Hour Of Darkness

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Can’t you guess, Mr Gayle? Their parents were never married, and given Mr Holmes’s business, they thought it better that Hastie and Alafair use their mother’s name.’

  ‘What business? Mr Holmes was a property developer; plus he had a limo company, a funeral business, and he was in the leisure and security business. He also owned a big chain of care homes. It was that company paid me when I looked after him.’

  ‘Sure, he was all those things, but much more. He was also . . .’ He stopped to consider his words. ‘Let me put it this way; if the Scottish police had a list of public enemies, in his time Perry Holmes would have been number one. He was a quadriplegic when you looked after him. Didn’t you know how he got that way?’

  ‘I know he was shot,’ Gayle replied. ‘His doctor told me the story, and of course I saw the scars. A former employee went crazy, and ambushed Mr Holmes and his brother.’

  ‘That’s only one-third true. Billy Spreckley never worked for the Holmeses, not formally anyway, and he wasn’t crazy. He shot them because they had his brother and his nephew killed.’

  ‘Mr Holmes? Are you serious?’

  ‘I never joke on the job,’ Pye assured him. ‘Mr Gayle, correct me if I’ve been misinformed, but you were there when Hastie was arrested, were you not?’

  ‘Too true,’ he admitted, ‘and I’ll never forget it. Hastie had a gun but that policeman, Skinner, he shot it out of his hand. I’ll never forget him either: he was a very scary man, in a quiet way. Those murders that Hastie went to jail for,’ Gayle continued, ‘they had nothing to do with his father. A girl he knew was attacked and the police were going to do nothing about it, so he went after the guys who did it. That was the story; that’s what he told me.’

  ‘And that’s what the court accepted, but there were other murders that he was never charged with and they definitely had to do with your patient. Tell me,’ the detective went on, ‘why did you leave him when you did?’

  ‘I went to do a nursing degree, in London,’ the man replied. ‘Didn’t you find that out when you checked up on me?’ he added, with a faint hint of sarcasm.

  ‘As a matter of fact we did, and this isn’t part of my investigation; I’m just curious, my cop’s nose is twitching. You can imagine why, since Mr Holmes was drowned in his treatment pool not long after you left. Why did you go? Were you scared by Hastie’s arrest?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he conceded, ‘sure I was. You woulda been too if you’d been there.’ His own recent experience with Patrick Booth made Pye admit privately that he was right. ‘But that wasn’t why I went then. I was given money, quite a lot of money, and I was able to afford to go.’

  Pye felt a surge of excitement but hid it. ‘And who gave you the money? There’s a school of police thought says it was a man called Tony Manson.’

  Gayle chuckled. ‘Then they ain’t thinking straight, Inspector. I never heard of that man. No, it was Alafair gave it to me.’

  ‘Alafair?’

  ‘Yes, she said it was compensation for the stress of Hastie’s arrest. And it was her who found me the course in London. It was all official, man. I paid tax on it, the money. I know this, ’cos it said on my form when I left.’

  Bloody hell. This is not history as it was written. I need to report this.

  When the nurse continued, Pye was so distracted that the words sailed over his head. He excused himself. ‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that?’

  ‘I said, what does all that have to do with Duane Hicks?’

  The DI replied, ‘I was getting there, and I will, but let’s stay with Hastie for now. Why did you visit him?’

  ‘Because he and I were friends when we worked together; it felt like the thing to do. Then there was the money, I suppose. Without it, I’d never have been able to take my degree, and I’d never have been here. I felt grateful to the family, and that was the only way I could show it.’

  ‘When you saw him, what did you talk about?’

  Gayle smiled, revealing perfect tombstone teeth. ‘All sorts of things, man. Books, music, movies I’d seen. Sport, of course; we talked about cricket a lot. He’s a fan, and it’s part of my culture.’

  ‘Did you ever talk about the old days, about Edinburgh?’

  ‘Some, but not much.’

  ‘When you did, did Hastie ever mention a woman called Bella Watson?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he did. One day, not long before he was released, I asked him about the other guys in the prison, whether any of them were famous. He said there was a guy called Lennie something, about his own age, from Edinburgh. He told me that he’d never met him on the outside because . . . how did he put it . . . they were from different parts of town, but he’d got to know him inside.

  ‘He said he was very much a reformed guy, that he’d spent all his sentence studying, but that in the old days, he’d had a ferocious reputation. I asked him if he was the most dangerous person he knew, and he said no, that he wasn’t dangerous any more, and that even when he was, he didn’t come close to a woman called Bella Watson.

  ‘He told me that inside Lennie there was always a kind heart, but that this Bella woman, she didn’t have no heart at all, just pure evil inside.’

  ‘Have you seen him since he was released from prison?’ the DI asked.

  ‘No. He said he would look me up when he felt like a free man again. He expected that would take time. I’ve promised to give him physio treatment. He has handicaps, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that. Now,’ Pye said, briskly, ‘let’s get back to Duane Hicks. Have you heard from him recently?’

  ‘Recently? This year, certainly; he called me out of the blue, in early January, and asked if I could do him a favour. He said his boy Marlon . . . now I think about it, that must have been his wife’s kid: they have two of their own, but they’re still at school . . . Marlon, he had trained as a mechanic and was lookin’ to come back to Edinburgh to work. My mum had said to his mum that I knew people; last time I was home I told her about Hastie and Alafair and the businesses they own.

  ‘A week or so later, I saw Hastie in Kilmarnock, and I asked him if they had anything going. A couple of days on, Alafair called me and said they’d hire him. She even fixed him up with somewhere to live, as a favour to me. Once the kid was settled in he dropped by to thank me. I haven’t seen him since.’

  The DI nodded. ‘Okay. Now, once again, you’re saying you don’t know anything about Duane’s wife.’

  ‘Her name’s Marie, but that’s it. Why, man? Why’s it so important?’

  ‘It may not be, but a bookie would give you rotten odds against. Bella Watson, the woman I asked you about: it’s her murder I’m investigating, and young Marlon Hicks is her grandson. You can bet that if Hastie McGrew thought Bella was pure evil, she felt much the same way about him.’

  Forty-Two

  I didn’t blame Lottie for getting less out of the priest than I did. I could have told her to go harder with him, but there was no certainty that would have worked. Tom Donnelly had felt a personal connection with me, through my father, and that may well have persuaded him to open up as much as he had.

  He’d given me enough food for thought to send me into a mental meltdown, and some of it, I decided, I was keeping to myself. As for the rest, I was prepared to share that, and even to swap it.

  I thought through my options; when I was ready I picked up the phone and called Maggie Rose . . . sorry, Maggie Steele; my old habits die harder than Bruce Willis. ‘Hi, Bob,’ she greeted me, sounding less than cheerful.

  ‘Who stole your scone?’ I asked.

  ‘And my birthday cake,’ she retorted. ‘I’ve got Mario with me; we’ve just had a visit from Mary Chambers, briefing us on the Bella Watson murder inquiry.’

  ‘How’s that one going?’ I don’t think I sounded too interested; Bella’s demise was poetic justice in my book, and so as an outside observer I couldn’t summon up too much enthusiasm.

  ‘She’s got more lines of inquiry than a s
pider’s web. The unfortunate thing is that they all lead in different directions. The DCS has called a case conference for tomorrow to try to pull them together. Just to add a fresh complication, she had a call from Sammy Pye in the middle of our visit. He’s just picked up a piece of information that might mean we have to reopen a very cold case: the death of Perry Holmes.’

  That got my attention. ‘Indeed? I wouldn’t be spending too much money on it. Lennie Plenderleith reckons that Manson had him done. You’ll be struggling to convict him, since he’s as dead as Perry.’

  ‘No, not him.’

  ‘Still, think carefully,’ I advised. ‘It’s been a long time and there were no witnesses. It could even have been an accident . . . although I admit that I have never bought the fiscal’s dodgy wheelchair theory.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Maggie said, ‘that’s not a top priority. Right now, the two of us are contemplating the prospect of holding a press briefing tomorrow, to go public on David Mackenzie’s disappearance, and to announce that he’s wanted on suspicion of murdering his wife. I’m going to get crucified.’

  ‘No,’ I heard McGuire say loudly in the background. ‘I am; you’re not taking the rap for this.’

  ‘It’s my rap to take,’ Maggie declared, for his benefit and mine; her voice echoed, telling me that she’d put me on speakerphone. ‘I’m the chief constable; I can’t get out from under. That forty-eight-hour silence isn’t going to look too clever under questioning.’

  ‘Just hold on,’ I told her, ‘before you get into a warm bath and open your veins. Have you set up this suicide mission yet?’

  ‘No, we’re leaving it until the morning. Why?’

  ‘Because you need a rethink; Mackenzie might have done a couple of things in his time that he didn’t want anyone to know about, but he has not murdered his wife.’

  ‘What?’ she shouted in my ear. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘It comes from an unimpeachable source. When I was a boy in Motherwell,’ I added, in explanation, ‘there was a guy on the council who was the local bishop’s mouthpiece. That was what he used to say when he was quoting his master’s voice.’

  ‘Did you get that from the bishop, then?’ she asked, with a trace of sarcasm that I must have left in her office when I moved out.

  ‘Almost as good as; I got it from David’s priest.’

  ‘From his what?’ McGuire exclaimed. ‘I never knew Mackenzie was a Catholic.’

  ‘There are lots of things none of us knew about Mackenzie, chum. He wasn’t born into it, as far as I know; he signed up as a teenager.’

  ‘You trust this clerical informant, do you, Bob?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘He told you Cheryl is still alive?’

  ‘Not directly, but that’s what he meant.’

  ‘Do you know this guy?’ I’d never been cross-examined by McGuire before. I wasn’t sure I cared for it.

  ‘My father knew him,’ I replied, well aware how lame that sounded.

  ‘That doesn’t fill me with confidence,’ he drawled. ‘I seem to remember you telling me once that you hardly knew your father yourself.’

  ‘Mario!’ I heard Maggie snap.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s a fair point. But Tom Donnelly told me categorically that Mackenzie is not a wife-murderer, and I will go with that. If you two don’t want to, then fine, let the media vultures pick your bones tomorrow. But be ready to look like a couple of Charlies when Cheryl shows up alive and well in the tabloid of her choice.’

  ‘If this goes pear-shaped, Bob . . .’

  I acknowledged her hesitancy. ‘I know. You’ve both got careers to protect, especially with the new unified force well over the horizon, whereas I don’t give a shit about mine. It’s your call, and it has to be based on your judgement.’

  ‘But yours is that we should hold fire?’

  ‘Mine is that you have no evidence other than a few bloodstains on a towel, and they don’t prove violence. There are any number of possible explanations for that; a sudden nosebleed, as I said before. Sarah had one when we were in Spain last week, but nobody thought about locking me up.’

  ‘What about the duvet, Mags?’ McGuire asked. ‘Does Bob know about that?’

  ‘Sorry, Mario,’ she replied, after a short pause, ‘I’m still processing the news that he and Sarah were in Spain last week. Yes, the missing duvet from off their bed.’

  ‘Again, that proves nothing,’ I pointed out. ‘You’ve got a couple who’ve disappeared at the same time, leaving their kids behind, safe with her mother. That’s all that you know for sure. I take it you’ve checked their financial situation. Do they have money problems, debt collectors knocking on the door, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Yes we have, and no they don’t. They’re as comfortable as you’d expect a couple to be with two good salaries coming in.’

  ‘Is there anything in Mackenzie’s past career that rings any alarm bells, villains with a grudge, and so on?’

  ‘No, we’ve eliminated that as a possibility.’ She sighed. ‘Okay, this is about judgement, as you said earlier. We’ve both followed yours from the start, and I’m going to follow it again. We’ll do nothing about a media conference, and reconsider on Monday. If there’s flak when it does come out . . .’

  ‘If it comes out,’ I interrupted. ‘They could return tomorrow, penitent and unharmed.’

  ‘Okay then, if it leaks, and the media go on the attack, we can argue that there was no danger to the public, so we had no obligation to them. Agreed, Mario?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘A deal, then; we come back from the brink. Thanks, Bob, for your input and your advice.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ I said. ‘I hope it works out for you; something’s happened between them, that’s for sure.’

  I know what you’re thinking. Why isn’t he sharing everything he knows with them, two people he’s known and trusted for much of his career and most of theirs? I should have but I chose not to, for I had a scent in my nostrils. It wasn’t a very pleasant odour, and I wanted to get to its source on my own.

  ‘Mags,’ I said, ‘the way this is turning out it’s almost as much my investigation as yours. Could you do something for me?’

  ‘Name it, oh master,’ she chuckled. ‘Why is it all your requests still sound like orders?’

  ‘This is a request, honest. I’ve been looking for Mackenzie’s personnel file, but my people tell me that everything was sent to Edinburgh when he moved. Any chance I could see it?’

  ‘If you want to; but I warn you, Ray Wilding’s looked at it and found nothing.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll have it sent to you tonight.’ She paused. ‘Where do I send it?’ she asked, provocatively. ‘Your place or Sarah’s?’

  ‘Mine, thanks,’ I replied, po-faced. ‘I’ll let you have it back when I’m done.’

  ‘What do you expect to find in it that Wilding didn’t?’

  ‘Nothing, Maggie, absolutely nothing,’ I told her, and I meant it.

  Forty-Three

  ‘Well,’ Mary Chambers began, as she gazed around the conference table in the Edinburgh police headquarters building, ‘this is quite a team to be investigating one disreputable old woman’s murder. Is that why we’re not making any progress? Too many cooks, is that it?’

  Five police officers gazed back at her: Detective Inspectors Sammy Pye and Jack McGurk, Detective Sergeants Harold Haddock and Karen Neville, and Detective Constable Jackie Wright, who had not been summoned but had been included by Pye in recognition of the sound work she had done. There was a seventh person in the room, a slight, earnest woman in her late twenties; she was a newcomer to them all and had introduced herself as Anna Jacobowski, a senior scientist with the Scottish Police Forensic Service.

  Jack McGurk frowned. ‘I don’t see that, ma’am,’ he protested. ‘We’ve all had distinct roles in an investigation that was complex from the very beginning. Speaking personally, I
don’t think my team have stepped on anybody’s toes. If Karen hadn’t been on the ball and thinking clearly, it would have taken us much longer to match the blood in the Caledonian Crescent flat to the Cramond Island remains.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Chambers admitted.

  ‘I’ve even got a bonus to report,’ he added. ‘Karen and DC Singh were diverted there by Mr Mackenzie when they were on their way to investigate a hit and run in Gorgie Road. Tarvil went back to that investigation and spoke to the witnesses. They told him that the car that hit the girl was going like a bat out of hell, “Like a getaway car”, according to one of them who’d been sober enough to give them the make and model of the vehicle . . . it was a Nissan Qashquai . . . and a partial number that showed it was five years old, registered in the city.

  ‘He cross-checked all possibles with the DVLA, and Patrick Booth’s name jumped out. We’ve got the vehicle impounded, so it was plain sailing after that. We can do him for that as well.’

  ‘And we will,’ the head of CID said. ‘How’s the victim?’

  ‘She’ll live. Tarvil gave her the name of a lawyer, so she can sue Booth for compensation for her injuries. She won’t have any problem there; the one legal thing the guy did was keep his tax and insurance up to date.’

  ‘Does Booth know yet?’ Sauce Haddock asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ McGurk replied. ‘No rush.’

  ‘It’ll be a nasty surprise for him.’ Sauce laughed, vindictively. ‘Another few years down the road just when he thought he was getting off lightly for shooting wee Vicky.’

  ‘You have to play it by the book, Jack,’ Chambers declared. ‘I’m not messing with Frankie Bristles. If you have enough to charge him, do it, and disclose to her.’ She nodded, then continued.

  ‘Okay, you’ve made your point, Acting DI McGurk. This is a bugger of an investigation and I can justify the resources we’ve devoted to it, whoever asks me. My main concern was that most of it’s gone off in the absence of the CID coordinator. He should have been doing all along what I’m doing this morning but I’m happy that we are where we’d have been if he had been here.’