Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel

by Quintin Jardine

  I could see the headlines as I lay in the darkness . . . ‘Gay Blade Strikes!’ . . . and I didn’t fancy it at all.

  Ten

  I gave up trying to sleep just after six; apart from my pressing work problems, Thornton’s visit was weighing heavily upon me. He was the last of our parents’ generation, mine and Myra’s, and such a hearty fit guy, that it had never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be around for my fiftieth birthday, and for a few after that. I tried to imagine what I would say to Alex when ‘It’ happened, but I couldn’t. Instead, I had a vision of Jean, Alex and myself in the front row of the church where Myra and I had been married, and my eyes filled with tears.

  I rose and took my time about getting ready for the day. The face that I saw in the mirror as I shaved was creased and lined, with dark bags under the blue eyes. My hair was all over the place, and looked greyer than ever. I could still find a few dark strands, but they were as outnumbered as the Spartans at Thermopylae. They had begun to retreat on the day that I cut off a lock and put it in Myra’s coffin, and had been quickly overcome by the silver hordes.

  ‘Vulnerable?’ I grunted. ‘No, you’re just a sad old bastard.’

  I chose a suit, a pale cream linen thing that was meant to look crumpled . . . or so I’d been told by a dickhead in Austin Reed, who hadn’t bothered to tell me that it would need dry cleaning after almost every wearing. I complemented it with a black shirt, but didn’t bother with a tie. I remembered my admonition to McGuire about flashy dressing but disregarded it; I wanted to leave my image with the man I’d be seeing that day long after I’d left him.

  I was on my second coffee, and had run almost half a loaf through the toaster, when Alex joined me, also dressed for action. ‘Why did Alison go?’ she asked, a little anxiously, as she filled a bowl with cereal. ‘Did you have a row?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I reassured her. ‘She had a work call.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, relieved. ‘That’s all right, then.’

  I laughed. ‘There will come a day in your life, kid, when you get a business call at half past one in the morning. When it happens, I promise you that it will not be all right.’

  ‘Lawyers don’t get calls in the middle of the night.’

  ‘No? I reckon that if this career choice of yours is definitive, it’s time I introduced you to a couple I know. There’s a man called Mitchell Laidlaw, one of my five-a-side football chums. I’ll ask him if he’ll have a talk with you. And there are a couple of advocates that you ought to meet.’

  She shrugged. ‘If you want.’ Then she turned to what was really on her mind. ‘This trip of Grandpa’s, Pops. Do you know where he’s going?’

  ‘No,’ I said . . . honestly, I believe. ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘I think it’s weird, going on holiday and not knowing where you’re going.’

  ‘Not at all. People used to do it all the time, before the days of packages to bloody Benidorm, back when you went on holiday in your own country, not in other people’s. When I was a kid, we went to Fife.’ That was the only place my mother would go, but I didn’t tell Alex that. She looked at me with a kind of pity.

  I was in the office by quarter to nine, but I wasn’t first. McGuire was there before me. He raised an eyebrow when he saw the suit. ‘You really do need to meet my tailor, boss,’ he said.

  I waved a middle finger in his direction and retreated to my sanctum. I hung my jacket on a hook . . . no sense in creasing it more than necessary . . . sat behind my desk and called Alison’s mobile. ‘How’s it going?’ I asked. ‘Has Dan got a result yet?’

  ‘Can’t talk now,’ she replied, quietly. ‘Office?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Give me five.’

  I replaced the phone in its socket and waited, looking out into the outer office, and waving, first to Andy Martin, then Jeff Adam, as each arrived. The DS stuck his head round the door. ‘Want me to get back on to Newcastle, boss, and ask them to dig up that car auction manager?’

  ‘No. Get them to give you his name and number and call him yourself. Cut out the middle man.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Alison called back a couple of minutes later, on my mobile. ‘Sorry about earlier,’ she said. ‘I was with Mr Pringle.’

  ‘Nuff said. I understand. Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m back at Gayfield now, in the ladies. Did you get a decent night’s sleep after I left?’

  ‘Log-like,’ I lied. ‘How goes it?’

  ‘No result, but we do have a witness, though. Mr Pringle’s team did a door-to-door; they knocked up everyone living in the area. The owner of a mews house in Jamaica Street Lane told them that he came home just after midnight and was just closing his garage after putting his car away, when a man came running past him, heading in the direction of India Street. He gave a decent description: twenties, tall, slim, clean-shaven, black hair, khaki-coloured cotton jacket.’

  ‘That’s a start.’

  ‘More than a start. Bob, this is the same man; I’m sure of it.’ Just what I did not want to hear. ‘He’s changed the hair, as you said he would, but the rest of the description matches Wyllie’s. And that’s not where it ends. When you called earlier we’d just left the home of the manager of the Giggling Goose, a man called Ferrier. We ran the description past him. He told us that it fitted someone who’d been involved in a dust-up in his pub, earlier on. What you have to understand is, his customers aren’t exclusively gay; there’s no sign over the door, and his clientele’s usually mixed.’

  ‘Bet on it,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a pint in there myself before now.’

  ‘Okay, so you know what it’s like. Well, according to Ferrier, a wee bit before twelve, our man bought a pint.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘Yes, as far as Ferrier could tell. Anyway, as he was backing away from the bar, he bumped into two guys and spilled his Guinness all over them. It was his fault, but he started to swear at the other two, and it got a bit heated. There were a couple of homophobic remarks, and Ferrier told them to shut up. Khaki jacket wouldn’t, though. He called them a couple of wankers, said they were hiding behind the barman’s apron, threw what was left of the Guinness in their faces and headed for the door.’

  ‘Did they go after him?’

  ‘Only one of them. The other one, his pal, tried to stop him, but he shook him off. He went charging out and he never came back.’

  ‘Did nobody go and look for him?’ I asked.

  ‘Ferrier said that about ten minutes later, his mate asked him to mind his drink and went looking for him. He came back though, and said he couldn’t see him. That’s not surprising. Just at the end of the lane, where it splits, there are a few steps leading down into the courtyard of the Jamaica Mews flats. The body was hidden down there in the shadows, out of sight of the lane. It was only found when a couple of girls tripped over it on the way home. It was a hell of a mess; multiple stab wounds, big ones, including one in each eye.’

  ‘So the khaki jacket would be pretty bloody,’ I suggested.

  ‘Not necessarily. He must have died very quickly, for there wasn’t as much spread of blood as the number of wounds would suggest.’

  ‘Have you got an ID for him?’

  ‘No, he had nothing on him. Ferrier didn’t know him by name and there was no wallet found. He had one when he was in the pub, so khaki jacket must have taken it.’

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘I agree, but what’s it to you?’

  I told her of my fear. There was a multiple murderer out there, or there would be when Weir’s life support was switched off. It was always possible that Alf Stein would take over the hunt himself, but that wasn’t his style, not when he had the Serious Crimes Unit up his sleeve to put a bit of PR gloss on it.

  ‘What should I do now?’ she asked.

  ‘You should tell Dan Pringle what you know, and then bring Alastair up to speed when he gets back from Perth. They’ll report to Alf, and next thing you know,’ I s
ighed, ‘I can see now, it’ll be pass the fucking parcel to yours truly.’

  I left her to follow my suggestions, or not, as she chose, and went back to my own day. Once everyone had arrived I pulled my team together, and brought everyone up to speed on developments in the Marlon murder investigation, the van, the Newcastle connection, my Friday visit to Lennie Plenderleith, what he’d told me about the reason for Tony Manson’s absence, and the speed with which he’d been moved in to ‘babysit’ . . . some baby! . . . Bella.

  ‘What do we read into that?’ Fred Leggat wondered.

  ‘It says to me that Marlon’s death was as big a surprise to Tony as it probably was to the boy himself. We can expect that the man will be taking it very seriously, now he’s back. I’m going to see him this morning to make sure that he knows he’s in our thoughts.’

  ‘But are we any closer to understanding why Marlon was killed?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know about any of you guys, but I’m not. Newcastle: that’s all we’ve got.’ I looked across at Jeff Adam; he was at his desk, seated, leaning forward, shoulders hunched, phone pressed to his ear, in his left hand, scribbling in his notebook with the other. I waited till he was finished.

  He turned in his chair as he replaced the phone, with a small involuntary jump as he realised that every eye in the room was focused on him. ‘What?’ he exclaimed, provoking a round of laughter. It made me feel good. I was brought up to believe that a happy team was usually a successful team. (Too bad that my dad didn’t realise what was happening within his own small squad.)

  ‘A name,’ Adam announced. ‘I have a name. The Transit was bought by one Glenn Milburn, number seventeen Woodvale Avenue, Wallsend, Newcastle.’

  ‘Real name, or could it be a fake?’ I asked.

  ‘Not very likely, boss. The auction house insists on proof of identity from all buyers. Milburn produced his passport, so unless that was a phoney, it’s him. The manager even gave me a description. Big bloke, face like a front-row forward, he said. Whatever that means.’

  ‘Usually it means that only a short-sighted mother could love it,’ Martin chuckled.

  ‘Excellent, Jeff,’ I told the DS. ‘A good start to the day.’

  ‘How do we play it, boss?’

  ‘You talk to your Newcastle CID contacts; check with NCIS to see if this Milburn has a record, known associates, and so on. You’d better get down there.’ I looked around the team and settled on McGuire. ‘Take Mario with you. I want this guy lifted, I want a name for the second man, and ideally I want the pair of them in our custody by this evening. As a minimum, I want Milburn. Before you set off, though, you must see the fiscal’s office about getting a warrant from a sheriff to arrest Milburn, and his pal if you can put a name to him, and bring them here. The rights to legal access are different in England and I don’t want this investigation hindered by some fucking lawyer arguing about jurisdiction.’

  He nodded. ‘Understood, sir. I’ll speak to Davie Pettigrew. He’s my tame fiscal.’ He looked at McGuire. ‘Mario, you make the call to Newcastle. I’ll give you a name.’

  ‘Good enough,’ I said, just as the phone rang in my room. I went back to my desk and picked it up.

  ‘Jesus, Bob, that was a bit embarrassing last night,’ Detective Superintendent Alastair Grant began. ‘I didn’t know about you and Alison Higgins.’

  ‘You still don’t, buddy,’ I warned him.

  ‘Sure, that’s a given. But still, it was a surprise, especially after she cut you like a knife on Saturday in the Sheraton. Mind you,’ he chuckled, ‘it does explain why she cut you like a knife. Who was that gorgeous brunette you had on your arm?’

  ‘A witness,’ I replied, abruptly.

  ‘She’s not a hostile witness, that’s for fucking certain.’

  ‘Listen, Alastair,’ I warned him, ‘if all you’ve got to do with your day is get yourself on my shit list, you want to find something else, sharpish.’

  He laughed. ‘When the man of mystery gets caught out twice in two days, you can’t expect it to go unremarked.’

  ‘Fine,’ I retorted, ‘but if it doesn’t go unreported I’ll come looking for you.’

  ‘Don’t worry, my mouth will stay shut . . .’

  ‘And nothing will be said to Alison.’

  ‘Absolutely not, no.’

  ‘Good. Now,’ I asked, ‘is there another reason for this so far annoying phone call?’

  ‘I take it she told you what it was all about,’ he said.

  ‘You shouldn’t assume that.’ I paused. ‘But let’s say that I forced it out of her.’

  ‘It’s the same bloke in each case, we’re sure,’ he volunteered. ‘I’ve suggested to Dan Pringle that we should take the lead in both inquiries, but he’s on his high horse. He says that his is a murder, while ours is only attempted, or maybe even just serious assault.’

  ‘That’s a crap argument and we both know it. You outrank him; don’t suggest, man, bloody tell him.’

  ‘I would, but he’s been to Alf.’

  I laughed, softly, seeing a bandwagon heading in my direction. ‘Go on,’ I murmured.

  ‘And Alf says—’

  ‘That he’s not holding your jackets while you sort it out,’ I offered, ‘and that the lead in the investigation passes to me?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Grant admitted, after a moment’s hesitation.

  ‘Does he want me to go and see him?’

  ‘No, he’s at what he calls an inter-force CID exchange today, although I’m sure I heard the swish of swinging golf clubs in the background when I spoke to him. He asked me to pass it on to you, and also to give you any assistance that you need. By that, he meant manpower.’

  Since I had known what was coming, I had thought it through. ‘Make that woman-power,’ I told him. ‘I want Alison to lead both stabbing investigations, working out of your office, but reporting to me.’

  ‘Shouldn’t she move to Fettes for the duration?’ he asked.

  ‘No fucking way, man,’ I retorted, ‘and I shouldn’t have to spell out why.’

  ‘No, maybe not,’ he conceded. ‘Do you want anyone else?’

  ‘Assistance as necessary, but for the moment I’ll assign a couple of people to work with her. Tell her what’s happened . . . it won’t come as a surprise . . . then ask her to come up here right away, so I can brief them all together.’

  As I hung up, I turned my thoughts to planning my day. While I’d been speaking to Grant, the force press officer had left a message with Fred Leggat, wanting me to update the media on the Watson investigation, but my new inquiry would have to be dealt with too, and that would grab most of the headlines. I could have done without it, but I didn’t trust the press guy to handle it on his own. He was a police officer, a veteran uniformed inspector, who’d been put there to see out his time. He was known among the senior ranks as ‘Inspector Hesitant’. He was fine for reading out prepared statements, but I couldn’t trust him to handle questions without pissing in the soup.

  I’d been lobbying Alf Stein for a while about the need for a specialist professional in that office, and he’d taken it to the Command Corridor, but he’d run up against the age-old blocker, ‘budget considerations’.

  I called Inspector Hesitant back and told him to call the media in for ten thirty, then went outside to see Brian Mackie and Stevie Steele. Brian knew Alison from our drugs squad days, so it made sense for him to work with her, and I wanted to see how the younger DC functioned under a bit of pressure.

  I was impatient to get it all over with; I had a visit to pay that day, as soon as possible, and the enforced delay was annoying me. On top of that, there was something else I had to do, a call I’d forgotten about until Alastair Grant had reminded me, inadvertently.

  I might have decided to forget about it altogether, if it hadn’t been for my daughter, and a promise made to her, and . . . a tingling curiosity inside me that I couldn’t quite manage to suppress.

  I rang the Airburst studi
o, although I wasn’t sure when Mia’s working day began. At nine thirty, it turned out, on that day at least; she was in, and took my call. ‘Hi, Bob,’ she said, in the warm voice that worked so well on radio, and that tingling grew stronger. ‘How’ve you been?’

  ‘Good, and busy,’ I replied.

  ‘Before you say anything more,’ she continued, ‘I haven’t forgotten about that demo CD for Alex . . . but what I did forget was to bring it with me this morning. I’m putting my programme together for this afternoon, then I’m going back home, so if you were free around lunchtime, you could call in and pick it up. And,’ she paused for a second, ‘we could finish that discussion we left hanging in the air on Saturday.’