Aftershock

Sixty-five

‘Did you have to hit him, Jack?’ Stallings asked.

‘Either that or he hit me. Given the choice. .’

‘Fair enough. There was a moment yesterday when I thought he was ready to have a go at me.’

‘Where?’ McGurk looked puzzled.

‘At his house. There was a disturbance. Sugar’s dad paid him a visit and they wound up having a fight. Two uniforms in a patrol car saw it and broke it up; they called it in and Sauce phoned me at home. Funny place for a traffic car to show up.’

‘That’s down to me. When I chased him from Lisanne’s on Friday night I warned him that we’d be keeping a regular eye on him. If young Haddock had given me the word, I’d probably have had him lifted.’

‘It wasn’t as easy as that. John Dean threw the first punch. Mind you, after he told me what the charmer said about his daughter, Ray had to stop me going back into the house to beat the crap out of him myself.’

The sergeant threw her a small smile across his desk in the CID room. Torphichen Place was quiet, in Sunday mode. ‘He is a pig, isn’t he?’ he murmured. ‘Except. . Lisanne says that his other side does appeal to the ladies. She fell for it for a few years. He has a way of making them believe that what he’s telling them really is what’s best for them.’

‘Did he see her with you on Friday?’

‘I don’t think so. I made her stay out of sight while I sorted him out.’

‘Still, he must have worked out what had brought you there.’

‘I doubt it. I reckon that, for all the stalking, his ego’s so big that it just wouldn’t occur to him. . and Lisanne agrees with me.’

Stallings chuckled. ‘And you’re so big he wouldn’t do anything about it even if it did. What’s his timetable with the court?’

‘There’ll be a Sheriff Court pleading diet. . hearing, in other words. . in a few weeks when the indictment will be read out. By that time Frankie will have done a deal with Gregor Broughton to drop the minor charges in exchange for a guilty plea. She might try to talk him into a charge of simply attempting to defeat the ends of justice, and he might go along with it, since we weren’t very far into our investigation.’

‘Will it make much difference?’

‘I don’t think so: the sheriff’s powers are limited, so he’ll send him to the High Court for sentencing. When the judge hears that the body lay undiscovered for ten days, and adds that Weekes was a cop, he’ll hammer him.’

‘That assumes that he hasn’t been charged with murder by then.’

‘Come on, Becky. We know there’s no chance of that.’

‘Doesn’t it also assume that we haven’t charged anyone else? Wouldn’t the Weekes hearing be delayed in case it was prejudicial?’

‘That shouldn’t make any difference. The judge would impose restrictions on what the press could report about the case, but he’d still put the hammer on Theo.’

The inspector sighed. ‘It’s a bugger, Jack,’ she said. ‘When we got into him on Wednesday, and then when you came in with that necklet the next morning, I thought, “Great, my first big inquiry in Scotland and we’ve wrapped it up in three days.” Now it’s Sunday, we’re sitting having a case conference, the murder’s still unsolved, there are new complications, and we have no positive leads to go on.’

‘It’s depressing, I’ll grant you,’ McGurk agreed. ‘But don’t take it personally; nobody’s going to blame you. As for me, I’m not bothered about complications. I look at that image on the wall over there. .’ He pointed at a large print of Davis Colledge’s defaced picture, which Skinner had emailed from Spain. Stallings had cut a square from an adhesive label and pasted it over the young artist’s erection. ‘. . and I see an angry young man. Why was he angry? That’s what I want to know. He’s my top priority. I want to speak to him.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. There is that avenue. We won’t be talking to him today, though, so let’s rescue what’s left of our weekend.’

‘Sounds good to me. What have you and Ray got planned?’

‘We’re going to get our bikes out and cycle to the Northern Bar for a couple. You?’

‘Nothing in particular,’ he replied noncommittally.

They walked through the moribund station and out through the back door. McGurk was lowering himself into his car when he heard the inspector’s mobile sound. He waved to her as he started his engine … but stopped when he saw the look on her face as she stared at him. He lowered the window. ‘What?’ he called.

‘That was Mae Grey,’ she told him. ‘She’s at Weekes’s place, and she sounds in a right two and eight. We need to get there straight away.’