Poisoned Cherries

Chapter 48

I’d never seen Ricky Ross panic before; it was not a pretty sight. It was all I could do to stop him picking up Alison and making a run for it. He saw sense at last, though, on the drive back to the city centre.

‘We have got to concentrate on what we started on Sunday, man,’ I told him. ‘We have to find the killer before it goes pear-shaped for us all.’

‘You think it isn’t already?’ he retorted, as we drove across the George IV Bridge. ‘But you’re right. We’ve got some time yet; even if Alison’s prints are on that knife, it’ll take them a while to lift them and match them. If she goes away on a business trip, even if it’s only for a couple of days, that’ll buy us more.’

‘So how are you getting on checking the lists you took from Torrent?’

He swung the car round, past Bristo Square, into George Street, and stopped on a yellow line. ‘I’ve been through them all; wee Anna was efficient. Everyone who came into that building printed and signed their name.’

He chuckled. ‘All the well-known ones signed her own wee book, too. . even you, flash bastard that you are. Must have been a great job for an autograph hunter; they came to her. Every signature in there matched a signature on the list, bar one.’

‘Whose was that?’

‘Haven’t a fucking clue. The thing was completely illegible; just a straight line with squiggles in it, that’s all.’

‘I know the one. Like an ECG chart?’

‘That’s it. It’s nowhere on the Health and Safety lists. Some pop star probably; she’ll have taken it with her to a concert.’

‘So where does it take us?’

He threw me a gloomy look. ‘Nowhere, pal. If you were making a western here I’d say I could hear the sound of the sheriff’s posse closing in on me. As it is, I can almost feel Mr Skinner’s hand on my collar.’

I could see that his earlier panic was still pretty close to the surface. I’d never imagined him like this before, never thought it possible that he, super-cop, super-Mason, super-connected, could lose it. If he was scared surely I should be too, I told myself. And then, as if in answer, a strange feeling of certainty swept over me; it told me, beyond doubt, that everything would be all right.

I smiled at him. ‘You’re forgetting one thing, Ricky.’

‘What’s that?’ he grunted.

‘You’re sat next to the luckiest bastard on the planet.’ I held up my right hand. ‘Grab that, and some of it will rub off on you.’

He looked at me as if I was a lunatic. Maybe he’s right; maybe I am. I only have my own word that I’m not. But then, he took his white-knuckled fist off the steering wheel and grasped mine. ‘At this moment,’ he said, ‘I’ll try anything.’