Cochrane stood up, dragged the chair over to the other desk, rested his hands on its back. ‘Sometimes I think it never stopped.’ He sighed out some smoke. ‘Him down in Manchester. Brady. He’s one of ours, too, God help us. Pollok boy. You got a minute, McCormack?’
‘Sir.’
McCormack followed Cochrane into the narrow office next to the Murder Room. He closed the door behind him.
‘Did he hit him?’
‘Like I said, sir, DS Goldie behaved professionally.’
‘Ah fuck it. Guy’s a nonce. Who gives a shit. Had your boss on the phone.’ Cochrane was stubbing his Rothmans in the ashtray, jabbing it into the scuffed red metal.
‘You’re my boss.’
‘Your real boss. DCI Flett. Wants to know how long we’re planning to keep you. When we might be able to spare you.’ McCormack rode the little punch of irony on the last two words. Cochrane had stopped jabbing the cigarette butt and now he folded it over on itself, pressing down hard with the ball of his thumb. ‘Told him you’re playing it close to your chest. Any thoughts, though? How long this might take?’
‘Few more days. Another week, maybe.’
‘Then we learn our fate.’
Cochrane moved round the desk to stand beside McCormack. McCormack could smell something carious under the older man’s tobacco breath, a rottenness that made him breathe in shallow sips. Above the height of four feet, the wall of Cochrane’s office was frosted glass through which the torsos of the day-shift detectives floated like clouds.
‘No slackers here.’ Cochrane nodded through the glass. ‘No shirkers, Detective.’
McCormack took this to mean that there were no Roman Catholics in the Murder Room. Thinks I’m a Prod, McCormack realized. Probably thinks all Highlanders are Wee Frees.
‘Busy bees.’ McCormack nodded. ‘Work rate’s not a problem, clearly.’
The word ‘problem’ tilted the atmosphere in Cochrane’s office. He felt Cochrane giving him the stare.
‘What do you suppose it might be then, Detective? The “problem”?’
‘You’d know that better than I would, sir.’
‘Uh-huh. Right. Well. You find out what it is, you let me know. First cab. Understood?’
McCormack watched the white shapes, avoided Cochrane’s gaze. ‘You’ll see the report, sir. It’ll come to you. In the normal course of things.’
‘Normal course of things?’ Cochrane kicked a wastepaper basket as he stepped right up close to McCormack. The clouds drifted in the Murder Room. ‘This isn’t the normal course of things. This is you parachuting into my station to stitch me fucking up. Me and those boys out there. Tell the CC how we fucked it up. How you’d have done it better.’
‘We’re all on the same side here, sir. We all want him caught.’
‘Is that right? You’ve been a polis how long, McCormack? How long you been on the force?’
‘Thirteen years, sir.’
‘Twenty-seven.’ Cochrane slapped his own chest. ‘Twenty-seven years. You make a lot of friends in that time.’
‘This a threat, sir?’
‘It’s a statement of fact, Detective. I’ve got three years to go. Three years till I’ve done my thirty and I’m out. You’re not gonnae fuck that up for me, son.’
Back in the Murder Room, McCormack tried to focus on the report he’d been reading, a press statement in Cochrane’s lurid prose: The man we are seeking is a man of dark urges and lawless drives. He may keep irregular hours. Anyone with inform—
‘That for my benefit?’
Goldie had appeared beside his desk.
‘What?’
‘The wee performance back there. Backing up a fellow officer. Look at me: I’m a good guy after all. One of the lads. That what that was about?’
McCormack shook his head. The whole Kilgour thing had been a stunt, he realized. It was Goldie declaring that McCormack and McCormack’s review could take a fuck to themselves. It was also a test. Goldie had known that Kilgour would complain. He’d known that Cochrane would want to know what happened. If McCormack backed up Kilgour, well, what do you want from a rat? If he backed up Goldie he was weak as piss.
‘Got one or two things on my plate just now, Detective. One or two concerns. Am I on Detective Sergeant Goldie’s Christmas card list? That’s not one of them.’
‘Well, that’s handy.’
Goldie had a smoke in his mouth, fumbling in his pockets for a light. The cigarette bobbed up and down under Goldie’s muffled curses. McCormack watched him for a few seconds then produced his Dunhill lighter, sparked it angrily.
‘Here.’
He lit Goldie’s then he lit one of his own. They stood smoking, watching the river, not talking. A minute ticked past.
‘Fucking cheek on him, but.’ Goldie was studying the end of his cigarette. ‘Moaning about the press.’
‘They’re not on his case?’
‘They’re on his case, aye. But maybe he should stop holding press conferences every five minutes.’
McCormack said nothing. Goldie was right. Cochrane had run to the media with every development, however slight. His line was that they should use it to their advantage, the media interest. Keep feeding the papers little tidbits. The Record and the Express were like a daily door-to-door to every household in the city.
But the papers needed something to write about between killings. They needed an excuse to put the artist’s impression on the front page, the half-smiling clean-cut killer, limned in pencil. They needed ‘QUAKER’ in a forty-point Tempo, stark black print on the off-white pulp. And when there was nothing else, when there were no ‘developments’, they wrote about the Murder Squad. Their failings, their wasted efforts. How Long Must We Live in Fear? Will the Dance Hall Butcher Never Be Caught?
‘Think we’ll get him?’
‘We?’
‘You. Us. Whatever.’
‘Will we fuck. We were beat from the start. The first one did it. The Magic Stick. That’s what screwed us. Should have got him then.’
McCormack felt the rebuke. Jacqui Keevins was the first victim. She’d been at the dancing, the Majestic Ballroom on Hope Street. The Magic Stick, everyone called it. The cops went there the following night, team-handed, put her photo up on a screen, asked for patrons who’d been there the night before to come out and talk to them in the foyer. A bloke recognized her, said he’d danced with her at the start of night but lost track of her later on.
The cops were stoked. This was the early break you always look for, the sign that you’re on the right track. Too bad the guy was making it up. Too bad he was a bullshit-merchant, attention-seeker. By the time he came clean it was too late. When the truth emerged – Jacqui Keevins had been at the Barrowland, not the Majestic – two weeks had passed. The trail was cold.
‘So. What you planning to do?’
McCormack flicked his cigarette