White Rage (26 page)

Latta sighed. ‘I'm asking the lady a question she apparently doesn't want to answer. I can go another route. I have a legal arsenal at my disposal.'

‘You bringing charges?' Perlman asked.

Latta shrugged. ‘One always looks for cooperation before taking that step, of course. Why the hell are you so interested anyway? Playing the gallant in front of your lady – or do
you
have something to hide about the source of this deposit?'

‘I can't take this creep a minute longer,' Perlman said to Miriam, and he escorted her towards the door.

‘Hang about, Lou,' Latta said. ‘This creep comes with a message for you.'

Perlman turned. His neck muscles were rigid with tension.

Latta grinned at him. ‘I hear people are looking for you. People are seeking you everywhere. You're the Clydeside Pimpernel. Seems your phone's on the blink. Seems a certain corpse disfigured in an explosion has been identified. If I were you, perish the thought, I'd hasten to the nearest public phone and contact Sandy Scullion.'

Perlman went outside, his arm linked with Miriam's.

‘The night's over,' Miriam said.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Maybe we broke off at just the right moment.'

Perlman didn't want to explore the meaning of this one. For him, Latta's intrusion had come at the wrong moment altogether. He gestured towards the pub. ‘That wanker –'

‘He's not worth it, Lou.'

Perlman felt the nippy air of the real world. He preferred the world of magic. ‘I'll put you in a taxi. Phone you later.'

‘That's fine,' she said.

‘I don't know what time.'

‘It's okay.'

He gazed along Paisley Road West, thinking how Latta's appearance had drained the night of some of its wonder. Then he pondered Miriam's transfer of such a large sum of money, and he realized that Latta had done more than devalue the evening, he'd poisoned it.

He hailed a taxi, watched it cruise to a halt. Miriam kissed him quickly on the cheek, then stepped inside. He closed the door for her. She raised a farewell hand in the window. Her face was set in what looked like resignation or regret.

He didn't have time to decide. He walked back in the direction of La Fiorentina to ask for the use of their phone, all the while aware of Latta, shadowy under the brim of his hat, observing him from the doorway of the Old Toll Bar.

29

He drove north to Possil, pustulent Possil, his ears still echoing from the sound of Scullion's voice on the line. All right, so Sandy had a genuine grievance: his number two, his right-hand man, had gone AWOL at a bad time. And incommunicado.
You know how many fucking times I've tried to call you, Lou? This keeps happening
. Contrition didn't dent Scullion's anger.

White Rage had made it to the evening news on TV, Scullion had said. You could practically
hear
the city shut and bolt its doors against the horror. People are scared, and we owe it to them to say the city will be made secure. We want to tell them it's safe to go out and walk their dogs.

And where are you, Perlman? Out with your brother's widow.
Out on a fucking date!

He imagined Latta clyping on him in unctuous tones.
Found your wandering DS, Sandy. Out on the town, no less. My, you should keep your man in check, Sandy
…

So Possil. Head aching, chest aching from the cigarettes he'd smoked all the way from the Old Toll Bar to the western side of the city, Perlman drove his faltering Mondeo. When he reached his destination it was like driving into a sudden pall; this blighted place, this
carbuncle
of a suburb. It dismayed him.

He found the address Sandy had given him. He parked his car, turned on the interior light, scanned the car for a sign of his mobile. It wasn't in the car and it wasn't in a pocket of his clothing. It wasn't anywhere. The mobie goes missing. He'd lost it, dropped it, whatever. It had been a fucking
ludicrous
attachment anyway, something with which he felt no kinship.

He locked the car, conscious of various phantoms gathering in the blacked-out places where no streetlamps shed light. There were few functional lamps anyway, and those that remained were curiously prominent, like sorry afterthoughts. Who the hell was in charge of changing bulbs anyway? Some corporation flunkey too afraid to enter this place?

He thought:
£893,000
. That was a considerable stash. That was hefty money. No, not now, Lou. Leave it among everything else piled up behind you, all the unanswered questions that spread out from the murder of an Indian girl.

He caught a smell of dope on the air. Whatever could be inhaled or snorted, you'd find it here. He saw Scullion's Citroën, and a Strathclyde Police patrol car parked behind it. Two uniformed constables stood guard outside the patrol vehicle and looked more wary than vigilant. Perlman recognized one as PC Anstruther from HQ, a kid with a fuzz of fair hair on his cheeks. The other was a young WPC, whom Perlman had seen at the Sunshine Day School. Meg, he remembered. Meg Gayle. Good oval face, a sad kind of intelligence in her eyes.

Something cracked against the pavement. Perlman, startled, watched a rock hit concrete and bounce a few feet away from him. Bombardments. The air was rich with menace. The night vibrated. You half-expected to hear war drums. Glasgow Mau-Mau.

Anstruther flinched. ‘Jesus Christ,' he said.

‘Rough territory, my children,' Perlman remarked. ‘You might want to sit inside your car. For your own protection.'

Anstruther peered into the dark, as if trying to assess the extent of his and WPC Gayle's personal safety. Perlman entered the tenement. The security door hung off its hinges. The close smelled of urine so intense the stench was a weight in the air.

He climbed the stairs to the second floor. The door of a flat was open. He stepped inside a living room. Scullion was sitting on a sofa with a woman whose age was impossible to guess. Her flesh was like cracked parchment, and her wispy uncombed hair was crowned by an aura of cigarette smoke. Her fingernails were scarlet and bitten down. She had a maroon shawl drawn around her shoulders.

Perlman caught Scullion's eye. Sandy got up and crossed the floor. ‘I don't have the time to keep on being pissed off with you, Lou. Nor the energy.'

‘I thought your spleen was well and truly vented anyway.'

Scullion made a querulous crescent of one eyebrow. ‘Let's take it as written that my anger's now on a very low flame. Just don't aggravate it.'

‘Got it.'

I'll bring you up to speed.' He lowered his voice, leaned his head towards Lou. ‘Positive ID of one Robert Descartes. He'd been booked about fifteen years ago for a DUI offence. It wasn't a big deal. Thirty days or a hefty fine. He paid up. No further trouble with the law. At least on record. He lived right here with his mother, Sandrine. He survived on unemployment benefits. The mother's French. Says she is anyway.'

‘Have you had a good look around the place?'

I'm working in that direction. Slowly. I want her to okay it. Saves time if she agrees to a brief inspection. Right now she's in shock. Seems she expected Robert – or Robair, or just plain Bobby – to get into deep trouble eventually. He was a doomed boy, she says. Born under a bad star.'

Perlman scanned the room. New TV, fake lilies in a porcelain vase, assorted tabloids and TV magazines on the stained carpet. A tarot deck lay open on a small coffee table alongside a big green glass ashtray overpacked with butts. The Four of Wands overlapped the Five of Swords and the Fool. Did this have any meaning? He studied Sandrine Descartes' face. The pale blue eyes looked as if they expected to see tragedy at every turn.

‘Is she talkative, Sandy?'

‘Comes and goes. Weepy. Chatty. Weepy again.'

Perlman approached the sofa. Sandrine Descartes lit a fresh cigarette from the end of an old one.

‘I'm Detective-Sergeant Lou Perlman, Mrs Descartes.'

Sandrine Descartes stared at him. ‘And? Are you here to tell me why my son was killed?'

‘I'm here to see if I can find that out,' he said.

‘Your colleague, he said the same thing.'

He sat beside Sandrine. He had the impression of a person sunk in shallow water and far too weary to rise. Life had scuttled her.

‘What do you think Bobby was doing at Cremoni's?' he asked.

She shrugged. ‘How can I answer this? Bobby was a mystery.' She said the last word in such a way that she might equally have said ‘disappointment'. ‘Until tonight I had never heard of this Cremoni's.'

‘He never mentioned Perseus McKinnon to you?' Perlman asked.

‘He never mentioned
anyone
to me. If he had friends, I never met them.'

Scullion stood close to the sofa, his shadow falling across the woman's face. ‘What did he do, Sandrine? How did he pass the time if he didn't work?'

‘He played on his computer,' she said, and shrugged. ‘How do I know what he did? We shared very little. I never understood him. Sometimes, you know, I felt I was close to reaching him. Not often. He was like soap, slippery.'

Scullion said, ‘He spent a lot of time on this computer?'

She nodded fiercely. ‘Yes, yes. This is what he did. Sat at the keyboard. Tap tap tap. Like
un pic
. A woodypecker. Is that how you say it?'

‘Close enough,' Perlman said.

Sandrine found a clump of tissues under her shawl, and blew her nose hard. ‘And now he's dead. And I say it's a waste. A life goes out, pah,
snuff
. What was he here for? Why was he born? Just to die in this damp fucking city. This place.
This fucking place this fucking city
,' and she screamed at the room, the cords in her neck stretching and tightening. She sobbed, and held her shawl against her face.

Perlman said, ‘Can I get you something? Do you have wine? Brandy?'

‘Nothing,' she said.

‘You sure?'

‘I want nothing.'

Perlman asked, ‘Can we see Bobby's room?'

She indicated a door to her right. ‘Why not.'

Perlman opened it, entered a dark stale space. He found a light switch. The room was small and panelled. Assorted items were pinned to the walls.

A bumper sticker:
My Country, Love It Or Leave It
.

A ragged slip of paper torn from a pamphlet dated 20 April 1998: Concerned Citizens for a White Britain, 7.30 p.m., Govan Cross.

A creased snapshot of a boy, possibly Bobby Descartes, in a Cub uniform. Undated.

Scullion entered the room. ‘What have we got here?'

‘Bits and pieces.' Perlman indicated the stuff on the walls, then moved to a table that held a computer. Although he had an urge to turn it on he knew he'd better leave that task to Scullion. He'd only press a wrong button.

He found a stack of envelopes to the side of the keyboard and he flicked through them. They were all addressed to R Descartes. He opened a few, enough to get an idea of the kind of post Bobby received.

None of the material suggested Bobby was a man of tolerance. There were leaflets from various ‘patriotic' societies that extolled the merits of the Monarchy and something called ‘the British Way of Life', even as they excoriated Britain's attitude to immigration and the lack of truly strict laws that would keep ‘the unwanted' out of this concrete Jerusalem. Read this stuff and you could imagine crazed people scribbling their ravings in bedsits or cold attics, the demented and the deranged in whose dislocated minds Britain had become no more than a gathering place for the scum fugitives of the planet. You could hear their clamour, their slogans, their hatred. Send all those niggers back the way they came. Stuff 'em in the holds of bug-ridden ships and float their arses out of God's Country.

Perlman stilled his anger. Racism was one of the planet's conditions; all your outrage didn't make a flake of difference. You could rant until your face was heliotrope and in the end you'd only sound hysterical, the flipside of the message the racists were screaming.

Scullion sifted the material, shaking his head. ‘Let's say the delightful Bobby Descartes wants to kill McKinnon – so are we really looking at a kamikaze act? Does he go inside Cremoni's on the understanding he's not coming back out again alive?'

Perlman didn't know. ‘Why McKinnon anyway?'

‘Surely obvious? The man's colour.'

‘A few people, not all of them racists, might have been interested in the removal of Perseus. His records … some of that stuff he collected was more than enough to make certain villains very nervous, Sandy. In any case, do you look around this sorry room and get the impression that our boy Bobby had a kamikaze streak? I see some pitiful hate mail from dubious organizations and hysterical individuals, aye, but do you know the overwhelming impression I get here?'

‘You tell me.'

‘Bitterness. Despair. The place reeks.'

‘All I smell is damp,' Scullion said.

‘Pay closer attention to your senses, Sandy. This computer, for example.' Perlman laid a hand on top of the dead screen. ‘I don't know shite about these things –'

‘Seconded,' Scullion said.

‘But I know enough to tell you this is one of those home-made jobs. Look at it. All the pieces are different brands. The screen's one thing, the keyboard's another, the disk-drive is stuck inside some scratched metal box, and this doodah –'

‘The external modem, I believe.'

‘Whatever it's called. It's battered and dented, and the cable looks fucking lethal. Touch it, I bet you fry like bacon. Here's what I see. Some downright fucking sorry loser sitting here in this gloomy room attaching all this
shmatte
together, bits he picked up probably for a few quid in junk shops and second-hand joints. Look at it, Sandy. It's pathetic and rundown, and those wood panels look like they'd fall off if anybody as much as raised their voice in here …' Perlman paused. This was the underbelly of a dead man's life. The unmade bed and the objectionable leaflets and the used grey Y-fronts on the floor and the discarded socks that lay in balls and the low-grade home-made computer system.