Miss Take - Chapter 8 (3509)

Chapter 8 (3509)

Chapter 8 (3509)
Mabel, in her role as the expert in break-ins walked around Corum’s flat, until she ended up in the bathroom.
‘He came in here, Sergeant,’ she said as she opened the window and looked down into the murky alley below. The light from the street lamps in the main street twinkled in the rain water. ‘I doubt the climb would have posed much of a challenge. Do you usually keep this window open, sir?’
‘It was locked,’ grumbled Lavius from the kitchen as he boiled the kettle.
Mabel looked at the window frame, running her eyes up and down it. She then went back into the kitchen and sat down at the counter, accepting a cup of tea. ‘You didn’t call the police, sir?’
‘I am the police!’ growled Lavius. ‘Besides, Gavin didn’t actually take anything. The last thing I want is you HBU mob all over my flat. Honestly, when I get my hands on the wee bastard, I’ll knock shite out of him.’
Corum paused, laughed, then threw his head back and sighed. ‘Oh well. Balls of Steel that kid. More than that, a right titanium nut-sack, breaking into the flat of a CID officer!’
Mabel looked at the picture that had been circled in red pen.
‘Aye,’ he nodded at the photo. ‘And it looks like he’s trying to help us. I think Gavin was there that night, and saw the murderer. He’s telling us that this is the murderer.’
‘Or he’s trying to frame this man,’ Mabel murmured.
‘Maybe,’ considered Corum, ‘It’s a lot of effort to go to. There must be easier ways to lose the heat than this?’
The sipped their tea for a while, each of them lost in thought. Lavius shuffled through all the other CCTV images they had collected from the cameras around Wraithston on the night of the murder. There were over twenty of them.
‘A lot of people passed the house that night. From what I understand it’s a bit of a bridle path for people walking back from the pub,’ said Corum. ‘You know what, I think we should concentrate on this guy. Put everything else on pause, including hunting high and low for Gavin the Scarlet Pimpernel. I think if we did bag him, he’d just point at this picture and say “this is your murderer” anyway.’
‘We can hand everything to do with Gavin over to Harvey if you like, Sergeant.’
‘Sure, do that,’ said Corum.’ If they do catch him though, make sure they let us know right away.’
‘Of course,’ agreed Mabel with a nod.
Corum sighed and walked over to the sink to wash out his cup. He then turned to Mabel and looked her over. ‘So, this is how you dress out of work?’
She looked down at her professional looking black coat, dark trousers and shoes. ‘Sergeant?’
Corum smiled and shook his head. ‘It’s nothing, Yoyo. It’s just something I thought of earlier today. You look exactly as I pictured you would.’

***
On Wednesday, after school, Kelly Kane went for her piano lesson. She went home and changed first; into a new outfit she had just bought the same day for the occasion. She did her hair differently too, doubting that it would make much difference, but doing anyway. A small disguise was better than nothing.
She looked herself up and down in the mirror before leaving the house. She looked like a plain clothes police officer, which was precisely the look she was going for.
On the bus she thought everything over, wondering what would happen when she went through the door to this man’s house and how he would react when she revealed her true purpose. He’d not had a profile picture on Facebook so she started to worry, however unlikely it was, that he could be the Wraithston killer himself.
He wasn’t though, he was an elderly man with straggly grey hair and a tattered woollen cardigan with patches on the elbows. He lived in a small second floor flat and by far the most expensive thing he owned was the stand-up piano that occupied the wall furthest from the door.
‘Do you have any experience at all dear?’ he asked as he ushered her in.
Kelly stayed at the door. ‘I’ll be blunt and get straight to the point Mr Gould. I am here investigating the murder of Elaine Nostrum.’
He did a double take and took his first good look at her. ‘My word!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve not heard that name for a while. Two years or more.’
‘So, you remember her?’
‘Ah yes,’ he replied. ‘She was a good student. Very agile, ah… fingers. How is she? Is she ok?’
Kelly was confused for a minute, but then realised he must have had no idea of her fate. ‘I’m sorry Mr Gould, but she is dead. She was murdered two years ago.’
‘Oh, oh I see,’ he said, backing off into the tiny adjoining kitchen. He looked around for a moment, as if wondering how he had got there. ‘Um, would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No thanks,’ replied Kelly. He seems lost and confused, she thought. She had initially considered he might have hired an assassin to kill Elaine, out of jealousy or for some other unknown reason, but looking at the dirty dishes in his sink and the light patch in the living room wallpaper were a television used to be mounted she doubted this man had enough money to pay the rent, let alone a contract killer.
‘I don’t understand. Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Who are you? Are you the police?’
‘Sorry,’ said Kelly as she sat down by the window. ‘My name is Janet Yates; I was a friend of Elaine’s. I’m trying to find out things about her death on behalf of her family.’
‘Oh,’ he said and sat down in the chair opposite, rubbing his chin nervously. ‘The police?’
‘Never caught the killer,’ she said, and she knew this to be true as she’d been reading everything she could find out about Elaine Nostrum on the internet for the last several days. ‘The police never interviewed you, sir?’
‘No, no, not at all. This is the first I’ve heard about it,’ he said with apparently genuine sadness. ‘She was a lovely young lady.’
Kelly took her mobile from her pocket and scrolled to a picture of the killer she had taken from the photo in Sergeant Lavius’s flat. ‘Do you recognise this man?’
‘No, no I don’t sorry,’ he said instantly, looking as if he was starting to get concerned about this strange woman in his flat. ‘Listen, I barely knew her really.’
‘It’s ok, Mr Gould,’ Kelly said as gently as she could. ‘I know what she did for a living.’
Steven looked down at the floor for a moment or two, then stood up and pointed at the door. ‘Please leave now.’
Kelly also stood up. ‘Tell me what you know about Elaine, then I’ll leave.’
He put his right hand on her shoulder, gently, but said sternly, ‘I’ll call the police.’
At that moment Kelly ran out of patience and grabbed his hand, then twisted it, forcing him back into his seat with a thump. ‘Listen Mr Gould. I need to know what you know. I’m usually very nice, but lots of nasty people are currently after me and I need to find out everything I can.’
The old man winced as she applied more pressure onto the wristlock she had him in. ‘You’re really hurting me!’ he cried ‘If you break my wrist, I can’t make a living!’
‘So, talk!’ she hissed and let him go. ‘Talk to me and I’ll leave.’
‘Fine,’ he grumbled. ‘Fine. I paid to have sex with her? Happy? I don’t see how that helps you though.’
‘And? You didn’t know she’d been murdered, so what did you think when you didn’t see her about again?’
‘Oh well,’ he said, as if searching his memories. ‘We lost touch. I used to call her, but she always said that she had a new client that wanted her exclusively. Always taking her on holidays and things. She just didn’t need my money any longer.’
‘Did she say anything about this man?’
‘Only,’ he said, then laughed. ‘Only that he was fat, old and ugly. And that’s honestly all I can remember. You think he killed her?’
‘It’s possible,’ pondered Kelly. ‘I’m just pulling on threads at the moment, seeing what happens.’
He shrugged, looking up at her with a confused half-smile.
She stood up. ‘Well thank you for your time.’
He stayed seated, but as she was just at the door he spoke. ‘Elaine Nostrum wasn’t her real name, incidentally. That was just the name she used in the UK.’
‘You know her real name?’
‘Yes, I even contacted her father in Bulgaria, silly I know, but at one point I really thought I could marry her. Make an honest woman of her. It seems ridiculous now.
He sighed. ‘Her name was Bogomila Todorova.’

***
Trajan woke up with a start, somewhat alarmed to hear the sound of the television downstairs. His wife was still in bed, her face buried in a pillow. He groaned and got out of bed, dressed in shorts and a plain white T-shirt, and padded across the landing, muttering to himself. The kids never left their room after lights out, but what else could it be? His daughter had started getting moody lately, at twelve she was growing into a woman and seemed to be angry at him all the time. Perhaps this was start of some kind of rebellion?
He owned a large house, built on the proceeds of organised crime, so once downstairs he had to go down a long white tiled corridor to get to the TV room. He switched on the hall light and as he entered the room where the television was talking to itself. As he reached for the light switch, he was gearing himself up to have the shouting match he was anticipating he was about to have with his daughter. It clicked, but nothing happened.
With a muttered curse he went skirting around the large horseshoe of couches in the centre of the large room to get to the coffee table were the remote control usually was, but couldn’t locate it in the dark. He was about to go over to the wall to switch it off when a voice somewhere behind him said, ‘leave it on.’
He spun round, looking for the speaker. The voice had come from somewhere over by the entrance to the conservatory. ‘Who’s there?’
A short figure stepped out of the darkness. They were dressed in black and worse a mask. ‘It’s me, Gavin. I’m just here to talk.’
Trajan crossed himself, muttering ‘pricolici’ as he did so, then edged towards a shelving unit behind the couches. ‘What about?’
‘About a girl called Elaine Nostrum. Please stand still. Have you heard of her?’
‘No,’ said Trajan sharply, but he did stop moving though.
‘Her real name was Bogomila Todorova. She worked as a prostitute in Edinburgh two years ago.’
‘Right,’ he growled. ‘And you think to yourself. That Eastern European name. Who else I know with name like this also? This may shock you, but I don’t traffic in women. You think because I’m Romanian I traffic in women? I’m not monster. She was one of Mack’s girls. I remember when she was killed. It was in papers. Police like you, think I am to blame. They ask me many questions. What’s the matter? You don’t like this answer?’
Kelly shrugged, then with what sounded like genuine curiosity asked, ‘what do you do then?’
‘What’s it to you?’ asked Trajan with a shrug. ‘Protection, off-track gambling, drugs, general… crime.’
‘Fine,’ said Kelly with a wave of her hand. ‘Give me something useful then. Make me go away.’
‘OK, I give you something, pricolici,’ he said, going towards the shelves again. ‘I have contact details for some of Mack’s girls ok?’
He opened a large cigar box and pulled out a gun, which he swung to point at her.
‘Can you dodge bullets, little pricolici?’ he snarled. ‘Or do they just bounce off you?’
Kelly froze.
‘You come to my fucking house?’ continued Trajan. ‘With my wife and kids asleep upstairs? You are very foolish, little pricolici. I should just shoot you here and now. Or maybe I call the boys and we have some fun at last? You have made a lot of friends back at the club.’
He raised up the gun, as if psyching himself up for a shot.
Kelly slowly raised her hands up in front of her, palms out. ‘You’re going to put a corpse in your living room? The shot will wake your family. Do you want the police here?’
‘Take off your mask, pizdă,’ Trajan hissed. ‘So I can see who you are before I kill you!’
Kelly slowly raised her hands to her mask, but then stopped and gave him the finger. He cursed and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. He pulled the trigger again. It clicked again. He threw the gun at her head, but it missed and hit the curtains behind her. In a flash she was on him, and with a twist of his arm she threw him onto the floor. Before he could catch his breath, she had her knees in his back and his left arm pinned painfully behind him.
‘What sort of burglar do you think I am?’ she whispered in his ear. ‘I checked everything in the room before I turned on the television of course. I don’t know much about guns, but I can figure out how to take the bullets out of them at least.’
Trajan squirmed, but it was impossible. The only way he got out of the hold he was in, was with a broken arm or if the pricolici let him go.
‘Did you kill Treacle?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he groaned through gritted teeth. ‘He told us everything about you, pricolici. Been robbing houses for years, eh? You were there the night Big Mack was killed. Did you do it? You had better watch your back. If we don’t get you, the Hamilton’s will. When they get their hands on you, dumnezeu te ajută…’
The rest of his sentence was cut off with a groan as Kelly twisted his arm further into the small of his back.
‘Have you got any information for me or not Trajan? About this girl, remember?’
‘Go talk to Jackie,’ he gasped through gritted teeth. ‘Jackie Dempsey. She knows all of the Hamilton girls; she’ll tell you everything there is to know.’
‘Where do I find her?’
‘Just ask about on Salamander Street. She is not hard to find.’
Something hard hit him on the back of the head and his arm was released. He rolled over and groaned then tried to stand up. He managed to do so on the second attempt. He looked around; he was alone in the room. He coughed, then started yelling for his wife to wake up.

***
Jackie Dempsey was not hard to find. Everyone on Salamander Street, Edinburgh’s unofficial red-light district knew her and Kelly was pointed to a block of flats that sat back from the main road.
Salamander Street was little more than a connecting road between Leith Walk and the Seafield Cemetery, home to car dealerships, self-storage units and groups of isolated terraced houses, old and forgotten like the last standing survivors of a tsunami wave. Haggard looking street walkers stood at the corners, watching the cars go past with empty eyes. The flats Kelly was direct to was where some of them could go for a rest or a cup of tea on a cold night, as long as they kept quiet and didn’t bring any men with them.
The residents of the other flats knew well what was going on, and she was given a filthy look by one neighbour as she went up the stairs to Jackie’s door. Kelly kept her head down and her hood up. She was dressed and Gavin, the idea of going dressed as a tart only occurring to her once she had arrived on the Street. She almost laughed out loud when she had pictured the state she would have looked,
‘What do you want son?’ said a voice from the other side of the door when she knocked.
‘They told me you might make me a cup of tea if I asked nicely,’ replied Kelly.
Once inside it didn’t take Kelly long to butter up Jackie further. She gave her best cheeky young scamp impersonation, flirted a little and the old lady was chatting away like they were long lost friends.
Jackie was maybe only fifty or so, but dressed older, and moved around slowly.
‘I don’t get about quickly these days. I’m waiting on a hip operation,’ she explained as she pottered into the kitchen. ‘Too many nights standing in the rain on street corners probably.’
She wore a floral tabard with a big pocket in the front from which she pulled a packet of cigarettes. She smoked as the kettle boiled.
They chatted as she made the tea, arranged a tray and brought it through.
‘Aye, I ken them all,’ she said as she eased herself into her high armchair. ‘I see them doon there, shivering in the cold. I felt sorry for them, ken? Invited them in to get warm. I used to be like them, before I married my Dougal. When he died the council gave me this place. Who are you looking for son?’
Kelly, who was munching on a chocolate hobnob washed it down with a swig of tea before speaking. ‘A lady called Elaine Nostrum. She’s dead, I know that, but I want to know who her last client was.’
‘Oh aye,’ mused Jackie. ‘I mind Ellie. Yon was a bad business. They’re usually pretty secretive about their men, ken? Especially when they are rich. They usually give false names, anyway, but aye, I remember when she was killed, she only had one client, right enough. Elly told me it was someone high up. Said she recognised him off the tele. If she ever did tell me his name, I’ve forgotten it.’
‘Did she say if he was left-handed?’ asked Kelly, leaning forward.
Jackie just laughed and gave her an odd look. ‘Who are you? Columbo? What’s with all the questions anyway?’
‘I’m in heaps of trouble,’ admitted Kelly. ‘I’m trying to find the man that killed her. I’m hoping that might help with the trouble I’m in.’
‘Oh, aye well,’ said Jackie. ‘Well watch yourself around here then. There are all sorts of wrong’uns that go about down on the street. You don’t want to get tangled up with them.’
Jackie poured herself another cup of tea, taking her time, as if sorting through old memories.
‘Oh, I do remember something!’ she said almost startling herself as she looked up from her cup. ‘She said he’d been in the Cosby’s when he was younger! Aye, I remember that. Thought it was odd. That must have been where she saw him right? On that show? Doctor Huxtable and aw’ that? Or was it that he was a soldier? Oh, I’m sorry sweetie, I can’t remember. Maybe it was both?’
‘Was he… I…’ Kelly stumbled over her words, not knowing what to make of what Jackie had said. Before she could organise her thoughts, there was a knock on the door.
‘Don’t get up dear,’ said Jackie as she pulled herself painfully out of her chair and headed for the door. ‘I dare say that’s Betty, here for her lunch.’
Kelly heard the door being opened, but then a squeak of surprise from Jackie and the sounds of heavy footfalls in the hall. Kelly stood up, suddenly anxious.
Three men walked into the living room. Two were dressed in black and hung back at the door. Their leader was a tall and strong looking man, with a shaved head and a tattoo of a camera, of all things, tattooed on his neck. He wore a dark purple tracksuit and a lot of gold chains, looking like some kind of Dundonian version of Ali G.
‘Look at this eh? Comes strolling right into our manor, as bold as brass!’ said the bald man, turning to his goons with a crooked smile. ‘This is the Gavin kid is it now? Doesn’t look like much does he?’
‘Who are you?’ said Kelly, standing her ground by the sofa.
‘Who am I?’ said the man with a laugh, pointing at his chest. ‘Who the fuck am I?’
He had turned to his friends, but then he turned to Kelly again and looked right at her with his pale grey eyes. ‘I’m Lenny Hamilton, Mack the Knife’s was my brother and you’re dead ya wee cunt!’