White Rage (28 page)

Sahara shrugged. ‘Clydevalley is another free-serve op. Customers don't pay a fee to send or receive emails. Also popular with students, travellers, holidaymakers. There are so many of these outfits. Talk about proliferation.'

‘So Magistr32 is basically untrackable.'

‘You might get lucky and find the point of origin, then you'd probably discover it's an Internet café somewhere, with a hundred clients a day.' Sahara scrolled a little further. ‘Beezer obviously answered Magistr32's message. Look.'

Perlman read aloud the words on the screen. ‘Beezer will do his duty.'

‘I wonder what his duty was,' Scullion said.

‘Whatever, this Magistr32 is the one giving out the orders,' Perlman said. The screen was crucifying his eyes; he felt sharp pressure behind his eyeballs.

‘There's a date and a time,' Scullion said. ‘Hey, I just realized – he sent this email two hours before the shooting at the kindergarten.'

Two hours before. Perlman's headache was worsening. He thought of a rainswept school playground, and a hooded figure moving through the prematurely dark afternoon with a gun in his hand. And then his mind went to Magistr32's command, and Bobby Descartes' response, and the curious way Bobby referred to himself in the third person:
Beezer will do his duty
.

Alec Desert said, ‘If youse two don't need me any longer, I'm for the off. I need some kip.'

‘I think we can release you. Alec,' Scullion said.

Desert said, ‘Remember. If you want to read more, just keep pressing that arrow key, the one that points down. Got it? Or is that too difficult for your wee brains? I'll leave written instructions if you like.'

Perlman said, ‘Piss off home.'

‘Matter of interest, do I get overtime for this?'

‘Take it up with the management.' Perlman picked up a paper dart from Scullion's desk and aimed it at Desert, who ducked halfway out the door before the missile struck a wall and dropped gracelessly to the floor.

‘Oh aye, one last thing,' Desert said. ‘The name Magistr32?'

‘What about it?'

‘It's the name of a common but nasty stealth computer virus. Nice wee in-joke for nerds. It's as if Lucretia Borgia had email and used the name Toxica or something.'

‘Funny,' Perlman said.

‘Thought you should know.' Desert left.

Perlman picked up the dart, smoothed it back into its original flat form, then sat on the edge of Scullion's desk and stared at the light-strip in the ceiling.

Magistr32 and Beezer. Beezer and Magistr32.

He thought of the young woman in Dumbarton Road, the attractive Celia, but this time, strangely, he couldn't bring her face to mind as he'd been able to do with such clarity before; it blanked in his head, turning into an expanse of undetailed flesh, something rising up from the fog of an uneasy dream.

Scullion looked at the computer. ‘What do you think, Lou?'

‘I'm probably thinking what you're thinking, Sandy.'

‘The Go message. The Beezer response. The timing.'

‘The timing. You can't ignore that.'

‘Magistr32 and Celia – one and the same?'

Perlman nodded. ‘Maybe. But it doesn't bring us any closer to nailing her.'

‘Her picture will be in every morning paper, Lou.'

‘And we'll get lucky and somebody will see it and the case will break open like a jimmied safe. Right?'

‘It happens. We'll get a uniform to run through the rest of Bobby's messages tomorrow.'

‘Am I free to leave?'

‘It's late,' Scullion said. ‘Enjoy your liberty.'

Perlman edged off the rim of the desk and creaked to a standing position. I don't want to go home, he thought. Back to Egypt, back to that cold house. But it was too late to phone Miriam, and he didn't relish the idea of spending a night in a nearby hotel. I'm a man of limited options.

‘Get some sleep,' Scullion said.

‘Remind me how.'

‘Say your prayers and close your eyes. If you're still having trouble, count all the good-looking women you failed to bring in for questioning when you should have.'

‘Hit me below the belt, Sandy.
Bilik vi vorsht
.'

‘What the hell does that mean?'

Perlman headed for the door.

‘I hate it when you talk Yiddish,' Scullion said.

‘Oy vey.'

32

Perlman didn't drive straight home, although he was weary and his brain was malfunctioning. He parked in the street outside Miriam's building and lit a cigarette to steady his wobbly hand. He looked up, saw no light escape from her loft.
Maybe she's sitting in the dark, waiting for you to ring, Lou
. Aye, and in this perfect wee world bumblebees play tunes on paper-combs.

I underestimate myself. She's up there, sleepless, waiting for me. Of course she is. He crushed the cigarette out. Go home, he thought. He looked the length of the dark street. No Latta in evidence. He lit another smoke. Tomorrow I quit. He rolled down the window. The 3 a.m. air was chill and a little hazy and the city quiet as the inside of a crypt.

The kiss, he thought. That's why I'm here. Seduced by a kiss. Wanting more. An addict in need of his fix. He shut his eyes and pondered Miriam's mouth and remembered the taste.

My brother's wife.
£893,000
.

You keep stumbling into things that take the breeze from your sails. He got out of the car and walked to the thick front door of the building. He poked the button for the buzzer; Miriam, take me in.

‘Lou?' Her voice was clear over the speaker.

‘I wake you?'

‘No, no. Come up.'

She buzzed, the door opened, he entered the building and moved towards the stairs, unaware of a little skip to his step. He climbed. She was waiting for him outside her loft. She wore a dark green velvet robe, knee-length, belted. She was barefoot. Her hair, no longer gelled and flat, had been brushed out, given fuller life. He half-expected – if not a fierce hug, a fiery passion – a brief embrace at the least, but instead she simply smiled and turned and went back inside. He followed, hands dangling idly at his sides, palms cold.

One lamp was lit inside the loft, a tiny gasp of light in an expanse of shadow.

‘I just finished at HQ. I was going home.' He wondered why this meeting was suddenly awkward, why there was a sense of frozen space between them. Where was the Miriam who'd held his hand and kissed him and understood his longings? He stared through an open doorway at her bedroom, seeing an edge of bed, sheets disturbed where she must have risen minutes before to answer the bell, a pillow dented where her head had lain.

‘Solved everything?' she asked.

The question was ambiguous; did she want to know if he'd cracked the code of the human heart, or if he'd swept the streets of Glasgow free of criminals?

‘Solve one thing, another puzzle comes along,' he said. ‘Crime never sleeps.'

‘Like you.'

‘Crime and emotion,' he said. ‘They're resurgent things.'

‘Do I want to talk about emotion? I don't know, Lou.'

‘In the pub tonight –'

‘I kissed you. You kissed me.'

‘It was more.'

‘Lou, it's far too soon.'

‘So I wait for a better time, if such a thing ever happens? Is that what you're telling me? I go about my daily business and hope you get everything sorted out in your mind and one night you call with your decision?'

‘No–'

‘By which time,
neshumeleh
, I could be drawing a pension.'

‘Lou –'

‘I'm aching inside,' he said. ‘I yearn. It's like having a fucking ulcer, Miriam, only there's no medication.'

‘I'm not acting like this to
hurt
you, Lou. I'm not playing games. I swear, I know what you feel. I know what you go through. But I need time. Please understand I'm not being some fifty-year-old cocktease, Lou.'

He looked at lamplight reflected in the black skylight overhead. It resembled a small alien moon. How patient could he be? How patient could any man be? He'd soldiered for years in the trenches of endurance. He'd been sitting in the anteroom of Miriam's love for as long as he'd known her. You wait for a sign. You think the kiss is such a thing. You hope.

A Catholic might have called his life a purgatory.

He reached for her and drew her towards him. She let him kiss her. She didn't fight him off; there was no hardening of her body against him. He was captivated by the exciting privacy of the kiss, a man journeying into emotional hyperspace where time is fragmented and you're joyful, joyful. He touched her naked breast, moved by the warm softness of it even as he was amazed by his own lack of clumsiness; she let him caress her like this for a time, then she stepped away from him.

He hadn't come here to impose himself on her body. He'd wait, sure he'd wait, but maybe it would be a different kind of waiting than before: he'd glimpsed a tiny flutter of optimism, and that was enough to sustain him for the time being. He was aware he'd developed an erection, which was already in a state of collapse: a minor matter. You go from the promise of cosmic bliss to detumescence in a flash – was any journey ever shorter?

She shoved her fingers through her hair. ‘Bear with me, Lou.'

‘I'm bearing,' he said.

She looked at him. She had a frank gaze, direct and true. ‘I'm thankful that you are.'

He walked towards the door, where he stopped. ‘Tell me. Has Latta been bothering you again?'

‘I try not to think about Latta,' she said.

‘He'll keep on about that bank transfer. You know he will. He's a
nudnik
. He digs in with claws.'

‘Why are we talking about Latta? You're as curious about that money as he is, aren't you?'

Of course he was curious. It's none of my business, Miriam.'

‘You know what I sometimes feel, Lou? I'm destined to be haunted the rest of my life by your brother's ghost. I transferred some money, and suddenly people imagine Colin's sinister handiwork in the transaction. I spend money living in Florence for three months, and people want to know if I'm using a private slush fund Colin left me. Money he embezzled, money that rightly belongs to his victims, money the tax people are interested in, and the cops.'

‘I don't wonder about the money,' he said.

‘Of course you wonder, Lou. You can't help yourself. Go. Solve some crime. Make Glasgow healthy again. Call me.'

He stepped out of the loft. He didn't want to leave her. He heard her close the door behind him. He went downstairs and out into the street. Nothing moved. Glasgow was possessed by the curiously unreal stillness of the sleeping city. Traffic lights changed, but no traffic materialized. He got inside his car and headed east towards the Trongate, past darkened buildings and shuttered shops. He felt the spectre of Miriam's mouth:
Give me a kiss to build a dream on
.

Deeper into the east; London Road, Bridgeton, Belvidere Hospital, until recently a geriatric care facility, now closed. He reached the cemetery at Dalbeth, where he dozed a second, then pulled himself out of it just in time to avoid a man running directly in front of the car, a figure wrapped in headscarf and clothes so dark he would have been barely visible in the best of light. Perlman stamped on the brake and the Mondeo went into a short skid and the man vanished in the direction of Braidfauld Street.

Perlman heard the siren of a police vehicle, and saw a flash of lights about a hundred yards ahead of him. From the dark of the cemetery more black-garbed figures appeared, twenty or so scarpering and scattering across London Road, some rushing into Braidfauld Street, others making for Downfield Street. The air was cut with the occasional cry or shout in a language Perlman didn't know. The police vehicle was a black van that came to a halt alongside the Mondeo, and four uniforms jumped out, their boots clattering on stone as they raced after the fugitives.

A man in a blue raincoat emerged from the front of the van. Curious, Perlman got out of his car and walked towards him.

‘Problem?' Perlman showed his ID.

The man said, ‘Lou Perlman, eh? Sergeant Joe Adamski, E-Division.'

‘What's going on?'

Adamski was a heavy man whose florid neck overflowed his shirt collar. ‘Round-up time,' he said. ‘This lot was dropped off by a lorry back there,' and he jabbed a thumb in the general area of the cemetery. ‘But we had the information. So we were waiting. They usually give us a good work-out. Not for long. They don't have the stamina. Starving, most of them.'

‘Illegals,' Perlman said.

‘Yep. I think this lot is from the Middle East. Some will apply for asylum. Most get their backgrounds investigated and then offski. There's always another load arriving. They come in the holds of ships, under piles of cargo, sometimes they're buried beneath rotting fruit, frozen beef … a fucking desperate state of affairs. It costs them a fortune to get here, and they don't know where they're going to end up. I hate this part of my job, chasing these people.'

Perlman, drunk on lack of sleep, had the feeling of being in a city he didn't know. Glasgow was suddenly a place he'd entered unwittingly, where men chased other men in a pantomime played out in front of tiny audiences.

‘They think it's all milk and honey here,' Adamski said. ‘They have this notion they can come two thousand miles and the government just spews out cash for them.'

Perlman looked a little longer into the dark, hearing angry or impatient voices now and then break the silence. He had to get home. ‘Happy hunting, Adamski.'

‘We always get them,' Adamski said.

Perlman drove up Braidfauld Street. He saw nobody, no movement. He parked outside his house. Depleted, depressed by the idea of homeless refugees fleeing in the night, and the basic inequities of the world, he barely made it to the front door. He stroked the mezuzah as he always did.