Butcher

by Campbell Armstrong

  He wiped his eyes with his knuckles and the thought bludgeoned him: who sent the fucking postcards?

  42

  Rick Tosh sat in the lounge of the Cameron House Hotel and drank Guinness slowly. He’d been in Scotland for two weeks, what they called a fortnight here, and was damn homesick, although he was acquiring a taste for the black bevy. Scotland was scenic all right, the hotel was conveniently close to Glasgow, but the grey skies over Loch Lomond depressed the crap out of him, and the rain, oh Christ, the rain. He was leaving first thing in the a.m. Back to Texas, back to heat and dry air and the things he knew.

  He raised a hand when he saw the man he’d been waiting for come into the lounge. ‘Over here, Willie.’

  Willie Boyd, a thin man in blue jeans and a rain-stained khaki windcheater, walked to Tosh’s table.

  ‘Drink, Willie?’

  Willie Boyd sat. ‘A wee Auchentoshan would warm the bones.’

  ‘Is that a whisky?’

  ‘Lowland single malt,’ Boyd said.

  ‘You Scots and your malts.’ Rick Tosh scanned the room for a waiter, didn’t see one. ‘Fucking service here.’ He stuck a hand inside his pocket and removed an envelope, which he gave to Willie Boyd.

  Boyd opened it with his nimble bony fingers and looked inside.

  ‘It’s all there,’ Tosh said. ‘Airline ticket. Bank draft in the sum we agreed. Plus, lo and behold, one genuine green card.’

  Boyd checked the contents. ‘Good.’

  Tosh continued his search for a waiter. ‘Whadda you plan to do?’

  ‘I’ll check out Noo Yock City, then see.’ Boyd smiled. ‘America’s a big country and Baba’s future is infinite.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess it is,’ and Tosh laughed in his silent head-nodding way.

  Boyd rolled his eyes so the whites were all Tosh could see.

  ‘That’s some fucking trick,’ Tosh said.

  ‘Piece a cake, part of the gig. The real downside is all the shite you have to spout, and the warpaint’s a bastart to get off.’

  Tosh spotted a waiter, hailed him. ‘Gimme an – what was it, Willie?’

  ‘Auchentoshan,’ Boyd said.

  ‘Right away.’ The waiter, whose face was squirrel-like, scampered off.

  Tosh said, ‘My people are grateful to you.’

  ‘You’re paying for it. My honest opinion, Chuck’s feet don’t touch the ground any more. He was OK operating mid-level, and he had ambition, but as soon as he got the nod to take over, the changes started. Big anxieties about trust, worries about his underlings. And big big dreams, the kind despots get before their downfall – including a statue in his honour in George Square. A fucking statue! Reuben Mussolini, for Christ’s sake. He’s got major fault-lines ready to blow. You don’t want that.’

  Tosh shrugged, ‘Wouldn’t be the first bad pony we bet on. Cut losses, move along. What about this girl?’

  ‘She lost most of her interest in the whole guru babble, but Chuck bought it lock, stock and knicker-elastic. That tells me she’s smarter than Chuck. Or less gullible.’

  ‘She a problem for us?’

  Willie Boyd stacked beer mats on the table. ‘My opinion, no. She’s always had dreams of her own that’ll take her far away from Glasgow.’

  Rick Tosh’s cellphone rang. He looked at the caller ID. ‘Talk of the devil.’

  ‘Zat Chuck?’

  Tosh killed his cellphone. ‘Bye bye, Chuck.’

  The waiter came back and Boyd smelled his drink before he tasted it. ‘Good doing business with you, Rick.’

  ‘Hey, real pleasure for me.’

  Willie Boyd scarfed his Aucky and stood up. He shook Rick Tosh’s hand. ‘I spose you’ll deal with Chuck.’

  ‘Board level decision,’ Tosh said. ‘We’ll see what they say in Dallas.’

  ‘May your karma be good,’ Willie Boyd said.

  ‘Same to you.’

  Willie Boyd walked a few paces and turned, ‘Ronnie Mathieson has his heid screwed on the right way. Matter of interest.’

  ‘Noted.’

  Tosh watched Willie Boyd – one-time child actor and later ringmaster for a self-motivation bandwagon that conducted sessions on How to Develop Your Total Human Potential – walk out of the lounge and into darkness. Good actor, Tosh thought.

  Shame about Chuck.

  43

  The rain had let up when Perlman stepped from his car and saw two TV vans with satellite dishes parked at the kerb outside the tenement where Betty lived. A dozen or more murky figures, some with cameras at the ready, crowded him as he headed for the door.

  ‘Is that not Perlman?’ one of the figures asked.

  ‘Or a dead ringer,’ said a runty little guy in a herringbone coat.

  ‘Scatter, you lot,’ Perlman said, thrusting through. ‘I’m in no fucking mood for inky malingerers. And get these vans to fuck outta here.’

  ‘Come on, Lou, a little cooperation, some of us have been waiting hours for an interview,’ the runty man whined. ‘Free press, Lou, basis of a democratic society.’

  ‘Democracy, feh. Shite-hawks, every one of you. Tell me how you feel about your son, Mrs McLatchie. How do you think she feels? You scadges have pestered enough victims you could write this off the top of your heads without kvetching about an interview.’

  One of the journos remarked, ‘Every story has a different heartbeat.’

  ‘You’d know something about the heart, would you?’ Perlman recognized this wavy-haired guy from the Sunday Mail. He’d been present at Miriam’s trial.

  ‘Just get your arses outta here. Go on. Give the woman a break.’

  The Sunday Mail scribbler said, ‘Is Mrs McLatchie a personal friend or is this police business?’

  If this was innuendo, Perlman chose to ignore it. He turned to search for Betty’s bell among the others on the door.

  ‘Suppose you tell us about the dead boy, Lou. I’ve got to file something. I’ll do a tear-jerker. Not a damp eye in Glasgow.’

  Lou looked round. ‘You think I don’t know your style? Ghouls and flesh-eaters, every one of you.’

  ‘Hold on there, Lou.’ The man in the herringbone coat protested. ‘Speaking as a citizen and not a scribbler, as you put it, lemme ask you to tell the people of Glasgow what’s going on, this isn’t the first body—’

  ‘No fucking comment. Print that. And spell my name right.’ Perlman found Betty’s bell, pressed twice. He waited in agitation, pressed it again, holding his finger down. The journos crowded him with the hungry persistence of gulls swarming a trawler.

  A man switched on the blinding lights of a TV camera perched on his shoulder, and hunched forward, and a young woman draped in a fur-trimmed pashmina wrap was testing her microphone. Lou recognized her from a local news show. She thought she was Queen of Glasgow TV. She was always in gossip columns, linked to this actor or that wealthy footballer. She began to glide forward with the self-important air of one who lives in the public eye.

  Questions pepper-sprayed Lou. Tell us what you know. Tell us if you’re still suspended from duty. Tell us, is there any truth in the rumour this is the work of a lone madman, or do we have a crime syndicate killing for human body parts …?

  Betty opened the door a crack, enough for Lou to get through – just as a camera flashed and turned Betty’s face fluorescent.

  ‘Bugger it,’ she said and grabbed Perlman by the arm, drew him inside the close, and slammed the door.

  She led him into her flat, shut her door, locked and bolted it.

  Perlman said, ‘I’m later than I expected—’

  ‘I can’t go out, can’t even open my curtains. I sit in the kitchen and hide. The doorbell keeps ringing. The phone.’ She covered her ears with her hands. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘They’re savages,’ Perlman said. ‘They eat their young.’

  Inside the kitchen an overburdened ashtray sat on the table next to a teapot and a half-eaten packet of McVitie’s chocolate digestives. Perlman helped himself to one, ate
it hungrily.

  The phone rang. He picked it up and said, ‘Fuk Yoo Chinese Takeaway,’ and left the handset off the hook.

  ‘You look weary, Lou. Sit, I’ll pour some tea.’

  Perlman sagged into a chair. Betty filled a cup with dark tea, pushed a bowl of sugar and a jug of milk toward him. Perlman snagged another biscuit and devoured it.

  ‘You hungry? You can have anything you want providing it’s eggs. Boiled, fried, scrambled. I haven’t been able to go to the shops.’

  ‘Scrambled sounds good. You don’t mind?’

  ‘Coming up.’ Betty cracked eggs quickly into a bowl, salt and pepper, whisked the mix. Into the frying pan with everything.

  The doorbell rang and rang.

  She said, ‘Tell me they’ll get tired and bugger off.’

  ‘Not yet. The energy of werewolves is boundless,’ Perlman said.

  Betty set the eggs down in front of him. ‘I hope they’re OK.’

  He ate like a man rescued from a remote island after many years on a diet of raw turtle. He finished fast, laid down his fork, wiped his lips with a paper napkin. ‘Thanks. Delicious.’

  She sat, lighting a cigarette. She was watching him – a little warily, he thought. Wondering about something. Did she detect hesitation in him? Or a depth of sadness? The blue eyes were bright, and in receiving mode. There was no way he was going to unload the story of Miriam on her. Later, not tonight. She’d never met Miriam, but she’d heard the Aunts talking. Those two old dears rambled on about family matters from the minute they rose until they went to bed again, recycling stories with the patience of women crocheting.

  The Aunts would be devastated when they heard about Miriam, even if they harboured no great affection for her. Another murder in the family, first Colin, now his widow. Shame and gossip in the community, scandal. People stopping to ask them questions in local shops, on the street, in the park, Rabbi Grossman coming round to offer spiritual comfort but also to pick up the latest tittle-tattle.

  Perlman got up, wandered the kitchen.

  ‘Heebie-jeebies?’ Betty asked.

  ‘Wired.’ The world jostled him. The postcards. The places. Amsterdam. Copenhagen. Florence. Who wrote the words? He leaned against the stove. The fridge hummed. The doorbell rang again. Something fizzed in the ashtray, a discarded match maybe. He wanted to stay in this flat, shut away from the bawsacs on the pavement, the world in general. He wanted to believe the ID of Miriam was an enormous forensic misinterpretation, an error so gross the slacker should be crucified.

  ‘Your coat looks damp.’ Betty was promptly on her feet. She felt the fabric. ‘Lou, it’s practically sodden. I’ll put it in the airing cupboard.’ She helped him out of the coat, but not before he’d removed his mobie from a pocket. She stashed the coat in a closet on the other side of the room.

  ‘How are your shoes? They damp as well?’

  ‘A wee bit, but nothing—’

  ‘Let’s dry them,’ she said. ‘The socks too. Don’t want you getting cold.’

  Perlman bent obediently, removed his shoes. He rolled off the socks, relieved to see they matched. Betty stuck shoes and socks in the cupboard where she’d put the coat. Perlman glimpsed the interior – a big brass hot-water cylinder, towels and bedsheets folded neatly on shelves.

  Annie’s vision, laundry. The sickroom. It reared back at him. He should phone Adamski, let Joe and some crime-scene specialists make something of it. How long was it since Annie had seen the bloodied sheet? A full forty-eight hours anyway – which was more than enough time for Dysart and Ace to do a thorough cleaning job.

  ‘Fancy a drink? Scotch?’

  ‘Sounds fine.’ Perlman was conscious of his white blue-veined feet and the unusually long middle toes. Betty brought him a tumbler of Scotch and laid it on the table. She sat, a glass of wine tilted in her hand. He liked her maroon shirt and blue jeans – she’d set black aside, as if she might create a space, however transient and illusory, between herself and the garb of grief.

  ‘The last barefoot man in this flat was a Spanish accordion player called Yglesias … New Year’s Eve 1990.’

  A barefoot Spaniard playing an accordion. Barcefuckinglona – can’t get away from Miriam’s destinations, her fabled odyssey. And all the time she’d been lying motionless under the clay of Glasgow, less than a mile from his house. And he’d imagined she’d found a lover, or she’d been in an accident or who knows what his wild head created—

  He drank his Scotch a little too quickly.

  She pushed her chair back from the table and stretched her legs, and made a connection – her slippers against his bare feet.

  He drew back, and so did she, and she said, ‘Ooops.’

  But he felt the pleasing frisson he’d had before with her – the closeness of lips a few nights ago, the almost-kiss. Wrong time then, wrong time now. Life was askew. He was a collection of unanswered questions. But those sympathetic eyes and that lush mouth drew him.

  Except the dead were present in this room. The dead remained to be salvaged.

  Betty was speaking quickly, as if to diminish any significance there might have been in the contact. ‘I get a kick working for your Aunts, Lou. They’re funny sometimes.’

  ‘They’re a pair of old eccentrics all right.’

  He listened to Betty talk about Marlene’s noontime habit of spiking fresh lemon juice with crushed cloves and a thimble of port. He enjoyed the imitation she did of Marlene, catching exactly the rise and fall of the old woman’s voice and gestures.

  Easy street, Lou thought. Let’s talk about family all night. But his mind was peeling off elsewhere.

  Split-level brain in action.

  Somebody sent those cards. Somebody killed M. One and the same person – or two? One who’d committed the act, and an accomplice who travelled Europe? But why only three postcards in all that time? Why not once a week, twice a week?

  Because you received just enough to make you think she was alive, OK, but that same irregularity served another purpose – she doesn’t entirely think the world of you, Lou. And the messages, aloof, devoid of sentiment, were designed to underline the fact she didn’t care to divulge anything of her feelings and plans. Even the fucking pedestrian images were an insult, postcards somebody would pick out if they were in a hurry, and sent to a recipient of no importance.

  You were meant to be hurt. Somebody schemed your anguish. Somebody as blackhearted as Latta.

  Maybe Latta’s the one. Killed Miriam, forged the cards, popped out of the country a couple of times and mailed them. But Latta, despite his malicious cunning, his desire to hammer Lou down, would be reluctant to leave Glasgow – why would he turn his back on the city and neglect his obsession? God forbid, he might miss something. A clue, a hint of Miriam and Perlman’s complicity. Also there was the loft to keep under surveillance, and although he had a paid informant to do it he needed to be in a place where he could easily be reached.

  OK, imagine Latta had an accomplice post the cards—

  Lou’s head ached.

  Betty was still going on about his aunts. She obviously found the subject neutral territory, a place she could wander safely. ‘I once asked Hilda why she never married. She said she never met the right man. She “walked out” with a young guy called Barry Bernstein for a time. The Nosepicker. Always hiding behind a hankie, finger as far up his nostrils as he could shove it.’

  ‘Guaranteed to win a lady’s heart.’

  Betty smiled. ‘After the Nosepicker there was the Slob.’

  Perlman heard this even as he drifted to Dysart and Ace, wondering if they’d dragged Miriam randomly off a street, drugged her and tossed her in the back of the van, chained her, and then … How else did they find their victims other than by snatching people walking alone down dark empty streets? It was a job too risky to do in daylight. And they had the cutting implements, the means – if Annie’s story was right. But Miriam didn’t fit into what he assumed was their purpose: cash, working for pr
ofit – Jackie’s operations had to be paid for, the upkeep of that house, even in disrepair, devoured money. So how did it benefit them financially to cut off a hand?

  Click! Was it possible Latta had hired Ace and Dysart?

  This leap plunged him deeper into thickets of associations – how did they meet, what was the arrangement? But what did Latta have to gain by Miriam’s death – when all he really wanted was to rub her face in a crime, and Perlman’s along with it? In public, where he could scream I was right all along.

  You couldn’t find that gleeful fulfilment if your quarry was dead.

  Betty said, ‘Hilda doesn’t speak much about him.’

  He’d lost her thread. ‘The Slob you mean? I never heard of him.’

  ‘He ate with his mouth open as wide as the Clyde Tunnel. Always stuffing it full and food would drop into his lap.’

  ‘Hilda’s choices were impeccable,’ Perlman said.

  The doorbell rang again. Some dickhead on the pavement kept his finger to the button. Perlman asked for directions to the toilet.

  ‘Through the living room and down the hall. First door on the right.’

  The toilet was a small cubicle Betty had prettified with some dried flowers in a vase, and small prints of old Glasgow on the walls. He peed, flushed, washed his hands, dried them on a dark green towel colour-coordinated with the pale green walls. He saw himself in the oval mirror, oy, whose face is that? Eyelids puffy, bristle on his jaw darkening by the day, expression ferklempt.

  Perlman, feeling your years.

  He turned from his reflection and took his mobile out of a trouser pocket. He punched in the number for Adamski. Saturday night, what chance? An automated voice said, Your call is being redirected. He waited.

  Adamski’s voice came through. ‘Hello.’

  Perlman said, ‘I’m not disturbing you?’

  ‘I’m sitting in front of the telly watching reality shite.’

  Perlman told him about Annie’s experience, then asked, ‘Can you get a search warrant, Joe?’

  ‘Do you believe she saw this body, Lou?’

  ‘She saw something. I’m inclined to believe it was a corpse.’