There was a buzz and Hanlon pushed the door open and walked up the grey, worn granite steps to the second floor. She knocked on the door and a girl opened it.
‘Come in,’ she said.
Lee Anne Gillespie looked about sixteen. She was small and slim with short hair, dyed orange, parted on one side, and a pierced nose, lip and ears. Colourful tattoos decorated her forearms. Hanlon could see the striations of faint scars, the results of self-harm, that bisected some of the tattoos with faint white lines. She was very pretty.
There was more than a hint of weed in the air.
The flat was sparsely furnished with cheap furniture. As well as the smell of the cannabis, there was a strong smell of poverty. The carpet was threadbare, the sofa had been fixed with duct tape. The armchairs were of the sort that old people were sometimes discovered dead in.
‘So how can I help you?’
Hanlon could see her looking puzzled at the state of Hanlon’s clothes. It wasn’t hard to read her mind: what kind of police turn up covered in bloodstains? She opened her bag and showed her warrant card. Lee Anne looked at her questioningly.
‘Kai McPherson,’ said Hanlon.
A faint smile played around Lee Anne’s face.
‘Whit’s he done the now?’
‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ Hanlon said.
‘Deid?’ Lee Anne looked shocked. She sat down on the edge of the sofa.
Hanlon said gently, ‘He can’t hurt you any more.’
Lee Anne frowned. ‘What do you mean, hurt me?’
Hanlon was puzzled. ‘I thought he used to beat you up?’
‘Beat me up? Who have you been talking to? That’s nae true.’ She shook her head emphatically.
‘Manny Johnson.’
‘Manny!’ Lee Anne spat the word out. ‘Manny! That auld cunt. Him and that arsehole Leo. And you believed him! Are you fucking stupit? If ever there were two congenital liars it’s those two!’ She now looked absolutely furious. Lee Anne obviously had a temper.
Hanlon made placating motions with her hands.
‘So it’s not true? It’s not true that Kai used to knock you about?’ Hanlon was puzzled. Manny had ordered her either dead or injured, she certainly had no reason at all to trust him, but she had believed his story about Kai. It had made so much sense. It matched so well with what she knew of him.
Lee Anne shook her head angrily. ‘Kai is a nice guy. You would nae want tae mess with him, but he’s nice. I was gang oot with him and then I stupidly fucked it up.’
‘So Kai didn’t put you in the Royal Alex?’
‘No, no one put me in the Royal Alex. Well, obviously I’ve been in the Royal Alex.’ She said it as though it were self-evident that this would be the case. ‘This is Paisley, who has nae? But never because of Kai, or any man, come to that.’
‘What about Tam?’
‘Whit aboot Tam?’ She frowned. ‘I, like a numpty, pissed as fuck, had sex with Tam and Kai found out and left me. But he never hurt me.’
‘So what is the story at that pub?’ Hanlon asked.
Lee Anne sighed. ‘Look, the way it is, is this. Manny is a coke dealer and Leo is his minder. Manny pays him in drugs. I say coke, but he’ll do you anything, ket, smack, spice, whatever…’
‘That much I’d worked out,’ Hanlon said.
Lee Anne nodded. ‘Guid. Tam is one of Manny’s best customers. He’s also one of Paisley’s biggest burglars – you should know, he’s got a record as long as your arm – and he’s also a fence. Tam might be able to get you some drugs, if you’re a mate, but he buys from Manny. Anyway, Kai did get busted but the copper cut him some slack and Kai went straight. He told me that the police man got him a legit job. Kai had had enough of the game, he told me.’
‘And what about you?’ asked Hanlon.
Lee Anne shrugged. ‘You ken, I’ve tried tae get clean, loads of times, SMART, NA, CA…’ she reeled off a list of organisations specialising in addiction, a whole list of acronyms ‘… even the church… no good. Maybe one day, ye ken. But not right now… I do OK. I’m a sex worker, I’m self-employed, I don’t have a pimp.’
That’s reassuring, thought Hanlon.
Lee Anne continued, ‘I work out of the hotels in the West End, a good class of customer, some regular clients, it’s nae too bad.’
Hanlon thought of Nose-stud, another sex worker, dead, her hair drifting like seaweed in the cold Atlantic swell. Kai dead. She wondered fleetingly if Lee Anne worked for the guy who ran the company who had supplied the girls to the Hart brothers. How long would Lee Anne survive?
‘Poor Kai,’ Lee Anne said. ‘I really thought he’d make it. I was happy for him. He’d escaped.’
But he hadn’t, had he? thought Hanlon.
She took the bag of coke out of her pocket, Lee Anne’s eyes widened.
‘What are you trying to do? Fit me up?’
Hanlon shook her head and stood up. ‘Nobody’s trying to plant drugs. You can have this. It belonged to Leo.’
Lee Anne looked at her as if she were crazy. ‘Are you really in the police?’
Hanlon thought of what she had done, what she was doing now and what she was going to do. She thought of McCleod, who was so career conscious she didn’t want her staying the night in case that raised question marks about her judgement or her sexual orientation. McCleod, too frightened to go to her superiors to tell them about Campbell. Hanlon felt a twinge of contempt for her Goody Two Shoes behaviour. Then she thought, Well, she’s the sensible one, she may be a bit boring but she’s not the one in trouble like me. Or indeed the one doling out class A’s like a box of chocolates.
‘Only just,’ she said truthfully. ‘Probably not for much longer, to tell you the truth.’
Lee Anne digested this, then looked at the baggy in her
