by Alan Parks
Mary handed over the photo, sat down beside him. Her face seemed to have gone a bit pale suddenly. Seemed distracted. Not that interested in his information.
‘You okay?’ asked McCoy.
She shook her head. ‘Feel a bit sick all of a sudden.’
McCoy looked at the photo: a table outside a cafe somewhere hot, sunshine giving the picture a whitish glow. He peered at the sign above the cafe door. ‘L’AUBERGE’. France, then. Bobby March was laughing in the picture, head back. Keith Richards had never struck McCoy as much of a comedian, but who knew. He was leaning forward, cackling away. Must have told him a joke.
There were empty bottles of wine on the table, glasses, packets of Marlboro and, tucked in beside March’s snake-skin-booted feet, was the bag. It was just as his dad had described. Beige, woven, long handle, couple of badges he couldn’t make out pinned to it.
‘Can I take this?’ McCoy asked.
‘Can you fuck!’ said Mary. ‘Needs to go back to the library or I’ll be shot.’
She took it out his hand, just in case.
‘What’s up with you, anyway?’ asked McCoy.
‘What d’you mean?’ she said, a little defensively.
‘You usually know more about cases like Alice Kelly than I do. What happened to Mary Webster, intrepid girl reporter? Alice Kelly is right up your street. Wee girl missing, human interest, clock ticking. Why are you not out there, shaking and moving?’
She sat forward, put her head in her hands. ‘Because I think I’m pregnant,’ she said quietly.
Was the last thing McCoy was expecting. ‘What?’
She sat back up, looked straight ahead. ‘You heard me.’
‘Well, that’s good, eh?’ said McCoy, not quite knowing what to say.
‘Is it?’ she asked, looking at him.
‘Have you told Wattie?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Nope. And I’ve no bloody idea why I just told you.’ Old Mary back. ‘And I swear, McCoy, if you tell a single living soul, especially and including Douglas Watson, I’ll kill you, but not before I cut your dick off with a rusty penknife. Got me?’
McCoy nodded.
‘What did you say when Angela told you about wee Bobby?’ she asked. Then realised. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t ask. Didn’t think.’
‘It’s okay,’ said McCoy, ‘I like talking about him.’ He was quiet for a moment, lost in thought. ‘I can’t remember really. I was pished. Had just come in from the Victoria. Think I asked her if she was sure.’
Mary rolled her eyes. ‘Marginally better than asking if it was yours, I suppose.’ She stood up.
‘You should tell him,’ said McCoy. ‘He’ll be over the moon.’
‘I know he will,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’ve not told him.’
‘You want to wait until you’re sure?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘Scared he’ll not want it?’
‘No. He will. You know Wattie. It’ll be a dream come true. It’s me. I’m no so sure I want it.’
She turned and walked back to the lifts. The door opened and she got in. ‘See you, McCoy. And thanks for the chat.’
SEVENTEEN
The cafe was just about closing when McCoy got there. Had walked from the Daily Record, taken him longer than he thought. The waitress was wiping down the tables, collecting the big plastic tomatoes from each table on a plastic tray. He checked his watch. Four twenty. He was late. Not many people left in the Golden Egg, just the stragglers. A young couple sitting at the front; a man with a sleeping toddler in his arms, kid’s chubby hand still clutching a foil windmill. A girl sitting at the back. She was drawing something in a sketchbook: must have been a picture of Alfredo behind the counter, kept looking up at him. She finished, closed it over and looked up at McCoy.
‘I was wondering if you’d turn up,’ she said.
He wouldn’t have recognised Laura Murray in a million years. She looked nothing like the girl in the photo he had in his wallet. The long brown hair was gone, was dyed blonde now, cut short. She was dressed in blue jeans and a man’s white T-shirt. Duffel bag on the seat next to her.
She took a sip of her coffee. ‘Iris said you wanted to see me.’
McCoy nodded, a bit taken aback that she seemed to be running the conversation. Felt like he was about to be interviewed.
‘She found you, then?’ he asked.
‘She didn’t have to try too hard. I know her from the shebeen. Donny liked it, liked to drink there with his cronies. I used to sit in the kitchen with her, help her count the stock and the money.’
‘Playing shops with Iris?’ said McCoy, sitting down. ‘What, you two best pals now?’
‘Why shouldn’t we be?’ Laura’s posh West End voice carried across the cafe. ‘She’s had quite a life, Iris. More interesting than most people. You know she used to dance in Paris?’
McCoy snorted, tried not to laugh. ‘Is that what she’s calling it now? Dancing on her back, more like.’
Laura glared at him. ‘Sorry, I forgot you were a policeman for a minute. Didn’t mean to offend your bourgeois sensibilities.’
He’d never heard anyone say ‘policeman’ with so much contempt in his life. Or ‘bourgeois’, come to that, whatever it meant.
The waitress brought over a coffee, plonked down a Pyrex cup and saucer in front of McCoy. Turned to Laura. ‘You want anything else, hen? We’re closing soon.’
Laura shook her head. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
The waitress wandered back to the counter and started filling the plastic tomatoes from a big catering bottle of tomato sauce.
‘Want to tell me what went on up at Whitehill Street?’ McCoy asked, stirring two spoons of sugar into his coffee.
‘Whitehill Street?’ Laura repeated. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought you were here to persuade me to go home.’ She fumbled in her bag, got out her cigarettes, lit up and stared at him.
McCoy sighed. Didn’t have the energy for this. Needed to hurry things up.
‘Let me remind you. Whitehill Street. Horrible street over by the Wills factory. It’s where your boyfriend Donny lived. Top floor, single-end. Picture of the Rangers team on the wall. It’s where he got stabbed, where he died, bled out onto the floor cloth. Remember it now, Laura? Coming back? Ringing any bells, is it?’
She looked at him, said nothing.
‘C’ mon, Laura. I’ve been doing this too long and you’re too bright for this. Just tell me what happened.’
‘I’ve never been to Whitehill Street. I don’t even know where—’
The words died in her mouth as McCoy reached into his pocket and took out the paperback of The Great Gatsby. He put it on the table. Corner of it stained red with Donny MacRae’s blood.
Laura looked at it. Looked at him, fear in her eyes. Fear that turned to tears soon enough.
‘Come on, Laura, just tell me,’ said McCoy. ‘It’s over now, it’s done.’
She nodded, looked defeated. Got some paper serviettes out the silver dispenser, wiped at her eyes.
‘We’d had a fight, a big fight. Donny was being an idiot, acting like a child. I stormed out the flat, left him to it, stayed at Iris’s that night. She said I could stay on the bed in the kitchen, keep out the way of the party. I couldn’t really sleep though, there was too much noise even back there, so I left early and walked back to the flat. Was going to be the bigger person and say sorry.’
She stubbed her cigarette out in the foil ashtray, wiped her eyes again. Carried on.
‘When I got there the door was open and he was lying there, on the bed. There was blood everywhere. I didn’t know what to do. So I just ran. I left him there. I know I shouldn’t have but I . . .’
And that’s when the real tears started. Big gulping sobs, snotty nose, the whole shebang. McCoy went up to the counter, got her another coffee and put it down in front of her. Found a clean cloth hanky in his jacket pocket and passed it over.
She smiled as she took it, started to calm down a bit. Then she began to fill him in about love’s young dream. After a couple of minutes McCoy was having a hard time deciding what was worse, the crying or the pish she was telling him now.
‘Donny could be a bit wild, but he was a good guy really, once you got past all the showing off and the tough guy stuff. He had a horrible childhood, you know. He suffered a lot, but he was still really kind when he wanted to be.’
‘Really?’ said McCoy. ‘He wasn’t that kind to Alec Page. You know about that, do you, Laura? Know what happened to him?’
‘That wasn’t Donny,’ she said quickly. Then looked like she wished she hadn’t.
‘Oh aye, who was it, then?’ he asked.
She fumbled with her cigarettes, managed to get one lit. ‘There was someone else there, they did it,’ she said. ‘Not Donny.’
‘Did they now . . .’ McCoy wasn’t even trying to sound convinced.
‘He never said who it was, never told me a name. Just told me someone had gone crazy, that it wasn’t meant to happen like it did. The guy just took a Stanley knife out his jacket and went mad before Donny could stop him.’
‘And Donny didn’t say who this mystery guy was?’ he asked. ‘There’s a surprise.’
‘Windmill!’
The toddler had appeared by their table, foil windmill in hand, held up to show them. His mum arrived just behind him, scooped him up. ‘Wee menace just runs,’ she said. ‘Doesnae care where.’ Asked him who was a cheeky monkey as she carried him back to his dad counting out change at the counter.
Laura carried on. ‘All he said was he didn’t expect it, not from someone like him.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. That’s all he said.’
For some reason, he was inclined to believe her. When people were lying, they usually exaggerated a story, added details, thought that made it seem more convincing.
‘Did you see anyone up at Whitehill Street?’ he asked. ‘Near the flat?’
She took a sip of coffee, too hot, blew on it. ‘No, I just ran. Went over to Jean at the van.’
‘So he was definitely dead when you got there?’ McCoy asked.
‘Yes, I tried to find a pulse but there was . . .’
Then she stopped. Something had dawned on her. ‘You don’t think it was me, do you?’ Some of the attitude was starting to wear off. She sounded panicky. ‘I didn’t do it. Honestly.’
McCoy held up his hands. ‘I never thought you did. Don’t worry, I cleared the flat of all the stuff you left behind anyway. Only me and your uncle Hector are ever going to know you were there.’
The news didn’t seem to make her that happy. ‘Good old Uncle Hec,’ she said. ‘Always there to help in any situation. Whether you want him to or not.’
‘Saw your dad today too,’ said McCoy. ‘Paid me a visit to tell me to get you home pronto.’
She looked him in the eye, sat forward, tone of her voice changed. ‘You can tell my dad and uncle Hec that I’m fine, but if they think I’m going back they can forget it. I’m sixteen in a month and then they can’t make me. All I’ve got to do is keep out their way for a bit and there’s nothing they – or you – can do about it.’
McCoy sat back. Could see her father in her, the same entitled tone, the same superiority. Trouble was she wasn’t wrong; he couldn’t really bodily drag her into a car and drive her back. Wasn’t going to tell her that, though.
‘Okay. You tell me why you left, why you won’t go back,’ he said. ‘You tell me a good reason and I’ll think about it.’
She thought about it and then she shook her head. ‘I just couldn’t be there any more. I was suffocating.’ She smiled and her face brightened. ‘It was too bourgeois.’
McCoy grinned in spite of himself. Laura Murray certainly wasn’t like most fifteen-year-olds he’d met. Now all he had to do was decide if that was a good or a bad thing.
‘Where you have been staying?’ McCoy asked her.
‘In the storeroom at Iris’s,’ she said.
‘What?’
She laughed. ‘I was at the Co-op when you came, getting the messages.’
McCoy shook his head. ‘She owes me five quid.’
‘Two pound fifty actually. She gave me half.’
The waitress appeared again, bill in her hand. ‘That’s us closing now. Pound and ten.’
McCoy dug in his pocket, handed over the money. They stood up.
‘Need to get you out of there,’ said McCoy. ‘It’s not safe at that shebeen. Not for a young girl like you.’
‘I can look after—’
‘Spare me. It’s no gonna happen,’ said McCoy before she could finish. ‘Weekends in there can get hairy. Believe me, I know.’
‘Well, I’m not going home,’ she said. ‘I told you. Not in a million years. And you can’t make me.’
He was about to tell her he could – but didn’t. There was something about her that was bothering him. She was a bright, good-looking, capable kid. Why was a girl like that so determined to turn her back on her mum and dad? Needed time to find out.
‘Cool your bloody jets. I’ve got somewhere else in mind. I think you’ll like it.’
He nodded at her duffel bag. ‘Is that all your stuff?’
‘No, there’s more back at Iris’s, clothes and stuff like that. More sketchbooks.’
‘Okay, you go to Iris’s and get your stuff. She won’t be there now, it’ll be a big guy called Jumbo. He’s a good lad, tell him I told you to come. I’ll meet you at the Strathmore at quarter to ten. We’ll go from there.’
McCoy dug in his pocket again, handed over a couple of quid. ‘Get a taxi,’ he said, looking over to the rank at the bus station.
She nodded, took his money. McCoy watched her go. Wondered what he was doing. Wondered why he hadn’t just taken her back to Bearsden like he was supposed to. Part of him knew. She wasn’t just the sulky teenager intent on annoying her mum and dad that he’d imagined; he’d seen real fear in her eyes when he’d suggested it. He had a feeling Murray and his brother weren’t telling him the whole story. Not by a long shot. And until they did he wasn’t going to deliver her. No matter how much they asked.
EIGHTEEN
He knew something was up the minute he turned the corner into Stewart Street. There were four or five pandas outside the station, doors open, lights lazily spinning. He could see Larry Kerr from the Evening Times, Jamie Forsyth from The Citizen, a couple of other reporters he didn’t recognise. All of them, jackets off, sleeves rolled up, fags in mouths, grim expressions. Billy the desk sergeant was outside too, standing talking to them, hat held in his hand, bald head already red from the sun.
McCoy’s heart sank. Only one reason they’d all be there. Billy and the reporters nodded hello as he approached. Billy held out his packet of Regal and McCoy took one.
‘Where’d they find her?’ he asked.
‘They didn’t,’ said Billy. ‘Not yet anyway. But they arrested a guy a few hours ago.’ He nodded back at the station. ‘He’s in there now. Seems like the fucker all right. Raeburn’s got him in the interrogation room.’
‘Anyone we know?’ asked McCoy.
Billy shook his head. ‘Young guy, can’t be more than sixteen, seventeen. Lives in the same close apparently.’
‘Bloody nonce,’ said Forsyth. ‘Least he can do is hurry up and tell them where the body is.’
‘How’d they get him?’ asked McCoy, ignoring Forsyth as he always did.
‘Seems one of the neighbours was away at her sister’s for the weekend,’ said Billy. ‘Came back and read the paper.’
‘The Citizen?’ asked Forsyth hopefully.
Billy ignored him. ‘So she goes into the Woodside and tells Raeburn she’s seen the boy with Alice Kelly. Not for the first time either.’ He flicked his cigarette into the gutter. ‘Seems the dirty bugger’s got a record as well. Indecent exposure. Wouldn’t you
know it.’
McCoy turned to go into the station and Forsyth called after him. ‘By the way, Harry, anything on Bobby March? Editor’s on my bloody back. Need an angle.’
McCoy shook his head. Whatever he thought about what had happened to Bobby March, the last person he’d tell would be Jamie bloody Forsyth. One step up from pond life, as far as he was concerned.
‘Any sexy groupies hanging about?’ He grinned. ‘Anyone I could talk to?’
‘Nope. Think his dad’s still around. Try him.’
Forsyth nodded and McCoy walked into the station, hoped Forsyth would traipse over to the Tradewinds and experience the joys of Wullie March. He pulled the double doors to the office open and walked in. The atmosphere was the same as it always was when a big case was breaking. Everyone standing around, leaning on desks, nobody doing any real work, eyes flicking to the corridor that led to the interrogation rooms every five seconds, waiting for a result. McCoy hung his jacket over his chair, went over to Thomson.
‘Got someone, I hear,’ he said.
Thomson nodded. ‘Raeburn’s in there with him now. Him and Wattie. Been at it for a few hours.’
‘Wattie?’ asked McCoy, surprised.
Thomson nodded. ‘Thick as thieves those two these days.’
McCoy nodded. Felt even more out in the cold than usual. Knew he should be in there, not out here waiting, knowing nothing. He sat at his desk, tried to pretend he was interested in rearranging his files but he was just like all the rest of them. Glancing over every five seconds. Waiting.
An hour passed. Nothing happening, just the office getting hotter and hotter. McCoy looked at his watch for about the twentieth time. Decided he couldn’t just sit here and wait. And yet that was exactly what he ended up doing, the same as everybody else.
He got up, yawned. ‘How long’s that now?’ he asked.
Thomson looked up at the clock on the wall. ‘Going on four hours.’
‘Christ. Hope it’s worth it.’ He unbuttoned his shirt and loosened his tie. ‘It’s bad enough out here; must be a hundred bloody degrees in that interrogation room.’