White Rage (21 page)

Scullion touched the sleeve of Perlman's coat. ‘Can we feed you tonight, Lou? I'll call Maddy, make sure she's got enough in the house for a guest.'

‘I don't have an appetite, Sandy.'

‘You need to eat some time.'

‘Later maybe.'

It was the response Scullion expected. Perlman never did the right thing when it came to his own needs. When it was time to eat, he didn't. When it was time to sleep, he lay awake. When it rained, he forgot his raincoat and didn't seem to notice he was being soaked. How the hell did he survive? He didn't look out for himself, he lived in that bloody damp house in Egypt –

Scullion stopped this rattle of carping thoughts. It wasn't his business to look after Perlman. And yet he spent a lot of time doing it anyway. Shielding, protecting him. He went too far at times in his behaviour towards Perlman, and he knew it, and he realized some rules got bent along the way. But what was he supposed to do? Leave Lou hanging out to dry? Sometimes Maddy chided him for being over-supportive:
I'm very fond of Lou, but he's a grown man, he can take care of himself, Sandy
. And so he could, up to a point: after that he often vanished into a fog of absent-mindedness or elsewhereness. How did he explain to Maddy that Perlman was more than a colleague?
He's like an older brother I never had
. But that was trite and untrue. He had no fraternal feelings for Perlman. It was something else. How to say it?
Maddy, for all his flaws, he's probably the best friend I have in the world, but he's his own worst enemy sometimes, which is why he needs me … And I need him
.

Perlman wandered along the pavement, hands deep in his pockets. There was a hint on the air of burnt cooking oil. He noticed Terry Bogan in conversation with Detective-Inspector Newby some yards away. Their heads were inclined together, like two men sharing a deep secret. Yards behind them – lo and bloody behold – Chief Superintendent Tay stood with his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and a mobile phone attached to his ear. Perlman couldn't remember when he'd last seen Tay at a crime scene. Years, it had to be. He had the bearing of a colonial viceroy surveying a natural disaster, a flood, say, or an earthquake. His face was regally impassive. Mary Gibson stood at the Chief Super's side. She looked unhappy. She'd given up smoking recently for the umpteenth time, but now she had the desperate expression of somebody pining for a nicotine infusion.

Perlman listened to the crackle of messages on car radios, mobile phones ringing; he saw the usual gathering of newshounds arrive in their flashy media vans. He walked to where Scullion stood talking to a teenage boy with hair dyed green and white. This kid had studs attached to his earlobes and lips. A resident Martian, Perlman thought, somebody beamed down to report the stuff of Glaswegian life for the edification of viewers on a distant planet.

Hello, fellow Mars Beings, I bring you today's news from Weegietown.

Scullion said, ‘Lou. This is Tommy Flynn.'

Perlman looked at the teenager. ‘Do those things hurt?'

The boy said, ‘You get used to them.'

‘Do you attract lightning?'

‘Aye right. And I set off metal detectors in airports as well.'

Perlman glanced at the green-and-white-striped hair. A head like a badger gone wrong. Or a brush in a car wash. Celtic colours. This one was a big fan. ‘Who's your all-time favourite player?'

‘Larsson,' the kid said. ‘He's the best.'

‘What about Bobby Murdoch?'

‘Who?'

Perlman let the kid's response go unanswered. Football legends of the 1960s were fossils for today's young fans, who were interested only in the current heroes and their haircuts. Bobby Murdoch, half-forgotten forty years after his prime, was a Celtic Park ghost with a Brylcreemed head.

Sandy Scullion said, ‘Tommy saw somebody go inside the chip shop, Lou. Just before the blast.'

‘Tell me about it, Tommy.'

‘I already told this man here,' and Flynn indicated Scullion with a quick nod of his head. Barely perceptible. Cool, Perlman thought.
Gallus
, in the patois.

He said, ‘Tell me as well, son.'

The boy sighed. ‘I live over there. That tenement. Top floor. Good view of the chipper. I was looking out of the window. It was about quarter past three. Can't be sure. Don't have a watch. A guy comes into the street from the direction of Dumbarton Road. He knocks on the chipper door. I know the place's shut, because it closes between three and half-five. The black guy who owns it opens the door. The other guy says something, then steps inside. Door closes. Thirty seconds later, mibbe more, there's this noise like a bomb going off and the chipper explodes. Wham. Glass flying. The doors blown off. All this thick black smoke pouring into the street.'

‘Did you get a look at the man who knocked?'

‘His face? Naw. He had a hood. You know, one of them hooded jackets?'

‘You remember the colour?'

‘Green. Definitely. He was wearing tracksuit trousers. Purple and green. Blue and green. One or the other.'

Like the kindergarten killer, Perlman thought. He imagined a Glasgow of hooded assassins. He imagined them sitting in spartan tenement rooms in front of formica tables scattered with digestive biscuit crumbs and pizza crusts, shadowy faces, men who spoke only in monosyllables and who oiled handguns to while the time away between acts of murder. He thought of tracksuit trousers of green and purple and blue and red. Colours spilled and ran in his imagination. He felt strangely dizzy. The sky shifted sideways in his line of vision. The tenements tilted. He placed a hand to his forehead. What was happening inside him? Was this the harbinger of some serious malady or just the giddiness of a blood-sugar dip induced by hunger?

‘Can I skedaddle now, Mr Polisman?' the kid asked.

Scullion said, ‘Aye. I've got your address if I need you.'

Perlman felt a flap, a flying sensation, in his heart. It passed quickly. I need a check-up. Blood pressure. Liver tests. Cardiac exam. The lot.

‘Bobby Murdoch, son,' he said. ‘Ask your dad about him.'

‘What Dad?' the kid said. He slipped away, moving swiftly between police cars and media vans and the legion of reporters.

Tracksuit trousers, hooded top,' Scullion said. ‘We're thinking the same thing?'

‘No doubt about it.'

‘We could be way off the mark. You see clothes like that all over the place.'

Perlman caught Tay's eye briefly; a chill Presbyterian eye, like that of a Freemason's symbol, all-seeing, disapproving. Tay made him feel guilty of some nameless sin.

‘Here's what puzzles me, Sandy. Say this fucker shoots Indra at the kindergarten, then he flees. So self-preservation is high on his agenda. Then the very next day he comes here and what – blows up a restaurant and self-destructs? Why?'

‘An accident,' Scullion suggested.

‘What kind?'

‘We don't know.'

‘And did he come here in the first place to murder McKinnon?'

‘Let's assume so.'

‘Okay. I'll buy a ticket for this hall of mirrors. He comes to kill Perse. Does he bring his gun? Or does he intend to employ some other means of destruction? An explosive device, say? He plans to hide it in the chipper without McKinnon seeing? Except the timer goes kaput before he can make an exit.'

‘It's a possibility.'

Perlman lit a cigarette. Picture Miriam, he thought. Imagine your head between her breasts. Soothed, oh definitely soothed. Who needs nicotine? He longed to phone her. She was an island of calm in this ocean of wreckage. Be my
gueleebte
, Miriam.

‘An observant man like McKinnon wouldn't notice somebody carrying an explosive, Sandy?'

‘A small device, easily concealed, hidden in a pocket perhaps.'

‘Perse had antennae coming out of his skull. He had built-in sensors. He had some really lowlife types coming to see him. He could smell out a liar. The same with anyone menacing. He'd sniff them out. I'm sure of it. So in this one instance his system was down?'

‘Maybe he knew the visitor.'

Perlman took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He longed to take a walk along the riverfront, which was located minutes away on the other side of the expressway. He needed an environment that didn't reek of molten plastic. Even the Clyde had to be perfume by comparison.

He saw a group of reporters edge towards Mary Gibson. She turned them aside with a gesture that meant ‘later'. But they persisted in the manner of their trade. They panted for material. Poor Mary. Abandoned by her spouse, now hounded by the zealous dogs of print and graphics.

Scullion said, ‘We'll have some information on the dead man when forensics are through with him. Which may not be very long …' He was quiet for a second. ‘I haven't had time to tell you this, but the news of Helen Mboto's death has already been broadcast. Radio Clyde was in like a bloody whippet.'

‘How much did they get?'

‘I think the phrase was “viciously slain”,' Scullion said.

‘No blow-by-blow mathematics?'

Scullion shook his head. ‘Nor any mention of the initials cut into her breast. But it'll come. It always does.'

‘We work in a fucking colander,' Perlman said.

Scullion looked at him with renewed concern. ‘Lou, I wish you'd go and sit down somewhere, have a sandwich, take the weight off your feet.'

‘Who made you my nanny?'

‘Seriously. I've seen healthier-looking characters in the terminal ward.'

Perlman said, ‘You're a fucking nag, Scullion.'

‘Please yourself. I've tried.'

‘And I'm thankful.'

Perlman looked out at the crowd beyond the yellow tape. These people had come from their flats and their shops and offices, they'd abandoned whatever it was they'd been doing to look at this tragedy. He wanted to tell them to fuck off back to their lives, if they could still find the way.

He scanned the gathering, thinking that the explosion might have happened when he'd been on the premises earlier. The leaflet stuck under the closed door might have been an explosive. And then – welcome to the big cheerio, Lou. Nighty-night. A plot of land near where Colin lay, in damp Barlanark. And maybe Miriam would come to place a pebble on your grave. And the Aunts would gather, weeping copiously, oh poor Lou.

He thought about Perse McKinnon, and the figure who'd come knocking at his door. One day the guy has a gun. He shoots to kill. The next day he doesn't. Did he leave his gun at home? Why?

I live a life of tough questions, he thought, and precious few answers. He continued to watch the crowd, which was growing steadily. His attention was drawn to a small dark-haired woman who stood on the outer edge of the gathering; he guessed her age in the late twenties. He found himself scanning her without thinking, a cop's habit. Then she moved and turned in the direction of Dumbarton Road.

Wait, he thought.

Wait just one minute
.

He felt a faint feathery touch of recognition. He followed her, pushing his way through the thicket of the crowd. He saw her cross Dumbarton Road. She was walking swiftly east in long strides. Her hair bounced against her shoulders.

The computer sketch, he thought. You could find matches for it anywhere you looked, if you wanted them badly enough. He crossed through traffic, hands held aloft as if to suggest he had some divine means of parting the sea of vehicles, a Moses of Partick. Horns blared, drivers shouted at him.
You trying to commit suicide, ya daft shite? Take an overdose of sleepers, bawheid
. He reached the opposite pavement and moved about thirty or forty yards behind the woman. She glanced at something in a greengrocer's window as she moved.

I need to see her face close up, he thought. I need to
evaluate
. He removed the copy of the computer-drawn sketch from his coat pocket and glanced at it. What the fuck could you tell from this shite drawing? A Renoir it wasn't. How was he supposed to play this? Ask her if she minded him comparing her to an image he happened to have in his hand? She'd think at first she'd been accosted by some sad street loony, a sorry schizo kept afloat on an armada of NHS downers.

Suddenly the woman stopped and swung round to face him. ‘Something on your mind?' she asked.

‘Maybe.'

‘You should be ashamed,' she said. ‘I'm young enough to be your daughter.'

Haughty, he thought. Commanding green eyes. And good to behold, sweet on the vision. ‘You misunderstand,' he said.

She pushed her hair over her ears. ‘I think I understand you too well. You're a creep. A DOM.'

‘Take a shufty at this.' He held the paper towards her.

She backed away. ‘Is this some religious handout? Don't tell me you're one of God's infantrymen?'

‘Me and God don't have an amicable relationship, dear. Just look.' He flashed the picture in front of her face.

She gazed at it, smiled. ‘Who's this hag supposed to be?'

Perlman shrugged. ‘No idea.'

‘She's a real Cro-Magnon babe. Look at that forehead. Are you doing some baffling kind of market survey or something?'

Perlman took out his ID and showed it to her. ‘Just so you know. I'm not a dirty old man, and I'm not conducting a survey.'

‘Detective-Sergeant, eh? I'm suitably impressed. You finished with me? Mind if I go now?'

‘Can I see some ID?'

‘Are you accusing me of something?'

‘When did I say that?'

‘I get it.
You
think I look like this
beast
, right? You're a real master of the sly insult, Sergeant.'

I'd still like to see some ID.'

She took a wallet from the inside pocket of her jacket. ‘I hear we live in a free country. I have a few reservations about that fable. Have a shufty, sturmbahnführer.' She shoved a credit card and a driving licence at him.