Only The Dead Can Tell

Welcome to our regular feature showcasing the talents of the nation’s best writers.

Aberdeen. The granite city, home for decades to the oil industry, a place where hard men thrived against North Sea winds and sharp-tongued women. Once it had been part of the fishing trade, the coastal waters teeming with herring, the ‘silver darlings’ of legend. Women had worked these shores, back-breaking toil, fingers raw from gutting and filleting the catches their men had brought in from the swelling seas, danger rife in every sailing. There lingered still a defiant attitude in this northern city, a determination to defeat any odds stacked against it. And yet the decline in the oil trade had meant falling house prices and a lowering of morale as workers left in their thousands.

The city was looking at its best as Lorimer drove along Union Street, early morning sunlight glinting off the grey stones, sky washed clean after the shower that had swept along the coast. Who would guess that these fine buildings were a front for something darker? Like a stage set where the actors were hiding in the wings, he thought. Ready to come out and show what really went on behind this façade of respectability. And he would be there to see it happen, guaranteed a front row seat.

The Major Incident Team from Glasgow had been here for days now, the final tip-off culminating in the raids that were scheduled to take place throughout the city centre. A network of trafficking in human misery had been uncovered, the gangmasters largely identified, the premises where the illegals worked already under surveillance. It was a highly structured operation, the Aberdeen police committing officers to various locations, Lorimer himself taking control of each and every movement.

His driver slowed down and turned along a side street, the vehicle’s tyres juddering over the cobbles. A workman in dark trousers with a hi-visibility jacket strode along, head down, bent under the weight of a backpack, never giving their car a single glance. He might be a genuine workman heading home after a night shift or he could be one of their own; it was impossible to tell and that was all to the good. Their undercover officers had infiltrated this illicit business in several ways, relating snippets of intelligence back to the MIT, culminating in this morning’s business, Operation Fingertip. The name had come from one quick-witted DI back in Glasgow who had thought up the tag. We’ve got a few of them fingered already, she’d explained with a grin and a wiggle of her own painted fingernails. And that’s just the tip of the

iceberg, right?