‘Shit.’ She took the phone from me. ‘Yes, sir.’ I watched her as she listened. I was thinking that she’d been excessively rank conscious for someone sitting up naked in bed in the middle of the night; the situation would have made me laugh, but for the look on her face.
‘I understand,’ she said, eventually. ‘Yes, I’ll get there as soon as I can.’
By the time she’d pushed the ‘end call’ button, I was out of bed and reaching for my dressing gown on its hook behind the bathroom door. ‘What’s happened?’
‘There’s been another stabbing, fatal this time, in Jamaica Street. He thinks it may be linked to last weekend’s.’
‘Jamaica Street?’ I repeated. ‘That’s not your area.’
‘No, but it’s just round the corner from that pub, the Giggling Goose.’
I knew why she’d been called. ‘That’s a gay bar, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Mr Stein’s told the boss to get involved; he wants me to meet up with the Gayfield Square CID team.’
‘Why the fuck’s Grant not going?’ I complained, as she headed for the bathroom. ‘You haven’t been involved in the Grove Street investigation.’
‘Because he’s been at a family party in Perth, and he’s staying there overnight.’
‘Who’s in charge from Gayfield?’
‘DCI Pringle. I’ve never worked with him before. Do you know him?’
‘Yeah. Dan’s a sound guy,’ I added. ‘He’s old school, and he looks a bit like PC Plod, but underestimate him at your peril. You get ready, and I’ll make some coffee.’
She was showered and dressed inside ten minutes. Her hair was still damp, but it would dry in the car. She was flustered. ‘Be cool,’ I told her as she took a wolf-sized bite from a slice of toast, ‘and don’t go charging in there. As far as Dan’s concerned, it’s his crime scene; you’ll be there more or less as an observer.’
‘Fine by me. All I’ve done is read the paperwork on our inquiry. A fat lot of use I’ll be.’
I handed her a mug of Nescafe, strong, and heavy with sugar; I didn’t want her nodding off at the wheel. ‘You don’t need to be any use. Keep your head down, take notes and compare the scene with the photos you’ve seen of the other one. Were there any exceptional factors about that?’
‘One that struck me: the witness statement from Grove Street. I told you that the guy, Robert Wyllie, kept changing his story, yes? He started off by saying that he and his mate, Archie Weir, were attacked, no more than that, but finally admitted that they were out to rough up a gay bloke. However, he maintained that they never actually got that far. What he claims is that their target rumbled them.’
‘That he didn’t act in self-defence?’
‘Not according to Wyllie; his final account reads as if they were lured into Grove Street. He says that the man was heading up Morrison Street, then took a quick turn. They followed him but he was nowhere to be seen. They went a few yards and then he was on them. Wyllie was stabbed first, in the leg. He went down, Weir started to run away, but the man with the knife pursued him and went to work on him. Seven stab wounds in all, two in the back, one in each arm and three in the abdomen. He turned back towards Wyllie, who was still on the ground holding his leg, but just then the fourth person came round the corner and the attacker ran off.’
‘Okay,’ I said, as she gulped her coffee, pulling a face at its sweetness. ‘You have that background knowledge, they don’t. So go there and find out what they do have. Another live witness would be a good start. How’s the guy Weir, by the way?’
‘On a ventilator. They don’t expect him to make it.’
‘Mmm. Not good.’ I took the empty mug from her, and kissed her; on the forehead, to avoid smearing her lipstick. ‘On you go now. You’re a star, and you’re going to leave us all behind.’
‘Thanks,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll see you.’ I thought she’d go then, but she stayed in my arms. ‘Not for a while, though. I’ve got to be careful; waking up with you could be habit-forming.’
I’d been thinking the same thing. I locked the door after her, then went back to bed, but I was done with sleep for the night. I lay there, aware of Alison’s scent on the duvet and on the pillow, my mind working, contemplating the crime scene that she was driving towards. My curiosity wasn’t idle. I found myself hoping that by the time they got there it would have been wrapped up, plenty of eye witnesses and an arrest made, either a gang killing or a dispute between a couple of macho guys that had gone too far, and nothing to do with the Grove Street attack that sounded as if it was going to become a full-scale murder inquiry before long.
But if it wasn’t, if the evidence pointed to a link between the two, then it would be a single homicide investigation, crossing divisional boundaries. I had no intention of volunteering, but I knew there was every chance that Alf Stein would decide that it fell within the loose remit of my unit and thus would dump it in my lap.
I could see the headlines as I lay in the darkness… ‘Gay Blade Strikes!’… and I didn’t fancy it at all.
Ten
I gave up trying to sleep just after six; apart from my pressing work problems, Thornton’s visit was weighing heavily upon me. He was the last of our parents’ generation, mine and Myra’s, and such a hearty fit guy, that it had never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be around for my fiftieth birthday, and for a few after that. I tried to imagine what I would say to Alex when ‘It’ happened, but I couldn’t. Instead, I had a vision of Jean, Alex and myself in the front row of the church where Myra and I had been married, and my eyes filled with tears.
I rose and took my time about getting ready for the day. The face that I saw in the mirror as I shaved was creased and lined, with dark bags under the blue eyes. My hair was all over the place, and looked greyer than ever. I could still find a few dark strands, but they were as outnumbered as the Spartans at Thermopylae. They had begun to retreat on the day that I cut off a lock and put it in Myra’s coffin, and had been quickly overcome by the silver hordes.
‘Vulnerable?’ I grunted. ‘No, you’re just a sad old bastard.’
I chose a suit, a pale cream linen thing that was meant to look crumpled… or so I’d been told by a dickhead in Austin Reed, who hadn’t bothered to tell me that it would need dry cleaning after almost every wearing. I complemented it with a black shirt, but didn’t bother with a tie. I remembered my admonition to McGuire about flashy dressing but disregarded it; I wanted to leave my image with the man I’d be seeing that day long after I’d left him.
I was on my second coffee, and had run almost half a loaf through the toaster, when Alex joined me, also dressed for action. ‘Why did Alison go?’ she asked, a little anxiously, as she filled a bowl with cereal. ‘Did you have a row?’
‘No, of course not,’ I reassured her. ‘She had a work call.’
‘Oh,’ she said, relieved. ‘That’s all right, then.’
I laughed. ‘There will come a day in your life, kid, when you get a business call at half past one in the morning. When it happens, I promise you that it will not be all right.’
‘Lawyers don’t get calls in the middle of the night.’
‘No? I reckon that if this career choice of yours is definitive, it’s time I introduced you to a couple I know. There’s a man called Mitchell Laidlaw, one of my five-a-side football chums. I’ll ask him if he’ll have a talk with you. And there are a couple of advocates that you ought to meet.’
She shrugged. ‘If you want.’ Then she turned to what was really on her mind. ‘This trip of Grandpa’s, Pops. Do you know where he’s going?’
‘No,’ I said… honestly, I believe. ‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘I think it’s weird, going on holiday and not knowing where you’re going.’
‘Not at all. People used to do it all the time, before the days of packages to bloody Benidorm, back when you went on holiday in your own country, not in other people’s. When I was a kid, we went to Fife.’ That was the only place my mother would go, but I didn’t tell Alex that. She looked at me with a kind of pity.