A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour)

by Smith, Anna

Chapter Five

  Ruby had staked out the house, deep in rural Ayrshire, a few times on previous visits back home, so she knew that Malky Cameron’s movements were like clockwork. His routine never changed. Every afternoon he headed out of his driveway towards his local golf club. If it was raining, he and his friends didn’t play golf but had lunch in the clubhouse and then spent most of the afternoon in the bar. He’d get into his car around seven and would be over the limit for driving, but would take it slowly along the four miles of deserted farm road to his house. He’d drive his gold Daimler straight into the old timber garage, come out, lock the double doors behind him and go through his front door.

  Ruby remembered Rab Jackson slagging him off to some old ex-pat cronies one time about how Malky, considering he used to be one of the most feared, sadistic bastards in Glasgow, now took pride in the simplest structures to his day. He’d quit the firm when the time was right for him and come over all respectable, Rab had said, hobnobbing with doctors and lawyers at the local golf club. He lived on his own in a plush, white turreted house set so far back off the road and up a private drive that you’d miss it if you didn’t know it was there. Rab said that’s how Malky wanted it. He loved the seclusion and seldom had visitors. But every Friday afternoon he drove to all the way to Glasgow and went into one of the saunas, where he enjoyed the services of a hooker for a couple of hours. Ruby had watched him do this over two weeks the previous year when, on a visit home to see Judy, she had driven down towards Elvanfoot and staked out his house. So tonight she knew exactly where to park to lie in wait. She looked at her watch. It was nearly eight, and she’d been here, hiding in this spot not fifty yards away in the undergrowth by the fish pond at the bottom of his garden, for nearly an hour. She had no problem waiting. She’d been waiting twenty-five years for this moment. It didn’t take much for her to summon the image that drove her on. It was never far away.

  *

  Ruby hadn’t seen Malky up close since that night in her home when he and Rab Jackson had raped and beaten her mother until she was lying soaked in blood, her skull crushed. She’d witnessed it all from below her bed, where Judy told her to hide, and she’d lain there eyes wide in terror, too stunned to move. Even when they had dragged Judy from her bed and slapped the screaming twelve-year-old all the way into the living room, Ruby lay, shivering, her hand stuffed in her mouth to muffle her terrified whimpering. She had been only eight years old. She could hear the screams. Judy’s screams. And it brought her from her hiding place to crawl along the floor to where she could peer through the keyhole. Malky was stripping Judy naked and bending her over. Rab was laughing. They both had a wild-eyed, crazy look on their flushed faces, like they were drunk or on drugs, and were shouting at Ruby’s mother that she was a ‘fucking grass’ and this is what they do to grasses. Rab grabbed her mother’s hair and forced her to watch Malky. He wasn’t spanking Judy – he was doing the sex thing she’d heard older girls talk about in the playground. She heard her sister let out a piercing scream, like she’d been scalded. Then nothing. But for a split second before she passed out, Judy looked towards the keyhole and Ruby instinctively knew she was pleading with her to stay where she was. She stood with her back to the door, her heart pounding in her chest, choking with fear. And then, suddenly, the smell of smoke. She waited, petrified, as it curled through the bottom of the door and up her legs until the room was filled with grey and black choking smoke. When she heard the front door slam, she opened the bedroom door and a huge belch of smoke and flames forced her back. She covered her eyes and pushed her way through, but at first could see nobody. Then she saw the figure of Judy, crawling towards her. Ruby got on her knees and inched closer to her. Then through the fug she saw her mother’s leg, and dragged herself to her. She’d never seen a dead body, but she knew from the look in her mother’s face, even through the blood and battered flesh, that the eyes staring wildly were dead. She wasn’t breathing and her mouth was open in a silent scream. Ruby struggled to her feet, grabbed hold of Judy’s hands and dragged her towards the door and down the stone steps, pulling her until they were out of the building. Seconds later, all the other neighbours came rushing out of the tenement and onto the street, staring up at the blazing building as flames licked through the open windows and lit up the night sky. Judy regained consciousness and gripped Ruby’s hand tight as she knelt down beside her.

  ‘Ruby . . . Ruby. Don’t say a word,’ she’d whispered. ‘You must never, ever say what happened tonight . . . or they’ll come for us.’

  Weeping, bewildered, Ruby held her sister’s hand until the ambulance came and took them both away. That was the last time she had seen her for eighteen long years. Ruby had passed out in the ambulance and, when she woke up, Judy was gone and she was in some kind of children’s home or dormitory, with other children in iron beds next to her. But no Judy. In the months that followed, she wailed every night in the darkness, shouting Judy’s name, until the dormitory door was flung open and someone came in and slapped her bare legs until she stopped. And, finally, they’d told her Judy was dead. That she’d gone into some kind of shock, couldn’t speak and then lapsed into a coma and died. That was it. Nothing else.

  Tonight was about retribution. Justice. Rab Jackson had his last week, and now it was the turn of Malky. Ruby strained her ears and, in the stillness, she could hear by the low murmur of the engine that he was close by. In a couple of minutes the car appeared over the brow of the hill, coming up his sweeping driveway. Ruby crept out from behind the building as she saw him drive straight through the open garage doors. As soon as he was inside, she moved like lightning, quickly closing the doors and clicking the padlock shut. Then she put the iron bar over the handles to make doubly sure. From her rucksack, she took the two beer bottles into which she had placed petrol-soaked rags. She lit them, then picked up a heavy stone, smashed the garage window and dropped them inside, one after the other, onto the floor, which she had sprinkled with petrol earlier. She heard the whoosh of the fire, and it stopped her in her tracks – she’d heard it in her nightmares all her life. She knew Malky would have smelled the petrol the moment he got out of his car and would have assumed he had some kind of leak in the petrol tank. It wouldn’t have dawned on him that his number was up until it was too late. That was the beauty of it. She knew it was risky, but she had to stay just a few seconds longer in case he tried to smash another window in desperation. He did, and she watched as he banged it with his fist, smoke swirling behind it and in front of her. But she was just able to see his face. And then, there was the split second where he looked straight at her, and somewhere in the depths of his evil, twisted, murdering mind, perhaps he recalled her face from some distant place in his past. At least, she hoped so. He looked confused, eyes wide as though appealing to her, then suddenly his expression changed. He must have seen Ruby smile as she watched him choking, pleading. She shook her head, hoping that her face was the last thing the bastard would ever see. Then, as the blaze ripped through the garage, Ruby got into her car and pushed her foot to the floor, knowing that any second now, once the tank in the Daimler caught, the whole place would explode. Bits of Malky would be strewn all over his neat, fake, red cobblestone yard. As she drove over the brow of the hill she glimpsed the moment in her rear-view mirror and she savoured it, just as she had when she drove off after torching Rab Jackson in his villa.

  The alarm bells would be well and truly ringing now. She had to be ultra careful. She drove onto the M8 and headed for Glasgow, coming off at the exit for the West End, where, unknown to Jackson, Malky or any of the other arseholes who thought they ran the show, Ruby had a tidy little tenement flat where she could be completely anonymous. Job done.

  Chapter Six

  Rosie remained in her car close to the Mahoney house after the friendly but emphatic knockback on the doorstep. She looked at her watch and decided to give it another ten minutes. The man who had opened the door of the big sandstone villa to her earlier was around her own age,
handsome, tall and athletic-looking with lush sandy-coloured hair and a foppish fringe he pushed back to reveal blue eyes that looked red-rimmed from crying. He bore a striking resemblance to a younger snapshot of Mahoney that Declan had dug out of the Post’s picture library archives, so Rosie assumed he was one of the sons who’d flown home from abroad. She was genuinely as sorry as she’d said she was to be intruding at this time, and for a moment the man hesitated as though he were going to say something more, but then he told her the family wanted to be left in peace. He understood she had a job to do, but there would be nothing for her here. He was polite, but unambiguous. As she was backing away she caught a glimpse of an older woman crossing the wide hallway, glancing over her son’s shoulder, and their eyes met. She must be the wife; her pale face was etched with sorrow. Rosie remembered from the newspaper cuttings that they’d been married for forty-five years.

  From where she’d parked she had a decent view of the steps up to Mahoney’s three-storey Glasgow West End villa, and her car was hidden behind the huge sycamore trees that lined the tranquil street in this leafy, affluent part of the city. Rosie watched a steady stream of visitors to the house, mostly older couples, some carrying flowers, grim-faced as they climbed the steps towards the massive stained-glass door. She peered over the steering wheel as they went in, then left after a few minutes, tearfully hugging the young man she’d spoken to on the doorstep. She looked at her watch again. It was already seven, and she still had to hit the door of Gerard Hawkins. Time to move on. She was about to start her engine when another car pulled up close to hers and a woman stepped out. She was tall and slim, dressed in that kind of silky, Bohemian get-up circa late seventies or eighties, big flowing blouse and skirt and flat pump shoes. When she had got out of the car, the woman reached back in and picked up a bunch of white carnations from the passenger seat. She seemed hesitant walking towards the Mahoney house, glancing through the big bay windows, and her steps faltered a little as she got closer. Then she stopped altogether, turned on her heels and came back towards her car, bursting into tears as she opened the driver’s door. Rosie dropped her sun visor and slid down a little so she could get a better look without being noticed. The woman got back into the car and sat for a few moments, her head bowed. Then she drove off, wiping her face. Rosie followed discreetly out of the West End avenue and down towards Byres Road.

  The woman parked her car in a side street and got out, heading towards Ashton Lane. Rosie found a parking space nearby and jumped out of her car, then followed her as she went up the cobblestone alley of Ashton Lane and turned into the Ubiquitous Chip wine bar. Rosie waited until she knew she’d be in the bar on the first floor before she opened the swing door and headed up the steps.

  The Chip was bustling with the usual early-evening drinkers. As well as the Glasgow University students who could afford it, the Chip was a trendy haunt for the luvvies who worked at the BBC TV studios nearby and a known watering hole of all the arty folk who liked to be seen or wanted to network. For any other punters, it was a place where you worked on the assumption that most of the people you met there had at least half a brain. On any given Friday night the Chip may have been full of people who were just as blootered as any other punter in the city-centre bars, but in the Chip you met a better class of eejit, or so the story went. It was busy almost every night of the week, and a number of staff from the Post lived in the West End and socialized there.

  Rosie ordered a glass of red wine and stood at the bar. The woman sat at a table in the corner, dabbing at the smudged make-up around her eyes, then she sat staring bleakly into space. She’d been a looker in her day, but her lined, tanned face showed the effects of too much sun. She lit up a cigarette as she took a long gulp from a large glass of white wine, and Rosie watched, surprised that by the time she had finished her fag she was more than halfway down the glass of wine. Safe to say that, whoever she was, she liked a drink.

  The bar was even busier now, so if there was to be a scene, nobody would really notice. Rosie took a sip of her wine, walked towards the empty table next to the woman and sat down. She picked up a newspaper from the table then put it back down.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said quietly. ‘Could I possibly have a word?’

  The woman gave her a surprised look but didn’t answer, just lit up another cigarette, a slight tremor in her hand.

  Rosie lowered her voice to a whisper then moved to the chair so she was opposite the woman. The noise level in the bar increased as a crowd of students came bursting in.

  She looked at the woman’s eyes, dark brown and bloodshot. No easy way to say it, Rosie decided, so just be up front.

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, but I couldn’t help seeing that you were walking towards the house of Professor Tom Mahoney earlier on.’

  The woman screwed her eyes up, puzzled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was there, too. I saw you. But I noticed you didn’t go in.’ She paused as the woman’s eyes did a double take around the bar. ‘Look’ – Rosie drew her chair a little closer – ‘my name is Rosie Gilmour. I’m a reporter. From the Post.’

  The woman glared at her in disbelief.

  ‘For goodness’ sake. Are you serious?’ Her expression twisted as though there were a bad smell under her nose. She opened her mouth to speak but Rosie interrupted.

  ‘Look, I know . . . I’m really sorry. But I didn’t want to bother the family any further. I’m . . . I’m working on an investigation into the murder of Tom Mahoney. It’s a terrible tragedy.’

  ‘Did you follow me here?’ The woman looked at her, incredulous.

  ‘Yes, I did. I’m sorry.’ Rosie plumped for honesty.

  ‘What the fuck? Have you people got no respect?’

  Her voice rasped, a mixture of outrage and too many cigarettes, and her dark eyes blazed. Rosie held her stare and didn’t speak for four beats. If she was as incensed as she looked, she’d jump up and leave. She didn’t.

  ‘Yes, we do.’ Rosie leaned forward. ‘We do have a lot of respect. Especially for a man like Tom Mahoney, who was adored by students and colleagues alike, as well as his own family. That’s why my newspaper is determined to find out who murdered him and why.’ She ran a hand across her face. ‘Please forgive me. I know it’s a difficult time. But I was in my car close to the Mahoney house and I saw you going to the door with flowers and then changing your mind. So I’m guessing it was too much for you.’ The woman shook her head. Tears came to her eyes.

  ‘What the hell do you know?’ She sniffed. ‘You people don’t know anything about Tom Mahoney or anyone else.’ She shook her head and swallowed.

  ‘Please,’ Rosie said. ‘Bear with me. Can I buy you a drink? I only want a little chat about Tom. I’m trying to build up a background of who he was, from his early days . . . The kind of man he was. I know he was a hugely popular figure at the university.’

  The woman stared at the table, tears streaming down her cheeks, as though the floodgates had opened. A waitress came past and Rosie touched her companion’s arm.

  ‘Have a drink with me. Just one? Off the record, if you want. What’s to lose?

  ‘A Chardonnay,’ the woman said softly.

  ‘Large one.’ Rosie turned to the waitress. ‘And another glass of Merlot.’ She stretched out a hand. ‘Rosie Gilmour.’

  ‘Marianne Brown . . . Mari.’

  Rosie shook the damp hand then let the silence hang for a few seconds. She was in.

  ‘Were you a student of Tom’s?’ she ventured.

  Mari nodded, swallowing.

  ‘You’re obviously far too young to be a colleague.’

  She hoped it didn’t sound patronizing, guessing that Mari would be forty-something, but younger looking, with high, fleshy cheekbones and full, soft lips. Rosie was relieved when they curled into a smile.

  ‘I’m not young. Not by a long shot.’ She sniffed and puffed out a gust of air. ‘I was once, though.’ She glanced around the bar, shaking her head wistfull
y. ‘God! The nights we had in this place all those years ago . . . students and lecturers together . . . A different world. All full of dreams and big ideals . . . impossible ideals.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve been away so long.’

  ‘You live abroad?’

  ‘Yes. France.’

  ‘You’ve lived there a long time?’

  ‘Nearly twenty years.’

  ‘What took you over there?’ Rosie probed. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

  Mari sat back and touched her neck, looking at Rosie then beyond her into the throng of people at the bar.

  ‘I just needed to get away. From here . . . From everything . . . Initially I went for a few months, then stayed on. Ended up teaching English in one of the international schools.’

  ‘I’m wondering why France,’ Rosie asked. ‘What’s a former student of East European Studies doing in France?’

  The waitress arrived with the drinks and Mari drained her glass and put it on the tray. She took a sip of the fresh drink, then pulled out a cigarette and offered the packet to Rosie. She took one and lit them both.

  ‘I wanted to put it all behind me.’ She inhaled and let out a stream of smoke. ‘I had to. I went down south first and did a post-grad in French so I could teach. I just wanted all the Eastern European crap out of my life.’

  They fell into silence and, for a moment, Rosie pictured this tired, defeated figure back in her heady, carefree, student days flouncing around the bar.

  ‘I take it you were Tom Mahoney’s lover?’ Rosie raised her eyebrows, knowing it was a bit of a hand grenade.

  For a moment, Mari stared straight ahead, as though the question had triggered a raft of images. Rosie waited. Eventually, Mari turned to her, sniffed and nodded.

  ‘How very astute of you,’ she said, with something of a defeated smile. ‘That was before . . .’

  Rosie raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Before what?’