White Rage (24 page)

They reached the corner of Hope Street now. Central Station lay across the way. An early evening traffic jam sullied the air. Fumeous Glasgow. A newspaper vendor called out
Evening Times, Getcher Evening Times here
, in an accent so impenetrable it might have been Estonian. Perlman pondered Barry Gupta's business dealings. What was the extent of them? Maybe Perse McKinnon could have told him more: the silenced oracle.

‘I must go now, Sergeant.'

‘I appreciate you talking to me,' he said.

‘I knew my husband wouldn't tell you anything of this. I had to do it. It may just be the rambling of a woman whose world is in disarray. I leave it to you, Sergeant. I ask only that you do not tell Bharat that I came to you.'

‘I won't.' He shook her tiny hand. She turned and slipped through the traffic and walked towards the taxi rank outside Central. He saw her climb into a black cab, then he walked back up Waterloo Street, thinking about death threats, anonymous letters, phone calls. What was in Bharat Gupta's life that he didn't want the police to explore?

He reached Force HQ. He hesitated outside, smoked a cigarette. He wondered how many times over the years he'd stepped inside HQ. Thousands, he supposed.
My days are numbered
. He flicked his half-done cigarette away, turned, entered. There was a buzz about the place, phones ringing, people coming and going up and down the stairway, voices. Destruction and murder activated cops, filled them with purpose; a strange force had galvanized them.

Dennis Murdoch appeared. He was still out of uniform. He had a couple of sheets of paper in his hand. ‘I was just looking for you, Sergeant. That stuff you wanted.'

‘Remind me.'

‘The licence –'

‘Oh aye. Right.' Perlman experienced a little mind-drift. Concentrate, concentrate. ‘So?'

‘Seemingly there's no such person as this Celia Liddell,' Murdoch said. ‘The Motor Department in Swansea has never issued a licence for anyone of that name at 4 King Edward Road. Not surprising, I suppose, since there's no number four in King Edward Road.'

Perlman felt a little stab of excitement, a jump-start. He heard himself say, ‘The licence was a fine fake, a beautifully skilled piece of work,' but he wasn't really listening to his own words. He was thinking about the woman who'd called herself Celia Liddell: that
ligner
fucking fooled me. He thought:
It's important to remember what she looked like
. Don't let the mental snapshot fade. Her features, her clothes, everything. A woman you mistakenly thought resembled a face in a bad sketch turns out to have her own secret identity,
plus
she's in the vicinity of Cremoni's at the wrong time …

He grabbed the sketch from his coat pocket and stared at it, and yes, okay, it
was
downright awful, but maybe, just maybe, there was some very thin resemblance after all to the woman who'd called herself Celia Liddell, something you'd overlooked at the time of talking to her, because in your heart you never dreamed you'd gaze at a crowd in the street and
just happen to see
a person wanted for questioning in a murder inquiry. She wasn't in hiding, she'd brazenly come out into the daylight, she was close to the explosion –

Murdoch said, ‘One other thing, Sergeant.'

Perlman coughed, felt light-headed. ‘Bad news or good?'

‘You judge. A truck belonging to Bargeddie Haulage went out of control on the M73 about three miles from Gartcosh this afternoon. The driver was wheeched to hospital. DOA.'

‘Any more details?'

‘Only that the whole thing burst into flames. I'll get more info as it comes in, Sergeant.'

‘Do that.'

Perlman moved towards the stairs. He climbed them two at a time. Celia Liddell. You fooled me so easily and I don't like that: Perlman,
shlemiel
. Who and where are you, Celia?

He saw Scullion appear at the end of the corridor.

‘Still no ID of the second victim,' Sandy said. ‘You've got a funny look on your face, Lou. What is it?'

‘I think I got sprayed by the musk of that very rare creature, the femme fatale.'

‘I daresay that's a damn sight better than the smell in my nostrils. Burnt chemicals and smoke.'

‘I wouldn't bet on it,' Perlman said.

27

Kilroy roared into his mobile: ‘You unload the shipment
after
you pay the asking price, or you don't unload it at all. I'll send the whole fucking thing right back where it came from. My last word.' Angrily he switched off the phone and stomped heavy-footed around his Daimler, which was parked in a street alongside the Necropolis, at the back of St Mungo's Cathedral.

Frankie Chasm got out from behind the wheel. ‘What's the problem?'

‘You make deals with some people then they think they can change the financial details at the last minute. Sometimes I wonder. Am I doomed to spend the rest of my days doing biz with clueless wankers?' He sighed, and slumped against the body of the Daimler and slapped the mobile up and down in the palm of his hand.

Chasm recognized this as the Fat Man's Serious Huff Mode. Pieces of his world were going out of shape. Life was not always the orderly thing he wanted it to be.

‘What do you think? Will these characters pay?'

‘Frankie, do I seem like a reader of crystal balls to you? I
shudder
when I contemplate the lack of honour in business circles. I remember when a deal was a deal. A handshake was like, like … an Eleventh Commandment. Thou doth not goeth back on a handshake. But nowadays …'

Chasm looked at the skyline, against which stood hugely elaborate tombstones, great vaults and mausoleums built by Victorian sentimentalists and death-freaks. Hundreds of crosses cast shadows; you could call this place Crosses R Us.

Seven thirty and the sun sliding from the sky. He glanced back at Kilroy. It wasn't the shakiness of a business deal that troubled the Fat Man, although that certainly irked him. No. It was the note and the photograph that had been delivered by TransClyde Express.

Especially the photograph.

Frankie Chasm watched Leo's face, which in the last few seconds seemed to have deflated, like a big red football with a puncture. ‘Look. The fucking note's a joke, Leo. Come on.'

‘You see me laughing?'

‘Plus that photo's a fake. If that's a genuine photo I'm a fucking yodeller in an Alpine band.'

Kilroy stared across the Necropolis. He wanted to be buried up here when his time came. He imagined himself wrapped in a burgundy velvet shroud, svelte in death. The shark at rest in Glasgow's damp black earth. The rich and the pious would come to his funeral. His eulogy would be read by one or other of the famous actors he knew.
A big man, yes, but with a heart to match. At the setting of the sun we will remember him
. It would be a memorable pageant attended by thousands.

I am not yet ready to shuffle off, he thought.

He slid a hand into the pocket of his powder-blue cashmere coat and took out the photograph and the note. He read the green ballpoint words:
If you don't want Perlman to see this, it will cost you a fortune, fatso. I'll be in touch
.

He gazed at the photograph. It depicted his beloved old Bentley passing under a streetlamp at night. The light falling from the lamp illuminated the presence, if not the features, of the driver, although a naked eye could tell that the man behind the wheel was a figure of some proportion. A printed date was visible on the front of the picture, lower right corner:
December 15
, followed by the year.

And there was a street sign in the background, clearly visible: Dalness Street.

Fucking
Egypt
.

Kilroy had a curdling feeling, pit of gut. ‘They have computers, Frankie,' he said. ‘Blum says they can work miracles, they bring out the face right down to the colour of the eyes.'

‘How many times, Leo?
The pic is fucking rigged
. It's all trickery. They can enhance it all they like, it doesn't fucking
matter
.'

‘Trickery, oh sure, I
know
it, you
know
it. But Perlman could use it to put my arse in a sling, Frankie.'

‘Think, Leo. Don't wilt. He's pressuring you. A fake photograph and a ha-ha tape and a joke note, and you're coming apart. Get a grip, big man.'

‘Ignore it all, you say?'

‘Exactly. Perlman's thinking he'll keep up the pressure and you'll crack like a fresh Ryvita. Maintain. Endure.'

Kilroy seemed not to have heard. He blinked at the fading sun. ‘I bet Perlman can make his colleagues
believe
the picture is real. I bet he can persuade the Procurator-Fiscal he's got a case.'

‘Blum wouldn't let it go that far. He'd have the photo analysed to death by experts.' Chasm thought: Jesus
Christ
, the Fat Man was imploding like an amateur's soufflé.

‘Blum? I think they can just brush that shyster aside any time they like. I've had my suspicions for a wee while now that he's really a lightweight. Scratch his Boss suit, and you get a wee boy whose rib-bones are showing. He's breakable, Frankie. Anyway, Perlman could manipulate the whole fucking system against me. Cops and judges stick together.'

Chasm experienced deep frustration. ‘But you're
innocent
, Leo. You're being hounded by a demented fruitbat whose obsession with trimming your sails is away out of control.'

‘Since when did a man's innocence matter in our legal system?'

Chasm shrugged. ‘Sometimes justice is tough to get.'

Leo Kilroy thought about all the things he disliked in Perlman. 1. He's a Jew. 2. He's a cop. 3. He has a naff haircut. 4. He wears stupid glasses. 5. He's obsessed with his dead brother. 6. He never quits, never goes away, never, like a bloody tick under your skin.

Chasm said, ‘Sometimes you need to seek out other avenues. Take an unexpected turning here, another one there.'

Justice is tough
. Kilroy let the phrase roll round his mind.

Chasm whistled the first notes of ‘Mairzy doats and dozy doats'. ‘Incidentally. There was a serious accident on the M73 this afternoon.'

‘Oh?'

‘One dead driver, unfortunately. Blood everywhere. One truck out of commission.'

A breeze came up and blew over the crosses and the vaults. The dank smell of the dead, Kilroy thought. He imagined rotted coffins and hanks of desiccated hair and bones stripped clean of flesh as if having been immersed in acid. He belched, leaving a gassy explosion of garlic on the air.

He picked a stray thread from his sleeve. The echo in his head was louder. ‘Tough justice, eh?'

‘I'm not saying it's the only way, Leo.'

Kilroy examined the thread in his fingers. How did a green thread become attached to a pale blue coat? He let it slip from his fingers to the ground. ‘I dislike intricate details, Frank. I like some things to happen far outside my field of vision.'

‘I know.'

‘Way way
way
beyond my auditory range.'

‘That's a given.'

‘Fine.'

‘The less a man knows, Leo.'

Kilroy stood motionless a moment. He felt a strange little tingle go through him, an icy hand on the back of his neck. ‘This place gives me the creeps when it starts to get dark, Frankie. I imagine the graves bursting open. Let's get out of here.'

Frankie Chasm ushered the Fat Man into the back of the Daimler. Kilroy's weight crushed fine leather.

‘Remind me to call my chemist in the morning, Frankie.'

‘Right.'

‘Certain sharp edges need blunting. Very sharp ones.'

28

It was sunset when Perlman parked his car in Paisley Road West, just south of the river. Ahead, he saw the entrance to La Fiorentina and he thought:
I need this, how I need this time, this space
. Was it so much to ask? He raised his face, eyes drawn upward to the stone angel on top of the building that housed the restaurant. Perched four storeys above street level, the angel was lit gold by the dying sun. An easy dramatic effect, he felt, a piece of theatre, but what the hell – he liked the sight of the creature and had sometimes even imagined it rising from the rooftop and gliding over Glasgow, bringing hope and joy in a whisper of wings. No more badness. An end to malice. Greed banished.

And this is where I wake up, dream over.

The human condition, that minestrone of desire and charity, hate and love, was beyond the attentions of any merciful angel. That soft flap of wings you heard was nothing more than the product of your own yearning for a kinder world.

He stepped inside the restaurant, wondering if Miriam had already arrived. Max, Perlman's favourite waiter, a small Italianate Glaswegian with a little moustache, helped him out of his coat.

‘How come we don't see you here so often any more? Huh? You found a better place to eat, Sergeant?'

‘Impossible,' Perlman said.

Max hung the coat. ‘I thought, hey, maybe the Sergeant has started to patronize some of those fancy new Italian places in Sauchiehall Street or Merchant City.'

‘Fancy, I don't like. You know me.'

Max smiled. He had a gold tooth. ‘People come, people go. Fickle.'

‘I always come back,' Perlman said, and wondered when he'd last patronized this place. Two years? Surely not. He couldn't keep track of time. ‘I'm expecting somebody.'

‘She's here already. A real beauty, if I may say so. In the corner. This way.'

A real beauty: Perlman felt he'd been complimented on his taste. He followed the waiter across the room, past the fringed lampshades that muted the light, and the tangled green-black plastic foliage. He experienced a slight tension, and almost collided with one of the Roman statues lingering in the shadows.

He saw Miriam watching him from a corner table. She'd glossed her hair back flat against her scalp. It had the effect of making her forehead higher and her eyes wider, so that she resembled a woman in a painting by – what was that Dutch artist's name? Holbein?