She could have been my downfall, and no mistake. Her grandfather is from the Dark Side, so dark that when the local villains in Dundee mention Darth Vader, they ain’t talking about the black sheep of the Skywalker family, or Sammy Pye’s secret father as a CID in-joke has it. She and I got together for all the wrong reasons, lust on my part, the fact that I’m a cop on hers. She kept her background from me and when she walked out the door one time, she might have been carrying the corpse of my career on her shield.
But she came back, remorseful, and when she did, I found that I couldn’t slam that door in her face. I’ve told her that if she ever lies to me again, that’ll be it, we’ll be finished. I was so firm about that, I almost believed it myself. The truth is that she has a hold over me. I love her. She says she feels the same about me, and I do believe that. We don’t discuss the future, we don’t think about it. We have what we have and that’s cool.
She’s the spawn of one of those families from hell, product of a relationship between the jailbait teenager that became her mum and a guy who really should have known better and is probably now part of the foundations of a choice property on Tayside. Her grandfather has been in the dock, in a situation where the wrong outcome would have seen him in jail for most of the rest of his life. He isn’t, because when it came down to it his resources were greater than those of the hapless cops who tried to put him away, and indeed because his assets included a couple of their colleagues.
Grandpa McCullough is retired from all that now. He’s a legitimate businessman whose interests are property and leisure. That’s what he says, and I tend to accept it as fact, because since Andy Martin became head of the Serious Crimes Agency, every time Grandpa takes a shit, that organisation is likely to know about it.
However, straight or not, I have nothing to do with him. That is a given between Cheeky and me. I will never go home to Dundee with her and I will never meet him. . unless on some inconceivable occasion in the future I go to arrest him. That’s the one thing that the chief made me promise when I told him that if I was forced to choose between her and the job, she would win.
And that’s why, when Cheeky came to me one night and told me that her grandfather had given her a message that he wanted me to pass on privately to Mr Skinner, I was more than a little doubtful.
‘What the hell’s this about, love?’ I asked her. ‘What’s he up to? What’s in it for him?’
‘I wanted to know those same three things myself,’ she told me. ‘He says that it’s something he heard from a guy in his health club, somebody who doesn’t know he’s out of the life and thought he’d be interested. He says that it’s a gesture of goodwill. . his words. . but that he doesn’t want anyone to know the source. He doesn’t even want you to mention his name to Mr Skinner, but to let him figure it out for himself.’
‘Jesus, Cheeky,’ I protested. ‘I can’t do that. If I get a tip I’m supposed to take it to Jack McGurk, or DI Stallings. The head of CID would fry my balls and eat them if I went over their heads, and his.’
‘I told him that too. He said that you’re only a sprog detective and that if you went through the usual channels they’d insist that you told them where the tip came from. He says that he can’t be seen to be an informant, and he only trusts Skinner to keep the secret.’
‘I don’t know,’ I muttered, doubtfully. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think nothing. I’m an unwilling messenger girl, Sauce, that’s all. Of course you could always forget it. There would be no comeback.’
But I couldn’t forget it, could I, because I’m a cop, and I’d been given information about a possible crime. I could have gone by the book, indeed I almost did. It wasn’t Grandpa’s reputation that stopped me, it was Cheeky; I was taking enough flak about her from Jack as it was and I didn’t want him knowing about her involvement.
So I plucked up the courage, I called Gerry Crossley, and I asked to see the chief. He asked me why, but all I said was that it was for Mr Skinner’s ears only, and very confidential. I had visions of being back in uniform next morning, but that didn’t happen. The boss said he’d see me when I’d finished my shift.
When I told him my story, he sat stone-faced all the way through it, and for a couple of minutes after. ‘Let me get my head round this,’ he said, as the sweat began to trickle down the back of my neck. ‘Your mystery informant wants me to take all this on trust, and commit police time to an operation that might be a complete fucking smoke-screen for something else. That’s how it is?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t believe it is. If it was a con, the information wouldn’t have come to me in the way it did.’
He frowned. ‘Luckily for you, son, I don’t believe that either. I’ll pass your tip on to Mr McGuire myself, and I’ll tell him to put DI Stallings’ team on the investigation. Nobody will ask me to name my source. But I warn you,’ he growled, giving me a look that scared me, ‘if this goes pear-shaped, your girlfriend will be in big, big trouble, and that will just be for starters.’
And so the operation started, with my fingers tightly crossed that it would all be plain sailing, that we would all have a nice arrest on our records and a shed-load of potentially toxic ciggies would be taken out of circulation. It nearly worked out that way too, until the complication of Freddy bloody Welsh popped up.
‘The weather forecast’s nice for tomorrow and Sunday,’ Cheeky said, breaking a bread stick in half. ‘When do you want to start off?’
‘Ah well,’ I murmured. ‘We might have to change that plan. How do you fancy St Andrews instead?’
‘St Andrews?’ she repeated. ‘In July? God no. The place will be crawling with caravaners and golfers. We wouldn’t be able to move. No, I want to go west. What brought that on anyway? I thought you did too.’
‘I did. I do, but. .’ I paused. ‘Remember that message you gave me the other night?’
‘Of course. How could I not? Why? Did something come of it?’
I’d said nothing, as usual, and she hadn’t asked, as usual. ‘Did it ever,’ I told her. ‘We followed it up and a large bucket of shite hit a very big fan, in a way that nobody expected.’
I must have been looking even more mournful than usual, for her eyes creased and her smile appeared, the one that turns me into very spreadable butter. ‘And you’ve got to clean it up?’ she chuckled.
‘Not exactly,’ I replied. ‘You have.’
The laugh lines vanished in an instant. ‘Me?’
‘Only if you agree,’ I said, quickly and firmly, finding some of the balls that I’d been missing in the chief constable’s room. ‘If you don’t want to do this, you only have to say so, and it will not happen. I’ll understand and I won’t say another word about it. That’s a promise.’
‘Then you’d better tell me what it is.’
‘I’ve got a message for you,’ I replied. ‘From my boss; my Big Boss. He wants you to go back to your grandpa and ask him some questions.’
‘Such as?’ She seemed anxious, and for some reason that pleased me, made me happy that if there had been a set-up she hadn’t been in on it.
‘I need to know whether when he gave me that tip about Kenny Bass, he knew of the involvement of a man called Freddy Welsh. I need to know whether he knows Welsh himself, and even if he doesn’t, I need him to tell me everything he knows about him. Can you tell him that?’
I chose not to add the chief’s parting words: ‘Make sure she tells him that if he holds back on this, I’ll come up to Dundee myself and knock his fucking door down.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘How soon?’
‘As soon as possible.’
‘So that’s why Oban’s scrapped?’
I nodded.
‘Then maybe we can rescue it. We can drive up there first thing in the morning. I’ll drop you somewhere or other while I go and see him. Then I’ll come back and we’ll head off from there. It can be just as quick as going from Edinburgh.’ She looked me in the eye. ‘That’s the deal.’