Hour Of Darkness

Fifty

Finding Marlon’s Grandma Ford was much easier than the detectives had feared it might be. They checked the address shown on the young man’s birth record and discovered that she still lived there. Two calls later they had discovered that she had a job as a dinner lady at one of the city’s schools, and that her working day had just ended.

The Fords were council tenants, in the city’s sprawling, nineteen fifties, Clermiston estate. It had been regarded as a showpiece in its time and retained an air of gentility.

‘Not bad,’ Haddock remarked, surveying number twenty-seven Clermiston Grange. ‘There were schemes in Edinburgh built well after this that aren’t there any more.’

The house was a mid-terraced villa with a large front garden that was maintained better than most in the street. A close-mown lawn was surrounded by rose bushes, all of them neatly trimmed. ‘I wish mine looked like that,’ Pye muttered as they walked up the path towards the white front door.

The DI was reaching out to push the buzzer when the door swung open, and a woman stood looking at them, severely. The detectives knew that Gina Ford was sixty-two years old, and that had created an image in their relatively young minds. Their stereotype was short, stocky and with grey hair, possibly wearing an apron; they did not expect a five-foot eight-inch ash blonde who could have passed for fifty, wearing a loose Bob Marley T-shirt that did little to disguise an impressive bust and jeans that might have been painted on.

‘I’ve been expecting you guys,’ she said. ‘It’s as well you came to me, or I’d have come lookin’ for you.’

‘You’d go looking for Jehovah’s Witnesses?’ Haddock exclaimed, wide-eyed.

The stern expression cracked, and a small smile took its place. ‘Bloody comedian,’ she said, grudgingly. ‘You look no more like Witnesses than I look like Beyoncé Knowles. Do you do a line as a female impersonator as well, son? I was told one of you was a woman.’

‘Different officers, Mrs Ford,’ Pye replied, identifying himself and his sergeant. He made to show her his warrant card, but she waved it away.

‘Come on in,’ she ordered. ‘I don’t like the polis on my doorstep. Pye and Haddock,’ she added. ‘You sound like the menu in a fuckin’ chippie.’

As they stepped into a well-decorated hallway, Haddock nodded over his shoulder. ‘You’ve got a nice garden. Do you look after it?’

She shook her head. ‘Still he makes with the funnies. This boy must keep you in stitches, Inspector.’ She waved a perfectly manicured hand. ‘Do I look as if I’ve got manure under my nails, Sergeant? No, that’s all my man’s work; I take care of the inside, he does the rest. It keeps us out of each other’s hair. . no’ that he’s got much, mind. One of the secrets of a happy marriage, lads, you should remember that.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Pye said, drily, as she led them into a neat living room, well-furnished and sparkling with cleanliness. He was still smarting from her menu wisecrack. ‘Now, tell me,’ he continued, declining the offer of a seat, ‘why were you going to come looking for us?’

‘Why the hell do you think?’ Her initial anger resurfaced. ‘Who do you people think you are? What gives you the right to go upsetting my grandson? He came to see me last night, in a hell of a state. His mother and I have spent the whole of his lifetime protecting him from the truth about his father, and your two bloody colleagues go and spill it out in the middle of some bloody café!’

‘I’m sorry,’ the DI retorted. ‘His name came up in the middle of our investigation and he had to be interviewed. It wasn’t possible to do it without telling him exactly why.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can explain that, Mrs Ford. We’re investigating his grandmother’s murder, and we found that Marlon is working for the family that police believe ordered his father’s killing.’

Gina Ford stared at him, rocking slightly back on her heels. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ she whispered.

‘How much do you know about your grandson’s father’s death?’ Haddock asked her, more gently than Pye.

‘The same as everybody else,’ she said. ‘He was found battered to death in the old Infirmary Street Baths. A few weeks later the papers said that the men the police suspected of doin’ it had been found dead themselves, in Newcastle. They said it was a gangland thing.’

‘That’s more or less how it was,’ the DS agreed. ‘The investigators at the time believed they were silenced by the man who ordered it.’

‘All that’s no surprise,’ she told him, ‘given that the Watsons were involved. Fucking lowlives, that family. That Marlon was the biggest mistake my Lulu ever made. . the only mistake, God bless her. He wasn’t a bad lad as such, always quite cheery, but the man he worked for was. And as for his mother. .’ Finally, she sank into an armchair and insisted that the detectives seat themselves.

‘Bella Watson tried to take over our lass after she found out she was pregnant by Marlon. But Robert and I, we weren’t having it, weren’t letting her have any influence over the child. We told her to stay away from our family. She didn’t like it, even threatened us, but my Robert’s no soft touch. He’s been a bus driver for thirty years, and he takes no nonsense. He went to see the man Marlon had worked for and told him what was happening. He said not to worry, and Bella never came near us again.’

‘But you know she’s dead?’ Pye asked, his earlier annoyance forgotten.

‘Oh aye. I saw it in the Evening News. No surprise really, and I suppose no surprise that you folk should want to talk to the laddie. But to tell him about her, that’s something else. I’m not happy about that. We all decided very early on to tell wee Marlon that his dad had run off. Then Duane came along, he and Lulu got married and had Robyn, and then Kyle out in St Lucia, and we more or less forgot all about what had happened. So, why did you have to upset him?’

‘There was no option,’ the DI explained. ‘I know, Marlon said he had no idea he had another grandmother, but we’re simply not able to take someone’s word in a serious crime investigation. We needed his DNA to prove that he’d never been in her flat, and the officers who interviewed him had to tell him why they wanted it. As for doing it in a café, it’s a discreet process, so they thought it was better to see him there than going to his work or having him brought into the police station.’

‘I suppose,’ Mrs Ford conceded. She was silent for a while as she replayed the discussion in her mind. ‘What you said earlier,’ she went on, when she was ready, ‘about Marlon working for the folk that killed his dad. What did you mean by that? Who ordered it?’

‘His name was Perry Holmes,’ Pye told her. ‘He was the top man in organised crime in Edinburgh and probably in Scotland, at the peak of his career. He had a run-in with the man who employed Marlon Senior.’

‘The guy Manson?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And the laddie was killed in the crossfire?’

‘More or less. He was targeted, to send a message to Manson, because Manson was having an affair with Holmes’s daughter.’

‘They killed the boy for something his boss done?’ She was incredulous.

‘Yes.’

‘Animals, the lot of them. So how does our laddie come to be working for them?’

‘As far as we can see it’s purely accidental. Perry Holmes was in a wheelchair. He had a carer, who happens to be Duane Hicks’s cousin, and who still works in Edinburgh. Duane asked him if he could help young Marlon find a job.

‘Perry Holmes had a lot of legitimate businesses, as well as the criminal side, and when he died his son and daughter inherited them. Vanburn, the cousin, was on good terms with the son, and that’s how it came about. They even gave him a flat to rent, I believe.’

‘That’s true,’ she affirmed. ‘These people, do they know who Marlon’s father was?’

‘I don’t believe they have any idea, and it will stay that way as far as we’re concerned.’

‘How much does he know about them?’

‘Again, nothing. He was told the circumstances of his father’s death and his family history, but that’s all.’

‘And that’s enough. He must never know about these Holmes people.’

Pye nodded. ‘We couldn’t agree more.’

‘Thanks. We’ll get the boy out of there. Robert’ll find him a job in the bus garage, and he can come and live with us.’ She leaned back in her chair and looked at them. ‘But that’s not all that brought you here, is it?’ she observed.

Haddock smiled at her perspicacity. ‘Not quite,’ he admitted. ‘We wanted to ask if you know anything else about the Watson clan. To be specific, did Lulu ever mention Marlon having had a child, a son, by anyone else, before her?’

‘I doubt it would have been after her, son, given that she had a few weeks to go when they buried him. But no, she never did. If you’re really asking whether he had an earlier kid with Lulu, the answer’s no. She wasn’t off the rails much longer than it took her to get knocked up.’

Pye leaned forward, rejoining the discussion. ‘What about the rest of the family? You see, we know that Bella had another grandson, but we can’t work out how.’

‘I see.’ Gina Ford paused, pondering the question. ‘Well,’ she ventured, ‘as I recall, the last time I saw our Marlon’s dad, when he dropped Lulu off from a hospital appointment, he was all excited. I asked him why. He said that he was going to meet his sister, and he hadn’t seen her for twelve years.’

‘Sister?’ Haddock exclaimed as he stared at the DI. ‘What bloody sister?’