Fallen Gods

Forty-Two

It had been years since Neil Mcllhenney had seen Lenny Plenderleith.

Bob Skinner had told him that the man had changed during the years of his imprisonment, and for the better, in many ways, but one thing remained. He was still as big as ever.

The giant laughed softly. "So I can trust you with my life, can I," he said. "He hasn't lost his touch, has he. So you're his man, are you? What's happened that he can't come to see me himself? He always has before."

Mcllhenney was struck by Big Lenny's quiet confidence. He had changed indeed from his days as principal enforcer to the late and almost unlamented Tony Manson. The gang leader had been mourned only by his protege, a fact which had proved unfortunate to his killers.

Skinner said, after Lenny's imprisonment for the murder, that the greatest mistake a man could make was to underestimate him. Some of those who had were no longer around to regret it.

"He's got problems; family things. He's in America at the moment, trying to sort them out."

"He's got one in Scotland that I know about; tough luck about his brother winding up in that lady's basement. Do they know what it was yet? Did somebody do him?"

"He died of a heart attack… while he was salmon fishing maybe."

Lenny Plenderleith leaned across the Shorts Prison visiting room table; they were alone, at Mcllhenney's insistence. "You and I will get on better, Mr. Mcllhenney, if you don't spin me any more fairy tales.

Nobody goes salmon fishing when a river's in full spate, and bursting its banks, especially not, as the Scotsman informed me, an alcoholic who's lived the last thirty years of his life in a Jesuit hostel. Maybe he did die of a heart attack, but how did he wind up in the Tay?"

"We don't know," the inspector admitted. "But he died of natural causes, so finding out is not at the top of Tayside CID's things-to-do list."

"They'd better move it up then, or is Bob not coming back from the States?"

"He'll be back, all right, but I'm not sure when."

Lenny frowned. "So what's happened in America that's more important than his brother?"

"It's a family matter, that's all; it's got nothing to do with this visit, I promise you."

"I'm curious, though. I read about his in-laws being killed a few months back; I even had a look at the New York Times website. The old man rated quite an obituary; he was a friend of the Kennedys and the Clintons, so it said."

"You certainly keep yourself informed," Mcllhenney observed.

"I have to do something in here; I've done my Open University degree. I did ask if I could get day release from here to do a doctorate at Napier, but they wouldn't wear it. Bob said that after I'd done ten years I should ask again, and he might be able to help. In the meantime, I'm writing; I've done the obligatory reformed lifer's autobiography, a book about the career of Tony Manson, drug lord with a social conscience, etc." and another about his murder and what happened after it. I wanted to do one about Bob Skinner, too, but he won't play."

"So what'll you do instead of that? Fiction?"

"Eventually maybe, but not yet; next I plan to do an academic study of the homicidal mind. It'll go on to look at people like West, Dahmer, Shipman, Sutcliffe and so on, and it'll try to give voice to their thoughts as they did what they did."

"What about your own?"

Plenderleith looked sternly at his visitor. "Please, spare me that.

Although I have killed people, I don't have a homicidal mind in that sense. I am a sociopath; that's allowed me to do what I've done in the past. But I am also a clever sociopath; I know that I cannot continue to do those things and retain the possibility of ever breathing free air, and thanks to my inheritance from Tony I won't be under any pressure to do them when I'm released. No one has a problem being left alone with me; I'm probably the safest man in this place." He grinned at Mcllhenney.

"I do virtually all my research on the internet. When I'm logged on I read a selection of world newspapers, to keep up with current affairs.

There's some interesting stuff out there." Plenderleith paused and glanced across at the policeman. "I even read about this actress," he said, 'a year or so back, who chucked it all to marry some dumb copper in Edinburgh… lucky bastard that he is."

"Sure," said the inspector, with sudden bitterness. "So lucky that his first wife died in her prime and left him with two kids. But you know about widowhood, don't you, Lenny? You killed your wife."

The giant drew a breath; for a while, Neil thought that the interview was at an end. But then he exhaled and glanced across to the window.

"Wrong subject for us, then," he murmured. "I'm sorry; I didn't know that."

"You must have missed the Scotsman that day. My Olive had a fine obituary; Bob Skinner wrote it."

"We all owe Bob, then," said Lenny, 'me as much as anyone. He might be the guy who got me banged up in here, but he was only doing his job …" he laughed '… not that I made it easy for him. He wasn't just doing his job, though, when he put in a word to get me a standard lifer's tariff, when any other copper… you included… would have left me here to rot, doing a minimum thirty years. So how can I help him?"

Mcllhenney leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Apart from his family things, the boss has had another problem lately. There's this councillor, Agnes Maley; she's had it in for him for years. Just lately, she's really been getting above herself. It's time she was brought under control."

Lenny shook his huge head, smiling. "Black Agnes, eh."

"You know her?"

"Oh yes, I know her. If I'd read that she had been fished out of a river the other day, rather than Bob's brother, it would have surprised me a lot less. But you'll need to be nifty on your feet to get anything on her."

"Maybe we have been. I've been looking into her past, and at some of the people she's been associated with. About twelve years back, there was a nasty murder in Edinburgh. It involved a rent boy, called Paul Deary… yes, I know, an appropriate name. He was found, naked, in a skip just along from the Elsie Inglis. Not just a murder; the way he was killed told us that the lad had been made an example of. His throat was cut and his balls were stuffed in his mouth." The inspector gave an involuntary shudder.

"We leaned on a lot of people, and eventually we found out that he had worked in a male brothel right in the middle of the Old Town, under the control of a pimp called Jason Fargo. We raided the place mob-handed and lifted everyone; I was in on it myself. We found the usual selection of clients, but we let them go. One of them was a journalist, so we were fairly certain it would be covered up. Instead we concentrated on the boys who were working there; the Big Man led the investigation himself. He showed them all photographs of Deary, at the scene and in the mortuary. He asked them to imagine the boy's last moments. He asked them to consider how safe they would all be if the guy who did it wasn't caught. And then he locked them up and waited.

"It only took one night in the cells. Two of them started talking and eventually they all did. They told us that Jason Fargo had come in the night Paul was killed and taken him away. He'd pulled him out of there, screaming, by the hair. They told us about another kid who'd disappeared as well, about six months earlier. Both boys had been freelancing; they'd been working the pubs in Leith and keeping all their money. In Fargo's place, they got a third of what they earned, if they were lucky. They were slaves.

"We turned Jason's flat over, looking for forensic traces, but there was nothing; we were in trouble then, because we needed more for the

Crown Office to proceed with a murder charge. Then one of the boys told us that he'd been with Jason once, and he'd stopped at a lock-up garage out off Causewayside. He'd gone in, come out with a stereo, locked it again and driven off. The lad had assumed, correctly, that it was used to store knock-off, and had thought no more about it.

"He took us there; we opened it under a warrant, and went in. Bingo; the kid's blood was up the walls, and his clothes were in a pile in the corner. There was stolen gear all over the place and Jason's prints were all over it. Fargo admitted it; it surprised us at the time, but he just folded. He even took us to the spot in the Queen's Park where he'd buried the first lad… poor kid, I can't even remember his name. He told us what we had guessed, that he had killed Paul like that to scare all the others off private enterprise.

"The Crown Office threw every possible charge at him; murder, forcing under-age boys into prostitution, keeping a disorderly house, the lot. The judge he drew was a well-known practising Catholic; he gave him a minimum twenty-five years."

He stopped; Lenny Plenderleith applauded, silently. "Well told, inspector. You had me right on the edge of my seat there. As a matter of fact, I remember the case very well. Tony was very pleased when Mr.

Fargo got stuffed. He did not approve of the wee boy business. Yes, I'll grant you, he was into saunas himself, but in Edinburgh, properly run, they can be positively therapeutic. Your friend McGuire should agree with that; Tony's estate, which I administer, sold a number of them to his very attractive cousin… kissing cousin, from what