White Rage (13 page)

‘What's she supposed to have done, anyway?'

‘I'm not sure she's done
anything
yet. Might turn out to be very simple. Bad choice of a husband, say. No crime in that. End of story, and I go home happy. Might turn out to be something else.'

‘You think she knows where Colin stashed illegal loot?'

Latta said, ‘Anything's possible, Perlman. I've given up being surprised.'

‘She didn't have a clue about her husband's line of work.'

‘I'd expect you to say that. She's family, right?' Latta grinned briefly. ‘For all I know, she might be even more than that.'

‘Don't talk crap.'

‘She's a damn fine-looking woman, Perlman. Don't get so bloody shirty.'

‘You should start investigating me, Inspector. I might be her accomplice. Maybe we divvied up spare cash Colin left lying around. You thought about that?'

‘Everything crosses my mind sooner or later, Perlman. I pick and I pick, and I examine every wee thread.'

‘All my adult life I've been on the force, Latta, and I never took a penny illegally.'

‘Aren't you the paragon?'

Patronizing fucker. Perlman felt his initial daft response of jealousy turn to anger. He had the scary urge to smack this creep between the eyes, which would have led directly to a committee of inquiry, then suspension. Maybe even a goodbye boot up the arse on the steps of Force HQ, and all his figurative medals ripped from his chest.

‘I'll say goodnight, Perlman.'

‘I'd say the same if I thought I fucking meant it,' Perlman remarked.

‘You want to watch your tongue,' Latta said. ‘We're not all like your friend Scullion,
Sergeant
. We're not all so bloody tolerant as good old Sandy,
Sergeant
. Bear that in mind.'

Latta walked away. He had a shuffling step, like a man whose shoes fit badly. He got inside a car and slammed the door. Perlman heard him rap the horn, then the vehicle headed towards Argyle Street.

He felt suddenly weighted, lead in his bones. Everything's a trial, he thought. You hunt criminals and killers. You bruise yourself against the brick and iron of this complicated city and sometimes that hurts. You don't sleep well. Or you encounter a colleague, a superior officer, a real
farshtinkener
, who tries to drag you inside a nasty little web he's weaving because he suspects you of knowing where stolen treasure lies buried. Think: Latta gossips in the lavatories of Pitt Street. Cops in cubicles, trousers round their knees, listen. Men standing with damp hands under the hot air of dryers tilt their heads attentively. Before long, Lou Perlman is tainted, a fucking
gonif
, a bad cop. This I need, he thought. A rotten rep at my time of life. Fuck Latta. He's not getting to me.

He pressed Miriam's doorbell.

From the intercom: ‘Yes?'

‘It's Lou. Can I come up?'

He heard a buzz. He entered the building. The lift was out of order. He'd been here a couple of times in the past, and it had never been working. He breathed deeply and badly as he climbed the stairs. He coughed when he reached the third floor. One more floor to climb. He wanted a smoke, regardless of his whining lungs. Once upon a time I could've had these stairs for breakfast …

Miriam was waiting for him in the doorway of her loft. She wore blue jeans and a black denim shirt that hung outside the jeans. ‘The midnight caller, what a pleasant surprise,' she said. She led him inside a large high-ceilinged space where a long skylight enclosed the night. Canvases were stacked against walls. An easel stood in a corner.

Miriam asked, ‘Coffee? Or something with a bit more bite?'

‘I'll risk a very small Scotch,' he said. ‘A nip.'

‘I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen you drink booze. Let me guess. You've had a shitty day, and to top it off you just ran into Latta as he was leaving.'

‘We had an encounter.'

‘And?'

‘You and me, we might be partners in some kind of financial scam,' Perlman said.

‘Dragged you in, has he?' She smiled and Perlman's mood brightened at once. What a tiny movement of lips can do.

‘He'd love to.'

‘He's the kind of man who suspects the whole world of wrongdoing,' she said. ‘Every face he looks at, he clocks it as dishonest. Every statement he hears, it's a lie. I wonder how he got like that.'

‘Burn-out,' Perlman said. ‘Been doing the same job for too long.'

‘And
you
haven't?'

‘I'm different.'

‘Are you? Tell me how.'

‘I'm immune to cynicism.'

She opened a cabinet, filled a tumbler with Scotch, and handed it to him. She poured a shot of vodka for herself. ‘Here's to immunity,' she said.

There was a period of silence, exaggerated by the way the space in the loft seemed to stretch into an infinity of shadow.

‘I think Latta would like to believe we're lovers into the bargain,' he said.

‘That bothers you?'

‘I give a damn what he believes?'

‘I can't imagine you would.' Caught in a wedge of light created by an overhead lamp, she looked suddenly impish, an elf of mischief. ‘He's probably thinking right now that we're copulating with abandon.'

‘Probably,' Perlman said.

‘Heavy breathing and passion,' she said.

Was she teasing him? he wondered. Playing him like an old penny whistle? Whatever, he felt a pleasing flutter, a shiver of desire. An image passed through his head, him and her, lovers in a bedroom, curtains drawn and a candle burning down in a slow-dying flame reflected in a wall mirror where, if he raised his head a little, he could see himself and Miriam naked in the glass, oy –

‘He probably gets his thrills that way. Mental voyeurism. A man with a grubby wee mind,' he said.

Miriam sat on the arm of a chair and sipped her drink. The mischief had gone from her face. ‘Forget Latta. He can't prove Colin hid any money away. No money, no case for complicity. He can excavate and interrogate all he wants, he's wasting his time. He even hinted he works hand in hand with the Nazis at the Inland Revenue, but that prospect doesn't worry me either. What have I got to hide?'

Perlman experienced decompression; the few seconds of elation and arousal had withered away. She hadn't been teasing
him
; instead, she'd been ridiculing
Latta
. That talk about copulating, heavy breathing and passion, it had been directed at the folly of Latta's imagination. She didn't know she was having any effect on
you
, Lou. What are you to her, anyway? Brother-in-law, that's all, that's how she perceives you. It's never going to change, forget it, let it go, toss out the obsession –

‘I saw that kindergarten murder on TV,' she said. ‘Are you involved?'

Perlman nodded. ‘It came my way,' he said. He wanted to lock Indra Gupta inside a secure room at the back of his head. Why not? Other people switched off, they didn't drag their work home with them, they didn't brood and sit up until dawn smoking and doodling and drinking rank black coffee and jangling. Take a break. Indra Gupta will still be dead in the morning.

‘There was another killing later,' he said.

‘I didn't know.'

‘A Nigerian student. Off Byres Road. Stabbed. I'm only flitting round the periphery of that one. I happened to be in the vicinity.' Even as he said this, he wasn't sure it was true: he'd get sucked in if he was asked to help. Suddenly he felt like a man trapped under an avalanche: the investigation of Leo Kilroy and his role in Colin's death, Indra Gupta's slaying, the suicide/jump of her cousin in Kelvin Court, and now this bastard Latta – all these were beads on an abacus, and he was sliding them this way and that along the wires, looking for a design.

‘You're exhausted,' she said.

‘This city roughs you up sometimes. You get punchy.'

‘Sleep here tonight. The sofa folds out. It would spare you the drive home.'

Three miles, Perlman thought. If that. ‘I've got some things to do,' he said.

‘Cleaning house? Silverware to polish?'

‘Paper stuff, office stuff … thanks anyway.'

She moved towards him and stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him on his cheek. He realized he hadn't shaved. He must feel like a bear's arse against her soft mouth.

‘What's that for?' he asked.

‘Fondness. Gratitude. I don't know. Does it matter? Does there have to be a
reason
for everything, Sergeant?'

‘Force of habit,' he said. ‘I'm glad I dropped in. I needed to see a friendly face.' He could still feel her kiss on his cheek.

‘When are we going to have tea at the Willow?'

‘Call you tomorrow,' he said.

She opened the front door for him. She kissed him again, same spot. ‘Drive safely.'

He went down the stairs and out into the street. Rain fell softly. He sat inside the Mondeo and looked up at the pale light glowing from her loft. Then darkness, almost shockingly sudden, as she switched the light off. He thought of her undressing for bed.

Your age, horny as a boy.

He drove into Glassford Street and then south to the Trongate, which was dead save for a drunk man lurching between lamp-posts like a figure trapped in a pinball machine. Trongate to Glasgow Cross, and along London Road; the city was bolted down for the night. Dead pubs. Dark cafés. He passed one bright blast of light, an Indian takeaway. It was empty except for an Asian man reading a newspaper behind the counter. Perlman caught the beguiling whiff of tandoori and for a moment was tempted to pause and grab a fierce vindaloo to take home.

Carrying curry to Egypt.

He didn't stop. If he went inside the Indian takeaway, he'd invariably start thinking about Indra Gupta, and tonight he wanted the full six hours of doss sweet doss, no interruptions. He was almost asleep at the wheel.

London Road was a gulch of darkness. He passed St Peter's Cemetery. His eyelids felt heavy; he turned on his radio for some quick wake-up noise and found a station playing ‘Itchycoo Park'. The Small Faces, he remembered. Another passageway into the past – but he was too tired for time-travel.

He turned left into Braidfauld Street. Home territory now. The last few blocks. He parked outside his house, a black brick two-storey affair that looked as if it had been dipped many years ago in soot. He locked the Mondeo, went up the driveway and let himself into the hallway. He stroked the mezuzah as he habitually did. It was concealed under a skein of old blue paint. When had he last painted this house? Ten years ago, fifteen? He couldn't remember.

Inside the living room he slumped into a decrepit armchair. A pile of newspapers lay on the floor, also a couple of CD boxes whose discs he'd misplaced. Monk's
Paris Concert
. Brian Kellock Trio's
Live at Henry's
. They'd turn up. Everything rose to the surface eventually.

He entered the kitchen, examined the contents of the refrigerator, grabbed some raspberry jam and cottage cheese, and slathered both between two slices of white bread so old that even the massive infusion of preservatives was beginning to lose its protective power. He bit into the sandwich; the best he could say about it was that it killed the taste of whisky in his mouth.

He yawned, imagined Miriam in her bed – did she sleep on her side? Or on her back with her legs parted a little? Pyjamas or in the buff? Such images, ah.

He checked his answering machine.

The message indicator read: 1. He pressed the playback button and listened. Familiar voice.

He listened to it twice. Then, intrigued, agitated, he listened a third time before he went upstairs to his bedroom. He couldn't sleep for the sound of rain running down the window, and a cat howling a randy song in a nearby alley, and the prospect of all the things he had to do in the morning.

15

2.30 a.m. Sandrine Descartes always stayed awake until her son came home. She loved Robert – mothers loved their sons, flawed or otherwise – but something about him scared her. A terrible admission to make where your own child was concerned, certainly, but true. She saw absolutely nothing of Jacques in him, and even less of herself. When she looked at him she sometimes wondered if there had been a switch at the maternity hospital, one of those mistakes one sometimes heard about.
He is someone else's child
.

He was a blob of a man, a thirty-seven-year-old stranger who tapped constantly on his computer keyboard and made quiet phone calls in the dead of night. He received letters and circulars from all over Britain. She never pried into his life. His room was out of bounds. He hadn't imposed this rule himself; rather, she'd come to realize that she preferred to keep herself separate from her son's world.

His only source of income was from the Department of Social Security. He was ‘disabled' and claimed benefits. The disability was a fiction stemming from an ‘accident' that had occurred three years ago when he injured himself on a building site. He'd tripped and broken his left leg and alleged that it had never healed properly, so he'd developed a limp for the purposes of fooling the DSS.

She heard drunks in the street scream sectarian songs:
we are ra people, we are ra people, the Pope's a fuckin tampax
. Bottles shattered on the pavement, and somebody shouted from a window:
Shut yer fuckin gobs we're tryin to sleep
. The drunks roared with laughter.
Away tay fuck, ya wanker
.

Sooner or later the drunks would move on and an uneasy silence come back. She thought of Jacques, as she did most of her waking hours, and wished he hadn't died and left her in this damnable place. Poor Jacques, he'd simply wasted away, assassinated by the climate. He'd grown small, shrunken, gasping as he died. Jacques, love of her life …

She heard Robert's key in the front-door lock. She knew from the clumsy scratching sound he made that he was drunk and incapable of letting himself in. She got out of bed and walked through the sitting room to the door. She turned the handle. Robert staggered into the room, lurched against the sofa and toppled clownlike over the arm. He fell on the floor.