I thanked her and got on with my self-imposed task, taking another step forward to the year in which Mackenzie had applied to join the force. By that time, Max was back in Glasgow, back in headquarters in Pitt Street. He was a chief super by then, and back in uniform, as he had been for most of his career, in a desk job supervising the traffic department. Nothing to do directly with staff recruitment; it was the responsibility of one of the ACCs of the day, but he reported to that guy, and he would have been on the same floor. If he’d wanted to . . .
‘But why, Bob, why?’ I asked myself. ‘Why would Max want to smooth Mackenzie’s way into the force and remove anything that wouldn’t have pleased the recruitment panel?’
I went through the rest of the file looking for an answer, but I saw nothing. Why was I bothered? Because the man had denied knowledge of someone who was a fugitive and he had lied about it.
At that point I could have gone straight to him. I could even have extended the traditional invitation to Pitt Street, ‘to help with our inquiries’. But, like anyone skilled in cross-examination, I prefer to have the answers before I put the questions, and there were none in that file.
I decided on another tack, another, informal line of inquiry. I have a pal, a man who’s been useful to me on several occasions. His name is Jim Glossop; he used to be a civil servant but he retired at sixty and became a consultant genealogist. I found him on my contact list and selected his number.
‘Bob,’ he ventured, the mobile signal sounding a little other-worldly, ‘is that you? I thought you’d moved on to great things.’
‘You mean I wasn’t bloody great before, Jim?’
‘Right,’ he said firmly, then laughed. ‘Let me rephrase that.’
‘No, mate, it’s out there now. It’s a pretty good judgement, too.’
‘What can I do for you,’ he asked. ‘I don’t imagine this is a social call, not from a man who’s as busy as you must be.’
‘Not exactly,’ I admitted. ‘It’s not exactly a police matter either, not yet, at any rate. I want to know about a man named Maxwell Allan, parents’ names, wife’s maiden name, siblings, anything there is.’
‘He’s Scottish, I take it.’
‘Yes.’
‘You got a date of birth?’
I read it from the file.
‘It shouldn’t be a problem, then. I take it you need it yesterday.’
‘The day before if possible. And Jim, the bill comes to me, not the police service.’
‘What bill?’ He hung up.
Fifty
Finding Marlon’s Grandma Ford was much easier than the detectives had feared it might be. They checked the address shown on the young man’s birth record and discovered that she still lived there. Two calls later they had discovered that she had a job as a dinner lady at one of the city’s schools, and that her working day had just ended.
The Fords were council tenants, in the city’s sprawling, nineteen fifties, Clermiston estate. It had been regarded as a showpiece in its time and retained an air of gentility.
‘Not bad,’ Haddock remarked, surveying number twenty-seven Clermiston Grange. ‘There were schemes in Edinburgh built well after this that aren’t there any more.’
The house was a mid-terraced villa with a large front garden that was maintained better than most in the street. A close-mown lawn was surrounded by rose bushes, all of them neatly trimmed. ‘I wish mine looked like that,’ Pye muttered as they walked up the path towards the white front door.
The DI was reaching out to push the buzzer when the door swung open, and a woman stood looking at them, severely. The detectives knew that Gina Ford was sixty-two years old, and that had created an image in their relatively young minds. Their stereotype was short, stocky and with grey hair, possibly wearing an apron; they did not expect a five-foot eight-inch ash blonde who could have passed for fifty, wearing a loose Bob Marley T-shirt that did little to disguise an impressive bust and jeans that might have been painted on.
‘I’ve been expecting you guys,’ she said. ‘It’s as well you came to me, or I’d have come lookin’ for you.’
‘You’d go looking for Jehovah’s Witnesses?’ Haddock exclaimed, wide-eyed.
The stern expression cracked, and a small smile took its place. ‘Bloody comedian,’ she said, grudgingly. ‘You look no more like Witnesses than I look like Beyoncé Knowles. Do you do a line as a female impersonator as well, son? I was told one of you was a woman.’
‘Different officers, Mrs Ford,’ Pye replied, identifying himself and his sergeant. He made to show her his warrant card, but she waved it away.
‘Come on in,’ she ordered. ‘I don’t like the polis on my doorstep. Pye and Haddock,’ she added. ‘You sound like the menu in a fuckin’ chippie.’
As they stepped into a well-decorated hallway, Haddock nodded over his shoulder. ‘You’ve got a nice garden. Do you look after it?’
She shook her head. ‘Still he makes with the funnies. This boy must keep you in stitches, Inspector.’ She waved a perfectly manicured hand. ‘Do I look as if I’ve got manure under my nails, Sergeant? No, that’s all my man’s work; I take care of the inside, he does the rest. It keeps us out of each other’s hair . . . no’ that he’s got much, mind. One of the secrets of a happy marriage, lads, you should remember that.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Pye said, drily, as she led them into a neat living room, well-furnished and sparkling with cleanliness. He was still smarting from her menu wisecrack. ‘Now, tell me,’ he continued, declining the offer of a seat, ‘why were you going to come looking for us?’
‘Why the hell do you think?’ Her initial anger resurfaced. ‘Who do you people think you are? What gives you the right to go upsetting my grandson? He came to see me last night, in a hell of a state. His mother and I have spent the whole of his lifetime protecting him from the truth about his father, and your two bloody colleagues go and spill it out in the middle of some bloody café!’
‘I’m sorry,’ the DI retorted. ‘His name came up in the middle of our investigation and he had to be interviewed. It wasn’t possible to do it without telling him exactly why.’
‘Why not?’
‘I can explain that, Mrs Ford. We’re investigating his grandmother’s murder, and we found that Marlon is working for the family that police believe ordered his father’s killing.’
Gina Ford stared at him, rocking slightly back on her heels. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ she whispered.
‘How much do you know about your grandson’s father’s death?’ Haddock asked her, more gently than Pye.
‘The same as everybody else,’ she said. ‘He was found battered to death in the old Infirmary Street Baths. A few weeks later the papers said that the men the police suspected of doin’ it had been found dead themselves, in Newcastle. They said it was a gangland thing.’
‘That’s more or less how it was,’ the DS agreed. ‘The investigators at the time believed they were silenced by the man who ordered it.’
‘All that’s no surprise,’ she told him, ‘given that the Watsons were involved. Fucking lowlives, that family. That Marlon was the biggest mistake my Lulu ever made . . . the only mistake, God bless her. He wasn’t a bad lad as such, always quite cheery, but the man he worked for was. And as for his mother . . .’ Finally, she sank into an armchair and insisted that the detectives seat themselves.
‘Bella Watson tried to take over our lass after she found out she was pregnant by Marlon. But Robert and I, we weren’t having it, weren’t letting her have any influence over the child. We told her to stay away from our family. She didn’t like it, even threatened us, but my Robert’s no soft touch. He’s been a bus driver for thirty years, and he takes no nonsense. He went to see the man Marlon had worked for and told him what was happening. He said not to worry, and Bella never came near us again.’
‘But you know she’s dead?’ Pye asked, his earlier annoyance forgotten.
‘Oh aye. I saw it in the
Evening News. No surprise really, and I suppose no surprise that you folk should want to talk to the laddie. But to tell him about her, that’s something else. I’m not happy about that. We all decided very early on to tell wee Marlon that his dad had run off. Then Duane came along, he and Lulu got married and had Robyn, and then Kyle out in St Lucia, and we more or less forgot all about what had happened. So, why did you have to upset him?’
‘There was no option,’ the DI explained. ‘I know, Marlon said he had no idea he had another grandmother, but we’re simply not able to take someone’s word in a serious crime investigation. We needed his DNA to prove that he’d never been in her flat, and the officers who interviewed him had to tell him why they wanted it. As for doing it in a café, it’s a discreet process, so they thought it was better to see him there than going to his work or having him brought into the police station.’
‘I suppose,’ Mrs Ford conceded. She was silent for a while as she replayed the discussion in her mind. ‘What you said earlier,’ she went on, when she was ready, ‘about Marlon working for the folk that killed his dad. What did you mean by that? Who ordered it?’
‘His name was Perry Holmes,’ Pye told her. ‘He was the top man in organised crime in Edinburgh and probably in Scotland, at the peak of his career. He had a run-in with the man who employed Marlon Senior.’
‘The guy Manson?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And the laddie was killed in the crossfire?’
‘More or less. He was targeted, to send a message to Manson, because Manson was having an affair with Holmes’s daughter.’
‘They killed the boy for something his boss done?’ She was incredulous.
‘Yes.’
‘Animals, the lot of them. So how does our laddie come to be working for them?’
‘As far as we can see it’s purely accidental. Perry Holmes was in a wheelchair. He had a carer, who happens to be Duane Hicks’s cousin, and who still works in Edinburgh. Duane asked him if he could help young Marlon find a job.
‘Perry Holmes had a lot of legitimate businesses, as well as the criminal side, and when he died his son and daughter inherited them. Vanburn, the cousin, was on good terms with the son, and that’s how it came about. They even gave him a flat to rent, I believe.’
‘That’s true,’ she affirmed. ‘These people, do they know who Marlon’s father was?’
‘I don’t believe they have any idea, and it will stay that way as far as we’re concerned.’
‘How much does he know about them?’
‘Again, nothing. He was told the circumstances of his father’s death and his family history, but that’s all.’
‘And that’s enough. He must never know about these Holmes people.’
Pye nodded. ‘We couldn’t agree more.’
‘Thanks. We’ll get the boy out of there. Robert’ll find him a job in the bus garage, and he can come and live with us.’ She leaned back in her chair and looked at them. ‘But that’s not all that brought you here, is it?’ she observed.
Haddock smiled at her perspicacity. ‘Not quite,’ he admitted. ‘We wanted to ask if you know anything else about the Watson clan. To be specific, did Lulu ever mention Marlon having had a child, a son, by anyone else, before her?’
‘I doubt it would have been after her, son, given that she had a few weeks to go when they buried him. But no, she never did. If you’re really asking whether he had an earlier kid with Lulu, the answer’s no. She wasn’t off the rails much longer than it took her to get knocked up.’
Pye leaned forward, rejoining the discussion. ‘What about the rest of the family? You see, we know that Bella had another grandson, but we can’t work out how.’
‘I see.’ Gina Ford paused, pondering the question. ‘Well,’ she ventured, ‘as I recall, the last time I saw our Marlon’s dad, when he dropped Lulu off from a hospital appointment, he was all excited. I asked him why. He said that he was going to meet his sister, and he hadn’t seen her for twelve years.’
‘Sister?’ Haddock exclaimed as he stared at the DI. ‘What bloody sister?’
Fifty-One
I hadn’t expected Jim Glossop to get back to me before the following Monday afternoon, at the earliest, but I’ve always underestimated his skill and his tenacity. I was on the point of leaving the office for a weekend with my family, when Sandra buzzed me to say that he had called.
I was ever so slightly vexed. On the basis of Father Donnelly’s firm assurance, in my mind I had downgraded the search for the missing Mackenzies from a potential murder hunt to a domestic situation that had got way out of hand and for which there would be hell to pay when eventually they turned up.
Monday would have suited me fine; at that moment my mind was fixed on Gullane’s Number Three golf course and the evening round that I had promised James Andrew, my younger son, who shows significant promise for his age. (Mark, his older brother, is a whiz at the computer version of the game. He can find no serious console opposition in our house, but sadly he has no aptitude on grass.)
I took the call nonetheless; I could have asked Sandra to lie and say I’d just left, but that would have been churlish. She might also have refused, and that would have been awkward. On top of all that, Jim was a mate, doing me a good turn.
‘Jim,’ I said, making myself sound as enthusiastic as I could. ‘You need more information?’
‘Not at all. It was dead easy really. There’s no twists and turns in your subject’s recent history. He was born exactly when you said, in Houston, Renfrewshire. His parents were Alastair Gourlay Allan and Wilma Maxwell Allan, maiden name Adams, both schoolteachers, married in Glasgow University Chapel on the thirty-first of August, nineteen forty-three. One sibling, Jonathan Allan, born on the second of February nineteen forty-four, no comment.’ He paused for a chuckle.
‘Maxwell Allan married Julie Austin,’ he continued, ‘on the seventh of April, nineteen seventy-seven, in High Blantyre Parish Church. They listed their occupations as police officer, and physiotherapist. They had two children, a son called Gourlay and a daughter called Rosina, but she died in infancy. How’s that then?’
‘A sad ending, but bloody brilliant as always.’ I hadn’t known about Max’s lost child; but some things are too painful to mention, so that didn’t shock me.
I’d been scribbling as he spoke, and had all the salient details noted down. From the list of names, one was familiar. ‘Hold on, Jim,’ I said, as I delved back into Mackenzie’s file. I was looking for confirmation and I found it.
‘That’s great,’ I said, ‘but I need one more thing . . . well, two more actually. Can you find out whether Julie Austin has, or had, a brother called Magnus, and whether he had any kids?’
Fifty-Two
‘No,’ Mary Chambers declared. ‘I have never heard any mention of Marlon Watson having a sister. After you called me I even checked with the ACC. He was involved in the murder investigation, albeit as he says he was brand new in CID, but he swears blind that nobody ever made any mention to him of any sister. Are you sure this woman’s memory is up to it? She is a grandmother, after all.’
‘My granny never looked like that,’ Pye countered, ‘or was half as sharp. It’s a line of inquiry and we’ll check it out.’
‘You do that,’ the head of CID said, ‘but it’s not your top priority. The council CCTV monitoring people have been on, looking for Sauce. When they were told you and he weren’t in, they came on to me. They want to see you, pronto. They’ve been bursting their braces for you and I got the impression they’re looking for a bit of public credit for it.’
‘We’re on our way back to Leith,’ the DI said, ‘but we’ll divert there. As you say, boss, the sister can wait.’
The Bluetooth call went dead just as they reached the traffic lights in Great Junction Street. Haddock, who was at the wheel, made a last-minute lane change and flashed a right turn signal, drawing a horn blast from the driver behind. The man followed him into Leith Walk, and s
at on his rear bumper, big in his mirror, headlights flashing and horn still blaring.
‘Fuck this!’ the sergeant declared, slowing.
‘Ignore him, Sauce,’ Pye ordered. ‘If he follows us all the way to the council offices we’ll do him there.’
They never found out whether he would have gone that far, for they were stopped by a red light at the next junction. Immediately their pursuer leapt out of his vehicle and ran up to Haddock’s door. The DS rolled down his window, holding up his warrant card.
‘Can you read that, sir?’ he asked. ‘If not, it says, “Get back in your motor or we’ll do you for breach of the peace.” Understood?’
The red-faced man uttered not a word; instead he weighed up his options and chose correctly.
‘I was in Traffic in my second year in the force,’ Sauce said, as the lights changed and he drove away. ‘I hated having to be polite to people like him.’
When they arrived at the City Council headquarters in Market Street, they had a second argument, with the car park supervisor, but once again the warrant cards won the day. The office was on the point of closing as they made their way inside, but the receptionist had been briefed to expect them. ‘Second floor, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘It’s the door facing the lift.’
The second instruction proved to be unnecessary. As they stepped out of the elevator, a man was waiting for them; a very fat man, in shirtsleeves, with the council logo on his tie. ‘Johnny Halliday,’ he announced, extending a podgy hand to Pye. ‘I’m the team leader here. The front desk let me know you were on your way up.’
‘You’ve got something for us, our boss told us,’ the DI said.
‘Indeed we have,’ Halliday replied, with evident pride. ‘Come and see.’
He led the way into an open-plan work area with more video monitors than either detective could count. Each one was live, with a different view of the city’s streets, displayed four to a screen. ‘This way,’ he said, leading them to the far corner, which was partitioned off from the rest. ‘This is my domain,’ he announced, grandly. ‘Sit yourselves down.’
Hour Of Darkness Page 26