A Taste for Malice (33 page)

‘I only met the son once, years ago at a charity dinner. He was with a lawyer-friend and a couple of women.’

‘Fag hags?’ asks Alessandra.

‘You own a delightful turn of phrase, Miss Rossi,’ I say as I try to remember the dinner and with the benefit of hindsight I connect the dots. After the meal was served and the band struck up some tunes, the two couples were barely off the dance floor. Rarely have I seen men willing to dance quite as much. Not unusual in itself, I’m partial to a wee dance myself, once suitably relaxed. However, when the smoochy music came on, they all sat down and both genders acted as if they were on their own. I can see the men now in my mind’s eye. If I had an operational gaydar I would have suspected, but my thoughts tend not to go there. I couldn’t give a shit what genital equipment other people demand in a lover. Life’s difficult enough without casting those sorts of judgements in my view.

I stop at a red light on West George Street. A horde of men and women in business suits cross from both directions. Almost everyone is wearing black. An occasional splash of colour from the odd tie and ladies blouse. Everyone is wearing an identical expression, focused on their internal world, worrying about the next meeting or the next deal.

‘You need to find a young-ish corporate lawyer. Blond. His hair is receding, late twenties-early thirties. Slim, good-looking,’ I speak my thoughts aloud.

‘Keep going,’ says Alessandra. ‘Sounds just my type.’

‘I think you’re forgetting something, Alessandra. We’re talking suspect in a gay lover killing.’

‘There’s always some kind of trade-off with the lookers,’ she laughs and then sobers. ‘And now I’m freaking myself out.’

‘How are you going to play this one out?’

‘Peters won’t want to know. It’s not his idea. And we’re looking for the proverbial needle. Throw a stick down Glasgow city centre and you’ll strike a corporate lawyer.’

‘Has the father been in?’

‘Yes. With a team of lawyers.’

‘Make up an excuse. Get him back in. Then hit him between the eyes.’

Alessandra is silent while she processes this.

‘A little bit of the truth can go a long way, Miss Rossi.’ I’m thinking of a certain woman and how she played me as I say this.

‘Where will you be?’ Alessandra asks.

‘A little bit of unofficial surveillance,’ I reply and give her the address.

‘Why are you going there again?’ she asks. ‘Is that not where Violet Hogg lives?’

Jim sat outside his parents’ house for what felt like hours. He couldn’t bring himself to go through the actions required to go inside. Pulling at the door handle, moving his legs out of the car and walking up the path was beyond him.

He was so tired. And confused. What was going on? How did it all get to this?

Sure he had told some lies, but they were white lies; designed to help the situation. He didn’t deserve to be in such an unholy mess.

If he was tired how must Angela be feeling?

Jim felt a crushing weight of guilt that his actions had contributed to the situation his wife and child now found themselves in. What he would give for a return to happier times.

He thought about the way Angela was the last time he saw her; exhausted, furious and an approximation of the woman he first met.

Then his thoughts were drawn to that first occasion as if he needed the balm of the memory of a time when the world was still recognisably round.

‘Don’t fancy yours much,’ Billy Grant said out of the side of his mouth, while paying full attention to the blond girl dancing in the middle of the floor. Even under the strobe lighting they could see that her hair was a honey blond. It swung from side to side in a solid sheet as she moved to Luther Vandross’s
Never Too Much
: a perennial favourite of the DJ.

Billy was his best mate and they were at a club in the city on a typical night out. The aim was, as usual to have a good drink and then pull a bird.

Jim was sure that this was his night. He was wearing a trendy new shirt and he was confident that this change would stand him in good stead.

Neither he nor Billy could take their eyes off the girl with the blond hair and the red blouse. With both hands she piled her hair on to the top of her head, enjoyed a breeze on her neck and then let it fall back down on to her shoulders. Her eyes were closed as she mouthed the words of the song. Locked in the rhythm and the moment, she looked as if no other place on earth could do it for her.

‘Killer tits,’ whistled Billy. ‘You can dance with her pal.’ He moved past Jim and took a step on to the floor.

‘Piss off you tosser. I got the ugly bird the last time,’ Jim pulled on his arm and strode past. Almost running to make sure he got there first, he kept ahead of Billy. In that well-worn Scottish male courtship movement Jim tapped blondie on the shoulder and started dancing in front of her.

‘Cracking song, eh?’ He shouted into her ear. She smiled, nodded, closed her eyes and continued to dance as if Jim wasn’t there.

Jim looked over at Billy to see that his new dance partner had her mouth pressed against his ear. She was a good bit shorter than Billy and was straining on to her toes to do so. Up close she looked a lot better than he first thought and Jim wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake. It didn’t look like Billy was going to have much bother warming her up.

‘Luther Vandross is the bollocks,’ Jim tried to shout above the thump of the baseline. ‘Love his stuff.’ Inwardly he cursed, what a stupid thing to say.

Again, she opened her eyes, looked at him, nodded and then went back to her dancing. Feeling as socially inept as a man dressed only in a pair of speedos and a gold medallion, Jim danced beside her for the rest of the song, wondering if his arms were swinging too much and praying for the song to end. He’d never felt as if he’d made so poor an impression on a girl before.

‘Thanks,’ she said when the song ended. She picked up her bag, looked at her pal and walked off the floor.

On each of the following three Saturdays she wasn’t there. She appeared, as if by magic on the fourth. Billy and Jim managed to squeeze on to a bare piece of carpet near to her and her pals. Looking through the press of clubbers, he tried to catch her eye.

Nothing.

‘Just go up and talk to her, for chrissake,’ said Billy.

‘Shut up,’ Jim sipped at his beer. ‘She’s not interested.’

‘Aye and she never will be if you stand there staring at her like a poofy big fearty.’

‘Eh? Can you even understand English?’

‘Go and talk to the lassie. Buy her a drink, for fuckssake. Nobody can refuse a free drink.’ And there, in a nutshell was Billy’s game plan for winning over the fairer sex. The annoying thing was, his record was a good deal healthier than Jim’s.

‘Right, okay.’ He negotiated a path through the crush of people and ignoring the swirl in his stomach he offered her a drink.

‘Got one thanks,’ she held up her almost full glass as proof.

‘Oh c’mon, can you no make this a wee bit easier on me?’ he asked.

‘I’m trying to save you money.’

A grin. That was good.

‘Money is something I’m not short of. Especially when it comes to a beautiful girl.’ Jim heard the words coming out of his mouth as if they were in slow motion and prayed that he could reel them back in.

‘You don’t do this much do you?’ She took a sip from her glass.

‘Was it that bad?’ Jim screwed up his face in anticipation of her answer.

She nodded in commiseration, like a vet telling an owner that their beloved animal was about to be put down. ‘Shocking.’

‘Okay. You do it.’

‘What? Chat you up?’

Jim nodded and took a sip from his bottle, trying to look as cool as she did.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Jim… Jim Hilton.’

‘Okay Jim Jim Hilton, what do you do?’

‘I’m a bookseller.’

‘Wow, I love books. What’s it like working in a bookshop, must be wonderful?’

‘Oh it has its moments. Like any job I expect.’

‘But to be surrounded by all those books…wow. Who’s your favourite author?’

Before Jim knew it he had launched into a list of authors and books, encouraged by every nod from the girl in front of him. He stopped speaking after several minutes aware that she was now grinning at him as if he was her prize pupil and he’d just won a gold star.

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘That’s how you do it.’ She waved her hand in a slow horizontal S and took a bow.

‘What ...’ Then it dawned on him. ‘You are good.’

‘The lesson for the day is over. Don’t chat up a girl, chat
to
her.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Angela. Angela Morris.’ She grinned in advance of what she knew he was going to do with her name.

‘Well, Angela Angela Morris, what do you do?’

‘I’m a social worker.’

‘Nae luck.’ He drank from his bottle and grinned.

She laughed, bending forward as she did so. ‘Oh, a sense of humour as well as lots of money, how can a girl say no?’

‘Say no to what?’

‘A night at the pictures.’

I’m sitting outside Mrs Hogg’s house in Shawlands. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and there is little movement around me. This is the lull before the school run. Then the streets will be full of yummy mummies in their suburban tractors, as they go and pick up their little darlings. It must be a bummer to go and invest in a higher seating position to find out it has been nullified because everyone else has one.

There’s no movement behind Hogg’s windows. Nor has there been any since I arrived here two hours ago. I wonder if I should add breaking and entering to my list of police sins. Best not. I’ve given them enough rope to hang me. It’s about time I make an effort to keep my job. Aye, right.

I sit low in my seat. Don’t want anyone to get a good look at me. Although I have been here twice already and someone’s sure to have clocked me on my previous visits. Perhaps that’s something I should play on.

Forty-five minutes later and a young woman leaves the house next door and walks to her Toyota Rav4 parked in her drive. She’s carrying an infant that she straps into the backseat. While she’s doing so I approach her.

‘Excuse me,’ I say while I’m still a safe distance from her. ‘Do you have any idea where Mrs Hogg is?’

She stops what she is doing and faces me. There is judgement in her expression and a little wariness. And then some form of recognition when I introduce myself.

‘Yes, Mrs …I mean Violet did tell me that she was helping the police.’ She formed an expression of not so polite interest. ‘Something about children that were being abused by some horrible women?’

‘Can you tell me where Mrs Hogg is?’ I ask, ignoring the question.

‘Sorry,’ she replies with a smile. ‘No idea. She’s probably on some committee or other. Feeding the starving millions somewhere.’ She says this as if Hogg’s generosity is at best some form of eccentricity. ‘Sorry.’

She gets in the car, starts it up and reverses down the short drive into the street. As she does so I pretend to go back to my car, with the view that as soon as she is out of sight I’ll be peering in Hogg’s windows looking for a way in.

She offers me a cheery wave as she passes. I wave back with one hand as I stretch my seat-belt into position with the other and watch her in my rear-view mirror. Her car turns left at the end of the street and I’m out of my car. The back door is wood, painted white. There are three windows at street level. None of them are double glazed, in contrast to those in the front. Perhaps she ran out of money before she could replace them all.

There are three refuse bins, green, brown and blue to one side of the door and three red ceramic plant pots in a group on the other side. I check under the pots in the off chance. You see people in movies doing it all the time. Leaving a spare key in a secret place just in case. However, Mrs Hogg isn’t that careless. There are no keys hidden under her plant pots.

I look behind me up the length of the garden. The boundary at the far end is marked out by a line of tall conifers. This means that I am not in view of her rear neighbours.

An unlocked window is as good as an unlocked door to a would-be burglar, they say. I check all the windows. The one that looks into the kitchen has a small panel window in the upper centre of the pane of glass, that is indeed open, and a panel to the right. Perhaps I can reach in through the upper panel, and open the side window from there. I pull the green bin over to the middle of the window and pull myself on top of it. I put my arm inside and stretch down to the handle. Can’t reach it. I push my body against the glass in the hope of giving me more arm room inside. Still can’t reach it. I pull my arm back out of the space and lower myself to the ground. Fuck. I guess it would have been too good to be true.

I move to the side and start to push the bin back into place. Something glints in the space where it had rested. I lean forward and pick it up. Bugger me, a key. The woman is careless after all.

I replace the bin and unlock the door. The kitchen is clean and tidy. Apart from a plate and a floral mug on the worktop at the side of the sink. The plate holds a half-eaten sandwich and the tea in the mug has barely been sipped. Makes me think that our Mrs Hogg had an unplanned meeting to attend.

The rest of the house is similarly clean and tidy. In the bedroom the bed is made and no dirty linen litters the carpet. The living room is dust free and even the second downstairs bedroom that is being used as an office is an essay in tidiness.

The desk is along the far wall and is lined on either side by bookcases. The books themselves are non-fiction, stories of worthy individuals. A Dell computer sits under the desk, with a flat-screen monitor on top. I switch it on. The screen fills with light and colour and the usual music sounds from it.

The computer demands a password. I key in
Violet
. Nothing. I try
Hepburn
. Nothing. With a grin I try
Bukkake
. Nothing.

What was her husband’s name? Tommy. I key it in. Nothing. I’d bet any money it was his date of birth. Where could I find that?