by Alan Parks
‘Belfast, apparently. Working. Been away for a week or so.’
No reply. Tried again.
‘Mother got a boyfriend?’ asked McCoy.
‘Don’t know,’ said Wattie. ‘
Should find out. You know as well as me, nine times out of ten it’s the dad or the stepdad.’
Knocked again. They waited.
‘Told you,’ said McCoy. ‘Be away on their holidays.’
Wattie nodded, looked at his bit of paper.
‘How many more? asked McCoy.
A quick totting-up. ‘Another twelve.’
They walked back down the stairs, could hear the radio better now. Definitely Lulu. ‘I’m A Tiger’. They stepped out the close, back into the heat and the glare of the sun.
‘Well, much as I’d like to accompany you on your travels, Wattie, I have my orders. Have to get back to the shop.’
Wattie looked pained. ‘Harry, you know working with Raeburn isn’t up to me. I didn’t even want—’
McCoy held his hand up. ‘I know, I know. Don’t worry about it, it’s between me and Raeburn. And I’m not that bothered. Quite enjoying the peace and quiet. But you stick in there. This is a big case, see what you can learn.’
Wattie grinned. ‘Then report back to you?’
‘Did I say that? Now, beat it before Raeburn sends out the search party.’
Wattie nodded, started walking up the road, stopped and turned. ‘Forgot to say. Think Raeburn might be putting you on they bank robberies.’
‘What?’ said McCoy, dismayed. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
Wattie grinned. ‘Thought you’d be happy. Got to be better than twiddling your thumbs, though.’
‘Not for me, it’s not. I like twiddling my thumbs.’ Dawned on him. ‘And this would be the robberies you and Raeburn have been on for two months and still haven’t got anywhere? Great. Tell him thanks but no thanks.’
‘Not sure you’ve got much of a choice,’ said Wattie. ‘What you going to say to him?’
McCoy sighed. Knew Wattie was right. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, they had.
‘Please tell Detective Sergeant Raeburn I would be delighted to help with the investigation in any way I can.’
Wattie smiled. ‘I’ll maybe not say it exactly like that. Files are on my desk. Have a look.’
Wattie waved, walked up the road looking back down at his bit of paper. McCoy watched him go, couldn’t believe how hot it was already. Might get a taxi to the shop, wasn’t sure he could face walking there, not in this weather. Anyway, wasn’t like he was going to get a hold of anyone. Anyone who had holidays would have gone by now, and even if they hadn’t, they weren’t stupid enough to answer the phone and get pulled back in. He opened his packet of fags and realised he’d only one left. Crossed the street to the newsagent. There was a board leaning against the wall outside. Crossed wire covering the headline.
‘SEARCH CONTINUES FOR MISSING GIRL’.
Raeburn had his work cut out for him. This was the kind of case that sells papers, gets people talking, wanting to know all the grisly details. The kind that gets a braying crowd outside the court. Pitt Street would be on him too. Longer the girl was missing, the more incompetent the polis would look and the big boys couldn’t have that. They’d want her found, soon as. And if she was dead by the time Raeburn found her? Then he’d better get the guy who did it. And quick.
TWO
McCoy recognised the shirt. Was made of some sort of black see-through material with wee silver stars on it. He recognised it because he’d had the same one on last night, only then he was onstage at the Electric Garden, not lying in an unmade bed with a syringe sticking out his arm. Rest of the outfit was the same, too. Jeans, pointed cowboy boots, some thin silver chains around his neck and some cloth bands tied round his wrists. Hair was remarkably intact. That spiky blond feather cut you would recognise at a hundred yards. That, the hooked nose and the wide grin that made up Bobby March. Rock star.
He’d only been back in the shop five minutes, had just got the phone list from Billy on the front desk and was about to call Sammy Howe to tell him his trip to Aviemore was off when the phone started ringing. Was the manager of the Royal Stuart Hotel. Suspicious death. And, being the only bugger left in the shop, he had to deal with it. He’d been expecting to see some businessman lying dead with a heart attack, wallet cleaned out by whichever girl he’d picked up on the Green. Really wasn’t expecting this, not at all.
He was trying to breathe through his mouth, but it wasn’t doing much good. There was no way around it: the hotel room stank. Incense sticks, sweat, whatever Bobby March had eaten the night before. He walked over and opened the window: immediately, the noise of the trains on the bridge, glare of the sun on the Clyde below. He stood there for a minute looking out, trying to let the room fill up with less fetid air. Was helping a bit.
He turned. ‘They know yet?’ he asked the hotel manager.
‘Who?’
‘The hardcore downstairs,’ said McCoy.
He’d had to walk through them to get in the hotel entrance. Four or five teenage girls and one boy with glitter all over his face. All of them had the cloth bangles, most had an approximation of the crop. Couple of them in Bobby March T-shirts. The boy’s had looked homemade. Fuck knows what they would be like when the news broke.
‘Don’t imagine so,’ said the hotel manager.
McCoy looked at him. Tweed jacket, toothbrush moustache, ramrod straight back. Didn’t look like he’d be very familiar with rock stars or drug overdoses. More likely parade grounds and shouting at scared National Service boys.
‘Rest of the band?’ asked McCoy.
‘Billeted in deluxe rooms downstairs,’ said the manager. ‘All still asleep, apparently.’ Look on his face demonstrating exactly what he thought about that kind of behaviour.
‘And the maid discovered him when?’ asked McCoy.
‘About ten thirty. She knocked a few times, called out, but there was no response. Thought the guest had checked out. Most do by that hour. No response from his room so she used the master key to get in.’
‘And he was . . .’
The manager pointed at the bed. ‘Exactly like that.’
McCoy looked over at Bobby March again. Remembered what he’d been like last night, up on the stage. Shit, if he was honest. He’d looked out of it, forgetting words, half playing the songs. McCoy was about to leave, call it a night, when March turned to the band and nodded.
First notes of ‘Sunday Morning Symphony’ rang out and suddenly Bobby March moved up a gear, became what he had once been, the best guitarist of his generation. He grabbed the mic, grinned, sang the first line and the crowd, including McCoy, went mental. This was what they had all come to hear. He powered through all twelve minutes of the song, played out his skin, made you remember why The Rolling Stones had asked him to join, and ended on a dime.
The hall went wild, standing, clapping, shouting. March stood there sweating, looked wrung out, whatever power he’d summoned had run out.
‘This is from our new album, Starshine!’ he announced, and that’s when McCoy left. He’d had the misfortune to hear it.
The stuff about The Rolling Stones had haunted Bobby March ever since it happened. They’d asked him to audition after Brian Jones got chucked out. He came down to Barnes, did a couple rehearsals at Olympic. Keith Richards told some reporter waiting outside that it was ‘the best version of the Stones there ever was’ and they asked him to join.
Bobby did the one thing nobody, including Keith Richards, expected. He said thanks but no thanks. Had decided he had his own career to follow. By the look of the hotel room, the half-empty takeaway boxes, and the fact he was staying in the Royal Stuart and not the Albany, playing the Electric Garden not the Apollo, it might not have been the best decision Bobby March ever made.
‘Twenty-seven,’ said McCoy. ‘Another one.’
The manager looked blank.
�
��Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison. All twenty-seven when they died.’
The manager nodded, still no real idea what he was talking about.
McCoy sat down on one of the chairs in the wee seating area. There was an acoustic guitar leaning against the coffee table, leather jacket on the other chair, copy of Melody Maker and an overflowing ashtray by the side of the bed. Not exactly private jets and TVs out the window. Just a room in the kind of hotel that made its money from weddings and Masonic dinners.
If Bobby March had to die, he’d probably done it at the right time. Probably be more famous dead than he was alive. Two great albums, Sunday Morning Symphony in 1970 and Postcard From Muscle Shoals in ’71. Still, two great albums were better than loads of rotten ones. McCoy bent forward. A couple of the cigarette ends had lipstick on them.
‘No girlfriend?’ he asked the manager.
He shook his head. ‘Just Mr March.’
McCoy walked over by the bed, had another look around. Wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for. Lipstick on the pillow? A forgotten earring? Whatever it was, it wasn’t there. Seemed odd for a rock star to be sleeping alone. Or maybe McCoy just believed all the sex, drugs and rock and roll stories. He walked through to the bathroom. Didn’t know what he was looking for there either. A message on the mirror in red lipstick? All he found was a shaving kit, a bottle of hay fever tablets and a plectrum on the edge of the sink. He put that in his pocket. Souvenir. Walked back through to the bedroom.
The stink of the room hit him again. In this heat, it was impossible to avoid. Not much he could do here and the sight of the lifeless body on the bed was getting to him. McCoy told the manager he’d wait for the medical examiner downstairs and left him staring at the body. He stepped out the room into the long corridor. Only smelt marginally better. A bucket of floor cleaner and a half-eaten hamburger sat on a tray outside one of the rooms.
He should really have told the manager not to let any press or photographers in, but he forgot. If truth be told, he wasn’t really focused on Bobby March and his untimely demise. Mind more concentrated on the fact he was down to acting as a duty officer at a suspicious death. Much as he’d liked Bobby March’s music, the last thing he wanted to do was fill out forms about his time of death and start phoning his next of kin.
The lift pinged and he got in, pressed G, and looked at himself in the mirror on the back wall. He needed a haircut. Needed a holiday. Needed to be anywhere but in a boiling hot lift, the stink of Bobby March’s last curry on him, suit jacket over his arm, dark rings under the arms of his shirt, a sheen of sweat on his face.
Things had to change. And soon.
THREE
The lift door opened and revealed the hotel restaurant in all its glory. McCoy remembered reading about it in the paper when the place opened. Owner had been on holiday to Fiji or somewhere so decided to name the place the Tiki Bar and do it up like a South Sea hideaway. That was the idea. The reality was more like an amateur dramatics production of South Pacific. Wee bamboo roofs over the booths, mural of a white sandy beach, plastic flowers and coconuts everywhere.
McCoy grimaced and sat down. The waitress eased her way out from behind the bar, sticking her chewing gum under it as she did. She was dressed in some sort of raffia fringe skirt and bikini top, a flower garland round her neck. Effect might not have been so bad if she was Polynesian, or even had a tan; didn’t work quite so well when you were a peely-wally Scottish girl with freckles and a half grown-out curly perm.
‘Aloha. Welcome to the South Seas. Can I get you a cocktail, sir?’ she recited in a bored Glasgow accent.
‘Pint,’ said McCoy. The thought of a cocktail at that time in the morning was more than even he could cope with.
She nodded and wandered off. Big navy-blue knickers flashing through the raffia every so often. He had a look at the menu while he waited for his drink. The specialty of the house seemed to be chicken breast in a banana and sherry sauce. No wonder the place was empty.
Pint arrived and he took a long draught.
‘Mr McCoy, I wasn’t expecting to see you here.’
He looked up and Phyllis Gilroy was standing in front of him. In a concession to the heat, the medical examiner’s usual tweeds had been replaced by light-blue trousers and a flowery, patterned shirt. The battered brown leather briefcase was still in place. She was looking round the restaurant with a mixture of wonder and horror.
‘I wasn’t aware the South Seas was famed for its cuisine,’ she said.
‘I’ve had a look at the menu. Believe me, it’s not.’
‘This isn’t one for the likes of you, is it? An overdose?’ And then it dawned. ‘Don’t tell me. Raeburn?’
McCoy nodded and she sat down across from him. The waitress appeared and Gilroy ordered a Coke, waited until she’d left before she began.
‘Have you spoken to Murray about it?’ she asked.
McCoy nodded. ‘Nothing he can do. He’s in Central for the next six months, or until they find someone else to do it.’
‘Yes, he finally had to give in. They kept on and on at him. Still, another six months isn’t the end of the world.’
‘You sure? In Perth?’ he asked. ‘I went there for the day once. That was enough.’
‘Fair point.’ She hesitated. ‘I know it’s not really my place to say, but my – thankfully limited – experience of Bernard Raeburn wouldn’t lead me to believe he’s an ideal replacement. Especially with this little girl missing. How on earth did that happen?’
McCoy shrugged. ‘I don’t have enough experience, Thomson’s not good enough, Reid’s about three months from his pension. They needed to bring someone in to replace Murray and Raeburn’s been waiting for a promotion for years. Looks like all the handshakes and the arse-licking at the lodge dinners finally paid off.’
The waitress appeared again and put the Coke down with a grunted ‘Aloha’. McCoy dug in his pocket for change. ‘My treat.’
Gilroy took a long drink, watched the raffia skirt head back towards the bar. ‘In Glasgow, of all places. Extraordinary.’
McCoy took another drink, watched the waitress get the gum from under the bar and stick it back into her mouth. ‘Well, that’s one word for it.’
‘Having said that, this is probably the first time that outfit’s ever been suitable attire,’ said Gilroy. ‘It was sixty-eight degrees at nine a.m. this morning. Unbelievable.’
McCoy smiled. ‘Thought you’d be used to it.’
She smiled. ‘Hardly. We left India when I was three. All I can really remember is the sunshine coming through green leaves and some figs on the path in the garden.’ She pointed upwards. ‘Famous, I believe?’
McCoy nodded. ‘Bobby March. Guitarist. Let’s just say his glory days were behind him. Good in his day, though. Really good. Been a junkie for years, if you believe what you hear. Looks like his luck just ran out.’
She nodded. ‘As it so often does in those cases. Any news?’
She didn’t have to say any more. The whole city seemed to be waiting for news of Alice Kelly, good or bad.
McCoy shook his head. ‘Nothing new. Mind you, way it’s going I’d be the last to know.’
She shifted in her seat, looked annoyed. ‘Well, I think it’s ridiculous. A case like that and you’re sitting here while that fool Raeburn is in charge . . .’
McCoy shrugged, tried to sound less annoyed than he really was. ‘Nothing I can do. He’s made it very plain he thinks I’m less than the shit beneath his shoe. Seems I’m best employed writing up reports about dead junkies. Could be worse, I suppose. He could have put me on public liaison.’
‘Why the enmity?’ she asked. ‘I never quite understood.’
McCoy sighed, told the story. ‘I did three months at Eastern when I started, partnered with Raeburn. He was like the rest of that shop. Backhanders, fit-ups and the path of least resistance. Not my idea of being a polis. Raeburn took it personally when I asked for a transfer. And now that’s come back to
bite me right on the bum.’
She nodded. ‘I see. Unfortunately that account of Mr Raeburn doesn’t surprise me in the least.’
There was also the small matter of Raeburn harassing Stevie Cooper for more and more ‘look the other way’ money for his sauna in Tollcross, but McCoy wasn’t going to let Gilroy in on that one. Raeburn pushed and pushed, raids every week, then Cooper got so pissed off he just closed the place down, moved away. Least when it was open Raeburn was getting his twenty quid a week. Now he was getting bugger all, courtesy of McCoy’s big pal Cooper. No wonder he didn’t like him.
Gilroy smiled, had thought of something. ‘What are you doing tonight?’
McCoy looked up. ‘Tonight? Nothing. Only plus about all this is I’m on regular hours.’
‘Excellent. I’m having a dinner tonight and I’d like you to come. Never know, a night out might cheer you up a bit. Half seven for eight?’
McCoy nodded, heart sinking. He’d walked straight into that one. No chance to make up an excuse now. A night out might well have cheered him up, but a night at Phyllis Gilroy’s wasn’t the kind of night he was thinking about. Not by a long shot.
Gilroy stood up, picked up her bag. ‘Mr March, here I come. See you later.’
McCoy said goodbye, watched as she walked towards the lift, pressed the button. How had he managed to get himself into this?
The dinners were famous. She had one every week, a gathering of the Great and the Good of Glasgow. All of them, no doubt, making small talk about stuff he’d never heard of, looking at him and wondering what he was doing there. And he’d have to wear a bloody suit and tie in this heat. He drained his pint, got up to go. Just five minutes earlier he’d thought he couldn’t feel any sorrier for himself. Showed how wrong you could be.
The group of four or five fans outside the front door had sat down on the pavement, were holding hands, singing ‘Sunday Morning Symphony’. Didn’t look like they’d heard the news yet, but it wouldn’t be long. News like that leaks fast: chambermaids, barmen, porters. Best get out of here before the wailing starts and the press turn up.