Dark Side (16 page)

‘No.'

‘He's merely the club's in-house bone-head, follows orders and knows nothing.'

‘Just testing,' I murmured.

We had been given a glimpse of Hamsworth and I did not like what I had seen.

Despite being presented with this evidence, together with what we had overheard at Jingles, DI Campbell was angry and told Patrick that he would be making an official complaint to SOCA. I gathered that Patrick was very polite, helpfully provided him with Commander Greenway's name and did not – I asked him – point out something along the lines of all police departments having their ‘
Life on Mars
'
moments. In truth, for him, he had handled Forrester extremely gently.

That evening, Joanna rang.

‘You reminded me that I used to be a cop,' she began by saying to me. ‘So I did a little investigating. I contacted Robert, James's father, to see if James was still there. He wasn't. I know it's terrible to doubt the word of someone you love but I'm sure something's going on. James only stayed for a few hours and was asking him questions about a London criminal – he didn't say who. If you remember Robert used to work for F9. Then he left and Robert has an idea he's gone to Scotland.'

‘Any guesses as to why?' I asked.

‘I can only think that it's in connection with this same person – although, obviously, he has friends there.'

‘So the trail's gone cold, as the cliché goes.'

‘Not necessarily. One of James's friends is a DI in Strathclyde Police – Neil Macpherson. I met him some time ago before James and I were married.
They
met at a course run by the drug squad when they were both in the Met. So I phoned him. At first he sort of stonewalled me and then might have remembered that I indirectly helped him by demolishing his best line of enquiry in connection with an attempted murder case he was working on – I won't bore you with the details – and told me that he had seen James and given him some information about a recent murder thought to be a gangland killing following the discovery of a body in a flat in the Broomielaw. That's all he'd say, other than he doesn't think James plans to stay in Glasgow for very long.'

‘Is Macpherson leading the investigation, do you know?'

‘He was cagey about that too – probably terrified I'll stick my nose in again – but I got the impression he is.'

‘Do you know where this nick's situated?'

‘Brig Street. It's near the river. The murder took place in Crimea Street.'

‘You really
must
rejoin the police,' I fervently told her. ‘How's the wee one?'

‘Much more settled, thank God. I'm actually getting some sleep.'

‘I'm not of a mind to go chasing after him,' Patrick said, albeit with a hint of regret. ‘He must be checking on the Scottish wing, if indeed there is one, of Hamsworth's empire. Any thoughts?'

I said, ‘It might be that as a body was found at a place where presumably this man used to live he's abandoned Scotland and brought any henchmen down south to re-establish the Raptors gang in either Bath or London, or even both. Travelling around to continually give the police the slip is all very well but it doesn't make for good control. But, now I think of it, the flat in Ealing had had what you said someone described as a small fire, so perhaps he's bailed out of there too. Wasn't there another address in Manchester?'

‘Sorry, I forgot to tell you – it was repossessed recently after the rent hadn't been paid for ages.'

‘So where the hell does he live now – above the club?'

‘That's unlikely, too easy to trace.'

‘Someone's going to have to get hold of Cooper and question him.'

Someone did, but cut his throat instead.

C
ooper's body was discovered by a council worker three days later, dumped in a skip intended for scrap metal at a recycling site in the Lower Bristol Road, a hundred yards or so from his house. Early findings revealed that he had been dead for only a matter of hours, which meant that he had been killed during the early hours of that morning.

‘He was of far more use to us alive than dead,' Patrick commented after we had received the news from Lynn Outhwaite.

Despite what had happened, I knew Patrick was not even indirectly involved with the killing. This was not just because he had spent the previous night
securely tucked up in bed
avec moi
after a couple of days at HQ in London where he had worked on something else, the Bath assignment having temporarily hit the wall.

‘Cutting throats isn't my style,' Patrick added, as though I needed convincing.

‘Look, I know you didn't do it,' I exclaimed. ‘Hamsworth has to be responsible.'

‘Punishment after what happened at the club, perhaps. It being closed for the foreseeable future must have cut off a good source of income.'

‘Why blame Cooper, though?'

‘Possibly because he had been left in charge and was handy to inflict a filthy temper on.'

‘Did you find out if David Campbell had made a complaint against you?'

‘He hasn't so far. But Greenway was annoyed with me as well when I told him I'd spoken to Forrester. I asked him how the hell I was supposed to advance the investigation if I had to stick to all the rules and he told me to get Campbell on side. I just wish to God that Carrick would re-surface – if only to give me a bit of support.'

With this in mind it was a little weird when, a couple of hours later that morning, Patrick's mobile rang and it was DI Campbell. Would we both care to attend the Manvers Street police station with regard to his latest case?

He was in Carrick's office, understandable in the circumstances as his own had been hastily created out of a store room with only just enough space for a desk, filing cabinet and small set of shelves. If he had more than one visitor the door had to be left open with a chair placed in the space.

‘We've found what is almost certainly the murder weapon,' was his opening remark after brusquely wishing us good day.

‘Where?' Patrick wanted to know.

‘In the same skip as the body. It presumably had been thrown in and being small had found its way to the bottom of the pile of scrap metal.' He took a specimen bag that had been lying in an open drawer and placed it on the top of the desk for us to see.

Patrick whistled softly.

It was a skene dhu, a
sgian dubh
,
one of the small knives that Scotsmen wearing highland dress tuck into their hose, long socks. The blade was dark with blood.

‘Have you seen this before?' the DI asked.

Patrick shook his head. ‘No.'

‘I know full well, as he told me himself, that Carrick sometimes wears the kilt and would have one of these. Also that the pair of you are friends of his and might be able to recognize it.'

Again, Patrick shook his head. ‘This, to my certain knowledge, does not belong to James Carrick. His does not have a stag's antler handle – this one could even be made of plastic – but is plain polished horn. This blade is stainless steel and I think James's is not – you can get a better edge on hardened carbon steel.'

‘You've seen it?'

‘Yes, I have.'

The DI got to his feet and left the room with the exhibit, presumably to give it to someone to send off to the lab. When he returned, he said, ‘You seem very sure. There's nothing to say that the man doesn't have two.'

‘It's just not to his taste. There's some kind of phony jewel, a chunk of glass, set into the end of the handle. That's not James's style either.'

‘But he and Cooper do have history.'

‘Which Paul Mallory is more than aware of. I suggest you question him.'

‘I was checking up on all that before you arrived.'

‘I rather get the impression that you think Carrick could possibly have killed this man.'

‘I'm only trying to eliminate him from the inquiry.'

‘You
are
doubting your own boss!'

‘Cooper did put Mallory up to almost killing the woman who is now Carrick's wife,' Campbell responded stubbornly.

We had agreed that we would say nothing, yet, to Campbell about the pair of them having taken it in turns to park outside Carrick's house. Nor the fact that
Joanna had received photographs of James taken at Jingles night club with a semi-naked female in extremely close proximity. Had he finally snapped?

Patrick said, ‘This has all been carefully orchestrated right from the beginning, but probably not by Cooper. He was used too, all of it as a war of attrition against the local senior policeman and to divert attention away from the fact that this mobster is moving his scene of operations to Bath. Cooper's murder is the latest development in an attempt to implicate Carrick in crime. No doubt he had served his purpose and they made further use of him by killing him.'

Campbell pondered.

‘It appears from what Forrester said that he's gone back to calling himself Hamsworth,' Patrick added. ‘Which is the name of the registered owner of the night club.'

‘I wasn't aware of that.'

‘That's because you haven't done any real work on it. Three of the four who were arrested work at the club; the other four, who got away, had been brought in from outside and
may
be Hamsworth's minders – a bunch of thugs described as his private army.'

There was an awkward silence broken by the DI saying, ‘We really need to find Carrick.'

‘He went to Scotland, we think with the express purpose of talking to an old friend about a gangland killing in Glasgow. A mobster by the name of Jack MacDonald has been murdered and his body dumped in a flat once rented by Hamsworth.'

‘Is he back?'

‘No idea.'

Feeling about as useful as a stuffed mascot at a football match, I found my mobile and dialled Joanna's number in an effort to find out.

There was just the usual recorded request to leave a message.

The phone in Campbell's office across the corridor then rang and he hastened away to answer it. I heard him say, ‘You've
what
?' and then there was silence for half a minute or so before he asked, ‘So where is he now?' Then, presumably in receipt of an answer, he added, ‘I want his clothes,' before crashing down the phone.

‘It looks as though my suspicions may have been realized,' the DI was saying as he re-entered the room. ‘Lynn Outhwaite and the team have just found Carrick. He was unconscious, his clothing bloodstained and lying in a space between one of the recycling bins and a wall. He started to come round as he was moved but appeared to be delirious. He's been taken to hospital.'

I found myself too shocked to say anything.

Campbell was flinging on his jacket.

‘Are you going to the crime scene?' Patrick enquired, already on his feet.

‘Yes. I was only waiting to ask you about the knife.'

‘May we come along?'

‘Officially?' the DI asked, pausing in snatching up a few possessions to give Patrick a hard stare.

‘Any which way you like. And Greenway did ask me to get you on side.'

The nuances of this were not lost on Campbell, but he was in too much of a hurry right now to resent being part of a SOCA investigation. Besides, I felt, this was getting all a bit too much for him.

All I could do was ring Joanna's number again and leave a message asking her to call me.

We discovered that Cooper's body had had to be removed from the skip quite quickly, for although it had been fairly straightforward to take his wallet from his jacket pocket and therefore find some form of identification, in this case his driving licence, the corpse had slowly started to slither, mainly on account of the blood, head first down into a crevice in the scrap metal. This consisted of old washing machines, fridges and the like. The decision to then carefully shift this stuff from the skip in an attempt to find more evidence had been Lynn Outhwaite's. It was she, ‘nosing around' as she put it, who had subsequently found her boss behind a nearby container for recycling glass.

The municipal recycling centre had been closed to the public – police and incident tape were everywhere – which had resulted in a traffic jam of such record-breaking proportions that even Campbell's driver could not get through, blues and twos notwithstanding. We ended up having to walk back from a piece of waste ground destined for re-development a short distance away.

The council centre, the gates of which appeared to have been forced, was the usual desolate area, the city's dustcarts parked in an adjoining compound fenced off mostly with sheets of corrugated iron topped with rusting barbed wire. There was a notice board announcing that the area was shortly to be ‘upgraded'.

Lynn was still upset about her discovery, a fact that she was desperately trying to hide behind a mask of super-efficiency. Campbell appeared not to notice, or was more tactful than I would have given him credit for, but I did and asked her if she was all right, fatuous in the circumstances, I knew, but I felt I had to say something.

‘What was your immediate reaction on discovering him?' Patrick asked her quietly. ‘Absolute first gut feelings.'

‘That he'd been dumped there,' was her immediate reply.

‘Did you think that way out of loyalty?'

‘No,' she responded evenly. ‘By the way he lay on the ground.'

‘Not as though he'd crawled in and collapsed, you mean.'

‘No, as though he'd been thrown in. He was lying on his back, feet this end.'

With Campbell we walked across to the place to see that the gap between a wall and the container in question was quite narrow. Patrick got down on his hands and knees and slowly manoeuvred himself into the space – bugger forensics – gazing intently at the ground, which was covered in dead leaves and blown-in bits of plastic rubbish, as he did so. Then, with no regard for his clothes, he wriggled over on to his back.