‘I have.’ She didn’t elaborate.
Manny frowned. ‘Tam’s a wee shite. He’s a druggie. I’m not in favour, I don’t like drugs, but whit can ye dae?’ He shrugged. ‘You might say, bar him, but in general he behaves. This is Paisley. Better the devil you know.’ He extinguished his cigarette and lit another one. ‘Shites like Tam are a fact of life. Anyway, there was friction.’
‘Friction?’
‘Tam and Kai had an argument. Kai came off worst. He had to leave after that.’
'What was the dispute over?' Hanlon asked.
‘There was a lassie involved. Tam’s ex. Lee Anne. She took up with Kai.’ Manny gave a wheezy laugh and said, ‘Boy, she sure can pick them. Anyhow, she and Kai had an argument and Kai started whaling on her. She ended up in the Royal Alex. Broken cheekbones, missing teeth, Christ, she was black and blue.’
So, thought Hanlon, Kai has form for assaulting women.
‘He has issues with women then?’ she asked.
‘Kai has issues, as you put it, with everyone. It’s lucky he didnae kill Lee Anne. He’s a wee pluke.’
‘What’s her full name?’
Manny looked at her questioningly.
‘Just in case I need to know.’
He shrugged. ‘Gillespie, Lee Anne Gillespie. She’s a bam – anyone going oot wi’ Kai needs their heid seeing to.’
There was obviously little love lost between Manny and Kai. He added, ‘If you interview him, I’d take everything he says with a pinch of salt. He’s nae the most honest of boys. I hope that’s helped give you your background.’
So, violent towards women and an untrustworthy liar. The landlord puffed away at his Regal Blue; he wagged a warning finger at Hanlon. ‘This is Paisley, like I said. It can get kind of rough round here, but I’m too auld to move now. I can control what happens in this pub, but not outside. When you leave it’ll be out the back with Leo to chum you doon the road. I heard you made Tam look stupit – he willnae take kindly to that. He’s impulsive.’
Impulsive, she thought, that’s one way of putting it.
‘Thank you.’
Manny waved away her thanks with a pudgy, unhealthy hand. ‘It’s my guid deed for the day. I don’t want anything bad happening to you from one of my customers. Anyway, one last word about Kai. I’d heard he’d gone straight, but I dinnae really believe it. He’s as bad as Tam.’
‘Thank you, Manny, you’ve been very helpful,’ Hanlon said. She had expected him to be a lot more close-mouthed, certainly not cooperative.
Manny lit another cigarette and topped his whisky up with a bottle he took out from a drawer in a filing cabinet behind his desk.
‘I’m seventy; I am fucked medically.’ He coughed as if to underline the point. It was a very long coughing fit and at the end he was gasping for breath. ‘As you may have guessed.’ He produced an inhaler and sucked hard on it.
‘If it wasnae for this wee puffer…’ he waved the inhaler ‘… I’d be deid, but I’m no terribly long for this world. I just want to create trouble for Tam, Kai and all their kin. Drugs are ripping, have ripped, the heart out of this community. Not just here, all over Scotland.’ He sighed. ‘But I’m not going to do anything that constructive personally. My action days are over. I heard that Kai had made a big-time connection with a Scottish coke importer. I heard too that he was paying the police off tae look the other way.’
He looked at her in a warning way. ‘This is, of course, off the record. Now I’ve told you quite a bit, you can do the rest. Now, time for you to go.’
Hanlon stood up.
‘Thanks again.’
‘Dinnae thank me, just inconvenience Tam and Kai. The sad truth is, even if you put them away, someone else will take their place. As well you know…’ he picked his phone up and laboriously texted ‘… but those two are wee bastards, they deserve to go down. Hopefully they’ll end up in the same jail, kill each other. Do us all a favour.’
Leo opened the door.
‘Yes, Manny?’
‘Take this young lady to wherever she wants, Leo.’
‘Where to?’ He looked at Hanlon with his eager, crazy eyes.
‘The airport, Leo.’
The door closed on Manny. The last she saw of him he was lighting another cigarette from the still-glowing butt of the old one.
Leo chuckled and their eyes met.
‘Star sign, that’s a guid one.’
14
Hanlon climbed out of the small plane and breathed in the heavy salt air with a sense of relief. Back on Islay. Even the airstrip, the tarmac running across very vivid green grass, looked welcoming after the huge concrete apron of Glasgow airport. A stiff breeze tugged at her dark hair and she patted the metal of the plane’s fuselage with an almost proprietorial hand.
She had run over the events of the day on the flight back, trying to make some sense of what she had learned.
Kai had indeed been employed at a Michelin-starred (well, almost) restaurant. She had been slightly surprised that this should have actually been the case. From the little she knew of such places, she had gathered it wasn’t easy to get a job in one. It was quite a leap from the Rob Roy to put it mildly. McCullough, the chef, had been of the same opinion. The consensus was that Kai didn’t fit in, that he should never have been employed there in the first place.
This inevitably led to the question, why? It was a big question.
Responsibility for giving Kai the job lay at the door of The Sleeket Mouse’s manageress, the sister of the detective in charge of investigating two deaths on Jura, both deaths involving foreign young women, both deaths drownings and both deaths linked to the hotel where Kai now worked. Had Campbell leaned on his sister to employ Kai, and if so, why?
Ishbel Campbell had become the co-owner of The Sleeket Mouse. She had managed
