Flesh Wounds (25 page)

She put the cup to her lips and stopped, then put it down again. Bad memories, bitter tastes.

Catherine watched Laura write down the name. They’d find out the details back at HQ.

‘If there was any kind of silver lining, you might have thought it was that at least Teddy was off of Brenda’s hands, but I don’t think she regarded it that way. You seldom saw her out and about once he went to prison, and on the odd occasion you did, she’d cross the street or avoid catching your eye.’

‘What happened to him?’ Catherine asked, calculating that he ought to have been released long since, unless he was sectioned.

‘He died in prison. I don’t know if it was anything to do with his condition, I just know he died. Of course, someone like Teddy, you’d always be afraid one of the other prisoners would do something to him, but that wasn’t what happened.’

Mrs Lamont seemed to change her mind about the tea and drank down the last of it, as though drawing a line under something.

Catherine’s phone rang: Zoe. She excused herself and took a walk out into the hall, leaving Laura to take over for a minute. She heard her ask about when Brenda got cleaned up, and the beginning of Mrs Lamont’s answer, something about Teddy’s anniversary.

‘Hi, Zoe. I gather you’re talking to Sheehan’s AA sponsor,’ Catherine said, so that Zoe could take a few things as read.

‘Yes, ma’am. Sponsor’s name is Agnes Nisbet. She’s a retired teacher. She’s known Brenda for fourteen years, sees her at least once a week, most recently five days ago. Absolutely no hint she was coming off the wagon, and I’m guessing she’d know what to look for.’

‘Had she come off before?’

‘A few wobbles over the years, yes, but Agnes said you could see the build-up to them from miles out.’

‘So I take it she was on an even keel recently.’

‘More than that. Agnes said she had been a bit burdened, as she always was at this time of year.’

‘Is this about the brother?’

‘Yes. You know about that?’

‘We’re with the neighbour across the street. Getting filled in on local history.’

‘Okay. So she gets kind of burdened when it comes around to “the anniversary”, as Brenda described it.’

‘The brother’s death.’

‘Except that this year, Agnes said Brenda came out the other side of it early and in good shape. She was religious, wasn’t she? A Catholic?’

‘Tim to the brim,’ Catherine confirmed, thinking of all the crucifixes and holy pictures. ‘Why?’

‘It’s just that Brenda told her sponsor she was in a good place, mentally and spiritually, because she had “finally made her confession”. Agnes kept using the word “burdened”, so I got her to clarify that this was Brenda’s term. It sounded like there was something she seriously needed to get off her chest, and she felt a lot better about herself afterwards.’

‘Aye. Until a little while later she’s surrounded by all this alky debris, having apparently drunk herself to death.’

Catherine walked back into the living room, where Mrs Lamont was talking with admiration and regret about Brenda’s efforts to literally put her house in order, her endeavours to tidy up her garden being particularly appreciated by the neighbour who had to look at it every day from her own.

‘Mrs Lamont, did you notice whether Brenda had any visitors recently?’

She gave it some thought, gazing across the road as though trying to picture the scene without all those polis vehicles cluttering it up.

‘Not in the past few days, no. Although, hang on, there was a chap maybe a couple of weeks ago. I noticed him because I saw his car going along very slowly, like he was looking for a particular house, and I was very curious to see where he was going to stop. He got out and went in to see Brenda. He was there a while. I saw him coming out again.’

‘And did you see Brenda? Did she seem upset or anything?’

‘No. They seemed to part on quite polite terms.’

‘Do you think you would recognise him if I showed you a picture?’

‘I don’t know. I’d be happy to try.’

Catherine reached into her bag and looked out the mug shot she carried for control purposes. It was of an actor from the Pantechnicon, posing as a con.

‘Is this him?’

Mrs Lamont pored over it for barely half a second and shook her head.

‘No. Definitely not. Too young, for one thing.’

‘What about this one?’ she suggested, presenting a picture of Glen Fallan.

‘The age is closer, but no.’

Catherine swapped it for a shot of Stevie Fullerton.

‘And how about this guy?’

Mrs Lamont reached for the picture and began nodding enthusiastically, pleasantly surprised at her own certainty.

‘Yes. This is him. I wasn’t being nosy. It was just that I couldn’t help but be curious as he had such a fancy-looking sports car.’

‘Tick tock,’ said a voice from behind Glen as he jogged along the edge of the sports field, savouring the outside air and maximising his exercise time.

He turned and, as he expected, saw only a group of inmates standing watching the football match that was in progress, none of them making eye contact.

It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it, though each time the voice had been different. Somebody was trying to put the fear into him, playing on the facelessness of the place and the fact that he’d never know who to look out for when the time finally came.

The only person he at least knew
not
to look out for had been the first guy to vocalise the threat, because he was the only one who said anything face to face. It was somebody he vaguely recognised from way back when, twenty-five years and in this prick’s case about twelve stone ago.

‘You’re deid, Fallan,’ he had said, leaning over Glen as he lay back, using one of the weight-training machines. ‘You’re fuckin’ deid.’

‘I’ve been deid before,’ he replied. ‘I’m developing a tolerance.’

Glen knew he could discount him as a threat because the people he was truly worried about wouldn’t be identifying themselves. Nor would they be giving him any warnings.

Glen heard a sudden babble of voices from over by the entrance, and saw one of the screws bark orders to his colleagues as he hurried towards the source. This time Glen immediately checked his surroundings, watching for a blindside attack like the one that had claimed the slashing victim in the dining hall. This wasn’t a diversion, however. Whatever was going down had happened inside.

Exercise time was extended by twenty minutes because they were still cleaning up the corridor when the standard hour was up.

Word spread fast in a place like this. Before he had even made it back to his cell, Glen had learned that the victim this time was the slasher from the other day. He’d been stabbed in the throat with a sharpened hairbrush. He had been rushed to the infirmary, but the rumour was he was already dead.

Tit for tat. Back and forth. The endless cycle.

He thought of Stevie, and a cycle Glen thought he’d ended long ago, but he’d been wrong.

Nokturn.

It was a place on West George Street called Night-Tek, which Stevie renamed, after a club he’d been to while on business in Holland. The main interior was square, overlooked by a mezzanine level on three sides, meaning most of the seating areas were secluded beneath the upper platforms, with the dance floor in the centre. Up on the mezzanine, there was a further elevation of two steps at one end, forming a golden-rope-cordoned VIP area. This was where Stevie held court among friends or received special guests, such as the occasional footballer, boxer or model: sometimes comped in, and in other instances paid to put in an appearance.

Glen didn’t like pubs but he did enjoy nightclubs. He liked the music, the volume and power of it, and he especially liked the fact that it was too loud for anyone to bother speaking much. People seldom tried to make conversation with him, and this made it easier to just melt into the walls and observe.

Jazz had been at the bar, almost certainly pulling rank to get served ahead of the queue, but that wasn’t what led to the carnage. This was premeditated and carefully planned. An unholy alliance of the Egans, the Beattie mob and assorted other Gallowhaugh miscreants had slipped in, separately and quietly, and on a pre-arranged signal commenced wrecking the joint.

The pre-arranged signal was Stanley Beattie slashing Jazz, opening his face from his cheekbone to his jaw.

Downstairs descended into mayhem instantly, as the assailants took advantage of the panic among the revellers to start tearing up the place. They primarily attacked known faces associated with Stevie, but if they couldn’t find one to hand, they just went for anybody who didn’t get out of the way fast enough. Tables and chairs flew, as did fists, boots, bottles and glasses.

Glen accompanied Stevie as he ran to the balcony. Even amid the chaos, the darkness and the flashing lights, it didn’t take him long to suss what was going on. Doke and Haffa went barrelling into the mêlée, the club’s bouncers also charging in from all sides. The music went off and the house lights came up, but neither prompted a breaking of the spell: they just provided a clearer view of the violence and made the sounds of screams, wreckage and collision seem all the louder.

Glen tried to restrain Stevie from his efforts to get downstairs.

‘Let your boys handle this,’ he urged.

Glen saw it for what it was: a jealous, impotent act of destructive defiance, like a doomed peasants’ uprising. Stevie should have ignored it, gone back to the VIP area and sipped champagne until the perpetrators had all been chucked out onto West George Street, or even presided over it serenely from above, recognising that it represented a form of triumph.

‘They’re just trying to drag you down to their level,’ Glen told him. ‘They want a shot at you, on their terms.’

Stevie stared at him in consternation, then wrestled his way past. Glen could probably have stopped him, but it wasn’t worth it. Stevie wanted it too much.

Looking back, Glen’s reasoning hadn’t stood a chance, and the latter gambit had probably been the most counter-productive thing he could say. As he began to understand, gazing down and watching Nokturn’s new owner wade into the fray, Stevie was always on their level. Stevie had been holding court in his new kingdom, sipping champagne in the VIP section, then two minutes later he was brawling in the dirt with nobodies, and what this told Glen was that Stevie, in keeping with all his crew and all the guys they were fighting with, would
rather
be brawling in the dirt than lording it in the VIP section. They only wanted to be sitting there as a fuck-you to their rivals anyway.

Despite being ahead in his thinking, and having the vision to see a world beyond Gallowhaugh, when it came down to it, it was still all about face, all about being on top. If somebody wanted a shot at Stevie he couldn’t walk away from it, like he couldn’t stand even thinking they’d put one over on him. He also loved the violence, loved the mayhem, a strange corollary to his meticulous sense of organisation, his command of systems and plans.

Glen saw nothing he could use or enjoy in this. He watched for a few minutes and then slipped away out the fire exit, the sound of sirens carried on the blast of cold air that greeted him as soon as he opened the door.

The car park outside the Old Croft Brasserie was surprisingly full for this hour of the morning, Jasmine thought. It was just a little past ten and yet it looked like it could be lunchtime; an upscale business lunchtime at that, going by the array of pricey rides lined up across the tarmac. Her beloved red Civic was only a year old and in her eyes still immaculate enough to grace any showcourt, but it looked almost dowdy, not to mention minuscule, alongside so many Q7s, X6s, Cayennes and Range Rovers.

She had heard the place was very trendy, but hadn’t anticipated that it would be attracting such a crowd for morning coffee. At least this meant it was open, as she wasn’t sure whether the mourning period was officially over.

She was trying to stem a sense of trepidation as she walked towards the main entrance, and thought of how her mum might have felt as she approached the same building back in her teens. Was she excited about the prospect of a night in the pub? Was she apprehensive about getting knocked back? Was she conflicted about being in the company of the Fullerton brothers, aware of the protection their patronage conferred, but equally conscious of being marked by association? It was impossible to know, and not much easier to picture. They’d spent a fortune renovating the place, so much so that her mum might not have recognised it.

Jasmine could see movement through the glass doors, hear the hubbub of voices and the clack of heels on a hard floor. Still she couldn’t shake this feeling of exposure and vulnerability, hitting her all the harder for it being so unaccustomed. Doorstepping strangers was what she did for a living. It always put her a little on edge – and arguably that was where she needed to be in order to do it effectively – but she had grown used to how it felt.

This was something different, and in that action of reaching for the door handle, she understood why. The difference was that normally at this point she was pretending to be someone else. It was both her gambit and her shield: that moment of walking through the door and representing herself as someone she was not was the moment she stepped into character and left the real Jasmine outside. This morning, the only card she had to play was the truth; being herself the only valid passport to the world she needed to explore.

The door held firm, resisting her attempts both to push and pull. She tried the handle on the other one but fared no better. They were locked. However, her ineffective rattling at least attracted the attention of someone inside. A tall, heavy-set middle-aged man in a suit approached the doors, a tired expression on his face. He looked like a bouncer but she thought it a little early in the day for such personnel, and couldn’t think of ever encountering one at a restaurant.

He opened the door just a little, certainly not by way of inviting her inside. Close up, she revised her bouncer impression. The suit was too expensive-looking, and in conjunction with the scars and tattoos she estimated she was dealing with management rather than employee; but not necessarily restaurant management.