Sugarcoated

by Catherine Forde

  ‘Then a week on some fisherman up Deeside snags –’

  ‘– well at first he thinks it’s a log –’

  ‘– but as you’ll see, Claudia –’

  ‘– that’s a partially burnt torso you’re looking at.’

  ‘Skull found intact further up the river –’

  ‘– which meant we could identify Andy –’

  ‘– though his arms and legs have never been found.’

  ‘So that’s Andy.’

  ‘But this next fella here’s a complete mystery-man …’

  When Stark and Hatch moved swiftly on to the third photograph, I was almost relieved.

  No more shock tactics. Just a headshot of a young guy. No blood. No bruises. No sign of violence. He looked early twenties to me: bad skin, thin blueish lips falling back from his teeth to make it hard to tell if he was smiling or sneering. I’d have judged his expression better if his eyes were open but they were closed. He looked asleep.

  ‘Peaceful enough eh, Claudia?’ The DCI tapped my thoughts as he tapped the photo. ‘So far this is as much as we’ve got of this lad.’

  ‘His head.’

  ‘Found in an alley in Aberdeen.’

  ‘No sign of the rest of him apart from –’

  ‘– well, actually you’re seeing the cleaned-up version of this poor bastard.’

  ‘He was found with his mouth full –’

  ‘– and a certain intimate part of his anatomy misplaced –’

  ‘– but we’ll spare you that photo –’

  ‘– for now. It’s in DCI Stark’s file if you’re interested.’

  ‘Anyway Interpol –’

  ‘– they reckon this fella’s Eastern European too –’

  ‘– can tell from his dental work –’

  ‘– and the hallmark in his earring. And that Claudia –’

  ‘– is us about done with what we needed to show you, apart from –’

  ‘– this gentleman here.’

  That final image on the table in the nicotine room was nothing like the others. For a start, the male subject in it was clearly alive. In fact, as he strode towards the camera, snarling something through the cigar in his teeth and giving the finger to whoever was snapping him, he looked larger than life. The closest thing to a human walrus I’d ever seen, he was, huge belly straining the white T-shirt he wore tucked into trackie bottoms mismatched with what was probably a very sharp jacket. Though it was hard to judge the quality of the threads given that the photo was so blurred. That was the second thing that made this pic different from the others the detectives had shown me. It was poor quality. Grainy. A shot of a moving target. Not a still … Huh. Get me: I was going to say ‘still life’.

  Still death, all the other photos were.

  Anyway, in this picture I’d to peer to distinguish the smaller details, but what I made out told even a dumbo like me all I needed to know about this big man: you wouldn’t mess.

  Basically, from his stubby grey ponytail to his white loafers, he was a tick-the-box gangster. The bling round his neck and wrists and fingers might as well have been engraved ‘BAD DUDE’, and as for his enormous gold specs – well, according to my dad, that ugly brown tint was always the giveaway.

  ‘Only clergy and crooks go for that these days. Folk with something to hide, Cloddy,’ Dad would have been whispering out the side of his mouth if he’d been sat beside me instead of Marjory.

  But he wasn’t and Marjory wasn’t whispering. She was telling me, ‘Our friend here’s incredibly camera-shy, but we can show you some pictures our forensics snapped when he was … well not exactly saying cheese, but a lot more cooperative.’

  ‘Then, Claudia,’ DCI Starsky-Stark chipped in. He was sweeping all the photographs, except the one of the walrus, into his folder. Taking more sheets from a different one, ‘I’m having a cigarette and you’re having a think to yourself in case there’s something you remember about what you didn’t see. So, eyes down –’

  I recognised the hammered man from Dad’s shop immediately. There were two pictures of him, taken from different angles. Both of them caught the man battered into a bloody, crumpled heap. Must have been snapped just before the paramedics attended to him.

  ‘You know this gentleman,’ the DCI swung his index finger back and forth between the walrus-gangster photo and one of the hammered man, but he kept his eyes fixed hard on me till I nodded.

  ‘But not as well as us,’ DI Hutch-Hatch took over the talking while his boss concentrated on staring me down. ‘And not as well as we’d have come to know him –’

  ‘– if someone who was even less keen on him than us hadn’t taken him out.’ Marjory was in on the commentary now, pulling out her notebook, puffing up her big manly chest.

  ‘The victim of the fatal assault outside Quinn’s Family Eyecare is Douglas Hall. Glasgow businessman, aged 58 –’ she read formally from her notes, then she laid them aside. ‘Better know as Hell Dog Hall. Complete scumbag.’ Marjory narrowed her eyes, wincing as if the words she was saying were nipping her mouth. ‘Drugs, guns, brothels, customs scams, illegals, false docs, fraud, dog-fighting, car-ringing. You name it, he was behind it –’

  ‘The Glaswegian Godfather, if you like,’ Starsky and Hutch couldn’t seem to resist putting in their oars.

  ‘But untouchable –’

  ‘– or, at least he was –’

  ‘– till someone from left field …’

  ‘Look, let’s get to the point about why you’re here.’ DCI Stark was on his feet, unlit cigarette in his mouth, box of Swan Vestas rattling in one hand, match poised for striking in the other.

  ‘Just looking at this bastard makes me feel I need fumigating. I’ll make no bones: Hell Dog was scum, Claudia. Involved in a world that you – a nice wee lassie – just wouldn’t have a … Ach-’

  Slumping against the doorframe of the nicotine room, DCI Stark’s face when it dropped to his chest was nearly the same grey as his suit. ‘Thing I’m trying to say, pet,’ he went on more kindly, ‘without scaring you more than you’re scared already, is that while we’re in here and you’re saying f-all, pardon my French, somebody’s out there who kills gangsters in broad daylight. And we don’t know who it is yet. But it’s someone with balls big enough to think he can step into Hell Dog’s shoes.’

  ‘If that makes any sense,’ DI Hutch-Hatch started nodding in agreement but then he seemed puzzled. ‘I mean it would be feet stepping into Hell Dog’s shoes, wouldn’t it, Boss? Not balls. You don’t put your balls into shoes –’

  ‘I’ve made my point, loud and clear,’ DCI Starsky-Stark’s glare included everyone in the nicotine room, but it lingered on me before he left.

  ‘Better get your thinking cap back on, Claudia.’

  22

  beauty parade

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Them, Claudia?’

  ‘None of them?’

  ‘You’re sure? Tell me if you need to go back to see any again.’

  I was sitting next to Marjory – just the two of us now. We were alone in a different room, brighter than the last, though even smaller. It was cluttered with chairs and desks and all the clumsy space-gobbling plastic and electronic spaghetti you need to run monster computers like the one I’d been at for at least half an hour. All that time I’d been shaking my head at a monitor while Marjory showed me more photographs. File after file after file. A parade of ugly, ugly men this time, not a one I’d fancy meeting up a dark alley, or in a dream, or jumping me when I walk up my front path in the dark, let me tell you. They were either scowling out from an official police mugshot, snapped unawares by surveillance, or captured in blurry freezeframe from CCTV. None of them were saying ‘cheese’.

  ‘Any of these chaps jog your memory so far, Claudia? Remember, you give us an ID, we protect you as best we can.’
<
br />   Aye right. Protect me like dead police informers on 24? Think I button up the back?

  ‘Memory of what? I told you I was hiding. Behind Dad’s desk. I didn’t see –’ Automatically I started to protest, but had to stop.

  Who was I kidding?

  It was obvious I was lying, my whine unconvincing and shrill, my face twitchy from the effort of trying to force it into an expression of innocence it couldn’t wear. Not now. Not when I’d seen what those hammer men I wasn’t telling the police about might have done to …

  Those girls. Their faces. And that ex-cop. And the thought of that bloke’s bollocks stuffed in his …

  Marjory must have heard my sharp intake of breath because she clicked her monitor to a still of the real 1970s Starsky and Hutch. Pushed back her chair. Patted my hand.

  ‘Take a breather. One more beauty parade, then I’ll get you home. You’re doing great,’ she was smiling but when she looked beyond me to the mirror covering the upper part of the wall behind us, her smile drooped. She rolled her eyes.

  ‘Is that mirror a two-way? For watching witnesses?’ Checking out if they’re telling porkies or not? I was gulping. Blushing. Mortified. Imagining some crack police psychologist with his clipboard doing his Robbie Coltrane and analysing my body language. Pointing his fountain pen at me through the two-way glass. Telling the DCI:

  ‘She knows something, Boss. I’d lean harder. She’ll talk …’

  ‘You watch too much TV, Claudia.’ Marjory, chuckling at my anxiety, didn’t confirm or deny my suspicions about the mirror.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Just a few more upstanding citizens. Now if any of them are in the slightest way familiar …’

  Click. Click. Click.

  Aware of possible unseen eyes on me this time, I sat as still as I could, hands in my lap, back straight. I blinked only when a face changed on the screen. This was fine, in fact I was feeling quite smug. Smug enough to make one of my mental notes to myself:

  Investigate Secret Service for possible career options. Or acting. Because whenever Marjory clicked from one mugshot to the next I could see my own face briefly reflected on the surface of her monitor, and without tooting on my own trumpet I’d say outwardly I must have looked pretty damn composed.

  A cool customer. Inscrutable … I almost congratulated myself.

  Then Marjory went and spoiled the masquerade.

  ‘Last –’

  Click.

  ‘– group –’

  Click.

  She sighed.

  And I jerked back in my seat like someone out the computer had socked me a right hook.

  What a muppet.

  The Glaswegian versions of Starsky and Hutch were panting stale coffee breath down my neck before I’d managed to resume my own involuntary respiration pattern.

  ‘Right. You’ve seen this man before?’

  ‘And that one?’

  ‘Previous JPG, please Marj.’

  ‘And forward –’

  ‘– back.’

  ‘Have another good look, Claudia.’

  ‘You know how important it is that you help us in any way you can.’

  ‘These are evil people we’re trying to find.’

  And that’s basically why I’m bloody well not wanting to tell you anything. I was curling up into a tight foetal ball in my head while Marjory moused between the same two images. Both were enhanced stills from a piece of video footage. This meant that in close-up, the two men leaving a car looked blurry and distorted enough to be drawn on soggy blotting paper rather than made of flesh and bone and hair. Like the badge on their Mercedes, only the men’s most distinguishing characteristics jumped out at me.

  But it was these I’d recognised. Instantly.

  The monobrow of the darker, thickset man. The monobrow beneath which his hard, black eyes had scanned Dad’s shop. The memory made me wince.

  So did the jutty angles of his fairer companion. The jumpy headcase with boxer’s footwork. Seeing him again made me catch my breath with a squeak. Hold it. And the hint of rings on every finger curving the pixels of the hands resting on the car doors …

  That’s what made me scrape back my chair. Remembering. Those fingers. Twice I’d seen them. The first time they’d sliced through Hell Dog Hall’s hair. The second time, similar ringed fingers were attached to whoever drove …

  … whoever drove Stefan, my sweet-talking guy, into his garage. Although Stefan’s driver can’t have had anything to do with this scowler on Marjory’s computer. Loads of blokes wear chavvy rings, I was telling myself as I shrank from the stares of the cruel men I’d seen outside Dad’s shop. Stefan’s driver’s rings just triggered a flashback of the hammer scene …

  ‘So. Finally we’ve jogged that memory of yours, Claudia.’ Starsky-Stark gave my shoulder a grateful squeeze. But his voice was the gravest I’d heard it and when I opened my mouth to stutter the usual denial – ‘B-b-ut I didn’t say …’ – he’d his palm flatted a millimetre from my face.

  ‘As an old Kojak song goes: “If a face could paint a thousand words – ”’ His finger drew a circle in the air round my head and shoulders. ‘You clearly recognise these men.’

  ‘I … uh …’

  ‘A nod’ll do. Don’t bother with another lie. And by the way, I’m warning you formally: your wise monkey act comes under wasting police time. That’s chargeable.’

  ‘So you’ve seen these men before, Claudia?’ While her DI struck the monitor with sharp, impatient raps of his pen, Marjory bumped my arm with her elbow. Ouch! For some reason her softly-softly tactics brought tears to my eyes.

  ‘We’re done here. Promise.’ Marjory was nodding at me as she spoke, half-smiling, like she was my friend, like we were in cahoots against the detectives. I felt my head nodding in symmetry with hers before I could bring down a shutter on her kindness. I was tired. My brain hurt.

  ‘That’s a yes. Take the lassie home.’ DCI Starsky-Stark spat a fleck of tobacco from the unlit cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘Just as we thought,’ he sighed. ‘This silent witness here saw Humpty and Dumpty all along. Bugger it.’ His head-jerk was sheer impatience as he held the door open for his DI to follow him from the room.

  ‘Now we need to find who’s yanking their chains –’

  ‘Chase down the organ grinder –’

  I could hear the detectives muttering curses to each other as they swept from the room like they were too busy to waste another second in my company.

  ‘C’mon lady. You’ve done good. Let’s get outa here and get ourselves something to eat.’ When she clicked her tongue at me, chuckling at her crappy American accent, I suddenly realised how much kind and well-meaning Sargy-Margy was reminding me of another cop: That pregnant one. Another Marge. From Georgina’s favourite film. Fargo. About a horrible murder …

  The coincidence made me gasp. Made me wish, more than anything, that my Marge and I could just be film characters too. Could leave the set. Walk away …

  23

  off down under

  ‘Cloddy, did you even bother yourself to look for my passport? I’ve turned the house upside down. Your mum swears it’s in her dressing-table drawer. But it’s not. I’ve wasted an afternoon queuing in the passport office for a temporary. Then I’d to get a new credit card sorted and I nearly didn’t. Been fighting with the bank. My VISA’s been skimmed or scammed or cloned, so they tell me. Couldn’t buy my flight with it. It’s maxed out –’

  Apart from the fact he was yakking non-stop, I knew my dad was hyper as soon as he opened the front door. He was topless for starters, although he was wearing a towel round his waist and a pair of Mum’s reading glasses. Retro, rhinestone-studded batgirl ones complete with a sparkly spec-chain which was buried in the tangle of his furry chest rug.

  Combined with the state of Dad’s hair, which was completely standing on end and bushed out round his ears, the whole effect made him look like a camp hobbit with a taste for bling.

  ‘I’m
off Down Under. In an hour.’

  Oblivious to the burly policewoman who’d escorted me home, Dad was flapping an airline ticket so close to Sargy-Margy’s face that she had to reel back.

  ‘Neil’s had the baby but he’s awful weak,’ Dad kept on flapping. ‘Your mother wants me over in case things …’

  Sicko that I am, you’ve no idea how close I was to cracking out one of my tasteless funnies: No wonder Neil’s weak if he’s just performed the miracle of birth I almost blurted, but I managed to bite my tongue. Glad I did, because I realised my dad had actually reached meltdown, and what he was saying was no joke.

  ‘Baby’s had an operation already. Wee scrap, your mother says. Fighting for his life. Called him Sean … Isn’t that just? … Oh I don’t know what to take with me. Your mother always packs my … and the whole day’s been utter hassle … I’ve had to arrange locums for the shop and now I can’t find …’

  Suddenly, the adrenalin that was keeping my dad together seemed to evaporate. He literally slid down the hall wall till his bum met the carpet.

  Burying his face in his knees, his fingers of one hand shredded his hair. The other gestured pathetically at his open suitcase. So far he’d packed two odd socks.

  I had to hand it to Marjory. People always accuse cops of being a waste of time, don’t they? Never about when you need them. But I doubt Dad would’ve have packed much more than those sad socks, let alone made his flight if it hadn’t been for a certain police presence in our house that night. Think I’d have known where Dad hid his underpants? His blood pressure tablets? I was standing over him gawping and Marjory was already in Public Assistance Mode, crouched down next to him, plucking the plane ticket from his hand, checking the time of his flight.

  ‘Hello, Mr Quinn. Remember me? Marjory? From your shop the other day. Now don’t be alarmed about seeing Claudia with a police officer. She’s not done anything wrong. She’s been trying to help us identify the men who were involved in the attack there. I need to talk to you about that but first we’ll get you sorted for your plane. You’ve less than an hour before check-in.’