White Rage (11 page)

The man said, ‘No joke. You don't leave until we tell you.'

Helen Mboto remembered something she'd read, an old newspaper story about how foreign girls were press-ganged into lives of vice, bought and sold and shipped off to the Middle East or Japan. Is this why she'd been brought here? No, her imagination was flying away with her. She was panicking.

‘Sally, explain this, please, I don't understand,' Helen said. ‘Your friend's behaviour –'

Sally said, ‘We're only trying to be hospitable.'

The man said, ‘The very words I used.'

‘I'd really like to leave,' Helen said.

‘No chance,' the man said.

Helen Mboto was too proud to make an imploring gesture; she'd never begged for anything even though she wanted to beg now:
please let me leave
. She felt endangered, cornered by an incomprehensible hostility. She made to rise, but the man stopped her again. She reacted the only way she knew how. She lowered her face and sunk her strong teeth into the man's thigh and he howled even as he tried to step away from the damp she had on his skin. She released him and he backed off a few feet, eyes filling up with tears.

She got up from the sofa and thought she'd rush for the door, she had time, maybe a few seconds, she was strong, athletic, quick. Before she'd gone a few steps she felt pressure against the back of her neck.

Sally Kincaid said, I'm holding a gun. Stand very still.'

‘That black cunt bit a hole out of my leg,' the man said. ‘That fucking nigger cunt.'

‘Sit down, Helen. Sit down and drink your tea. You, Beezer, quit moaning.'

‘You'd moan if you'd had her fucking fangs sunk into your leg.'

Helen sat. ‘I want to go home.'

Sally said, ‘Be a good girl. Do as you're told.'

The man limped inside the kitchen. Still complaining about his wound, he came back with a cup of tea. The string of the tea-bag dangled over the rim. He thrust the cup at Helen.

‘Drink, Helen.'

‘I don't bloody want to drink.'

Sally Kincaid pressed the gun into Helen's ear. ‘Do it.'

Helen took the cup. ‘Please don't shoot.'

‘Then drink.'

Helen didn't trust the tea. Why should she? It was probably drugged. Or poisoned.

She dropped the cup to the floor.

‘Oh my,' Sally said. ‘Clumsy. What are you going to do about her attitude, Beezer?'

The man punched Helen hard in the mouth and said, ‘Black fucking cunt.'

Helen felt a shellburst of pain. Blood flowed from her lips. ‘Let me go home. Please. I'll say nothing about this.'

The man had something in his hand. ‘Looks like silver, swings like lead.'

Helen stared at Sally and said, Tell him not to harm me, Sally. Please.'

Sally Kincaid said, ‘He's a very bad boy, Helen. I can't tell him anything.'

12

Perlman and Scullion met Detective-Sergeant Terry Bogan at Cottiers pub, formerly a Presbyterian church. It was a big untidy room, usually noisy, clientele young. This was why Bogan favoured the place: he could check out young women to his heart's desire. An unlikely gigolo, Perlman thought. He looked more farmer than cop – beery red face, frizzled side-whiskers, brown tweed suit.

Perlman said to Scullion, ‘Take a gander at this man, Inspector. He's a Highlander. A
teuchter
. Even does farmyard impersonations. Cows. Ducks.'

‘Only when I'm smashed,' Bogan said. ‘Anybody want a wee drink?'

‘A lemonade,' Sandy said.

‘Half a pint of lager for me,' Perlman said.

‘Still the hard-living Jewish playboy, eh?'

‘I boogie from dusk to dawn,' Perlman said.

Bogan went to the bar and ordered drinks. Perlman checked out the room. Dear Christ, did he need to be confronted with so much ripe youth? So many fecund girls, with rich lustrous hair and slender bodies? A couple danced in a corner, although there was no audible music: Perlman wasn't altogether sure it was dancing as he remembered it, more a voracious form of sexual prelude.

‘Bogan comes here because he considers himself a ladies' man,' he said.

‘Is he successful?' Scullion asked.

Perlman shrugged. ‘Lives with his mother. What does that tell you?'

‘He's saving on rent?'

Bogan came back with drinks, which he set down on a table. The three men sat, tapped glasses together.

‘Life treating you kindly?' Lou asked.

‘Smashing. See that redhead near the door? Don't all look. She'd raise anybody's spirits more than a notch.'

‘You know her?' Perlman asked. He squinted at the woman through his murky glasses; a tall beauty, legs to the moon.

‘Advances have been made.'

‘And rebuffed?'

‘Rebuffed, my arse. See these whiskers? Like Velcro to women.' Bogan stroked his steely fuzz. ‘She's called Cynthia, she's a nurse, and nurses don't play tiddlywinks.'

‘I'm impressed,' Perlman said.

Scullion looked at his watch. ‘This is all very jolly, but let's get to the point … About your jumper, Terry.'

‘The jumper, right, okay. That boy had everything to live for, according to what we've learned. Wealthy. Export business flying full speed. Top-of-the-line BMW. Expensive flat in Kelvin Court. Why end it all?' Bogan sipped his dark stout.

‘You have any reason to think he didn't jump of his own free will?' Scullion asked.

Bogan shrugged. ‘My best guess is he had a bit of a daft moment and climbed on the ledge and slipped. He had a high alcohol level in his blood. Plus he'd been smoking reefer. Maybe he thought he could fly. One other thing. He'd had sex shortly before his death. But there was no woman at the scene and nobody saw one coming or going.'

Perlman said, ‘Maybe she saw him fall, didn't want to get her name involved, so she shot the craw.'

‘Could be.'

‘Or she shoved him.'

‘Your imagination's dark as ever, Lou.'

‘But a push is possible,' Perlman said.

‘Aye. It's also possible I could get my leg over Nicole Kidman.'

‘You're talking in the realm of a miracle now, Terry. You need to find this woman who was with young Gupta.'

A white froth of stout adhered to Bogan's upper lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and gazed in the direction of the redhead. He winked at her. He managed to make it suggestive, Perlman noticed. How had Bogan cultivated that trick? I wink, it looks like an eye infection.

‘Why does this kid interest you anyway, Lou?'

‘You're not listening to the tom-toms of the city, Terry. He's the second dead Gupta today.'

‘Oh Christ,
right
,' Bogan said, and slapped his hand against his forehead. ‘That kindergarten teacher was called Gupta. I just didn't make the connection between her and Tilak.'

Perlman said, ‘I remembered the guy's name from the radio, which gobsmacked me because my memory's usually like a fishnet stocking. Then I wondered, this Gupta – could he be related to the slain teacher?'

‘Neither Dev nor Barry Gupta mentioned anything about the dead man,' Scullion said. ‘Wouldn't they have said something?'

‘Perhaps the young guy who fell off the balcony isn't related. Or perhaps they didn't
want
to mention it. Bad timing.' Perlman drank some lager. He'd never really enjoyed the taste of alcohol. ‘If there's a family relationship between Indra Gupta and the jumper, we've got a coincidence. And I don't always trust those bastard things.'

‘So we find out,' Scullion said.

‘You mean
I
find out,' Perlman said.

Scullion said, ‘If you feel you're overworked, Lou –'

‘Overworked nothing. I can cope.'

‘He always liked it coming thick and fast,' Bogan said. He clapped a hand on Perlman's shoulder and looked at Scullion. ‘He's a good soul, Inspector. Really. We go back more than twenty years, mibbe longer. Under that gnarly exterior beats a heart of total melancholy.'

Bogan drained his stout just as a uniformed constable, a young Sikh, appeared at the table, and whispered in his ear.

Bogan set down his empty glass. ‘It seems we have another casualty of the city, gentlemen.'

13

Leo Kilroy played bagpipe CDs on his ultra high-tech sound system, custom-designed to blast music from speakers strategically placed in the back garden of his house for the express purpose of annoying his snooty neighbours. The night positively
whined
. Dressed in kilt and tartan socks, he sat in his conservatory and watched water spout from jets hidden artfully under terraces of rock in the back garden. Spotlights of silver and gold illuminated the waterfalls. The Black Watch Pipe Band played ‘Farewell to Gibraltar', ‘The Black Bear', and other military favourites.

It was all deeply stirring, if you were Scottish.

He pressed a bell set into the wall.

Frankie Chasm appeared from the shadows, dressed in black jacket and pinstripe trousers and shiny black shoes. He carried a tray: one bottle of Gordon's, a litre of tonic, a bucket of ice, and a frosted glass. He fixed a drink. Kilroy sipped.

Chasm said, ‘That old rat's arse Mrs Gradley phoned to complain about the pipes.'

‘Tell her to shove a yam up her fanny.'

‘She's called the gendarmes,' Chasm said.

‘Oh she's such a predictable
tweedy
wee bitch. All right, turn off the music. When the officer shows up on the doorstep, as he will, give him a generous contribution to the charity of his choice – his own bank account, I don't doubt. Then deliver a bottle of something from the cellar to Mrs Gradley. She's an old port-hog.'

‘Port's her tipple all right,' Chasm said.

‘Make sure she gets a bottle covered in dust. Old fart won't drink anything younger than herself.'

Alone, Kilroy listened to ‘The Skye Boat Song'. He became grudgingly sentimental when he heard Jacobite tunes, and all that romantic guff about Bonnie Prince Charlie leaving Scotland for ever. Chasm cut off the music from the central control unit in the sitting room, and the night collapsed in silence.

Annoying the neighbours was a mischief of diminishing returns, Kilroy thought; the solicitors, the petitions gathered by irritated householders, the court cases and the fines, it had become all too tiresome. He sipped his G&T and watched the lights play on the waterfalls and he pondered Lou Perlman. He'd been pondering Lou Perlman too much lately. It wasn't healthy. That Yid tec. What was he
really
up to with the alleged anonymous caller?

Blum hadn't been especially comforting, hadn't said the soothing words lawyers were paid to say, such as: forget about it, Perlman's a scam artist, he's talking out his spout, I'll deal with it. Instead, Blum had rabbited on about Perlman's honesty. If you listened to Blum you'd think Perlman was George Washington. Daddy, I cannot tell a lie. I whacked the cherry tree. This fucking axe is mine.

The kilt felt heavy against Kilroy's thighs, like some pleated beast dying in his lap. He adjusted his sweaty legs under the stifling burden of the garment. He toyed with the notion of taking his business away from Blum. That would shake Blumsky up, because he lived in massive fear of poverty.

Chasm returned. ‘I paid the cop. I also delivered a bottle of port.'

‘Pull up a pew.'

Chasm did so. He sat down facing Kilroy. Frankie Chasm, born Chasmofsky of Polish parents, was a pale, muscular man. He had eyes the colour of cigarette ash. His nose was just slightly bent. His face was a map of a life led violently for almost fifty years. A streetfight or two, casual battery, a bad attitude to authority in general. Years ago, he'd been arrested for chainsawing fir trees on the Queen's estate at Balmoral while under the influence of rough cider; it was an anti-monarchist act of eco-terrorism, he'd told the police after a lengthy stand-off between big Highland cops armed only with batons, and Chasm, who menaced them with his chainsaw until it ran out of fuel and he was rushed off to the slammer.

He had an IQ of one hundred and thirty-one. When he'd been released from Peterhead after thirteen years, he'd come to work for Kilroy, who liked to describe him as a ‘factotum' or ‘butler'. But Chasm had gradually become more than a mere dark-suited appendage to Kilroy's world. Confidant, companion, and perhaps most importantly
minder
, he was Nat Blum's equal in Leo's hierarchy of support. Chasm had a special quality Blum couldn't bring to the party: he wasn't afraid of physical violence. He didn't go looking for trouble, but it frequently found him. He was a hard bastard with a deceptively quiet voice and manner.

‘Anything special you want to do tonight, Leo?' When the social calendar was zero, Chasm dragged out a chessboard or a pack of playing cards or Monopoly to keep Leo amused.

Kilroy said, ‘Fucksake. I can never relax, Frankie. Why can I never relax?'

‘Too much on your mind?'

‘What's on my mind is that Perlman.'

Chasm said, ‘Every problem has a solution, Leo.'

Kilroy looked thoughtful. ‘I don't believe he received that phone call. Not for a minute.'

‘Then fucking let it go,' Frankie Chasm said.

Kilroy said, ‘I simply have to get out of this bloody
skirt
. Can you believe people went to
war
wearing these hefty big things? How did they manage? Did they just
drag
themselves across the ground to fight the enemy? Here we come, you Jerry swine. Sporrans at dawn.' He stood up, undid straps, let both kilt and sporran fall to his ankles. He wore cavernous purple boxers. ‘Ah, now that's better, that's a load off me.'

‘Fancy three-card brag? Texas cut-throat?'

Kilroy sipped his G&T and dismissed Chasm's suggestions with a gesture of his hand. ‘Frankie, Frankie. I sit in this bloody mansion in my underwear, I've got wads of cash stashed in such a bewildering variety of bank accounts I can barely remember them all, I can have the city's finest young sexual playthings here at a moment's notice to keep me amused, I can eat at any fine restaurant I choose … so what's my problem? Is my Catholic upbringing giving me the willies finally? Are all those fucked-up nuns and jerk-off priests of my boyhood catching up with me and telling me I'm going to hell, as they predicted lo these many years? Am I afraid of failing to pass through the eye of the needle?'