Butcher (34 page)

‘What's that for?'

‘S-sometimes when I have to take a dog to the vet, I l-lock the chain to the dog's collar. S-so the dog d-doesn't bounce around—'

‘And if you have to take both dogs?'

‘Oh, that's easy. It's a l-long enough chain.'

Perlman tried to imagine two Dobes on this chain. Chain looped round the neck of one, then fed round the neck of the other and what – padlocked? It could be done. The chain could be used for a number of purposes – if you had something or somebody whose movements you wanted to restrict.

He stood a moment, surveying the inside of the vehicle.

A chain in a van, it was nothing. And a room that was some kind of homage to a dead woman – OK, mildly eccentric, maybe a touch morbid, but a long way from criminal. He continued to gaze at the chain.

He still had Kirk McLatchie's photo in his hand. He held it toward Dysart. ‘Try. One more time.'

‘I've already t-told you I d-don't know this person. I don't n-need to
f-fucking
l-look. Y-you th-think you can do anything, you p-police … You ha-harass Jackie, y-you go to her place of work, y-you go to her home, she's going through d-difficult times and y-you—'

He stopped suddenly, victimized by word-lock. His mouth was open and he stared at Perlman with the angry look of a man desperate to speak but struck mute. A flow of red raced across his face, rising from his neck and up through his cheeks, flushing as high as his forehead.

Perlman spoke quietly. ‘Dorcus, I understand what she's going through. I never harassed her. I asked some questions she didn't like, and I wasn't satisfied with the answers.'

‘Y-you b-broke s-stuff in h-her f-flat. You c-can't l-lie about that.'

‘I'm clumsy. I'm sorry.'

‘No you're not. Y-you're persecuting us.'

Persecuting
us
.

He heard it loud and clear in Dysart's anguished voice and was annoyed with himself for failing to pick it up before. Tartakower had almost been right.
Those two are close
. But he'd never walked the last few steps. He'd never said ‘love'.

Ace and Dorcus, hearts entwined. Love, of course: who could explain love? He thought: we're all love's victims in some way, giving our hearts freely, usually with complete disregard for consequences, often with no hope of reciprocity – look at me, love's nebbish. Prime instance.

‘Your private life doesn't interest me, Dorcus.'

Dysart said, ‘You say that, you d-don't mean it. At every t-turn there's p-persecution. If it's n-not you, it's somebody else. All the t-time. I d-don't need this, P-Perlman. I f-fucking d-don't need this.'

Perlman thought,
And neither do I
.

‘Please, please l-leave us in p-peace.'

Perlman stared at Dorcus but he had no more questions for him. Some other time. ‘You want peace, you got it. Walk me out as far as the gate and make sure those dogs don't think I'm an appetizer.'

‘Scared?'

‘Of a few things,' Perlman replied. Including my own mind where the spectres pass through whispering seemingly sound advice as they go, and the jury in my head deliver verdicts.
I thought I had it: they told me I had it
. But it slipped away, whatever it was, and what can I prove?

Raining outside still. Smells of wet grass and sodden leaves. The dogs came thundering out of a hiding place and Dysart, with the mac over his head and shoulders, shouted them away. He unlocked the gates and Perlman went outside.

Perlman turned as Dysart closed the gates. A metallic clang echoed, then faded. ‘Thanks for your time, doc,' Perlman said.

‘No problem.' No stutter, no exasperating struggle from Dysart.

Perlman walked to his car and sat behind the wheel and watched the Dobes, vigorously shaking water off fur, come running at Dysart and leap affectionately around him.

The dogs love him too, Perlman thought.

37

Mathieson parked outside the Temple.

In the back seat Chuck had been thinking about the night he'd first met Glori in the Arta and how he knew from the start they'd make harmonious body-music together. She was light in the dark, joy unexpected—

You find joy, don't let it go.

‘Here we are,' Mathieson said. He got out of the Jaguar and held an umbrella over Chuck and walked him up the steps to the door. Hard rain bounced off the pavement with the sound of pebbles.

Mathieson said, ‘I'll get on the mobie and check hotels.'

‘Do that.'

Chuck approached the door and didn't immediately see the notice stuck to the inside of the glass pane. He reached for the handle, and then his attention was seized by the sign:

CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

What the
fuck
is this –
closed?

Baba is sick, maybe: but no – gurus lead good lives,
spiritual
lives. They meditate and pray. They eat nuts and berries.

Chuck, in panic, pressed his nose to the glass, although the notice impaired his range of vision. But he saw enough: the fat pillows were gone and the curtains at the back had been taken down and the tapestries were gone and so were the statues.

A man with a broom was sweeping the floor.

Chuck rapped the glass. The man paid no attention.

Chuck found a pound coin in his pocket and hammered it against the pane. The man turned and looked at him, adjusted his hearing-aid, then opened the door.

Chuck swept into the hall. ‘What's goin on here?'

‘Place is for rent,' the man said.

‘
What
?'

‘For rent. Former tenant shot the craw.'

‘Who the fuck are you?'

‘Here, watch your language,' the man said.

Chuck grabbed the man by the collar of his blue overalls. ‘Where the fuck's
Baba
?'

‘Hey, I'm only the janitor.'

Chuck squeezed the man's scrawny throat. ‘When did he leave?'

The janitor spluttered. ‘Last night – packed up his bus – end of.'

Chuck released him.

‘Christ, you nearly choked me, mac. Nay need for that.'

Packed up his bus and gone. Like that. Chuck paced up and down the hall, his footsteps echoing sharply. ‘He leave an address?'

‘No according to the owner. Took his curtains and his pillows and off he went in his bus. He owed rent.'

‘How could he owe rent, for fuck's sake? He was well supported here.'

The janitor shrugged. ‘I only know what I telt you.'

Chuck fizzled.

Fucker conned me. Conned me all the way.

And took the bus.

He stood directly under the stained-glass Christ. Rainwater dripped into the bucket at the place where Farl the roofer had allegedly made repairs. Chuck had a chain of explosions in his head –
canny trust priests, canny trust gurus, canny trust roofers, canny trust Texans, canny trust yer granny, canny trust
—

The janitor said, ‘Ask me, I think this guru was a flyman.'

‘Who's askin you?'

‘Hey, mac, just my opinion.'

‘Shove yer opinion down yer fuckin throat.'

Chuck walked to the door, peered at the rain.

Who on God's earth can I depend on?

Ron Mathieson found Glorianna on his seventeenth call. She was listed as A Cormack at St Jude's Hotel in Bath Street. He asked to be connected to her room.

‘Nice room, Glori?' Mathieson asked.

‘Ronnie … oh
shit
.'

‘Chuck's looking everywhere—'

‘Oh, for God's sake
please
don't tell him I'm here. Don't.'

Mathieson saw Chuck come out of the Temple. ‘You think I'd give him the satisfaction?'

‘Swear to me on your life,' Glorianna said.

‘On my life.'

‘You're a doll, Ronnie.'

‘You deserve better than Chuck,' Mathieson said, and cut the connection and rushed up the steps with the umbrella and held it over Chuck's head.

‘Fuckin Baba took a hike,' Chuck said. ‘A fuckin toe-rag. Untrustworthy sneaky bastart bagga shite …' Chuck slid into the back of the Jag, thinking about trust. How did you know when to trust somebody? Was it in the way they looked, the way they spoke? Was it an instinct born into you?

If so, his was seriously jiggered. He felt despondent. Lower than that. Low as a tic up a centipede's arse.

‘Any word o her, Ron?'

Mathieson said, ‘I'm up to twenty hotels so far, and nothing, Mr Chuck.'

‘Right. Keep it rollin, Ronnie. Don't give up.'

Glori, my girl. Come back.

38

Perlman drove into the housing scheme and parked his car outside a wire fence surrounding a tall water-tower. He was glad to be out of Dysart's house. He scrutinized the rainy streets. There were no people about, no wet pets: the place might have been abandoned. A row of small shops was open directly in front of him – a grocery store, a newsagent-tobacconist, a hair salon called The Cutting Zone where an empty row of conical hairdryers was visible through the window. Bad hair day, all this rain.

He walked inside the newsagent's. A wire cage, erected the length of the counter, kept customers away from the cigarettes and the cash register. A couple of female assistants behind the counter watched him enter. He saw in their eyes a cool assessment. He wasn't a regular, a local. An object of curiosity.

Neither woman asked him if there was anything he needed. He surveyed the stacks of tinned goods, the big jars of sweets, the bottled lemonade. A man in a long raincoat and flat cap came in and started scanning stacks of newspapers.

‘This is no a readin room, Charlie,' one of the women said.

‘I'm buyin, I'm buyin, haud yer horses,
Jesus
,' the man answered.

‘You always buy the
Evening Times
early edition, Charlie.'

‘Well mibbe I'll buy somethin else,' Charlie said assertively.

‘Aye, when the moon's cheese,' one of the women remarked.

The other laughed and took a drag on a cigarette that had been burning in an ashtray.

Charlie selected an
Evening Times
and took it to the counter and paid for it. Perlman noticed the headline:
Was Victim Butchered
? He wanted to grab the paper out of Charlie's hand.

‘See this,' Charlie said. ‘Somebody carved up, another body dumped. What's the polis doin?'

‘Whit d'ye expect em to do, Charlie?'

‘Fuck all as usual.' Charlie coughed. ‘Gie's ten Senior Service.'

A packet of cigarettes was slid under the wire to him. He pushed some coins across the counter. Then he left, tucking his paper inside his coat.

Perlman picked up a copy of the same newspaper, checked the front page story as he approached the counter. He was shocked to see Kirk's face stare out at him. Behind the counter one of the women, her big round face stained with an oblong purple birthmark, looked at him. The other, small and rotund, flipped the pages of
Woman's Own
, and pretended Perlman didn't exist.

‘I'm looking for somebody called Pudge,' he said.

The women stared at him with a surly lack of interest.

Tribal protection. ‘He drives a hearse.'

The woman with the birthmark said, ‘See the sign outside? Does it
say
Funeral Home?'

Perlman said, ‘Bin the patter. I'm in a hurry.'

The other woman slowly raised her face from her magazine. ‘Aye, everybody's in a hurry these days.'

Perlman wondered if he should show his ID, but he figured these women had sussed him anyway. ‘Where do I find Pudge?'

‘You know any Pudge, Margaret?'

Margaret scratched her birthmark and looked at Perlman defiantly. ‘And what if I do?'

Perlman sighed. ‘It's a shite day outside and I've been on the go for hours, ladies. So please don't fuck with me.'

Frannie said, ‘Threatenin, int he? A wild man. Disny look it.'

Perlman grabbed and shook the wire cage and it rattled. ‘An address – then I'm history.'

‘That cage'll faw doon,' Margaret said.

‘Why don't you just tell him, Margaret? Then we're shot of him.'

Margaret said, ‘Out here, first left, first right. You'll see the hearse parked in the street.'

Perlman went outside. He read the story quickly. Rain fell on his newspaper. Kirk McLatchie, twenty-five, was the alleged victim of criminal surgery.
Police are refusing to confirm details, but this reporter understands that the victim's kidneys, liver and heart had been removed
.

This story shouldn't have seen the light of day in this form. Some source inside Pitt Street had provided this story – and was handsomely paid by a snooping journalist for the info. It was inevitable. Nothing stayed private for long inside Force HQ. The place was a church of talkative cops.

The picture was one he'd never seen before; Kirk on his wedding day, arm linked through his wife's, a small smile on his face.

He called Betty. She took a long time to answer.

He said, ‘I saw it.'

‘Oh Lou, why did they print
that
? Why did they put Kirk's picture on the front page? Don't they have any feelings?'

‘Feelings don't come into it, Betty. You're news.'

‘I've had reporters camped on my doorstep since first thing this morning. The doorbell hasn't stopped ringing. And the phone. I can't take it, Lou. I just cannot take it. What do they want from me? They've got their bloody news. My son's dead. Isn't that enough?'

‘They'll hound you until you weep.'

‘They can go to hell.'

‘Lie low. Keep your curtains shut. Don't answer the door, don't answer the phone. If I call you, I'll do the old two ring hang-up and ring again routine. Same routine if I press your doorbell.'

‘OK.'