‘Will it happen, Pops?’ I asked. ‘The unified force.’
‘It’s shaping up that way,’ he admitted. ‘You only need to look at the numbers. If the Nationalists and Aileen’s crew both back it, then it’ll walk through the parliament. She and Clive Graham probably think I’ll keep quiet if ACPOS support it, but I won’t. Any journo who asks me a straight question will get a straight answer, and I’ll bloody well make sure that I am asked. It won’t make any difference, though, for all the friends I have in the media, and in the parliament itself, because when it comes to it, there won’t be a free vote.’
‘Will you really quit over it?’
‘That’s my intention, although Aileen imagined that I could be bought off with the top job. No chance of that,’ he said emphatically. ‘What would make me reconsider? If you asked me not to, I might not.’
‘If I asked you to betray your principles?’ I exclaimed. ‘Why would I ever do that?’
‘Look, kid, if I go balls out over this I could make myself pretty unpopular with some people with a lot of power. There could be backwash, you know.’
The waves would have to be high, I reckoned, to reach a fifth-floor office in the biggest commercial law firm in Scotland. But they could be as high as the castle that I could see through my window and they wouldn’t make any difference to me.
‘Remember that song,’ I said, ‘the one you used to sing to me when I was wee, in the years after Mum died, whenever I got sad and started to cry because really she wasn’t coming back?’
I could see him smile, as if we were on Skype. ‘Yeah. The one by Paul Williams: wee guy, glasses, dodgy hair; “You and me against the world”. I’ve still got it, you know, that record. It was your mum’s favourite.’
‘Then dig it out and play it, because it was never more true.’
Nobody really understands about my dad and me; there’s a bond that ties us together, one that will never break, although she who formed it has been dead for twenty-five years.
‘Sauce’ Haddock
Satnav guided me all the way into the heart of an old-established residential area called Newton Mearns, to the south of Glasgow. What it didn’t tell me was that I’d been there before, not on police business, but for an away tie in a national foursomes competition against a pair from Whitecraigs Golf Club. I have very warm memories of that place; my partner and I handed the opposition a dog licence, in other words we beat them seven and six.
Solomon’s restaurant was situated only a few streets away from the clubhouse where we’d eaten after the match. That was a friendlier snack than it might have been, given what we’d just done to the locals. I’ve been to golf clubs where I haven’t even been offered a drink in those circumstances.
Solomon himself, a cheery, dark-haired wee guy. . think of Ben Elton with a refined Glasgow accent. . just short of forty, first name Jeffrey, ‘but call me Solly; everyone else does’, kept up the local standard of hospitality. He took me into his small office, and gave me sparkling mineral water, then produced a plate of buns that he called rugelach. I tried one, then another, then another. ‘Cream cheese cookies,’ he explained. ‘Kosher, of course. Go on, have another.’
I did; I hadn’t realised how hungry I was.
‘So,’ he said, once we had cleared the plate, ‘this guy you asked me about. What’s the story?’
‘I have a photograph,’ I told him, ‘but I have to warn you, it’s not the nicest.’
‘I have a strong stomach, Mr Haddock.’ He grinned. ‘Unsullied by pork, that’s why. You know the story about the rabbi and the priest?’
I did, but I let him tell it anyway, and I laughed when he was done. Then I took the mugshot from my pocket, slipped it from the evidence bag that held it and showed it to him.
It wiped the smile off his face, but it didn’t take the colour from his cheeks. He shrugged. ‘So he’s dead. I’ve seen worse: I did some kibbutz time when I was a kid, and we had trouble once. Rocket attack. What happened to him?’ He paused, and his eyes widened slightly. ‘You’re not going to tell me it was food poisoning, are you?’
‘No,’ I replied, smiling vaguely for a second or two, as I tried to work out whether his concern was real or just part of his shtick. ‘He had a brain haemorrhage, no warning. Pretty much instant cheerio. If it’s any consolation, he seems to have enjoyed his last meal. He ate plenty of it and he didn’t have time to digest it. That’s how we linked him to you.’
‘So what can I tell you about him?’
‘His name would be nice. Was he a regular?’
Solly shook his head. ‘Never seen him before. I have lots of regulars, and I know them all, but equally, because this is the only kosher restaurant in a long day’s march, I have a lot of occasional trade.’
‘How about his bill?’ I asked. ‘Can you identify that? I might be able to trace him through his credit card slip.’
‘I can find his bill, no problem,’ he told me, ‘but there ain’t no transaction slip, because he paid in cash. That’s why I remember him so clearly. You have any idea how few cash customers pass through here, or through any retail business these days? I love those guys. When someone offers me real money rather than plastic I knock the bill down to the nearest fiver, out of pure sentiment.’ He winked at me. ‘And when I do, the tip is always bigger. Works every time, and it did with him. I’ve still got the notes, by the way.’
‘You have?’
My tone must have rung a warning bell. ‘All above board,’ he insisted. ‘It all gets declared, honest. It’s just that I have so little currency that I don’t bank it very often; I tend to keep it as a float.’
‘Solly,’ I told him, ‘when I showed you my warrant card, it didn’t have HMRC on it. I don’t care about that. Anyway, I don’t imagine there’s any way you can tell which are the notes he gave you.’
‘Hell yes,’ he laughed. ‘I know exactly which ones they were. The only two Bank of England fifties I’ve taken in here since I opened.’ Just as I was thinking that his prices must be sky-high if it took two fifties to cover chicken broth with matzohs and stuffed fish, he added, ‘He didn’t give me them, though. It was one of his mates.’
‘He wasn’t alone?’
‘No. Party of three.’
That was news indeed. ‘Can you describe the other guys?’ I asked, trying to sound casual. Solly struck me as a man with an imagination and I didn’t want to get him so excited that it ran riot. ‘Age bracket, for example?’
‘Same ballpark as your mate, I’d say. Medium height, all of them. One of them was fair-haired, sort of ginger, with a crew cut, a real flat-top; reminded me of that American wrestler guy, Brock Lesnar, only smaller.’ I’d no idea who that was, but I made a mental note to Google him and find a likeness. ‘Otherwise,’ Solly continued ‘they were ordinary-looking guys. Nondescript,’ he declared. ‘I could do a photofit if you like,’ he added.
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ I said; a nondescript photofit, indeed. I reckoned that Brock Lesnar was as lucky as I was going to get, but I was wrong.
‘One thing, though,’ Solly chirped on. ‘The other two guys weren’t Jewish. They hadn’t a clue about the menu. Your dead guy had to explain what everything was, and in the end they let him order for them.’
A bit more, but it didn’t really take me beyond ‘nondescript’.
‘And they weren’t British.’
That was more like it. ‘Explain,’ I murmured.
‘They spoke English, to me and the staff, but with accents. The dead guy, the Jew; his was closest to normal, but it still wasn’t. The other two, I dunno; Australian? New Zealand?’
‘To you and the staff, you said. What about among themselves?’
He shook his head, firmly, sending a white shower of dandruff on to the empty plate. ‘No, they spoke something else then. But don’t ask me what it was. I don’t have a bloody clue, other than that it wasn’t Hebrew. I’m not fluent, but I’d have picked up some of it if it had been that.’