Murder in Court Three (16 page)

‘We could probably help you, but have it your own way. For the record, you are?'

The big man glared at him. ‘Detective Sergeant Kelly. Now fuck off.'

‘The inspector will be here in half an hour,' Baggo said to di Falco as they returned to the car which fortunately was in a shady spot. ‘We might as well wait for her.'

* * *

Her Sat-Nav working well, Flick arrived at the Gallowgate, her pregnancy sapping her energy in the heat but her mind buzzing with questions. She was greeted by Baggo and di Falco and thought she detected an unusual sheepishness about Baggo. Having been told of Kelly's attitude, she marched up to him. Harassed and over-heated, he was barely courteous even after realising she out-ranked him. It was only after calling the DCC on her mobile and handing the phone to him that he became chastened and she got the cooperation she wanted.

Inside the church hall, SOCOs and a photographer were busy. A pathologist had come and gone, provisionally confirming the knife wound as the cause of death and the time at about one pm. The dead man had been Johnny Dolan and none of the Glasgow officers would be mourning his passing. The
Vita Dei
group had told the police that Dolan had been with them when they came together to the hall at one, but no one could actually remember him upstairs. One young man thought he heard a voice calling ‘Johnny' as they came in off the street, but he could not remember if it was male or female and had thought nothing of it. Neither of the youths who carried the soup pot upstairs nor the red-haired woman had noticed the open door where the body lay. Their route from the kitchen to the stairs did not take them past it. The body had been discovered by an English tourist who was now in custody.

‘In custody?' Flick and Baggo asked in unison.

‘A constable was trying to get him to stay with the people who'd been upstairs,' Kelly explained. ‘He wouldn't go where he was told and when the constable put a hand on his shoulder he lashed out. So he was arrested.'

‘Where is he?' Flick asked, trying not to smile.

‘What is it to you?' Kelly asked sharply and immediately regretted it as Flick's face clouded. ‘I mean, he's at our London Road office, ma'am. I think there may be mental health issues. He swears he's a retired cop who cleaned up the East End of London.'

Flick turned away to conceal her amusement. Inspector No could stew in his own juice as far as she was concerned. While di Falco looked gleeful, Baggo stroked his chin thoughtfully.

‘Exactly how might this murder tie in with your investigation, ma'am?' Kelly asked.

Flick told him about the fraud trial, Knox's murder and Tam Walker's murder. Dolan had been working as a waiter when Knox died and had been a member of a group that had sent unpleasant letters to a QC who could have been mistaken for Knox.

‘And that newspaper …' di Falco began.

‘Hasn't made our lives any easier,' Baggo interrupted, shooting him a warning glance.

‘What newspaper?' Kelly snapped.

‘
Good News
,' Flick said. ‘They were offering a reward for information on the Knox murder. It may have been Dolan who was about to claim it.'

‘It almost certainly was,' Baggo said, seeing no point in keeping anything back. ‘We squeezed that out of Bothwell before we came here.'

‘But how did the killer know that?' Kelly asked.

‘Because the stupid newspaper editor insisted on alerting their readers in advance,' Baggo said. ‘Now we'll never know what Dolan would have said.'

In the cool atmosphere of the church hall, Kelly was becoming less hostile by the minute. ‘So how can we best cooperate, ma'am? I don't think we should concentrate only on your angle. There are a hell of a lot of people in Glasgow who would have stuck a knife in Johnny Dolan. I can reel off half a dozen names right now.'

Flick smiled. ‘Perhaps you might follow your lines and we follow ours, sharing information as we go? I'd like copies of the pathology and lab reports and if there are any fingerprints you can't trace, maybe we can.'

‘Certainly, ma'am. We're not short of cases here, you know. And I'm sorry about being awkward earlier.' A few words with the DCC and getting out of the sun's warmth had brought about a personality change in Kelly.

Flick and Baggo made their way towards their cars, di Falco following soon afterwards. Flick took Baggo's arm. ‘My car. Now,' she said. He threw his keys to di Falco and, full of foreboding, sat in her passenger seat.

‘It was you, wasn't it?' she said, her voice shaking with fury.

‘It was me?' he said plaintively.

‘You know damn fine,' she shouted. A well-upholstered Glasgow woman, laden with plastic shopping bags on both sides, turned to stare. ‘Bloody No. How did he come to be here? How did he know your mobile number? How much have you told him?'

‘Flick, listen …'

‘Don't Flick me.'

‘All right, ma'am. I made a mistake. I was in a pub talking to the crown junior in the fraud trial. She has been most helpful to us and will continue to be. I told her about
Vita Dei
but I didn't realise that bloody No had sneaked into the pub and was sitting behind me listening in. When I saw him I told him what he had said about you was a disgrace and that's why he was nice about you in today's paper. I also said we had an officer undercover in
Vita Dei
and I did not want his cover blown. I had not heard that Billy was no longer under cover. No has obviously decided to have a go at
Vita Dei
himself and it has all gone pear-shaped for him. As usual.'

Flick sat in the driver's seat, her hands rubbing the sides of her belly in circular movements. It felt as if the baby was learning the Highland Fling. ‘Is that all he overheard?' she asked.

He was tempted to say yes, but honesty was the best policy with Flick. ‘I did say a little about Lord Hutton.'

She buried her head in her hands. ‘No!' she shouted.

‘It was his idea that I should visit him last night,' he went on, ‘and I think I learned something.'

Her eyes filled with tears of rage. ‘How could you? I don't believe it.'

‘How can I make it better?'

‘You can't. I feel betrayed, I really do. Tell di Falco to get into my car and you can, you can … fuck off wherever you want to go but don't get in the way of my inquiry.'

He got out. ‘Sorry,' he said but she stared straight ahead.

‘Watch your step today,' Baggo said to di Falco as he told him to join Flick. ‘And it's not all down to hormones,' he added ruefully.

* * *

The temptation to leave No in custody was strong but Baggo recognised that he might yet prove useful. And to make him useful, first he would have to be made grateful. That was not proving easy.

If the cells area of London Road Police Office had air conditioning it was not obvious. The smell of sweaty, stressed male bodies made the air heavy. Baggo remembered hot, sticky air from Mumbai, but it had not been as rancid as the stuff now invading his lungs. The sweaty, stressed male to whom he was speaking was suffering more than most as he had to work. Sergeant Smith, the custody sergeant was reluctant to let Baggo see Osborne. As far as he was concerned, the prisoner was going nowhere.

Both his voice and his colour rose as he spoke. ‘Carstairs is where we keep the criminally insane in Scotland, and I'd say he was a candidate. He's been raving about conspiracies against him involving the Catholic Church and Wimbledon, all thought up by someone he calls “fucking Fortune”. And he clocked one of our boys too.'

‘I know it all sounds odd, but I've told you about him and about how he could help us if you release him. If you let me speak to him I'll find out more and I'll tell you. And I'll make sure he gets his newspaper to be nice to the Glasgow police.'

Either Baggo's persistence or the implied threat of bad publicity made Smith relent, and he led him down the cells corridor. From a cell at the far end emanated a barrage of foul abuse in a cockney accent. The parentage and sexual habits of Glaswegians were being slandered. From the other cells Baggo could hear low, dangerous rumbles. He thought that if he failed to get No out that afternoon the ex-inspector would be lucky to escape from the city alive.

No did not appreciate the precariousness of his situation. ‘You took your bloody time. These clowns don't know their arses from their elbows. They've treated me like a fucking criminal. I'll have their guts for garters, just see if I don't.'

‘Noel, listen …'

‘I've only been in this blasted city for a few hours before I find a body. I tell them and they lock me up. I'm not staying here another minute, Baggo. They can find their own fucking bodies from now on.'

‘And the first one will be yours unless you shut up. Now. Or I walk out and leave you here.'

The two men tried to out-stare each other. This time Baggo won. Speaking quietly as if to an over-excited child he said, ‘Wimbledon CID is in the past. Now I am in charge and you must do as I say. You are in a very deep hole yet you continue to dig. If you are to get out of here you will have to apologise to a lot of people, including Sergeant Smith, the custody sergeant, who wishes to keep you here. Now what on earth happened? What made you lash out?' As he finished he could barely believe he had spoken to Inspector No in that way. A couple of years earlier he had been terrified of him.

The mirror image of that thought process went through Osborne's mind. He knew he had to do as Baggo said or his future would be bleak. He slumped onto the hard surface, equally uncomfortable for sitting or lying, his head in his hands.

‘You must never tell anyone,' he said. ‘I wanted to solve your case. I tried to join these Catholic maniacs and they put me through what they said was their initiation routine, but they were just taking the piss. I was in too far to back out so I whipped myself like they told me to. Yes, with a fucking cat-o'-nine-tails.'

Baggo tried to turn his spontaneous laugh into a cough.

‘They're all fucking sado-masochists, Baggo. But they're not honest perverts like Miss Whiplash clients. They dress it up as fucking religion. After they'd had their fun at my expense I left. On my way out I found the body and phoned you. Then I dialled 999. These Glasgow goons wanted me to wait with the sado-masochists and one touched my sore back so I lashed out. Next thing I knew I was on the ground in cuffs, into the meat wagon and here I am in fucking Guantanamo Glasgow.'

Baggo turned away, his shoulders shaking. ‘You are going to have to apologise if you are to get out,' he said after a pause.

‘Apologise? For what?'

‘For hitting an officer who was doing his duty, for repeated abusive rudeness to the Glasgow police, actually all of Glasgow if it comes to that. Think, Noel, just think of the alternative. Sergeant Smith would pack you off to the place they keep the criminally insane, you know. You have to start acting like a retired Detective Inspector. Now I'm going to call Smith and I'm going to talk to him. When we come back you are going to be as nice as ninepence. Very apologetic. Itching to give quotes praising the Glasgow police to
Good News
. Okay?'

‘Okay.'

Baggo looked down on his old boss. Wet with sweat and dishevelled. Utterly despondent. He felt a little sorry for him, an emotion he'd thought he would never experience. ‘Don't expect miracles,' he said.

* * *

He owes me big-time, Baggo thought as he steered his way through busy traffic to the M8. He had told Smith that Osborne had been in so many tight spots as he cleaned up the East End that finding the body had sparked off an episode of traumatic stress disorder. He had hit out not realising it was a policeman who had put his hand on his shoulder. It stemmed from an incident when “Coffin” Bob Trotter had caught up with him in a dark alley off Mile End Road. Baggo pleaded with the sergeant to be allowed to take the fine old crusader for justice away, so he could be properly looked after.

In the passenger seat beside him, No sat hunched and sulky. With Baggo glaring at him and the sergeant looking sceptical, he had grovelled as he'd never done before. He had guaranteed brilliant quotes in the paper. And yet it had been a close-run thing. He had even been made to sign a disclaimer agreeing that he had suffered no ill-treatment at the hands of the police and that he had refused medical attention.

Neither man wanted to be the first to speak. At Harthill Services Baggo stopped and got out of the car to phone Melanie. The court day was over and she sounded pleased to hear from him. She readily agreed to take home the file of e-mails that Knox had concentrated on the afternoon before he was killed, and to Baggo's delight, invited him to come to her flat at seven for dinner.

Osborne's resolve broke as they passed Livingston and Edinburgh spread out before them. ‘What can I say?' he whispered.

‘“Thank you” would be a good start.'

‘Thank you, Baggo. I always knew you'd come through as a good 'un.'

A bit later Osborne showed what was really troubling him. ‘You won't tell anyone, will you? About the whipping?'

‘Depends.'

‘For God's sake, man. I couldn't hold my head up. Please. Remember all I taught you back in our Wimbledon days?'

‘Still depends.'

‘What do I have to do?'

‘One, you come good on your promises to Sergeant Smith. We need to keep the Glasgow people sweet. Two, you praise Inspector Fortune to the skies. Three, you put what I tell you to into
Good News
.'

‘Of course, of course, no problem.'

Baggo glanced at him. ‘Four.' He paused.

‘Four?' The dismay was audible.

‘Four, you do as I tell you, whatever that may be.'

‘Come on, Baggo …'

‘Or else …'

‘Bastard.'