The Blood of Crows

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘There was a queue. But anybody – anybody normal – would just have shot him. Bang-bang, dead.’

  ‘Instead of which … He didn’t die a good death, Mrs Biggart.’

  ‘He didnae live a good life either.’

  ‘Looks kind of good from here,’ said Lambie, looking around the huge back garden, the conservatory, the Porsche 911, and the eight-bedroomed house in a gated community at one of the smartest addresses in Glasgow. ‘But you’ve no idea who might want to knock him from his perch?’

  She shook her head. ‘The thing is this – ma man didn’t like women – or men, come to that – that had had too many.’ She knocked back a mouthful of the pink drink. Anderson could smell rum. ‘And by that I mean birthdays, not drinks. So, our marriage as such ended about three years after we were married. After that, I could please myself. And I did. Often.’ Melinda lit another cigarette and blew the smoke out in a thin stream.

  Anderson gazed past her to the pool. The bright diamonds of reflected light hurt his eyes. ‘But did you have anybody special?’ he asked softly.

  She didn’t answer immediately, but her eyes caught Anderson’s, giving him a glimpse of the girl she had been once. Did he detect a fleeting wistful look? ‘Aye, I had somebody special. Haven’t seen him for a while.’ She looked away. The next drink was a bit hurried. That conversation was over.

  ‘So, again, where were you when Billy died?’ asked Anderson.

  ‘I was here. You can ask the gateman, James. Sorry, don’t feel like saying much more. You know who my lawyer is.’

  They said goodbye. Once they were safely out of the house, Anderson drove the Jazz round the corner and parked immediately. ‘Just let’s wait till I get my breath back. God, what a cleavage.’

  ‘You could feed the whole GDP of this country down there, in cash! Silicone, of course. If they look like the guns of the battleship Potemkin in firing position, they’ll be silicone.’

  ‘I’m not going to ask how you know that.’ Anderson shook his head, trying to clear the image from his mind, slipped the car into gear and headed out towards the gate. The barrier rose as they approached, but Anderson pulled into the monoblocked space designated for those not yet allowed to escape. The gateman came out, wearing his commissionaire’s cap in the presence of authority.

  The DI got out of the car, thinking that the Jazz probably didn’t quite cut the mustard in a place like this. Still, it showed the police were suffering cutbacks just like everybody else.

  ‘James?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The security man didn’t actually stand to attention but it was not far off.

  Anderson heard Lambie get out of the car behind him. ‘I’m sure you’re aware, James, that some – well, one – of the residents here didn’t come by their wealth via the most legal means possible.’

  ‘Couldn’t really say one way or the other, sir. Rumours and idle gossip.’

  ‘But you get my general drift?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir.’

  ‘So, we’re obviously investigating the death of Mr Biggart.’

  ‘Mr Biggart, yes.’ James’s face filled with fear. ‘Mr Biggart,’ he repeated quietly.

  ‘And I’m sure you want to stay well out of it. You have your job –’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ James’s face relaxed with relief.

  ‘So, off the record, James, how often did Billy come in and out with somebody else in the car? How often did he have visitors?’

  James shook his head. ‘Not often, sir, not often at all. He always drove his own car, sir, a Hummer, a dark grey Hummer.’ He rattled off the registration number. The vehicle was six months old. ‘Not one for bringing his work home, not him. Not even a lot of visitors …’

  ‘And?’

  James nodded, as if a thought had struck him. ‘I mean, there weren’t a lot of visitors when Mr Biggart was in.’

  ‘Meaning his wife had more visitors when he was out?’

  ‘Mrs Biggart had a few visitors … you know, women. A few women came and went …’

  Anderson was aware of Lambie behind him, scuffing the ground with his toe. ‘And what about men? Did Mrs Biggart entertain any male visitors when Mr Biggart was away? Anybody in particular?’

  ‘Wouldn’t want to put it like that, sir.’

  ‘How would you like to put it, James? Not in writing down at the station, I’m sure?’

  James answered immediately. ‘Well, her usual callers – her flowers get delivered, her hairdresser, her personal trainer. A company sends cleaners – all male cleaners – laundry delivery. All men.’

  ‘Anybody new? Very recent? Any man who might be visiting on a more … friendly basis?’

  Anderson could see the cogs turning in James’s mind. ‘Well, there’s that young one, sir, dark hair, very dark eyes, handsome – almost pretty, you might say.’

  Very dark eyes. Anderson thought about Janet Appleby’s statement. Could the same man be a visitor to both the Biggarts? ‘And you’d recognize him again?’

  ‘Oh yes, I could. He drives a BMW Z3.’ James rattled off another reg.

  Lambie got his notebook out and scribbled it down. ‘You didn’t catch a name?’

  ‘No, but he was pleasant, polite, a well-spoken young man. Always stopped and had a word.’

  ‘Did he ever mention why he was here?’

  ‘No, don’t think so.’

  ‘One more thing, do you have a phone here?’

  ‘Yes.’ James gave them the number, and Lambie wrote it all down.

  ‘Thanks, James, we’ll try not to bother you again.’

  Anderson pulled the Jazz to a halt at the traffic lights and let his fingertips drum on the steering wheel.

  ‘Did we learn anything from any of that?’ Lambie enquired.

  Anderson quoted, ‘“I had somebody special. Haven’t seen him for a while.” Her exact words. There’s something going on there. Either somebody decided to take out Mr and Mrs Biggart in a two-for-one offer, or maybe Mrs Biggart was a bit fed up being second best? Wouldn’t be the first gangster’s wife to sleep with A. N. Other and decide to take over the company.’

  ‘And decide to hire a hit man? I might go for that. But nobody hires an arsonist for a hit man, they just do insurance work.’

  Anderson said, ‘True, they’d just shoot him and put him somewhere we wouldn’t find him. Like a flyover support on the M74.’

  ‘I’ll just phone those reg numbers through, see what the DVLA say.’ Lambie spoke on the phone for a few minutes, then announced to Anderson, ‘That BMW reg belongs to a Vauxhall Corsa.’

  ‘Do you think James got it wrong?’

  ‘He didn’t get the other number wrong, did he? Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Anderson, pulling on to the main road. ‘And who’d have enough savvy to get a Z3 with a false plate? Gangster’s moll, I bet!’

  4.45 P.M.

  Back at the station and bagged down with two mugs of strong tea, Costello was starting to feel vaguely sick. And more than a little confused. She had walked into the reception, now a haven of peace. The desk sergeant had nodded at her and then gone back to his screen; a uniform cop gave her a passing glance as he left, then automatically held the door open for her and, equally automatically, she had taken it from him, said thanks and walked through into the station proper. No questions asked. She headed for the stairs, nobody gave her a second glance, up to the CID suite. She looked through the glass panel in the door to see Mulholland flicking through a file in his lazy way, peeling the skin from an orange as if his fingers were getting tired. Wyngate, she noticed with a sudden flurry of affection, was sitting over a keyboard, battering away and pulling faces at whatever was not going right on the screen. Some things never changed.

  Behind her she heard the door of the major incident room click open. She quickly bent her head, as if reading the letter. A female plain clothes cop came out and held the door open for her. Head still head bent in concentration, Costello took the door, muttering thank you. She walked in as if s
he had a right to be there. Two of the cops sitting working said hello to her, she said hello back and strode over to the photocopier. She opened out the letter and the already photocopied bank statement, placed her hand flat on the paper, smoothing it out, then held the lid down as the flash moved slowly from left to right and back again. She looked around the wall, seeing the pictures of a girl’s face. A dead girl’s face. In profile, then face on, a case number underneath in black marker pen. Next to them was a strangely proportioned photograph from the river, taken from the middle of the river, looking at the north bank. A street plan with that section highlighted, the CCTV picture of a white Transit van with a cross through its number plate. The number plate arrowed, reassigned to a tractor.

  Costello took out the letter and replaced it with the bank statement, not daring to look round and see if anybody was paying her any attention. She nonchalantly placed her hand on her hip and pressed the button for four copies, just to take up more time. Her eyes scanned around, taking in smaller papers, files, the address, phone number and a contact name for the Russian Consulate in Melville Street in Edinburgh. On a desk, stuck to a monitor, were the photographs of two other girls, the same age. Dead. In the photographs they were badly bruised and distorted, covered in leaves and dirt, as if they had been left somewhere, exposed. She pulled the statement from the photocopier and her phone from her pocket as she turned to leave. She was on the phone to Central Records before the door had closed behind her.

  She was feeling more alive than she had felt in ages.

  It was time she got back to work.

  5.00 P.M.

  Back at Partick Central, Mulholland was still sitting flicking through a file, pulling out photographs of any known associates of Billy the Bastard Biggart, and trying to get rid of the smell of orange peel from his fingers. Wyngate was sitting hunched over a computer keyboard, his eyes inches from the screen. Anderson came in and looked from Wyngate to Mulholland, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Who knows what he’s doing? He’s quiet, which means he’s happy.’

  Anderson made himself comfortable, checking through the paperwork on his desk. He had also asked O’Hare to supply him with the photographs of the other two girls, the ones who had been found dead, dumped miles from anywhere but they didn’t seem to have appeared on his desk yet.

  Anderson was still wondering if the ‘cute guy’ that Janet had noticed in the hallway of Biggart’s flat and James’s ‘pretty’ young man might be the same person – a young gay man who was attractive to men and woman, cultured, educated. ‘Good teeth’ he added, automatically thinking about the Bridge Boy. Coincidence? Yes, but looking at the bigger picture – the violence, the association with Biggart – it fitted. He just couldn’t see exactly how. Maybe Biggart had been charmed. There were rumours that Biggart was susceptible to pretty young men, among other things. But who was this young man? Anderson needed the IT guys to produce an image of the Bridge Boy’s face before somebody had stamped on it. He needed that image to be put in front of James and Janet. That photo had to go to all the petrol stations along the train route. It wasn’t usual for people to fill a container of petrol, and good-looking people got noticed.

  Anderson felt a warm breath on the back of his neck. ‘You’ve been looking at Wyngate for a long time. Do you fancy him?’

  It could only be one person.

  ‘DS Costello, as I live and breathe. How the hell are you?’ He got up and hugged her, noticing how bony her shoulders felt under her jacket. Then he stepped back to look at her. It was Costello all right, but not the same Costello. He couldn’t stop his eyes flicking up to the silk scarf, knowing what it hid, and scanning the slight indentation on one cheekbone. She was regarding him with a challenging look.

  Mulholland and Wyngate both started to get up to greet her. She stopped them with a stare, so they just said hello and went back to their work.

  ‘So, what are you doing here?’ Anderson asked quietly, stepping aside and giving her his seat. He noticed that she just nodded and sat down; there was no unsubtle scan of the files on his desk, no fiddling with his stapler in a slightly threatening way, no overt or even covert nosiness at all. No, this wasn’t the old Costello at all.

  She clasped her hands in front of her, and placed them in her lap, a gesture that suggested she was trying to behave herself. ‘It’s amazing how I can get access to anywhere I want now. I just walk up to a door and the next person who comes out lets me in, two sets of security doors no problem at all. I bet I got in quicker than you ever do.’

  She seemed genuinely surprised, and he didn’t want to tell her that she had a certain degree of notoriety. Her face was now well known to every police officer in Strathclyde. She had their sympathy too, but he was even less keen to tell her that.

  ‘You look as though you’ve been somewhere important,’ he said. ‘Has somebody died? The suit, I thought the funeral was yesterday –’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll talk to you about that in a minute. But you’ll never guess where I’ve been.’

  Anderson was immediately on edge. ‘Were you called into Pitt Street? Have you been summoned for the Fairbairn review? Have they started already?’

  ‘Nothing like that.’ She was totally dismissive. ‘But it was ACC Howlett.’

  ‘Oh.’ Anderson leaned forward over the desk. ‘You haven’t been asked to leave, have you?’

  ‘Not yet. I don’t really know whether it’s a promotion, a test, or a slap in the face.’ Then her voice drifted off somewhere else. ‘What are you doing? Did you get the case of the girl in the river?’

  ‘No,’ came the terse answer

  ‘They are getting nowhere fast with it next door. They are on the trail of a white Transit with false plates. Three girls, rather than one?’ Her voice raised in a question.

  Both Mulholland and Wyngate looked up. ‘Dorothy Elm said it was a white Transit. Shit! I’m sure all this is linked somehow, in some way.’

  Then Mulholland said, ‘And how do you know that? You’re on sick leave.’

  Costello directed her answer to Anderson. ‘I was snooping around next door and they are on to the Russian Consulate, but it doesn’t look like they are getting anywhere. Why not ask MacKellar to work the cases together? Then you’ll know if there is a link.’

  ‘Fat chance. I’m not supposed to know what’s going on next door, am I?’

  ‘Oh, if he gives you any hassle, refer him to me – he owes me a big favour,’ she went on rather airily and Anderson was reminded of why she was so annoying. ‘So, you working on Biggart, then?’ She turned to look at the photo of the old Apollo building. ‘Did he do the world a favour, get suitably pissed, and fall asleep with a fag and torch the duvet?’

  Anderson didn’t dare tell her it was none of her business any more, so he ignored the question. ‘No matter what ACC Howlett said, I’m sure you’re not supposed to be here, having this conversation or snooping around this investigation.’ Then he found himself looking at the flat-voiced woman in her neat suit, but thinking about the old acid-tongued Costello, and decided he owed her a little more consideration. He said quietly, ‘Biggart wasn’t quite the typical burn-yourself-to-death job. Somebody else did it for him. I’m running it, under MacKellar’s watchful eye.’

  ‘Well, at the end of the day, he is your boss.’

  ‘I would rather you were shocked that I am not running this investigation as DCI. Then it would all be one big enquiry.’

  There was no response. Costello just kept looking at the photographs.

  He tried another tack. ‘So, what brings you round here? Not that we’re not pleased to see you …’

  ‘I was forced to come in and see you as your phone is always off these days.’

  ‘Just when I was in the morgue, that’s all. Then I was … elsewhere.’

  She picked up his stapler and began to fiddle with it.

  ‘Well, OK, you actually only phoned once, but I was a bit busy at the time,’ he expanded. ‘I was hardly ignoring you.
’

  But in the old days he would have returned her call ASAP, and both of them knew it.

  ‘So, Biggart was toasted rather than toasting himself?’ she said, her eyes skimming over his desk.

  ‘Yes. And you are not a serving police officer here, DS Costello, and you know –’

  But she wasn’t paying any attention. ‘I’m back in harness, sort of.’ She clicked the stapler closed, as if testing a firing pin. ‘Here you are, doing all this, and what do I get? I get to stop a bit of mischief among the over-privileged wankers at Glen Fruin Academy.’

  ‘No?’ said Anderson, drawing out the vowel in disbelief. ‘Well, that’s good. I mean, it’s a high-profile job. Prime ministers’ children, offspring of rock stars. Absolute discretion called for.’ He tried to keep the sarcasm from his voice. If anybody was badly suited for that job …

  ‘You mean, why the hell did they ask me?’

  ‘Just accept that they’ve given you something to do, something to get you back in the saddle. Sounds like you’ve been trusted with something important. More than I can say about me.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ The stapler thumped down. ‘It means they think I’m not fit for real work. It means they wouldn’t trust me with anything like this.’ She tapped the photocopies of Mary Carruthers’ letter.

  ‘And what’s that,’ muttered Anderson.

  ‘The grieving widow had a chat with her solicitor this morning, seems Tommy Carruthers had money in the bank. Untouched. Twenty grand.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘I’ve just spent over an hour with her telling me why she doesn’t think he killed himself – quite simply, she says he had no reason to. And I believe her. And now this. The solicitor is on to it, Colin. It needs to be looked at.’

  ‘Why, are you involved in this? In any way?’

  He recoiled involuntarily as she lurched across the desk. ‘A cop who nobody says a bad word against? A good Catholic? He flings himself out the window the minute his wife’s back is turned. Looks like a good cop? Or a bent cop? Twenty grand. That must be enough to raise a few questions.’