Crime (28 page)

At the same time, another local drama was unfolding. Most of the officers were supporters of Hearts Football Club, and were shocked that popular manager George Burley’s replacement was
Graham
Rix, an Englishman who had served a prison sentence for having underage sex with a fifteen-year-old girl. It was the afternoon following this announcement in the office at HQ, and you were preparing the Stockbridge surveillance rota. Dougie Gillman came in with a new Scotland coffee mug, discarding his Hearts one into the metal waste-paper basket.

— What’s up wi the Jambos’ yin? Notman asked.

— I wouldnae put it near ma fuckin lips as long as there’s a nonce in charge. Makes a mockery ay everything we stand for, Gillman barked.

Strung-out, you’d looked up and rounded on him. — What do we stand for, Dougie? What did you stand for in Thailand?

— We were on holiday. It’s different.

— Different, my arse.

But Gillman wasn’t at all defensive. — What about you, here? Wi Robbo? That wee lassie?

You fought the impulse to swallow hard. — That was nonsense … Robbo was a fuckin bam!

There had been a time when you and Robbo had been on an investigation and had barged in on a young couple having sex. The girl was underage, the boy not that much older. Robbo had gotten you to question the boy in the other room, while he spoke to the girl in the bedroom. He’d found pills, Ecstasy, in her bag. He’d briefly nipped out to ask you to confirm this. Then he’d gone back into the bedroom and cut a deal with the young girl. You often shuddered when you thought of what kind of deal it was, but no charges were pressed.

— Robbo was aw around the canteen wi that tale. Made the bird gam um, Gillman said. — Heard the wee lassie OD’d after. Stomach-pump job.

— If that did happen ah had nowt tae dae wi it!

— You kent what Robbo was like. Like you sais, a bam. You left him alaine wi an underage lassie. Think aboot that, Gillman sneered, sly and couthie. — Think aboot that when ye get on yir high horse and start telling tales oot ay school. Keep it oot, Lenny boy. Gillman provocatively tapped the side of his own nose. And you felt your eyes water, just as they had done in that Bangkok
bar
when the forehead of your colleague had smashed into your face.

But there were other things to think about besides your escalating war with Gillman. At almost 4 p.m. on an afternoon already swimming in dreich, nebulous darkness, those lonely, tedious days and neck-cricking nights of sitting in the van finally paid off. You’d been at Greggs, and were enjoying the sharp brief pleasure of solitude en route to bringing back sandy-coloured pies and coffee for yourself and Notman. Out of the blue, you were mugged by hail. The cold white stones stung you like pellets from an air rifle. You dived into the van, where Notman was glued to the monitors. The cantankerous weather drummed on the vehicle’s metal roof. It’ll pass, you’d thought, and it did, but not before intensifying furiously. You gratefully sipped the coffee as you’d talked about Hearts and its new East European owner’s penchant for controversy. The team under Rix was growing as quiescent as the overhanging trees in the graveyard, having their own winter shutdown.

Then you saw him on the screen. The man in the parka. Same parka. Same man. Standing above Britney’s grave. The man who was at Nula’s before being disturbed by Ellis. That snorkel hood of the parka, and the thrashing hail: would the mike pick up anything? It didn’t matter, you were flying towards the front gates, yelling at Notman to get round to the side entrance and head him off.

You bombed down the wet path, at one point almost losing your footing. But the man didn’t sense you advancing from behind him. Slowing down, you closed up on your quarry, creeping so near you could see the frosted breath coming from the side of the hood. — Sir! you shouted, pulling out your ID. — Police!

And Notman closing in from the other direction. You had him in a pincer movement. You anticipated a struggle, perhaps a desperate one. But the man didn’t run. Instead he turned round slowly, as if he’d been expecting this moment.

You knew it was Confectioner. Eyes arresting, yet at the same time strangely dead. Thick brown hair, slightly grizzled at the temples. Ruddy complexion. Small, broad and powerfully built,
like
he was from farming stock, though he’d probably never seen a farm in his life.

Notman was with you now. The man gazed from one cop to the other. — Had a decent run, he half shrugged, half smiled, as if he’d been done for shoplifting.

That offhand arrogance. The abhorrent, horrendous world he inhabited, how he’d normalised it for himself. By extension, nurtured a contempt and loathing for broader human society that you would feel the unremitting brunt of. It scared you. Made you feel weak and small even though you had a righteous outrage and the whole British state and its citizens behind you. And now Mr Confectioner had a name. — I’m Gareth Horsburgh, he’d smiled cheerfully. — Call me Horsey.

You went to your father’s office in Haymarket; you hadn’t seen the old man in a while. You’d take him out for a pint. This would ensure that you’d just have one: you always screwed the nut in his company. You smiled at Jasmine, the admin assistant who worked with him, and who took you through to his small office, where your dad had just set down the phone. You could hear his ragged breathing. You couldn’t see, through your own shit, just how messed up your father was. Emotionally, he gave little away. But there were physical signs. For a while, you’d been noticing a tightening and reddening of the skin on his face. Age was overcooking and reducing him; the scarlet marks where the cheekbones pressed from underneath had spread and flared.

But when your father spoke, your mind was on ‘Horsey’, the divorced civil servant who lived near Aylesbury with his invalid mother. A consensus through associates and work colleagues soon emerged: Gareth Horsburgh was depressingly ordinary. A pleasant enough man to say hello to, if a little pompous and pedantic in company. He could have been any suburban golf-club bore, the sort you felt comfortable about having one drink with before making your excuses.

You felt you were in the throes of some powerful auditory hallucination, a hangover from the grisly interviews with Horsburgh and the horror of the lugubrious beast’s disclosures, as
the
gravelly voice of your father informed you, — At least ten years it’s been going on, Ray, he’d said in stunned outrage as he dumped a box file on to his desk, — her and Jock Allardyce. Fucking behind my back for ten years. My Avril – your mother – and Jock Allardyce.

It was the ‘fucking’ that got you. Not even because your dad never swore in front of any of his family, save for an injured ‘bastard’ you’d heard him gasp in grim disbelief when Albert Kidd’s first strike hit the net for Dundee up at Dens Park back in ’86. It was the image of your mother, sweaty and lusty, being humped by family friend and neighbour, old divorcee Jock Allardyce; the man you’d grown up calling ‘Uncle Jocky’. Your skin prickled with the prudishness of offspring confronted with paternal sexuality. Staring into the goat-like eyes of your father, belligerent yet bemused, you had to fight down the desire to laugh out loud. — What will you do? You felt your finger rising nervously to the side of your nose. The cramped office had just got smaller.

— What can I dae? We’d stopped having sex, he said, matter-of-factly, — when I had the heart thing. It was the medication. It thins the blood. Ah cannae … He faltered and shrugged. — I tried Viagra, but they said it was dangerous for me. I even started looking at porn, to see if anything came back, but no use, just twinges. Your mother still wants sex, what right dae I have tae stand in her way?

— She’s your wife, you said, now angry for the first time, both with the old man’s lack of self-respect and your mother’s betrayal.

— What sort of husband am I?

You cleared your throat. This was too much for you to take in. Horsburgh, violently stealing sex from children. Your father, unable to partake in it with his wife. Your mother, banging away with their friend and neighbour. You had no wish to be spoon-fed details. — Have you spoken to Stuart about this?

The old man looked surprised. — Why would I do that?

Try, cause I’ve heard a lot fucking more than I want to, you’d thought. — Stuart’s good on that kind of thing. An actor. Understands people. Their motivations.

— I thought that as a cop –

— We lock people up, Dad.

Your father had nodded in disappointment as you took your leave, telling him you were too busy with this case for a pint, you’d just swung by to say hello as you happened to be passing. And that was to be the last time you’d see him. A few days later he dropped dead, discovered by Stuart on that same office floor. He’d been trying to tell you about a terrible secret that had haunted his life, and all you could think about was a despicable child killer.

Day Four

14

Sea Legs

THE AUCTION ROOMS
are stuffy, crammed full of bodies. Lennox looks up at the sad, dropsical face of Bob Toal, who stands behind the lectern, hammer poised in his hand. The lot for sale is a life-sized female figure. It stands upright in a coffin, stiff and dead. It has the same blonde hair as Trudi, but the face of Jackie’s doll.

— From the Victorian era, Toal says gravely, — and such a sad tale. A beautiful young girl kidnapped and murdered in foul circumstances. The corpse has been preserved in formaldehyde and the bones connected by lightweight aluminium rods … He moves over to the doll, taking its hand and shaking it. The wrist remains in the extended position. — As you can see, our tragic young miss has been rendered perfectly pliable. Will make an ideal companion for the sick and lonely, or anyone who values the time-old feminine qualities of passivity and obedience …

Lennox turns a stiff and heavy neck to catch Amanda Drummond in the crowd, brushing a tear from her eye. — … I would like to start the bidding at one thousand pounds, Toal continues, then looks to a raised hand at the back of the room. It belongs to Ronnie Hamil. — One thousand pounds. Do I hear fifteen hundred …?

Another raised hand. It’s Mr Confectioner.

— Stop this auction, Lennox shouts. — Ye cannae sell her tae them! Ye ken what they want her for!

Nobody seems to hear him. One more hand goes up. Lance Dearing, wearing a Stetson and cowboy suit, flanked by a grinning Johnnie. — Two thousand, Toal smiles, — and I’ll take this opportunity to remind our friend Mr Dearing from the USA, that remuneration is in pounds sterling rather than US dollars, he jokes to polite laughter from the floor.

Lennox tries to move towards the stage but his shins suddenly have the density of metal bars.

— It’s my fiancée … it’s my …

Something sticks in his windpipe, rendering his cry a soft, frustrating gasp.

All he can do is look at the profile of Dearing, bathed in a green light, giving him a gator-like cast. — I am aware of the currency of transaction, Mr Toal, and he turns and winks at Lennox, — but I’m sure if I find myself somewhat short then my ol buddy Ray here will be pleased to help out for such a purty lil’ prize.

— Let’s up the stakes, a voice shouts in a thick Midlands accent from the back of the hall. — Two million quid.

Lennox looks round, but the man seems to be moving to correspond, always just out of his line of vision. There are others, but they remain in shadow. Exasperation and fear eat at him.

Toal is about to close the bidding when Lennox sees his old mate Les Brodie as a young boy, looking at him, tugging his sleeve, urging him to bid. — Say something, Raymie!

But his throat has seized up and Lennox can’t speak. Toal’s hammer comes down with a strong bang. It pulls Lennox into another, better place. Again.

A better place
.

For a few brief seconds Ray Lennox thinks he can see flamingos, shrouded in soft white mist, dancing in the mangrove bushes. Blinking, it becomes evident that he’s merely woken up into a gorgeous pink sunrise, the room bathed in a coral flush almost neon in its intensity.

That soft tap-tap-tapping on the door: cagey but insistent. He realises that the baseball cards are still in his hand. Quickly puts them back into the sheep bag on the bedside table. It’s hot and he’s drenched in sweat. His ravaged throat just about manages to squeeze out, — One minute, as he rises to the door, opening it up and peeking round.

It’s Tianna. She has his
End of the Century
T-shirt on. — I borrowed this, she says, her mouth turned down in the self-loathing, apologetic manner of the morning-after drunk. — I gotta get my stuff.

— Right. Give me a second.

He shuts the door and pulls on his trousers, switching on the air-con unit before letting her in. — Okay, he says to the shame-faced girl, assailed by his own mendacious guilt as he steals a parting glimpse at the bag and considers the secrets it contains. Lennox goes outside, waits a spell, before furtively grabbing the T-shirt her extended arm passes out to him. Heading to his original room, he pauses in its doorway to marvel at the salmon-and-grenadine sky, and briefly enjoy the soft blare of truck horns from the distant freeway.

In his room he locks the door and discards the T-shirt and trousers in a heap at his feet. There is still a tiredness about him, behind his eyes, in his limbs, but he feels stronger and more together. He does a full range of boxer’s stretches and, mindful to put the weight on the balls of his hands, one hundred press-ups on the worn carpet, feeling the satisfying burn in his muscles, before jumping under the shower jet, luxuriating there till the water gets tepid. Towelling quickly, he gets dressed, catching the dusky, honeyed scent of the girl on his Ramones tee as he pulls it on.

A short time later, Tianna returns to his room. Her hands clutch the sheep bag chastely in front of her. — I wanna say sorry for last night.

— You shouldn’t behave like that, it isn’t right. Because somebody’s done bad stuff to you, you don’t make up for it by doing something bad to somebody else, he says. — Do you know what I’m saying?