The Quiet Ones Read online

Just the hint of a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, and up close Alec could see he maybe wasn’t as old as he’d first thought. ‘Aye, Alec,’ he said, seemingly grateful for the crumbs of normality this bit of chit-chat offered. ‘I’d recognise you anywhere.’

  Alec felt like a shit, didn’t have a clue who this guy was. It was unlikely to be an informer or an ex-con calling him by his first name.

  The old boy helped him out. ‘It’s me.’ His voice quieter now. ‘Tommy.’

  ‘Oh, fuck.’ Alec slumped back against the shop window; something inside him seemed to drain and the shock caused a wave of nerves through his legs. ‘Tommy? Tommy Gallagher?’

  Tommy grinned as though he’d been given the best news of the day. ‘Aye. Big TG. Ye mind me now, don’t ye?’

  ‘Tommy, I’m so sorry. But…’ there was no way of dressing this up ‘… what the fuck happened to you?’

  *

  The chippy had a sit down area at the back. Formica tables familiar from both their childhoods nestled into booths with padded plastic backed benches. Alec tried not to breathe in the smell from Tommy. Tried instead to remember his old pal.

  They’d been part of the same crowd at school. Even shared a paper round back in the day. Tommy had been a good looking kid. Maybe not quite the school heartthrob, but the type of guy who’d been popular with the girls. He’d been good at football and had made them laugh. A winning combination for any teenage boy. Alec had envied him. Envied his easy going manner, the way he’d known just what to say when they’d passed a group of third year girls in the corridor.

  He looked at this old man across from him. Shit, Tommy wasn’t yet fifty and could easily have passed for seventy. The waitress plonked down the fish supper in front of Tommy, just a coffee for Alec. She hadn’t used a plate, instead left it in the bright yellow polystyrene box. Tommy didn’t seem to notice. Alec guessed she wouldn’t have served Tommy at all had he not been with him. Tommy licked his lips as the smell of the food wafted into his face.

  ‘Can I have a fork, please, hen?’ The waitress pointed to the metal container with paper napkins and cutlery poking out of the top. Tommy’s hands shook as he cut the fish with his knife and fork. The steam belching out from underneath the golden batter.

  ‘Your mum never let us eat chips with our fingers, remember?’ The memory brought a lump to Alec’s throat.

  ‘We had a laugh, though, eh?’ Tommy recounted the past without a trace of bitterness.

  ‘Aye, you were a good looking sod. Never short of a girlfriend.’ Alec was paying lip service to this trip down memory lane. In truth it broke his heart to even think about the kid who’d turned into this old man who was grateful that Alec remembered him. He wanted the small talk over, but gave Tommy the chance to get some hot food inside him.

  ‘Tommy, what happened?’

  Tommy wiped his face with the paper napkin, cleaning the last trace of the fish supper from the corners of his mouth. There was a dignity in that gesture that humbled Alec.

  ‘Och, just life, Alec. Life happened.’

  Alec wasn’t convinced. Life could have a way of throwing some curve balls and letting you down, but life had kicked the shit out of Tommy Gallagher and by the looks of it had kept on kicking. Alec eyed the waitress who brought over a mug of tea for Tommy and a plate of bread and butter. She must have softened slightly because it was a plain white mug. A chipped plain white mug, but at least she didn’t humiliate Tommy by making him drink out of a disposable cup.

  ‘Had a run of bad luck, that’s all.’

  Alec sat back, didn’t push him. The smell of the salty chips coming from the front counter was driving him insane, but he’d already claimed he wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to embarrass Tommy further. It was bad enough that the poor sod was sitting here, life laid bare, no chance to big up his part. He waited for him to continue.

  ‘Once my marriage broke up, I…’ Tommy scratched at the rim of his chipped mug, trying to join the dots of being a married man to being a down-and-out sleeping in shop doorways.

  ‘Hit you hard, did it?’

  Tommy nodded, but Alec guessed there was more to it than that. Otherwise it would be standing room only on skid row if every soured marriage ended up with someone on the streets.

  ‘My own fault, hit the bottle, lost my job, couldn’t pay my rent…’ Alec nodded. He knew this only too well. Hostels were littered with such stories. It was a terrifying thought how many people out there were only one month’s salary away from destitution.

  Alec looked at his watch, stood up to go. ‘Tommy, listen, I’m sorry but…’

  He smiled back at him. ‘That’s all right, Alec. It was decent of you to take the time. You didnae need to do that. I appreciate it. Thanks, pal.’

  The past gripped Alec’s throat; he was hardly able to speak. Opening his wallet, he took out what cash he had. Thirty quid. ‘Tommy, if you need anything.’

  Tommy reached out and accepted the notes. ‘You can see I’m in no position to turn this down.’

  Alec grabbed a napkin and scribbled his name and number on it. ‘I meant what I said, Tommy.’

  Tommy looked at the napkin and folded it neatly, placing it carefully deep inside his coat. ‘Thanks, pal.’ He shuffled out of the door and Alec watched him make his way towards Trongate, crossing at the lights, before being swallowed by the city.

  42

  Oonagh woke with the now familiar sickening pain creeping up her spine. Her T-shirt clung to her back, sticky with sweat, and the palpitations in her chest caught her breath. It wasn’t yet light outside, but she was scared to go back to sleep in case she had another nightmare: terrifying dreams full of screaming children. The tablets were doing nothing; if anything they made her dreams all the more vivid. She leaned across and took a sip of the water from the glass on her bedside table, noticing her hand trembling very slightly, but she felt marginally better knowing that last night, at least, she’d gone to bed after managing an entire day without any alcohol. The second time in less than a month. She pondered making a wee wall chart, giving herself a gold star for every booze free day.

  She got up and padded downstairs, it was almost seven and she had a shedload of work to do, so even without the threat of nightmares there was no point in trying to get back to sleep.

  Trying to piece everything together was sucking her further and further down a very dark and seedy wormhole. The coffee tasted bitter on the back of her throat, but was strong enough to ease the jitters that had threatened to engulf her earlier. There was no point in going in to the office; she could easily work from home and had everything she needed here.

  A huge whiteboard hung beside her desk. On it was scribbled as much information as she had. She’d scanned and copied everything onto two separate pen drives, with no hard copies of any of the documents; she’d given them back to Sarah Nugent.

  There was now a link between Harry Nugent and Graham Petrie: Petrie had signed off the council business warrants, which had enabled Nugent to launch Pitch Perfect with minimal business capital and even less experience. He’d also guaranteed his tender to supply most of the schools in the west coast of Scotland, which had soon amounted to a multimillion pound business. Petrie had clearly used his position at Breakmire to abuse the most vulnerable patients, who hadn’t had a voice. Oonagh knew the care of mental health patients was sketchy but this was criminal. As far as she knew the police hadn’t established the connection yet, but it would only be a matter of time. However, far from leading her to whoever killed them, it just opened the inquiry out further. This was all starting to make her feel sick and she was glad of the excuse to get out of the house, but guessed today’s meeting would do little to make her feel better.

  *

  She’d asked a lot of Hannah’s dad to sit on the information just now. This stank of a huge cover-up, but she needed more before they went in with guns blazing. The last time she’d seen Peter Gray had been on the seafront at Helensburgh; she’d left him t
hat day a broken man. And today he looked no better. If he’d felt he’d failed his dead daughter for all these years, Oonagh could only guess at what was going through his mind right now.

  ‘I want someone to pay for this. I want them to fucking suffer the way I’ve suffered.’ Peter Gray paced the floor. She’d initially worried he wouldn’t want to see her again. That she’d be the bearer of yet more bad news, but it had been him who’d contacted Oonagh, and asked her to come to his house. Hannah had been an only child, yet there wasn’t one picture of her that Oonagh could see in the house. It was as though Peter Gray was trying to obliterate the memory of his daughter.

  ‘This is driving me crazy. I’m actually out of my mind now.’

  ‘D’you have anything to help you sleep?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing works. I let her down. She told me all along this was happening and I didn’t believe her. Animals. Fucking monsters.’

  ‘Peter, I’ll make a programme on this. It’ll be part of a wider case of abuse at Breakmire, but you need a really good legal team on your side too.’ Oonagh knew that the programme would raise more questions than it answered. ‘But I want to leave Hannah’s name out of things.’

  He knotted his brows together.

  ‘I spoke with Hannah’s mum a few days ago…’

  ‘She spoke to you?’

  Oonagh nodded. ‘But only to say she doesn’t want to go public with this. I need to respect her wishes.’

  ‘What about what I want?’

  ‘Peter, you’re angry, and, believe me, I’m desperate to get this on air, but we can do it without using Hannah’s name.’

  He looked defeated and crossed his arms, hugging them tight across his body. ‘Aye. OK.’

  Hannah had been in Breakmire for less than a year. According to Peter she’d never had a boyfriend and had rarely gone out with her friends. She’d been too ill. But she’d been pregnant when she died. What Oonagh couldn’t work out was how the hell the Fiscal’s office had let that one go. A young, emotionally unstable girl got pregnant whilst in the care of the NHS and there wasn’t even an internal inquiry at the hospital.

  ‘Did you manage to get Hannah’s medical records at all? Or…’ Oonagh knew the answer before she even asked the question.

  ‘Not a chance. They’ve all been destroyed.’

  ‘You sure they’re not just not handing them over? After all, the post-mortem report was there.’

  He bit down on his lip, looked reluctant to say too much.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hannah’s mum, we don’t talk much, but she’s a clinical psychologist.’

  Oonagh didn’t want to rush him but needed to know what was going on here.

  ‘She’s been doing some work for the NHS recently and I asked her to check. Nothing. There’s nothing there that even suggests our beautiful daughter ever existed.’

  ‘Hardly surprising, Peter.’ It appeared the only documents pertaining to Breakmire were the records kept by Harry Nugent.

  ‘Did Hannah get any other visitors when she was there? Perhaps someone else she could have confided in?’

  ‘No. No one. Just us.’

  ‘This doesn’t mean we can’t do something, Peter.’ There was too much going on here. That familiar feeling of panic was starting to rise in Oonagh’s chest. ‘If you can trust me…’ Peter instinctively nodded his head. ‘I need to try to find someone, anyone, who was there. If we go in guns blazing, then it’ll be harder. They’ll close ranks. We’ll get nothing.’ It looked for now that Oonagh was his best bet to get answers as to what had really happened to his daughter.

  *

  Oonagh got home around seven. It had been dark since four and she was starting to feel that underlying melancholy that Scottish winters could bring. The never ending feeling of darkness. She didn’t have a clue where she was going with this, and didn’t know if she had enough left in her to cope. She thought of calling Alec. She needed someone to talk to, but he’d be the last person she’d be able to confide in about this. Alec was a copper first and a friend second. And anyway, he’d been decidedly ‘off’ with her the last few times they’d met. She also knew that if he got wind of what she knew, he’d issue a warrant to obtain all the information she had. The cops would be all over this and there would be an injunction on any programme. For now she’d just need to ride solo with this.

  There were too many people, too many cover-ups and it made her feel sick. She was exhausted with it all. She felt like throwing the towel in, concentrating instead on stories about lost cats being reunited with their owners after seven years. She had enough misery of her own to cope with other people’s.

  She hadn’t had a drink all day, and felt very slightly smug as she poured the cold white wine, stopping short of half filling the glass. She glanced at it; half empty or half full, there was always room for more.

  43

  ‘We found your name and number scribbled on a piece of paper.’

  Davies looked at the napkin and nodded. It was his handwriting all right. He’d given it to Tommy Gallagher the day he’d met him in Saltmarket. Told him to call if ever he needed him. The assistant led Davies through the corridor to the room at the back. That smell again. No matter how many extractor fans and high-tech ventilation systems they installed, mortuaries had the pervading stench of death. Davies felt his heart grow heavy as he followed the assistant through the double doors. He’d told him his name, but was buggered if he could remember – he hadn’t really been listening, if truth be told. Was thinking about Tommy. The laughs they’d had together as kids. The carry-on of ring-bang-skoosh. Davies wasn’t sure if this version of kick the door and run away was particular to Glasgow, or if it was a pretty much universal practice to ring the bell, bang the door, then spit on the doorstep before running like blazes before the owner answered and gave you a thick ear.

  He should have done more for his old pal. Maybe could have tried harder. He’d got him a fresh set of clothes, and another to change into, packed them into a new wee rucksack and made sure he’d got a bed for the night at the city mission hostel. He’d given the guy at the door a bung, made sure that Tommy would have a bed for the night for at least the next few months. The guy had eyed the cash, but had changed his tune when Davies had flashed his warrant card and explained what would happen if Tommy didn’t have credit at that particular hotel. Davies felt his throat tightening when he remembered the gratitude in his old pal’s eyes, then once more the guilt washed over him and he felt like a shit for not doing more.

  The city mission was clean and basic. Homeless men and women could bunk for the night and at least get shelter from the bitter cold. And it was safe. Well, at least as safe as it could be. The guy at the door looked rough, knew how to handle himself, and Davies guessed he was no stranger to wading in when things took a turn for the worse. But they had a strict no-booze policy. From what Davies had gathered Tommy had stayed on the wagon for almost a week before turning up drunk. They’d kicked him out. The guy at the door had had the decency to give Davies a call to let him know. They were probably terrified not to, in case he thought they’d kept his money. Davies had told them to keep it, and make sure they had a bed for Tommy when he sobered up. That was three weeks ago.

  The room was stark, clinical, wall to wall stainless steel. One wall had a bank of drawers; each one held what it was designed to hold. A dead body. The mortuary assistant pulled at the metal handle of one of the drawers and it slid open. Effortlessly, as if he’d done it a million times before. The white rubberised sheet over Tommy’s body was fresh and clean and at this precise moment that was important to Davies.

  ‘Ready?’ It was a rhetorical question really. The guy was helpful enough, but probably assumed that Davies, as a seasoned cop, was well used to seeing dead bodies. He’d have no way of knowing just how stomach churning this was to him. How his growing nausea was eating away at his gut. It was getting worse. When he’d first started on the job it was no big deal. But with the pas
sing of time he’d noticed he was becoming decidedly squeamish.

  The sheet was pulled from Tommy’s face and Davies flinched. His wounds had been cleaned, but what looked like the mark of a heel was clearly visible on his forehead. The flesh under his right eye was split and raw looking. Yellow and blue bruises burst across his chin and under his jaw line.

  ‘What was the cause of death?’ Davies held out his hand, waiting for the guy to give him the necessary paperwork. He read down the list; Tommy had had liver failure, ruptured spleen, some old fractures to his ribs and had clearly been set about in the days before his death. But it was pneumonia that got him in the end.

  ‘You sure about this?’

  The guy nodded. ‘I can get the pathologist to have a word with you?’ He phrased it as a question. ‘He’s tied up at the minute, but…’

  Davies nodded. ‘Aye, get him to call me when he’s done.’

  Davies rested his hand lightly on Tommy’s cheek before the sheet was pulled back over his face. Poor soul. Apparently getting beaten up was a daily hazard when you were homeless. The mortuary assistant was very matter-of-fact when he explained how commonplace such injuries were. And so many homeless were ending up on slabs, he dreaded the winter and the extra workload it would bring.

  Davies thought he knew most of what went on in these streets. Thought he was hardened. Had that tough outer shell. But some poor old homeless guy getting kicked for sport by a few yobs on the way home was more than he could bear. Students pissing on him as part of a freshers’ week dare. Having beer poured over his head while they laughed as he tried to lap up a few drops falling onto his face, desperate to get his fix for the night as they laughed at how pathetic the ‘old alky’ was. What kind of fucking world did we live in? What the fuck kind of homes were people being brought up in? The sickness in the pit of his gut gave way to anger. His fists clenched and he ground his teeth as he wished the nice guy would bugger off and let him punch the wall, punch the door, punch anything just to get rid of this anger. But instead he nodded and wandered out through the corridor into the street, with the smell of Tommy’s body clinging to his hair.