Fenton's winter

ELEVEN

Fenton and Kelly stood still for a moment in the quiet of the basement area and courted the shadow of the wall while they listened for sounds coming from above. When they were sure that all was quiet they climbed the steps quickly to the pavement and started walking.

Like Christians cast into some Georgian Coliseum they looked furtively out of the corners of their eyes for signs of lions. They saw nothing but Fenton was far from convinced. He imagined hidden faces behind every tall rectangular window. Their description was already being noted and telephones were being lifted. They suppressed the urge to run but doing so filled them with the nervous tension of thorough-bred horses held under rein.

"Up here," said Fenton, seeking the earliest opportunity of returning to noise and bustle. The lights of a white painted pub attracted them like harbour buoys and the crowd inside absorbed them into welcome anonymity.

"God, I needed that," said Kelly after downing his whisky in one gulp. Fenton ordered two more and they began to take stock of their surroundings. The clientele were mainly young, fashion conscious and noisy. The bar list boasted sixteen different cocktails. It said a lot about the customers.

"Why! Steven Kelly!" said a loud female voice behind them. Fenton froze but he felt Kelly's eyes on him before he turned round.

"Fiona Duncan, how nice," said Kelly, failing his audition for RADA, thought Fenton.

"Whatever brings you here?" continued Fiona at the top of her voice. Kelly was struggling but Fenton realised that it did not matter for Fiona was not listening to the answers. She was only interested in her own performance. Fenton knew the type. Conversations were opportunities for self projection, chances to display an ever changing slide show of facial expression to whoever might be watching. The loudness of the voice was designed to swell that number.

"Tom, meet Fiona Duncan," said Kelly looking like a wet spaniel. "She used to be a nurse at the Princess Mary."

Fenton nailed Kelly with a glance before shaking hands with the loud girl. "And where are you now Fiona?" he asked politely.

"The Western General!" said Fiona. She announced it like the winning number in a raffle and her right hand gave a little cheer.

Fenton smiled, passing her back to Kelly.

"So what are you doing with yourself these days Steve? Behaving?” asked Fiona.

Fenton saw the look that passed between Kelly and the girl and knew what had gone on in the past. He marked time with a fixed smile on his face until Fiona decided that she had to 'dash'. Her friends were waiting for their drinks. He almost felt the spotlight go out as she moved her cabaret to the bar.

"Sorry about that," whispered Kelly, looking sheepish.

"They should have cut them off at birth," muttered Fenton.

Jenny welcomed them with a sigh of relief and a barrage of questions that made Fenton hold up his hands. "You had better sit down," he said. He told her what they had found, trying to leave out as many of the gory bits as possible. Jenny kept probing. He added the gory bits.

"But supposing he lies there for weeks before anyone finds him?" Jenny pointed out. "Could our nerves stand it?"

The consensus was no. "How should we do it?"

"Anonymous call," said Kelly. "I'll do it on my way home. Go to 24a Lymon Place. There's a dead man there."

The story was too late for the morning papers but local radio carried it in their morning bulletins. Nigel Saxon, son of the owner of Saxon Medical, the company at the centre of the lethal plastic affair, had been found dead in a city flat and the police were treating the death as murder. There was no more. Fenton thought that it seemed so clinically clean and tidy, nothing at all like the hellish reality of what had lain in that basement. Nothing to convey the sight, the smell. Only the police would know that. It made him wonder how many other stories were deodorized every day, cellophane wrapped, sanitised for public protection. Did it matter?

The evening paper seemed to think that it did.' New Town Funeral Pyre for Plastics Boss' concentrated on the charring and disfigurement of Saxon's body, managing to use the phrase 'barely recognizable' three times in the story. For the first time the police admitted publicly that they had been looking for Saxon in connection with their enquiries into the death of Neil Munro. The simple statement invited the public to draw their own conclusions, the very reason they made it, thought Fenton. No mention was made of the sex angle however, something that made Jenny suggest cynically that the police were going to sell it to the Sundays. She was wrong. The tabloids got it on the following morning and made a meal of it with, 'Sex Secrets of New Town Basement.'

No 'secrets' were actually revealed but the suggestion of homosexuality and the persistent use of the word 'apparatus' was enough to alter the nature of the crime for the law abiding citizens of Edinburgh. Outrage at the murder became muted. The unspoken view that this was an affair that God-fearing folk were better off not knowing about became the prevalent one. Some perverted creature from a strange twilight world had got his just deserts. I'll make the cocoa Agnes, you put out the cat.

Fenton could not help but feel that the police had orchestrated the whole thing and it had worked. The pressure was off them for, to all public intents and purposes, they had tracked down Neil Munro's killer and he was dead, better than a conviction for the rate payers. As for Saxon's killer? They would go through the motions, follow routine but there was very little pressure on them this time. No one cared about Saxon or his seedy society. At least this was what Fenton had concluded but he had to change his mind when the police issued a description of two men that they wanted to interview in connection with the New Town murder.

Fenton held his breath as he listened to the descriptions. Two men aged between twenty and thirty, one six feet tall and dark, the other slightly shorter with fair hair and broad shoulders. Both had been seen leaving the area of the basement flat on the night in question

Fenton's first instinct was to phone Steve Kelly but he talked himself out of it, deciding that it was a panic reaction. Kelly phoned him. There was nothing really to say.

Kelly phoned again in the evening just after eight when Jenny was leaving for the hospital. "We've got trouble," he said and Fenton's heart sank. Jenny, who had been in the act of leaving, paused in the doorway and said, "Should I wait?"

"No," said Fenton. "Just go, see you in the morning."

Jenny threw him a kiss and closed the door behind her.

"What trouble?" asked Fenton.

"Fiona Duncan called me. She pointed out that 'The White Horse' is very near Lymon Place and I've got fair hair and broad shoulders."

"Just what we needed," muttered Fenton, trying to think at the same time.

"I'm sorry about this," said Kelly.

"I think we had better go to the police before they come to us." said Fenton.

"Do you think if I strangled Fiona I could ask for one other case to be taken into consideration?"

"I'll come round to your place," said Fenton.

Fenton apologised to Mary Kelly for having got her husband into his present predicament but she was in a less than forgiving mood and her look came straight from the freezer. As they left Kelly gave his wife a peck on the cheek and said, "See you later."

Don't bet on it, thought Fenton.

"Good evening sir," said the desk sergeant, expecting a lost dog story.

"I think you are looking for us," said Fenton, feeling as if he were throwing away a key.

The sergeant stared at them until he saw a six foot tall dark man accompanied by a shorter man with fair hair. "Good God," he said and lifted the telephone. Jamieson was summoned from home.

Fenton and Kelly were held separately during the wait, each accompanied by a silent constable. Fenton found his room oppressively quiet and free from distraction, furnished only with a table and four chairs and painted in institutional pastel green. At least the table creaked when he put his elbows on it and, in this respect, it was more communicative than the constable. There was a vaguely unpleasant smell of disinfectant about the place, something that made Fenton wonder why it had been necessary to use it in the first place. It conjured up visions of lice and filth and vomit and generally added to his feelings of unease.

"Any chance of a cup of tea?" he asked.

The constable shook his head mutely.

An awful thought struck Fenton. As yet, no one had asked for his name or any other details. Everything was being saved for Jamieson. It would be a surprise for him when he walked through the door. He wondered what he would say.

"Oh Christ! This is all I needed," said Jamieson. "Mr smart-arse Fenton.

Fenton struggled to adopt the right facial expression but couldn't find it. Aggression was out, definitely out in the circumstances, but contriteness went against the grain, especially with Jamieson. He settled for something along the lines of a British tourist being harangued by a foreign official in a language that he did not understand.

Jamieson finished his opening salvo and settled down to enjoying his work. He was going to play this particular fish for a while.

"Why did you do it Fenton? Revenge? Was that it? He cooked your mate, you cooked him?"

Fenton spluttered out a denial but the truth was that he had not seen the poetic justice angle. Things were even worse than he thought.

"How long have you been a practising homosexual Fenton?"

Fenton clenched his fists.

"Is that why you got beaten up in that pub Fenton…in the toilets wasn't it?"

Fenton made for him. The constable dived in to restrain him while Jamieson just smiled.

Jamieson was in his element, he had not had so much fun for ages. He ran rings round Fenton, laughing away denials, playing him out, reeling him in, digging the hook in deeper until, at last, he saw the fight in Fenton begin to subside. It was always the moment he enjoyed most. He brought his face close to Fenton's and said threateningly, "Let me tell you this laddie, it gets very boring being taken for a mug by every half-arse who's seen The Pink Panther. You might just ponder on the fact that Nigel Saxon would be alive today if you had contacted us as soon as he called you. Fenton pondered the fact.

Fenton and Kelly were released at a quarter past midnight, a sober and wiser pair. They exchanged stories of their questioning as they walked down the High Street to collect Kelly's car. "Do you know, he suggested I was queer," complained Kelly. Fenton managed to summon up a smile in the darkness while a distant clap of thunder echoed over the roof tops. "Bloody rain," he said.

Fenton went back to the Kellys' flat where Mary Kelly was waiting up. She seemed much happier to see Fenton this time and apologised for her earlier frostiness. Fenton said that it had been understandable.

"So what happened?" asked Mary Kelly.

"We got our bottoms smacked," replied Kelly.

"About sums it up," agreed Fenton.

Mary Kelly went to bed leaving Fenton and Kelly drinking whisky and mulling over the past two days.

"Did Saxon kill Neil Munro or didn't he?" asked Kelly.

Fenton tilted his glass slowly from side to side, keeping the fluid level horizontal. "It pains me to say it but I think he might have been innocent. I think he was about to shop the real murderer when he got killed for his trouble. The killer must have got wind of what he planned to do and turned up early."

"The same man who called on Sandra Murray?" suggested Kelly.

"He could have killed Saxon but not Neil. The killer must have been in the lab when Neil discovered the truth about Saxon plastic. It couldn't have been a stranger.

"You do realise what you are saying?" said Kelly softly.

Fenton nodded. "If the killer wasn't Saxon it must be someone in the lab. Someone who primed the fair haired man to ask the right questions. Someone who knew what would happen when you added hydrochloric acid to potassium cyanide…"

The thought put both men to silence.

"But why?" asked Kelly.

Fenton shook his head.

"Did you tell the police about Sandra Murray's visitor?" asked Kelly.

"No, did you?"

"No."

"Here we go again," said Fenton.

Fenton got up and went over to the window. "The rain's stopped." he said. He drained the contents of his glass.

It was very late and the streets were practically deserted as Fenton walked home. The temperature had fallen with the clearing of the skies but the air was still and the stars twinkled brightly above him as he rounded a corner and saw the source of the eerie white light that lit up chimneys on tenement roofs. A full moon hung in the sky like a communion wafer. A cat fled from a dustbin and dissolved in shadow.

Fenton fell into a troubled sleep but kept waking at almost hourly intervals until at four o'clock he got up and made coffee. He had gone through each member of lab staff in turn at least three times and had still failed to find any motive for killing Neil. It was safe to eliminate all the females for Neil's murder had demanded physical strength but that left all the men. The motive had to be linked to the Cavalier organisation Fenton decided. That was the link between Saxon and the fair haired man. It was reasonable to propose that that was the connection between Saxon and the killer in the lab.

Charles Tyson? He had defended Saxon plastic throughout and had done everything possible to dissuade him from pursuing the faulty plastic angle. What was more Jenny had noticed that he had known what Ross had been talking about when he mentioned the 'Tree Mob.' He was also unmarried and never spoke of his personal life. But what about Ross himself? Ross had told him about the club in the first place but that might have been cleverness on his part, a ploy to make himself the least likely suspect…Fenton gave up. There was no way he was going to guess who the killer was. The fair haired man was the key to the puzzle. He must know who Neil's killer was. Fenton resolved to contact Jamieson in the morning.

Fenton phoned Kelly when he got into the lab and Kelly agreed to come too. They arranged to meet at noon and adopted Fenton's suggestion that they should use the Honda to avoid lunch time traffic and parking problems.

At a quarter to twelve Kelly phoned to point out that, as it was blowing a gale and the rain was almost horizontal the Honda might not be such a good idea. He would come round for Fenton in the car.

Kelly cursed as he tried to reverse the Capri into a small gap that they had found after crawling up and down side streets near the police station and found it particularly difficult because of the rain and condensation on the windows. "Hell, that'll do," he decided, abandoning the effort for neatness and leaving the car with its nose jutting out.

They ran up the hill, keeping close to the wall in an effort to avoid most of the weather but took it full in the face as they rounded the corner at the top with fifty metres or so still to cover before reaching the shelter of the police station.

"Do you think God has something personal against Scotland?" asked Fenton, shaking the water from his hair in the doorway.

"I think it's a character building agreement he has with John Knox," said Kelly. "Let's face it, if you were having a good time you'd only feel guilty."

Jamieson looked up from his desk as Fenton and Kelly were shown in by a constable who seemed strangely reluctant to let go of the door handle after opening the door for them. Both had to enter sideways.

Jamieson clasped his hands together under his chin and said, "Don't tell me. Let me guess. You have a suspicion that the Queen Mother did the Brighton Trunk Murders?"

Fenton grinned painfully and conceded Jamieson's right to some come back over his behaviour in the past. He told the policeman of their visit to the Murray house and what Sandra Murray's brother had told them about what a man pretending to be from the Blood Transfusion Service had asked at the house.

Jamieson knew the name Sandra Murray well enough. "Hit and run death, up the Braids way?"

Fenton nodded.

"And you are saying that she knew about the Saxon Plastic problem?"

"Maybe not the details, but she knew that Neil Munro thought that there was something wrong with it."

"And that's what this fair haired man wanted to find out?"

"It seems like it."

Jamieson sucked the end of his pen in silence for a moment then said, "Did Murray tell you any more about this man?"

Fenton told him about the ring and watched Jamieson's expression change. The policeman put down his pen and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands before saying quietly, "That lot."

"You know them?" asked Fenton.

"Oh yes, I know them all right," sighed Jamieson. "We all know them. The force is now full of senior officers who have tangled with that bunch and ended up giving road safety lectures to five year olds."

"You are serious?" asked Fenton in disbelief.

"I'm serious," said Jamieson quietly.

Fenton looked at Kelly who shrugged as if to say, I told you so.

"But you are the police. I thought…"

"I know what you thought," interrupted Jamieson. "You thought I could nip up to Braidbank, pick up Sandra Murray's brother, and get him to identify the man?"

"Well, yes."

Jamieson shook his head and said, "Let me tell you what would really happen. Assuming Sandra Murray's brother was willing to co-operate, and if he knows anything at all about this mob he wouldn't be, we would start making enquiries. A few days later I would be directing traffic in Princes Street and Murray would be running for his life."

"You can't be serious," Fenton protested.

"I am," said Jamieson. "These buggers have so much power it scares me shitless."

Fenton was shaken by the admission. "So where does that leave us?" he asked.

Jamieson ran his finger round the inside of his collar and said, "Now that you have told me this I am obliged to go see Murray and ask him formally if he thinks he could identify the man. Frankly, I hope he says no or there could be another hit and run accident in Braidbank within the week."

Fenton was having difficulty in coming to terms with the frankness of Jamieson's admissions but he did have an idea and said so. Jamieson grimaced and Kelly smiled. Fenton said, "Murray told me that his sister was the scientist in the family and that he was an artist. If he really is an artist, a brush and paint artist that is, he might be able to sketch the man for you and no one would ever know how you got on to him?"

"Sounds a good idea to me," said Kelly.

Jamieson took his time but finally conceded that he too thought it was worth considering. He said, "If we could find out who the man was without his knowing it would give us time to build up a case against him. We could go in strong."

Kelly suggested that he and Fenton should approach Murray and keep the police out of it in Murray's own interest. Jamieson agreed but Fenton sensed that he was uncomfortable. He wanted to say something else but it was having a difficult birth. "Gentlemen," he began, tapping his finger tips together, "With your agreement…" The words struggled over invisible barriers. "I would like to keep this on…an unofficial basis for the time being.

Fenton and Kelly waited for an explanation and it was even more laboured when it came. "Frankly, once a report is written…I can't be sure who is going to see it."

"I see," said Fenton. He said it calmly but felt anything but. "Perhaps it would be better if we met on neutral ground next time?" Jamieson nodded, relieved to see that Fenton had taken the right implication from what had been said without any further explanation being necessary.

It was still raining heavily when they got outside so they made a dash for the car although it was all to no avail when Kelly dropped the keys into the overflowing gutter in his haste to unlock the door. His curse was lost on the wind as Fenton turned his back and held up his collar while he waited.

"Did I dream that?" asked Fenton when they were safely out of the rain.

"If you did I had the same one," said Kelly.

Jenny looked aghast. "But they are the police!" she protested. "They don't say things like that!"

"That's what I thought too," said Fenton. "But I'm telling you exactly what Jamieson said."

"Oh Tom," said Jenny in exasperation. Fenton put his arm round her and tried to assure her by saying, "It's still a police matter. It's just that Jamieson wants to conduct it a little unconventionally."

"When are you going to see Murray?"

"Tonight," said Fenton.

The object of the exercise, decided Fenton, was to get the sketch from Murray with as little explanation as possible. They should say nothing about any possible connection with the Saxon murder and should not mention the police at all. This was just a little afterthought from their previous visit. But was Murray the right kind of artist?

"Actually I am a sculptor," said Murray. "But I think I can manage a rough outline."

It had turned out to be easier than Fenton had thought it might be. He had the sketch in his hands and Murray had hardly asked a thing, in fact, the man seemed positively subdued. He wondered whether the whisky beside Murray's chair was to blame but abandoned that notion in favour of a box of pills that he saw lying open on the table. He sneaked a look at the label when Murray had his back turned for a moment and saw that they were tranquillisers. They were a relatively mild brand but the alcohol was enhancing their effect.

Fenton looked at the sketch and admired Murray's competence.

"Thank you for your help Mr Murray," said Fenton, getting up to go.

"A drink before you go?" said Murray.

Fenton looked at his watch as a prelude to an excuse but the pathetically baleful look in Murray's eyes made him change his mind. "Thank you," he said. "Whisky for me."

"Do you still think my sister was murdered?" Murray asked as he handed Fenton and Kelly their glasses.

"I think it's possible," replied Fenton.

"I miss her you know," said Murray distantly. "I never liked her much while she was alive but now that she's gone…I miss her."

Fenton and Kelly exchanged embarrassed glances while Murray's eyes were fixed on the middle distance. He appeared not to notice and continued, "You see, she was the only person in my life who ever really liked me and now she's gone…"

Kelly shrugged his shoulders in discomfort and Fenton moved uneasily in his chair. Murray brought his eyes back and apologised for his rudeness. "Another drink?" Fenton declined the offer and thanked Murray again for his help.

As they walked down the path to the gate Kelly turned and looked at the house. "Poor bastard," he said.

The clock on the dash said eight forty-five and Kelly suggested that they call Jamieson on the number that he had given them. Fenton did so by using a phone box on the edge of Braidbank. He looked down at the lights of the city while he waited for Jamieson to answer. The rain had stopped but water was still running down the gutters from the hill. Jamieson answered and Fenton told him that they had the sketch.

"Do you know 'The Gravediggers' pub?" Jamieson asked.

"Corner of Angle Park?" said Fenton.

"That's the one, opposite Ardmillan Cemetery."

"When?"

"Thirty minutes?"

"We'll be there."

"I know it," said Kelly when Fenton told him. "Where can we park down there?"

"There's a railway footbridge near there, park in the street on the other side. We can walk over it."

Kelly followed Fenton's suggestion and they found a parking place with no difficulty. A diesel express thundered under the bridge as they crossed it, illuminating the banking with flickering light for a few brief moments before it was suddenly plunged back into darkness.

Jamieson was already there. He got up as they came in and ordered a round. "Any problems?" he asked as they sat down.

"None," replied Fenton, reaching into his inside pocket to take out Murray's sketch and hand it over.

Jamieson pursed his lips and made tutting noises. "Well, well, well," he said slowly.

"You know him?" asked Fenton.

"I do, indeed I do," replied Jamieson, still mesmerised by the sketch. "That's Gordon Vanney, Councillor Vanney's son."

Fenton thought that Jamieson looked as if he was being forced to remember something that he would rather have forgotten and did not intrude. He and Kelly remained silent until the policeman began to speak in his own time.

"Four years ago," said Jamieson, "A girl named Madeline Gray took her dog for a walk on Corstorphine Hill; she was fourteen at the time. Four youths set about her. They stripped her, tied her up and raped her in turn. When they had finished they stuffed stinging nettles…into every opening in her body and left her, still staked to the ground."

Fenton and Kelly listened in horror as Jamieson continued.

"When she could speak she named one of the youths as Vanney. She had recognised him because he lived in the same neighbourhood. We arrested Vanney but his old man got him out on bail." Jamieson paused and sipped his drink as if the words were paining him. "The very next night, while Madeline's father was out walking her dog, the dog ran off into the trees. It ran off with four legs and came back with three. Wire cutters, the vet said. Two days later the leg arrived by post addressed to Madeline. It was in a flower box so her mother let her open it by herself. A note suggested that it might be her leg next if she didn't keep her mouth shut. She did and Vanney went free. The girl still isn't right, takes four baths a day."

"What a story," murmured Fenton.

"And you never traced the others?" asked Kelly.

"We never did," agreed Jamieson. "A pity because, before she stopped talking altogether, the girl told us that Vanney wasn't the ringleader, he was just the one she recognised. That singular honour went to a six foot tall dark haired youth, wearing some kind of college or university scarf. He had a piece missing from his right ear lobe, she was very sure of that; she had concentrated on it while he was raping her."

"Four years ago Inspector? You have some memory." said Kelly.

"So would you if you had seen that wee lassie," replied Jamieson.

Fenton asked what Jamieson was going to do about the sketch.

"Watch and wait. Find out who his associates are. See who's an organ grinder and who's a monkey."

"You don't think Vanney could have killed Sandra Murray and Saxon?" asked Fenton.

"Vanney's a shit but he's small fry. Someone else always pulls the strings."

"Any ideas."

Jamieson shook his head and said, "No, I haven't. We kept tabs on the bastard for a while after the Madeline Gray affair, you know the sort of thing, anyone farts in a built-up area and we pull in Vanney. But his old man pulls a lot of weight in this city. He started shouting harassment and we had to back off."

"The same thing might happen this time," suggested Fenton.

"No." said Jamieson, "This time it's unofficial, and personal."

"You mean you are going to do it by yourself?" asked Kelly.

Jamieson nodded.

"Can we help?" asked Fenton.

Jamieson smiled faintly. "Aye," he said, "Aye, you can."

Fenton grew to know Vanney well over the next couple of weeks. The fact that Jenny was still working nights let him share night time surveillance with Jamieson and back- leave that he was due took care of some day time work. Steve Kelly took over on the nights that Jenny had off.

Vanney lived in his parents’ house on Corstorphine Hill, a sprawling modern bungalow with large gardens and a gravelled frontage that accommodated three cars. The Lotus belonged to Vanney junior. Each week day morning he drove it to work in the city, leaving at eight thirty and arriving at a merchant bank in the New Town at five minutes to nine. Lunch was one till two and he ate it in a pub in Rose Street called, 'The Two Shoemakers.' He always ate with the same people, a tall, ginger haired man with buck teeth and a loud voice and a short, squat, olive skinned man who looked Italian, maybe Spanish. Both worked in the same bank and it seemed just to be a lunch time friendship for neither featured in Vanney's evening social life.

Vanney had a girl friend and it surprised Fenton for he had assumed that a connection with the Cavalier Club inferred homosexuality although Kelly had said in the past that the club had broadened its horizons. The girl seemed nice and came from a similarly well heeled background to Vanney himself. She was tall, nearly as tall as Vanney, and good looking in a country girl sort of way. Fenton liked her on sight and wondered what she saw in someone like Vanney, and vice versa if Vanney really was homosexual.

Jamieson provided an answer to the second question. The girl's father was a director of the bank where Vanney worked. "Vanney to a tee," he snarled, "Brown nosing the boss's daughter."

"What do you suppose her father thinks about it?" asked Fenton.

"Probably encourages it," said Jamieson wryly, "Son of a prominent councillor, heir to a concrete shit empire, an excellent choice for their wee Denise. That's her name by the way, Denise Hargreaves.

Vanney and Denise Hargreaves saw each other twice during the week and again on Saturdays. One disco, one trip to the cinema and dinner out at the week-end. He played golf with his father on Sundays and stayed in on Thursdays. That left Mondays and Wednesdays.