‘How about his associates? Did you know many of them?’
‘You’ve probably met them all yourself by now, unless there are folk he’s got to know since I left. Gary didn’t make friends easily. In fact, Gary didn’t make friends, period.’
‘Who was closest to him?’ asked Wilding. ‘Oliver Poole?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. He saw Ollie only when he needed to; they might have had the odd pint, but that was all. He never came to the house, and we only ever went to his once, to a party about ten years ago. If you ask me to guess, from the people I met in and around the shop, I’d say that Eddie Charnwood was the closest thing he had to a pal.’
‘Not Smith?’
Mrs Philips laughed. ‘Big Ming? Gary described him as a lackey once, and that’s as good a description as any. He paid him next to bugger all, I know that; minimum wage. I don’t know how he survived. No, Eddie Charnwood was as close as anybody got. In fact we even got a Christmas card from him and his wife the year before I left. Her name was Sorry. I remember laughing at it; there was I feeling sorry for myself, and she was called that.’
‘Takes all sorts,’ Mackenzie murmured. ‘You don’t seem sorry for yourself now, Mrs Philips,’ he went on, his voice hardening with every word. ‘You were married to the guy for twelve years, and now he’s dead, tied up and butchered like a veal calf.’ He glanced around the room. ‘Yet I don’t see any signs of mourning around here. Did nobody care about the poor bastard?’
For a moment Wilding thought that Kitty Philips would live up to her name and lash out at the chief inspector like a cat, raking her claws across his face. He moved, ready to step between them, but she controlled herself, although her face was twisted with sudden anger.
‘What do you know?’ she shouted. ‘You flash supercilious bastard, what do you know? Do you think I should be dressed in black from head to foot? No fucking chance, and do you know why not? Because if I did, Gary would be up there,’ she pointed at the floor, her finger stabbing, ‘or down there, more like, laughing at me. The man didn’t have any love in him; he never showed it and he rejected it whenever it was shown to him. Once, just once, I said to him that I’d like to have kids. He looked at me as if I was crazy, then he said, “And what exactly would be in that for me?”
‘He wasn’t inhuman, I’m not saying that, but he wasn’t able to have normal relationships. There was nobody in his life that wasn’t of use to him. He never gave anything willingly, he only took it. He might have left everything to his mother, but he had no time for her when he was alive. He never visited her, and when she got old he let the social-services people look after her.
‘Do you know the main reason I left him? It wasn’t just about money; look, if I really needed it I used to take it and that was that. No, it was because I took a look at myself one day, at the number of people I had in my life, and at the way I treated them, and I realised that he was making me like him. And I left him, before it was too late.’
She paused in her tirade to reach out and poke Mackenzie in the chest, hard enough for him to flinch. ‘So, mister, don’t you look down your nose at me, just because I’m not sitting in that chair crying into my hankie. It’s awful that Gary died the way he did, but the fact is the world won’t be a sadder place without him.’ She glared at the chief inspector. ‘And you know what? I look at you, and I see a bit of him in there. Now go on, the pair of you. I’ve got nothing more to tell you and I’ve got to get ready for work.’
Mackenzie might have stood his ground, but Wilding took the lead. ‘Thanks, Mrs Philips,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything else we need I’ll call you.’ He nodded to the chief inspector and headed for the door. ‘What the hell was all that about?’ he asked, as they reached the car.
‘Search me. She really blew off steam, didn’t she?’
‘I don’t mean her, sir, I mean you. Why did you rattle her cage like that?’
‘Because I chose to, Sergeant. She annoyed me, so I had a pop at her, just to shake her up, just to get under her skin. And you know what, Ray? You’re annoying me too. I’ve had just about as much of this constant questioning of my methods as I’m going to take.’
Wilding looked at him coolly. ‘Very good, sir,’ he said, as he opened the driver’s door.
Mackenzie was fastening his seat-belt when his mobile sounded. He scowled and reached for it. ‘DCI,’ he snapped, then waited. ‘Do you want Wilding as well?’ he asked, his tone altered. ‘Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ Pause. ‘Half an hour. See you.’ He glanced to his right as he replaced the phone. ‘That was McIlhenney: he wants a briefing on the investigation. Get us back to Leith, and I’ll take the car on up to Fettes.’
Fifty
Much of the west of Scotland was uncharted territory to Sir James Proud, and Wishaw was included in the extensive list of places of which he was almost totally ignorant. He knew no more than that it was conjoined to Motherwell, Bob Skinner’s home town, which he had visited once for an ACPOS meeting in the offices of North Lanarkshire council.
He came off the M8 at Newhouse, and headed into the former steel town, past the site that had once been home to the Ravenscraig strip mill, allowing his global positioning system to guide him to Wishaw. There was no obvious boundary between the two towns, so he was slightly taken aback when he was instructed to make a right turn, then a left and found himself stopping outside number seventeen Church Road, where a sign beside the door confirmed that he had arrived at the offices of Woodburn Hill and White.
Having checked that he was parked legally, he stepped into a dull reception area, pulling off his driving gloves and stuffing them into the pockets of his Barbour jacket. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ a young voice asked him. Its owner was seated behind a desk that was bound in a leather-like cream fabric, designer furniture which told him at once that this law firm was determined to present a modern image to its clients. The same could have been said of the receptionist: her hair was three different colours and she wore a top with ‘FCUK’ emblazoned across it. Earlier in his career, Sir James would have regarded it as grounds for arrest. A sign beside her computer keyboard told him that her name was Kylie McGrane.
‘I’d like to see one of your partners,’ he replied, ‘but I’m not sure which one.’
‘Well,’ said the girl, ‘there’s Mr Leckie, there’s Mrs Gillingham and there’s Miss Ward.’
Proud’s eyebrows rose slightly at the third name. ‘Miss Ward, I think, if she’s available. Her name doesn’t appear on the internet. Why is that?’
‘She’s only just been made a partner, sir. Who shall I tell her is calling?’
The chief constable produced a card from the breast pocket of his sports jacket and handed it to the receptionist. As she read it, her eyes widened and her mouth opened a little. ‘If you’ll just excuse me for a moment, sir,’ she stammered. She rushed from the reception area, returning around a minute later with another woman, stocky, dark-haired, square-faced, in her early thirties, with the sort of sharp, perceptive eyes that Proud used to fear in the early days of his career, when he was required on occasion to go into the witness box.
‘Sir James,’ she said, extending a hand, ‘I’m Ethel Ward. Is this an official visit?’
‘Well, yes,’ he replied, carefully, ‘but a very discreet one.’
‘Come through and tell me about it, then.’ She led him, past a staircase, to a small room at the rear of the building; there were bars outside the window. ‘I’m the junior partner,’ she said, with a sudden smile that made her seem not grim at all. ‘In this firm you climb the stairs through seniority.’