Butcher

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘Help yourself, why don’t you,’ she said.

  ‘I will. Thanks.’ He drank some, then sat in a chair facing her.

  She asked, ‘How’s Betty?’

  ‘Grief-stricken. Stressed.’

  ‘I’ve always liked her. She doesn’t know anything about my life as Glorianna. I never told her.’

  ‘I gathered that.’

  ‘God only knows why, but she’s fond of you.’

  Perlman said, ‘I like to think we’ve become friends.’

  ‘Friends – that all?’

  ‘Friends, right.’ Perlman shuffled his feet. He wasn’t here to talk about Betty. It had been a couple of hours since he’d spoken to her – he needed to see her, and to know how she was handling the gannets of the local press. Soon, soon.

  Annie looked at her wristwatch, which lay on the bedside table. ‘Your five minutes are ticking away.’

  He took another glug of water. ‘What’s it like to travel in a hearse.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Tell me what Dysart did to scare you.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about Dysart.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Because isn’t an answer, Annie. You went to his house why … start there. I’m a wee bit puzzled about what you and Dorcus could possibly have in common.’

  ‘Absolutely nothing. Believe me.’

  ‘But you went all the way out there anyway? So you’re a student of old houses. Or you love the quirky charm of housing schemes.’

  ‘Yeh, right. They’re so picturesque, so very sophisticated. Bookshops, espresso scenting the air.’

  ‘You ran screaming from that house, Annie.’

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘I’m only reporting what I heard. I’m assuming Dysart threatened you in some way.’

  ‘Assume what you like.’

  Perlman was quiet, then changed the angle of his approach a little. ‘It’s a bloody scary house, Annie. You expect the Munsters to greet you. The locals say it’s haunted.’

  ‘Ballocks. I never noticed a thing.’

  Stonewalling. Perlman had talked to bags of cement more forthcoming. ‘Did you get a tour of the place?’

  ‘No, and I didn’t ask for one either.’ Annie opened the drawer and removed a nail-file and began to work her nails.

  He leaned against the wall. His coat was heavy with rain, and he felt dampness seep through to the bone. I’ll come down with something. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if you’re protecting Dysart for some reason. Or is it Chuck you’re trying to shield?’

  ‘I’m looking out for myself, Perlman.’

  He took off his coat.

  ‘Don’t get any ideas about staying,’ Annie said.

  ‘I’m only trying to dry out my coat a wee bit before I leave.’ Perlman slipped his mobile phone from a wet pocket, then placed the coat over a radiator. ‘I hate to waste time, Annie. I bet Chuck feels the same way.’

  Annie held one hand out and checked her nails, then peered at Perlman between her fingers. ‘I don’t have any idea what Chuck feels.’

  ‘He’s thinking he’s wasting a fuck of a lot of time looking for you, dear. He’s sitting at his desk, I bet, waiting for a call.’

  She saw the mobile in his hand and read his intention immediately. She raised her face aggressively, and muscles tensed in her neck. ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to, Annie.’

  ‘Don’t call him, Perlman.’

  ‘Then suppose you talk to me.’

  He watched her go to the mini-bar and remove a half-empty bottle of white wine. She poured some into a glass and sat cross-legged on the bed. She lit a cigarette, a Camel, and was silent for a time, weighing choices.

  The mobile rang, vibrating in Perlman’s palm.

  Annie jumped. ‘Is that Chuck?’

  Perlman saw the caller’s identity on the screen: it was the number for Force HQ. He signalled Annie to be quiet and answered the phone. ‘Perlman.’

  Annie was still agitated. She bit her thumb nervously. She mouthed the question, Is that Chuck?

  Perlman shook his head at her.

  ‘Jack Wren here, Lou.’

  ‘Jack, you old schmoozer. You still serving Glasgow’s finest?’

  ‘Still the reliable constable on the desk, Lou.’

  Perlman had a fondness for Jack Wren. They went back years together. ‘What’s the story, Jack?’

  ‘You’re expected here at six sharp. That’s coming from upstairs.’

  ‘From the pinnacle, eh? You any idea what for?’

  ‘The day they tell the downstairs staff anything is the day I’ll croak. See you at six, Lou. Mind how you go.’

  Perlman closed the connection. Six sharp, Tay’s office. Why were they calling him in unless they had news they wanted him to hear about the DNA result? And they wouldn’t ask for his presence to tell him anything cheerful, damn right. They’d never summon him for a glass of sherry and sing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. So? What lay ahead? It could be something other than the DNA, he realized – the official pink-slip, a reprimand for punching Latta, or—

  Don’t borrow from the future.

  Annie was sipping her wine. ‘I’ll make you a deal, Perlman. I’ll tell you what went on in that house, or as much as I remember – but I won’t answer any questions about Chuck’s business interests. Which isn’t an admission I know every move he makes. Remember that.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘I also want you to promise me you won’t tell Chuck where I am. Swear that.’

  ‘Such delicate negotiations,’ Perlman said. ‘What do you want, Annie? An oath? I swear it, OK?’

  She stared at him, as if she might find an element of trustworthiness in his face. ‘Maybe Betty goes for that just-been-dragged-in-by-the-cat look you do. You seem sincere. I hope she’s got your number right, Perlman.’

  Dragged in by the cat. This was probably similar to just-out-of-bed – maybe some women saw him in this light: a stray to be sheltered, a waif to be fed. He wished he projected suave, man about town.

  ‘I could cross my heart, if that would help,’ he offered.

  Annie didn’t take him up on this offer. She drank some wine and fidgeted with the stem of her glass. ‘I do massage, Perlman. I’m fucking good at it. I make home calls once in a blue moon. I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘Oh, come on, everybody leaps to the same snide conclusion when I tell them – massage plus home calls equals sex. They always say, oh, I suppose you offer extras at a price. Well, I don’t, Perlman. I went out to that house to give Dysart a massage. No strings. No extras. I want you to understand that.’

  Annie Purity. ‘I believe you. How did Dysart contact you?’

  ‘I did it as a favour.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter—’

  ‘I’d still like to know.’

  ‘Jeez, you’re pushy. I hate pushy. I did it because Chuck asked me to give Dysart a good massage. And it’s important to be nice to Dysart because Chuck …’

  ‘Chuck what?’

  ‘There’s some kind of arrangement between them – don’t ask me what. I’m not hiding anything, I just don’t know.’

  Perlman heard the ping of a tuning-fork vibrate in his head. Were Dysart and Chuck connected in some form of commerce? He couldn’t begin to imagine it: an ‘arrangement’. What were their conversations like? Chuck speaking clipped hardman Glasgow, with that characteristic nasal edge, Dysart stammering in his agitated manner. Odd socks, so how did they match?

  Annie said, ‘Dysart’s a bagga nerves right from the start. He doesn’t want me there. But since Chuck sent me, maybe Dysart doesn’t like to offend the Big Man. Not many people do. Chuck’s displeasure isn’t always welcome … I’ve massaged some uptight people in my time, Perlman, but this guy – this was like trying to revive a corpse in an advanced state of rigor
. Think OK, I’m wasting time, I’ll split, so when I decide to call a taxi he goes weird on me and smacks my mobie out my hand and it breaks on the floor … I’m not happy about this, obviously. I’m thinking, uh oh, this is not a cool place to be.’

  ‘This was upstairs or down?’

  ‘Downstairs. The room was just a couch, a small table. He had all these big thick medical books. He’s a doctor. He says. Oh – and he delivers office supplies on the side.’

  Office supplies? Ding dong. Dysart hadn’t mentioned that. His only income was seemingly from the legacy. I have just about enough to live on … The house was a demanding and ultimately insatiable mistress; she needed great wads of money. And delivering office supplies wasn’t going to provide enough to appease this harridan, nor the depleted relics of an inheritance, nor help from Jackie – if in fact she provided any. Then he thought about her surgical expenses and wondered where that kind of cash was coming from. Insurance? Or did she also have a legacy?

  ‘Does he deliver these supplies to Chuck?’

  ‘I said I wouldn’t talk about Chuck’s business.’

  ‘Right, you did.’

  ‘But I don’t believe that’s what Dysart does. I know where Chuck gets his office supplies, and it’s not from the doctor.’

  ‘What happened after the phone demolition?’

  ‘Strange. Suddenly he turns pale and he flies upstairs. I hear a door slam and then the sound of him being violently sick. I mean violently.’

  ‘So you took this opportunity and left?’

  ‘How could I leave when Dysart had the key to the gates? So I went looking for him.’

  Brave girl. Perlman waited. She’s confused, the ordeal’s a puzzle for her, give her time.

  ‘If this comes out jumbled it’s because it’s how I remember it … I walk along the hallway, tapping on doors, I can’t find him. I think, OK I’ll go back downstairs. It wasn’t rational thinking, because I didn’t have the key. Maybe I imagined I’d be able to climb the gates. Fucking daft, eh? So downstairs I take a wrong turning and find myself in a room where mice are running over the keys of a piano. Mice. I swear. And there was this old wingback chair and somebody was sitting in it and he started to get up … very slowly.’

  ‘A man?’

  ‘A man, I think, I didn’t see a face. I don’t know if I imagined it. I was beginning to panic, Perlman. I ran out of the room and found the hallway and then I was outside, and Dysart was coming after me and shouting … Maybe I did scream, I don’t remember. But anyway, he’s still shouting and he’s coming behind me. I also hear dogs and I lose my shoes. Look at my feet,’ and she kicked off her slippers and showed him her soles, which were covered with strips of Band-Aid. ‘Blisters.’

  ‘Nasty. What was he shouting?’

  ‘He’s sorry, he wants to apologize, I don’t remember.’

  ‘OK, you still have the gates to get over.’

  ‘The fucking gates. Some kids tossed me a rope and I climbed.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Little kids. They had a whacky plan to climb the gates and poison the dogs.’

  ‘But instead they rescued you.’

  ‘Thank Christ they did. I climbed and climbed and my hands hurt like hell. Then these kids took me to the guy who owns the hearse.’

  Perlman had the feeling she was skipping something. ‘Roll it back a bit, Annie. Dysart went inside a room to throw up. Did he unlock that room?’

  ‘I never knew which room he went into because I couldn’t find him.’

  ‘You knocked on a couple of doors in the upstairs hallway. And he didn’t respond.’

  ‘Right … I remember a smell.’ She wrinkled her nose.

  ‘A strong disinfectant by any chance?’

  ‘Very strong …’ She held a hand to the side of her face and closed her eyes. He wondered where she’d drifted.

  ‘You smelled this upstairs mainly?’

  ‘Upstairs, yeh. But also on Dysart’s clothes. He reeked of it.’ She looked at Perlman: something clearly distressed her, because she grabbed the hem of her robe and twisted it, curling it round her fingers.

  ‘What else do you remember.’

  ‘There’s this other room … The smell was stronger …’

  ‘Was this room locked?’

  ‘No … I thought he might be in there because of the smell, and I wanted that key to the gates, Perlman. I had to have that fucking key. What was I thinking? He’d hand it over to me? Here, let yourself out … was I thinking that?’

  ‘Slow down, take it easy, Annie.’

  ‘This room was different from the rest of the house.’

  ‘What way.’

  ‘… the floor. No carpet. It was tiled.’

  ‘White tiles.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Was there a bed?’

  She hunched forward over her glass. Her body seemed to have locked, as if she’d become paralyzed in this awkward curved position.

  ‘A sink … I remember a sink. I think I found a light switch and turned it on and I saw this steel sink.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘A naked woman was standing at the sink … she was running hot water very slowly out of the tap into a cloth, and she was washing her hands and body and her hair was hanging over her shoulders … the room was clouded with steam.’ She caught her breath. ‘I feel giddy.’

  ‘It’s the wine, the tobacco.’

  ‘There’s a breeze following me around, and footsteps in the distance but nobody’s coming. And the person getting out of that chair … He isn’t real, he’s kind of shadowy, like he’s almost transparent … Maybe the place is haunted after all.’

  Perlman tried to redirect her. ‘Go back to the room with the tiles, Annie.’ He sat on the bed. She was trembling.

  ‘I don’t need to go there, Perlman.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘Easy for you to say …’ She blinked rapidly. ‘The woman turns and I think she sees me and she’s surprised because she drops her towel. And that’s when I see.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘This woman has a cock.’

  ‘You saw this for sure?’

  ‘Not for sure … I look away because I’m what? Embarrassed, shocked? I don’t know, Perlman.’

  ‘All this took a few seconds?’ Perlman said.

  ‘You think I was looking at my watch?’

  ‘You see the woman’s actually a man and you look away quickly.’

  ‘I think I did … yes …’

  ‘You step back out of the room? Come on, I want this through your eyes, Annie.’

  ‘I turn my head because I’m looking away and … Remember there’s steam, a lot of steam … but I see a bed, a kind of a bed.’

  Perlman waited. A woman who’s a man. A kind of bed.

  ‘There’s a bundle on the bed. I don’t know, it’s laundry wrapped up in a sheet, ready to be taken away … That’s when I turned and ran down the hallway.’

  ‘A bundle of laundry. Why would it scare you?’

  ‘The room’s spinning, Lou. Hold me or I’ll float away.’

  He put his arms around her. ‘Take your time. Just take your time.’ He was talking in the hushed reassuring voice he’d use to a frightened child. ‘Tell me about the laundry.’

  ‘I thought: laundry. It passed through my mind in a flash. It’s a white sheet soaked with blood, it’s bulky, because it’s laid across something. But I realize it’s not laundry, Perlman. It’s not.’

  ‘You can tell what this something is?’ Perlman felt tension rise inside.

  She looked at him, dazed. ‘The shape I see under the bloodstained sheet is human.’

  ‘Human? Covered all over? No view of the face?’

  ‘Covered totally. Head to toe. In this bloody sheet.’

  Perlman got up from the bed and walked to the window and looked out into the rain. It fell miserably: the city was draining away. He thought of Kirk McLatchie’s photograph. He thought of Dysart showing him this s
ickroom where he said his mother had died.

  How many others had died in that room?

  A bloodstained shroud. Only now the bed isn’t a souvenir of his mother, her deathbed – something else. He moved back to Annie and for a moment saw the vulnerable child in her, the kid from The Drum drawn into a world she didn’t comprehend.

  She stared at him. ‘How could that bastard Chuck send me to a place like that? How could he do that to me?’ Now she was angry, outraged – but also perplexed. She’d been let down, she’d been sent out and abandoned inside a bad dream, and she couldn’t figure why.

  Flecks of spit gathered at the corners of her mouth. She drew back from Perlman. ‘You don’t ship somebody like me to a guy you know fuck all about. And that room, Christ, that room … I dreamed it, I want to believe I did.’

  ‘I know you do.’ Perlman listened to the screaming rain assault the window.

  41

  He was already running late when he left St Jude’s. He wasn’t looking forward to HQ, passing through the front door and watching faces turn to clock him, or catching sleekit smiles and hearing sly whispers. Nobody inside Pitt Street had forgotten Miriam’s trial, and most resented Perlman for his actions. He had few friends in this place.

  PC Jack Wren was one of the few. He stood at the reception desk when Perlman came in and peered at him over the rims of his specs. He’d shaved off his walrus moustache.

  ‘Evening, Lou,’ Wren said.

  ‘I turn my back, you get a face lift,’ Perlman said.

  Wren winked. ‘Flattery will get you anything.’

  ‘I live in hope,’ Perlman said.

  ‘You really think it works?’

  ‘What – hope or flattery?’

  ‘The shave, Lou. The shave.’

  Perlman said, ‘I swear, ten years younger, Jack,’ and headed for the stairs.

  Wren said, ‘Good to see you. I mean that.’

  The warmth Perlman felt at Wren’s greeting faded as he climbed, hurrying past figures coming down, some who looked openly hostile, or merely nodded, others who pretended they were involved in conversation and didn’t see him. Fuck them.

  He reached the landing, paused to collect himself. He listened to the beat of his heart and he thought of Annie’s story. Was it enough to take to the Proc-Fisc’s office for a search warrant? Dysart’s house was in Adamski’s territory. Maybe Adamski would think he had sufficient to go on. If there was a body in that house, he’d want to move in with a crime-scene team before all evidence had been destroyed. You couldn’t wipe everything away. Hairs, blood in the septic system, something damning always remained.