Butcher (40 page)

Betty was speaking quickly, as if to diminish any significance there might have been in the contact. ‘I get a kick working for your Aunts, Lou. They're funny sometimes.'

‘They're a pair of old eccentrics all right.'

He listened to Betty talk about Marlene's noontime habit of spiking fresh lemon juice with crushed cloves and a thimble of port. He enjoyed the imitation she did of Marlene, catching exactly the rise and fall of the old woman's voice and gestures.

Easy street, Lou thought. Let's talk about family all night. But his mind was peeling off elsewhere.

Split-level brain in action.

Somebody sent those cards. Somebody killed M. One and the same person – or two? One who'd committed the act, and an accomplice who travelled Europe? But why only three postcards in all that time? Why not once a week, twice a week?

Because you received just enough to make you think she was alive, OK, but that same irregularity served another purpose –
she doesn't entirely think the world of you, Lou
. And the messages, aloof, devoid of sentiment, were designed to underline the fact she didn't care to divulge anything of her feelings and plans. Even the fucking pedestrian images were an insult, postcards somebody would pick out if they were in a hurry, and sent to a recipient of no importance.

You were meant to be hurt. Somebody schemed your anguish. Somebody as blackhearted as Latta.

Maybe Latta's the one
. Killed Miriam, forged the cards, popped out of the country a couple of times and mailed them. But Latta, despite his malicious cunning, his desire to hammer Lou down, would be reluctant to leave Glasgow – why would he turn his back on the city and neglect his obsession? God forbid, he might miss something. A clue, a hint of Miriam and Perlman's complicity. Also there was the loft to keep under surveillance, and although he had a paid informant to do it he needed to be in a place where he could easily be reached.

OK, imagine Latta had an accomplice post the cards—

Lou's head ached.

Betty was still going on about his aunts. She obviously found the subject neutral territory, a place she could wander safely. ‘I once asked Hilda why she never married. She said she never met the right man. She “walked out” with a young guy called Barry Bernstein for a time. The Nosepicker. Always hiding behind a hankie, finger as far up his nostrils as he could shove it.'

‘Guaranteed to win a lady's heart.'

Betty smiled. ‘After the Nosepicker there was the Slob.'

Perlman heard this even as he drifted to Dysart and Ace, wondering if
they'd
dragged Miriam randomly off a street, drugged her and tossed her in the back of the van, chained her, and then … How else did they find their victims other than by snatching people walking alone down dark empty streets? It was a job too risky to do in daylight. And they had the cutting implements, the means – if Annie's story was right. But Miriam didn't fit into what he assumed was their purpose: cash, working for profit – Jackie's operations had to be paid for, the upkeep of that house, even in disrepair, devoured money. So how did it benefit them financially to cut off a hand?

Click!
Was it possible
Latta
had hired Ace and Dysart?

This leap plunged him deeper into thickets of associations – how did they meet, what was the arrangement? But what did Latta have to gain by Miriam's death – when all he really wanted was to
rub her face in a crime
, and Perlman's along with it? In public, where he could scream
I was right all along
.

You couldn't find that gleeful fulfilment if your quarry was dead.

Betty said, ‘Hilda doesn't speak much about him.'

He'd lost her thread. ‘The Slob you mean? I never heard of him.'

‘He ate with his mouth open as wide as the Clyde Tunnel. Always stuffing it full and food would drop into his lap.'

‘Hilda's choices were impeccable,' Perlman said.

The doorbell rang again. Some dickhead on the pavement kept his finger to the button. Perlman asked for directions to the toilet.

‘Through the living room and down the hall. First door on the right.'

The toilet was a small cubicle Betty had prettified with some dried flowers in a vase, and small prints of old Glasgow on the walls. He peed, flushed, washed his hands, dried them on a dark green towel colour-coordinated with the pale green walls. He saw himself in the oval mirror,
oy
, whose face is that? Eyelids puffy, bristle on his jaw darkening by the day, expression
ferklempt
.

Perlman, feeling your years.

He turned from his reflection and took his mobile out of a trouser pocket. He punched in the number for Adamski. Saturday night, what chance? An automated voice said,
Your call is being redirected
. He waited.

Adamski's voice came through. ‘Hello.'

Perlman said, ‘I'm not disturbing you?'

‘I'm sitting in front of the telly watching reality shite.'

Perlman told him about Annie's experience, then asked, ‘Can you get a search warrant, Joe?'

‘Do
you
believe she saw this body, Lou?'

‘She saw something. I'm
inclined
to believe it was a corpse.'

‘Inclined's iffy. I'd like to talk to this lady.'

‘She's scared, Joe. She doesn't want a certain person to know her whereabouts.'

‘And who is this scary person?'

‘Reuben Chuck.'

‘No wonder she's feart. Am I to take your word for what she said?'

‘My word's gold.'

Adamski was quiet a second. ‘Forty-eight hours have passed since she claimed to see this corpse. You know that body's long gone, Lou.'

‘I know. But I only learned about it this afternoon. Then I was detained by another matter.' Another matter, but he was locking a door on that wretched encounter in Latta's Theatre of Cruelty. Sometimes all you can do is keep swimming through the slime.

‘I'll need to dig somebody up at the Proc-Fisc's office,
and
a sheriff who doesn't mind getting off his arse on a Saturday to swear out a warrant. Then I'll have to scratch around to ferret out a couple of forensics people.'

Ferret. A verb, an animal. Perlman remembered Issy. A drab sorry creature, dead eyes and lacklustre coat. Who keeps a fucking ferret? He lowered his voice in case Betty had some reason to come along the hall. ‘It's possible, but no certainty, that Kirk McLatchie was inside that house at some point. Mibbe he was butchered there. I stress mibbe.'

‘This a hunch?'

‘A feeling, Joe.'

‘I'm working on the testimony of a girl who won't talk, plus Lou Perlman's feeling. My lucky day, everything so stacked in my favour.'

‘Nothing's easy,' Perlman said. ‘One final thing. Two serious Dobermans roam the grounds.'

‘Dogs? I love dogs,' Adamski said.

‘Not this pair. Thanks, Joe.'

‘Thank me after I get the warrant,' Adamski said. ‘But don't expect it to happen too soon.'

Perlman cut the connection.

Inside the kitchen Betty was checking the condition of his coat in the airing cupboard.

‘Another wee Scotch?'

Perlman thought about it, but said no, just as his phone rang. He checked the screen: Scullion's name.

‘Excuse me.' Half-turning away from Betty, he spoke into the mobie. ‘Whatsup, Sandy?'

Scullion said, ‘I just heard about Miriam. It's fucking awful. I can't believe Tay and Latta keelhauled you like that—'

‘After they made me walk the plank.'

Scullion said, ‘I don't think it's funny.'

‘You hear laughter from me?'

‘The whole thing's fucking deplorable, Lou.'

Perlman glanced at Betty, who'd risen to water a plant on the window sill. ‘They're masters of finesse.'

‘That fucker Latta doesn't have a case. You know that. It's all sound and fury fuelled by his spite.'

‘I don't intend to lose sleep over Latta. Believe me.'

‘They'll drop it eventually, of course. But at a cost to you.'

‘I resign the Force.'

‘That would be Tay's asking price.'

‘And Latta wins.'

‘He'll think it some kind of victory, sure … it's a clumsy question, I know, but how're you feeling?'

‘I'm tired, Sandy. How are things with you?'

‘We lost our banker. Totally mental. It was a dead giveaway when he looked at three hundred mug shots and identified
every single face
as one of the fuckers who invaded his house. On the up side, we're raiding the offices of Chuck's lawyers this very night.'

‘Legally?'

‘How else? These are hot-shot lawyers. You don't go near them without the right paperwork. Chuck gave a freebie bus to Ragada, and the guru tried to sell it to a sharp-eyed dealer … who knew the docs of ownership were fake. Good fakes, just not good enough. The guru has disappeared.'

Perlman said, ‘These are the days of false prophets, Sandy.'

‘Call me in the morning, Lou. Better still, drop round about midday, we'll have a beer.'

Lou closed the connection, massaged his eyes.

Betty said, ‘What was that about resigning?'

‘Pah, politics.'

‘In other words, don't ask.'

He got up from his chair. His feet were so cold they might have been welded to the floor. ‘It's the usual polis shite, Betty. I'm not keeping anything from you.' That comment, he knew, might come back to haunt him.

‘You're in trouble, Lou,' and she touched his hand softly.

‘This is new?'

‘I wish I could help.'

‘It's time I was leaving.'

‘You don't have to go. Unless you have other places …'

‘And miles to travel,' he said.

He fetched his coat and shoes and socks. The coat was warm but still damp, the socks were tolerable. ‘I'll kick some arses out there before I go. I'll also disable the doorbell. You can put your phone back but don't answer unless I give you the signal.'

She was downcast. She didn't want to be alone. He hugged her briefly, kissed her cheek, then went down the hallway, where he paused to reach up and yank the bell-wire from the wall before he continued into the street.

The scribblers were still milling around. Dogged crowd, hunting in packs. They clamoured for answers. They had readers to titillate, viewers to please.

Perlman drew them together. ‘Pay attention, youse lot. Mrs McLatchie is now sedated and sleeping. The phone's not being answered and the doorbell's disconnected, so unless you break a window to get to her – which let me remind you is seriously against the law – there will be no statement tonight, and no interview. Awright? Got that? Now let me see you scatter, boys and girls.'

‘Aw fuck,' somebody said.

The Queen of Glasgow TV was snippy. Her diction slipped. ‘Been freezing my bloody arse off for hours here.'

‘Here's a wee suggestion, dear. Go home to bed and crack open a good book.'

‘Don't
dear
me, Perlman,' she said. ‘I'd like to do a story on the stalling tactics of the local police, starring you.'

‘He's no even on the Force,' the guy with the wavy hair said.

Perlman stared at the guy belligerently. ‘That's a fucking rumour, you turnips will swallow anything. Now move, move along. Give the woman a break.'

The hounds began slowly to disperse, muttering.

Perlman waited, rattling car keys and change in his pocket, until the last of them had gone and the TV van had pulled away, before he walked to his car and sat behind the wheel, watching vigilantly for anyone who might chance his arm and sneak back.

Nobody did.

Driving home, he mourned Miriam silently.

44

From the kitchen window Dorcus looked at the lit towers. Grievous Saturday, damp dark Slabland. Sometimes a hundred or more empty beer cans and bottles were tossed over the wall on Saturday nights. Saturday was a pagan Glasgow festival, football in the afternoon, drunken fans rolling home hours after the game, rowdy and violent whether their team won or lost, car windows and street lamps smashed with stones, and always at least one murder, usually from stab wounds or head blows with a heavy instrument or just a damn good kicking.

The Dobermans howled. They always knew when it was Saturday. They went berserk Saturdays.

Jackie Ace, dressed in a yellow chenille robe, was fashioning a head full of long ringlets with her curling iron. ‘I want you to know – I'm very proud of the way you dealt with Perlman.'

‘I just stood my ground, I told him he was wrong about that photo.' Dorcus wished he still had long hair. He missed it, the feel of it against the side of his face. He watched how deft Jackie was with the curling iron.

‘That's all it takes. Stand your ground, don't give way.'

She set the iron down and took Dorcus's hand, stroked it. At times she wanted to hold him, never let go. ‘When you showed him the OR, he accepted your story.'

‘I had your help—'

‘Oh, all I did was take some of your Ma's old things out of the attic.'

‘But it was good—'

‘I'm just so brilliant.' She laughed and wrapped her arms around him. She was filled with a longing to protect him. She kissed his forehead and was impatient for the day when she'd no longer be this incomplete creature.

She raised a palm to the side of his face. ‘You can do anything.'

‘Only when you're with me.'

‘I'll always be with you. Have I ever let you down?'

Dorcus couldn't remember a time. All the way back as far as the Tartakower days, he'd known Jackie would be his life-partner. How eager he'd been to befriend Jackie, following him around, fetching his surgical instruments, watching the way he operated. He'd learned so much observing Jackie with a scalpel. He'd marvelled at Jackie's nimble hands. And card tricks – Jackie could create illusions that left you laughing and baffled. Cards vanished without trace inside hankies, spades turned to diamonds, clubs to hearts, cards cascaded randomly out of his hands and yet always ended in the appropriate suites, cards set on fire in one place were restored from ashes in another …