‘All right, Ray.’ Donoghue leaned forward and placed both reports side by side on the blotting-pad and took his pipe from his mouth. ‘Let’s kick it around a bit, shall we?’ Sussock shuffled wearily in his chair.
‘So she was murdered as we first suspected, the obvious wound was the only wound, hence the fatal one, she was murdered where she was found, she was a lady of the night and a heroin addict. Lived in a shared flat with a now shocked but none too sympathetic-sounding girlfriend. She was known to be frightened of a stockily built man who drives a decorated car and she has an interesting tattoo which indicates a present or past involvement with somebody called Dino. Is that a fair summary, Ray?’
‘Yes, sir, also to include that she was murdered where she fell.’
‘I think I said that. It’s a valid point and means an appeal for witnesses.’ Donoghue scribbled a note. ‘Who’s in today?’
‘King and Montgomerie are both on day shift this week, sir. Abernethy’s on the back shift for the week.’
‘With yourself on the graveyard shift for your sins, Ray.’ Donoghue smiled. ‘Very well, I won’t keep you any longer than necessary. The way I see it is that we have the following tasks; we need to search Stephanie Craigellachie’s flat, find her home address in Bearsden because next of kin have still to be notified, talk to the girls in the street, that’ll be for Abernethy to do. Anything else?’
‘Find Dino?’
‘Of course—Dino the mysterious,’ said Donoghue, lighting his pipe with the gold-plated lighter, ‘and find the identity of the owner of the fancy car. They may turn out to be one and the same.’
‘They may indeed, sir.’
‘See what rumours are flying around, if any. I’ll ask Montgomerie to pull his snout, Monday Morning or whatever his name is…’
‘Tuesday Noon,’ said Sussock. ‘Montgomerie once told me his real name but I can’t recall it. He was born one Tuesday at noon and the name has stuck since childhood.’
‘Tuesday Noon,’ said Donoghue. ‘Still, he’s been useful before, no matter what his name is.’
‘All we’re waiting for is feedback from Forensic and the knife and the clothing.’
‘Where’s the girl’s handbag?’
‘Stores.’
‘I see. I think that’ll be King’s first job while Montgomerie’s contacting Tuesday Noon’.
‘Will that be all, sir?’
‘Yes, thank you, Ray. See you at the hand-over tomorrow morning.’
‘Good day, sir.’ Sussock stood and Donoghue noticed how tired and drawn he looked, how elderly. He was too old to be at the front line of police work.
‘Have a good sleep, Ray,’ he said.
‘Don’t you usually have female officers with you when you go into a woman’s room?’ The girl hung back leaning against the wall of the kitchen, interested and uninterested at the same time. Detached, thought King, a very detached young woman. Not a healthy state of mind.
‘Not if there isn’t a lady involved,’ he said, ‘as is the case here.’ He pressed his shoulder to the door of Stephanie Craigellachie’s room. The barrel lock sagged into wet-rotten wood. ‘Sure you don’t have a key?’
‘Sure I’m sure,’ said the girl, Karen by name.
‘It’ll break cleanly,’ said Montgomerie. King shoved it and it broke cleanly.
Stephanie Craigellachie’s room was small, cramped, spare and spartan. A single bed, two ruffled sheets and a blanket, insufficient for winter, but this was high summer, right enough; no pillow, a chest of drawers, bare floorboards, save for a rug, torn curtains, dirty windows. A wardrobe without a door revealed her clothing, a few dresses, skirts, a woollen pullover rolled up on the top shelf, a winter coat, torn at the elbow.
Something on legs scuttled across the floor and into a hole in the corner of the room.
‘Ugh!’ said Karen, craning her neck around the corner of the doorway. ‘I’ve never seen in here before. She never let me in. Wonder what she did with her money—stashed it away, I reckon, got to be a Building Society passbook somewhere if we look for it. Saving for a flat in the south side—must have wanted it so bad to be prepared to live like this, I mean not spending on herself. You want me to make a start in the chest of drawers?’
‘No. We want you to remain in the kitchen,’ said Montgomerie harshly. ‘Just keep out of the room.’
‘Oh!’ Karen said with unashamed disappointment. But she didn’t argue. ‘Wonder why she didn’t spend on herself? I mean, a little luxury helps the world go round.’
‘She spent on herself all right,’ said Montgomerie, moving past King and opening the dirty curtains a little, just enough to look down into Gibson Street. An Asian family, baggy trousers and saris, ambling gauchely up the road, a lemon-haired girl in a long skirt and blouse swaying confidently in the opposite direction, the basement restaurants, the second-hand bookshops, the antique shops, the bridge, the trees in the park, the graceful curve of the Elden Street tenement block, empty now, awaiting a decision as to its fate. A red fly poster said, ‘Save Elden Street.’
‘What do you mean?’ Karen looked at Montgomerie. ‘She must have been pulling down hundreds of pounds a week. What did she do with it, where did she put it?’
King opened the top drawer of the chest of drawers and took out a hypodermic syringe, broken and rusty.
‘Handle with care,’ said Montgomerie, ‘she’s a category one risk.’
‘Of what?’ said Karen.
‘AIDS,’ said King, placing the dirty works on top of the chest of drawers. ‘She was a smackhead.’
‘I never knew…’ .
‘Maybe you just didn’t want to know,’ said King. ‘Girl works the street seven nights a week, nothing to show for it.’
‘She did as well,’ said Karen, ‘seven nights each week, every week. Never missed a shift, winter or summer.’
‘A shift.’
‘Just an expression.’ Karen went back to the kitchen and sat at the table. She wore a black T-shirt, short black skirt and black tights, and King noticed how thin her legs were, anorexically thin. Perhaps she was clinically depressed, he thought, perhaps that’s why she seems so detached.
‘Only one thing drives a girl to do that, Karen,’ said King from Stephanie Craigellachie’s room, ‘and it’s not the dream of a bought three apartment in the south side.’
‘I know,’ said Karen.
‘She was spending it all on junk.’ King opened the other drawers as Montgomerie sifted through clothes hanging in the wardrobe.
‘She was a really nice girl,’ said Karen. ‘Brought a cat home once, found it in the gutter, leg smashed, then she took it to the Dispensary for Sick Animals, walked all the way. She was that sort of girl. Just kept telling me she was saving for a flat.’
‘Ever seen her arms?’ asked King.
‘Her arms?’ Karen shook her head. ‘She liked long-sleeved blouses and dresses. Even in the summer.’
‘Ever think she might be covering herself up?’
‘No.’ The girl’s expression became vacant, as if the real world was catching her through her detachment.
‘Been on the street yourself, then?’ asked Montgomerie gently.
‘No. Yes. Sometimes. Just when I needed money.’ She looked at Montgomerie appreciatively. He was tall, flat stomach, chiselled features, downturned moustache.
‘Do you see it as a way of life?’
She cast a feminine eye over King. Chubby, bearded, sort of homely, a family man, she thought, whereas the tall thin one would be playing the field for all he was worth. She shrugged in reply to the question.
‘Just do some growing up first,’ said King without looking at her.
‘You’re not really ready for the street.’ Montgomerie took a dress from where it hung in the wardrobe, looked at it, then laid it on the bed. ‘Nobody ever is, but you’re a little more vulnerable than most. Nobody ever offered you anything to make you feel good?’
‘Not yet.’
‘
Not yet is the right answer. There’s always somebody to help you out if you go on to the streets.’
‘I wouldn’t take anything from a strange man.’
Montgomerie groaned with disappointment. She even sounded like a little girl. ‘It’s not strange men who’d give you anything. It’s men you’ve known a long time, or other women that you think are your mates. They’ll offer you a little packet of angel dust: a short step to the good life.’ He extended his arm to indicate Stephanie Craigellachie’s room. ‘Take a look at the good life.’
‘Hey, I don’t need a sermon.’
‘So tell us a little more about Stephanie,’ said Montgomerie. ‘I mean, now you know that she was a smackhead.’
‘I don’t know nothing more. I told the female cop everything I know.’
‘Come on, Karen!’
She shot a glance at Montgomerie, stung by his anger, alarmed by his impatience. ‘Well, she didn’t have any friends, didn’t seem to have anyway, came from Bearsden, she was already in here when I took the second room.’
‘Ever mention anybody called Dino?’
‘Dino?’ She copied Montgomerie’s pronunciation, ‘Die-no.’
‘Dino.’
She shook her head.
‘Sure?’
‘Nobody of that name. Did mention a Dino from time to time.’ She said ‘Dee-no’.
‘Dino,’ echoed Montgomerie.
King in the cramped smackhead cell turned to Karen, interestedly. ‘What did she say about him?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘Not much to tell us then, is there.’ Montgomerie took out his notebook.
Karen lit a nail, inhaled deeply and exhaled down her nose.
‘Don’t keep us waiting.’ Montgomerie sat at the table opposite the girl.
‘Last person to sit in that chair was Stephanie Craigellachie,’ said Karen comfortingly.
‘Then it’s a good job I’m not superstitious,’ Montgomerie replied coldly, impatiently. ‘So, Dino?’
‘Dino.’ Karen inhaled again. This time the smoke came out of her mouth as she spoke. ‘She mentioned him a lot; no, she didn’t. What I mean is she thought a lot of him, liked him. Didn’t say much about him but when she did talk about him you could tell she liked him, by the way she talked.’
‘I see.’ Montgomerie still hadn’t written a word in his notebook. ‘Any idea of his identity?’
She shook her head. ‘He was just a guy.’
‘You can do better than that.’
‘Well, I got the impression that he had a bit of money. I mind the times she used to come back early, said she’d met Dino, he’d taken her for a meal and had given her enough cash to keep her off the street for the rest of the night. Look, you maybe ought to talk to the girls who work the street, they’d know more than me.’
‘Apparently so,’ said Montgomerie, ‘if you lived with her for a matter of months and still didn’t know she was a dope fiend. Not a lot gets noticed by you, aye? So how often did she meet Dino?’
‘Once a fortnight, once every ten days, once a week. No set pattern.’
‘You said she had no other friends?’
Karen shook her head. ‘None that I knew of, or know of. She went out, came in, stayed in until she went out again. It all figures now. See, the way she talked about that three apartment south of the water. Sort of lived for it but never got nearer to it, like a gold prospector chewing dirt for twenty years and just living for the day he strikes it rich, but never does so, yet he keeps going anyway. Must have been like a dream. I reckon we all need a dream to cling on to, something to work towards. For Stephanie it was a three apartment in the south side. Didn’t really want much, did she, no.’
‘Where did Stephanie come from? Bearsden is a big place.’
‘She didn’t talk much about her background. Just Bearsden where even the muggers say “please”. Couldn’t be more different from my background. I come from Airdrie. Things are so bad there they take the pavements in at night.’
King and Montgomerie split up. King returned to P Division and consulted the yellow pages, making a note of the city’s tattoo artists. Montgomerie went to St George’s, one stop by tube from Kelvinbridge, and walked up towards the Round Toll. He went into a bar called the Gay Gordon. He was looking for a guy called Tuesday Noon.
The Gay Gordon was a tough, rough pub, it was a concrete pillbox of a bar on the corner of a piece of waste ground; opposite, on the other side of the road, was a spread of new factory units; behind them on a hillside was a concrete and glass complex of a huge housing scheme, looking not unlike a modern prison. Montgomerie entered the Gay Gordon via the narrow metal doors. It was still just 11.30 a.m., the pub had been open for business for thirty minutes and would remain open for the next eleven and a half hours selling cheap wines and spirits, plenty of choice of either but only one tap of lager. There was just one room in the Gay Gordon, hard chairs and tables chained to the floor as much to stop the punters taking them to furnish their homes as it was to stop them being used as weapons in the inevitable Friday night rammy. Along the wall opposite the gantry was a red upholstered bench, badly slashed, with the stuffing pulled out in dull white plumes. The barman was a hard-looking, bald-headed guy who gave Montgomerie a mean look as he entered, a look which said very clearly that cops and sawdust don’t mix. Not in the Gay Gordon. Above the gantry was a television mounted on the wall with both the colour and the volume turned up too loudly. At the moment it was horse-racing being beamed from a shire county in England. It might as well have been beamed into the Gay Gordon from another planet. Two young guys in Oxfam cast-offs slumped together in the far corner staring blankly into space, smashed on cheap junk. Tuesday Noon was sitting on the bench nearer to the door, underneath a window through which streamed a beam of sunlight which illuminated the flecks of dust floating in the air inside the bar.
Montgomerie went up to the gantry and ordered a lager and a whisky. The barman looked at him coldly and then served him slowly in his own good time. Montgomerie picked up the drinks and walked across the tacky lino and sat opposite Tuesday Noon, pulling the chair from the table as far as the silver chain would allow.
‘Hiya, Tuesday.’ Montgomerie put the whisky down on the table in front of Tuesday Noon, who picked up the glass and sank the contents in one, neat. He rasped a hot breath of thanks across the tabletop. He had a black mouth with a few bent yellow pegs going up and down. He pushed the empty glass across the table towards Montgomerie.
‘Not so fast off your mark, Tuesday,’ said Montgomerie. ‘I want a wee chat first.’
‘Aye?’ Tuesday Noon’s hot breath blasted across the table.
‘You heard about the lassie who was filled in just off Blythswood Square last night?’
‘Aye. I read about it in the Record.’
‘That’s what I’m interested in.’
‘Aye?’ He wasn’t giving anything away.
Montgomerie suddenly wondered how old Tuesday Noon was, he could be as young as forty or as old as sixty, grey whiskers, grimy face, matted hair, same old scarf round his neck winter and summer. ‘Heard anything?’
‘Not yet.’
Quite clever, Tuesday, quite clever.
‘Been up the Square recently?’
‘Not really my part of town, Mr Montgomerie.’ He pushed the empty glass further across the table towards Montgomerie.
‘We’re interested in a character called Dino. Ring any bells, no?’
Tuesday Noon shook his head. ‘Never heard nothing about no Dino.’
‘Not worth another drink then, is it.’ Montgomerie drank his lager in three deep draughts.
‘Did hear of something else.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Information first, Tuesday, drink later, if it’s worth it.’
‘Heard of the Black Team?’
Montgomerie shook his head.
‘Come on, Tuesday, ‘I’m not a fish on the end of a line. Stop playing games
or you get bounced into the cells.’
‘For what?’
‘A11 those unpaid fines. Have you any idea of the amount of outstanding warrants out on you? You can get pulled any time we please. Just happens that you’re more useful to us on the streets, but that’s not a guarantee of liberty so don’t abuse the privilege or you get taken to your wee home from home.’
‘OK, OK. The Black Team—women, all women, too old to work the street any more—they jump young girls at the end of the night, roll them for their night’s takings.’
‘At the end of the night?’
‘Towards the end of it. There’s not a lot of point doing it in the early evening, the purses are still empty then, also it’s still light. They have to wait till dark, have to wait till the girls have taken a good few quid, turned a few tricks. If they roll five girls they pick up a good few hundred quid for twenty minutes’ work. Sometimes they don’t have to roll them, just walk up to them and show them the knife…’
‘I see.’
‘Or threaten to give them a doing. Any sensible girl will give up her wedge, she can work an extra hour or so and make up the loss. So she’s late to her bed but at least she lives and can still work. You know what women can be like to each other, and where one old woman can stick a younger one with a knife or chair leg to make sure she doesn’t work again for weeks, if at all.’
‘The Black Team?’
‘That’s it, Mr Montgomerie.’
‘I just can’t see a team of women rolling down the hill knocking over all the girls. The girls would stand there waiting for it.’
‘The girls kept getting picked up and dropped off all the time. A girl gets brought back to the street by a trick, gets out of the motor and next minute, before she knows where she is, the Black Team have got her against the wall. I’d say that was worth a drink, Mr Montgomerie.’
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