Chapter 7 (5662)
Chapter 7 (5662)
Lavius and Yoyuwevuto drove to Craigs Park, but Niles was out. A girl in her late teens answered the door.
‘He’s at his work. Back about six. I watch wee Connor for him when he’s not at school,’ she informed them.
Mabel was doing the talking. ‘I see. What about Mrs Makepeace?’
‘Oh, she left him last year. Nobody tells me anything, but I guess they think it’s better for Connor to stay here. He really loves Niles.’
Mabel held up a police photofit picture of Gavin Newgate. ‘Have you seen this boy around at all?’
She squinted at the picture, but then leaned back. ‘No. I’ve not lived in this street that long though.’
‘Can you get Niles to give us a call to arrange an interview?’
‘Is he in trouble?’
‘Not at all,’ Yoyuwevuto assured her. ‘Just a few questions.’
The next day, in the morning, Lavius and Yoyuwevuto met again, at the ‘Hello Panda’ import shop on Easter Road. Yoyuwevuto had been there for an hour, Lavius had just arrived.
‘So, what have we got?’ asked Lavius as he ducked under the yellow crime scene tape. He stepped delicately on broken glass as he entered and nodded to the uniformed policewoman who was standing guard by the broken window. There were many other uniformed police officers inside, all, seemingly, with their own jobs to do.
Lavius followed Yoyuwevuto through the shop into the back room where the body was.
‘It doesn’t look like anything much was stolen from the shop, but downstairs has been fairly well turned over, Sergeant,’ she told him as they stood and looked down at the corpse. ‘And this is the owner, Mr Francis Sharp. It’s a bit early, but Donald says, from first inspection, he thinks that Mr Sharp has been dead for three days.’
‘The break-in happened last night though.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Yoyuwevuto as she walked around the body and pointed at its neck. ‘Two puncture marks in the neck from what was probably a sharpened screwdriver.’
‘Calling card of the Vampires again,’ mused Lavius.
‘Indeed, sir. The neighbours are all being questioned now, but we have two people who heard the glass breaking about three in the morning. The police were not called until seven.’
‘Great stuff,’ said Lavius sarcastically.
They walked back through to the shop.
‘And this glass, as you may observe sir, mostly landed on the pavement. Suggesting it was broken from the inside.’
‘Classic bit of detecting there, Yoyo,’ said Lavius wryly. ‘Top marks.’
Lavius looked around the shop, with his hands on his hips, taking it all in. He pointed at the large carpet in the middle of the floor. ‘That was unrolled last night too.’
‘How can you tell?’
Lavius lifted the corner. ‘There is blood splashed everywhere around this bit of the shop, but I doubt it managed to get under the carpet.’
He stood, lost in thought for a while, and then finally muttered, ‘well this is annoying. The killer strikes again, and the only decent lead we have slipped right through my fingers.’
‘If it’s any consolation, Sergeant, Mr Sharp was probably killed before you met Gavin Newgate.’
‘Right. I wonder then, if it was our friend Gavin that broke in last night? In that case he is making a real habit of robbing places that have murder victims in them,’ said Lavius in a bitter tone.
‘I think the burglar came in from the back,’ said Yoyuwevuto. ’Then exited through the broken window. It fits the style of the Squirrel certainly.’
‘I’m glad someone can be sure about something, because I’m bloody not. Sorry, Mabel. I can’t make up my mind whether it’s the Vampires, or someone else trying to make it look like it’s the Vampires. With Big Mac, I would have said not, because they have no reason to kill him. I’ve been watching them for years now, all the twists and turns of their gradually muscling in on Edinburgh organised crime. The absolute last thing they want right now is war with the Hamiltons. This mess, on the other hand, looks much more like their style. This looks a lot like someone unwilling to pay protection money. Usually they just beat people up, but sometimes it gets out of hand. Anything dodgy about Mr Sharp? Any connections?’
‘We’ve got people looking into that now,’ replied Yoyuwevuto. ‘But wait until you see the cellar.’
‘Bless you Mabel Yoyuwevuto,’ Lavius sighed and followed her downstairs. When they arrived he whistled softly through his teeth. ‘Phew, another Aladdin’s cave of crap down here too. Someone tore this place apart. Any clues to who? I suppose it was either the murderer three days ago or the burglar last night.’
‘Or both,’ pointed out Yoyuwevuto
They were in a large basement, split into two areas, one where all manner of junk and unsold stock was stored. The bulk of it was packing boxes and bin bags full of rubbish that the owner had evidently not gotten round to throwing away. The other area, further back, contained two tables, one round and one square and an assortment of tatty chairs and sofas. Judging by the overflowing ashtrays and empty bottles, business was conducted down here. There were boxes of mobile phones, in various states of repair, boxes of handbags, laptop cases, wallets, shoes, scarves, coats and other junk, all scattered about across the floor. The sofas had been slashed and every box had been turned upside down.
‘Mr Sharp was a fence,’ observed Lavius.
‘I would say so,’ agreed Yoyuwevuto. ‘Just the sort of person that could end up on the wrong side of the Vampires.’
They picked about in the detritus for a few moments, looking for anything interesting.
After a while Yoyuwevuto spoke. ‘How did you get on with Mr Makepeace?’
‘Yeah, I caught him at home before he went to work. He’s a nice guy, but I would say there is something a bit fishy going on. He said that Gavin just comes and goes. There is no official fostering going on. He might not see him for weeks. I’m not so sure. Definitely worth keeping an eye on him still.’
‘Agreed.’
Just then Lavius’s phone made a noise and he checked his messages.
‘Oh right, I’m going back to the school, I better scoot.’
‘In regards to?’
‘Something I want to ask Miss Kane. Probably nothing.’
‘Shall I finish up here then?’ asked Yoyuwevuto somewhat tartly.
‘What?’ said Lavius in mock irritation. ‘I need your permission, mum? I’ll catch you later.’
The night before, it had indeed been Gavin Newgate, or rather, Miss Take who had broken in to Treacle’s shop. She has broken in to Treacle’s several times before, the route she had found led from a derelict Edwardian wash house that been half-converted into a bathroom and them abandoned. She’d carefully jimmied the external door, then once inside removed enough the plasterboard to get in to the wall space between the old wash house and the back room of Treacle’s shop. From there it was a question of making more mouse holes until she came out inside a built-in kitchen unit that contained only ancient bottles of bleach and cobwebs.
Prior to her decision to break into the shop she had been sitting at home, thinking and thinking, turning over her options and trying to come up with ways of finding the killer when she remembered the photos of the murdered girl that she had picked up in Wraithston. Those photos were in her loot bag, which was somewhere, she assumed, in Treacle’s shop. Somehow, they felt connected to things, although she had no idea how. Maybe it was the daughter of the killer, and he was exacting revenge? Maybe the killer had already murdered this girl and Mack the Knife had found out about it and so he had been silenced? Maybe there was no connection at all and Mack just happened to have some pictures of a dead woman for an unrelated reason. She could perhaps find out. All she had to do was go to Treacle’s and get them.
From the kitchen she entered the back shop and it was here that she nearly tripped over Treacle’s boy. She cursed and stepped back. With her light on she leaned over him, but didn’t touch him. He was very dead. There was a lot of blood, but mostly dried out. There were bloody drag marks that lead from the door to the shop. She quickly shone her light in that direction and saw that he had likely been killed in the rear sections of the shop, then his body dragged in here, out of sight. Despite all this though, she had a job to do and she knew that Treacle didn’t keep his treasure in the cellar. She’d been down there and had a snoop about the first time she had broken in and had broken in four or five times since, never leaving a trace, but she always took a look anyway, just to be nosey.
There were no windows down there, so it was safe to switch the light on. Whoever had killed Treacle had really ransacked the place. All Treacle’s boxes of hard to get rid of stolen things, mainly handbags and mobile phones were strewn everywhere. In their frustration at not finding any good stuff, or money, they had even ripped up all the upholstery on the chairs and sofas. They were wasting their time though; she knew that. She’d never seen anything of any great value down here, it was just a junk room. Wherever Treacle kept his money, she’d never been able to find out.
She wasn’t looking for valuables though, she was looking for the photos. She took a look around, carefully picking through the boxes, but they were not down here. After half an hour of searching, she headed upstairs and after carefully manoeuvring her way around his body went into the shop.
She cast her eyes around the room, there were a few opened cabinets and broken vases, but the killer had found nothing. They’d not looked very hard, perhaps thinking that any loot was unlikely to be hidden here and that any passer-by could look in the window at them. There was nowhere else though. There was nothing in the back room or the kitchen. It took less than a minute to search those rooms. The shop though, it would take hours to go through all the junk that was in there. Furniture, carpets, boxes, trunks, cabinets and cupboards. And behind the main displays a whole other section of even more unsold junk that had been in the shop for years.
She stood, looking at it all, pulling on her bottom lip through her mask. Even so, she had a feeling it was in here somewhere. He’s put it in the shop. There was something about the character of the man, she began to think, that would take great delight in having a hiding place that was ‘clever’. Somewhere in plain sight. In the weak street light from outside she stood silent and still in the middle of the shop taking everything in. She could see where he had been killed. Right at the vague dividing line between the two sections. There was a splash of blood across the top of a mahogany chest of drawers here. Did he die trying to get to his money? Knowing it would never be that simple she checked all the drawers anyway and found them empty. She continued to look around the area he had died. The front of the shop was where he kept his most recent and sellable stuff, the rear of the shop was just big items he couldn’t be bothered taking down to the cellar. There were dozens of items of furniture, dozens of boxes, dozens of crates. It would take an age to search them all. In amongst it all were rolled up carpets, stuffed into the gaps between the furniture. The largest carpet of them all was lain across the top of a row of four wardrobes that formed the main division between the front and rear areas of the shop. Looking closer at the bloody drawers she saw a foot print in the age-old dust that covered the top of it. Curious, she stepped up onto the cabinet herself and from here she could just see the top of one of the wardrobes that held the large carpet. There was all manner of other junk items up here too, an opened parasol, pewter jugs, a stuffed cat. She quickly shone her light across the top of the wardrobe and saw holes in the dust where several other items had been. Shining her light down onto the floor she saw where they had landed. A rusty biscuit tin over by the wall, a broken electric heater and a small cardboard box marked with Chinese writing. So, Treacle had stepped up onto the drawers, possibly swept aside those things that had landed on the floor… and then, was pulled down and murdered? The only other thing up here, besides all the knick-knacks was the massive carpet. She had to pull herself onto the top of the wardrobe to take a closer look, stifling a sneeze as the dust tickled her nose. She shone her light down the end of the roll and took a look inside. There was something down there, right in the middle. It looked like her bag.
With a satisfied smile she came back down to the drawers and removed all the junk off the wardrobes so she could get the carpet down a silently as possible. She then dragged it to the front of the shop, the only place where there was enough room to unroll it and gave it a kick. It was a pleasant, red patterned Persian carpet and as it opened up dust flew everywhere, making her sneeze several times. When she could look again, she could see her bag, and several more, smaller ones. She checked her bag and murmured gratefully to herself when she found the photos, still in the same side pocket she had put them in. Checking the other bags revealed them to be full of rolled up notes and small items of jewellery. She took an Asda bag for life from her jacket pocket and stuffed them all into that.
She was about to leave the way she had come in, but then paused for a moment at the thought of poor Treacle. How long had he lain there? And how long would he lie there yet before someone realised he was dead? The only regular customers that he had were not the sort of people that called the police. If they saw the shop closed, they would probably assume he’d been arrested and not come back again.
Turning on her heal, she went to the window and selected something to break it with. She picked up a stone Buddha about the size of a grapefruit and threw it at the glass. It sailed right through, leaving a big hole. She knocked out a bit more with a paper parasol then jumped through the window and fled into the night.
The next day her nerves were in tatters, thinking of poor Treacle and trying to figure out what it all meant, so-much-so that when Mrs Hunter came to see her and whispered in here ear, ‘that nice young policeman is here to see you,’ she nearly jumped out of her skin.
Her blood running cold she went to meet him in one of the GP rooms. They went and sat together at the teacher’s desk, Lavius grabbing her a chair from beside the windows.
‘How can I help you?’ she asked as calmly as she could. Her mind was racing. Had he found out she had been fostered by Niles Makepeace and had put it all together? Was he here to unmask her? To arrest her? Out of a desire to hide behind her teacher disguise, she had worn even more makeup than usual today, and had even more padding hidden under her clothes. Her heels were the highest she owned, making her waddle around like an idiot. She smelled of a cloying perfume she’d been given for Christmas last year. Was he seeing through all that?
They way he smiled at her seemed to suggest otherwise though. ‘No need to look so nervous!’ he laughed. ‘It’s just a few follow-up questions’
She smiled back and looked down at her hands folder in her lap. She tried her best to keep her breathing steady.
‘I’ll get straight to the point, Miss Kane, so I won’t keep you from your class any longer than I have to. I was looking through pictures of the birthday party at Button Grove people had posted on Facebook and lo and behold I saw you in the background serving plates of sausage rolls to the kids.’
‘Ah yes, I have a weekend job, you see…’
‘It’s Linda’s Catering Services you work for, right?’ he went on. ‘I gave the eponymous Linda a ring just to check I was right. Is she the only agency you work for?’
‘Well, at the moment. I’ve been with them about six months,’ replied Kelly as her mind now raced down another track. Just how much did he know about her habit of casing out places she planned to burgle as part of her job as a catering assistant?
‘And before then?’ he said as he pulled out a pen and notepad. ‘Sorry, if I don’t write things down, I forget them.’
Kelly’s stomach sunk into a pit. Should she lie, or tell the truth? What was safer in the long run. Slowly, making it up as she went a long, she told a series of half-truths.
‘Oh well, let’s see,’ she said slowly, buying herself time. ‘Before Linda it was EMA. Before that it was Triple-E and before that it was kind of informal. Some of it was cash in hand.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, not looking up from his notebook. ‘I’m not here to do you for moonlighting.’
‘This was before I started teaching.’
‘I see well, forgive me,’ he said looking up with a smile. ‘Linda herself was interviewed just after the break-in, but we didn’t get a list of all her staff until now. You were there the same day Button Grove was burgled, and interestingly also at Orlando, but this time about two months before it was robbed.’
‘Are you questioning me?’ she asked, on tender hooks. Then remembering that she was not meant to know that the place had been robbed she said, ‘I had no idea the place had been burgled!’
‘No, no, no!’ he said, patting down the air with his hands and trying to look as reassuring as he could. ‘It’s not like that at all. Although, I suppose if you are a suspect, then so is Linda and everyone else that works for her. No, I’m currently only interested in Wraithston and I’m sure that Mackenzie Hamilton doesn’t throw parties – well, not the type that would need outside catering anyway.’
‘Oh, ok,’ she laughed nervously.
‘Well, anyway, the burglar was seen. At Button Grove,’ went on Lavius as he pulled a pack of photos from his jacket pocket. ‘A resident encounter him, before he made his escape. She didn’t get a good look at him, but we suspect he may have looked like this.’
He pushed a picture across the table towards here. It was a computer-generated image of what she had looked like that night she had been picked by Lavius in his car. It wasn’t a very good likeness, she thought with some relief. The hair was wild enough, but the nose and lips were too narrow. ‘He looks young,’ she said.
‘Did you see him at the party?’
‘There were a lot of kids there, but no, I don’t think so.’
He pushed all the other pictures towards her. ‘How about any of these men?’
She shuffled through the photos, all were CCTV images of varying quality. Her heart missed a beat when she saw an image of the man she had seen leaving Wraithston the night Mack the Knife was murdered. There he was, in his waxed coat and flat-cap. The picture was at an angle and you could only just make out his left cheek and his downturned lipless mouth, but it was definitely him. She kept shuffling, trying not to betray her recognition.
‘No, I’m sorry. I’ve not seen any of them’, she said, leaning over the desk to hand Lavius back the pictures.
‘Not to worry,’ he said casually as he put them back into his pocket. He then clicked his pen and returned that to his pocket along with the notepad.
It looked like the interview was over, but as they got up to leave, Kelly couldn’t help but ask a question. ‘What does this all mean? What does it mean for poor Paul?’
Corum paused, as if considering his answer carefully. ‘I think poor old Paul is off the hook for Wraithston. There is no evidence against him other than it fits the MO of the Orlando burglary. Inquiries are still ongoing. As far as I know he’s still due in youth court at the end of the month, but only for Orlando.’
‘Do you think he did it?’ she blurted out.
‘Personally, no,’ he admitted. ‘But I have nothing to do with it. I’m only investigating the Wraithston murder. Would you mind showing me out? This place is a bit of a maze.’
Kelly was a nervous wreck for the rest of the day, but managed to keep herself together until she got home. As she usually went to the gym on a Friday after school, that was what she did. As she went through the motions, she turned over everything she and Lavius had talked about in her head. Does he not see it, she thought? Is he so focused on finding the murderer that he doesn’t see that the main suspect for framing Paul Bevy was her? It was all there right in front of them wasn’t it? She catered at Orlando. The stolen goods turned up in Paul Bevy’s bag and locker. Surely the connection was easy to make? And yet Lavius and that other detective had not. When they connected her to Gavin, via Niles, her goose would be cooked wouldn’t it? She had to do something.
With a plan brewing in her head she went home without showering and dug the photos out of the hiding place in her bedroom. Looking through them she saw that she had twenty-five pictures of the young woman, taken in Amsterdam judging by the canals in the pictures, and thirteen pictures of the murder scene. She wanted to search for the girl then and there, but caution sent her into town to use a late-night internet café used by backpackers.
Here, she cautiously took pictures of the photos on a burner phone then ran them through a reverse image search tool. She found the young lady’s Facebook profile in a matter of minutes. She went by the name of Elaine Nostrum and had died two years ago. It looked very much like she had been a call girl, going by the friends she had connected with on social media. Going by her posts she talked a lot to a piano teacher who happened to live in Edinburgh. He was an elderly gent called Steven Gould and he had a website. She filled in an online form to book herself a piano lesson.
When she got home, she spent the rest of the evening looking at the photos, looking for anything that might help her. Whoever had taken the pictures had almost seemed to take careful care to keep themselves out of them. In one though, you could just make out their left arm, reflected in a shop window. It was an unremarkable arm, except for the fact that they wore a wrist watch on it. In this day and age a wrist watch was rare enough, but on the left arm, did that mean they were left-handed? It wasn’t much to go on. She put the photos back in their hiding place, washed and went to bed, where she plotted what to do about the increasing annoyance that was Detective Lavius.
***
Saturday evening, the annoyance that was Detective Lavius was sat on a bench inside the Ocean Terminal shopping centre, mainly watching the crowds of shoppers going in and out of HMV, but occasionally checking the time on his phone.
His flat was not far from Ocean Terminal, but he’d come to the appointed place earlier than arranged to be on the safe side. He had a feeling that he might be in for a long wait, but he wasn’t too bothered as long as he got a positive outcome.
The shoppers went in and out. Young men and women, families with kids, tourists and groups of teenagers. In amongst them, he spotted a familiar face. Tottering towards him on high heels and carrying several shopping bags, came Miss Kane. He smiled and waved. She waved back. She was wearing a denim jacket and tight leather leggings. Her hair was tied up tightly in a bun behind a knotted red bandana. Lavius tried to keep his eyes off her amble cleavage as she made her way towards him.
Once she was at the bench, she sat down beside him. ‘Do you mind? My feet are killing me!’
‘Not at all,’ he replied, moving over to make more room for her and her bags. ‘A lot of shopping to do?’
‘It’s a nightmare, I have four kid’s birthdays to buy for. All of them born in the same month.’
Lavius laughed. ‘Oh, I know that feeling. I have a lot of nieces and nephews. I’m from a large family.’
‘I’m sorry,’ as if realising she was being rude. ‘Are you waiting for someone?’
‘Oh, not really,’ he said. ‘Well, just a little friend.’
‘Been stood up?’
‘Oh, nothing to worry about,’ he said with an evasive smile. ‘They were a bit vague about the time.’
She leaned over her bags, checking and re-arranging the contents, giving him a good eyeful. He did his best to avert his gaze and was looking innocently straight ahead when she looked back up at him. With her bags all sorted she stood up.
‘Well, I hope your friend shows up,’ she said with what he considered a very sweet smile. ‘Oh, do you happen to know what a good present is for a four-year-old girl?
‘Ah, well, in fact yes. I recently gave my six-year-old niece the “My Little Pony Magic School of Friendship Playset” and it went down like an absolute house on fire.’
She pursed her lips and nodded. ‘Sage advice.’
With one final friendly little wave and a smile, she turned and tottered off.
He laughed and shook his head. The first time he’d met her, she had seemed stiff and formal. Just now it had felt like she had been flirting with him. She must be all prim and proper at the school and be a bit more outgoing at the weekend. She had been nervous about talking to a policeman as well and he supposed that that could have accounted for some it.
He began to think what Mable would be like out of work and found it impossible to imagine her being any different. She probably went to bed in a suit and pearls. Still, that Miss Kane was well proportioned, he’d give her that, he thought to himself as he watched her backside wiggling off into the distance. All the right bits in all the right places.
An hour and a half passed. He never moved from the bench. Once more Kelly Kane sat down beside him.
‘Still here?’ she asked, then went on without waiting for an answer. ‘I’ve been everywhere! Look.’
She opened a bag to show him all the toys within. ‘Ponies, Hatchimals, PJ Masks. The whole lot.’
‘Lucky kids.’
‘Did your date turn up?’ she asked demurely.
‘No,’ he admitted.
‘That’s awful!’ she said with apparently genuine dismay.
‘It doesn’t matter, I should head home now anyway.’
‘Oh, sure,’ she said, getting up. ‘Um… My bus isn’t until half past. Want to grab a coffee?’
He hesitated, but then said, ‘sure, why not?’
They sat in Costa, drinking coffee and stuck to the straight-forward topic of their jobs.
‘I like it I guess,’ said Kelly as she looked down into her cup. ‘But it barely pays the rent. That’s why I do the temping, so I have enough money for holidays.’
‘You sound about as enthusiastic about your job as I do!’ he laughed. She had been letting him do most of the talking so he went on. ‘I never really wanted to be a policeman if I’m honest. My big brothers pushed me into it. I couldn’t think of a reason why not at the time.’
‘Not your dad? Doing the pushing I mean?’
‘All he ever pushed was a bottle into his face. Bless the old sot, he was ok before mother died. I’ve three brothers, they are all successful, in their own way. I was – the black sheep. Always in trouble. They seemed to think that since I have a criminal mind, it should be put to good use. I’m good at my job, I suppose. Catch a lot of bad guys, anyway.’
There was a pause, and to fill the gap in the conversation he blurted out, ‘do you have family? … Oh sorry!’
She looked up at him. ‘You know about my family?’
He thought for a second that she looked angry, or struggling with some kind of emotion. ‘Yes, sorry. I wasn’t snooping, well… I mean, it’s my job to snoop, but I just stumbled over your mother’s Wikipedia entry.’
‘It’s ok,’ she said with a smile. ‘Well, my grandmother is still alive and very sweet. I loved my foster parents dearly. I still see them from time to time, but apart from that I have no other close family.’
He nodded at her bags. ‘Lots of god-children though?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she nodded back. ‘We’ve both lost mothers. If you don’t mind me asking, how did yours die?’
‘Lost as sea,’ he said plainly and did not elaborate. ‘My dad was never the same after that.’
‘How old were you?’
He laughed and leaned back. ‘Well, since I know your story, here is mine. I was twelve when she died. My whole family have always said I was the closest to her, the one that was most like her. After her death my father really began to drink heavily. The parties that he threw were famous, or infamous I should say, throughout the land. I remember them as good times. We converted the, ahh, main hall into an archery range, where Neville got an arrow through the leg in one drunken contest, and we used to race the hunting hounds around the lake until the sheriff complained that it was startling the tourists. We just did whatever we liked for years and years, we were supposedly being home-schooled, but our tutor was almost as bad as dad. Well, finally the money ran out, and people stopped coming, and when we all sobered up, we realised that the ten-year party had taken a great toll on the estate and the castle. Um, yes, I suppose we lived in a sort of castle. Neville joined the navy, Eric the clergy and my youngest brother works for an NGO. My lack of any formal kind of learning meant that I was no better, in terms of employability than a common labourer. In the end my father pulled some strings with some old friends and got me a job. And here I am.’
Kelly was smiling at him throughout his story, but what she was thinking was, like a common labourer? Who talks like that?
‘What a life you must have had!’ she sighed. Then after a pause she said, ‘I was younger than you when my mother…’ Just as she was starting to talk though, she casually checked the time on her phone. ‘Oh no! I’d better run or I’ll miss my bus.’
Their coffees were long finished and Lavius rose with her. ‘I’ll walk you out.’
She giggled girlishly. ‘Such a gentleman.’
Corum gave her a friendly wave as she got on the bus, taking another opportunity to sneak a quick glance at her amble behind as she boarded. I’m in there, he thought to himself as he turned and headed home, whistling cheerfully.
Meanwhile Kelly was sat looking forward, a slightly fixed smile on her face, thinking, he seemed like a nice guy. Such a shame about what I’ve just done to him.
Corum entered his flat on Leith Walk. He switched on the light to find that it had been burgled.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake! Gavin, you little shit!’ he cried.
In the living room all the drawers had been turned out and a box of magazines up-ended. He went through to the kitchen where he saw some of the drawers had been emptied out and that the little bastard had helped himself to one of his beers. The empty bottle was on the kitchen counter. Beside the bottle was a stack of his work papers. They all appeared to be there. One of them had been pulled out of the bundle and placed in the middle of the worktop. It was a grainy CCTV image, of a man in a barber jacket and flat cap. The man had been circled repeatedly with a thick red felt-tip pen.
Lavius and Yoyuwevuto drove to Craigs Park, but Niles was out. A girl in her late teens answered the door.
‘He’s at his work. Back about six. I watch wee Connor for him when he’s not at school,’ she informed them.
Mabel was doing the talking. ‘I see. What about Mrs Makepeace?’
‘Oh, she left him last year. Nobody tells me anything, but I guess they think it’s better for Connor to stay here. He really loves Niles.’
Mabel held up a police photofit picture of Gavin Newgate. ‘Have you seen this boy around at all?’
She squinted at the picture, but then leaned back. ‘No. I’ve not lived in this street that long though.’
‘Can you get Niles to give us a call to arrange an interview?’
‘Is he in trouble?’
‘Not at all,’ Yoyuwevuto assured her. ‘Just a few questions.’
The next day, in the morning, Lavius and Yoyuwevuto met again, at the ‘Hello Panda’ import shop on Easter Road. Yoyuwevuto had been there for an hour, Lavius had just arrived.
‘So, what have we got?’ asked Lavius as he ducked under the yellow crime scene tape. He stepped delicately on broken glass as he entered and nodded to the uniformed policewoman who was standing guard by the broken window. There were many other uniformed police officers inside, all, seemingly, with their own jobs to do.
Lavius followed Yoyuwevuto through the shop into the back room where the body was.
‘It doesn’t look like anything much was stolen from the shop, but downstairs has been fairly well turned over, Sergeant,’ she told him as they stood and looked down at the corpse. ‘And this is the owner, Mr Francis Sharp. It’s a bit early, but Donald says, from first inspection, he thinks that Mr Sharp has been dead for three days.’
‘The break-in happened last night though.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Yoyuwevuto as she walked around the body and pointed at its neck. ‘Two puncture marks in the neck from what was probably a sharpened screwdriver.’
‘Calling card of the Vampires again,’ mused Lavius.
‘Indeed, sir. The neighbours are all being questioned now, but we have two people who heard the glass breaking about three in the morning. The police were not called until seven.’
‘Great stuff,’ said Lavius sarcastically.
They walked back through to the shop.
‘And this glass, as you may observe sir, mostly landed on the pavement. Suggesting it was broken from the inside.’
‘Classic bit of detecting there, Yoyo,’ said Lavius wryly. ‘Top marks.’
Lavius looked around the shop, with his hands on his hips, taking it all in. He pointed at the large carpet in the middle of the floor. ‘That was unrolled last night too.’
‘How can you tell?’
Lavius lifted the corner. ‘There is blood splashed everywhere around this bit of the shop, but I doubt it managed to get under the carpet.’
He stood, lost in thought for a while, and then finally muttered, ‘well this is annoying. The killer strikes again, and the only decent lead we have slipped right through my fingers.’
‘If it’s any consolation, Sergeant, Mr Sharp was probably killed before you met Gavin Newgate.’
‘Right. I wonder then, if it was our friend Gavin that broke in last night? In that case he is making a real habit of robbing places that have murder victims in them,’ said Lavius in a bitter tone.
‘I think the burglar came in from the back,’ said Yoyuwevuto. ’Then exited through the broken window. It fits the style of the Squirrel certainly.’
‘I’m glad someone can be sure about something, because I’m bloody not. Sorry, Mabel. I can’t make up my mind whether it’s the Vampires, or someone else trying to make it look like it’s the Vampires. With Big Mac, I would have said not, because they have no reason to kill him. I’ve been watching them for years now, all the twists and turns of their gradually muscling in on Edinburgh organised crime. The absolute last thing they want right now is war with the Hamiltons. This mess, on the other hand, looks much more like their style. This looks a lot like someone unwilling to pay protection money. Usually they just beat people up, but sometimes it gets out of hand. Anything dodgy about Mr Sharp? Any connections?’
‘We’ve got people looking into that now,’ replied Yoyuwevuto. ‘But wait until you see the cellar.’
‘Bless you Mabel Yoyuwevuto,’ Lavius sighed and followed her downstairs. When they arrived he whistled softly through his teeth. ‘Phew, another Aladdin’s cave of crap down here too. Someone tore this place apart. Any clues to who? I suppose it was either the murderer three days ago or the burglar last night.’
‘Or both,’ pointed out Yoyuwevuto
They were in a large basement, split into two areas, one where all manner of junk and unsold stock was stored. The bulk of it was packing boxes and bin bags full of rubbish that the owner had evidently not gotten round to throwing away. The other area, further back, contained two tables, one round and one square and an assortment of tatty chairs and sofas. Judging by the overflowing ashtrays and empty bottles, business was conducted down here. There were boxes of mobile phones, in various states of repair, boxes of handbags, laptop cases, wallets, shoes, scarves, coats and other junk, all scattered about across the floor. The sofas had been slashed and every box had been turned upside down.
‘Mr Sharp was a fence,’ observed Lavius.
‘I would say so,’ agreed Yoyuwevuto. ‘Just the sort of person that could end up on the wrong side of the Vampires.’
They picked about in the detritus for a few moments, looking for anything interesting.
After a while Yoyuwevuto spoke. ‘How did you get on with Mr Makepeace?’
‘Yeah, I caught him at home before he went to work. He’s a nice guy, but I would say there is something a bit fishy going on. He said that Gavin just comes and goes. There is no official fostering going on. He might not see him for weeks. I’m not so sure. Definitely worth keeping an eye on him still.’
‘Agreed.’
Just then Lavius’s phone made a noise and he checked his messages.
‘Oh right, I’m going back to the school, I better scoot.’
‘In regards to?’
‘Something I want to ask Miss Kane. Probably nothing.’
‘Shall I finish up here then?’ asked Yoyuwevuto somewhat tartly.
‘What?’ said Lavius in mock irritation. ‘I need your permission, mum? I’ll catch you later.’
The night before, it had indeed been Gavin Newgate, or rather, Miss Take who had broken in to Treacle’s shop. She has broken in to Treacle’s several times before, the route she had found led from a derelict Edwardian wash house that been half-converted into a bathroom and them abandoned. She’d carefully jimmied the external door, then once inside removed enough the plasterboard to get in to the wall space between the old wash house and the back room of Treacle’s shop. From there it was a question of making more mouse holes until she came out inside a built-in kitchen unit that contained only ancient bottles of bleach and cobwebs.
Prior to her decision to break into the shop she had been sitting at home, thinking and thinking, turning over her options and trying to come up with ways of finding the killer when she remembered the photos of the murdered girl that she had picked up in Wraithston. Those photos were in her loot bag, which was somewhere, she assumed, in Treacle’s shop. Somehow, they felt connected to things, although she had no idea how. Maybe it was the daughter of the killer, and he was exacting revenge? Maybe the killer had already murdered this girl and Mack the Knife had found out about it and so he had been silenced? Maybe there was no connection at all and Mack just happened to have some pictures of a dead woman for an unrelated reason. She could perhaps find out. All she had to do was go to Treacle’s and get them.
From the kitchen she entered the back shop and it was here that she nearly tripped over Treacle’s boy. She cursed and stepped back. With her light on she leaned over him, but didn’t touch him. He was very dead. There was a lot of blood, but mostly dried out. There were bloody drag marks that lead from the door to the shop. She quickly shone her light in that direction and saw that he had likely been killed in the rear sections of the shop, then his body dragged in here, out of sight. Despite all this though, she had a job to do and she knew that Treacle didn’t keep his treasure in the cellar. She’d been down there and had a snoop about the first time she had broken in and had broken in four or five times since, never leaving a trace, but she always took a look anyway, just to be nosey.
There were no windows down there, so it was safe to switch the light on. Whoever had killed Treacle had really ransacked the place. All Treacle’s boxes of hard to get rid of stolen things, mainly handbags and mobile phones were strewn everywhere. In their frustration at not finding any good stuff, or money, they had even ripped up all the upholstery on the chairs and sofas. They were wasting their time though; she knew that. She’d never seen anything of any great value down here, it was just a junk room. Wherever Treacle kept his money, she’d never been able to find out.
She wasn’t looking for valuables though, she was looking for the photos. She took a look around, carefully picking through the boxes, but they were not down here. After half an hour of searching, she headed upstairs and after carefully manoeuvring her way around his body went into the shop.
She cast her eyes around the room, there were a few opened cabinets and broken vases, but the killer had found nothing. They’d not looked very hard, perhaps thinking that any loot was unlikely to be hidden here and that any passer-by could look in the window at them. There was nowhere else though. There was nothing in the back room or the kitchen. It took less than a minute to search those rooms. The shop though, it would take hours to go through all the junk that was in there. Furniture, carpets, boxes, trunks, cabinets and cupboards. And behind the main displays a whole other section of even more unsold junk that had been in the shop for years.
She stood, looking at it all, pulling on her bottom lip through her mask. Even so, she had a feeling it was in here somewhere. He’s put it in the shop. There was something about the character of the man, she began to think, that would take great delight in having a hiding place that was ‘clever’. Somewhere in plain sight. In the weak street light from outside she stood silent and still in the middle of the shop taking everything in. She could see where he had been killed. Right at the vague dividing line between the two sections. There was a splash of blood across the top of a mahogany chest of drawers here. Did he die trying to get to his money? Knowing it would never be that simple she checked all the drawers anyway and found them empty. She continued to look around the area he had died. The front of the shop was where he kept his most recent and sellable stuff, the rear of the shop was just big items he couldn’t be bothered taking down to the cellar. There were dozens of items of furniture, dozens of boxes, dozens of crates. It would take an age to search them all. In amongst it all were rolled up carpets, stuffed into the gaps between the furniture. The largest carpet of them all was lain across the top of a row of four wardrobes that formed the main division between the front and rear areas of the shop. Looking closer at the bloody drawers she saw a foot print in the age-old dust that covered the top of it. Curious, she stepped up onto the cabinet herself and from here she could just see the top of one of the wardrobes that held the large carpet. There was all manner of other junk items up here too, an opened parasol, pewter jugs, a stuffed cat. She quickly shone her light across the top of the wardrobe and saw holes in the dust where several other items had been. Shining her light down onto the floor she saw where they had landed. A rusty biscuit tin over by the wall, a broken electric heater and a small cardboard box marked with Chinese writing. So, Treacle had stepped up onto the drawers, possibly swept aside those things that had landed on the floor… and then, was pulled down and murdered? The only other thing up here, besides all the knick-knacks was the massive carpet. She had to pull herself onto the top of the wardrobe to take a closer look, stifling a sneeze as the dust tickled her nose. She shone her light down the end of the roll and took a look inside. There was something down there, right in the middle. It looked like her bag.
With a satisfied smile she came back down to the drawers and removed all the junk off the wardrobes so she could get the carpet down a silently as possible. She then dragged it to the front of the shop, the only place where there was enough room to unroll it and gave it a kick. It was a pleasant, red patterned Persian carpet and as it opened up dust flew everywhere, making her sneeze several times. When she could look again, she could see her bag, and several more, smaller ones. She checked her bag and murmured gratefully to herself when she found the photos, still in the same side pocket she had put them in. Checking the other bags revealed them to be full of rolled up notes and small items of jewellery. She took an Asda bag for life from her jacket pocket and stuffed them all into that.
She was about to leave the way she had come in, but then paused for a moment at the thought of poor Treacle. How long had he lain there? And how long would he lie there yet before someone realised he was dead? The only regular customers that he had were not the sort of people that called the police. If they saw the shop closed, they would probably assume he’d been arrested and not come back again.
Turning on her heal, she went to the window and selected something to break it with. She picked up a stone Buddha about the size of a grapefruit and threw it at the glass. It sailed right through, leaving a big hole. She knocked out a bit more with a paper parasol then jumped through the window and fled into the night.
The next day her nerves were in tatters, thinking of poor Treacle and trying to figure out what it all meant, so-much-so that when Mrs Hunter came to see her and whispered in here ear, ‘that nice young policeman is here to see you,’ she nearly jumped out of her skin.
Her blood running cold she went to meet him in one of the GP rooms. They went and sat together at the teacher’s desk, Lavius grabbing her a chair from beside the windows.
‘How can I help you?’ she asked as calmly as she could. Her mind was racing. Had he found out she had been fostered by Niles Makepeace and had put it all together? Was he here to unmask her? To arrest her? Out of a desire to hide behind her teacher disguise, she had worn even more makeup than usual today, and had even more padding hidden under her clothes. Her heels were the highest she owned, making her waddle around like an idiot. She smelled of a cloying perfume she’d been given for Christmas last year. Was he seeing through all that?
They way he smiled at her seemed to suggest otherwise though. ‘No need to look so nervous!’ he laughed. ‘It’s just a few follow-up questions’
She smiled back and looked down at her hands folder in her lap. She tried her best to keep her breathing steady.
‘I’ll get straight to the point, Miss Kane, so I won’t keep you from your class any longer than I have to. I was looking through pictures of the birthday party at Button Grove people had posted on Facebook and lo and behold I saw you in the background serving plates of sausage rolls to the kids.’
‘Ah yes, I have a weekend job, you see…’
‘It’s Linda’s Catering Services you work for, right?’ he went on. ‘I gave the eponymous Linda a ring just to check I was right. Is she the only agency you work for?’
‘Well, at the moment. I’ve been with them about six months,’ replied Kelly as her mind now raced down another track. Just how much did he know about her habit of casing out places she planned to burgle as part of her job as a catering assistant?
‘And before then?’ he said as he pulled out a pen and notepad. ‘Sorry, if I don’t write things down, I forget them.’
Kelly’s stomach sunk into a pit. Should she lie, or tell the truth? What was safer in the long run. Slowly, making it up as she went a long, she told a series of half-truths.
‘Oh well, let’s see,’ she said slowly, buying herself time. ‘Before Linda it was EMA. Before that it was Triple-E and before that it was kind of informal. Some of it was cash in hand.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, not looking up from his notebook. ‘I’m not here to do you for moonlighting.’
‘This was before I started teaching.’
‘I see well, forgive me,’ he said looking up with a smile. ‘Linda herself was interviewed just after the break-in, but we didn’t get a list of all her staff until now. You were there the same day Button Grove was burgled, and interestingly also at Orlando, but this time about two months before it was robbed.’
‘Are you questioning me?’ she asked, on tender hooks. Then remembering that she was not meant to know that the place had been robbed she said, ‘I had no idea the place had been burgled!’
‘No, no, no!’ he said, patting down the air with his hands and trying to look as reassuring as he could. ‘It’s not like that at all. Although, I suppose if you are a suspect, then so is Linda and everyone else that works for her. No, I’m currently only interested in Wraithston and I’m sure that Mackenzie Hamilton doesn’t throw parties – well, not the type that would need outside catering anyway.’
‘Oh, ok,’ she laughed nervously.
‘Well, anyway, the burglar was seen. At Button Grove,’ went on Lavius as he pulled a pack of photos from his jacket pocket. ‘A resident encounter him, before he made his escape. She didn’t get a good look at him, but we suspect he may have looked like this.’
He pushed a picture across the table towards here. It was a computer-generated image of what she had looked like that night she had been picked by Lavius in his car. It wasn’t a very good likeness, she thought with some relief. The hair was wild enough, but the nose and lips were too narrow. ‘He looks young,’ she said.
‘Did you see him at the party?’
‘There were a lot of kids there, but no, I don’t think so.’
He pushed all the other pictures towards her. ‘How about any of these men?’
She shuffled through the photos, all were CCTV images of varying quality. Her heart missed a beat when she saw an image of the man she had seen leaving Wraithston the night Mack the Knife was murdered. There he was, in his waxed coat and flat-cap. The picture was at an angle and you could only just make out his left cheek and his downturned lipless mouth, but it was definitely him. She kept shuffling, trying not to betray her recognition.
‘No, I’m sorry. I’ve not seen any of them’, she said, leaning over the desk to hand Lavius back the pictures.
‘Not to worry,’ he said casually as he put them back into his pocket. He then clicked his pen and returned that to his pocket along with the notepad.
It looked like the interview was over, but as they got up to leave, Kelly couldn’t help but ask a question. ‘What does this all mean? What does it mean for poor Paul?’
Corum paused, as if considering his answer carefully. ‘I think poor old Paul is off the hook for Wraithston. There is no evidence against him other than it fits the MO of the Orlando burglary. Inquiries are still ongoing. As far as I know he’s still due in youth court at the end of the month, but only for Orlando.’
‘Do you think he did it?’ she blurted out.
‘Personally, no,’ he admitted. ‘But I have nothing to do with it. I’m only investigating the Wraithston murder. Would you mind showing me out? This place is a bit of a maze.’
Kelly was a nervous wreck for the rest of the day, but managed to keep herself together until she got home. As she usually went to the gym on a Friday after school, that was what she did. As she went through the motions, she turned over everything she and Lavius had talked about in her head. Does he not see it, she thought? Is he so focused on finding the murderer that he doesn’t see that the main suspect for framing Paul Bevy was her? It was all there right in front of them wasn’t it? She catered at Orlando. The stolen goods turned up in Paul Bevy’s bag and locker. Surely the connection was easy to make? And yet Lavius and that other detective had not. When they connected her to Gavin, via Niles, her goose would be cooked wouldn’t it? She had to do something.
With a plan brewing in her head she went home without showering and dug the photos out of the hiding place in her bedroom. Looking through them she saw that she had twenty-five pictures of the young woman, taken in Amsterdam judging by the canals in the pictures, and thirteen pictures of the murder scene. She wanted to search for the girl then and there, but caution sent her into town to use a late-night internet café used by backpackers.
Here, she cautiously took pictures of the photos on a burner phone then ran them through a reverse image search tool. She found the young lady’s Facebook profile in a matter of minutes. She went by the name of Elaine Nostrum and had died two years ago. It looked very much like she had been a call girl, going by the friends she had connected with on social media. Going by her posts she talked a lot to a piano teacher who happened to live in Edinburgh. He was an elderly gent called Steven Gould and he had a website. She filled in an online form to book herself a piano lesson.
When she got home, she spent the rest of the evening looking at the photos, looking for anything that might help her. Whoever had taken the pictures had almost seemed to take careful care to keep themselves out of them. In one though, you could just make out their left arm, reflected in a shop window. It was an unremarkable arm, except for the fact that they wore a wrist watch on it. In this day and age a wrist watch was rare enough, but on the left arm, did that mean they were left-handed? It wasn’t much to go on. She put the photos back in their hiding place, washed and went to bed, where she plotted what to do about the increasing annoyance that was Detective Lavius.
***
Saturday evening, the annoyance that was Detective Lavius was sat on a bench inside the Ocean Terminal shopping centre, mainly watching the crowds of shoppers going in and out of HMV, but occasionally checking the time on his phone.
His flat was not far from Ocean Terminal, but he’d come to the appointed place earlier than arranged to be on the safe side. He had a feeling that he might be in for a long wait, but he wasn’t too bothered as long as he got a positive outcome.
The shoppers went in and out. Young men and women, families with kids, tourists and groups of teenagers. In amongst them, he spotted a familiar face. Tottering towards him on high heels and carrying several shopping bags, came Miss Kane. He smiled and waved. She waved back. She was wearing a denim jacket and tight leather leggings. Her hair was tied up tightly in a bun behind a knotted red bandana. Lavius tried to keep his eyes off her amble cleavage as she made her way towards him.
Once she was at the bench, she sat down beside him. ‘Do you mind? My feet are killing me!’
‘Not at all,’ he replied, moving over to make more room for her and her bags. ‘A lot of shopping to do?’
‘It’s a nightmare, I have four kid’s birthdays to buy for. All of them born in the same month.’
Lavius laughed. ‘Oh, I know that feeling. I have a lot of nieces and nephews. I’m from a large family.’
‘I’m sorry,’ as if realising she was being rude. ‘Are you waiting for someone?’
‘Oh, not really,’ he said. ‘Well, just a little friend.’
‘Been stood up?’
‘Oh, nothing to worry about,’ he said with an evasive smile. ‘They were a bit vague about the time.’
She leaned over her bags, checking and re-arranging the contents, giving him a good eyeful. He did his best to avert his gaze and was looking innocently straight ahead when she looked back up at him. With her bags all sorted she stood up.
‘Well, I hope your friend shows up,’ she said with what he considered a very sweet smile. ‘Oh, do you happen to know what a good present is for a four-year-old girl?
‘Ah, well, in fact yes. I recently gave my six-year-old niece the “My Little Pony Magic School of Friendship Playset” and it went down like an absolute house on fire.’
She pursed her lips and nodded. ‘Sage advice.’
With one final friendly little wave and a smile, she turned and tottered off.
He laughed and shook his head. The first time he’d met her, she had seemed stiff and formal. Just now it had felt like she had been flirting with him. She must be all prim and proper at the school and be a bit more outgoing at the weekend. She had been nervous about talking to a policeman as well and he supposed that that could have accounted for some it.
He began to think what Mable would be like out of work and found it impossible to imagine her being any different. She probably went to bed in a suit and pearls. Still, that Miss Kane was well proportioned, he’d give her that, he thought to himself as he watched her backside wiggling off into the distance. All the right bits in all the right places.
An hour and a half passed. He never moved from the bench. Once more Kelly Kane sat down beside him.
‘Still here?’ she asked, then went on without waiting for an answer. ‘I’ve been everywhere! Look.’
She opened a bag to show him all the toys within. ‘Ponies, Hatchimals, PJ Masks. The whole lot.’
‘Lucky kids.’
‘Did your date turn up?’ she asked demurely.
‘No,’ he admitted.
‘That’s awful!’ she said with apparently genuine dismay.
‘It doesn’t matter, I should head home now anyway.’
‘Oh, sure,’ she said, getting up. ‘Um… My bus isn’t until half past. Want to grab a coffee?’
He hesitated, but then said, ‘sure, why not?’
They sat in Costa, drinking coffee and stuck to the straight-forward topic of their jobs.
‘I like it I guess,’ said Kelly as she looked down into her cup. ‘But it barely pays the rent. That’s why I do the temping, so I have enough money for holidays.’
‘You sound about as enthusiastic about your job as I do!’ he laughed. She had been letting him do most of the talking so he went on. ‘I never really wanted to be a policeman if I’m honest. My big brothers pushed me into it. I couldn’t think of a reason why not at the time.’
‘Not your dad? Doing the pushing I mean?’
‘All he ever pushed was a bottle into his face. Bless the old sot, he was ok before mother died. I’ve three brothers, they are all successful, in their own way. I was – the black sheep. Always in trouble. They seemed to think that since I have a criminal mind, it should be put to good use. I’m good at my job, I suppose. Catch a lot of bad guys, anyway.’
There was a pause, and to fill the gap in the conversation he blurted out, ‘do you have family? … Oh sorry!’
She looked up at him. ‘You know about my family?’
He thought for a second that she looked angry, or struggling with some kind of emotion. ‘Yes, sorry. I wasn’t snooping, well… I mean, it’s my job to snoop, but I just stumbled over your mother’s Wikipedia entry.’
‘It’s ok,’ she said with a smile. ‘Well, my grandmother is still alive and very sweet. I loved my foster parents dearly. I still see them from time to time, but apart from that I have no other close family.’
He nodded at her bags. ‘Lots of god-children though?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she nodded back. ‘We’ve both lost mothers. If you don’t mind me asking, how did yours die?’
‘Lost as sea,’ he said plainly and did not elaborate. ‘My dad was never the same after that.’
‘How old were you?’
He laughed and leaned back. ‘Well, since I know your story, here is mine. I was twelve when she died. My whole family have always said I was the closest to her, the one that was most like her. After her death my father really began to drink heavily. The parties that he threw were famous, or infamous I should say, throughout the land. I remember them as good times. We converted the, ahh, main hall into an archery range, where Neville got an arrow through the leg in one drunken contest, and we used to race the hunting hounds around the lake until the sheriff complained that it was startling the tourists. We just did whatever we liked for years and years, we were supposedly being home-schooled, but our tutor was almost as bad as dad. Well, finally the money ran out, and people stopped coming, and when we all sobered up, we realised that the ten-year party had taken a great toll on the estate and the castle. Um, yes, I suppose we lived in a sort of castle. Neville joined the navy, Eric the clergy and my youngest brother works for an NGO. My lack of any formal kind of learning meant that I was no better, in terms of employability than a common labourer. In the end my father pulled some strings with some old friends and got me a job. And here I am.’
Kelly was smiling at him throughout his story, but what she was thinking was, like a common labourer? Who talks like that?
‘What a life you must have had!’ she sighed. Then after a pause she said, ‘I was younger than you when my mother…’ Just as she was starting to talk though, she casually checked the time on her phone. ‘Oh no! I’d better run or I’ll miss my bus.’
Their coffees were long finished and Lavius rose with her. ‘I’ll walk you out.’
She giggled girlishly. ‘Such a gentleman.’
Corum gave her a friendly wave as she got on the bus, taking another opportunity to sneak a quick glance at her amble behind as she boarded. I’m in there, he thought to himself as he turned and headed home, whistling cheerfully.
Meanwhile Kelly was sat looking forward, a slightly fixed smile on her face, thinking, he seemed like a nice guy. Such a shame about what I’ve just done to him.
Corum entered his flat on Leith Walk. He switched on the light to find that it had been burgled.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake! Gavin, you little shit!’ he cried.
In the living room all the drawers had been turned out and a box of magazines up-ended. He went through to the kitchen where he saw some of the drawers had been emptied out and that the little bastard had helped himself to one of his beers. The empty bottle was on the kitchen counter. Beside the bottle was a stack of his work papers. They all appeared to be there. One of them had been pulled out of the bundle and placed in the middle of the worktop. It was a grainy CCTV image, of a man in a barber jacket and flat cap. The man had been circled repeatedly with a thick red felt-tip pen.
No comments:
Post a Comment