Whisky From Small Glasses (16 page)

‘Hello, sir.’ Cluny had finished his call quickly. ‘We’re just going through the CCTV records. It’s taking a while, but we’ve got sight of the victim now, so we’re taking it frame by frame. Anything new on the owner?’

‘I was just about to ask you the same question, Chick. He’s not surfaced here, then?’

‘No, sir, not a peep from the flat. Do you think we should pan the door in?’ Cluny was, as usual, anxious to be at the heart of the action, an impetuous characteristic that had got him into numerous scrapes but also had its rewards on a fortune-favours-the-brave basis.

Daley turned to the barman. He was a thin youth, probably still in his teens, with untidy fair hair and a face full of spots. ‘Is it usual for your gaffer to be away all day like this? I’d have thought he would have plenty to do while it’s quiet.’

The barman made to speak, opening his mouth, without any words coming out. The detective realised he had a paralysing stutter. ‘It’s . . . ac-ac-ac . . . actually not that unusual.’ The last part of the sentence came at a gallop.

Daley recognised that he was using ‘actual’ as a trigger word to help initiate speech, a common tactic amongst chronic stutterers. Start speaking with a word that was relatively easy to say, and use it as a springboard for the rest of the sentence. One of Daley’s schoolfriends had been a stutterer: Colin Chiveney. He had found it virtually impossible to get words out, and became a target for the ridicule of his peers. Daley had befriended him, and soon discovered that if they were alone, in relaxed surroundings and once they had got to know each other, Colin would begin to talk almost normally. Then, when anyone else appeared, the stuttering would return with a vengeance. He remembered his friend’s exasperation and embarrassment.

When he was in his mid teens, Colin had formed a rock band. He was a talented guitarist, using the instrument to express in music what he found virtually impossible to do in
conversation. It was then he had discovered something truly miraculous: when he sang or spoke through a microphone, his stutter disappeared. Not only that, he had a fantastic singing voice. Nowadays he played the lucrative Vegas cabaret circuit, as well as session singing work. He was confident, worth several million dollars and only a trace of his impediment remained. The pair had kept in touch, and even though they occupied very different worlds, were still at home in each other’s company.

‘Take your time, son. I’m Inspector Daley.’ He hadn’t yet got used to his recent elevation in the ranks. ‘Do you have any way of contacting Mr Mulligan, other than those we’ve already tried?’

The barman looked at the floor, and the set of his shoulders changed, as though he was about to attempt some athletic feat. ‘Ac-ac-ac-actually . . . if he doesn’t answer his mobile we . . . ca-ca-ca . . .’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘Actually we canna get a hold o’ him.’ He looked mightily relieved.

‘OK, fine.’ Daley looked back towards Cluny. ‘I’ll just make sure we have a warrant.’ He pulled his mobile from his jacket pocket and rang Scott on speed dial. He wondered briefly how you could be a barman with such a severe speech impediment, and then reflected that most of the time in Pulse, no one could hear to converse anyway.

‘Hi, Jimbo. Enjoy your walk?’ Scott answered brightly.

‘I’m at Pulse. Have we got a warrant to break into the owner’s flat yet?’ He heard a rustling of papers.

‘Aye, just arrived fae a local JP a few minutes ago. Dae ye want me to come doon?’

‘Aye, good idea, Brian. And bring one of those battering rams. My days of kicking in doors are over.’

‘Has your good lady arrived yet? One o’ the boys said a helicopter landed on the green earlier – wherever that is.’ Scott’s curiosity had the better of him.

‘Yup, she’s on her way to some posh hunting lodge with my brother-in-law. Nice for some, eh?’ Daley was glad he couldn’t see Scott raise his eyebrows on the other end of the phone. ‘I’m due to meet her shortly, so can we get a move on?’ He looked at his watch, then sent a text to his wife to tell her he’d be slightly late for their rendezvous at the Island Bar.

Peter Mulligan’s flat was a bare, characterless place. There were no pictures on the walls, no framed photographs above the fire, no food in the fridge; in short, it felt as though the dwelling had just been fully furnished, waiting for someone to move in. This was reinforced by the scrupulous tidiness in the flat. Not a thing was out of place: the cushions sat plump on a white leather sofa in the lounge, which also boasted another easy chair and a small TV. A chest of drawers in the bedroom contained the usual array of underwear, T-shirts, jumpers and shirts, all neatly folded and arranged. Even the bed was tidy. It reminded Daley of his time at the police college as a young recruit. As with the army, beds had to be made to an exacting standard of precision, complete with hospital corners and wrinkle-free duvet covers. Some zealots even ironed their beds once they had been made – Daley hadn’t gone that far. So it was with Mulligan’s place; any inspecting sergeant would have found no fault with it. The clothes in the wardrobe – coats, suits, jackets and shirts – all hung in ordered perfection. Many of the garments were still covered in polythene dry-cleaning covers. There were no personal papers to be found. Come
to that, there was not one book, CD or magazine in the whole flat.

‘Something’s no’ right here, Jim. I mean, whit kinda guy has a flat like this, an’ at the same time allows lassies tae prostitute themselves doonstairs in the yard? It doesna fit.’

As usual, Scott had summed things up succinctly. Peter Mulligan would have to be traced – as a matter of priority.

Part Two

11

She wanted to be able to move her arms, but to her surprise she couldn’t. She wasn’t doing anything consciously different from any other time in her life when she tried to make them move, but they refused to obey her commands
.

She felt numb though. She was cold, very cold, and she knew that the reason for this was being naked. She longed for her recalcitrant limbs to conform to her desire to get off the floor and pull the duvet from the bed around herself. However, nothing could instill even the slightest response from her body
.

She was moving her eyes in a slow and random way, a bit like falling asleep as a child. She would get quieter, her eyes would roll, and her granny would lift her from the couch and up the stairs to her bed. It was the only way she could get to sleep. Being left alone in a darkened room conjured up all manner of ghosts – the fears of an overactive imagination, her granny had said. By the time her lids forced themselves closed, those fears receded. She benignly complied with her granny’s wishes. It had been so long since she had felt that way. Her head had flopped forwards onto her chest; she could do nothing to stop it. It was so heavy. If she raised her eyes towards her brow until it was sore, she could just about see to the top of the bed. She studied the hand that hung limp over the side with complete indifference, though the blood that trickled down from the fingers and onto the carpet below held a strange fascination for her
.

There was noise now. It was like listening to a voice from underwater – another memory from childhood – the swimming pool at school. The screams and shouts of her friends becoming quiet and distorted by the rush and gurgle of the water in her ears. Yes, that was what it was like now, though she was pretty certain she wasn’t under water. Something sparked in her mind. Water? Try as she might, the thought would not form
.

Then, something else. A change of sound and, out of the corner of her eye, movement: legs, booted feet. A dull prompting. Thoughts through cotton wool. The bed moving. A thud. More mumbles
.

She’d had a life-sized doll’s head when she was young. A blank canvas on which make-up could be applied, or the hair could be styled. Training, designed to turn fresh-faced little girls into painted, groomed women. That head was looking at her now, though the eyes stared and the tongue lolled from the mouth. She could feel something dripping on her legs. Red rivulets ran down towards her feet, like drops of rain on a window. The head swung from straggly hair held by a black-gloved hand
.

She could feel the blood on her legs. She could see the syringe sticking out of her arm, held there by the needle thrust deep into her flesh. She felt gloved hands under her armpits. The scene changed before her eyes, as she was half-dragged, half-lifted from the bed. She tried to focus on the mass of flesh, bone and blood on the bed, but she was pulled away too quickly. She felt her thigh catch on something sharp as she progressed across the floor
.

More pain. Her face connected with a hard surface. A dull crack filled her head, as waves of agony consumed her. More mumbling. Something sharp in her behind. A tightness in her chest: this was fear. She was frightened all of a sudden. Abruptly, a rush of noise made her flinch. The cotton wool-filled world had gone. The voice – that horrible voice – so clear now
.

She was in a kneeling position, pain from her knees as well as her face. Then a flash of pain she could see as well as feel. Red agony: then blackness
.

The bar was a one-room affair. Two old men sat at the long counter, drinking whisky from small glasses. The proprietor – she knew because he had told her – was a looming presence behind the bar, a portly man with a red face and a welcoming smile. She sat at a window seat, looking out over the loch and the road which led from the centre of the town to the Island Bar: ‘O’er there,’ as her taxi driver had put it. Three fishing boats bobbed in the harbour, while a long low vessel was being loaded with what looked like logs from an orange crane on the faraway pier, the colour of it almost matching the luminous orange of the top half of the lifeboat moored nearby.

Mark had wanted to come too, but she wanted to speak to her husband by herself. She needed to tell him how miserable she was, how much she hated living where she did, how long her days were, how undervalued she felt, how frustrating she found sharing a marriage with a man devoted to a career that could see him drop everything at a moment’s notice to go and stare at another mutilated corpse, or try to drag the truth from a low-life scumbag who didn’t deserve to draw breath.

She reflected on what loneliness had done to her. Like almost everyone she knew, she had entered married life a starry-eyed optimist: the cottage in the country; the long walks; making love on stormy nights beside a blazing fire. Being possessed by someone so completely that to identify where she ended and they began was an impossible, if hackneyed, spiritual quandary.

The ‘cottage in the country’ was a dreary detached villa on an equally dreary private estate, in the ‘village of the damned’ where dozens of identikit women lived identical lives, dressing the same, speaking the same, driving the same cars, and possessing the same ambitions: a good school for Jake, or Jed, or Perdita, or whatever other ridiculous name was currently in vogue; two weeks on a beach in the summer; a weekend in Paris or Prague in the spring; and a skiing trip after Christmas. A new 4x4 every few years, and maybe even a move to a slightly bigger house, on a better estate, in a ‘nicer’ area where the ambitions were essentially the same though more elevated: a public school for the kids; a more exotic holiday destination; a Porsche Cayenne, rather than a Volkswagen Touareg.

In short, people who would be born, grow up and die with nothing to show for any part of their lives, apart from a reasonably good credit rating and an inheritance for their offspring to fight over – offspring who would themselves embark upon an identikit middle-class existence, while believing themselves to be at the cutting edge of cultured society.

‘Would you like another drink? We’re in a wee round up here having a wee soirée – I’m on the bell. You’re looking pretty lonely over there.’ The proprietor smiled effusively as
one of the two men turned round from his perch on a bar stool, better to survey her.

‘Jeest you stay where ye are, lassie. It’s no’ a soirée he’s thinkin’ aboot wi’ you. Is that no’ right, Big George?’ The old man had the bronchial cackle of the confirmed smoker.

It was clear, though, that Big George was not enamoured with his customer’s opinions. His face darkened and he glared at the old man. ‘Yesss’ – the word was an elongated preamble – ‘I thought when you lost your job and your wife left you, Dennis, you’d have learned to shut up. Obviously not. Don’t worry about him, darling. I like all my customers to be happy. C’mon up, we’ll make an evening of it.’

At that, the old man tried to manoeuvre himself around to face her again, however, drink or old age got the better of him, and, after a cartoonish flailing of arms and a desperate grabbing of the bar, he fell backwards on his stool, his head narrowly missing the table where she was sitting.

‘Don’t worry, darling.’ Big George seemed unconcerned. ‘If I had a pound for every time I’ve seen him do that, I’d be able to close up for good, and not have to talk to a barful of drunks every day. Is that not right, Dennis?’ He moved as close to the bar as his girth would allow and peered down at his felled customer, who was, by this time, doing his best to get back to his feet amid a torrent of bad language and abortive attempts at balance. ‘Hurry up, it’s your round.’

‘Aye, but you said it wiz your round’, big man.’ Customer number two looked confused.

‘Yes, that’s before he fell over and I realised what a fuckin’ awful life I’ve got.’ Big George smiled at Liz and turned to the gantry, holding a small glass up to a large whisky bottle.
‘You’ll be for another dram, Dennis.’ That was in the form of a statement.

Dennis, now back on his feet, muttered in the affirmative and fumbled in his pockets for money to buy the round.

Liz wondered idly just how many rounds Big George actually bought his drink-addled customers. Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tall, dark-haired, slightly overweight man wearing a suit, striding purposefully across the esplanade. Her husband, Jim Daley, was on his way. The flutter in her chest was involuntary.