Flett was edging towards him through the throng. DCI Angus Flett, commander of the Flying Squad. Chins were tipped in greeting, cigarettes raised in two-fingered benedictions. Flett gripped elbows, punched shoulders, clapped backs, threw mock punches, twisted his hips in that drying-your-backside-with-a-towel move when he passed a dancing typist.
The squad room looked like Christmas. Strings of paper bunting were pinned above their heads. Two desks had been pushed together to form a makeshift bar. Bottles of spirits clustered in the centre: Red Label, Gordon’s, Smirnoff, Bacardi. Four-packs of beer in their plastic loops, green cans of Pale Ale, red cans of Export. Someone had gone out for fish suppers and the sharp tang of newsprint and vinegar and pickled onions mingled with the smoke and sweat and alcohol.
On an adjacent table stood a large birthday cake edged with blue piping, a ‘12’ standing proud of the icing on blue plastic numerals. Twelve was the tariff. Twelve years in Peterhead. They’d watched him cuffed and taken down to the cells, James Kane, one of McGlashan’s lieutenants. It took them over a year to build the case and now they’d got him. Attempted murder. Serious assault. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Guilty on all three counts. Au revoir, fuckface. Have a nice life.
McCormack raised his can of Sweetheart Stout to salute Angus Flett. He felt the beer sway inside the tinnie. He didn’t like beer. He’d drunk just enough so the can wouldn’t spill. He liked whisky well enough but he was playing shinty tomorrow, a grudge match against Glasgow Skye, and he wanted to stay fresh.
‘The hard stuff, Duncan?’
McCormack worked his shoulders, straightened up. ‘Got a game tomorrow, boss.’
‘A game? I’d say war would be nearer the mark. I watched a match once, up in Oban. Jesus. Tough game. They say ice hockey’s based on it.’
McCormack shrugged, sipped his tinnie.
‘Anyroads, need to talk to you, son. Won’t take long.’
In Flett’s office, McCormack closed the door behind him, muffling the noise of the party. Flett got straight to business.
‘Job’s come up, son. I’m putting you forward.’
McCormack nodded slowly. When Flett sat down with the sun at his back, McCormack noticed that he hadn’t shaved; little filaments of stubble caught the light.
‘What’s the job, sir?’
‘It involves a change of scene. You’ll be based in Partick. The old Marine.’
‘That’s the Quaker inquiry. They’ve got Crawford, already. They need another Squad guy?’
Flett held his hand out flat, palm down, swivelled his wrist.
‘It’s not a straightforward job, Detective. It’s not the operational side of things. I had Levein on earlier’ – he nodded at the phone on his desk. ‘The feeling is, it’s gone on too long, the whole circus. Guts is, he wants us to review the investigation. See where things went wrong. What can be learned. Make recommendations.’
Peter Levein. Head of Glasgow CID. Bad bastard. Due to retire at the end of the year, to no one’s regret.
‘Recommend what? What’s Cochrane saying about this?’
‘Nothing he can say. They haven’t caught him, have they? He’s not going to like it, but he’ll cooperate.’
McCormack was still frowning. ‘Make recommendations as in shut it down?’
Flett leaned forward. ‘Do you need it spelled out, son? This job? It’s not a popularity contest.’ Flett nodded at the door. ‘You think those fuckers out there like me? Think I want them to?’
‘It’s not that, sir.’
‘What, then?’
‘I’m a thief-taker, boss. That’s what I know.’
‘This still McGlashan? You’re still on about McGlashan?’
‘We’re close, sir. We’re gonnae get him.’ He jabbed his thumb at the door, at the sounds of beery triumph. ‘See that, sir? That’s nothing. That’s just the start. We’re building the case. We’ll bring it all down, the whole rotten empire.’
‘All right, McCormack.’
‘What – you think I’m making it up?’
‘No, Duncan.’ Flett spread his hands. ‘No, I’m sure you are close. Thing is. Nobody knows who McGlashan is. We know who he is. The poor bastards in Springboig and Barlanark and Cranhill: they know. But the punters out there? The ratepayers? They’ve no idea. They know about the Quaker, though. Jesus.’ He tapped the folded Tribune on his desk. ‘They know about him.’
‘So we tell them.’ McCormack shifted in his chair. ‘We’ve got people who deal with the papers, haven’t we? We fill them in. Give them the goods. Glasgow crime lord, reign of terror. Fear on the streets.’
‘Give them what, exactly? If we had solid on McGlashan we wouldn’t need the bloody papers, we’d just arrest him. It’s more complicated, son. They’ve got a hold of this Quaker thing and they’re not letting go. They want answers. They want to know why we’re still fannying about after all this time. It’s not McGlashan that’s making us look like— What: you got something to say, Detective?’
McCormack was shaking his head. ‘Naw, it’s just, I was under the impression that the guy who headed up the Flying Squad was the head of the Flying Squad. My mistake. Not the editor of the Glasgow Tribune.’
‘Oh for fuck sake, Duncan, catch yourself on. It’s always worked like this. Keep the papers off your back, you keep the councillors happy, the MPs. It buys you the space to do the real job.’
‘This isn’t the real job?’
Flett held his hands up. ‘I know. I know. Look. You do a job on this Quaker thing we’ll go after McGlashan. You head up the team. You pick your men. I’ll give you everything you need. But first it’s this. Son, you’re either ready or you’re not. I thought you were. Have I made a mistake?’
Had he? Maybe the whole thing was a mistake, McCormack thought. Maybe joining the police was a mistake. Leaving Ballachulish.
‘You want to be a fucking DI all your life. One of the lads—’
‘I’m not one of the lads.’
‘Good. I’m glad to hear it. I’ll bell Levein. Start on Monday. Now get out there and enjoy yourself.’
So now he was sitting in the Murder Room at the Marine. Enjoy yourself, indeed. The feeling is, it’s gone on too long? Jesus, tell me about it, McCormack thought. He’d been here barely a week, listening in on the morning briefings – eavesdropping, it felt like. Days that dragged like months. Absorbing the hatred of his colleagues. A spectator at the daily taskings, a nodding auditor of tactical discussions. He listened to the detectives talking about the case – Earl Street, Mackeith Street, Carmichael Lane – and it bothered him. The men were so sure there was a meaning, some mystical link connecting the victims or the places where they were killed. As if the murders were a language, a code. A work of bloody art.
There had to be a link, they thought, but the men in this room couldn’t find it. The three victims were unknown to each other, lived in different parts of the city. They had no mutual friends, no common bonds of church or political party. Two of them had husbands in the forces, but this fact – which seemed so promising at first – now looked like a coincidence. The worst kind of coincidence, the kind that costs you a couple of hundred man-hours before you realize it means nothing. But now it seemed clear. The women were bound by nothing more than luck or fate, whatever word you hit on for the actions of the Quaker.
But still there was the feeling that the map might hold the key, the six Ordnance Survey sheets tacked to the Murder Room wall. Each locus was within a hundred yards of the