The Damage (David Blake 2) (2 page)

Both men had taken a cursory look at the victim but you didn’t have to be a GP to know he was way beyond anyone’s help, so they retreated, to spots some distance away, standing either side of the body, their primary aim to secure the scene against any pain-in-the-arse-passers-by or make-a-name-for-themselves-journalists whilst they waited for the SOCOs to arrive.

Narey chose a spot by some trees, just in case. The sniper might be long gone but twelve years in the force had taught him to be cautious. Narey could still see the victim clearly enough from this vantage point. He looked like someone sleeping off a liquid lunch but the gelatinous brain matter plastered over the wall behind him told a different story.

‘Poor fucker,’ he said.

‘Wouldn’t want to be the one that’s got to clean this up,’ Walker called from his spot at the opposite end of the open ground between them, ‘he certainly picked the wrong day for a walk in the park.’

Narey couldn’t argue with that. If the victim had stayed in that afternoon or gone round the shops instead, he’d still be alive now, for this crime was about as indiscriminate as it gets.

The guy on the bench looked to be in his early forties, appeared respectable enough for this part of Glasgow and was dressed casually, in t-shirt and combats.

Narey wondered if the corpse had a wife somewhere. There’d be kids most likely and friends, colleagues from work, mates down the pub and all of them would be shocked rigid when they found out what happened to this guy. He was unlucky enough to have become the fourth, entirely random victim of the Sandyhills Sniper. These motiveless attacks, on unconnected victims from distances of hundreds of yards away, had shocked Glasgow into a kind of paralysis. People were afraid to be out on the streets, some were too scared to go to work and even pubs were reporting a downturn in business.

And the Press, as always, were sticking the knife in, ‘Baffled Police left clueless,’ being just one of the more helpful headlines that morning, followed by the strapline ‘Police can’t guarantee Sniper won’t kill again,’ as if anybody could guarantee that. Now there was a fourth victim, which meant the tabloids were going to have a field day. Fucking journalists, all they ever did was sneer. He’d love to get some of them to try and find the bloke responsible for this and see how they got on. They’d be bloody clueless, the lot of them.

Everyone was freaked out by this killer, because they knew they had just as much chance of being picked off by him as the next man. The Sniper didn’t care who he killed. So far there had been a van driver, filling up his vehicle on a busy petrol station forecourt in Sandyhills, which is why the Press had dubbed the killer the ‘Sandyhills Sniper’ even though he shot people from all corners of the city. Next, a middle-aged business woman in a trouser suit was gunned down walking home from work during the evening rush hour, closely followed by a young guy shot from his bike while he pedalled down the middle of the street on his way to get his exam results; straight As of course, the Press loved that bit and now this, a fourth victim in ten days; a poor, harmless bloke out for a stroll in the park on a Sunday afternoon.

Thank God they had McGregor on the case. Narey’s boss, legendary Detective Chief Inspector Robert McGregor already had a theory. He reckoned the perpetrator was copying the Beltway Sniper attacks of 2002, when thirteen luckless souls were gunned down randomly in Washington and Virginia by a nut job called John Allen Muhammad. ‘We’ve definitely got ourselves a copycat,’ DCI McGregor told a room packed with detectives, who were hanging on his every word, shortly after the second murder victim was positively identified.

At least the brass had been sensible enough to put their top man on it, temporarily commandeering McGregor from his duties looking into Glasgow’s gangland killings. Everyone knew McGregor would want this case. He may have been brought back to his native city to tackle the gangs, following a stint breaking up firms in London, but he would relish being reassigned until this one was cleared up, ‘And cleared up it shall be,’ he assured the officers in the briefing room.

Now here he was, striding purposefully down the hill towards them. Trust McGregor to get here before the SOCOs, his entourage of medium-ranking detectives trying and failing to keep up with him; tall, strong, powerful, his trade-mark, long, dark raincoat flapping behind him in the breeze. No wonder the tabloids called him ‘The Caped Crusader’.

As McGregor drew closer, Narey straightened until he was almost at attention. There was something the guvnor possessed that made you strive to do a good job for him, almost made you want to be a better man after you’d been in his vicinity. Narey supposed that was called leadership. McGregor wasn’t like other senior officers. All they worried about was managing their own careers but it was obvious McGregor cared passionately about the job and he had an incredible instinct. People said he could think like a gangster and was hard enough to take them down himself, being unafraid to get his hands dirty or his knuckles skinned. The stories about him were legendary. What man in the force wouldn’t respect that in a boss?

DCI McGregor drew alongside Narey, his burly frame almost blocking out the light. Some of the detectives were out of breath from the yomp across the park but McGregor looked like he’d just stepped from his car.

‘Jason,’ he said, ‘how’s the family?’ There was warmth in the question and it caught the younger man by surprise. After all, there were surely bigger priorities.

‘Good, thanks boss,’ a quadruple murder on his hands and McGregor still had time to ask after his well-being, amazing. Frankly he was astounded the guvnor could even remember his name, let alone the fact that he had a family.

‘How old’s your little girl? Eight?’

‘Yeah, she is,’ beamed Narey, ‘you’ve got a good memory boss.’ McGregor was probably able to recall the name and age of the kids of every man in CID.

‘My advice? Enjoy the next five or six years before she starts running you ragged. Now,’ he commanded, as if suddenly remembering they were all there for a reason, ‘lead the way.’

I’d be proud to, thought Narey but he managed to avoid saying it, instead he said ‘Mind how you go there, Sir. It’s a bit slippy,’ but DCI McGregor was already clambering down the grassy bank towards the victim.

‘Beat the SOCOs to it, did we?’ McGregor snorted. ‘Probably still struggling into their little white gimp outfits,’ and there were chuckles at that. ‘Let’s take a look at this body shall we? Don’t worry, I won’t
touch
anything,’ he added, his tone drippingly ironic, as if they thought he might start frisking the corpse. This attitude would never have been tolerated in any other officer but McGregor would get away with it, as he always did.

They stopped a few yards from the body and the whole party waited patiently for McGregor to take a look, then deliver his verdict. He didn’t disappoint. ‘A middle-aged bloke out on his own walking in the park,’ he began, speaking softly, as if to himself, ‘is he dodgy, I wonder? We should check that. Just because he’s unlucky enough to become the latest victim of the Sandyhills Sniper doesn’t mean he wasn’t out here looking for kiddies to fiddle with, leaving a trail of Werther’s Originals right up to the back seat of his Rover 75.’ They all laughed lightly at the chief’s gallows humour. ‘But I doubt it. I think we’ll find this poor fucker is probably divorced, not his idea either, and it wasn’t his weekend with the kids. He probably didn’t know what to do with himself until it was time to go to his local.’

Narey hadn’t thought of it like that but, all of a sudden, it seemed to fit. The boss had painted a vivid and believable picture of the victim, based on little more than a glance, and Narey found himself trusting in it unreservedly. Why else would a man be wandering in the park on his own, unless he was missing his kids?

DCI McGregor pointed at a scrunched up, brown paper bag at the victim’s feet that Narey hadn’t even noticed. ‘He dropped that when the bullet hit him. It’s empty, which shows he’s respectable, old fashioned, wouldn’t dream of littering the place with the bag that contained the bread he was using to feed the ducks.’

It was quite a forlorn image really, if the guvnor was right. Some poor sod whose life fell apart when his wife kicked him out, reduced to plodding through the park, making friends with the local bird life. ‘I wonder if he had a dog?’ mused the DCI, ‘might be worth checking the park to see if one ran off when the shot was fired, which brings me to the angle….’ He left the sentence unfinished, instead bending down to examine the bullet wound, peering closely at the obscene hole in the socket where the eyeball used to be. He looked like a golfer surveying a particularly tricky putt on the eighteenth green at St Andrews. McGregor rose and went round the back to check the exit wound and he took a long, hard look. He retraced his steps and went down low again, resuming the golfer’s stance as he looked once more into the bloodied eye socket, then he turned his head to look behind him.

‘So many possibilities; office blocks with flat roofs, those new apartments and the tenements,’ McGregor turned back to the corpse, as if checking something, then faced forwards once again, ‘but I don’t think so,’ he bit down on his lower lip while he was thinking, ‘beyond them, those tall high-rise blocks way back there. What do you think Peter?’

DI Peter Blaine at least had the balls to offer a half-hearted contradiction, ‘Not sure about that boss,’ he offered quietly, ‘looks a bloody long way from there to here.’

‘Could be out of range but I bet you a pint and a chaser that it isn’t.’ The disagreement was amiable enough. McGregor wasn’t the sort to make his officers look bad in public. ‘There are rifles these days that can take a man out from a thousand yards. I’d say it’s almost out of range, but not quite. Not for someone who’s had training, a veteran, Iraq or Afghanistan maybe.’ That was one of the theories they’d all been working to; that some unhinged former member of the armed forces, scarred by his war experience, had gone postal. Not that they were making that theory public, for fear of the backlash from the Press. ‘We should check those balconies,’ McGregor continued, ‘see if he left anything behind. You never know.’

‘Yes Guv,’ answered Blaine.

Narey stared at the three high-rise buildings McGregor had indicated. They were set back a long way from the crime scene, but they were still tall enough to tower over the park, affording a perfect vantage point of the bench. It would have been a simple enough matter to fire a shot, then disappear before anyone noticed. Narey didn’t know about rifles with a thousand-yard range but believed his boss knew what he was talking about. One thing he did know however; in those flats, the chances of anyone cooperating with the ‘Polis’ was next to zero, no matter what the crime.

McGregor glanced back at the victim, looked up again at each of the three high-rises in turn and squinted, then he rose slowly to his feet. ‘Gentlemen, I think you will find that the fatal shot came from there,’ he said, pointing at the block of flats to their left. Narey didn’t turn away from McGregor, which was just as well or he would have missed what happened next. There was a distant, muffled crack and Narey flinched as something zipped past his left ear.

Before anyone could move, the bullet caught DCI McGregor flush in the centre of his chest. He was catapulted backwards and a thick clot of blood expelled from his mouth as he gasped at the impact.

Narey looked down at his guvnor’s body. McGregor had landed on his backside, his body propped against the park bench, head slumped against the last victim’s knee, eyes wide open, a look of complete shock on his lifeless face, the trademark black raincoat puddling around him in the mud. ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ someone shouted, and then all hell broke loose.

.......................

Newcastle – one year later

T
he legendary Peter Dean, appropriately enough for a porn baron, had gone down in the world. He looked up from the chipped basin he’d been spitting into, at the end of another spectacular coughing fit, and took in his tired, lined face in the old bathroom mirror. He stared at the unwashed greying-brown hair and squinted at the mercilessly receding hairline that was cutting a swathe over the top of his head. ‘Christ almighty,’ he murmured at the bald patches, wondering again if it was too late for a hair transplant at his age. He noticed his sallow complexion and sunken, watery eyes, ‘too many fags,’ he concluded gloomily, then immediately reached into his pocket for another one, struck a match several times with shaking hands and eventually lit it. Dean took a rejuvenating drag, then exhaled, deliberately blowing smoke at the mirror until his image was obscured.

He ambled back into the lounge of the one-bedroom-flat he called both home and office and sat down on the ancient battered armchair, attempting to ignore the cold by folding his arms across his chest. He was trying to avoid spending money on luxuries like heating, and he wondered whether he should put on a second pullover, while telling himself for the thousandth time that it would all work out somehow.

It hadn’t always been like this. There was a time when he and Bobby Mahoney had made good money from his little film production studio; a lot of money in fact. But that was when Bobby was still a wannabe gangster, making his way in the world with a little armed robbery there, some protection here, a bit of grass and a few whores on the side, before he went on to run the entire city. In Newcastle, back in the late seventies, Peter had been a player and, hard as it might be to imagine it now, was once on an almost equal footing with the man who went on to control Tyneside’s biggest criminal organisation. Back then, Peter was the go-to guy for all manner of adult material.