Lawless (8 page)

‘Why don’t you start at the beginning?’ He rested back in his seat and glanced up at the black-eyed cameras in their cages, wondering which of them was trained on the table and curious if it would home in for a close-up on Gilzean as he started to recount his version of the night that had brought the meaningful part of his life to an end.

It was an uncomplicated story. He had not been there. In fact, he had not seen Alison for three days previously. On the day which had been her last, they had spoken on the phone and he had told her he would not see her that night either because he needed to visit his father. She had not been particularly happy but had indicated she would pass the evening at the gym they usually attended together.

When Gilzean had finished, McBride asked him the obvious questions. How was it possible that his semen had been found inside her? How did his fingerprints find their way on to a wine glass? And how could one of his hairs be on the tie used to murder her?

The man with the pale, strained face sitting opposite seemed helpless. He looked desperately at McBride. ‘I ask myself that every night,’ he said. ‘We’d had sex three days earlier. Maybe the traces stay that long?’

McBride raised an eyebrow. ‘Not unless she hadn’t got off her back. What about the wine, the tie?’

‘I never drink white wine,’ Gilzean said sharply. ‘Can’t stand it. I’m a beer man and, if forced into wine, I’ll only take red. Besides, I’d never seen the glass in my life before.’

‘You’re about to tell me you never wear a tie either, right?’ McBride said.

‘Only for special occasions. I am – was – an architect, Mr McBride, working in a small practice. It was very informal. Nobody dressed up.’

‘What about all the rows the two of you had? Pretty frequent, by all accounts?’

Gilzean slowly nodded his head. ‘I know …’ He looked over McBride’s shoulder. Into the past – remembering. ‘They were never as bad as they might have sounded,’ he said quietly. ‘We were passionate about things … just about everything. We got over the arguments quickly – usually in a good way.’ He was speaking more to himself than his visitor.

McBride eyed him steadily, lifted his voice to bring him back to the present. ‘OK. Two last questions. Did you have any other girlfriends and did she have boyfriends?’

For the first time since they’d met, Bryan Gilzean could not meet McBride’s gaze. He hesitated. Stared at the floor. ‘No – don’t think that was her style.’

‘You?’

Gilzean paused again. ‘Not really.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing serious. Nothing steady. Just the occasional one-nighter. You know how it is …’ He looked away, embarrassed.

McBride knew exactly how it was but saw no point in enlightening Gilzean about his own sexual habits. He said nothing, just shrugged his shoulders non-committally.

‘Right, finish up,’ an officer’s voice called out from the dais. It signalled the end of visiting hour. The mothers shouted their offspring back from beneath the pictures of Goofy and the Seven Dwarfs and, at the tables, the women reached thin-fingered hands out to grasp those opposite, the need to make physical contact even more desperate. Some of those on both sides of the table struggled with tears.

McBride rose slowly, unsure how to end the meeting. ‘I’m glad I came, Bryan,’ was the best he could do. ‘I’ll kick it all around and get back to you.’

The pleading face looked up at him, a mixture of eagerness and uncertainty.

McBride said the word first. ‘Promise.’

‘Thanks, Mr McBride, thanks.’

On the way towards the door, McBride noticed for the first time that behind the barred windows and disturbing paintings there was an open-air, triangle-shaped visitors’ section with picnic benches and a play-area whose centrepiece was a climbing frame. It was standard height but, even if it had been close enough to a wall, it wasn’t going to help anyone over. The cold stone surrounding the unexpected oasis rose for fifteen feet and there was another five feet of razor wire on top of that. As play parks went, you were never going to have to worry about your children wandering off.

McBride reached the end of the room and turned, knowing that Bryan Gilzean, who would be kept at his table until the last visitor had left the hall, would have watched his every step. From a distance, the twenty-seven-year-old looked even more like someone approaching middle age. Oddly, when he raised an arm, the wave that came from it resembled the kind you got when you left a child in the school playground for the first time. It reminded him of how Simon had once bade him anxious farewells.

McBride held out his left hand for the ultraviolet lamp to reassure an officer he wasn’t an escaping inmate and waved back with the other one. Instinctively, he put his thumb up.

All the way back to Dundee, he wondered how appropriate the gesture had been.

McBride had turned off the coastal path that led from the river and was running towards the series of rises that would test his stamina when an unseen hand flicked a switch. Floodlights flashed inside his head and with the light came the blinding certainty that he had been headed in the wrong direction – not in the route he had taken that morning but in the course of his mind ever since he had left the frozen file room of
The Courier
.

The riddle of the missing section of the Bryan Gilzean murder trial report that had taken him up a succession of mental blind alleys and culs-de-sac was finally making some sort of sense. The sentences that had been excised had not been removed by a warped souvenir hunter – they were making a statement. ‘The bastard!’ he suddenly spat out, oblivious to the astonished looks from a pair of dog walkers. ‘He didn’t take something away from the library – he left something behind.’

The realisation that he might have cracked the problem that had swirled almost ceaselessly round his head for days took McBride completely by surprise. He had not even been aware that he had been wrestling with it at that moment. With the dawning came physical release. He subconsciously lifted his pace, lengthened his stride and pushed hard up the first, and steepest, of the short hills, feeling the urgency to somehow make use of the new information.

As he ran, McBride inwardly repeated the words that had become etched into his brain,
though this is not unique. These activities happen from time to time and can be confusing. Care has to be taken to ensure a dispassionate analysis and conclusion. It wouldn’t be the first time someone got it wrong and it won’t be the last
. McBride became convinced that whoever had taken the passage away from the filed newspaper in the Central Library was giving out a message. The more he contemplated its meaning, the more he began to wonder if the most important part wasn’t the opening five words – the ones which did not even form a sentence. He cursed himself for not having come to that conclusion the second he laid eyes on them. Unless they had deep significance, why leave them standing alone, sentence-less and otherwise meaningless? ‘Christ,’ he muttered, ‘they should have been in capital letters!’

McBride covered the remaining four miles back to his new flat faster than he would have believed possible. By the time he arrived, the volume of sweat that usually only poured from his body on warm, heavy days was dripping on to the off-white carpet of his bedroom, leaving a trail of damp stains. Instead of following his usual routine of stretching then showering, he hurriedly towelled his face and armpits while simultaneously lifting his mobile with his free hand.

He rang the offices of
The Courier
but did not ask for Richard Richardson. Instead, he requested to be put through to Cuttings, the department that every newspaper office cannot exist without. As he waited to be connected, he offered a prayer that Gwen Kissock was on duty. Long before the paper had invested in an electronic retrieval system for recovering selected news items, she had performed the same function as fast as any computer, especially when the story being sought related to crime. She was a human encyclopaedia and could have enjoyed a prosperous existence if she had been interested in television quiz shows on the subject. At the very least, she should have become a police officer. Happily, she had done neither and had remained as one of the paper’s most valuable but underappreciated assets.

She answered the phone and recognised McBride’s voice instantly for she had also been born with a ‘photographic’ ear. It had been more than a year since they had spoken – back when he had called her from London for assistance with research for his book. ‘Hello, Campbell,’ she said confidently, before he had a chance to announce himself, ‘what do you want this time?’ She could also be direct.

‘I just wanted to hear your dulcet tones once again,’ he replied with what he hoped was humorous charm. ‘It’s been more than a year and I’ve been pining.’ McBride could almost visualise her raising her eyebrows in feigned exasperation.

She replied, ‘Me too but not for you – just for some of the cash you’ve made from the book I wrote for you.’

‘That’s part of the reason I’m calling – to arrange a dinner date in the near future. But, just while I’m on, can you do me a quick favour?’

‘Keep speaking.’

‘Can you dig into that unique mind of yours and tell me if you recall any murders in the area where someone was strangled?’

‘Oh, is that all?’ she retorted. ‘Be more specific. Male or female victim? Solved or unsolved? Timescale?’ Gwen was already pressing her memory buttons.

‘Probably female. Maybe solved, maybe not. Say, in the last five or six years.’ It did not occur to him that what he was asking might just be a touch unreasonable.

‘Thanks for the assistance!’ She stopped speaking to McBride for more than two minutes but broke the silence with occasional brief discussions with herself. ‘Let me think … no … yes … right … OK.’

Suddenly she returned to share her deliberations. ‘Don’t know if this helps but off the top of my head I can think of a half a dozen, maybe eight. Nine if you count a hanging of sorts that was probably suicide.’

She ran through her list. ‘There were three in Dundee, one in Perth, one in St Andrews and another one in either Montrose or Brechin, can’t remember which but it was in Angus somewhere.’

McBride was grateful but not satisfied. ‘Great – but do you have any more details?’

Gwen sighed. ‘The best I can do is tell you that I think most of them, but not all, were solved. I’m fairly sure there was no one in the frame for the Fife one and at least one of the Dundee ones.’

‘You’re a marvel. Can I ask one more thing?’

Before he could expand, Gwen broke in. ‘Yes, I know. You want me to look them up and supply you with copies of the cuttings.’

‘Christ, Gwen, on top of everything else you’re a bloody clairvoyant. What a woman!’

‘Yes, and I also have total recall of every conversation we’ve ever had and I’ve heard all that crap before. But you can keep saying it. I’ll dig the stuff out later today and leave it down at reception for you, OK?’

‘Brilliant. You’re a gem. Oh, just one other thing – last one, promise – if you happen to bump into Richard Richardson, don’t tell him I rang or what I was after. Will you do that for me?’

‘Okey-dokey. Why all the mystery? What’s all this about?’ She hesitated for all of a second before adding, ‘Why did I say that? There’s not a chance you’re going to tell me, is there?’

‘Of course I will … but not right now. When I take you to dinner, I’ll give you complete chapter and verse – well, more or less. Anyway, you’ll be first to know.’

Both of them laughed as they hung up.

He promised himself he would give the magnificent Gwen two hours to fulfil her promise to have the cuttings waiting for him. But an hour later McBride was behind the wheel of his car doing his best to impersonate Michael Schumacher as he cut through the heavy afternoon traffic that was pouring in and out of the city centre.

At the crowded roundabout where the Kingsway city bypass converged with half a dozen other roads, he gunned the silver Mondeo through the junction, ignoring the fury of other drivers.

Moments later, he arrived at the imposing red-brick home of
The Courier
. Few strangers to the town would have recognised it as the print headquarters of one of Britain’s most successful publishing empires. There were no illuminated signs or boastful banners. Just discreet lettering above the main entrance announcing the company name – DC Thomson & Co Ltd – only just enough to let the postman know where to drop the mail. McBride smiled as he suddenly remembered the name it had been given by a forgotten former colleague – ‘the Red Lubyanka’, a reference to its position on the outskirts of the city which, the cynic said, ‘made prisoners’ of the reporters who might otherwise have been interrogating ‘contacts’ in the city centre bars. There was nobody as economical with the truth as a journalist in search of a drink.

McBride screeched to a halt, taking up two parking spaces in his thoughtless haste. He strode swiftly into the building and looked at once to see if one of the large buff envelopes always used by Cuttings had been placed on the desk at reception. The memory woman of Kingsway had not let him down. Gwen’s precise handwriting in her hallmark heavy black ink jumped out at him from a bulging packet – ‘To Await Mr Campbell McBride’.

Bloody marvel
, he thought as he identified himself to the receptionist, picked it up and walked just as quickly back to the car park, hoping none of the reporters inside had spotted him from their ‘cell’ windows. He resisted the temptation to rip the envelope open as soon as he was back in his car, knowing his search of the thick bundle of newspaper clippings would not be brief or easy to conduct from the confines of the Mondeo.

His journey back through the city was no less impatient. He drove on the brakes and horn, wondering, as he always did, why his fellow motorists seemed to resent his presence. McBride had an uncomplicated view of other road-users – those who drove slowly in front impeding his progress were idiots; those who overtook were morons; and those who sat behind at precisely the same speed as himself were a combination of the two. It seemed a reasonable enough appraisal of all those inconsiderate enough to want to make a journey at the same time as himself.