Where the Bodies are Buried (14 page)

He sat them both down but didn’t offer them a drink, eschewing the charade of disingenuously genial host. No games; or at
least, no easy ones. There was a deep sincerity about him, though it was not to be confused with solicitousness or empathy.
It was the kind of sincerity with which a judge addressed the dock once the black cap had been placed on his head.

If Callahan told you he meant you harm, you would worry. That kind of sincerity.

‘You’re here about Jai McDiarmid,’ he said, soon as they had taken their seats. He was trying to steal Catherine’s thunder
again, skipping past the formalities of pretending he had no idea what the police might possibly want to talk to him about.
It was probably intended to surprise her, but Catherine took it as a vindication of her own strategy: he wanted them out of
the place as quickly as he could.

‘Why would we want to talk to you about that?’ she replied, reciprocating his gambit by being the one pretending to be surprised.

‘You don’t, specifically. You want to talk to Gary. Jai was carrying on with Gary’s girlfriend behind his back. I’ll get him
for you. He’s upstairs in the office.’

Callahan addressed her with no edge, no irritation or sarcasm. He spoke as though he had nothing whatsoever to fear from this
investigation because it simply didn’t concern him. He gave off no hint of grudge or even the weariness that some men of his
ilk displayed at enduring this mandatory occupational inconvenience.

He summoned a waitress with the subtlest of nods. The girl must have been in eyeshot the whole time, Callahan having seated
himself in sight of the open door to the bar. The glass expanse of the dining area proper was a further remove from the private
room, which occupied a space to the rear of the original property. There was even one
of the little windows Catherine remembered from her childhood, though the tie-back curtains had long since been replaced with
a trendy vertical blind. Callahan spoke softly to the girl and she walked away again, smartly but unhurried.

‘Did you know him?’ Catherine enquired.

Callahan nodded, eyes wide with that sincerity but unreadable as to whether he’d sincerely hated McDiarmid or sincerely wanted
him dead. He wasn’t going to volunteer anything else.

‘What did you think of him? Did you have dealings? Cross swords?’

‘I didn’t know him personally. I knew what kind of man he was. I knew some of what he had done, and what he was said to have
done.’

That was about as expansive as he was going to get, Catherine assumed. Even when he did offer a few words, they were unfailingly
neutral, like his statements had already been lawyered before they came out of his mouth.

He glanced away towards the bar as they waited for Fleeting, not so much looking impatiently for his man to appear as further
demonstrating that he had nothing more to say to his guests and it would be impolite to sit and stare at them.

Catherine felt less constrained by any need to feign propriety, and took the chance to study Callahan’s face, understanding
that he would be entirely aware of this. Despite his status and notoriety, she realised she had never been this close to him.
She had encountered him in the flesh only once before, at least ten years back and only momentarily, as he was being escorted
through the teaming chaos of a police station on a Saturday night. Their paths were thereafter unlikely to cross, as she mostly
dealt with murder and he mostly had other people deal with that on his behalf.

In the growing silence, Catherine was unsettled to catch herself contemplating whether she might, under other circumstances,
have considered Callahan attractive.

He was early forties, looking good for his age, as opposed to young for it, the lines on his face etching evidence of his
years but not speaking directly about how he had spent them, unlike so many of his counterparts, who might as well have had
‘gangster’ tattooed on their foreheads. If she didn’t know more about him, she’d have taken him for a successful tradesman,
perhaps a man who had his own business but earned the better part of its profits from the sweat of his own brow and the skill
of his hands. She wondered distantly if that was
how he could have turned out, under other circumstances; whether the brutality in his spirit had been put there by his experiences,
or whether that spirit had picked out his brutal path.

He was slim and suntanned, a light and authentic holiday bronze as opposed to sunbed orange, dressed in a short-sleeved lilac
shirt that complemented his skin tone. His hair was a silvery mixture of grey and white, trimmed neatly at the back and sides,
lightly gelled to keep it in place on top. He had downy blond hair on his arms that seemed jarringly incongruous, as she normally
associated it with the softness and fragility of her sons’ skinny limbs. He was short too; shorter than her anyway. She preferred
men shorter than herself, though at five-nine that didn’t narrow the field too much. Callahan couldn’t have been more than
five-seven. Amazing how often, in Glasgow gangland, the big man was actually a wee man. Napoleon complex. Bantams and terriers.

His clothing was expensive but understated. Tasteful.

Not flash.

With that thought her reverie evaporated. Flash Frankie. That was what they used to call him, but not because he was ostentatious
in his appearance. It was a name conferred by his criminal peers due to the fact that one minute you were just talking to
him and then in a flash he had opened your face.

This was why his calmness made him a far more intimidating presence than Paddy Steel. Steel gave off so much energy that it
was easy to detect changes in the atmosphere. By contrast Callahan, as many had found to their considerable cost, was impossible
to read.

He relaxed a little in his chair, Catherine’s first indicator that Gary Fleeting was about to enter the private dining room.
Callahan wasn’t quite getting up and leaving them to it, but there was a further air of detachment about him now that his
lieutenant had arrived.

Where Frankie was calm and unemotive, Fleeting was rangy and bristling, with a restless physicality about the way he composed
himself, or rather didn’t compose himself: not for more than three seconds at a time anyway. Catherine knew instantly both
why Lisa Bagan had been trysting with Jai McDiarmid and why she had been anxious to keep it a secret. Fleeting struck her
instantly as the kind of guy who would ‘rather fight than fuck’ if both options were on offer; someone who quite possibly
got more of a thrill from learning that another bloke was shagging his girlfriend than he got from actually shagging her himself.

‘Gary, these ladies are from CID.’

Catherine was aware that Callahan hadn’t had the chance to prep him, having spoken only very briefly to the waitress who had
been sent upstairs. She waited for him to further contextualise their visit in order to provide a heads-up: even just a terse
‘They’re here about Jai McDiarmid’, heavy with hidden emphasis and discreet import.

Callahan, however, added nothing. Was he confident that Fleeting had had no involvement in McDiarmid’s murder, or merely confident
that Fleeting would know exactly why she and Laura were here?

‘It’s about James McDiarmid,’ Catherine said. ‘I believe you had a mutual acquaintance.’

‘What aboot him? Any news, or is he still deid?’

Aye, he knew fine why they were here. He was aiming for feigned lack of interest, but didn’t have his boss’s emotionless intensity.
Plus, he couldn’t resist acting the big man. Put him in a room with polis and he would come over all cocky no matter the circumstances.
It was bred in the bone. She’d have said it was in his mother’s milk, but the chances of finding a breastfeeder in Fleeting’s
infant-years postcode would have been roughly the same as finding a virgin in his school’s fourth-year netball team.

‘Where were you on Sunday, Gary? Between around half-eleven in the morning and midnight?’

‘That’s a big window, is it no’?’ he asked, ostensibly of Catherine but clearly for the benefit of Callahan. ‘Christ, the
Gas Board give you a smaller time frame than that when they’re coming round to fix your boiler.’

Callahan cracked a hint of a smile, genuine amusement rather than a gesture of solidarity. Catherine detected a hint of impatience
too, as if he didn’t fancy the prospect of Fleeting stringing them along. It was like he really couldn’t be bothered with
this, had better things to do.

‘Well why don’t you start filling that big window in?’ Laura responded, an acidity to her patronising tone that conveyed unmistakably
how unimpressed she was with his humour and with Fleeting in general.

‘Where were you?’ Catherine reiterated.

‘Sunday?’ He shrugged. ‘I was in my bed until lunchtime, close on one, maybe later. Pulled a wee durty up the toon Saturday
night.’ He looked to Laura as he said this, mock conspiratorially, like she would approve or even identify. ‘Nothing to write
home aboot, but your hole’s
your hole. I went out and had a bit of brekky doon the boozer watching the game. That’s me till aboot six-ish. Went hame,
freshened up, got changed and came here. Bar was short-staffed, too many folk away their holidays. I was helping out Mr Callahan
here as a favour. Closed up about quarter to one. Does that fill your windae enough?’ he asked, giving Laura a sneer.

‘Would this “wee durty” have a name,’ Catherine asked, ‘so that we could maybe get hold of her to verify her part of your
alibi?’

‘I think it was Lynn, though it might have been Lyndsay. Like I says, no’ very memorable. I mean, she was pretty dirty, but
maist birds are these days. Take it all ways, like wee porn stars, so they are.’

Catherine was doing better than Laura at not rising to the bait. Maybe it was her greater experience and maybe it was that
the bait wasn’t being cast for her. She wondered distantly whether to be insulted by this implication that she was too old
to be worth bothering about.

‘Aye, well if it turns out she doesnae remember you either, that’s not much of an alibi, eh?’ Laura responded.

‘I’m sure she’ll remember enough. She was at my flat. She gave me her mobile number. I’ll write it doon for you,’ he told
Laura. ‘Or if you give me yours, I could text you it.’

‘Which pub were you in?’ Catherine asked.

‘My local. The Raven’s Crag. You know it?’

‘Aye,’ Catherine confirmed with a small sigh. ‘It’s a popular spot for alibis. Did anybody see you there who hasn’t served
a minimum of five years?’

‘Well, I couldn’t say for the Raven’s, but there must have been a good few dozen in this place saw me Sunday night, and I
don’t think you would be casting aspersions on the Bay Tree’s clientele, would you?’

‘Gary was here from about seven onwards on Sunday,’ Callahan interjected with that intense, almost overstated conviction.
‘I’ve still got the bookings list if you want to speak to individual diners. Their contact numbers are on the sheet. I’ll
have Gillian photocopy it for you,’ he added, summoning the waitress.

He got to his feet as he gave her his instructions, his body language and demeanour indicating that he expected everyone else
to rise likewise, because as far as he was concerned, business had been concluded.

‘There must have been sixty or seventy people saw him,’ he underlined. ‘Regular customers. Local residents. Doctors, lawyers,
teachers.
I think even Marghrad Bell, the area’s MSP, was in with her family on Sunday. You’re wasting your time here, believe me.’

That neutrality of tone again, that conviction and sincerity. There was no smugness, no goading. In contrast to the walking
taunt that was Fleeting, it almost sounded like Callahan was trying to help her here.

Right enough, Fleeting was offering enough smugness and goading for both of them. He folded his arms with a silly smirk as
she and Laura stood up from their chairs.

The waitress, Gillian, returned with a copy of the restaurant’s booking sheet from Sunday night. Catherine got Fleeting to
dictate the phone number of Saturday’s one-night stand and wrote it down on the same sheet, sparing Laura the task. She looked
on the verge of doing or saying something rash. Catherine wasn’t happy either, but she wasn’t done here yet, and she knew
to bide her time. Callahan wasn’t getting to manage her from entrance to exit, and nor was he going to succeed in keeping
this visit entirely discreet.

She waited until they were in the bar area, ostensibly headed for the main doors, then stopped and turned on her heel with
a hammy pirouette, the better to attract the notice of any customers potentially in earshot. She was probably out of range
of the dining area, but there were at least a dozen drinkers seated in the environs of the bar, including a tableful of precisely
the sort of glammed-up young women Fleeting no doubt enjoyed impressing when he was on the premises.

‘Mr Callahan, I’ve got one last question for your associate, Mr Fleeting, and it’s this: why aren’t you in jail? I mean, admittedly
that sounds like a very general question, one that must go through most people’s minds when they meet you, but I mean specifically.
You were apprehended with a sizeable quantity of heroin not two months back and were remanded pending trial, yet here you
are, free as a bird, getting “your hole”, as you put it, from undiscerning wee birds who, in your words, “take it all ways”
but are otherwise “nothing to write home about”. What gives?’

This earned Catherine the satisfaction of seeing Fleeting glance anxiously at the table of young women and the smug look wiped
off his face, but any further response was muted by Callahan’s subtlest of touches to his arm.

‘I’d rather my customers weren’t exposed to this manner of discussion,’ Callahan said, eyeing her fixedly but not angrily.
‘So if you wish
to continue this conversation, it would be courteous to them to do so outside.’

He did not attempt to further usher them towards the doors, but instead stood with a blankly silent expression communicating
that no answers would be forthcoming from either of them until the party had vacated the bar. Catherine clocked him giving
the merest shake of the head to the waitress, Gillian, who had gone to reopen the door to the private dining room. Such courtesies
were no longer being extended. Nonetheless, while they would have to continue outside, she did not envisage that it would
be an old-fashioned rammy in the car park. Callahan would ensure voices weren’t raised. Not on his side anyway.