by Stuart David
A note on the author
Stuart David is a musician, songwriter and novelist. He grew up in Alexandria, on the west coast of Scotland – a town memorably described as looking like ‘a town that’s helping the police with their inquiries’. Stuart co-founded the band Belle and Sebastian (1996–2000) and went on to form Looper in 1998. His memoir, In the All-Night Café: A Memoir of Belle and Sebastian’s Formative Year, was published by Abacus/Little, Brown in 2015 to much critical acclaim.
Peacock’s Alibi
STUART DAVID
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.
Birlinn Ltd
West Newington House
10 Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.polygonbooks.co.uk
1
Copyright © Stuart David, 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978 1 84697 411 3
eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 047 6
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.
Typeset by 3btype.com, Edinburgh
Peacock’s Alibi
1
Most days, I wouldn’t be over the moon to find a detective inspector standing on my doorstep – especially one who’d come round to drill down into the finer points of my whereabouts on the night Dougie Dowds was murdered. But this afternoon, when my old pal Detective Inspector McFadgen turned up at the front door with that specific aim in mind, it came as something of a welcome relief. It got me away from the bedlam that was playing itself out in the living room, the pandemonium that had peaked about half an hour earlier, and stayed right up there, with no obvious signs of abating. And for that much, at least, I was eternally grateful to the boy McFadgen.
Here’s what had been going down . . .
The wife had a full-length mirror propped up against the back of the couch, and she was standing looking into it – in tears – all trussed up in the elaborate pink bridesmaid’s dress she was meant to wear at her daft pal’s upcoming wedding.
‘I look like a meringue,’ the wife moaned. ‘Look at me. Wilma must have lost her mind. How can she possibly be expecting me to go out in public wearing this?’
Meanwhile, the wife’s mother was sitting across the room in an armchair – but rather than offering any of the emotional support you might expect under the circumstances, she was using the subject of the upcoming wedding to put forward her own agenda, an agenda that was never very far from the forefront of her concerns, no matter what other events might be going on round about her.
‘Wasn’t Wilma married once already?’ she said, and the wife nodded silently, the wee shoulders moving up and down as she sobbed away to herself. ‘Well, there you go,’ the mother said. ‘It’s just like I’m always telling you, Beverley – marriage doesn’t have to be for life nowadays. Just make sure you try and catch the bouquet at this wedding, and let fate take care of the rest. You could be shot of this idiot here by the end of the year. Who knows, you might even meet a nice young man at the wedding itself. It was at a wedding Marianne met her husband.’
I shot the mother-in-law a look, but she stared straight back at me, totally nonplussed.
‘This is probably the sort of stuff you’re meant to keep for behind my back, Mrs Cuthbertson,’ I said. ‘An air of frosty disapproval in my company would be enough to get your point across.’
‘Oh Jesus Christ!’ the wife shouted. She’d turned round so’s her back was facing the mirror and she was staring at her reflection now by looking over her shoulder. ‘Look at the size of my arse in this thing, Peacock,’ she said. ‘Look at it! It’s tiny. It’s all squashed flat. She must have done that deliberately. Can you see it? Look at it!’
‘That Eric Smiley was asking after you again, Beverley,’ the mother said. ‘Do you remember Eric? He’s got a lovely house now. Still a bachelor too. I’ve always thought Eric had a really lovely head of hair on him.’
‘It’s so’s none of us outshine her,’ Bev said. ‘She’s trying to make us look like houfers. Come and look at my arse from here, Peacock. Does it really look as wee as it does in the mirror? Be honest with me. It does, doesn’t it? It must. She’s at it, isn’t she? Oh my God! What am I going to do, Peacock?’
She flung herself at me then, throwing her arms over my shoulders and enveloping me in the acres of pink silk and pink netting. Hysterics, I suppose you’d call it – the wailing, the difficulty breathing, the clawing at me. I was just about at the end of my tether, partly owing to the fact that the mother-in-law still didn’t show any signs of letting up on the new-man front. But thankfully, that was the exact moment Detective Inspector McFadgen decided to launch his assault on the front door.
‘Answer that, Mum,’ the wife said in a muffled voice, and the mother pushed and tutted her way past us, struggling to get through the tangle of limbs and bridesmaid’s dress that were blocking her way.
I’ll tell you this, though, she was fair glad she’d made the effort when she found out who it was that had interrupted our scene of cosy domesticity.
‘Peacock!’ she shouted, making sure as many of the neighbours as possible could hear her. ‘It’s for you. It’s the police. Homicide!’
And as I untangled myself from the wife’s embrace, the mother-in-law practically skipped back into the room, about as happy as I’d seen her in the past ten years, and she said to the wife, ‘You’re free, Beverley. They’ve got him at last. It’s been a long time coming, but he’s finally about to get his comeuppance.’
‘For God’s sake, Mum,’ the wife said, ‘I’m at the end of my rope here. Be serious for once. Look at this dress. Look at it!’
And I slipped quietly out into the hallway, and told Detective Inspector McFadgen to come away in, to follow me into the kitchen. And if there hadn’t already been the kind of history between us that tends to keep things on a somewhat formal footing, I’d probably have grabbed his hand and given it a right good shaking, or maybe even pulled him in for a quick bear hug.
We go way back, the bold detective and myself. Back, in fact, to when he was simply PC McFadgen, at least. Here’s the thing about him, though – regardless of the rank he happens to be occupying at any particular moment, he’s always trying to lift me for a crime at the level he’s currently qualified to be investigating. He apparently sees us as rising up through the ranks of our respective careers almost in parallel. I mean, fair enough, he’s booked me for this and that, now and again. But the vast bulk of it was minor misdemeanours back in the early days. He’s been pretty much on to plums since then. Still, give him his due, he’s a determined soul. Not a man prone to giving up when he sets his mind to something.
Worse luck.
‘What can I get you, Duncan?’ I asked him, when I’d ushered him through the lobby and into the kitchen. ‘Tea, coffee? A wee snifter?’
‘Nothing for me, Johnson,’ he said. ‘This is hardly a social call.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said, and grabbed myself a beer from the fridge. ‘Settle yourself down at the table there, and let’s hear the latest. Let’s see what I’ve been up to this time.’
He started ruffling about in his jacket pockets, first the ones on the inside, then he found what he was looking for in one at the front.
Now that McFadgen’s out of the uniform, and free to put his own distinct wardrobe togethe
r, it’s hard to pin-point exactly what kind of look he’s going for. He’s certainly attempting something or other, but he’s fallen somewhat short of whatever it was, and he really just looks like a bit of a fud. There’s certainly a stab at Humphrey Bogart in there, maybe some Taggart and even a hint of Columbo. But his lumpy wee body, his pink face and his flat brown hair have resulted in the whole thing making him look more like the treasurer of a bowling club than whatever it was he initially set out to achieve. Unless, of course, it was the treasurer of a bowling club he was aiming at all along.
‘Right,’ he said, now that he’d laid his hands on the precious item that had been hiding away in his suit pocket, ‘what have you got to say about this, Johnson? What fabricated nonsense am I going to have to sit and listen to in response to this?’
And he handed me a resealable plastic bag about the size of a fag packet, with what appeared to be a single piece of paper inside it. A blank piece of paper, as far as I could tell.
I held the bag up in front of me and gave it a right good staring at, more just to humour the guy than anything else, and after a few seconds he started drumming his fingers on the tabletop and nodding at me slowly.
‘That’ll do, eh?’ he said. ‘I suppose even a patter merchant like you knows when to call it a day.’
I lifted my eyes from what I imagined must be Exhibit A and fixed them on him instead.
‘That’s the miracle that’s going to get you off my streets once and for all,’ he said. ‘This city’ll be a much cleaner place with you inside, and that item right there will put you inside for longer than you can possibly imagine.’
I started to wonder if the poor guy was maybe just a touch overworked. Declining police numbers and all that malarkey – the constantly increasing paperwork. Maybe it had finally got to him. Or maybe he’d just never been all that stable in the first place.
‘What exactly am I looking at here, Duncan?’ I said. ‘All I can see is a blank bit of paper. I think I must be missing its wider significance. What exactly is it?’
The pink face grew pinker. He reached out with a speed that suggested we were about to witness an instance of police brutality. But it was the plastic bag he grabbed – pulled the thing out of my hands, took a quick swatch at it and then turned it round and handed it back to me. Suddenly things were slightly clearer. It wasn’t a blank bit of paper at all – there were some words printed on it, and numbers. Closer inspection revealed it, in fact, to be a receipt of some sort. We were starting to get somewhere. I was still none the wiser as to how this innocuous item was the weapon that could relieve the Glasgow streets of my looming presence, but at least we’d established that there must be some method to McFadgen’s madness, rather than just the beginnings of a full-scale mental collapse.
‘Are you recognising it now?’ he said, but I had to come clean and tell him I wasn’t.
‘I can see it’s a receipt, Duncan,’ I said, ‘but that’s as far as it goes. What’s the story behind it?’
‘Take a closer look,’ he said. ‘Take a look at the items on it. Read them out. See if they ring any bells.’
There were only three. A bottle of Irn-Bru, a packet of chewing gum and a magazine, which from its title seemed to be of a distinctly pornographic nature. Still, I read the list out to keep the good detective happy, and he raised his eyebrows and tipped his head at an angle that suggested he’d just given me an insight into the fundamental workings of the universe.
‘Bingo!’ he said. ‘I take it you recognise that collection of junk, Johnson.’
I thought about it for a minute and then I told him I still seemed to be somewhat wide of the mark.
‘Look at the credit card number at the top of the receipt,’ he said. ‘Look familiar?’
The number was interrupted by four Xs in the middle, four digits at the start, four at the end.
‘Should it seem familiar?’ I asked him.
‘It certainly should.’
‘How come?’
He gave me the head tip again. ‘Cause it’s yours.’
I wasn’t about to start arguing with him. It might very well have been mine – it’s hardly the sort of thing you commit to memory, is it? So I gave him the benefit of the doubt and I looked over the list of items again.
‘So what are we saying here?’ I asked him.
‘We’re saying I’ve got you bang to rights, Johnson. At last. It’s all over. You’re done.’
‘For buying a porno mag? Have you gone mental, Duncan? That’s what all this has been about? You’ve burst in here, threatening me with this, that and the next thing – telling me you’ve got what you need to fulfil your mad desire to lock me up and throw away the key – and this is what the whole scenario amounts to? I bought a porno mag? You’ve been overdoing it, Duncan. Seriously. You need a good long holiday, pal. A few quiet weeks in the south of France. Besides which, since when did it even become an offence to buy a porn mag?’
He gave me an evil wee smile, and then slapped at the plastic bag as it hung loosely in my grip.
‘It’s got nothing to do with what you actually bought,’ he said. ‘Your perverted desires are your own affair. All that matters to me is when you bought that filth, Peacock. Have a look at the date. Have a look at the time.’
If I have to be honest, the whole thing was starting to wear a bit thin by this point. It had been a novelty to get out of the madness that was taking place in the living room for a while, but the madness that had replaced it was starting to seem like the decidedly less appealing of the two options. And given the choice now I decided I’d rather be back in there with the wife banging on about the size of her arse than take much more of McFadgen’s receipt mania. I quickly checked the date and time he was talking about, read them out, and did what I could to hurry this thing along and send him on his own sweet way again.
‘The twenty-third of June,’ he said. ‘Ten minutes past eight in the evening. That was Thursday night, Peacock. Thursday. And according to you . . . let me just get this right . . .’
Back he went into the jacket pockets again, first one then the other. Then back to the first one. Eventually he produced a notebook and opened it up on the table. Flicking through the pages and licking the tip of his finger here and there till he found what he was looking for.
‘There it is,’ he said, ‘right there. According to you, at eight ten on Thursday night, you were sitting in Rogano’s with your wife, splashing out on an expensive dinner for your anniversary. You’ve got the waiter backing up your story. You’ve got various other customers backing up your story. You’ve got your wife backing up your story. And yet, there it is, in black and white. This receipt is telling another story altogether, Johnson. This receipt is saying that at that exact time you were a good couple of miles away from Rogano’s, in Barrett’s on Byres Road, buying a wank mag and a tin of Irn-Bru. And that, as you well know, puts you right in the frame for whacking Dougie Dowds. That Rogano’s alibi was all that was standing between you and a life sentence, Peacock. And now that alibi is out the window. Kaput, my friend. And that makes this just about the happiest day of my short, sweet life.’
2
Dougie Dowds was a notorious grass. Whenever he found himself in hot water with McFadgen’s crew, which was frequently, he’d invariably have a juicy titbit on somebody else that he’d be willing to trade for his own freedom. But more than that, he’d regularly take a tip-off to McFadgen even when he was in the clear, in return for a wad of cash. And normally that kind of behaviour would get you seen to quick smart – the concrete wellies, the sharp blow to the back of the head. Whatever.
Here’s the thing about Dougie, though, here’s the twist in the tale: just about everybody, up to and including the myriad of mugs he’d grassed on over the years – even the ones who’d spent time behind bars due to his transactions with McFadgen – felt somehow protective towards him.
You could hardly help yourself.
He was such a fucked-up and bewildere
d-seeming wee guy that it was like trying to deal with a cat you’d just fished out the river. And he never made any secret of what he was up to with McFadgen and his boys.
‘I’m a right rotten bastard,’ he’d tell you. Or ‘I can hardly look you in the eye, Peacock. I’m eating myself up here.’ And somehow you’d end up trying to reassure him that he was all right. Which he was. He was a sweetheart when it came right down to it. He’d a heart of gold. Apart from the selling every bastard to the filth, that is. And before you knew it you’d probably have lent him a bit of money into the bargain, or bought him a bag of groceries – and there he’d go on his merry way, still eating himself up with guilt about whoever it was he’d just landed in the shite this time.
So there you are – that was Dougie Dowds. That’s how he was. Until the evening of the twenty-third of June – some time after eight o’clock – when McFadgen’s minions found him lying on the concrete pad beside the bins, two floors beneath his balcony, having left nothing much up there as evidence bar the signs of a rather brutal struggle.
Poor wee bastard.
‘When I came round here to see you the day before yesterday,’ McFadgen said, all fired up with excitement now, ‘I knew it was you that killed Dougie. I’d come round here to arrest you. Then, when you hit me with that pile of mince you’re calling an alibi, I’d no option but to go away again and work on blowing the thing to smithereens. And this receipt does exactly that, Johnson. Exactly that. So, what are you saying to it?’
I took a minute to consider what I was saying to it.
‘How about I ask you a question?’ was what I came up with in the end. ‘Will you answer me a question, Duncan?’
He looked at me in exasperation, no doubt just itching to get the cuffs on me and start battering on about my right to remain silent. But he kept himself under control, took the plastic bag with the receipt in it out of my hands, and tucked it away safely in his inside pocket.