Poisoned Cherries

Chapter 35

That’s how it went. The CID arrived. . two detective sergeants. They both knew ex-Superintendent Ross, called him ‘sir’, and accepted his story without question. They didn’t even talk to me.

Ricky gave me his spare keys to the Alfa, and I headed off back into town; as soon as I was out of sight, I called Alison’s mobile number. She answered on the fifth ring, as if it had taken her that long to decide to take the call. She was at home, but she still sounded terrified.

I drove straight there. She was in her dressing gown when she let me in; her hair was wet, straight from the shower.

‘That girl, Oz,’ she whispered.

When I told her who Anna Chin was, and what they had in common, she slumped down into an armchair. After a few seconds she began to cry. ‘Someone’s got it in for me, Oz,’ she moaned, ‘and I haven’t a clue why.’

‘Maybe not, but you’ve got the good guys on your side. We’ll find out and put a stop to it.’

The soles of her shoes were still stained dark red with cherry juice. I went to work with bleach and a nailbrush, until they were spotless.

She had stopped crying by the time I was finished. I thought about questioning her, but decided that already I was way more involved that I’d planned.

So I gave her a big drink, drove the Alfa back to the Mound, picked up some overnight kit, and headed for Glasgow.

It was midnight, but Susie was still pleased to see me; no more, though, than I was pleased to see her.

‘My God,’ she said, looking at me in the doorway. ‘You look dead beat; you must have had a hard day at the office.’

‘I have,’ I said, and then I picked her up and hugged her, for quite some time.

When I woke there was a strange, middle-aged lady leaning over the bed. . only when I could focus, I realised that she wasn’t strange at all. It was only Ethel; she had been trying to put a mug of tea on the table by my head without disturbing me. I don’t know why she thought I’d like to wake up to a mug of cold tea, but that appeared to be the game plan.

‘Morning,’ I mumbled.

‘Sorry, Oz,’ she said, with the bright morning voice of the professional nurse, ‘I was trying not to wake you. This isn’t part of the service either,’ she added, almost as an afterthought, ‘but Susie’s feeding baby Janet and she asked me if I would bring your tea in.’

I mumbled again as she left, then checked the bedside clock. It told me in big red liquid crystal numbers that I’d slept for almost ten hours. I pulled myself up in bed and used a remote to switch on the television in the corner, but all I could find was cartoons, kids making a noise, and that blonde girl with the tattoo on her bum who does the Saturday morning football programme.

I gave them all up and settled for Radio Clyde One, just as Susie came into the bedroom with wee Jan still attached. Maybe it was all the stuff that had been happening over the last few days, but my heart and my eyes just seemed to fill up at the same time.

‘Come here,’ I said, barely able to see them. ‘Come into bed and let’s be a family.’

We did that, we just lay there, did Susie and I, for about half an hour, with our child between us, talking mostly nonsense. I told her about Ewan and Alison having done their deal, I told her about the rehearsal and the scene set visit to Advocates’ Close, and I told her about meeting Don Kennedy, the famous golfer, and his gloomy prognosis for my slice. But I did not tell her about Anna Chin; that sort of stuff has no business invading a moment like that.

Eventually we got up, and each of us, while the other showered, took turns at playing with the smiling Janet. Some people say it’s only wind at that age, not a real smile, but that is sheer nonsense. . I have two nephews and a daughter; I know these things.

It was Ethel’s hard-earned weekend off; she muttered something about going to see her sister in Roseneath and headed off in her all-silver Ford Ka. ‘Right,’ Susie declared. ‘Janet’s fed, now what about us?’

‘Saturday morning,’ I replied. ‘Glasgow. I’ll go for the rolls and the papers, like any other bloke. You start the fry-up, and get the tea on, like any other woman.’

‘Bloody chauvinist! But I don’t fancy going out looking like an unmade bed. .’ See? Stereotypical behaviour; with her red hair tousled, and her freckled face fresh from the shower, she looked absolutely stunning. ‘. . So we’ll do it your way.’ She took the door keys from the kitchen table and tossed them to me.

The flat is in a building near the top of Woodside Terrace, so I cut along to Lynedoch Street, and down to Woodlands Road, where I could take my pick of grocer newsagents, each one just like my friend Ali’s place. I went into the nearest, bought four morning rolls, baked that day, the Daily Record and the Scotsman. The woman behind the counter gave me a knowing look, probably marking me as an out-of-towner, because I hadn’t taken the Herald. I had a reason for picking the Edinburgh daily, though.

I sprinted across the street, and stopped on the other side, turning to glare over my shoulder at a taxi-driver who had blown his horn at me. As I did so, I caught a figure at the edge of my vision, turning away from me. Of itself, there was nothing unusual in it, but something clicked in my head, all the same.

I looked after the bloke, but he was heading briskly off towards Charing Cross. . yes, Glasgow has one of them too. Paranoia, Blackstone; not everyone is out to get you. I forgot about it and opened my Scotsman. The death was worth a paragraph on page one, and a longer story on page three. That told me that the police had launched a full-scale murder investigation after the body of a twenty-five-year-old woman had been found in the new headquarters building of the Torrent group. The victim, Anna Chin, a doctor’s daughter from Barnton. . If she had been a waiter’s daughter from Leith, would they have mentioned that? I wondered. . was in the habit of working late on Fridays to take weekend returns from the field sales team. Detectives were working on the theory that she had disturbed an intruder.

Fine, I thought. Ricky’s put them off the trail, for now at least. I knew that it was a matter of time before they tumbled to the David Capperauld connection, but hopefully by that time there would be nothing that would tie Alison to the scene.

I took out my mobile and called Ricky on his, ship to ship, as a pal of mine used to say. ‘How is she?’ I asked him.

‘Okay,’ he replied, in a quiet voice. There was a pause: I guessed he was still with Alison and that he might be going somewhere she couldn’t hear him. Knowing her better by now than I ever had before, I guessed that he was probably getting out of bed.

I heard the sound of a closing door; Ricky was probably in the toilet. ‘She’s calm now,’ he said, more clearly.

‘Did she tell you anything else?’

‘Only what we guessed; someone called her and told her that Torrent wanted to see her at the office.’

‘Who?’

‘She doesn’t have a clue. She said that the voice wasn’t clear; the caller said he was passing on a message from Natalie Morgan, that Torrent wanted a quick meeting that evening.’

‘What about Torrent? Do we know where he was?’

‘The records in his office showed that he signed out at three, with Natalie. The police tried to get hold of him last night; eventually they found them both at a dinner at Gleneagles Hotel. I called someone I know there afterwards. They checked in at four-fifteen.’

‘Separate suites?’

‘Of course, she’s his niece.’

I couldn’t help laughing; there are some things that coppers can’t contemplate. ‘Cynical bastard, Blackstone,’ he muttered. ‘Even if they were, they still wouldn’t just take one suite.’

He had a point; I wasn’t as smart as I thought. No need to let him know that, though. ‘It could still have been Natalie who made the call,’ I pointed out.

‘Sure. I’m betting it was.’

‘She couldn’t have killed Anna, though,’ I said. ‘She must have been alive when the last person signed out.’

‘She could. She could have checked in, driven back, done the girl and been up there again for dinner.’

‘And why would she want to do that?’

‘That’s a question I’d love to ask her, but I can’t risk it.’

‘Then get one of your tame policemen to ask.’

‘I can’t do that either; they’re off chasing intruders, remember.’

Yes, I remembered. We were boxed in, good and proper. Or at least, Ricky was; I had to remind myself that this investigation had nothing to do with me.

I had almost put it out of my mind by the time I got back home to the family. I had got the best of the deal all round; Susie’s a much better breakfast cook than me, and she always uses olive oil when she’s frying. I’ll use anything.

We stuffed the four rolls with fillet steak and egg. . decadent, eh. . and ate them in front of the telly. The tasty bird with the tattoo on her bum had finished, and we were into previews from around the grounds.

‘That’s enough of that,’ said Susie, once we were finished. She grabbed the remote and switched off. ‘We are taking our daughter out for an airing.’

‘Where?’

‘I thought that Kelvingrove would be nice. We could walk there.’

That sounded good to me. ‘Okay,’ I agreed, ‘if I can do the Transport Museum as well.’

Susie got the baby dressed for the outdoors, we did the same, and we headed out into the bright autumn day. We walked Janet, in her pram. . a sort of multi-purpose vehicle for kids. . down Elderslie Street, and turned into Sauchiehall Street, the most famous thoroughfare in Glasgow, if not the nicest. We strolled along at no great pace, but it didn’t take us long to come to the old Kelvin Hall, which houses the city’s museum of transport. When I had lived in Glasgow, before, and Jonny and Colin, my nephews, came to visit, they always made me take them there. I took no persuading; I love those old Glasgow trams and I’d love to have ridden on one for real. My Dad did, on a visit to Glasgow as a child, and he still talks about it. The city was all the poorer when they were replaced by giant electric trolleybuses; Whispering Death, they became known as, as they came rolling silently up behind a number of unwary Glaswegian drunks who had chosen exactly the wrong moment to step off the pavement.

Wee Janet was a bit young for the trams, and Susie’s an unromantic Weegie, so we didn’t stay there long. We had just left the building and turned into Argyle Street, heading for the crossing to Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, when I saw a man step swiftly back into Blantyre Street, on the far side of Kelvin Hall. He was in my line of vision for less than a second, but I was dead certain that it was the same bloke I’d seen earlier, in Woodlands Road. I saw a little bit of face this time, or at least a flash of beard, and the glint of the sun reflected from dark glasses.

For a moment, I almost set off after him, but that would have alarmed Susie, so I held myself back. Instead, we crossed the road and, carrying the pram, mounted the steps to the entrance to the big, baroque building.

At the top, I glanced over my shoulder, quickly, while Susie was looking the other way, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Inside, seats were laid out in rows, and a man was playing the big pipe organ, above the central hall. ‘Sit there for a minute,’ I told Susie, as wee Janet stirred in her MPV pram. ‘I’m going to the gents.’ I found a sign showing the two matchstick people, one legs apart, the other legs together. . Shouldn’t they be the other way around? Ah, never mind. . and followed it.

I wasn’t sure I’d get a mobile signal in the toilet, in the great sandstone building, but I did. When Ricky answered, I could hear the unmistakeable sound of domesticity in the background. ‘Have you got someone following me?’ I asked him.

He hesitated. ‘Yes,’ he admitted at last. ‘Alan Graham’s looking out for you. I had to, Oz, it’s in the contract. If you have an emergency, someone has to be on hand to respond. You shouldn’t have seen him though; I warned him not to disturb you.’

‘This isn’t him; this is someone else.’ I told him about the man I had now seen twice in a few hours. ‘Tell Alan to stop looking out for me, and concentrate on him. I want to know who this guy is and what he wants. If he comes near Susie and the baby, I’ll bloody well kill him, and I’m not joking.’ I must have been shouting, because a guy standing at a urinal looked over his shoulder at me, with a degree of alarm. I glared at him and he went about his business.

‘Okay, Oz, calm down,’ said Ricky, in his reassuring voice. ‘I’m on to it. If I have to I’ll send someone else through as back-up, plus I’ll leave Alan on Susie when you come back to Edinburgh, at least until this man is identified and eliminated as a threat, if he is one. Give me a description.’

‘Tallish, long hair, dark beard, age. . I didn’t get a good enough look to tell; wearing jeans and a bomber jacket, and shades.’

‘Okay, that’ll do; I’ll get after him. But please, and I mean this; if he does confront you, do not touch him yourself, leave him to my people. When you said that just now, I really did believe you.’