The Storm Read online

  Praise for Neil Broadfoot

  Praise for The Storm

  “A gripping page turner with prose like a sniper’s bullet – straight, true and hitting the mark. Falling Fast was an astonishing debut. The Storm shows it was no fluke.” Douglas Skelton

  Praise for Falling Fast

  Shortlisted for the Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award 2014. Finalist, Dundee International Book Prize.

  “Neil Broadfoot is the one to watch.” Magnus Linklater

  “Falling Fast is a book that grabs you by the throat from the start and doesn’t let go.” Crime Fiction Lover, 5 stars

  “Falling Fast by Neil Broadfoot: Scotland isn’t going to run out of great crime fiction any time soon.” Chris Brookmyre

  “A deliciously twisty thriller that never lets up the pace. Thrills, spills, chills and kills.” Donna Moore

  “The chapters are a series of stabs, swift, to the point… The knots in the plot unravel with timely stealth.” Tom Adair, Scotsman

  “Broadfoot is the real deal. A superb debut.” Michael J. Malone, Crimesquad.com

  “Cracking… we are instantly hooked.” Rosemary Kaye,

  The Edinburgh Reporter

  “It’s hard to believe [this] is a debut. There’s a certainty of purpose, a clarity of voice and a real sense of danger… Broadfoot is here, and he’s ready to sit at the table with some of the finest crime writers Scottish fiction has to offer.” Russel D. McLean

  “A great meaty crime read with a true grit core.” Laura Piper, STV

  “Gritty with a strong identity. Broadfoot is destined for crime success.” Dundee International Book Prize judges

  THE STORM

  NEIL BROADFOOT

  Contents

  Praise for Neil Broadfoot

  THE STORM

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Copyright

  For Fiona

  and the Everything she brings –

  every single day.

  1

  Overhead, the sky is numb static with a low haar hanging over the city, heavy with the threat of rain. Watery daylight seeps between the clouds, throwing a crazy-paving pattern of shadows onto the buildings and streets. The wind is little more than a shimmer in the grass I’ve made my nest in, sharp enough to make my breath a mist to mingle with the haar. I can feel moisture bleeding in through the cracks in my waterproofs, making my joints moan with the promise of pain to be delivered later for putting them through this.

  I flex my hands, pins and needles shooting like daggers into my fingers as circulation rushes back in and the tendons stretch out. I should be wearing gloves, but I can’t risk it. I need accuracy.

  Precision. Control.

  I run a final check, but there’s no real need, everything is ready. It has been for months, years. Waiting for this moment. I always knew it would come. It was inevitable.

  The smell of gun oil is strong, bitter and somehow reassuring, scalding my nostrils. I chamber the bullet, enjoying the harsh click-clack as it locks into place. There is a slight tremor in my hands. I close my eyes, take a long, deep breath and concentrate, force them to be still. Then I snuggle down deeper into my nest and hug the stock close to my cheek like an old friend. Peer down the sight, waiting for my eye to adjust to the fish-eye effect of the telescopic lens. Force my breathing to slow as my heart begins to hammer in my chest, an excited thrum I can feel dancing in my trigger finger as I start to squeeze against the metal, readying myself for the perfect moment.

  2

  Twelve minutes before his life fell apart, Doug McGregor was flicking through the morning papers, scrawling notes on the stories in them between rushed glances at the clock on his PC.

  10.52am. Shit.

  He threw the last of the papers aside, turned to his computer and started hammering on the keyboard, adding what little he had found in the papers to the morning news schedule for the Capital Tribune. The schedule was basically a long list of the stories of the day, culled from the papers, news agencies and what reporters had managed to find. At 11am, he would walk into the editor’s office, sit down and go through the list, regurgitating everything he had crammed into his brain in the previous two hours, all the time praying a question he didn’t have the answer for wasn’t asked.

  Doug had started working on the newsdesk about a month ago. His boss Walter, the news editor, had practically begged him to do it. After the last round of redundancies there were hardly enough journalists left in the place to put together a weekly freesheet, let alone the Tribune – “the new voice and conscience of Scotland” as the ad men had branded it in a desperate attempt to cash in on the referendum and its aftermath. Given the sales figures Doug had seen, they’d lost the bet.

  “Look, Doug, I need someone I can trust,” Walter had said one afternoon in the canteen, massive shoulders hunched over the table, skull glinting in the overhead lights from beneath the five o’clock stubble of his hair. “Someone who knows a story when he sees it, won’t get us fuckin’ sued to hell and back, and doesnae brick it every time Greig asks them an awkward question at conference. So, how ’bout it? Couple o’ days a week oan the desk?”

  In a moment of stupidity, Doug had agreed. And now it was 10.55am, his head filled with stories and lines, his mouth bitter with the aftertaste of bad coffee and adrenalin. Outside, the rain finally made good on its threat, drumming on the window like impatient fingers.

  At least there was one benefit of being stressed out of his mind – he didn’t have time to worry about the message he’d left on Susie’s phone half an hour ago.

  Well, not too much.

  He forced himself to concentrate on the schedule, ignore the sudden burning in his cheeks. Looked up from his computer, down the newsroom to the reporters’ desks. It was a depressing sight. As part of the redundancies and “corporate restructuring” – which, as far as Doug could tell, was bean-counters’ code for cutting costs – the Tribune’s standalone printing presses and office block on the outskirts of town had been sold off, the land halfway to being houses by now. The Tribune staff who had survived the cuts had been moved into an office just up the road from the Scottish Parliament, which had once served as a
city-centre base for the ad men and the political and legal reporters. The chiefs sold the idea to shareholders and staff as moving the paper “closer to the heartbeat of the capital city and Scotland’s political pulse”. Doug had his own translation.

  He remembered morning edition when he first started at the Tribune, when there was a team of fifteen reporters, all working stories or speaking quietly into phones. The chatter of keyboards used to be like a soundtrack to the newsroom, a pulse. Now the room was quiet, like a house after a rowdy party. And there were four reporters working.

  Eight minutes. Eight minutes to hell.

  “If you’ve got any lines, I need them now, please,” Doug shouted. The reporters stirred into life and, a moment later, he got a couple of emails with a headline and a brief paragraph of background explaining what they thought the story was. Not a lot, but better than nothing. He skimmed them quickly. As usual, Barry Evans’ were shit, the same old mix of gossip and tabloid crap that would make a nice piece in Hello! or OK!, but nothing he could use. He thought about bollocking him, realised he didn’t have time. James Marten, the political reporter, sent over three good stories – two, predictably, were election-related, plus a tale about an MSP and his expenses claim linked to a casino. Donna Brent, the general reporter, sent over her list. Mostly it was the usual stuff – dull, worthy, back-of-the book filler at best – but there was a line that caught Doug’s eye, about a kid being found in a back alley in the west end and rushed to hospital in the early hours with a suspected overdose. It was the latest in a series of overdoses that had been reported over the last month. The culprit seemed to be some new drug that bore more than a passing resemblance to methadone – “Jade Junk”, they were calling it. Promising.

  He cut and pasted the headlines into the main schedule, printed out the last of the briefings and notes he had collected. Turned back to the schedule and skimmed over it again. Re-ordered a few stories, checked his notes. Glanced at the clock. 10.58am. He made a final check, counted the number of stories he had – twenty-three in total. Not bad. There were twenty-six pages of news planned for tomorrow’s paper. Three stories short. He’d had worse. And something always happened during the day to fill the gaps.

  Doug printed the schedule, asking for ten copies. Scooped up his notes and put them in order. Stood up and headed for the editor’s office. Showtime.

  11am.

  Four minutes to go.

  • • •

  Jonathan Greig sat barricaded behind his desk, Arthur’s Seat framed behind him like a watercolour in the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the back wall of his office. As usual, he looked more like a banker than a journalist, jacket hanging from a coat-rack in the corner, tailored waistcoat buttoned over a shirt with creases so sharp and precise you could cut yourself on them. He looked up as Doug crowded into the room with Mike King, the sports editor, Alice Ericson, the business editor, and Don Moore, the foreign editor. A curt nod from Greig, slicked-back hair glinting in the light, and they took their seats at the conference table in the middle of the room, waiting for him to join them and run through the schedules.

  Conference was meant to be a routine affair – tell the boss what you thought the best stories of the day were, answer relevant questions, agree the top line and where things were going to appear in the paper. Problem was, Greig didn’t see it that way. Conference was his time to be The Editor, master of the Capital Tribune and “the new conscience of Scotland” as the nation navigated its way in the post-referendum, post-election world. Doug had heard the horror stories from Alice, Mike and Don when they had dared to pitch a story that wasn’t in keeping with Greig’s thinking. Shouting-downs weren’t uncommon, and on more than one occasion staff had left the editor’s office with “something in their eye”. In most other industries it would have been called bullying or harassment – in journalism it was just another day at the office.

  Doug glanced at his list again, hoping Greig was in a good enough mood to let any slips go unpunished.

  Seeming to read his thoughts, Greig pushed away from his desk and stood up, theatrically straightening his waistcoat and smoothing his tie. He was a thin, wiry man, with angular features and high cheekbones that gave him a vaguely funereal look. Doug made a mental note to squeeze Walter for some time off when he came in for the afternoon shift. It was the least he was owed.

  “Good morning,” Greig said as he sat at the head of the conference table directly opposite Doug and scooped up copies of the schedules in front of him. “So, Mike, let’s get started.”

  Mike cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses and started talking. “Pretty busy schedule, boss. Three Premier games tonight and a track event at Meadowbank. We’ve also got the usual fun and games at I…”

  A sharp, high crack cut Mike off, the room suddenly filling with yelps of shock and fear. Behind Greig, the floor-to-ceiling window shattered into an elaborate network of silvery spiders’ webs, frozen in place by the safety wiring running through the glass. Doug jerked back and away from the table, heart pounding against his ribs, legs leaden with adrenalin, ears filled with the crack and a dull, heavy thud from the wall behind him. It felt as if the air had become heavy, thick – a physical force pressing on him, making it difficult to breathe in.

  “What the hell is…?” Greig began as he stood out of his chair, turning away from Doug to look at the shattered window.

  Alice screamed as he spun back round violently, as if wrenched by some immense, irresistible force. His upper body twisted at an almost impossible angle, blood spraying from his throat in a widening arc. His hands flailed for his neck, frozen into palsied talons clawing at the wound as he gasped and hacked for breath. He staggered forward, eyes wide and frantic, gaze locking with Doug’s for one horrendous second. The facade stripped away, nothing there but terror and fear and confusion. What’s happening to me? his eyes begged. I can’t breathe. Choking, choking…

  He let out another gagging cough, blood seeping between bone-white fingers like oil.

  And then his chest exploded.

  Blood and viscera erupted onto the table in front of him with a horrible wet slap and glistened there, horribly dark and textured with shreds of ruined organs standing out against the white of the forgotten pages of the schedules. Greig’s back arched as though he had been electrocuted, arms dropping to his sides. He hung there for an instant, frozen, before his knees buckled and he collapsed forward, head bouncing off the table with a sickening crack that echoed around the room and drowned out the shouts of panic and cries of despair.

  Mike scrambled away from the table, his face a wax-white sneer of disbelief and disgust, grabbing Alice by the shoulders and dragging her to the door.

  “Come on, for fuck’s sake, MOVE!” he screamed, voice rough with terror and tears. “Get the fuck out of here, move NOW! Doug, Don, for fuck’s sake, GO!”

  Doug couldn’t move. Pinned to the spot by shock and terror and the memory of Greig’s eyes. The terror. The confusion.

  He heard the hammering of feet from the other side of the door as the reporters ran for the office. Caught vague snatches of words, urgent cries to “Call the police, get a fucking ambulance, it’s the boss. Oh fucking CHRIST…”

  Don at his side now. Arms on his shoulders. “Come on, Doug,” he whispered urgently. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. It’s not safe, we need…”

  Doug shrugged him off violently, staggered forward. He felt disconnected, alien, as though he were an office block and the lights were being switched off one floor at a time.

  He shuffled forward on numb legs until he was standing over Greig. Looked down almost casually, wanting, needing, to look into those eyes again. He was dimly aware of a burnt smell in the air, the sour waft of shit and the bitter tang of iron.

  Blood and shit and murder – the perfect story, he thought, ice creeping down his back as he felt himself smile and fought back a chuckle that c
aught in his throat.

  Greig’s head was twisted back, ear touching his shoulder, blood oozing slowly from his mouth. A huge gash ran over his temple like the torn lip of an open envelope, exposing a blood-smeared sliver of skull underneath. Eyes dead and empty, the same look of shock and confusion Doug had seen seared into his features by the horror of what had happened.

  Doug closed his eyes and fell to his knees. He toppled forward onto his hands and heaved, bile and coffee burning his mouth as he vomited. He was dimly aware that his hand was in a widening pool of Jonathan Greig’s blood. He found he didn’t care. At that moment, it was the only warmth that he felt.

  3

  Detective Sergeant Susie Drummond stared at the message on her phone: one missed call from Doug, one voicemail. She chewed her lip for a moment. Debating. Listen or not?

  With a sigh, she pocketed the phone then went back to trying to get comfortable. She was sitting on a low wooden bench in the marble-filled main corridor outside court two in the High Court building on the Royal Mile, waiting to be called to give evidence in the attempted murder case she had worked on earlier in the year.

  She snorted despite herself, drawing an arched look from a red-faced, jowly man in an expensive suit, who was waddling past her clutching an untidy pile of papers. The whole trial was a waste of time, and wee Kevin Malcolm should be sitting in a cell in Saughton and shitting himself about shower time now. And he would have been too, except that “Charming” Charlie Montgomery QC had other plans.

  Kevin was known around Edinburgh as a small-time thief with a big-time temper. He was five-foot-seven of bad attitude, greasy hair, cheap tattoos and skin bleached grey by too much booze, dope and fried food. For years he had been linked to some of the nastier break-ins and assaults in Edinburgh, including, infamously, the kneecapping of a security guard too stupid not to stop Kevin when he was making a bolt for the front doors of the St James Shopping Centre after smashing in the front window of a jewellery shop.

  The guard – Jamie Miller, a dad barely out of his teens and a keen five-a-side football player – had sprinted for Kevin, taken him down with a flying tackle and waited for the police to arrive. They dragged him from the floor, held him back when he lunged for Jamie. And then Kevin had hawked back and spat a wad of blood-flecked phlegm at Jamie. “Yer a fast wee cunt,” he hissed. “Better hope ye stay like that.”