Stuart MacBride - In the Cold Dark Ground

‘Denise, have you—’

‘Shhh!’ She stuck a finger to her lips, then put the Styrofoam cup on the tray and crept out of the room. Eased the door shut behind her. ‘Only just got him off.’

‘Are you two...?’ Logan pulled his chin in and pointed at the cell.

‘The poor sod’s got dementia. He hates his care home, so he disappears for a couple of weeks at a time.’ She slid the hatch up, hiding the sleeping Felix away. ‘But he gets confused and too hot and takes all his clothes off — which is when we get a phone call from some distraught mother of two, because he’s done a strip in the local Post Office, or Asda. And he ends up in here for the night.’

‘Can you open up number five?’

‘Least we can do is feed him up. He’s skin and bones under them rags.’ She dug out her keys. ‘Why do you want into five? Seriously, I was only joking about the “falling down stairs” thing.’

‘Need to ask Mr Milne a couple of questions.’

There was a pause, then a shrug. ‘Don’t see why not. Long as you sign for him.’

‘No.’ Martin Milne hunched into himself on the other side of the interview room table. His fingers twitched themselves into knots and out again. ‘No recordings.’

Logan pressed the button on the machine, setting the digital camera running. ‘It’s for your own protection, Martin. This way everyone knows it’s all aboveboard and no one tried to make you say anything.’ The unit gave a bleep. ‘Interview with Martin Carter Milne, of number six, Greystone View, Near Whitehills. Present, Martin Milne and Sergeant Logan McRae. It’s...’ he checked his watch, ‘twenty-one forty, Thursday the twelfth of February—’

‘No comment.’

Great.

Try not to sigh. ‘Martin, if you don’t want to talk to me, why are we—’

‘No comment.’

Well, it was pretty obvious why they’d written ‘P AIN I N T HE H OOP ’ on his cell whiteboard.

‘Martin, can we—’

‘I said, “no comment”. I have no comment to make.’

Complete waste of time.

‘Interview suspended at twenty-one forty-two.’ He pressed the button and switched it all off. ‘Let’s get you back to your cell.’

The lines around Milne’s eyes deepened. He spread his hands out on the tabletop. ‘They’ll kill me if they find out.’

Here we go.

‘Who’ll kill you, Martin?’

‘They made me watch .’ His eyes glistened. ‘They wouldn’t let me say goodbye, but they made me watch.’ Tears sparkled on his eyelashes. ‘They said if I told anyone about it, they’d do the same to me and my family. To Ethan. They’re going to kill my wee boy.’

Logan sat back in his seat. Slipped his hands into the pockets of his trousers. Felt for his mobile. ‘It’s OK, Martin, you’re safe here. Why don’t you— Damn it.’ He hauled his phone out and poked at the screen. ‘Sorry about that: got it on vibrate.’ Then placed the thing facedown on the table. ‘Should have switched it off earlier.’

Outside the room, the floorboards groaned like a dying dog, the noise fading as whoever it was passed down the corridor.

‘Why don’t you start at the beginning? Tell me what happened and we’ll try to sort it out together, OK?’

Milne nodded. Wiped a hand across his eyes. ‘It was just meant to be a meeting. We turn up and hand over the cash and everything’s done.’ He swallowed. ‘Only, when we got there, they started screaming about more money. They said two hundred and twenty-five thousand wasn’t enough. They wanted an extra hundred grand.’

‘The money you borrowed from the bank.’

A nod. Then a sniff. ‘We told them we didn’t have it. It’d take some time. And this big guy, he starts hitting Peter and screaming at him: “We want our money, Bitch. We want our money.” And I tried to stop him, but they jumped me and they’re kicking and punching...’

Milne hauled in a deep, rattling breath. Stared down at his twitching fingers. ‘Then this other guy comes in and he says that if we want to get out of this alive, we’re going to have to sign GCML over to them. We’re going to have to start doing favours .’

Sounded familiar.

‘Course Peter says, “No way. Deal was for a loan, not this.” And they start in on him again. They’re stamping on his chest and his head and he’s crying and...’ Milne ground tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand. ‘They tied his hands behind his back and stuck a bin-bag over his head. I promised them. I promised them anything they wanted, but they... they...’ He bit his bottom lip. ‘They taped it tight around his neck. And he’s thrashing against the floor, and he can’t breathe, and I can’t breathe, and they’re laughing, and...’

Milne folded forwards, until his forehead rested on the tabletop. He put his hands over his head, pressing down, as if he could force it through the scarred Formica. Muscles bunching in his thick arms. Shoulders trembling. Then the sobbing started.

Logan sat back and watched.

Somewhere outside, a patrol car’s siren burst into life. Then faded off into the distance.

He reached across the table and put a hand on Milne’s lurching shoulder. ‘Shh... You’re safe here. You’re safe.’

Milne didn’t look up, the words coming out jagged and torn. ‘If I... if I don’t do what... what they want.... th... they’ll kill me and my... my wife and my little boy.’ A wail grew from somewhere deep inside his torso. ‘Like... like they... they killed Peter.’

Detective Superintendent Harper scowled up from her desk. ‘This better be important, Sergeant , some of us have work to do.’ She pulled back in her chair. ‘What happened to your face?’

The office had the same bland, flat-pack elegance as the rest of the station. Two desks along one wall, one in the middle of the room. Harper had commandeered that one, while Narveer had the one nearest the door. Both of them poking away at fancy laptop computers, rather than the usual hamster-wheel-powered lumps of ancient plastic everyone else had to fight with.

Logan folded his arms, shoulders back. ‘Martin Milne claims he was present when Peter Shepherd was killed.’

‘Does he now?’

‘Their container business was failing, they needed new contracts. Peter Shepherd came up with the idea of bribing officials in Nigeria to let them bid for a bunch of oilfield logistic projects off the coast there. Only they needed the money in a hurry. So they went to one of Malcolm McLennan’s goons.’

‘Hmmm...’ Harper closed her laptop. ‘Narveer?’

Her sidekick swivelled his seat around to face them. ‘It’s a connection.’

‘Apparently Shepherd wasn’t just into true-crime books, he liked to kid-on he was connected. A little bit dangerous. When he bumped into someone he recognized from The Blood-Red Line at a fundraiser, he let it slip they needed two hundred thousand for something dodgy.’

‘I see.’ She picked up a pen and wrote something in her notebook. ‘And we should believe you, because?’

Logan held up his phone. Pressed his thumb against the button marked ‘P LAY ’.

Martin Milne’s voice burst out of the speaker, slightly distorted and tinny. ‘ ...from the bank, but he said we couldn’t get the money fast enough. We had to get these guys bribed by Wednesday or—’

He pressed ‘P AUSE ’.

‘I accidentally set my phone on voice-memo mode and left it on the interview room table. Might not be admissible in court, but that doesn’t mean we can’t act on the information till he agrees to make a formal statement.’

She tilted her head to one side and stared at him in silence.