White Rage (29 page)

He undressed while he climbed the stairs, kicking off shoes, dropping overcoat and trousers. By the time he reached his bedroom he was down to shirt and underwear and socks. He lay on the bed. A Celtic Football Club pennant hung aslant on the wall.
European Cup Winners, 1967
. There was a small framed photograph of that legendary team tacked just under the pennant. Heroic Glasgow men, toiling in the Lisbon sun to defeat a bunch of tough Italians. A couple of old football programmes were pinned around the pennant. Real Madrid v Eintracht Frankfurt, Hampden Park, 1963. England v Scotland, Wembley, 1967, a rare, famous Scottish victory.

The thought struck Perlman, as it had done before, that this was a boy's room, with its sport souvenirs and discarded clothes piled here and there; it wasn't a grown man's bedroom. It wasn't a seduction chamber, a babe-box.

He fell asleep quickly, and dreamed he was pursuing a band of fugitives down Hope Street at the height of rush hour.

33

At dawn she walked towards the Clyde, where she listened to the cry of gulls and the occasional noise of a delivery van carrying morning rolls and newspapers to shops. There were no buses in the streets, no taxis. A dirty yellow light slit the dark sky. The night withdrew at the pace of a garden slug. Streetlamps were still lit in the city.

She passed a bundle of newspapers stacked and twined outside a shuttered newsagents, and helped herself to one, yanking it out under the string. Hysteria on the front page:
Racist Killings
. A group called White Rage was being ‘hunted'. Police spokesmen said rhubarb rhubarb. Only a matter of time. We'll bring them to justice. A Roman Catholic bishop called for calm and courage and prayer. Muslim leaders urged people to be watchful. An inner-city politician took advantage of the situation, as politicians will, and railed at the inadequacy of policing, and how stronger punishments for race crimes were needed.

She saw her own face stare at her from the page.

If you have seen this woman, please call 888-8787
.

Pegg had said it was a good likeness.

She couldn't see it. People never really know what they look like to others. Check a mirror, and you see what you're inclined to see. She walked to the river's edge and ripped the newspaper in a dozen pieces and let them go from her hand towards the water, where they floated in gradually discolouring strips.

Then she began to run. She moved into an easy jog when she reached Anderston Quay, picking up speed along the Broomielaw. She turned round as soon as she reached Central Station Bridge, and jogged back the way she'd come. Good for the heart. Good for the lungs. She needed to be fit. She needed clarity of mind and strength of purpose. Her skin felt warm now under the grey cotton tracksuit. Her breath created little clouds in the air.

She stopped at the end of Lancefield Quay. She could hear sparse traffic on the Clydeside Expressway. A drone, then silence, then another drone. She took a couple of deep breaths and ran again, heading back towards Central Station Bridge. She saw a man come towards her, late thirties, expensive black tracksuit, top-of-the-line running shoes. He smiled at her. A couple of pavement pounders exchanging affectionate understanding, like members of a club recognizing each other's badges. We must be mad to do this. She predicted he'd say something like that.

What he said was, ‘Are we crazy?'

‘Probably,' she said.

‘I haven't seen you around here before.' He'd changed direction, slipped into step alongside her.

A duo of joggers. He fancied his chances. ‘I don't come here often,' she said.

He was breathing hard. ‘The fight against flab knows no bounds.'

‘I don't have any flab,' she said.

‘I can see that. So you exercise for what? Fun?'

‘I'm fighting middle age before it arrives.'

‘Precautionary measures. Smart.'

She spurted a few feet ahead of him, then he caught up with her.

‘Is this a race?' he asked.

‘I'm only doing what I do.'

‘You're in great shape.'

She stopped. She walked a couple of paces, turning into McAlpine Street. He followed her.

‘You jog up here?' He gestured towards the network of little streets – Crimea Street, Balaclava, Washington – that ran south of a main thoroughfare, Argyle Street.

‘It's quieter this time of day.'

‘It's not exactly crowded anywhere this early, is it?' He had black hair, a few lanks of which toppled over his brow.

‘I like the quiet,' she said.

‘I'm a noise person myself. Too much quiet, I'm going out of my mind.' He fluttered his index finger rapidly against his lower lip to suggest gibberish and lunacy.

She was supposed to laugh at this, so she did. ‘We're all different.'

‘Thank God for that.'

She stared at the ground. She knew he'd ask her out. She sensed him gather the nerve. Men were vividly transparent most of the time. Only Oyster was different, difficult to read. Maybe that was why she found him so appealing. The sense of inner privacy he projected: you'll never know me.

‘You ever been to Café Arta?'

‘Are you inviting me?'

‘Why not? We runners should stick together.'

She put her hand in the pocket of her trousers. ‘You want an immediate answer?'

‘If you've got one.'

‘I'm the girl with all the answers.'

She took out her gun and shot him. She shot him in the right eye. He went down, stunned and blinded, and tilted his face up as if to say
There must
be
some mistake
. She shot him again, this time in the neck. He fell on his side and his blood gathered on the pavement around his head. It looked darker than blood in the bad light, more like spilled wine. She didn't wait. She ran north to Argyle Street and jogged under streetlamps even as the sky lightened inexorably. She kept going north up Wellington Street, then she made a right turn along St Vincent Lane, just a runner, just a pretty blonde jogger pursuing good health.

Any pedestrian passing on his or her way to a sedentary job might look and think: More people should do what she does.
I
should do what she does. Get the blood going, stave off a coronary, tone the muscles. Yes indeed.

A healthy young woman. Sound of body, sound of mind.

34

It seemed to Perlman he'd hardly slept more than a few minutes before his alarm clock raged. His dreams vaporized. He woke empty-headed, dry-mouthed. He rolled out of bed and stumbled to the shower and stood paralysed under the blast of water. When it began to run cold he stepped out, towelling himself as he returned to his bedroom to look for something to wear.

He found a clean white shirt folded badly in a drawer of his dressing table. He decided yesterday's socks had another day left in them. Clean boxers, blue and white striped: he felt sporty in these, vaguely pugilistic. Come out of your corner fighting, champ.

He knotted his tie, not yesterday's embarrassing kipper of an attachment, but a slimmer tie one of the Aunts had pressed on him a couple of Chanukahs ago. Blue, silver flashes.
Here, Louie, do yourself a favour, brighten yourself up, what bird whistles at drab plumage?
He checked inside his wardrobe. He had a charcoal-grey suit hanging there. It had a faint pinstripe that was almost invisible. The suit was ten years old and the trousers were tight at his waist. He'd get by.

He put on his shoes and went downstairs where he stuck an old vinyl disc on the turntable and listened to Fats Waller sing ‘Ain't Misbehavin', and then he continued into the kitchen. Coffee, tea – decisions. He plugged in the electric kettle. He made instant coffee. He drank it standing at the kitchen table. He glanced at the clock on the windowsill. Eight oh seven. He had a very bad feeling about the day ahead. More death. More violence. A panicky city.

He walked to the stairs, picked up his coat where he'd dropped it about five hours ago, and then left the house. He stepped inside his Ford. Ready ready ready. Hit the road, Jack. As he drove off, he slid a CD of Nigel Clark's
Grand Hotel Europa
into the deck, and realized he'd forgotten to turn the damn turntable off. He drove towards the city centre through draggy traffic, wondering where he'd lost his mobile. You could go crazy pondering the loose ends and missing objects of a life – the record player running, the AWOL mobile phone, the light he realized he'd left on in his bedroom.

He made it to Force HQ by eight forty. He parked his car on a double yellow and entered the building. He was filled with a quiet dread that lay in his stomach like an undigested slice of Dundee fruitcake. He saw Scullion coming quickly down the stairs, and Mary Gibson hurrying behind him. They looked grave.

Scullion said, ‘Just in time.'

‘For what?'

Sandy didn't answer. A rough day loomed: you could read it in his frown. Mary Gibson's face was knotted with tension. Perlman followed Scullion and Mary Gibson out into the street. The morning was cold, the sun a furious red. Scullion zapped the central-locking device of his car, opening the doors. Mary Gibson took the passenger seat, Perlman slid in behind her.

‘Will somebody tell me?' Perlman asked.

Mary Gibson didn't turn to look at him. ‘Nat Blum,' she said.

‘Blum? What about him?'

‘Dead. Shot twice. Cold blood.'

‘Blum's dead?
Blum?
'

Sandy Scullion said, ‘His body was found at six a.m. approximately, just off the Broomielaw. He was carrying no personal items, no wallet, nothing. It took more than an hour and a half to ID him.'

‘Blum,' Perlman said. ‘I can't believe Blum's …' He hadn't cared for Nat, he'd considered him greedy and slick, but he'd never have wished him dead.

Scullion turned his car into Bothwell Street, and then Waterloo. Perlman remembered how he'd come this way yesterday with Madhur Gupta, and how long ago that seemed. It was as if Indra Gupta's murder had been driftwood sucked away by a ruthless tide. If he didn't reel it in soon there was a risk of it vanishing completely.

And now Blum.

Okay, Nat kept bad company: maybe somebody in that circle of thugs he represented had decided he knew too much, and a man with an insider's knowledge of illicit acts is always vulnerable, always a possible liability.

Scullion parked the car outside Blum's office building, where Perlman's urge to blame a gangster element for the lawyer's murder dissipated as soon as he saw the graffiti spraypainted over the windows and entranceway. Shocked, he got out of the car. He opened Mary Gibson's door for her. Scullion was already on the pavement, staring at the riot of paint.

‘Fuck me,' Perlman said. He studied the collection of red swastikas and tried to define what was going through his head, what this blood-coloured symbol caused him to feel – sadness? Anger? Or just a reaction to his own power – lessness to make a change in the world, and promote a little understanding, a little tolerance? Fuck it, he wasn't a social worker, a shrink, it wasn't his place to alter the attitudes of men and women –

Scullion said, ‘Pretty sight, eh?'

Perlman made no response. He was conscious now of uniformed cops cluttering the scene, keeping at bay the growing number of spectators. He recognized Dennis Murdoch among them.

Perlman wondered when he'd last seen a swastika in Glasgow. He'd spotted one now and then in the arches under old railway bridges, usually surrounded by the spraypainted names of gangs and crude religious slogans. He'd noticed the symbol in a peripheral way only, viewing it as the work of ill-informed boys, the same yobs who splashed the acronyms IRA and UVF here and there throughout the city. But this serious assault on a building in the business heart of Glasgow was a different piece of work, offensive, nakedly public.

He counted more than twenty individual swastikas. Then he noticed the initials
WR
in white paint dotted here and there between the red; white streaks had slithered to touch the red, and the red had run here and there as well, creating a pink pattern, as if the stone itself were leaking a pale blood.

WR
.

Nat Blum had been white; no matter, his Jewishness had put him in the same category as Ochoba, and Helen Mboto, and Perse McKinnon. There was no such thing as a white Jew, not if you were a member of White Rage.

Perlman entered the building. He followed Mary Gibson and Scullion into the lift and they rode in silence upwards. Inside Blum's suite, there were more swastikas, dozens splattered across blond wood and chrome. In Blum's private office, filing cabinets lay toppled, plants overturned, pots shattered, the lawyer's sound system smashed.

A couple of fingerprint guys worked in their careful way, stooped, almost monkish in their devotion. Tizer Dunlop appeared, photographing the wreckage. Fraser Deacon entered Blum's office, looking gaunt in a black suit and black polo-neck sweater. His shaved head gleamed like bone under the recessed spotlights. Did the Big Frase bring news from Special Branch? Perlman wondered. Was there somewhere a nugget of precious information?

Deacon said good morning in a curt way, then indicated that he wanted to talk in a small conference room that adjoined Blum's office. This was a place where Nat met his clients, where legal strategy was discussed and options assessed. Perlman sat down beside Mary Gibson. She had her hands folded demurely in her lap. No wedding ring, marriage still out of commission. Scullion remained standing, his back to the window that overlooked Waterloo Street. Deacon stared at Perlman, as if surprised to see Lou here. Perlman thought, Maybe he expected me to walk away from this case, citing ‘personal differences'. But I'm sticking to it, Frase. Trust me.

Deacon said, ‘First, we're inclined to believe the weapon that killed Nat Blum was the one used in the shooting of Indra Gupta. Thirty-two calibre in both cases. We won't know for sure until further tests are done. But we're working on the assumption that it was the same weapon.'