White Rage (40 page)

‘St Anthony's.'

‘Where's that?'

Perlman thought as fast as his dulled brain would allow. ‘Drumoyne. The priest's Father Dow. Officiated at my daughter's wedding.'

‘How old's your daughter?'

‘Twenty-three. Philomena, named after her late mother, God rest her soul. I have one wee grandson called Aloysius McCracken.'

Scullion raised his eyebrows. He made a fanning gesture with his hand as if to dispel the heat created by Perlman's fiction.

‘That's nice, so it is,' Mrs Clayne said. ‘And your wife's long dead, is she?'

‘Twelve years, Mrs Clayne,' Perlman said. ‘I swear on my grandson's life, this is really Inspector Scullion out here.'

There was a long, promising pause. Perlman waited. The handle turned, the door opened a little way. The woman who appeared in the slit was about four feet nine inches tall and had a face like a tiny cat. She had a line of prominent hair above her lip and her eyebrows came together in the middle. She held Scullion's ID in her hand and compared the picture with his face.

‘Aye, well, I suppose it's not a bad likeness. So who do you want to see in this building anyway?'

‘A man called Oyster,' Scullion said.

‘I don't know him personally. I see a woman come and go into his flat from time to time. I don't like the look of her.' She stared at Perlman. ‘You're the Catholic?'

‘I am,' Perlman said.

‘You don't look Catholic.'

‘It takes all sorts, Mrs Clayne.' Perlman stepped past her into the hall. Scullion came behind, then Murdoch.

‘You know what, you look Jewish,' Mrs Clayne said.

‘I get that dark complexion from the Italian side of the family.' Perlman headed towards the stairs. He grabbed the banister rail and made it halfway up, then felt he was about to slip. Scullion caught his elbow.

‘When did you convert, Lou?' he asked quietly.

‘Five minutes ago.'

‘Pray to this new-found God you don't fall down the stairs and break your bloody neck.'

‘It got us inside, didn't it?'

From the bottom of the staircase, the little woman was watching them ascend. ‘Second floor,' she said.

Murdoch led the way now, his shoes clattering on the stone steps. Perlman paused, caught his breath. Enough's enough. This is it. Your body's crying out. He slipped one of the capsules into his mouth.

Scullion said, ‘I saw that. Don't think I missed it.'

Perlman didn't respond. The tiled interior of the building was yellow with a dark green border. Light came from a stained-glass window set in the roof, a feature that took daylight and imbued it with different colours before diffusing it. You could hallucinate in here.

A door closed above. The sound echoed. Murdoch stood very still. Scullion raised his face, gazed upward. Perlman listened to somebody descend. A figure appeared on the stairs above Murdoch. A man. He came down, stepped straight past Murdoch, then stopped.

Perlman gazed up.

Scullion said, ‘Funny old world.'

‘I was thinking the same,' Perlman said.

The man didn't speak. He shoved a hand quickly into the pocket of his double-breasted overcoat. Murdoch reached out, his arm strong and straight, and caught the man's wrist. Murdoch twisted hard, and the man, stifling a grunt, was forced down on his knees.

‘What the fuck,' the man said.

‘I think there's a weapon in that pocket,' Murdoch said.

‘Wouldn't surprise me,' Scullion said.

Perlman climbed the steps to where Murdoch had the man forced against the wall. ‘You got a gun, Frankie?'

‘You got a search warrant?' Frankie Chasm asked.

‘Don't think we'll need one,' Scullion remarked.

‘Fuck you, Scullion.'

‘Likewise, Frankie.'

‘Why don't we go back up to your flat and talk things over,' Perlman said.

‘You sure that's what you want?'

‘I'm sure,' Perlman said.

47

Distressed, Perlman looked at the dead woman on the floor. What was left of her face reminded him of something red and unidentifiable slaughtered under a truck on a highway. She was recognizable, but only just. He stood over her, bent down in an awkward angled way, touched the back of her hand. The painkiller was dissolving in his stomach and he felt nauseous, and the sight of the woman didn't ease the gastric discomfort. He found an armchair and lowered himself slowly into it.
I creak therefore I exist
. Those Feds in the movies never swallowed drugs, never felt faint and uncoordinated. They were machines. They functioned no matter what. They all had square chins and heavy overcoats.

He stared across the room, squinting for focus. Framed by the window, Frankie Chasm created a dark silhouette. He affected an air of disinterest. Somebody was dead on his living-room floor, so what? Murdoch gazed at the corpse. Scullion, scowling, stood with his back to the mantelpiece. The gun that had been in Chasm's coat pocket lay on the table alongside the silencer attachment.

‘Why did you kill her, Frankie?' Scullion asked.

‘Prove it.'

‘Aw, come on, Frankie. You know it's only a matter of matching the bullet wound with that gun of yours.'

‘But can you prove I pulled the trigger?'

‘It's elementary, Frankie. You had the gun in your possession. The girl's dead on your floor –'

‘It's not my floor, Perlman. It's not my flat.'

‘Don't make this hard on us. Either you rent this place under the name of Oyster, or Oyster is some stooge you use for cover. We'll find out. And you
know
we'll find out. You're going back to Peterhead, sonny.'

Chasm said, ‘I'm not taking
your
word for that, Perlman. I need to hear it from a jury of my peers.'

‘Count on it,' Scullion said.

Perlman shifted in his chair. ‘Tell us your story anyway. You came in the flat, found her dead on the floor, you picked up the gun then you left? That about right? It's a fucking weird sequence, Frankie. Why did you pick up the gun and go? If
you
didn't shoot the girl, why did you feel the need to purloin the evidence?'

‘With my record, Perlman? Your people wouldn't give me the time of day if I called and reported a murder. You'd have me in handcuffs and back in the nick like shite through a goose.'

‘So you were going to dispose of the gun and and and?'

‘I hadn't thought that far.'

‘Let me guess. You toss the gun, come back here, remove any traces of ever having been here, spot of house-cleaning, bit of elbow grease to get rid of the nasty tell-all fingerprints, then toodle off back to the Fat Man in Bearsden?' Perlman rose into a cloudy place where he felt like spirit matter. Concentrate on what you are saying, Lou.
Hard
. He cleared his throat. He heard his voice make sounds like dry grass stalks rustling. ‘The girl rots. The smell. A neighbour complains. You're three or four days gone by then.'

‘Nasty,' Scullion said.

Perlman asked, ‘How did you get inside the flat if you aren't Oyster?'

‘I have a key.'

‘Oyster sort of “gave” it to you, did he?'

‘We have an arrangement.'

‘In your dreams.' Scullion yawned theatrically. ‘This is crap, Frankie. If Oyster's real, tell us where can we find him.'

Chasm said, ‘He comes and goes.'

Perlman said, ‘The girl's still warm. So let's think about the time scheme here. You enter the flat, you see her on the floor, you pick up the gun, you head for the stairs. This takes, what? A couple of minutes while you ponder your actions?'

‘I don't remember,' Chasm said.

‘But you don't see the killer. So, you just missed him, a matter of seconds? And we're outside in the street arguing with some old biddy, but the killer quote unquote doesn't pass us either. So he skipped out the back way, did he?'

‘I'd like to phone a lawyer.'

Murdoch, who'd slipped out of the room unnoticed, came back. ‘Nobody seems to live here. The bed looks like it's never been slept in. The pillows are still in their plastic wrapping. The towels in the toilet are brand new. Bar of soap untouched. No clothes in the wardrobe, nothing in the chest of drawers. No personal possessions.'

‘This is all a bloody sham,' Perlman said. ‘It's a stage setting you've got here, Frankie.'

‘There's no such person as Oyster,' Scullion said. ‘Don't insult us, Frankie. You used this place. You met the woman here.'

‘But obviously not to screw her,' Perlman remarked. ‘Sex is messy. It leaves signs. Little disturbances. Towels in a laundry basket, soiled sheets, maybe certain kinds of discarded items –'

‘You working from memory?' Chasm asked.

‘Oy, hit me on the nerve endings, Frankie.'

Chasm said, ‘I need a lawyer.'

‘Here's what I'll do,' Scullion said, ignoring Chasm. ‘Contact Force HQ, get some tech staff in here and dust the place top to bottom, fingerprint the gun at the same time. Who knows, Lou? Maybe Chasm's telling the truth. Stranger things have happened.'

‘Not much stranger, Sandy.' Perlman felt the medication kick in sweet and low. The pain went out like a slow tide. He could still feel it, but barely; it lay just outside the firewall of pethidine, or whatever it was he'd ingested.

‘Hello, anybody listening? I want to contact a fucking
lawyer
,' Chasm said again.

‘In time, in time.' Scullion took his mobile phone out and tapped the keys.

‘You're calling HQ now?' Chasm asked.

Scullion said, ‘Why wait?'

‘What about my rights, Perlman?' Chasm asked.

‘Even if you talk to a lawyer, it's a preposterous story you've got to tell him, Frankie. You're dead meat.'

‘The fuck you say.'

Perlman smiled but didn't feel his lips move. This numbness was a lovely condition. ‘Was this all your idea, Frankie? Renting this place. Pretending to be somebody else. If you didn't shag the girl here, what did you do with her? Why did she come here? It wasn't for tea and biccies, was it, Frankie? So what did you get up to when she paid a visit?'

Chasm didn't answer. He looked at Perlman with an air of nonchalant defiance: I don't have to talk to you, polis.

‘I hate asking questions twice, Frankie.'

Chasm turned away, gazed up at the ceiling, tapped a foot on the floor.

Scullion closed his mobile and put it back in his pocket. ‘They're on the way. Twenty minutes.'

‘See, Frankie? The tech boys are coming. Whose prints are they going to find scattered round this nice wee flat? Yours. The girl's. Who else? These guys will find evidence – so small you don't even know it
exists
– that you fired the gun.'

‘And you can throw me a life jacket, can you?'

‘I can't throw you anything,' Perlman said.

Chasm was quiet a moment. ‘Fuck it. All right. We met here. We talked.'

Perlman said, ‘You didn't want to be seen with her in public, Frankie, did you? You knew what she was doing and what she stood for.'

‘For the record, I didn't agree with any of it.'

‘Do I look like I care? You agree with racism, you don't, means nothing to me. What did you have in common with her, Frankie?'

‘She needed help now and then.'

‘Money?'

‘Money. Well, yeah.'

‘Since you're not a registered charity, Frankie, I have to ask what was in this for you?'

‘I got nothing out of it.'

‘Hear that, Sandy?'

‘He's a philanthropist,' Scullion said.

‘She wanted money.'

Perlman asked, ‘In your great generosity, what else did you give her? How about guns?'

Chasm shook his head quickly. ‘No. No guns.'

‘Bullshit,' Perlman said. ‘I'm betting you gave her a weapon, didn't you? She killed Indra Gupta with it. She shot Blum with it. She tried to kill
me
with it. You and her met here because she was hitting you up for White Rage donations and because she needed weaponry. Tell me I'm wrong, Frankie.'

Chasm didn't respond. He stuck his hands deep in the pockets of his grey trousers and looked remote.

Perlman said, ‘You gave her a gun and you gave her money. But you didn't agree with what she was doing? I'm missing something.'

‘Like what, Permian?'

‘The big why, Frankie. That's what I'm not getting.'

Chasm made a casual throwaway gesture with one hand. ‘I did what I had to.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘You're the bright boy. You work it out.' Chasm jingled some coins in his pockets and whistled a couple of tuneless notes.

Perlman knew he had to keep going, keep pressing. His present clarity was brief, fragile; he couldn't predict how long he might endure. ‘Tell us about Bute Transport, Frankie. How much do you charge per head?'

‘Per head of what?'

‘What does it cost a refugee to be smuggled into the alleged land of the free? A thousand? Five thousand? Ten?'

‘You want to know about Bute, speak to the Fat Man. He lied his arse off to you. He never relinquished control of that company. I don't care what he told you, it was just an old paper shuffle. I don't want to be sucked into any fucked-up deals where Bute is concerned. Especially when it comes to smuggling people. Okay?'

‘I like an interesting mess.' Perlman wanted to get up, but remained a little longer in the chair. When he rose, he needed to appear collected. He glanced at the body on the floor. ‘She was bad news, Frankie.'

‘Hard reading, right enough,' Chasm said.

‘I'm going to book you on suspicion of murder,' Scullion said.

Chasm said, ‘I thought you'd never get round to it.'

‘We get round to everything in time.' Perlman heard a crackling in his head, like low-level white noise reaching him from faraway. His ears were small caves where sounds resonated. High-pitched whistling from the distant estuaries of the universe.