Grievous Angel bs-21

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Rubbish,’ she murmured, but she opened it, about halfway, enough for me to see that she was wearing wrap-around sunglasses, barely necessary on a morning that had begun overcast and looked like staying that way.

  ‘Satisfied?’ she drawled. She’d have slammed the door shut if it hadn’t been for McGuire’s size whatever moccasin blocking the way. As she pushed vainly against his strength, I reached out and whipped the shades away.

  Both her eyes were blackened, and swollen, as was the bridge of her nose. I hadn’t noticed before, but her lower lip was puffy as well. She snatched the Ray-Bans back from me and replaced them, but I’d seen enough. I’d expected that, or something similar.

  ‘I’m still saying nothing!’ she snapped. ‘Now go… or I’ll call your superior officer.’

  ‘That would be DCS Stein,’ I advised her. ‘But it doesn’t matter. You’ve told me everything I wanted to know. We’re going to do you a favour now; we’re not going to ask you anything at all.’

  She took me by surprise; she slumped against the door and started to cry.

  I let McGuire administer the sympathy. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, gently. ‘Is he often abusive?’ She nodded. ‘Do you want to make a complaint against him?’

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered.

  I leaned close to her. ‘I think you have done already, kid,’ I murmured, ‘but not to us. Come on, Mario.’

  We closed the gate carefully behind us. ‘She had you going there, didn’t she?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘I take a very dim view of domestic violence. I’ve seen too much of it in uniform.’

  ‘We all do in our time,’ I agreed, ‘and I’m not condoning it. But remember three things: one, she’s an actress; two, she doesn’t know that we know she’s been fucking Manson; three, everybody likes to have the police on their side. She’s hoping we’ll pat her on the head and go away. The bugger is, she’s right; we’ll have to.’

  I checked my watch… the clock in the Discovery had packed up in the time of a previous owner. It showed twelve forty. ‘The Police Federation would like you to be going for lunch now, son. But right now, as I speak, she’s in there making a phone call. I don’t want to give the recipient too long to digest it, once he’s heard who turned up on her doorstep.’

  The city bypass was fairly close, so I took that rather than head across town. The journey took me twenty minutes, and I’d probably saved the same. The gates swung open even more quickly than before, but then, I was expected. ‘Where are we?’ McGuire asked.

  ‘In the belly of the beast. You’ll see.’

  For the third time in succession, the door was opened by a different person. Dougie Terry didn’t say a word; he let us in and stood aside. I knew the way by that time.

  Manson was behind his desk, contemplating what looked like two burgers, or possibly steaks, each in a big, floury bap. He looked at McGuire as we crossed the room. ‘I see we’ve both got new minders. Skinner.’

  I took the fake pen from its stand and broke it in two, then ripped its wire loose. His smile vanished. ‘Hey, what the fuck are you doin’? It’s not switched on.’

  ‘Who gives a shit?’ I barked. ‘I’m in that sort of mood. Mario, now that you’ve met Mr Manson, you might want to go and have a longer chat with Mr Terry.’

  ‘You serious, boss?’ the DC asked.

  ‘Yes, go on.’

  I waited until he’d left then headed round the desk. Manson saw that I really was serious; he panicked, opened the top right-hand drawer and reached into it, but I slammed it shut on his hand and pressed hard. ‘Bastard!’ he yelled. I pulled him over backwards, right out of his chair, and took the gun he’d been after. He started to rise, and I slugged him with it, backhanded, across the face. He sprawled on the rug, in a bay window that looked out on to the completely secluded garden, free of onlookers. He wasn’t done, more fool him. I pocketed the automatic as he got to his feet, then hit him, a big right-hander on the temple that knocked him back down, and right out.

  When he started to come to, I was in his chair, pointing his own gun at the middle of his forehead, with half a burger in my left hand. ‘That was the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your life,’ I told him, when he was ready to listen, and I had finished chewing. ‘We were just going to have a chat until you went for the gun. Are you fucking mad?’

  ‘What gun?’ he mumbled. ‘You brought it with you.’

  ‘No, I didn’t, but I’m taking it away. There’s an amnesty on just now, post-Dunblane, pre-legislation, and this is going in the river.’ I put it back in my pocket (the safety catch had never been off), picked up the other bap from the plate on his desk and handed it to him.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, sourly.

  ‘Actually, Tony, you did me a favour,’ I confessed. ‘I wanted to give you a slap, very badly. I’m angry, very angry. I’ve just been to see a lad in hospital. You’ve been screwing his wife and now you’ve ended his career for him. You know what? As well as being a fucking criminal, you are an arsehole of the first order.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ he muttered, then winced as he took a bite from his roll and felt the pain. I’d caught him with the gun between the right cheekbone and upper jaw. His face was swelling and his eye was going to be closed before too long.

  ‘Where’s big Lennie?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s gone on holiday for a bit.’

  ‘Sure. He left last night I’ll bet, via Blackford Hill.’ He frowned and I read his mind. ‘No, forget that,’ I told him. ‘Derek’s story is still that he was hit by a car, but we both know that’s crap. We also know that there’s only one guy in town who’d tackle a job like that alone, against a young, fit guy, and inflict the damage that he’s got. You’re a bastard on that score as well. You like Lennie, yet you used him to do that. What about Bella?’ I continued, keeping the pressure on him. ‘Where’s she?’

  ‘Back at her own place. She’s got Marlon’s funeral to sort.’

  ‘And she’s safe, of course, now you know there’s no threat against her.’

  ‘There never was,’ he replied. ‘She was upset about the kid. We both were. I just wanted her here for a while, that was all.’

  I shook my head. ‘I still don’t get it, man. Okay, you’ve got a thing going with Alafair, but she’s a fucking trophy for the likes of you, that’s all. You don’t want to marry her, for Christ’s sake. A week’s nookie in Ibiza and that would have been it, am I right?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So, she goes home, Derek finds out, they have a big fight, he loses it and hits her. And she phones you crying about it. The Tony Manson I know would have said, “Your business,” and hung up on her, but instead you set big Lennie on the guy you’ve been cuckolding, the highest profile sportsman in town, and you break his fucking legs! I do not get that, Tony; I don’t get it at all. Explain it to me, no witnesses; go on.’

  He took another bite of burger, with the other side of his mouth, and I finished mine. When he was done, he looked up at me, and said, ‘Just this once, okay?’

  I nodded. ‘Okay, if you want.’

  ‘It was a matter of principle. A message had to be sent; now it has been and the story’s over. I’ll compensate the boy. His debts are wiped at the casino, forty grand’s worth. I doubt if he’ll ever go there again, but if he does he’ll have another ten coming in chips.’

  I whistled. ‘That’s the noblest thing I’ve ever heard,’ I told him, ironically; I must emphasise that, in case you thought I was being serious, for irony is very difficult to convey on the printed page. ‘But I don’t get your fucking message.’

  ‘It wasn’t for you, but trust me, it’ll have been received.’

  ‘By whom? Derek? For fuck’s sake, Tony. What good’s that going to do now? Oh, and by the way, I’d sooner trust a politician.’ I frowned. ‘You’ve got a lot in common, mind you. They keep on getting away with it, just like you will this time.’

  I reached out a hand and pulled
him off the floor, then gave him back his chair. ‘No more, Tony, no more,’ I warned him. I patted my pocket. ‘And no more toys either. Once this new ban on handguns comes in, if I raid this place and find any, you’ll be gone for five years.’

  McGuire and Terry were outside in the hall when I left, eyeing each other up, the latter more than a little warily. I sensed that something had happened. I patted the DC on the shoulder. ‘And he’s on our team too, Dougie. I’ll bet that hasn’t made your afternoon.’

  The gates had been opened for us when we stepped outside. Neither of us said a word until we were off the property and back in Essex Road. It was McGuire who broke the silence. ‘What happened in there, boss?’

  ‘Tony and I had a wee chat. We’re old acquaintances. Don’t be offended that I asked you to leave. Some things are better one on one. I wanted you to see him before we got down to it. I’m sure you’ll bump into him again before you’re done.’

  As it happened he did, a few years later; it was a one-sided meeting, though, since Manson was dead at the time.

  ‘We heard a shout at one point,’ the new DC said, quietly. ‘Terry was for going in there.’

  ‘Did you have to restrain him?’

  ‘No, sir. He thought better of it.’

  They usually do with him. I grinned. ‘Thanks for your confidence,’ I remarked. ‘It might have been me that was shouting.’

  ‘I never thought that for one second, sir. Neither did Terry, from the way he reacted. Did you get anything out of Manson?’

  ‘I’d read the script before I heard the performance.’ I summed up the sequence of events for him, but left out the more physical side of the discussion.

  ‘If we know all that, don’t we have a chance of a prosecution?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. If… Derek Drysalter, who’s getting fifty grand from Manson for pain and inconvenience, plus, I imagine, an insurance payment that might be in doubt if the truth came out, was to change his story and make a complaint, if… a couple of witnesses come forward out of the blue and make it to the trial unbribable or undamaged, if… Alafair confesses to everything including running to Tony after Derek hit her, and if… big Lennie doesn’t happen to have been in a roomful of oath-taking friends at the exact moment the attack took place, then… yes, we might have a chance of taking it to court. The only problem is that none of those things is going to happen.’

  I understood his concern. I’d been as idealistic as him ten years earlier. ‘We just have to keep doing our best, Mario,’ I told him. ‘We get most of them in the end.’

  ‘We haven’t got Manson yet,’ he pointed out.

  ‘If we don’t, the chances are that someone else will. Look at the Holmes brothers. They thought they were untouchable, until wee Billy Spreckley showed them they were only human after all.’

  ‘Where does all this leave us with the Watson investigation?’

  ‘Good question, son,’ I conceded. ‘Back at point one, unfortunately. What were those two hooligans hired to get out of Marlon? The fact that Tony and Alafair were having it away? I can’t see that. At the end of the day who cares other than the Loyal Hibernian Supporters’ Club? And I can’t see them hiring hit men from Newcastle.’

  McGuire whistled. ‘I don’t know, boss,’ he chuckled. ‘Hibbies can be very determined people when their club’s involved.’

  ‘You can joke about it, but that’s all we’ve got at the moment. Whatever they were after, it was serious. They were brought in to do a job, we got on to them and they, for their carelessness, were killed themselves… to eliminate any chance of us reaching the person who hired them.’ I sighed. ‘And then there’s the leak. How did our man find out that we had indentified the van, and the men in it?’

  ‘We’ve got a mole then,’ McGuire murmured.

  ‘I’d like to think that Newcastle has, not us. But don’t call him a mole; I hate that analogy. Moles are nice furry wee things. Our traitor’s a reptile, a serpent in our garden.’

  ‘Does Manson know who’s behind it all?’

  I sighed. ‘If he does, then he isn’t worried any more. Bella’s no longer being protected… although he told me he never did think she was at risk… and his own security’s back to normal: Dougie Terry’s not exactly fucking Cerberus guarding the gates of Hell. My feeling is that Tony believes that it’s over with him having sent his message, as he calls it. It might be for him, but not for us. We’ve still got a triple murderer to catch.’

  ‘So what do we do now, sir?’ he asked, as we neared the office.

  ‘Us normal mortals, Mario, we just keep going, or we go back over what we’ve done so far and see if we’ve missed anything. You, I guess, just keep relying on flair, luck and brass neck.’

  As soon as I was back behind my desk, I called Alison. ‘How did you get on with Alf’s assistant?’

  ‘I’m no further forward,’ she replied. ‘She did a trawl of all the reports from divisions of incidents from the Wednesday night right through to the Friday, but there was nothing there involving three unidentified suspects.’

  ‘Bugger. Nothing at all?’

  ‘There was an armed robbery by two guys from a video store in Leith Walk on the Thursday night. Doesn’t quite fit the time frame and we’re one suspect short.’

  ‘Nor does it sound like the sort of thing that people get killed over. Go back to Shannon, Ali, and ask her to trawl over two further days, just in case something happened that wasn’t reported until after the event. And this too: get your boys to ask around discreetly for things that might have happened off our radar. For example, any word of a robbery where the victim might have had an interest in not reporting it?’

  ‘I will do. Bob,’ she seemed to hesitate for a second, ‘do you think we should go back to Mia Watson on this?’

  ‘And ask her what? She’s already told Stevie that she doesn’t remember any of them.’

  ‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘I wondered whether, if it was woman to woman, she might push her memory a wee bit harder.’

  I didn’t really want Alison interviewing Mia, but I couldn’t order her not to, or even come up with a convincing reason why she shouldn’t. ‘Try it, if that’s what you want, but she goes on air soon for most of the rest of the day, and we’re both off the pitch for four days from tonight, including Monday when we go to interview Telfer.’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘We can’t get to see him before Tuesday. By the time we got the train up to Aberdeen it would be too late to fly to the platform and back in one day, but as you said, he’s not going anywhere. I’ve made all the arrangements with Shell. We go up Monday afternoon and leave at seven o’clock on the helicopter. All I have to do now is book us into the airport hotel.’

  ‘You’d better make it one room,’ I told her. ‘Times are tight; we should save the taxpayer some money.’

  She laughed. ‘After a weekend on a seagoing schooner, you might want a suite.’

  Sixteen

  ‘What should I wear, Pops?’ Alex asked me, as she handed me a mug of tea. ‘I don’t have a black dress.’ She was a wee bit anxious; the truth about where she was going and what we were about to do had been settling upon her since breakfast.

  ‘They tend not to be fashion items for thirteen-year-olds, kid,’ I pointed out. ‘What did Grandpa like you to wear? It’s not about what other people expect, it’s about what he’d be thinking.’

  She thought about it. ‘There’s the blue dress I bought with the money he gave me last Christmas. Would it do?’

  ‘That will be perfect, my love.’

  ‘Make-up?’ Under Daisy’s guidance and with my approval she had started to use cosmetics on the day she moved into her teens. She didn’t overdo it, for as Daisy had pointed out, she didn’t need to. ‘Would that be disrespectful?’

  ‘I’d tell you if it was.’

  ‘Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to upset Aunt Jean.’

  ‘You won’t.’ Jean was going to be sending her dad off to the good fire. I
doubted if she’d even notice that her niece was wearing a bit of eyeliner and lipstick. ‘It’s not as if you’re going to be painted up like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver.’ We’d watched the video a couple of months before.

  ‘You lookin’ at me?’ she drawled, and headed for the stairs.

  ‘Don’t come down with your hair in a Mohican,’ I called after her.

  The ribbing had lightened things but I was probably more tense than my daughter. I didn’t like Daldowie; or rather I disliked it more than any other crematorium I knew. It was one of those places where you saw distant relations and acquaintances, promised to see them soon and then never did until the next time you were there.

  I decided to match the dress code I’d recommended to Alex, so I put on the linen suit I’d worn a few days before, but with a black shirt and tie. Then I packed a bag for the weekend, full of what I imagined might be sailor stuff.

  Alison had advised Alex about what she should take with her. She and I had arranged that we’d all set off from my place; if I’d picked her up, it would have taken at least forty-five minutes longer to reach Carluke. When she arrived, in a black suit, we were ready to go. She scored a real Brownie point by heading straight for the back seat of the Beamer, leaving Alex in her usual place, up front. It was thoughtful, and I loved her for it. Yes, you read me right; I loved her for it.

  We got to Thornton’s house just before one. There were quite a few people there, in addition to Jean, a couple of her aunts, one from either side of the family, Thornie’s much older brother, Uncle Moffat, who wasn’t quite sure where he was, and his best pal from the golf club. The great-aunts made a small fuss of Alex, and were polite to Alison, but mostly concentrated on sipping their Harvey’s Bristol Cream, and munching their salmon sandwiches as best they could with their loose dentures.

  Sergeant Lowell Payne was there too, clean-cut, about my own age, and formal in dark suit, white shirt, black tie. My Special Branch contact had called me back, giving him a clean bill of health. He wasn’t expected to rise any higher than inspector, but that would give him a decent pension one day, and he had no bad habits for me to worry about. We were introduced, ‘Bob, Lowell. Lowell, Bob,’ but didn’t say much to each other. At that stage everyone was focused on what was to come. Alex stuck close to me, tight-lipped; one of the great-aunts had insisted on pinching her cheek, and Uncle Moffat kept calling out, loudly, ‘Who’s that lassie? Is that our Myra?’