But was the young man Sy? He could be the same age. He was the centre of attention, especially Elaine’s, who stared and smiled and pouted at him. His frame was that of a very young man, possibly a boy. The odd glimpse of his head showed he was closely cropped, but the hair colour was hard to discern. Maddy would have searched harder, but staring at those images made her deeply uneasy. There was something attractive in them – the stranger’s skin, the way Elaine’s nakedness reclined, abandoned, across the bed, her expensive lingerie, the hands coming at her from all sides…
Then Maddy recognised the room. About the only hotel she’d stayed in in Glasgow in her life. The place she’d spent her last night with Louis. Behind the Botanics.
She tried to get hold of Coulter. Must be between office and home; somewhere his mobile doesn’t work. She left messages for him to phone back.
Belinda arrived back to collect her things. She had made some vague mention of a lift up to Dundee but had settled down, squatting on the floor beside Maddy. “You okay?”
Maddy’d drunk too much, eaten too little, was dishevelled, her makeup smeared and eyes red from weeping. Belinda hardly needed to ask. “Kids who end up dead or have to pimp for their mothers and old people dying and jobs and arsehole bosses and me screwing everything up and the world being totally fucked up–’” She drew breath and they both laughed. Sort of.
“Christ – how can you people become parents? I’d just sit in a corner terrified.”
“I’m not really one to take credit for much parenting,” Belinda replied.
For the first time, Maddy saw a softness in her, a failure of that sublime earth-given confidence. Maddy would have liked to confide in her about Elaine and the boy who might be Sy. But she couldn’t do that – Belinda’s own son was killed with Sy. Were the Docherties and Whyte much greater monsters than those photos suggested? Did they kill the boys after they had ensnared them in hotel rooms? There was no sign of anything S&M or violent about the images… . Was it just this photo shoot that had gone wrong? Or were Elaine and Jim and Martin mixed up in a much bigger story altogether?
Belinda poured them both another generous glass of wine.
“You and Father Mike got on well,” Maddy said.
“He’s okay. Typical orthodox type – can’t think for himself. It’s all learned in books.”
“I suppose it depends on the books you learn from.”
“The moment anything’s written down, it loses its energy, its truth.”
“What – you never read anything?”
“Only if I have to. I believe in human communication. What we’re doing now.”
Maddy had much less faith in the ability of talking to communicate anything – especially after nearly two bottles of wine.
“How Catholic was Paul?”
“Not at all when he was with us. Veronica, though, is old school. Giorgio’s parents were too. I was raised an athiest myself. I’d rather my child be brought up in any religion than the emptiness of that. Imagine – no possibility, no dream even, of transcendence. My parents weren’t even political. They just lived. Existed.”
Every now and then, Maddy noticed Belinda glancing at the trees outside the window. And the woman didn’t even know about Ian Lennon and his two plastic bags hiding, waiting, camouflaged high in the leaves. Their glasses empty, Maddy went to get another bottle from her hoard of supermarket bargains.
Coulter and Russell were interviewing Des and Veronica Kane one last time before they headed back to Pennyvale.
“Paul had trouble settling down. After the chaotic life with his parents in Glasgow, the split, his dad’s move to Manchester… Giorgio let him bunk off whenever he wanted.” Des shook his head sadly – the cruel irony of a man like Giorgio Pacchini having a son, while he and Nicky had tried for so many years. “We decided – with Paul’s agreement – that he couldn’t cope with school straight away. We moved out to the country. A smaller, safer community. A friend of Nicky’s it was who suggested home schooling. We found out about it – and, between the three of us, decided to go ahead. For a year or two at first. Until the boy had settled down. We’d thought that maybe next year…”
The home schooling organisation they worked with turned out to have a base in Edinburgh. Coulter was just about to find out more, when the call from the hospital came in. He asked the Kanes to leave contact details for themselves and the educational organisation with the desk sergeant. He’d try to see them again tomorrow.
Tony Kennedy had been found by passers-by in a lane near his lock-up. Severely battered. No one had seen what had happened or who had done it. There were reports of shouts and footsteps running along the lane, then of screams and thumps. Coulter ordered a fingertip search of the lane. There was no point in going to the hospital: Kennedy had been given heavy-duty painkillers on arrival, and then a pre-med. They were taking him into surgery to fix some broken facial bones and stem internal bleeding.
Coulter’s mobile went while they were trying to get more info from the medical staff. Maddy. He put it back in his pocket. He wanted a bit more space and time for that call.
There was only one good witness to the attack on Tony willing to talk. Guy relieving himself round the back of a Dumbarton Road pub. For once officers of the law were delighted that a punter had a pish up a lane. Malcolm Turner was brought in immediately to describe what he had seen.
“It was the guy in the papers, I’m telling you.”
“The man who attacked Tony Kennedy? Did he have a Northern Irish accent?”
“I didn’t have to hear him. It was Lennon. I’ve seen his picture in the papers. Killed those youngsters.”
Turner had heard one set of footsteps, running, followed by shouting and threats. Then a second lot of footsteps, giving chase. He identified from photographs Tony Kennedy as the man being chased. Turner had slid further back into the doorway he’d been relieving himself in. It didn’t take long for the bigger man – Lennon, he was certain – to catch up with Kennedy.
“When he did, he stopped him. Spat in his face. Said something—”
“What?”
“Didn’t catch it. Nothing Shakespearean I wouldn’t have thought. General insults and expletives. The other chap was shouting for help all the time – screaming, really. But your murderer swung just one massive punch, and the little guy fell, still shouting. Lennon runs off, up the lane, past me, towards the backs of the shops.”
Where the hell had Lennon come from? Why did he make a beeline for Kennedy? Coulter was relieved that they had at least located the Irishman. But where was he now, and what had been going on between him and the father of one of his victims? It would be hours – maybe even days – before Kennedy was going to be able to answer any of these questions.
“He was in a hell of a state, the fellow.”
“Mr. Kennedy is being well looked after in the Western Infirmary, Mr Turner.”
“Not him. Lennon. He’d been in the wars. All bloody and messed up. Went limping off down that lane like Mary Shelley’s Creature.”
Three Uniforms were sent to search Tony Kennedy’s lock-up and the lane round about it for the third time that night. Glasgow’s police were like a man looking manically for his car keys, going over the same places time and again. This time, one of the officers did see something new. Right along at the end of the lane, several lock-ups along from Tony’s and on the other side, one of the roll-down doors was open at the bottom.
“Not open enough for two men to coming belting out of.”
“And neither one was likely to take the time to turn and even half-close it.”
“Maybe you could roll out through that gap, though.”
That must have been what happened. Somebody managed to get the door open, or forced the other to open it for him. Either Kennedy or Lennon rolled under, and the other did the same, giving chase.
Did Kennedy have two lock-ups? When the officers opened the door wide, they knew for certain that something unpleasant had been ha
ppening in there.
“When did you find this out? How did you find out?” Coulter had hoped that this would be a make-up call. It was proving quite the opposite.
“Alan – I’ve been trying to get you all night!” Maddy could hear the defensiveness in her own voice.
Coulter was agitated enough. A witness still in the interview room with Russell saying that both Kennedy and Lennon were bloodied in whatever had gone down between them. And officers phoning the station every few minutes from the lock-ups with new information. Now there was this to deal with… “There are pictures to prove it? Definitely Elaine Docherty and Sy Kennedy?”
“You can’t see Sy’s face. But it’s him. In one photograph you can make out Jim Docherty.”
“And Whyte?”
“I think he’s the one taking the pictures. Check his ring finger. Some kind of gold band on his right hand index… You haven’t caught up with him yet, have you?”
“We’re checking hotels and B&B’s in the Merchant City. There’ve been a couple of possible sightings.” Too much was happening at once – Whyte still missing, Lennon apparently reappearing in a bust-up with one of the victim’s fathers. “Shit, Maddy. This changes everything. I’ll get WPC Dalgarno to ring you. Get details of the site. Don’t – please, Maddy – busy up your line. She’ll call any minute.”
“Alan. If it is Paul Pacchini in these pictures then it’s appalling what they’re doing – criminal. He’s underage apart from anything else. He’s only a boy. But… there’s nothing violent in the images. If anything, they’re a bit dull and unimaginative.”
“What do you want, Maddy? Chains and knives and blood?” He took a breath. “Maybe they’re old pictures. Things got worse as they went along.”
“They were posted about four months ago.”
“Maybe Sy’s death’s not related directly to the pictures. But, it seems like Whyte and the Docherties mixed him up in something illegal.”
“And knew him – intimately. Where does that leave your Lennon theory?” She tried to keep her tone neutral.
“God knows. But on that – stuff happening there too. I’ll fill you in later. Got to go. Shit.”
The living-room door was knocked dead on cue, just as Maddy put the phone down. She had kept her voice low and the door closed. “Come on in.”
Belinda had a glass in one hand, a plate with food and a plastic box in the other. “Cheese, celery, apple, oatcakes. Celery is a natural calmative.” She opened the little plastic box. “Ashwagandha. An Indian herb. Don’t look at me like that. It does the trick, believe me. Two of these. A snack and a long drink of water and you won’t believe the difference.”
Maddy sat down on the couch and let Belinda pull up the coffee table and serve her. But she grabbed her half-full glass of wine. “Let me just finish off my course of medicine first.” She drained it, and picked up the pills. They were huge.
“Aren’t these for horses?”
Before Belinda could answer, Maddy’s computer made a noise she’d never heard before. She got up and turned on the monitor. Strange, like your real life was being fictionalised and put on a screen: Louis’s face was inside a stamp-like square. His movements were uneven, time-lapsed. Like a war correspondent in some far-flung conflict.
Maddy checked the clock – later than she thought.
As she typed in some very basic details, mentioning no names – never trust computers or the internet, especially having seen ScotEx – Belinda cleared up behind her. Her cure hadn’t quite worked. Maddy had drunk half the water, taken a single bite out of the celery and swallowed the pills. But she’d poured herself yet another half-glass of red and bitten two chunks out the cheese. Thank goodness she hadn’t had time to try and set up her camera, this end, after all. She must be a sight. Her news about Lennon and Kennedy she knew was already old – things were happening out there right now.
Whatever it was that created the low-detail image of him – too few pixels or something – had the same effect as being back-lit. It edited out little details and simplified the human face. As a result, Louis looked half his age. His hair was uniformly dark and his eyes, in a pop-video stop-start way, darted and flashed. He looked beautiful. When Belinda was away washing dishes, Maddy stroked the tiny image of the man who had bulked her bed. Only a few weeks ago, yet she felt as if she herself had faded since then, vanishing from her own life.
Maddy glanced round instinctively at the trees outside her window. There was no doubt Lennon was a killer, and that he had long-running dealings in the States. But could he possibly have killed this Jordan Murdock boy only a few days ago? If he had, then at least he wasn’t outside her house right now.
She stared hard at the little image of the jumpy, bobbing Louis, trying to see behind him, pick up some clues about his home life. There was a square – a curtained window? Maybe a bookcase underneath it. The camera angle was too close-in. He might not even be at home.
A warm glow was beginning to come over Maddy. She relaxed a bit, sitting here, talking quietly to Louis, glass of wine in her hand, about the big case right now in her life. The fact that it was just a computer image beamed across the Atlantic, that she was off the case, and that the bottle was empty, she chose not to dwell on. She began to feel sleepy, dreamy.
The connection was cut. The gods of cyberspace weren’t letting her have her intimate moment with a virtual Louis. Her computer froze, and then told her she’d performed an illegal action.
It was turning out to be one of those nights when the power to be in two or more places at the one time would have been handy. As it was, he’d left Russell – which wasn’t quite the same thing – back at the station, directing a quadruple search. Whyte they’d get soon enough – he’d been spotted twice around Candleriggs earlier this evening. They’d been keeping tabs on the Docherties, so they knew they were en route back down from a meeting in Inverness. They’d pick them up along the A9.
Coulter stepped inside the lock-up. Was Tony cute enough to keep an extra den to himself without letting on to anyone? More Lennon’s style, that. And were people normally kept chained up here?! Two sturdy chains were attached to a wooden frame on the wall. One side of the frame had been splintered, which was probably how the captive got free. There were ropes, too, which he must have wriggled out of, or which perhaps weren’t properly tied in the first place.
But who was the captive, and who captor? Coulter couldn’t see little Tony Kennedy getting Lennon into the lock-up let alone tying him up. Unless he had a gun. The gun – the one that killed Paul and Frances? And his own son. Surely not.
Or was Lennon the imprisoner? Did Tony manage to wriggle free and make a bid for freedom, only to be felled by the bigger man halfway down a dark lane? But th
en why didn’t Lennon drag him back? Because he’d been seen. He’d had to make a run for it.
Patterson Webb was making a beeline for him, talking urgently into his radio.
“Inspector. It’s Whyte.”
“At last. We’ve picked him up?”
“He’s dead, sir.”
Maddy half-woke. She remembered lying out on the couch, but not covering herself with the duvet. Or putting a pillow under her head. She turned her head round – a red wine hangover was beginning to kick in. She still felt exhausted. Drowsy. Belinda Laird was sitting up straight, her eyes closed, on the armchair. She had one of Maddy’s books lying open, cover-up, on her knee. The Leopard. The computer had been turned off. Louis had been sent back up the tunnel to far America.
Part of her wanted to get up. Try and get the connection back with Louis. Listen out for Coulter’s calls. Keep an eye on those trees out there. But the duvet was too comfy and that Ashwagandha strong stuff. Maddy let herself slip back down into sleep again.
It was like the Death of Marat. The bathroom had been lined with a hundred little candles; more than half of them still burning, their smoke staged dry ice. Radio 3 played through from the radio in the hotel room itself – some noisy, bustling Copland piece, totally inappropriate. Perhaps when Whyte was lying dying it had been something gentler. Coulter didn’t know yet if Martin Whyte could officially be called a child abuser or not, but he found himself hoping for more fitting music for the poor bastard anyway.
Whyte had swallowed a cocktail of pills – valium, over-the-counter sleeping pills, painkillers. The bottles and a few pills lay scattered about the floor. Then he’d opened his wrists, and the blood tinted the deep bathwater pink. Streaks ran down the enamel side of the tub, spilled out onto the floor. Suicides are always nasty, but Coulter couldn’t help thinking that gay Glasgow artists make a better job of it than most. To complete the Marat scenario, Whyte had written a couple of suicide notes. One before he’d cut his veins, left tidily on the shelf above the sink, addressed to his mother. The other lying on the floor, soaked and blood-stained.
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