8. THE INCIDENT
The next morning Franco rises early, looking out of his window to the end of the street and the small bridge, which crosses over the Water of Leith, leading to the rugby stadium. It is strange that the river winds all the way out to Leith and the Firth of Forth, down by the docks. Once again, his perception of the neighbourhood shocks him. With its cheap, shoddy, pebble-dashed dwellings, this is one step above a council scheme.
Picking up his US cellphone, he notes that the battery is running down and realises that through packing in haste, he’s only brought a US charger. Nonetheless, he calls Melanie, taking a chance that she might be up late. She answers immediately. — Hey, you!
— Hey, honey, how’s things? Franco feels his accent bland out. — How are my girls?
— We’re all good. It’s just tough to know what to tell them. I settled for ‘an old friend of Daddy’s is ill’, I couldn’t think of anything else.
Franco considers this, acknowledging, — Good move; it’s probably for the best.
Melanie spills into an anecdote about Grace, and then Frank tells her that they’d been playing Mousetrap. When it seems as if his phone is going to give up, they say their goodbyes, and he goes to the kitchen to make breakfast.
Elspeth is surprised to come through and find him in her domain, making an egg-white-and-Swiss-cheese omelette, sporting an apron depicting the body of a fat woman in her underwear. She has never seen him so much as boil a kettle before. — New talents, she remarks.
— Can I interest you guys in any of this? he says, that slight American affectation still in his voice.
Elspeth declines, but Greg, trying to smooth down a tuft of hair as he enters, enthusiastically takes up the offer. Bolting back his food, Franco then briefly vanishes, only to re-emerge in a zipped sweater, ready to go outside.
— So where are ye off tae this early? Elspeth asks.
— Thought I’d take a wee stroll intae toon, then maybe head doon tae Leith, see if there’s any old faces kicking about.
Elspeth remains silent, issuing him with a spare key. He can see that trademark intense activity buzzing behind her eyes as she processes the potential ramifications of this.
When Franco departs, Greg comments, — Your brother is like a completely different guy! Had a great chat with him about his creative process.
— You see the best in people, Greg, Elspeth says coldly. — You don’t know what he’s really like.
Franco sets about trying to piece together Sean’s last days. His first port of call is the flat in Gorgie where his son met his demise. It is tucked down a sunless, tenemented side street at the back of Tynecastle Stadium. Canals of moss grow between its cobblestones and a deathly stillness and silence pervades. The stair door is on an entryphone system, but he pauses, disinclined to start harassing neighbours for information, until he’s learned more about the broader facts of the case.
The rudimentary details garnered from June badly needed supplementation. Heading up to George IV Bridge and the Edinburgh Library, he reads the newspaper reports of the incident. Then he calls Gayfield Square police station, on the assistance number listed in connection with the case. To his surprise, the receptionist immediately puts him through to the officer responsible for the investigation. The policeman introduces himself as Detective Inspector Ally Notman. Expressing sympathy for Franco’s loss, he says that he wants to see him personally, asking when he can come in. Franco tells him he could be down there within the hour, to which Notman is agreeable. Following this call, he expects the power bar on his iPhone to indicate the charge is spent, but it hangs on resolutely.
He walks through the city with a peculiar, detached buoyancy. When he comes to the top of Leith Walk, his pulse kicks up further; this is the gateway to where he is from. Despite his positive reception on the phone, it is a strange feeling walking voluntarily into the Gayfield Square police station. On his last visit, many years past, he’d been dragged through those doors into a holding cell, semi-drunk, raging and covered in the blood of Donnelly, another rival, after a knife fight outside the Joseph Pearce pub across the street. This had taken place in broad daylight. What, he wonders, had he been thinking? Fucking kamikaze pilot. He stops, steps back from the glass station doors, looking from the step of the Georgian square back over to the pub. It would have been less hassle to have simply walked into the station and plunged the desk sergeant.
Now the officer greeting him has a welcoming smile, this continuing sympathetic treatment further knocking Franco out of kilter. The detective he’d talked to earlier is summoned and promptly appears. DI Ally Notman is a tall, dark-haired man, thin, but with an expanding drinker’s waistline. Notman shakes Franco’s hand, conveying condolences at his loss, as he ushers him into a quiet room. Only then does the detective dispense with the soft soap, going systematically through the details of the case. — Sean suffered multiple stab wounds to the chest, stomach, abdomen and thighs. The lacerations on just one arm indicate that he was only able to put up token resistance, probably due to his extreme intoxication. The blow that killed him was a wound that severed the femoral artery in his leg. He would have bled to death inside a minute. Notman raises his dark eyebrows, looking for a reaction from Franco.
— Seems like the boy who did this was in a rage, and got lucky, Franco considers. — It’s no exactly the work ay a stone-cold assassin.
Notman keeps his face poker-straight, though Franco thinks he can see a flicker of acknowledgement in the cop’s eyes. Then the detective shows him a copy of the toxicologist’s report. — This indicates that Sean was heavily drugged.
Franco scans the document; amid the technical jargon the words heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, amphetamine sulphate, cannabis, valium, amyl nitrate and antidepressants jump off the page. Whoever came intae that flat and plunged the poor wee cunt never exactly had their work cut out. — And some, Franco observes. — What was he no on?
— As I said, it’s unlikely he would have known much about the assault in that condition.
It was extreme liberty-taking, Franco decides. — Any suspects?
— Our investigations are ongoing, Notman says blandly. — We’ll obviously keep you and your ex. . Sean’s mother. . informed of any developments.
— Sound, Frank Begbie says. He knows the drill. The polis wouldn’t be going the extra mile to find the guilty party here. To his dismay, he now finds that he can scarcely blame them. Sean, like himself, had probably long been lost, and would have gone on creating havoc around him. Why indulge people like that when they would simply take each other out if you left them to their own devices? Despite our limited and grudgingly unenthusiastic lip service, the truth is that we’ve moved beyond democracy, universality and equality in the eyes of the law and, de facto, embraced a hierarchial, elitist world view. Those at the bottom aren’t important, as long as they only threaten each other, rather than those at the top, or revenue streams like tourists. His own children, Sean, Michael and River, his ex-girlfriend Kate’s son (whom he’d practically forgotten about as he had commenced his long stretch just before the kid was born, splitting with her when he was inside): they are of no consequence to him. How can they be compared to Eve and Grace, born to an educated mother in advantaged circumstances? You always bet on the sleek thoroughbred rather than the Clydesdale. If he differentiates his own offspring in this manner, how can he condemn the polis for their lack of interest, when some poor tourist is probably getting their bag nicked up the town?