By the Light of a Lie (Thane & Calder Book 1)

by Marjorie Orr

  ‘Has Rory kept up with any of the other children?’ she asked. ‘He must have made new friends.’

  ‘No, they had been asked not to keep up contact afterwards,’ she replied. ‘The man said they should make friends locally, not on the internet. And they came from all over. There were no other Scottish children there. Well, except one.’ She hesitated.

  ‘Perhaps we could interview him and his grandmother?’ Tire asked sweetly, her antennae up.

  Mrs McKinley frowned and shook her head. ‘I don’t know their address. He was very muddled, quite aggressive, that boy when he came. Then he got ill and they took him away to the big house. We didn’t see him again.’

  After considerable coaxing, she admitted she had chatted to the boy’s grandmother from Dundee, who said she had adopted him after he’d been taken into care as a toddler. Her son and the boy’s mother had been drug addicts and he’d been starved and beaten as a baby.

  ‘She had a big heart taking all that on,’ she said admiringly. ‘You could see that his background had affected him badly. He had a real nasty look in his eye the first time we met him. But Rory saw him just before we left and said he was much nicer and calmer. Though maybe they had him doped up.’

  ‘This was the last holiday you went on?’ Tire asked smoothly. ‘Were any of the kids ill the previous time?’

  The old lady rubbed one wrist with a knobbly hand and thought for a moment. ‘To be honest, and I wouldn’t like this to go in your article, they were all sick the previous time. Not vomiting or anything, just not right in the head like. It took Rory a while to feel normal again. They said it was a virus. He couldn’t remember his sums for weeks after. At times I wondered if he knew who I was. I was worried, but the manager assured me it would wear off and it did. They sent a young doctor round to check on him here, which was very kind. Saved me going down the health centre.’

  There was little else she could tell them, but they lingered till her grandson came home. Herk took a few shots of both of them sitting on the couch, Rory holding his favourite signed football.

  Outside, Tire said: ‘What did you make of that?’

  ‘More questions, no answers, lots of maybes,’ he replied, manoeuvring back out into the rush-hour traffic.

  CHAPTER 39

  Their next port of call was a rendezvous with the reporter Murdo Scott, with the hope that he might shed light on the journalist who had been killed in a car crash while investigating Paul Stone’s business. Back through the tunnel again, more slowly than before, crawling along Anniesland Road into the leafy suburbs of Great Western Road, past Gartnavel Hospital and then heading north over the River Kelvin at Queen Margaret’s Bridge into tenement country.

  The Maryhill pub was noisy inside and out, with smokers hanging around beside the litter bins, pulling their jackets tight against the wind and clutching glasses of beer, the smoke wreathed across the heavily grilled doorway. Inside, the din was louder with piped pop music and the raucous chat and laughter of customers winding up for a long night ahead. The brass-railed bar stretched the length of the long, low-ceilinged room, with spirit bottles stacked up to the ceiling on shelves in front of the mirrored wall. The décor was muddy brown.

  Herk pushed ahead of her, clearing a way through the jostling crowd of men still in their grimy work clothes, until she tapped him on the shoulder. She was praying that Murdo Scott would still be sober enough to make the meeting worthwhile.

  He was sitting crouched over a corner table, the collar of his raincoat turned up, a few strands of lank, greying hair lying across his bald scalp. When he raised his head, the deeply lined skin on his face seemed to slide downwards, pulling at the pouches under his reddened eyes. A feeble wave acknowledged her presence. In front of him was a wine glass half-full of clear liquid, with bubbles rising to the surface.

  She patted him on the hand and introduced Herk.

  ‘Not too great at the moment, I’m afraid,’ he wheezed. ‘Docs have got me on this cat’s piss,’ waving at the spritzer. Now that she was closer, she could see tinges of yellow jaundice on his skin and in the whites of his eyes.

  Deciding this was no time for a full medical rundown, she charged in and asked whether he’d found out anything. His rheumy eyes regarded her blankly, blinked several times as if he was trying to stay awake, then he grasped her hand.

  ‘Joe said you owe me money,’ he said intensely, leaning towards her. She attempted not to breathe in too deeply, as his musty odour spread across the table.

  ‘Sure, Murdo, sure,’ she said brightly. ‘Loose ends from the last gig. I’ll settle up. But I need to know about this reporter.’

  To her surprise, tears filled his eyes and, having blown his nose loudly into a filthy red handkerchief, he said: ‘Aye, Davey Campbell. I knew him well. I helped with his last investigation into some London bigwig. But after he’d gone I didn’t have the heart to keep going. Or the money to be honest.’

  Roy Orbison’s Only the Lonely was blaring out with the volume turned up full and several voices joining in on the dum dum doo-wahs and oh yay yay yay, yeahs. A plump, blonde woman in her fifties at the next table, still in her supermarket overalls, was belting out of tune for all she was worth. Herk, returning with two beer tumblers full of coca cola, raised one in greeting to her.

  When the next track, a Barry Manilow, came on to the accompaniment of boos, the volume was turned back down. Hardly daring to hope, she said quietly to Murdo: ‘I don’t suppose you have any of his notes from that investigation, do you?’

  He regarded her with mock superiority and smiled, for the first time looking in focus. ‘Of course I do. What do you take me for? No, don’t answer that,’ he said, sighing heavily. Bending down with difficulty, he brought a tattered briefcase up from the floor. It took her all her time not to grab the case, but she stopped herself and rescued his wine glass instead, which was in danger of being knocked over.

  The effort seemed to have exhausted him so he sat for a moment breathing heavily, clutching the scuffed leather to his chest.

  ‘Tell me about the car crash,’ Tire said, when he looked less stressed.

  ‘Don’t know much about that, to be honest. Up in Wester Ross somewhere. And before you ask, his death certificate’s in here, well, a copy I got at the time.’

  ‘You thought it was suspicious?’ She fingered the condensation on her glass, trying not to sound too eager.

  He half-laughed, which turned into a choking cough, so she pushed the glass of Coke towards him. He nodded and took a sip, dribbling the brown liquid down his chin.

  ‘Don’t we always?’ he replied. ‘But truthfully I was pretty far gone when he died, so I couldn’t even go up and check. Felt bad about that. I owed him.’ His face was anguished.

  She gave him a sympathetic smile and said: ‘Maybe me and Herk can go check and let you know.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nah, I won’t be here long enough. My number’s pretty much up. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d make it here tonight. Doc says maybe a month, maybe not.’

  ‘No mountain high enough,’ roared the blonde at the next table as the Manilow track finished. ‘Just call me and I’ll be there.’ This earned her an enthusiastic round of applause. Murdo pulled at Tire’s shoulder bag to bring her closer, and croaked in her ear: ‘But I do need money to give to my son. Could you do me five hundred. Please, Tris?’

  She nodded to him as ‘Listen baby’ started up at full pitch, and gestured outside. They left as ‘Ain’t no river wide enough’ boomed out across the street. Even the rumbling evening traffic sounded muted in contrast, as they walked slowly towards the traffic lights. Herk flagged down a passing cab for Murdo as Tire found ten fifty-pound notes in her bag, tucked them into his jacket pocket and then paid the cab driver for his journey home to Dennistoun. He collapsed onto the seat and as she leaned in to blow him a kiss from the open door he rasped, saliva trickling down his chin: ‘See Davey right, will ye? He was one of the good guys.’

  A sen
se of bleak despondency kept her quiet on the way to their hotel. Drink, she thought, the Celtic curse. Filling the black hole of nameless pain and galactic loneliness out of the bottom of a bottle. A communal habit, but really a solitary vice of souls crying out for a connection they could never quite make.

  She turned to Herk as he was parking and said: ‘What did your father die of?’

  ‘Cirrhosis,’ he answered, staring ahead. ‘And his father before him, and one of my brothers and two uncles. I know what it looks like and that guy’ll be lucky if he sees the end of the week.’

  Later, over a bottle of wine in a quiet corner of the hotel bar, they reviewed what they knew and what came next. The Stone family history, involvement in illegal drug testing and perhaps a journalist’s death covering up whatever he’d found out about their finances. The reporter Davey Campbell’s notes could be added to Russell’s research list. And who was Jimmy Black? That would mean another Glasgow trip.

  Tire could feel herself getting drawn into a distracting curiosity about the Stones, which might lead to a sensational exposé – and a libel nightmare – but was not getting them any closer to nailing down Erica’s killer.

  She slumped back in her seat. And Wrighton? Where did he fit in? Buddies with Harman. Two shits together. Scratching each other’s back when they had problems.

  ‘Want to know what I think?’ Herk’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘Only chance we have of getting the evidence we need is to track the watchers and motorcyclists back to base. We have to know whether they were mercenaries freelancing for several employers or working for one. The text on the phone in Spain suggested they might have several different gigs running at once. I could put a team together. Two men and a dog aren’t enough. It’d cost, mind you. How are you doing on money?’

  ‘Kind of OK.’ She gave him a distracted look. ‘There’s cash in from the Sanchez book and another advance for the next one. I can write chunks of expenses off against tax as a development project. And I’ll write a travel piece about the Costa Brava, and California, which’ll pay a bit.’

  ‘What about California? Did I miss something? You never mentioned that before.’ He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘I thought we were backing off for a while. Neither of the Stones will be there or Wrighton, will they? So what’s the point?’

  ‘Calm down,’ she said more loudly than she had intended, causing the couple two tables away to turn round.

  Lowering her tone, she said: ‘Plane tickets are free off airmiles. It’s only an in-and-out trip so we’ll be back in three days and you can set up your counter-surveillance gig before then. My gut says Harman Stone’s the answer, so the more I know, the more…’ she trailed off. Then giving herself a shake, she said firmly: ‘And Chip Nathon is the best source I’ve got so far.’

  ‘For Paul Stone’s biography, maybe, but I can’t see how he helps with our main priority, which is Erica.’

  ‘And Greengate and Jimmy Black,’ she said, absent-mindedly peeling the gilt edge off a table mat, exhaustion making her head spin.

  ‘Hey, hey. Hold hard. No mission creep. We can’t save the world. Keep your focus steady.’

  CHAPTER 40

  ‘Calm down man, for god’s sake. I don’t know what you’re saying.’ Wally’s rough accent roared down the speakerphone on Ricky’s desk. ‘What fire?’

  ‘It’s where Jimmy lived,’ Ricky screeched hysterically. ‘And there’s three dead. The whole building went up at three this morning. It’s on the TV news.’

  There was silence from the other end, then a long growl of anger, followed by an echoing bellow to get the car. ‘I’ll meet you there in ten,’ he said tersely and rang off.

  Ricky tried to drink his coffee, but was shaking so much he had to put the mug down. He sat stunned, with his secretary and assistant hovering wide-eyed in front of his desk. ‘I should have done something,’ he wailed. ‘I knew he might be in danger. And I didn’t do anything.’

  He sank his head in his hands and gave two heaving sobs. Eventually Priscilla collected his coat and handed it to him while Alex went off to flag down a cab.

  The area was cordoned off when he got there, with three fire engines still tending to the smouldering ruins of what had been a tenement building. The soot-blackened windows on the second and third floors, the glass blown out and the frames scorched, gave testament to the heat of the blaze.

  A claret-coloured Bentley was parked in the middle of the road at the far end of the police barriers. A stocky figure in a sheepskin coat with a yellow construction hard hat was inside the cordon talking animatedly to a policeman. Seeing Ricky, he beckoned to him and after a moment, when he got no response from the figure clinging onto a lamp post, sent a policewoman across to collect him. He clapped Ricky hard on the shoulder, more to jolt him into coping than out of sympathy.

  ‘It’s too soon to tell,’ he said gruffly. ‘Too hot to get in, according to Joe here.’ He nodded at the uniformed man beside him. ‘One body’s been recovered, an old woman, from the first floor, smoke inhalation. But that second floor is in a real mess. So they reckon at least two more dead. If not more. They’ve no idea what started it.’

  An ambulance siren was wailing and car horns blaring as the traffic seized up behind the roadblocks. Two fireman, covered in dust and wet soot, clambered over debris with a stretcher carrying a closed body bag. Ricky leant against Wally and sobbed.

  ‘Listen up.’ Wally shook him upright. ‘You’re sure he couldn’t be anywhere else? My flat he’s using as a studio?’

  Ricky looked wildly at him, hope flaring and then instantly dashed. He shook his head miserably, tears running down his cheeks. ‘They wouldn’t stay there. It was too grubby.’

  ‘Well, nothing to do here. Joe’ll keep me informed about what they find. Best go take a look. Just in case.’ He grabbed Ricky’s arm and manhandled him towards the Bentley.

  The mountainous driver with a bald head and tattoos on the back of his neck cursed and honked regularly as cars got in his way. They had to take a long route round to Castleton Street and approach it through a rat run of narrow streets that were a tight fit for the Bentley. Ricky cowered in a corner of the back seat, saying over and over: ‘It’s all my fault. I should have done something.’

  ‘No sense in crying over spilt milk,’ Wally admonished him, with an irritated look. ‘What’s done is done. But I’ll get the bastards who did this, if it was arson. They’ll be the same ones who did for my nephew Jimmy. I found out yesterday they were foreign cunts. Dorry finally tracked down a kid who saw it. A contract job for sure, and someone is going to pay, you can take my word on it.’ He drummed on the armrest with one stubby hand, glancing occasionally out of the window to frown as they slid past parked cars only inches away.

  They walked up the stairs of the tenement with Wally puffing, and prodding Ricky from behind every time he threatened to collapse. At the top they looked at each other, then Wally hammered hard on the door with a clenched fist. There was an echoing silence for almost a minute, which brought more tears and a rumble of aggravation.

  Then the door opened suddenly to reveal Elly wiping her hands on a dish cloth. ‘What’s all the noise about?’ she asked indignantly.

  Ricky rushed past her into the main room to see Jimmy standing brush in hand, looking puzzled, and threw his arms round him in a passionate embrace.

  ‘We thought you were dead,’ Wally remarked tonelessly. ‘You stayed here last night, then?’

  ‘I hope that was alright,’ Jimmy answered, looking bewildered and embarrassed. ‘It was just I painted till late and then there was a garden programme on television I wanted to see.’ He shuffled nervously. ‘And the set here’s better than the one at our place. We got fish and chips round the corner. After it was over, we thought we might as well stay. The bed’s very comfortable.’

  ‘Thank Christ.’ Ricky tottered unsteadily to the sofa and sank into it, burying his head in his arms.

  ‘Hey missus, any chance of a
cup of tea?’ Wally gave a tight smile to Elly, who obediently went off to the kitchen. He walked to the window and looked out, came back and stood viewing Jimmy’s half-finished painting of a stone path in a garden with an ancient wall to one side and a blank space in the middle.

  ‘What’s going in there?’ he pointed a finger at the canvas.

  Jimmy came across hesitantly, barely able to take his eyes off the huddled, tear-stained figure on the sofa. ‘It’s where my mother was killed, I think,’ he said faintly. ‘I wanted to do one last painting about the past and then leave it for good.’

  ‘Your flat was torched last night,’ Wally replied abruptly after he was handed a mug of tea.

  A squeal from Elly was followed by a clatter as she dropped the tray of mugs onto the table, slopping tea and milk across the surface. It brought Jimmy to her side and they clung together, listening with horrified expressions to Wally’s blunt description of their burnt-out tenement and the dead neighbour.

  ‘Poor Mrs McDonald,’ Elly whispered through tears.

  ‘Stop snivelling, man.’ Wally growled in disgust at Ricky’s blotchy face and reddened eyes. Then he turned to Jimmy and said with a dismissive sneer: ‘He thought you were dead and he hadn’t protected you.’ He searched in his pocket for a cigar and added through pursed lips: ‘Mind you, there but for the grace and all that.’

  Jimmy stood rooted to the spot, staring as the cigar was lit, drawn in rapid puffs and smoke spiralled into the room. His eyes drifted off to the half-finished painting with its grey stone, green plants and blue sky. The patch of raw canvas in the centre he’d been reluctant to fill in stared back at him. With a considerable effort he brought his gaze back to the barrel-chested figure standing impassively beside him.

  ‘You don’t mean it was deliberate?’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘To get me?’ His eyes were anguished as he searched vainly for reassurance. ‘I was the reason my neighbours got killed?’