Hour Of Darkness

Twenty-Three

When I confessed at a dinner party that Blue Bloods was one of my favourite TV shows, Aileen, my wife at that time, accused me of being a right-wing, sentimental old fart. My smile may have been a little tight-lipped, but I sat there and let it pass.

Now that she’s part of my history, I want to put the record straight for anybody who was at that table and might have believed that I agreed with her description. I don’t.

I know I’m not right-wing, but I don’t feel that I have to prove it to anyone. I have been known to be sentimental, but it takes the presence of my children, or these days of Sarah, to bring out that side in me. A television programme does not get anywhere close. As for the last, one day maybe I’ll become one of those, but not yet.

I know Blue Bloods is corny, but it’s about cops, so that gets my attention. I know that it has one basic storyline, but the good guys always win. I know that the Irish Catholic family it portrays, the Reagans, is laughably stereotyped, but their values are my values, if not their faith.

I enjoy it, and I’m not embarrassed to say so; live with it.

One thing, though; people who know the show might assume that I associate myself with Frank, Dad Reagan, the New York police commissioner. I don’t. The character with whom I empathise most is Danny, the older son, who’s a New York City detective. That’s why when I walked into my chief officers’ meeting on my first day back after my L’Escala break, and those six uniforms stood to attention, I had a sudden flash of me, with a Tom Selleck moustache, and I thought, Shit, this is not who I am.

I kept it to myself, though. All I did was reiterate my edict that nobody who didn’t wish to wear a uniform to my meetings should feel obliged to do so. I suspected that nobody would take a blind bit of notice, but I felt it needed saying.

The group were still, largely, strangers to me. The only two I’d known before taking the Glasgow job were the ACCs, Bridie Gorman, my very sound acting deputy, and Michael Thomas. He and I had a difficult beginning, but we’d reached a position of mutual respect, if not trust, on my part.

In truth, though, none of them was my sort of cop. The only one of the command crew I inherited that I would have chosen for that rank was old Max Allan, but no sooner was I appointed than he decided that his health wasn’t up to the job any more. I couldn’t complain. He’d only been hanging on to spite my predecessor. Her tenure had come to a sudden and shocking end, but that’s another story.

‘Nothing personal, Bob,’ Max said, when he told me. ‘You’ll get on fine without me.’

It seemed that in my absence the Strathclyde police force had got along perfectly well without me too. There had been no serious crime, no crises and generally speaking everyone was sleeping peacefully in their beds at night. It was the sort of briefing that every chief constable should like to hear, but it left me with a growing sense of my own irrelevance.

I’d signed up for the role, though, so I thanked them all, sent them off to continue keeping the people safe, and went off to tackle my mountainous in-tray. I got so wrapped up in it that I almost broke my vow to Sarah by having a daytime coffee to keep myself awake, but I worked my way through a whole series of decisions, of which most were so damned obvious that my nine-year-old son could have taken them.

I was so wrapped up that when Inspector Sandra Bulloch, my executive officer, came into my room to tell me that a man named Dominic Jackson was downstairs in reception, saying that he had an appointment with me, it took me quite a few seconds to make the connection.

‘The guys downstairs are a bit wary about him, sir,’ she said. ‘Apparently he’s enormous.’

I smiled as I made the connection. ‘That’s possibly an understatement. Go get him please, Sandra.’

I was waiting at the lift door when she returned with my visitor. I’d been wondering how he’d react when he saw me on my own turf rather than on his. As it turned out he looked a little reserved, shy almost. Sandra certainly seemed to have found nothing in him to make her wary, for she was completely relaxed as she ushered him into the corridor.

‘Mr Jackson,’ I said. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.’ We shook hands; mine isn’t small but it almost disappeared inside his.

‘Thank you for the invitation,’ he replied. ‘It took me completely by surprise, as you’d imagine.’ His voice was at odds with his size, but I’d known that. It was as quiet as ever, and over his years in a broad-based community much of his Edinburgh accent had worn off.

I nodded. ‘Yes, I can imagine that. Come this way; my office is along here. Would you like tea, coffee?’

‘I’m fine thanks, Bob. Plain water, if you’ve got it, but that’s all.’

‘Sure.’

I settled him into a visitor chair that was fortunately just big enough to take him, then fetched a couple of plastic bottles from my office fridge. I didn’t sit behind my desk, but on the other side, facing him.

‘Well, Lennie,’ I murmured, ‘this is full circle, is it not?’

‘It surely is.’

‘How’s the course going?’

‘Very well. I’m on track for graduation next summer.’

Lennie had begun a postgraduate Masters degree at Strathclyde University; he was like any other mature student in that he attended lectures and tutorials five days a week. The big difference was that at the end of the day he went home to Kilmarnock Prison, and ten thirty lights out, while the others went to their flat shares, their designer pubs and wherever else they chose to exercise and abuse their freedom.

I’d known about it from the start; in fact I supported his application when he asked me if I would. He told me that his degree and his doctorate were respected, but they were OU and that he wanted to top them up with what he had called an orthodox qualification.

He glanced in the direction of Sandra Bulloch’s glass-walled office. ‘Does the inspector know who I am?’

‘You’re Dominic Jackson to her and to anyone else in this building who crosses your path.’ The university had agreed that he could study under his alias. I suppose it was possible that some of his fellow students would have heard of Lennie Plenderleith, given that criminology was in his course, but it was highly unlikely that any would recognise him. His hair was receding, and what was left was far shorter than in any photograph in newspaper libraries; also he wore a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘So, Bob, cut to the chase. Are you feeling so lonely up here that you felt the need to see an old familiar face, or is there something else?’

He took me aback. I’d forgotten how perceptive Lennie is, and maybe also discounted the fact that he’s become a very well-qualified psychologist. He’d read me like a book, and also, with that single question, he’d helped me to define my feelings about the job that I’d been landed in by a combination of circumstances, and possibly by my own ego.

‘Something else,’ I told him, pushing the realisation aside, ‘something serious that my old team in Edinburgh have happened upon, and need your help with.’

‘Mmm.’ He tilted his head to one side and raised an eyebrow. ‘Something serious, as in something criminal?’

‘Both.’

‘Then I’m struggling to guess what it might be. To the best of my knowledge most of my old associates are dead, and those that aren’t are in the nick or well past giving the police any trouble. Anyway, I cut all my links with that life when I was sentenced.’

‘All but one.’

He stared at me. ‘No, all of them, I promise you.’

‘Bella Watson.’

His eyes widened. ‘Ahhh!’ The sound was half gasp, half sigh. ‘Bella. I’m sorry, Bob, I assumed you meant my criminal associates. I don’t put her in that category. What’s the old bitch been up to? It must be more than shoplifting for you to be involved. She hasn’t been claiming housing benefit, has she?’

‘That’s possible, from what I hear, but if she has, she’s got away with it, because she’s dead.’

Lennie took a deep breath, sucking God knows how many litres of air into his massive chest. ‘People die,’ he said, slowly, after a while. ‘Bella must have been in the late sixties, so there’s nothing out of the ordinary in her being dead; unless someone made her that way.’

‘Exactly. Upwards of three weeks ago now.’

‘Then why didn’t I know about it? I read the Saltire every day. It wouldn’t have missed out on a homicide in Edinburgh, on its own doorstep.’

‘Have you read today’s?’

‘As it happens, no; I usually pick up a copy at the university, but I came straight here.’

‘Do you recall reading about a body being found on the wee beach in Cramond Island?’

‘Yes, but that’s all it said, that and the fact that it was female and unidentified.’

‘They didn’t report all the gory details, because they weren’t all released. They weren’t told that she’d been hit by the screw of a ship, or that there were half a dozen stab wounds in the visually unidentifiable section that was washed up. It wasn’t until your lawyer’s girl had to go into the house on Saturday and found evidence of “foul play” that the identity of the body was established, and announced at a press conference yesterday.’

‘I see,’ Lennie murmured. ‘Poor old Bella.’ He paused, fixing me with his interrogative gaze. ‘Hey, they don’t fancy me for it, do they?’

I laughed. ‘The thought probably did occur to a couple of the younger investigators, but I advised them to forget it. The pathologist told me that it was impossible to be anything like precise about the time of death, but I’m sure that whenever it was, your movements and whereabouts are all verifiable. Don’t take their suspicions to heart, chum; they were fleeting at best. They are good enough to have asked themselves why you would kill the woman after housing her for the last nine years.’

It was his turn to grin. ‘These people aren’t exactly made in your image, are they? I’m sure you could have come up with a reason, in their place.’

‘I’m sure I could, but I know you, Lennie. This might sound like a crazy thing to say to someone who’s doing life for three murders, and got off with another, but I don’t believe you’re exactly a natural-born killer. With one exception you did what you did because you thought it was necessary, or just.’

‘An interesting analysis,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve never tried to justify myself, to myself or to anyone else. I’m not sure I agree with your sympathetic view of the old me. What about all the casual injuries I inflicted when I was a kid, and when I worked for Tony?’

‘You were part of Tony’s world; you lived by its rules. So did everyone else in it and they knew what happened if they broke them. You happened, or someone like you did. Before that, as you said, you were a kid, and that was your environment. I know another man who was like you must have been then, albeit with less brain power. He saw the light before he got sucked in, joined the military and changed the course of his life.’

‘I can guess who showed him the light.’

‘It didn’t take much. I met him again, recently. He’s a fucking spook now, would you believe!’

‘I’d believe anything. What was the exception?’ Lennie asked, suddenly.

I gave him a long look. ‘Come on,’ I said, slowly. ‘You don’t need to ask me that.’

‘My wife? Yes, I can see why you would think that. Now I’m going to tell you something that you are not going to believe. I pleaded guilty to Linda’s murder, but I didn’t kill her.’

I hadn’t been expecting that one. ‘You’re probably right, Lennie, I’m not going to believe it. I’d like to, but I was there at the crime scene. I saw the mess, I saw your bloodstained palm print on the wall, your thumb print on the bathroom mirror.’

‘I found her, and I got her blood all over me, but I didn’t kill her.’

I cast my mind back over a decade, to the scene. ‘We found the clothes you changed out of. There was semen on them.’

‘There probably was. I’d just got out of jail, and I’d been with a woman, but it wasn’t Linda. She was an unrepentant whore, and I decided when I was doing my time that I wasn’t going to waste any more of my life on her. No, it was somebody else, somebody I’d been involved with before I went inside.

‘I met up with her and then later I went to Linda’s flat to pick up my stuff, plus an air ticket and some travel money that I’d told her to get for me. I found her. She couldn’t have been long dead, for she was still warm and the blood hadn’t congealed. It’s true, Bob; I’d like you to believe me, but. . what the hell, it doesn’t matter.’

I hadn’t taken my eyes off him. Lennie wasn’t the only psychologist in the room. ‘Why did you plead to it?’

‘Because I thought Tony had done it,’ he replied, quietly. ‘Linda was a seriously provocative woman; I thought she’d pushed him too far and he’d had her taken care of. I wouldn’t have blamed him.’

‘Do you still believe that?’

‘In the absence of any other solution, or proof that it was a completely random killing. . given that prostitution is a dangerous game. . yes I do.’

‘You were that loyal to him, that you took a rap for him even though he was dead?’

‘He was the nearest thing to a father I ever had; a bad man, yes, but not all the way through.’

I wasn’t going to tell him there and then, but I was inclined to believe that analysis.

‘Can I ask you something, Bob?’

‘Within reason, sure.’

‘When I found Linda it was obvious that she’d been having sex with the man who killed her. Those clothes you found, yes, they were mine, but I’ll bet you never cross-checked the semen traces on them with what was on her body.’

Good point, Lennie.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘We didn’t. The investigating officers hadn’t got round to it by the time you were caught and confessed. Because you did, the Crown Office said not to bother. They had plenty of other evidence against you.’

‘Could they still do it?’

‘Honestly, I do not know. If it could be done, would you want it?’

He smiled, sadly. ‘If I could pay for it to be done privately, I would, but only to prove it to you. It won’t get in the way of my release and I don’t want to dig up the past.’

‘Then privately,’ I told him, ‘I’ll accept what you’re saying. If I do so publicly, it means that Edinburgh has an unsolved murder on its hands, and my old colleagues wouldn’t thank me for that.’ I paused. ‘As a matter of interest, what about the other woman, could she confirm that you were with her?’

‘Not any more; she’s dead. She was killed in a fire in her husband’s car showroom, down in Seafield.’

I remembered that fire. It had been no accident. I’d known the woman too, and wasn’t sorry she was dead, but that wasn’t ground I was going over with Lennie.

‘Let’s get back to Bella,’ I said. ‘Did you have any contact with her at all?’

‘I sent her a Christmas card every year. Do you want to know why? Because she was the only person I could send one to. There was always you, I suppose, but your wife might have thought it was a bit weird.’ He grinned. ‘Or should I say your wives?’

‘Touché,’ I chuckled. ‘Aileen certainly would have. Your contemporary socialist politician is pretty old guard when it comes to crime and punishment.’

‘All politicians are; they’re all things to all people. When I get out I might form a new party on the internet, and let the members determine the policies by questionnaire. They’ll tell us what they want and we’ll believe in it.’

‘I hate to disappoint you,’ I said, ‘but you’re too late. They’ve been doing that for years: focus groups, they call them. Did Bella send you a card back?’ I asked.

‘No. And we had no contact other than that. I’ve had no contact with her, in fact, since before I went in for assault.’

‘Why did you do it? Why did you look after her in that way?’

‘I did it because Tony would have wanted me to,’ he explained. . although I’d known the answer anyway. ‘He had a soft spot for the old boot; Perry Holmes had both her sons killed, and the second one died because of him. Tony took care of her when he was alive, and when I inherited his estate, I felt that I’d an obligation to carry on doing that. She’d been living in a flat that Tony owned and left to me, but it was attached to some property I wanted rid of, so I instructed the lawyers to give her a budget and let her choose her own place.’

‘I see. So you don’t know anything about her life?’

‘Nothing, not since the last time I saw her, and as I say that must be fifteen years ago. You’ve probably seen her more recently than I have.’

‘Probably not; I think the last time I saw her was at her son’s funeral. You may recall it; you were there, cord number three, if I’m right.’ Then I remembered a later meeting, with her and Manson. ‘But no, that wasn’t the last; there was one more time after that.’ I caught his eye. ‘What did you think of her, Lennie?’

He tilted his head back and gazed at the ceiling for a few moments. He was smiling when he met my eyes again. ‘Ever read Lord of the Rings?’ he asked.

‘Sure, a long time ago.’

‘Do you remember Shelob, in the third book?’

‘The bloody great spider that nearly does for Frodo?’

‘That’s the one; bloody great female spider, to be absolutely accurate. That’s how I’ve always seen Bella: clever, cunning and utterly vicious.’

‘That’s a good analogy,’ I conceded. ‘I’ve always suspected that her brothers did her bidding a lot of the time, but I’d never have got near proving it. So, from all the people she mixed with back in those days, can you think of anyone who might have carried a grudge against her for a long time? After all, she was living as Isabella Spreckley, not Watson. Could it be that an old enemy had lost track of her, then came across her again?’

‘It could. I’ll grant you that. But if that’s what happened, I can’t help you with a name. Apart from Tony, nobody liked the woman, but I can’t think of anyone who might get that extreme about her.’

‘Look at it from another angle,’ I suggested. ‘People she might have had a serious down on herself.’

‘Even there, I can’t tell you anything you don’t know already. The Spreckley family fell foul of the Holmes brothers. They made Bella’s brother and son, Gavin and Ryan, let’s say disappear. Brother Billy took out the Holmeses and died in the act. A few years later, Bella’s second boy was killed, on Perry’s orders, then Perry drowned in his hydrotherapy pool.’

‘Was drowned, we reckoned,’ I corrected him. Officially, Perry’s wheelchair malfunctioned, or so the fiscal decided, when no alternative could be proved.

‘And so did most people,’ he acknowledged, ‘but if you’re asking, I have no idea who held him under. You’re not suggesting that was Bella, are you?’

‘I know it wasn’t. I didn’t investigate it, but I know she might have been a suspect if she hadn’t been able to prove she was in Florida when it happened. . with Tony Manson.’

Lennie whistled. ‘I didn’t know that. It tells me plenty. Normally Tony wouldn’t have taken Bella anywhere you couldn’t reach on a Lothian bus. That suggests he was behind it.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s academic; ancient history. I didn’t care much at the time and I care nothing at all now.’

‘Whatever, Bob, it just about closed the book on Bella’s feud.’

‘You’d imagine so, but. . Tell me, have you ever come across a man called Peter Hastings McGrew when you were inside? He’s a lifer too, doing time for two murders.’

He stared at me. ‘As a matter of fact, I have. We met when he came to Kilmarnock, three years ago. I run group self-assessment sessions in prison, me and an outside psychologist. The idea is to get long-term prisoners to open up about their crimes, and to examine their motivation at the time. We don’t ask them about their current perspective, for they’d all claim to have reformed. It’s the job of my colleague to listen to them and reach a view on their fitness for parole. Hastie McGrew came to these sessions.’

I felt my antennae twitch. ‘He came to them, you say?’

‘Yes. He was released on licence a few months ago, at the back end of last year, in fact.’ I felt a chill run through me, but I hid it from my visitor.

‘Did you know anything about his crimes before you met him? Had you ever heard of him?’

‘No, and that surprised me, until he told me that he did what I did: he accepted his culpability and pleaded guilty to save the Crown the cost of a trial.’

‘Right. Now, do you remember a man called Derek Drysalter, a footballer?’

Lennie frowned and his big face darkened. ‘Always. Where are you going with this, Bob?’

‘Not far,’ I replied. ‘Drysalter was a hit-and-run victim. That’s how the complaint read, and that’s how it was investigated. Needless to say we never traced the car or the driver. . because they didn’t exist.’ Lennie knew that I knew exactly who had smashed the guy’s legs, but I had no wish to make him admit it.

‘The lad was a serial gambler,’ I went on, ‘and very bad at it; he’d run up a big tab with Tony Manson, so certain conclusions were drawn. He never played again after his. . accident, but he’s done all right since as a manager and a pundit.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Lennie said. ‘All I will say is that I had doubts about a few of the things Tony asked me to do, but he was my patron so. . For every action, a reaction; behind every effect, a cause. That’s the way our world worked,’ he observed. ‘It’s the way the legitimate works too, but that’s codified, and those codes are the accepted mores. Now,’ he continued, ‘are you going to tell me what took you from Hastie McGrew to Derek Drysalter?’

I did. ‘They’re brothers-in-law.’

I didn’t think I could ever surprise Lennie Plenderleith, but that did.

‘They’re what?’ he gasped. ‘Are you telling me that wife of his. . What was her name again? Alafair, that was it. . that Tony Manson was banging, was Hastie McGrew’s sister?’

‘I am indeed. Now, work this one out. Hastie and Alafair were illegitimate in the days before it was fashionable. They used their mother’s name rather than their father’s. Given that young Marlon Watson, who was Tony’s driver, remember, was killed by hired talent from Newcastle while Tony and the girl were off in Majorca or wherever, who do you think Daddy was?’

It took him all of three seconds to read the script for the drama that had been played out the best part of twenty years earlier.

‘Perry Holmes,’ he murmured.

‘Spot on, my friend. That guy you had in your self-assessment group is Perry Holmes’s son.’

‘And Perry had Bella’s boy done to warn Tony off his daughter?’

I nodded.

‘Which means that Drysalter’s “accident” had nothing to do with him thumping his wife when he found out she’d been playing away, or with a gambling tab? It was Tony sending a signal back?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Did you know about Hastie McGrew being in my group? Is that why you asked me in here?’

‘No, Lennie,’ I said. ‘I promise you I had no idea. I’ve barely thought about McGrew since the day he went away. But since he’s probably the only guy alive, apart from you and me, who knows about the Watson feud, and. .’

He raised a hand, interrupting me. ‘I’m with you. Hastie’s a smart guy. He could have suspected, rightly or wrongly, who was responsible for old Perry’s death. What you’re about to ask me was whether I ever said anything to him that might have hinted that I knew where Bella was.’

‘I am indeed.’

‘I’m trying to remember.’ He frowned, deeply. ‘Jeez,’ he whispered. ‘There was one session, when I steered the group towards atonement. To get contributions going, I started off; I told them that one of the people I killed had left a teenage daughter, and that I’d established a fund that would pay her way through university.

‘I also mentioned that I was looking after someone else, a woman friend of Tony’s who’d suffered enough loss for anyone’s lifetime. I said I’d bought a place for her in Edinburgh, just off Dalry Road.’ His expression changed, took on a look of anger. ‘Fuck it!’ he snapped.

‘What?’

‘My psychologist colleague asked during the session if I’d done it anonymously. I said I had for the girl, but that I’d bought the flat under my investment alias, Jackson.’

‘McGrew heard this?’

‘Yes. He was there. If he’d wanted he’d have been able to look through the valuation roll, to find out who was paying the council tax.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘he wouldn’t; it only lists addresses. The property register, though, that’s a different matter. He could look for your name there. . or rather for Dominic Jackson. I’ll pass McGrew’s name on to my old team in Edinburgh. Mario McGuire will know who he is; he was around at the time.’

I looked across at him and my breath caught in my throat. That great big guy had tears in his eyes.

‘I thought I was gone from all of that,’ he sighed. ‘I swore to myself I’d never hurt another human being. There’s a curse on me, Bob, and now I’ve passed it on to Bella.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said, firmly. ‘Yours was exorcised years ago; if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be my friend. As for Bella Watson, she called her curse down on her own head, before you were even born. There was a streak of badness in her that affected everyone she touched. You’re not responsible for her death; she is.’

‘I’d like to believe all that, but it’s difficult for me. The dreams I have at night, man.’

For all his intensity, I could not stop myself from smiling. ‘Listen, mate,’ I countered, ‘you’ve done some awful things in your life, but you’ve faced up to them. You did them because you thought it was your duty. Society didn’t agree with you, but you’re paying the price it exacted without complaint. I’ve killed people too, in the line of my duty. Society said that was okay, but that doesn’t stop me having dreams that are, I’ll bet, just as bad as yours.’

I let my words sink in, before I added, ‘So, Lennie, think no more of this; complete your degree, and after you’re released next year, you and I will work together. How, I don’t know, but I can feel it; we will.’