The Last Darkness

by Campbell Armstrong

  Murdoch said, ‘Some guy hit her.’

  ‘Send her in, send her in.’

  Murdoch went away a moment, then ushered Billie Houston inside the cubicle. The young cop vanished. Billie Houston sat down. Her nose was slightly puffy, eye makeup pale.

  ‘Great service around here. I got a cup of tea and a ginger snap.’

  ‘That’s a damn sight more than I get,’ Perlman said. He blew into his cold red hands. ‘I’d murder for a cup of hot tea. So what happened to you? Who attacked you?’

  ‘He didn’t pause to introduce himself, Sergeant.’

  ‘They seldom do,’ Perlman said. ‘What was he after? Purse? Those bracelets?’

  ‘Robbery wasn’t the motive,’ she said. ‘He wanted information.’

  ‘Funny way of asking for it.’

  ‘Dead funny,’ she said. She crossed her legs, and her coat fell open to expose the short suede skirt and the matching knee-length boots. He imagined Joe Lindsay eyeballing the legs while he dictated letters. Why did a quiet wee man get murdered?

  ‘What information was he so keen to get?’

  ‘Wanted to know where he could find Mr Lindsay. Desperate to know.’

  ‘Desperate enough to thump you.’

  ‘I got him back,’ she said.

  ‘I bet you did.’

  ‘I’m not a punching bag for some arsehole. No way.’

  ‘Strange he didn’t come to the office in Bath Street if he was looking for Lindsay. Why follow you into a parking garage?’

  ‘I think he phoned hours before you turned up. I remember his accent. I told him Mr Lindsay hadn’t come in and he asked for his home number, which I didn’t give, of course.’

  ‘What kind of accent?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t have an ear for things like that. I can’t place it.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Dark beard. Dark hair. Quite good-looking. He wouldn’t be my type. I can’t imagine him ever relaxing, enjoying a night on the town. If I was forced to pin it down, I’d say he looked Middle Eastern. Iranian, I dunno. An Arab. That kind of complexion.’

  That kind of ‘complexion’ covered all sorts of nationalities in the Middle East, Perlman thought. Arab was an easy label, a generic. ‘Anything else you remember about him?’

  ‘Sure. He was sorry he hit me. Even apologized. Oh – one other thing. I didn’t tell him Mr Lindsay was dead. I told him if he wanted to know anything about Joe, he ought to ask you or Inspector Scullion.’

  ‘So I can expect to be assaulted on my way home?’

  ‘I doubt it. He might phone you, though.’

  ‘People who’ve committed an assault don’t usually telephone the police for the information they’ve failed to get by violent means,’ Lou Perlman said.

  ‘No, I suppose they don’t,’ she said.

  He considered Lindsay’s life: what had he been hiding? An act of fraud, fiddling the ledgers of somebody’s estate? Perlman wasn’t inclined to buy. The cocaine bothered him. The staged suicide also. A desperate man who might be from the Middle East – that niggled him as well. Lindsay had been part of that group, Nexus, which advocated peace in Palestine, Jew and Arab, good neighbours together. Could a connection lie there? Some disaffected person who had a serious grudge against Lindsay? But the solicitor had seemingly drifted away from the movement, if that’s what it was. So Billie Houston had said, and Perlman had no reason to doubt her.

  ‘Unless you have any more questions, I’ll be running along,’ Billie Houston said.

  ‘You want somebody to escort you to the garage?’

  ‘I think I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’d feel negligent if I didn’t get PC Murdoch to make sure you were safe.’

  ‘If you insist.’

  ‘I do.’ He picked up his phone, pressed a button, asked for Murdoch. The young policeman appeared within moments. How eager, Perlman thought. A young dog panting to please. Did I ever have such enthusiasm? ‘See that Ms Houston gets back to her car safely, would you?’

  ‘No problem, Sarge.’

  From his doorway, Perlman watched Murdoch lead Billie Houston across the outer office towards the stairs. He listened a moment to the ringing of phones and the upraised voices of policemen and women indulging in the joking banter that made the job of law enforcement tolerable. A dedicated crew, he thought. Most of them fresh, most of them keen as young Murdoch. Many of them would become jaded and stale in time. In the tumult of the city’s criminal world, a few would even lose their way entirely and break down in exhaustion and nerves, and occasional delusions of grandeur, I’m above the law, I can swagger and throw my weight around and do whatever the hell I like.

  He started to punch in Artie Wexler’s number when a tall stout man loomed in the doorway. Bloody hell. Was he never going to get the chance to call Artie? He put the handset down and, slipping his fingers under his glasses, massaged his eyelids. ‘And who the devil are you?’

  ‘Tony Curdy. Clyde Valley Security.’

  Perlman regarded the man’s dark-blue uniform. Nice little red shoulder chevrons, he noticed. ‘And what brings you to my lair?’

  Tony Curdy had a sorrowful face. You could see him doing a tearful clown shtick in a circus. ‘I have a videotape. Your Constable said you might like to see it. It’s the incident in the garage?’

  ‘You have that on tape?’

  ‘We maintain extensive CC surveillance of the garage twenty-four hours a day, Sergeant.’ He talked like a sales brochure. He tugged a video cassette from the pocket of his coat. ‘You got a VCR somewhere?’

  Perlman remembered there was one in Scullion’s office. ‘Follow me,’ he said. He walked through the outer office, and Curdy came after him. They climbed the stairway to the next floor and went along a corridor to Scullion’s office, which was empty and dark. Perlman switched on an overhead light and indicated the VCR and TV in the corner of the room. Curdy slid the cassette into the slot and turned on the TV.

  Perlman watched grey static on the screen, and then the picture cleared, and he saw the inside of a lift and the face of Billie Houston, and her image made him uneasy because he knew what was going to happen to her. The camera swivelled and another face appeared in the frame and this was the bearded man she’d described, the attacker. The Arab. Perlman braced himself for the inevitable moment of the assault. Words were exchanged: mouths opened and closed in silence. The lift door opened. Billie Houston started to make an exit, but then her face was rendered invisible by the man’s body as he stepped in front of her.

  The camera angle changed. Perlman saw a quick downward gesture of the man’s hand. Billie Houston’s face jerked back and then blood came from her nose, and again the angle of vision changed and Perlman saw the assailant’s face in close-up. An expression that might have been one of self-disgust, regret. The attacker dragged the scarf from his neck and held it out to Billie like a peace offering, and that was when she belted him.

  Clearly you didn’t mess with Billie.

  Then both characters vanished off camera and Perlman found himself looking at an empty lift.

  Curdy said, ‘Wait, we pick it up again. Right here.’

  A row of parked cars. The bearded man was moving after Billie and caught up with her, an image wrapped in shadow. He turned her around so that she faced him. Oy, she looked tough, her expression one of determined self-preservation. She shoved the guy away, and then she hurried out of the shot and was lost entirely. The attacker moved in the opposite direction and then he too was gone.

  Perlman’s eye was drawn to another figure who appeared briefly between parked cars. Wait, he thought. Who’s the wee lurker? ‘Can you roll it back and freeze it?’

  Curdy rewound, then stopped. ‘This the spot you want?’

  Perlman moved closer to the screen, peering at the dim shape loitering among motionless cars. ‘Him,’ he said.

  ‘I noticed him too,’ Curdy said. ‘He must’ve seen the confrontation between the man and th
e woman, and buggered off.’

  ‘Can you make it clearer? Can you zoom in or something?’

  ‘We don’t have that capacity, but I could leave you the tape and your tech guys could enhance that image for you.’

  Perlman didn’t have the patience to wait for technicians. He got in as close to the screen as he could. The face that looked out, from beneath a baseball cap, was familiar. Perlman wasn’t sure. The image was grainy. He stepped away, took off his glasses, replaced them, looked again. Yes. No. Maybe.

  Curdy said, ‘If this guy interests you, there’s one more bit you might want to see. A street sequence. We’ve got cameras outside the building as well as in.’ He fast-forwarded the tape, then played it. The picture depicted a pavement, a few lights reflected from surrounding offices. The image was gritty, as if the picture had been shot through sand. A man rushed into the frame, stopped, looked back. It was the guy from the lift. He turned, then moved away from the camera. A few yards ahead a second figure appeared – and this time Perlman, down on all fours, gazed at the picture like an assessor evaluating a painting of uncertain provenance. The ‘Arab’ moved a few paces towards the second figure, a small man who slipped quickly into the doorway of a shop and out of sight. The bearded man stopped and abruptly disappeared into the same doorway, and the frame was empty for perhaps twenty or thirty seconds, before Billie’s attacker emerged and ran along the pavement and finally out of the camera’s range.

  The second figure, the small man in the baseball cap, didn’t reappear.

  Curdy said, ‘One guy goes into the doorway and doesn’t come out again.’

  ‘Maybe he couldn’t come out,’ Perlman said.

  ‘Probably the bearded joker kicked his arse.’

  ‘Why not? The little guy’s a witness to the fact the other guy committed an assault.’ Perlman stared at the pavement, the reflection of lights in wet stone. It resembled an artsy monochromatic photograph: ‘Glasgow Sidewalk in Winter’. He stood upright, massaged the sides of his aching legs. Shouldn’t go down on all fours, he thought. Harder than ever to get up again.

  ‘Run it back a little for me,’ he said. ‘To where the guy in the cap slips into the shop doorway. Then hold it.’

  Curdy obliged. Perlman stared at the face under the peak of the cap until his eyesight began to vibrate. You’re sure. But not one hundred per cent.

  Sandy Scullion came into the room. ‘Home movie night, eh? What’s showing?’

  Perlman said, ‘Have a close look.’

  Scullion walked to the frozen image on the screen. ‘When did Terry Dogue become a film star and what the devil has he been up to?’

  Confirmation. Terry Dogué, felon, drug-dealer, credit-card thief. Lou Perlman smiled and said, ‘Keep watching, Sandy. Wee Terry’s about to vanish right in front of your eyes. So much for the fragile nature of stardom, eh? Let me tell you the story so far.’

  22

  PC Dennis Murdoch was fond of WPC Meg Gayle. He liked her tall flat-chested body and the touchingly self-conscious way she slouched to diminish her height. Some people considered her awkward in her movements, but not Murdoch. He loved her laugh – a bell’s sound, he thought – and the way she cut her black hair in a bob.

  He shone his flashlight into the doorway of the shop. Sleet pierced the narrow beam of light. Bending, Meg Gayle examined the space illuminated by the torch. There was no evidence anything out of the ordinary had occurred here, no body, no bloodstains, just a plain old doorway, a few scraps of uninteresting litter – Crunchie Bar wrapper, dented Tizer can, spent matches – and a darkened insurance office beyond.

  ‘What are we supposed to be looking for, anyway?’ she asked.

  ‘Evidence of violence. This is where the encounter took place.’ Murdoch directed the beam around the space again. He’d been taught to be thorough. Look, and if you see nothing, look again. Then a third time.

  ‘Perlman showed me the videotape.’

  She said, ‘I bet he doesn’t want to be out in this weather, does he?’

  Murdoch smiled. ‘I don’t think he gives a monkey’s about the weather. He’s too busy thinking. He’s got, how would you describe it … an elsewhere look? I like him.’

  ‘They say his bark’s worse than his bite.’

  Murdoch said, ‘Ah, he doesn’t bark that much.’

  ‘All the worse when he does bite,’ she said.

  ‘I sort of admire how he goes about his business.’

  ‘And you want to be just like him when you grow up, Den?’

  ‘It’ll be years before I grow up.’ Murdoch smiled and killed the beam.

  He stood with Meg Gayle in the doorway. He enjoyed the intimacy of this, him and Meg and the empty street. In other circumstances, off-duty say, he might have reached for her hand and warmed it between his own. He imagined undressing her in a half-dark room. Red scarf draped round a lampshade. That flat body. The hard stomach. Flimsy knickers, peel them off gently, slide them down over her legs. You’ve a mind like a cesspool, he thought.

  ‘We might as well drive back,’ he said. ‘I’ll call in, tell Perlman there’s nothing at the scene.’

  ‘Spose.’

  They rushed to the patrol car parked nearby. Inside, melting sleet dripped from Murdoch’s black and white chequered cap. Meg Gayle blew her nose quietly into a Kleenex. Sniffle weather, Murdoch thought. Weather for coming down with bugs and calling in sick.

  The carphone rang and he answered. He heard the throaty voice of PC ‘Diamond Jim’ Brady. ‘Come in, Dick Tracy, speak your mind. Diamond Jim’s here most of the night to answer your calls, ease your worries, soothe your concerns, give you good advice on loving and living, on vitamins and nutrition, alternative medication as against traditional, anything you need, you just ask the Diamond –’

  ‘Christ,’ Murdoch said. ‘The Mouth Machine. We’re just on our way back. Anything happening?’

  ‘Possible victim of violence Terence Dogue was taken by a passer-by to Emergency at the Royal Infirmary.’

  ‘Have you told Perlman?’

  ‘Yepski. He was out of here like a whippet in heat.’

  ‘Any instructions for us?’

  ‘Aye. You’re to meet him for tea and cream buns tomorrow afternoon at the Willow Tearooms. Two-thirty, don’t be late. His treat. And wear your best suit. As for you, WPC Gayle, Perlman wants to see you there in a really skimpy mini-kilt and transparent blouse and absolutely no bra. Something utterly suggestive, he said. Something you can see your nipples through. I’d suggest PVC.’

  ‘Piss off,’ Meg Gayle said.

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘You’re up to here in crap, Brady,’ Murdoch said.

  ‘And damnably proud of it,’ Brady said.

  ‘Bampot.’ Murdoch cut the connection. Back to Pitt Street through the sleet. He looked at the wipers and thought of Meg Gayle in mini-kilt and see-through blouse. Aye aye. Hot thoughts on a nippy night.

  He needed a steaming cup of Bovril.

  23

  At nine p.m. Lou Perlman parked the Mondeo at the Royal Infirmary. Sandy Scullion was with him. As they rushed across the car park, Scullion said, ‘Lindsay’s house is neat and tidy, at least until I send the technical boys in tomorrow. Newspapers folded. The kitchen shipshape. Bed made. Absolutely immaculate. Just like your place in Egypt, Lou.’

  ‘Aye, right enough, sounds like home,’ Perlman said. ‘Did you find anything interesting?’

  ‘Would you call the Jewish Telegraph interesting?’

  ‘My aunts all love it, if that means anything.’ Perlman said.

  Driving sleet skelped his face. He heard the wind blow out of the Necropolis, where it roared between headstones and crosses and mausoleums, and battered the gothic structure of Glasgow Cathedral before it thudded the big dark edifice of the Infirmary. This was the cervix of old Glasgow, where the city had been birthed in the sixth century by a wandering monk later canonized as St Mungo. His bones lay interred in the Cathedral.
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br />   Perlman and Scullion entered the hospital, and found their way to Emergency, where they asked a bustling nurse the whereabouts of Terry Dogue. She was Irish and pretty, and held a bedpan over which lay a soiled towel. ‘It’s Dr Nimmo you’ll be wanting to see.’

  ‘And where might we find him?’ Scullion asked.

  The woman jabbed a finger in the air. ‘Down there, office on the right,’ and then she was gone, bedpan held aloft.

  Perlman and Scullion moved along a corridor thronged with sorry people awaiting medical attention. They passed curtained partitions where they glimpsed bleeders, accident victims, the casualties of everyday violence. One screaming child had a long nail hammered through her right nostril. This is where they come, Perlman thought, Glasgow’s wounded, the accident victims, the wrecks of domestic or criminal violence. They come for drugs, stitches, bandages, tourniquets, hasty surgery. And some come to die.

  A big man in heavy black-framed spectacles came out of an office. He wore a plastic tag that identified him as Dr George Nimmo.

  Perlman said, ‘Just the man we want,’ and flashed his badge.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Nimmo said. He had a harassed expression. He lived along the borderline between life and death, a location that made him impatient and nervy. He was also very English, and in his most stressful nightmares had probably never imagined he’d end up working in an Emergency unit in a huge Glasgow hospital. Some Englishmen, Perlman knew, didn’t travel well. Especially to barbaric Scotland.

  ‘I’ve got better things to do than chat to you police chaps –’

  ‘I’m sure, doc,’ Perlman said. ‘We want to ask about Terry Dogue.’

  ‘Dogue?’ Nimmo blinked, puzzled. ‘Oh, Dogue, of course.’

  ‘He was brought in here, correct?’ Perlman asked.

  ‘Some kindly Samaritan found him in a sorry state. Half-dead from asphyxiation. Seems somebody tried to throttle him. I’ll make out the necessary police report for you fellows whenever I have a minute to sit down. God, I’ve been going non-stop for fifteen hours and it doesn’t look as if I’ll ever get a chance to put my feet up –’