‘Can you describe him then?’
The actor laughed again. ‘My dear boy, I have always assumed that policemen are called pigs because they all look exactly alike. He was just another aggressive chap in a raincoat, that’s all.
‘But tell me, why do you ask?’
Before I could conjure up a half-decent lie, Prim jumped in. ‘Dawn was involved with a policeman for a while. He didn’t like it when she chucked him, and he gave her a hard time.’
‘Then she should complain to his superiors, surely.’
‘That could be asking for even more trouble,’ she said. ‘You can’t think of any quick way for us to trace Dawn, then, other than driving around the Highlands looking for movie lights?’
Brooks paused for a second or two. ‘There’s a company called Celtic Scenery, based down in Leith somewhere. They maintain a database of potential film sites. Visiting companies use them for advance work, choosing locations to suit story-lines, making sure that there are no electricity pylons in the background of the highland heroes, that sort of thing.’ I smiled briefly to myself, remembering jet trails in the sky in a B-MOVIE Western that I’d seen on TV as a kid. ‘If they’ve been involved, they might have a copy of the shooting schedule.
‘That’s as much help as I can give you. Now I must return to my script.’ He turned his back on us abruptly and rearranged himself, artistically, on his chair.
‘Thank you very much, Mr Brooks,’ said Prim. Without turning, he waved a hand, feebly. We made our way back into the corridor and out of the building.
The morning sunshine was refreshing after the gloom of the rehearsal room. ‘What an arsehole that guy is!’ I spluttered as we emerged.
‘Ah, my darling,’ said Prim. ‘That’s your inherent Scottish homophobia coming out.’
I looked at her in surprise. ‘Homoph… So you reckon he is too?’
‘As queer as a nineteen pound note, so Dawn said in one of her letters. It used to be a three pound note: that’s inflation for you, eh?’
I thought about it. ‘No, I won’t have the term homophobia used about me. I’ve never been afraid of a homosexual in my life. I’m a liberal in that respect. A couple of my best friends are gay. That bloke in there could be as straight as an arrow and he’d still be an arsehole.’
‘I agree,’ she said, ‘but he was useful though. Celtic Scenery can be our next stop, after we see Dylan. Could he have been the policeman who visited Brooks, d’you think?’
‘Not unless he was hell of a quick on his feet. Mike Dylan was at Leith to respond to Constable McArse’s call only a few minutes after Brooks had his visit. And why would he have been asking questions about Dawn before Kane’s body was found?
‘There’s no saying it was a policeman anyway. He was on his own, which isn’t right. Brooks didn’t see a warrant card, or even ask to see one.’
Prim smiled, mischievously. ‘He was probably too busy having fantasies about truncheons.’
‘Unworthy! No, that could have been anyone. It could even have been the real killer.’ A shudder swept through me. ‘In fact, it probably was!’
Her eyes lit up. ‘And if that’s the case, it means that Dawn must have got away from him.’
‘Aye, but it also means that he’s looking for her. We’d better get a move on. Let’s go back to the loft and see if we can find an address for Celtic Scenery in Good Old Yellow Pages.’
In which Prim says ‘Hello Mum’, and the quest goes on
GOYP let us down for once, but the good old Royal Mail Postal Address book turned up trumps. Celtic Scenery was listed at a quayside address in Leith Docks, less than a mile from the police station in Queen Charlotte Street, where we were to meet Dylan.
We sat on the sofa, clothed this time. At our feet, Wallace’s endless pursuit of the sun had taken him to a square in the middle of the varnished wooden floor where he sprawled contentedly, crunching away at a bowl of Wonder Weinie Iguana Superfood.
I put the Royal Mail book back in a drawer in my desk. ‘Ready to go?’ I asked Primavera.
She stood up. ‘Yes, but can I make a quick call first, to my Mum. I should have called yesterday, but with one thing and another…’
‘Sure, you do that, I’ll leave you to it.’
‘No, you wait right here.’
She picked up the black handset and punched a telephone number into the dialling panel, fidgeting nervously as it rang out.
‘Mum?’ Her face lit up with a huge smile. ‘It’s me. I’m back home. Yes, I’m safe, and I’m well. In fact, I’m better than I’ve been in years.’ She paused. ‘Why should you leap to that conclusion? Yes, I am; but we’re friends that’s all. Yes, he’s here. I’m at his place in fact … Don’t “Oh yes” me, Mother!’
She glanced up at me. ‘His name’s Oz Blackstone and he’s daft. Here Oz, say hello to Mum.’ She thrust the phone at me.
‘Hello Mrs Phillips,’ I said to British Telecom, ‘how are you?’
‘Very well, thank you Oz.’ Her voice sounded hearty, in a country sort of way. ‘So you’re daft, are you. In that case you and Primavera should get on very well together. She sounds very happy.’
I tried to think of an appropriate answer. ‘I think she is, Mrs Phillips. There’s no accounting for taste. Here she is again.’ I returned the phone to Prim.
‘Mum, we’ve got to go out right now, but we’ll come up to see you as soon as we can. Let’s see how the weekend goes. Yes, he is. ‘Bye.’
She hung up. ‘Mum said you sound charming.’ She kissed me, quickly. I kissed her in return, more slowly.
For a second or two her body moulded itself against mine, until she pulled herself away and held me at arm’s length. ‘Oz, I told you, first things first. My sister’s in trouble, and it’s up to you and I to find her.’
In which we tell porkies for the record, pick up Dawn’s trail, and discover that the law isn’t as big an ass as it looks.
Prim’s phone call had made it impossible for us to fit in Celtic Scenery before the police, and so we headed directly for the Leith Station, a drab Victorian building in Queen Charlotte Street.
I went up to the bar of the general office and introduced myself, and Prim, to the constable on duty. ‘DI Dylan’s expecting us,’ I told her. She looked at me in what I took for slight surprise. ‘Take a seat over there,’ she ordered, pointing. I looked at the uncomfortable wooden bench and decided to disobey.
A few minutes later a businesslike young man in his mid-twenties appeared through a half-glazed door labelled ‘Private’.
‘Good morning,’ he said, although incorrect by a few minutes. ‘I’m Detective Constable Morrow. Mr Dylan’s apologies, but he had to go out on enquiries. He’s asked me to take your statements. He said it was just a formality.’
He led us through to a small, windowless, airless interview room. It smelled of earlier occupants, and I guessed it was that special kind of room you hear about in police stations, with walls which move about on occasions; such as when a suspect proves difficult, or provocative.
Morrow was a nice lad, and actually meant it when he apologised for the conditions. ‘We have all this high-tech stuff now,’ he said, ‘yet we still have to interview ordinary decent folk like you in smelly wee rooms like this.’
He asked us only the most basic questions, allowing us to tell our stories unprompted to the tape recorder. We were lying for the record this time, and that worried me, more than slightly. But with Archer’s secret, my doubts about him, and Dawn’s predicament whirling about in my mind, I plunged on, comforting myself with the hope that one part of our story might well become true, even if retrospectively.
It didn’t take long. When I was a trainee copper, I’d had to take my statements down in longhand in a daft wee notebook, in the knowledge that I might have to read them aloud in court. I had heard tales of what could happen to policemen in the witness box, and afterwards in the Chief Constable’s office if their jotters had been doctored in any way. ‘Let me see your notebook, officer,’ is the last thing any Plod wants to hear the judge say when he’s up there, in the box, under oath. My book was always impeccable, but for all that I was still a pretty awful copper.