She rose from the table. ‘I’ll ask him now. You go and switch on the telly, and I’ll call him from the bedroom.’
‘There’s no rush,’ he insisted.
‘Rubbish. You’ve never asked me to get anything from Grandpa before. It must be important.’ She headed for the door.
Sauce polished off the last of his pasta, then cleared the table, loading the used crockery and forks into the dishwasher. He had just switched on EastEnders, when Cheeky came back into the room, phone in hand.
‘He wants to talk to you,’ she said, holding out the handset. ‘Grandpa never asks for anything either, so it must be important.’ She saw his hesitancy. ‘Please, love.’
Unsmiling, he took the phone from her, and muted the television sound. ‘Mr McCullough.’ He felt a shiver run through him. He had never spoken to his partner’s grandfather before, but he might have been regarded as an expert on him, since he had read almost every word that had ever been written about him, in the media and on police intelligence files.
He knew that the man on the other end of the line was seen by many as the most influential person in his home city of Dundee, and by most of those who had known him in his younger days, as its most dangerous.
‘Sauce, is it,’ he asked, ‘or do you prefer Harold? My name’s Cameron, by the way. Only people who work for me call me Mr McCullough, and I don’t expect you to be calling me Grandpa.’
‘Sauce will be fine. I rarely get anything else these days.’
‘First off,’ Cheeky’s grandfather began, ‘it’s good to be talking to you at last, although I understand why we haven’t. Given what people say about me, it’s a brave thing for someone in your job to have taken up with our lass, and I admire your for it.’
‘I love her, Cameron, simple as that.’
‘I know that, and I can see that you’re making her happy.’ Sauce heard the unspoken words, Just as well for you.
‘That works both ways,’ he replied.
‘Good, good. Now, you asked her to ask me about Perry Holmes and his boy.’ McCullough paused, as if words were being chosen carefully. ‘Without going into detail about how we came across each other, yes, I did know Perry. He was what you might call a man of respect. Hugely intelligent and successful in everything he did; his legitimate business empire is still there, run by trustees on behalf of his son and daughter. I’m sure the police file on him is about a foot thick and that it’s still stored in a Black Museum somewhere.’
‘It still exists,’ Sauce confirmed. ‘There’s a book about him too, written by one of our guys after he retired.’
‘I’ve read it,’ Grandpa said. ‘The author didn’t know all the story. Perry only ever made one mistake, and that was to be excessively loyal to his brother. He gave that head-banger Al far too much rope. The man was a liability, an animal, and the things he did got both of them killed eventually, although it took Perry a lot longer to die than it took the brother.
‘It was widely assumed, and maybe still is, that when Perry was crippled, his criminal side came to an end, but in fact that wasn’t the case.
‘He never married the mother of his two kids, so nobody knew about Hastie. When his father got shot he came out of the army, and simply replaced his Uncle Al. He’d be about twenty-five when he came to see me in Dundee about a business deal that Perry and I had.
‘He was a very formidable lad, although he didn’t act hard. He’d his dad’s brains, and as time proved, some of his uncle’s tendencies, but because he was bright he was far more dangerous than Al ever was. I’d tell nobody but you this, but only two men have ever put a chill into me, and Hastie McGrew is one of them.’
‘Who’s the other, as a matter of interest?’ Sauce asked.
‘Somebody you know,’ Cameron McCullough replied, ‘the man who’s right at the top of your game now, in fact.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘young Hastie ran the show for his old man, while the whole word thought he was just his nurse, until their luck ran out. Perry finally used up his extension, and Hastie was put away for killing two guys. His score was actually a lot higher than that, and I’m not talking about his army days.’
‘I see.’
‘So do I. The fact that you’re asking me about him tells me that he must be out. He’ll be due, given that it all happened almost twenty years ago. Let’s see, he must be pushing fifty by now. Has his name come up in this high-profile investigation you’re on?’
‘Possibly,’ Sauce conceded.
‘Then take him very seriously.’
‘We’ve got another name in the frame already, though.’
‘Yes, Cheeky tells me that you had a close call with an idiot today. It’s as well it wasn’t Hastie. He never made mistakes. What makes you so sure the other one might be the right guy?’ McCullough laughed, suddenly. ‘Listen to me, asking a cop about a case. Forget it, son.’
‘It’s okay. I can tell you we found some stuff of the dead woman’s in his flat, a box of jewellery. That, and traces of Class A drugs in the toilet bowl and around the place.’
‘Was he a user or a dealer?’
‘Oh, a dealer, definitely.’
‘And the stuff you found, the jewels, was it valuable?’
‘Mmm. Moderately so; four figures we reckoned, but well short of the five.’
‘In that case are you really sure you’re after the right man? Why would a drug dealer murder a woman just to steal a few baubles?’
Hell, that’s a good question, Sauce thought, but he refrained from answering it.
‘I’ll tell you, lad,’ Cheeky’s grandfather said, ‘. . and this is not me asking an indirect question, mind, because I really don’t want to know. . if this dead woman had any quarrel with Perry Holmes in the past, then don’t rule out Hastie.’
Thirty
‘This is an unexpected pleasure, Dan,’ Max Allan told his visitor. ‘You’re the first of my old colleagues to look me up since I retired. But how did you know where to find me?’
Provan beamed up at the former assistant chief constable. ‘For fuck’s sake, Max,’ he laughed. ‘Everybody in the force knows you drink in a pub called the Hoolet’s Nest. Why should that change just because you’re no’ a polis any more?’
‘True enough. What are you for?’
‘I’ll have a bottle of Magner’s, and that’ll be me. I’ve upset too many uniforms in my time to take a chance.’
Allan nodded. ‘I know that for a fact. Christ, the number of complaints I had about that tongue you’ve got on you. I hear you’ve landed on your feet, though. I wondered how you and Skinner would get on. I knew he’d either take to you or you’d be out on your arse in thirty seconds. Your homespun charm seems to have worked, from what I’m told. You and Lottie are his star CID turn, so Bridie Gorman said last week.’
He ordered Provan’s cider, then glanced around the small saloon. ‘You know why I like it here?’ he asked. ‘It’s the most anonymous pub I know. The signs outside say “Barnhill Tavern”, but nobody calls it that, ever. So if anyone wants to come looking for me, searching for the Hoolet’s, they’re going to have a hell of a job finding me, unless they’re local. . and if they are, I’ll see them before they see me. So, like I asked you earlier, how come you did? You’re from Cambuslang.’
‘I’m also a fuckin’ detective,’ the little sergeant retorted. ‘I phoned your house before I left home. Your wife told me where you were and how to find it.’
‘So much for security,’ the retired ACC sighed. ‘Now, what do you want?’
Provan feigned outrage. ‘Why should I want anything? You and I go back over thirty years. You were my first sergeant in uniform.’
Allan laughed. ‘And some impression I must have made on you. Look at you now. Do you practise being scruffy, Dan?’