Pray for the Dying (11 page)

Sixteen

‘
That’s Bazza Brown,’ DS Dan Provan announced.

Lottie Mann frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Trust me. Real name Basil, but nobody ever called him that, unless they wanted a sore face. The first time Ah lifted him he was sixteen, sellin’ what he claimed were LSD tabs on squares from a school jotter. They wis just melted sugar, but nobody ever complained; he wis a hard kid even then, and he had a gang.’

‘When was that?’ Skinner asked. He had never met the wizened little detective before but he found himself taking an instant liking to him, and to his irreverence.

‘Goin’ on twenty-five years ago, sir. He moved on frae there, though. The next time I picked him up he’d just turned twenty-one and he was sellin’ hash. He got three years for that, in the University of Barlinnie, and that, you might say, completed his formal education. He’s never done a day’s time since, even though he’s reckoned . . . sorry, he was reckoned . . . to be one of the big three in drugs in Glasgow.’

‘So how come he wound up in a car boot sale?’

‘Ah can’t tell you that, sir. But Ah know you’re going to want us to find out.’

The chief grinned. ‘That is indeed the name of the game, Sergeant.’

He and Payne had called in Mann and her squad at once. They had left the car untouched. Indeed the only change in the scenery since they had made their discovery lay in the absence of Clyde Houseman. Skinner had decided that it would be best if he made himself scarce.

He had expected Lottie Mann to be blunt when she arrived, and had been ready for her challenge.

‘Can I ask what the fuck you’re doing here, sir? I’ve got people out showing pictures of Smit and Botha to every car park attendant in Glasgow, and what do I find? You and DCI Payne, with their bloody car key!’

‘Inspector!’ Lowell Payne had intervened, but his new chief had calmed his protest with a wave of his hand.

‘It’s okay. DI Mann is well entitled to sound off. I was given some information, Lottie, and I decided to evaluate it myself, and to bring you in if I reckoned it was worth it. Get used to me: it’s the way I am.’

‘Oh, I know that already, sir,’ she retorted. ‘Just like I know there’s no point me asking who your source was.’

‘That’s right, but now the result is all yours.’

She had given one of her hard-earned smiles, then gone into action.

The photographer and video cameraman were finishing their work as Provan announced the identity of the victim and he and Skinner had their exchange. They had been hampered slightly by a silver Toyota parked in the bay on the right, but the two to the left were clear.

As they packed their equipment, the elevator door opened, beside the stairway exit, and a woman stepped out, pushing a child in a collapsible pram with John Lewis bags hung on the back. She frowned as she moved towards them. ‘What’s going . . .’ she began.

Payne moved quickly across to intercept her, holding up his warrant card. ‘Police, ma’am. Is that your Toyota?’

‘Yes, but what . . . It’s not damaged, is it? I can move it, can’t I?’

‘It’s fine, but please don’t come any closer. If you give me your car key I’ll bring it out for you.’

‘It’s not a bomb, is it?’ The young mother was terrified; Payne smiled to reassure her.

‘No, no, not at all. If it was I wouldn’t be within a mile of it myself. It’s just a suspicious vehicle, that’s all. We’re checking out the contents. You just give me your keys and don’t you worry.’

He reversed the Toyota out of its bay and drove it a little way down the exit ramp, then helped her load her bags and her child, who had slept through the exchange.

‘Did she see anything?’ Mann asked the DCI as he returned.

‘No, or you’d have heard the screams. But we need to get a screen round this, now we’ve got the room.’

‘It’s on the way, with the forensic people. We’d better not touch anything till they get here. That peppery wee bastard Dorward’s on weekend duty and he’ll never let me forget it if I compromise “his” crime scene.’

‘It’s well compromised already, Lottie,’ Skinner pointed out. ‘Anyone got a pair of gloves?’ he asked. ‘I want a look at these suitcases. I’ll handle Arthur’s flak. I’ve been doing it for long enough.’

Provan handed him a pair of latex gloves. He slipped them on and lifted one of the blue cases from the boot, laid it on the ground and tried the catches, hoping they were unlocked and smiling when they clicked open.

‘Clothing,’ he announced as he studied the contents, and sifted through them. ‘It looks like two changes: trousers, shirt, underwear, just the one jacket, though, and one pair of shoes. Everything’s brand new, Marks and Spencer labels still on them. Summer wear. Mmm,’ he mused. ‘What’s the weather like in South Africa in July?’

There was a zipped pocket set in the lid of the case, which also sported a Marks and Spencer label on its lining. He unfastened it, felt inside and found a padded envelope. It was unsealed; the contents slid into his hand.

‘Wallet,’ he said. ‘Looks like at least three hundred quid. One Visa debit card in the name of Bryan Lightbody. A passport, New Zealand, in the same name, but with Gerry Botha’s photo inside. Flight tickets and itinerary, Singapore Air, Heathrow to Auckland through Singapore, business class, departure tomorrow evening.’

He lifted the second case from the car and checked its contents. ‘An Australian passport,’ he announced when he was finished. ‘It and the bank card are in the name of Richie Mallett, and the flight ticket’s Quantas to Sydney, again Heathrow tomorrow night. So that was the game plan. Drive to London, fly away home and leave us scratching our arses as we try to find them on flights out of Scotland.’

‘Well planned,’ Lottie Mann observed.

‘Yes, but that’s not what these guys did. The man Cohen was the planner. He made all the arrangements, bought the air tickets, hired the car.’

‘The car,’ she repeated, then turned to Provan. ‘Get . . .’

‘Ah’m on it already,’ he retorted, waving the car key with his left hand while holding his mobile to his ear. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s right, Strathclyde CID. I’m standing over one o’ your cars just now, and Ah need to know whose name is on the rental contract.’ He paused, listening.

‘Because there’s something wrong wi’ it, that’s why.’ He waited again.

‘Maybe there wasn’t when it left you, Jimmy, but there is now. There’s a fuckin’ body in the boot. Or dae all your vehicles come with that accessory? No, Ah won’t hold on. The registration’s LX12 PMP; you get me the information Ah want and get back to me through the force main switchboard. They’ll transfer your call to my mobile. Pronto, please, this is very important.’

As Provan finished, Skinner tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Have you ever done a course,’ he asked, ‘on communication with the public?’

The sergeant pursed his lips, wrinkling his two-tone moustache in the process, and looked up at him. ‘No, sir, I can’t say that Ah have.’

‘Then I will make it my business, Detective Sergeant,’ the chief told him, without the suggestion of a smile, ‘to see that you never do.’

‘Thanks, gaffer,’ the little DS replied, ‘but even if you did send me on one, at my age I wake up sometimes wi’ this terrible hacking cough. Knocks me right off for the day, it does.’

Skinner laughed out loud. ‘I could get to like it here,’ he exclaimed. Then he turned serious. ‘Now prove to me that you’re a detective, not some fucking hobbit who’s tolerated because he’s been around for ever. There’s a begged question in this scenario. I’m not wondering about the guy in the boot. You knew who he was, and I know what he was. No, it’s something else, unrelated. What is it?’

As Dan Provan looked up at his new boss, two thoughts entered his mind. The first of them was financial. He had over thirty years in the job, and his pension was secure as long as he didn’t punch the chief constable in the mouth, and since that struck him as being a seriously stupid overreaction, it wasn’t going to happen. So the ‘daft laddie’ option was open to him, without risk.

But the second was professional, and pride was involved. He had survived as long as he had because he was, in fact, a damn good detective, and as such he was expert in analysing every scenario and in identifying all the possible lines of inquiry that it offered.

A third consideration followed. Skinner hadn’t asked him the question to embarrass him, but because he expected him to know the answer.

He frowned and bent his mind to recalling as much as he could of what had been said in the previous half hour. He played the mental tape, piece by piece, then ran through it again.

‘It’s the flights,’ he said, when he was sure. ‘The two dead guys had plane tickets out of Heathrow. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right. Now if everything had gone to plan, the two hit men, Smit and Botha, or Lightbody and Mallett, or Randall and fuckin’ Hopkirk deceased, whoever they were, if it had all gone to plan, they’d have driven straight out of this car park, almost before the alarm had been raised, headed straight down to London, dumping our friend Bazza in some lay-by along the way, and got on a fuckin’ plane. Right, boss?’

Skinner nodded. ‘You’re on a roll, Sergeant, carry on.’

‘Thank you, gaffer. In that case, even as we’re stood here, they could have been sipping fuckin’ cocktails in business class. Except . . .  their flights were booked for Monday, for tomorrow. So what were they supposed to be doin’ in those spare twenty-four hours?’

The chief constable smiled. ‘Absolutely. Top question. You got an answer for that one?’

Provan shrugged, ‘No idea, sir.’ He nodded towards the boot of the Peugeot. ‘But if we find out what they were doing with poor old Bazza Brown there, maybe that’ll give us a clue.’

Seventeen

‘He’s a marginally insubordinate little joker, but I do like him,’ Bob chuckled. ‘He and that DI, Lottie, they’re some team.’

Sarah smiled across the table, on which the last of their dinner plates lay, empty save for the skeletons of two lemon sole. She raised her coffee cup. ‘Could it be that Glasgow isn’t the cultural wasteland you thought it was?’

‘Hey, come on,’ he protested. ‘I never said that, or even thought it. I’m from Motherwell, remember; I’m not quite a Weegie myself, but close. I have a Glasgow degree; I spent a good chunk of my teens in that fair city. West of Scotland culture is in my blood. Why do you think I like country music and bad stand-up comedians?’

‘So part of you is glad to be back there,’ she suggested.

‘Sure, the nostalgic part.’

‘Then why did you ever leave?’ she asked in her light American drawl. ‘Myra was from Motherwell as well and yet the two of you upped sticks and moved through to Gullane in your early twenties.’

‘You know why; I’ve told you often enough. I liked Edinburgh, and I liked the seaside. I wanted to work in one and live by the other. I’ve never regretted that decision either, not once.’

‘But what made you choose it over Glasgow? I can see you, man, and your pleasure now at being back there. There must have been an underlying reason.’

He leaned back in his chair and gazed at her. ‘Very well,’ he conceded. ‘There was. I didn’t like being asked what school I went to.’

‘Uh?’ she grunted. ‘Come again? What’s that got to do with anything?’

His laugh was gentle, amused. ‘You’ve lived in Scotland for how long? Twelve years on and off, and you don’t know that one? It’s code, and what it actually means is, “Are you Protestant or are you Catholic?” Where I grew up that was a key question, just as much as in Belfast, and for all Aileen and her kind might try to deny it, I’m sure it still is in some places and to some people. The answer could determine many things, not least your employment prospects.

‘Why the school question? Because through there, education was organised along religious lines; there were Roman Catholic schools and non-denominational, the latter being in name only. They were where the Protestants went. So, your school defined you, and it could mean that some doors were just slammed in your face.’

‘Wow,’ Sarah murmured. ‘I know about Rangers and Celtic football clubs, of course, but I didn’t think it went that deep.’

‘It did, and for some it still does. Both those clubs condemn sectarianism but they still struggle to eradicate it among their supporters. I decided very early on that I didn’t want any kids of mine growing up in that environment, and Myra agreed. That’s what was behind our move.’

‘But now you’re back you like it?’

‘Hey, love, it’s been one day. My reservations about the size of the Strathclyde force are as strong as ever. What I’m saying is that I like the people I’ve met so far. Mann and Provan, they’re good cops and pure Glaswegian, both of them.’

‘What school did they go to?’

‘As for Lottie, I have no idea.’ He winked. ‘But the Celtic supporter’s lapel badge that wee Provan was wearing still offers something of a clue. He may miss their next game,’ he added, ‘if they don’t get these killings wrapped up soon.’

‘Yeah,’ Sarah said. ‘The body in the boot must have been a bit of a shaker.’

‘It was for Lowell, that’s for sure. He jumped out of his skin. Me too, to be honest, but I’ve gotten good at hiding it.’

‘Why was he there, the dead guy?’

‘I guess they didn’t want to leave him wherever he was killed. The provisional time of death was Friday evening some time; with the hit being planned for Saturday, they may not have wanted to muddy the waters by having him found.’

‘Meaning the police might have made a connection to them?’

He nodded. ‘It would have been a long shot, but that would have been the thinking.’

‘Mmm.’ She frowned. ‘But I didn’t mean why was he in the boot; I mean why were they involved with him at all?’

‘We all asked ourselves that one. It seems that the late Mr Brown was a reasonably heavy-duty Glasgow criminal, but I doubt very much that Mr Smit and Mr Botha met him to do a drug deal on the side.’

‘Are you still sure those are their real names?’

‘Oh yes, we know that. We can trace them all the way back to the South African armed forces. Lightbody and Mallett were aliases. It remains to be seen whether they actually lived under those names, one in New Zealand, one in Australia. We’ll need to wait for the passport offices and the police in those countries to open before we can follow them up.’ He checked his watch; quarter to nine. ‘New Zealand should be wide awake now, Australia in an hour or two. Anyway, whatever their fucking names, what were they doing with a Weegie hood?’

‘Yes, any theories?’

‘Only one, the obvious. Mr Brown must have been involved in the supply of the police uniforms and equipment, and they must have decided not to leave him behind as a witness.’

‘So why did they leave the arms dealer alive?’ Sarah wondered.

‘Because he’s part of that world, I’d guess, and was in as deep as they were. A small-timer they’d have seen as a weakness.’

Sarah refilled her cup from a cafetière. Bob, who had given up coffee at her suggestion, almost at her insistence, topped up his glass with mineral water.

‘But the tough questions are, why was he in the chain at all, and who introduced him? There we do not have a Scooby, as wee Provan would probably say.’

‘Good.’ She smiled. ‘Enough for tonight, Chief Constable. No more shop, just Bob and Sarah for a while. I’ve been thinking about what happened a couple of nights ago, you and me having a nice quiet dinner and ending up in bed together.’ She took his hand, studying it as she spoke. ‘I have to ask you this, Bob, because it’s been gnawing away at me, knowing from personal experience how unpredictable you are when it comes to women. Are you and the witch definitely a thing of the past? Is there any chance of a reconciliation?’

He sipped some water. ‘Given our history,’ he began, ‘I suppose I deserved that “unpredictability” crack. But you can take this to the bank: Aileen and I are through. Sit her across from you and she would give you the same answer. She’d probably add also that we’re not going to walk away as friends either. Each of us married a person without knowing them at all. Before too long we found we didn’t even like each other all that much.’

‘Do you think you know me now?’ she asked.

‘None of us can live inside someone else’s head, but if I don’t know what makes you tick by now . . .’ He leaned forward and looked deep into her eyes. ‘I always did like you; now I know more. I never stopped loving you either.’

‘But let’s not put it to the test by getting married again. Agreed?’

Bob nodded. ‘Agreed. But is that because you don’t trust me? If it is, I understand.’

‘Amazing as it may sound, I do trust you. No, it’s because right now, the way we are . . . I don’t think I’ve ever felt happier, and I don’t want to risk that.’

‘Fair enough. Now, with the kids upstairs in bed, can we do something old-fashioned, like watching television?’

She laughed. ‘How very couple-ish! Yeah, let’s.’

She was flicking through the channel choice when Bob’s work mobile sounded. ‘Bugger,’ he murmured. ‘I must give this Edinburgh phone back to Maggie and get a new one from Strathclyde. Chances are this is for her.’ He looked at the caller identification. ‘No, it’s not. Lowell,’ he said as he accepted the call, ‘what’s up? News from down under?’

As Sarah watched him, she saw his eyes widen, a frown wrinkle his forehead for a second then disappear. ‘You’re fucking kidding,’ he exclaimed. ‘So that’s what the bloody woman was leading up to. Don’t apologise, man, I know you had to tell me, but worry not; it won’t ruin my night. I just wish I could be a fly on a certain wall, that’s all.’

He ended the call as Sarah laid down the TV remote.

‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘What bloody woman? Aileen?’

‘As it happened, no,’ he told her, ‘another bloody woman, but not unconnected. What you asked me earlier on, whether there was a cat’s chance of the two of us staying together.’ He laughed. ‘If you doubted me at all, then, by Christ, you’re going to be a happy woman tomorrow morning.’