Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel (21 page)

I drove Martin the short distance to his car. ‘Well?’ I said, as he opened the passenger door, ‘what did you think of Terrible Tony?’

‘Dangerous and resourceful,’ he replied, firmly. ‘How did he get where he is?’

‘By moving in on a guy who was less resourceful than him.’

‘What happened to him?

‘They said at the time that he went into the construction industry.’

He frowned. ‘Wouldn’t that have been a matter of record?’

‘Does euphemism mean nothing to you?’ I asked. ‘There was a new office block being built down in McDonald Road at the time. The story was that he became part of the foundations.’

‘So where did these Holmeses fit in?’

‘I told you: while Tony was king of the midden in Edinburgh, Perry Holmes was the undisputed Scottish number one. He was an importer on a massive scale; he distributed to people like Manson across the country.’

‘Why did nobody cut him out?’ The lad asked good questions.

‘One or two tried. Perry was a property developer too; still is, from his wheelchair. On you go now, get your arse back to Fettes.’

I let him exit the cul-de-sac ahead of me, and watched him as he zipped along Essex Road. By the time I reached the Maybury roundabout, he was out of sight, so he didn’t see me make the left turn into Quality Street. I’d forgotten that I was going to call Mia, but she must have been looking out for me, since she opened the door of her little single-storey house just I was pulling up outside.

She was dressed much as she had been the first time we’d met, jeans this time, and another Airburst T-shirt. ‘Hi,’ she said, smiling as I took the two steps that was all the tiny path from the gate required. ‘Welcome.’

‘This is nice,’ I told her as I stepped straight into a bright living area that must have taken up half of the total floor space. It had been freshly refurbished, and twin doors led to a small conservatory that still had a look of newness.

‘Isn’t it,’ she agreed. ‘It’s a bit like your place but on a much smaller scale.’ She glanced at a clock on the wall, above a white painted fireplace with a high mantelpiece; it showed one o’clock, on the dot. ‘You’re on time.’

‘My last visit didn’t drag on,’ I replied, ‘and it was close to here, out in Barnton.’

‘Handy. How much time do you have?’

I shrugged my shoulders, noncommittally. ‘Some.’

‘That’s good, for I’ve made us some lunch. Ham salad okay?’

‘Spot on. Thanks, Mia, you . . .’

‘. . . shouldn’t have!’ she laughed. ‘Now we’ve got the automatic responses over, let’s get down to it.’

She led me into the conservatory, where two full plates waited, on a small round table, with a bottle of sparkling water and two glasses. It was warm in the sunshine, so I hung my jacket over the back of a chair. We sat and she poured. There was a package on the table, white cardboard about six inches square. She handed it to me. ‘The Spice Girls,’ she announced. ‘Alex will love them; they’re going to be big. They are really, really different.’ She laughed. ‘Listen to me: “really, really”. They’ve got to me. You’ll understand what I mean when you’ve heard it a couple of times. There’s a phrase in there that’ll live forever.’

I watched her as we ate. She seemed different from our earlier meetings, more relaxed, bubblier, more like the woman whose voice and attitude were pulling kids into her audience at a rate to rival the Pied Piper . . . ‘The Pie-eyed Piper of Hamilton,’ was Thornton’s version of the name, and it came to me then. The thought of it made me frown and realise that I’d broken the promise to call him that I’d made to myself.

Mia spotted the change in me. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘There was; I could see it. A flash of pain. What’s wrong, Bob? Hard times at work?’

‘It’s not getting any easier,’ I admitted, ‘but that’s not what it is. I had some bad news yesterday, family news.’

‘Oh dear. Someone close?’

‘The closest I have left, apart from Alex. My father-in-law. He came to see us, to tell me that he’s ill.’

‘Oh God,’ she sighed. ‘How ill?’

‘Barring a miracle, terminally.’ I took refuge in the salad for a while.

‘How’s Alex taking it?’ she asked when we were both finished. She stood, and picked up her glass. ‘Come on, let’s sit in over here.’

I joined her, on a white cane sofa, that looked out on to the tiny enclosed garden. ‘Alex doesn’t know,’ I said.

Mia whistled, softly. ‘You can’t keep a secret like that from a girl her age.’

‘Thornton’s insistent on it. He’s told her that he’s going away on a trip,’ I smiled, ‘to far-off and exciting places. He wants to spare her from what’s going to happen.’

‘That’s well meaning of him but,’ she took my hand, intertwining our fingers, ‘he’s not going to be around to pick up the pieces, Bob. He’s going to be dead, and when Alex finds out that his illness was kept from her, she’s not going to blame him, she’s going to blame you. If you don’t tell her, she’ll be hurt worse than if you do, and so will you.’

‘I promised her granddad though, Mia.’

‘Then you have to tell him why you can’t keep that promise. I don’t want to sound like an agony aunt, but Bob, love, who’s the most important person in your life?’

I stared at her. ‘Alex, of course.’

‘And what’s the most important thing in your life?’

I didn’t have to think about that one for long either. ‘My relationship with her.’

‘Then don’t damage it. Her childhood is over . . . Pops. She’s come through puberty, and she’s starting to think like a woman. That’s a process that accelerates pretty fast, I can promise you, and it’s bloody difficult for any parent to keep up with it, let alone a single dad.’

I was frowning again. ‘But I don’t want to hurt her at all,’ I protested. ‘That’s why I agreed to what Thornie asked.’

She touched my chin and turned my face towards her. ‘She’s going to be hurt anyway. It comes with the territory of adulthood.’

I sighed. ‘Point taken. Thanks for that, counsellor.’

That’s when I kissed her. It wasn’t something that I’d anticipated, or ever imagined. It just happened, that’s all, a reflex response to our proximity. She responded, very gently, her lips exploring mine, her mouth opening slightly, her tongue flicking my teeth. Until then, I’d held the private belief that kissing is overrated, no more than the opening gambit of the chess game between two people that leads to mating. With Myra and me, it had been rough and tumble, like our sex. With Alison . . . it was something we barely did, we usually cut straight to the chase. But Mia could kiss like nobody I’d ever encountered before; it was full of subtlety, tender and modest, yet inviting, too. Have you ever noticed how strong a spider’s web is, how, once it’s woven, it can withstand a tempest? That’s the best analogy I can conjure up for Mia’s kiss, the softest thing imaginable, yet once it had drawn you in, there was no escape.

‘Is this the talk we were going to have?’ she murmured, as we surfaced.

‘What talk was that?’

‘About whether we’re going to see each other again.’

‘I guess it is. What do you reckon?’

She flicked the first button of my shirt with a fingernail. ‘How much time do you have?’ she asked. I knew what she meant, but I didn’t want a quickie; I wanted to be able to dive into her ocean and swim there at my leisure.

‘Not enough,’ I replied. ‘I have to be sharp this afternoon. If all goes well, I’ll be having a very tough conversation with a couple of guys from Newcastle. I won’t be able to make a proper impression on them if I’m thinking of you.’

She smiled. ‘Me too, I suppose. I wouldn’t want to be talking to seventy-five thousand young people and have something inappropriate slip out. So? What happens next?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Could we have dinner one night,’ she suggested, ‘and take it from there? How free are you?’

‘I can make arrangements,’ I said. ‘I have someone who looks after Alex during the day. I can arrange with Daisy for her to stay over at her place.’

‘Then call me when you can fix it.’

‘I’ll do that,’ I promised. We kissed again: just like the first time. I had to force myself to my feet.

‘Go and terrify the bad guys,’ she instructed me, as she walked me to the door.

‘And you go and bewitch a million listeners.’

‘That’s the entire listening audience. We’d have to achieve a hundred per cent penetration for that.’ She giggled, and a hand went to her mouth. ‘But that’s something we can discuss after dinner.’

For all my talk of sharpness, my mind was all over the place as I drove back to Fettes. I was attracted to Mia with a power that I hadn’t experienced since before my fifteenth birthday, and I hadn’t understood it then. I wanted her very badly, but I wanted the moment to be perfect, and the timing to be absolutely right. I began toying with the idea of booking a room, or maybe even a suite, in an upmarket hotel . . . Gleneagles, say, and damn the expense . . . for the Friday following. But . . . I’d left it with Alison that we’d see each other at the weekend. Alison. What about Alison? We’d been straight with each other; it was companionship and sex, nothing more expected or wanted on either side, and surely that carried the possibility that one of us might find someone we really cared about. Fine. And the incident at the Sheraton? I still hadn’t worked that one out, but the one thing I did know for certain, Alison and I had two relationships, personal and professional, and she had to be treated right, on both levels. And then there was my kid. The way I felt at that moment, I had no idea how far a relationship with Mia might go, and Alex had made her feelings pretty clear about another woman . . . Mia had been right; I had to start thinking of her as such . . . moving into our house. But looming over it all was the memory of that first, spontaneous kiss.

‘Jesus, Skinner!’ I exclaimed, out loud, as I turned into the police headquarters car park. ‘For once, will you try and think with your brain and not with your prick.’

The first person I saw when I walked into the office was Jeff Adam. Instantly, I had what my very good friend Neil McIlhenney once described, memorably, as ‘a Taggart moment’. They’re rarer these days than they used to be, but when they’re triggered, they’re unstoppable.

‘What the hell are you doing here, Sergeant?’ I shouted. ‘You’re supposed to be in fucking Newcastle picking up fucking Milburn!’

Fortunately, the rock-steady, unflappable Fred Leggat was there to intervene. ‘I told him to hold on, boss,’ he explained. ‘Newcastle CID went to pick him up at our request, but he wasn’t at home, or at work. I didn’t think there was any point in Jeff and McGuire going down there till they had him.’

I felt the hot air escaping from my balloon, fast, but did my best to keep my dignity. ‘Work? What does he do, apart from being a heavy?’

‘He’s a taxi driver. Self-employed. He has a small office in North Shields; he runs a few cabs out of there.’

‘Does he have a wife?’ I asked.

Fred nodded. ‘Yes. She wasn’t cooperative, at first, not until our Geordie colleagues threatened to arrest her for obstruction and hand her kids to social services. A bluff, but she fell for it. Eventually she admitted that he went out late on Saturday night and hasn’t been home since.’

‘Did NCIS come up with anything on him?’

‘Oh yes. Two convictions for actual bodily harm, one for GBH, several arrests but charges dropped for lack of evidence. He’s said to work for the Newcastle big boss, a man called Winston Church . . . no hill, just Church. His known associates locally are Barton Leonard and Warren Shackleton who works for him in the taxi firm. Leonard used to, until he was given a nice room to himself in Durham jail, for being the getaway driver in an armed robbery.’

‘I take it . . .’

‘Yes. The Geordies went looking for Shackleton too; he wasn’t at home either, and he’s been missing for about the same length of time as Milburn.’

‘Okay. Good shout, Fred.’ I was left feeling embarrassed by my telly’tec episode. ‘Sorry I went off at you, Jeff. There was no cause for it. Do something else for me, please. Ask NCIS to go back into their computer and ask it if there are any known links between this man Church and Tony Manson. He says that there aren’t, and I doubt if he would deny something that he knew we could confirm, but let’s check it anyway. I’m not saying he’d admit it either, but he wouldn’t let me catch him in a flat-out lie.’

‘Andy said that Manson couldn’t help you,’ Leggat remarked.

‘He didn’t tell us where to look, but the mere fact that he was worried enough to contact a private security firm and hire a couple of ex-squaddies, that tells me he thinks he’s under threat from someone.’ I headed for my office, motioning the DI to follow. ‘Where have we got in this investigation, Fred?’ I asked as he closed the door.

‘Newcastle,’ he replied, ‘and that’s it.’

‘Manson did make a good point,’ I told him. ‘How did these guys get hold of Marlon, so quietly that we haven’t picked up a trace of it? And where did they pick him up?’

‘Could he have arranged to meet them?’ he wondered.

‘It’s a thought. What’s the last sighting of him?’

Leggat frowned, and scratched his head. ‘When he left his mother’s house last Tuesday?’

‘No, Bella said he came home after that, and then went out again. She didn’t know where, though. Pub, probably. Where did he drink?’

‘Search me, Bob.’

‘Sorry, Fred, I was talking to myself there. But there’s somebody who might be able to tell us.’ I called Bella Watson’s mobile from my desk phone; she answered quickly, as if she’d been expecting a call. ‘Do you still have your babysitter?’ I asked.

‘Aye,’ she grunted.

‘Then put him on.’ I waited for the giant. ‘Lennie,’ I said, ‘did you see much of Marlon, in the course of business?’

‘We were in touch,’ he replied. ‘And, of course, he drank in the Vaults.’

‘That’s what I was hoping you’d say. When did you see him last?’

‘Monday. He was in on Monday.’

‘Do you remember anything about him? Was he nervous in any way?’

‘No.’ He paused. ‘Hey, wait a minute, he was in on Tuesday, late afternoon. He brought a licence renewal application for the pub that had come in the boss’s morning mail.’