‘You Thomas McNiece?’ Eric Manson asked.
‘Aha, have a’ won the pools or somethin’?’ the man replied jocularly, eyes still closed.
‘No, and I need to speak to you.’
‘Do yous now.’ A slight note of menace crept into the reply, as if to convey that the favour of an interview might not be forthcoming.
‘Yes, I do. In connection with an ongoing investigation that we are conducting, we need -’
‘Why didn’t you say you were a polisman?’ McNiece interrupted him, his eyes now wide open, mouth shaping itself into a cold smile. ‘Jist tell us whit you want, son.’
‘Son! Chief Inspector to you, McNiece.’
‘Oh, aye, Chief Inspector, sir, Your Holiness… didnae take you long tae show yer teeth, eh, tiger? So, whit d’you want?’
‘What were you doing on Friday last, from, say, ten p.m. onwards?’
‘The twelfth?’
‘Aye. The twelfth.’
‘Do you mind if a’ ask why, your honour?’
‘Yes.’
‘So that’s how it’s tae be. Fine, an’ it’s easy peasy an a’. I wis at hame havin’ a wee pairty, a birthday pairty. Ma birthday pairty.’
‘How long did it go on for?’
‘A’ nicht.’
‘So your guests, if we speak to them, will presumably be able to confirm that you were there all night? Eh?’
‘Aha. Ma pals, as I cry ’em. No probs there… sir. You’d no’ hae a pairty, eh? No pals tae come!’
‘After the party, what did you do?’
‘Ye’ll nivver even hae been to a pairty, eh? Whit d’ye think I done? I lay doon in ma bed a’ day wi’ a sair heid.’
‘On your own?’
‘Ma flat wis fu’ of folk, sleeping a’ o’er the place. Some oan the settee, oan the lounge flair… an’ Jessie wis in bed wi’ me.’
‘Jessie who?’
‘Jessie May McNiece.’
‘Your wife?’
‘Naw. That’s where we’re alike eh son? Both sleepin’ wi’ dogs. But a’m the lucky wan, ken. Mine’s got French blood. She’s a poodle.’
Getting up to leave and sticking a finger in the congealed soup, then sucking it and re-inserting it, Eric Manson growled, ‘I’ll not be taking your word for any of this, McNiece, I’ll be checking up on it all.’
‘Aye, right,’ the man replied, supping his pint. ‘Ye just do that, yer worship.’
9
The lawyer did not smile when Alice entered his office. Her appointment with him had been fitted into his already packed diary by his secretary, who was shortly off on maternity leave and now careless of whether he approved. Guy Bayley made no attempt to conceal his annoyance at the re-arrangement of his timetable. Instead, he waved towards a hard chair opposite his own, then pushed all the papers on his desk to one side as if to clear a space for whatever matter she might raise with him. It seemed a slightly petulant, almost hostile reception, and all the while his expression remained unchanged, his mouth set tight as a trap and his brows furrowed. He had thin blond curls which fell in every direction on his scalp and a complexion as pale as ivory, but extending just below his hairline was an angry, red margin of psoriasis, framing his forehead like a wreath of blood. Despite remaining silent he managed to convey an impression of extreme exhaustion, a tiredness with life and terminal ennui.
Just as Alice took her seat the door opened and a heavily pregnant young woman came in bearing a tray with two cups of tea on it. She threw Alice a shy smile as she lowered the tray onto the desk, but before she had a chance to take the cups off, her boss said wearily, ‘Not now, Susannah. I’ll have mine later.’
As the door closed again he turned his attention to the policewoman.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have long, Ms Rice, and although I did set up the group I don’t think I’ll have much information – or at least much information likely to be of any use to you. I co-ordinate our activities, orchestrate our campaigns, act as a spokesperson and so forth. I see it as a type of social work really. No-one, I think, could suggest that the “sex-workers” are anything other than a public nuisance.’
He waited a few seconds for her assent, which did not come, and then continued in the same dull tone, ‘and finally, despite our best efforts, they have now achieved the double – sex and murder, no less.’
Sounding slightly more interested in the subject, he told Alice that on the nights of both crimes he had been on duty, scouring the streets for prostitutes, ready to winkle them out of Salamander Street, Boothacre or any other of their shady cracks and crevices. By the time his vigil had ended he had encountered one whore only, a Russian creature whose accent seemed tailor-made for the foul insults she flung at him.
Talking to the man in his sedate, New Town premises, Alice saw no signs of the hate-filled fanatic described by Ellen Barbour, and wondered, momentarily, if her friend had confused him with someone else. His office, with its black-and-white Kay prints, vapid watercolours and thick carpet, seemed so far removed from the front-line in Leith that it was hard to see how the two worlds might meet, far less collide. And had he not lived in Disraeli Place, their two orbits would have remained fixed, distant and discrete, each unaware of the other spinning past.
‘Well, sir, those two unfortunate women…’ she began, but immediately he cut in, now emphasising his point by rapping his fountain pen on his desk.
‘They are not, sergeant, “unfortunate women”,’ he intoned, a humourless smile of correction on his face.
‘Sorry, sir?’ she replied, puzzled.
‘They are not “unfortunate women” as you described them,’ he answered, repeating himself but making no attempt to explain his statement.
‘No? Then what are they, sir?’
‘Dead whores,’ he said, brushing a shower of thick scurf off his right shoulder.
‘Murdered women are surely unfortunate women?’
He rolled his eyes, eloquently expressing his exasperation at her apparent sentimentality.
‘No, sergeant, my point is that they are not women, not real women, at least. No real woman would do what they do, I’m sure you’d agree.’
Finding herself annoyed by his response, she said coolly, ‘Again, I’m not sure what you mean, sir. Every second all around the world women are doing what they do – not for money, perhaps, and out of choice, but many of the prostitutes have no choice.’
‘Firstly, many but not all. And secondly, and more importantly, there is always a choice,’ the man said, as if addressing a particularly slow child.
‘If they are not women, then what exactly are they, sir?’
‘Society’s flotsam and jetsam, obviously. Society’s, let’s not mince our words, rubbish, detritus, garbage.’
‘And such rubbish should be cleaned up, eh, sir?’ She wondered how far he would go.
‘Well, I don’t know where you live, sergeant,’ he said, looking hard at her, ‘but perhaps you and your neighbours would welcome with open arms those “unfortunate women”? Welcome their used needles, their discarded condoms, their pimps and punters, them and all their revolting paraphernalia, to your leafy suburb. If not, then you too might find that if they arrived, uninvited, you also would want them cleaned up and got rid of, from your own area at least.’
‘And how should they be cleaned up?’
‘With a BIG BROOM,’ he said, opening his eyes unnaturally wide to express his sarcasm, ‘anything to move them on… but killing’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?’
‘Are there any witnesses to your movements on -’ she began, but before she had completed her question he returned to the fray.