No Quarter Given

Book 4: Connor Fraser

by Neil Broadfoot

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Private Investigators; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Jennifer MacKenzie being hit by a car was a tragic accident. Or so it seemed. Until Connor Fraser is summoned to a meeting with his girlfriend's dad, Duncan MacKenzie, who claims that Jen's accident was actually a message intended for him - and a way to force him to kill his trusted lieutenant Paulie King, who has now mysteriously disappeared. As an all-out gang war threatens to explode across central Scotland, Connor begins a journey that forces him to confront some uncomfortable truths about his girlfriend and the family he is connected to through her. But Connor is also driven by a vow to find Paulie. And when he does, no quarter will be given.

Release date: September 9, 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

Three weeks earlier

His pain made the world into a weapon.

The mirror above the fireplace? Smash it, grab a shard, use it as a blade. The poker beside the fire? Perfect for caving in someone’s skull. The hardback books on the shelves? Swung just the right way, they could dislocate a jaw, perhaps even break it. Then drive the book into the windpipe, crushing it, robbing your victim of the ability to breathe.

Victim.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Tried not to hear the screams as they replayed in his mind, the clatter of feet on concrete, the squeal of tyres, the hard, dull thud of a car hitting a body. Tried not to feel his lips on hers, fingers pinched around her nose as he forced his breath into her lungs, willing her to live. Felt bile surge up his throat as he remembered the sound of her rib cracking under his weight as he pummelled her chest, working frantically to get her heart beating again. Felt tears burn at his eyes at the sound of her gargled cough, hot blood spraying across his face as she spluttered out a breath and clawed her way back to life. To him, it was as sweet as a newborn baby’s first cry.

He stood suddenly, seized by the desire to move. Paced around the flat, felt the walls close in on him as he fought the urge to unleash the tsunami inside him. Weaponise the world. Destroy everything, drown out the memories with a discordant scream of destruction as bookshelves were toppled, mirrors smashed and furniture was thrown through the patio doors into the day that seemed to mock him with its silent indifference.

A step forward towards the TV. He was halted by the shrill ring of his phone in a pocket. Instinctively he reached for it, felt a stab of dread as he read the name on the caller ID. Hit answer with a thumb that was not steady, spoke before the caller could say anything. If bad news was coming, he wanted to be in control.

‘How is she?’

Silence on the line, deeper somehow than the shadows that seemed to creep towards him, splinters of darkness eager to claim him.

‘She’s alive. In intensive care now. Doctors say it’s too early to know anything more than that at the moment, but they’re keeping me updated.’

Relief and terror surged through him, a poisonous cocktail that made it difficult to breathe or think.

The caller dragged him from his thoughts, the voice so diminished and defeated that it screamed in his ear, like a bad chord in a symphony.

‘We need to talk,’ Duncan MacKenzie said. ‘There’s some things you need to know about today. There’s more to it.’

Confusion clamoured through Connor’s brain. He felt his body twitch, as though some fuse had blown and he was starting to shut down. Understandable. Everyone had their limits and, after seeing Jen run over, tossed into the air by a car like a discarded toy, then crashing to the ground, where Connor had given her CPR, he thought maybe he had finally found his.

‘What do you mean?’ he said, his lips numb, the words odd, alien things in his mouth.

‘Not on the phone,’ Duncan MacKenzie replied, his voice hardening as he moved on to more familiar ground. ‘Can you meet me?’

‘At the hospital?’ Connor asked. He had been there less than an hour ago, left only when MacKenzie had arrived, his face a rictus of terror and barely controlled hysteria. The hardman façade had been stripped away, leaving only the face of a father confronting the reality that his little girl had been badly hurt. It was only now that Connor vaguely wondered how MacKenzie had found out about the …

There’s more to it …

… accident?

‘Yeah, I can meet you downstairs. There’s a coffee shop in the main atrium. Know it?’

‘I’ll find it,’ Connor said, eyes drifting towards the hallway that led to his bedroom.

‘Text me when you get here. If Jen’s OK, I’ll come down and meet you.’

‘Copy that,’ Connor said, his mind already shifting gears, becoming a cold, calculating thing of violence and split-second decisions.

There’s more to it.

He ended the call, headed for his bedroom. Slid aside a panel under his bed, reached into the darkness and opened the safe that waited there, the sound of screaming and Jen’s blood-choked cough churning through his mind as he retrieved his gun.

The hard, blunt clack of the slide as he checked the chamber and racked the magazine home was like a full stop to the thoughts in his mind. Jen had been hit by a car outside the gym she worked at in Stirling. She had been heading inside, Connor waiting there to meet her as arranged before she started her shift. It was part of their routine if he was on an assignment with odd hours: they would meet at the gym, he would get a work-out while Jen coached clients or led exercise classes, then they would grab a coffee together while she was on her break. He had seen the car swerve across the street, mounting the pavement, barrelling towards her. Felt as though he was swimming through treacle as he took off towards her, knowing he wasn’t going to be fast enough to get there in time. Saw her thrown into the air, long blonde hair fanning out like a halo, then heard the dull, hard thud of Jen hitting the ground.

He’d got to her a moment later, her body a feverish lump of bloodied flesh bent at impossible angles. Felt a flash of self-loathing for the half-second he took to glance up, memorise the number plate of the car that had hit her even as it sped off.

A hit-and-run. Kids, probably. He would deal with it later.

There’s more to it.

Connor felt his grip tighten on the gun even as he flicked off the safety. For some reason, he didn’t think safety was going to be playing a big part in his immediate future.

Leith Docks, Edinburgh

With his sallow skin, neatly parted salt-and-pepper hair and small half-moon spectacles that winked in the overhead lights every time he moved his head, Martin Christopher looked to DS Susie Drummond more like a TV casting agent’s idea of a civil servant than a real one. But the facts were undeniable. Martin Christopher was indeed a civil servant who had spent the last thirty-four years of his life working for, first, the UK then the Scottish Government. His record, which she had skimmed on the way here, was peppered with glowing performance reviews and words like ‘efficient’, ‘diligent’ and ‘committed’. But this morning, Christopher had added another word to his résumé. One that would be with him a lot, lot longer than the warm words of his superiors.

Because now Martin Christopher was traumatised.

He sat across from Susie, eyes on the cup he cradled between two pale, delicate hands, head darting left and right as though he was studying some exotic flower rather than a bland white mug containing an oversweet cup of tea.

They were sitting in a large canteen in Victoria Quay, next to one of the windows that looked out onto Leith Docks and the Ocean Terminal shopping centre beyond. At the corner of the centre, Susie could just make out the mast of the Britannia peeking over the roof of the building. The former royal yacht was permanently moored there now, another tourist attraction in Edinburgh’s already formidable arsenal. The appeal in seeing how an over-pampered family lived in opulent luxury at taxpayers’ expense eluded Susie.

She pulled herself from her thoughts, forced herself to focus on the job in hand. Cast a quick glance around the canteen. It was a massive room, and would normally be bustling with civil servants and visitors as they grabbed something to eat, had a meeting or topped up their caffeine levels. Not today. Today it was as quiet as a church just before a funeral procession arrived. ‘Sorry, Mr Christopher, you were saying?’

He looked up, bloodshot green eyes blinking rapidly as though he had been startled from a daydream. ‘Ah, sorry, what?’ he asked in a faltering whisper which did nothing to mask the perfectly formed east-coast accent.

‘You were telling us how you found the deceased,’ she said, gently trying to coax him into conversation.

‘Oh, yes, yes,’ Christopher said, the tips of his ears reddening as he spoke. His eyes darted right, out of the canteen and across a cavernous atrium to a set of double doors now cordoned off with large white drapes erected by the SOCOs to preserve the crime scene. And what a scene it was. ‘Well, ah …’ he coughed, took a slug of his coffee ‘… I came in early, you see, to use, ah, well, to use the …’

‘Swimming-pool?’ Susie offered helpfully.

‘Yes, the, ah …’ he stuttered again, as though the phrase was somehow offensive to him. After what he had found, maybe it was. ‘Anyway, I went into the changing rooms and the lights were off. They usually come on automatically, you see, so I thought maybe they were switched off or a fuse had blown.’

Susie nodded, made a note. Worth checking. ‘And then?’

‘Well, I fumbled around a bit, couldn’t find anything. Thought I’d check if all the lights were out of order, so I went through to the, ah, the …’

‘Pool,’ Susie offered again.

Christopher nodded vigorously, his ears growing darker. He would, Susie thought, be shit at poker. ‘Yes, so I went through and that’s when I saw …’ His voice trailed away, and Susie saw tears glitter at the corner of his eyes.

She held his gaze, softened her voice to a supportive whisper. ‘You’re doing fine, Martin, this really is helping. But, please, just tell me what you saw. And what you did.’

He spoke quickly, as though it was an unpleasant task he could rush through and finish. ‘The lights came on and I didn’t understand what I was seeing at first.’ His eyes darted frantically as the memory played in his mind. A memory he would be revisiting for years. ‘When it made sense to me I, ah, well, I was sick. I’m sorry.’

Susie nodded. The SOCOs had loved that, their crime scene being contaminated from the off. ‘And then?’

‘I ran,’ he said bluntly, the shame in his voice as plain as his crimson ears. ‘I ran to the security desk, got them to call you. Well, not you, but the police and then I … I …’

Susie nodded. She knew the rest, had seen the CCTV images of him braced against the building’s front security desk, bent over like a man about to collapse, silently screaming at them for help. The call had come into the call-handling centre at Bilston Glen and, in what must have been a minor miracle, actually been allocated to a station within striking distance of the location. Being less than three miles away, near the top of Leith Walk, and with DC Eric Baine driving like an extra from The Italian Job, it had taken Susie only ten minutes to get there.

She nodded slightly to a uniform, who was hovering at a table nearby. ‘Thank you, Martin, that’s been a great help. My colleague here, PC Redmayne,’ she gestured to the tall, lanky woman who was now looming over him, ‘is going to get a formal statement from you and then get you home. Is there someone we can call, make sure they’re there for you?’

‘Gina,’ Christopher said, his eyes filling with a desperate eagerness that made Susie both pity and detest him at the same time. ‘She’ll come.’

‘Good,’ Susie said. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it. Thank you for your time. No doubt we’ll speak again.’

She watched as Redmayne ushered Martin Christopher away, then looked back out to the Docks. Weak sunlight was playing on the granite grey of the water, flashing silver as the wind rippled its surface. Susie closed her eyes, imagined the chill of the wind on her face, her mind emptying of everything. Felt her leg muscles twitch, her body crying out for movement, action. She would go for a run later, try to sweat out the day. It was already shaping up to be a bad one.

She stood up, heading for the white drapes and the SOCOs’ crime-scene cordon. Wrestled her way into one of their white-paper boiler suits, then slipped a pair of protective covers over her shoes. She took a deep breath, then stepped forward, opening the double doors and walking inside.

The pool was in a large patio-style wing that jutted out of the side of the building. Susie had no idea if it was an original feature or had been grafted on at a later date. Either way, she marvelled at the thinking that had concluded a swimming-pool was an essential component of a working office.

A SOCO’s camera flash burst into life, flaring across the water. It was a pinkish-red colour – Weak Ribena, she thought suddenly ‒ and left pink tide marks on the tiles surrounding the pool as it splashed over the sides.

No wonder Martin Christopher had run. Susie felt the momentary urge to do the same.

She thought back to the pictures she had already seen, the ones taken by the first SOCOs to arrive. In the centre of the pool, bobbing gently, there had been a body. Face down, dark hair splayed out like a halo around the head, the pale skin of the back looking like a slab of greying wax that seemed to glisten, like seal skin, in the harsh light of the camera flash.

The normal impulse would have been to pull the body out, make sure there was no sign of life. Luckily, one of the security guards Christopher had summoned was a former police officer who knew the script. He’d taken one look at the scene, known that whoever was in the pool was beyond any help.

On the wall to the left of Susie, scrawled in a red so dark and hypnotic it could only be blood, was a message. Seven words. Seven words that sent cold spider’s legs skittering across Susie’s spine. This is not murder. This is justice.

Susie shook herself, looking from the message and back to the pinkish-red water. Martin Christopher had found it impossible to say the word. She understood. It was a pool all right.

A pool of blood.

Connor never made it as far as the café. MacKenzie was waiting for him as he pulled into the car park at Forth Valley Hospital. A moment of panic as Connor studied him: the reddened eyes, slumped shoulders, clothes that seemed suddenly too big for him. What reassured him was the walk: strong, sure, impatient. Direct, as he paced around the entrance to the car park. If something had happened to Jen, Connor doubted MacKenzie would be on his feet. No, he would be on his knees.

He honked his horn once. MacKenzie’s head darted up with the air of an animal sensing prey nearby. Connor drove on, MacKenzie nodding understanding and following on foot. But even as he parked, Connor felt something niggle at his mind, something that was wrong with this picture.

Something …

He pushed the thought aside as he got out of the car and saw MacKenzie striding towards him, shoulders straight now, chin jutting forward. ‘Fraser,’ he said, thrusting his hand out.

Connor took it, felt desperation in the grip. ‘Duncan. How is she?’

The muscles in MacKenzie’s jaw twitched, as though the words had stung him. He sighed, jammed his hands into his pockets, glanced back over his shoulder at the hospital. ‘Being monitored,’ he said at last, his voice so empty Connor could tell he was repeating what the doctors and nurses had told him. ‘Still under sedation after they brought her in. Some nurse told me to take a break while they worked, that nothing was going to happen immediately. I needed to get the smell of that place out of my nose anyway. Doctors say the next twenty-four hours will be critical. They’re going to lower the drugs she’s on, bring her round then assess her injuries. They’re being cagey, but I heard one of them mention the spinal unit in Glasgow.’

The words scalded Connor. ‘Spinal unit? You mean that …’

MacKenzie looked him straight in the eye, as though challenging Connor to say something about the tears that suddenly welled there. ‘Yes, Connor,’ he said, his voice as dead as an echo in a mausoleum. ‘The impact could have damaged her spine. They can’t tell how seriously yet, but …’

The words faded out, as Connor’s mind filled with the memory of Jen flying through the air. The harsh, blunt thud as she hit the ground, the eternity it took to reach her, the moment spent looking up, catching the number of the car …

… the car.

‘You said there was more to this.’ Connor snapped back to the present, surprised by the effort it had taken to form the words and speak them.

MacKenzie nodded, jaw setting, eyes hardening. ‘Yeah,’ he said, as he slid an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Connor. ‘This came last night. Was waiting for me when I got home.’

Connor took the envelope, inspected it. It was standard letter-sized, good-quality stock. He noticed it had been sliced neatly open with a very sharp letter-opener or knife. On the front, scrawled in ink so black it could only have come from a fountain pen, MacKenzie’s name was underlined twice. No stamp. Hand delivered.

They know where he lives, Connor thought.

‘Open it,’ MacKenzie said.

Connor held MacKenzie’s gaze for a moment, then did so. He pulled out a single sheet of paper. Good quality again, handwritten in the same ink used to address the envelope. He could see the ghostly outline of writing on the back of the note, decided to take it one step at a time.

Mr MacKenzie,

I’ll be brief. I know. I know what you did. So kill Paulie King or I will take your daughter from you, just as mine was taken from me.

Connor looked up at MacKenzie, couldn’t read what he saw in the man’s eyes. Understood now what had been bothering him when he arrived. Paulie, MacKenzie’s thug in chief, wasn’t with him. He spoke before the thought was fully formed in his mind. ‘Paulie,’ he said. ‘You didn’t…’

A smile, cold and empty as the sky above them, flashed across MacKenzie’s face. ‘No, Connor, I didn’t. I tried to call Paulie about this last night when I got that, couldn’t raise him. I was going to speak to him today, but then …’ His voice wavered, and he gestured back towards the hospital. ‘I’ve had people out looking for him, all the usual haunts, but he’s gone. Vanished.’

Connor forced back the memory that was threatening to overwhelm him. Jen flying through the air, the thud as she hit the ground. The feeling of her rib cracking under his weight as he fought to get her heart going again. The … He coughed. Focused. ‘What does it mean, “I know what you did”? What did you and Paulie do that led to a woman dying?’

A flash of rage in MacKenzie’s eyes, his body tensing as though he was going to lunge at Connor. Then, as though he was a balloon that had just been pricked, he deflated, the outrage giving way to bewilderment and fear. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘Look, Connor, I’m not pissing about here. Paulie and I have done some nasty shit in our time, but I have no idea what this letter is referring to. All I know is someone hurt my little girl, and Paulie is missing.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’ Connor asked. It was a pointless question: he already knew the answer. But he wanted, no, needed, to hear MacKenzie ask. He knew the reason, wasn’t proud of it. The request would legitimise what came next, maybe even absolve Connor of some of the blame.

Maybe.

‘Paulie’s the key to this,’ MacKenzie said. ‘Find him, get him to tell you what this means. Then find the bastard who hurt Jen. And end them. For me. For Jen.’

Connor held MacKenzie’s gaze for a moment, an unspoken conversation passing between them. Then he looked back to the letter and flipped it over, read what was there, scrawled in an angrier hand than the first page he had read.

This is not murder. This is justice.

The rain was thin and begrudging, sharpened into stinging needles by a chill that promised worse to come from a sky that was darkening as rapidly as Donna Blake’s mood.

She was sitting in the Sky outside-broadcast van parked near Victoria Quay, listening to the rain. She wrapped her hands around the cup of coffee her cameraman, Keith, had passed her as soon as she had finished her to-camera report on the discovery of a body at the Scottish Government office earlier that morning. As ever, she couldn’t remember anything she had said during the report, but Keith had assured her it was fine, an opinion he was now backing up with contented grunts and murmurs as he sat in front of a mini production desk and edited footage for later reports. And that, Donna thought, was the problem. Later.

She had seen the police press release on the body that morning as she skimmed the wires for possible stories, known straight away that it would dominate her day. It was a big story, nationally big, and she knew it would keep her in Edinburgh all day. After her initial report, there would be the standard police press conference down at Fettes as they tried to control the narrative and keep the public calm. Which, for Donna, meant waiting outside Victoria Quay for the police to organise themselves. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. With her son, Andrew, safely deposited with his grandparents, Donna had the day to herself to dig up background on the story, maybe catch up with old contacts.

The problem was that another story, little more than a statement on the wires, was competing for her attention, whispering to her that sitting in a satellite van drinking bad coffee and listening to Keith’s guttural sighs and mutters wasn’t what she should be doing.

It had been a standard police release, announcing a hit-and-run outside the gym at Craigs Roundabout on the way into Stirling. The copy boiled the horrific down to the mundane – a thirty-four-year-old female employee of the gym had been hit by a vehicle that had subsequently fled the scene. The woman, who had yet to be named, had been transported to Forth Valley Hospital, where her condition was described as critical. Donna wrote up the story for Sky’s website, knowing a local traffic accident without a fatality would never make its way to television, then made the call she knew in her gut she didn’t need to make. She called the gym, got a receptionist whose voice was ground flat by tears. Didn’t take her long to ascertain that it was Jen MacKenzie who had been run down. Jen MacKenzie, daughter of Duncan MacKenzie, a local haulier, who was rumoured to move more than furniture and fittings for the right price. Jen MacKenzie, girlfriend of Connor Fraser.

Donna had first encountered Connor three years ago, when a decapitated body had been dumped in the shadow of Stirling Castle. She had used that story as a springboard from local radio in Stirling to a job at Sky. Since then, she had built a career, and on the big stories that had helped propel her forward, Connor was there. She kept him out of the stories as much as she could, driven by her gratitude to him for saving her life and a sense of professional obligation, but it was hard to argue that Connor Fraser wasn’t a magnet for trouble.

And now that magnet had drawn disaster to Jen’s door.

She called Connor’s mobile, not surprised when the call rang out and went to voicemail. She left him a message, asking him to call her back and wishing Jen well. Then she met up with Keith and drove to Edinburgh to cover the Victoria Quay story. But still the thought of Jen gnawed at her, as if a bell only she could hear was being rung somewhere, demanding her attention.

Donna blinked, swallowed the last of her coffee, annoyed with herself. Here she was, musing over the fate of a contact’s girlfriend, when there was real work to be done. A murder in a government building. It was a national story, and one Donna was determined to be the reporting face of. The press release issued by the police had been predictably vague: body found, suspicious circumstances, no identification made at this stage, updates to follow.

Donna fished her mobile phone out of her pocket and started scrolling through her contacts. Waiting had never been her style. Or following. Time to get her own updates.

After his meeting with MacKenzie, Connor had headed back to the flat. What he really wanted to do was go to the gym – calm the frustration and confusion he felt by torturing his body with heavy weights, losing himself in the agony as his grandfather had taught him in Newtownards all those years ago. But the events of that morning had poisoned what had been his place of refuge and retreat, turned it into a stark, brutal reminder of Jen and the pain she had endured – and the pain to come.

What was it Duncan MacKenzie had said? I heard them mention the spinal unit in Glasgow.

That had sent Connor to Google, to find horror stories of spinal trauma and possible treatments. He scrolled through pages on rehabilitation, heard the hard, metallic thump of Jen’s body being hit by a car as he read about the potential for paralysis, the loss of bowel and bladder control. His thoughts became sharp, fractured, like a kaleidoscope of broken glass tumbling through his mind. What if she was paralysed? They had never really spoken about their future, but suddenly here it was, staring Connor in the face, asking for decisions and demanding answers. He would stand by her, support her, make sure she got everything and anything she needed, but then what? Move her in with him? Convert the flat, install ramps? Get another place that was more easily accessible? And what would she do for work? Would she even want . . .