Where the Bodies are Buried (8 page)

She called her cousin Angela, Jim’s eldest, whom Jasmine had always deemed most likely to have a nose in Jim’s business. She
posed the query neutrally, disguising her concern, playing up her own scatterbrained disorganisation as the most likely reason
she didn’t know where Jim was.

Angela reported that she hadn’t spoken to her dad since the preceding weekend. She didn’t seem concerned, but then her dad
not being around when he was supposed to be was a circumstance Angela had grown up with.

Putting down the handset and being once again confronted with interminable silence, Jasmine decided she could no longer tolerate
this state of limbo. She had to do something, take some form of action, to dispel this feeling of being helpless.

She got in her car and drove across to Hyndland. In the early-afternoon traffic it took about twenty minutes to reach Jim’s
address, the time of day also contributing to her unaccustomed ease of finding a space to park.

As she turned off the engine and glanced across at the door to Jim’s close, she felt sick. She could see so vividly what might
be about to unfold. She would walk up there to the second floor and ring the bell, then, when there was no answer, she would
peer through the letter box. That was when she would see him, maybe just an arm or a leg,
motionless, dead on the carpet. She didn’t think she could take that. She had seen Mum slip away by small increments, fading
from normal life to exist only among drips and monitors. Mum was still warm the last time Jasmine touched her. She still took
comfort from that. If Jim had been lying there for days, then no, she really didn’t think she could handle it. Somebody had
to, though, and she needed to know.

She closed her car door, looking again at the unfamiliar plethora of available parking spaces, and realised the purpose of
her visit was moot. She wouldn’t find Jim in the flat, dead or alive, as his car wasn’t here. Just to be sure, she took a
walk back and forth along Jim’s street and then a good hundred yards around the corner, in case he had last come home at a
busy time and been forced to park further afield, but his Peugeot was nowhere to be seen. Grateful for this minor relief,
she decided to check out the flat anyway for what little information she might be able to glean.

She felt oddly self-conscious about ringing the doorbell in the near-certain knowledge that nobody was going to answer it,
but felt she had to go through the motions anyway, like some vestigial religious rite the origin of which even its believers
had forgotten. It sounded disproportionately loud, perhaps because she was imagining the emptiness of the flat causing it
to echo, though the absence of the normal ambient noises of an occupant probably did amplify it. Truth was, when you rang
a doorbell, you could tell when nobody was home, perceive the emptiness behind the door. Croft had, she bet. He hadn’t phoned
her because he thought she might have been in the shower or not heard him for the radio. He knew the place was empty.

Jasmine pushed open the letter box, confidently unafraid of what she might discover. The sight that greeted her wasn’t comforting.
She saw a scattering of mail and a couple of newspapers. Her angle of view only showed what had fallen a foot or so away from
the door, so she retrieved a compact mirror from her bag and held it through the slot. There was a third copy of the
Evening Times
resting near-vertically against the inside of the door. Subtracting Sunday, when it didn’t print, that meant three deliveries
since Jim was last home. She didn’t know if his paper-boy had been yet today. If he had, then at the absolute latest, the
last time Jim was home was some time before his
Times
got delivered on Friday; and if Monday’s paper wasn’t one of the ones on the floor, he’d been missing for four days.

Lies Over Breakfast

They found Paddy Steel where their information had indicated: jogging around Strathclyde Park in the morning sunshine, his
pace being dictated by the two burly minders accompanying him every step, neither of whom could be said to have a runner’s
build.

Catherine and Laura watched the troika from the Bothwell end of the loch, their car parked a few spaces from Steel’s Hummer.

‘He likes to keep himself fit,’ Catherine remarked. ‘He’s here most days, hits the gym too for his weight work. Guys like
that, it’s the alpha male thing writ large: they need to know they could take a guy half their age, theoretically anyway.
In practice, the challenger wouldn’t get near them. Most other mammals don’t have security personnel.’

‘Or MAMILs,’ Laura observed. ‘Middle-aged men in Lycra. He’s not exactly cut down in his grief, eh? Either he doesn’t know
about Jai McDiarmid yet, or he’s dealing with his sorrow through the re-assurance of the familiar.’

Catherine let out a dry chuckle.

‘Oh, he’ll know. Just check the nick of the minders. Do they look like they jog every morning? Paddy might not be on a war
footing yet, but he’s moved to DEFCON Three. He’ll be loving the fact that the minders cannae hack it, though. Lets them know
he’s not the boss just because he’s got good connections and has made a few bob.’

‘He won’t tell us anything, will he?’

‘Course not. It’s the Glasgow Omerta: the silence of the bams. But sometimes you can work out that there’s something specific
they’re not telling you. Besides, that’s only part of the game here. Mainly I want him to know we’re watching him, so that
he thinks twice about launching reprisals.’

Laura made to get out of the car as the trio ambled towards the car park, the sweaty minders now at walking pace with the
end of their ordeal only yards away.

‘Hang fire,’ Catherine told her. ‘He’ll be going into the restaurant for his power breakfast. We’ll let him order, then I’ll
undo a couple
of buttons and bat my lashes and ask if we can join his table.’

‘Power breakfast?’ Laura asked, confused and betraying the years between them. Catherine just hoped the DI realised she was
joking about undoing a couple of buttons too.

‘Paddy Steel was a skint up-and-comer during the eighties,’ she explained. ‘His aspirations got jammed back in adolescence.
Now that he’s got the money, he thinks he’s in
Miami Vice.’

They found him at a big corner booth with a dual-aspect view through floor-to-ceiling windows, no doubt his regular spot,
given that it was unquestionably the best table in the house. Catherine hadn’t doorstepped him here before, but she wondered
whether he wasn’t sitting a little further in from the glass than normal.

He was smaller than she’d expected. She hadn’t seen him up close in maybe a year or so, but her impression was always revised
the same way. He grew in the mind over the intervening period so that the real thing always literally came up short. It wasn’t
just a proportion thing, given his muscular build; he really was two or three inches smaller than Catherine. You don’t have
to be big to be the big man, however. His presence was still a powerful one, with a brute fortitude and strength of will crackling
off him like you were standing under a pylon.

He looked up neutrally as they approached, maintaining the same expression to hide his recognition and whatever else he felt
and deduced regarding the arrival of two polis. He was tucking into an omelette, polka-dotted with red, green and yellow peppers,
a pint glass of fresh orange juice next to his plate. His minders clearly felt they had earned the right to a more traditional
indulgence, each tackling a fry-up of quite heroic proportions.

‘Can we help you?’ one of them said gruffly, speaking through a mouthful of black pudding.

‘It’s all right, Bobby,’ Steel told him. ‘These ladies are just here to offer their condolences. Aren’t you?’

‘Quite,’ said Catherine. ‘I don’t mean to intrude. I can see you’re all devastated.’

‘Loss affects people in different ways,’ Steel replied, still poker-faced. ‘Bobby and Big Nige here are comfort-eating.’

This drew a grunt of laughter from Big Nige on the right, while Bobby on the left just eyed them warily and kept chewing.

‘You knew James McDiarmid what, twenty-odd years?’ Catherine said. ‘Since you were both in your teens.’

‘Aye, what aboot it? Is this grief tourism or something? Are you all put oot because you’ve come doon here and you’re not
getting to see any grown men cry?’

‘As you said, Mr Steel, it affects people in different ways. I just thought, given the length of your relationship, you’d
be keen to assist our efforts in bringing your friend’s killer – or killers – to justice.’

‘If I knew anything, you’d be the first person I’d tell,’ Steel replied, before taking a sip of juice. ‘Unfortunately, I’m
totally in the dark here.’

‘Can you think of anybody who might have wished Mr McDiarmid any harm?’ Laura asked, playing the game by responding in kind.

‘I’ll not lie to you, hen, we’re nane of us nursery teachers. I don’t doubt Jai had enemies. But this came out of the blue,
and that’s gospel.’

Catherine clocked Steel eyeing the salt, about to reach for it, but she got there first, picking it up as though absent-mindedly.

‘You’re telling us you’ve no idea what this might be about?’ she asked, toying with the object between her fingers. ‘There’s
nobody you’re worried about making a move on you, given that they’ve just taken out your right-hand man?’

Steel put down his fork, a sour look on his face. He wasn’t going to enjoy his breakfast now until he’d got rid of her, and
he certainly wasn’t going to enjoy his omelette until he’d got the salt back.

‘You need to stop reading the
Daily Record,’
he said. ‘Until I read aboot it, I wasnae aware I had a right-hand man. Aye, we did business, and aye, we ran aboot together
when we were kids, but we don’t have a gang hut any more. I don’t know what Jai was up to seven days a week, any more than
I know what Bobby and Nige here have got planned for this afternoon. Jai got himself in bother, obviously, the worst kind,
but it’s nothing to do with me.’

‘When did you hear?’ Catherine asked.

‘Back of seven.’

‘Not a nice way to start the day. Woken up with that news.’

‘I was awake already. I’m an early riser.’

‘And what was the first name that popped into your head?’

‘I was too shocked to think about anything like that.’

‘Bollocks you were. Gut instinct: who did you think about?’

He took another gulp of juice, buying time. This told her that whatever name followed would be a lie, but more importantly
that there had been a name he didn’t want to give her.

‘Tony McGill,’ he said, prompting a snort of amusement from both
his dining companions. ‘I just thought, maybe the auld bastard’s still trying to keep the drugs out of Gallowhaugh.’

‘Aye, very good,’ Catherine said with a measured lack of interest. ‘So you won’t feel it’s incumbent upon you to respond on
the late Mr McDiarmid’s behalf, or be worried that you might also be under threat.’

‘I’m keen that justice is done, and I’ve every confidence that you’ll see it is, Officer … ?’

Nige reprised his grunt. He thought his boss was a riot, clearly. He was easily pleased, although not so easily sated, going
by the damage he had inflicted on the buffet.

‘McLeod,’ she stated. ‘Detective Superintendent.’

‘McLeod, aye. And no, I’m not worried. Like I said, I don’t know what this is about, but it’s nothing to do with me. Now,
would you mind passing the salt?’

Catherine motioned to toss it. Steel cupped his hands. She deliberately threw it a little too hard and a little too fast for
him to catch. It hit him in the chest, bouncing off his sweatshirt with a percussive sound that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pecs
couldn’t have made, even in his prime.

‘Not worried, aye,’ she said. ‘That’s why you’re out running between two fat bastards, getting jogger’s nipple off a bulletproof
vest.’

Sergeant George Collins had the polite and slightly disconnected air of giving a well-rehearsed speech. The effect was dishearteningly
like speaking to an advanced but no less impersonal answering system. For missing persons, press one.

‘You see, Miss Sharp,’ he explained, ‘our resources are finite, so it’s incumbent upon us to prioritise them appropriately.
For that reason, unless we have solid evidence that a crime has been committed, we can’t act upon a report of a missing person.’

Jasmine felt stupid now, but only because, deep down, she had known this was how it was going to play out. It was only just
gone eight o’clock, meaning she had to admit to the cop that she had first noticed Jim missing less than twelve hours ago,
not even overnight.

Determined to be able to tell the police that she had exhausted all reasonable avenues open to her as a civilian, she had
opened the Yellow Pages with the intention of checking the local hospitals. When she saw the list, she realised that she could
be at it a while, which was when it struck her that this normally worked the other way around. If Jim had been admitted somewhere,
then the staff would have attempted to get in touch with his relatives. Nobody else had wind that anything was wrong, which
meant the onus was on her to raise the alarm.

It had originally been her intention to sleep on it and go to the police in the morning if there were no developments, but
she knew she wouldn’t be sleeping on it so much as lying awake all night worrying on it. Having spent all day doing just that,
she needed the assurance that some kind of process was under way. She was also impatiently aware of police statistics dictating
the importance of the first twenty-four hours after someone had gone missing, with the likelihood of success dwindling rapidly
after that period had been breached. Or was that to do with solving murders? She couldn’t remember, but either way, she felt
it was imperative she act fast.

Besides, it wasn’t less than twelve hours in reality: only twelve hours
since she’d noticed. A check of that day’s
Evening Times
back page matched none of those on Jim’s hall carpet. He hadn’t been home since Thursday.