‘Car?’
‘Vauxhall Victor estate, handy for a big family.’
‘Also handy for moving large objects,’ Laidlaw added thoughtfully.
‘What the hell is all this?’ Milligan sounded genuinely curious to know.
‘You’ve not mentioned the redecorating.’
‘Okay.’
‘Whole house or just certain rooms?’
‘The living room. Wall units moved into the downstairs hall. It was a bit of a bloody squeeze, to be honest.’
‘Carpets up?’
‘Some, yes.’
‘Ladders and tins of paint?’
‘Paint yes, ladders no. Satisfied?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far. You know the widow’s ex is a painter and decorator?’
‘It came up in the notes.’
Laidlaw nodded to himself, then gestured towards the door. ‘Reckon you’ve got your man?’
‘No.’
‘Just the autograph, then, eh?’
‘He was some player in his day. You reckon Spanner Thomson did that damage?’
‘Colvin’s men are too gormless to do anything other than follow their noses, same as this inquiry’s been doing.’
Milligan’s hackles rose perceptibly, but it was too late to do anything about it. Laidlaw had turned his back on him and was walking away. Milligan went after him.
‘You need to tell me what you’re doing. That’s a direct order, DC Laidlaw.’
‘Kiss my hairy arse, DI Milligan.’
‘What’s the house got to do with anything?’
‘You’re a detective. Given a few lifetimes, I’m sure even you can work it out.’
A whisky apiece with a beer chaser, Bob Lilley given no say in the order. Then the same corner table as before, the one they’d sat at with Eck Adamson. The other drinkers consisted of two women surrounded by bags of purchases from a department store, and a couple of business suits at a separate table who looked as if the future of the world rested on their shoulders. One of the women was being taken to Paris the weekend after next, while the other had a new refrigerator on order.
‘We’ve been looking in all the wrong places,’ Laidlaw said as Lilley settled next to him. It was as if his mind was half in the room and half elsewhere, like a medium tapping into the spirit world. ‘You might call it classic misdirection, but the murder itself was amateur hour. Think about it. The body was moved and then found. Why? A professional hit would have been cleaner and the body could have been buried under a motorway.’
‘The killer wanted it to be found.’
‘After a day or two, yes. But what was going on during that time?’
‘Where are you going with this, Jack?’
‘Who was it said early on — cherchez la femme? Most murders are domestic, Bob.’ Laidlaw met Lilley’s gaze for the first time and held it. ‘Bobby enjoyed the company of other women, but at home he ruled with an iron fist. Neighbour across the way heard regular arguments. Monica’s ex-husband wasn’t allowed over the threshold. It wasn’t so much a family in that house as a hostage situation. Not that we focused on any of that; we were too busy making the facts suit our preconceived ideas. Gangsters get hit by other gangsters, end of story. And to be fair to us, there was no end of suspects to keep us busy and stop us seeing what was in front of our faces.’ He paused. ‘In fact I blame Milligan for that one hundred per cent. If he’d allowed a proper detective to enter that house, they’d maybe have twigged sooner, but he kept that wee treat to himself. Stupid of us to let him do that.’
‘Twigged what, though?’
‘The whole house was redecorated a couple of months back, Bob.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at.’
‘This murder was messy and spontaneous and personal. It then took time to work out what had to happen next. Take the body to John Rhodes’s part of town and plant it there; get rid of the knife close to where one of Cam Colvin’s team lives. Planned by someone who knew a bit about both camps. Spanner’s address would be known to anyone near the top of the Colvin hierarchy. The Parlour was where Bobby Carter was due to meet John Rhodes, except Rhodes bailed. Carter would have been fuming about that, maybe said something about it to someone close to him.’
Lilley was shaking his head as if to refuse the invitation Laidlaw was offering him. ‘I was beginning to enjoy working with you, Jack — if that’s what you can call what we’ve been doing. But now I’m not so sure.’
‘I don’t like it either, Bob, but the truth’s not about likes and dislikes, it just is. And if you liking me is dependent on me lying to you or giving you soft options, forget it.’
‘You saw the family, though — the photos in the paper, the TV pictures. They were devastated.’
‘Of course they were.’ Laidlaw paused. ‘They’d just murdered the head of the household.’
Lilley snorted in disbelief. ‘You’re saying all of them did it, based solely on someone telling you the place had been redecorated recently?’
‘Good people do bad things all the time, Bob. Especially when they feel trapped or lied to and let down over and over again. Our job, yours and mine, is to uphold the law, especially when turning a blind eye means other people getting hurt. What we had here was a classic case of the giant’s fingers.’
‘You’ve lost me again.’
‘It’s something John Updike said — details are like the giant’s fingers. No matter how big and complex something is, it all comes down to smaller details.’ Laidlaw saw the blank look on his partner’s face. ‘Okay then, how about W. H. Auden? His poem “Musée des Beaux Arts”. Friend of mine at school, Tom Docherty, he was a big fan. “About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters”. Auden is looking at Brueghel’s painting The Fall of Icarus. There’s this calamity happening — Icarus falling to his death — but nobody in the painting is paying any attention to it, too distracted by their everyday concerns.’
‘Right.’
‘You’re a proper philistine, aren’t you?’
‘Plain talk and plain bread are my staples, if that’s what you mean.’
‘So what do you say?’
‘To what?’
‘To coming with me.’
‘Bearsden, you mean?’
‘Where else?’
‘You don’t think you should maybe clear it with Milligan first?’
‘No.’
‘Or put together a case that’s more than an amalgamation of guesswork and lines from poems I’ve never heard of?’
Laidlaw offered a shrug and said nothing.
‘You’re going anyway, aren’t you?’ Lilley looked resigned to the fact.
‘I’m going anyway,’ Laidlaw agreed.
36
When they parked outside the house in Bearsden, Laidlaw gave a wave to Mrs Jamieson, who was peering, sentinel-like, from a gap in her net curtains. They were halfway up the path to the Carter house when its door opened, Cam Colvin paying them no heed as he stomped towards his own car. The two detectives paused to watch him.
‘Was that a street map he was holding?’ Lilley enquired.
‘You’d think by now he’d know his way around the city,’ Laidlaw agreed, tapping at the open door and stepping into the hallway. He could smell fresh paint. Whatever clutter had been in the hall, however, was no longer there. From what he could see, only the one wall here had actually had a fresh coat — the one running along the side of the staircase. He indicated as much to Bob Lilley before entering the living room. All three children — Stella, Peter and Chris — were seated there, books and comics on their laps. Their mother stood at the entrance to the kitchen. She looked jittery, Cam Colvin no doubt to blame.