Fallen Gods

I

hear… Ms Viareggio, although some of the purchase price was paid by a cheque signed by Mr. McGuire's mother."

The giant grinned as he watched Mcllhenney fail to mask his surprise.

"There's a lot big Mario doesn't tell you, eh Neil," he said. "On the other hand, there's hardly anything that people don't tell me; nothing at all when I want to know. But I'm sorry. Go on with your tale."

The inspector pulled himself together. Lenny had been right; the news about Christina McGuire helping to fund Paula's sauna purchase had come as a complete surprise. "Right, and this is where Maley comes in.

Fargo's place was in her council ward at the time, and she's like you.

She knows everything that happens on her patch. We didn't pursue that angle at the time; it would have been pointless anyway. But the other day, I went round a few people who were involved in that case. One or two of the lads involved have made decent lives for themselves. I got a tip from one, who can remain nameless. He told me that he believed that Jason Fargo was only able to operate for as long as he did because he was paying backhanders to Agnes Maley."

"Mmm." Plenderleith murmured, almost impatiently. "So?"

"So, Jason Fargo's in this very nick, Lenny; I would like to know from him if that is true. If it is, I'll need it in writing, signed.

There'll be no comeback on him, I promise. I'll feed the information, personally, to contacts I have within the Labour Party. It'll be enough to put a stop to Maley's political career."

A rumbling sound seemed to emanate from deep in the man's great chest.

"Ahh, Fate can be a bugger, eh. I'd have done that for Bob. Jason would not have refused me; I may be a smart sociopath with his future mapped out, but as far as the boys in here are concerned, I am still the man to whom you like to say "yes". But sadly, you're about a month too late." He sighed.

"Mr. Fargo is indeed in Shorts nick; the news is not generally known at this moment, in case some of the younger inmates get alarmed, but he's in the hospital wing, in isolation. The man has full-blown AIDS, inspector, and it has attacked him here." He tapped the side of his head. "He's fucking brain dead, Neil. The most I'd get out of him would be a drool."

"Shit!" Mcllhenney hissed; then he saw that Lenny was looking at him, in a strangely direct way. There was more to come.

"Going back to the criminal mind… a real criminal mind, I mean, not Mr. Fargo's which was never up to much in the first place, even before it went into melt-down… the worst thing you guys can ever do is to underrate it. What I am going to tell you now will be of absolutely no use to you, or Bob, because I learned it at the time from Tony Manson, who's even deader than Fargo. So it's hearsay. Sure, I could write it down for you, but it could never be proved. If you tried to feed it to your sources, first they wouldn't believe it, and second they'd look at the signature: Lenny Plenderleith, mass murderer, casual observer of the Edinburgh scene at the time, and unlikely friend of Agnes Maley's enemy, DCC Bob Skinner. We'd all probably wind up in the civil courts, or worse."

Mcllhenney sighed. "You're right, of course. So what is it that we can't use?"

"Just this; and remember that it came from Tony Manson, who knew everything and everyone on the criminal scene in Edinburgh. As the tabloids had to say, he was the Godfather of his time. The fact is that Jason Fargo did not pay, as you put it, backhanders, to Maley. He ran the place, paid the kids their pittance, took his own wages, and gave her what was left. Black Agnes was the boss, Neil. The set-up was his idea, and the flat was in Fargo's name, but it was bought with cash which she supplied."

"Why didn't he shop her then?"

"Work it out; man. He knew he wouldn't have lived to stand trial.

Think back to those days, and to the way it was in Edinburgh. There were three teams; there was ours, there was Jackie Charles and his lot, and there was a third one, not as big as us, but a grouping nonetheless. You knew about Jackie and us, but you could never get a handle on that third one. You were never even sure if it was organised, or whether it was just a load of villains picking the scraps off our table. Well it was, and Black Agnes was at its heart. Her boys did the stuff we wouldn't; protection, the wee boy business, smuggling cigarettes and all that.

"After Fargo got done, she realised that she was pushing her luck, so she packed everything up and concentrated on being a councillor. But when she was in business, nobody, not you, not even Bob Skinner himself, ever had a sniff of her, because her tracks were covered too well, and because all you could see was what a fucking pain she was as a councillor. But she was much more than that, Neil.

"Jason Fargo didn't kill those boys off his own bat, man. He did it on Agnes's orders."