The other two drinkers he didn’t know. A young man and a young woman. He’d already decided he didn’t like the look of the man. He sat with one arm draped over the back of his companion’s chair, while the other lay on the table in front of her. It was as if he were constructing a wall around her. Any minute now he’d be adding barbed wire and a No Trespassing sign. He spoke directly at her face, keeping his voice low but insistent. She couldn’t be much more than eighteen and he was no older than twenty. She looked uncertain, as if trying to gauge the safest route around the avalanche tumbling from his mouth.
Conn recognised a Glasgow seduction when he saw one. He was glad both his daughters were safely married. When the couple rose suddenly and the girl stooped to pick up her umbrella, he couldn’t resist lobbing a remark their way, like a coin towards a wishing well.
‘Safe home, the pair of you. It’s a dirty night.’
The young man leered at him in what seemed both hope and expectation. When the door closed on them and Conn crossed the floor to collect their glasses, he noted that the girl had barely touched her drink. That might be a good sign. She was keeping her wits about her. By the time he was back behind the bar and running the tap in the sink, he realised that Rab had completed the long day’s journey from his table.
‘Should have given me a shout,’ Conn told him. ‘I’d have brought it over.’
‘Doctor says I’ve to get some exercise. I told him I’ll get plenty when they shut the surgery. It’s moving a mile and a bit away. Half a dozen white coats and you won’t get a say in which one sees you. Tell me, is that meant to be progress?’
‘You’ll need a pair of gym shoes, Rab.’
‘Ever tried polishing a pair of those?’
‘I can’t say I have.’
‘That’s why I won’t be wearing them. My father said never to trust a man who didn’t own good leather shoes.’
Conn nodded and decided not to remark that tonight, as usual, Rab was wearing tartan carpet slippers whose rubber soles were starting to perish. Instead, he hit the whisky optic twice and set the refilled glass on the counter as Rab fumbled in his pocket for the necessary coins.
‘This one’s on the house — just don’t tell the management.’
‘You’re some man, Conn.’
‘Maybe you could tell my wife that.’
‘I would, but she never comes in.’
‘She finds the place a bit too highfalutin.’ Conn pretended to examine his surroundings. ‘The crushed velvet and the candelabras.’
He seemed to have lost Rab, who was already doing a slow turn, ready for the thousand-yard walk back to his table. The sound of the door to the outside world being yanked open alerted Conn to trouble. But it wasn’t skin-heads or one of the other local tribes. Cold air entered along with a gust of rain. The young couple stood on the threshold, unsure what to do next. They seemed hardly to recognise the premises they’d just left. Eventually they shuffled inside, the door clattering shut behind them. The umbrella was half open. Conn wasn’t sure at first if those were raindrops or tears on the woman’s chalk-white face. Her partner’s cocksure patter had left the stage. When he found his voice, it was louder than necessary.
‘We found a body,’ he announced.
‘Where?’ demanded Conn.
‘The back lane.’
‘A tramp?’ Susie piped up.
‘Big guy, well dressed. That’s as much as we saw.’
Conn was weighing things up. The police would need to be informed, but was there anything he should do first? Would they want to check his accounts or open the safe? He doubted it. Should he alert John Rhodes? But then would that look like he thought there might be a connection?
‘You sure he’s dead?’ he asked, playing for time.
‘Unless he just likes lying spread-eagled in a handy puddle.’
‘Go take a look, Conn,’ Auld Rab suggested.
It was one way to defer the inevitable, Conn supposed. He reached to a hook for his jacket and it was as if he’d pulled off a conjuring trick. All eyes were on him, the sleepy room suddenly animated.
‘Is it all right if we grab a drink?’ the young man was asking as Conn made to pass him.
‘Wait till I get back,’ Conn said in warning. He opened the door and stepped out into the dark.
The rain was easing, leaving pools of water for him to navigate. The lane was just that. It led behind the bar to where bins and empty crates were stored. The bins were galvanised, their lids long gone, taken by kids to use as shields or paired to make unholy cymbals. Between them, he could see the body. He tried to think when he’d last been out here. Not for a couple of days. The man wore a suit. He lay on his front, his red tie resembling a ribbon of blood. His head was angled so that his face was visible, the thinning black hair sticking to it.
‘Bobby bloody Carter,’ Conn muttered. ‘Cheers for that, Bobby. Aye, that’s just what I need...’
He retreated to the bar. It looked as though no one had moved a muscle in his absence. He kept his jacket on while he poured himself a vodka, downing it neat and in a single gulp.
‘Well?’ the young man asked him.
‘What are you having?’ Conn Feeney enquired.
3
The Top Spot, a bar on Hope Street, was the usual watering hole of choice. It was crowded when Bob Lilley arrived. Even so, Jack Laidlaw seemed a man apart, easy to spot, almost as if he had a radioactive glow. Ben Finlay was seated at a table, surrounded by drinks he hadn’t got round to yet and discarded wrapping paper. One retirement gift, a copy of Playboy, was being passed around, its centrefold unfurled. The female faces scattered around the room wore tight smiles, knowing they were expected to play along. They were ancillary staff mostly — the infamous typing pool — plus one or two constables, hardly recognisable in civilian clothes and freshly retouched make-up.
Lilley weaved his way through the crush until he reached the bar, where Laidlaw was alternating sips of whisky and puffs on a cigarette. He was a handsome enough man, broad-shouldered and square-jawed, but he managed not to look too happy with his lot, as if, in his late thirties, life had already subjected him to a harsh interrogation. He brought baggage with him — Lilley knew at least a few of the stories — but judgement could wait.
‘Tried to catch you at the station. I’m DS Lilley. Bob to you.’ He held out a hand, which Laidlaw shook, raising one eyebrow afterwards.
‘A fellow member of the non-Masonic fraternity,’ he commented.
‘Failed the audition when I burst out laughing. What can I get you?’
‘Antiquary.’
The barman had appeared in front of them, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. ‘First drink’s already paid for, Bob,’ he said.
‘Two Antiquaries then.’
‘We’ve John Rhodes’s largesse to thank apparently,’ Laidlaw explained.
‘So we’re taking drinks from gangsters now?’
‘Why break the habit of a lifetime? Besides, it’s nice to be nice — John understands that.’
‘You know the guy?’
‘We’ve had our moments.’
‘How about Cam Colvin?’
‘Not so much. He’s a thug who surrounds himself with others who remind him of himself.’
‘And John Rhodes doesn’t?’
‘John likes men who are scarred on the inside as much as the outside, but he’s not like that himself.’ Laidlaw finished his first drink as its replacement arrived. He looked around the bar. ‘Have you noticed how police never just visit pubs? It’s more like temporary ownership.’
‘Looks to me like the student union at Stirling Uni gearing up for the Queen’s visit.’ Lilley gestured towards Finlay’s table. ‘Did I miss the speeches?’
‘There was just the one — Commander Frederick. He knew the lines by heart. “Conscientious”, “much valued”, “irreplaceable”.’
Lilley gave a snort. ‘His replacement’s already in post.’
‘Do I take it you aren’t a fan?’
‘Ben’s a nice enough bloke, team player and all that. But he couldn’t detect shit in a cowshed.’
‘I’ve always liked him. He gave me some good advice once.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘When he was working a case, he said, he often stopped the night at a hotel in town. Saved him the commute and meant he kept his head in the game.’
‘Well, he might have a point there,’ Lilley conceded. ‘Like a surgeon binning the surgical gloves before going home. You don’t want the job going with you and contaminating the evening meal.’
‘I’d need a new head every day, Bob, and not even the Barras is selling them.’ Laidlaw was taking a fresh cigarette from the pack. He offered one to Lilley, who shook his head. A hand landed heavily on Lilley’s back. He swivelled to face a grinning Ernie Milligan.
‘All right, Bob?’ Milligan said.
‘This is DI Milligan,’ Lilley told Laidlaw.
‘Jack already knows me,’ Milligan interrupted. He made show of studying Laidlaw’s apparel. ‘Get yourself to Rowan’s, man, tell them I sent you. You look whatever the opposite is of professional.’ Then, to the barman: ‘Two lager, two heavy.’
Milligan’s face was flushed and his tie askew. His hair was already turning grey and he wore it longer than the Commander liked, his defence being that it helped him blend in, much as a barn door would blend in at a festival of garden rakes. Lilley had watched the change come over Laidlaw, his entire edifice tensing in Milligan’s presence, like a trap that’s had its camouflage brushed aside.
‘We were DCs together once upon a time,’ Milligan continued, seemingly unaware of his proximity to six-feet-plus of unalloyed enmity. ‘One of us has kept climbing the ladder, the other’s still at the bottom, petrified of heights.’ The tray of pints had arrived, Milligan gripping it firmly, offering a wink in Laidlaw’s direction before ploughing into the crowd again.
‘See, I don’t mind coppers like Ben Finlay,’ Laidlaw said quietly. ‘He might not be hugely gifted, but he knows right from wrong.’
‘You’re saying Ernie Milligan doesn’t?’
‘I’m saying he’d be just as happy in a uniform with a swastika on the sleeve. As long as he was left alone to do the job the way he reckoned it needed to be done, he wouldn’t complain or even stop to think.’
‘Why do I get the feeling you’ve told him as much to his face?’
‘Sometimes you have to judge a book by its cover. There’s nothing in Milligan’s pages that you couldn’t glean from a moment’s look at him.’ Laidlaw finished his whisky.
‘Speaking of books, I happened to be passing your desk. Not quite the usual Criminal Law and Road Traffic Law...’
Laidlaw almost smiled. ‘Unamuno, Kierkegaard and Camus.’
‘Reminding us you studied at university?’
‘I left after a year, not sure that’s anything to shout about.’
‘What are they for, then?’
‘We know where a crime ends,’ Laidlaw obliged. ‘It ends with a body maybe, a court case, someone going to jail. But where does it begin? That’s a much thornier question. If we could work back to those origins, maybe we could stop crimes from happening in the first place.’
‘Crime prevention already exists.’
Laidlaw shook his head. ‘It’s not cops like you and me we need so much as sociologists and philosophers. Hence those books.’
‘I’d like to see Socrates patrolling the Gallowgate on an Old Firm night.’
‘Me too. I genuinely would.’
The phone had been ringing behind the bar for a couple of minutes, the barman finally finding a moment’s breather that allowed him to answer, hand pressed to his free ear to shut out the din. He scanned the room, said something into the receiver, and left the handset dangling while he went in search of someone, returning a moment later with the Commander. Whatever information Robert Frederick received seemed to sober him up. The nearest bodies belonged to Lilley and Laidlaw, and he fixed them with a look. Having replaced the receiver, he faced them across the bar, as if about to proffer an unexpectedly large drinks bill.
‘You’ve not long arrived, Bob?’ he checked.
‘Sorry I missed your speech, sir. Jack filled me in on the highlights.’
Frederick ignored this. ‘I need the pair of you to scoot to a pub called the Parlour. Body found in the alley behind it. Word is it could be Bobby Carter.’
‘That’s in the Calton,’ Laidlaw stated. ‘John Rhodes territory.’
‘Which is why we need to tread carefully. It’ll be a while before this lot will be any help, but we’ll be there when we can.’
‘Message received,’ Lilley said.
‘And understood?’ Frederick’s eyes were on Laidlaw.
‘Absolutely,’ Laidlaw replied, his gaze on the ashtray as he stubbed out his cigarette.