A Brush With Death

by Quintin Jardine

  The young man faded to black, and the DI paused the recording. ‘Very interesting, but where does it take us?’ she asked, looking at Skinner for a response.

  ‘It’s telling us why Swords was sent to steal that laptop,’ he suggested. ‘Nobody knew about the copy that Aldorino gave Leo at the party. But who knew about the project itself?’

  ‘The people who were in it, obviously.’

  ‘Not necessarily. They agreed to be interviewed by Moscardinetto, but did they know about Leo’s involvement, and did they know what the end product was going to be? That’s not clear yet, not at all. What is, though, is this: Leo’s story about Brezinski trying to bribe him to throw their fight provides a potential motive for his murder. If that leaked – and some of it must have, for Swords to have been sent to steal the laptop and the phone – it would be very dangerous, and possibly fatal for Leo. But we’re not done yet. That line at the foot of the screen tells me we’re not much more than halfway through. We should watch the rest before making any judgement.’

  Mann nodded and pressed the arrow icon. The action resumed with a man on screen in an office location that could have been anywhere.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Provan asked.

  ‘Bryce Stoddart,’ Skinner told him, ‘and I’m very interested to hear what he’s got to say, now we know about that bribe.’

  ‘One might say,’ the promoter began, ‘that Leo is the acceptable face of boxing. What I will say is that the day his father brought him to see my father was the best that Stoddart Promotions ever had. He was a driven man, Peter Jackson – that was the name he used in the ring when he fought for my father. That came to an end when he was injured in a fight in Vegas. Dad told me that he overmatched himself, that he insisted on taking that fight, against his advice. They said he recovered from the brain blood clot, but I’m not sure about that. He was a bit peculiar, obsessive about that Vegas fight, making all sorts of claims about it that Dad said couldn’t have happened. Despite that experience, he had a lot of time for Dad, and that’s why he brought Leo to him once he’d made a name for himself in the amateurs.

  ‘Dad wasn’t sure about him, to be honest. A lot of good amateurs don’t make the transition to professional. The deal we did with him was contingent on him coming back from the Olympics with a medal. Dad didn’t think he would, that’s why he agreed to send him to the LSE, but he got a couple of lucky breaks and only lost to Brezinski in the final. There were complaints about the judges, but you always have those at the Olympics. Bottom line, take a look at Leo’s medal and you’ll see that it’s silver, not gold. There are misconceptions that Leo Speight made Stoddart Promotions; they’re bollocks. He made us bigger, yes, but we’d have got there anyway.’

  Stoddart fell silent; for a moment or two the watchers thought that the recording had frozen, but he resumed. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘the truth is that Leo Speight cost us money. The fight he had in Russia with Yevgeny Brezinski; there were, say, certain agreements made in relation to that. On the night, Leo broke them, without consulting me or anyone else. Our co-promoter, Zirka, let’s just say they were not pleased, and when these people are pissed off with you, you’ve got trouble. Leo doesn’t know this, but he’s lucky to be alive. He thinks he knows all about the business side of boxing.’

  Stoddart gave a sudden harsh, startling laugh. ‘Actually he knows fuck-all about it. Oh, sure, he’s a clever guy with a university degree that my father paid for, and there’s nobody better at number-crunching with the TV companies, but that’s the bit of the iceberg you can see. The rest of it, that’s the dangerous part and it drags the shiny bit along with it. I’ll be frank with you: if you look at the accounts we have to file with the taxman every year – and you can; they’re public property with a company our size – you’ll find that every year since that fight we’ve paid Zirka a million. It goes though the books as a consultancy fee; actually it’s a fucking bounty, it’s compensation for Leo reneging on the deal he made. Zirka’s still in business, but it’s a pissy little eastern European operation these days. It makes hardly any money. Without our contribution it would probably have sunk long ago, but we’re tied to them, thanks to Leo. Not just the pay-off; there’s more, but I really don’t want to go into that.’

  The screen blinked once more. ‘Don’t be fucking daft,’ Stoddart continued. ‘No, Leo never knew about the pay-off, or that Zirka had made physical threats against him. He never saw our accounts because he wasn’t a shareholder in the company; he knew he made money for us, but as long as he made enough for himself, he was happy. He’s a fucking innocent, Leo, that’s the truth. He bounced something off me the other day, something he’s thinking about doing now he’s finished in the ring. Some pan-European MMA and boxing operation he wants me to get involved in; he can’t be serious. If there was nobody else out there doing that sort of stuff, maybe, but there is, and you don’t want to mess with them.’

  Abruptly, Bryce Stoddart faded, to be replaced by Gino Butler. The location was another café, but indoors at a window table, with a view across water to an island. ‘Largs,’ Provan muttered, as the narrative began.

  ‘I’ve never seen myself as a boxing manager,’ Butler said. ‘You’re asking me about my experience of the fight game, but all I can tell you is what I’ve seen through Leo Speight’s eyes, more or less. I don’t have a stable of fighters, just one client, and if we hadn’t been mates since we were kids, I wouldn’t have him. Even then I don’t think it would have happened if it hadn’t been for Mr Speight, Leo’s dad. He was a nice bloke, and I liked him, but I can imagine that if you didn’t know him he could have been a bit scary. He had a big scar on the left side of his head,’ Butler tapped himself just above the temple, ‘right there, and you could see it, ’cos he shaved his head. His eyes stood out too, and it was as if he was always staring at you. He shuffled when he walked rather than taking big strides. I almost said that apart from that you wouldn’t know he’d been carried out of the ring at Caesar’s Palace on a stretcher, but that’s not true. You knew that he’d suffered a head injury, and there were other signs that he’d been a fighter.

  ‘How good was he? Depends who you ask. Leo swears that he was drugged and slugged in that American fight, and that if it hadn’t happened he’d have been a world champion and retired a rich man. Ask Bryce Stoddart and he’ll tell you different. I’ve heard him say that Mr Speight was average at best and that his father only got him the Las Vegas fight because he was a cheap option who was going to make the other guy look good. Mind you,’ he added, ‘I’ve never heard him say that when Leo was in the room. I asked his dad – Benny Stoddart, that is, not Leo’s dad – about him being drugged. “Things happen, son, that you don’t want to know about: never forget that.” That was all he said, but I never have forgotten it.

  ‘I don’t know the truth of it on either side, but I do know this: you don’t get on those Las Vegas fight cards if you’re a bum. You might not always be there to win, but you are there to look good, and unless you’re the champion, to make the other guy look even better. Leo, he never needed that; he was always the best. Like I said, he’s been my career, and I’ve got his dad to thank. When Leo went off to London to train, Mr Speight made me go down there as often as I could; then when I graduated he got Benny to fix it for me to be down there full-time. Nice man, Benny; it’s a pity about the dementia. At first I got bunged a small salary as Leo’s assistant while I completed my accountancy training, When I qualified, Leo declared that I was his manager, full-time.’

  There was another edit, then Butler resumed. ‘You said I could be frank, Mr Moscardinetto, so I’ll answer your question, but edit this out, okay? I liked Benny, like I said, but I can’t say the same about his son. Leo’s always been the boss in their relationship, but still I’ve never trusted Bryce Stoddart as far as I could chuck him, and he’s a chubby bastard. By the time Benny had to give up, because he couldn’t remember by lunchtime what he’d had fo
r breakfast, Leo’s career was established and he was working to a programme that he drew up himself. That was simple: win all the belts, defend all the belts against all comers, make as much money as possible, then move on. Bryce tried to manipulate that, he tried to match Leo with people that I could have beaten, possibly because he wanted to protect him as an asset, but most likely because he’d been promised a backhander. He pays a backhander himself, every year, to Brezinski’s company Zirka. He thinks Leo doesn’t know about it, but he does. I asked Leo about it, but he told me to ignore it. “It’s his money he’s paying out, not mine,” he said, then he laughed and said, “Mafia stuff, in Bryce’s head. He knows fuck-all, Gino.” What did he mean? I don’t know, honestly.’

  The picture froze, then restarted once more. ‘Leo’s my entire boxing experience, as you’ll have gathered. Now that he’s quitting, I have to find a new career. Being the guy he is, he’s working up a new business plan for a new fight channel, multi-discipline, with its own TV outlet. He’ll float it as his own project, but he won’t actually do it; he says it’s for me, a terminal bonus, and for Bryce if he wants part of it, although Leo says he won’t because he’s too chicken, too scared of upsetting his imaginary mafiosi. I probably do know enough to run it on my own, but I don’t know if I will. Leo and I have a personal conflict of interest of sorts; he might not be so keen when he finds out, as he’s bound to.’

  The screen went to black once more; Mann paused the replay. ‘What did he mean by that?’ she asked. ‘A personal conflict of interest?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Skinner said. ‘Maybe you should try to find out from other sources before you put it to him directly. But let’s see this through to the end.’

  ‘I don’t really know why you want to talk to me,’ Trudi Pollock told Moscardinetto’s camera. ‘I know I work for Gino Butler, and he works for Leo Speight, but that doesn’t make me part of the boxing business. To be honest, I hate the sport. My Gordon wants to box, he has done ever since he was wee, but he’ll get no encouragement from me. Nor from Leo, thank God. He’s forbidden him, point blank, from ever getting in a boxing ring, although Gordon’s pushing twenty. How do you forbid an adult from anything? I suppose you can if you’re Leo Speight.’

  A dreamy smile crossed her face. ‘Leo’s like a brother to me now,’ she continued. ‘That sounds a wee bit incestuous, given that we’ve got a son together, but it’s the truth. We went to school together, and when we got old enough, we went out on dates, pictures, youth club discos, and we did the sex thing because it was part of growing up. I’m Catholic and I thought I knew all about when it was safe and when it wasn’t, but as it turned out, I didn’t. Why am I telling you all this? You’ve got a kind face, that must be it. Still, I don’t want any of this getting on to Netflix.

  ‘My mum, she thought that I saw Leo as an escape route. She reckoned I must have reckoned that if I had a baby with Leo I’d get away, get out of the house I was brought up in. My father was a horrible man, you see. Just a beast; he never abused me sexually, but he did in every other way. No, I don’t want to talk about him, really I don’t. He has nothing to do with boxing anyway. But he did split me and Leo up. I should be ashamed to say this, but I’m not. I was glad when my father died. When he did, it was too late for Leo and me, but it always was really. He was with that Faye woman by then; she had her anchor sunk into him big-time . . . or she thought she had. She has to have it in someone, that one. I . . .’ Suddenly her pretty face was distorted by bitterness. ‘No,’ she declared, ‘I’m not going there. It’s his business, more fool him.’

  She smiled again, and the screen seemed to be brighter. ‘So, back to business, what do I know about boxing? Next to bugger-all, but I do know this. Of all the people I’ve met that are connected with it, there’s only one I’d ever trust, and that’s Leo. I suppose you’d expect me to say Gino as well. I wish I could.’

  ‘That’s a statement,’ Provan observed as her contribution ended. ‘And she works for the guy, too. Do ye think we should talk to her again?’

  ‘My gut says no,’ Mann replied. ‘I don’t want to be asking anyone direct questions from this recording. At the moment, nobody knows we have it and that’s an advantage. I propose that we re-interview Gino Butler and see what we can squeeze out of him. Is that the video finished?’

  ‘According to the screen, there’s another couple of minutes left,’ Skinner said. ‘Let’s see what’s in them.’ He clicked the play symbol, then froze it again as another face appeared, older, scowling. She was seated; there was a window behind her through which the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral could be seen.

  ‘Who the hell is that?’ the DS exclaimed. ‘I’d hate to be looking at her over the cornflakes every morning.’

  ‘By some accounts the guy who does barely knows she’s there,’ Skinner retorted. ‘That is Genevieve Alderney, matchmaker of Stoddart Promotions and Benny’s bidey-in, as we say in Edinburgh. Let’s hear what she’s got to contribute.’

  ‘You’re making a TV series, signore?’ she began. ‘You want it to be as realistic as possible? Then I hope you don’t want it to be a comedy, because there’s no fucking laughs in the business. There’s tragedy in plenty, but no brighter side. I only ever heard of one man who walked away reasonably unscathed from a serious head injury in the ring. That was Leo Speight’s father, who fought as Peter Jackson, and look what happened to him. Got crushed by a truck in a railway yard before his son could earn enough money to get him out of there. I’ve been in this business for much of my life, and I’ve never met a happy old fighter. They all retire with problems. Leo Speight maybe not, but he’s different. Speight never inhabited the boxing business, not really. From the moment he turned pro, he floated above it. He was maybe the best fighter who ever pulled on a glove, and for sure he’s made more money out of boxing than any other European. But he’s not the real face of boxing; the real face is ugly, it’s fifty-something if it lives that long, it’s battered out of shape and its owner can’t stick three syllables together without tripping over them. Or he’s younger and he’s in a wheelchair and he can’t fucking speak at all, or he’s in a bed being fed through a tube and having his ass wiped by a nurse, until he runs out of money to pay for his care and they switch off his life support. You want to make your TV movies, you make them about people like them, not about some Hollywood hero like Leo Speight, goddam him. He’s fucking lucky to be alive, but nobody’s luck lasts forever.’

  The screen went black.

  ‘There’s a cracking last line, if ever I heard one,’ Skinner murmured. ‘You might want to have a chat with her.’

  ‘Aye,’ Provan shot back at him, ‘but we might want to do a bit of research first. Did nothing strike you about her, Big Bob? The accent, it’s just no’ right. Genevieve Alderney: ye expect something cut-glass, no’ something that sounds like a concentration camp guard that’s been to night school. Sorry, naebody called Genevieve Alderney was meant tae talk like that.’

  He nodded, hunched in his chair, lips pursed, eyebrows together in a frown. ‘I hadn’t noticed, Dan; I was too busy studying her body language to listen to how she sounded. But you’re right: something’s off about her. Tell you what,’ he said, straightening up, ‘leave the research to my side of the house. We’ll get results faster than you.’

  Thirty-Nine

  ‘So what have we got here?’ Skinner asked, eyeing the tall glass on the table with a degree of suspicion.

  With the Pitt Street police building in its final few days, the canteen had closed, driving the trio to the nearest coffee shop, in Sauchiehall Street, opposite the Dental Hospital, an eyesore of a building whose brutalist style had been inflicted on the famous old thoroughfare half a century before.

  ‘They call that a macchiato,’ Provan told him.

  ‘Not the fucking coffee, you hobbit!’ the former chief barked. ‘What have we learned from the video we’ve just watched? First of
f, none of the people we saw knew that Leo was behind the project. Why? Why did he keep his involvement secret?’

  ‘Isn’t the answer in the Italian’s covering note?’ Mann suggested. ‘Leo saw it as a documentary on boxing, warts and all, so he wanted people to speak frankly, about him rather than to him. Once he’d done those interviews, Moscardinetto saw it as even more than that. He may have seen it as a piece of art; Leo probably saw it as his boxing legacy. The only thing that’s certain is that nobody’s going to tell us. Because they’re both dead.’

  ‘Yes, and by whose hand? That’s the issue. We’re one fingerprint match away from proving Billy Swords killed Moscardinetto, but many miles away from nailing him for Leo. We don’t even have a motive, and unless he carried a cyanide capsule around with him, and a key to Leo’s house, we don’t have means or opportunity either. So I repeat, what have we learned from what we’ve just seen?’

  ‘Speight took a bribe to lie down to Brezinski,’ Provan replied, ‘then reneged on it. We’ve learned that. Stoddart’s been paying it back ever since, at a million a year, to keep the Russians from getting even with him.’

  ‘Leo said the bribe was never paid,’ Skinner pointed out. ‘According to Butler, he knew that Stoddart was paying out the so-called bounty. He laughed it off as a fantasy, but is it? Is the money for something else? There’s other questions from the film. Stoddart said there’s more than the bribe, but he wouldn’t go into detail. He and Gene Alderney both said Leo was lucky to be alive, but to me . . . it’s difficult to explain, but I heard each of them in a different way. Then there’s what Butler said about a personal conflict of interest with Leo, and also the fact that Trudi Pollock, who works for him, doesn’t trust him. And Alderney, what about her, where did that bitterness come from? For that matter, where the hell did she come from? Hopefully the call I made before we came along here will give us a clue to that. Lots of questions, lots of people to re-interview, but nothing that points to Leo and Aldorino having the same killer. I’m sorry, Lottie, Dan, but there are two of them out there.’