Crime (6 page)

— A lot of poor bastards have retired down here with a partner, who’s since kicked the bucket, and now they cannae afford to
move
elsewhere. I know tons of codgers in that situation. Ginger swirls back a mouthful of beer and signals for some shots of tequila. — The retirement dream becomes a nightmare, he muses. Two men walk in, hand in hand, and sit in a corner of the bar. — This place was meant for retirees. Now look at it, Poof Central.

They down another few drinks and briefly walk along a strip of beach before heading back up to meet their wives present and future.

Trudi and Dolores have evidently enjoyed their early-evening shopping. — The best time to do it in this heat, Dolores explains, as Trudi defiantly holds up some purchases at Lennox. — It’s stuff I
need
, Ray. I know that we’re meant to be saving up … but I never ask what you spend your money on.

Resentment bubbles in Lennox.
As if I care what she spends her money on
. — Who’s asking questions? Ah’ve no said a fuckin word.

— I know that look, Raymond Lennox.

— What look? Lennox protests through his semi-drunken fug. — You’re makin something oot ay nothing. This is ridic, he appeals to Ginger.

But it’s Dolores who pitches in. — Shopping’s what we do best, son. Get used to it, she playfully chides, shifting her gaze to Ginger, — right, lover boy?

— Aye. Ginger flushes through his drink. Lennox thinks it could have been with pride or embarrassment or perhaps a little bit of both.

Ginger Rogers then presents his guests with two alternatives. Either Dolores can run them back to Miami Beach, as he concedes that he’s drunk way too much, or they can go out for a meal at his favourite restaurant and spend the night in the spare room.

— We can get a cab, Trudi suggests.

— Won’t hear of it. Fifty bucks? Robbery! Dolores or me’ll whisk you doon there in the morning.

— Okay, Lennox agrees, heading out on to the balcony and looking over the rail. The Holiday Inn can’t totally obscure the view of the ocean. The darkness has thickened but some heat is still in the air, despite a thin breeze whistling coolly on his arms. Down below, the soft thump of beats from a disco bar. He can
tell
Trudi isn’t happy. As she would say herself: he knows that face.

Ginger comes out to join him, closing the patio door behind them. He has two cans of Miller in his hand; issues one to Lennox. — Paradise, eh? he says, scrutinising his pal’s reaction.

— Nice, says Lennox, and they bang beer cans together. He knows that he would go crazy here, but each to their own.

— So why the long face, Raymondo?

— The long face is on her through there. Lennox twists round and looks in, fuddled and aggressive in drink. — I don’t give a suffering fuck what she buys. And that makes her worse. What I was meant to say was: ‘C’mon, baby, we’re supposed to be saving up for the wedding,’ so she could go, ‘Don’t spend all your money on drink then.’ Ah didnae gie her thet satisfaction, so she got nippy and had the argument anyway: with herself. Only it’s worse now because I supposedly don’t care aboot the poxy wedding.

Ginger’s eyes take on a manic gleam as they dance in his head. Lennox has the sense that he is watching something moving behind him. — This is your first night here?

— Aye. He briefly glimpses round, but there’s nothing.

— And you’re on holiday?

— Aye.

— And you’re on med leave after stress breakdown?

Lennox can see where this is heading. — Aye.

— And you’re seeing an old buddy you havnae seen in five years?

— Aye, Lennox hesitantly replies, — but aw the same, I –

Ginger cuts him off. — And she’s been hassling ye wi wedding plans?

— Well, aye, I suppose –

— Tell her those three magical little words every woman needs tae hear now and again, he smiles in defiant cheer, — Get tae fuck!

The door slides open and Braveheart charges out on to the balcony, barking skittishly in circles as Dolores shouts, — Buck! Get that Caledonian ass of yours in here. You too, Ray! Bill and Jessica have arrived!

Bill Riordan is a retired New York City police officer. Thin, but looks granite-hewn hard, his whole body like one big bone. The sort of man age had chiselled rather than bloated. His wife, Jessica, is a slender woman with meandering eyes and a lazy smile. Time had given her a light sack of fat under her chin but little anywhere else. They are part of the ballroom-dancing competition, and Lennox is already writing off Ginger’s chances. They move into the kitchen, where Ginger steers Lennox to the hot-dog cooker. — Put the buns and the dogs into vertical slots and they all pop up at once, he announces proudly. — Dolores disnae like me going too crazy with it, he whispers, glancing at Bill, who chats to the women, — likes me to keep the weight doon, wi the competition finals up in Palm Beach next week.

More drinks follow as the evening dissolves around them. They decide they won’t make the restaurant and phone for a pizza delivery. As the party finds its way back out on to the balcony and the plastic chairs, Ginger’s voice rises in a rasping catcall. Lennox dimly remembers drinking sessions past and an obnoxiousness that could come out in him when he was pissed. — You fuckin Paddies, he turns to Riordan, — all you supplied the New World wi was the numbers, the expendable brawn. Fucking worker ants. The Scots, we provided the know-how. He thumps at his chest. — Right, Ray?

Lennox pulls a tight smile.

— That’s a very misty Caledonian perspective, Buck, Bill Riordan cheerfully offers.

— What about Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Wilde? Trudi intervenes. — The Irish have given so much to Western culture.

Ginger is now drunk enough to openly scoff at her.— Couldnae write their names on a giro compared to the bard. Rabbie Burns, right, Ray?

— I’m keepin ootay this one.

— You stop it, Dolores shouts, leaning forward in her chair and punching Ginger in the chest. — I’m Irish. And Danish. And Skats. My paternal grandfather came from Kilmarnock.

She pronounces it Kil-mir-nok.

— A wise choice to get on that boat, Ginger teases, mellowing under her intervention.

Lennox turns to Riordan. — Must have been some tough beats in New York, Bill.

Riordan nods in cautious affirmation. — The city’s a lot different now, Ray. But I loved my time on the force. Wouldn’t have changed a thing.

— It must be so dangerous compared to the UK, all these guns, Trudi shudders, glancing briefly at Lennox.

This time Riordan gestures in the negative. — I certainly wouldn’t like to work in Britain and not have a pistol in my holster.

Trudi clicks her teeth together. She often does that when she’s nervous or excited, Lennox considers. — But isn’t it dangerous? Doesn’t it make you more likely to use the gun? You must have shot a few people, right?

Smiling genially at her Bill Riordan lowers his glass. — Honey, in all my years on the force I shot nobody. I worked some of the toughest precincts in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens. You name it. I’ve never personally known a New York City cop who shot anybody. I unholstered my gun twice in thirty-five years.

Lennox watches her almost purring under his kindly gentleman-uncle patter. Sees the wedding guest list grow by two.

— Uh-oh, cop talk, Dolores gripes, — time to evacuate, girls. She stands, sending her plastic chair hurtling back along the tiled balcony floor. Jessica follows suit. Trudi hesitates for a while, preferring the company of one youngish and two old men, to that of two old women, but realises that Scottish sexist protocol will set the social agenda tonight, and follows back through to the lounge.

Ginger cranes his neck to watch the sliding glass door slurp along its runner, before thudding closed. — Course it’s aw fucked now, he slurs, as he pours some shots from a tequila bottle he’s opened, — the job. It’s the same everywhere. The high-flyers come in, tell all us old pros how it’s done, eh, Bill?

— I guess, Riordan smiles warily. Like Lennox, he seems keen on avoiding the fight that the host is spoiling for.

— Ray? Ginger challenges, his eyes narrowing on his ex-colleague.

Lennox feels himself swallow his beer in a hard gulp. That
promotion
was eight years ago. His career has stagnated since, but some cunts wouldnae let it go. He shrugs again in a non-committal manner.

— I reckon that’s the way of the world, Buck, Bill Riordan chuckles.

— Aye, but it shouldnae be. Ginger closes one eye, focusing the other in accusation on Lennox. — Polis, they call them. That job you got, that should have gone tae somebody like Robbo. Now there wis a polisman!

Lennox takes in a long breath through his nose, pleasantly surprised to hear his sinuses pop. — Robbo was a fuckin washed-up nutjob, he spits. And he wants to add:
And now I’m just like him. Just like the lot of youse
.

— A fuckin good cop, Ginger mumbles, seeming to run out of steam. Then he asks, — How’s Dougie Gillman? Some boy him, eh, Ray … His voice tails off.

— The same, Lennox says through tight lips.

— Course … ah forgot that you and Gilly had that wee fawoot. Kissed and made up yet?

— No.

A silence falls. Rather than let it hang, Lennox rises and heads through to the open-plan lounge where Jessica is playing with the dog and Dolores is teaching Trudi some dance steps. — I’m heading for my scratcher, he announces. — Jet lag kicking in.

— Ah … lightweight, Trudi teases, now lost in the drink and the dance.

In the en suite bathroom he washes down his last two antidepressants and prepares for another night, hoping he’s ingested enough to obliterate its horrors. Sliding into the bed, he listens to the chatter and laughter from the front room dissolve into the madness inside his head. Though exhausted, a harsh, regressive calculus seems to dictate that sleep will be denied him again. Instead, he has thought.

What was it Toal said in his briefing about Angela Hamil? – A wanton slut, he’d ventured, putting his pipe back in his mouth and sucking on it. Since the ban he wasn’t allowed to smoke it in the office now, but he still brought it out as a prop, chewing on the stem when he was nervous.
Then
he’d added, — I reckon that it’s some scumbag she’s had in her orbit. You know the kind of rubbish the likes of that woman’s bound to attract
.

Lennox blinks, tugging on the duvet. Images of Angela, her straw hair and haggard face, form into clarity around him, not like in a dream because he is painfully conscious that he’s in this bed.

Then he can see him, Mr Confectioner: his cold, fishlike eyes, his monstrous, rubbery, scandalised lips, and Britney, helpless, at his feet.

And Ray Lennox thinks of that balcony outside, beyond the cackling party. Just to step over that railing and let go. To be away from it all: the Nonce, Britney. Just how hard could it be?

4

Edinburgh (1)

IT WAS THE
morning following the disappearance. You’d broken off a long session sifting through data, stealing a few hours of sleep at your Leith flat. Awakening with a start in disorientating blackness, your missed calls list told you that Keith Goodwin had phoned. You’d forgotten about last night’s NA meeting. It was still shy of 6 a.m. when you were back at Police HQ’s IT lab, reabsorbed in the CCTV footage.

Not that there was much of it. The mind-boggling network of cameras that recorded every Briton’s movements on an average of between ten and forty times a day, depending on your source, had thinned out when it left the city centre and was threadbare by the time it got to Britney’s housing scheme. There was some coverage of her yesterday morning: a grainy shot on security film that lasted just under a minute as she left her block of flats, school-bound, then a few beats more, courtesy of a speed camera, as she traipsed towards the roundabout. You deployed every program and procedure that might enhance these shabby images. You stretched them out, slowed them down, closed in and pulled out to scan the peripheries and all the nooks and crannies where somebody might be lurking. From the back of Britney’s head and the side of her face, you’d try to trace her line of vision, to see the world through her gaze. Like a fevered prospector, you sifted through the data swarm hoping to find a pixel of gold that might provide a clue to the kidnapper’s identity. Nobody in Lothian and Borders Police knew more about sex offenders. And nobody was more inclined to cast the net wider.

Through the repeat black-and-white viewings of the pensive child, the name Robert Ellis kept resonating in your skull. A man who’d been under lock and key for three years now for the murder
of
two young girls, one in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, the other in Manchester. Britney’s case seemed to have many of the same characteristics as the murders of Nula Andrews and Stacey Earnshaw. Predictably, Ellis had protested his innocence to those heinous crimes.

The other name that came back to you was George Marsden, part of the Hertfordshire team who had put Robert Ellis away for the kidnap and murder of twelve-year-old Nula. The prosecution had established that Ellis was prone to hanging around the local park where the girl had last been seen, by a tree-lined path that she was traversing en route to her aunt’s.

Only George believed that they’d got the wrong man. There were similarities with the case of Stacey Earnshaw, whose body had been found dumped in woods in the Lake District two years previously. When Hertfordshire Police hauled in Ellis, they discovered he’d had a girlfriend in Preston whom he’d visited regularly around the time of Stacey’s murder. The girl, Maria Rossiter, disclosed some fairly mundane details of their relationship to a tabloid, which were luridly recast and spiced with innuendo. Alongside a disturbing tape Ellis involuntarily made, this helped establish his guilt. George Marsden was sure it was same person who snatched Nula Andrews who had got Stacey Earnshaw in Manchester. Only he was absolutely convinced that it wasn’t Ellis. In Welwyn Garden City, a white van had been reported leaving the side street adjacent to the wooded parkland near the time of Nula’s disappearance. Now Ellis was inside and White Van Man was back.