‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘So, Bob, cut to the chase. Are you feeling so lonely up here that you felt the need to see an old familiar face, or is there something else?’
He took me aback. I’d forgotten how perceptive Lennie is, and maybe also discounted the fact that he’s become a very well-qualified psychologist. He’d read me like a book, and also, with that single question, he’d helped me to define my feelings about the job that I’d been landed in by a combination of circumstances, and possibly by my own ego.
‘Something else,’ I told him, pushing the realisation aside, ‘something serious that my old team in Edinburgh have happened upon, and need your help with.’
‘Mmm.’ He tilted his head to one side and raised an eyebrow. ‘Something serious, as in something criminal?’
‘Both.’
‘Then I’m struggling to guess what it might be. To the best of my knowledge most of my old associates are dead, and those that aren’t are in the nick or well past giving the police any trouble. Anyway, I cut all my links with that life when I was sentenced.’
‘All but one.’
He stared at me. ‘No, all of them, I promise you.’
‘Bella Watson.’
His eyes widened. ‘Ahhh!’ The sound was half gasp, half sigh. ‘Bella. I’m sorry, Bob, I assumed you meant my criminal associates. I don’t put her in that category. What’s the old bitch been up to? It must be more than shoplifting for you to be involved. She hasn’t been claiming housing benefit, has she?’
‘That’s possible, from what I hear, but if she has, she’s got away with it, because she’s dead.’
Lennie took a deep breath, sucking God knows how many litres of air into his massive chest. ‘People die,’ he said, slowly, after a while. ‘Bella must have been in the late sixties, so there’s nothing out of the ordinary in her being dead; unless someone made her that way.’
‘Exactly. Upwards of three weeks ago now.’
‘Then why didn’t I know about it? I read the Saltire every day. It wouldn’t have missed out on a homicide in Edinburgh, on its own doorstep.’
‘Have you read today’s?’
‘As it happens, no; I usually pick up a copy at the university, but I came straight here.’
‘Do you recall reading about a body being found on the wee beach in Cramond Island?’
‘Yes, but that’s all it said, that and the fact that it was female and unidentified.’
‘They didn’t report all the gory details, because they weren’t all released. They weren’t told that she’d been hit by the screw of a ship, or that there were half a dozen stab wounds in the visually unidentifiable section that was washed up. It wasn’t until your lawyer’s girl had to go into the house on Saturday and found evidence of “foul play” that the identity of the body was established, and announced at a press conference yesterday.’
‘I see,’ Lennie murmured. ‘Poor old Bella.’ He paused, fixing me with his interrogative gaze. ‘Hey, they don’t fancy me for it, do they?’
I laughed. ‘The thought probably did occur to a couple of the younger investigators, but I advised them to forget it. The pathologist told me that it was impossible to be anything like precise about the time of death, but I’m sure that whenever it was, your movements and whereabouts are all verifiable. Don’t take their suspicions to heart, chum; they were fleeting at best. They are good enough to have asked themselves why you would kill the woman after housing her for the last nine years.’
It was his turn to grin. ‘These people aren’t exactly made in your image, are they? I’m sure you could have come up with a reason, in their place.’
‘I’m sure I could, but I know you, Lennie. This might sound like a crazy thing to say to someone who’s doing life for three murders, and got off with another, but I don’t believe you’re exactly a natural-born killer. With one exception you did what you did because you thought it was necessary, or just.’
‘An interesting analysis,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve never tried to justify myself, to myself or to anyone else. I’m not sure I agree with your sympathetic view of the old me. What about all the casual injuries I inflicted when I was a kid, and when I worked for Tony?’
‘You were part of Tony’s world; you lived by its rules. So did everyone else in it and they knew what happened if they broke them. You happened, or someone like you did. Before that, as you said, you were a kid, and that was your environment. I know another man who was like you must have been then, albeit with less brain power. He saw the light before he got sucked in, joined the military and changed the course of his life.’
‘I can guess who showed him the light.’
‘It didn’t take much. I met him again, recently. He’s a fucking spook now, would you believe!’
‘I’d believe anything. What was the exception?’ Lennie asked, suddenly.
I gave him a long look. ‘Come on,’ I said, slowly. ‘You don’t need to ask me that.’
‘My wife? Yes, I can see why you would think that. Now I’m going to tell you something that you are not going to believe. I pleaded guilty to Linda’s murder, but I didn’t kill her.’
I hadn’t been expecting that one. ‘You’re probably right, Lennie, I’m not going to believe it. I’d like to, but I was there at the crime scene. I saw the mess, I saw your bloodstained palm print on the wall, your thumb print on the bathroom mirror.’
‘I found her, and I got her blood all over me, but I didn’t kill her.’
I cast my mind back over a decade, to the scene. ‘We found the clothes you changed out of. There was semen on them.’
‘There probably was. I’d just got out of jail, and I’d been with a woman, but it wasn’t Linda. She was an unrepentant whore, and I decided when I was doing my time that I wasn’t going to waste any more of my life on her. No, it was somebody else, somebody I’d been involved with before I went inside.
‘I met up with her and then later I went to Linda’s flat to pick up my stuff, plus an air ticket and some travel money that I’d told her to get for me. I found her. She couldn’t have been long dead, for she was still warm and the blood hadn’t congealed. It’s true, Bob; I’d like you to believe me, but. . what the hell, it doesn’t matter.’
I hadn’t taken my eyes off him. Lennie wasn’t the only psychologist in the room. ‘Why did you plead to it?’
‘Because I thought Tony had done it,’ he replied, quietly. ‘Linda was a seriously provocative woman; I thought she’d pushed him too far and he’d had her taken care of. I wouldn’t have blamed him.’
‘Do you still believe that?’
‘In the absence of any other solution, or proof that it was a completely random killing. . given that prostitution is a dangerous game. . yes I do.’
‘You were that loyal to him, that you took a rap for him even though he was dead?’
‘He was the nearest thing to a father I ever had; a bad man, yes, but not all the way through.’
I wasn’t going to tell him there and then, but I was inclined to believe that analysis.
‘Can I ask you something, Bob?’
‘Within reason, sure.’
‘When I found Linda it was obvious that she’d been having sex with the man who killed her. Those clothes you found, yes, they were mine, but I’ll bet you never cross-checked the semen traces on them with what was on her body.’
Good point, Lennie.
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘We didn’t. The investigating officers hadn’t got round to it by the time you were caught and confessed. Because you did, the Crown Office said not to bother. They had plenty of other evidence against you.’
‘Could they still do it?’
‘Honestly, I do not know. If it could be done, would you want it?’
He smiled, sadly. ‘If I could pay for it to be done privately, I would, but only to prove it to you. It won’t get in the way of my release and I don’t want to dig up the past.’