The Last Darkness (33 page)

Perlman stood up. His glasses reflected light and his hair was a mass of unruly tufts. You'd never think he was a cop. Not in a hundred years. What did he look like? The guy who came to read the gas meter and looked sad because he couldn't remember where he'd stashed his winning lottery ticket. The broken-down door-to-door salesman, a one-time software hotshot made redundant, peddling magazine subscriptions and hauling a heavy sample-case.

‘So are you talking, BJ?' Perlman asked. ‘Either I hear it from you, or I hear it from him. I don't care.'

‘I'm telling you –'

‘No, sonny boy, pin back your ears,
I'm
doing the telling. You just shut your gub and keep it shut. Let's leave the envelopes for a minute, and take something else into account, something new I just learned … Ready for this, BJ? Hang on to your chair. Our forensics man Sid Linklater, very experienced young guy, very bright, says there's every possibility that Terry Dogue's throat was cut by Furfee's razor –'

‘Ballocks.' Quick felt clammy. His armpits flooded. He imagined how he'd react if somebody asked him to take a lie-detector test. He'd go into
melt-down
.

Perlman said, ‘It's going to take more tests to be conclusive, but he's eighty per cent sure.'

‘Okay, fine, so what, say Furf killed Dogue, it had nothing to do with me. Absolutely totally completely one hunnerd per cent nothing.' Quick made some motions of his hands, chopping the air like a kung-fu fighter.

‘We've still got to break this forensic discovery to Furf,' Perlman said. ‘How do you think he'll react?'

‘Hell would I know?'

‘My feeling is he'd want to be very cooperative, BJ. Don't you? I think he'd answer anything we asked. He's looking at a very long time in a bad jail, if the tests are indisputable. I think he'll want to bring you down with him.'

‘I was nowhere near
Terry fucking Dogue.
'

‘Have a smoke. Take a few minutes and think through your predicament.'

Quick looked into Perlman's unblinking eyes. ‘You're bluffing, you bastard. I just know it.'

‘I never bluff. So you won't admit to any involvement with Dogue, and you won't tell us why you played postman in Maryhill, and what was in the envelopes. Fine.' Perlman walked to the door, clutched the handle. ‘We'll see what Furf has to add. I'll be back soon, BJ. Why don't you sit here and marinate, okay?'

Perlman went out. Scullion was standing a few yards down the hallway. ‘Well, Lou?'

‘He's feeling the pressure. Give it half an hour. I'd kill for a cup of tea.'

‘I'll keep you company.'

They walked together down the hallway to the place where a drinks machine was located. Hot tea, coffee, broth. Scullion stuck coins into the slot. The machine hissed, then issued liquid and a blast of steam. Perlman sipped from a cardboard cup and gasped as the hot tea hit the back of his throat.

Scullion said, ‘When did Linklater say he'd come in and look at the razor?'

‘Some time in the morning,' Perlman said. ‘There's no hurry.'

‘You're a cunning old fart.'

‘I'm not that old,' Perlman said.

Scullion looked at his watch. ‘You want to take a quick glance at the Merc?'

‘Why not.'

Scullion's mobile rang and he removed it from his pocket and answered it. ‘For you, Lou.'

Perlman took the handset.

He heard Ruth Wexler on the line, and the sound of her voice – thin, spectral, like that of somebody communicating from the place where the dead gather – unnerved him.

She said, ‘You'll find the killer.'

‘I know I will, Ruth.'

‘Tell me you're certain.'

‘I promise you.'

‘I'm counting on that, Lou.'

46

Charlotte Leckie had dozed for a while but she still felt sleepy. She sang aloud the song that had been playing in her dream. It was an old Scots song, and she had no idea why she even remembered it, nor what she'd been dreaming. '
Twas there that Annie Laurie …
Weird choice, she thought. She hadn't heard that song in years. She didn't even like it.

She turned on her side. Shiv must have drawn the curtains at some point because there was no light from the street.

She looked at the luminous dial of her watch. Nine o'clock exactly. She'd slept for nearly half an hour. She realized Shiv wasn't in bed beside her. She heard water run in the bathroom. She felt very tired. She could easily drift back into sleep. What would it matter if she slept another fifteen minutes, or even thirty? She had no appointments. Shiv would expect her to stay until he decided it was time to leave anyway.

She listened to traffic, but it began to seem very far away. The Christmas singers were quiet now. Down the slope. She dozed. When she opened her eyes again she could still hear water running in the bathroom. The bedroom was impenetrably black save where a strip of light glowed under the bathroom door. Then a shape moved. The bathroom door opened. The sound of running water was louder. A white rectangle of light formed in the space, and the shape passed in front of this brilliance. She thought,
Shiv
, and was about to say his name when she realized that the figure entering the bathroom wasn't her lover but somebody else, a stranger, and all the while the water ran and ran.

She heard a noise. She wasn't sure of its source. It was almost the sound of air escaping, as in a sigh, but harsher. Harder. Or some object lodged in the throat of a person unable to expel it. Yes. But she wasn't certain.

She forced herself to move. Up on one elbow. Her view of the bathroom was limited by her angle. White walls, white light, white tub and basin and curtain shower. The tiles on the floor were another colour. Salmon? That was her impression. White and salmon. She saw the interloper move towards the sink but then he was lost to her. She thought she should stay very still. She didn't want to be seen. Why had she moved in the first place? She wondered why she hadn't heard Shiv cry out in surprise. His privacy had been invaded, after all –

The stranger stood in the doorway again. He saw her.

She tried to make herself very small. She sought invisibility. She knew something bad had happened. The air in the room had changed. It was unbreathable. She watched the man. She saw only that half of his face exposed by light. Half of a beard, one eye, a corner of a mouth.

She started to say something but he moved quickly and pressed a finger firmly to her lips and held it.

‘Do not scream.' He took his hand away.

‘Where is Shiv?'

‘No questions. Please.'

‘Where is he?' she asked.

He stepped back from the bed and moved to the front door. There he paused, turned, held out his hands in a gesture of dismay, and then he was gone. He shut the door as he left.

She rose from the bed, went into the bathroom.

‘Shiv?'

The room was dense with steam. Hot water spurted into the basin. The floor was damp under her bare feet.

‘Shiv,' she whispered.

She saw him then. He was seated in a chair, his head inclined over the washbasin. His arms hung at his sides.

‘Shiv?'

She couldn't quite get her perceptions to work. Shiv wasn't sitting right. She thought it was like looking at something very familiar from a place outside her experience. If you were as small as an ant, a blade of grass would be the size of a tree. But that didn't do it, that didn't describe quite the distortion that affected her understanding. She saw herself reflected vaguely through the layer of steam that adhered to the mirror above the basin. She remembered she was naked. Turn off the water: that was her immediate response to the situation. Practical.

Do something very very simple.

Turn off the tap. All this waste of hot water.

She reached towards the basin, then she drew her hand away again quickly. Through steam rising from the tap, she saw Shiv's face and his thick white hair.

Nothing else about him was familiar. This wasn't Shiv. This wasn't Bannerjee, her lover.

Something else.

47

The underground garage was cold as an igloo. Perlman blew into his hands. Fucking hell: temperatures in the city had plunged. By morning Glasgow would be one great construct of ice. No buses, no traffic except for the foolhardy, no trains, no planes, no escape. He stared at the four-door Merc that had belonged to Lindsay.

Inside, a Sergeant called Cameron Tubb was probing around, hands encased in latex gloves that looked like big multi-teated condoms. He wore a protective plastic suit and plastic boots. He was a thin man with an adam's apple the size of a prize-winning pomegranate. ‘Lindsay kept a clean car, Lou. Fastidious fellow. A lintfree life. Contents of glove compartment. Car registration, an AA members' handbook, a small folded rag he might have used to clean his glasses. That's it.' Tubb placed these items inside a plastic bag and labelled it, then wrote with a felt-tip pen on the label.

‘Anything else in there?' Scullion asked. His breath made a cloud on the air.

‘Looking,' Tubb said. ‘Sometimes I find. Sometimes I don't. I like to sing when I work. That trouble you gents?'

‘Is it country-western?' Scullion asked.

‘It bloody well is not, Inspector.'

‘Then sing all you like,' Scullion said.

Tubb sang, ‘
If you throw a silver dollar down upon the ground
…'

Perlman said, ‘Jesus, you're really raiding the archives there, Cameron.'

‘Fifties was a great time for popular songs,' Tubb said, and clambered into the back seat of the car. ‘
It will roll roll roll, because it's round round round.
'

Scullion said, ‘This is affecting my brain, Cameron.'

‘Sorry, sir. I know other songs.'

‘I've heard enough,' Scullion remarked.

‘Everybody to his own, I say.'

Perlman lit a cigarette. He puffed smoke without taking the cigarette from his mouth because he stuffed his icy hands back inside his pockets. He thought about Ruth Wexler's call and the promise he'd so casually given her. What else was he supposed to have told her? Ruthie, look, it takes time, there are pieces to fit together. Somebody's murdered: it's like an explosive device detonating – and all a cop could do was sift the shrapnel the way Cameron Tubb was poking around inside the Merc. I have some of the fragments. I have to reassemble them. I have to see where they join.

Scullion said, ‘I wonder how the car found its way to Kelvinbridge.'

‘Whoever killed Lindsay left it there,' Perlman said.

‘But what for? If you murdered a man, why would you drive his car away?'

‘Maybe he was killed right where the car was parked,' Perlman suggested. ‘Maybe Lindsay met somebody, and they drove around talking, and then the killer asked Lindsay to pull over.'

‘Which implies he knew the killer.'

‘Right. Lindsay parks. All of a sudden there's a gun at his head, and a bag of cocaine going into his mouth.'

‘Then what? He was transported to Central Station Bridge in another car?'

‘Why not? But there are other alternatives, Sandy –'

‘Save them for later, Lou. My brain's running on empty. Cameron, come on, I'm turning to a block of ice here.'

‘You can't hurry this job, Inspector,' Tubb said. ‘Suppose in the haste of my preliminary examination, I disturb something microscopic but essential? What would the lab boys say? See how I move in slow-mo, Lou? Time is frozen for me.'

‘Well for me it's my fucking balls that are frozen, Cameron.'

‘You're a crude man at times, Perlman.'

‘I had a crude education.'

‘Wait a minute,' Tubb said. He went into Mexican-accent mode. ‘What ees thees leetle theeng?' He probed the space behind the front passenger seat and surfaced with a small crunched-up brown paper bag in his hand.

Scullion stepped closer to the Mercedes. ‘What is it, Cameron?'

‘Let's see.' Tubb opened the bag carefully and peered inside. ‘Here.'

Scullion peered inside. ‘Looks a bit like sawdust.'

Perlman gazed at the contents. He had a rush of familiarity. ‘It's not sawdust,' he said.

‘You know what it is, Lou?' Tubb asked.

‘Only too well. I had a wife who ate it all the time, said it helped her stop smoking. That dust, pupils, is the residue of sunflower seeds. She picked up the habit of munching on said seeds during a trip to Tel Aviv. Told me everybody chewed on seeds over there. It was a bone of contention in our marriage. I was always complaining about her crunching on these things and spitting out the pods. She did it in bed – which was about the
only
thing she did in bed, as I remember.'

‘Sunflower seeds?' Scullion said.

‘She called it gar gar … something.'

‘So our neat and tidy solicitor chewed on these seeds and then dumped the bag on the floor of his otherwise meticulous Merc,' Scullion said. ‘And what did he do with the bits you spit out? Did he just expectorate from the open window? Why am I not seeing that clearly?'

‘Maybe the bag belonged to somebody else,' Tubb said.

‘The killer,' Scullion said.

‘Careless of him if he dropped it, though,' Perlman said, and looked at Scullion. ‘What was that phrase you used to describe him, Sandy? Arrogant amateur?'

‘I remember.'

‘So it just fell out of his pocket, and he overlooked it?'

‘Possibly.'

Perlman snapped thumb and forefinger together. ‘
Garinim
. That's the word I was looking for. That's what they call this stuff.'

Tubb tucked the paper bag inside a plastic one. He sealed it, stuck a label on it, scribbled something. ‘We'll get it fingerprinted, gents.'

Perlman let his cigarette fall and crushed it underfoot. He was anxious to get back to his unfinished business with BJ Quick and Furfee. He imagined their tiny minds in turmoil. What to say? What half-truths? What might they fudge? They couldn't collude in a fiction either: how frustrating that had to be for BJ Quick.