Grievous Angel

Two

The Watson family home was in a crumbling council estate on the south side of the city. It was one of the urban sores that Scottish Homes had been set up to eradicate, and it should have been high on its agenda, but wasn’t. The police station that had been built there a few years earlier might have been the work of an architect who’d seen Assault on Precinct 13. Indeed that had probably been in the design brief.

There were a few kids hanging out in the street as I parked in the gathering gloom, and I cursed myself for lack of foresight. I had two cars, a BMW 3 Series saloon that I used socially, and a battered, scratched six-year-old Land Rover Discovery that was my work car. Since Myra’s death I’d always gone for solid vehicles with good all-round protection. When I’d left home, because Alex was with me, I’d taken the Beamer, without thinking ahead. It was a nice car, gunmetal blue metallic, and it drew admiring glances, even in Gullane, where upmarket was the norm. Where we were, it was more likely to draw gunfire.

We got out, and as I locked up I looked around; a few yards away a group of half a dozen boys and youths stood, some eyeing me up, a couple looking at the car and almost salivating as they did. ‘Just a minute,’ I said to Martin. I walked up to them. The oldest of them might have been sixteen, maybe a year or so younger, but he was a big lad. He was cocky with it, didn’t flinch as I approached, but looked at me as if he was thinking of having a go there and then.

I held his gaze. ‘If you haven’t guessed,’ I began, ‘we are the polis. We’re going into that building, and we’ll probably be a while in there. You lads are appointed to watch my motor.’

‘What’s in it for us?’ the gang leader grunted. I felt a wee bit sorry for him. In his environment face was important and he was about to lose some, in front of his crew.

‘We’ll discuss that when the job’s done. But if, when we come out of there, I see one mark on my car, as much as one fingerprint on the windscreen, I will pick you out, yes you, son, personally, and I will knock seventeen different colours of shite out of you. There will be no point in doing it over then getting off your mark, because I will come back, and back, and back until I’ve found you. My name is Skinner, and I’m a man of my word.’

I left them to consider my offer and rejoined Martin; he’d been watching from the other side of the road. ‘What was that about, sir?’ he asked.

‘Personnel management. Come on.’

The houses in the street were all in tenement blocks, but Bella Watson’s house was ground floor, with a main door that opened out on to a narrow, untended garden, with beer cans, cigarette packets and other garbage littering what might have been a lawn with a little interest, imagination and effort. I’d been there twice; after her brother had re-enacted the OK Corral gunfight, and a year or so later to take Marlon in for questioning that I’d known would be pointless but had to be done.

The door was painted grey, with a quarter panel of dappled obscure glass. The DC stepped in front of me and pressed the buzzer. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I chuckled. ‘She’ll think you’re the rent man. Fat chance of her answering then.’ I leaned forward and pounded the woodwork, hard, with the side of my closed right fist, once, twice, a third time. ‘Now she knows. Count to thirty, slowly.’

‘Why?’

‘To give her time to hide anything she doesn’t want us to see.’

He had reached twenty-eight when we saw the handle turn.

Bella Watson was better dressed than she had been on my previous visit. She’d never been scruffy, but the casual house-wear that I’d been expecting had been replaced by a short-sleeved blouse with vertical cream and brown stripes, a close-fitting brown skirt, and shiny high-heeled shoes; none of it looked as if it had come from Littlewoods catalogue. It was the first sign she’d ever given me that she had a body, and it took me by surprise. Her hair was different too; the grey streaks that I’d seen before had gone, it was a lustrous auburn and it had a Charlie Miller look about it. She was around fifty, I knew, but with the new style and a tan that was way out of place in her neighbourhood, she could have passed for at least five years younger.

The mouth was still the same, though. ‘Aw fuck, it’s you,’ she moaned, as she looked up at me. ‘What do you want now? Ma boy’s no’ here.’

‘We know that,’ I told her. ‘He’s with us. Invite us in, Bella.’

She knew it wasn’t a request; and she stood aside to let us past and into the hallway. The house had had a makeover too. There was a new fitted carpet in the living room, and a white three-seater settee and armchair that had a leather look to it. The telly in the corner was bigger than mine. I glanced at the sideboard, at the two framed photographs that stood upon it; Marlon and a boy who hadn’t grown much older than he’d been when it was taken. There wasn’t one of the daughter, I noticed. ‘Marlon’s earning good money, surely,’ I remarked.

‘This has got fuck all tae do wi’ him,’ she snapped.

I stared at her. ‘You’re not telling me you’ve got a job, are you? There would have been a story in the Evening News about that.’

‘Smart bastard.’

‘So what is the story? Or is this all knock-off? Would you like to show us receipts for this lot?’

Her eyes blazed at me. ‘Piss off, Skinner!’ she snarled. ‘If ye must know, it’s our Mia. She’s been lookin’ after me. She’s doing all right for herself.’

I didn’t know Mia; I’d never met her. But as far as I knew she hadn’t broken the mould and gone straight to Oxford from Maxwell Academy. She wasn’t the business of the evening, though. ‘Does Marlon still live with you?’ I asked her.

‘Aye. Why? Did he tell you lot different?’

I shook my head. ‘No, he hasn’t said a word to us. When did you see him last, Bella?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘we’re not trying to do him for anything. I need to know, that’s all.’

‘Tuesday,’ she muttered, grudgingly. ‘Tuesday afternoon, before he went out.’

‘Had he been in all day?’

‘No, he’d been at his work.’

‘With Tony Manson?’

She seemed to draw herself up to her full height, about five eight in the heels, and a look of pride shone in her eyes. ‘Yes, wi’ Mr Manson. He’s his prodigy.’

‘I think that might be protege, Bella; who told you that?’

‘Mr Manson did.’

‘Manson came here?’

‘No. I’d to go to his place one day. Marlon had left his mobile at home, and he needed it.’

A question suggested itself. ‘Are you working for Manson too, Bella?’

‘No.’

I didn’t believe her. ‘Bella!’

She folded. ‘Okay, occasionally.’

‘What sort of work?’

‘In one of his launderettes.’

Tony Manson had a range of commercial interests; they included low-rent offices around the West End of Edinburgh and in Leith, two discos, one in Fountainbridge and another in Bellevue, a pub chain that was incorporated and traded as Bidey Inns, several saunas, a private hire taxi company, and a string of launderettes. It was believed that much of what was laundered there was money from Manson’s other business activities, drugs, prostitution, protection and loan-sharking. I knew all those places and I’d never seen anyone in a launderette dressed as the new-look Bella was.

I shook my head. ‘Try again?’

She snorted. ‘All right, Skinner. God, you’re a fuckin’ bastard. Ah do a few shifts in the saunas, when Ah’m needed.’

‘I didn’t know you were a qualified masseuse.’

‘Ah can massage a cock as well as most, although probably no’ as well as one of you polis shites.’

Beside me, young Martin seemed to recoil with distaste. I saw his hand go, subconsciously, to the crucifix on his neck chain, as if he was warding off an evil spirit, and maybe he was. ‘Back to Marlon,’ I said. ‘You’re saying you haven’t seen him since Tuesday?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Does he often stay away for a couple of days?’

‘Naw, but he said that Mr Manson had gone tae Newcastle, so I suppose he’s gone too.’

‘He’d no other plans for Tuesday?’

‘None that he told me.’ Finally she seemed to realise that I was stringing her along; she folded her arms tight across her chest and glared at me. ‘Look, Skinner,’ she hissed. ‘What the fuck is this about?’

She was a nasty, vicious cow from a family without a detectable moral code, but there is one part of the job that no cop ever enjoys; doesn’t matter who’s being given the news. ‘Sit down, Bella,’ I murmured.

And she did, hard, on the leather settee. I didn’t have to say another word; she knew well enough, for she’d had the same news before. Under the tan her face went ashen, then her back straightened and her mouth set in a thin white line; but her eyes stayed dry. ‘What happened?’ she asked. The edge on her voice could have shattered diamonds.

‘He was found dead late this afternoon,’ I replied, ‘in the old swimming baths in Infirmary Street. We’re not certain how long he’d been there, but we think since Tuesday night.’

‘How did he die?’

‘It seems that he fell off the high board. Our guess is that he had help.’

‘Was it just him?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What about Mr Manson? Marlon wasnae just his driver, he was his minder as well.’

‘No, Manson wasn’t there; we still have to speak to him. But he’ll keep. Bella, do you know if Marlon might have upset him in some way?’

‘Naw. No chance of that. Marlon worships the ground that man walks on. And Tony,’ she corrected herself, ‘Mr Manson, likes him too. This is someone else.’ Her expression changed, turned into one of pure savagery. ‘That bastard Holmes! I should have done that fuckin’ job myself, no’ trusted our Billy!’

‘Stop right there, Bella,’ I warned her. ‘Whatever Holmes was in the past, he’s out of it now. The man can’t even wipe his own arse. Now, if you’ve got any idea who might have done this, tell us now, and we’ll nail them. But you do nothing yourself; you’ve lost enough of your family to the life you chose to live.’

Her eyes blazed up at me. ‘Chose? You fuckin’ ignorant toffee-nosed bastard. You come and live here. You bring your family here and see what sort of a fuckin’ choice you’ve got.’

I didn’t have a glib response to that one. All I could offer was, ‘People do move out, Bella.’

‘Aye, most of them in the back of a Panda car, the rest in boxes, like ma boys and ma brothers. Thank God our Mia’s made it.’

‘Where is she?’ I asked. ‘Married?’

‘She’s had better luck than that. She’s got a good job; she’s on the radio.’

Back then, I was a cynic, so my life wasn’t full of surprises, but every now and then… I couldn’t hold back a gasp. ‘Eh? As what?’

‘She’s a presenter. A disc jockey, like. She calls herself Mia Sparkles. Watson or Spreckley didnae sound showbiz enough.’

‘Where? What station’s she on?’

‘Airburst,’ Martin volunteered.

I looked at him. ‘Never heard of it.’

‘Maybe not, boss, but I’ll bet your daughter has. There were some new licences issued the year before last; it started broadcasting last August. They’re targeting a young audience. The advertising profile’s ten to twenty-five. It’s doing well, from what I’ve read. Mrs Watson’s daughter does what they call the “School’s Out” slot, three hours, four to seven.’

‘You sound like a regular listener.’

He shrugged his shoulders, encased in a shiny new leather jacket. ‘Why not? I still fit their listener profile… just.’

‘Where can we contact Mia, Bella?’ I asked.

‘You don’t,’ she growled. ‘She’ll hear this from me.’

‘Were she and her brother close?’

‘Aye, of course they were.’ She didn’t convince me. If the family unit was so tight-knit, why was Mia missing from the sideboard?

‘Then we’ll need to interview her,’ I told her.

‘Well, you can find her at the station, I suppose. I’m no’ helpin’ yis.’

On another day I might have pushed her harder, but I let it go. ‘We’ll do that. There’s something else; we’ll need a formal identification of Marlon’s body. Either you or Mia could do that.’

‘Ah’ll do it!’ she said, firmly. ‘Where is he?’

‘In the mortuary. We’ll take you there just now if you like.’

She snorted. ‘Ah’m no’ leaving here wi’ you two bastards. Ah ken where it is. Ah was there before, for oor Billy, remember.’

I nodded. ‘If that’s what you want. I’ll delay the post-mortem until ten tomorrow morning. Be there for nine thirty, please.’

She stood, and we turned to leave. Unexpectedly, I felt a sudden rush of admiration for her stoicism. ‘Bella,’ I murmured, ‘I’m sorry.’

She sighed. ‘No, you’re fuckin’ not. A year from now you’ll have forgotten about Marlon, just like everybody’s forgotten about poor wee Ryan, and ma brothers.’

I didn’t tell her, but she was wrong. I’ve never forgotten, not a single one of them, nor any of the others.

The young team was still outside, standing across the street from my car. I walked around it slowly, examining it. It was spotless; I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had polished it. I nodded approval.

The leader walked across. ‘Okay then, boss?’

‘Fine.’

‘What’s in it for us?’

‘My appreciation.’ His eyes narrowed, angrily. ‘Listen, son,’ I went on, ‘and think about this. There are people in this street that are capable of killing you if they see you taking money from a cop. That’s one reason for my hand staying in my pocket. The other is that if I did pay your lot, you’d take it as a licence to extort money from any dumb stranger who parked here. I will give you this, though.’ Quickly, so that none of the others could see, I slipped one of my business cards into the pocket of his shirt. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

‘Clyde Houseman.’

‘Well, Clyde, if it ever occurs to you that it might be a good idea to get out of this hellhole and get a life that gives you a chance to be different, you call me, on one of those numbers, and I’ll show you how.’

I unlocked the pristine Beamer, started the engine, and drove off. In the mirror, I saw that Clyde was still looking after me as I turned at the junction and passed out of his sight.