In the Devil's Name Page 22
“After that, I tried speaking to everyone that I could think of that knew Andy to see if I could find anything out, but there was nothing.
“A few months later, I was cleaning out my desk in the station, and I found a writing pad at the back of a drawer that was full of scribbles. The sort of thing people keep beside the phone to write down names and numbers, you know? I recognised Andy’s handwriting, and so I sat there behind my old mate’s desk, just flicking through it, remembering him, and that’s when I found the connection between Brian Bishop and the Lisa McKeown case.
“There was a line written on a page near the middle of the notepad that read ‘Brian Bishop, witness re. McKeown case’ and a phone number underneath. I remembered the name from when I’d checked out Andy’s phone records a few months before.
“I still had the records my mate in telecoms had given me, and sure enough, when I compared the two phone numbers, they were the same. It seemed strange to say the least that the last call Andy ever received had been from the guy who was the key witness in a high profile murder case that’d been closed for months, so I dug out the McKeown case files, spent the next three weeks going through them, did a bit of digging, and found out a couple of things.
“Because Bishop’s phone number wasn’t working, I called the ticket office at Glasgow Central where he worked and ended up speaking to a guy who was a colleague that he’d been friendly with. You know what I found out, Phil?”
I’d started to get a creepy feeling about where this was going, and hazarded a guess.
“He was dead,” I said.
Grace chuckled and nodded in approval.
“You’d make a good polis yourself, son,” he said. “Dead as a doornail. Apparently he’d died in a car accident a few days after he spoke to Andy Swanney, but that wasn’t all I found out. He’d been diagnosed with a brain tumour and would have been dead inside a year if he hadn’t died in that crash. On top of that, he’d been in a serious amount of debt to a private loan company, and guess who was the owner of that loan company?”
“Jesus…” I murmured. I’d a pretty good idea.
“Not quite,” Grace replied. “Alexander Griffiths. The Earl of Ayrshire had his fingers in a whole oven full of pies, Phil, and owned businesses all over Scotland. Not directly of course. Everything was owned by one company which was run by another firm that had ties to another organisation, but in the end, it all filtered back to him. Loan companies, engineering firms, restaurants, property and interestingly enough, hotels. You see where I’m going with this?”
“His alibi,” I said, that creepy feeling tightening somewhat. “The hotel in Edinburgh.”
“Exactly. One of the many hotels that Griffiths had a vested interest in was the one he’d supposedly been in the night Ray Vize said he saw him in Glasgow. I called the hotel and asked to speak to the lad working in the bar who’d confirmed Griffiths had spent the evening there, but surprise surprise, the boy had been let go a few months previously. Oh yeah, and they didn’t have any contact details for him either. Seems his record at the hotel HR office had been destroyed after he was fired. I had his name and home number of course, he’d given it to the coppers who’d spoken to him, but when I called, it was a dead line. I also tried tracing him through the Edinburgh police where I still had friends, but it turned up nothing. It was as if the lad had vanished off the face of the Earth.
“I went to my superiors again with all this and tried to get the McKeown case reopened, but they told me in no uncertain terms to drop it. Even when I pointed out that Griffiths’ alibi was unreliable and the connection to Brian Bishop through the loan company, they said it was all paper thin. Coincidental and circumstantial. Not enough to reopen a closed case. That’s when I knew something was rotten with the whole thing, but again, it was made clear that digging any deeper would be detrimental to my job.”
“But how is that possible?” I asked, sceptical that Grace’s superiors would on two occasions be so reluctant to reopen cases that were so obviously flawed.
Grace gave me a sympathetic look.
“You’re young, Phil, and I’m not patronising you, but you’ve a lot to learn about how the world works. Especially for those with money. A guy like Alexander Griffiths has a bottomless bank account, and it’s frightening what money can do if you know how and where to apply it.
“You can buy people, even the police,” he said. “You know how many bent coppers I’ve known in my time?
“You can own people,” he went on. “Especially people who owe you money, like Brian Bishop did. You can get them to say things that maybe aren’t true in return for you calling off the debt collectors and writing off their debt.
“You can frighten people, like maybe that guy in the hotel bar was frightened of losing his job, or maybe his kneecaps, if he didn’t say that Griffiths was in the hotel bar that night.”
Grace leaned forward, fixing me with his icy blue eyes.
“And you can kill people, Phil, like maybe Andy Swanney was killed after he spoke to Brian Bishop. Bishop had less than a year to live, and according to his friend at the ticket office, he was a timid, but genuinely good hearted man. Suppose he felt bad about what he told the police about seeing Ray Vize with that girl, and decided to make set things right and tell the truth when the doctors told him his number was up? Suppose that was why he called Andy Swanney? I checked the station phone records as well, and the afternoon of the day Andy died, less than twenty four hours after he’d gotten the call from Bishop, he phoned Alexander Griffiths. Suppose he told him that he wanted to speak to him again? Suppose the Earl of Ayrshire got nervous, and used his bottomless bank account to see to it that both Andy and Brian Bishop stopped talking? A bottomless bank account can buy you all the suicide notes, Valium and car accidents in the world, Phil.”
Sergeant Stephen Grace picked up his tumbler, knocked back the last of his whiskey and gently set the thick glass back on the table. The blood staining the front of his shirt was more plentiful by then, and I noticed he was suddenly paler than before. His voice had also become steadily weaker as he told his tale.
“There’s a safe under the couch there, Phil,” he said to me. “The combination’s four eight four eight four eight. Open it up for me, would you?”
I rose from the couch and pushed it back, revealing a section of carpet that looked normal, but on closer inspection, you could see that in one area about a half metre square, the stylised floral pattern was upside down.
This disguised section of fabric lifted away to reveal a floor safe with a digital lock. I keyed in the combination and was rewarded with a green light and a soft click. Inside were thick bundles of bank notes held together with sturdy elastic bands. I turned back to the dying man in the armchair, not understanding.
His face was ghastly.
“I stayed here because I always had a feeling that there was something bad in Ballantrae,” he said. “Now it’s fucked, this town, but my first duty is the preservation of human life. This is still my town, fucked or not, and there’s still people here.
“I wish you all the best, Phil, but I’ve got a feeling that you’re not right, son. It’s in your eyes. It’s all over you. You’ll bring death with you wherever you go, so I’d advise you to go somewhere that other people aren’t.”
He coughed again. There was more blood. Quite a bit of it this time.
“There’s ten grand there,” he said, pointing at the floor safe. “My yacht fund. Never trusted the bank with it, the fuckers. Take it, Phil. And leave. It’ll buy you some mileage.”
More hacking coughs. More blood.
“If you want answers,” he said, his voice starting to slur and halt, “Speak to Des Griffiths, but watch your back… bastard’s a snake… just like his old man… something wrong with that whole fucking family. Always has been. My grandma… used to tell me Griffiths Hall was… bad place. Haunted…”
I thought of the brooding, unwelcoming atmosphere me, Sam and Cairnsey had felt on the few occasions w
e’d been up at Griff’s place, and thought the Sergeant’s grandma had the right of it.
The blood stain on Grace’s torn shirt suddenly bloomed larger, like a bizarre rose opening its petals. His breath was coming in short gasps now, the remaining colour visibly running out of his face. He was on his way out, fading fast.
“The photo… there… mantelpiece…” he wheezed, pointing.
I solemnly handed him the silver framed black and white portrait of his wife. He clutched it to his bloody chest with one hand. I knelt in front of him and took his other hand in both of my own. No one should die alone, even thought it’s a journey we all ultimately make solo.
Tears spilled down my cheeks.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
And then he was gone.
Chapter 52
Desdemona Griffiths, Earl of Ayrshire, was a man constantly in complete unquestioning control of his life and everything in it.
As a light hearted Christmas present, a woman whom he’d employed as a housemaid at Griffiths Hall and whose name he hadn’t known then and didn’t know now, had once given him a ceramic mug emblazoned with bright red lettering that read ‘I’m not a control freak, I’m THE control freak’. Although the sentiment was accurate enough, Desdemona had fired her on the spot.
As he stood over his wife’s body which lay on the floor at his feet where it had fallen several hours ago after he’d cut her throat, he contemplated the blood stained bone dagger in his hand, and thought about the concept of control.
The weapon, which was carved from a human femur, was slender sharp and centuries old. Extensively filigreed, strange markings, runes, symbols and etchings bedizened the pale hard blade and twisted decoratively around the handle. Although it was an exquisitely rendered object that displayed the skill and control of the craftsman who had wrought it, it wasn’t an efficient weapon; uncomfortable to wield and not designed for use in battle, but deadly all the same if used with control.
Control.
He lived for it.
Everything Desdemona did, thought, and felt was internally screened and meticulously examined for folly and inefficiency. It was the only way for a man to conduct his affairs as far as he was concerned. To Desdemona Griffiths, the heart was merely a muscle. A dumb, insentient engine that’s only purpose was to keep blood supplied to the brain, and not to be considered when making decisions and planning strategy.
The heart brought unpredictability. Irrationality. Chaos.
The mind and will brought efficiency. Order. Control.
The second home in which he now stood; a half mansion in the most affluent part of Glasgow’s west end, was one of just many fruits his philosophy of domineering control had borne. The extensive chain of flourishing businesses, the top of the range BMW parked outside and the four other equally opulent automobiles he possessed, the beautiful, compliant, and thoroughly vacuous wife whom he’d murdered the previous night, and the ability to stand motionlessly in wait over her cooling corpse since.
All of it was made possible by the application of control.
When he’d been a powerless frightened child, nightly terrorised by the thing that had stalked his family for centuries, it was the eventual taking of control that saved him from the fate of drooling insanity that had befallen so many of his ancestors. Ancestors who’d been irrational idiots, too cowardly to take control of their lives and carry out was necessary in order to free themselves and too wrapped up in what they stupidly believed to be their duty. Although he shared common genetic material with that ancient line of fools, Desdemona was a breed apart. He’d no interest in the continuation of their misguided traditions, nor in holding to their archaic beliefs, and so he had taken control in order to save himself; to bring the madness to an end.
For years he dedicated his mind, will and virtually limitless wealth to his purpose. Like a shadowy puppet master he pulled the strings of people’s lives, making them dance to his tune. In the execution of his plan, he controlled the existences and fates of unwitting others, and saw himself as Godlike in this regard. He’d been meticulous in his design and planning, and it was the work of many years to set in motion a chain of events that would finally pay the debt with which he had so unfairly been burdened by those blind generations who’d gone before him.
Control and mastery of his natural parental instincts had also been necessary, not that he had any real fatherly affection for his offspring. Dean had been a highly intelligent child, and had he shown less interest in such insipid notions as friendship, kindness and humour, perhaps Desdemona would have felt more regret over his sacrifice. As it was though, for all his brilliance, his son had never shared his father’s belief in the importance of control, a fact illustrated succinctly in the boy’s fascination for chaos theory; a nonsense concept that was the absolute antithesis of control. Even if his death hadn’t been necessary, the sheer wastefulness of such a sharp mind made it easy to accept.
The demise of his wife was nothing. Desdemona mourned the loss of the Persian rug that had been ruined by her arterial blood more than he did the loss of his spouse. The mindless bitch had been but a vessel, and she’d served her purpose eighteen years hence. His plan hinged on him having an heir, and Sheena had been no more to him than a hired womb. He’d only kept the idiotic cunt around as an occasionally useful ornament after Dean was born, and in the end, she’d been no more than an extra bargaining chip.
Of equally less import were the others who had to perish in the fulfilment of his undertaking. The bovine population of a nowhere village. They were as dumb cattle; of precisely zero worth to him other than as living currency that he would exploit in the settlement of a debt. Pounds of flesh, if you will.
It had all been a means to an end. If that end had to be achieved through the bloody obliteration of one hundred and forty four lives, including that of his own his own son, then so be it.
As a businessman, Des knew that random fate and unpredictable developments could derail even the most cunningly crafted and meticulously thought out endeavour. Ordinarily, through the application of logic and outside the box thinking, he was able to overcome unforeseeable deviations when they cropped up in his dealings and reassert control.
But this time, despite all his planning, painstaking research, unseen influence and subtle puppeteering, everything had gone badly awry, perhaps irrevocably so. Events had spiralled wildly out of control, and Desdemona Griffiths was unsure what scared him the most; the fact that he was for the first time as an adult powerless over what happened next, or the thought of what the consequences might be of this. He would have been angry had he not been so afraid.
The mind bending terrors of his childhood had returned, and all he could do was wait to see what happened next, unable to influence events any further and completely terrified.
You have to do it, son, his father’s voice echoed in his mind. It’s our family’s duty. We do it in the King’s name. We do it in the Devil’s name.
Nine year old Desdemona Griffiths takes the funny white knife from his daddy’s hand.
He looks up into the big man’s face, then down at the little girl who’s about the same age as him. She’s tied up without any clothes on and lying in the hole in the ground his daddy made him dig. It’s cold out here in the woods at night time. He only wants to go back home and play with his toys.
“Go on, son,” his daddy says kindly. “It’s your time to become a man.”
Desdemona looks up at the big man standing above him on the edge of the hole in the ground, and starts to cry.
“I don’t want to do it, daddy,” he blubbers.
His daddy looks angry now, and slaps him hard across the face. Des falls down in the hole next to the little girl. He can hear her making little scared noises through the rag his daddy has stuffed in her mouth.
“Stop it right now. Stop your crying,” his daddy shouts. “Do you want the bogey rogey to come and eat you up? Because he will, Desdemona, if you don’t cut this wee ho
or’s throat.”
Some of his friends at school sometimes talk about monsters under their beds or in their wardrobes at night, and how their mummies and daddies always tell them they don’t exist; that they’re just nightmares, and Desdemona thinks that they’re probably right.
But Desdemona’s daddy doesn’t tell him the bogey rogey isn’t real, because they both know that he is. The bogey rogey doesn’t only come out at night either. The bogey rogey lives anywhere that’s dark, and even in the daytime there are dark places.
Just the other day, he’d been playing with his toy cars at the top of the stairs at home, when the hatch that covered the entrance to the loft had slowly opened, and the bogey rogey had smiled down at him with its big teeth and yellow eyes. Its long bony arm had reached down out of the dark and tried to grab him up, but Desdemona’s legs had went all wobbly from the scare, and he’d luckily fallen down the stairs out of reach. Even as he’d fell down the stairs he could hear the bogey rogey chuckling up there in the loft.
Then he’d run and told his daddy that the bogey rogey had tried to get him. Daddy didn’t tell him it was his imagination, like other daddies did. His daddy looked just as scared as he was for a second, then had shouted at him, saying not to bother him, he was busy. Then he shouted at mummy, telling her to see what the fucking wean was greeting about.
His mummy was nicer. She held his hand and hugged him, telling him it was okay, there was no bogey rogey. She wanted to take him upstairs to show him there was no monster in the loft. Desdemona wouldn’t go with her though, and he screamed and screamed and hit her when she tried to pick him up. Then she’d got angry and put him down and went to go upstairs herself and he begged her not to. He loved his mummy and didn’t want the bogey rogey to get her, but she went up anyway.
When she came back down she asked him how he’d opened the loft hatch, and gave him into trouble because it was so cold up there now. She didn’t believe him about the bogey rogey of course, but he didn’t mind so much. As long as his mummy was safe, it was okay. It was good she didn’t believe in the bogey rogey.