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Authors: Eric Wight

BOOK: The Last Hand
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Orliff put down the phone and dialed Calvin Gregson's office. The lawyer's secretary told him that he was on his way to Hazelton Lanes to see a shirtmaker, but she could reach him on his cell phone.
“Tell him to meet me in Holt Renfrew in thirty minutes,” Orliff said, thinking how nice it was to be able to give orders to a guy like Gregson when you had something he wanted.
 
 
Gregson had added a dark blue brocade vest to the suit and the riding shoes. The two men found a place to drink coffee on the lower level.
“I think you're fixed up,” Orliff said. “I've got them to put Salter on the case.”
“Who's he?”
“A staff inspector, not a regular member of Homicide, but he's handled a couple of sensitive cases successfully. He's his own man.”
“A lone wolf?”
“More of an odd duck. But he's the one I would want if it were me.”
“Knows how to tread carefully, does he?”
“That's his nature. If he smells a cover-up, though, you won't be able to keep him quiet.”
“I told you there isn't any cover-up. We just want the right answer as quickly and quietly as possible. Can you do one more thing for me? Ask Salter to come and see me as soon as he can.”
“You want
me
to tell Salter to report to
you?
At your office, maybe? With his shoes shined? You hear what you are saying?”
“Right. Sorry. I understand. Right. Sorry. You had no hand in
it. You really are a crafty bastard, aren't you? How come you're not a lawyer?”
“Poor guidance counseling in high school, I guess. Or the wrong high school.”
“I
don't need a teammate,” Salter said. “When I need one, I'll ask you for one.”
Marinelli shook his head. “We work in pairs, Charlie, remember? For a lot of reasons. Backup, mainly.”
“In case of a fight? Who the hell is going to start something here? One of Lucas's Granite Club pals?”
“No, in court. You need someone to cover your ass, you know that, someone to testify you didn't use undue violence when you got that old lady in an armlock. We are getting too many complaints.”
“If I see any trouble coming, I'll call for help.”
“I'm serious, Charlie. The order comes from the chief.”
“So assign someone to me, but keep him in your office until I need him.”
“There's a guy just joined us. He's not long on the force but he had a lot of experience overseas before he came here.”
“Let me guess: a visible minority?” Salter imagined a small Pakistani or Chinese, recruited in spite of the height requirements to quiet the demands for more ethnic representation on Toronto's traditionally white, Anglo-Saxon force. The West Indies had a presence on the force, but India, China and Sri Lanka were still underrepresented.
Marinelli laughed. “An audible minority, more like.” He stepped to the door of the outer office. “Terry,” he called across the room. “Come over for a minute.”
A man in his mid-thirties, dark-skinned with acne-scarred cheeks,
looked up from a computer, nodded, then stood up and crossed the room.
“This is Staff Inspector Salter,” Marinelli said. “On assignment from the deputy's office to look after the Lucas case. I'm putting you with him. Charlie–Constable Terry Smith.”
Salter put out his hand. Looking surprised, Smith responded and they shook hands.
Salter said, “Are you familiar with the case? I'll need to be filled in.”
Smith said, “I'll need to fill myself in first, sir. I just arrived yesterday. I don't even know where the coffee machine is yet.”
Salter said, “You're Scottish?” It seemed polite to acknowledge that he could identify the sounds he was hearing.
Smith said, “I am,” and Marinelli, grinning, said, “See? An audible minority,” and closed his door, leaving them to each other.
Salter said, “You just off the boat, you say?”
Smith shook his head. “I just came over to Homicide. I've been on the force for a year. I trained in Glasgow. I made detective and then decided to emigrate.”
“Why?”
“My wife didn't like Glasgow. She's from Inverness. So we came over and I joined the Winnipeg police. Three years ago. Then we came to Toronto and I joined this lot. This is my first assignment in Homicide.”
“Why did you leave Winnipeg?”
“My wife didn't like it.”
“Did you?”
“I liked it fine. I liked Glasgow, too. Shall we get on?”
After a second to register that Smith was telling him to butt out, Salter said, “Let's go over the ground. I didn't ask for help, but your boss insisted. Okay? You say you don't know anything about the case, and I sure as hell don't. So let's make a start.” He looked at his watch. “It's ten-thirty. Go back to your computer and read the file. I'll get rid of the paper on my desk and we can meet here at one-thirty, then you can tell me all about the Lucas case.”
 
 
Smith was ready when they met again.
“The man's name was Lucas, Jeremy Baker Lucas. Fifty-five; a bachelor; lawyer; small, two-man practice, mainly in estate and mortgages; generally, looking after people with money, not problems. He was what I would call rich–belonged to three clubs, cottage in a place called Muskoka–you'll know where that is, sir? where he spent a lot of time in the summer; house in Costa Rica, where he spent much of the winter. You need a few shekels for that sort of thing, d'ye not? Actually, his law practice was more of a hobby. Hardly anyone came in off the street, and those that did usually ended up with his partner, but few as they were, Lucas's clients were well-heeled and the practice paid his rent, no doubt about that.
“In Toronto he rented an apartment, the place where he was killed. Not a luxury block, but what they call in Glasgow a ‘guid address'”-Smith spoke the two words in dialect, and smiled to indicate that Salter should understand that Smith was aware of the quaint phrase-“near the intersection of Bedford Road and Prince Arthur.” He looked up. “That's not far from Bloor Street. Bedford runs down to Bloor opposite the football stadium.”
“You know the area?”
“Oh, sure. My wife works in a doctor's office nearby. And I've been to a couple of soccer matches at the stadium.” He returned to his notes. “The rent for three bedrooms was three thousand five hundred a month. After his death his partner hired an accountant to glance over the books to reassure Lucas's clients that everything was in order, because he was managing a lot of money for five people, all old, well-fixed, who trusted him to look after their affairs, and in two cases to pay all their bills and give them an allowance. According to his partner, he handled the money very conservatively, no mutual funds, no second mortgages, and delegated the bill-paying to the secretary, which is fairly normal. He countersigned all the checks, and she kept some petty cash on hand for small purchases.
“In other words, he was exactly what he seemed–a well-heeled, semiretired lawyer who was in business mainly to have something to do and to have something to charge his expenses to.”
“Family?”
“His sister, Flora, also comfortable …”
“Where did the money come from originally? I heard furs and liquor.”
Smith shook his head. “There might have been a bit of that at the start, but Lucas's great-grandfather started a small office-supplies company selling sealing wax and string and so forth around the turn of the century, and when he was set up, went in for manufacturing paper clips and elastic bands, then went on to printing diaries, calendars, cards, invitations, all that kind o' stuff.” Here Smith seemed to take a breath and resumed in a louder voice. “He made lots o' money, his sons more. Lucas's father carried on with the gold mine, so by the time Lucas and his sister came along naebody had to work again, but they carried on anyhow because they were from good lowland stock, the kind that couldn't be doing nothing. But he soon left the trade and became a gentlemen, a solicitor, and his sister went in for charitable work until she became an MP.”
“MPP.”
“What's the difference? I should have found out by now.”
“An M.P.P. is a member of a
Provincial
Parliament,” Salter explained, as he waited for Smith's explanation of why he had spoken the last sentences in an accent like an actor welcoming a stranger to the glen.
Smith looked up from his script with a slight flicker of knowingness around the corners of his mouth. “Am I going a bit fast for ye?” he asked, in the same accent.
“What's with the Harry Lauder impersonation?”
“Actually, I'm just giving you what I got from one of our colleagues who heard me speak, then went into the whole Rabbie Burns bit. Bloody Constable Macbeth, he called me. Claims the same tartan himself. Can you believe it?”
Salter leaned back, waiting for more.
“Professional Scotsmen,” Smith explained. “I can't stand them.”
“What are you, then? An amateur? You've still got an accent.”
“I'm aware of that, but I still try to stay away from highlanders–sorry,
heelanders
–when I'm away from home because they piss me off and I'm sure they piss off everybody else, too. I'm from Glasgow. I've never eaten a haggis, or worn a kilt, or done any Scottish country
dancing, and I don't know the words to ‘Charlie Is Me Darling.' I'm a respectable working chap. Clan Smith, and the tartan comes from the wrapper around the toffees I ate as a wee lad.”
“Well, well. That seems clear.”
“Good. Shall we move on, sir?”
“In English.”
“Aye. The accent was Hollywood Scottish, by the way, the language you people think we talk. If I talked like that around Drumchapel, they'd think I was speaking pure BBC English. Drumchapel is a district of Glasgow where they speak a language you would not understand a word of. Don't go there without an interpreter.”
“I thought that was the Gorbals.”
Smith looked irritated. “My grandmother grew up in the Gorbals and she claims she never heard a woman swear until she moved to Govan. Bobby Cairns's granny, it was.”
“It must have gotten its reputation from somewhere.”
“I suppose so, but my sister lives there now, and she's very particular. Shall we get on, sir?”
“Where did you get all this information about the Lucas family?”
“From the reference books. You left me a lot of time, and the Lucas family is pretty well-documented.”
“What else do we know? Lucas was a bachelor. Was he gay?”
“Not if we make assumptions about the nature of his dealings with the only suspect in the case so far.”
“Who is?” Salter knew well what he was going to hear, the tiny bit of information he had overheard Marinelli telling Mackenzie.
“There's a hoo-er in the case,” Smith said, grinning, emphasising the word and the pronunciation so that Salter had to ask about it.
“Hoor? What's that? A scotch whore?”
“That's right, sir. Well done. I like the sound of it, don't you? It's different from ‘whore.' A whore sounds to me like some poor girl without any knickers, shivering on a street corner under a gaslamp. It's an ugly word, don't you think?”
“And ‘hoor'?”
“Nice and warm, a belly-dancer on the side.”
Salter laughed. “Tell me about our hoor.”
“The neighbors reported one lurking around the block the night Lucas was killed.” The remnants of Smith's accent dwelled fondly, comically, on ‘lurrrking'.
“What did they mean?”
“One of them saw her getting into the elevator, and the other one spied her on Lucas's floor.”
“How did she get in the building? No security?”
“The usual. Either you press the buzzers until someone responds without asking, or you walk in, smiling gratefully, with one of the tenants. It's a rare body who will challenge you. But in this case, there's probably a simple explanation–he was expecting her and buzzed her up.”
“Expecting her? Oh, right. I was thinking of something else. What made her seem like a hooker? A hoor. How did they know?”
“Silver boots; skirt up round her arse, a blouse that showed off her titties, and she was made up like Cruella, one said. Who's Cruella, though I can imagine?”
“A Disney character in a film called
101 Dalmatians
. I saw it about twenty-five years ago. A terrific movie, but make sure not to see the remake. So she was dressed for work, was she?”
“That seems to be the way of it.”
“What do you make of it? Her.”
“It's fishy. I would have thought that a poo-bah like Lucas could have paid for a bit of discretion.”
“Maybe she just forgot her coat. Maybe the rest of the costume was contracted for on the assumption she'd cover it up until she got inside. You know, maybe Lucas
wanted
a ‘hoor,' not a whore.”
“I never thought of it like that, sir.”
“What did you think?”
“Just that it was fishy, strange, incongruous. I didn't arrive at any conclusions.”
“But on the surface it looks like a hooker who lost it, and stabbed him with a … what?”
“A kitchen knife. A Victorinox.”
“A what?”
“That's the make. A big one. From his own kitchen.”
“His?”
“Apparently.”
“So she didn't plan to stab him when she arrived?”
“Not from the look of it so far.”
“Did she rob him?”
“All the desk drawers had been tipped out. The cleaning lady says Lucas always paid her in cash, and I understand a Toronto tart costs mebbe a couple of hundred. It's a bit less in Winnipeg and around Argylle Street where I come from. I doubt they take American Express, these ladies, except the ones that work for regular escort services. So he mebbe had a few hundred on hand. Except for cabs and tips and the barber, though, little things like that, he did everything with plastic.”

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