‘Don’t tell me you believed it was all a meritocracy, Lou?’
‘I had moments of delusion.’ A cousin of Tay’s wife. He’d never heard of Tay having a wife. He caught himself picturing Tay in an act of intimacy, that small clam of a mouth sucking on his wife’s tits, and his rotund white arse exposed as a duvet slid from the conjugal bed.
The hooker came out of the station with a packet of cigarettes. She smiled at him as she undid the cellophane with her teeth, and then got back into the taxi.
‘Another thing … Why did you beat up George Latta?’
‘One quick punch, that’s all.’
‘And a kick.’
‘Oh aye, I forgot the kick. He was insulting. He’s calling Miriam names and accusing me of that old alleged scam to share her embezzled loot, so-called. Latta’s an evil bastard.’
‘Evil or not, he’ll talk to Tay. Count on it. And these guys are not your friends.’
Perlman was defiant. ‘You know how fucking good it felt to smack that arsehole?’
‘I can only imagine.’
‘He also brings up the hand, like he’s holding me responsible for it.’
‘How?’
‘Who knows what goes on inside the hall of mirrors he calls a brain? What are they saying about this hand at HQ, Sandy?’
‘The buzz is the buzz. Inconclusive, wild. A practical joke just to keep you occupied and out of Pitt Street—’
‘I’m laughing.’
‘Somebody else suggested it was probably evidence from some long-ago case you’d taken home with you and forgot to return.’
‘A gem.’
‘Another theory is that it was planted there to implicate you in an unspecified crime. A set-up.’
‘Sinister. And what crime is that supposed to be?’
‘Who knows.’
A set-up. A crime. It’s all gossip, gossip, reams of yack. Jesus, they were like crones down there at HQ, clacking in the corridors, whispering in their offices, chuckling over the Case of Perlman’s Hand.
‘Maddie would like another word with you, Lou.’
Madeleine came on the line. ‘How about dinner next week, Lou. Thursday, seven-thirty for eight. Sound OK for you?’
‘Sounds just fine.’
‘You don’t have to dress up or anything.’
Dress up as what, Perlman wondered. ‘I’ll leave the tux at the cleaners. What’s on the menu?’
‘I’ll surprise you.’
He replaced the handset and. wandered across the forecourt of the station and sat for a time in his car, smoking butts until there were none left. His mind drifted through recent encounters and occurrences – Tartakower, Jackie Ace, Betty McLatchie’s lost son, Aunt Hilda making him feel guilty, and now, so help me, Latta – baggage that had gathered on his trolley all at once. And the hand, cut from a living human being. He felt like a man sifting dry crematory ashes in the hope of finding something useful, something intact, that he might retrieve from the furnace.
Like news of his heart’s condition.
He was still niggled by resentment of Tigge, and carrying the incubus Latta on his back, when he parked outside his house. Lights were lit in all the windows, a warming effect. He normally came home to darkness. He’d unlock the front door, reach for the light switch in the hallway, and the illumination of that solitary bulb would direct him into the unwelcoming recesses of other empty rooms.
He heard music, an ancient Kingston Trio album he’d forgotten he owned. The things you gather only to forsake. You pass me by, and all the folks all turn and stare, they wonder why … Betty McLatchie was singing along to it. She had a high sweet voice. He took off his coat and hung it on a peg, then stopped on the threshold of the living room and watched her. She was on her knees, scrubbing old stains out of the carpet. Unaware of his entrance, she didn’t look up. She was lost in the song.
Oh heart of stone, you pass me by …
He cleared his throat. She raised her face, stopped singing.
‘Took me by surprise,’ she said.
‘I’m Fred Astaire, light on my feet.’ He demonstrated, did a little two-footed circular shuffle, pretended Ginger was hanging on his coattails. Me and my shadow.
‘Needs work, but I see the raw talent right enough.’ She raised herself to a kneeling position and studied the carpet. ‘Some of these stains go back years.’
‘And every one of them has a history.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’
Perlman was more aware than ever of renewal all about him. Not only the smells he’d encountered before, the air freshener and the pine-scented polish, not only the sight of shining wood and the dearth of dust and spider’s webs, now there was the deep-perfumed foam of carpet shampoo and a couple of chocolate-scented candles burning on the window sill. The angle of his TV was altered slightly, and so was the position of his favourite old velvet armchair. Betty had also moved the sofa a couple of feet, creating a kind of triangular viewing centre. Rearranging his life, a little comfort. He was pleased.
He asked, ‘You always work this late?’
‘Keeps me busy, Lou. I don’t mind cleaning anyway. You put in the work, you see instant results.’
‘What cop can say that?’
She smiled and began to rise. He took her hand and helped her up. Her skin was hot. He had a spontaneous urge to put his arms around her, as if to prolong the unexpected illusion of domesticity, which he found touching, an intriguing novelty. I’ve been alone too long, far too long. Their faces came close together a moment, within kissing distance. He took a step back. Come on, did the idea of a kiss really cross his mind? Maybe the unfamiliar intimacy of the situation affected him, and he felt moved to express gratitude, or it was some simple need for the touch of another person. Homecoming, Betty’s presence, a clean well-lit house. Sweetheart, lemme tell you what a day I had at the office.
She lit a cigarette and Perlman, who’d forgotten to buy any, cadged one from her. She held her lighter toward him.
‘You deserve a medal, Betty.’
‘I was worried you’d think I’d taken liberties. What about the candles?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever had candles in this house. Never scented ones anyway. Are they edible? I could make one into a sandwich, if I had bread.’
‘Just remember to blow them out before you go to bed.’
The music stopped. Perlman smoked in silence and watched Betty gaze at pools of foam drying on the carpet. She was lingering, he knew that. She didn’t want to leave before asking about her son – but she didn’t want to appear pushy.
If he told her he had no new information, would that increase her worries or elevate her hopes? No news is … whatever they say it is. He stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray on the sideboard and felt the acuteness of her uncertainty. He wished he had some means of reassuring her. How? He wasn’t about to spout an easy fiction or mutter a mealy palliative that might still her anxiety for a brief period.
‘This place feels like a home,’ he said quietly. He felt the tips of his ears heat. Was he blushing, please no. ‘I don’t feel ashamed of it any more, Betty. I thank you for that.’
‘Isn’t that what life is all about? Making people feel a little better about themselves and their environment?’
What a pleasing outlook, he thought. She moved a couple of steps toward him. He noticed she’d pinned back her unruly hair with wine-red plastic barrettes that made her look younger. The zodiac jeans had been swapped for a pair of black Levis which she wore with the cuffs turned up. One time she must have been cheeky and funny and sexy – she still was.
‘Isn’t it all about kindness, Lou?’
‘In an ideal world.’ He imagined her cavorting in Woodstock mud. Life was all in the now. Later, there would be a one-night stand and a fatherless kid gone missing and a great tide of fear inside her. Who in their right mind would want to know what the future held?
Without warning, she wept explosively, and pressed her fa
ce against his shoulder. He stroked her hair. He was connected to the depths of her pain, its savage cut, the force of it.
‘Betty, listen to me, never give up hope, always hang on. You understand?’
She tried to speak through her tears. He didn’t catch a word. She simply wanted to be held.
‘Cry all you want, cry …’
‘I’m falling to fucking pieces, Lou.’
‘I’m here, I’ll catch you.’
She pulled back from him, rubbing her eyes, trying to force a smile that didn’t quite work. ‘You’re a nice man, Lou.’
‘For a polisman.’
‘A nice man full stop.’
Perlman placed his hand under her chin. ‘I’ve got some old wine somewhere. Fancy a wee medicinal glass?’
She drew her sleeve across her face. She trailed a thin line of pale mucus across the back of her hand and looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what? Let me get the vino. I’m not claiming it’s drinkable. It might be complete piss. If I can find it.’ He turned toward the kitchen door.
‘Third shelf in the pantry. Above the sauce bottles.’
‘I’ve got sauce bottles? I never knew.’
‘Some from companies that went out of biz years ago.’
‘Amazing. You sit down. I’ll be right back.’
‘You’ll find clean glasses in the cabinet.’
‘One day give me a guided tour of this house.’
She struggled to smile again. ‘It’s a date.’
He walked into the kitchen. The room gleamed. He took the pic of Colin and Miriam from his coat and stuck it into a drawer, then he found the wine and the glasses where Betty said they’d be, and as he turned back toward the living room – brimming with sympathy and the need to comfort her – his half-dead mobile phone rang weakly in his jacket pocket. Not now, not now … He dragged the phone out and heard Adamski’s voice, a croak from the reaches of dead space.
‘I think we might have your missing person, Lou.’
18
All night Dorcus Dysart drove his white van around the city. He’d checked the hookers on the edges of the city centre, but they were high-risk, these girls in their hiked-up skirts and stark powdered faces. They were likely to be diseased, drug-ridden, probably both. Impurities flowed in their blood, toxifying their organs.
He travelled south of the Clyde and into the silent gritty streets that branched off Paisley Road West. Yellow street lamps, some of them shattered, and nobody moving except some late-night drunks singing Ah’m no Hairy Mary ah’m yer maw.
Solitary pedestrians were difficult to find. People tended to move in pairs, or three- and foursomes. They read the papers, saw the news. Bodies had been found. Somebody in this city was doing ‘spare-part surgery’. Quote unquote.
Circumstances had to be perfect – a person walking alone under dim lights. Weight mattered, and accessibility.
He drove deeper into the territory. Pollokshields, Shawlands. Locked shops, shuttered restaurants, dark tenements: he might have been driving the streets of an abandoned city. Sometimes a desperation overcame him: he’d never find anybody ever again, and then what? What would he do for money? And then he began to obsess about this Glorianna who’d telephoned him, Mr Chuck’s friend. She was coming to his house, he’d never had a woman there.
Except Nurse Payne.
She was sacred to him, a love so constant he sometimes wondered if she was somebody he’d dreamed. He pictured her face. That intelligence in the eye.
Now this Glorianna was coming too …
What would he say to her? How would he say: Look, I don’t want it but thanks anyway, don’t think I’m ungrateful. He’d phone Mr Chuck and say: Don’t send the girl, I’m too busy working, but he had the feeling Reuben Chuck was a man who didn’t like his gifts rejected.
At 2.30 a.m. he changed direction and went back across the river and up into the area around the university. The thoroughfares were empty. This was Studentland but where were the inhabitants, where were the party people? He pulled over, cleaned his glasses with a special little chamois cloth he kept in the glovebox.
On Byres Road he saw a few groups of late loiterers. Then side-streets – Dowanside, Havelock, White Street, Caird Drive. Up and down and round and round. He went back the way he’d come, prowling. Along Woodlands Road a few taxis cruised, a couple of cars passed. He slid a hand under his glasses and rubbed his tired eyelids.
An unfulfilled night. No, no, you have a deal with Mr Chuck.
Mr Chuck who likes you, calls you Dorco. Says you’re an artist, looks up to you, wants your skills, pays highly for them.
Halfway down West End Park Street he saw the girl come round a corner, trying to hurry on wobbly high heels. She was short, trim, lightweight.
Slowing his van, he followed her a little way.
If she made it to the main crossroad, Woodlands Road, opportunity might be lost to him in a sudden burst of traffic, or more pedestrians. He pulled his van into the curb alongside her and slid open his door.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
She didn’t look, kept walking. Same pace, didn’t want to appear frightened.
He edged the van forward to keep up with her. ‘Sorry to t-trouble you.’
She turned now. Her face in the headlights was plain, mouth a mournful downturned slash. Her eyes were red from crying. She was upset. He wondered why – perhaps heartache, broken promises.
People in love were vulnerable. Often they trusted their hearts to shits.
He felt sorry for the girl.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ The expression on her face was shaped by years of urban fear: don’t talk to strangers, don’t take sweeties from men you don’t know, stay away from bushes. In her emotional state she’d overlooked her own rule. Or forgotten it.
He braked, gazed down at her. He knew he had a certain awkward innocence about him. He projected harmlessness. People saw the benign face and the thick frames of his glasses and they heard the quietly hesitant way he spoke and the stutter and they felt sorry for him. They might wonder about the long hair, but they thought they divined his nature easily enough: kindly, no hidden threats, a nice guy but just a little out there. Nurse Payne always said he could knock on any door and be given shelter for the night.
‘I’m l-lost and looking for … uh, G-Great Western Road.’
‘You’re not far,’ she said.
‘Excuse me, are you all right,’ he said.
‘What you mean, am I all right?’
‘You look a wee bit d-down.’
‘That’s my problem, intit?’
A defensive moment. Dorcus felt she could easily slip away if he wasn’t careful. ‘I’m not b-butting in, excuse me. I only wanted …’
‘Great Western, you said. Go to the end here, that’s Woodlands Road. Take a right on Park Road and you’ll come to Great Western, OK?’
She turned away from him, walking quicker now, but wobbling more. He jumped down from the van, landed quietly on his rubber-soled trainers. He had the chloroform out of the bottle and into a hankie in one slick well-rehearsed movement, and he grabbed her from behind and she shouted ‘What the hell do you think you’re—’ just before he crammed the hankie over her mouth. The inside of his head vibrated like a struck drum. This is always the bad time. This is where anything can go wrong, she can break loose, fight, or the chloro isn’t strong enough to bring her down, or worse, the chloro is too strong.
She moaned, struggled against him, tried to bite his hand, kicked, then abruptly buckled as if life had just drained out of her, and she slid downward against his legs and slumped on the pavement.
He stuffed the hankie into his pocket and dragged the girl to the back of his van, opened the door, picked her up and laid her carefully inside. He got in beside her and tied her limp hands with straps of leather, then bound her legs with a long chain welded to an interior panel. He padlocked the chain, then he placed an old burlap sack, in which he’
d scissored two holes for breathing, over her head, and he knotted the drawstring under her jaw.
He slid into the driver’s seat and travelled until he was in the east of the city, moving along Edinburgh Road toward home. He checked his mirrors time and again for police vehicles. If he was stopped he’d have to explain his passenger – don’t think that way, do not. Outside his house he unlocked the high metal gates and drove through quickly.
He heard the Dobermans: dogs of war.
He drove the van into the garage and the door closed automatically behind him. He lifted the girl out and carried her into the house, calling ‘Nurse Payne, Nurse Payne, is everything ready?’ as he ascended to his surgery at the top of the stairs, passing, the way he always did, through the ghost zone, the mist of ice.
19
Five a.m. in the morgue, and Perlman had no desire to sleep, no chance of getting any even if he wanted: the idea was like voyaging to a country too far to reach. Death had a magnetic energy field, and it kept him hyped, edgy. He drank cup after cardboard cup of bad black coffee from a vending machine.
Now and again he was drawn back to the bed where Kirk McLatchie lay exposed for the purpose of examination, illuminated by a cruel overhead light. A sorry end. No privacy, less dignity.
Adamski was standing a few feet from the body. Burnt-out, he massaged his beefy eyelids continually and sighed time and again – regret, sadness, maybe disgust with the ways of the city he’d served for years. This corpse had been found by two lovers walking in woodland near the Clyde where it flowed close to Cambuslang Road. What a memorable date that turned out to be.
Perlman’s mind kept going back to Betty, and the glass of wine she was destined never to taste. How had he broken the news to her? About Kirk, I’m sorry to tell you they’ve found your son … He had no specific details to give her at that point, just news of Kirk’s discovery. She sat motionless, as if paralyzed by a stroke. She shrunk in front of his eyes, diminished by pain. She didn’t go through the predictable phases of denial – no, it can’t be my son, it can’t be Kirk – as if she’d known that the life of her missing kid would end badly all along. She’d tried to light a cigarette and it slipped from her hands and she made no move to pick it up. He saw terror build inside her. She began to shake so badly he knew he couldn’t ask her to go to the morgue to identify the boy.
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