‘At least a month, then really until my pal finds a buyer, which might prove difficult after this morning’s events.’
‘Not at all. Just have to phrase the ad properly. “High-profile city-centre residence”, something like that. “Historical significance.” Certainly a significant address in the history of Dr Ponsonby.’
By about seven-thirty the place was filling up with the evening regulars, the post-work swift halves and cathartic office bitching-therapy groups having come and gone over a bustling ninety minutes. Parlabane had stuck advisedly to the tomato juices and watched with accustomed awe as his big friend punished the Guinnesses with little detrimental effect on his mind or body. Didn’t the bugger ever go for a pish? His bladder capacity must put supertankers to shame.
Duncan exchanged waves and nods of acknowledgement with several of the steadily arriving drinkers, and seemed to be on familiar terms with all the bar staff. Parlabane reckoned his friend must be wasting a fortune on mortgage payments on his New Town flat, as he quite clearly lived here.
‘All right, Jen?’
‘Hi, Dunky,’ came a female voice from behind Parlabane, the woman passing her respects as she waited for her change and for her pint of Eighty Shilling to settle. Parlabane was side-on to the bar, facing Duncan, and so without turning round inquisitively, he was unable to make out more than the edge of a woollen cap and a strong but delicious whiff of perfume. From the corner of his eye he was aware of her taking a long, slow pull at her pint, then heard her sigh with satisfaction.
‘Tough day?’ Duncan said to her over Parlabane’s head.
‘You don’t want to know,’ she said breathily, then reached for the life-giving heavy again.
‘So who’s your pal, big man?’ she said, moving around Parlabane on his left just as he turned right to introduce himself.
‘Sorry, Jen, this is Jack,’ Duncan was saying as Parlabane turned back round, his much-practised, usually affected (but not today), weather-weary-but-winning smile giving way to blank disbelief when he realised who he was being introduced to.
‘Jack, this is Je . . .’
‘DC Dalziel,’ Parlabane stated, looking very sternly at Duncan.
‘I’d consider it a magnanimous gesture if you’d call me Jenny,’ she said, offering a hand.
Parlabane gripped the outstretched fingers and couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Jack,’ he smiled. ‘Grab a stool.’
That morning, Dalziel had seemed to be dressed with severity of impact in mind, but tonight she was a bright kaleidoscope of reckless and frequently conflicting colours, apart from the black woollen cap atop her closely-cropped head. A tiny diamond indeed glinted on one side of her nose as he had predicted, and although it was one of the few such ornaments that he didn’t find clumsy and unattractive, it still made him slightly squeamish. Parlabane almost passed out with pain when he accidentally plucked a nose-hair. The thought of ramming a needle through there was like chewing tin foil.
‘It’s not his fault. I never told him what I do for a living,’ Jenny explained.
‘Well what the hell do you guys talk about in here?’
‘Not everyone is quite as job-obsessed as you, Jack,’ Duncan said in defence.
‘We talk about football, for instance,’ Jenny offered.
‘Oh, you talk about football with un-job-obsessed Duncan, the football reporter?’
‘You have to forgive him, Jen,’ Duncan said, getting up. ‘I’m afraid he tends to get a bit nippy after being arrested in his Y-fronts.’
‘I was not arrested. And they were not Y-fronts. Where are you going?’
Duncan quickly finished off his pint. ‘Excuse me a wee minute. I just spotted someone through the window. I’m off to see a man about a man.’
Through the glass they saw him cross the road and head into the Buzz Bar of the Blue Moon Cafe opposite.
‘Call of nature,’ Jenny muttered.
‘Hmm?’
‘Le Gay Café.’
‘Oh, is it.’
‘Used to be the Pink Triangle. Weren’t the Eighties a time of subtlety.’
‘Is that why you never told him you were a cop?’
‘He never asked.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘And that’s none of your business.’
Parlabane held his hands up. ‘Fair enough.’
He sipped at his tomato juice and winced slightly. The barman had been sufficiently liberal with the Tabasco that it burnt the palate more than straight whisky.
‘I’ll grant you, off-duty you don’t look like a cop.’
‘I’ll consider that a compliment.’
‘Yes, but then are you off-duty?’
‘Don’t get paranoid, Mr . . . Jack. I’m not checking you out.’
‘Bet you pulled my file though, didn’t you?’
She gave a mischievous grin. ‘Of course. Standard procedure. Two court appearances for charges of breaking and entering. No convictions, thanks to no material evidence. Did you do them?’
He smiled. ‘What, are you wearing a wire?’
‘Well, as I’m not about to bare my chest to you you’ll have to take my word for it that I’m not.’
‘I trust you. Yes and no. Yes I entered, but I never break and I never take.’
‘You never broke, you mean. Those two times, the only times.’
‘Of course.’
‘I mean, it’s not like you’re the kind of person who is so experienced at such criminality that – if you locked yourself out, say – you would try and climb in from someone else’s flat rather than ask the police for help.’
She finished her pint and gestured in a familiar fashion to the young woman behind the bar for a refill.
‘So what were you looking for?’
‘Nothing. And I was trying to get back into . . .’
‘Not today. I meant when you “entered but did not break"?’
‘Documentation, usually. Records, files. I never remove the stuff, just shoot copies. Proof. Evidence. Helps stand up your story, keeps the libel lawyers at bay.’
‘Not exemplary journalistic practice.’
‘I didn’t say I was an exemplary journalist. Although unlike most these days I prefer to find a real story rather than create one from an out-of-context quote or a grotesque exaggeration.’
‘Aye, you’re a real hero. Spare me the sermon, scoop. How do you explain where these documents came from when you write your story?’
‘They were “leaked”. They “fell into our hands”. These phrases sound familiar?’
Dalziel shook her head. ‘You know, if we acquired evidence that way, you’re precisely the sort of person who would be leading the outcry about it.’
‘Now you can spare me the sermon,’ Parlabane said. ‘You do acquire evidence like that. How often have “stolen” documents been “anonymously” delivered into police hands, then turned out to be “surprisingly useful” to a current investigation?’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ she said, accepting her drink from the barmaid with a nod. ‘That sounds far too resourceful and imaginative for our lot.’
‘Hmmm,’ he said, lifting the drink he hadn’t noticed her ordering for him. ‘Well, let’s just say I’ve met some cops in my time who were extremely resourceful and imaginative. Cheers, by the way.’
‘Slange.’ She drank a foamy mouthful from her glass.
‘You know a few cops, don’t you?’ Dalziel said.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Anyone so familiar with murdered stiffs is either a doctor, a cop or someone a cop knows well enough to allow him into a crime scene.’
‘Or a serial killer. Or someone who habitually trespasses on crime scenes.’
‘Someone who just habitually trespassed on crime scenes wouldn’t be able to deduce what you did from thirty seconds of staring at a body.’
‘I scored?’
‘Well, the PM hasn’t been completed yet, but you got the E
TD right. When they cleaned the blood off down at the mortuary they found rope burns around the waist and under the armpits. And we found another finger amongst all the crap on the floor.’
‘Find any hairs above the mantelpiece?’ Parlabane asked.
‘Where?’
‘I heard your killer took a dump up there. If he banged his head on the ceiling, there might be hairs in the cornicing.’
‘If he banged his head on the ceiling he’d be seven feet tall.’
‘Yeah, so he’d be easier to spot. You’d know his approximate height and hair colour, as well as his maximum number of fingers. Find anything else interesting?’
‘Hypodermic needle.’
‘Literal needle in a metaphoric haystack. Impressive. Syringe?’
‘No. No syringes in the flat at all. So we reckon that means the needle didn’t belong to the doctor. McGregor’s increasingly married to the burglary-gone-wrong theory. Needle equals junkie, junkie equals uncontrolled, random, potentially explosive burglar. And these days there’s a lot of attacks on doctors by junkies looking for drugs. But I’m reserving judgment until I know more about Ponsonby. Naughty doctors do sometimes deal drugs. Drug deals sometimes go very wrong . . .’
‘Lovely girl, Jenny,’ Duncan said. ‘I’d never have guessed she was in the police in a billion years.’
‘Apparently not. But against my better judgment I do like her. If I could overcome the threat to my masculinity of her being about four inches taller than me, I think I could quite fancy her. Do you think it would be unwise for me to get involved with an officer of the law?’
‘I don’t think it would be wise for you to get involved with anyone I know. I’ve seen how your relationships develop, remember. Anyway, you’re not really Jen’s type. Believe me, I know at least that much about her.’
‘Oh come on, Duncan, that’s unfair,’ Parlabane protested, trying to sound hurt. ‘I’ve done a lot of growing up in the last few years – even more in the last few days. I’m slightly more sensible and a lot more sensitive. These days I’d be prepared to change things about myself to attract the right woman.’
Duncan arched an eyebrow. ‘Yeah? Could you grow tits?’
Parlabane closed his eyes. ‘Fuck.’
‘Sorry, Jack. I tried to be gentle but you weren’t picking me up. I thought as I didn’t tip you off about the police station I should at least let you know that.’
Parlabane stood up and slapped Duncan on the back.
‘Naw, you’re all right, big yin.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home. It’s been a very long day and I’d quite like to forget that most of it ever happened. You don’t know a good smack dealer, do you?’
SIX
Sarah had expected to feel more scared. Her hand trembled slightly as she gently, slowly, quietly turned the key in the lock, but it wasn’t the thought of being caught, intruded upon that was bothering her. In fact it was the disorientating emotional numbness of the days since his death that she was seeking to dispel with whatever she found within; a feeling of plain old terror would at least be a feeling.
There seemed nothing to make sense of, as if the final reel was missing. It was not a dramatic crescendo or a devastating dénouement. Neither did it feel like a sudden tragedy or a never-expected blow.
The feeling was far worse than of anticlimax; it was one of abortion. Someone had ripped the pages from the back, taped over the last half-hour.
She hadn’t loved him for years, but she hadn’t hated him so much for a wee while either. She needed to feel something for him, one way or the other, but there was just a gap, a question mark. Perhaps in his flat there would be some trace of his presence that she could latch on to; she had long since exorcised it from her own. The police had refused her request to be allowed into the premises, but she still had the keys Jeremy had left with her in case he ever lost his own set. The cops had said she could come back when they were finished there, but she feared they would somehow neutralise the place.
She pushed the door open and stepped between the crime-scene-warning tapes. The smell of disinfectant filled her nose immediately and her eyes filled with tears as she wondered blindly at what it might be covering up, the physical, visceral reality of her ex-husband’s murder hitting her for a vivid, horrific moment.
Sarah closed the door silently and let her eyes grow accustomed to the dark, the hallway illuminated solely by the play of streetlights coming in the living room window. The living room door was off its hinges, propped up against the wall a few feet from where it should hang.
Ironically, the place looked like Jeremy was about to move out. His books and papers and even clothes were all arranged in piles on the floor, items of furniture racked up on top of and against each other along one wall. Most of the floor was bare, and despite the half-light she could still make out a large, dark stain and guess wincingly at what had made it.
She looked down at it but it didn’t precipitate any floods of emotion. She now knew nothing in here could disturb her more than the imagination of what had been cloaked by that disinfectant.
‘Oh, Jeremy. You’ve really screwed it up this time,’ she found herself mumbling.
At the time she had been glad Jeremy’s father had been asked to formally identify the body, but as events unfolded she had felt increasingly excluded from the whole affair. She had gone to his parents’ house in Morningside because she didn’t really know of anyone else she could talk to about it. They had been civil enough, but she couldn’t miss their underlying question of ‘what the hell does anything concerning our son have to do with you any more?’ She had divorced him, hadn’t she? What did she care if he was dead?
The police didn’t seem to think she had any right to know what was going on at all, and what they did tell her just added to the numb sense of nothingness. Killed by some malnourished-looking Trainspotting character the police had picked up and charged, with a history of smack and aggravated burglary. Just chance. Plain old bad luck.
She felt there had to be more to it, but had seen enough random tragedy to know that there was no reason why there should be. Why should there be a big answer for her when no one had been able to give one to all the bereaved spouses, parents and children she saw every week?
As divorces go, it had been a pretty clean break. She had forgiven but had learned to protect herself too much to forget. For a long time she still felt something for him, even if it was only pity, but that was always mixed with the kind of relief a sailor must feel when he looks back from the lifeboat at his ship going down.
Perhaps what had so thrown her about Jeremy’s death was that someone had pre-empted the climax of his inevitable self-destruction.
She was right. There was little trace of Jeremy left in the flat. For a start, the whole place looked too tidy. Even the debris was in neat little piles, splintered wood separated from broken ceramics. She squatted on the floor next to an orderly section of glass shards which she recognised as from the revolting coffee table Jeremy’s parents had given them, one of the things she had gladly let him keep when they split.
Then she found herself doing a double-take; she had seen something uninterestingly familiar and looked away for the half-second it took to realise that it was familiar from an entirely different context. It was a small plastic ampoule, empty and without a label, stuck in between two fragments of glass. It was possible that the police had ignored it or even that it was awaiting inspection along with all the other items ranged around the room, but there seemed a good chance that they had missed it altogether. Now that she had seen it, she couldn’t just leave it, as what if they had missed it or ignored it and it turned out to be important? However, she realised that there was no way she could tell them about it without letting them know she had been in the flat.
She carefully removed it and popped it into the pouch at the front of her bag. She would get it analysed herself and then own up if it turned out to be anything interesting.
<
br /> Sarah tiptoed back to the front door and peeped through the spyhole to make sure there was no one on the landing. She held her breath and listened for noises in the close, but there was nothing. Then she opened the door, climbed back through the tapes and closed it again, turning the key and releasing it so that the lock didn’t slam.
‘Find what you were looking for?’
Sarah’s stomach made a valiant escape bid but was foiled by her rapidly expanding lungs as she gasped and turned around to see who had spoken.
There was a man standing on the staircase, blocking off her route out of the close. He looked early thirties, about 5’ 7” – her height – and of slim build, dressed in jeans, a black polo-neck and a biker-style leather jacket. He had a shock of fair hair falling over his forehead, and darkish skin that suggested regular exposure to the sun rather than a fortnight’s tan. She figured all that was missing was a skinny roll-up in the mouth and a notebook of dreadful beat poetry in his right hand.
Her first instinct was to kick the shit out of him for creeping up on a lone woman at night, but she thought she had better establish first whether or not he was a cop.
‘Why, who the fuck are you?’ she offered.
‘I’m someone else who has trouble reading “keep out” signs,’ said Parlabane. ‘There’s a polisman heading over here right now. Do you fancy coming upstairs for a cup of tea or would you rather bump into him on your way out of the close?’
There was a tingle in Parlabane’s nose. It was a familiar one, but no less enjoyable for it, and it made him feel like he was off the canvas again. It was created by sticking the said nose where it didn’t belong; better yet, where someone specifically didn’t want it.
He hadn’t lied to Jenny. After seeing the carnage in Ponsonby’s flat, he genuinely didn’t have any intention of getting involved in the investigation, any more than passing on anything he might happen across. Throwing a decent cop a few titbits was always worthwhile, especially when you were new in town, and Jenny had instantly struck him as a lot more than just a decent cop. The calm, assured and even intrigued manner in which she had reacted to finding him in Ponsonby’s place had told him from the off that she wasn’t standard-issue.
Quite Ugly One Morning Page 4