Grievous Angel

Twenty

I had to leave Alison and her small team to begin the trawl through Mia’s private life, because I had other things to do. There was the matter of Hastie McGrew to be resolved, but more immediately, there was Marlon Watson’s funeral at Seafield Cemetery, only an hour away by the time we left Davidson’s Mains. I dropped Alison off at her office then headed for mine, to pick up a companion.

Andy Martin was head down at his desk over a pile of mobile phones, and of course the clumsy Jeff Adam, who’d never have been handling a ram in the first place if there had been room for another large body in the chopper, was at home with his foot in plaster, so I pointed at Mario McGuire. ‘You. With me.’

The lad was irrepressible. He jumped to his feet. ‘Yes, boss. Where are we going?’

‘A funeral.’ He smiled, and followed. If I’d told him I was taking him to the zoo to be fed to the lions, he’d have done the same, although that might have been bad news for the king of the jungle.

We made it to the depressing boneyard with ten minutes to spare. The prepared grave was easy to spot. To my surprise there were a few mourners there already: a middle-aged man, fifty-something, probably, four guys, all around the age that Marlon would never exceed, and three women, one of them in black, and ready for a good cry by the looks of her. On closer inspection, the other two seemed to be supporting her. That interested me; Bella had never mentioned a girlfriend, but Bella never mentioned anything to the police, so no real surprise. The younger set knew what we were, if not who. The guys edged away from us as we approached, but the girls stayed where they were. ‘Big shock, I expect,’ I said to the tearful one. She nodded and dabbed at her eyes. ‘Did you see a lot of Marlon?’

One of the ladies-in-waiting actually sniggered… at a graveside. I looked more closely at her pal and noted that she was either pot-bellied or pregnant. The dy-nasty’s assured, I thought. ‘He was my fiance,’ she mumbled.

‘What’s your name, love?’ I asked her.

‘Lulu. Lulu Ford.’

‘Were you with him on the day he died?’

‘In the afternoon, later on; he came to see me. He could, because his boss was away.’

‘When did he leave?’

‘About five; a wee bit after.’

‘Do you know where he was going?’

The sniggering girl decided to intervene. ‘Hey, leave her alone, you. Can ye no’ see she’s upset.’ McGuire leaned forward and whispered in her ear. She turned, stared at him and backed away. I repeated my question to Lulu.

‘To the pub,’ she whispered. ‘The Vaults.’

‘That I know, but afterwards.’

She gnawed at her bottom lip. ‘He said he’d a meeting. I asked him what it was about, but he wouldnae say. He said he’d tell me if it worked out all right. He was lookin’ forward to it, though. I could see that.’

McGuire tapped me on the shoulder. I glanced round, and saw the cortege approaching: a hearse and a single limo. As it grew closer, I could see that Manson had done well by his late employee. The coffin was solid wood, not chipboard, and there were a couple of wreaths on it that must have set him back a few quid.

The small procession drew up a few yards away and the living passengers emerged. Six of them: Bella, stone-faced, in a black suit and hat, Manson, Dougie Terry, Tomas Zaliukas, a surprise to me, and Lennie Plenderleith, newly returned from his wee holiday. They were followed by a minister in a long white robe.

The bereaved mother looked around. She nodded in my direction, more reaction than I’d expected, and beckoned Lulu towards her. And then her eyes fell on the other mourner, the fifty-something bloke. I’d never seen Bella look anything close to tender. In any encounters I’d had with her she’d always been stern-faced, occasionally combative, but when she saw that man her face showed all sorts of stuff I’d never seen on it before. I’m good at reading expressions, but even I was challenged to take it all in. There was shock, instantly; it was replaced by fear, and by curiosity, until they merged together into a grimace of pure hatred. Then she seemed to tear her eyes away from him.

Manson walked round the grave and approached me; his right cheek was bruised, just below the eye. ‘For once,’ he whispered, ‘I’m glad you guys are here. I’m a couple short with the cords. Will you take one each?’

There’s a thing we do at funerals, in Scotland at any rate, maybe elsewhere too, I don’t know. The deceased is lowered into the grave by up to eight family members and friends, traditionally male, although at Myra’s funeral Jean had insisted on being one of the number. There were McGuire and I, on duty at what was, for want of an alternative description, a gangland funeral, and we were being asked to bury the victim. I could have shaken my head and stepped back. Those four would have been enough, and in any event the coffin is always supported by straps held by the undertakers, just in case. But the request wasn’t made on practical grounds, or as some bizarre peace offering on Tony’s part. It was made out of respect, so that Marlon could be buried by a more or less full complement rather than a scratch team, and so that his mother would have something to remember. ‘Okay,’ I said. He handed each of us a card with a diagram and a number on it.

And that’s how two of the CID’s finest came to stand round a grave with four guys most generously described, at that time at least, as pillars of Edinburgh’s darker community, an experience which both McGuire and I have kept to ourselves until now. Well, I have, anyway; I suspect there’s nothing that Mario hasn’t told Paula by now, and that some of it I wouldn’t want to know.

The God-botherer was competent, if nowhere near as familiar with his subject as Thornie’s minister had been. The service was short and the committal of the coffin to the grave went smoothly. I had cord number two, at Marlon’s feet. Manson held number one. As the burden neared the ground, I glanced up and along its length. For an instant, his eyes met mine. I don’t know what sort of message we exchanged, but I never thought of him quite so badly after that.

There were no pleasantries afterwards. The hearse was driven away to pick up its next load, and the passengers returned to the limo. Plus one: Bella squeezed in Lulu to join them at whatever post-funeral wake Manson had laid on. I wondered whether she’d known before that afternoon that she was going to be a granny.

That left just McGuire and me, and one other, the man whose appearance had unsettled Bella so much. He was heading for the exit when I called after him. ‘Excuse me!’

He stopped and turned, patiently and a shade wearily, as if he’d been hoping to get away unchallenged but recognised that was never going to happen.

‘We’re police officers,’ I told him as we caught up, ‘investigating Marlon’s murder. Would you mind giving us your name?’

‘Not at all. It’s Watson, Clark Watson. That was my son you just helped bury.’

Once upon a time, I was in Spain, in L’Escala. Alex was in a cafe with her grandpa, and I was standing on the headland. The Tramuntana, the north wind, was blowing strong and the sea was wild all around me. I’d been looking back towards the beach; in the very instant that I turned, I was hit full on by a giant wave as it broke over the rocks. When Marlon’s father revealed himself, I had much the same feeling. I’ll swear that I swayed on my feet.

And then… this is my day for analogies, so I’ll follow one metaphor with another. Remember those imaginary bricks I mentioned earlier? Well, a whole pile of them materialised and formed themselves into a wall. It wasn’t quite solid, it was still a bit ephemeral, but it was there.

‘Forgive my surprise,’ I said. ‘Here was me thinking you were dead.’

He smiled. ‘Is that what the cow told you? I shouldn’t be surprised by that, I suppose. I might as well have been as far as my family was concerned. No, as you see, I’m still alive.’ He held out an arm. ‘Go on, have a feel; it’s solid.’

‘Where have you been?’ I asked, my mind still swirling in the aftermath of that wave.

‘These past twenty years? I’ve been sailing. I moved on from trawlers and joined the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. I’m chief officer on a support tanker, Leaf class. I live in Portsmouth now, have done for fifteen years.’

‘How did you hear about Marlon’s death?’

‘When I’m on shore,’ he replied, ‘my newsagent gets the Scotsman for me. I read about it in there. I found out about the funeral through the local authority, and came up for it. I thought I might have seen my other two children there.’

Jesus, he didn’t know. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr Watson, but your other son’s dead too. Your daughter’s estranged from her mother, and has been for twelve years. She’s…’ I was on the point of telling him where he could find Mia, but I stopped. I had unfinished business there, and I didn’t want him getting in the way. Also, I didn’t think she’d be too pleased to see him, since he was supposed to be helping Davey Jones sift through his locker.

‘I see,’ he murmured. ‘Lucky Mia.’

‘Why did you leave?’ I continued.

‘Where are my brothers-in-law?’ he asked. ‘Those fucking Spreckleys?’

I pointed, downwards.

‘Both of them? Now that is good news. Billy maybe not so much, but Gavin, yes. If I’d had the guts I’d have put him there myself. He was the reason I left.’ He looked at us. ‘I was a bit wild in my youth. Check your records and you’ll find my name there, although for nothing serious. But I had no idea when I married Bella what her family was like. She was pregnant with Mia and we did the old-fashioned thing, then we had the other two. I was away at sea a lot, so it took me a while to find out what Gavin was up to, with the drugs and everything. When I did, I went mental. I told Bella we were moving away. But she’d have none of it. She did her nut. We had a big argument. A couple of days later, I had a visit from her brothers. Gavin put a gun to my head and said that if I was still around in twenty-four hours he’d pull the trigger. He told me to disappear and not to even think about going to the police as he’d friends who would find me and put me through an industrial mincer, feet first. He scared me all right, enough for me to leave my wife and family behind, and never even think about coming back.’

So: Mia had made up the story she’d told me about her father’s departure, but she hadn’t been that far off the mark. ‘If you’d known he died twelve years ago, would you have?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I had another family by then, a wife and a daughter. Not bigamous, mind; I divorced Bella as soon as I could when the law let me.’

I wasn’t too bothered about that. I had other matters on my mind, for example that mirage-like wall. ‘Give my colleague your contact details, please, Mr Watson,’ I said. I left them to it. I walked away, across two double ranks of graves, and sat on a long, flat, mossy tombstone, giving myself time and space to think.

Mia had lied to me. She’d told me that after Ryan’s murder she’d run off to live with her father, her tragic, lost-at-sea trawlerman father, who’d given her the stability she’d needed, and let her build a proper life for herself away from the remnants of her doomed family. That was all fiction, a farrago of Mills and Boon candyfloss, but she had gone somewhere, that was for sure. It was probably likely that the degree she’d told me of was real, and her CV. She wouldn’t have expected me to check any of it, but her bio would have to stand up to the scrutiny of others as her career developed.

So where had she gone when she was barely sixteen? I ran through everything she had ever said to me, looking for a hint. Her contempt for her family had been evident, for her brother Ryan, for Gavin, her uncle. Not a psycho, she’d insisted, but what was it that she’d said about him, only a couple of hours before? I searched for her words and they came back to me. ‘Gavin had aspirations, he wanted to be Mr Big, but he was never in the same league.’ And the vehemence with which she had spoken them, as if she was speaking from…

No, come on, Skinner, stay focused. But couldn’t it be? What had she said, according to Telfer? She didn’t shag boys, only proper men. Not Gavin, surely? Not her uncle? No, even Bella would have drawn the line there, but did he take her about with him? Did she meet any of the crew he worked for? Could she ever have met… Fuck!

‘So where did she go?’ I whispered. And answered myself, intuitively.

I snatched my phone from my pocket, and searched through incoming calls until I found a number with a prefix I recognised. I knew it was a long shot, one that I hoped wouldn’t pay off, but didn’t Foinavon win the Grand National, didn’t Ali dismantle the monster Liston, then topple the invincible Foreman?

Lowell Payne was on duty when I called. He was surprised to hear from me, but sharp and efficient as usual. I asked him for a telephone number, and he found it in seconds. The lady who answered my call was posh Lanarkshire; her voice was the sort that I’d heard as a child, mostly on my occasional visits to my dad’s office, when clients arrived for appointments.

‘Mrs Shearer?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m a police officer,’ I told her. ‘My name is Skinner, and I’m a colleague of the sergeant who spoke to you the other day.’

‘About poor Violet and her children?’

‘That’s right. I need to ask you something else. Can you remember, was there a third child living with them at any point? It would be about ten to twelve years ago.’

‘Oh yes, dear. I remember her well. Not really a child, though. She’d be about sixteen when she joined them, about halfway between Peter and Alafair in age. I have to confess I didn’t care for her at first. She was a little… well, a little coarse, I have to say. But she improved; Peter, when he was there, and Alafair, were a good influence on her, and Violet, of course. She was a clever girl as I recall… I was a teacher myself, you know. She went to Hamilton Grammar with Alafair. Violet told me that she had problems at first, but that she caught up very quickly. She did a very good group of Highers, and went off to university. I don’t recall seeing her after that.’

‘And her name?’ I knew, but still, tension gripped me tightly.

‘She had a funny name.’ Mrs Shearer laughed softly, genteelly, the way posh Lanarkshire people do. ‘But no funnier than Alafair, I suppose. She was called Mia.’

I sat in silence for a while, until I realised that I had to start breathing again. ‘One last question,’ I continued. ‘I know that Violet is… was,’ I corrected myself, ‘a widow. But when the family lived there, do you recall if they were ever visited by a man?’

‘Oh yes,’ she exclaimed with the enthusiasm of a gossip too long out of practice, ‘there was. Violet’s cousin, she said,’ she paused, ‘although, to be honest, from time to time I did wonder. A very nice man. She introduced me once; he was quite charming, in a formidable sort of way. His name was Perry. That was his first name, dear,’ she added, ‘she never did tell me his surname, and one doesn’t like to be nosy.’

I killed the call. I didn’t even thank the dear lady, shame on me. The only excuse I can offer is that I was completely stunned. Mia had been under Perry Holmes’s wing for twelve years, since she was a precocious girl, disdaining boys, with an eye for proper men. She’d spent two of her formative years with his children and their mother. With Violet, and Alafair and, when he was home, with Peter or rather Hastie, who was sitting in the cells at Fettes, smirking, because he knew he’d got off with…

I jumped to my feet. Clark Watson had gone, and McGuire was keeping his distance. ‘Come on,’ I shouted to him, heading for the gateway and the road beyond where I’d parked. When we reached the car I tossed him the keys. ‘You drive. I need to make a phone call. But we’re going to the lab, not the office. Do you know where that is?’

‘Yes, boss. And the quickest way there.’ He wasn’t fazed. He eased his bulk behind the wheel and set off as if he’d been driving elderly off-roaders all his life, while I called directory enquiries for the Edinburgh University number. A few were offered, but I called the main switchboard. Inside a minute, I was put through to Joe Hutchinson’s secretary. ‘This is Detective Superintendent Skinner. Is the prof in?’

‘He’s lecturing,’ she told me. ‘He should be finished in ten minutes, though, if you want to call back.’

‘No time for that. Ask him if he’d be good enough to meet me at the city mortuary, as soon as he can. I should be there in half an hour.’

I hung up and called Alison. ‘Find Wyllie and Redpath,’ I said, as soon as she answered. ‘I want them both at Fettes, but kept apart. If Redpath’s on an away trip, have him brought back.’

‘Will do.’ She didn’t bother to ask why; she knew that I’d tell her in time, and where her priorities lay.

McGuire headed for the bypass, then turned off at Sheriffhall. ‘Wait here,’ I ordered as he pulled up outside the lab.

I’d been there before but it was new and I didn’t really know my way around too well. I asked the first person I saw where I’d find Arthur Dorward. She sent me straight to him and two minutes later we were back on the road again. ‘Mortuary?’ McGuire asked. I nodded.

We arrived there at the same time as the professor. Indeed our cars almost collided as we swung into the car park. ‘What the hell’s up?’ the tiny pathologist exclaimed as we met at the entrance. ‘Has one of your victims risen from the dead? It had better be something of like importance.’

I held up the object I’d collected from the lab. It was a Gurkha kukri, scimitar-shaped, in its scabbard, an object of veneration among its bearers, covered in fingerprint dust and contained inside a clear plastic evidence bag. ‘It is,’ I replied. ‘I need you to prove that this killed Weir and McCann.’

He blinked, then smiled. Joe loves a challenge. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ He took it from me, carefully. ‘Give me a little while and I’ll tell you one way or another.’ He looked up at me. ‘But Bob, please calm down. I wouldn’t want you on my table before your time.’

I took his advice. As we followed him inside I took some deep breaths, to bring my heart rate back to normal and to calm my mind.

Joe’s a genius, with few professional peers, if any at all. He was gone for fifteen minutes. When he returned, grinning all over his face, he didn’t have to announce his findings. ‘Do you have a Gurkha in custody?’ he asked. ‘If so, he did it.’

‘Stack of bibles?’

‘One will be sufficient.’

I let McGuire drive us back to Fettes. Alison was waiting for me there, and so was Robert Wyllie; she told me that Redpath was on his way in from Haddington, but I decided not to wait for him. I sent Mario on a trawl of the building looking for five men, in the twenty-five to thirty-five age bracket, slim, clean-shaven and dark-haired. There were plenty of them about, so it didn’t take long to set up the identification parade. By that time, Alison had twigged what was happening, but she said nothing, leaving me to get on with it. I had Hastie McGrew brought from his cell. He was puzzled when he saw the waiting line-up, but shrugged his shoulders and gave his escorts a patient, indulgent smile, as he chose his place among the other five, on the extreme left, the first man. I saw his lips move and read the words ‘Anything to oblige’, although I couldn’t hear him, since I was behind a one-way mirror.

When they were ready, I called Wyllie in from the room where he’d been waiting, with Alison. ‘Before you do this,’ I told him, ‘you should know that you will be in no danger from this man, or from anyone else. You’ve got my word on that. Now, I want you to take your time, and when you’re-’

‘Number one,’ he murmured. ‘The man on the left.’

‘Are you certain?’

‘A hundred and ten per cent.’

‘Thanks, Robert. We’ll need you to sign a formal statement confirming that you’ve identified him, then you can go. And I repeat, no worries.’

I left Alison to take care of the paperwork, and to run the second parade when Redpath arrived. I was in my office when she rejoined me forty minutes later. She looked as if her patience was wearing thin. She had no idea who the prisoner was.

I told her.

‘The same man?’ She was stunned, as I’d been.

‘The same,’ I repeated.

‘But how?’

‘Sit down and I’ll tell you.’ And I did, about Clark Watson turning up at his son’s funeral and the chain of circumstances that his appearance had revealed. I didn’t tell her everything, though.

‘So Perry Holmes…’ she began.

‘You can come with me to find that out, after.’

‘After what?’

‘After you’ve charged Hastie McGrew with two counts of murder and taken the press briefing that I’ve told Inspector Hesitant to set up.’

‘But this is yours,’ she exclaimed. ‘You-’

‘I made you a promise at the start of this, and I’m keeping it. It’s your arrest, your credit.’

‘While he walks on Marlon, and you’ve got an unsolved against you? No thanks.’

I smiled. ‘But yes. It’s the rub of the green, Ali.’

‘You realise what everybody in here’s going to think? That you’re screwing me, and that you’ve thrown me another bone.’

‘Listen,’ I told her, ‘anyone who matters knows that you are a top cop, a class act. As for the rest, do you give a toss what they think? Because I don’t. On you go now, do what I tell you and then we’ll top and tail it.’

‘You know what I’d like to do with you, don’t you… sir,’ she murmured.

‘Yes, Detective Inspector, but not here, not now; later on, after the champagne.’

She left, to take her plaudits.

And no, before you ask, I hadn’t told her everything. In particular I hadn’t told her that I’d got three men killed. No, I hadn’t confided in her that I could see as plain as the…

… that Mia had played me.

She’d swallowed me whole with those bedroom eyes and with those warm, enveloping honey walls of hers.

I’d given her the crucial info that Perry and Hastie needed when she’d heard me speak to Fred Leggat: the fact that we’d made the link to Newcastle, the fact that we’d found the van.

I put the timescale together. Yes, it had been torched after I’d told her, inadvertently, that we knew about it, and Milburn and Shackleton had gone off the radar at the same time.

Then, only after I’d told her that we knew who they were, Hastie had gone down to Tyneside, and removed any threat to him and to his father… just to be on the safe side.

And me? The wild reckless bastard that I was, I’d tossed the blame for the leaks to Ciaran McFaul and his colleagues, when all along it had rested with me, and with me alone.

No, I hadn’t told Alison that, nor would I; nor would I tell anyone else.