Pray for the Dying

Twelve

‘So you’re the armourer,’ ACC Mario McGuire said to the man who faced him across the table in the Livingston police office. There was nobody else in the interview room.

Freddy Welsh was a big man, one with ‘Don’t cross me’ in his eyes, but someone had. There was a deep blue bruise in the middle of his forehead and his right hand was bandaged. For all that, he still looked formidable. ‘I don’t recognise that name,’ he murmured.

‘Maybe not, but it seems that other people do. People like Beram Cohen.’

‘Never heard of him.’

McGuire leaned back and sighed. ‘Look, Mr Welsh, can we stop playing this game? You’ve never been in police custody before, so I appreciate you’re only doing what you’ve seen on the telly, but really it’s not like that. There’s no recording going on here.

‘You’ve already been charged with illegal possession of a large quantity of weapons. We have the gun that was used in last night’s murder in Glasgow, and we are in the process of proving beyond any doubt that it came from the crate that was found yesterday afternoon in your store. You can take it that we will do that, and as soon as we do, the Crown Office will have a decision to make.’

‘And what would that be?’ Welsh asked.

‘Are you really that naive, man?’ McGuire laughed. ‘Do I have to spell it out? The kill team that executed Toni Field are all dead.’

The prisoner’s eyelids flickered rapidly. He licked his lips.

‘You didn’t know that?’ his interrogator exclaimed.

Welsh shook his head. ‘I’ve been locked up since last night, and I wasn’t offered my choice of newspaper with breakfast this morning. How would I know anything? I don’t even know who this bloke Tony Field is, or how Glasgow comes into it.’

‘Antonia Field,’ McGuire corrected. ‘The Chief Constable of Strathclyde. She was the victim. Your customer, Mr Smit, put three rounds through her head. You told my colleague Mr Skinner it was a woman he and Botha were after, and you were right.’

The other man frowned, as he took in the information. McGuire had assumed that he knew at least some of it, but it was clear to him that he had been wrong. ‘And they’re dead?’ he said.

The ACC nodded in confirmation. ‘Yeah. Cohen, the planner, the team leader, he died of natural causes, a brain haemorrhage, but you knew that much. As for the other two, Mr Skinner and the other man you met,’ as he spoke he saw the shadow of a bad memory cross Welsh’s face, ‘arrived on the scene too late to save Chief Constable Field, but they did come face to face with Smit and Botha as they tried to escape, over the bodies of two other police officers they’d just taken down. They were offered resistance and they shot them both dead.’

The armourer started to tremble. McGuire liked that. ‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘dead. It’s one thing being the supplier, Freddy, isn’t it? You’ve been doing that for donkey’s years, supplying the weapons to all sorts, but never being anywhere near them when the trigger was pulled. Not like that here, though. You’re too close this time, and it’s scary. Isn’t it?’

He reached into his pocket and pulled out two photographs and laid them in the table. One showed the body of Antonia Field, the other that of Smit.

‘Go on, take a good look,’ he urged. ‘That leaky grey stuff, that’s brain matter. Awful, isn’t it?’

Welsh pushed them back towards him.

‘You don’t like reality, do you?’ he said. ‘It’s not good to be that close.’ He leaned forward again. ‘Well, you are, and far closer than you realise. That woman, her whose photo I’ve just shown you, when that was done to her, my wife,’ his voice became quieter, and something came into it that had not been there before, ‘my heavily pregnant wife, was in the very next seat. When I got her home last night she was in a crime scene tunic that Strathclyde Police gave her, because the clothes she’d been wearing before had Toni Field’s blood and brains splattered all over them, and she couldn’t get out of them fast enough.’

He stopped, then reached a massive hand across the desk, seized Welsh’s chin and forced him to meet his gaze.

‘So far I know of four people who I hold responsible for that, Freddy. You are the only one left alive, and that puts you right in it, because now only you can tell me who commissioned this outrage. And you will tell me.’ He laughed, as he released Welsh from his grasp.

‘You know, Bob Skinner suggested that if you didn’t cooperate, I should get the MI5 guy here to persuade you. But I don’t actually need him. He’s just a spook with a gun, whereas I am a husband who’s going to wake up in cold sweats, for longer than I can see ahead, at the thought of what might have happened to my Paula and our baby if that sight you supplied with your Heckler and fucking Koch carbine had been just a wee bit out of alignment.

‘I’ve been playing it cool up to now, because Paula’s amazingly calm about it and I want to keep her that way, but that’s been a front. Inside I’ve been raging from the moment it happened. Now I can finally let it out. You’re a big guy, but you’re not tough. There’s a hell of a difference. I’m probably going to beat the crap out of you anyway, but what you have to tell me may determine when I stop.’

He sprang from his seat and started round the table.