‘Wouldn’t you give your left one to be forty years younger?’ The speaker stooped to pick up one of his bowls. The jack had been dispatched to the far end of the carpet. Two bowls sat either side of it.
‘Sorry to interrupt your game,’ Clarke said, deciding immediately on her approach. ‘I’m Detective Constable Clarke.’ She showed them her warrant card. ‘I’m looking for George Samuels.’
‘Told you they’d catch up with you, Dod.’
‘It was only a matter of time.’
‘I’m George Samuels.’ The man who stepped forward was tall and slender and wore a burgundy tie under his sleeveless V-neck jumper. His hand when she shook it had a firm grip and was warm and dry. His hair was snowy white and plentiful, like cotton wadding.
‘Mr Samuels, I’m from St Leonard’s police station. Would you mind if I had a word?’
‘I’ve been expecting you.’ His eyes were the blue of summer water. ‘It’s about Christopher Mackie, isn’t it?’ He saw the look of surprise on her face and broke into a smile, pleased that he still had some force in the world.
They sat in a corner of the bar. An elderly couple sat in the other corner: the man had drifted off to sleep and the woman was knitting. A half-pint of beer sat in front of the man, a sherry in front of his companion.
George Samuels had ordered a whisky, doubling its volume with water. He’d signed Clarke in so that she could drink as his guest, but she’d only wanted coffee. Now, after the first sip, she was wishing she hadn’t bothered. The catering-sized tin of instant behind the bar should have given her the first clue. The second should have been when the barmaid started chipping away at the contents.
‘How did you know?’ she asked.
Samuels ran a hand over his forehead. ‘I always knew there was something wrong with it... with him. You don’t just walk into a building society with that amount of money.’ He looked up from his drink. ‘You don’t, do you?’
‘I’d like the chance to try,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘You’ve been talking to Val Briggs. She said much the same thing. We always joked about it.’
‘If you thought there was something odd about it, why take the money?’
He opened his arms. ‘If I hadn’t, someone else would. This was twenty years ago. We weren’t under any obligation to tell the police if something like that happened. That one deposit made me Branch Manager of the Month.’
‘Did he say anything about the money?’
Samuels was nodding. There was something Christmasy about his hair; Clarke imagined playing with it, like playing with fresh snow. ‘Oh, I asked,’ he told her. ‘I came straight out.’
‘And?’ A couple of biscuits had arrived with the coffee. She bit into one. It was soft, felt greasy in her mouth.
‘He asked if I needed to know. I said I’d like to know, which wasn’t quite the same thing. He told me it was from a bank robbery.’ Her look pleased him all over again. ‘Of course, we both laughed. I mean, he was joking. The notes... their serial numbers... I’d have known if they’d been stolen.’
Clarke nodded. There was a paste in her mouth. The only way she could swallow it was with the help of a drink, and the only drink available was the coffee. She took a swig, held her breath and swallowed.
‘So what else did he say?’
‘Oh, he said something about the money coming to him in a will. Him having cashed the cheque to see what that amount of cash looked like.’
‘He didn’t say where he cashed the cheque?’
Samuels shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I’d have believed him, even if he had.’
She looked at him. ‘You thought the money was...?’
‘Tainted in some way.’ He was nodding. ‘But no matter what I thought, there he was, offering to place it in an account at my branch.’
‘No qualms?’
‘Not at the time.’
‘But you always knew someone would be coming to speak with you about Mr Mackie?’
Another shrug. ‘I’m beyond the point of giving excuses, Miss Clarke. But I’m guessing you know where the money came from.’
Clarke shook her head. ‘Haven’t a clue, sir.’
Samuels sat back in his chair. ‘Then why are you here?’
‘Mr Mackie committed suicide, sir. Lived like a tramp, then threw himself off North Bridge. I’m trying to find out why.’
Samuels couldn’t help. He’d spoken with Mackie only on that one occasion. As Clarke drove back into the city, heading for the Grassmarket, she considered her options. The process took all of three seconds. She had this one slender trail, that was all. To find out the what and why, she had to find out who Christopher Mackie had been. She’d already phoned a search request to the records people. He wasn’t in any phone book, and, just as she’d suspected, when she arrived at the Grassmarket address she found herself at a hostel for the homeless.
Grassmarket was an odd little world all of its own. Centuries back, they’d held executions here, a fact commemorated by the name of one of the pubs: The Last Drop. Until the 1970s, the area had borne the reputation of being a haven for the destitute and the wandering. But then gentrification became the model. Small specialist shops opened, the bars were spruced up, and tourists began their hesitant, steep descent down Victoria Street and Candlemaker Row.
The hostel wasn’t exactly publicising its existence. Two grimy windows and a solid-looking door. Outside, a couple of men were crouched beside the wall. One of them asked if she had a light. She shook her head.
‘Probably means you’ve no fags on you either,’ he said, resuming his conversation with his friend.
Clarke turned the door handle, but the door was locked. There was a buzzer on the wall. She pressed it twice and waited. A scrawny young man yanked open the door, took one look at her and retreated back inside, saying to no one in particular, ‘Surprise, surprise, it’s the polis.’ He fell into a chair and got back to the serious business of daytime TV. There were a couple of beaten-up armchairs in the room, plus a long wooden bench and two that looked like bar stools. The TV and a coffee table more or less completed the furnishings. There was a tin ashtray on the table, but the linoleum floor looked to be the more popular destination for stubbed cigarettes. One elderly man was asleep in an armchair, his face speckled with bits of white paper. Clarke was about to investigate, when her meeter and greeter tore a scrap from an old newspaper, moistened it in his mouth, then spat it towards the sleeping figure.
‘Two points for the face,’ he explained. ‘One for the hair or beard.’
‘What’s your record?’
He grinned, showing a mouth missing half its teeth. ‘Eighty-five.’
A door opened at the far end of the room. ‘Can I help you?’
Clarke walked over, shook the woman’s hand. Behind her, the record-holder made siren noises. ‘I’m DC Clarke, St Leonard’s police station.’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you know a man called Christopher Mackie?’
A protective look. ‘I might do. What has he done?’
‘I’m afraid Mr Mackie’s dead. Suicide, it looks like.’
The woman closed her eyes for a second. ‘Was he the one who jumped from North Bridge? All it said in the papers was that he was homeless.’
‘You knew him then?’
‘Let’s talk about it in the store.’
Her name was Rachel Drew and she’d been in charge of the hostel for a dozen years.
‘Not that it’s really a hostel,’ she said. ‘It’s a day centre. But to be honest, when there’s no place else for them to go, they do use the front room for bedding down in. I mean, it’s winter, what else are you going to do?’