White Rage (18 page)

Perlman felt his stubborn streak work in the same involuntary way some people crack their knuckles. ‘They left their calling card on Helen Mboto. But not on Ochoba.'

Deacon intervened. It was his show, after all, and he was from Special Branch, and he needed to stamp his authority on this meeting. He acted like a man who knew there was an empty seat just waiting for him in the corridors of true power. ‘Obviously they didn't have time to leave their mark on Ochoba, Perlman. They had plenty of time for Miss Mboto, though. All the time in the bloody world.' He paused, gestured at the yellow sheets. ‘The inescapable fact is we've had four murders of non-Caucasians in Glasgow in the last twenty-four hours. So we have to be alert to the possibility that White Rage
could
be involved in all of them.'

Perlman was silent. Death and complexity. Murder had its own inverted logic. He saw the hammer rise and fall and fall and rise and he heard metal rap on bone and bone breaking. He imagined wind and rain blowing against the black girl's body on the golf course. He was suddenly shot through with sadness: once upon a time you took murder in your long stride, Lou. But time buffs the protective veneer. Death was a younger man's business. He thought about Murdoch, whom he'd dispatched to Bargeddie. Indra Gupta, and Dev, and Barry Gupta, these faces suddenly formed a crowd in his head.

Mary Gibson asked, ‘This girl in the café who left with Helen Mboto – do we know anything about her?'

‘We have a computer-generated rendering,' Deacon said, ‘based on descriptions made by the cappuccino brigade who were in the Matchbox last night.'

‘The Tinderbox, actually,' Linklater said.

‘Whatever,' Deacon said, clearly annoyed that anyone had the temerity to correct him. ‘Let's see the picture, Paul.'

Newby opened a briefcase that had been jammed between his feet, and removed a sheet of paper. He set it down on the table, placing it on top of the yellow leaflets. Perlman's view was upside down. Faces were always bizarre from this perspective, like creatures in the kind of dreams you had when half-digested vindaloo was rocketing through your system. He walked round the table to get a better look. Computerized sketches usually lacked vitality, reminiscent of faces in the morgue. He found himself gazing at a young woman, eyes large and dark, lips full, mouth downslanted in what might have been a slight petulance.

He imagined that in real life she'd be pretty.

But what else could you tell from this image that was based on the varied recollections of different people who'd seen her from assorted angles in a Glasgow coffee shop? Intelligent, murderous, innocent, sweet – what could you deduce?

Sometimes, with a photograph, you could imagine the subject's inner self, you could divine his or her state of mind up to a point. But this lifeless rendering granted you no such access. The girl could be one of thousands in the city, walking along a street, riding the Underground, climbing into a taxi.

Mary Gibson said, ‘And this is all we have?'

Deacon said, ‘All we have on the girl, yes.'

‘Nobody saw where she and Helen Mboto went when they left the café?'

‘Nobody's come forward so far,' Deacon said. ‘We may not know anything about this young woman … but we do know something about White Rage.'

‘I'm listening,' Mary Gibson said.

Deacon walked round the table. He paused directly behind Sandy Scullion. ‘Special Branch has been aware of White Rage for the past few weeks. Certain information has been gathered … I'm not at liberty to say how. It's scant and it's not totally reliable, but we're working on it twenty-four hours out of every twenty-four.'

Perlman thought about how Special Branch operated in the crevices of the city, in those twilit places where terrorists and/or subversive groups gathered with malicious intent. Mad bomb-makers, disaffected citizens with burning grudges against a System that had foisted injustice on them. Anyone who was a menace to public order came under SB's scrutiny, and SB were furtive bastards.

Deacon said, ‘The members of WR are probably hard-core neo-Nazis, fall-outs from organizations that have already gone out of existence. Membership is probably constructed on the cell principle. Nobody knows anyone outside his own cell, which may consist of only two, three or four people. Messages between cells are always conveyed anonymously.
Noms de guerre
are always used. These people keep moving. They don't linger.'

‘And do we know the real identities of any of these people?' Mary Gibson asked.

Deacon looked deflated. He shook his head, then recovered his buoyancy. ‘Not yet. But I think we're getting close.'

‘How close is close?' Perlman asked.

‘I can't tell you specifically. I can't say we'll catch them tomorrow or next week or next month. It doesn't work that way.'

‘How does it work then?' Perlman asked.

‘I can't reveal the inner mechanism of an ongoing operation, Perlman.'

‘Why's that?'

‘Why's that? Because I can't endanger the lives of people engaged in secretive work.'

‘What do you think Helen Mboto would say if she heard that? Or Ochoba? What would they say if they knew their lives just might have been spared if SB had shared some of its information with us regular-type policemen, us low-ranking schmucks?' Perlman caught Scullion's eye and read the look as clearly as a banner headline:
Don't push it, Lou
. Pish off, Sandy, I'm playing my own game, he thought. ‘If White Rage is out there in a murderous frame of mind, how are we supposed to stop them from killing again if you hotshots at Special Branch don't provide us with what you've dug up?'

Mary Gibson interrupted. ‘I take your point, Detective-Sergeant, even if I find your approach disrespectful. But you know as well as I do that certain types of operation are fragile and have to be kept under very tight wraps.'

Perlman clasped his hands together and cracked his knuckles.
Stop. Fall silent
. He knew he should, but instead he raised another question. ‘Why weren't we informed that SB knew about White Rage weeks ago?'

‘
Lou
,' Mary Gibson said.

Perlman thought: quit before they toss you out of the room – but he was rolling along, enjoying Deacon's expression of disapproval. ‘Now you're telling us that the murders of Indra Gupta and Ajit Singh might have been the work of this group. Right? So what I'm saying is it would be bloody helpful to have a gander at some of SB's info. Instead, we only hear what Inspector Deacon wants us to hear. I don't call that useful. Also, how is SB making inroads into this group exactly? Undercover cops, paid informants? I feel like I'm working blind. Somebody pass me a white stick.'

Mary Gibson sighed and said, ‘Sergeant, I'm quite sure there's no deliberate obstruction here. Drop the matter now. Please.'

Perlman pushed his chair back from the table. ‘Certainly,' he said. He heard his stomach rumble, acid churning. ‘It's dropped.'

There was a silence in the room. Perlman thought of the stresses that boiled under the roof of Force HQ, the games, the one-upmanship, the sniping and the begrudgery; people built their own kingdoms and protected them any way they could, with threats, malicious rumour, brute power. It's time to get the fuck out, he thought. Take the high road to Somewhere Else. A clean place. By yon bonnie banks, yon bonnie braes. I kid myself. I stay until they carry me out. It's in my system.

Deacon addressed Mary Gibson. ‘When I have more knowledge, you'll be notified. It's not in Special Branch's interest to sit on anything that might be useful to police operations – despite what our outspoken Sergeant here might think.'

Mary Gibson stood up and looked at Sandy Scullion. ‘Make sure the picture goes into circulation right away, Sandy.' Then she faced Deacon. I'll expect daily updates, Prase. I don't want to wait until we're awash in blood.'

‘Nobody does,' Deacon said.

People began to file from the room. Mary Gibson asked Lou to stay behind a moment. He'd been waiting for that. The bad pupil. The rotten apple. He lingered until he was alone with her. She told him to sit, which he did. He watched lead-coloured clouds fly across the sky above Pitt Street.

‘You're like a bear,' she said.

‘I've got two dead people on my mind, and that flyboy from Special Branch flapping like a Cold War operative. Now I've got to start thinking about the notion, which may or may not be remote, that my two victims were killed by this scum, this White Rage.' He wondered about the possessiveness he experienced towards the kindergarten dead.
My two victims
. Was that what he felt – the dead belonged to him? He had some kind of right of ownership? ‘Shoot me for expecting some cooperation,' he added.

‘I'd love to shoot you for your bad manners, frankly,' she said. ‘I know there's bad blood between you and Deacon.'

‘Some people just rub each other the wrong way.'

‘It's more than that, Lou. And you know it. You had a falling-out.'

‘It was more than a mere falling-out, Superintendent.'

‘You worked a case with him involving drugs.'

‘Right. Before he became the blue-eyed of Special Branch. We knew a shipment of heroin was coming into the city. We knew where, we knew when, and we knew the principals involved. Piece of cake. But Frase gets it into his head that if he somehow infiltrates the smugglers, we can grab all the local boys and then go back down the trail to the point of origin, and nab the guys at source as well. Which, in this instance, happens to be Morocco, where Frase has absolutely no jurisdiction. Does that bother him? The world's his playground. He can strut where he likes. He infiltrates the Glasgow locals – but when he flies out to Morocco to bag the biggies, he's rumbled. They're expecting him. He's been sniffed out. It's all downhill then. The shipment never leaves Morocco, the big boys scatter and play elsewhere, and the Glasgow muppets are left with nothing. Frase comes back about to explode. He's got this look like a tomato that's been boiling in a greenhouse. Somebody's given him away. There was a leak. It wasn't his fault, of course. Oh no, heaven forbid. It was
mine
. I gabbed in the wrong place. I whispered and somebody overheard and a warning went out to abort the whole smuggling exercise. Frase blamed me. He
still
blames me. He had egg on his face, but I was the one responsible for splattering him with it. I'm an amateur, a clodhopper. Frase, who leads a charmed life, becomes a high-flyer in SB. As for me – well, here I am.'

Mary Gibson asked, ‘You ever hear of kiss and make up?'

Perlman dismissed the idea with a slight shudder. ‘What's so special about Special Branch anyway? How did they get that name? Did they apply for it? Did they say to the Chief, hey, we're special, so can we be called Special Branch?'

‘You have no excuse for being confrontational, Lou. Nor sarcastic.'

‘Take into account I also have Tay on my back like a carbuncle. He says he's looking for more action on my brother's case.'

‘Still no excuse,' Mary Gibson said.

‘And then there's George Latta, all sweetness and light.'

‘Latta's piddling into the ocean, Lou. That's what he does for a living. He shouldn't alarm you.'

Perlman slumped, stretched his legs, gazed at Mary Gibson. She had a look of professional sympathy, such as you might see on the face of a trained counsellor; and yet there was more – a sincere softness in the eyes.

‘When did you last have a holiday?' she asked.

‘I forget.' When indeed? He couldn't recall.

‘Take some time off soon. Get out of Glasgow. Or maybe you believe nothing exists beyond the city limits. Are you one of those people, Lou? Leave Glasgow and you fall off the edge of the planet?'

Perlman smiled. ‘I was in Largs a few years ago.'

‘Largs? Did you get a nosebleed? I'm thinking more of Malaga or Malta.'

‘I'll have plenty of time for that when I quit the Force. Can I leave now?'

She nodded. Perlman moved quickly to the door.

‘I know it's far too late in the day to tell you not to get devoured by the job.'

‘That advice might have been useful thirty years ago.'

She smiled faintly. ‘Shackled to the cause of law and order.'

Perlman reached for the door handle. ‘I can think of worse causes.'

‘That's what I told my husband even as he was packing his suitcases,' she said.

Perlman hesitated. ‘You're separated?'

‘Last week.'

‘I'm sorry, Mary.'

‘I wouldn't mind so much except it's such a damn cliché. Husband neglected because of wife's career. Decides to move on. Maybe there's another woman. I don't know. I doubt it.'

Perlman wasn't sure what to say, what comfort to give, nor did he understand why she'd chosen him as the recipient of her bad news. I must have a kind face, he thought. Mary Gibson's husband worked for the Inland Revenue; his name was Maxwell. Or maybe Martin. Perlman had seen him only once, at a Christmas party three or four years ago, and couldn't bring an image of the man to mind.

‘He might come back,' he said.

‘He might.' She made an uncertain gesture. ‘Go do your job, Lou. Just remember to take a few steps back every now and then. You get a better view of the landscape that way.'

‘I'll keep it in mind.' Perlman left the room.

Scullion was waiting a few yards down the corridor.

‘Whatever she said to you, you deserved it,' he said.

‘She chastised me,' Perlman said.

‘Bloody right. What did I tell you less than twenty minutes ago? Try to play the game.'

‘I tried. I failed.'

‘You didn't try very hard, Lou.'

‘I'll give it more effort, I promise,' Perlman said. ‘Have you re-scheduled that fish pie?'