by Tony Black
He seemed to have changed his tone, but Leanne wasn’t fooled. He had done this before: it was his way of lulling her into a false sense of security. He offered her the cigarette; Leanne took it and pressed it to her thin lips.
‘There, see . . . We can be friends when we want, eh?’ said Gillon.
Leanne nodded and followed him through to the kitchen. She watched Gillon filling the kettle with water. ‘You hold onto that fag, doll.’ He dipped into his pocket and produced the pack again. ‘I’ll fire up a new one for myself.’ Gillon lit the cigarette and placed it, tip out, on the side of the sink. Leanne watched the blue stream of smoke swirl towards the ceiling as her pimp made tea. It was an unusual situation: they had moved from her being battered near senseless in the hallway to now being made a cup of tea. It worried her; Gillon clearly wanted something from her, but she didn’t know what it was.
‘There you go, doll.’ He placed the cup down in front of her. ‘Nice cup of char, eh.’
Leanne watched the cup, steam rising from the liquid that was still swirling in the wake of the spoon’s rapid revolutions. She couldn’t bring herself to drink the tea; it sat there like a challenge to her, taunting her to take up the cup, to drink – the consequences of which worried her more than anything.
‘OK, Leanne, I can see you’re wondering why I’m so curious about that big fat paedo,’ said Gillon. He leaned back in his seat and reached out his hand to retrieve his cigarette from the edge of the sink. ‘See, I know you had him round here the other day, because I know you.’
‘What do you mean?’ Leanne drew deep on the filter tip; the ash was nearly an inch long now.
Gillon smiled, a mean smirk that showed the yellowed staves in his mouth. ‘See, every time that paedo’s round here you become a bag of nerves . . . It’s like you’re a wee lassie again.’
Leanne looked away. She was reminded of that part of her, the place deep inside, that had died. She watched cars hissing by the window on the street below. There were people walking on the pavements, birds swooping in the sky. It always felt strange to know that there was a world of ordinary people and ordinary goings-on and yet Duncan Knox existed within that same sphere. ‘He came round.’
Gillon withdrew his cigarette and pinned back his lips; two hollows either side of his mouth became pronounced. ‘There, see . . . Wasn’t so bad, was it?’ He flicked his ash on the floor. ‘Now, what did he want?’
Leanne kept her gaze on the street. ‘Why? What does it matter what he wanted?’
Gillon’s voice rose. ‘It just does. Look, Leanne, tell me what he wanted.’
She turned her head and caught sight of Gillon’s anger growing behind his eyes again. ‘He told me someone had died.’
‘Who?’
‘Nobody really, just someone I used to know.’
‘And why did he tell you this? Why did he come round here?’
Leanne shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell me the name of the person who died, Leanne.’
Her throat constricted; it was as if the words wouldn’t pass. She wanted to say them, to get the name out in the open to show that he meant nothing to her. He couldn’t harm her: he was dead. ‘James Urquhart.’
Gillon pushed the chair back; the legs scraped loudly on the floor. In a second, he was on his feet pacing the kitchen. ‘That’s him . . . the man on the telly.’
Leanne watched her pimp, flapping his arms and walking the length of the room again and again. ‘Gillon, he’s dead, what’s the matter?’
He stopped still, moved towards Leanne and planted his hands on the table. ‘He’s dead all right, and so’s our fat paedo friend.’
‘What?’
‘Knox copped it out at the track . . . Place is heaving with filth, right now.’
Leanne felt a tingling sensation behind her eyes. It was as if she had been given a drug that released a sudden burst of energy. ‘Dead?’
‘Aye, Leanne . . . Both your wee pals have been knocked off; what do you make of that then?’
She watched the ash fall from her cigarette – the tobacco had burned nearly all the way to the filter tip. She raised the cigarette to her lips and drew deep. She tasted a burning sensation that chimed with the heat building inside her. ‘The police . . . They’ll want to speak to me.’
‘Why?’ said Gillon. ‘How are they going to know anything about you?’
Leanne touched the sides of her face, pressed her cheeks in. ‘The police will want to know who killed them . . . He was just here, Knox, he was here.’
Gillon closed down the space between them and threw his arms onto Leanne’s shoulders. He was shaking her as he spoke. ‘You just stay away from the police. You hear me? I’ll tell you how to play this. I’ve got other ideas and they don’t involve the police.’
19
DI Valentine ruminated on the latest victim’s identity for a moment and found his train of thought suddenly hijacked. The death of a paedophile – what was really so bad about that? He caught himself just before the notion became a more solid philosophy; he knew it was the act of murder he needed to focus on, not the murdered. He was a police officer with a duty to protect all – his own personal animus had no place in the investigation, unless of course it coincided with the views of those who paid his wages. He shook his head and saw the tracks shifting again: his thoughts rolled over once more. Knox was still dead; however he assessed it, there were some who would say it was good enough for him, but was it really – what was so bad about death? He had been thinking about death a lot lately, but he recalled a time when death was no more a cause for thought than sleep. Valentine laid down his head each night and fell gratefully into the stupor of sleep, thankful even that the sentient part – life, living – was over for another day. How different was death? Wasn’t it something to be welcomed, like a well-earned sleep? It struck him that people had it all wrong: they should be grateful for death; the endless tribulations, tests, daily meetings, the unforeseen challenges of life were the things to be afraid of. In life there was no escape, no release. Knox had been released from it all.
Valentine thought of his father – arthritis-wracked, lungs scarred with emphysema – a prisoner in his own mortality who had come to beg for the release of death. The detective thought of his father in the pits of Cumnock digging for coal. They said he could face down a seam and locate the one point where a single blow from a well-timed sledgehammer would release tonnes of the black gold. They – those who said such things – had admired his father’s skill as a miner, but what was that worth now? What use were his great skills, hard earned though they were in the bowels of the Ayrshire earth, when they closed the pit? When his father was on strike and the family starved, when the miners fought hand to hand with the police or when the uniformed officers came on horseback and struck them down with batons – where was the benefit of an accumulated life’s experience? This death wasn’t to be feared, it was to be embraced. Life was the thing to be afraid of. Valentine shuddered as the realisation came to him in waves of recognition – a perspicacity that was new to him, and yet he recognised every nuance of every word as though they were long-worn truisms of his very own.
In the corner of his eye he caught sight of the chief super approaching. He turned to face her and flagged her towards the glassed-off office at the end of the incident room. As he turned, he felt as though a heavy burden was weighing on him, as if he was dragging the contents of the incident room along with him. He knew, of course, it was a fallacy, but he knew also that there would be a new timbre to the conversations he would now have with CS Martin.
Valentine held open the door and watched the chief super walk through. She avoided eye contact, but once inside, behind the closed door, she fixed him with her gaze.
‘Well?’
He placed his hands on his hips as he spoke slowly. ‘We have an ID for the victim out at the track . . . Duncan Knox.’
She shrugged. ‘Who?’
‘He’s a paedophile,
long list of convictions . . . mostly time-served. I haven’t pulled the file yet, I just took the call.’
The chief super folded her arms and twisted her mouth. She seemed to be thinking, but Valentine knew the look was more practised: she was battling her true reaction. ‘And it’s the same MO?’
‘Almost identical.’
She unfolded her arms and started to pace the confines of the small room. ‘Jesus . . . What the bloody hell’s going to tie him to Urquhart?’
Valentine eased his hands from his hips and weighed them in front of him. He had the chief super in his sights as he spoke. ‘If there’s a link, we’ll find it.’
She looked out to the incident room – her gaze seemed to fall on Paulo – and shook her head. ‘You’re not exactly blessed with a full compliment of detective genius out there . . .’
Valentine resented the statement. His first instinct was to react with a rebuttal, but his second instinct was to say nothing and let the burn of her censure be felt in his silence. She spoke again: ‘I think it might be time to talk to Glasgow about the case.’
The DI knew the last thing Martin wanted was another area’s officers on her patch – it would be humbling, just shy of humiliating, and the chief super liked to be able to strut around her territory with impunity.
‘Let’s not be too hasty, we haven’t even cracked the seal on this Knox death yet. Who knows what the next twenty-four hours will hand us? It would be a shame to serve everything up on a platter for Glasgow.’
The chief super gnawed on her bottom lip, halted her pacing and stood tapping the toe of her shoe on the ground. ‘All right, Bob, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt . . . but if you’re telling me you can handle this with the team you have, then there better be something more than white space to look at on that board the next time I come in here.’ She removed her gaze from the detective and walked past him on the way to the door. ‘And tomorrow, Bob, first thing . . . you have a therapy session. Hope you can fit them around your workload.’
The muscles in Valentine’s arms tensed as he watched the chief super walk out into the incident room and back towards her office. He held himself in check for a moment longer, until she was out of sight, and then he reached for the door handle.
‘Paulo . . . get your coat.’ The roar startled even himself.
DS Rossi rose from his desk. ‘Are we going somewhere, sir?’
‘Out to see the Urquharts.’
Rossi looked perplexed. ‘Shouldn’t Ally be going with you, then?’
Valentine’s voice became a growl. ‘Ally’s at the scene, so I’m making do!’ He started to walk towards the door, and the police officers in the room dropped their heads to avoid eye contact. ‘And anything comes in, I want to be informed straight away . . . Call!’
There was no reply, but the message was duly received. DS Rossi wrestled himself into his jacket as he caught up with Valentine on the stairs. ‘So, are we running the Knox killing past them, boss?’
The sound of the DS’s voice had started to grate on Valentine already. ‘What do you think, Paulo?’
He shrugged as he pulled his collar down. ‘Will I drive, sir?’
The DI nodded. ‘Well, I didn’t bring you for your repartee, son.’
By the time they got to the car park, Valentine was several strides ahead of DS Rossi, who depressed the remote locking; the blinkers flashed momentarily to indicate the car was unlocked. As he got inside Valentine had to tip a pile of folders onto the floor. He picked up a mobile phone that rested on the seat and noticed there was a missed-call notification. Valentine registered the caller’s ID just as DS Rossi opened the driver’s door. ‘Is this your phone, Paulo?’
The DS looked at the phone in Valentine’s hand and seemed to clam up. ‘Erm . . .’
‘Simple question: is it or isn’t it?’
Rossi nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then you better take it . . . Was sitting on the seat, lucky it wasn’t nicked.’ Valentine kept a stare on the young detective. For a moment there was an uneasy silence in the car, and then Rossi turned towards the windscreen and put the key in the ignition.
On the road out to Alloway, Valentine allowed himself a few snatched glances at Rossi; he knew he had something on the DS now and that he would have to act on the information, but didn’t want to let himself believe it was true. For some unknown reason, Valentine felt the need to observe Rossi: it was as if his own temper was too hot, as if any action taken in the immediate future would be weakened somehow by the anger it would ride on. Valentine closed down his thoughts and stared ahead at the road, the swish of trees that passed the windows and the cold grey of the Scottish sky. By Maybole Road the atmosphere in the car seemed to have lost its foetid air, but then entering the rarefied and well-heeled streets of this part of town always made Valentine ease a little further back in his seat. It was as if the broad, expansive boulevards, meandering driveways and high-pitched roofs dictated it. This was where people came to enjoy the rewards of a good life – and to them it was a very good life.
‘How the other half live, eh?’ said DS Rossi – his voice faltered a little on the conversational gambit.
Valentine returned the glance. ‘Not on your wages, Paulo.’
The remark lodged itself in Rossi’s expression like a blow. ‘I wasn’t suggesting . . .’
‘Oh, no.’
They had reached the Urquharts’ home in perfect time for Rossi to brake and drop down the gears; he made an elaborate turn of the wheel and changed direction from the main road. In the driveway, he pulled up behind Mrs Urquhart’s Range Rover and stilled the engine. Valentine already had his seatbelt off as the driver removed the keys.
The moment he stood outside the car, Valentine was assailed by a faint breeze: it swirled towards him on the path, carrying stray grass cuttings and mulch then surrounded his frame in a tight grip that sent a shiver through him from head to toe. For a moment he halted his stride, grabbed a deep breath and then forced himself to walk on. The mere act of putting one step in front of the other broke the spell of the breeze and by the front door of the property the detective was left wondering what he had just experienced.
‘Everything OK, boss?’ said Rossi.
‘Yes, why shouldn’t it be?’
Rossi dipped his chin towards his chest. ‘You’re as white as a sheet.’
Valentine dropped his tense shoulders and turned back towards the door; he was pressing the doorbell as he spoke. ‘No need to worry about me.’
In a few moments the door was opened by Adrian Urquhart. He paused before opening his mouth, but released no words until Valentine introduced himself.
‘Oh, yes . . . Would you like to come in?’ he said.
As Valentine stepped into the vestibule, his eyes devoured the home: he knew more about the former occupant than he had on his last visit and the knowledge dredged up James Urquhart’s spirit for him. It was as if the banker was suddenly everywhere he looked. The rug on the floor, the paint on the walls, the ornamental lamp on the side table – they all bore his signature.
Mrs Urquhart was standing in the middle of the lounge when the detectives entered the room. ‘Hello, gentlemen.’
Valentine nodded and accepted the offer of a seat. ‘I hope you don’t mind us calling round like this . . . It’s just we’ve had some developments.’
‘Oh . . .’ She lowered herself into the opposite chair; Adrian followed at her side.
For a moment Valentine toyed with the idea of slowly building up to the revelation of Duncan Knox’s murder, but as he eyed the Urquharts sitting before him in calm comportment there seemed no need for soft-soaping.
‘There’s been another killing, in much the same fashion as before.’
The pair sat, unmoved. Valentine checked them for a flinch, the gripping of hands perhaps, but nothing came. He turned his eyes towards DS Rossi, who was looking at the Urquharts with a perplexed expression playing on his face.
Valentine spoke a
gain. ‘I have to ask . . . Does the name Duncan Knox mean anything to you?’
This time there was a reaction: Mrs Urquhart rose from the chair and stood behind her son, then she placed her hands on his shoulders and squeezed tightly. ‘No, why should it?’
Valentine registered how she snatched her words. ‘You seem very sure.’
‘Certain.’
DS Rossi turned in his chair to face the detective and made a taut wire of his mouth. Valentine rose to face Mrs Urquhart. ‘Is there something you’d like to tell me, Mrs Urquhart . . . This isn’t the reaction I was expecting to the news that your husband’s rather unusual death has been mimicked.’
Adrian shot from his chair and walked towards the middle of the room where the detective stood. ‘I wasn’t aware there was a grieving widow’s handbook that my mother was supposed to be acting out.’
‘That’s enough, Adrian . . .’ Mrs Urquhart walked round beside her son. ‘Mr Valentine, we are still in shock.’
‘I appreciate that.’
‘Then why on earth are you questioning us when you could be out hunting a killer?’
Valentine caught sight of DS Rossi rising from his chair; in the space of a few minutes the cordial atmosphere had turned nasty. ‘It’s very important that we ascertain any links between your husband and the latest victim, you must be able to see how that could assist us.’
‘What makes you think there are any links?’ said Mrs Urquhart.
‘Well, if there aren’t then it’s important that we eliminate that line of inquiry.’
Mrs Urquhart’s glass-smooth skin reflected the light from the window where she stood; she looked pale and fraught as she spoke to her son. ‘I don’t know this Duncan Knox, do you, Adrian?’
Adrian Urquhart shook his head. ‘No.’
A scowl settled on Mrs Urquhart’s face and then she touched the seam of her blouse nervously. ‘Well, there, that seems to be an end to it, doesn’t it now, Mr Valentine?’
DI Valentine’s facial muscles conspired against him as he eased out a slanting smile. His words came bluntly. ‘I suppose it does.’