Quite Ugly One Morning (11 page)

‘Well, Jenny, you’re the professional,’ said Parlabane, holding up a powdery handful of tenners. ‘Do you think it’s possible Sarah’s ex-husband was up to something illegal?’

Jenny sighed. ‘You know, scoop, our mutual friend Duncan said you were a moody bastard when an investigation was going nowhere for you. He didn’t warn me that you were totally unbearable when it was going well.’

‘How much money is there?’ Sarah asked.

Parlabane glanced at the pile of cash sitting before them on the kitchen table.

‘About two grand. If he had used fabric conditioner, the pile might be higher and more fluffy.’

‘So the question is what was he doing for this money,’ Sarah muttered.

‘Yes,’ said Parlabane. ‘But the bigger question is who won out of this. Somebody’s life got a whole lot easier when Jeremy died. That was the purpose of the exercise.’

‘Don’t suppose you’ve any bright ideas on motive, scoop?’

‘Well, I don’t think it was about money – not Jeremy’s money anyway. It remains in doubt whether the hitman was aware of – or interested in – this cash, and therefore it seems unlikely that whoever paid the killer was interested in it. That leaves the two other big favourites: silencing and eliminating competition.

‘Now, if Jeremy had competitors for whatever he was doing, he wasn’t afraid of them. He was taking no precautions: no baseball bats, no knives, no guns, not even extra locks on the door. He didn’t think he was at any risk other than having his cash discovered. There’s also the intended method of death to consider: it was supposed to be quiet and unsuspicious, even to look like suicide. As we were saying the other day – and this doesn’t just apply to drugs – competitors like everyone to know their rivals were deliberately taken out. So it seems most likely he was murdered to keep him quiet, probably about whatever he was doing for the cash.’

‘What about blackmail?’ Jenny offered, thinking out loud. ‘That could explain the cash and the motive.’

Parlabane shook his head. ‘Murdering a blackmailer is something you do
instead
of giving him money. No. I think whoever had Jeremy killed was also the person employing his unknown extra-curricular services.’

Sarah had a look of frustrated incomprehension on her face, which grew into head-shaking and eventually throwing her hands up in front of her.

‘I’m sorry, but . . . well, what on earth could he have been doing? I lived with the guy for years, and I never noticed any talents that might have a criminal application. And even if he had – plus the inclination to use them – he wouldn’t know who to offer them to. There isn’t a crooks’ Situations Vacant section in the
Evening Capital,
for God’s sake.’

Parlabane smiled. His mouth barely moved, but Jenny could see it in his eyes, that glint that made her want to check her wallet.

‘All right, scoop, hit us with the big exclusive,’ she said, with demonstrative weariness.

‘Someone else noticed Jeremy had talents that had a possible criminal application,’ he said quietly. ‘An application that suited his needs. It was our bad guy who approached Jeremy with a job offer, not the other way round.’

‘Oh come on,’ said Sarah, growing impatient with this casual imposition of the idea of underworld activity upon places and people so familiar to her. ‘Who’s going to ask a respected physician to get involved in something shady when he could very likely just turn round and tell the police about it?’

‘Someone who knows he’s in trouble,’ said Parlabane flatly. ‘Someone who knows he’s got major money problems and could do with earning some undeclared on the side. Someone who knows his wages are being skimmed at source to pay off a debt.’

Sarah gaped. ‘Someone at the hospital,’ she breathed.

‘Very possibly. So what we need to know first is who knew about the gambling problem.’

‘Next to no one. Just Jeremy, me, the bookies and his parents. It’s the kind of thing that a family like the Ponsonbys will go a long way to keep under wraps.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Parlabane. ‘They’re not going to want it
the talk of the wards, but it’s still going to be known. The Prof must have mentioned it to someone, particularly when he was sorting out this rather unusual financial arrangement. But even if he confided in his senior colleagues, or even if Jeremy told a couple of pals, the only people who would have known just how
deep
Jeremy was in were the people involved in administrating the wages deal. We need to know who was in on that information, because it looks like one of them acted upon it.’

‘And how are you going to find that out without asking the kind of questions that might send the bad guy scurrying for cover?’ Jenny asked, then caught Parlabane’s eye. ‘On second thoughts, don’t answer that. In fact, forget I even asked.’

‘I suppose you know a little about Jack’s less obviously journalistic talents?’ asked Sarah.

Jenny indicated right as her car reached the Picardy Place roundabout, nothing else on the road but taxis and discarded chip pokes. She stole a glance at her passenger before advancing, Sarah’s determined and handsome profile silhouetted against the orange of the streetlights. Jenny liked her, there was no denying it. Mainly, it was the body language, the way Sarah so assuredly commanded space in a room, instead of waiting to be put or accepting the role she was allotted, something Jenny was constantly disappointed not to see enough of in women. She had an easy purposefulness about her gait and posture, a physical confidence borne perhaps of having more important things to be getting on with than worrying about where she fitted in.

On a less noble level there was also that flowing red hair, but that was another matter.

‘I know a lot more about Jack than Jack thinks I do,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ve been checking him out a wee bit. I know his pal, Duncan McLean, one of the
Capital
’s
football hacks. I also spoke to a cop in London who investigated one of the breaking-and-entering charges Jack faced. They’ve both got a lot of respect for his abilities, but for appreciably different reasons. Duncan talked admiringly about Jack’s “unorthodox” – read illegal – methods, said there was nowhere he couldn’t get into if he wanted to badly enough. Said he can pick locks in his sleep and climbs buildings like fucking Spiderman. He does all that indoor rock-wall stuff, and given Jack’s
small frame, Duncan reckons his fingers probably contain the strongest muscles in his body.

‘The cop, who admitted he barely managed to even get this particular charge to court, said he was glad Jack was a journalist and not a career cat burglar. The company that accused him had absolutely no physical evidence that he had been into their building other than the fact that he had acquired a copy of a (later very controversial) document that only the chairman had ever had access to. Even his fellow directors hadn’t had their hands on it, so there was no possibility of a leak. In fact, none of his fellow directors were even aware of its existence, which was partly why the said chairman spent much of the next two years as Her Majesty’s guest.’

‘Do you like him?’ Sarah asked shyly.

‘I can’t professionally say I quite approve of him, but . . . well, he certainly makes things more interesting.’

‘No,’ said Sarah, ‘I meant do you
like
him.’

Jenny laughed quietly to herself, gently shaking her head.

‘Jack’s not . . . I’m kind of spoken for at the moment. Well, at least I’m hopeful it’s going somewhere for a change.’

‘God, I know what you mean,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ve not had much luck on that front since Jeremy . . . and I suppose that means I’ve not had much luck full stop.’

‘If it wasn’t for bad luck you’d have had no luck at all, huh?’

‘Yeah,’ Sarah laughed. ‘So what’s his name, this Mr Hopefully?’

Sometimes you had to worry nights about people finding out or having to tell them. Worse when it was someone who was or might be a friend, the possibility of fear or mistrust. Would they think you were only being friendly because . . . Would they be insulted that you didn’t trust them enough to . . .

But sometimes you just knew.

‘Angela,’ Jenny said, then smiled and thought for an absurd second she would giggle.

‘So, you want me to stop the car so you can escape?’ she added.

‘God yes, at once, help help,’ mumbled Sarah in a distracted, monosyllabic mutter, staring out of the window as they passed the unnerving spiky splendour of the portrait gallery. ‘She know you’re a cop?’

‘Not yet, but that’s the part I’m hopeful about.’

‘Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’

They pulled up at a red light, the purr of the idling engine emphasising the still quiet of the night.

‘You like him, don’t you?
Like
him, I mean,’ Jenny said.

‘He’s untypical. I like that.’

‘Untypical? Perhaps the witness would care to elaborate.’

‘You’ve obviously not spent a lot of time among medics. The worst thing about typicality is its inexhaustible power to disappoint.
Another
short-arsed surgeon with small-man syndrome, barking orders at everyone because he’s got a point to prove.
Another
spineless git who’s had a personality bypass marrying a doe-eyed nurse.
Another
academic hot-shot dropping his qualifications into the conversation because you’re supposed to be impressed. Oh Jesus,’ she giggled, ‘there was even one I came across who kept telling everyone he was a distant relative of Oppenheimer.’

Jenny laughed too. ‘No, you’re making this up now, surely.’

‘I swear,’ Sarah insisted. ‘I’ve got witnesses.’

Jenny convulsed, swerving the car slightly in her laughter as the pair degenerated into temporary hysterics.

‘OK,’ Jenny said, eventually recovering. ‘But even if what he said was true . . . that still constitutes a new record level in human sadness.’

‘Like I said, you’ve not spent a lot of time among medics.’

‘Well, what if I told you Parlabane was a typical hack,’ Jenny said.

‘I wouldn’t believe you. You see, the thing that I most like about Jack is that he gives a fuck, and that’s not typical in any profession.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jenny, ‘but that’s what worries me about him. I’ve been told he’s a tenacious investigator, and I respect that, but there’s more than meets the eye here, girl. Jack Parlabane is working to his own agenda on this, like he’s on some kind of crusade. I don’t know what it’s about, but I’m warning you to be careful.’

‘Well I do know what it’s about,’ Sarah said, in an instantly regretted reaction to feeling she was being patronised. ‘And I will be careful.’

Jenny indicated, pulled the car over, switched off the engine and turned to face Sarah.

‘So what’s the story, Doc?’ she demanded.

Sarah looked anxiously about herself for a few seconds, then ran her hand through her hair.

‘Well, it goes without saying that I’m trusting you not to tell him you heard this. Not just that you heard this from me, but that you heard this at all. Jack’s here because he left LA in a big hurry – someone was paid to kill him.’

‘How does he know?’

‘He didn’t say. He just told me someone tried to kill him and he seems very sure it was a professional matter.’

‘Well, if he told you that much, there must be more to know. It’s a hack’s prerogative not to give you the full story. Not in the first edition, at least. But I’ll warn you again, Sarah, don’t get too close. Whoever’s behind all this has had one person killed already. We’re dealing with dangerous individuals here, and your safety might not be the first thing on Jack’s mind when he gets the scent in his nose.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Sarah said flatly. ‘I can look after myself.’

I don’t doubt it for a second, thought Jenny.

But could she look after Parlabane?

Mike Gorman’s secretary, Guadeloupe, didn’t put calls through from just anybody. Not only were there less than a dozen names that guaranteed direct transfer, but there were only a few more that she would even ask him for a yes or no on. Her boss was a very busy man, which was one thing, but as Metro editor of the
LA Tribune
,
he got hundreds of calls every day from hopeful hacks and hopeless nutcases.

Elvis called a couple of times a week.

A story bigger than Watergate was breaking most Tuesdays.

Jimmy Hoffa frequently rang from somewhere inside the Bermuda Triangle, usually collect.

And Mike was too busy to talk to any of them.

In fact, that afternoon Guadeloupe wasn’t putting many calls through at all. She had told him he looked like shit (sir) and should be taking the day off. He was worried-looking, upset, unshaven and tired, and had been growing more so with each of the previous few days.

Mike wouldn’t let Guadeloupe fuss over him like that, mainly because he enjoyed it too much, but also because he was precisely the kind of workaholic who, when told he was unwell, worried that he’d have to knuckle under more to make up for not operating at full capacity.

So when Guadeloupe took a call for Mike ‘from beyond the grave’, she told the person on the other end that he was only taking calls from this world today.

‘He’s pretty shaken up, then, I’d guess,’ the caller said. ‘I might be able to put his mind at rest.’

‘Who is this?’ she asked.

‘I can’t tell you, but I can assure you Mike will be pleased to find out.’

Mike didn’t sound very pleased after Guadeloupe put the call through.

‘Where the fuck are you, you miserable Scottish prick? I thought you were dead. In fact after the week I’ve just been through I was fucking
hoping
you were dead, so that at least all this worry would be worth a goddamn.’

‘I’m in Edinburgh,’ said the voice after the satellite delay.

‘Edinburro Scotland?’

‘No, Edinburro Nevada. It’s just outside Buttfuck. We’re thinking of throwing up a few casinos, getting the town off the ground. Of course I’m in fucking Scotland. I couldn’t hang around in LA. I’ve got a bad allergy to bullets.’

‘I guess your hunch was right then. How far did you get?’

‘Not very. Dangerous people, Mike. Out of my league, anyway.’

‘So what happened to you, Jack? Jesus, your place. You know they found . . .’

‘I know what they found, Mike. And what I don’t tell you, you don’t have to lie about, OK?’

‘Roger that.’

‘I’m going to be staying here a while, obviously.’

‘Bit of hang time might be advisable for a man of your recent history. Go for it.’

“Fraid not. I’m on to something out here.’

‘Oh, surprisorama. New town, same story.’

‘Something like that. I need a favour, Mike.’

‘Jesus, Jack. You were on the telephone for nearly a whole minute before you said that. That makes this like a birthday call or something.’

‘Well, after what I put you through. Have you got a pen?’

Clive Medway listened to the unfamiliar ringing tone, halfway across the world, nervously hoping the call would be a waste of time, but knowing it was a check he couldn’t afford to omit.

‘Hello,
LA Tribune
,
Mike Gorman’s office,’ said a slightly Hispanic American accent.

‘Er, yes, hello. This is Clive Medway of the Midlothian NHS Trust in Edinburgh. Could I speak to Mike Gorman please?’

‘One moment, sir.’

Click. Purr.

‘Hello, Clive. Are we all set?’

‘What? Oh yes, of course. I’m just checking . . .’

‘We’re for real? No, I don’t blame you. No, you should see some of the stunts they pull to try and get into my office. You don’t have to tell me what devious assholes reporters can be. Hey, I’m surrounded by them. So what time is it out there . . . ?’

*
*
*

Brilliant. It was no hoax, no set-up. It was an honest-to-God publicity coup, just the sort of thing NHS Trusts needed to counteract the relentless tide of fish stories about overworked doctors and patients dying on trolleys in waiting rooms.

And as Public Relations Director of the Midlothian NHS Trust – ‘We’ve got a heart in the Heart’ © – he would be the man who had made it all happen.

It was a no-lose situation. If the article turned out to be a hatchet-job, the only people who would see it would be about 8,000 miles away, and if it was a glowing appraisal, he’d send copies to every paper in Britain and get the pages blown up poster-size for the lobby.

But he was sure the chances of it being yet another negative, one-sided perspective were very remote. He just knew that he and this Mike Gorman chap spoke the same language.

‘For God’s sakes, this is the Nineties, Clive,’ Gorman had said. ‘Everybody’s had enough of
ER
and white coat mythology. They want to read about how a modem hospital
really
works, what
really
turns the wheels in a place like that. Administration, management, planning. My readers want to touch base with the pro-active chance-takers who pick up the ball and run with it, who make sure that all the pieces are in place before Dr Hot-shot or his patient even come into the equation.

‘Now, I got a rough draft of a piece in front of me right here done at OCG – that’s Orange County General – looking at twenty-four hours in the life of a hospital. The reporter spent the day finding out a little about the roles of all the administrative staff, then spent the night on-call with one of the doctors, and was able to trace back all the doc’s moves to decisions taken at management level. How the doc wouldn’t have been able to do such-and-such if the VP in charge of whatever hadn’t drafted the right policy directive at an earlier date. And how everything that gets done, right down to stitching up a gang-banger’s bullet wound, conforms to the OCG mission statement.’

‘Sounds marvellous.’

‘It is. The piece could run on its own, we got some great shots to illustrate it. Got a beautiful montage from our art shop of an administrator at a computer, and in the screen, over the account figures he’s working on, you can see a reflection of a guy in a surgical mask holding up a scalpel. The whole thing
was gonna be primo, Clive. But the guy who wrote it said it would be even better to run it along with a comparative piece on another hospital, somewhere totally different. And I said yeah, you mean like Third World or something, and he says no, like England. He told me – how’d he put it? – “the dinosaur of the health service is finally evolving into something viable in a free enterprise environment”, and he said the ideal sidebar piece would be on an English hospital that’s changing for the better.

‘Of course I said he was nuts if he thought I was paying for him to fly to England just for the sake of filling a couple more pages, but he’s from over there and he said he was going out on vacation anyway.

‘Unfortunately he isn’t going to be in town long, so I’m not giving you much notice, but I’d be real grateful if you could set it up. He won’t get in the way – he’s the last guy you need to tell about how busy these places are – he’ll just watch, ask a few questions, take a few shots.

‘His name’s Jack Parlabane. I’ve known him a long time and I really trust this guy’s instincts. Believe me, Clive, if he says there’s a great story waiting to be found in your hospital, you can be damn sure he’ll find it, and you can be damn sure he’ll let the whole world know.’

Morag Kinross wasn’t a nosy person. She was no curtain-twitcher, like many round here, and despite the torrential flow of other people’s business through what was not just her home but
her
business, she had never succumbed to the temptation to poke her snib in where it hadn’t been invited. Truth be told, there just wasn’t the time. Running the Pilrig Guest House had been work enough to keep her slim and trim into her mid-sixties, and didn’t allow much opportunity for playing the spectator upon other people’s affairs. Oh, sure, you caught glimpses into the lives of guests as they passed through, but they were like wee adverts for TV programmes you knew you didn’t have time to watch. And obviously some of those programmes looked like they might be more exciting than others, but her own show was quite sufficient, thank you.

However, she was a light sleeper. Many was the night she found herself involuntarily tuned into the live radio soap of a couple arguing in one of her rooms, or letting equally heated
but less acrimonious passions run their course. The initial outbreak of sound would waken her, but once she had assimilated what it was it would fade into the background and her eyes would close once again.

But with Ruffle missing, just about any wee noise was enough to get her out of bed and looking through the doorway, down into the hall, or out of the window upon the back garden.

A squeaking noise followed by a scraping against the pipes outside drew her to the casement, where she peeped from between a crack in the curtains at the figure of Mr Bond jumping down on to the flagstones. She didn’t like Mr Bond one bit. He seemed rough as a crab’s backside and wore one of those plastic tracksuit affairs that the wee urchins from Leith used to sport about five years ago, and that she still occasionally spotted on trips to Fife. He was also dreadfully
English
– not nice English, posh English, but like something off that vulgar
East Enders
programme that the guests sometimes watched in the TV room.

If he had just pitched up looking for B&B, she would have told him the place was fully booked and slammed the door. Wouldn’t have been the first time. But the man who had phoned to book the room for ‘his business acquaintance’ had sounded very posh indeed, and had said the Pilrig was recommended to him by a number of friends at his golf club in Kent. When Mr Bond appeared, looking like he did, she was sure he must be an impostor, but as his first action was to hand her an envelope containing seven nights’ advance payment in cash, she decided to wait and see.

She soon regretted it. Comings and goings at all hours of the night. Keeping his room locked all the time. And that horrible smell, like someone had opened a butcher’s shop on the landing.

She watched him creep furtively around in the back garden, then climb over into Mr Henderson’s. It was dark, and her eyesight wasn’t as sharp as it used to be, so as he crept towards the back wall she couldn’t quite make out what he was doing. He seemed to crouch down at Mr Henderson’s conifers, then to disappear, so she assumed he had gone in behind them. Then he emerged again, stood up and headed quickly back towards the guest house.

As she wasn’t a nosy person, she thought no more of it. She had seen many more suspicious things in the back gardens at night – everything from sleepwalking to unmentionable behaviour by that seemingly respectable and middle-aged Italian couple – and knew it was wisest to just turn a blind eye.

But then a couple of days later old Mr Henderson came round with a tear in his eye and told her he had found Ruffle.

She said nothing as he led her, seemingly inevitably, to the conifers, and pointed out the part of the wall from where the stone had fallen, telling her not to look behind the small trees lest the sight upset her. When he apologised and claimed it was his fault for not keeping the dry-stone dike in good order, she told him not to be silly and that she didn’t blame him in the least. And when he offered to bury Ruffle there she thanked him for relieving her of an unpleasant task, then silently walked back home, around Mr Henderson’s house, along past the front gardens and in through her front door.

There was a large brown envelope sitting behind the storm door in the porch, addressed to Mr J Bond, obviously dropped off by hand, going by the absence of postage stamps. She took the envelope to the kitchen and for the first time in her life opened someone else’s mail.

It contained a pair of black leather gloves, a packet of black hair colouring, and a copy of that day’s
Evening Capital.
She unfolded it and noticed a faint black ring around part of the main picture on the front page. Opening the paper, she found that the faint mark was the reverse of a harsher ring in heavy felt pen on page two, around a story headlined:
Ponsonby murder: cops seek nine-fingered fiend.

She put on her glasses and read on:
Police investigating the brutal murder of City doctor Jeremy Ponsonby today stated that they were looking for a nine-fingered man in connection with the crime.

In a fresh appeal for new information, Inspector Hector McGregor (52), who is leading the investigation, said that the man they were looking for is at least 6’5”
tall, has brown hair with silver highlights, and is
missing his right index finger, which was lost during the murder.

Mrs Kinross replaced the items and re-sealed the envelope, then put it back where she found it on the porch.

*
*
*

‘It’s fish for dinner, Mr Bond,’ she said cheerily, emerging from the kitchen as he came along the hallway, heading for the stairs with the envelope in his arms. ‘Would you like batter or breadcrumbs?’

Mr Bond just stared at her for a moment, then muttered ‘batter – an’ I wannit in me room,’ and lumbered up the stairs, where he opened his envelope and cursed that stuck-up cunt who didn’t think he’d be smart enough to have already been wearing gloves.

Mrs Kinross went back to the kitchen and prepared Mr Bond’s fish, using a special batter enhanced by the powdery contents of several sleeping capsules from the bottle left by that jumpy Austrian woman last year.