The Endings Man (17 page)

They picked him up at the corner of Leith Walk and Macdonald Street, a bulky man in his forties wearing a faded leather jacket.

As he slid into the seat beside Curle, Meldrum passed the folded slip of paper back to him.

‘We’ve tried a couple of times. She’s been switched off.’

‘She’ll still be in her bed,’ Leather Jacket said. ‘They’re all lazy cows. Is this out of a Bible? Where did you get it?’

McGuigan said, ‘Mr Curle got it in the drawer beside his hotel bed the other night. Somebody had written the number in it, and he gave it a ring.’

Curle stared straight ahead as, from the corner of his eye, he saw Leather Jacket squinting at him.

‘How did you know what it was?’ he asked.

Curle ignored the question.

‘Mobile phone number? In a hotel drawer? Might have been a plumber, but he didn’t need a plumber.’ McGuigan laughed. ‘Just shows, it pays to advertise.’

‘You shouldn’t have torn the page out,’ Leather Jacket said, trying Curle again. ‘Not out of a Bible. That’s bad luck.’

‘Not a lot,’ McGuigan said. ‘It was a Protestant Bible.’

‘Is there any other kind?’ Leather Jacket asked. ‘Take the next on the left. I’ll bring her down.’

‘You have a key?’ McGuigan asked.

‘No. I don’t have a fucking key. Hey, stop the car!’

McGuigan hauled the car to a stop at the edge of the pavement. It was as if he’d conjured a parking space out of thin air.

Leather Jacket opened his door and shouted, ‘Magda!’ then cursed and clambered out of the car.

They watched him as he walked back along the pavement. Just before the corner he turned in under the mortar and pestle sign of a chemist’s. When he came out, he was with a young woman. Her blonde hair was cut close around a narrow skull. It was hard to tell what it was that marked her out. The skirt was very short, but lots of women wore them that way. Maybe it was something about the way she slouched to a stop, hip shot, by the car. Whatever it was, there wasn’t any doubt she was for sale.

Bending to the window Meldrum had wound down, he said, ‘She’ll have to do her shopping later.’

Meldrum said something too quietly for Curle to catch.

Leather Jacket opened the car door and held the girl’s head down as she got in.

Through the side window, Curle watched him walking away. He caught the warm staleness of powdered skin from the girl and, faint enough to be his imagination, what might have been the lingering smell of sex.

‘I not do anything,’ she said. She glanced sideways at Curle without moving her head. ‘What he say I do? I don’t steal. Don’t do anything wrong.’

Meldrum was twisted half round, one hand resting on the back of the seat. He flicked a finger to indicate Curle. ‘You know this man?’

‘I never see him in my whole life.’

‘She’s the one!’ Curle exclaimed.

Ignoring him, she said to Meldrum, ‘That is fucking truth.’

‘Aye, right,’ Meldrum said. He faced front again, massaging his neck with one hand. ‘Back to the hotel, we’ll sort it out there.’

McGuigan switched on and steered out into the traffic.

It was an uncomfortable journey. The girl Magda kept her attention determinedly turned to the window. She hadn’t tried to resist being put into the car; she’d made no protest at being taken off to the hotel. In her own country and since, no doubt, she had been obedient to uniformed police, pliant before bureaucrats, cowed by pimps and violent strangers. Her passivity gave Curle a sense of a life lived without even the illusion of autonomy. It was that memory of her vulnerability which had made him ashamed when he woke alone in the hotel room. He had torn the page with the number on it out of the Gideon Bible and hidden it in his wallet to prevent her being exploited by men like him: an explanation he would keep to himself for fear of being mocked. Absurd, self-serving, hypocritical, like so much of his moral life the impulse was contradictory but not entirely contemptible.

Jonah Murray wasn’t a man who entertained at home. There were bachelors who went in for cooking gourmet meals, blocks bristling with best-quality kitchen knives, heavy-bottomed copper French pans, splash-proof aprons with masculine motifs. He wasn’t one of them. His natural habitat was the restaurant, found by himself rather than too fashionable, for leisurely working lunches and the occasional dinner for half a dozen close friends. It fitted with his oxymoronic emotional strategy of embracing people while holding them at arms’ length. That Curle was surprised, as he set out for Jonah’s flat, to realise he’d never actually been inside it, was testimony to how effectively the strategy worked.

He drove into the Queen’s Park at the Palace of Holyrood and turned right up the winding road and then down sharply past the loch. In Duddingston he made a mistake and had to do a three-point turn in a narrow road before finding at last the converted townhouse where Jonah lived in the penthouse apartment.

He pressed the entrance buzzer and heard the security door unlock before he could speak.

Coming out of the lift into a narrow hallway, he was lifting his hand to knock with the little brass gargoyle head
when Jonah opened the door. At sight of Curle, his face went slack with astonishment.

‘Barclay!’

‘You were expecting someone else?’

‘I’ve a table booked for dinner.’

‘This will only take a minute,’ Curle promised grimly.

Given no choice, reluctantly Jonah led the way inside. He stood in the middle of the floor and didn’t invite Curle to sit down.

‘You said a minute. I really have to be going almost at once.’

At any other time, Curle would have been avid for detail of the way Jonah lived. As it was, even in his state of contained anger, he couldn’t help noticing the baby grand that sat in one corner. He hadn’t known that Jonah played the piano, or even that he was interested in music. A man who managed his life in compartments: music for those who were interested (Curle wasn’t), books for others, and paintings too, presumably, since the walls were crowded with pictures.

‘I’ve been with the police all afternoon,’ Curle said.

He scanned Jonah’s face for a sign of guilt.

‘May one ask why?’

‘They found out I lied about being at home the night that woman was murdered.’

‘The one in the flat under Ali?’ All that Curle saw was what he had seen so often on his friend’s face: the eagerness of the born gossip.

‘And that meant Liz was lying to them as well. They didn’t like being lied to.’

‘But you didn’t know this woman. What could her murder have to do with you?’

‘You’re the only one who could have told them. I can’t
make sense of that. Why would you do that?’

Jonah flushed with indignation. ‘I didn’t tell them! I’m insulted that you should think so!’ But his gaze, which had been fixed on Curle, slid furtively away.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You do understand I might have been arrested for murder?’

‘But you weren’t!’

‘Because I phoned for a whore.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘To come to the hotel.’ He was shaken by a spasm of self-disgust. ‘Pretty, isn’t it? While I thought my wife was committing adultery along the corridor, I was spanking and fucking a whore.’

‘Don’t tell me this. I don’t want to listen.’

As they stood silently confronting one another, poised for the next challenge, an echoing insistent banging sounded on the outer door.

‘Oh, dear,’ Jonah said.

Curle waited, listening with an uneasy presentiment.

‘How did you get up here?’ he heard Jonah asking from the hall.

‘Are you going to move your arse?’ Did he know that voice? ‘Somebody hadn’t closed the security door properly.’

‘I’ve complained about that repeatedly,’ Jonah was saying over his shoulder as he returned.

Brian Todd followed him into the room.

‘What’s this?’ He spoke to Jonah not Curle. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Curle had seen Jonah in many moods, but never so defensive, never so flustered, never cowed.

‘Barclay came about that poor woman who was killed. The police wanted to talk to him about her.’

Todd shifted his gaze to Curle.

‘You know how she died?’ he asked. Expecting any question but that, Curle gaped at him.

‘Are you talking about the woman?’ Jonah asked. Bewilderment didn’t suit him. It furrowed his face with lines like the marks of ageing.

‘The woman,’ Todd repeated, mimicking the tone in mockery. ‘She was strangled to death. Her windpipe was crushed. And after she was dead, this time it was after, she was beaten to a pulp. Eva Johanson was her name. The woman.’

He moved his shoulders, shrugging like a boxer in the ring. He gave off energy like heat, a body packed with muscles.

‘Was that – that wasn’t in the papers,’ Jonah said.

‘A client told me.’

Curle remembered the talk of a reporter whom Todd had helped with his tax problems. He’d taken the man’s existence for granted. Suddenly he didn’t believe in him. But if the reporter didn’t exist, how could Todd know how the women had been killed? Was he making it up? What kind of sick pleasure could there be in that?

Todd had answered Jonah’s question casually without looking at him, never taking his eyes from Curle. Now he said, ‘I didn’t expect to see you again.’

Casual, again. It was the only word. It was the assumption of power over him in Todd’s tone, casual, unquestioned, that transformed Curle’s feelings. Before that moment, he had disliked Todd, been scarred by the memory of him, had even at one time been obsessed by him. Afterwards, like the tempering of a beaten sword
plunged into icy water, he hated him. He had no words for it, though. If he’d had a weapon, he would have attacked him.

As Curle stood silent, Todd disconcerted him by smiling. A grimace that bared his upper teeth, there was no humour in it. ‘I thought you’d be in a cell. You’re a cat with nine lives.’ He put his arm around Jonah’s shoulder and asked, ‘What’s it going to take?’ He squeezed the smaller man tightly to him, knuckles whitening with the force of his grip. ‘That’ll give us something to talk about.’ He laughed at the expression on Curle’s face. ‘Pillow talk.’

The stricken look on Jonah’s face as he hung like a doll in that awful grip was beyond bearing.

As Curle made blindly for the door, he heard Todd’s voice, asking in mock surprise, ‘How long have you two been friends? I knew as soon as I looked at him.’

On the way down in the lift, he began to retch. Hard dry shudders shook him so that it would have been a relief to vomit. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, however, so there was nothing to sick up.

At some point, he’d told Jonah that he was sure Bobbie Haskell was gay. Not like you and me, eh, buddy? I envy you your novelist’s insight, Jonah had said. Was that satirical? What else could it be? In the past, Jonah had stroked Curle’s ego by pointing out reviews blethering of his profound insight into human nature. The truth is, Curle thought, I know nothing.

Unable to cope with his own company, he lunched at the Arts Club to find the conversation dominated by a visiting American with a face like a Fox newscaster. One of those McCarthy types, he decided as he chewed without appetite, who carry all before them until they’re caught with a hand in the till or up a choirboy’s cassock. As penance for his sins of incomprehension, he listened without interruption as the guest’s talk ranged from the current thirst for God to the need to get back in touch with nature. From the illustrations offered, he seemed to have derived his knowledge of mysticism and the mores of Scottish rural life from
The Da Vinci Code.

He sat for a while after lunch; jerked awake on the realisation he’d dozed off; came out blinking into the light of a pale afternoon sun. He sauntered along Princes Street from one store to another, wandering at last into Jenners and letting himself drift aimlessly with the crowd up
through its maze of floors. Three Muslim women covered from head to toe as they bent over a display of fine porcelain caught his attention for a moment. Idly, he wondered if human nature could be so easily muffled. Did one woman in a burqua ever turn to another to ask, Do my eyes look big in this? He drank coffee and ate a cake in the café, sitting at a table alone. He would have liked to go home and spend time with Kerr. The boy would be back from school by this time, but he’d be cared for since it was one of Liz’s afternoons off. It was all too complicated. He looked at his watch. Not home; he had somewhere else to go, but it was still too early. He set himself to passing the rest of the afternoon.

At six, he was in George Street and began to walk west, still not hurrying, wanting to give Bobbie Haskell time to get home from work. It gave him time, too, to plan his approach. He didn’t have any hope of success.

At Royal Circus, there was no answer when he pressed Haskell’s buzzer. He tried three times then gave up, crossed the road and went along Great King Street, cut up Dundas Street and made his way back again. This time a voice asked, ‘Yes?’ He leaned close to the grille and gave his name. At once, the lock was released.

On the top floor, Haskell waited in his doorway. He was wearing chinos and a shirt open at the neck. Just back from work presumably, he’d replaced outdoor shoes with a pair of light moccasin-style slippers.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said pleasantly. ‘The shortbread was so delicious, you’ve come back for more.’

Curle was basically a diffident man but, without wishing to, there were people to whom he knew himself to be superior. He had that feeling about Haskell, and as a result felt more comfortable with him than he usually did with acquaintances.

‘Your downstairs lock was working this time,’ he said.

Stepping back to let him enter, Haskell looked puzzled. ‘It usually does.’

‘Not always though?’

‘You have to be careful how you shut it.’

They were standing in the hall. As Haskell closed the door, Curle made as if to go into the front room where Linda Fleming and he had been entertained. With a light touch on his arm, Haskell turned him the other way.

‘I want you to see this.’

An open door gave a glimpse of the kitchen, a pine table, a rack of cooking implements on the wall by a double oven, a work surface with a block of knives and a wooden bowl standing beside a board with a half-chopped salad. Since the flat shared its layout with the one below, Curle knew that the room opposite into which he was being led must be Haskell’s bedroom.

‘You must have wondered where they all were,’ Haskell said.

Time slipped and as he stepped inside, it was as if he was going into Ali’s bedroom. She would be standing by the bed, lying on it, laughing afterwards, her face close to his.

It was a square room, not particularly well lit, since the windows at the back were tall and narrow rather than the ample bow windows on the front of the building. Three bookcases, each tall enough to reach the high ceiling, dwarfed the single bed placed under the window.

‘I keep them all in here.’

‘Books?’ Curle guessed.

‘What else?’ A small frown creased the fine skin between Haskell’s pale eyebrows. He stared at Curle as if wondering whether he had intended a joke. If so, clearly he
was not amused. ‘It’s a thing of mine. I won’t have them shelved anywhere else in the flat. But they’re here all right. I didn’t want you to think I was some kind of philistine. So many houses now and there’s never a book in sight. Television and record players and a mini bar in the corner, isn’t that right? As a writer, it must make you wonder what the world has come to.’

‘You have a lot of books,’ Curle said carefully. It had the merit of being true. Feeling something else was required, he added, ‘Beautiful bookcases.’

‘They belonged to an uncle of mine. He left me them in his will. Too tall for a modern flat. I had to keep them in store until my aunt died.’ Puzzled for an instant, Curle recalled being told at some point that the flat had been bought with an inheritance from an aunt. ‘Aren’t I lucky? You could say I’ve everything I want.’

Curle found this too effusive to answer. He kept silence until they were in the front room. Seated, he glanced round and, for something to say, remarked, ‘Plenty of space for a bookcase. One of them would look well in here.’

This was a mistake, however, for Haskell looked offended. Putting back a lock of blond hair, he said, ‘I thought I’d made it clear. I don’t keep books in here. I’m quite particular about that.’

Who was it? Curle wondered. George Douglas Brown? Who’d made the point that stupid people would seize on some arbitrary habit and follow it inflexibly as a mark of individuality.

Haskell, however, had an explanation. ‘For me books should be private. If you took me into a stranger’s house and showed me his books, you’d be surprised how much I could tell about him. Or her.’

‘Or her,’ Curle noted.

‘Yes. Do you want something to drink?’

‘No, thanks. I don’t want to keep you from your meal.’

‘Oh, it won’t take long tonight. Just a simple salad with a bottle of white wine. I was opening it when the buzzer went. You’re sure you wouldn’t take a glass?’

‘Absolutely!’ Curle said a shade too emphatically.

‘Oh, well.’

After an awkward silence, Curle said, ‘Can I ask you something about the night Ali was killed?’

Haskell stiffened. ‘If I killed her? Is that what you want to know?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘That awful bloody woman downstairs thinks I did. Do you know that?’

‘I’d no idea. I mean, you must be mistaken.’

‘When you came here for afternoon tea, she stole something. She claimed she wanted a pee and took her chance to wander about the place. I only realised once you’d gone.’

‘I find that hard to believe,’ Curle said.

‘Believe it!’

Curle thought quickly, trying to work out how to use this unexpected turn in the conversation to his advantage. ‘If it is the case,’ he said, ‘she’s just threshing about because she’s distraught over her sister’s death. She desperately needs to know who killed her. You can see how natural that is.’

‘I can’t bring Ali back.’

‘None of us can.’ Curle felt the sting of unwanted tears. ‘But it would help, it would help me too, if whoever killed her was punished.’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘I know that.’

‘You’re sure?’ To Curle’s eye, there was something pathetic in the blond man’s plea for reassurance.

‘The night Ali was killed Jonah Murray and I left you in the pub with Brian Todd. You remember?’

Stupid question.

‘I’ll never forget that night,’ Haskell said.

‘Did you tell him about Ali and me?’

‘What was there to tell?’

‘Don’t play silly games. You knew we were lovers. Did you tell Todd?’

‘…I was drunk. I’m not really a drinker, apart from wine. After you two left, he bought whiskies. I didn’t want it, but he insisted.’

‘So you told him?’

‘I think so.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I told you, I’m not used to drinking so much. I may have done.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘I think I told him that I lived in the flat above a friend of yours.’

‘A friend?’

‘He kept on at me.’

‘And you told him I visited her.’

‘For years, I said.’ He stopped, realising what he’d admitted. ‘I’m sorry.’

It was more than Curle had expected to learn. The stirring of excitement, though, was dampened at once. There was a difficulty. ‘I don’t suppose you told him where you lived?’

Haskell bit his lip, staring suddenly. ‘Wait a minute. What’s this about?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you thinking
this fellow Todd…’ He baulked at putting the idea into words. ‘If that’s what you’re thinking, it doesn’t make sense. He didn’t know her. He’d never even heard of her until that night.’

All of which was true, but he hadn’t raised the obvious objection.

‘But he did know where you lived? You told him where you lived?’

Curle held his breath.

‘I had to. He gave me a lift home.’

‘You took him up to your flat?’

‘No! Of course not.’

‘Did you watch him drive away?’

‘No. I thanked him and he went off. I imagine that’s what happened… What else would happen?’

‘Is there any chance you didn’t close the street door properly when you went in?’

Haskell threw up his hands. ‘I was drunk. I go in and out every day. I suppose I shut it.’

‘Did you tell the police about Todd running you home?’

‘Yes – not that they were interested. I mean, why on earth would they be?’

They wouldn’t be. But then, Curle thought, they don’t know there’s a history between Todd and me. What was it Jonah had said?:
He must hate you very much; we must find out why.