Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel (48 page)

‘There are a lot of dead people who thought that.’

Perry was in his chair when we walked in. ‘You have no right here,’ he croaked. ‘What do you want?’

‘We’re here to tell you that your son Hastie’s been charged with murder.’

He made a strange sound in his throat that might have been a chuckle. ‘Then you’ll be embarrassed. My lawyer says you’ve got no chance, that you’ll lose and then we’ll sue.’

I treated him to a real laugh. ‘Wrong murders, Perry. We’re doing him for Weir and McCann, two of the three guys who raped Mia. Don’t fret too much about the third one. Hastie might have missed out on him, but he’ll do time for the attack.’

I’d been waiting years to see all of the confidence, all of the arrogance, all of the brutality, drain from Perry Holmes’s face. It was a wonderful sight, and I found myself regretting that a few of my colleagues, guys who’d spent their working lives trying to skewer him, weren’t there to see it happen.

‘I’ve got all the bricks,’ I told him. ‘I’ve built my case and it’ll stand against any defence. The only question is whether I charge you too, and with what. Are you a paedo, Perry? Are you a beast? Were you fucking Mia when she was only fifteen, when she used to follow Gavin Spreckley around? When you parked her with your own kids, were you grooming her for later when she grew up properly?’

His face filled with rage. It could have been scary if he’d been able to move. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Not me! It was Alasdair, my amoral brother, he abused Mia. Her disgusting uncle gave her to him; fifteen years old and he gave her to him, literally, to curry favour with us. As if that would! Gavin told me about it, when I found out that he’d been dealing to schoolchildren. He threatened to expose Al, the stupid bastard, to tell the police; stupid bastards both of them.’

I’ve never seen anything more ferocious than the look in Holmes’s eyes then. ‘He was going to die anyway,’ he snarled, ‘but because of that I told Al to make him watch as Johann strangled his nephew, then cut his hand off with a chainsaw, before he used it to cut off Gavin’s fucking head.’

He glared at me. ‘I rescued Mia, Skinner, from that awful family, from that den of vermin, from that hard whore of a mother. I’d have fucking killed her too, but for Manson. I wouldn’t risk my son against him.’

‘No,’ I murmured. ‘Not Manson. But you must have almost got up and walked when you found out that your daughter was fucking him. Derek came to you, didn’t he? He cried on your shoulder, told you she had another man, you confronted Alafair, and she told you who it was. I’ll bet you were apoplectic. But no, you couldn’t go for Tony, so you did the next best thing. You hired out-of-town talent to kill his driver, and added bonus, he turned out to be a Watson, half a Spreckley.’

‘I’ve sired the wrong daughter,’ Holmes growled, a little more calmly. ‘Alafair’s always been a problem, always trouble. But Mia, once she was away from her awful upbringing, she’s treated me like she was my own blood . . .’

His eyes fixed on me. ‘You have a daughter, Skinner: I know you have, for Mia told me she’d met her. The way it is between you and her, that’s how it is with me and Mia. How would you feel if your kid was picked up off the street by three animals, and . . .’ if he had the words he couldn’t say them, ‘. . . for a whole night? What would you do?’

‘As much as I could,’ I admitted, ‘without hurting her worse. In other words, whatever I could get away with. But if I used other people, I’d make sure they were better than your Geordies, or than Hastie, for that matter. He’s going to do life, Perry, just as you are in that pathetic chariot. You’d better be nice to Alafair, Daddy, for she’s all you’ve got left.’

He shook his head; it was the tiniest of movements, but he managed. ‘I’ve still got Mia. In spite of you, Skinner, I’ve still got her.’

‘Don’t bet on it,’ I warned him. ‘Mia’s on the verge of the big time, and she doesn’t need a helpless old geezer in a wheelchair holding her back. You, set against her career? I don’t think you stand a chance. So long, Perry, but don’t think you’re secure. The first chance I get to put you away, I’m still going to take it.’

We left him to his thoughts, to his new life of still, impotent, solitary uncertainty.

Outside, as we stood beside the old car that I was definitely going to ditch, I turned to Alison. ‘Love,’ I began, ‘there’s—’

She put a finger to my lips to stop me. ‘When you’re lonely in the dark of night, who do you call first?’

‘You.’

She frowned, then kissed me. ‘That’s all right then,’ she whispered. ‘Take me home and let’s crack that champagne, and the rest.’

Twenty-Two

M
uch of the rest was silence. We shared the champagne and it did me in. After the stress and strain of the day, after its shocks, its triumph and its exultation, I folded; Alison woke me in my chair just after ten and half carried me to bed. So much for my earlier scorn for McFaul.

I think I dreamed of Mia in the night, crouched over Holmes in his chair. If it was her, she had her back to me, so I couldn’t see what she was doing, but he had boasted to me that even in his paralysis, he could still sustain an erection, so . . .

It had been easy for him to cast blame on to Alasdair; he wouldn’t be offering any denial.

Next morning I took Alison to Torphichen Place. Apart from the final paperwork on what had begun as the Gay Blade investigation, she was back on Grant’s team. And I was back with mine, reading their frustration that we’d been thwarted over Marlon’s murder, and ignoring the smugness of the returned Mackie and Steele over their ‘success’. Hastie’s arrest, and Alison’s press briefing, were major news in the Edinburgh papers and even made the front pages of the
Glasgow Herald
and two tabloids.

I felt as flat as Richard Branson’s latest balloon. I did my duty and went to see Alf, to report the conclusion of both investigations. He was a bit pissed off that he’d read about one of them in the press before he’d heard it from me, but I told him, fairly irritably, as I recall, that he couldn’t expect me to be his fire-fighter and his fucking exec at the same time.

‘Aye, fair enough, lad,’ he conceded, and poured me a mug of coffee that was so strong it should have been seized as a Class A drug.

‘One way or another, the job’s done, whatever those pen-pushing, bean-counting English tits think about it. McGrew’s on his way to Peterhead for the next twenty years, and his old man’s fucking helpless. Well done. Now on to the next. Mr Manson; let’s see if we can put him in the next room to Holmes’s son.’

I drained his rocket fuel and went back to my office. He was right; I should have been moving on, but I couldn’t. She was out there, she’d played me, and she’d left me with a couple of guilty secrets. I was hurt, I was humiliated and I was angry.

About a year ago, one of my young CID lads got himself into a similar situation with a woman. Afterwards, a few people were surprised that I didn’t crucify him, but I knew, from experience, that letting him live with it was the most effective sanction I could apply.

The guys spent the rest of the morning avoiding me, but a week wouldn’t have been enough. When Andy Martin stuck his head round my door at quarter to three, I still bit it off. ‘Yes!’ I barked although I’d been doing nothing more taxing than contemplating shopping around the boatyards with Ali at the weekend.

‘Sorry, boss,’ he said, ‘but I’ve come up with something I need to ask you about.’

I sighed, ‘Okay, sit down then, and get asking.’

‘It’s those mobiles,’ he began. ‘I’ve been checking through them all, as you said, and the thing is, I think I’ve found Marlon Watson’s. It had to be the one I looked at last, of course; that’s life. It’s loaded with Edinburgh numbers. I’ve checked them all, incoming calls and outgoing, and they nearly all fit. There’s Bella’s mobile, Manson’s as well, and his ex-directory line, Dougie Terry’s and the Milton Vaults number. But there’s a couple that are odd. One’s a landline, with a couple of calls to it and from it. I’ve checked the number. It isn’t registered to a person, but to a company, Pentecostal Properties Limited. However, the phone’s in a private house. This is it.’

He handed me his notebook, I read his scrawl, and felt as if I’d had another shot of Alf Stein’s coffee. I knew the address all right: it was Mia’s.

‘The other number,’ he continued. ‘It’s a mobile, I haven’t been able to find out whose it is, but . . . you know you can send text messages between these things now?’

‘So my daughter tells me.’

‘Well, there’s a message on Marlon’s phone, from that number. It says, “My place 9 tonite, chat. M.” And it’s timed at ten past noon, on the day that Marlon died.’

I felt the blood leave my face. ‘Thanks, Andy,’ I said. ‘Leave it with me.’ I didn’t bother to ask for a note of that mobile number; I knew that it was logged into my own phone.

I walked out of the office, and left the building, and climbed into my car . . . the BMW, for I’d decided that the Discovery really had served its purpose. I drove out to Sighthill, and was waiting, still behind the wheel, outside the Airburst FM studio when Mia arrived for her show. I waved to her, signalling that she should join me.

We had a brief discussion; no, that’s not true, I talked and she listened. When I was done, she got back into her Mini and drove away. I tuned into the station at four; there was confusion, but they coped like professionals. Mia hasn’t been seen in Edinburgh from that day on.

I had one more informal meeting that day, at five, at Tony Manson’s place. Bella was there as I’d requested, for there was something I wanted to know. ‘When Mia left home,’ I asked, ‘did you know where she’d gone?’

‘No,’ she replied, ‘and I didn’t care. I didn’t expect to see her again, but when I did, after Marlon saw her in the street and followed her to where she worked, then talked to her and told me about it, I thought she owed me. That’s the truth, Mr Skinner.’

I nodded. ‘I know it is.’ Then I told her where her daughter had been for twelve years, under the protection and in the tender care of Perry Holmes. ‘Just as you reckoned she owed you,’ I said, ‘so she believed that she owed Perry.’ I paused, to let that sink in, then continued.

‘And guess how she repaid him. Do you know what happened to Marlon, how those brutes from Newcastle got hold of him so easily? He’d given Mia his mobile number. She sent him a message and asked him to come to her place that night, for a wee chat. He went, all excited I’m sure, and they were waiting for him. I don’t have pictures, but I know that’s what happened. Because Perry Holmes asked her to, your daughter set her own brother up to be killed, and she never batted an eyelid. And why? All because you, Tony, were screwing his daughter.’

‘Where is she?’ Bella murmured. The way she said those three simple words told me that if she could find her, then she’d be childless.

‘I don’t know, but wherever that is, she’ll be out of your reach. Don’t go looking for her. I wouldn’t like that.’

I left them to chew it over.

Vanburn is another who hasn’t been seen in Edinburgh since that time; he left town a couple of days later, without giving his agency a forwarding address. He may have taken my advice, and found himself a new job in a safer environment. On the other hand, Manson may have paid him a lot of money to be absent while Dougie Terry, or someone similar . . . but not Lennie, not for something like that . . . drowned his patient in his therapeutic pool. Or he may have paid him even more money to do the job himself.

Perry’s funeral was private, even smaller than Marlon’s, and without anyone like Lulu, anyone who’d loved him. Alafair was there, and a priest. Hastie wasn’t allowed to go, and Derek Drysalter was still in hospital. No, Mia didn’t show up. I did, though, with Alf Stein. Our main interest lay not in paying our respects, but in ensuring that they filled the grave in properly, after the undertakers had lowered him into it, since there were no men to take the cords.

Life returned to its usual pattern after that. Alex missed Mia for about a week, then realised that the best influences were those around her, not voices from her radio. Alison and I settled into a routine too, living separately, and together, as we chose; it lasted for a couple of years and then it just . . . stopped. Not my doing; Ali never said, but I reckon she’d wanted me to buy that boat after all. We stayed friends beyond the split, but she insisted, and I agreed, that our professional relationship should be entirely formal from that point on.

Me? Well, you know about me. A failed second marriage with the consolation of two lovely kids and one adopted boy, until I was way luckier than I deserved, and another soulmate came along. Now I’m never lonely in the dark of night.

And Mia? What about her? I would say, ‘Who knows?’ only . . .

A couple of years ago I was playing about online, after everyone else had gone to bed, when I happened upon an English-language radio station that was based in the south of Spain. There was a female presenter on air at the time, with a mature, smoky voice, and an accent that was vaguely Scottish.

I’d clicked on the link because of her name: she called herself Mary Whitehouse. I’m sure that meant nothing to her younger listeners, and I imagine that the older part of her audience thought only that she was having a laugh at the old decency campaigner’s expense.

She talked for a bit, about the weather on the Costa del Sol, about which of yesterday’s entertainers were appearing at which exclusive night spots, and then she cued up a song. ‘This for old friends, old lovers, and even some old enemies,’ she breathed. ‘You out there, you know this is for you. It’s Gram Parsons: “Return of the Grievous Angel”.’

‘God,’ I whispered. ‘I hope not.’