Free Father Confessor (J McNee series) by Russel D McLean

them.”
    Raymond got the hint.
    Emptied out the glossies. Looked at them carefully.
    Laid out three so that we could see them.
    “They were the ones came to see me.”
    Lindsay gathered up the images. “I were you, Raymond, I’d maybe think about moving.”
    He touched my shoulder.
    I took the hint. Had seen the photographs and realised their significance. Realised Grant had given us all he could.
    The poor, washed-up old bastard.

ELEVEN
    Down the road, we walked into a public park. Sat on a bench that was shaded by a pathetic old tree whose branches were bare, skeletal.
    The wind came in from the Tay.
    Cold.
    Made me shiver.
    I spoke first. “They’re coppers.”
    Lindsay said, “You recognise any of them?”
    “Seen at least one of them around FHQ,” I said. “Not enough to speak to. They’re all young. Joined after I left, maybe.”
    “This whole case is a fucking disaster. I had a feeling about it since this morning. When there’s one rotten apple, it usually spreads through the barrel.”
    “We don’t know –”
    “We know that someone’s rotten, McNee. I know you think me and Ernie didn’t get on well, that I’d be fucking happy to see the pain-in-the-arse get posthumously sent down for shite he might have tried to hide in real life. But the fact is I really don’t want him to be dirty.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s face it, though: some fucker’s bent. Someone set him up at the very least, and to do that they need connections on the force.”
    I was feeling tired. Limbs heavy. Just wanted to go home, hide under the sheets and forget everything.
    But it was too late. I couldn’t back out. For my own sanity as much as anything.
    “I’m not a paranoid prick like you,” Lindsay said. “I don’t see conspiracies around every corner. But this morning, we both knew that Grant was scared of someone, that we weren’t the first bastards to approach him about Ernie. Maybe he’s been scared for a long time. Whatever story he had ready for us about how Ernie gave him that money, I think it was bollocks. I think someone’s been setting this up for a long time and they knew we’d follow the trail, make the connection between Ernie the veteran bastard detective found with all that cocaine and his doped-up junkie tosspot ex-colleague.”
    I was thinking, Burns .
    Lindsay told me what he’d figured, “You were going back to talk to him. Fine, gave me a chance to do some thinking. One of my instructors at the college works for Discipline and Complaints. Owes me a favour or two.”
    “That’s where you got the pictures?”
    “I won’t tell you what the bloody price was.”
    “I won’t ask.”
    “Thing is, McNee, this is going to get big. If Ernie was mixed up with those bastards, this is serious shite. There’s a major investigation in the works. One of the reasons the old man gave me access to those files. If we can bring one of these boys in, maybe D&C can squeeze them. Make a deal.” He made a face, then, and spat on the ground. “The squirmy cunts they are.”
    ###
    Grant had picked out three faces from the array. Constables. None of them veterans. Which was why they stood out. I’d been expecting long-serving officers, but what I got were fresh faces.
    They were nothing more than foot-soldiers. Errand boys.
    But they were a start.
    The first looked like he could barely shave; a roundfaced lad named Cal Anderson. Anderson had already been marked as a potential trouble-maker. Despite that smooth skin and baby-round face, he had been cited several times for excessive force and for the sloppy, inconsistent quality of his arrest sheets.
    The second was the spit of the Pillsbury Dough-Boy. Robin Reed didn’t have as thick as a jacket as Anderson, but he was being looked at for social connections. He’d grown up in one of the city’s more colourful areas, and most of his schoolyard contemporaries had gone on to work for the likes of David Burns. Reed had kept his nose clean, but there