Howard Linskey - The Dead

‘Okay,’ I said, glad of his intervention.

I’d had a long day shovelling a seemingly endless amount of shite. As well as the meeting with Fallon and the briefing with Susan Fitch, some issues came up involving Henry Baxter’s impending trial and some short-notice transferring of money from place to place was also required so I could pay my suppliers without a major drama. It was late, I was tired and I had a series of meetings in York the next day. All I wanted was to go to bed.

I returned home to find the kitchen in darkness, but Sarah was sitting there, all alone at the table, with only the light from the moon outside to illuminate her. In the half-light I could make out the half full bottle of wine in front of her and the half empty glass standing next to it.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked her.

‘You know,’ she was slurring, ‘you know what’s the matter. I want you to talk to me.’

‘About what?’ We both knew I was stalling.

‘About dad. I want you to talk to me about dad. I want to know what happened to him.’ Sarah was speaking slowly and deliberately, as if she was worried she might mess up her sentences. It was only then I realised there was a second empty wine bottle on the kitchen counter.

‘And I don’t want to talk about it. Not now,’ I told her, ‘I was there, remember.’

‘Of course I remember!’

‘Then you should know why I don’t want to relive it. Do I ask you what happened with that Russian guy?’

‘You did ask,’ she reminded me, ‘and I told you. He tried to rape me and I killed him.’

When I’d returned to collect Sarah from her old man’s house after I’d killed Bobby, I’d gone into her bedroom to find her sitting on the floor in shock. She was staring at the dead body of a Russian goon who she’d stabbed in the neck with her father’s lock knife.

‘He was my dad. I have a right to know.’

‘And I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.’

I turned to walk away and she called out, ‘That’s what he said you would say.’

I stopped and turned back to face her then, watching as she reached for the wine bottle and topped her glass right up to the brim.

‘Who?’ I asked.

At first she ignored me. Instead she reached for the wine and took a huge gulp, then turned to face me with the bravery of a drunk, ‘The policeman.’

‘What policeman?’ I demanded.

‘The one who came to see me,’ she said, ‘the detective.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘A policeman came to talk to you and you didn’t tell me? Why the fuck did you not tell me?’

‘You were away,’ she said, which we both knew was a bullshit reason, ‘and he didn’t come to talk about you. He came to talk to me about my dad.’

‘Even so, Sarah, you should have told me. Who was he and what did he want?’

‘His name was Carlton,’ she told me, ‘DI Carlton. And he wanted to warn me.’

‘Warn you? About what?’

‘About you,’ she told me, then she repeated it slowly and deliberately, ‘he wanted… to warn me… about you. He reckoned you had something to do with dad’s disappearance.’

‘That’s bollocks and you know it.’

‘I do know it,’ then she corrected herself, ‘I did know it but since you came back from your last trip you haven’t been able to look me in the eye and you won’t tell me what happened. That has got me thinking; it has got me worrying.’

‘What about?’

‘Something he said before he left.’

‘Which was?’

Sarah deliberately avoided my eye when she uttered the words that changed everything between us.

‘Ask yourself this question, Miss Mahoney, who stood to gain the most from your father’s death? Who stood to gain?’

It took what seemed like an age for me to find the words to reply. I kept looking at her, trying to work out if she was completely off her face and rambling or if she actually believed I’d killed her father just so I could take over his firm.

‘And what did you say to that?’ I hissed the words at her.

‘I told him to fuck off,’ she said, finally looking me in the eye, ‘and he did, but he made it clear he was after you,’ she took another swig of wine, ‘and then a funny thing happened.’

‘Oh yeah?’ I was trying to contain my anger with the woman I loved, ‘What funny thing? Go on Sarah, you’ve got something to say to me, so finish it.’

‘A few days after, I picked up the newspaper and he was in it,’ she said, ‘because someone had murdered his daughter.’ Then she took another sip of wine before remarking, ‘I wonder who stood to gain from that.’

I drove back into the city and took a room at our hotel but went straight to the bar and got the barman to pour me a large one. He kept them coming. All I could think about was Sarah and what she had said to me. Where the hell could we possibly go from there?

This wasn’t the first time I’d walked out on her, but I knew that it might be the last. And it wasn’t just Sarah who was occupying my thoughts. I couldn’t bear the idea of losing my little Emma. Every time the notion went through my mind I drank a little more.

It was midday by the time I got my act together, called Peter Kinane and left the hotel. He picked me up and we headed south. I was glad when he didn’t comment on my appearance. I knew I must have looked like shit. I could really have done without this trip to York but the meeting with the architect had already been postponed once.

At least it gave me an excuse not to go home. I didn’t want to face Sarah in this state. I didn’t want to think about Sarah at all in fact.

That afternoon Palmer parked a car two streets from the Serbs’ makeshift headquarters in Edinburgh. They’d set themselves up in a crumbling old house in Pilton; not the best part of the city, but it was a good way to avoid casual police scrutiny. Palmer walked slowly up the road, hands deep in his pockets, not looking directly at the building he was checking out. Instead he used his peripheral vision to take in the number and make of cars parked in the street and whether any men stood back from the Serbian brothers’ house, watching.

The main security was provided by two burly bodyguards; one on the gate and one on the front door. Palmer had to assume they were both armed. He was patted down three times before they let him near the brothers; both men at the front of the house searching him in turn, in case one of them missed anything. Next he was ushered up a staircase and a new man was waiting for him at the top. This guy was huge and Palmer guessed he was one of the brothers’ main enforcers. He wore a black leather jacket and, when he raised his hands to indicate to Palmer he should do the same, for the inevitable pat-down, his gun was clearly visible in a shoulder holster that hung low and loose inside his jacket.

The room had a reinforced steel-plated door, which would have taken a long time to break down, giving anyone behind it ample time to ready themselves or call for help. When the man had finished searching Palmer he called through the door in Serbian. He must have indicated his satisfaction because a moment later there was a buzz from inside the locked door and it came free automatically, opening slightly. The big man ushered Palmer through it.

Palmer placed his hand on the door, opened it completely and stepped into the large room that served as the brothers’ headquarters. There were three men waiting for him and, from the resemblance, Palmer took them to be the Stevic brothers. No one else had been admitted to the inner sanctum so it appeared they kept the big decisions within the family. The brothers even dressed alike, in jeans and T-shirts and were sporting the same heavy gold chains around their necks like a badge of office.