Church.’
‘So I understand,’ Fred agreed. ‘That’s why I don’t see it as relevant. Just a curiosity, really; that’s why I drew it to your attention.’
I gazed at the report, and I smiled. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s no more than that, but given who’s involved… I think I might just go and visit the sick.’
Thirteen
I didn’t take grapes with me, or even a bunch of the petrol station flowers that were popular in those days (and may still be, for all I know) with guys who had wool to pull over their wives’ eyes. Perry Holmes might have been a basket case, but his past hadn’t been erased, not in my eyes, or in those of any cop who’d seen the aftermath of some of the things he’d ordered.
My former colleague Tommy Partridge was among them. He devoted a large chunk of his career to putting Perry away but he never came close, and because of it he was a bitter man when he retired. Holmes was much, much too clever, for all of us. He never got near to the things that were his, and he was never near anything that was done in his name. When I was in my last year at secondary school, an old policeman came to speak to my debating group. In an off-the-record moment, he told us, ‘You are all bright young people, with working lives ahead of you. I shouldn’t give you this employment advice, but the fact is that should any of you choose to go into crime, then with your intelligence and backgrounds, you probably have a ninety per cent chance of being successful.’ Holmes was living proof of the truth he spoke; he was a brilliant, ruthless man. Tony Manson had learned a lot from him, but he wasn’t his equal.
I’d only ever met him once, in the Western Infirmary, two years before, after Billy Spreckley had killed his brother and shot him four times. One of those bullets had lodged in his brain, and was still there. His consultant neurologists, all three of them, for Perry wasn’t a man to accept only a second opinion if he didn’t like it, said with unanimous certainty that he was going to die. He was conscious and responsive, though; I was sent by Alf Stein to interview him about the shooting, and about anything else he cared to discuss. .. to take a dying declaration, in effect.
He didn’t care to say a word, not a cheep. He didn’t care to die either. After a few months it became obvious that he wasn’t going to, not any time soon at any rate, and so he was transferred to a nursing home while a new house was built for him on an estate that he owned just outside the city, all on one level and fitted out to meet the needs of a quadriplegic.
He’d been kept under observation there, for a while, just in case his surviving old associates started to roll up to his door, but none of them had. No police time was spent on him any longer. Received wisdom, and the evidence of our own observation, was that his criminal enterprises died with his brother Al, and, shortly afterwards, with Johann Kraus. They had been his main conduits, the means by which his orders were delivered, and executed. Without them, and with no means of replacing them, the word was that he devoted himself from his wheelchair exclusively to the legitimate side of his business empire, the vast property portfolio that he had built up with very thoroughly laundered money, and a development wing which the banks and other institutions were always ready to fund, because he was very good at it, and always gave an excellent return on investment.
The underworld vacuum that he had left behind him seemed to have been filled not by one person, but by several, of whom Tony Manson was one. He was dominant in Edinburgh, but in other areas of the country there had been a couple of turf wars, with fatalities, before the new order had established itself.
I’d met Al Holmes often enough; he was pulled in quite regularly by the drugs squad, and given as hard a time for as long as the law would allow, but Perry’s system was foolproof. He swept his house and his office for bugs every day, and he never had discussions, only oneto-one meetings, with no third parties present. Al was a shit, and nowhere near as bright as Perry, but he was too scared of his brother ever to cross him.
Kraus and I had crossed paths too. He was almost as big as Lennie Plenderleith, but not in his league when it came to tough, or for that matter in the same league as me, as he found out one time when he took a swing at me in an interview room. I’d hoped he would; that’s why there was no one else there. He had a fearsome reputation, but only with a gun or a chainsaw in his hand. When one of our marksmen took him down, the squad had a whip-round for the shooter.
I was thinking of him as I pulled up outside Perry’s new house. Kraus had lived on a small farm that was part of the estate, and it was suspected that some of his victims, including most of Mia’s brother and uncle, had gone into an incinerator there. And that made me think of Mia for the first time in a few hours; it was just gone four o’clock and she was on air until half an hour before I was due at her place. Too late to cancel gracefully… if I’d really wanted to.
I stepped out of the Discovery and walked up a long white marble pathway that led to the front door. It was opened before I reached it by a man in a blue nurse’s tunic, a large black man, with short frizzy hair; he wasn’t smiling. I glanced around looking for the camera that must have picked me up, but I couldn’t see it.
‘Can I help you?’ the doorkeeper asked as I approached; his accent could have been from anywhere other than Scotland, and I’d never seen him before.
‘I’d like to speak with Mr Holmes,’ I replied.
‘Then you’ll be disappointed, sir. Mr Holmes does not receive visitors.’
‘I’m a hard man to disappoint,’ I countered. ‘I apologise for not calling ahead to make an appointment, but the matter is important, and it’s only just come up.’
‘You’d have been wasting your time trying to call. The number here is ex-directory.’
‘Those don’t exist for me.’ I pulled my warrant card and showed it: I’d no reason to hassle the guy, and he had every right to refuse me entrance. ‘That says I’m a police officer, Detective Superintendent Skinner. You’re doing your job, sir, but so am I, and mine overrides yours. So please go and ask Mr Holmes if he has five minutes to assist me in a murder investigation in which he is not, I repeat not, a suspect.’
He made his choice, and let me step into the hall. ‘Very well. Please wait here.’
I did. He left through a door in the far left corner. While he was gone I scanned the place carefully for the next camera, the one that I was sure was trained on the door, but I couldn’t spot that either. The guy was gone for five minutes, but I kept my patience. If he was going to ask me to leave he’d have been back sooner.
When he did return, he was brisk and to the point. I saw that he had a professional bearing, not that of hired muscle. ‘Mr Holmes will see you, Mr Skinner,’ he announced. ‘I’m sorry for the delay, but we’ve been moving him to his receiving room. If you’ll come with me. ..’
I followed him into a broad corridor, more of a second hall, in fact, with several doors off, all double width. The set that faced us were of dappled glass, and he led me towards them. They opened out into a conservatory big enough to accommodate a tennis court and a few spectators into the bargain. It looked into a walled garden, and was expensively but not heavily furnished, a circular table and a couple of armchairs, that was all. Its main feature was a pale blue tiled swimming pool, with a ramp rather than steps leading into it.
But no, the main feature was probably Perry Holmes himself. He was waiting for me, seated upright in a wheelchair with a high back, a head restraint, and padded arms. His right hand rested on a control pad. It moved very slightly, one finger, no more, but he started to roll towards me.
‘I won’t shake hands, Mr Skinner,’ he chuckled, hoarsely. ‘I probably wouldn’t even if I could. You can sit down, though. Would you like a wee refreshment, as they say?’
‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Are you sure? I can’t join you since Hastie here has to feed me, and we don’t do that in public.’ I glanced across at another blueuniformed man who was standing close by, pale-skinned, slimmer and smaller than the other. ‘But don’t let that put you off.’
‘No, really.’
‘As you wish. You can leave us now, lads.’ The two men withdrew, without a word. ‘They’re my carers,’ Holmes said as the door closed. ‘Hastie’s a nurse, highly trained and very experienced; Vanburn’s my masseur. I need a lot of that, to keep me going. They’re good lads; they allow me a certain lifestyle, and they’re with me pretty much full-time. As you can see, I have very little movement; facial muscles, fingers and toes, but that’s it… apart from erections. Ironically, I still have those, but they have nothing to do with muscle movement. The doctors
