The Dirty Rouge (The Dirty Rouge Series Book 1)

by Geoff Small

  What with being at the casino and Nancy’s until past four the previous night, then being called to the body on the beach at Largs, the detective chief inspector hadn’t slept in over thirty-six hours. Before going home, though, he took a metallic grey Ford Mondeo from the police compound and headed across town for some groceries. Having already given his final fifty pounds to Jackie, he was too broke to be able to visit a supermarket, so travelled three miles out of his way, driving through the Clyde tunnel and into a conspicuously Asian neighbourhood on the Southside. Here, he went into Sharma’s convenience shop, nestled in the middle of an iron shuttered parade, beneath a beautiful, sandstone tenement, which radiated every shade and hue of blonde in the evening sunshine.

  Having been the community’s purveyor of cigarettes, booze and newspapers for over thirty years, Mr Sharma was a respected feature in the neighbourhood, a comforting piece of continuity in a gratuitously fast changing world. Everybody addressed him as Mr Sharma and he in turn knew all his regular customers names and saluted them with the same quaint courtesy. Once he knew you, you were welcome to credit and if you were short of cash he always let you off the difference and just dismissed the whole situation with a philosophical, backward wave of the hand, as if swatting a gnat.

  As Curzon entered Sharma’s twilit emporium, the man himself, tall and well fed with big, round, naïve looking eyes, stood joking with an old lady as he filled her shopping bags for her on the counter, before coming round to walk her out of the shop. On spotting the detective, though, his mirth disappeared and, after watching the old lady safely to her tenement from the door, he walked back to his post forlornly, head down, while his visitor filled a basket with a four-pack of McEwen’s brown ale, two meat feast pizzas, a bag of oven fries and a block of Neapolitan ice cream. As Curzon approached the counter, he turned as if by telepathy and took forty Berkeley cigarettes and a bottle of Glenfiddich from the shelves behind him, which he then bagged up along with the food, without going near the cash register and without uttering a single word to his ‘customer’ or even making eye contact. Basically, it was a petty extortion racket, enforced by Curzon following an incident two years previously when he’d been caught stealing a ninety-nine pence toothbrush by the shop owner. Of course, back then, Sharma didn’t have any idea that he was dealing with a detective chief inspector, and when he’d found out, after Curzon had flashed his ID – in the same aggressive manner that a criminal might pull a gun – he’d been even more adamant that the police be called and had locked our hero in the store. At this point Curzon had invoked moral relativism, snatching at a single pack of Kleenex tissues on a nearby shelf, on which were printed the words: ONLY TO BE SOLD IN MULTI-PACK. Next, he’d taken a shot in the dark, telling Sharma that he knew all about the smuggled cigarettes and alcohol he was selling and not paying tax on, prompting the grocer to unlock and open the door, standing poker straight in a bid to retain some dignity as the detective strode out of the dimly lit shop to freedom, brandishing and waving the stolen toothbrush triumphantly. If Sharma had thought that would be the end of the matter, he was wrong. According to Curzon’s thinking, the Indian had had no intention of showing him any mercy when on top, and so now, he was obliged to return the same lack of compassion. As extortion rackets go it was small-time: a four-pack of ale, a bottle of malt whisky, forty cigarettes and a meal’s worth of convenience food once a week. That said, it probably amounted to about fifteen hundred pounds annually, not to mention the humiliation the shopkeeper had to endure. But he certainly wasn’t the only one. Curzon must have had a score of corner shops, restaurants and fast food takeaways in his palm, meaning that he never had to pay for any of his food or drink. However, it also meant that he hadn’t eaten anything remotely healthy in years.

  Back at his apartment, Curzon sat in the tiny cluttered front room wearing only his boxer shorts, tray on lap, deliberately chewing each morsel of pizza, sucking on each greasy oven fry and slurping on his can of McEwen’s, before taking a very large helping of malt to bed with him, where he lay on top of the covers deliberating over the case so far, enjoying a much savoured sip of the golden nectar every two minutes or so. It must be pointed out here that, unlike his father, the detective was by no means an alcoholic. Considering the booze related misery of his upbringing, though, you’re probably surprised he had any taste for the stuff at all. Indeed, the issue of drink had provided a real dilemma for Curzon as a teenager. No, he most definitely did not want to end up like his old man, but he also knew that he could never whole heartedly emulate his fictional heroes if he wasn’t to quaff a few shots of the hard stuff from time to time.

  Once he’d finally drained the last drop from the glass tumbler, of which he had dozens, all stolen from the city’s pubs, Curzon was almost relaxed enough to sleep. I say almost because never, since the age of thirteen, had he been able to settle down to rest without masturbating first. He didn’t use porn, just his imagination, based on real women he’d seen around town, like Frau Fuchs and Jackie the Junkie. On this occasion, after several minutes’ deliberation, he decided to cast the latter as leading lady in that night's fantasy. Ultimately, Frau Fuchs had proved too vulnerable a human being, but Jackie was tough as old boots, which was precisely how he liked his women.

  Chapter 6

  Next thing Curzon knew he was being woken by a crack of thunder at six-thirty in the morning, ankles still manacled by his boxer shorts. Running his tongue around his whisky-stale mouth, he listened to the rain clattering on the street outside until he suddenly remembered that he had to meet Jackie. He leapt up, showered and put on his grey suit and beige trench coat, before driving over to the Necropolis. After squeezing through the gap in the railings, he scrambled up the greasy, wet bank, slipping here and there, the rain drops running down his nose thick as tears. Rounding the ten foot high tomb he prepared himself for a no-show but was shocked to find a purple, one-man tent pitched on the grass, the rain patting loudly against its flysheet.

  “Jackie?”

  There was a sound of unzipping and Jackie’s gaunt face poked out from the nylon den, eyelids flickering, evidently wasted on smack.

  “Come in! Come in! Come into my wee palace Inspector Curzon!” Then she did one of her horse throated, chesty cough laughs.

  After looking round to check nobody was watching, Curzon stooped to climb inside.

  “There’s nothing hazardous in here now is there Jackie?”

  “Don’t panic!”

  Poking his head in, he scanned the bare plastic ground sheet of the new smelling tent, before entering and sitting, legs crossed near the opening, with Jackie lying on her side up the west wing, resting her face on her left elbow, cheek in the cup of her hand.

  “What the hell’s all this about Jackie?”

  “I went to Castlemilk just like you asked. I was in the pub there when some gadge came in selling tents for a tenner, so I thought: ‘there’s no way I’m gonna miss my appointment if I camp on the spot.’ I didn’t want to risk whatever forfeit you’d no doubt got planned for me if I’d gouched out somewhere and failed to show.”

  “Sensible girl.”

  “It was a lovely night too. I was lying out on the grass thinking how I could just get into the outdoor lifestyle, maybe go hiking in the highlands, get off the heroin, be free of you – and then this bastern thunderstorm started!...Fucking typical isn’t it?”

  “Aye, it is so.” Curzon shook some of the excess water from his hair with his fingers. “Anyway, what have you got for me?”

  At this point Jackie’s eyelids began to flicker again and then close, causing Curzon to have to lean over and shake her by a scrawny shoulder blade. She jerked upright, opened her eyes as wide as a frog’s and burst into a fit of giggles, then started rubbing the lapel of the detective’s unbuttoned raincoat between her thumb and forefinger.

  “You’re after murderers aren’t you, you Dirty Rouge you!”

  Then she started giggling again, head drooping so that Curzon had
to hold her up by both sticklike shoulders.

  “Aye, I’m after murderers,” he confessed impatiently. “Now tell me what you know…or so help me God I’ll…”

  Jackie held an index finger to her mouth: “Shush. There’s no need to shout.” Then she began laughing again before registering the aggression in Curzon’s eyes and trying to stop. “No. No. Hold on. Here goes.” She took a deep breath and held both arms out in front of her, as if conducting a séance, until her fit of giggles finally subsided. “The guy you’re after is called Craig Hunter”

  “Aha. Where is he?”

  “He’s stopping over in East Kilbride at a lad called Gaddafi’s house, until the heat cools down, apparently. According to everyone in the Oasis Bar, he’s popped the guy you found on the beach over a drugs debt.”

  “Is that it?” Curzon exclaimed disappointedly.

  “‘Is that it?’” Well, it’s a damn site more than you’ve managed to get, otherwise he’d not be at large and you’d not be here…so where’s my bloody heroin you old scoundrel you?”

  As a fresh volley of thunder rumbled, Curzon produced another two wraps from his raincoat, which Jackie took and stuffed down the front of her slacks, into her panties, before raising her eyebrows coquettishly.

  “Why don’t you hang around a wee while till the rain stops inspector? We’ll call it another fifty quid?”

  Although Curzon declined Jackie’s offer without a moment’s thought, even he felt a hint of shame at the contradiction between his fantasies and his reality. The previous night he’d literally shot his load imagining her on all fours on top of a grave slab, yet here he was with the opportunity to do it for real, in the rain, during a thunderstorm – and he was running away. Still, it might help at this point to inform you that D.C.I Patrick Curzon had never, ever enjoyed intimate contact with a woman, not even just a peck on the cheek. The bullying he’d suffered as a boy, along with his daily experience of the dark side of human nature in his job, had left him unable to trust people full stop, and so he kept everyone at a very long arm’s length. Knowing this, one couldn’t help but wonder what exactly went on during his visits to Nancy.

  Chapter 7

  Back at the station, Curzon begged a cooked breakfast in the canteen, which he ate in his office while his trousers and overcoat dried out over the radiator. At eight-thirty, Deegan and McKay arrived and, after ascertaining the real name of ‘Gaddafi’, from East Kilbride police station, they all went down to another metallic grey Ford Mondeo, which they drove through the incessant rain, followed by a riot van full of officers. Once they’d reached their target’s address on a sprawling estate of grey, pebble dashed houses, McKay walked round to the back of the abode with two uniformed boys, while Curzon and Deegan knocked at the front, the other officers lying in wait at the side of the building. At first the occupants pretended no to be home until a short haired, peroxide blonde girl in a pink Lacoste polo T-shirt popped her head out of an upstairs front window, asking what all the fuss was about and claiming to be alone. She stubbornly refused to open the door, much to the aggravation of everyone stuck outside in the deluge and, it was only when a couple of uniformed officers came from the side of the house carrying a battering ram that she eventually capitulated. It was obvious that she’d been biding time while the suspect concealed himself somewhere on the property, so it came as no surprise when a WPC located both ‘Gaddafi’ – who really was the spitting image of the former Libyan leader – and Craig Hunter hiding behind the water tank in the attic, where they were arrested on suspicion of murder, as was the female householder.

  On their return to the station, McKay interviewed Gaddafi and his girlfriend, while Curzon and Deegan interrogated Craig Hunter, the prime suspect. He was a pretty distinctive looking character with crew cut ginger hair, a ski ramp nose and slightly slanted eyes which contained chestnut brown pupils, dilated through a combination of sheer terror and recent cocaine inhalation.

  Before starting to interview Hunter – who’d been stripped of his black Hugo boss T-shirt and matching Armani jeans and was now wearing a white paper suit – Curzon noted several shallow bite marks on each of his knuckles.

  “What’s with the knuckles son?”

  “Eh?” Hunter looked down, stretched his fingers out and stared. “Oh, right. I was lying on Gaddafi’s sofa all last night waiting for you to come. Every time I heard a car door slamming shut outside or an engine running, my heart started beating so loudly that I actually couldn’t hear what was going on, so I started biting my knuckles, coz it seemed to calm the thud down in my heart and my head.”

  On hearing such an uninhibited, detailed outpouring, Curzon was anticipating an instant confession coming on, until:

  “It wasn’t me! I swear to God it wasn’t me!”

  “Then why were you so scared of us?”

  “Because I was charging round on Saturday searching for Bobby…telling people that when I found him I was…,” Hunter looked down at the table top ashamedly, “telling people that I was gonna kill him.” He looked up again. “It’s just an unfortunate turn of phrase, you know.”

  “Portentous even,” Deegan interjected.

  “Eh?” the suspect exclaimed in ignorance.

  “Never mind that now,” Curzon insisted. “I just want to know why it was that you felt the need to say such a thing.”

  Hunter put his elbows on the table, placed his head in his hands and sighed, before mumbling:

  “Coz he’s been screwing my woman.”

  Curzon raised his eyebrows, as if shocked. “He was a bit of a ladies man then?”

  Hunter looked up, suddenly animated, eager to impress his version of Bobby McQueen on Curzon.

  “Oh aye, was he no. Not only was he a good looking guy but he had the patter, know what I mean?” Hunter gulped, tears welling up in his eyes. “He was my best pal, the dirty, rotten bastard!”

  Deegan handed him a Kleenex and, after wiping his eyes dry, the suspect continued.

  “He was even banging the woman in charge of his probation course over at the new social-workers centre.” Then he started laughing. “He reckoned she was into some right kinky stuff.”

  Curzon remained inscrutable, but in truth his curiosity had been aroused properly for the first time so far during this case.

  “Did you ever see this woman?” the DCI asked hopefully.

  “Nah…he just told me about it.”

  “We noticed that you were the last person to make a call to his phone. Could you tell us what that conversation was about?”

  “I just wanted to know where he was.”

  “So you could kill him?”

  “No! For fuck’s sake man! I told you, it was just words that I really wish I hadn’t said now!” Hunter started scratching his crew cut, ginger hair. “He told me he was at this party round at some posh house up the West End. So I went over there, but by the time I arrived he’d gone.”

  “And you never saw him again?”

  Hunter shook his head, then his lips started quivering and he broke down in tears.

  Chapter8

  With Hunter back in his cell and nothing of note from either Gaddafi or his moll, Deegan drove Curzon over to a brand new social-work centre on the Southside. About the length of a small street and set back behind a parking area, the complex was a two floored, brown brick affair with a pavilion roof and blue plastic window frames. Curzon hated these sorts of purely functional, flexible buildings, with their landscaping and open spaces filled with mid-range cars. Indeed, he hated all the ‘new-builds’ in Glasgow, not only in the city centre where they’d ruined the sandstone ambiance with titanium and glass or bright orange brick, high yield office blocks, but on the schemes too, where the grey, masculine and mean looking post war tenements were being replaced by energy efficient, brick built two-up two-downs with driveways and gardens. I mean who, he thought, would want to read a crime novel set in such a sterile setting?

  On entering the foyer of the social work centr
e, the two detectives flashed their badges and asked the young receptionist if she could fetch the person in charge, which she very kindly did. While she was away, Curzon received a call from the lab confirming that the blood on the napkin from Frau Fuchs’ back garden was indeed that of Bobby McQueen. He was still digesting this information when Matilda Fuchs herself came out to greet them – in her capacity as head social worker. She was wearing the same clothes as the previous day, hair still tied back, only hanging here and there in wild, loose strands now, eyes looking very red as if she’d been doing a lot of crying. She and Curzon looked equally shocked to see one another, until the latter had recomposed himself enough to arrest the German, much to the bewilderment of Deegan.

  Frau Fuchs sobbed all the way to the station, where Curzon let her stew for an hour in a cell before he began questioning, observed by his detective sergeant, in Interview Room number two.

  “You lied to me Ms Fuchs.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You will be.”

  “I don’t know anything about Bobby’s death…really! It’s just, I couldn’t afford for people to find out about us…Oh God my career’s over for good now.” She looked at Deegan as if expecting some sympathy. “We’d been frolicking…frolicking? Is this the right word? Frolicking?” Deegan nodded. “We’d been frolicking up at the centre in one of the store cupboards and once over in the Cathkin Braes…we had a picnic there.”

  She looked from one to the other of her interrogators as if hoping that the romantic idea of a picnic might mitigate their view of her as some sort of slut. Unfortunately, though, it only reinforced any such thoughts, with Curzon and Deegan both imagining that this was where the ‘kinky’ stuff must have occurred.

  “Apart from that we never met outside the centre…I shouldn’t have, but he’s a good looking boy….was a good looking boy….and, well, that’s my weakness: good looking boys. It’s why my husband left me.”