by Ian Rankin
Colvin was not the biggest of men, yet he filled a room without effort. His face was a locked door, with a peephole through which he studied and learned. He had draped his black three-quarter-length Crombie coat over the back of his chair and run a hand through his hair to push it back into place. The cut was slightly long, as though Teddy boys had never gone out of fashion. Ever since his early teens his reputation had been growing. He’d run with a gang and fought with unusual ferocity, never backing down no matter the threat level. But he was savvy, too, and cautious in matters of business. The men gathered here were the few he genuinely trusted. To others it might have resembled a committee of gargoyles, but in Colvin’s line of work you didn’t want staff whose looks put people at ease.
‘I’m judge and jury on this one,’ he went on, ‘and sentence has already been pronounced.’ He ran a finger down the front of his dark tie, as if to ensure nothing was out of place. ‘But he’s alive when he gets to me, understood? It’s my job to do the necessary dismantling, and that process will maybe take a while.’ His eyes scanned the group again. They were still paying attention. There was an empty chair to Colvin’s right. Past that sat Panda Paterson, Mickey Ballater, Dod Menzies and Spanner Thomson. Panda’s love of food would normally have had him on his third or fourth biscuit by now, but he knew to behave himself, today of all days.
‘This is a message to us. It’s telling us something. Somebody out there thinks we’ll leave it alone? No chance. I want you to start asking around, and don’t feel you need to be subtle about it. It’s fast answers I’m after, not diplomacy. See this chair here?’ He patted it. ‘This is where Bobby should be sitting, and it needs to be filled. Hopefully by whichever one of you brings me the news first.’ He paused, letting the invitation percolate. ‘So give me some ideas – where would you start looking?’
‘Pub’s an obvious one,’ Panda Paterson said, his voice like slurry. ‘It’s on John Rhodes’s turf, though.’
‘No “though” about it,’ Colvin snapped. ‘Territory’s a thing of the past until this gets solved.’
‘What about Jenni?’ Dod Menzies offered.
‘Jenni’s difficult,’ Colvin said, shifting in his seat.
‘The wife doesn’t know?’
‘Bobby was always clever that way. I’d rather Monica didn’t find out. She’s got enough on her plate, before you factor in the kids. Besides, stabbed behind a pub – does that sound like a crime of passion to you? No, this was business.’
‘Which brings us back to John Rhodes,’ Spanner Thomson piped up. He had a reedy voice, one that sometimes caused strangers to chuckle or tease him, which they did only until the heavy spanner – his implement of choice – was drawn from his inside pocket.
Colvin pressed his hands together. ‘I’ll maybe be needing a word with John. But let’s hold off and see if he comes to us first. Other routes we should be travelling?’
‘Bobby had no shortage of enemies, boss,’ Mickey Ballater offered. ‘You know that. He was a good enough fixer but lousy at keeping his head down. Number of times I’ve had complaints from clubs and restaurants he walked out of without paying. Anybody resisted, he reminded them who he worked for.’
There were nods around the table.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever done that, Mickey? Or you, Dod? We’re all family here, right? Don’t go speaking ill of the dead.’ Colvin paused. ‘Okay, the man had a bit of history and maybe you need to dig into that. What worries me, though, is how blatant the killing was. Either someone’s putting Rhodes in the frame – someone like Matt Mason – or else Rhodes himself thinks he’s bulletproof. That’s why I see it as a message we need to decode. Not easy for people whose only paper qualifications are for truancy, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to work flat out. I want you busting your gonads on this. Okay?’
Once the nods around the table had satisfied him, he got to his feet and produced a tray from a cupboard. It held a bottle of whisky and six glasses. He poured the measures with due ceremony and handed them round, leaving one in front of the empty chair.
‘Bobby was a valued member of our team, one who kept us a bargepole’s distance from any whiff of fraud or tax evasion. So here’s to absent friends.’ He raised his glass in a toast.
They drank in silence. Paterson swallowed and wiped his mouth on his shirt cuff.
‘Okay if I have a biscuit now, boss?’ he asked.
‘Your dentist must love you almost as much as your doctor,’ Colvin muttered, rising to his feet. ‘I’m away for a pish. Don’t let me detain youse.’
After Colvin had left, Paterson ran a tongue around his mouth. ‘At least I’ve got all my own teeth, mostly,’ he commented, reaching for the plate in the centre of the table.
‘Anyone got any ideas?’ Ballater asked the room.
Menzies gave a loud sniff. ‘Would I be speaking out of turn if I mentioned that the boss has always had a thing for Bobby’s missus?’
‘That doesn’t exactly put him in a minority,’ Thomson said, keeping his eyes focused on the table rather than anyone seated around it.
‘But now he gets to play the knight in shining armour,’ Menzies went on.
Ballater spaced his words out when he answered. ‘Are you saying you think the boss did Bobby in? I’m not convinced that would work out well for us.’
‘We need to be doing something, though,’ Paterson said, crumbs spraying from his parted lips.
‘The Parlour’s the obvious starting point,’ Ballater concluded after a moment’s thought. ‘Pity we don’t have any current friends inside the crime squad – a few rounds bought at the Top Spot could be helpful.’
‘Way I hear it, John Rhodes has his finger in that particular pie.’
‘And we don’t get to Rhodes without going through his team first.’
‘Especially that big bastard with the face that looks like a join-the-dots painting.’
‘We’re not exactly midgets ourselves, remember.’ ‘Plenty of folk on the street we could be asking,’ Thomson said. ‘Word has a way of getting around.’
‘I dare say myths are being created as we sit here,’ Ballater added. ‘Soon enough we’ll have to turn colliers to dig up anything resembling the truth.’
‘My dad was a coal miner,’ Thomson said.
‘Let’s hope his son doesn’t have to take up a shovel or a pickaxe to find some answers.’
Thomson gave a thin smile as he patted his jacket pocket. ‘There’s only one tool I’ll need, Mickey.’
‘Are youse still here?’ Cam Colvin barked from the doorway, affecting incredulity as he wiped his hands dry on his handkerchief.
‘Just going, chief,’ Paterson apologised, rising to his feet. He reached out an arm towards one final biscuit before thinking better of it and following his three colleagues from the room.
7
After Milligan’s pre-lunch briefing, Laidlaw had felt the need not so much to clear his head as to exorcise the whole soul-festering hour. He’d jumped on a bus, no destination in mind, just staring from the top deck as the streets around him spun their endless small stories. He smoked cigarette after cigarette and thought of the Burleigh. If it was going to be his base camp for the duration, he needed to go home and pack some clothes. Ena wouldn’t be happy about it, but that was increasingly becoming the default setting regarding their marriage. It felt as though they were living through a phoney war, negotiations fraught, hiding the truth from their civilian children. There were three of them – Moya, Sandra and Jack; aged six, five and two. Whenever a case kept him out past their bedtime, Laidlaw would creep into their rooms to stroke their hair and remind himself a better world was possible.
It wasn’t so easy with Ena.
His thoughts shifted to the receptionist at the Burleigh. Her name was Jan, a well-upholstered woman with a steely stare that seemed to soften in Laidlaw’s presence. He suspected that male admirers would wonder if they could pass whatever test she seemed to be setting with those eye
s. She knew he was a detective because Ben Finlay had once told her to expect a visit.
‘Nice to know I’m predictable.’
‘Ben seems to think you’re anything but.’
Laidlaw told himself that it wasn’t Jan that kept him returning to the Burleigh; it was the need to stay near the steady pulse of the city streets. Simshill was too far, too safe. The kids needed stories told to them, meals were required to be eaten as a family. He was no longer supposed to be a policeman.
‘You’ll burn out before you’re forty,’ Ena had once warned him.
Forty wasn’t too far away, either. He felt it encircling his thickening waist. His knees complained when faced with too many stairs. His eyes were under strain and he doubted he could chase a suspect the length of any street worth the name. Wiping condensation from the bus window, he looked out at a sky belched from the chimneys of the crumbling tenements, the same smoke that clung to the various civic buildings, once grandly Victorian but now in danger of being swamped by modernity. Old habitats were being demolished, shiny towering replacements planned, a motorway carving its way through the city. Forget the old certitudes; they would soon be crushed underfoot like a fag end beneath a platform-soled shoe. Laidlaw didn’t doubt, though, that the replenished housing stock would fail to do much for Glasgow’s ingrained problems. Behind new glazing and harling he’d be sure still to find poverty, loveless marriages, drunken aggression, sectarian bile, like angry tattoos hidden under a laundered shirt.
He was only vaguely aware of his surroundings as he got off the bus at its next stop and crossed the road to await another back into town. The attempt to erase the memory of the briefing wasn’t working. He was seeing Milligan standing in front of his attentive audience, never happier than when issuing orders and offering theories as if they were diamond-hard facts. A wall of black and white photographs acted as scenery to his soliloquy. One of them showed graffiti on the rear wall of the Parlour, left there by the Gorbals Cumbie, a teenage gang whose current leader was called Malky Chisholm. Chisholm was a college dropout whose ambition of becoming a social worker had led him to too close an association with the various groupings of feral young men. It had become like a drug to him, and eventually, having attempted to broker peace between the Cumbie and other gangs such as the Calton Toi, he’d been offered no choice but to take sides. The Cumbie had become his tribe and soon enough he’d been crowned their king. It helped that he was a gifted amateur boxer. A ‘square go’ held few fears for him – in a fair fight, he would almost always win. But he was cunning, too, meaning even unfair fights went his way.
Laidlaw was aware of a bit of history between Chisholm and Milligan. Arrests made; charges dropped. Milligan was strapping on a pair of blinkers to go with his boxing gloves, ready to enter the ring again.
‘What this graffiti tells me,’ he had pontificated for the benefit of the room, ‘is that the Cumbie are encroaching on Calton turf. A stabbing is one hell of a calling card, wouldn’t you agree?’ His eyes had fixed on Laidlaw as he’d said this, as if daring him to shake his head. What would have been the point? The crime squad office was hardly the forum in Rome, and Laidlaw doubted anyone gathered there would have looked good in a toga. Ever since Lilley and Laidlaw had returned from the mortuary, Milligan had been waiting for them to complain that their trip there had been a waste of time. Neither man had done so, purely to deprive him of that pleasure.
Lighting another cigarette, Laidlaw became aware of a stooped old-timer with rheumy eyes who had joined the bus queue behind him.
‘You should enjoy life more, son. Your face is tripping you.’
The man’s breath was like a blowtorch, and Laidlaw wondered why it was that after a drink so many Glaswegians turned into the Ancient Mariner, eager to share their stories and wisdom with complete strangers. This particular example boasted a rolled-up newspaper, which he wielded like a baton, as if he could conduct the world.
‘At least it’s only my face that’s tripping me,’ Laidlaw responded. ‘Your whole life seems to be one long bout of falling over.’ He gestured towards the rips in the man’s trousers and the elbows of his worn-out jacket.
The man studied him, taking a step back as if to help him focus. ‘You look like an actor, son. Have I seen you in anything?’
‘We’re all actors in this town, haven’t you noticed? You’re acting right now.’
‘Am I?’
‘Badly – but even bad acting deserves the occasional round of applause.’ Laidlaw dug a few coins from his pocket and placed them in the man’s hand. ‘Should cover your bus fare. Either that or a paper from this week rather than last.’
There was a double-decker drawing towards them at that moment. Laidlaw gestured for the old man to precede him aboard, but then stood his ground and told the clippie he’d wait for the next one. The new passenger stared in bemusement from the window as the bell rang and the bus pulled away, depriving him of his audience. Laidlaw didn’t doubt he would soon find another.
8
Bob Lilley was making show of studying the crime-scene photos when Ernie Milligan stopped in front of him. He smelled of Old Spice and ambition, neither of which particularly bothered Lilley, though he was an Aramis man himself. Milligan took a slurp of tea from a Mexico World Cup mug, which Lilley knew would be sweetened with the usual three sugars.
‘Got enough to be getting on with?’ he enquired.
Lilley decided to tickle his boss’s belly. ‘Interesting what you said about the Cumbie. When do we talk to Chisholm?’
‘Soon enough, Bob, don’t you worry. Sorry about the post-mortem, by the way – crossed wires.’
‘You’re bound to make a few mistakes along the way.’ Lilley watched Milligan’s face stiffen. ‘I mean on a case as complex as this. Lot of plates spinning.’
‘Meantime your partner isn’t so much a plate-spinner as a Harry Houdini.’
‘Is that what Laidlaw is, my partner? I get the feeling he’d object to the description. And to answer the question you’re about to ask, I don’t have a clue where he is. He hightailed it as soon as the briefing was done.’
‘Aye, and before I could dole out tasks.’
‘From what I’ve heard, Jack Laidlaw works best when left to his own devices.’
‘He needs reined in, Bob. That’s your job.’
‘You want me tailing him around town?’
‘I don’t want him thinking he can set any agendas here, that’s all.’ Milligan broke off as a WPC began Sellotaping a fresh set of photographs and clippings to the wall, including a snap of the deceased with his wife and children.
‘Got that from the house,’ Milligan explained. ‘It’s some place – you should see it. They’ve not long moved in. Decorators are still busy.’
‘How old’s the photo?’ Lilley leaned in towards it.
‘Couple of years. Anniversary bash at the Albany. She’s not changed much.’ Milligan’s eyes were all over the widow. ‘She’ll have suitors queuing up at her door.’
‘I’m assuming she’ll be well provided for financially?’
‘There’s a will still to be read out, but you can bet there’ll be money – not all of it within reach of the taxman, judging by the deceased’s track record.’
‘Has the house been searched?’
‘We didn’t find a secret stash, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘And Carter’s office?’
‘Under way. His secretary’s helping between weeping fits.’ Milligan had noticed the Commander gesturing from the doorway. He nodded, placed the mug on the nearest desk and straightened his shoulders, but then paused for a moment. ‘Find Laidlaw. Keep me posted. Don’t let him cloud your judgement. Oh, and make sure he’s smoking and drinking plenty. I want him six feet under well before me. It’s by way of a bet where the winner gets to dance a jig on the loser’s grave.’
Lilley watched Milligan march – actually march, arms swinging – towards the door. The phone on the desk behind hi
m was ringing, so he picked it up.
‘DS Lilley,’ he announced.
‘I’m looking for Jack. Jack Laidlaw.’
‘He’s not available at the moment. Can I take a message?’
‘I’m his wife. Ena. Just wondered if I’d be seeing him today.’
‘You know he stayed at the Burleigh last night?’
‘Not that he had the good grace to tell me himself, but I’d worked it out. You’re on that murder case?’
‘That’s right, Ena.’
‘Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name already.’
Lilley had rested his backside against a corner of the desk. ‘I’m Bob. Bob Lilley.’
‘I don’t think he’s mentioned you.’
‘Well, we’ve only recently been partnered.’ There was that word again.
‘Good luck to you.’
‘I understand he can be a handful.’ ‘Like saying Krakatoa gave off a bit of smoke.’ He could hear the smile in her voice. A tired smile, but still a smile. ‘Are you married, Bob?’
‘Too long, my wife might say. We’ve a couple of grown kids.’
‘Lucky you – our three are going to be around for a while yet.’
‘I know that can be hard. Detectives tend to work unsociable hours at the best of times.’
‘And even when they’re home, they’re sometimes not home at all.’
‘You’d get no argument from my wife.’
‘Does she have a name?’
‘Margaret.’
‘Maybe I should be swapping notes with her. Will you tell Jack I called?’
‘Of course.’
‘Thank you.’
Lilley was trying to work out what to say next, but the dialling tone told him she’d already ended the call.