I backed out the way I had come. "That's Joe all right," I told the copper. "Is the doctor still here?"
He nodded. "She was in the back garden writing up some notes last I saw her." At that moment a short, busty woman in a tweed suit, maybe aged in her mid-forties, came through the back door of the garage and made her way to us.
"Dr. Halliday," she announced, briskly.
"Oz Blackstone," I replied, shaking her hand. She blinked and looked closer at my face; this lady did go to the movies.
"Pleased to meet you. Identification complete?"
"Yeah, that's poor old Joe. The sergeant says he's been dead for some time. Is that right?"
"Yes, it is; probably since last night in fact, although the temperature in here with the engine running and everything makes it difficult to be precise. The pathologist should be able to confirm it, though. How did you come to know Mr. Donn, Mr. Blackstone?" she asked.
"Through business, but there's a family connection too. Joe was once married to my wife's late mother." The whole truth wasn't relevant, so I kept that to myself. "What do you think happened?" I continued instead.
"It's a bit obvious what happened, sir," said Kennedy. "Suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning."
"It's not bloody obvious to me. Joe Donn was no more suicidal than you are, Sergeant; maybe less so, for all I know. If you report that to the Fiscal, I'll challenge it. This has to have been an accident."
"It's difficult to see how you could accidentally gas yourself like that," Doctor Halliday murmured, sympathetically.
"Joe was always tinkering with his car. Look at the way it's gleaming in there; anything less than perfection was no good to him. He could have heard something wrong with the engine and been checking it. Maybe it was dark, maybe he forgot the doors were closed, or he was overcome far quicker than he could have realised."
"And maybe life got too much for him," the sergeant said, 'so he just got behind the wheel, turned on the engine and said goodbye."
"Was there a note?"
"We haven't looked yet, sir."
"When you find one I'll start to believe you, but not before. You know what Joe was supposed to be doing tomorrow night? He was in the final of the Lanark Golf Club match-play championship. Joe's been a member for forty years and he's been scratch or damn near it for most of that time, yet he's never won the championship."
"Maybe he's got the yips since the semi," Kennedy retorted.
"Not funny."
The sergeant winced. "Maybe no', sir. I'm sorry. Still, I don't see this as anything other than a suicide, and that's what I'll be reporting."
"Don't bet on it."
His eyes narrowed. "What do you mean by that, sir?" he said, with the beginning of a threat in his voice.
"I mean that I've got friends." I took out my mobile. "I make one phone call and there will be CID here to start a proper investigation.
That will not look good for you, so do yourself a favour and call the cavalry yourself."
Kennedy snorted. "You think you can call out Strathclyde CID, do you, Mr. Blackstone? You're a policeman, are you?"
"As a matter of fact I was, about ten years ago. Not that I hung around long, mind; I didn't like being shouted at by people who thought that having three stripes on their arm made them better than me in some way. I still have contacts, though. As a further matter of fact I was at a Chamber of Commerce dinner a week ago where I was sat next to your chief constable: he asked me to autograph his menu for his wife." I looked at the sergeant. "No bullshit," I said, quietly.
A glimmer of recognition came into his eyes; whether it was of me, or of the inevitable, I wasn't sure. "If you insist, then," he muttered, then turned his back on me, walked a few steps away and spoke softly into his radio.
Seven.
The CID came all right. They took photos of Joe in the car, and fingerprinted everything in sight, including the doctor and me, in case we had been careless. (They didn't take prints from Sergeant Kennedy and PC Cash Money; all police officers are fingerprinted for elimination purposes, although their records are kept separately from the Bad People.) They supervised the rolling of the Jag from the garage and the removal of Joe's body, then they searched the car.
I watched them from a distance as they did it, and Susie joined me after they had taken Joe off to the mortuary in Glasgow. Crawford Street isn't a place where crowds will gather naturally, but a few people had stopped to spec tate There would have been a lot more if the High School along the road had been in session, but it was closed for the Easter holidays.
The sudden, suspicious death of Joe Donn warranted two detective constables and two technicians. I thought they'd want to take statements from us, but they didn't. I began to wish that I had made that call… it would have been to Ricky Ross, whose Masonic arm reached everywhere. They searched the house too. I assumed that they were looking for a suicide note, and it gave me a degree of satisfaction when Kennedy came over to me and admitted that they hadn't found any trace of one.
"Did they check his computer?" I asked. I knew that he had one, since I'd sent him some photos of Janet once, by e-mail.
"I don't know," he replied. "But I'll make sure they do, don't you worry."
There wasn't much to do after that but go home. Gerry Meek had been in the office, waiting for the board meeting, when the call had come from the police, so Susie phoned him from the car to let him know what had happened. Gillian Harvey was out of town, on a visit to a bank client in Sheffield: Susie left a message with her secretary, asking her to call whenever she could.
There was no one else to inform, really, other than Joe's sister-in-law, Mira. I did that when we got back to the house, although with just a bit of trepidation. She had seen some tragedy in her life since our brief meeting, and I couldn't be sure that she didn't blame me for some of it. She was okay, though, sorry to hear about Joe's death, if I not exactly grief-stricken. I promised I'd let her know about funeral arrangements, and we left it at that.
I guess that word got around the Mother well nick after the CID officers reported back to their bosses, and they saw the names on the report. I had a call early that evening from a detective superintendent, who introduced himself as Tom Fallon, Divisional Commander. He didn't have anything startling to tell me; he called to let Susie and me know that the brass was in the know and that the brass was taking it seriously. However he went on to say that there were no signs that Joe's death was suspicious. His people hadn't gone firm on their report to the Procurator Fiscal, but he had steered them towards a finding of accident, subject to the post mortem report, rather than suicide. He assured me that they had 'expedited' the autopsy, and that in fact the old boy was being carved up even as he spoke.
The results came through next morning, after Susie had gone to work.
That was one of the hardest things she ever did. She had had a strange relationship with Joe, one that had been turbulent in business terms, but when everything else was stripped away, he was her father, and his death hit her like a hammer. Okay, she had spent most of her life thinking of Jack Gantry as her dad, but blood is blood.
The trouble was, no one knew but me… well there was one other who did, but we hadn't seen Prim in a while, and didn't even know where she was… and Susie and Joe had decided that they would keep their true relationship secret. So that morning, she put on her tough face, hid the depth of her sorrow and carried on with business as usual.