The Blood of Crows (23 page)

‘You don’t know if he was still married?’

‘I wouldn’t know, son. I think he was on his own yesterday. But I wasn’t paying attention.’

Lambie found himself trying with difficulty to follow what Mary was saying. Rene kept butting in, asking him something about the old Co-op bakery and telling him she’d got the scones there that morning.

‘Doubt it,’ muttered Mary. ‘It was knocked down forty years ago.’

But Rene was nibbling again, and saying, ‘I said to Mary but she didn’t understand. Well, she did, but she has a lot on her plate – you know, planting your man, it’s not easy – so maybe she didn’t. Or if she did, I don’t think she found it –’

‘Found what?’

‘The photograph of the boys, the boys that all went hill-walking that time. You know the one? The one the man was asking for.’

Crystal clear. Lambie looked at Mary, who slowly shook her head.

‘What do you mean, Rene? What man?’ Mary stood up and went over to the far side of the room, her face deathly pale. Lambie watched her carefully as Rene kept talking.

‘You see, the man was asking for it, and she – her there – said she didn’t have it, and I know that she did have it because I’ve seen it. When that other girl –’

Mary shook her head, finally understanding. ‘Sorry, Mr Lambie. She’s thinking about the girl who wrote that book. She came round last year or the year before – you know, the way they do – wanting to speak to Tommy about the Marchetti kidnap case, but he had had nothing to do with it. But she kept on and on, as if he had. It upset him, mind you.’ Then, briskly, ‘But that’s what Rene is thinking about. It’s in the papers again, and it’s reminding her, that’s all.’

Lambie nodded. ‘So, Rene, who was asking about the photograph?’ he asked gently.

‘That man at the funeral, the man who came up in the lift with me, with the gloves.’ Rene dunted Lambie heavily in the ribs with her elbow. ‘I mean, gloves! I think he was a bit simple, but who would have gloves on, on the warmest day of the year? That’s what I said to him, and he laughed. He was nice looking, though. Just like that man on the telly. You know the one – Michael Aspel!’

‘Do you know this man?’ Lambie looked from one sister to the other.

‘I’ve no idea who she’s talking about.’ Mary shrugged. ‘I mean, there is an old picture somewhere. It’s normally with the diaries but it’s not there now.’ She wiped a tear
from her cheek, and sat down. ‘Tommy, Eric Moffat, Wullie MacFadyean and – oh, who were those other two now? Graham … ? Graham Hunter and Jason Purcie. They all used to go hill-walking, camping, when they were younger.’

Lambie reassured her. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t that important,’ he lied. Mary was an old woman, she was upset, so he let the silence lie.

She twisted her hanky in her fingers and went on. ‘You know, when Tommy died, I was going through his things, and I checked all the diaries, to make sure they were in order. There’s one missing. He wrote his diary every day until a couple of years ago. Now, his life’s not complete …’ The tears were threatening to start again.

He turned his attention to Rene, and asked her the most important question. ‘And when did you meet the man in the lift, Rene? The man who was at the funeral? Was it the day of the funeral?’

‘Oh no, it was the day Tommy died, the day I’d been to the hospital, with my knees.’

‘And when did you get back?’

Rene lowered her voice melodramatically. ‘Not until after – you know …’ She nodded, so Lambie would understand.

‘She didn’t get back until the afternoon,’ said Mary. ‘One of the neighbours took her in. Told her, gave her a cup of tea.’

At that point, Mary composed herself and relaxed into the sofa, her face still pale. This was obviously news to her. Slowly she began to question her sister. There had been a man in the lift on the day of Tommy’s suicide who had also been at the funeral. The man had asked her about
a photograph of Tommy Carruthers out hill-walking with his friend Wullie MacFadyean.

‘Can we rely on what she is saying?’ asked Lambie out of the side of his mouth.

Mary nodded her head, still confused. ‘She must be right. She wouldn’t make that up.’ She ran her fingers through her hair.

Lambie waited for her to think it through.

‘She would have got the hospital bus back. It drops her at the rear of the building, so she’d have come in that door. There’s a small lift back there, near the stairs, but people don’t use it much. Everybody uses the lifts at the front.’ She cupped her fingers over her mouth. ‘Was there somebody here? A man who knew my husband?’ She looked at Lambie, reddened eyes full of confusion.

Lambie stood up, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘We’ll find out if he was here, don’t worry.’

A few uninterrupted hours with the CCTV footage and a strong coffee, and they might know exactly who ‘he’ was.

8.00 P.M.

Ex-DCI Eric Moffat was not totally happy to meet at the station; he asked Anderson to come up to the Lodge On The Loch, a hotel by the side of Loch Lomond. ‘We can have a full and frank conversation, totally off the record, and well away from prying eyes and ears,’ he said. ‘Anything else, you can simply ascertain by calling up the old records on the computer.’

Anderson could imagine a cold beer in the early evening sun, by the lochside, with the sun glinting off the water, Ben Lomond in the distance. He was sure he could think of better ways of spending a Thursday evening if he tried – but, apart from dinner with Helena McAlpine, nothing jumped to mind. What he hoped to get was the situation surrounding Biggart, warts and all.

When he arrived, Moffat was already there and had commandeered a table outside. They ordered a couple of pints from a waitress, and sat in silence as the
Maid of the Loch
steamed past, full of holidaymakers. Moffat was looking hot, and the dry flakes of a previous sunburn were still apparent round his receding hairline. The tan was obviously coming at a price.

‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ said Anderson, ‘how the hell do you survive in Australia? Do you not just burn up all the time?’

Moffat shook his head, downing a gulp of beer. ‘That’s the thing about Australians – they know about the sun and they know how to deal with it. They’re prepared. My grandchildren never go out without their factor thirty and a sun hat. Everywhere they go there’s air con. It’s a healthy life. My daughter, Carolyn, had really bad asthma as a kid, on steroids all the time. One of the reasons they went out. She’s not had an attack all the time they’ve been there. Scotland is a splendid country, but God knows the weather is shite.’ Moffat raised his beer glass to the ben, looming at the head of the loch.

Anderson let his eyes flit across the water. ‘If the weather was like Australia, this place would look like a desert,’ he said. ‘So, your daughter went out before you did?’

‘Yeah, I stayed to finish my time in the force. The minute I’d done my thirty, I was out there.’ Moffat drained his beer. ‘But I guess it’s different for you, being a bit younger.’

‘And the kids not yet at exam age. But we might be better going now, while they still have a couple of years to fit into the Australian system.’

‘With us it was no contest. Carolyn was ill, so she went. Then my wife followed, just for the summer. Then that turned out to be permanent. The minute they landed in Brissie, Carolyn’s lungs lost their sensitivity. The air’s warm and dry, not this damp muck we breathe. She has a good job, rather than the life of an invalid she would have had here. But both my boys married Glasgow lassies and refused to follow us out. They’re both on the force in Glasgow – Callum and Johnnie – doing well. You got your promotion yet, by the way?’

‘Yes. But I’m not totally sure what I’m chief of.’

‘I think Howlett’s keeping you for something special. LOCUST, maybe?’

‘I think he might have something on his mind.’ Anderson recalled what Howlett had said about saying little and listening a lot.

‘So, nobody’s mentioned it by name. It’s supposed to be a new initiative to clean up the streets of Glasgow. But if they weren’t thinking of you for it, they wouldn’t have asked me to meet you. I always reasoned that the one they sent to speak to me would be the one heading up the new team.’ Moffat settled back, comfortable with his audience. ‘So, for now, officially, you are working on the Biggart case. While shielding your back about the Fairbairn case,
and trying to forget the fact that an abused minor died in your arms. Tough one.’

‘It is when you put it like that.’ Anderson was beginning to find Moffat’s charm wearing thin. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’

Moffat tipped his sunglasses with his forefinger, studying the photograph Anderson was sliding towards him. ‘Is that the tattoo on the van driver?’

‘The passenger – yes.’

‘Do you know what it means?’

Anderson waited.

‘It means trouble,’ Moffat said quietly. ‘It means he’s done time in a Russian prison. If he has more tattoos on his upper arm, black wavy lines, then that means big trouble. The lines represent crows in flight. One crow means one kill. Three crows, and they’re allowed to prove themselves with a blood eagle.’ He didn’t elaborate. ‘These guys are not playing peek-a-boo, Colin.’

‘A blood eagle?’ A vision floated into Anderson’s mind – taut arms, splayed ribs. Blood … ‘What does that mean?’ he asked evenly, drawing Moffat out.

‘It’s a rite of passage,’ Moffat explained. ‘It’s like a promotion, a graduation.’

‘Who for?’

‘The Russian mafia, of course.’ Moffat downed half his pint.

‘So, the guy with the barbed-wire bracelet would be in our system?’

‘No, he would be in the Russian prison system,’ said Moffat impatiently. ‘They view time served as a matter of pride, hence the visibility of the tattoos. Biggart had a
tattoo on the biceps of his left arm, didn’t he?’ He was making a connection.

‘Did he?’ Anderson was surprised, then remembered that O’Hare had found traces of one, deep in the skin.

‘You didn’t know?’

‘He was burned to a crisp.’ He sipped his pint, eyes on the photograph, wondering who had blabbed. ‘To tell you the truth, I’d much rather get after the bastard who did for the girl. ACC Howlett seems to think that you might be able to shine some light on it all.’

‘I can give you some background. The thing is, nobody really knows how Biggart got where he did. He used to be so low on the O’Donnell family totem pole that they’d only use him to wipe their arses if there was no sandpaper left. He was not a clever man –’ Moffat drained his glass ‘– but he was crafty, certainly crafty enough to always be one step ahead of us.’

‘Background, you said?’

‘Well, he used to run with the O’Donnell family, like I said. Wee Archie O’Donnell in particular. But once the Marchetti boy was taken, and they were all at each other’s throats, we had the upper hand, and the rest is history. Wee Archie’d be in his forties now, maybe a bit older. He’s doing life in the Bar-L for taking somebody’s head off with a machete, so he’s not likely to get out any time soon.’ Moffat smiled. ‘Those days produced a stream of intelligence for us. People found the nerve to step forward, and there was a secret information amnesty, if you like. We just picked them up and locked them up. The families were never hugely into drugs – that was a cultural thing – but there was an outbreak of the usual fighting for territory, and that
caused the great heroin drought of 1999 to 2000. Prices were going through the roof. Biggart found a supply and moved into the vacuum. Quickly. So, one minute he was a two-bit pimp, and within a couple of years he was the bee’s knees with an endless supply of red heroin.’

‘So, somebody was backing him?’

‘I don’t doubt it. Didn’t doubt it then, don’t doubt it now. Presumably he’d proved his worth. Hence the tattoo. But, at the time, we had no idea what a monster he would turn out to be, did we?’

‘How about Mrs Biggart? She had a close association with a much younger man, apparently. And it’s possible he might have known her husband as well.’

Moffat grinned. ‘Is that a euphemism? If he was a good-looking young man, Biggart may well have
known
him. Any idea who he was?’ It was a direct question

Anderson said evasively, ‘I think we’ll know by tomorrow. What we don’t know is why Melinda Biggart was killed.’

Moffat waved a cloud of midges from above his head. The heat was starting to wane. ‘In that game, any association is a dangerous one. And there’s another drug drought on now. Somebody is squeezing the supply again. Just look back over the last eight months. You’ve noticed a lot of dealers have been killed or packed up and moved on? A kind of ethnic cleansing of the unclean. Which means somebody is holding on to the supply, so that when the balance tips they’ll be in the driving seat.’

‘And a new king moves in?’

‘Or queen,’ said Moffat. ‘The trouble is, the price drops with the flood. There’s more activity, more chance the cops hear about it and intervene. It all gets messy.’

‘Seems messy either way.’

‘You want another?’ He reached for Anderson’s drained glass.

‘Coke for me, please. I’m driving.’

Moffat got to his feet. ‘All I’m saying is, Colin, always look behind what you see. You’re still on the job, and I don’t expect you to say anything, but if you know, definitely know, of any more dead girls out there, young girls, with any hint that they’re foreign, then we’re talking about human trafficking. Human flesh is good currency nowadays. People will invest a lot in that kind of business. A child can be bought in Nigeria for twenty dollars, and sold over here for thousands. And that means you’re looking at organized crime. Russian, if we consider the evidence of the tattoo.’

‘Yes, we’ve got that far. Is that what LOCUST is being set up for?’

‘That’s the rumour. But no matter what, Special Branch will come along and take it off you, so please don’t think you owe the job too much. Because they won’t think they owe you anything. If it suits them, they’ll throw you to the lions.’

8.30 P.M.

Mick Batten got off the subway train at Hillhead, with a battered leather satchel slung over one shoulder, and an overstuffed rucksack over the other. He liked Glasgow – it reminded him of his Liverpool hometown – and he was starting to feel quite at home here, as if he was coming back to see family he actually liked. He and ACC Howlett had been emailing thoughts and documents backwards
and forwards to each other for a couple of weeks now. Batten was a forensic psychologist, not a criminologist, but he could see the bigger picture perfectly well, and Howlett had been impressed – as people often are when somebody else comes along and not only does their job for them, but does it better. Criminal psychology was simple in a case like this. All he had to do was separate the wood from the trees, stand back and take a good look.