04-Mothers of the Disappeared Read Free Page A

the chest finally put him out of his misery.
    I still believed, even if others didn’t, that Ernie hadn’t switched sides. That he’d had some grander purpose. That he hadn’t died uncertain of who he was, of who he stood for.
    Sandy was asking me to walk that same line. More than that, he was asking me to betray every principle I had ever claimed to have.
    ‘I don’t want to do this, man. But I’m down to my last hand. You’re my ace.’
    ‘Let me think about it. Jesus fuck, just give me a moment to …’
    ‘Sure, a moment.’ Griggs stood up. His coffee wasn’t even half-finished. ‘You know where I am. Just don’t take too long, huh?’

THREE
    I spent the afternoon making phone calls. Calling in what few favours I could. Shaking proverbial trees. Trying to get some idea of just how badly I was being fucked.
    Nobody wanted to talk to me. Told me just about everything I needed to know.
    Three o’clock got me a phone call from Cameron Connelly at the
Dundee Herald
. Playing the concern-for-a-friend card, but just beneath the genuine worry, I could hear his reporter’s instincts angling for a story. If he was calling me, it meant his colleagues were already sniffing blood, and he wanted to beat them to the exclusive.
    I said, ‘How long?’
    ‘They’re waiting for official sources to disclose the nature of the charges.’
    ‘How much do you know? Off the record, of course.’
    ‘About what I knew before. Except the spin is different. Someone’s trying to make this about your incompetence.’
    ‘That how you’ll report it?’
    ‘I’ll report the facts. You’ll have right of reply. But I don’t want to run this if it’s simply a vendetta, know what I’m saying?’
    ‘You’re all heart.’
    ‘Aye, it’s been said.’
    In those days, I had been angry. Recovering – slowly – from the accident that had left me ready to lash out at the whole world. When I wound up caught in the middle of Burns’s and Egg’s little turf war, I focused my anger on two of Egg’s thugs. Convinced there was no other option. Ask me today, I think things went the only way they could. Given who they were. Given who I was. Anyone trying to spin me as a have-a-go hero or a mindless thug was grinding their own axe.
    The only witness to what happened that evening – the thug who survived – refused to talk to the police, to confirm or deny my story. Took the whole ‘honour amongst crooks’ bit dead serious. Dead being the operative word when he wound up knifed in prison just a few months later. The work of David Burns. He might as well have left his signature at the scene. But of course, even if everyone knew he had been behind the death, no one could prove it in a court of law.
    So that left me. The only one who knew the truth. I had acted in self-defence. The gun was not mine.
    So the questions became,
Why now?
Who was re-opening the investigation?
    ‘Look, this just fell in my lap.’
    ‘From where?’
    ‘Talk.’
    ‘Come on!’
    Connelly sucked in a sharp breath on the other end of the line. ‘Just talk, man. Words. Here and there. I know someone who’s been hearing the whispers. What I can gather is that the word came in from an anonymous source. And given your recent relationship with the force, I guess they’d be more than inclined to look for ways to burn you.’
    It was a fair point. I’d exposed one of their top cops as a corrupt arsehole playing both sides against the middle. I’d made enemies of the personal and political persuasions. And a number of coppers still thought I’d fitted up Kevin Wood. Refused to believe the evidence that their own Discipline and Complaints department had amassed against the deceased former deputy chief constable.
    I wasn’t about to get any answers from the force. And seeking answers from the ABI or any of my private contacts was a dead end. Connelly wasn’t about to give me his source, and the way he told it, so far he was the only reporter aware of what was going