Lethal Intent

Thirty-one

Willie Haggerty normally prided himself on his focus and his powers of concentration. Yet as he waited in the outer office of the Castle Street basement, listening to the secretary's fingers clattering on her keyboard, he found his mind wandering.

He had had his eye on the Dumfries and Galloway job for a while. It, or something like it, had definitely been part of his career plan. Yet now that the moment might be drawing near, and the finger of opportunity was being flexed, ready to point, he found himself strangely torn.

He had come to Edinburgh with mixed feelings, lured by Jimmy Proud and Bob Skinner, when his instincts had told him that he would find the place an alien environment after half a century of childhood, adolescence and an active police career in his bigger, and more dynamic native city.

And yet he had been proved wrong. He had enjoyed it from the start. The Edinburgh force was not small by Scottish standards, yet it was dwarfed by its monolithic Strathclyde neighbour, which was second in size in the UK only to the Met. Where he would have been struggling to know half the officers under his command in an ACC post in Glasgow, Haggerty had settled in far more quickly than he would have believed, and had built good working relationships with all the ranking men and women in the uniformed divisions that reported to him.

He had been looking forward to a couple of years more in post, before going for a top job, and so when the call had come from Geoff Dees, the Dumfries chief, giving him advance warning of his departure, he had struggled to sound enthusiastic at the pointed hint that went with it. Still, very few police officers enjoyed the opportunity that was before him now and he knew that he owed it to himself, and to his wife, to go for it.

He was mentally planning his tactics at the interview, when the door opposite him opened, and a middle-aged man, dressed in a check shirt and faded jeans, beckoned to him. The secretary carried on typing as if nobody else was in the room. 'Sorry to keep you waiting,' he said, without sounding as if he meant it. 'I'm Tom Herron, the director of this organisation. Come on in.' The man looked harassed, and Haggerty found himself wondering what had made him that way, as he followed him into his office. It was furnished as shabbily as its occupant was dressed; its barred windows faced out on to a tiny courtyard, above which the policeman could see the grey stone buildings on the other side of Castle Street.

'What would they call all these places if there was no bloody castle?' he asked aloud.

As they settled into their respective chairs, his host gave him a look that questioned his sanity. 'Pardon?'

'Ach, don't mind me,' said the ACC. 'It's just the Glaswegian in me. Thanks for agreeing to see me, Mr Herron.'

The man nodded; his manner was suspicious, if not hostile. 'I don't have much time,' he said, 'so let's get on with it. How can Refuge Scotland be of help to the police?'

'I hope we can be of help to each other. We live in a changing world, even in Scotland, and even in Edinburgh. It's important that we keep up with events, so that our policing strategies are always relevant to the actual needs of the community.'

'Very praiseworthy, I'm sure, Mr Haggerty, but what does that actually mean?'

'Boiled down, it means that we need to know what's going on, all the time.'

Herron swung round in his wooden swivel chair; it was old, and it squeaked. 'I see, so I guessed right: this is a spying mission.'

'Not at all!' Haggerty protested. 'Why the hell are you folk in the voluntary sector always antagonistic towards the police?'

'Long experience.' The man pointed to the pile of papers on his desk. 'See that lot? A significant amount of that correspondence involves complaints against the police, or other public authorities. Asylum-seekers in this country are hustled around from pillar to post. Do you know that you can't seek asylum in Scotland any more? You have to go to Liverpool to do it, but the government won't help with your travel costs. That's one reason why organisations like mine exist.'

'You've heard this before, I'm sure,' the ACC retorted, 'but we don't make the law, we just enforce it. I'm not aware of a significant number of complaints against our force. Give me some examples.'

Herron bridled. 'Okay, let's look at people arrested on suspicion of theft. They're held in custody for hours, often for far longer than they should be.'

'I'm sorry, not often. We've had seven cases in the last year of asylum-seekers being arrested on suspicion of shop-lifting or other petty thefts… that's seven among many hundreds. If anyone was held for longer than normal it was because an interpreter was needed… an interpreter whose costs are met by the police service. I'm sorry, I'm not going to buy that one. I'm not here to antagonise or persecute anyone. I just want to pick your brains about what's going on out there.'

'Couldn't the Home Office tell you?'

'Do you trust information from the Home Office?'

The director swung back to face him, smiling for the first time. 'Touche,' he said. 'Okay, pick away.'

'Thanks. I know that we have fewer asylum-seekers than they do in the west of Scotland, but we still have some arriving here. I'm interested in where they're coming from.'

Herron shrugged. 'My information is that most of them are from the sub-continent and Afghanistan. We have a well-established Asian community in the Edinburgh area, and it's natural that they should be drawn to cultures similar to their own. There are Iraqis, of course; Saddam drove a fifth of his population into exile, and they haven't all gone home. There are quite a few Turks as well; in fact, in Glasgow there are more Turkish refugees than from any other ethnic group. Then there are Somalis, Congolese, and people from several other African nations.'

'How about the Balkans?'

'It's got a lot quieter there in recent years. We took a quota of Kosovars during the crisis, as you know, but most of them have been repatriated since the fall of Milosevic'

'Albanians?'

'The Kosovars were ethnic Albanians.'

'I know, but I mean home-based Albanians.'

'They're negligible in Scotland as far as I know. There are some economic refugees from Albania, of course: it's a very poor country unless you're part of its Mafia. But as far as I know, most of them head for Germany.'

'Are there any here that you know of?'

'I don't know of any specifically, but if you ask some of the other charities, or even the local social-work department, they might be able to tell you. In any event, there won't be enough of them to require a separate strategy on your behalf.'

'So any that did show up here would tend to stand out?'

'I suppose they would, unless they blended with the Kosovars who are still here, or with another ethnic grouping; the Turkish community would be the likeliest, I'd say.'

'Mmm,' said Haggerty. 'That's very useful, thanks. I won't take up any more of your time.' He stood, watching his host raise himself carefully from his unstable chair.

'There's one thing I forgot to ask,' Herron murmured, as they moved towards the door. 'What is your rank, Mr Haggerty?'

'I'm an assistant chief constable.'

The director stopped and looked at him. 'That either makes you a very unusual copper,' he said, 'or it revives all of my suspicions about your visit. I've been around the police for quite a few years now, and I've had a few of your colleagues in this office. None of them ranked higher than sergeant. I've never known an ACC who did his own leg-work, and certainly not for a piece of routine fact-finding.'