Hour Of Darkness (25 page)

Forty-Eight

‘Boss, I’ve been thinking,’ Haddock said.

‘Glad to hear it,’ Sammy Pye retorted. ‘Sometimes I wonder. Did it produce a pearl of wisdom?’

‘Up yours . . . with respect, of course. I’d love us to be able to put Alafair Drysalter in Bella Watson’s kitchen and find a strand of her hair stuck in the blood, but I don’t believe it’s going to happen. She’s a spoiled selfish woman, and she has that dim sod of a husband on a string, but I don’t see her with a knife in her hand.’

‘Me neither,’ the DI admitted. ‘I only did the test out of thoroughness, not expectation . . . and to rile her a wee bit as well. I’m quite convinced we hit the nail on the head over her father’s death, and it’s possible she could have paid people to do the job on Bella Watson, but the timing’s wrong for me.

‘We know from the feedback from the ACC that Hastie McGrew picked up a clue to where she was living while he was still in prison. If they were that desperate to get rid of her, would they have waited until Hastie was released? I don’t see that.

‘To be honest, I got the impression that if Alafair ever knew of Bella’s existence, she’d forgotten about her, and the same may well have been true of Hastie. Which reminds me, did the hospital confirm his condition?’

‘I spoke to his probation officer,’ Sauce replied, ‘and she was able to fill me in. She’s entitled to know, since he’s a lifer on parole. She’s been advised by the hospital that he has not one, but two brain tumours, and that surgery isn’t an option. Nothing’s an option really; they could try radiation but he’d almost certainly wind up like his father, and even then not for long. As it is, the probation officer says he has motor difficulties and his speech is starting to go. They’re about to move him into a specialist nursing home.’

‘Poor bastard.’

‘Huh!’ Haddock snorted. ‘That poor bastard murdered two men in Edinburgh, and there were three more in Tyneside that the CPS knew he did but never charged him with because there was a one in four chance of an acquittal. If ever there’s a case of poetic justice, it’s him.’

‘Would you feel that way if it was Cheeky’s grandpa with the tumour?’ Pye asked, quietly.

‘Probably, but I’d keep it to myself.’ Sauce paused. ‘In a roundabout way that leads me back to Perry Holmes. What are we going to do about his death and Gayle’s evidence, that Alafair paid him to go away?’

‘Us? We’re going to report it to the fiscal’s office and that’s all. I spoke to the DCS and that’s what she says.’

‘What if they kick it back to us?’

‘She won’t let them. She’ll send it to the cold case unit. But it won’t come to that, Sauce; we’re pretty sure what happened, but pretty soon, when Hastie goes, Alafair will be the only one of them left alive. There’s nobody to incriminate her; even the fiscal will work that one out.’ He frowned. ‘Let’s not get sidetracked on that any longer. Mary Chambers is keen to know how we’re getting on with her bright idea, looking for Spanish plated vans near Caledonian Crescent around the time of the murder.’

‘I was afraid she would be,’ Haddock said. ‘I’ve got the City Council’s monitoring department on to it. You can guess how pleased they were when I asked them. So far, nothing; I’ll stir them if you like, but they know already that it comes from the boss.’

‘It’s all right, I’ll tell her. It was a shot in the dark and Mary knows it.’ He was in the act of reaching for his phone when it rang.

‘DI Pye,’ a bright female voice sang on the other end of the line, ‘this is Anna Jacobowski from the Forensic Service. I’ve got something rather intriguing for you on your murder inquiry.’

‘Just intriguing? Not case-breaking?’

‘That’s down to you guys, isn’t it?’ she chuckled. ‘We’ve just analysed one of the dozens of DNA samples from Caledonian Crescent. It’s different from all the rest; it demonstrates a second generation familial relationship with the dead woman.’

‘What does that mean, in plain Scottish?’

‘It means it’s her grandson.’

‘Her grandson?’ Pye repeated, switching the phone to speaker mode. ‘You’re on broadcast, Anna. DS Haddock is with me.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ Sauce remarked. ‘Jack McGurk and Karen Neville interviewed Marlon Junior yesterday and he denied even knowing that he had a Granny Watson. I think you and I need to talk to this lad ourselves, boss.’

‘Maybe you do,’ the scientist intervened, ‘but I haven’t got to the really interesting part yet. I’ve tested the Marlon Hicks swab that I received from your two colleagues, and from the very first analysis I can tell you that the other one isn’t his. Bella Watson had two grandsons, gentlemen . . . at least two.’

‘How?’ Pye gasped.

‘How many ways are there, Inspector?’ Jacobowski laughed. ‘I’ll send you a written report by email.’

‘There’s IVF,’ Haddock observed, as she hung up, ‘but somehow I can’t see Marlon Senior leaving any frozen sperm behind him.’

Pye frowned, looking up from his chair at the ceiling. ‘Could Lulu and Marlon have had another son, one we never knew about?’

‘No. If they were brothers, Anna would have said.’

‘Of course, but Bella had another son, remember. He died when he was fifteen, but I suppose, in theory . . .’

‘I’ll get on to the General Registers Office; see if Ryan is named on any birth record . . . other than his own. Any son of his would be pushing thirty by now, so I’ll know where to look.’

‘Get Jackie to do that, Sauce, I’ve got another task for us. We know from Marlon Hicks that Lulu’s mother’s still around. Let’s find her, and ask her how much she knows about the Watson family.’

Forty-Nine

The HR person was as good as her word; Max Allan’s file made it from her office to mine within five minutes. It extended to three folders, Max having enjoyed a long career that had ended in the carnage of the assassination of my predecessor in the Strathclyde chief’s chair a few weeks earlier.

‘Why the hell couldn’t all this have been computerised?’ I grumbled as I contemplated forty years’ worth of documents. ‘Then I could have entered “David Mackenzie” in the search window and pushed a button.’

But it hadn’t so there was nothing for it but to start the process. I decided to discard some of the material, since Mackenzie hadn’t been born when Max had joined the force, and so I skimmed through his career until I found his posting to Uddingston, in Lanarkshire, as a detective sergeant. The name rang a bell with me, and not only because Myra and her family had lived close by. Tom Donnelly had told me that was where the chip-pan incident had happened.

I went through the documents one by one, from that point on, and pretty soon I had a result. I hadn’t expected to find a report of the affair on Max’s file, as that would have been in CID records rather than personnel, but I did find a summary. It was attached to a note of an official commendation by the chief constable of the day, acknowledging Max’s exceptional performance in uncovering the abuse of the child and framing charges leading to a successful prosecution. The boy had been identified in the commendation document, but his name had been redacted.

I wondered about that; indeed I was curious enough to pick up the phone and ask the head of HR about it. ‘Would your department have done that automatically, thirty-odd years ago?’

‘No,’ she replied at once, ‘not then. Nowadays yes, but back then, in a confidential file, no. The published notice of commendation wouldn’t have included the attachment, you see.’

‘Was there ever a time when you’d have gone back and done it retrospectively?’

‘If we had the manpower to do that . . .’ she began, leaving the rest unsaid.

‘Could ACC Allan have had access to his own file?’

‘In theory everyone has a right to see all information held about them but, Chief, when you’re an ACC, there isn’t a door in the building that’s closed to you . . . apart from your office, perhaps.’

‘Mine? No, it isn’t, in fact.’

‘It hasn’t always been that way, I assure you.’

I laughed. ‘I’m sure. And who knows what the future will hold?’

I thanked her and got on with my self-imposed task, taking another step forward to the year in which Mackenzie had applied to join the force. By that time, Max was back in Glasgow, back in headquarters in Pitt Street. He was a chief super by then, and back in uniform, as he had been for most of his career, in a desk job supervising the traffic department. Nothing to do directly with staff recruitment; it was the responsibility of one of the ACCs of the day, but he reported to that guy, and he would have been on the same floor. If he’d wanted to . . .

‘But why, Bob, why?’ I asked myself. ‘Why would Max want to smooth Mackenzie’s way into the force and remove anything that wouldn’t have pleased the recruitment panel?’

I went through the rest of the file looking for an answer, but I saw nothing. Why was I bothered? Because the man had denied knowledge of someone who was a fugitive and he had lied about it.

At that point I could have gone straight to him. I could even have extended the traditional invitation to Pitt Street, ‘to help with our inquiries’. But, like anyone skilled in cross-examination, I prefer to have the answers before I put the questions, and there were none in that file.

I decided on another tack, another, informal line of inquiry. I have a pal, a man who’s been useful to me on several occasions. His name is Jim Glossop; he used to be a civil servant but he retired at sixty and became a consultant genealogist. I found him on my contact list and selected his number.

‘Bob,’ he ventured, the mobile signal sounding a little other-worldly, ‘is that you? I thought you’d moved on to great things.’

‘You mean I wasn’t bloody great before, Jim?’

‘Right,’ he said firmly, then laughed. ‘Let me rephrase that.’

‘No, mate, it’s out there now. It’s a pretty good judgement, too.’

‘What can I do for you,’ he asked. ‘I don’t imagine this is a social call, not from a man who’s as busy as you must be.’

‘Not exactly,’ I admitted. ‘It’s not exactly a police matter either, not yet, at any rate. I want to know about a man named Maxwell Allan, parents’ names, wife’s maiden name, siblings, anything there is.’

‘He’s Scottish, I take it.’

‘Yes.’

‘You got a date of birth?’

I read it from the file.

‘It shouldn’t be a problem, then. I take it you need it yesterday.’

‘The day before if possible. And Jim, the bill comes to me, not the police service.’

‘What bill?’ He hung up.

Fifty

Finding Marlon’s Grandma Ford was much easier than the detectives had feared it might be. They checked the address shown on the young man’s birth record and discovered that she still lived there. Two calls later they had discovered that she had a job as a dinner lady at one of the city’s schools, and that her working day had just ended.

The Fords were council tenants, in the city’s sprawling, nineteen fifties, Clermiston estate. It had been regarded as a showpiece in its time and retained an air of gentility.

‘Not bad,’ Haddock remarked, surveying number twenty-seven Clermiston Grange. ‘There were schemes in Edinburgh built well after this that aren’t there any more.’

The house was a mid-terraced villa with a large front garden that was maintained better than most in the street. A close-mown lawn was surrounded by rose bushes, all of them neatly trimmed. ‘I wish mine looked like that,’ Pye muttered as they walked up the path towards the white front door.

The DI was reaching out to push the buzzer when the door swung open, and a woman stood looking at them, severely. The detectives knew that Gina Ford was sixty-two years old, and that had created an image in their relatively young minds. Their stereotype was short, stocky and with grey hair, possibly wearing an apron; they did not expect a five-foot eight-inch ash blonde who could have passed for fifty, wearing a loose Bob Marley T-shirt that did little to disguise an impressive bust and jeans that might have been painted on.

‘I’ve been expecting you guys,’ she said. ‘It’s as well you came to me, or I’d have come lookin’ for you.’

‘You’d go looking for Jehovah’s Witnesses?’ Haddock exclaimed, wide-eyed.

The stern expression cracked, and a small smile took its place. ‘Bloody comedian,’ she said, grudgingly. ‘You look no more like Witnesses than I look like Beyoncé Knowles. Do you do a line as a female impersonator as well, son? I was told one of you was a woman.’

‘Different officers, Mrs Ford,’ Pye replied, identifying himself and his sergeant. He made to show her his warrant card, but she waved it away.

‘Come on in,’ she ordered. ‘I don’t like the polis on my doorstep. Pye and Haddock,’ she added. ‘You sound like the menu in a fuckin’ chippie.’

As they stepped into a well-decorated hallway, Haddock nodded over his shoulder. ‘You’ve got a nice garden. Do you look after it?’

She shook her head. ‘Still he makes with the funnies. This boy must keep you in stitches, Inspector.’ She waved a perfectly manicured hand. ‘Do I look as if I’ve got manure under my nails, Sergeant? No, that’s all my man’s work; I take care of the inside, he does the rest. It keeps us out of each other’s hair . . . no’ that he’s got much, mind. One of the secrets of a happy marriage, lads, you should remember that.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Pye said, drily, as she led them into a neat living room, well-furnished and sparkling with cleanliness. He was still smarting from her menu wisecrack. ‘Now, tell me,’ he continued, declining the offer of a seat, ‘why were you going to come looking for us?’

‘Why the hell do you think?’ Her initial anger resurfaced. ‘Who do you people think you are? What gives you the right to go upsetting my grandson? He came to see me last night, in a hell of a state. His mother and I have spent the whole of his lifetime protecting him from the truth about his father, and your two bloody colleagues go and spill it out in the middle of some bloody café!’

‘I’m sorry,’ the DI retorted. ‘His name came up in the middle of our investigation and he had to be interviewed. It wasn’t possible to do it without telling him exactly why.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can explain that, Mrs Ford. We’re investigating his grandmother’s murder, and we found that Marlon is working for the family that police believe ordered his father’s killing.’

Gina Ford stared at him, rocking slightly back on her heels. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ she whispered.

‘How much do you know about your grandson’s father’s death?’ Haddock asked her, more gently than Pye.

‘The same as everybody else,’ she said. ‘He was found battered to death in the old Infirmary Street Baths. A few weeks later the papers said that the men the police suspected of doin’ it had been found dead themselves, in Newcastle. They said it was a gangland thing.’

‘That’s more or less how it was,’ the DS agreed. ‘The investigators at the time believed they were silenced by the man who ordered it.’

‘All that’s no surprise,’ she told him, ‘given that the Watsons were involved. Fucking lowlives, that family. That Marlon was the biggest mistake my Lulu ever made . . . the only mistake, God bless her. He wasn’t a bad lad as such, always quite cheery, but the man he worked for was. And as for his mother . . .’ Finally, she sank into an armchair and insisted that the detectives seat themselves.

‘Bella Watson tried to take over our lass after she found out she was pregnant by Marlon. But Robert and I, we weren’t having it, weren’t letting her have any influence over the child. We told her to stay away from our family. She didn’t like it, even threatened us, but my Robert’s no soft touch. He’s been a bus driver for thirty years, and he takes no nonsense. He went to see the man Marlon had worked for and told him what was happening. He said not to worry, and Bella never came near us again.’

‘But you know she’s dead?’ Pye asked, his earlier annoyance forgotten.

‘Oh aye. I saw it in the
Evening News.
No surprise really, and I suppose no surprise that you folk should want to talk to the laddie. But to tell him about her, that’s something else. I’m not happy about that. We all decided very early on to tell wee Marlon that his dad had run off. Then Duane came along, he and Lulu got married and had Robyn, and then Kyle out in St Lucia, and we more or less forgot all about what had happened. So, why did you have to upset him?’

‘There was no option,’ the DI explained. ‘I know, Marlon said he had no idea he had another grandmother, but we’re simply not able to take someone’s word in a serious crime investigation. We needed his DNA to prove that he’d never been in her flat, and the officers who interviewed him had to tell him why they wanted it. As for doing it in a café, it’s a discreet process, so they thought it was better to see him there than going to his work or having him brought into the police station.’

‘I suppose,’ Mrs Ford conceded. She was silent for a while as she replayed the discussion in her mind. ‘What you said earlier,’ she went on, when she was ready, ‘about Marlon working for the folk that killed his dad. What did you mean by that? Who ordered it?’

‘His name was Perry Holmes,’ Pye told her. ‘He was the top man in organised crime in Edinburgh and probably in Scotland, at the peak of his career. He had a run-in with the man who employed Marlon Senior.’

‘The guy Manson?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And the laddie was killed in the crossfire?’

‘More or less. He was targeted, to send a message to Manson, because Manson was having an affair with Holmes’s daughter.’

‘They killed the boy for something his boss done?’ She was incredulous.

‘Yes.’

‘Animals, the lot of them. So how does our laddie come to be working for them?’

‘As far as we can see it’s purely accidental. Perry Holmes was in a wheelchair. He had a carer, who happens to be Duane Hicks’s cousin, and who still works in Edinburgh. Duane asked him if he could help young Marlon find a job.

‘Perry Holmes had a lot of legitimate businesses, as well as the criminal side, and when he died his son and daughter inherited them. Vanburn, the cousin, was on good terms with the son, and that’s how it came about. They even gave him a flat to rent, I believe.’

‘That’s true,’ she affirmed. ‘These people, do they know who Marlon’s father was?’

‘I don’t believe they have any idea, and it will stay that way as far as we’re concerned.’

‘How much does he know about them?’

‘Again, nothing. He was told the circumstances of his father’s death and his family history, but that’s all.’

‘And that’s enough. He must never know about these Holmes people.’

Pye nodded. ‘We couldn’t agree more.’

‘Thanks. We’ll get the boy out of there. Robert’ll find him a job in the bus garage, and he can come and live with us.’ She leaned back in her chair and looked at them. ‘But that’s not all that brought you here, is it?’ she observed.

Haddock smiled at her perspicacity. ‘Not quite,’ he admitted. ‘We wanted to ask if you know anything else about the Watson clan. To be specific, did Lulu ever mention Marlon having had a child, a son, by anyone else, before her?’

‘I doubt it would have been after her, son, given that she had a few weeks to go when they buried him. But no, she never did. If you’re really asking whether he had an earlier kid with Lulu, the answer’s no. She wasn’t off the rails much longer than it took her to get knocked up.’

Pye leaned forward, rejoining the discussion. ‘What about the rest of the family? You see, we know that Bella had another grandson, but we can’t work out how.’

‘I see.’ Gina Ford paused, pondering the question. ‘Well,’ she ventured, ‘as I recall, the last time I saw our Marlon’s dad, when he dropped Lulu off from a hospital appointment, he was all excited. I asked him why. He said that he was going to meet his sister, and he hadn’t seen her for twelve years.’

‘Sister?’ Haddock exclaimed as he stared at the DI. ‘What bloody sister?’