Blackstone's pursuits

In which we meet the Widow Kane and find her wanting in the grief department

‘Oz, I know you’re daft; you don’t have to go proving it all the time.’ From the moment of our meeting, Prim’s faith in my judgement has been touching. ‘What will we say to the woman?’

‘I don’t know for sure. I just think we should go along to offer our sympathies. Remember what Dawn said about her. She was two-timing Willie, according to him at least.’

Primavera looks wonderful when her smile is just about to erupt into laughter. When she throws her head back and laughs it sounds like the pealing of a chime of bells. Right at that moment, the ringers had a good grip on the ropes.

‘So we just walk in there, and ask her about it, do we?’

‘Not quite, but there’s one thing we might learn, if we play our cards right. Just think back to what Dawn said about her.’ She thought for only a few seconds, then caught on. Much quicker than her sister, is Prim. When it comes to it, she’s much quicker than me. ‘I remember now. And you think …’

When you’re really in love, telepathy is a perfectly feasible proposition.

We found the address with no difficulty at all. In the back of the car, we still had a copy of the Evening News which carried the report of his identification, complete with a photo of Chez Kane. Even for a stockbroker, it looked quite a place. It was a big villa along Ravelston Dykes, one of those streets in Edinburgh where the poor folk aren’t encouraged to get out of their cars.

As I parked the Nissan, defiantly, Prim gazed at the house through the wrought-iron railings which topped the small garden wall. She whistled softly. ‘Poor Willie must really have been stuck on our Dawn to walk out of this pile,’ she whispered.

‘Or he must really have hated his wife,’ I said.

The only downmarket thing about the house was the car in the driveway. It was a silver Calibra, where you’d have expected a Five-series Beamer at the very least. But, still, it was top-of-the-range, with a personalised ‘LBK’ number plate.

I took a quick peek through the living-room window as we approached the front door, hustling along in the light rain, which had been threatening all day. Where Semple House was genuine Charles Addams, ‘Achnasheen’, for thus it had been named by a fanciful builder, was genuine Vogue. The furniture was modem but nondescript, white leather settees, a dull high-board, a hi-fi rack and speakers against the far wall. Prim tugged me towards the front door and rang the bell.

It took a second ring before the door was opened, by a reddish-haired woman. She leaned against the jamb, perspiring and breathing heavily. She looked well on the fleshy side in her leotard and tights, ankle-warmers and trainers, her bosom jiggling formidably as it rose and fell. In the background, an aerobics tape pounded on loudly.

She looked at us as she recovered her wind. For the faintest moment I thought I saw alarm in her eyes; but probably I imagined it. This was a woman who would not be alarmed by heavy machine gun fire. ‘Yes?’ she gasped, eventually.

‘Mrs Kane?’ I asked. She nodded, and I ploughed on as wide-eyed and friendly as could be. ‘Sorry if it’s an inconvenient time, but we wondered if we might have a word with you?’

She was breathing normally now, and looked formidably hostile. ‘You’re not more bloody press, are you?’ I noticed that her voice was harder than the norm among Ravelston matrons.

‘Heavens no,’ I said airily.

‘Oh Christ, not the fucking Witnesses, surely! Sunday was yesterday, chum.’

I smiled, trying to appease her. ‘No, Mrs Kane, we’re not witnesses. Not that sort, anyway. We, I, wanted to talk to you about your husband. My name’s Oz Blackstone. I don’t know if the police told you, but it was us who found Mr Kane.’

The hostility lessened a bit, but she was still a long way from offering an embrace. ‘I see. So? Do you expect a fucking reward?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Well, my girlfriend and I thought we should maybe come along to see you, just to, well comfort you if we could.’

‘Do I look as if I need comforting?’

I almost told her she looked as if she needed a couple of weeks on Slimfast, and a compassion transplant, but I held back. We hadn’t come just to be slung off her doorstep. Eventually she gave in. ‘Oh, come on in, if you must. The Cindy Crawford workout’s left me shagged out anyway.’ She turned in the doorway and pressed a TV remote. In the background, Cindy was cut off in her splendid prime.

She led us into the ‘no imagination’ living room. A packet of Benson and Hedges lay on the mantelpiece. She took out a fag and lit it with a big Ronson table model, offering the pack to us as she inhaled.

‘So,’ she said, as the blue smoke gave the room its only real colour. ‘What did you want to tell me about the dear departed?’

‘Well, we thought you might like to know that it seemed as if he didn’t suffer, that it was pretty quick.’

She took another drag, and looked at me as if I was an idiot. Right then, that was how I felt; if you called Linda Kane a hard cow, you’d be insulting bovines everywhere. ‘I’d worked that one out, son. Who d’you think identified the little shit? I imagine that if someone skewers your top-piece you go straight to the Pearly Gates, no stopping.

‘More’s the pity,’ she added with venom.

‘Oh, come on Mrs Kane,’ surprising myself by coming to the adulterous embezzler’s defence.

‘Come on nothing. The little bastard left me. He walked out on me for some fucking tart … on me! After all I’ve done for him. I made him at Black and Muirton, you know. The number of times I covered up for him. To look at him you’d never have thought he’d the brains to …’ She stumbled, very slightly, then caught herself, ‘… put his hat on the right way round.

‘Nearly said something rude there.’ She added, with a coyness that sat on her as easily as a nun on a rodeo bull.

‘So you found him, did you?’ She looked at Prim. ‘That means you, dear, must be that little tart’s sister. Little bastard or not he was my little bastard; And anyone who takes what’s mine… Fucking little tart!’

I held my breath and waited for Prim to drive the woman’s nose up into her brain. But Linda Kane saved the situation, and herself. ‘Look, I’m sorry to be so blunt, talking about her like that, but woman to woman, you must know how I feel. And I know you can’t pick your relatives.’

Somehow, Prim managed to look at the floor and say nothing. Then she turned away, and walked a few paces across the room, to the tasteless high-board. There were several silver-framed photographs on a shelf in the middle. She picked one up, and looked at it, then held it up so that Linda Kane and I could both see it. It showed a girl, a mature schoolgirl, in a blazer shirt and tie. ‘Is this your daughter?’

Linda smiled. ‘Do I look old enough? Yes, well I suppose I am. No, dear, that’s me, when I was head girl at Mary Erskine. Let’s see. That’ll have been taken in 1975.’

I whistled. ‘You’ve worn well then.’

She looked at me with the nearest thing I’ve seen to a leer on a woman. ‘Flattery, son, will get you most places. But not here; not here. I like my men a bit older than you, and a bit bulkier too.’

She took the photo from Prim. ‘Now, if that’s all you’ve got to tell me, thank you for coming, but I’m due for a cut at Charlie Kivlin’s in an hour.’ She ushered us smoothly back to the door.

‘Must look my best for the funeral, after all. It’s at Mortonhall, on Friday. I’ve got a fair idea what I’m going to do with the ashes afterwards.’ She made an unmistakable flushing movement with her right hand.

‘Cheerio, then. If you want to come to the funeral you’ll be welcome. The senior partner’s talking about having a reception afterwards in the office. That’s a bloody sight more than I’d do for him.’

She closed the door on us with something grotesque, that we took for a smile.

We hustled down the path to the garden gate as fast as we could and dived into the Nissan, which sat self-consciously under the trees. As soon as we were inside, I looked across at Prim, straight-faced. ‘Widow of the Year, eh?’ That was enough; we erupted in hoots of laughter.

‘God,’ she gasped at last, still convulsing, ‘I actually feel happy for Willie Kane. Imagine, if Dawn had chucked him out before she left and he’d been forced to go back to that! Whoever killed him did him a favour.’

‘Aye, but he did one for her too. With him dead, she’ll have the house, free and clear.’

‘And what more could she be after?’ muttered Prim, ominously.

‘Ah, hold on though,’ I said, trying to keep her enthusiasm in check. ‘She said nothing at all to show that she knows about the theft, or the fiver. She connected you to me, remember, and that’s the story the police will have told her, about you and I finding him when we got back from the airport.’

‘So what? No, Oz. I’d put nothing past that woman. If Mrs Archer told her about the theft, the bank account and everything, she could have been signing Kane’s death warrant. Wish we knew a bit more about the boyfriend though. That’s another thing we didn’t find out.’

I looked at her, happy in the knowledge that I was about to score a point. ‘Remember what Dawn said about him, though. Head boy and head girl at the same time.’

‘Yes, I remember; but you remember, Mr Clever Dick. Mary Erskine’s an all-girl school. My dumb sister must have got it wrong.’

‘Ah Miss Clever … eh, Clever whatever. Mary Erskine’s run by the Merchant Company, and there’s a partner boys’ school less than a mile away. Stewart’s-Melville; it’s right at the end of this road, in fact. So …’

She was like a kid on a treasure hunt. ‘So why don’t we just head along there now and see what we can find out?’