Black Widow (28 page)

Two cops got out of the patrol car: a tall white male and a short female of Indian or Pakistani descent. They approached Parlabane's car, the bloke indicating to Parlabane to roll down the window. He complied.

‘Can I help you, officer?'

‘We're responding to a report of someone acting suspiciously,' said the female officer.

This sounded conveniently vague to Parlabane, a favoured police method of warning you off. The more nebulous the transgression, the more scope they had for claiming it applied to you if you didn't take a hint.

‘I've only been here ten minutes, if that. I think someone's messing with both of us. Who made the complaint?'

‘That's not something we can disclose.'

‘May I see your driver's licence please?' her colleague asked, his accent English.

He sighed and produced his wallet. The male officer examined it and then handed it to his colleague.

‘What is your business here, Mr Parlabane?' she asked.

Parlabane looked blankly at her.

‘That is
my
business.'

‘He's a reporter,' said the male.

The woman's look seemed to be asking how he knew this. Meantime Parlabane's silence was confirming it.

‘Is that right?' she asked.

‘Yes. So now you know I'm just doing my job. Not bothering anybody.'

‘I'm not sure about that,' said the male. ‘I can guess what you're working on, and after all she's been through, Dr Jager could do without press harassment.'

‘So you guys know she lives here. Have you been involved in the case?'

Neither of them answered, the pair sharing a mutually worried look that betrayed they knew they had screwed up by giving away something they didn't need to.

‘I'll take that as a yes. See, I've been speaking to a few people up here and I've been told that Peter Elphinstone was under extreme stress in the run-up to the accident. I've also been told the marriage was not quite as harmonious as everyone believes. Have either of you got any comment regarding the ongoing investigation into the crash?'

The woman handed him back his wallet.

‘You need to move along, Mr Parlabane.'

Half an hour later, Parlabane was returning from the bar with two drinks, reflecting briefly that this was how outsiders used to imagine much of journalism was conducted: buying drinks for strangers in dingy bars in the hope that they might tell you something useful. It was certainly a far cry from the reduced modern circumstances of cribbing press releases or copy-pasting from Twitter, and though he was often nostalgic for the lost days of smoky press bars and the booze-fuelled cultivation of contacts, those outsiders would be wrong if they thought it sounded like an easy gig. For one thing, you had to spend a lot of time and money entertaining insufferable throbbers such as the turd-sculpture sitting opposite him right now.

Craig Harkness was one of Peter's ex-colleagues in the hospital IT department, another of the names on the list Lucy had given him. He was a sweaty wee bowling ball of a man, sitting there in a Motley Crue T-shirt and a denim jacket he couldn't even have got away with twenty years ago. He reminded Parlabane of the green one-eyed character in the
Monsters Inc
movies, though only via his build. Nobody was ever going to compare him to Billy Crystal in terms of wit and charm. He was an unpleasant and contradictory mix of self-satisfaction and resentment, combined with a wild over-estimation of his own conversational appeal. The upside of this, from a journalistic perspective, was his bumptious indiscretion. The downside was having to listen to the bastard.

He spent much of the time complaining about his lot, and a vast proportion of this involved framing his plight as the wise old hand surrounded by idiots and incompetents who didn't appreciate his genius. It seemed everything was particularly awful since the IT department got swallowed up by outsourcing firm Cobalt Solutions, and he'd been forced to transfer into their employ. Before that, everything apparently hummed like clockwork in his wee IT fiefdom, which he ran with judgement and precision in the face of the chronic stupidity of the doctors, nurses, managers and indeed anybody who was not Craig Harkness.

Making it worse was the fact that Parlabane was on Irn Bru to keep his options open, while this guy was happily necking free pints. He had been leaning towards driving home tonight, and sitting with this fud was cementing his decision. On the strength of what he had heard so far, he was already looking forward to being in his own bed in a few hours; his own home, such as it was.

The fact that Lucy had put this guy's name on the list showed that there wasn't much to find. He hadn't even worked with Peter for long: only a few months either side of the marriage. She was grabbing at air, hoping rather than expecting Parlabane to find anything.

He would call her from the car on the drive south later, once he had decided what it would be kindest to share. It was possible her brother had killed himself or had a stress-related fatal accident. Whether the pressure he'd been feeling was related to work, his marriage or a combination of the two, it didn't alter the fact that his death was not suspicious. Maybe it would be best if she made her peace with it and stopped looking for someone or something to blame.

‘So, did you have a lot of dealings with Peter's wife?' Parlabane asked, opting to go direct. There was no need to pussyfoot around the point of interest with someone so self-obsessed, and he had already decided he wanted this wrapped up. He certainly wasn't buying this sphincter-lozenge another pint.

‘Did I ever.'

Harkness gave a dry chuckle.

‘Snootiest bitch in the whole place. One of those smart-arsed cows who can't take the fact that they need your help. She really thinks she's something, that one. Acts like it's beneath her to even have you in her office when she's got a problem needing fixed.'

‘I gather hospital IT guys weren't her favourite people in the world. Apart from the one she married, obviously.'

‘No shit, Sherlock. Do you know about the blog she wrote?'

‘I heard about it, yeah.'

‘The cheeky cow said that if we were any good we'd have a job somewhere else. Well, what does it say about Vinegar Tits that she ended up here in Inverness? If she was hot shit like she makes out, she'd be at Barts or wherever, wouldn't she?'

He knew it was best practice to let the guy talk, but there was only so long he could listen to a blowhard puffing himself up. Parlabane hadn't approved of Scalpelgirl's scattergun disparagement but he suspected Harkness's own outrage – and conspicuously insecure self-praise – was rooted in the fact that in his case deep down he knew she was right.

‘I believe her previous consultant post was at the Alderbrook, in an internationally leading surgical department. It's my understanding that she had to leave that position due to the fallout from her being hacked: not only was she identified as the author of the blog, but as a consequence so were some of the colleagues she had alluded to. I assume that's why she was uncomfortable with anyone else working on her PC.'

‘Yeah, but that's the whole point, isn't it? She was tarring us all with one brush in her blog, and then doing the same when she got here. Never gave us the benefit of the doubt. I didn't know how Peter could stick her, to be honest, but they do say love is blind. Deaf as well, it would seem.'

‘So Peter was aware you didn't have a high opinion of her? And presumably she let him know that it was reciprocal.'

From the brief moment of doubt and injury on Harkness's previously smug face, it hadn't even occurred to him that his colleague and his wife might ever have been comparing notes on what a wanker he was.

‘Peter was always making excuses for her being such a torn-faced midden. If someone moaned about how snippy she was, he would tell us she'd been through personal tragedy, blah blah blah, not to mention the hacking thing, like that was our fault.'

‘What personal tragedy?'

‘He never said and I never asked. What do I care? Don't see what difference it makes. I know plenty of people working in that hospital who've been through bad shit in their lives, but they can still manage a fucking smile. And as for the hacking thing, yeah, okay I get that it was out of order, but let's face it, it was nothing compared to what
could
have happened.'

‘What do you mean?'

Harkness gave him a knowing and approving grin.

‘Don't stick your dick in a hornet's nest. Or in her case, your tit.'

Harkness had chosen his words precisely. He was referring to internet security firm HBGary's deliberate provocation of Anonymous and the hacker collective's entertainingly punitive response. In online lore, the firm's actions had been described as above.

‘She pissed off the wrong people. She should be grateful all that happened was she had her personal details leaked. Just as well she didn't have a sex tape back then, or it would have been public domain.'

He looked smugly satisfied about this notion, and the worst thing about it was that he clearly assumed Parlabane shared his satisfaction.

‘You know, what has always confused me about these kinds of leaks is why guys are so desperate for porn of women they claim to detest.'

Harkness looked at him with amused confusion, as though Parlabane was thick or Harkness was expecting an imminent declaration of homosexuality.

‘Because it knocks them off their high horse. Especially someone like Dr Diana: she acts like she's so superior, like she's above mere mortals, and definitely above the male of the species. Sex tapes prove women like that still love a good hard cock when it comes right down to it.'

There was that nasty grin again, like he knew a secret. Amazing, mate: women like sex too. What a scoop. Right enough, it probably did seem like a revelation to Harkness, as Parlabane couldn't imagine women had ever provided any evidence that they liked sex when he was around.

‘So had you heard about her before she pitched up here in Inverness?'

‘Course I had. Everybody in hospital IT knew about her: that's how the hacking thing came about. Not that I was involved, you understand.'

He gave a throaty chuckle and touched the side of his nose in a hush-hush gesture. He was inviting Parlabane to think he
was
involved, but Parlabane saw the obvious truth. This helmet wouldn't have had a clue where to begin but he wanted to make out he was badass and connected. It was frankly pathetic.

‘How did everybody know about it?'

‘Her blog first got mentioned on a support forum for one of the big database management packages we use. A lot of hospital IT folk are on there, as well as sys-admins from firms using the same software. There's the main support bulletin board and there's more informal sub-forums for general moaning and gossip. It went viral from there.'

‘So Peter knew all about this stuff before he met her?'

‘No. It's probably significant that Peter was the only guy in our department who
didn't
know about it. I guess that gave him the chance to make his own impression, or for his dick to take control before his brain found out what kind of cunt he was dealing with.

‘Peter wasn't part of hospital IT before Cobalt brought him here, and the blog-hacking thing was four or five years ago, so I don't know what he was working on back then. Also, Peter was kind of unto himself: a bit unworldly sometimes, you know? If you'd asked him about Bladebitch, he'd have probably thought you were talking about someone in a comic book.'

‘Did he tell you what he went off to work on?'

‘He was designing some kind of app, to do with small-value transactions, I think. He wasn't giving much away: coy to the point of shifty. One time I asked him about it and he said: “I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.”'

Harkness rhymed this off with an admiration indicative that he thought this was a hell of a line, one his audience would surely never have heard a thousand times before.

Parlabane decided he'd heard enough. He drained his Irn Bru and got up. Harkness remained where he was, still nursing half a pint. Parlabane wished he'd been running a tab. He'd have no qualms about fucking off after telling the barman that the sweaty flange sitting opposite had agreed to pick it up.

Starfire.

That was the name of the videogame whose logo was depicted in the coloured-plastic buckle Peter was wearing when he left the house that Saturday. I mention it because I came to realise how much it bothered me that I knew. When I first met Peter, I thought it was refreshing that I was becoming exposed to things that were outside of my over-serious bubble, vicariously appreciating passions and enthusiasms that didn't begin and end with work or research.

In time, I became resentful that I knew about all this crap. I could recognise the logo of a nineties videogame, same as I could name minor characters from superhero comics and recite the lyrics to juvenile Blink-182 songs about prank calls and blowjobs. It was like there was this sacred canon of Peter's personal culture in which I had immersed myself in order to become closer to him, in order to share something with him, and now I was seeing it for the worthless trash that it was.

There's nothing makes the scales fall from your eyes quite like realising you're being lied to by your husband.

I was still reluctant to accept this, of course. After I finished speaking to the cab driver, I immediately began constructing other explanations; or at least explanations that didn't involve the faceless woman in the photographs and videos. None of them were convincing, or even particularly plausible. When I started speculating that maybe the ex-Inverness flights were full and Peter was actually flying out of Glasgow, that was when I knew I was reaching.

I felt sick: physically sick. I was light-headed and my stomach was churning. I had to sit down. I made myself a cup of tea and sat numbly sipping it in the kitchen, beginning to confront the reality I had been presented with.