The University Cafe smacked of the 1930s; thin benches, jutting from the walls, heavy stained wood panelling. An Espresso coffee machine wheezed near the till. It had a strange atmosphere, to Montgomerie it was the 1930s but 1930s Paris or 1930s New York, he couldn't decide. The cafe was almost deserted; three taxi drivers sat in the corner with their plastic money-holders on the table in front of them. An old lady in ragged clothes mumbled to herself. The man in the kaftan sat alone at a bench with his back to a partition and his left arm leaning against the wall, just under a certificate of merit somebody had achieved for ice-cream making. Montgomerie sat adjacent to him.
The man looked like Jesus Christ. His long blonde hair was centrally parted, he had a beard and moustache, both untrimmed. He looked at Montgomerie and smiled with glazed blue eyes. Montgomerie was reminded of the time some years previously when he had been in a room in a flat near the Meadows in Edinburgh. It was a darkened room, the air was full of the soft sweet smell of cannabis and Indian music was coming out of the hi-fi speakers. Montgomerie had long hair then and his moccasins had come all the way from Exchange and Mart. The other person in the room was another man who also looked like Jesus Christ. He had had a small monkey which he kept as a pet; it was attached to the man's trouser belt with a thin chain. Suddenly the man picked up his banjo and began to hit the monkey over the head. The room was filled with squeals and hollow resonance and he didn't stop until the monkey was dead. Montgomerie had stopped relating the story when he found that people just laughed, it may have sounded funny, but Montgomerie didn't think it was. It wasn't funny at the time and years later when he understood about breakdowns it still wasn't funny. Since then he could never bring himself to trust young men who looked like Jesus Christ.
The waitress was an Italian-looking woman with a dour expression. Montgomerie said he'd take an Espresso. He thought he shouldn't have sat so near the man; he thought he should have tailed him; he couldn't believe his own stupidity. He'd given the game away. So what did he do now, drink the coffee and go back outside and wait for the guy to come out and hope he didn't recognize him, and then continue to follow him? Or say, 'Excuse me, sir, I am a police officer and I observed you travelling along Byres Road in a southerly direction with a guitar in your hand…' to which the man would reply, 'Yes?' In the end Montgomerie forced a smile and asked Jesus of Nazareth if he played that thing.
'I was wondering when you were going to say something, Officer,' said the man, continuing to smile with his eyes.
'What made you say that?' Montgomerie wasn't feeling too clever.
'Because you are a polis man,' said the man in the kaftan, 'are you not?'
'What makes you think that?' said Montgomerie.
'Only a polis person would say that. You've clinched it, polis person.' The man smiled. 'But if you want to know the truth…'
'I want to know the truth.'
'Don't cut me off in mid-sentence, polis person. If you want to know the truth, only a person of homosexual leaning or a polis would sit opposite me when over half the seats in the cafe are empty. I don't think you have a doubtful hormonal balance and so I think you are a polis person. Also you followed me down the road but waited for a few minutes before following me in here. Was it to see if I was just popping in to get some nails?'
'OK How did you know I was following you down the road?'
'I could see your reflection in the glass in the shop doorways, polis man. A bit like wing-mirrors on a car, they are. You walked rapidly, running almost until you were a few paces behind me.'
'Not unobservant, are you?'
'I was also expecting you, polis man.'
'Why?'
'I read the news.' He tapped Montgomerie's newspaper. 'Slow Tom is a male and has blond hair.'
'Light-coloured. Got an alibi, have you?' Montgomerie was no longer solely interested in men with light hair, but he played out the part.
'Och aye.' The man sipped his coffee and took a bite of his hamburger. The waitress brought Montgomeries's coffee.
'Tell me. Last night, for instance?' The telephone conversation he had had with Donoghue just before sighting the man was still fresh in his mind. He seemed to feel the death of Simone more than the other deaths. He had once seen her picture.
'Last night, no alibi. Mind you, when the old bird was killed a couple of nights ago I was playing in a club. Witnesses to the power n, where n is large and positive. I also can't be fitted up because I cant play twelve-bar blues. It said in the paper the murderer plays good twelve-bar blues.'
'You can't?'
'No.'
'Perhaps you could point us in the right direction?'
'Perhaps I could.'
Montgomerie's eyes narrowed.
'Cost you,' said the man, pushing the remainder of his hamburger into his mouth. Montgomerie noticed a gold filling.
'What?' he said.
'Buy me breakfast, oh polis person. I'm flat stoney-broke. Good job I spotted you following me, otherwise I wouldn't have come in here.'
'What am I getting in return?'
'One name and one address. They both belong to the meanest twelve-bar blues player I know.'
'He's in the city?'
'He's in the city.'
Montgomerie took a pound note from his hip pocket and slid it across the table but kept his finger on it.
'That'll do nicely, polis person. Try Toby McCann, 96 Atholl Gardens, G12.'
Montgomerie took his finger off the pound note and took a biro from his jacket pocket. 'You're pretty free at pointing the finger at your friends,' he said, scribbling the name and address on the newspaper.
'He's not that much of a friend,' said the man, crumpling up the note and pushing it into his own pocket. 'Besides, he's not Slow Tom. He's got black hair.'
'But he can play twelve-bar blues?'
'Polis person, he is a natural. He's trying to make it in the ents business, he's not into serious blues. He's just burning himself up looking for a break.'
'That so?' said Montgomerie.
Ninety-six Atholl Gardens was a bleak Victorian tenement. It was also damp. The dampness gripped at Montgomerie's chest and made it feel hollow. He started up the stairs, feeling his way one step at a time and running his hand up the bannister rail. The house was quiet, dead quiet, and Montgomerie felt a sinister atmosphere. He had to go to the top landing underneath a grimy skylight before he found a door with McCann on the front. He knocked twice on the door, gently.
There was just the loud silence of the empty stair. He knocked again.
There was a rustling inside the flat; from the other side of the door a voice said, 'Who's there?'
'Police,' said Montgomerie under his breath. Then loudly he said, 'Scottish Television.' He hitched the cassette recorder he had slung over his shoulder round to his front. Nice of Gillian to lend it to him. But she could hardly stop him, he was out of the door before she knew what was happening. She had yelled after him that he had to be bloody careful, it was a twenty-first birthday present. He hadn't known she was as old as that.
'Who?'
'STV.'
'Minute.'
A few moments later the door opened six inches. It was attached to the frame by a bronze chain and above the chain a round face blinked at Montgomerie.
'STV,' said Montgomerie, smiling.
The blinking eyes moved from Montgomerie's face to the tape recorder and back to Montgomerie's face. Montgomerie continued to smile.
'Yes?' said the man.
'I heard you were a good guitar player. I'd like to take a sample.' He tapped the tape recorder. 'No promises, you understand, not even of an audition, but we're anxious to find new talent for a musical show. Should run to six Saturday evening programmes. One established name to head the bill and new talent in support. Somebody pointed me your way.'
The door shut. Montgomerie heard the chain being unhitched. The door opened, a young man, barefoot in jeans and a vest, stood in the doorway. 'I just got up,' he sa
id.
Montgomerie extended his hand. 'Malcolm Montgomerie. Most people call me Mai.'
'Toby McCann,' he had a thin hand with long fingers. 'Most people call me Toby.'
'Sense of humour is important,' said Montgomerie, grinning.
Toby McCann led the way down a threadbare hall carpet to a bedsitting-room. The bed was unmade, there was a Winnie the Pooh poster on the wall and a twelve-string jumbo acoustic guitar leaning against the wall.
'Where can I set the tape up, Toby?'
'Next to mine on the desk is about the best place.'
'Local talent, are you, Toby?'
'Aye, well, Dumbarton way, that's where I hail from. I'm in my first year at the university but I want to make it in the music business.'
'From what I hear you've got no problem, Toby.' Montgomerie set the machine on a table top, which was scattered with paper. On the paper was a series of scribbles, music and lyrics, the doodlings of a budding songwriter. Toby McCann took up his guitar and began to strum. Montgomerie propped the microphone against a book about Woody Guthrie.
'What do I do?' asked Toby McCann, looking bewildered.
'Oh, say something, Toby, so we can get your speaking voice, then sing one of your songs. You write your own material, don't you, Toby?'
'Oh, yes. I don't know whether it's any good, though.'
'Well, let's see,' said Montgomerie. 'You seem to have a good reputation.'
'Yeah?'
'That's right.' Montgomerie pressed the record button and stepped back from the machine.
Toby McCann strummed a few chords and then in a curiously affected voice said, 'Well, this is just a little song I wrote and I hope you like it… was that OK, Mai?' Montgomerie nodded. Toby McCann sang a song about a lonely boy whom nobody understands. He finished the song and looked at Montgomerie, who was convinced he had found the hoaxer. But he was more stunned by the guitar-playing: rarely in his life had he heard more beautiful, flowing unaccompanied music or seen such fluidity of wrist movement. Toby McCann's hands seemed to have a life of their own. Half seriously Montgomerie said, 'I'd like to be your agent.'
'Can you help me, Mai?' Toby McCann looked eagerly at Montgomerie. 'Play it back, let's hear it.'
Montgomerie walked over to the machine. He looked at it and felt his stomach constrict. Flatly he said, 'There isn't a tape in the machine.'
Toby McCann leaned forward and glanced at the recorder. 'Wouldn't have made any difference, you weren't recording anyway,' he said, 'The mike jack-plug isn't home.'
'It's a new machine, Toby. Sorry.'
'It's about five years old.'
Gillian is not twenty-six. 'It's new to me, Toby.'
'Do you want to borrow one of my tapes?'
'I'll pay you for it.' It didn't matter if she was.
'Just let me have it back, Mai.' He tossed a tape to Montgomerie. Montgomerie put the tape in the machine and pressed the microphone plug fully into the side of the recorder. He pressed the 'record' button. Toby McCann repeated his performance and again Montgomerie stood back in awe. He had a vision of a brilliant guitarist drawing on his early experiences of arrest and imprisonment for his material. He felt he was helping to create something. Montgomerie pocketed the tape and slung the machine over his shoulder.
'I'll hear from you?' asked Toby McCann, who had just decided that 'Tobe McCann' was to be his stage name and that he was going to get a pair of tinted spectacles for when his photograph was taken for the cover of his first long-playing record.
'Aye. I'll have to play it to my governor, Mr Donoghue, but I dare say he'll like it.'
'Donoghue?' said McCann. 'I've heard that name somewhere.'
'He's a nice man,' said Montgomerie. 'A gentleman. You'll like him.'
McCann looked at him, paling a little.
Montgomerie walked back to Otago Street and dropped the machine off at Gillian's flat. She was making notes from an American textbook and offered him coffee. He declined. She didn't look twenty-six. He took a No. 16 bus into the city.
Donoghue listened to the tape, pulling gently on his pipe as he did so. Montgomerie sat in front of the table, feeling unkempt.
'I think you have him,' said Donoghue. 'We'll have to compare the voice traces, but I'd say this is our man. What's he like?'
'Short, lean, naive, but he can play a guitar like nobody I know.'
'Waste of talent, like a lot of people that keep you and me in a job.'
'I think he'll make it in the end. Get his autograph for your daughter, sir.'
The phone rang on the desk. It saved Donoghue the difficulty of telling Montgomerie that he objected to his remark. Instead he settled for a furrowed brow, picked up the phone and said, 'Hello?' Montgomerie saw Donoghue's eyebrows rise and the furrow deepen. He heard his senior say, 'Bring him up, please.'
The two men waited in silence. There was a knock on the door, Montgomerie turned round. A constable in a blue shirt stood in the doorway. Next to him stood Toby McCann. His hair was wet.
'It was only a joke,' he said.
CHAPTER 9
Richard King left Susan Smith's house at 10.30 a.m., half an hour after Sussock and Donoghue had left and one hour after the body had been taken away. He left only after Bothwell had satisfied himself that he had dusted for prints throughout the bedroom, the downstairs room where the body was found, the hall and the kitchen. Bothwell packed his equipment away, confident that he had six different sets of prints, possibly seven, in a total of one hundred and fifty-three individual traces.
'No sign of a break-in, sir,' he said, 'or I'd definitely know where to dust for the suspect prints.'
'So long as you gave the bedroom a good going over; we know he was in there,' replied King. 'How would you like a pad like this, Bothwell?'
'Cost plenty,' said the man. 'Wouldn't know where to look for my shoes.'
'Where do you stay, Bothwell?'
'Queen's Park, sir. With my mother, she's a widow. She worked as a receptionist after my dad died but she had to give that up, she fell ill, you see.'
'I'm sorry to hear that.'
'Oh, we get by,' he said, forcing a smile.
King knew that he was making Bothwell uncomfortable. 'What sort of social life do you have, Bothwell?'
'Oh, I take a pint, not had a lot of success with the girls though, sir.'
'How old are you?'
'Thirty-three.'
'Well, let us have those prints as soon as you have them mounted. Bring them straight up to the incident room, please.'
'Yes, sir,' said Bothwell and left hurriedly. King followed him, stopping briefly to speak to the constable who would be standing on duty outside the front door of the house for the next six hours until he was relieved. King stepped in Bothwell's footprints as he walked down the driveway. The sky was a cold, dull grey, a keen wind was blowing, but the snow seemed to be thawing. He found himself humming 'Good King Wenceslas' to himself. He hadn't known Bothwell was so old.
Back at P Division station King sat at his desk, pondering. He leaned back in his chair with his elbows resting on the chair arms and both index fingers pyramided against his brow. Presently he leaned forward and picked up the telephone and said, 'Computer Terminal, please… Computer Terminal?… DC King, P Division… sorry it's a bad line… KING…yes…I'd like a breakdown of all unsolved murders of boys aged between eight and fourteen… F-o-u-r… fourteen in the west of Scotland during the last five years… Five, as in maids a-milking… well, yesterday would be nice, but could you phone me back in half an hour with a verbal? Thank you.'
He replaced the receiver and went to the basement and searched for the criminal record of one Jamie McPherson of Partick. He wrote on a red card 'McPherson, James; DC King. 25 Jan' and slipped the red card behind the file of McPherson Iain and in front of the file of McPherson John and returned to his office.
He tried to stop his pulse racing. 'Softly, softly,' he told himself and went to the canteen and made a mug of cofDEEP AND CRISP AN
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fee before allowing himself to open the file. The previous convictions read:
'Bad lad,' said King and sipped his coffee. In the file was a Social Background Report which had evidently been requested in connection with the Attempted Murder conviction:
Social Work Department, West Three, Glasgow.
17th April Report on James McPherson of 12 Glassel Street, Glasgow 12
Currently at H.M. Prison, Barlinnie Offence—Attempted Murder Court—The High Court Date of Court 23 April Previous Court appearances—as libelled.
age 22
FAMILY AND HOME CIRCUMSTANCES Mr James McPherson aged 53—Unemployed.
Father. James McPherson aged 22—Unemployed. Subject of this report Sonia McPherson aged 13—Scholar. Sister.
The family live in a three-room flat in the West End of the city. It is untidy but not especially unclean and tends to reflect a warm and 'lived-in' environment. Mr McPherson (senior) has not worked for some years since he sustained a severe back injury at his place of work. Although he can walk he is only able to take a limited number of steps at a time and so is virtually housebound. He also has a severe chest complaint which further hinders his mobility. Mr McPherson blames himself for his son's criminal activities in that he sees his injury and resulting incapacitation as having prevented him from being a father to his son. He has similar worries about Sonia's future. Mr McPherson's wife, who was apparently a very powerful figure in the family, died when James McPherson (subject) was eleven.
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