Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel

by Quintin Jardine

  I made another decision. ‘No, I can’t dump this one all on you. We interview her together.’

  ‘Okay. Where?’

  ‘I don’t know, but not the fucking Sheraton, that’s for sure.’ I flicked through the options. The radio station? Hardly. That left only one. I took out my phone and called her, mobile to mobile. She must have recognised my number but she answered nonetheless. ‘Hello, Bob,’ she murmured; she was using her radio voice on me, damn her. ‘Do you want to start with a fresh page?’

  ‘I need to see you,’ I replied.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘It can’t wait.’

  ‘Then I’m at home.’ I ended the call and told Alison that she’d given me her home address.

  Cross-town at midday, a journey that might have taken as little as ten minutes, took twenty-five. Duplicitous to the last, I parked well away from the house and made a show of checking the numbers. I was nervous as I rang the bell, in case Mia answered in nothing but her T-shirt, but she must have been looking out for me, for she was fully dressed and showed no surprise when she opened the door and found two of us there.

  ‘Mob-handed,’ she murmured, with a quick glance at my companion as she ushered us in. ‘I’m honoured. It’s a pity you didn’t bring that dishy detective constable though, Bob. I took a shine to him.’

  ‘A female officer was necessary, Mia. This is DI Higgins.’

  She frowned. ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘Think back three weeks,’ I said, ‘and the reason may begin to dawn on you. We’ve arrested Donald Telfer, and charged him with rape.’

  Her eyelashes flickered, but only slightly. ‘Who’s Donald Telfer?’ she asked.

  I sighed. ‘Please. Have some respect for me as a police officer, if nothing else. You know who he is. He’s one of three guys who kept you prisoner overnight, while they raped and sodomised you, repeatedly. The four of you were at school together, and Telfer was getting even for the scars that your brother Ryan left him with, twelve years ago.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ a woman hissed, a woman I’d seen revealed once before. ‘I didn’t make a complaint. I told that inspector that it was a party that got out of hand, and that it was probably my fault.’

  ‘Your blood was clean, Mia. No drink or drugs. What you say doesn’t matter anyway, unless you’re prepared to repeat it under oath, and that won’t be necessary. Telfer’s made a full statement, admitting the whole thing. He’s even told us that McCann and Weir stopped him from finishing his revenge by killing you. He’ll go to the High Court for sentence and he’ll do time, but you don’t have to worry, because the law will give you complete anonymity.’ She sat down, we stayed on our feet.

  ‘That brings me to the real reason we’re here. You’re by no means an idiot; you’ve got a degree in journalism and you must have known that rape victims’ identities are protected, so why not make a complaint?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose I felt sorry for them.’

  ‘Don’t make us laugh. After what they’d put you through? If Telfer told us the truth about what happened to him at Maxwell Academy, you didn’t feel sorry when he tried it on with you then. He reckons you sent your brother to cut him after he tried his hand with you.’

  ‘Then he’s wrong. I told Ryan, but I was laughing about it. Telfer was a spotty wee tyke. I’d no idea that Ryan would decide to defend my honour. Mind you, I suppose I should have. I knew what he was like. My little brother was a psycho, Bob.’

  ‘And your Uncle Gavin,’ I added.

  ‘No, Gavin wasn’t; he’d never have done anything as stupidly gratuitous as that. Gavin had aspirations, he wanted to be Mr Big, but he was never in the same league.’ She said that with feeling. ‘In the end he turned out to be Mr Remains Never Recovered.’

  ‘Ryan did defend you, though, psycho or not. Which leads us to ask, who have you turned loose now?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Bob?’ she challenged, coolly; too damn coolly, too damn confidently.

  ‘I’m talking about the man who’s been taking out the rapists. Andy Weir, attacked a few days afterwards, died ten days later, just after Albie McCann was stabbed to death. Two down and one to go. Telfer was offshore and out of reach or I’m sure he’d have been the first to go. So who was it, Mia? You’ve run out of brothers, so who’s your avenging angel this time?’

  ‘I have no idea what you mean, and I have no knowledge of these things. There must have been a queue of people waiting to kill those three.’

  ‘But not with your immediate motive. Who’ve you got in your life that we don’t know about?’ And yet, as I put the question I remembered her saying that it had been a while since she’d had a man in there properly, a man in her bed. I’d believed her then, and I still did. ‘Or did you pay someone? Is it as simple as that?’

  She shook her head. ‘Stop these allegations, please. I’m a victim, pure and simple. You’re barking up the wrong tree. I’ve paid nobody, and I’ve asked nobody, to do anything to those poor sad clowns.’

  ‘If only I could take your word for that,’ I told her, honestly. ‘But I can’t. I tell you now that we’re going to be looking at your bank accounts for cash withdrawals, we’re going to be looking at your phone records for contacts and we’re going to be following up every possibility.’

  ‘Then do that,’ she snapped, ‘but you’ll find nothing, I promise you. Now please leave. I have to get ready to broadcast this afternoon.’ For the second time running she was throwing me out of her house.

  If Alison had sensed any frisson between Mia and me, she said nothing about it. ‘Do you think we’ll come up with anything?’ was the only question she asked.

  ‘Honestly? No. But we’ve got to do it.’

  ‘Is it possible,’ she wondered, ‘that she doesn’t have anything to do with the murders?’

  ‘They say that time travel’s possible,’ I replied, ‘but don’t go booking your trip to the twenty-first century and expect it to take any less than three and a half years to get there.’

  Twenty

  I had to leave Alison and her small team to begin the trawl through Mia’s private life, because I had other things to do. There was the matter of Hastie McGrew to be resolved, but more immediately, there was Marlon Watson’s funeral at Seafield Cemetery, only an hour away by the time we left Davidson’s Mains. I dropped Alison off at her office then headed for mine, to pick up a companion.

  Andy Martin was head down at his desk over a pile of mobile phones, and of course the clumsy Jeff Adam, who’d never have been handling a ram in the first place if there had been room for another large body in the chopper, was at home with his foot in plaster, so I pointed at Mario McGuire. ‘You. With me.’

  The lad was irrepressible. He jumped to his feet. ‘Yes, boss. Where are we going?’

  ‘A funeral.’ He smiled, and followed. If I’d told him I was taking him to the zoo to be fed to the lions, he’d have done the same, although that might have been bad news for the king of the jungle.

  We made it to the depressing boneyard with ten minutes to spare. The prepared grave was easy to spot. To my surprise there were a few mourners there already: a middle-aged man, fifty-something, probably, four guys, all around the age that Marlon would never exceed, and three women, one of them in black, and ready for a good cry by the looks of her. On closer inspection, the other two seemed to be supporting her. That interested me; Bella had never mentioned a girlfriend, but Bella never mentioned anything to the police, so no real surprise. The younger set knew what we were, if not who. The guys edged away from us as we approached, but the girls stayed where they were. ‘Big shock, I expect,’ I said to the tearful one. She nodded and dabbed at her eyes. ‘Did you see a lot of Marlon?’

  One of the ladies-in-waiting actually sniggered . . . at a graveside. I looked more closely at her pal and noted that she was either pot-bellied or pregnant. The dy-nasty’s assured, I thought. ‘He was my fiancé,’ she mumbled.

  ‘What’s you
r name, love?’ I asked her.

  ‘Lulu. Lulu Ford.’

  ‘Were you with him on the day he died?’

  ‘In the afternoon, later on; he came to see me. He could, because his boss was away.’

  ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘About five; a wee bit after.’

  ‘Do you know where he was going?’

  The sniggering girl decided to intervene. ‘Hey, leave her alone, you. Can ye no’ see she’s upset.’ McGuire leaned forward and whispered in her ear. She turned, stared at him and backed away. I repeated my question to Lulu.

  ‘To the pub,’ she whispered. ‘The Vaults.’

  ‘That I know, but afterwards.’

  She gnawed at her bottom lip. ‘He said he’d a meeting. I asked him what it was about, but he wouldnae say. He said he’d tell me if it worked out all right. He was lookin’ forward to it, though. I could see that.’

  McGuire tapped me on the shoulder. I glanced round, and saw the cortège approaching: a hearse and a single limo. As it grew closer, I could see that Manson had done well by his late employee. The coffin was solid wood, not chipboard, and there were a couple of wreaths on it that must have set him back a few quid.

  The small procession drew up a few yards away and the living passengers emerged. Six of them: Bella, stone-faced, in a black suit and hat, Manson, Dougie Terry, Tomas Zaliukas, a surprise to me, and Lennie Plenderleith, newly returned from his wee holiday. They were followed by a minister in a long white robe.

  The bereaved mother looked around. She nodded in my direction, more reaction than I’d expected, and beckoned Lulu towards her. And then her eyes fell on the other mourner, the fifty-something bloke. I’d never seen Bella look anything close to tender. In any encounters I’d had with her she’d always been stern-faced, occasionally combative, but when she saw that man her face showed all sorts of stuff I’d never seen on it before. I’m good at reading expressions, but even I was challenged to take it all in. There was shock, instantly; it was replaced by fear, and by curiosity, until they merged together into a grimace of pure hatred. Then she seemed to tear her eyes away from him.

  Manson walked round the grave and approached me; his right cheek was bruised, just below the eye. ‘For once,’ he whispered, ‘I’m glad you guys are here. I’m a couple short with the cords. Will you take one each?’

  There’s a thing we do at funerals, in Scotland at any rate, maybe elsewhere too, I don’t know. The deceased is lowered into the grave by up to eight family members and friends, traditionally male, although at Myra’s funeral Jean had insisted on being one of the number. There were McGuire and I, on duty at what was, for want of an alternative description, a gangland funeral, and we were being asked to bury the victim. I could have shaken my head and stepped back. Those four would have been enough, and in any event the coffin is always supported by straps held by the undertakers, just in case. But the request wasn’t made on practical grounds, or as some bizarre peace offering on Tony’s part. It was made out of respect, so that Marlon could be buried by a more or less full complement rather than a scratch team, and so that his mother would have something to remember. ‘Okay,’ I said. He handed each of us a card with a diagram and a number on it.

  And that’s how two of the CID’s finest came to stand round a grave with four guys most generously described, at that time at least, as pillars of Edinburgh’s darker community, an experience which both McGuire and I have kept to ourselves until now. Well, I have, anyway; I suspect there’s nothing that Mario hasn’t told Paula by now, and that some of it I wouldn’t want to know.

  The God-botherer was competent, if nowhere near as familiar with his subject as Thornie’s minister had been. The service was short and the committal of the coffin to the grave went smoothly. I had cord number two, at Marlon’s feet. Manson held number one. As the burden neared the ground, I glanced up and along its length. For an instant, his eyes met mine. I don’t know what sort of message we exchanged, but I never thought of him quite so badly after that.

  There were no pleasantries afterwards. The hearse was driven away to pick up its next load, and the passengers returned to the limo. Plus one: Bella squeezed in Lulu to join them at whatever post-funeral wake Manson had laid on. I wondered whether she’d known before that afternoon that she was going to be a granny.

  That left just McGuire and me, and one other, the man whose appearance had unsettled Bella so much. He was heading for the exit when I called after him. ‘Excuse me!’

  He stopped and turned, patiently and a shade wearily, as if he’d been hoping to get away unchallenged but recognised that was never going to happen.

  ‘We’re police officers,’ I told him as we caught up, ‘investigating Marlon’s murder. Would you mind giving us your name?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s Watson, Clark Watson. That was my son you just helped bury.’

  Once upon a time, I was in Spain, in L’Escala. Alex was in a cafe with her grandpa, and I was standing on the headland. The Tramuntana, the north wind, was blowing strong and the sea was wild all around me. I’d been looking back towards the beach; in the very instant that I turned, I was hit full on by a giant wave as it broke over the rocks. When Marlon’s father revealed himself, I had much the same feeling. I’ll swear that I swayed on my feet.

  And then . . . this is my day for analogies, so I’ll follow one metaphor with another. Remember those imaginary bricks I mentioned earlier? Well, a whole pile of them materialised and formed themselves into a wall. It wasn’t quite solid, it was still a bit ephemeral, but it was there.

  ‘Forgive my surprise,’ I said. ‘Here was me thinking you were dead.’

  He smiled. ‘Is that what the cow told you? I shouldn’t be surprised by that, I suppose. I might as well have been as far as my family was concerned. No, as you see, I’m still alive.’ He held out an arm. ‘Go on, have a feel; it’s solid.’

  ‘Where have you been?’ I asked, my mind still swirling in the aftermath of that wave.

  ‘These past twenty years? I’ve been sailing. I moved on from trawlers and joined the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. I’m chief officer on a support tanker, Leaf class. I live in Portsmouth now, have done for fifteen years.’

  ‘How did you hear about Marlon’s death?’

  ‘When I’m on shore,’ he replied, ‘my newsagent gets the Scotsman for me. I read about it in there. I found out about the funeral through the local authority, and came up for it. I thought I might have seen my other two children there.’

  Jesus, he didn’t know. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr Watson, but your other son’s dead too. Your daughter’s estranged from her mother, and has been for twelve years. She’s . . .’ I was on the point of telling him where he could find Mia, but I stopped. I had unfinished business there, and I didn’t want him getting in the way. Also, I didn’t think she’d be too pleased to see him, since he was supposed to be helping Davey Jones sift through his locker.

  ‘I see,’ he murmured. ‘Lucky Mia.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’ I continued.

  ‘Where are my brothers-in-law?’ he asked. ‘Those fucking Spreckleys?’

  I pointed, downwards.

  ‘Both of them? Now that is good news. Billy maybe not so much, but Gavin, yes. If I’d had the guts I’d have put him there myself. He was the reason I left.’ He looked at us. ‘I was a bit wild in my youth. Check your records and you’ll find my name there, although for nothing serious. But I had no idea when I married Bella what her family was like. She was pregnant with Mia and we did the old-fashioned thing, then we had the other two. I was away at sea a lot, so it took me a while to find out what Gavin was up to, with the drugs and everything. When I did, I went mental. I told Bella we were moving away. But she’d have none of it. She did her nut. We had a big argument. A couple of days later, I had a visit from her brothers. Gavin put a gun to my head and said that if I was still around in twenty-four hours he’d pull the trigger. He told me to disappear and not to even think
about going to the police as he’d friends who would find me and put me through an industrial mincer, feet first. He scared me all right, enough for me to leave my wife and family behind, and never even think about coming back.’

  So: Mia had made up the story she’d told me about her father’s departure, but she hadn’t been that far off the mark. ‘If you’d known he died twelve years ago, would you have?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I had another family by then, a wife and a daughter. Not bigamous, mind; I divorced Bella as soon as I could when the law let me.’