'You and Peerse.'
Stewart laughed. 'You'd be all right with Peerse – he'd buy a box of matches from you any time. Go out of his way to do it.' He stood up; ready to go, he hesitated. 'What I was saying about your brother, don't worry about that. It's just Peerse – but you know what Peerse is like. I mean, they're looking for a maniac. Merchant wasn't just killed, he was messed about – even worse than the first one. It was the same weapon, a knife with a long narrow blade. They think he might have got it first in the back of the neck and that paralysed him. After that he'd about thirty cuts round the bum and at the front. Whoever did it peeled his prick like a banana and Forensic think they did it slowly. Like I say – a maniac.'
When he had gone, Murray sat lost in thought. What Eddy Stewart had described seemed different in kind from what had been done to the first victim. From what he understood, the tears on the body in that first case had been made as if the killer had struck and sliced in excitement – and most, perhaps all, seemed to have been done after death. It looked as if Merchant had been tortured. A number of things followed from that. It meant he had been killed indoors, perhaps in a flat, anyway in a place where someone could take their time. Torture could be used to satisfy an impulse of cruelty, Eddy's maniac; but it had another use as well, an old use.
Was it possible someone had tortured Merchant to get information out of him? If so, what kind of information could that have been?
Billy had misunderstood his silence. When he looked up, Billy said, 'You shouldn't let Eddy bother you. Anyway, I think all that stuff about your brother at the end there was his way of apologising.'
It took Murray a moment to work out what he was talking about, then he said, 'That's just Eddy's style.' He touched a finger to the swollen side of his face. 'If he thinks you're down, he can't resist giving you a kick. He's been in the police too long.'
'He can be a right bastard,' Billy said with a sudden change of mood. 'Before you came, he was going on about my father. Telling me what a fine man my father was. He must imagine there's something wrong with my memory. My father had a silver plate in his head from the war. Eddy and the other boys would follow him about and torment him until he lost the place. Then my mother and I would have to hide with a neighbour or stand in the street while he wrecked the house. Sometimes he would take a fit and fall down and roll about.'
Murray had never heard this before, but he wasn't interested.
'When I described that guy from the casino,' he said, 'Eddy recognised him, I'm sure he did, maybe that's why he started to shout the odds. What about you, Billy? Do you know who he is?'
'You could call Eddy my oldest friend. I've known him longer than anybody else. One night back then, there was this guy lived up the stair from us, Sammy Dudley, and Sammy's hiding in the house because he was frightened to come out and face – what was his name? McConochie. That's right, McConochie, a right ned. It lasted for nearly an hour. Sammy hiding in the house and McConochie running up and hammering on his door and then when he got fed up with that running back down into the street and yelling up at the window – Come out and get what's coming to you, ya yellow shite! And finally Maisie Dudley – she'd be about fifteen then – got so ashamed for her father peeping out between the curtains peeing himself with fright that she put on her old man's jacket and bunnet and ran down the stairs pretending she was her father. She ran out of the close with her fists up and McConochie took a swing and laid her out. Down she went, the bunnet flew off and all her hair spilled out. McConochie shouts, Jesus Christ, it's a lassie! All the women hanging out of the windows enjoying the laugh went crazy. Bastard was the kindest word they had for him. All hell broke loose. He was shirricked right down the street. One-Punch McConochie they cried him after that – until he got so fed up with it that he flitted.'
'One-Punch McConochic,' Murray said neutrally. 'He wouldn't have dyed black hair would he or hang out at the casino in Stark Street?'
'Eh?' Billy made a face of puzzlement. 'My father had been watching out of the window of our flat and when he saw the girl fall down he ran away down the stairs. He charged out of the close waving his arms, threatening McConochie, who turned and ran for it. I was proud of him – but then just as he bent over Maisie he fell down beside her. I could see the foam coming out of his mouth. It was the worst fit he ever threw – at least where other folk could see him.'
Murray said, 'Billy, you're full of piss and wind.' Despite himself, Murray saw a picture of old man Shanks, as tall as his son grew to be, with the same big arm gestures but even less controlled; everything less controlled, the man with the silver plate in his head, the man the kids in the street tormented.
'My father couldn't stand to see anybody being hurt. I stood at the back of the circle round him. I couldn't see him, but I could hear the noises he was making. I thought, this time he's a goner for sure.'
'You recognised the description of that guy in the casino too. Right? What are you frightened about?'
Billy shaped broken clockwork rings with the base of his glass on the table. 'Eddy's a bastard, but it doesn't mean he's not right about some things. You've been battered, Murray. You don't want to risk that again. Let it go.'
'Give me a name.'
Billy sighed. 'Joe Kujavia.'
Something in Murray relaxed. If the figure in the nightmare could be given a name, perhaps it would be easier to sleep. 'Joe Kujavia.' He weighed it carefully, like a thing his hand was taking into its grip.
'From the way you described him, it couldn't be anybody else. There can't be two bastards in the world looking like Kujavia. Was he involved with what happened to you?'
Murray hesitated. 'I had an argument with Blair Heathers. I'm not telling anybody else that. Not Eddy. Not anybody.'
'Don't try to prove the connection,' Billy Shanks said bitterly. 'A respectable businessman like Heathers and scum like that – it's two different worlds. Kujavia's a pimp among other things, he runs girls in Moirhill, and uses an iron bar on them. If he was killed tomorrow, there would be a hell of a lot of people in Moirhill out dancing in the streets.'
'Do you have an address for him?'
'No. And if I did have one, I wouldn't be doing you a favour. This guy's killed people. They've never got him into court, but I know. He battered the woman he was living with to death. Funny, I always remember the priest crying. I was young then. He was a good man though. It was him that looked after the kids – got them adopted.'
'There were kids?'
'The woman had a couple of kids. God knows who the fathers were. She'd been married before she went on the game. Maybe one of the wee girls was Kujavia's. Funny how you remember the first jobs you go out on. That bloody priest sitting there crying. Later you don't let things like that upset you. It's part of the job.'
But suddenly Murray was too tired to talk. He thought about getting back somehow to the flat, getting behind a locked door, going to sleep until the pain stopped.
It was Billy Shanks who started to speak again, breaking the silence between them. 'It's a job you can't do without asking questions. What happened to you on Saturday night, did it have anything to do with the Jill murders?'
'Is that what you call them now?'
Billy shrugged. 'Nothing in newspapers exists properly unless you can invent the right label for it. That's part of the job too.'
'The Jill Murders.' He gave it the emphasis of a headline.
'That's what Standers wanted you to call them, wasn't it?'
'I didn't do it for Standers' sake,' Billy said. 'I told you after I saw him that I wouldn't be interested. It was John Merchant getting himself killed – second murder, right date. That did it, Murray. I had a story.'
The ache behind Murray's eye came and went in waves. He had no idea what Shanks meant, and he could not get up the energy to care. He would think about it later, after he had slept. 'I'm glad for you, Billy. But it is nothing to do with me. Okay?'
'It was just a thought,' Billy said. Murray grunte
d.
'Even with friends... I didn't say it wasn't a lousy job.' He smiled, and then put his hand across his mouth like a child apologising for a lie. 'Sometimes. Mostly it's good, pretty good... You look rough, Murray.'
'I'm just going.'
But he sat on. In a little while, he would feel well enough to move.
'If I've a friend,' Billy said, 'Eddy must be the oldest one I've got. And there are times when I can't stomach him. He was sitting there an hour ago and tells me they brought Maisie Dudley's daughter into the Northern shop yesterday. Five guys had pulled her away from a bus stop into a condemned tenement. Nobody lives around that bit any more so they could take their time. He said they raped her taking their time. All five of them – all the ways there are. He said she had the same red hair as her mother. You could have warmed your hands at Maisie Dudley's hair.' His hands for once lay still on the table and he looked at them and said, 'I wanted to say to him, It's no good, Eddy, you can't make me foam at the mouth and fall down. I'm not my father. It's my job to know what the world is.'
14 Conferences
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14TH 1988
It was only when he went down into the street and bought a paper from Barney on the corner that Murray realised he had missed Thursday. As he walked into the city centre, he tried to work out how many hours he must have slept. He had fallen into bed on Wednesday afternoon after talking to Billy Shanks, and had been wakened an hour ago by the persistent ringing of the phone. The thing was that as he rolled out of bed and trailed yawning through the lobby to answer it, he had not felt especially refreshed; nothing hinted to him that he had slept for more than forty hours. His only thought as he recognised the voice was that, despite the lousy taste in his mouth, it had been worth the effort since it was Mr Bittern who was calling.
'I tried to get hold of you earlier in the week, Mr Wilson,' the lawyer complained discreetly.
Like all private investigators, Murray depended for his livelihood on having a firm of solicitors who would refer clients to him. As a one-man Johnny-come-lately, he had been lucky to have Bittern, Samuels and Alexander (Incorporating Gibb and Mac Taggart) offering him scraps from their crowded table.
Shortly after their first acquaintance, Mr Bittern, the senior partner, had unbent and explained to Murray that crime was caused by boredom; people in the slums, particularly the young, needed to have their energy 'of which they had so much' directed into socially useful channels so that they would not be bored. He had an old man's bleat on the vowels, ‘pee-eeple’.
'I sympathise with your difficulties. You are quite well now? Good. But I am afraid that Mr Foley is not one of the world's most patient men. I have to say that he feels not enough is being done to find Mr Beddowes.'
'Mr Beddowes...'
'And Mrs Foley, of course.'
'And the money.'
'That, according to our information, seems certainly to be with Mr Beddowes... and Mrs Foley, presumably.'
Which, Murray knew, was why he had been offered this job; for the same reason as the ones before it, lawyer Bittern had an eye for a bargain. You get what you paid for; and Foley's money had eloped with Beddowes. There was a taste in his mouth as if his gums might have been bleeding while he slept. 'Foley isn't so anxious that he'll go to the police though. Is he afraid they might want to look at the books?'
Wires hummed and clicked disapprovingly into the silence.
'Sorry.' Murray cleared his throat. 'Forget I said that.'
'Ye-es,' Mr Bittern decided; but could not refrain from adding, 'Leaving aside the state of Foley and Beddowes' books, which is not at issue, it is by no means clear that there is or will be occasion for the services of the police. Whatever monies may or may not be missing belonged to the firm and have been removed by a partner... may have been removed. If removed, it is plausible that the partner involved might not be Mr Beddowes but Mrs Foley to whom her husband consigned a share when she improved her status from secretary to spouse. In that case, the relation between husband and wife would obtain and whether there were a larceny would depend on the intention of Mrs Foley, who may for all we know expect ultimately to return to Mr Foley.'
'Yes,' said Murray in his turn. His head ached and Bittern had lost him. 'It would help if there was more money available.'
'I think we've covered that.'
'I had to limit the circulars and photographs. A hundred sent out to the likeliest agents – not a letter of instruction, but I had to make the usual promise that a fee and expenses would be paid to anyone who turned something up.'
'That is acceptable.'
'It's not a help that Foley won't let me talk to his neighbours. He's not even happy about me talking to Beddowes' neighbours. I found the taxi driver who took them to the station. And Beddowes' ex-wife – you know he'd been divorced ? – and –'
'Put it in a report for Mr Foley. Today? It would settle his mind that something is being done. And a copy for me?'
Mr Bittern was a gently unreasonable man and when Murray put down the phone he knew ground was lost that he could not afford to lose.
The train wheels made a rhythm out of loss and afford, and he looked out of the window as they ran on the viaduct level with the top floor of tenements and crossed the river and the houses began to spread out and then came together again as little one-storey semi-detacheds showing vegetable plots and garden sheds and children's swings to the railway line. 'There's a good shopping centre not far away,' Malcolm had explained, 'and I can get into the office by train. It'll do us fine, for just now.' Ambitious Malcolm.
When he came up the steps, he was uncertain for a moment which way to turn. Below him the long empty platform seemed glazed and expectant in the sun. He began to walk up the hill towards the main road. Facing down the slope half way up, a Porsche 911 Turbo was parked; it had the big spoiler wing at the back and was the colour of blue the sky took over the desert at sunset. It looked exactly like one he had seen in California, sitting outside an apartment block in a piece of the Mojave that had been watered and tamed and shod with highways. Out of a habit of attention, he noticed that it had been fitted with non-standard BBS wheels; it was someone's toy, and too expensive to be sitting in this neighbourhood. Inside, a man in a white shirt, the cuffs rolled back on his forearms, was reading with the book rested on the wheel in front of him. It didn't need a uniform for Murray to identify him as a chauffeur. He had the air of a man used to waiting. As he turned into Malcolm's road and made his way slowly, as if reluctant, past the tiny cropped lawns and the low gates clamped across each entrance, Murray wondered about that expensive car and where its owner might be while his driver waited so indifferently.
When Irene came to the door, she stared at him as if shocked. They stood intimately close in the warm motionless air, time suspended.
'Have you got a visitor already?' he asked.
'Mmm.' She made a little noise that might have been assent. With her right hand she held the door by its edge as if she might decide to close it, while the other hung strangely passive by her side with the opened palm turned to him. She leaned down from where she stood above him in the entrance to the hall, and cried, 'Your poor face! My God, I had no idea it was so bad.' Standing back as he came into the house, she continued, 'We would have come to see you, but with what happened... We would have come to the hospital at the weekend.'
'I signed myself out.'
He spoke over his shoulder, impatient to check on the identity of her visitor. He stepped into the front room; sun inclined in through the wide picture window, islanded the chair and the man's shape in it and painted a white lozenge on the carpet. The air felt heavy, hot as outside, like a barrier to press against.
'Mr Heathers,' Irene said behind him. 'Do you two know one another? This is Malcolm's brother. Mr Heathers came to see if there was anything he could do to help – because of what happened. It was very kind of him.'
She sounded matter of fact as if she meant simply what she said, kind Mr Heathers; w
hat could be more natural?
'I heard you were in hospital,' Heathers said. His voice sounded dry and harsh, but firm; with his back to the light, it was not obvious that he was an old man.
'I signed myself out,' Murray said. He could get tired of explaining that. As he spoke, he circled a step or two moving to the side so that he could see Heathers' face. What he surprised was ambiguous, for although the mouth was taut with controlled fright, the old eyes stared with greedy satisfaction at the great bruise that disfigured Murray's cheek below the dark glasses.
'You don't want to do anything stupid,' Heathers said, glancing away.
'Come and sit beside me on the couch,' Irene said. He felt her hand on his arm and let himself be seated. 'What would you like to drink? We were having tea. But there's something stronger, if you'd prefer.'
'Tea would be fine.'
There was a table with two glass panes as a top set at the level of their knees between the chair and the couch. There was a teapot and a little delft milk jug and cups with a rose on the inside; there was even a plate of sweet biscuits nicely arranged. On the backs of one kind of biscuit, sugar fractions sparkled in the sun. He balanced the cup Irene had fetched, sipped tea, and listened to the harsh accent which sounded confident and even young when the face was shadowed against the light. 'People get the wrong idea when they meet me socially. I couldn't be the man I am at home and do all I've done. In business I'm a man in a man's world. If you want to know me, that's where you come. I'm a businessman,' the voice said.
'What business have you here?' Murray asked. Irene had put milk in the cup without asking him, and the milked tea lingered on his tongue bland and slightly sickly.
'Business?' Irene wondered. 'He came to sympathise about what had happened to Malcolm- but I told him there was no need.'
'The police let Malcolm go,' Murray said. 'I was told that.'
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