Killing With Confidence (20 page)

Connor had got pretty
adapt at working them out all the same.

B R N jst a
month
. ‘Easy,’ he thought to himself, ‘Be there in just a mo,’
as the predictive text always turned mo into ‘month.’

Tell Marvel 2 get
back on on ;)
. Well, since they had arranged to meet in the
Peccadillo, Marvel would be the waitress Martel. And the
back on
on
had to be ‘the bacon on’.

Some folk had their
crosswords or their Suduko. Connor had April’s texts. The Enigma
code breakers at Bletchley Park could not have done better.

He texted her back in plain
old-fashioned English: Try to be a bit quicker than a month, you
BOC (that’s Batty Old Cow), and I’m sure MARTEL already has the
bacon on.

April was soon
tucking into a Peccadillo breakfast special. Connor opted for a
simple bowl of muesli.

He studied her with a
wry smile as she told all about Luigi’s unexpected marriage
proposal in between great mouthfuls of food. Connor fully expected
her to die this way, inhaling a whole link sausage during a long,
inane explanation about hanging baskets or whatever else had
happened to her that weekend. Like a pensioner having a heart
attack on a golf course, at least she’d pass away doing what she
enjoyed the most.

Suddenly, Connor’s
mind clicked into focus, and it had nothing to do with the
lecherous old Italian trying to get his end away. ‘Did you say
Luigi’s cousin might have seen our killer?’

‘Oh yes, I almost
forgot, after he got me all flustered with asking for my hand.’
April rooted around in her handbag, ‘Here it is,’ she announced,
producing the old notepad and studiously flicking through the
pages. ‘A red Ford Mondeo. And its licence plate.’

‘Are you sure, April?
Are you sure that’s the number plate?’ Connor asked
emphatically.

‘Oh yes, look,’ April
said, shoving her mobile phone in his face. There was a grainy
picture of a Red Mondeo, with its fuzzy number plate. ‘Bluetooth,’
she announced triumphantly, ‘Jayne showed me how to switch it on
and Luigi just transferred his cousin’s photo to my phone.’

‘Wonders will never
cease,’ Connor said with a touch of pride. ‘You may be a BOC but
you always come up trumps.’ He kissed her affectionately on the
forehead.

‘Luigi kissed me
there as well, but the dirty old bastard also managed to cop a feel
of my tits, too.’

‘Who said romance was
dead?’ Connor grinned.



Colin
Harris was also having bacon for breakfast. He had tucked a linen
napkin into his collar to prevent any grease dripping onto his
expensive Gucci suit.

He was no stranger to
fine wining and dining. Glasgow’s famous seafood restaurant
Rogano’s, nestled between Royal Exchange Square and Buchanan
Street, could always find a table for Colin Harris even at their
busiest times. In fact, he’d worked there on his bestselling
autobiography,
A Matter of Life and Death, with his biographer
Big Mac
. But this morning it was in the dank basement under the
floorboards of the Portman bar that Colin found himself, dictating
to three monstrous men who sat around the scruffy wooden table,
lifeless pints of Tennent’s lager in their massive hands even at
this early hour.

Harris said, ‘We know
the number plate was false’ – the gangster had discovered that
information illegally from a ‘contact’ who had access to the vast
database at the DVLA in Swansea – ‘but that doesn’t matter as
we know the car and have an accurate description of our man. Now
we’ve got to have our peelers out everywhere to catch him. He will
surface again, twats like that are incapable of lying low, and when
he does, I want him alive. Understand? No one is to touch him until
I get there.’

Harris gave each of
the three goons a bulging envelope, adding, ‘That’s five grand
each, another five when you nail him.’

Tracking down Osiris
had cost Harris heavily so far, what with the reward money he had
to pay his informant, the £10,000 each for his heavies, and the
£5,000 sweetener for his DVLA mole. But he would have paid ten
times that to catch his sister’s killer.

‘Happy hunting,
guys,’ Harris said with a sadistic grin as the monstrous men headed
for the steep steps that led from the basement to a trap door
behind the Portman’s bar.

None of the
regulars batted an eyelid as the three gorillas squeezed themselves
through the narrow service hatch and headed for the exit. The same
way the regulars never saw a thing when the heavies would
occasionally bundle a stranger through the same trap door to the
hell that lay beneath.

41

A New Recruit

DCI Crosbie
was now working on a triple murder inquiry. He knew every detail of
the deaths of Selina Seth and the prostitute Jackie McIvor, but
this morning he was staring at a new autopsy report – for
Martin Seth.

Martin’s death fell
under the jurisdiction of the Northern Constabulary, since his body
had been discovered at the Seths’ family lodge near Aviemore, but
as Martin had been the prime suspect in the murder of his wife,
Crosbie had been asked to work with his Highland colleagues on the
case.

In the usual
non-emotional and clumsy writing style of the head pathologist, the
autopsy papers detailed how Martin had been killed: ‘Death by
restriction of the airway caused by hanging. But it is the view of
this pathologist that the euthanasia had been staged as the
overturned chair was a foot too short for the height required for
the deceased to place his head through the noose, meaning he either
expertly jumped from the chair, placing his head in the noose, then
was able to tighten it mid-air – which is theoretically
possible – or that his head was placed in the noose at ground
level and he was hoisted by assailant(s) unknown into a hanging
position.’

Crosbie smiled to
himself. ‘Typical pathologist, always covering their arses. Of
course it’s “theoretically possible”. It’s theoretically possible I
could shag Claudia Schiffer but it ain’t going to fucking
happen.’

So, someone killed
Selina Seth. Someone else murdered Jackie McIvor. Colin Harris
tried to either kidnap or blackmail Martin Seth – or
both – and now Martin was dead.

DS Cruickshank burst
into the room. ‘Any leads, Crosbie? Anything at all? Or will we
wait until the killer keeps on killing until we catch the fucker
red-handed? What the fuck is going on, Crosbie? What the fucking
hell is going on?’

Crosbie had never
heard Cruickshank swear before. He feared it would spark off a
response off the Richter scale from his inner self, however, he
remained eerily calm and in a measured, assured tone, replied,
‘Just one more day, sir, and I’ll know where we’re going and start
making arrests. I need just one more day.’ This statement was said
more in hope than anything. Now he desperately needed to hire an
ageing new recruit.



The staff
rep Davie Paterson was as gruff as usual when he called April. ‘How
you getting on, old yin? Got your head screwed back on
yet?’

April sighed but
didn’t give much away. ‘Yeah, hanging in there, thanks.’

Paterson lowered his
voice as if making a confession. ‘Look, I’ve been asking about, to
get a feel for what the company really want from this whole
disciplinary nonsense, and it’s not looking good, April. They want
you out.’ He let the phrase hang there, to allow it time to sink
in, before continuing, ‘It looks like you’ve made an enemy of the
Weasel, and Bent has no intention of calling off his Rottweiler.
You’re screwed, my dear, unless you have a joker up your sleeve. If
not, then it’s a case of getting as much out of them as possible.
They’re trying to wriggle out of giving you the full amount, with
this gross misconduct rap. But that won’t stand up in a tribunal
when you say they put you under undue pressure. By my calculations
you’ve been here twenty-five years. You’re due a month for every
year’s service, plus your three months’ service and anything else
we can try to lob in. You should be walking out that door with
about two and a half years’ wages, but these two cunts just aren’t
playing ball. They want to sack you. We could claim anything from
sexual harassment to age discrimination. No hang on, you’re mad as
fuck, right? Have you ever had that properly checked out? If a kind
doctor would go on record to say you have early-onset Alzheimer’s,
then that would go down as a disability. And if they discriminated
against a disabled person then, Jeez, April, the sky’s the fucking
limit. Screw the thirty-one months’ pay-off, we could be looking at
three years. That’ll give you a nice little retirement pot,
eh?’

April broke into her
customary throaty laugh, thanked Davie for his help and
encouragement and hung up. She then dried her eyes and cheeks of
the tears that had been streaming down her face. He’d hit a nerve.
Early-onset Alzheimer’s was a fear she lived with every day. Both
her folks had suffered with it. They had not only forgotten each
other’s names, but even the fact that each other had even existed.
When they were put into separate nursing homes, both would
regularly be found in other patients’ beds, thinking that was their
partner.

Connor called a few
minutes later, sending April off on one again. She sobbed how she
feared she’d end up like her parents. But if she expected to hear
sympathetic words down the line then she should have known better.
Instead, Connor chuckled then said, ‘Ach, what are you worried
about? You’d be none the wiser. And anyway, think of it like
this – with Alzheimer’s, every day would be like an adventure
with all those new people to meet. It wouldn’t be any different
from how you are now – you can’t remember anything from the
day before anyway.’

Connor made April
laugh. She appreciated his easy ability to put life into
perspective. She’d always been a mad old bat. Last week she’d even
forgotten it was Jayne’s birthday, which had led to a week of
frostiness. When her daughter finally confronted April about her
forgetfulness, she’d laughed it off as not being important because
‘it’s only your twenty-ninth birthday anyway’, only to be informed
that it had actually been her milestone thirtieth.

‘Right, have you
stopped all this self-pity pish?’ Connor said, ‘Because we have
work to do.’



Connor had
also made a call to a contact who had instant access to the DVLA
computer and asked him to run a check on the registration number
April had got via Luigi’s kerb-crawling cousin. Ironically, it was
the same ‘mole’ who had charged Harris £5,000. But it would cost
the reporter next to nothing, except perhaps a few pints in the
pub, as his contact was also his cousin Robert.

Robert said, ‘It’s a
false plate, Elvis, but listen, someone else called in that exact
number, too.’

Connor now knew for
certain he was on the right track. Getting caught acquiring the
services of a prostitute wasn’t nearly as serious as driving around
with a fake set of number plates. Obtaining fake plates was far
more difficult these days since new government regulation meant you
had to produce a vehicle registration form along with proof of
identity and address. That meant the driver of the red Mondeo had
probably had his false plate – or several plates – made
up for a while. It also meant he was a professional. The fact that
Colin Harris was on the case too only confirmed it.

Connor could do one
of two things. He could tell the Weasel and his editor Bent
everything he knew. They would then splash something along the
lines of ‘The red Mondeo Suspect’ and every unfortunate middle-aged
man driving a red Ford would be pulled by the police or open to
vigilante attacks. Or, he could use the information to actually
catch the bastard. Connor chose the latter.

He could not mobilise
the same number of street contacts as quickly and as efficiently as
the gangster but he could get access to the city’s extensive CCTV
network via DCI Crosbie.

Now he knew the make,
model and colour of the car he was after, even if the killer
changed the fake plates again, they would still be able to nail
him, and quickly. But he needed bait. He knew the killer was not
particularly fussy. If it was the same man who had been carrying
out attacks over the years then he had targeted the young, old,
skinny and fat. Dominating his victims and inflicting fear and pain
were the name of his game.

Connor knew a woman
who had the guts and wherewithal to act as bait. A very big piece
of bait to catch a ferocious predator. He phoned April again.
‘Sorry to interrupt you while you’re no doubt eating, but I need
you to be a streetwalker for the night.’

‘Sure,’ April said
without pause, ‘maybe I’ll bump into Luigi’s cousin, the dirty
bastard.’



‘Hmmm,’ DCI
Crosbie pondered out loud, ‘I hope you know, you’ll be taking one
big tit fucking risk.’

‘Well put,’ April
smiled.

Crosbie ignored her,
letting his foul mouthed stream of consciousness continue, ‘It’s
just a twating hunch, but I think Connor could be right that our
prostitute killer prefers older streetwalkers. Jackie McIvor was
just a murder of convenience. There have been many older sex
workers killed or badly assaulted down south over the years. Some
have been linked, most haven’t, but I’ve got a feeling the English
killer has been moonlighting north of the border. I’d prefer to use
a policewoman, but I think it’d be better if I used your services.
Our killer will be able to spot an undercover policewoman at one
thousand yards. Don’t ask why but they can always smell a copper.
Using you also means I don’t have to run it past my dog wanking
superior Cruickshank, who’s on my case night and day. Not that I
have much choice. Elvis here told me in no uncertain terms I was
only getting the photo of a suspicious car with the dodgy licence
plate if you were both involved in the case.’