Where the Bodies are Buried (13 page)

‘I’m just kidding, hen. Relax. You can leave it in our hands now. And I’d strongly request that you
do
leave it to the professionals. I realise you want to help, but when you don’t know what you’re doing, you can end up causing
more harm than good. Tramp about where you’re not meant to, even with feet as dainty as yours, and without realising it you’ve
contaminated the trail.’

Any reassurance Jasmine derived from having successfully got the police involved seemed to evaporate as soon as DS McDade
departed and she was left alone in the office once again. It was as though the last hour had never happened, or at least that
it might as well not have. She had this impression, this quite irresistible impression, that despite his parting pledges,
she wouldn’t be hearing from McDade again. More than that, she had the unmistakable deflated feeling of having been dismissed.
He’d all but patted her on the head, treating her like a daft wee lassie. Fair enough, when it came to this stuff she
was
just a daft wee lassie, but not so daft that she hadn’t noticed a jarring shift in his behaviour.

It was that change of manner, that stark contrast between the man who had entered the office and the one who had left it.
As he questioned her, McDade had seemed formidable, an intense and intimidating presence, marked by that near-disapproving
absence of levity
that she had seen Jim train on people when he wanted them to know he meant business. Then all of a sudden he was making light
of the situation and patronising her, treating her like a silly schoolgirl who shouldn’t be bothering her pretty little head.

She deduced that he had been there to satisfy himself about something, not to assist her. Once he had found out whatever that
was, he was suddenly at ease.

That was when she realised her mistake: she had assumed that cops such as Collins and McDade would be more likely to help
her once they learned that Jim used to be on the force. She’d forgotten that any such loyalty would be to Jim first and foremost.
McDade might just as easily want to prevent anyone looking into Jim’s whereabouts if he thought Jim was trying to stay hidden.
She had no idea what the DS had gleaned from his visit; he could have sussed precisely what it was all about, to his own reassurance
and satisfaction, but he wasn’t going to share it with her.

McDade hadn’t troubled himself over the bizarre question of why Jim would be looking for a long-dead gangster, nor even to
enquire who had been paying him to do so. Maybe Jasmine didn’t know what she was doing, but that struck her as an odd thing
to so quickly dismiss – unless he had some undisclosed reason to believe it wasn’t relevant.

Or perhaps he wanted to give her the impression it wasn’t relevant so that she wouldn’t look deeper into it and ‘contaminate
the trail’.

She opened the Fallan file and leafed through it, struck immediately by how few pages it contained and what little information
was on them. There were no invoice copies, no client details, only that rather redundant affirmation on the folder that there
was
a client. All the other case files contained the most pedantic and pernickety stage-by-stage progress notes, every phone
call, visit, name, address and physical observation logged meticulously.

Jim’s case notes were like maths papers: it seemed imperative that he show his working, so that he could retrace his steps
if need be, whether to see where he took a wrong turn or to check the veracity of his conclusions. In the Fallan file, however,
this scarcity of information, this conspicuous absence of detail, made it look like he didn’t want anybody to be able to follow
his footsteps or to see how he had reached his conclusions.

Yet the conclusion itself was noted: or at least the last point his calculations had led him to. There was a name – Tron Ingrams
– and
an address in Northumberland. The file stated, in Jim’s block capitals, that he had contacted Ingrams ten months ago, which
appeared to have been where the investigation ended, as supported by the computer records.

Back off, McDade had instructed her. Leave it to the professionals. When you don’t know what you’re doing, you can end up
causing more harm than good. Well, if it wasn’t relevant, then she couldn’t do much harm delving a little deeper into why
Jim had been looking at this file shortly before his disappearance. And if it was the case that McDade didn’t want her poking
her nose into this particular area of investigation, then that was the first place this daft wee lassie was going to look.

‘What’s the view like from your front window?’ Catherine asked.

They were parked opposite the Bay Tree restaurant in Thornton Bridge, a prosperous suburb to the south-east of the city that
was still clinging on tenaciously to the term ‘village’ for its property-value mojo, despite the ongoing housing sprawl that
was directly resultant of the same. New-build developments snaked out like spider legs along all the roads in and out of the
tiny core of nineteenth-century affluence that constituted the original Clydeside settlement; indeed, the newest ones stood
closer to the centres of neighbouring towns but were still advertised as Thornton Bridge addresses.

Catherine remembered being brought to the Bay Tree as a wee girl, for birthday teas and other enjoyable family treats. Her
first-year report card: that was one such memorable occasion, the pleasure of the meal augmented by her sense of having earned
it, by getting the best grades in her year. Her dad insisted it was for hard work rather than coming first. She understood
his sentiment, but he was on to a loser either way, given the level of competition: she’d have gotten the best grades in her
year whether she had worked hard or not. Her diligent industry merely enhanced the margin. In fact, simply picking up a textbook
and reading it, rather than hitting a fellow pupil with it, would also have enhanced the margin at a failure factory such
as Calderburn High.

The restaurant had been very different then: small, cosy and probably well on the wrong side of twee, but heavenly back in
a time when she considered scampi-in-a-basket and pear belle Hélè ne the height of sophistication. It had looked like a little
cottage in those days, with tie-back curtains on its three little windows, and seemed to be staffed entirely by bustling middle-aged
women who made her think of the three good fairies in Disney’s
Sleeping Beauty.

‘Much the same as the view from the windows opposite,’ Laura replied. ‘I can see a sandstone tenement boasting varied but
inconsistently successful examples of modern soft furnishings. If I go up inside the bay and look hard right, I can just about
make out a wee
bit of Queen’s Park, but that’s at the price of also being able to see the flat at the far end with these honking green curtains,
eh? Why d’you ask?’

Catherine looked across at the Bay Tree again, partly by way of overture to her answer but mostly so that Laura didn’t see
the smile that crept across her face. She was still getting used to the girl’s idiosyncrasies, one of which was undoubtedly
her Edinburgh accent, which tended to rise in tone at the end of every sentence, as though it was a question rather than a
statement. This effect was cemented by her further habit of adding ‘eh?’ at the end of certain remarks, as though requiring
affirmation.

Upon reflection, Catherine had realised that Glaswegians often did the same thing, adding ‘know?’ at the end of half their
utterances, but her relative unfamiliarity with Laura’s accent made her invitation to agreement sound all the more genuine,
albeit she couldn’t decide if it was needy or merely polite.

Maybe it wasn’t just unfamiliarity, however. Aside from the fact that the Glaswegian ‘know?’ was most definitely not the offer
of an opportunity to dissent, there were other aspects of Laura’s manner that tended to give the impression she was permanently
apologising for herself. It was to be expected, perhaps, Catherine thought. New city, new force, new bosses. She’d be treading
very lightly for a while yet. It just didn’t quite tally with the reports of a headstrong and spiky young DI that Catherine
had both heard and read ahead of her arrival.

‘I ask because I remember what this place used to be like, and I was feeling for the folk in those two semis opposite. They
used to look across the street to a homey wee cottage that looked like something out of a seven-year-old girl’s painting.
Now every time they open their venetian blinds, they get confronted with twenty or thirty folk stuffing their faces.’

Catherine was referring to the Bay Tree’s twenty-first-century makeover, expanding it all the way to what was once the bounds
of its front garden by means of a huge all-glass extension running the full breadth of the premises. The renovation job was
rumoured to have cost close to seven figures, but had paid off by transforming a glorified tea parlour into a glitzy restaurant
and bar, ideally situated to sell Thornton Bridge’s aspirational new denizens an expensive but satisfying helping of lifestyle.
The only bustling middle-aged women to
be found there these days were seated at rather than waiting the tables: all push-up bras and blonde dye-jobs, Botoxed to
the max.

Catherine didn’t imagine they were doing high teas any more, but she wouldn’t know. She’d never been in and nor would she
spend two bob in the place, for the simple reason that it belonged to Frankie Callahan, and that alone would make the food
taste like ashes.

‘Is it a money-laundering front?’ Laura asked, glancing at the busy scene behind the glass.

‘Not strictly speaking. Not in the short term, anyway, but it’s a front, all right: a front for Frankie’s public perception,
and it’s money-laundering inasmuch as it’s all part of the process of turning his dirty-money past into a clean-money future.’

‘An investment kind of thing?’

‘That’s the strategy now for these guys. Make your money in drugs and other scams, then buy your way into the legitimate game.
Some of them miss being the big man, but once they reach a certain age, they can’t be doing with the hassle. They just want
the cash and the kudos: the new kudos of being a respectable man of means. They’ve already had the kudos of the notoriety
trip, and the smart ones don’t kick the arse out of it. Frankie here laid down a lot of money to renovate the Bay Tree, then
ran it at a loss for a couple of years.’

‘Tax write-down?’

‘For sure, but that was just a fringe benefit. The real pay-off was what you’re seeing now. An ordinary Tuesday night and
every table is full. It’s always mobbed. He took a hit to keep the prices down and the quality high until it became
the
place for an evening out or a lunch-time meeting in what is a very salubrious wee part of the world.’

‘And once you’ve established that kind of popularity, you can invert the ratios, eh?’

‘Not to mention branching out. He owns two other restaurants now, but he’s also got a catering supplies and ancillary services
company: Top Table. They supply breads, pizza bases, pastry and other sundries to restaurants all over the place, and they’ve
got a laundry sideline that collects and cleans all the tableware as well.’

‘I’d imagine he’s been very resourceful and competitive in tendering for contracts, though. Buy your bread from us or we’ll
burn your restaurant doon. Let us wash your napkins or you’ll be using them to mop up your own blood, eh?’

‘That’s merely the entrepreneurial spirit, DI Geddes; see, if you’d
grown up during the Thatcher years, you’d understand that. The legitimate part of Frankie Callahan PLC is ever-expanding.
That’s why if we don’t get him in the next few years, we never will.’

‘He’ll get away clean. Like one of his tablecloths,’ Laura suggested. Catherine could tell she was concealing a smirk, tipped
off by the lack of an ‘eh?’.

‘He’s not quite ready to ditch the core activities yet. Still makes too much from heroin to give that up, especially when
smack is proven to be so much more dependable in volatile economic conditions. The Bay Tree is the apple of his eye, though.
He lives just around the corner from it: a big original Thornton Bridge mansion house, you understand, not one of the ultra-modern
footballers’ wives’ pads along in the new estates with a four-seater jacuzzi in the en suite and a plasma telly in the bog.’

‘Aye, I’d heard a few of the Old Firm players live here. Is that right?’

‘They do, and they often stop in at the Bay Tree, which considerably adds to the allure both for the clientele and for Frankie.
He gets to be the genial host, friend of the famous, successful businessman and popular restaurateur, as opposed to back-stabbing,
heroin-peddling murderous scumbag.’

‘Have to imagine a man like that wouldn’t want the polis making themselves conspicuous on his premises of an evening, eh?’
Laura suggested, clearly understanding why Catherine had waited until now to pay him a visit.

‘I find blokes like Frankie are less inclined to amuse themselves by dicking you about and playing wee power games when it’s
their own precious time they’re wasting. You get more straight answers when they cannae wait to get rid of you. Besides, we’ll
make up for any potential embarrassment with the air of class the pair of us will bring to the establishment.’

Callahan read the situation expertly, Catherine had to give him that. He must have clocked Catherine and Laura showing their
warrant cards to the waitress who met them near the front door, and he swept through the restaurant to intercept them before
they could make themselves any more conspicuous, all the while composing himself in preparation for dealing with them. He
concealed whatever anger he felt at the deliberate timing of the intrusion, perfectly aware of the effect Catherine
was hoping to have, and escorted them briskly but politely to the Bay Tree’s private dining room, out of sight of the other
diners. If anyone caught a glimpse, they might well assume the two plain-clothes officers were there at his bidding, so calm
was his demeanour.

Everything about Callahan was calm, in fact. In contrast to the way Paddy Steel exuded aggression like a Van de Graaff generator
exuded static, Francis Callahan, as he liked to be known these days, did not exude, more absorb. He gave out nothing, the
kind of man who, had he been a cop, could have elicited confessions merely by sitting there in unnervingly still and profound
silence.