A Taste for Malice (12 page)

She was right about Ben, however. The fright had come from her, so she should be the one to placate him. Similarly with the floor. Would she clean it up if Jim threw his dinner over it? No way. And there was no need to snap. He just wanted to help.

All over a bloody name — for a bloody nobody. Moira who? And what was she all about? Weaselling in here to speak to his wife. Pretending to care. Probably didn’t have a life of her own and wanted to steal someone else’s. What were the chances Jim would find her rifling through his garbage, trying to find out more about them so she could infiltrate their lives.

Whoa, big guy. Time to get off the bus before it arrives at Paranoia City.

Where are you, Ms Hepburn? The curtain is falling. Your time on stage is almost up. Okay, I’m getting fanciful, but it is four o’clock in the morning and I can’t sleep.

I can understand a name change when you are trying to hide your nefarious deeds, but why choose a famous name? The first thing is that we are dealing with damaged goods. There are few people who can act in such a vicious way without being a victim themselves. It’s way too early for the nature/nurture debate, McBain, but it feels right. Something terrible happened to her so she’s regaining power by passing that tag of victim on to someone else. Several someone elses. Which suggests she gets something from it.

What do psychiatrists say when it comes to motivation? We move away from pain or towards pleasure. Does she really find pleasure in what she does, or is she so full of pain that the only relief she can achieve is to pass that pain on to someone else?

These thoughts are going over and over in my mind in a loop. Enough with the cottage industry psychology, McBain, get some sleep.

Tomorrow I go for a run. Perhaps then I will sleep when I go to bed. Exercise, that’s what’s called for. And a diet. Even Maggie remarked on my weight gain.

Monday is a great day to start a diet. That gives me the whole of tomorrow, well today, to enjoy my food. A huge fry-up for breakfast. The works. Black pudding and everything. Then choccy biscuits with my coffee at elevenses. I love Kit-Kats. A couple of sausage rolls for lunch. A slice of cake with afternoon tea. Has to be carrot cake. And then a curry for dinner. With a sweet naan. Then a bag of Maltesers while I watch a late movie.

I chuckle at my intensity. My belly is groaning at the thought of all those calories. Perhaps I will just settle for a cooked breakfast and see what the rest of the day brings.

It’s eleven o’clock Sunday morning and the door goes. I press the intercom. Recognise the voice and let him in.

It’s Kenny, my favourite career criminal. When I was on the run from the police, my employers, Kenny was one of the few people I could turn to. The irony of that was not lost on either of us. Our paths have crossed several times over the years, first as boys and then as young men. Each time began with me saving his expensively clad arse. So he owes me, he thinks. I think the debt is all-square after he saved me recently. Without his intervention while I was under the knife of Leonard I would no doubt be dead.

‘Let me guess. It was a toss-up between church and me. And I lost?’

‘Haven’t seen you for a wee while, big man. Just thought I’d give you another chance to thank me for saving you from a homicidal maniac.’

‘You should have found me before the heid-case slashed my wrists. How thick are you? I left enough clues to fill an edition of Junior Cluedo.’

‘Once again,’ he punches my arm. ‘You are welcome.’

He’s looking good. The bastard. Every inch the successful and wealthy businessman. Except his business is on the shady side. And whatever it is I don’t want to know; bonds forged in war of boyhood are often the hardest to break. He’s wearing a pair of jeans that probably cost more than my favourite suit and a shirt which I am guessing is from his preferred shop, Thomas Pink. He walks ahead of me into the living room in that loose-limbed, athletic way of his. He is broad-shouldered and lean. Moves like he is totally at ease in his body. I think I hate him.

‘You’ll be making me a coffee?’

‘One pinch of arsenic or two?’

‘Bitch.’

I make us coffee and bring it through to the sitting room. He’s sitting on a sofa like he designed it. Arms open wide and resting along the top, his right foot placed on his left knee.

‘So what’s the haps? What is the famous detective investigating these days?’

‘None of your business.’ I hand him a hot mug.

‘Oh c’mon. Tell me.’

‘Nothing, really.’ I shrug. ‘I’ve been benched. I’m on the subs bench. They don’t want me working on anything until the public has well and truly forgotten all about the Stigmata thing.’

‘Ah,’ he nods sagely, ‘McBain The Embarrassment.’

‘Remind me why we are friends?’

‘You need someone to look down on. I need a break from the monotony of making loads of cash.’

We grin at each other. Don’t know why I am so sanguine with this situation. If the bosses knew he was my friend, I wouldn’t even be on the subs bench. Given that I don’t have a garden, I can’t go on gardening leave, I’d have to call it Window Box Leave.

‘Getting any?’ he asks in that caring male way.

‘None of your business.’

‘That’ll be a no.’

‘I’ve decided to be celibate. Women are just too much trouble.’

‘Theresa. That was her name wasn’t it?’ What is that in his eyes? Concern?

‘Mmmm.’

He thinks for a moment. It’s as if he has something to tell me and he’s not sure that he should. Eventually he opens his mouth. ‘She’s pregnant.’

‘I know.’

‘He knows. Fuck me, mate. I’ve had this news for weeks.

Been too worried to tell you, and you know.’ He pauses. ‘Is it yours? How do you know?’

'The more pertinent question is how do you know?’

‘Want me to do something about him?’

Him would be the husband, I assume. ‘Na. I’m the polis remember. We don’t do stuff like that.’

‘Aye. Right.’

‘So how come you know about this?’ I ask again.

‘Information and the trade thereof is how I make my money, old son.’ He replies in a theatrical manner. ‘And I have an interest in making sure that my friends are looked after.’

‘Don’t tell me anything else,’ I shudder to think what Kenny knows and what he does with that knowledge. For a moment I think about Theresa’s husband. With him out of the way, minor damage only of course, severe memory loss for example, I could waltz back in there and be a father to our child.

A boyish devilment dances in Kenny’s eyes. ‘You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?’

‘Machiavelli was never my role-model.’

‘Right enough, Baden-Powell was more your scene. If you ever get tired of protecting the great unwashed, come and see me. I’ll make you rich, my boy.’

‘So information is your thing these days?’ I ask.

‘People and their many and varied vices are my thing, Ray.’ He lifts up his half-full mug and toasts them all. ‘Information brings me to them. It’s amazing what the right piece of information in the wrong hands can achieve.’

‘Tell me no more.’

‘Bet you I could find out something about the good folks of Glasgow quicker that you could with all your highfalutin’ policeman stuff.’

I take sip from my mug. There just might be some mileage here.

‘So you’d become a police informer.’

He shuddered violently. ‘Wash your mouth out with vim. No. I’m talking about the type of people you deal with. You know, the happily deranged and the psychos. I’ll be an unofficial adjunct to your investigation.’

‘Right enough. We’ve got to have our standards.’ I aim somewhere between sarcasm and irony. I am always amazed at how those involved in financial crime regards themselves as above the violent in the criminal pecking order. The human mind in all its glory. If the Afrikaners could use the Bible to excuse apartheid then we can manage to reason almost anything into the justifiable.

‘How’s Maggie?’ he changes the subject.

‘Happy that she hasn’t crossed paths with you.’

‘She doesn’t like me?’ He actually manages to look wounded.

‘Let me try and remember how she described you. Ah yes. If he was chocolate he would have nibbled his own knob down to a nub.’

‘Good work with the alliteration. A good brain and nice tits.’ He nods his head slowly. ‘Why haven’t you shagged her yet?’

‘Friends don’t get all groiny with each other.’

‘Platonic friendships, my arse,’ Kenny the Philosopher dismisses a world of friendship. ‘Unless one of you is pigugly.’ Smile. ‘You could qualify for that title in your little two-some.’ His eyes are momentarily lost in a picture he has summoned into his mind. ‘Maggie is one fine looking woman. Pity she doesn’t charge for it.’ Kenny has a thing for prostitutes. The kind that have their own appointment system and a waiting list. His thinking is that sex is nothing but a form of transaction and when he pays for it at least it’s honest.

‘Away an’ howl at the moon, ya numpty. You’re doing my head in.’

Monday morning, it’s only ten o’clock and I am lunchtime hungry. May have something to do with eating breakfast at six o’clock. Couldn’t sleep and when I did my dreams were enough to make sleep the last thing I ever want to do again.

I am in my office on my own. Daryl and Alessandra are out on a job and I’m doing the good little banished detective thing. Posting holiday requests and sick-notes is not my idea of policing. Still, someone has to keep Human Resources up to date.

The only thing I’ve done this morning that might resemble my actual job is to read an email from Alessandra. She checked out the mobile number we got from Mrs Hogg. It was dead. Surprise, surprise.
Pay as you go
phone numbers are ideal for the transient and wannabe untraceable elements of our society.

Coffee. I’ll have another coffee. Go into a café and look at the skinny people. They’ll all be drinking coffee. The fatties will have tea and cake in front of them. Ergo, to lose weight, drink shit-loads of coffee.

See me. See flawed thinking. I’m a genius at it.

It’s now eleven o’clock and Daryl and Alessandra aren’t back yet. I’m having another coffee and I’m beyond hungry. Next thing I see with a pulse is going to get speared, skinned and roasted.

The thing about boredom is it makes you think about your next meal and the next snack. Find a boring job and you’ll find a fat bastard doing it.

Enough is enough. Think I’ll take me and my mobile phone a wee walk for some fresh air. I walk up Pitt Street, take a right into West George Street and walk down to Blythswood Square.

Here, a square shaped garden is surrounded by Edwardian terraced houses, most of which are now offices. At the far end with a whole block to itself is the former RAC club. Now a hotel that should have swanky in its name. I make my way into the square and find a bench. I pluck my phone from a pocket and dial a number.

‘Had a re-think about my offer?’ Kenny answers immediately.

‘You been waiting for my call?’

‘My breath has been bated since last we spoke. Wassup, partner?’

I tell him what I need. He promises to get back to me as soon as. We hang up.

I lean back in my seat, kick my feet out in front of me. The sun is strong on my forehead. Traffic is busy going around the square, but the lines of trees and bushes are enough to give the illusion of an oasis. Right. That’s enough non-movement, McBain. Who can you phone next?

‘Ray?’ Daryl answers the phone immediately.

‘Hey good buddy. What’s the haps? Howzit hanging?’

I can hear him talking to someone else. ‘DI McBain is bored out of his tiny mind.’

‘Yes and any crumb of police work would be gratefully nibbled on,’ I reply. Alessandra chuckles in the background. ‘What you got?’ I ask.

‘Dead end, Ray. We’ve just been up at the Southern General. They’ve had no staff working there going by the name of Lucy Hepburn. Or Audrey Hepburn for that matter.’

‘Mrs Hogg was sure it was the Southern General she was working in. What about the other city hospitals?’

‘We already tried them. And nothing going there either.’

‘Maybe we need to spread our enquiries to other regions?’ I suggest.

‘But, Ray,’ I can hear Alessandra over Daryl’s shoulder. ‘It can’t be too far away. Hepburn had to do her shift at the hospital and then go and do her second job.’

‘Well spotted, Ale.’ I pause. A woman sits beside me. She sits as far away from me as she can without sitting on the bench’s arm. She is wearing a navy blue business suit and a white shirt. She is carrying a dun-coloured woven bag which she places on her lap. She pulls out a silver flask and sits it to her left. Then she pulls out a plastic tub full of salad and a plastic fork. Is everyone on the planet on a diet? I’m sure she can hear my belly grumble.

‘Ray? Ray? You still there?’ Daryl speaks in my ear.

‘Sorry. Got distracted. Have we tried the private hospitals in the area?’

‘Not yet, Ray,’ says Daryl. ‘We’ll add that to the list.’

‘One thing that bothers me. Nurses have qualifications. You have to prove who you are to sit qualifications these days. You can’t just dance into a hospital and pretend to be a nurse.’

‘So?’

‘So maybe she’s using her real name at work and the name she gave to Mrs Hogg and the families are bogus.’

‘The fact that she retains the first name might be a clue. We need to get a hold of all the nurses in the west of Scotland with the first name of Lucy,’ Alessandra jumps in.

‘Let’s get on it,’ I say and hang up.

‘Lovely day,’ the woman beside me speaks.

I look at the food on her lap and the fruit spilling out of her bag and think it all looks very healthy. I need healthy.

I smile and say, ‘I’ll give you twenty quid for the lot.’

‘Why don’t I have a brother and sister?’ Ben asked, turning away from a cartoon. One of the characters in the show was about to get a new little sister and was all excited about it.

Angela looked up from her purple notebook — it was a present Moira had given her that afternoon over coffee at The Honey Pot and in it she could record all the new information she received each day — the question of having other children was something she hadn’t yet considered, judging from the expression on her face.