Death's Door

Thirty-nine

I wasn’t surprised when you rang me. I’ve been expecting you since lunchtime.’ Amy Noone’s wide eyes and pale face were witnesses to her claim. As she perched on the edge of her couch, she clutched a can of Irn-Bru, white-knuckled.

‘How did you find out?’ Steele asked her.

‘I was in the middle of shampooing a customer,’ she told him, ‘and STV was on the television like always. The news was on, then the woman said they were switching to Edinburgh, and two men walked in front of a camera. I wasn’t really listening until I saw that one of them was Zrinka’s dad. I knew him right away, from a photo she has in her flat. And then the other one, the big guy with the nice black curly hair, said that Zrinka was the girl that was murdered on the beach. I just screamed.’ She pressed the cold can to her forehead. ‘God knows what would have happened if I’d been cutting the woman’s hair at the time, instead of just washing it. Mervyn, the boss, was at the other end of the salon; he came rushing up thinking I’d scalded her or something, then the man said something else about Zrinka being shot and he screamed too. Then Harry’s name was mentioned, and the pair of us were in floods of tears.

Mervyn told me I should go home; gay blokes are kind that way. He said he’d finish off my customer, and cancel as many of the afternoon appointments as he could.’

‘He knew them too?’

‘Of course he did. Zrinka was a customer. That’s how she and I met; she came into the salon a year and a half ago, no, maybe a bit more, and Mervyn gave her to me. She said that she wanted a makeover to surprise her boyfriend. I told her that if he didn’t appreciate her as she was, he needed a mental makeover, or maybe changing altogether. She laughed at that, and we just got on from there.’

‘Can you tell us anything about the boyfriend?’ Tarvil Singh asked her.

‘Dominic?’ Amy frowned. ‘I never liked him. I never trusted him either.’

‘Why? Did he come on to you?’

She snorted. ‘In his dreams! Nah, he just didnae seem right for her. He was older than her for a start. Zrinka was just twenty-two then, and he must have been into his thirties. She liked a laugh, and he was a dour bastard, unless he was making an effort, and he never did, unless she was looking at him.’

‘Do you know why they broke up?’

‘No, Zrinka never let on, not even when I asked her. All that I know is that she chucked him out, no week’s notice, nothing. One day I went to see her and he was there. Next day he was gone.’

‘Her mother told us that they broke up on good terms,’ said Steele.

‘That’s what Zrinka wanted her to think. Wasnae true, though. My theory is. .’ she looked at the detectives across her coffee table ‘. . that he was a gold-digger.’

‘That’s a good old-fashioned term.’

‘It fitted him, though. I reckon he was after her because her old man’s filthy rich, and that Zrinka finally figured it out and bounced him. I suggested as much once, and she just said that if that was what I wanted to think it was all right by her.’

‘What about Harry?’

Amy’s face seemed to light up. ‘Aw, Harry was different. He was such a nice guy; one for the women, right enough, but once he met Zrinka, that was that. It was me that introduced them.’

‘How did you come to meet Harry?’

‘Through A-Frame. . Sorry, Lionel; Harry gave him that name and it stuck. He’s my boyfriend. I took Zrinka along to hear the band one night. . You know Harry had a band?’ Singh nodded. ‘I never thought she’d fancy getting off with him, but she did. Shagged him that very night, so she told me afterwards. I thought it would be a one-nighter, but that’s not how it turned out: they were pretty much inseparable from then on. She even took an interest in Upload. Not that long ago she brought the three of them into the salon. She said that if they were going to cultivate a scruffy image, then at least it should be well-groomed scruffy. That was pure Zrinka.’

‘Have you spoken to A-Frame this afternoon?’

Amy nodded, wiping a tear from a corner of her right eye. ‘He was the first person I called. He hadn’t heard. He was workin’ when I rang him. He’s still got a day job. . just as well, now this has happened. He stacks shelves at Scotmid in Leith. He didn’t believe me at first, until I told him to tune in to the Radio Forth news at one. I’m meeting him tonight, him and Benjy. . that’s the other lad in the band. We’re going to have a wake for Harry and Zrinka up in the Pear Tree. They’d a record deal, too. That’ll be well stuffed with Harry dead. He was the musician, you see, and the programmer. A-Frame does the drums, and Benjy does the keyboards, or so they say, but really they’re just machine operators.’

‘What’s Lionel’s surname?’ Singh asked.

‘Broad. Benjy’s is Malcolm; Benjamin Malcolm.’

‘Thanks,’ said Steele. ‘Did Zrinka ever mention a woman called Stacey Gavin?’

The girl squeezed her can even tighter as she nodded. ‘She was that other girl that got shot, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘She knew her,’ she told them, ‘and so did I. That makes it all even scarier, I suppose.

‘Up at the art college in Lauriston, the final-year students have a show, where you can buy their work. Zrinka took me up there last summer, on a Saturday, just to have a look. “Let’s suss out the potential competition,” was how she put it, but she was laughing when she said it. Stacey was there, showing quite a lot of her work. It was really, really good, as good as Zrinka’s. It’s funny, I never really knew anything about art until I met those two. Now I’m quite keen on it. Zrinka persuaded me that what I do is art as well, in its own way.

‘Stacey had sold just about all of her stuff when we got to her. In fact, yes, that was what happened, she sold her last piece when we were talking to her. A man bought it; he said it would do nicely for his daughter’s new flat when she moved in. He was a nice guy; middle-aged, but he looked tough as fuck. He and Stacey did the deal, he took the picture away, and she said that was her done. So we went to the Pear Tree for a pint.’

‘Did you see anything of her after that?’

‘Zrinka did, more than me. She let her sell stuff off her stall last summer, until she had her own sales system lined up.

‘The two of them fell out, though. I think it must have been over that bastard Dominic. Zrinka found out that Stacey was going out with him. She warned her that he was a no-user, and Stacey didn’t like it. They had this discussion one lunch-time, when the three of us were in Bert’s Bar, along from the salon. It started off about Dominic; it wasn’t an argument or anything, Zrinka just said she was worried for Stacey. Stacey told her that her problem was that she never trusted any men, and Zrinka replied, “No, and you of all people shouldn’t either.” Then she stopped, but Stacey asked her what she meant.’

‘What did she mean?’

‘I dunno. I had to go back to work then. But Stacey and Zrinka never seemed to see each other after that.’

‘Stacey and Dominic,’ asked the inspector, ‘do you know what happened there in the end?’

‘She binned him. Stacey still came into the salon after the thing in Bert’s, not very often, but every time she did I told Mervyn he should be paying me commission. The last time I saw her I asked her about him. She said that Zrinka had been right, and that she’d chucked him.’

Steele looked at Singh, eyebrows raised slightly.

‘What about Zrinka’s folks?’ the big Sikh asked. ‘She seemed to have cut herself off from them, from her father at any rate.’

‘No, you’re dead wrong there. Zrinka loved her dad. He understood when she said that she was moving up here to make her name as an artist, where she wouldn’t be connected with him, and where she could be sure that people were buying her stuff because it was good, not because of who she was. Officially she was independent of him and her mum, but she bought her flat, and he slipped her cash every so often: I’m not talking about the odd tenner either. It was funny: neither of them knew the other was helping her. It was supposed to be a secret, but she told me.’ Amy smiled. ‘And then there was her brother.’

Dražen?’

‘Yeah. He calls himself David, though, David Barnes. Now he does have a problem with his old man.’

‘You’ve met him?’

‘Yeah. He came up here to visit Zrinka once. He took the pair of us out to dinner at Cosmo’s, just along the road from her place. He was really nice, really, really nice.’ For the first time since the detectives had arrived at her Comely Bank studio flat, Amy’s face showed a touch of colour. ‘In fact. .’ she continued, then stopped. ‘A-Frame doesn’t know about that. Anyway, he and I hadn’t been going out very long then.

‘Poor David.’ She sighed. ‘I think that Zrinka was the most important person in his world.’