Chapter 11 (4867)
Campbell shouted at
his girlfriend, ‘you fucking fat cow!’ and slammed the door of their grubby
flat, then gingerly descended the stairs to the front entrance of the block of
flats he lived in. If he wasn’t a total wreck, he’d give her another black eye,
the bitch.
The block of flats
was part of a large U-shape building that centred on a kid’s play park. This was
where his seven-year-old daughter was playing with some of the other local kids,
not that he cared about that. He sat down on a damp bench, cursing as he got
his joggers wet. He then pulled out his phone and started browsing through all
the timewaster games that were installed on it.
With Lenny in
hospital, and Soft Tony fuck-knew where he had nothing to do all day. His girlfriend,
and mother of their daughter, had been nipping his head since then. He spent
all is time loafing around in the flat and not bring any money in. In just a
few days she had lost patience with him.
‘Oh, go get a job, you
lazy cunt!’ she’d shouted at him, coming down in the morning and once again
finding him still awake in the living room, hunched over a PlayStation
controller, surrounded by empty beer cans and crisp packets. He tried to lamp her
one, but even though she was a fat pig, she easily avoided him. He had been
hobbling around like an old man since the beating he’d taken from Gavin Newgate
and even getting in and out of his armchair was agony. There was a pain
somewhere deep inside him that seemed to be getting worse as the days wore on. He
was starting to think that he should go see a doctor. He’d been self-medicating
with whiskey and beer and that had certainly been taking the edge off, but it
was only masking the problem and he still walked everywhere like John Wayne. The
kick to the head had made his vision blurry for days, but that had sorted
itself out after a while and now the only thing blurring his vision this
morning was the drink he’d put away last night.
Eventually he decided he wasn’t in
the mood for games. He was keeping off of social media, so he turned his phone
sideways and started watching an old episode of Buffy. It was a pretty keech
show, but it had been a favourite as a kid and he found the nostalgia it brought
to him comforting.
He was onto his second episode when
someone sat down beside him and said, ‘alright Soups?’
‘Fuck!’ he yelped and stood up when
he saw the small hooded figure of the person he knew as Gavin Newgate.
‘Don’t run,’ said Kelly calmly. ‘Sit
down or I’ll knock shite out of you again.’
‘Fucking hell,’ groaned Campbell,
who then looked around and eventually sat down. ‘What do you fucking want?’
‘Just a chat, man. Relax.’
‘Relax? You’re a fucking maniac!’
snarled Campbell. ‘Lenny is still in hospital with a fracture pelvis. He’ll be
in stooky for months. Fuck knows if his eyebrow will grow back. And Soft Tony
has a brain bleed. His eyes are pointing in different directions now thanks to
you.’
‘I don’t care.’
Campbell, full of pent up anger
made a half-lunge towards her. Kelly scooted over on the bench and held up her fists.
‘Fuck around and see what happens.’
The menace in her tone made
Campbell think twice about going another round with her and he sat back down, defeated.
‘Ok, ok!’
‘Good,’ said Kelly in a harsh whisper.
‘I know you’re a snitch. So, if you can talk to the cops, then you can talk to
me. I want to know what you know about Mack’s murder.’
‘I’m no fucking snitch!’ fumed Campbell.
‘And what’s it to you?’
‘None of your business. How about
this – was Mack blackmailing anyone?’
‘Probably,’ Campbell sighed, ‘but
I didn’t get involved in that sort of thing.’
‘Come on, Soups. We all want to
catch the guy that killed Mack. You can’t put any of this together? Someone came
to the house and killed Mack. Anyone connected to a blackmail attempt?’
‘My name is Baxter, ok?’ he hissed
back. ‘OK, ok. There was this guy, some posh bloke. I know Mack was trying to get
a lot of money out of him, but I don’t know anything more than that. Anyway - if
I tell you anything the Hamiltons will kill me.’
‘If you don’t tell me I’ll smash your
face in here and now,’ threatened Kelly. ‘Besides, we want the same thing. Tell
me what you know and maybe I can get to Mack’s killer. Play it right and you
could even end up a hero.’
‘To who?’ said Campbell in a self-pitying
whine. ‘The Hamiltons in Edinburgh are done, with Mack dead and Lenny in stooky.
Someone else will move in, or they’ll send a cousin down from Dundee to take
over. Either way, I’m spent. Beat up by a wee laddie, I may as well get a job in
fucking Tesco.’
‘What a sad story.’
‘Fuck off, Gavin,’ said Campbell with little malice.
‘That’s not the way my luck has been going lately. There have been a lot of
bodies mounting up lately, I just don’t want to end up dead too.’
‘If that’s the case then tell me what happened
with Mack that night? Before he was murdered.’
‘Och well,’ said Campbell,
clearing is throat. ‘It was just business as usual really, ken? One of the old
boys was down from Dundee, called a wee gathering and we were away to that. But
then Mack got a call and changed all the plans. He seemed happy though. None of
us knew, but we all guessed that the big fish he was blackmailing had come
through with the money. Mack sent us on and he went back up to the Manse alone.
Probably to hide what he was up to from Lenny who was mooching around for a
cut.’
‘Who was he blackmailing?’
‘Not a scoobie,’ said Campbell
honestly.
‘Who would know?’
‘Maybe Lenny? I telt ye, I don’t know.’
‘What about the girl, Elaine
Nostrum. Did you know her?’
Campbell looked at her in confusion.
‘One of Lenny’s tarts, isn’t it? Got offed a couple of years ago? Is she part
of this?’
Kelly sighed. ‘You don’t know much,
do you Baxter?’
‘I just got paid to stand in the background
and look menacing. Sometimes I hit people. What do you want from me? Fuck’s
sake.’
‘Just the name of whoever it was
Mack was bloody black mailing!’ said Kelly, who was about ready to give up.
‘I don’t know!’ pleaded Campbell,
but then something stirred in his whiskey-addled brain. ‘Oh, wait though, there
was one time we went out to the big fish’s house. Massive place it was. We just
waited in the car while Mack went in. Had a big smile on his face when he got
back.’
‘Where?’
‘Out past Longniddry. Goosey-goosey-something.
Goose… I’ve lost it.’
Kelly got her phone out and
looked at Google Maps for a few minutes.
‘Gosford Hall?’ she asked,
looking up again.
‘That’s the place, by the sea. It
was a wild night when we were there.’
‘When?’
‘Like January or something. It was
not long after I started working for Mack. I dunno, I wuznae really paying
attention. I just went along with Mack and the others. Like I said, we rolled
up one night when it was pishin’ down. Me and the lads waited in the car for a
couple of hours, then when Mack was done, we went back into town. That was it.’
Kelly stood up. ‘Thanks Soups.’
She looked about, taking in the raucous
group of children playing on the swings. One of the girls waved at Campbell.
‘That your daughter?’ she asked
looking back at him.
‘Leave me family out of it!’ he exclaimed.
‘Fucking leave her alone you fucking lunatic! I swear if you touch her, I’ll go
straight to the police, I don’t care what happens.’
Kelly had only asked out of passing
interest. They were not far from her school, but a little outside the catchment
area. It had only been the teacher in her that had asked and she had done it
automatically and in complete innocence. For a moment it hit her just what sort
of world she had immersed herself in and what it thought of her. To goons like Baxter
she was a psycho, capable of anything. She wondered if she should play up to
it, create an identity for herself to terrorise the gangs of Edinburgh with.
After a heart beat or two she decided against it. Things were complicated enough.
‘Chill out man,’ she said in the
end. ‘I’m not as bad as that, I’m just backed into a corner. See you around.’
She walked off, toward the main
road. Behind her Campbell called after her, ‘what even are you? Who do you work
for?’
She didn’t turn around, or say anything
in reply. At the top of the road she jogged over the pedestrian crossing and
disappeared into Morrison’s carpark.
A few streets away Kelly hopped
onto a bus and started doing some more browsing on her phone. She read the
first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia page on Gosford Hall, build by Lord
So-and-so in 1782, sold to the Earl of Such-and-Such in 1921. She was almost
about to go back to the search results when she saw a familiar name in the text
further down, one that made her gasp and drop her phone into her lap.
The current owner was a man call
Sir Horace Lavius.
She picked up her phone again and
searched the name. He was Corum’s father all right. She couldn’t find any
recent picture of him, but one of him at a party in the 90s struck her. He was
a large, fairly heavy man with reddish-blonde hair. Stunned, Kelly sat with her
head back, looking out the window. What on earth did this mean? Was Corum’s
father the man from the pictures? In one of their meetings, Corum had told her
that his father had ‘gone off the rails’ and had had a pretty wild life after the
death of his wife.
She searched again, but could
find nothing about whether he’d been in the army. She’d been thinking about
seeing Corum today, but now that was out of the question.
More and more shocks hit her
system as she started to try and add things up in her head. Did Corum know it
was his father that had ordered the killing of the prostitute? Was he even now,
protecting him? Price hadn’t acted like he had known Corum though – but maybe
he didn’t? It was quite possible Price hadn’t known he was trying to kill his friend’s
son. Or perhaps Price and Sir Horace had had a falling out? None of it made sense.
She was jumping at shadows; she had been for days. She saw danger in everyone,
even when she had got on the bus, she had checked out everyone onboard to see if
they looked dangerous or might recognise her. Shadows or not, she believed
Two-soups when he had said he’d gone to Gosford Hall. Why would he lie? He knew
Corum, so perhaps he knew the house was owned by his father and he was just
trying to sow confusion? Perhaps that was it, but it hadn’t felt like it. Soups
hadn’t known about Elaine Nostrum, and if he had and he’d wanted to frame Corum’s
father he could have came out and said it bluntly – Sir Horace had a prostitute
killed. If he was telling lies then they were much more subtle than what would
be expected from a whiskey-soaked Craigentinny thug. Whatever it was, she wasn’t
going to take any chances. She’d go back to her flat, gather up all her treasure
and ready cash and find a quiet hotel somewhere. Tonight. Then, when the time
was right, she’d go to Gosford Hall.
***
Kelly chose the next Friday
night, after school, to break in to Gosford. The house had its own website, and
while it didn’t host many events, tonight it did, so it was not really a break-in
at all, as she simply slipped in with the crowd.
There were several dozen people there
for the event, a handful of caterers and even a camera crew. As far as she could
tell, Corum’s younger brother, a young man with long blonde hair called Roland,
worked for some sort of new-age charity or something and was launching a new
initiative to help fight deforestation in the Amazon. There had meant to be marquees
in the garden, but wind and rain had drove everyone inside. There were tables
of food scattered haphazardly in the main entrance hall, and the camera crew
set up in the ballroom, with cables lying around everywhere and floor lamps
dotted around, making the place feel like a film set.
She found it was easy enough to
slip in and mingle with the guests. It was chaotic, no one had name badges, there
was a lot of drink being served and people were milling around, laughing at their
wet hair as they came in from the garden, talking to friends or trying to make
new ones. It looked very much like other media events she had catered in the
past.
Gosford Hall was by far the
largest place she had ever broken into. Her expert eye took in everything, even
though she had no need to, she did not plan on stealing anything. She broke
away from the crowd and explored some of the room, moving around in the gloom
as the rain lashed up against the tall dark windows. There was very little
security around the place, the windows were locked, but that was all. There
were several friendly little dogs, but no alarms that she could see. There was
nothing worth stealing though, the house was full of junk. It looked like
everything of any value had been sold years ago and the Hall was in a sad state
of disrepair. Rooms were damp, dust lay on every surface and there were plentiful
signs of rodent infestation in some of the closed-up rooms. What remained was
beautiful though, the floors – dirty as they were – were made from Oak and Mahogany
boards, the paintings too large to sell or of too much sentimental value, hung
in elegant gilded frames. This had once been one of the nicest stately homes in
Scotland, but decades of neglect gave it the air of a once-famous stage actor
slipping into good-natured and stylish disgrace.
After she’d ‘cased the joint’ as
she described it to herself while being in the role of Miss Take, she wanted to
get a look at Sir Horace, so grabbing a tray of drinks she had a hunt around in
the ground floor rooms. She found him in his large library, looking out the
window over the storm-tossed Firth of Forth. He turned as she entered and held
up a hand.
‘Oh, nothing in here
lass!’ he said in a deep and rich Scottish brogue. Then seeming to change his mind,
he said, ‘well, if you could maybe bring me some tea?’
She nodded and bowed
out of the room. Sir Horace had been fat, bald and grey, and was certainly no oil
painting. He had worn no watch. Was that the man from the pictures? It could be,
but she was still doubtful. Chewing it over, she headed for the kitchens and
made up a tray of tea – four cups and a teapot – something that she could take
her time over when she got back. She could make a big production of laying out
all the cups and saucers, giving her more time to check out the man and his surroundings.
When Kelly got back to the library,
Roland was there too, and both men were sat at the log fire, looking into the
flames.
‘Thank you my dear,’ said Sir
Horace with a friendly smile as she slowly started to unload her tray onto a
side table.
Roland was talking. ‘It’s not voodoo,
dad.’
‘Witchcraft then?’ laughed the
old man. ‘I just don’t get it.’
‘You sort of listen to the
planet. I can lend you some books,’ said his son. Sir Horace waved the suggestion
away, apparently a man who owned enough books already.
‘My son the druid,’ he mused.
‘That’s it dad, exactly,’ said
Roland as he took a cup of tea from Kelly with a nod of thanks. ‘Look at it
like next level gardening - on a global level. Well, that’s how were selling it
to Channel 4 anyway. Ten episodes, a different country each episode.’
‘Simon Reeve better look out,’ he
went on with a laugh. ‘I can’t believe we’ve pulled it off to be honest, these
last few months have been amazing…’
Kelly wanted to listen in to more
of whatever it was they were talking about, but she had served all the tea and
had nothing else to do.
‘Is there anything else I can get
you?’ she asked hopefully.
Sir Horace said no thank you, and
she left. The party was breaking up and people were leaving so she went upstairs
to where she had stashed her bag and waited until the house was quiet.
Around ten, with the house presumably
all locked up and all the guests gone home, she snuck downstairs, changed out
of her everyday clothes into a black hooded top, black leggings and a full-face
balaclava.
She found Sir Horace sat, sound
asleep, in a comfortable armchair by the fire in the library. There were little
more than embers in the grate, and besides a desk lamp by the window there was
no other light, which provided her with plenty of shadows to hide in.
There was another old man, in
another chair by the fire, asleep with an empty whiskey glass still in his hand.
A small fluffy dog was asleep on the hearth rug.
Kelly skulked into the room and
hid behind a table piled with unsorted books.
She was completely
silent, but even so, the dog looked up and gave a yap. Sir Horace muttered and stretched,
but then settled back into his chair and resumed sleeping. The other man did
not move a muscle and seeing that no one else seemed to care, the dog whined, yawned
and then lay its head back down onto the rug.
She didn’t really
have a plan at this stage. She had been thinking to threaten Sir Horace with
violence until he confessed, but in this moment in time it almost seemed a
shame to wake them all. It was such a peaceful scene she didn’t want to ruin
in, and also perhaps, she was still thinking about Two-Soup’s reaction to her.
She felt she was in danger of becoming a real villain, and she didn’t like the
idea of that at all. Miss Take was a cunning thief that astounded the police
with her escapades, she wasn’t meant to be a thug. She decided to watch for a
while longer and after half an hour, Sir Horace sat up with a cough, then stood
and walked over to a hamper in the corner by the fire. From this he took a
blanket which he then arranged over his sleeping friend after gently taking the
empty glass from his hand. Kelly watched all of this from her hiding place and considered
that everything she had seen of Sir Horace so far did not match with her idea
of what a man who paid to have people killed looked like. Not that she knew
what someone like that looked like, she admitted to herself. Whatever was going
on, he was involved somehow and eventually, tonight most likely, she would have
to find out. One way or another.
Just as she was starting to think
about how to reveal herself and confront him, everyone in the room was startled
by the phone ringing. It was a landline, sat on the desk, an old-fashioned
handset with a loud and harsh ring tone. The dog barked, then jumped onto the old
man’s lap, who after his initial shock had apparently gone straight back to
sleep.
‘Hello? Hello? Oh, do shut up Henry!
Be quiet you daft bugger!’ said Sir Horace addressing the dog.
‘Hello?’ he asked again once the
dog had settled. It curled up into a ball on its master’s lap. The old man grunted,
his head lolled back and he began to snore.
All was quiet for a while, Sir
Horace stood poised at the desk, listening intently to whoever was on the other
end of the line.
‘Now look here…’ said Horace
eventually.
Then there was another long pause
as the other person spoke.
‘Now look here,’ repeated Sir
Horace. ‘You can’t keep calling like this. Whatever trouble you are in, it’s none
of my business… None of your suspicious characters have been around and I’d
send them packing if they did!... Steady on! No… no… Absolutely not. As far as
I’m concerned, the debt is paid! No, no I won’t. I don’t want to know any more
about it, goodbye!’
Sir Horace put the phone down,
and sat down at the desk. He rubbed his mouth and then sat for a while in deep
thought. Kelly was extremely alarmed. Was that Price that had just called? Sir
Horace had been very anxious. Who else could it have been? It had sounded to her
like Price was asking for help and Sir Horace was wanting nothing to do with him.
Before she had time to consider
the implications of what she had just heard any further, Sir Horace picked up
the phone again and after consulting a note pad, made a call of his own.
After a while it was picked up
and he spoke.
‘How are you doing son? How’s the leg?... I
know, I know. Just wondering if you’d had any unusual things happen recently.
Haha! Yes, apart from being shot of course! Do you remember all that business back
in January? Yes, yes. I know that now of course!... Yes… Least said, soonest
mended I always say.’
There was a long pause, the he continued. ‘Don’t
worry about me, if he comes around again, I’ll set Henry on him… I’ve no idea,
but you know the sort of company he keeps these days. Little better than fascists
if you ask me.’
There was another pause, as the person on the
other end spoke.
‘I don’t know, I didn’t ask. Something rotten
I expect, you know what he’s like.’
Another pause.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I just thought I’d better
let you know, since you had asked me to let you know if he called again. Yes.
Yes. Oh, it went well. Your brother and all his druid stuff. It will be on the
tele next year apparently. It’s a shame you couldn’t make it, but a national manhunt
is a bit more important I expect.’
There were a few more exchanges, then some
goodbyes and Sir Horace hung up.
He then sighed and went to wake up his friend
with a gentle shake. ‘Come on old fellow, lets get that dog of yours outside
for a pee.’
While he did that, Kelly snuck out of the room
and then out of the house, her head buzzing with confusion over what she had just
heard. It was still raining, but she had a waterproof jacket in her bag. She
walked to the nearest pub and called herself a taxi.
All the way home she thought about what she
had seen and heard. The first call had been from Price, of that she was
certain. And then Horace has called his son to tell him about it. So, what the hell
was going on? Whatever trouble you are in, its none of my business, Sir Horace
had said. The tone of voice and the choice of words had not really jibed with
the gravity of the situation she thought, but what else could they have been
talking about?
Then talking to
Corum, about “that business in January”, that matched exactly with what Two-Soups
had told her. So Corum had known all along that his father was being blackmailed?
Had he known all along that his father had ordered the murder of Elaine Nostrum?
All the time she had thought she had been playing Corum, he had been playing
her. He was surely aiming to set her up to take the fall, somehow, but how?
She had a room in a low-quality guesthouse
along the Portobello beachfront. It was off season, and so the house was quiet.
She let herself in the front door and quietly went to her room. It was small
and cold, but cheap and out of the way. She sat on the bed, then lay back. She
just couldn’t make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. If Corum was
playing her, then the best thing he could do was arrest her, and he had not
done that. So, why not? Presumably because whatever his plan was, he didn’t
want the police to know anything about her. Whatever he was plotting, it needed
her to be on the loose. She was being used she realised, but she’d known that
already, as soon as Corum had started describing her as an informant. Was
she being used to get to Price? Obviously Corum and his father wanted to get rid
of Price, and… no, that didn’t make sense either. Why hang up on him like that
then? Most likely Sir Horace wanted Price dead now, so why not set up a meeting
and then have Corum deal with him? After being shot in the leg, she imagined that
Corum would have little hesitation in returning the favour.
Another thing she couldn’t fathom
was why Corum would send her to Two-Soups if he had known it would lead her to his
father. Maybe he hadn’t realised Soups had known about it? There was no way now
that Two-Soups had been lying to her – she’d heard it confirmed from Sir
Horace himself. So? So Corum had not known that Two-Soups knew about his father,
which on the face of it seemed fairly unlikely. But why send her in that direction
at all? Purely as a distraction? That made no sense either, because if he was
distracting her, he didn’t need her, so why not just have her arrested?
It didn’t matter however she tried
to add up what she knew; it didn’t make any sense. Whatever was going on though,
it was indisputable that Sir Horace was involved, Corum new about it and that for
whatever reason had decided not to arrest her.
Tempting as it was, she knew not
to contact Corum in any way. How would she be able to believe anything that he
said? Again, she started to doubt herself on even this simple thought. Perhaps
it was better to call him, meet him again even, to prevent him getting suspicious
and putting a warrant out for her?
Tired as she was, and as futile
all this thinking felt to her, she knew she would not be able to sleep tonight.
She turned on the TV and tried to lose herself in a late-night film, but it was
hopeless. In the end she turned it off, then lay back in the dark, her eyes
wide open looking up at the ceiling.
After a while, she heard the front
door being opened and then some people whispering drunkenly in the hall downstairs.
Next there were footsteps on the stairs, then more voices on the landing, and
then finally in the corridor her room was on. She heard a male and female
voice, then some fumbling at the door across the hall, some giggling, then at
last the sound of a door being closed and locked.
A few minutes later there was the
noises of someone else trying to get in her room. She heard someone mutter in
drunken confusion, and the sound of a key scraping in the lock.
She waited, but whoever it was, seemed
to be so drunk they were determined that this was there room, no matter what.
‘Wrong room!’ she called from the
bed.
The drunk paused, but then went
back to trying their keys in the lock.
She went to the door and opened it,
ready to scold whoever was on the other side, but was hit by something right in
the head so hard that she tumbled, senseless, back into the room.
When she woke up, groggy and confused,
she was tied to a chair and Clarence Price was looking down at her with a knife
in his hand. As her eyes flicked open, he held the knife to her throat and
whispered harshly in her ear. ‘You and me need to have a little talk.’
