‘Is there another kind?’ She laughed. ‘No, actually I don’t think La-La ever had any man trouble. That was her problem; men were absolutely no trouble at all. At fifteen she looked twenty-one. When the rest of us were all greasy hair and plooks, she was strutting about, tall, slim and legs right down to the ground. She left Leith on the first bus out of town on her sixteenth birthday, went to London and became a model.’
‘She was American, wasn’t she?’ I remembered the florist telling me that. ‘Why London and not New York? What was she doing in Leith in the first place?’
‘The only thing Yank about La-La and Estelle was their dad. And La-La’s accent, when she could be bothered. She thought it made her sound sophisticated. I don’t know the full story, you’d have to ask her sister, but their old man was in the US Navy. He used to visit their mum. Ship in and ship out, if you know what I mean.’ The caretaker walked from the window to the bed and looked down at it as though La-La’s body was still lying there. ‘La-La leaving home destroyed Estelle. A lot of us were sorry to see her go, she was always the life and soul and Estelle worshipped her. When she was older Estelle tried to go down the same modelling route as her big sister. I heard she did all right for a while, but La-La . . . now she was something special.’
‘How did she come to end up here?’
‘Look, Mr . . . ’
‘Munro.’
‘I was friendly enough with La-La but she was a big girl and what she did and why she did it was up to her. All I know is that apart from on the front cover of a magazine, I never saw La-La for . . . fifteen years? Something like that. Then one night she turfed up on the doorstep, homeless, skint and out to here.’ The caretaker mimed an exaggerated bump in her stomach area. ‘She wanted a room for the night and ended up staying here for, I don’t know, six months? A year? Could have been more. Having that baby was the most important thing to her. All she wanted was to be left alone and I made sure that she was. We have one rule at Cypress House. No one tells anyone on the outside who’s staying on the inside. The minute someone breaks that rule, they’re out on their arse, I don’t care who they are. If word starts going about who’s in the refuge, next thing you know we’ve got an army of angry men at the front door.’ As though stage-managed, somewhere far off a bell rang.
‘Did you know La-La was taking drugs?’
‘I knew she drank a lot and might have smoked some blow.’
‘She died of a heroin overdose.’
‘I’m not here to run folks’ lives for them.’
‘What about Daisy? Her ex says smack was the reason they split up.’
‘That his excuse for hitting her?’
The bell rang again.
The caretaker walked to the door. ‘I’m coming!’ she roared down the stairwell. ‘Look, Mr . . . ’ I let her hang. ‘I’m going to have to get back to work.’
‘Okay, just one more question.’
The caretaker commenced her descent, stopped, turned and stared up at me from two steps down. ‘What is it?’
‘If La-La had a sister, why didn’t she look after Molly?’
‘Molly? Oh, aye, I’d forgotten that was the bairn’s name. Better than Lafayette, I suppose.’
‘Why would she let her niece go into a children’s home?’
‘Estelle’s got her own problems.’
‘Do you know where I could find her?’ I asked, as we recommenced the journey downstairs.
‘I thought it was Daisy’s murder you were investigating?’
‘I told you, I’m following a number of leads.’
‘You’re a lawyer. Everything I tell you is confidential, right?’
‘That’s right,’ I said, though a more accurate answer would have been ‘that’s wrong’.
‘Then if I give you her address, don’t tell her who you got it from. In fact don’t even let on to Estelle that you’ve been here. I don’t want her to think I’ve been helping the polis.’
Three more impatient blasts of the doorbell.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, as we reached the ground floor. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’
33
La-La Delgado’s sister ran an amusement arcade in Portobello, not three miles from Cypress House. On a summer’s day the Promenade would have been mobbed with visitors, eating ice cream and trying to sunburn themselves, but on a cold, damp Tuesday in October, the sun on strike and a chill wind whipping in from the North Sea, apart from a few dog walkers and some kids careering about on bikes, the beachfront was deserted.
It was only after much searching and twice asking for directions that I eventually found The Lucky Dime, an amusement arcade down a side street. It wasn’t that far from the strip, but too far to catch much passing trade. If the shopfront was designed to attract stray promenaders, then it was difficult to imagine a less attractive layout than the swathes of faded-navy velvet, decorated here and there by cheap tin trophies, plastic horseshoes, bouquets of silk flowers and the occasional desiccated insect.
Inside, under dimmed lighting, rows of outdated gaming machines blinked, flashed and bleeped a weak come-on. To my right, some noisy teenagers shot zombies with a plastic shotgun, and, as my eyes grew accustomed to the twilight, I saw an elderly woman, sitting on a stool in the centre aisle, dipping her hand into a shortbread tin full of pound coins, feeding a slot machine, uncaring of the end result. It beat me why anyone would rather gamble their hard-earned at a dump like this when they could throw it away in style in the more salubrious surroundings of the much bigger and flashier arcade just around the corner, slap bang on the centre of the promenade.
‘Looking for someone?’
A woman approached from my left, tall and slim, untidy hair swept back and tied at the back, accentuating her slender neck and high cheekbones. If she was the less photogenic of the Delgado sisters, La-La must have been really something. One glance from her and the old lady climbed down from the stool and disappeared, taking her tin of coins with her.
‘Estelle Delgado?’
‘Who’s asking?’
‘Robbie Munro. I’m a lawyer. I was hoping to speak to you about your sister.’
‘What about her?’
‘I’d like to know more about her relationship with a woman called Daisy Adams.’
‘Relationship? What do you mean relationship?’
‘I’m told they were friends.’
‘Daisy’s dead, so is Lafayette. What are you really? Polis or the papers?’
Three of the zombie-shooters sauntered over. Even in the semi-darkness I could see the pallor of their skin, the hollow of their eyes. Protection came cheap at The Lucky Dime and in tenner bags.
‘I’ve told you. I’m a lawyer. A defence lawyer. I’m acting for the man charged with murdering Daisy and I heard that your sister was a good friend of hers.’
‘That was years ago.’
I came straight to the point. ‘Your sister was a heroin addict. So was Daisy.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘I thought they might have had the same dealer and that you’d know who that was.’
She took a step forward, pushing her face closer to mine. ‘And how would I know that?’
Where to begin? For a start there was her presence in the world’s shittiest amusement arcade. Then there was the bunch of junkies in the corner, not forgetting the resident hag pumping pound coins into a puggy before, no doubt, emptying it and doing the same at the next in the row and the one after that, clicking up the numbers to explain away the receipt of hundreds of pounds of weekly income from another source. This wasn’t an amusement arcade; it was the second laundry I’d been in that afternoon and these weren’t slot machines, they were washing machines.
I waited for one of the puggies to complete a series of dings and whistles as it went through its automated routine and then I took a more diplomatic route. ‘She was your sister. She died of a heroin overdose. Were you not interested in who gave her the drugs that killed her?�
��
‘What Lafayette did was her business. Not mine. Not yours. And I don’t see what it’s got to do with Daisy’s death.’
A sudden change of tack was the best idea when dealing with a hostile witness. ‘When did you last see your niece?’
I had expected the question to cut the tension slightly, not to bring about the sudden change in Estelle’s demeanour that it did. She nearly smiled. ‘Not in a very long time. How is she?’
‘Not too good.’
‘You lot, mind the store!’ Estelle yelled to the zombie-killers. I followed her down the centre aisle, through a doorway fringed by multicoloured plastic strips hanging from its lintel and into a back room that had a couple of ancient, but comfortable-looking chairs, a table, an overflowing dustbin and a sink full of dirty mugs. In one corner below a large framed print of the Bay of Naples stood the skeleton of a partially dismantled bandit, in another a change-machine, the latter with a stool in front of it. I imagined Estelle spent a lot of time here putting through bundles of cash, one tenner at a time. This room was the first part of the wash cycle. The arcade equipment was for rinsing the cash.
‘I suppose they’ve put Molly back in that home?’
‘I’m afraid so. Right now she’s pretty much traumatised. She’s going to need a lot of love and attention from somebody,’ I said. ‘Losing one mother was bad enough, but two—’
‘Did he do it?’ Estelle lifted a kettle from the table. ‘Your client. Did he kill Molly’s new mum?’
‘He says he didn’t.’
‘And that’s good enough for you, I suppose?’
‘It’s my business to believe people other people don’t believe.’
Estelle held the kettle up to me. ‘Cup of tea?’ I declined. ‘Well, are you going to tell me what my late sister has to do with your client killing Daisy?’ she asked.
‘Here’s how it looks to me – if my client didn’t kill her, somebody else did.’
‘I can see why they made you a lawyer.’
‘And people who kill other people usually have a motive.’
‘So you’re looking for somebody else to blame, but first you need to find a reason why they’d do it?’ Estelle filled the kettle at the sink, switched it on, came back and sat on the edge of the table. Arms folded she stared at me. In the bright light of the kitchen I could see how pale she was. The facial features that seemed so refined when softened by the dim lighting of the arcade, were harsh and drawn, eyes deep-set and shadowed. ‘You do know she had a husband? He used to beat her. He got the jail for it.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’
‘I’ve been to see him already. He was in New York when she died. And he says he never beat her. He says somebody else did.’
‘Does anyone ever tell you they’ve done it?’
‘Daisy’s ex says that she was taking heroin. I’m wondering if she owed somebody money.’ I cast my eye around. I wouldn’t have had to look far in that kitchen for a bag of citric acid, some needles and a blackened spoon. ‘You married? Have a partner?’
Estelle’s face froze for an instant and then relaxed. ‘Why, Mr Munro . . . ’ she said coyly, adopting a Southern drawl, pretending to fan herself.
‘I heard Lafayette could put on a good American accent too.’
She stopped. Stared at me. ‘You seem to know a lot about us.’
‘Just what I’ve heard on the grapevine.’
‘Would that grapevine be a wee, blonde bint from Leith with a big mouth?’
‘As a matter of fact it was Daisy’s ex-husband,’ I said, remembering my promise to the caretaker.
‘Oh, Mr Innocent. I should have known.’
‘Lafayette testified against him in court. He thought she was American.’
Estelle smirked. ‘She was. But only when she wanted to be.’
‘Lafayette and Estelle. Exotic names for a couple of girls from Leith.’
‘Our father was in the US Navy. He named us after towns in Louisiana. I never met him. He only came to Scotland twice on manoeuvres. He managed to manoeuvre my mum into bed both times. Told her he’d come back and take us all to America with him. My mum died waiting. Years ago I tried to track him down via the US Armed Services, but they had no sailor by the name of Delgado. Only a ship.’
‘You never said if you had a partner.’
‘That’s because my personal life is my own business, and as I’m sure Mr Innocent will have told you, my partner is no longer around.’
The florist had said that the man who’d dealt drugs to Daisy had disappeared. He’d hope that was because somebody wanted him dead even more than the florist did. Could that somebody have been the person he owed money to after their drugs had been seized, thanks to a certain tip-off? Small-time dealers never bought for cash. They bought on tick, sold the drugs and settled their suppliers – suppliers who expected payment for their merchandise and didn’t let a little thing like a police raid frustrate the contract.
The kettle boiled. Steam billowed about Estelle as she rinsed out one of the dirty mugs, dropped in a tea bag and poured on hot water.
‘While you’re looking for people to blame, did you stop and think that the two people who gave evidence against your Mr Innocent are both dead?’ she said.
‘You saying it was revenge?’
‘It’s a better reason for killing somebody than because they owe you money. The dead don’t pay their debts.’ Estelle sloshed some milk into the mug and stirred the whole lot around with a teaspoon before squeezing the milky tea bag against the inside of the mug and dropping it into the sink. It wasn’t the Japanese Tea Ceremony, but then again Estelle wasn’t a Geisha. She was a debt-ridden junkie, laundering money for the mob.
‘You know you’re never going to be able to pay them off so long as you keep using,’ I said.
She leaned her back against the sink and stared at me, no make-up, hair tied at the back with a red rubber band, sweatshirt and leggings. If there was ever a woman in need of a makeover it was her. Two weeks of rehab, a couple of spa treatments, a fancy frock and she could have been on the cover of a magazine too. ‘I was given two options,’ she said. ‘Use my head for business or put my body to work. As you can see I run a business, and . . . ’ She took a sip of tea. ‘What I do in my spare time is my concern. Understand?’ After another quick drink of tea she pushed herself off the sink and carrying her mug of tea, headed for the multicoloured plastic-fringe. Apparently, I was leaving.
As we re-entered her world of flashing lights, squawks and bleeps, the glassy eyes of the zombie-killers swivelled in our direction, faces gaunt and twisted, like the characters out of their own video game.
‘I’ll tell Molly you were asking for her,’ I said, as we marched together down the aisle.
Estelle stopped when we reached the front door and stared down the long length of her leggings to her feet. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You do that.’
34
Joanna captured me the minute I walked through the door to my office, shaking off the rain.
‘You owe me,’ she said.
I’d been held up in rush hour traffic leaving Edinburgh. Tina was curled up on my chair sound asleep, her lips plastered in what Joanna informed me was Hollywood Red by Bobbi Brown.
‘Who’s the nail varnish by?’ I asked.
‘Staedtler. It’s highlighter pen. Don’t worry, it will wash off. And it’s not about the lippy . . . well, not just about the lippy, that stick cost me twenty quid. I didn’t finish court until half four and wasn’t back here until five, by which time Grace-Mary was off and running leaving me with Tina. It’s after six now. She only fell asleep five minutes ago. I’ve not had a chance to return any calls, far less get my head around tomorrow’s cases. Where the hell have you been?’
‘Portobello.’
‘Portobello? As in Portobello by the sea Portobello? While I’ve been slogging away in court and entertaining your daughter, you’ve been at the seaside?’
I led Joanna to the co
uch against the far wall and pushed her down onto it. ‘Just listen a minute. I’ve been working on Deek Pudney’s defence and I’ve got some interesting news.’
‘Go on, then,’ she said, ‘astound me.’
I shoved some files aside and leaned against the corner of my desk. ‘It was Deek who killed that man at Sunnybrae.’
‘No, I said astound me.’
‘But it wasn’t murder, it was self-defence.’
Joanna rolled her eyes.
‘Yes, he went to chin Daisy Adams about the debt, but she was dead when he got there. The murderer attacked him and Deek did what Deek is very good at.’
Joanna wrinkled her brow. ‘And you learned all this from a trip to the seaside?’
‘Daisy Adams was into heroin.’
‘Does the toxicology report say that?’
‘No. I’m talking about a few years ago. I think she and Molly’s real mother were being supplied by a drug dealer in Portobello.’
‘And?’
‘Daisy’s husband found out, didn’t like it, confronted the dealer and, believe me, Daisy’s husband is someone you don’t want coming to your door unless he’s bringing flowers.’
‘Flowers? Robbie, what are you going on about?’
‘Daisy’s husband tipped off the cops, the dealer was raided and he took it out on Daisy. He broke her cheekbone and she framed her husband for the assault.’
‘Why?’
‘She must have been coerced. Anyway, her husband got the jail and he—’
‘Revenge-killed Daisy on his release?’
‘It’s a dish best served cold.’ I pushed myself off the desk, walked to the window and looked out at late autumn in Linlithgow; the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. It was hammering down.
‘Why did it take so long to identify Daisy’s ex-husband as being the dead guy at the farm if he’s got a record?’
‘He’s not the dead guy. He’s very much alive and making bouquets down Gorgie way. Unfortunately, he was in New York at the time of the murder.’
‘What are you saying? That he went to the Big Apple to give himself an alibi while he had someone else kill his ex-wife? Doesn’t help Deek Pudney’s defence much, does it?’
Last Will Page 16