Black Widow (29 page)

I read an email from Piers on my phone, telling me that his daughter Ellen had won a karate tournament on the Gold Coast. Ordinarily this would make me feel a warmth at the thought of my niece and a tang of regret that I saw so little of her. Right then I was too numb to feel anything.

Mercifully, my bleep didn't go off. At other times, my ability to shut out all distractions as I concentrated upon a procedure had offered me valuable respite, but on this occasion, if I had been called back into the hospital, it would have been torture. I felt the need to take action, to engage physically in dealing with what I had learned.

I went to Peter's den. I had been increasingly tempted in recent weeks to go rooting through his things, looking for clues to what he might be keeping from me. There had been other overnight stays, all-day airsoft meets and oh so many evenings when I knew he wouldn't be home until late. I had not wanted for opportunity. But it was as though there had been an invisible forcefield in place, preventing me from entering: a line I could not bring myself to cross because of the person I would be – and the marriage we would have – on the other side of it.

It would be fair to say that on this particular on-call Saturday, the shields were down.

Principally I was looking for documentation of where he was staying in Glasgow. He wasn't due back until Monday, so if I could find out what hotel he was booked into, I could drive there the next day, as soon as my on-call was over.

I didn't go indiscriminately wading through the place like an inquisitive toddler. I took my phone with me and photographed anything I was planning to touch. I didn't want to tip him off that I was on to him, because if he still thought I was swallowing his lies, he might let his guard down further.

I went through his desk and every drawer in his plastic filing stack without finding anything remotely suspicious, which made me realise that Peter wasn't relying upon an invisible forcefield to protect damning evidence from his wife's discovery. Chances were he was keeping anything he didn't want me to see in his office at Sunflight House. Accomplished deceivers are naturally suspicious, so my enthusiasm for the task diminished as my fruitless search endured. Nonetheless, I needed to stay occupied, and right then I had nothing better to do.

I opened the big double-door wardrobe that stood against the wall at the far end of the room. It had come with the house, an ancient and ugly built-in affair the vendors couldn't be bothered ripping out and moving. Peter kept his airsoft gear inside it, but I was sure I had seen him stick a concertina file in there once as well.

I spotted it near the bottom beneath a shelf, stashed sideways on top of a lever-arch file and behind a sun-faded blue cardboard box that must previously have been stored in direct sunlight. The blue box was considerably heavier than I expected, its weight being used to keep the over-stuffed concertina file from springing open. It was when I placed it down carefully on the carpet that I noticed the logo and text on the lid: it was an old laptop, held on to and lovingly stored like I had learned Peter did with anything electronic.

I flipped it open and pressed the on switch, but there was no response. Typically, an old machine being dead was no reason for Peter to throw it out. But then I noted the power cord and transformer tucked neatly into their polystyrene housing and realised that the battery might merely have run down in storage.

I plugged it in and tried again. It hummed into life and booted up, so tantalisingly slowly as to suggest the thing had a sense of the dramatic and was milking the moment.

It was worth waiting for.

There was no password screen, so I had carte blanche.

The first thing I did was search for files created around the dates of the images and videos I had seen previously, as they were old enough for earlier copies to have been stored on this machine. Sure enough, I found the same photos and clips, as well as more featuring the same woman: always with her head out of shot. I was hoping to find others taken by Peter, less explicit and therefore more revealing. There was nothing, though: only a few phone shots taken at airsoft meets and what I resented recognising as a Star Trek convention.

I fared better when I booted up his email client. The most recent email was from eighteen months ago, when presumably he had moved on to a new laptop. I had access to all messages, sent and received, going back almost two further years.

I moved the laptop through to the kitchen table and scrolled patiently, opening messages whenever I came to a female name. These were conspicuously rare among Peter's contacts list, and I struck gold when I discovered his correspondence with a woman named Liz Miller. Reading through these emails and others that they were both copied into, it was clear that these messages marked the early days of a relationship. The exchanges dated from a little more than two years ago, and were therefore concurrent with the time the videos were taken.

I launched the old laptop's browser and scoured his favourites until I found his Facebook page. Unfortunately it didn't automatically log me in, so without his password I couldn't access his Friends lists. I was hoping for a photo, any nugget of information about who she was, but with her first name and surname being so common, there was no point in putting them into Google.

I decided to copy her email address so that I could try a search using that. It was when I clicked on the contact details that I saw that her mobile and landline numbers were listed also.

I felt the hairs on my neck rise in primal response, and watched gooseflesh form on my forearm. I knew that I could dial one of these numbers right now and that Peter could be sitting feet away from the woman who answered.

I glanced again at the landline. It wasn't a Glasgow number: the area code was 01382. I looked it up: Dundee.

I felt a surge of relief, then realised it meant nothing. If this was a dirty weekend, they might both be away from home.

My fingers trembling, I dialled the number and it began to ring, my heart thumping as I heard the syncopated electronic purr. I had no idea what I would say if she picked up, or indeed whether I could bring myself to say anything. I just needed to know.

He called Lucy first thing that morning, having got home from Inverness late the night before. The flat might be half the size it used to be, but it felt all the more empty, despite all the crap he had in boxes he was unlikely ever to open. They were like unexploded memory mines dotting the floor. He felt a compelling need to talk to somebody, and in her case he had an excuse to call.

It was almost a week since her brother's accident. She sounded brighter than at their meeting at the café, though there was an underlying sincerity to her voice that didn't indicate she would be cracking jokes any time soon.

‘Mr Parlabane. I was just thinking about you,' she told him, which he had no intention of misinterpreting. ‘How are things?'

‘Busy. I was calling to update you on what I've been finding out.'

‘I'm actually going to be in a meeting in about, let me see, seven minutes. How about we catch up this evening when we can talk at a bit more length.'

‘Sure.'

‘And how about we make it a bar. I think I owe you a drink.'

‘You don't really, but I won't say no.'

Parlabane reckoned it might not be a very large drink if she was buying on the basis of what he had discovered, but it might make things less tense and awkward if they were talking in more sociable circumstances.

‘I think I do. You're the only person I feel I can be honest with at the moment. Plus it seems only polite. You're running around the highlands on my behalf and I've been so wrapped up in myself that I've never even asked how you're doing.'

Parlabane said nothing for a moment. It had taken him aback that it even occurred to her to care.

‘That wasn't a question, by the way, so don't answer,' she said, as though anticipating a response that he wasn't actually about to give. ‘I'll ask you later when there's time to talk.'

They agreed a rendezvous, but before she hung up, Parlabane managed to tap her for some information pertaining to the one area he still needed to look into.

‘About Peter's firm, MTE Ltd. I found the details through Companies House. What do the initials stand for?'

‘Micro Transaction Executables.'

‘That's not very revealing. What was he actually working on?'

‘I can't say.'

‘Can't say as in you don't know? Because I see you're listed as company secretary.'

‘Can't say as in bound by a non-disclosure agreement. It's to protect the investors and what they have staked in the project: even with Peter gone, there's still the possibility they can find someone to build on his work.'

‘I'd like to know more about how the project was going, even if we have to avoid specifics.'

‘That's not me, I'm afraid. My involvement only went as far as finding the investors and helping get the company set up.'

‘There are three directors listed,' Parlabane noted. ‘Apart from Peter, there is a Courtney Jean Lang and a Samuel Patrick Finnegan.'

‘Lang is the epitome of the silent partner. Lives abroad, seldom comes to the UK. We've never actually met. I got in touch via a friend of a friend. The ideal investor, you might say: gives you the money then isn't looking over your shoulder and demanding progress updates all the time. You'd have a better chance of talking to Sam. He's in Glasgow.'

As a journalist, Parlabane had heard ‘fuck off' more times than most people in this life. He considered himself a connoisseur, able to detect the finest nuance that distinguished individual varieties of the sentiment, and he was able to recognise it even when it came encoded within words that were ostensibly benign and even purporting to be helpful. Sometimes ‘fuck off' was screamed directly into his face from the spittle-flecked mouth of someone in the throes of vein-bulging fury. Yet the message could be equally unambiguous and implacable when delivered in the mellifluent tones of a fresh-faced and smiling young woman as she politely enquired of him: ‘Do you have an appointment?'

Lucy had given him the address of an art dealership Sam Finnegan owned just off Great Western Road. She had worked in the art business herself, which was how she knew him, but she cautioned Parlabane that their connection wasn't a guarantee that Finnegan would speak to him. Thus her words ‘a better chance' indicated how difficult it might be to get in touch with Lang. And thus Parlabane was able to interpret the true meaning of the receptionist asking whether he had an appointment.

What the receptionist didn't realise was that she was also telling him her boss was around. When she went through the mummery of calling upstairs and telling Parlabane that Finnegan was ‘unavailable all day', he reciprocated with his own pretence of giving up and leaving. Instead he sat in his car, parked with a view of the entrance, and did something all good reporters were trained in before the era of churnalism had taken hold.

He waited.

Within the hour he saw two figures emerge from the shop: two men he had definitely not seen enter, for he could hardly have missed them. The older one he took for Finnegan: a tall and chiselled-looking middle-aged bloke with a dandified and haughty air about him: a well-dressed and immaculately coiffured individual whose healthy conceit of himself was evident merely from his gait and posture. He was accompanied by a younger guy who looked a less natural match for his duds: taller, more muscular, easier to picture in a sleeveless vest and sweatpants than a good suit.

Parlabane strode into Finnegan's path, card pinched between his fingers, offering a smile and a chirpy tone.

‘Mr Finnegan?'

Finnegan looked at him with mild surprise and calm composure. If there was annoyance there, he masked it well, and Parlabane was damn sure there was annoyance there. Image meant a lot to this guy: that was clear.

‘I was wondering whether I could have a wee word with you about your involvement with the late Peter Elphinstone and his company, MTE.'

His expression remained relaxed. He looked like he was thinking about it, as though internally checking his schedule.

‘And you are?'

He proffered the card.

‘Jack Parlabane. I realise there's an NDA preventing you discussing details of the project, but I'm interested in how it was progressing generally.'

Finnegan took the card and examined it like it was a delicate artefact, turning it over slowly between his leather-gloved fingers. He looked back at Parlabane and gave him a cold smile.

‘I don't discuss my businesses with anybody not directly involved.'

Those words, also, said ‘fuck off'.

‘I was wondering when you last spoke to Mr Elphinstone, and how you felt things were between you at that time.'

Finnegan made the tiniest of gestures: a brief movement of his eyes that was intended to be perceptible only to the individual who was presumably paid to be looking for it. On this occasion, Parlabane was looking for it too.

The bigger guy took a step: not so much towards Parlabane as slightly to one side, thus shielding his boss and ushering him past. It was subtle and controlled: defensive rather than offensive, but unmistakably a demonstration of power.

It told Parlabane a great deal. Finnegan was a man who didn't want to make a brash display of deploying muscle, but muscle he had, and presumably muscle he needed. He was wearing a very expensive winter coat, beneath which Parlabane could see fine tailoring and a flamboyantly colourful silk tie. He was dressing like a man of parts: businessman, art dealer, cognoscenti, but the other thing Parlabane identified beneath that coat was a Glasgow gangster.

Finnegan opened the door of an immaculately preserved vintage Bentley. Not for him the absurdly ostentatious modern sports version, ubiquitous vehicle of choice for the successful Scottish drug lord. No, Finnegan wanted something more classic, that spoke of taste and refinement rather than just power and money.