White Rage (17 page)

Perlman thought that if a hard-boiled egg could speak it would sound exactly like Sandy Scullion right now. ‘I got a message from my anonymous caller. On tape already. I took it to Blum.'

‘Caller leave a name?'

Perlman shook his head.

‘You recognize the voice?'

‘No.'

‘Then you've still got nothing.'

‘I don't consider a tape nothing, Sandy. Listen to it.'

‘I will, Lou, but right now there's this meeting –'

‘What meeting?'

‘The one you'd know about if you kept your phone on,' Scullion said.

‘You don't even want to
hear
the tape, Sandy?'

‘Later, I'll sit down, I'll play it. Not now.'

Both men moved along a corridor. Perlman was disappointed and a little angry. He'd expected Scullion's understanding, the way he'd always expected it in the past. ‘Tell me, Sandy. Did you roll out of bed on the wrong side, or did an alien pod take you over in your sleep?'

Scullion turned to look at Perlman. ‘I'm just a little pissed off, Lou. First thing this morning, even as I'm drinking my coffee, I'm practically
third-degreed
by George Latta, who's not my favourite human being to begin with. If I see Latta on the street, I cross to the other side and toll my rosary beads. He tells me a story. You're screwing your late brother's wife.'

‘Screwing Miriam? Hold on, Sandy. Just hold on–'

‘He further tells me you and Miriam might be accessing funds your brother stowed away illicitly.'

‘He's talking utter shite,' Perlman said angrily.

‘I
know
he's talking utter shite, Lou. I told him so. I've known you long enough to know you're not crooked. And even if you and Miriam
were
in a romantic relationship, it's personal, it's got nothing to do with me so long as it doesn't interfere with what we do around here –'

‘If I was having an affair with Miriam, you'd be able to read it from my face because I'd be beaming like the fucking Bell lighthouse. I can't believe you'd let a toerag like Latta get to you. Why give him the time of day? He's a lying bastard. The only tool in his box is innuendo. I think it's more than George Latta that's getting to you.'

‘You don't miss much for an old fart, do you? Twenty minutes after I ease Latta out of my office, who calls me? Chief Superintendent Tay. His majesty. Wants me upstairs on the double. He's had reports, he says. Some senior cops don't like the freedom Perlman gets, he says.'

‘Feh. For years they've been saying that.'

‘They've been making noises, agreed. But now he thinks it's time you were …' Scullion paused, lost for a word.

‘Restrained? Downsized? Decommissioned?'

‘More
focused
.'

Perlman thought of Tay, a man with a head as square as a concrete block. He rarely encountered the Superintendent, who lived in a place where no ordinary policemen could go. He sat in a grey suit in a grey room located in the upper corridors of the building where all the grey spirits congregated and conspired.

‘So twenty minutes after you have a contretemps with Latta, you get a call from Tay? A man with no nose could sniff collusion.'

‘Sure. Latta goes running to his pal the Super. The Super carpets me. Tells me to carpet you.'

‘And how am I to be more “focused”, Sandy?'

‘Tay says your logs on your brother's case are vague. You have whole passages of time unaccounted for. Your reports are skimpy and careless.'

‘I'm a slow typist.'

‘That's not the point, Lou. He thinks you're not making progress. He wants this case solved and closed.'

‘How can I close it, Sandy? And how am I to spend more time writing detailed reports? Suddenly I'm a journalist?'

‘Lou, he wants to see specific. To the minute. Where you go. What you do. Who you see. He's suddenly got this bee up his arse about Colin.'

‘Why now? He never seemed interested before.'

‘I don't know why.' Scullion adjusted the knot of his tie. ‘Play his game a little more.'

‘What game?'

‘The procedural game,' Scullion said.

Perlman thought of Latta stepping out of Miriam's building after midnight, the encounter in the street, the misaligned teeth of the man. So Latta casts a shadow over my life, he thought. More than a shadow; aspersions as well. Fuck Latta. Fuck the ‘detailed' reports. You reached an age when you couldn't make the changes people demanded of you. You couldn't adapt to a new set of regulations because you only knew how to work the old ones. You were who you were; you'd put years of labour into yourself. Okay, so you weren't the finished article. You weren't a fucking gemstone, all nicely polished. You had flaws and warts and idiosyncratic manners, but that was how you'd turned out. Too bloody bad.

Scullion looked at Perlman with unusual seriousness. ‘Do it for me, Lou. You don't know how many times I've gone out on a limb for you. You have no idea how often I've covered for you.'

‘I'm grateful.'

‘So do what Tay asks.'

‘I'll try, Sandy.' Perlman didn't like the uncharacteristic gravity in Scullion's voice.

‘Lou, listen, I'm sorry. It's been a shit morning and I'm stressed to hell, and the day's hardly started.'

‘Tell me there's more.'

‘This meeting will explain all.'

Scullion walked quickly; Perlman, darkly pondering Tay's interest in Colin's murder, lagged a few paces. They stopped outside the door to a conference room. Scullion entered, Perlman followed. The room, overlooking Pitt Street, was furnished with a long table and a set of chairs; Perlman noted water jugs and plastic glasses, notepads, dark blue Strathclyde Police ballpoints, a box of tissues.

DS Mary Gibson sat at the top of the table. She smiled in a restrained manner at him. She wore a peach-coloured scarf of some gauzy material and a pale tan blouse and matching skirt. Immaculate, he thought. Hair exact, lipstick just so. A certain kind of perfumed, permed perfection. When she walked, her feet probably didn't make contact with the ground.

To her right DI Paul Newby, from the Partick Office, sat slouched. He was distinguished in a crumpled way; his silver hair fell against his collar. He had the bearing of an academic who favours the shaggy laid-back look. He blinked at Perlman, as if he'd emerged from a long sleep and was uncertain of his whereabouts.

Sid Linklater, a bespectacled young forensics expert, sat across the table from Newby and drew Gothic crosses on a notepad; Sid's hobby, Perlman remembered, was to make charcoal rubbings of headstones – a cheery wee pastime for a pathologist. Sid had a thing about crosses.

A third man leaned against the wall with his arms folded. Flint-eyed, head shaven smooth as an egg, black three-piece suit: Perlman recognized him at once. Fraser Deacon, Special Branch, sometimes known as the Big Frase. One of the bright stars in the firmament of Special B. One of the smart boys with the well-buffed halo. He was Going All The Way. He was riding an express train to Glory.

He caught Perlman's eye with a hard look. Perlman thought: in that one look our shared history is encapsulated. Deacon sniffed the air and turned his face up towards the ceiling, as if he wanted to pretend that Perlman wasn't in the room.

Mary Gibson asked, ‘Your alarm clock let you down, Detective-Sergeant Perlman?'

‘I was unfortunately detained,' Perlman said. He noticed leaflets on the table, and he recognized them as the yellow sheets distributed by White Rage. ‘My apologies.'

‘Just don't make a habit of it,' Mary Gibson said.

Perlman didn't respond. He'd been chided quietly. Mary Gibson scolded with grace and objectivity. He sat down at the opposite end of the table from her, drawing a chair up alongside Scullion.

Mary Gibson said, ‘For your benefit, Sergeant, I'll repeat what you've just missed – Ajit Singh died half an hour ago. He never regained consciousness.'

Perlman had been halfway expecting Singh's death – you came to fear the worst in this job – but the confirmation still upset him. Another sorry corpse, this one a potential witness to a killing. Now he was a victim, the other half of a double slaying inside the Sunshine Day School.

But there was more to this meeting than the news of the death of Ajit Singh. Otherwise, why was Newby here? And why Sid Linklater? And why above all was the Big Frase present?

Mary Gibson looked down at her wedding ring in a somewhat wistful way, then she glanced at Deacon. I'm sure most of you already know Detective-Inspector Deacon from Special Branch.'

Deacon cleared his throat, pressing a fist to his lips. He had big mauve hands that suggested a circulation problem. He gestured towards the pile of yellow papers on the table. ‘You've all seen these things already, I expect. They've been stuck under wipers on cars. Pinned to telephone poles, supermarket bulletin boards. In the past two or three days they've been spotted around the city. We've had similar groups in the past. They make a few threats. Sometimes they assault a few people. Do a bit of damage. Maybe a car overturned and burned. You know the kind of thing. Usually these fringe idiots run out of energy before they get into anything really serious.'

Big Frase paused. It was a good theatrical pause, Perlman thought, a kind of rehearsed suspension. The room was very still; all faces were focused on the man. Deacon enjoyed this, you could see. Captive audience in the palm of his hand. Centre of his own ever-expanding universe. He dominated space like an actor.

‘Last night a Nigerian called Ochoba was stabbed to death in the West End. You're all aware of this. The crime was seemingly without motive. Ochoba led a normal life, no criminal sheet, no immigration hokery-pokery. Visa status shipshape. He was just a man trying to get a university degree. So why was he stabbed? Casual street violence? Something out of his past? Or just because he was black?'

Deacon walked to the window, where he turned his back on the room. The stage detective preparing his denouement, Perlman thought. When he spoke again, Deacon didn't turn around. Instead he addressed the window, or perhaps Pitt Street below, maybe even the city beyond, delivering a speech that was being transmitted, by telepathic means, to all citizens of Glasgow:
there is an evil among us
.

‘A young woman's body was found this morning on Knightswood Golf Course. She'd been murdered. Like Mr Ochoba, also a student. And, like Ochoba, also black. She was from Zambia. Her name was Helen Mboto. I'll ask Sid Linklater to fill you in on the physical details. Sid?'

Linklater resembled an eager schoolboy, the one who's always reluctant to leave the chemistry lab. Let me stay, sir, let me mix chemicals together and play with the Bunsen burners, oh please, sir. My ambition is to be a mad scientist. ‘Emmm. The victim had been beaten to death with really unusual brutality … My primary examination leads me, ah, to believe she was battered to death by a hammer or some similar object. Forced, I'd go with a common everyday hammer. Her cheekbones were broken. Jawbone. Skull. The ferocity of the blows to her jaw had driven her teeth through her tongue. She'd been battered thirty-five to forty times in the ribcage. Her fingers had been broken, her left thighbone shattered …' He shook his head, took off his glasses. Without the specs, his face looked truly youthful; bookish and innocent, the swot. ‘My guess is that the blow to the skull was the killing one. Savage business altogether. You don't usually see …' He didn't finish his sentence.

Perlman listened to the wind on the pane. It was finally dying now, drained of energy. He thought of a hammer rising and falling, forty times, fifty, more. He thought of a black girl lying on Knightswood Golf Course, and a black man stabbed in Ashton Lane. His mind drifted to Indra Gupta, and Ajit Singh gunned down as he stepped out of his classroom. And then he wondered about Tilak Gupta: jumped or pushed?

The shades of the dead; black and brown, night and sand.

Was this the reason for the meeting? Connections between the killings? Perlman knew where Deacon was going, and it was related to the yellow papers on the table.

Frase Deacon said, ‘Sid has omitted one detail. He hasn't mentioned the scars.'

‘I left it to you, Inspector,' Linklater said.

‘Why? Finish your story.'

‘There's, ah, not much more … Somebody had carved two letters of the alphabet on Helen Mboto's right breast. Not a very good job, I have to say. Legible, though. W and R.'

‘White Rage,' Deacon said, and turned quickly to Paul Newby, who sat upright for the first time. ‘Tell us about Mr Ochoba, Paul.'

Newby ran a hand through his hair. A few flecks of dandruff fluttered to the shoulder of his jacket. ‘Here's what my people have pieced together since last night. Ochoba was on his way to an assignation with Helen Mboto. According to his flatmate, one Fernando Gostabana, Ochoba was beginning to entertain “serious” feelings for Helen. Ochoba never made the date, of course. But Helen Mboto was seen leaving a café called the Tinderbox at approximately ten p.m. in the company of a young white woman described variously as “attractive”, “sexy”, or if you like the more colloquial description, a “smashing wee bit of crumpet” … Two dead black people, and one firm connection between them – namely, a relationship. Admittedly, we don't have any evidence that Ochoba was murdered by this White Rage outfit, but I think we can surmise, with a degree of certainty, that the killer or killers of Helen Mboto were connected with his death.'

‘How?' Perlman asked.

Newby puffed his cheeks, then expelled a little blast of air. ‘If we know the killer of Helen Mboto was a member of White Rage, does it make any sense to ascribe the murder of Ochoba – Helen's
boyfriend
– to another party? If White Rage killed Helen Mboto, it seems perfectly sound to assume that the murder of Ochoba was committed by the same party. Is it not one hell of a bloody coincidence otherwise – two separate and unconnected killers whose victims were friends?'