I heard a long intake of breath. ‘Understood?’ I repeated, loudly enough to draw a glower from a blue rinse at the next table.
‘Aye,’ Bella hissed. ‘Okay.’
‘Wise woman. Remember what I’ve said, and don’t you think, not for one second, that I won’t do everything I’ve threatened.’ I slapped my phone shut, ending the call. ‘Sorry about the language,’ I told Mia, ‘but it was your mother I was speaking to. You can cancel that standing order.’
‘Have you always been that angry?’ she asked me quietly. ‘I don’t know what you did to my mum, but you scared me.’
I looked at her. ‘Angry? Me? That was just me in cop mode, don’t worry about it.’
‘No, it was more than that. There’s real rage in you, Bob.’
‘No, really, I’m a big soft nelly at heart. You should see me at home with my kid.’
‘I’m sure, but you’re not at home just now. You couldn’t see the look in your eyes when you were lacing into my mother; I could. They were full of… fury, almost.’
‘Nah,’ I scoffed, lightly. ‘You were imagining some other bloke.’
She wouldn’t be deterred. ‘You told me your daughter doesn’t have a mother any more,’ she said. ‘What happened? Did she run off?’ I shook my head and sought refuge in a large bite of club sandwich. She took it as a snub. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I have no business asking.’
‘It’s okay,’ I told her. ‘It’s no secret. Car crash, eight years ago.’
‘Were you involved?’
‘No, she was alone. It was a silly wee car with too much power. She lost control.’
‘Poor woman. Poor man. It must have hurt you so badly.’
I looked away. ‘That’s a fair assumption. You know the damnedest thing, though? The mind must have some sort of a safety valve, for I’ve got very little memory of the accident itself, even though they told me that I arrived on the scene not long after it happened. There’s before, and there’s after, but the detail of the… the thing itself, it’s not there.’
‘I wonder if that’s what makes you angry,’ she mused. ‘Or could it be that when you have to deal with people like my mother, and you must have, all the time, you feel it’s unfair, for them to be alive while your wife isn’t.’
I held my hands up in mock surrender. ‘Hey,’ I exclaimed, ‘I thought you did a broadcast journalism degree.’
‘I did, but there was a psychology element: to help us with interviewing, let us work out what our subjects’ reactions meant.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind next time I’m interviewed on the radio.’ I turned the spotlight back on to her. ‘But what about you? Don’t you feel any anger about your brothers or your uncles?’
‘About Gavin and Billy, no. Not a bit. They had no regard for life. Ryan? You could say he never had a chance, but I could see that Uncle Gavin was a beast, so why couldn’t he? But suppose he had, it wouldn’t have made any difference. He worshipped him, and copied everything he did. Marlon, maybe I feel a bit of pity for him, but not enough to let his death screw up my life. He could have done what I did, if he wanted, got out.’
I found myself thinking of the kid in her mother’s street, Clyde Houseman. He was playing the role of tough guy because he had to, because he knew no other way of making the place survivable. Maybe one day he’d call me; but probably not.
Mia broke through my contemplation. ‘That man you mentioned when you were talking to Mum; who is he?’
‘Lennie Plenderleith? He’s minding her.’
‘No, the other one, the one you said she’s…’
‘His name’s Manson. He’s…’ How to put it? ‘… a person of interest to us, and your brother was his driver. How does that relate to his death? As of this moment we have no idea.’
Her eyes widened, and she put her hand to her mouth, to stifle a grin. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s terrible of me to laugh, but are you saying that my mum’s a gangster’s moll?’
I smiled at her amusement. ‘An old-fashioned term but appropriate. She doesn’t have exclusive rights to the territory, though, Manson spreads his favours far and wide.’
‘Why does she need a minder?’
‘She probably doesn’t, having met her; but her boyfriend might know more about your brother’s death than we do.’
‘He might think that somebody could be after her too?’
‘Not really, but we’re covering the possibility. I’m not just relying on Lennie to look after her. I’ve got people there too. If they see anyone nosing around… She’s safe. But most important of all, she’s off your payroll.’
She gazed at me, and her eyes seemed to soften even more. I felt as if they were embracing me. ‘I can’t thank you enough for that,’ she said. ‘It started off at a hundred a week, then she wanted more. She’d have bled me dry.’
‘It’s my job,’ I assured her. ‘I let her off lightly. You let me know if you don’t get that money back.’
‘I don’t care about that. I’m glad she doesn’t have her claws in me any longer; that’s the main thing. She’s a bad bitch.’
That was an understatement: I wasn’t going to tell her daughter but I had Bella marked as the most evil of the three Spreckley siblings. I’d met Gavin only once, in my very early days on the force. He’d been dangerous, yes, but thick with it, so thick that he’d crossed the Holmes organisation and got himself and his nephew killed. His sister, on the other hand, was as amoral as him, but as I was discovering, she had a brain. The truth was that I’d have been struggling to convict her of extortion; a half-decent lawyer would have got her off. No, my real threat to her was in using her to embarrass Tony Manson. ‘You made a smart move when you left home,’ I told Mia. ‘Your mistake when she put the bite on you was in not calling her bluff.’
‘You reckon?’ She was sceptical.
‘Absolutely. You need some good PR advice. You’re underestimating your audience. If your story was told properly and sympathetically, you’d be a role model for thousands of kids who are just as you were, trapped in awful domestic circumstances, and afraid to do anything about it. I’m not saying that you should do it now, with your brother’s murder still a hot media topic, but once that’s all blown over, the right piece in the right newspaper will give your career another shove forwards, rather than hurting it. You’ll be a media darling. You’ll be on telly before you know it.’
‘You’re very sure of yourself, Detective Superintendent.’
I grinned at her. ‘Is that your way of asking who the hell I am, a cop of all people, to be advising a broadcaster on public relations?’
She laughed in return. ‘You said it.’
‘You think you’re the only one who’s studied psychology?’
‘Are you a uni graduate?’ She sounded surprised.
‘As it happens, yes I am. It’s the coming thing with the polis. The lad who was with me yesterday, he’s one; my girlfriend’s another.’
‘You’ve got a partner?’
‘No,’ I said, quickly. ‘We’re not that serious. We see each other, that’s all. It suits us both.’
‘I’m sorry, Bob,’ she exclaimed. ‘I was being nosy.’
‘It’s okay. But… to be accurate, psychology wasn’t part of my university degree. I studied that on a senior command course at the police training college, for much the same reason you did at university. Not only that, we were given some training in how to deal with the media.’
‘Who trained you?’
‘Consultants; a couple of television journalists. To be honest I wasn’t all that impressed by them.’
‘Some of it must have rubbed off, for you to be passing it on to me. I will think about it, honestly,’ she conceded, ‘but I’ve still to be convinced that it’s worth taking the chance.’
‘It could be taken out of your hands, Mia. The bigger a name you make for yourself, the more the press are going to be interested in you. Life is about control. Lose it, and you’re vulnerable.’
‘Wow!’ She chuckled. ‘Angry and a control freak. I’m glad I’m not