat on the black leather Chesterfield opposite his desk. McGuire looked at her and she was conscious that he was watching for signs of stress or the effects of what had happened a few months ago. Whatever else he was, however strident at times, he had been genuinely upset at what had happened to her after the Fox investigation. Rosie knew her editor cared about her a lot, but she also knew he wouldn’t want to hear about the nightmares or
panic attacks that had been part of her life recently. He wanted her strong.

‘You alright, Rosie? You look well enough.’ He clasped his hands across his stomach and sat back.

‘Tell me. Did you have a good rest, get the batteries recharged and all that stuff?’ He frowned. ‘Whatever you might think, Rosie, I was a bit worried about you before you went. Thought maybe you came back to work a bit too quick. You looked drained. Dunno. Sad or something.’

McGuire seemed genuinely interested. His eyes narrowed.

‘So what are you now, Mick? A psychologist? Maybe you should write the Problem Page.’ Rosie gave him a sarcastic look.

McGuire was being nice to her, caring, but she was too fragile right now for an arm around the shoulder from him. Combat she could cope with, but sympathy? No thanks.

McGuire rolled up a piece of paper and threw it at her.

‘Aye, fine. Full of the usual shit. Good to have you back, Gilmour! Want a coffee?’

‘No,’ Rosie smiled.

‘Okay. So tell me about this wanker who phoned you about Nelson? No ideas who he is?’

‘No. Nothing. I’m meeting him at a pub in Saltmarket in a little while.’

‘How do you know he’s not some psycho who’s going to do you in?’

‘I don’t. What you want me to do? Go home and build a jigsaw?’

McGuire chuckled. ‘Okay, we’ll deal with him later. So tell me: how far away are you on the people-trafficking story? And by that, Gilmour, I mean a version that I can get past the lawyers and in the paper.’

‘Well, here’s the lowdown.’

Rosie told him that the day before she left Spain she went with Javier and Matt to the address of the recruitment office. They watched it for a couple of hours, then they left Matt for a while longer by himself, so he could snatch pictures of who was coming in and out. Turned out there wasn’t much to see, and no Daletsky. But one guy went in and out a couple of times, and they suspected that he might be Leka, Daletsky’s Albanian enforcer and organiser. Rosie told him she had a source who would be able to identify him when she got back, but she didn’t tell him it was Adrian.

She also told him that Javier had researched the names behind the recruitment outfit, and there was one small importing company owned by Daletsky whose director was also on the board of the recruitment company. It was a tenuous link, but it placed one of Daletsky’s companies at least in the same trough as the recruitment firm who were behind the people-trafficking.

‘How do you know it is this recruitment company who are behind the people-trafficking?’ McGuire’s eyebrows knitted.

‘Well,’ Rosie said, ‘according to my private-eye contact, Javier, the intelligence coming from his connections in the Guarda Civil is that this company is under surveillance
for organised crime, and people-trafficking – as you know – is part and parcel of organised crime.’

‘Fine. But I want it more solid than that. What actual evidence are we going to get that they are involved in people-trafficking, Rosie? You know what these fucking lawyers are like. I’m not going to them unless I’m fireproof.’

‘I know, and Javier has also come up with a couple of other things from his cop contacts.’

She sat forward in her chair and concentrated. You had to be careful not to tell McGuire too much. Just enough for him to know that it was workable.

‘You’ll love this, Mick.’ Rosie licked her lips. ‘You know the girl from Sarajevo who was kidnapped? Well, I have someone who has made contact with her back there and we now have her story. It’s brilliant. Puts flesh on the tale, real human interest. But better than that, she remembered the make of the van that took them from the hotel in Malaga to the house where she escaped when they let the girls out of the van. And, amazingly, she even remembered most of the registration number. She said that from the moment they realised they were being taken, her friend – the one who twisted her ankle and got recaptured – told her they must remember everything they could.’

‘You’re fucking joking,’ McGuire said. ‘Are you saying that two country bumpkin innocent girls abroad were being kidnapped and they had the savvy to remember a registration number of their kidnappers – when they must have been worried they were going to die? I find that hard to swallow.’

‘I did too, Mick, but all we did was get the info from her. She didn’t know what we were going to do with it. What I did was give it to Javier and he ran it past his Guarda Civil man. We didn’t have the full reg, but Javier’s mate said it was near enough. He ran it through the computer and confirmed that it matched a van from a company that subcontracts work for the recruitment firm. That might be as good as it gets, Mick, but tell you what – it’s good enough for me.’

McGuire lifted his spectacles from the desk and began polishing the lenses with his tie.

‘I like that. I like that a lot, Rosie. A bit of real digging there and proper intrigue, but it will still be hard to get past the lawyers.’

‘I know. But when I get back, I might have more, and I’ll be ready to write. I’ve already done up the girl’s interview and I’ll pop it across to your secret email.’

‘How did you trace her?’ Mick asked, standing up and looking at his watch, indicating the chat was over.

Rosie got up and put her hands up as though she was under arrest.

‘Now, Mick, you don’t need to know any of that stuff but it’s all true, and her story is verified by police and counselling groups who have dealt with her since she got back to Sarajevo. How we traced her is on a need-to-know basis. And you don’t need to know. Not right now anyway.’

He walked past her, and patted her shoulder.

‘Well done, Rosie. Go see your mystery man tonight and call me in the morning. And get some sleep as well.’

CHAPTER 24

Rosie stood at the bar, nursing a glass of mineral water that was getting warmer by the minute. She knew better than to ask for ice.

There were bars in parts of Glasgow you only went into if you could guarantee a safe passage out without getting your smile widened. This was one of them. If you happened into one of these bars as a tourist, or just for a walk on the wild side, you wouldn’t get the sense straight away of how your night was going to pan out. You might get a cheery word from the barman, or a ‘howsit goin’ big man?’ from a guy propping up the bar. Some bar-room Voltaire might even engage you in friendly conversation. But the secret was to know when it was time to leave. Because what began as genial chat could swiftly become a broken bottle in your neck. That was the Glasgow you wouldn’t see in the Good Pub Guide.

The Globe, smack bang in the middle of Saltmarket, ticked all the squalid boxes. It was close enough to the High Court to ensure that most of its patrons were either
on their way to jail, or had just been freed because some clever bastard QC managed to outwit the prosecution – so sending another lowlife scumbucket back onto the streets to resume his career. It was in this dingy hole of a place, which stank of piss and stale tobacco, that the ‘not guilty’ or the ‘not proven’ came to celebrate alongside their brief – who would later repair to the posh O’Brien’s in the city centre and regale the other movers and shakers with tales of his glimpse into the underbelly. And it was at O’Brien’s that he would quaff vintage champagne on the strength of the grand a day he was paid in legal aid to defend the indefensible.

The other punters in the Globe, who sat in dark corners, were the old whores and drunks from the street, who’d come in out of the cold for enough cheap wine to blot out the night and the memory of a squandered life.

Rosie was lucky. She was always guaranteed a safe passage out. She’d been in and out of the bar a million times before, during and after a million High Court trials, and down the years she’d become only as close as you would want to be with the bar staff and the owner. She was respected, and nobody bothered her. Sometimes she would come here to gather her thoughts before writing up her copy after a trial, and other times just to soak up the atmosphere, when her mood became melancholy the way it occasionally did.

Anything could happen at any time in the Globe. On one memorable afternoon, Rosie’s eyes nearly popped out of her head when she became aware of a blootered old wino in her sixties giving her equally blootered pal a
hand-job under a table in the corner. It finished in a punch-up as he jolted his knee upwards when he came, spilling her drink, and she hooked him with her free hand. The romance of the city.

Now, as she stood at the bar, she saw ghostly images of herself down the years as a young reporter learning her craft in and out of places like this. One time, she was here with a prostitute. There were only the two of them in the bar, and a punter came in and beckoned the hooker out. She’d returned, a tenner richer, about six minutes later, laughing that the punter had said it was the other hooker he’d wanted – meaning Rosie.

Now, Rosie was talking to Billy the barman when the swing doors opened and a vision stepped in. She hoped her mouth hadn’t dropped open with shock. The guy had no face, in terms of the kind of faces the rest of the world had. His forehead was the size of a biscuit tin, but half his chin was missing, and Rosie could only see one eye. Two holes, as though moulded out of plasticene, were stuck in the middle of this monstrosity. His nose, she assumed. What passed for a mouth was a kind of slanted slit. The entire effect looked as though someone had made a really bad job of hollowing out a Halloween pumpkin. Trick or treat. The whole bar fell silent waiting to see which it was.