Pray for the Dying

Thirty-Five

‘In my office, please, Dan,’ Lottie Mann said as she returned to the investigation suite.

‘Absolutely,’ Provan muttered, but too quietly for her to hear, and he rose from his seat and followed her into a small room at the end of the open area.

‘See that friend of yours in CTIS?’ she began, without preamble. ‘Whoever he is, you’d better warn him that where he works careless talk costs lives, and in this case it’s his that’s on the line. On Toni Field’s watch there would probably have been a leak inquiry over what he told you. There won’t be this time, but probably only because Skinner likes you too much to use a nutcracker to get the name out of you.

‘We are not to follow up what you were told. Instead we’re to wrap up Bazza’s murder, pass the file to the fiscal and mark it case closed, then get on with the main investigation, which is still, unlike Field, very much alive. That’s the way it is, Dan. You are from Barcelona. You know nussing.’

‘Ye’ve got the accent wrong,’ the DS said. ‘Ah’m old enough to have seen Fawlty Towers when it wis new. Unfortunately, Lottie, Ah don’t know nothin’. In fact, Ah know too fuckin’ much.’

‘Oh, I know that,’ she laughed. ‘Too much for your own good.’

‘No, love,’ he sighed, ‘for yours.’

She stared at him. ‘What are you on about, Detective Sergeant? Can we just keep up the pretence that I’m your senior officer?’

‘No, we can’t.’

Her eyes narrowed. A spasm of something strange ran through her, and she realised that it was fear. ‘Dan,’ she murmured, ‘what is this?’

‘This, Lottie, is me doin’ something Ah shouldn’t. By rights Ah shouldn’t be talking to you alone. There should be a senior officer in this room right now, probably the chief constable himself. There isn’t, because Ah care about you, lassie, and I want you to know about this from me, first. This might have to be another of those conversations that never happened, like mine with Alec in CTIS, but this is a hell of a lot more serious.’

He reached across her desk and switched on her computer; it was an old-fashioned tower type, probably on its last legs, and took an inordinate length of time to boot up.

‘Dan,’ she said once more, as they waited, but he hushed her, with a finger to his lips.

‘They store the CCTV recordings on DVDs,’ he told her, as he loaded a disk on to the computer’s player tray, and slid it into position, then settled into the DI’s chair so that he could control playback.

‘I started at the end, like Ah said,’ he began. She looked at the screen and saw a still image of an empty car park, and with numerals in the bottom right corner. ‘These things can hold eight hours at a time,’ he explained. ‘They have a bank of recorders tae cover the whole park. When one disk gets full, another starts, so it’s constant. Ah thought I’d have to go a’ the way back tae seven, but. .’

He clicked a rewind icon, three times; the image began to move, as did the time read-out, fast, backwards. Provan’s finger hovered above the mouse until the clock showed seven twenty-eight, when he clicked again, freezing the recording once more.

‘Ah nearly missed this first time. Watch.’ He clicked on the ‘Play’ arrow and the images started to move.

Mann peered at the screen. The park was almost as empty as it had been before; only a few cars remained. Then she saw a silver saloon roll into view, moving jerkily, for the camera was set to shoot only a few frames per second. It came to a stop and as it did so, a figure walked towards it, his speed enhanced. He was carrying a large parcel. She could just make out a face in the front passenger seat, and a hand, beckoning.

‘Bazza,’ Provan murmured. ‘Now see what happens.’

The man she took to be Brown opened the rear door, slid into the back seat, and closed it behind him. Everything was still for a few seconds. Then she saw what seemed to be three flashes, inside the Peugeot, as if someone was sending a Morse message with a torch. Immediately afterwards, the car zoomed off, at high speed.

‘That was the execution of Bazza Brown,’ the DS said.

‘No doubt about it,’ his DI agreed. ‘So?’

‘So, what was wrong with that picture?’

‘Enlighten me,’ she growled. ‘Stop playin’ games, Dan.’

‘This is no game, kid. The parcel.’ He emphasised the word. ‘Where did Brown get the fuckin’ parcel? Cec never mentioned that. As far as he was concerned he was takin’ his brother to meet a bit on the side. And what was in it? Did he take her chocolates? If he did, it’s the biggest box of Black Magic Ah’ve ever seen.’

‘True,’ she murmured. That cold feeling revisited the pit of her stomach. Her old crony was taking her somewhere, and she had a bad feeling about their destination.

‘Then there was the time,’ the DS continued. ‘Bazza wanted to be there for seven, yet the South Africans never turned up for another half hour. So Ah ran the recording back to the time Cec told us, like this.’ He rewound once more, stopping at six fifty-eight, with a large black car in shot, near to where the Peugeot had pulled up.

Provan let the recording go forward, and Mann saw Bazza Brown step out of his brother’s Chrysler, and into the last half hour of his life. He went nowhere, but stood his ground, pacing up and down, waiting, as Cec drove away.

And then a door opened; it was set in the side of a large warehouse building at the top of the frame. A figure stepped out. He was carrying a large parcel, and he walked towards Brown. There was no handshake between the two, barely a glance exchanged, it seemed, as the bundle was handed over. The second man seemed about to turn on his heel, when Provan froze the screen.

‘I need you to confirm, ma’am,’ he said, ‘that the man with Brown is who I think he is.’

Standing behind him, Lottie leaned over and grasped his shoulder, and the corner of the desk, for support.

‘Oh no,’ she moaned. ‘Oh my God, no. You know it is, Danny. You know it’s my Scott.’

The sergeant let out a sigh that seemed bigger than he was. ‘Ah’ve never wished in ma life before,’ he murmured, ‘that Ah wasnae a cop. But I do now, so that somebody else could be doin’ this.’

He stood, and gave her back her own chair. Then he went to the door, opened it and beckoned to Banjo Paterson, who crossed the office and joined them.

‘Detective Inspector,’ Provan announced, his accent vanishing in the formality of his voice, ‘in view of what we’ve just seen, and what you’ve confirmed, in spite of my subordinate rank I have got no choice but to ask you to remain here with DC Paterson while I take this matter to senior officers.’