Thursday legends

9

They did it all: all the routine slogging that is part of every murder enquiry. By the end of the afternoon every one of Alec Smith's neighbours in Forth Street had been interviewed by CID officers. Most of the other houses in North Berwick had been canvassed by senior officers. All of the Friday evening customers listed by publicans had been located and questioned.

With DCI Maggie Rose back in command in the van, the Head of CID had taken on foot-soldier duties. He and McGuire had visited every resident of the converted Granary flats, and of every other house clustered around the small tidal harbour. No-one could recall seeing anyone drop anything into the water late in the evening. No-one could recall anyone being parked there, or driving away.

Andy Martin was dog-tired when he arrived back in Dean Village, just before seven. It had been a blazing day, and there was still real heat in the sun. He slid the MGF into his garage and was about to pull down the up-and-over door, when Rhian stepped inside.

'Hi,' she murmured. 'I was beginning to think you wouldn't make it.'

'So was I.'

She slid her arms around him as he pulled down the door. 'That would have disappointed me. I hate disappointments. I don't think I could stand two in two days; you're not going to disappoint me again, are you?'

He grinned down at her. She really was very attractive, in a bikini top and shorts, her tan dark and shiny; very much a woman, not a girl at all. 'I think there's every chance of that,' he chuckled, as she reached back to flick the catch of her top. 'But I'll do my best.'

He picked her up and carried her, through the garage exit and into the house, up the first flight of stairs, then up the second, and into his bedroom.

Yes, you surely are mad, Martin, he said to himself, but right at that moment he cared not a bit.

Rhian was a screamer and the window was open; at first he hoped like hell that the music next door was loud enough to cover her cries, but after a while he stopped caring. 'You have definitely done this before,' he said, afterwards, as the air seemed to sizzle round them.

'I did tell you that. You're not too shabby yourself, officer, definitely not a disappointment.' She nestled into the crook of his arm. 'There. Feeling better now?'

'And how.'

'Has it been a bad day?'

'Yes, but don't let's talk about it.'

'Have you caught anyone yet?'

'Nah. Fact is, we haven't got a bloody clue. All those folk in North Berwick, but no-one saw a damn thing. They don't, you see; most of the time, people just don't notice other people. They only register them as part of the background, and that can make life very difficult for us.' He glanced at the bedside clock. 'Here, we'd better get ready.'

She chuckled; deep and wicked. 'You don't think I'm finished with you yet, do you?'

If Juliet Lewis had noticed her daughter's absence, or marked the fact that Andy was over an hour late for the barbecue, she said not a word about it, only, 'Welcome,' and 'You shouldn't have,' as he handed over two thick fillet steaks, bought in Struth's of North Berwick and wrapped in greaseproof paper, and a bottle of reserve claret from the delicatessen in Gullane. She was beautifully dressed, in a close-fitting skirt and a long-sleeved blouse, in stark contrast to many of her younger guests.

Rhian had gone upstairs after showing him through to the garden. Just as her mother was handing Martin a goblet of red wine she reappeared, dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, and with her hair tied back in a pony-tail. She picked up a bottle of Belgian beer from the serving table, took his hand and drew him towards his fellow guests, who were gathered on the lawn.

'Come on, let me introduce you around.' As he had expected, most of them were young, around Margot's age. She pointed to a group gathered around the younger Lewis daughter, a tall dark girl, in a light blue dress. 'You know the guest of honour, of course.' Actually, he had never exchanged a word with her. From what he had seen she was a serious type, who looked, as did Rhian, a year or two older than she really was. He gave her a smile and a wave. She responded, almost shyly, sneaking a quick look at her sister. For an instant, he detected a hint of a smirk on her face, and wondered.

'These are the serious people, though.' she led him over to a group of half a dozen men and women, older than the rest and standing a little apart. 'Hi everybody,' she called out.

One of the men, who had been looking down on to the dark, slow-moving Water of Leith, glanced over his shoulder. 'Ah, it's herself,' he said, turning. 'I wondered where the hell you'd got to.' He grinned at Martin. 'Can I guess?'

'I've been changing,' Rhian answered.

'That'll be the day, honey. You'll never bloody change.' There was a familiarity in the exchange; two people comfortable with each other. Andy eyed the other man appraisingly, remembering Rhian's remark about older lovers, trying to guess his age. He was small but trim, with dark, grey-flecked hair which was thinning on top; well-preserved, but probably in his early forties.

She brought him back by squeezing his hand. 'Don't listen to this so-and-so. Have you two met before? Andy, this is Spike Thomson, Edinburgh's oldest teenager and a legend in his own mind. Spike, this is Andy Martin; he lives next door.'

The man's eyebrows rose. 'Ah. I've heard of you. You're Bob Skinner's pal, aren't you?'

The detective looked at the other man warily, although he was not certain why. 'You know Bob?'

'Of course. I'm one of the Thursday mob.'

Spike Thomson. Get the brain in gear, Andy boy. How many Spike Thomsons can there be? 'The disc jockey? Fair footballer too, according to Bob.'

'That's kind of him. How come we've never seen you on a Thursday night?'

The detective grinned down at his new acquaintance. 'I've been asked, but football's definitely not my game. I used to play rugby.'

'Me too. I played scrum-half for North Berwick High, then for the rugby club for a while. What was your position?' He took a pace backwards and looked Martin up and down, noting the thickness of his neck, the breadth of his shoulder. 'Prop?'

'For a while, at school, but I played all my senior stuff as a flanker.'

'Ah. That explains why you're not a football man. Bloody lethal on the football field are flankers, to a man. Who'd you play for?'

'West of Scotland.'

'Any good?'

The policeman smiled at the directness of the question, sportsman to sportsman. 'Some folk thought so. I played for Glasgow District a few times; got as far as an international trial, but that was it. I joined the force and packed it in.'

'Why, for God's sake? Couldn't you have carried on playing as a policeman? Others do.'

'Maybe, but working shifts in Edinburgh meant that I couldn't guarantee to make training in Glasgow. I could have played for Edinburgh Accie Firsts at one point, but I decided against it. I took the view that, since the force was going to be my career, I'd better devote myself to it full-time if I was going to make a success of it.'

'You've done all right so far, haven't you?'

'I'm more than pleased with where I am now, yes.'

'Where do you want to wind up?'

'In a Chief Constable's chair.'

Thomson looked up at him. 'Won't that mean leap-frogging Bob?'

Martin shook his head. 'No, it doesn't mean that at all… although there is a hell of a lot of leap-frogging in the police. No, there are other forces. I'll have to leave Edinburgh sometime if I want to carry on up the ladder, I know that.'

He might have said also that he would have to leave to move out of the Deputy Chief Constable's shadow, but that was a thought which he had voiced to only one man, Bob Skinner himself.

He looked over his shoulder at Rhian, but she had moved away to join another group. Turning back to Spike Thomson, he realised that he had been quizzed gently by a professional interviewer. He had his own skills in that department.

'How about you?' he asked. 'What was your career path?'

The little man smiled. 'A lot less conventional than yours. I went to Heriot-Watt University and did a Chemistry degree, then went to work in a path lab. On the way through Uni, I did discos at weekends to make a few extra quid; eventually I realised that I was far more interested in that than in my day job. This was back in the seventies, when commercial radio was in its infancy — the pirates had just come on shore, so to speak — so I sent in a tape to the managing director of Radio Forth, just for fun.

'To my great surprise, he liked it… no taste, that man. He gave me an audition and hired me on a short contract, to present the weekend breakfast programme. Twenty years or so on, I'm still there.'

'You've been at Forth all that time?'

'More or less. About fifteen years ago, I was lured away to the flesh-pots — Glasgow — but it didn't feel right so, after a year, when Forth asked me to come back and be the station's Head of Music, I haggled for about half a minute, then agreed.'

'Have you never fancied the BBC?' Martin asked.

Spike Thomson drained the last of his red wine. 'I was approached, a while back, by Radio One. They offered me a bigger salary and the chance to increase my ancillary earnings about ten-fold. But I'd have had no control over anything, I'd have had to start by doing a through-the-night show for six months, and it would have been another short-term contract.

'Didn't fancy it. I like my local audience, I like the instant feedback we get from our listeners, and I like the feel of what I do. This might sound pompous, but I believe that local radio is socially important. We talk to a lot of people, and we have the ability to change the way they think.'

'Why don't you work more closely with my Drugs Squad then?'

'Because as soon as we start to sound like a mouthpiece for the police — or anyone else for that matter — we're dead. We're independent local radio, remember; the word means something. Don't worry, Andy, we get the drugs message across, all of us, but through the attitude of our presenters, not through propaganda.'

The disc-jockey paused. 'Come in and watch us at work sometime. You can sit in with me in the studio.' He grinned. 'You can bring Rhian if you like, although she's been already.'

He caught Martin's look. 'Some girl, that. Twenty-one going on forty; you watch yourself there. She can be a real heart-breaker.'

'You speak from experience?' the detective asked. There was an edge to his tone.

Spike Thomson held up a hand, as if to keep the big policeman at bay. 'Not guilty, honest, officer,' he protested. 'The truth is that my interest is in her mother. Juliet and I have been seeing each other for a while.'

He broke off. 'You eaten yet?'

'No,' Martin replied, hunger biting at once.

'Come on then, let's get some grub and a refill.'

They were halfway to the barbecue when the detective's mobile phone sounded in his shirt pocket. He stopped and took it out. 'Yes?'

'Andy, it's Maggie.'

'Hi, Mags. How's it going out there?'

'A town full of brick walls so far. I do have Sarah's postmortem report though: it answers a couple of questions. I'm having a team briefing tomorrow morning, at ten in the mobile. Want to come?'

'Sure, I'll be there.' He ended the call and put the handphone away. 'Work,' he said to Thomson.

'Not that thing our newsroom was on about today, was it? Out in my home town.'

'I'm afraid so.'

The little man shook his head. 'Poor old Smithy. He was one of us, you know; one of the Thursday Legends. Something come back to haunt him, did it?'

Martin frowned at the shrewdness of the question. 'Maybe, maybe not. Too early to tell. Come on, there's been enough shop all round. Let's get to the grub.'

They were almost there when the scream rang out behind them; short, sharp piercing, then dying into a gasp. The detective turned on his heel. Margot, the birthday girl, was standing to the left of the garden with her back to her guests, leaning over the boundary fence and gripping its rail tightly. She was staring down, back along the river towards the Belford Bridge.

The rest of the gathering seemed to turn in slow motion towards her, but Andy Martin was by her side in three strides. 'What's up, Margot?' he asked urgently.

The girl said nothing, did not move, as he put a protective arm around her shoulders. She could only gaze at the greenish-tinged water, her mouth hanging open slightly. At last she raised a hand and pointed. 'There,' she whispered. 'What's that thing along there? Is it what I think it is?'

The detective followed the direction of her outstretched finger, leaning outwards, just as she did. At last he saw it, just under the far parapet of the bridge which carries the road above across Edinburgh's little river. It was a large green, puffy object, swollen by the water, not going with the flow but snagged on something. He might have thought that it was no more than a roll of carpet — but for the thing, the pale white thing, which floated on the surface.

'Oh no,' he muttered. 'Just what I need to round off a perfect day.'

He felt a strong hand tug at his elbow and turned to face Rhian. Juliet, Spike and the others had gathered behind her, one or two of them leaning out over the fence. 'Back,' he called out, sharply. 'Everyone get back towards the house, please.

'There's something in the river and it's given Margot a fright. It's probably nothing — ' He knew as he spoke that his urgency made his lie sound unconvincing. '- but I'm going along to check it out, just in case. Come on now, back, please.'

Frowning, Juliet Lewis took her younger daughter, who had begun to tremble, by the hand and drew her away from the fence, while Rhian began to usher the rest of the gathering towards the back of the garden as Martin had asked. As she did, he glanced down at his clothes, then eased out of his sandals to stand barefoot on the grass. He stripped off his Hugo Boss shirt and hung it over the top rail then, deciding that his cotton slacks were expendable, vaulted over the fence on to the sloping embankment which ran along the other side.

The arch of the bridge was about fifty yards away; he made his way crabwise along the grass banking until he reached it, then stepped out into the murky waters. Almost at once he was more than waist deep, wading through ooze and slime, pausing to balance himself as he stepped on the occasional slippery stone. The river was no more than a few yards wide, but under the bridge it was so gloomy that he could not see the object clearly until he was almost upon it.

Close to, the pale thing had a bluish tinge. It was a hand, on the end of a shirt-sleeved right arm which seemed to have worked its way awkwardly from the dark-coloured rug which had enclosed it. The head was almost clear too; a man's head, face down in the water, sparse hair floating on the surface.

The detective allowed his eyes a few more seconds to become accustomed to the gloom. Gradually he saw that the rug had been tied with thick twine, top, middle and bottom. It was hooked on the branch of a tree, which had fallen somewhere upstream and become snagged itself on the riverbed.

Something made him look again at the hand, closely this time. The thumb and little finger were missing; bones showed where they had been snipped or sawed off. He switched his attention to the other end of the rug. Two bare feet protruded: the big and little toes had been severed on each.

'Fuck,' he swore quietly, feeling his stomach prickling. He decided to touch nothing. The rug was stuck fast to the branch which was itself solidly based in the river: there was no chance of anything floating away. Taking care not to slip, he turned and waded back across the river, scrambling, with some difficulty since his feet were slippy with mud, back up the embankment.

Rhian was standing by the fence. Everyone else was standing around the barbecue, but no-one was eating.

'What is it?' she asked.

'Male, human and very dead,' he answered, grimly. 'What we in the business call a stiff. It had to happen tonight, too, and here. Just great for poor wee Margot's birthday. Do me a favour. Fish my cell-phone from my shirt pocket. It was a bit pricey so I don't want to muck it up.'

She did as he asked. He switched it on and pressed buttons in sequence to call a short-coded number. 'Aye?' came a gruff voice as his call was answered.

'Dan, it's Andy Martin; glad I caught you. I'm at home, or rather next door, at a birthday party. We've just had an unwelcome extra guest.'

'Why's he unwelcome?' asked Detective Superintendent Dan Pringle, commander of CID in Edinburgh's city centre.

'Because he's fucking dead, and floating face down in the Water of Leith.'

'Suicide?'

'Would I be calling you if it was? No, this is definitely not suicide. We'll need photographers, and suited divers to get him out. He's stuck under the Belford Bridge. It's not very deep, but it's mucky down there. Even as I speak I've got half a hundred weight of slime clinging to me.'

'You'll be lucky if that's all it is,' Pringle chuckled, darkly. 'Okay, I'll get things moving. Should I have Belford Road closed off?'

'I reckon you should, for a while at least. I'll put an end to the party; it'll get hellish busy down here very soon.'

'Won't we need statements from everyone?'

'Only one, I reckon, and she lives here. You get on with it and I'll see you shortly.'

'Fine, but do me a favour, Andy.'

'What's that?'

'Wash the shit off before I get there.'