‘We got a large reward for the money we recovered.’
‘That’s not what I mean. I think you know who killed Kane. What if I was to pull you in — you and Prim — and ask you that, under caution?’
I laughed. ‘A rubber hose job?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Greg McPhillips would have us out of there in two minutes, and you know it.’
‘Aye, I suppose so. But come on, Oz, give us a clue, between friends. That one’s always niggled at me.’
I looked at him for a while. Then I put part of my life in his hands. ‘You can close the book on it, Mike. The guy who killed Willie Kane is dead himself.’
‘Accident?’ he asked, quietly. ‘Natural causes? Or did someone do him?’
‘Accident. Sudden, bloody and very, very fatal.’
‘Not in Geneva, by any chance?’
My eyes, formerly narrowed, widened suddenly, giving him his answer.
‘I wondered about him when I heard about the accident report from Switzerland. I even had a look at it. At the time the Swiss police were a bit puzzled by the fact that the guy had two bullets in his chest and he was as high as a kite on heroin, but a street full of witnesses saw him run right in front of the bus, so that was that.’
I left him staring at the table while I went up to the bar for another round of pints.
‘Dawn wasn’t involved, was she?’ he asked, when I returned.
‘No way.’
‘That’s all right then. Now, back to your bother in Aberdeen. I’ll ask my SB colleague up there if he can find out anything for me. I’ll check the network too, just in case there’s been an alert about Russian gangsters coming into Britain.
‘Mind you, that sounds like clutching at straws to me.’
‘What way?’
‘Ach, you’ve always had a taste for the exotic, but in the real world, where we’re faced with an alleged crime like this, the first thing we do is look for a domestic solution. We usually find it too.’
I shook my head as I sipped my pint; no mean feat, that. ‘You won’t find it here. I promise you.’
‘Oh no? You mean it couldn’t have been a jealous boyfriend, because of Ms Turkel’s preferences?’
‘Something like that.’
‘So who says it was a man on the bike? What was the rider wearing?’
I described the biker’s outfit, in detail.
‘And was his cock hanging out of his leathers?’
‘No. Mind you, it was cold that morning, so if it was it’d have been pretty shrivelled up, and I might not have noticed it.’
‘Somebody would have. I can see the headline now: “Motorcycle flasher in Union Street gun drama”. No, Oz, for all you know your gunman could have been a gun person, a hellishly furious, scorned, et cetera, former woman friend of the lesbian lawyer. Tell me different, go on.’
I couldn’t.
‘That’s if there was a gun person at all. Are you dead sure of what you saw?’
‘Of course.’
‘Who else saw the gun?’
‘Only me. The rider was coming right in behind her, but I was in the line of fire. Noosh heard it, but only I saw it.’
‘She could have heard a backfire from the bike. You could have seen something else; the biker could have slowed down because his mobile phone rang. Maybe that was it.’
I leaned across the table. ‘Michael,’ I asked him, straight-faced. ‘Do you remember your first shag?’
He looked at me as if I was daft. ‘Of course; everyone does.’
‘Well, having a gun pointed in your general direction is just as unforgettable, and you don’t just remember the first time.’
‘Maybe so, but I suspect that my colleagues up in Furry-boots City are a bit sceptical, nonetheless.’
‘They’re giving Noosh protection.’
‘Of course they are. She asked for it, and she’s a lawyer, so they’re playing it by the book. Let’s see how long it lasts, though. Like I said, I’ll ask some questions tomorrow, and find out what their thinking is.’
For the next few minutes we ate in silence, doing justice to the Horseshoe pies. When we were finished, and the last bean scooped up, I looked at Dylan again. ‘Any progress on your own stalker?’ I asked him.
To my surprise, he beamed back at me. ‘I was saving that. We got a result off the wire-tap on Tuesday. Mrs Donn had a call from her baby boy; we managed to trace it all the way to a call-box in Amsterdam. Bugger’s in Holland.’
‘Did he say anything significant?’
‘Not as far as I could see from the transcript. He was just asking after her, that was all. She asked where he was, but all he said was “Moving about”. She asked when she’d be seeing him again, but he was vague about that too.
‘Still, at least it gives us something to go on, we can keep an eye out for the boy coming in on the Schiphol flights and the ferries.’ He paused. ‘Of course there’s a problem with that. We don’t actually know what Stephen Donn looks like. Susie’s given me a general description, but we don’t have a photograph of him, for the people at the airports. The thing is, we don’t want to tip our hand here, so I’ll probably just give them a photof it.’
‘Why don’t you pull Prim and me back on to the case. We’ll get you a photo.’
He gave me his best sarcastic look. ‘How will you do that? Break into his mother’s house while she’s at college?’
‘I suppose we might. But no, that’d be too risky; there are too many retired people in the block she lives in. No, I thought we’d just go back to Uncle Joe.’
I knew that I didn’t have to make the offer, but what else could I do? Mike was going to check out Aberdeen for me to make sure that Noosh was okay; he was good at extracting one favour for another.
‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘See if you can do it tomorrow morning.’
I waved my empty glass at him. ‘In that case,’ I suggested, ‘on balance, the last pint’s on you.’
Chapter 21
This time, there was no need to pull a stunt to get to see Joe Donn. Prim called him and asked if we could visit him again. He must have taken a shine to her, for he agreed without a murmur.
We took the Z3 out to Motherwell; it’s a bit of a toy, that car. How many times in Scotland would anyone actually want to drive one with the top down? Very few indeed, but that Friday was one of them; as I drove along the M74, past Strathclyde Country Park with its fun fair and its rowing course, the wind sent Prim’s hair flying out behind her and tried to find its way inside my wrap-round shades.
Mr Donn was polishing the Jaguar when we drew up in front of his house. He looked at our car, nodding approval. I repositioned the electric hood, locked it and the car — okay, it was a good neighbourhood, but you can’t be too careful when you drive a flash motor like ours — and followed him into the big brick house.
He was as well-dressed as he had been before; still casual, but Calvin Klein, this time, from head to foot as far as I could see.
‘So what is it this time?’ he asked as he showed us into his study. ‘Will I save you the trouble by confessing now?’ I stared at him.
‘Okay, I admit it,’ he chuckled. ‘I once went to a conference, met a woman and charged her dinner to the firm on my expenses. There you are, you can shop me to Susie; then I suppose I’ll have a visit from her polisman boyfriend.’
‘No, Mr Donn,’ said Prim. ‘That won’t happen. Everyone fiddles their expenses a bit — even Oz.’ That wasn’t true, but I let it pass.
‘Last time we were here,’ she continued, ‘we told you that someone had been threatening Susie. It’s a bit more serious now; there’s been an attempt on her life.’
In a second, Joe Donn’s face seemed to turn as grey as his hair. ‘You what. .?’ he gasped.
‘Someone torched her car,’ I said. ‘She was meant to be in it at the time, but by pure chance, no one was.’
‘Do the police know who did it?’
‘The police wrote it off as an accident,’ I lied, technically. ‘We’re still handling this thing, and we’re still looking for your nephew. Have you seen him since we were here last?’