A Brush With Death

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘The other exception?’

  ‘That was the Stadium Hotel. The previous owner had gone bust. He thought his name as a footballer guaranteed him success, but as is usually the case, he was wrong. He was undercapitalised from the outset. He called in administrators, but that was only a delaying tactic to fend off liquidation. I made them an offer that would let him pay off his creditors, but no more than that. With no other bidders in sight, they accepted. The owner was hopping mad. He actually came here and threatened me; last Wednesday, it was. He told me that if I didn’t improve the offer, all sorts of bad things would happen.’

  ‘Police involved?’

  ‘No need. A couple of my younger colleagues saw him off. Former rugby players; a few of those move into my profession. They may not be the best valuers, but they have their uses from time to time. For example, they’re great at networking.’

  ‘Is the deal complete?’

  ‘Leo and I signed up and paid up last Thursday. The administrators are still in charge, but we’re due to take possession on Friday after the staff have been paid off.’

  ‘What’s the previous owner’s name?’

  ‘Arthur Mustard. He’s a Trinidadian, plays for a club called Merrytown. You may have heard of him.’

  ‘I have. Did he know of Leo’s involvement?’

  ‘The administrators did, so I imagine he did too. Does that interest you?’

  ‘Not much, but his threats might interest the police. He was right about one thing, though. A bad thing has happened, in addition to Leo’s death.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Skinner reached across, plucked a copy of that morning’s Saltire from the row of black-top newspapers on the oval table. The front page carried a report on Aldorino Moscardinetto’s murder.

  ‘You might want to read that,’ he said. ‘If you had, you’d have known what I mean. I hope you were planning to rip up the carpets, because they’re awful, but there’s one that does need replacing for sure.’

  Thirty-Two

  Augusta Cambridge had been hard to find. A call to the Blacksmith had ascertained that she had checked out of the hotel after breakfast on the previous Saturday morning, the day after the party, driving away in an old boxy Volvo estate. The manager remembered her departure, and the time, because he had shown her how to access the motorway south without hitting the Glasgow traffic.

  ‘Through East Kilbride,’ he told Provan. ‘At that time of day you can save half an hour by going that way.’

  She had given no address on checking in, as the booking had been made by Trudi Pollock, but the number of the Volvo was in the hotel records. The DS had hoped it would take him straight to her, but he was frustrated when a DVLA check revealed that the car was owned by a company, Cambridge Prints Limited, registered in the Isle of Man.

  He had made three fruitless calls to numbers taken from the artist’s Wikipedia page, but none of them had been accurate. He had managed to locate the publisher of the most recent coffee-table collection of her work, but she had referred him not to the artist herself but to her agent, a woman based in Bath, whose number went straight to voicemail.

  Finally he had done the obvious. Trudi Pollock had picked up on the first ring. ‘Miss Cambridge? Yes, I’ve got her contact details. She lives in Wiltshire. What do you need? I can give you her landline, her mobile and her email address . . . and her postal address if you need that too.’

  He had noted them all down. Before trying to contact the artist, he had gone back to the online encyclopedia to learn a little of the woman he would be calling. He discovered that she was fifty-one years old, a Jamaican-born British citizen who had been an art director with a London advertising agency, and a part-time portrait painter, before finding an even more lucrative career. She had been commissioned to paint a series of studies of West Indian sprinters competing at the Athens Olympiad and had captured their movement so effectively that her work had won international attention. Within a year she had left the advertising industry behind, prints of her work were selling worldwide, and her lasting fame had been sealed by a follow-up series of images, created at Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville, Florida, recording New England Patriots’ victory over Philadelphia Eagles.

  The Wikipedia entry noted that her rise to fame had been matched by that of Leo Speight, and that she had captured several of his fights, the last being his farewell performance in Glasgow against the American upstart Mario Fonsecco.

  ‘Not quite up to date,’ he murmured as he closed the entry, wondering as he did how much her final images of the doomed fighter would earn her in print form.

  He tried the landline number first, to be greeted by a call-vetting system, the kind that always tried his patience. Nevertheless he waited for the tone, and when it sounded, announced himself in the most formal accent he could summon as ‘Detective Sergeant Provan of the Scottish Police Service, calling regarding the death of Leo Speight.’

  He held the line, as the guardian requested, for a further twenty seconds, until finally a real human being answered.

  ‘Mr Provan,’ she said, ‘I am Inge Bergvik, Augusta’s partner. She is devastated by poor Leo’s death. Is it really necessary for you to speak to her? There is nothing she can tell you.’

  ‘That might be the case,’ he agreed, ‘but we still need to talk to her. We’ve been a wee bit guarded in what we’ve said to the press, because our lab’s been dragging its feet, but we’re treating the death as murder. Miss Cambridge was at the party the night before, and she was one of the last people to speak to Mr Speight. We need to know what they talked about, and more besides. If she can help us,’ he cajoled, ‘I’m sure she’d want to.’

  ‘I am shocked, Detective,’ the woman replied. He wondered what nationality she was, which Scandinavian country had issued her passport. Wikipedia had offered no personal information on the artist. ‘Of course Augusta will help if she can. But please can she have time to compose herself?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How do you wish to do this?’ she asked.

  ‘Normally we’d visit her,’ the DS told her, ‘but given the distance involved, could we use a video link, Skype or FaceTime, one of those.’

  ‘We can do FaceTime. You will need an email address.’

  ‘I have it. Look, my DI’s away from her desk just now. Can I call you in fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bergvik agreed. ‘That will be acceptable. Until then.’ She hung up with a click.

  ‘Progress,’ Provan sighed, replacing his handset and leaning back in his chair. Even as he did so, he heard the sound of another phone, coming from Lottie’s office. With a muttered grumble, he jumped to his feet and headed off to answer it, hoping that the caller would hang up before he got there.

  It rang on, determined as sometimes a phone can sound. He silenced it by snatching it up. ‘DI Mann’s phone,’ he snapped, without meaning to.

  ‘As customer-friendly as ever, eh, Dan,’ a male voice laughed in his ear.

  ‘I try my best,’ he said icily. ‘DI Mann’s out of the office at the moment. Who is this?’

  ‘Fuck me, have I been away that long?’ the voice chuckled.

  Provan felt his eyes narrow and his annoyance grow into anger. ‘Scott? Scott Mann? Is that you?’

  ‘Thank Christ for that, Dan, I was beginning to feel insulted. Yes, it’s Scott, free and clear.’

  ‘Not quite,’ the DS barked. ‘You’re only released on parole; your sentence isnae served yet. So think about this, sunshine: harassing your ex-wife at her place of work, or anywhere else for that matter, will get you recalled faster than you can say Barlinnie.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that ringing my former wife to check on the safety of my son won’t be called harassment by anybody.’

  ‘Jakey’s fine; he’s got a proper carer out of school. You neednae worry yourself abo
ut him, Scott.’

  ‘The day I take your word for anything, Dan, I’ll go back to prison of my own accord, for I’ll be past praying for. I’m not interested in talking to you; it’s Lottie I want.’

  ‘Be careful what you wish for, you whining shite,’ Provan snarled.

  ‘Lovely.’ Mann chuckled once again. ‘I hope they really are recording this call for training porpoises, or whatever the fuck they do. Now, where’s my wife?’

  ‘Read the divorce decree, Scott; she’s your ex-wife, and I repeat, she’s no’ here. Just leave her alone. Okay?’

  ‘Why do I not believe you? I’ll bet she’s sat right there listening to this. She’s under your spell, you evil little gnome. You won’t be so fucking smug once my dad’s finished with you, I promise you. We’re taking Jakey away from her, and as for you—’

  ‘Stop right there, son,’ the DS said; the quietness of his voice was forced and ran counter to all his instincts. ‘There’ll never be a day I’m alive when you and your windbag of a father can scare me, but you harm Lottie and I promise you, I will put the fear of God into you, and him. If you really want what’s best for your son, you will stop this nonsense right now and negotiate acceptable access arrangements with his mother.’

  ‘We’ll see her in court, Dan,’ his adversary hissed, ‘and you if you want to turn up, although when the sheriff sees you, it’ll only help my case, you scruffy wee bastard. You tell her to take care of my son, do you hear me?’

  ‘All I hear, Scott, is a bully, a spoiled coward who was as bad at bein’ a husband and father as he was at bein’ a police officer. You think she’s helpless against you and your dad’s creep Moss Lee. That’s why you’re so fuckin’ smug.’

  ‘Face facts, “Uncle”,’ Mann sneered. ‘She is helpless; and friendless. A fat lot of good you’ll be to her.’

  ‘Time will tell on that, but for now, hear this. Whatever you think, that girl means a hell of a lot to me, so you come near her, or hurt her in any way, and this scruffy wee bastard will put you in your place.’

  He slammed the phone into its cradle. As he let his fury go in a great tearing gasp, he heard a sound behind him, the creaking of a hinge. He turned to see Lottie standing in the doorway.

  ‘How long have you been there?’ he asked.

  ‘Long enough, Dan, long enough. I’m glad I wasn’t here to take that call. I doubt that I’d have stayed as calm as you.’ Her mouth looked almost lipless. ‘I’m going to crush those people,’ she hissed. ‘Whatever it takes.’

  Provan nodded. ‘That you will, love, that you will.’

  ‘What did you call me?’ she asked quietly.

  He stared at her. ‘Detective Inspector. What else? Now come on, ma’am. We have to speak to Augusta Cambridge on yon FaceTime thing, if I can get it to work.’

  ‘Fire away,’ she said, moving into her chair and drawing up another for him, facing the computer monitor. ‘By the way,’ she added, as she slid her keyboard across the desk. ‘You mean a hell of a lot to me too.’

  He smiled as he opened the FaceTime programme and keyed in the email address that Trudi Pollock had given him. As a dial tone rang out, they could only see themselves on screen, but after a few seconds the top of the screen showed a single word, ‘Connecting’, the image changed and their faces were replaced by that of a blond woman with a square face and round thick-framed spectacles.

  ‘Detective Sergeant,’ she said, ‘I am Inge. Good to see you.’

  ‘You too,’ he replied. ‘This is Detective Inspector Mann, my boss. She’s the senior investigating officer into Leo’s death.’

  ‘Very good. I have Augusta for you.’

  She moved out of shot and was replaced by another, her physical opposite, a black woman with delicate features and deep, clear brown eyes. She wore a heavy russet-coloured sweater and a scarf around her shoulders.

  ‘How can I help you?’ she began. ‘From what Inge told me, you believe that Leo was murdered, is that correct? The police announcements haven’t been very enlightening. I’ve called Gino Butler several times but he hasn’t come back to me. I guess that’s because he’s had nothing to tell me.’

  ‘That’s a fair assumption,’ Lottie Mann agreed. ‘We haven’t shared anything with that gentleman. Nor with anyone else,’ she added. ‘The investigation is still gathering information, but to answer your question, yes, we are treating this as murder. We believe that Leo was poisoned, by a substance added to a drink in his fridge. Were you close enough to him, Miss Cambridge,’ she ventured, ‘to know anything of his personal habits, his foibles?’

  She bridled, reading too much into the question. ‘We were friends, Inspector, nothing else. As you’ll have gathered, I’m gay, and even if I wasn’t, there was the age difference. But I did see a lot of him, yes. I painted at all of his fights, with his permission, and I cut him in on the profits from the prints. Five per cent commission; he didn’t want it, but I insisted. When he’d some down time, he’d visit me here, and we’d talk. You know his mother lost her marbles, poor woman, a long time back? I guess he needed a substitute; I’m proud that he chose me. He’d open up to me then, in a way that maybe he didn’t with other people. The media kept saying he was reserved, but he wasn’t with me. When I think about it now, I can see that Leo was more like a nephew to me than anything else. We had something in common, after all.’

  ‘Explain that for me, please,’ the DI asked.

  The artist stared at her through the screen. ‘Isn’t that pretty obvious? Leo was black.’

  ‘Mixed race.’

  ‘Yes, with a light skin tone, but where he was brought up, that made no difference. He was a black kid in Paisley, end of story.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Provan said. ‘He had no blood relatives we can interview, apart from Gordon, so we have no perspective on his early life, apart from what we can glean from Trudi Pollock and Butler, and we haven’t really gone there with them. Did he talk to you about his ethnicity?’

  ‘A little; he acknowledged it to me, which was something for him. He never tried to be white, but he never played on his blackness either. His father, Leonard senior, was Jamaican; a quiet guy, according to Leo. He’d been a boxer, but never won any titles. Leo said it was because he was too good; none of the guys with the belts would fight him, so he stayed on the outside. His ring name was Peter Jackson, taken from an old-time black fighter over a hundred years ago, another man that nobody wanted any part of in his prime. Leonard was Leo’s first coach; he never talked about him much, but he told me that the things that made him special he had from his dad. That’s where he got the Stoddart connection too. Leonard knew Benny Stoddart; he trusted him to look after his son, but he made sure he did. Leo going to LSE wasn’t Benny being altruistic. It was a clause in the contract that his father insisted be put there.’

  ‘He died in a workplace accident, didn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right; when Leo was early twenties, just starting in the pros. The police decided it was an accident, but Leo never believed that. He told me it had been set up to happen, set up by his boy Gordon’s granddad.’

  ‘Leo told you that?’ the DS exclaimed. ‘Did he say whether he took that theory to the police?’

  ‘It wasn’t a theory. He knew for sure. He hired some people to ask some questions, and he found the guy who’d been paid to set it up.’

  ‘What happened to that man?’

  ‘Nothing, but I doubt he slept easy for a while. As for Granddad Pollock, time and the river took care of him. Those were Leo’s exact words, but if you were to tell me that time had a little help, you wouldn’t surprise me.’

  ‘We’re not going to tell you that, Miss Cambridge,’ Mann said. ‘We have no plans to turn that stone over. We’re interested in the present day, and in particular in anything unusual that might have happened at the party last Friday. We’ve spoken to a few guests alre
ady, but we believe you were best placed to see most of what happened.’

  The artist pulled her scarf tighter around her shoulders. ‘What are you hoping to find?’

  ‘Any contact that Leo had with a guest that might have been less than friendly, but really any specific contact he had. For example, we know he spoke to you at one point.’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, we were fooling around. He came up to have a look at what I was doing; I told him he’d see it when it was done. Then we had a laugh. He’d been asking me for a while to paint his portrait, and I’d always said no, ’cos that’s not something I do. I specialise in action scenes. He was standing behind me saying, “Come on, Gus, paint me,” so I did; I turned and I dabbed a little paint on his neck. He grinned and said he’d never wash again, then he went back to his table.’

  ‘Yes, Trudi Pollock told us about that.’

  ‘She wasn’t the only one who saw. There was another woman watching us. As Leo walked away, she kept on looking at me, and it was sheer venom she was radiating.’

  ‘Who was it?’ Provan asked, doing his best to sound casual.

  ‘I never met the woman, but I believe it was the mother of Leo’s middle two kids. She was pointed out to me on the night. What’s her name again?’

  ‘Faye Bulloch?’

  ‘That’s her. Leo told me she’d been giving him trouble. From her expression, I could see that he meant it.’

  ‘Sheer venom, eh?’ the DS murmured.

  ‘Absolutely. A nasty piece of humanity altogether. I had an encounter with her later on. I arrived at the ladies’ room just in time to hear her racially abuse Rae Letts. Specifically she called her “a fucking nigger tramp”. If you’d care to prosecute her, I’ll happily be a witness. The door was closed but I could still hear her.’

  ‘What time did this happen?’

  ‘About nine thirty.’

  ‘How did the confrontation end?’

  Their witness frowned. ‘Mr Provan, this screen may not show it, but I am very large. I must have looked as angry as I felt, for the creature turned appropriately white, and left in a hurry. Ask the woman Trudi; she was there too. I know little Rae; one time when I was in Las Vegas for a fight, I visited her and Leo. She had gone into a booth by the time I got in there. When she came out, I asked if she was okay. She said she was, that people like that were to be pitied for they hate everything, even their own skin. I told her she was too kind for her own good, then we went back to the party. I didn’t see the Faye woman for a while after that. I’d like to think I scared her off.’