A Deviant Breed (23 page)

‘For how long?’ he asked, but could guess the answer.

‘Geneva?  Oh, I dunno, a day, two maybe.  But God knows if she’ll let me catch a return flight.  You know Bobbie, always another deal to do or well to sink.’ 

And that was the response he had expected.  Theirs was not his idea of a marriage.  It felt more like an affair – with rings on.  Elspeth sneaking home and cheating on her boss to be with her husband, but to her mind the rewards her job afforded outweighed the inconvenience of being at Bobbie’s beckon call. That, and she loved it; jetting business class around the world, staying in five star hotels, schmoozing with the movers and shakers of the industry, corporate bankers and billionaire investors.  Whereas he would settle for less money and a little –
a lot
more time together, a topic, when raised that always got kicked into touch.  Elspeth would never ask him to compromise his career in the interests of their relationship, so talk of changing her job was also off limits. 

‘What did Jock want?’ He held his left arm out and twisted his wrist to show her the watch. ‘To give you a cruddy old watch?’

‘His Omega, and this cruddy old watch is all he has to show for a life’s work,’ he said bitterly.   ‘
And
– it’s a collectible cruddy old watch, worth two or three grand at least I imagine.’  She looked surprised, but was it because that was all that Jock had to show for all those years, or that it was worth so much?  He examined it. ‘It’ll look it too, with a new crystal and a bit of a clean.’  Rotating his wrist he examined it again. ‘
A
nd a new strap.’

‘May as well just buy a new watch,’ she suggested sarcastically. ‘How many times have you told me not to buy you a watch because you prefer that cheap old piece of tat in your waistcoat pocket?  It’s a real pain come birthdays and Christmases; it’s the only thing I can ever think of.  And they have some beauties in duty free.’

‘Well, I definitely don’t need one now.  And pocket watch is not cheap tat – just cheap.’

‘Anyway, as I recall, you stopped wearing them because you’d lost too many fighting with drunks and nobheids.’

‘True, but that was then.  DCI’s don’t tend to get into many scraps.   Anyway, this is Dad’s watch, he wanted me to have it before –’ The thought of how far this once, proud pillar of his community had slid choked the words from in his throat.  Elspeth had only been teasing.  She smiled tenderly and ran her fingers over the back of the hand that cupped his wine glass.

‘I think you should eat something.’  He shook his head.  ‘Come to bed then?’  He drained his glass and considered another but rinsed it out instead.  Unless he started to exercise a little more restraint, wine was going to become the friend whisky had once been.

***

Ether Street, one of the internet cafés MI had been using to communicate with Archie and contribute to his blog, was but a short detour off his route to the office, so he decided to check it out on his way to work.  As soon as he pulled up outside he recognised the place.  In his days on the beat it had been a hobby shop.  Like many a constable before him, PC 661 Alec Dunbar had made it his business to get to know the local tradesmen, shopkeepers and other convenient spots where a foot-weary copper could scrounge a cup of tea, and ‘New Model World’ had been one such place.

As far as he had ever been able to tell, in those days the twins that used to run the shop, did so as a hobby.  His suspicion was evidenced by a distinct lack of customers and the layer of dust over almost every surface.  That, and the fact that stock rarely seemed to move or change for that matter.  The twins seemed to spend most of their working day assembling Revell kits or painting model soldiers for use in war games.  What he never saw them do was sell anything.

Dunbar could not have claimed to have ever really got to know the eccentric twin brothers, Ewan and Innes McNair.  To call them introverted was to understate the depth of their reserve.  Conversation was invariably one sided and, often as not, restricted to monosyllabic responses when they did engage him.  It struck him at the time that theirs must have been the only business in Edinburgh where the owners had taken a vow of silence – but they made a mean brew.  Loose leaf Brooke Bond in the mornings, Earl Grey in the afternoons, and they always seemed happy to see him, and to show off their latest project.  In later years, on reflection, he did wonder whether it was because the presence of a copper in the shop brought a sense of security, or that they just had a thing for handsome young men in uniform. 

In their day the ceiling had been amateurishly painted in gaudy sky blue with fluffy clouds.  Suspended beneath from fine fishing line was a mock aerial dog-fight comprising of a few dusty Spitfires and Hurricanes, and far more dusty Messerschmitts and Focke-Wolfes, Junkers and Heinkels.  Across the wall, facing the front door and above the picture rail, they had painted Churchill’s rousing tribute to the pilots of the Battle of Britain:
“Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”

The chime had not changed, neither had the ceiling, less the model planes of course.  Nicotine coloured fragments of the Sellotape that once held them aloft still remained along with the ghost of Churchill’s words.  Despite being buried under several coats of brilliant white matt emulsion, he could still just make them out – or was it just his mind’s eye?  It is after all, a famous enough quotation, and one he knew by heart.  So perhaps
he was
just imagining it.  But no, the emulsion had covered the words but had not obliterated them; Sir Winston, as was his wont, always had the last word.

Dunbar closed the door behind him and looked around a room cluttered with computers and monitors.  The tech was a mix of old and new; defunct and downright scrap.  Cables bulged out of trunking or hung in swags between benches whilst spiral cable-tidies snaked all over the floor, pasted down under gaffer tape.  Lights blinked, computer blipped and couple of early-bird foreign student types hunched over QWERTY boards in window seats.  The one nearest to him, a baby-faced oriental with the weirdest razor cut and colour job he had seen, and the other, a bum-fluff faced Asian with chronic acne.  Both studiously ignored him. 

Out of sight in a recess a gravelly cockney voice asked. ‘Can I help yer, chief?’  He slowly emerged crabbing along on the wheels of his chair. Dunbar found himself looking at a lean ‘biker-type’ of indiscernible age.  He was either a hard-drinking, spliff-monster 40-something, or a pensioner who was wearing well, Dunbar could not decide.  The biker occupied a space, which in the twins’ day, had been off limits and had been filled floor to ceiling with shelves that held back copies of model making magazines and catalogues. He wore the statutory customised and very much lived in, cut-off denim jacket over a faded Metallica T-shirt and scuffed leather jeans.  Covered as he was in tattoos from his pierced earlobes to the words, hate across the fingers of his right hand, and rage across the fingers of his left.  His ‘Born-to-be-Wild’ look topped off by straggly greying hair scraped back into a ponytail.  Dunbar thought that he looked more like he should be astride a customised hog than an ergonomic office stool.

‘Are you the owner?’

‘Nahh, my ol’ lady’s gaff, innit.’

‘Is it?  And you are?’ he asked reaching into his pocket.

‘Banty.’

Dunbar waited.

‘Who wants to know?’

Dunbar flashed his ID. 

‘Ansell – Brian if yer must, but everyone calls me Banty. The gaffer’s Angie, me missus.’  Banty chortled. ‘An’ that’s only evva happened to me once before.’

Dunbar found that hard to believe judging by the acronym ACAB (All Coppers Are Bastards) and the blood-drenched crossed battle-axe and sabre logo of The Horde, a notorious Pan-European biker gang, etched into his skin.

‘Geezers get, chief wiv’ me an’ girls, babe.
Right?
  One time I asked this geezer that come in ‘ere the same fing, an’ he
was a chief!
  Straight up! I mean a proper fackin’ red indian chief – from Alberta in Canada.  Is that mad or wot’? Wanted to email the ol’ reservation back home or summat, so I sez – I thought you lot just sent smoke signals?  He didn’t fink that was very funny.’ 

Or he had heard it too many times to find it funny, Dunbar thought. 

‘Went down like a bad pint.  Still pissed off at us for nickin’ all the beaver and buffalo an’ runnin’ the Iron Horse fru their Happy Huntin’ Grounds, I suppose.’

‘I think you meant the prairies. The Happy Hunting Ground being their spirit world.’ Dunbar corrected.

‘Whatever!  He did a bit of a war dance an’ facked off!  But I’ve still got me scalp. –
So!
  What can I do for yer, Detective Chief Inspector?’  That got the attention of the two foreign students.

‘A blogger using the call sign MI has used this place a few times to blog on a website called, The Debatables Society.  Do you know who that might be?’

‘
Arghh!
Tricky shit.  Puttin’ me on the spot wiv that, Chief.  The punters wouldn’t like me handin’ their shit over to the ol’ bill.  An’ then there’s all that data protection malarkey, a minefield – innit?’

‘Even if I told you it’s a triple homicide enquiry?’

He hesitated and shook his head. ‘Even if me efficks would allow it, we get hundreds fru’ ‘ere every week.’

Dunbar cocked his head defiantly. Banty made a steeple, interlinked his fingers, turned his palms away and cracked his knuckles before tapping away at his keyboard, scrolling through pages and pages of lists. ‘MI, is that Roman numerals or –?’

‘We’re not sure.’

After a few seconds he suddenly stopped, pushed his seat back and blurted, ‘Baby I’m hot, so show me what you got.’  He glanced at Dunbar.  ‘Spotted that sayin’ in the window of a knockin’ shop in Amsterdam, when I still rode wiv’ the bruvverhood.’

‘The Horde,’ Dunbar said.

‘Eyeballed my tatt, uh?’  He looked down at it, kissed his finger-tips and pressed them to it.   Happy days – crazy days but – happy.’

‘Ride till you die?’

‘Yeah well, kissed too many headstones of geezers that took that bollocks literally.  Got nippers now, yeah! Anyhow, Amsterdam!’ Banty leered. ‘You know the kind of place I’m talkin’ about, where the girls sit in the window showin’ off the goods, yeah?’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Remembered it an’ thought to meself, perfect!  Me own gotcha’!’

‘Catchy,’ Dunbar answered drily, if uncertain of the meaning.  Probably a computer geek thing.  It sounded much like terminology, as favoured by the tech-heads at HQ.

‘Is, innit?  The ol’ lady’s turned me from greaser to geek.’ Banty tapped the screen. ‘Here’s yer geezer look.  MI hasn’t been in for six weeks, an’ I remember him now.  Needed a personality reboot; a moody mature student type.  All beard, hair an’ chunky knits.  Spilt his latté over the keyboard.  Made him leave a deposit, but the twat nevva’ came back wiv’ the balance.’

‘CCTV?’ Dunbar asked, looking around the place.

‘Nahh, used to but – put too many punters off.’  He nodded in the direction of the two students and lowered his voice. ‘The gaff’s frequented by wanabe hackers, conspiracy freaks an’ illegal immigrants here on student visas.  They get twitchy about that surveillance shit.’

‘If he comes in again, stall him and call us,’ Dunbar handed him a card.

Banty rested a hand over his Horde tatt. ‘Proper out of me’ comfort zone ‘ere, Chief.  Grassin’s a big no-no, don’t ride with the boys no more, but still bound by our honour code.  Know how it is?  You took an oath.’

‘And if he cuts someone else’s head off?  Or digs up another grave to steal body parts ‘cos you don’t feel comfortable about telling me?’

The biker’s eyes popped then instantly narrowed into slits.  He recoiled and rolled backwards on the chair’s castors. ‘Fackin’ hell! Grave robbin’, an’ choppin’ ‘eads off?’  Dunbar nodded. ‘That’s Burke an’ Hare shit that – well nasty!’

‘Well nasty – so call me.’ At that Dunbar left.  He stepped out of the door and looked back. That had gone easier than he had hoped for once he had clocked the tattoos, and in particular The Horde tag. He could not imagine any other self-respecting member of that gang being as cooperative.  Banty was either a very much reformed character, or a wanabe himself, and if it was the latter, woe-betide him should he ever cross their path wearing their patch on his skin.  If he is a deserter from their ranks, his fate would be no-less precarious.  Banty might not take their “ride till you die” motto literally, but as far as Dunbar understood their code, they do!

***

Donnie Salkeld’s report was in his tray. Wilson Farish had been doused with lighter fuel, before being knocked over and his own booze added fuel to the flames, possibly in an attempt to try and mask that fact.  Searing to the inside of the mouth and throat indicated that he was alive when alight and that he had inhaled some of the accelerant’s fumes which then ignited.  Dunbar skipped over the detailed description of how the head was removed having seen Donnie’s re-enactment in the path-lab. Farish had also been suffering from chronic emphysema and cardiomyopathy.  So mercifully, the likelihood was that he died within seconds of being engulfed. He also had a slight contusion to the left side of his head indicative of a very hard punch or being struck with something.  He had not fallen, he had been knocked down. That was a fact and the Braur Glen enquiry was now officially a murder investigation; time to brief the team again.