Thursday legends

19

'Ahh bugger it, I hate this sort of job!' Mario McGuire shouted in sudden frustration, leaning back in his chair, right fist punching upwards towards the ceiling. 'My wife can sit with piles of case folders, going through them for hour after hour like this, looking for linking factors. I don't have her sort of patience. I suppose that's why she's a DCI and I'm only a poor bloody Inspector.'

'With prospects,' said Stevie Steele.

'Aye, unless I get too good at this job and wind up stuck here like poor old Alec' He stood up, walked to a small desk in the corner of the room, and switched on an electric kettle. 'Time for a caffeine fix.' The Sergeant watched as he mixed two mugs of Alta Rica coffee, added a dash of milk to each and brought them across to the table at which they had been working.

'Right,' he said. 'We're about a third of the way through working backwards; we've eliminated the obvious no users — which is most of them — and set aside our prospects. Let's see what we've got. You go first, Stevie.'

'Okay' The Sergeant laid down his coffee and picked up a folder. 'In here are Angus Morrison, date of birth June 28, 1954, and Wendy Forrest, bora April 4, 1959. He was a bus driver, she was a low-grade civil servant. They lived together at an address in Lasswade. They were founder members — as far as I can see the only members — of something called the Scottish Republican movement. They were jailed in September 1991 for twelve years each after conviction at the High Court in Edinburgh for possession of gelignite and attempting to blow up an electricity pylon in Midlothian.

'According to Alec's file, they were observed every step of the way. SB officers watched them lay their explosives then lifted them before they could set them off.

'How about them?' he asked. 'They should be out by now, with remission.'

McGuire hunched his shoulders and took a sip of the strong coffee. 'Good trick if it was Wendy Forrest. She hanged herself in her cell in Cornton Vale in 1995. Gus Morrison's another matter, though. He was paroled in 1998. From what I remember of that file, she reads like a poor wee mouse, but he was a real nasty bastard.'

Steele nodded. 'That's what it says right enough. It says also Alec Smith and another SB officer gave evidence against them in camera; but DCI Smith notes on the file that Morrison got a good look at them all in the witness box. Where will Morrison be now, d'you think?'

'He's not under my eye yet, I can tell you that. He's out on parole, so the probation service will have him under supervision. We'll check with them. Who's next?'

'Lawrence Scotland. Date of Birth January 7, 1961, unmarried, lives in Gilmerton. Usually unemployed in the past, but a known associate of criminals, most notably one Tony Manson. According to this, Scotland was a known contact of the Ulster Volunteer Force, and was suspected of killing several Catholics in Northern Ireland during the 1980s. He was under SB surveillance, but became aware of this. In 1990 he slipped his watchers and disappeared for several weeks. There were sightings of him in Ireland during this period, which coincided also with a spate of assassinations of senior Provisional IRA figures in Armagh.

'Scotland doesn't seem to have been convicted of anything. There's a note on the file by DCI Smith; all it says is "Interviewed, December 2, 1990," nothing else, but there are no reports of activity after that.'

McGuire grunted. 'I'm not surprised.'

'Why not?'

The Inspector looked at his colleague, unblinking. 'I've got a DC on my strength called Tommy Gavigan. He's been in SB for years, can't go anywhere else. I spoke to him on Sunday, just the two of us, asking for anything he knew about Alec that wasn't on the files. He told me about that "interview".

'He and Alec picked Scotland up at six in the morning; they drove him up into the Pentlands, to the part the army uses, where no-one else goes. They got the boy out of the car and walked him up the hill. Then Alec took out a revolver. He took out one bullet, showed it to him so he'd know it wasn't blank, loaded it, spun the chamber, put it to Scotland's head and pulled the trigger. The guy fainted.

'Alec kicked him in the ribs to bring him round and stood him up. He loaded another bullet, spun the chamber again, pointed the gun right at the middle of his forehead and pulled the trigger. Scotland shat himself and dropped to his knees, crying like a baby.

'Alec looked down at him and said, "Next time, Lawrence, there'll be six bullets in the fucking gun." Then he and Gavigan just walked off and left him there, squatting in his own shit.'

Steele's mouth hung open in amazement. 'How did Smith manage to make sure that the hammer hit an empty chamber?'

'He didn't.' 'You mean…'

'Five to one against first time, two to one the second; if Scotland had lost the bet, they'd have left him there and the Army would have buried him.'

'Just like that?'

'Just like that. The guy was believed to have killed at least ten people and he was thumbing his nose at us.' 'But…'

'Either way, he never did it again. Gavigan's been keeping an occasional eye on him. Does the file say where he is now?'

'Still in Pilton. He's got a job now; he's been with Guardian Security since 1995.'

'Guardian? Jesus! And that dopey old bastard Tommy never thought to tell me.'

'Maybe he didn't know that Smith had gone there.'

'Maybe not indeed,' the DI conceded. 'Alec never told him things; he just told him to do things.'

'What else have you got?'

'One more. Shakir Basra, date of birth not known, but believed to be around 1950, resided in Little France. An Iranian who wangled political asylum after the Shah fell; he was kept under surveillance here after he moved up from London. The main thing about him was that he was suspected of sexually abusing children, and of several child murders in London. He was never charged there but, according to the file, SB actually had a photo of him with an eight-year-old boy who was found raped and murdered near Craigmillar Castle in 1994. It's missing from the folder, though; the file stops just after that time with a handwritten note by Alec Smith, saying, "Left the District". Doesn't say where he went.'

'Forget him. Gavigan told me that story too. Basra's dead.'

Steele's face twisted with incredulity. 'He's not up the fucking Pentlands, is he?' he gasped.

'No, no, no, Alec wouldn't have dirtied his hands on that one. The fact is, there's a real Iranian dissident group in Edinburgh; they're just political activists mostly, but there are one or two real hard men among them. We know all about them, and they're smart enough to know about us. Alec went to see them; he gave them the photo, plus one of the kid's body, and he told them all about Basra.

'They took him away one night, executed him, Islamic-style, and let Alec know afterwards. They castrated him, then cut his head off with a sword and buried him, near where he killed the boy.'

'My God.' The young Sergeant looked distressed. 'What sort of a man was this Smith? Were there any more?'

'Not that Gavigan knew of. I sweated him a bit, but he swore blind that he was never involved in any other — what do we call it? — unofficial action. As to what sort of a man Alec was, he was a copper with the power to do what many others wish they could, and the strength of will to go through with it.'

'But he was a vigilante,' Steele protested.

'And an elder of his church when he lived in Pencaitland.' McGuire smiled at him, a dangerous, high-intensity grin. 'Have you never thumped anyone, Sergeant? Remember that guy who slashed Maggie's arm? She heard what you said to him when you had him on the floor, with your knee in the middle of his back. Something about cutting his fucking ears off, wasn't it?

'You were talking earlier on about what the Boss did to that big Russian. I know what he did; Dan Pringle told me. I'd have done much the same in his shoes, except I might have given him an extra kick in the balls, just for luck. Between you and me, I think the way Smith handled the Basra business was just bloody wonderful. You've seen the file; you know what he did to that kiddie. The London murders were exactly the same. The man was an animal. Good for Alec on that one.' 'But still…'

'Aye, I know. You could argue that sometimes the real strength lies in not using your power. But that man Basra deserved to be in the ground. As for Lawrence Scotland, ask yourself this? How many lives did Alec save when he put the fear of God in that bloke?'

'Maybe, Mario. But maybe, too," the fear of God wore off and cost him his own life.'

'Let's find out. That's your lot, then?'

'Yes. What have you got?'

'Eff all… that I fancy at any rate. Let's work our way through the rest, although the further back in time we go, the less we'll get, I'm sure. We'll do it though, report progress to Maggie and then take a real close look at Gus Morrison, and Lawrence Scotland.'