them through some tough times.
He pulled on his seat belt and grabbed the gearstick. Vibrations from the engine chugged up his arm and through his body, like he and the car were part of the same beast.
‘Hey, you’ve got a wee chip there,’ Rose said, pointing at the top of the windscreen. Billy followed her finger and saw a small crystal of cracked glass in the shape of a star. ‘You better get that sorted, Kiddo, otherwise the crack will just get bigger and bigger.’
Billy put the car in gear, his feet twitching on the pedals, and pulled out.
6
Blacket Place was a leafy enclave of Georgian mansions hidden between the bustle of Newington Street and the student chaos of Pollock Halls. The Neighbourhood Watch signs were brass plaques, CCTV everywhere, and Billy’s ancient Micra was making curtains twitch.
The Whitehouse place was the swankiest of the lot, a gravel drive winding round an ornamental fountain out front, Doric columns fronting a two-storey edifice that was verging on stately home. They crunched up the drive and rang the doorbell.
After a while the door opened and a fair-haired young woman answered. She had an accent, Polish or Slavic, and she threw a glare at them. She was the nanny, Mrs Whitehouse wasn’t in and she didn’t know when she’d be back. End of conversation, door closed.
They mooched round the side of the house, having a nosey. A huge, well-tended garden with half a forest of oak and pine, a large treehouse and a pond. To the side of the house was a four-car garage. Locked, alarms, security cameras, no windows. Round the back, a gabled pine summerhouse hidden from the main building.
‘Leave, now.’
They turned. A thug in a suit, thick tattooed neck, muscles flexing as he tapped a baseball bat against his leg. A smaller guy lurked behind, same air of menace.
‘And you are?’ Rose said.
‘Out.’
‘OK.’ Rose lifted a placating hand. ‘We got a little lost trying to leave this palace.’
They shuffled towards the front gate, taking a wide berth round the goons.
Rose smiled at them. ‘Are you employees of Mr Whitehouse?’
The big guy shook his head and indicated the gate with the bat.
‘Well, nice talking to you.’
The men watched until they reached the car. They got in, drove round the corner and stopped for five minutes, then headed back to Blacket Place, parking further away from the house. The guys were gone. Billy killed the engine, his fingers still gripping the wheel.
Rose got her notepad out. ‘OK, let’s think about what we’ve got. Edinburgh crime lord dead. There’s our headline right there. We can assume he died last night.’
Billy nodded, although Rose wasn’t looking for input, just using him as a sounding board.
‘So what the hell was Frank Whitehouse doing up the Radical Road in the middle of the night? I don’t believe he’d kill himself, and I doubt he would be up there on his own at 3 a.m. or whatever, so that rules out an accident. Which means he was taken up there and thrown off.’
Billy was still nodding. He touched the bump on his head. Rose hadn’t asked how he got it. He touched his face, pushed at the skin over his cheekbone. He couldn’t feel anything. He was confused for a moment, didn’t know whether it was his face or his fingers that were numb. He rubbed his hands together. His fingers tingled. His brain felt sluggish, syrupy. Those pills. At least the pain had gone for now. He looked down. His legs were jittery, like a current was passing through them. He tried to stop them but couldn’t. He put his hands on his thighs but the vibrations just passed up his arms. He wound his window down and gulped air, but swarms of midges made him wind it up again.
Rose was still talking to herself, figuring it out.
‘Maybe he wasn’t up the Radical Road at all.’
Billy gripped his legs to stop them shaking.
‘Maybe he was killed somewhere else and dumped at the bottom. Or maybe he was killed somewhere else, then taken up there and thrown off to make it look like suicide or an accident. But that’s an awful long way to lug a corpse when you can just dump him anywhere. And if you’re going to dump him, why not do it where he’s less likely to be found? Or maybe the point was to make sure he would be found.’
Billy stared out the window, his mind fizzing. Or maybe it was a hit and run and he wasn’t dead like they thought and he got up and walked away, and collapsed in the gorse. Maybe they could’ve saved his life if they’d called an ambulance. Maybe.
‘It’s all speculation until forensics come back with something.’
The gears in Billy’s mind ground together.
‘What sort of things can they find out?’
‘It just depends. It’s not like CSI, but they sometimes come up with a useful nugget. Precise cause of death would be handy.’
Billy thought about that for a minute.
‘I reckon the Mackie boys must be the prime suspects,’ Rose said. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the cops have brought them in for questioning already, checked their alibis.’
Billy raised his eyebrows.
Rose looked at him. ‘Wayne and Jamie Mackie. For a crime reporter, you really don’t know much about Edinburgh’s criminal underworld.’
‘You’re supposed to be teaching me.’
‘How did you get this job again?’
A running joke. Rose and the paper’s editor and news editor had been the interview panel. The other two had wanted another candidate with more experience, a hotshot young woman from down south. Rose had talked them into hiring Billy. She sealed it by pointing out he’d be cheaper and she could train him up. She reminded him at every opportunity.
‘Yeah, the Mackies had the most to gain, rival criminal gangs and all that, and they’re just about the only guys in town capable of something like this.’ Rose looked at Billy. ‘It takes a lot of bottle to kill someone, you know. More than you’d think.’
A lot of bottle, thought Billy.
A silver Lexus swept past them and turned into the Whitehouses’ drive.
‘Aye, aye,’ Rose said. ‘Look lively.’
She huffed as she got out of the car, and Billy followed. She scuttled to the house as he caught her up.
The car had stopped at the front door and a man and a woman got out. The car drove on to the garage, the driver waiting for the garage door to slide upward electronically.
The couple were walking up the steps, the man with a hand placed on the small of the woman’s back. He was short and skinny in a loose suit, she was taller, red hair to her shoulders, wearing a black polo neck, tight skirt and heels. She had a graceful walk.
‘Mrs Whitehouse?’ Rose called out as they approached.
Both figures turned at the door. The man had close-set eyes and stubble. He tried to steer the woman inside the house but she didn’t budge. She wore large, round sunglasses. Billy was struck by how beautiful she was — old-style, full-figured glamour.
‘Mrs Whitehouse, I’m Rose Brown from the Evening Standard, I wondered if we could have a quick word.’
The man stood in front of the woman. ‘Adele has nothing to say to you.’
‘Mrs Whitehouse?’ Rose looked past the man at her.
The man snarled at Rose. ‘If you don’t leave immediately, I’ll call the police.’
‘Was it your husband, Mrs Whitehouse? At the morgue?’
