White Rage (22 page)

‘I look like the Gestapo to you?' he said.

‘Let's debate civil liberties,' she said.

He examined the licence. Celia Liddell, born 5 January 1978. Address 4 King Edward Road, Glasgow. He knew King Edward Road. It was in Jordanhill, a comfortable suburb a couple of miles west of Partick. He checked the photograph on the licence against her face, glancing with half an eye at the computer impression – then realized with a flush of embarrassment how fucking ridiculously
mistaken
he was, how bushwhacked by the explosion at Cremoni's and the death of McKinnon, how lopsided his connection with the world had become: there was no similarity between this idiot caricature and the photograph, no resemblance
whatsoever
between the computer's ham-fisted rendition of an imaginary creature and the woman who was presently grabbing back her belongings from his hand.

Blood fired to his face. Was he blushing noticeably?

‘You'll be all right if I leave now, I take it?' she asked.

‘I had to check,' he said quietly.

‘You don't need me to phone somebody to collect you?'

Funny girl. She was attractive. She had a self-assured quality, a proud intelligence about her. ‘I had to check,' he said again.

‘Now you get to say it's a messy job, but some poor bastard has to do it. Right?' She moved away. He watched her step inside a car parked about twenty yards from where he stood.

Celia Liddell, I'm sorry. Wrong woman. Totally wrong. He skipped through traffic back to the other side of the street. He felt out of synch, displaced. He felt – what was the word his mother had used –
dershloguen:
despondent. He was in no hurry to return to the crime scene. He needed time out, a break.

He stepped inside a grotty little pub of the old Glasgow kind, where everything was covered with a patina of dust, and the room hadn't been ventilated in so many years that the amalgamated odours of booze and smoke had created their own biosphere. A couple of leathery punters studied the racing pages of newspapers.

He looked at the menu, ordered a fizzy lemonade and a roast-beef sandwich with chutney. The girl behind the counter, twentyish and wearing gaudy earrings in the shape of parrots, vanished into the kitchen area, then popped back a minute later with his order.

He carried the sandwich and lemonade to a table. He took off the top slice, gazed at the marbled texture of the beef and the thick smear of chutney. His appetite was dying in slow stages. It wasn't food he needed, it was freedom from a world of suspicion and violence, his world.

Escape From Perlman's Planet.

He thought of his encounter with the young woman, and he had a sense of the whole investigation slipping away. It had an amorphous feel he didn't like. If you gathered all the murders under the rubric of White Rage, if you worked on the hypothesis that the dead were victims of race hatred, then maybe you'd be able to impose a design. Just maybe.

Who made the decisions? Who fingered the targets? Were they randomly selected? Was it as arbitrary as sticking the tip of a pin into a phone directory and choosing a victim on that basis?

He shut his eyes and thought: I was desperate to nail her, desperate to nail
somebody
. This is the measure of the place I've come to. So you were wrong. You made mistakes before, you'll make them again. Infallibility is the domain of the self-deluded.

Check. Check and double-check.

He rose, asked the barwoman if he could use the telephone. She told him it was fine. He punched in the number for Pitt Street and asked to be connected to PC Dennis Murdoch. He was informed that Murdoch was out of the building; he left a message for the young cop to run a question through the computer.

The barwoman asked, ‘Did you hear about that explosion at Cremoni's?'

Perlman said he'd heard.

‘Shocking. I mean, it's only just down the road. Somebody said it was an underground gas pipe just blew. You don't know when your nummer's gonny be called, do you?'

‘You can't even guess,' he said.

One of the punters, who wore thick-lensed glasses, didn't look up from his
Daily Record
. ‘Christ almighty, Glasgow's become a total pisspot.'

Perlman allowed his thoughts to float back to Miriam. She stood for serenity, the possibility of sanity, God knows what other good things.

‘You mind if I use your phone again?' he asked.

‘No, as long as it's not Tokyo you're calling,' the barwoman said.

‘I don't know a soul in Tokyo, love. It's Rio I'm phoning.'

‘Oh I'd love to visit Rio during the carnival,' she said. She did a slight samba sway. ‘I can just see it. I'm yours, Miguel. Arriba arriba. Take me away from this humdrum life.'

Perlman smiled at her as he pressed in Miriam's number.

‘I'm still waiting for that invitation to the Willow, Lou.' Miriam's voice gave him the notion that a fulfilling emotional life was still possible, and that the world might be a clean shining place after all.

‘I wish I could make it today,' he said. ‘I can't.'

‘I read the papers, Lou. I listen to the radio. I know what you're up against. We'll do it some other afternoon.'

Be bold. Seize the day, Lou. An hour for yourself. Ninety minutes. It was so damn little to ask. ‘I was thinking … how about tonight? A drink, maybe something to eat.'

‘You're sure you've got the time, Sergeant?'

‘I'll make the bloody time. I need to. I'm running on empty. How about La Fiorentina? Eight. Eight thirty.'

‘Suits me. It's years since I've been there.'

He said goodbye and hung up. He took a single bite out of his sandwich before stepping out into the street and walking back in the direction of Cremoni's.

25

She abandoned the rotted Mini in a street near Kelvingrove Park, then walked to Kelvin Way where she hailed a taxi and asked to be driven to Dennistoun in the east end. The cab slogged her through the stop-start afternoon traffic of the city centre and past the giant dark edifice of the Royal Infirmary, then along Alexandra Parade, where the old red-brick cigarette factories lay vacant. She got out of the taxi at the entrance to Alexandra Park. She always followed the same route when she came here.

She entered the park, walked towards the large Victorian royal-blue fountain where water poured from the mouths of cast-iron lion heads. She glanced as she usually did at the four classical life-size statues of women who had the appearance of serene guardians; they were said to represent art, commerce, literature and science. She thought they always looked knowing, as if they'd penetrated some deep secret from the years of their vigil at the fountain. Something precious, something to do with patience.

Tell me all about patience and how to restrict my daft impulses.

You had to look, didn't you? You had to go back and check on Beezer's handiwork. You couldn't leave it alone
.

She moved along the edge of the pond where swans sailed on the murky surface, and then past the children's playground. She was aware of elderly people on benches. Some gazed at her, the old men especially. She left the park and circled back to Alexandra Parade, where she walked in the direction of Kennyhill Square. A bowling green occupied the centre of the square, which was bordered by respectable red tenements, some of which had pretensions; columned entranceways, dense vine growing from sandstone, plants in hanging baskets. She heard the infinite drone of the motorway in the distance.

The day was calm, the wind dead, the air scented with cut grass.

Okay, she'd gone to look at the scene of the explosion, she'd joined the crowd outside Cremoni's. Probably stupid. No,
definitely
stupid. Slack, unprofessional. But why worry? She felt immune from the law. She lived inside a locked box, and nobody knew the combination. What legacy had she left the cops anyway? They might find her old car, the interior covered with her fingerprints – but since she had no criminal record, prints were useless currency.

She felt removed from the encounter with the man who carried a card that identified him as
Louis Perlman, Detective-Sergeant, Strathclyde Police
. Perlman had seen her close up, and he'd be able to give an accurate description, but when he tried to gain access to a copy of her driving licence from the central computer in Swansea, what was he going to find?

Just the same, she'd take the precaution now of dyeing her hair, changing the way she looked – maybe glasses, more make-up, whatever it took – then she'd find new rooms and move between them in her customary haphazard way. As for the computer drawing he'd shown her, a bad joke. It depicted a frightened zombie, a simian freak. The Missing Linkette. She wondered about the eyewitnesses who'd contributed their impressions to that poxy image. She'd been observed last night at the Tinderbox in the company of Helen Mboto – of course.

Which meant that the body had been discovered.

Good. It was time.

She stopped outside number fourteen. There were half a dozen nameplates. She rang the bell marked J K Oyster in two short bursts. She heard the buzzer, the man's voice from the intercom.

‘Come up.'

The security door opened, she stepped into the building. The door shut behind her silently. She climbed the stairs to the second floor. Pale lifeless light fell inside the tenement from a pane set in the roof.

She stopped outside a panelled door with a brass knocker in the shape of a Celtic cross. She raised it, then let it fall twice against the wood. She heard noises from inside the flat, a footfall followed by the sound of a safety chain being slid back.

He opened the door, made a gesture with his head. She moved past him into the hallway. The flat was spacious, filled with the kind of dark furniture that suggested permanence, mahogany dining table and chairs, oil paintings depicting Scottish scenes, castles in mist, long-haired cattle in water. It wasn't her taste, but it was good stuff, expensive. She remembered the sticks of furniture her mother had gleaned from scrapyards and junkshops for the two-room flat in Govan. Every bloody thing broke so soon, she thought. Every bloody thing was so pathetic and smelled of other people's histories.

The man said, ‘Sit.'

She didn't do so immediately. She liked a little show of independence. Nobody tells me. She looked out of the window; below, half a dozen senior citizens played bowls. A hump-backed old man in a blazer crouched over his bowl, then sent it skimming across the grass in the direction of the jack.

‘God, it's exciting around here,' she said.

‘I'm sure you get enough excitement in other places,' the man said. He had a strong Glasgow accent. ‘Sit down.'

She sat in front of the unlit fireplace. The big velvet armchair engulfed her. The man leaned against the mantelpiece. He wore grey trousers and a grey open-necked shirt. It was all she'd ever seen him wear. She wondered if she should mention the encounter with Perlman, then decided against it.
You shouldn't have gone back
, she thought. You didn't take an accident of fate into account, a chance meeting with a policeman. She thought of Perlman's face. He had the look of a guy who'd innocently give sweeties to wee children, or help blind men cross busy streets, but she had the feeling that he'd be as quick to displeasure as he was to compassion. She could imagine him fishing, enduring long rainy hours on a riverbank, waiting for his float to be snatched under the surface. A man of some persistence.

The encounter was history. You can't alter it.

The man stuck his hands in his pockets and jingled keys. She knew him only as Jack Oyster. He wore smoked-glass shades. His black slip-on shoes had little tassels. He gave an impression of physical strength; he was someone who took pride in his condition. He was in his late forties, maybe fifty. Part of the attraction she felt lay in his impenetrability – he was a fellow-traveller of sorts, but he was also an enigma. She wanted to get inside him, to know him.

His money for one thing: where did that come from? He was generous with it but what was its source? And this flat – she felt that it wasn't where he lived, but simply a place he kept for meetings and assignations.

He sat facing her, legs crossed. ‘You've been busy.'

‘We keep on top of our work,' she said.

‘This girl on the golf course …'

‘Yes.'

Oyster adjusted his glasses. She wondered if Oyster was really his name. Most likely not. She'd never heard of anyone called by that name. She remembered a piece of childhood verbal nonsense:
what noise annoys an oyster
? She watched him and wondered if he knew she'd go to bed with him if he asked her. She wasn't sure how he'd react if she made the first move. He gave off no spark of interest. She always knew when a man desired her. She studied the tiny scar that ran from the shadow of his earlobe to his jawbone. A couple of inches long, and discoloured. An old injury.

‘And the explosion today,' he said.

‘A job done.' She got out of the chair. She walked back to the window. The bowling green was empty now. The players had gone inside the pavilion for afternoon tea.

He said, ‘You set off some pretty fireworks.'

‘Is that a compliment? It must be your first.'

If it's wee puffs of praise you're after, you've come to the wrong man.'

‘I don't need praise.'

He said, ‘If you did, I don't think we'd be doing business together. I help with a little finance. Sometimes our interests coincide.'

‘We're
simpatico
,' she said.

‘At times.' He was quiet for a while. ‘One day you'll come here and I'll be gone. The place will be empty. I never existed.'

‘I assumed as much. There's a touch of the mirage about you anyway. You're like something seen from a distance.'

‘I come, I go. The longer I keep doing the same thing, the more chance of exposure. So I close shop and come back again a year or two later doing business under another name.'