that’s what he’d have done to me, if he’d been able.
He sloped off, without another word. Policing is no different from any other profession, or from humanity for that matter. It has those people with that little bit extra, or who exceed their natural ability by their effort and enthusiasm, and it has its great majority, those who do what’s expected of them competently, the people who, in the end, make it all work, life’s Poor Bloody Infantry. Then there are the others, those who want the ride for free, and whose weight is carried by the rest. Occasionally, one of those will climb the ladder through lack of proper scrutiny. Greg Jay wasn’t a typical example, he’d gone higher than most, but he’d been on my radar for a while, and with me having risen to the same rung as him, he knew that his card was marked.
I climbed the ladder out of the pit, beckoning to Higgins and Martin to follow. They’d both stood silent while Jay and I had our gunfight. At the top, I called out to the lead crime scene officer. ‘DS Dorward,’ I said, ‘I know this place must be a fucking mess, with council staff walking all over it twice a week, but I need you to get as much as you can out of it. First off, I need to know how many people were in here with the dead man.’ The SOCO opened his mouth but I cut him off. ‘Yes, I know it’s possible that nobody else was here with him, that he was off his face on something and thought he was Greg Louganis, but I do not believe that. I want everything there is. Start with the door that was jemmied.’
Red hair poking out angrily from under his tunic hood, the man stared at me as if I’d asked him whether he regularly had sex with pigs. ‘That’s the first place we went, sir,’ he retorted. ‘It’s covered in prints. If the victim’s are there, we’ll find them.’
‘Of course you will. Sorry. Give me everything you can, as soon as you can, but without compromising thoroughness.’
‘What does “compromising” mean, sir?’ he drawled. ‘Is that a CID term?’
I laughed. Dorward’s path and mine hadn’t crossed too often, but every detective in the force knew of his prickliness.
‘Nah,’ I replied, ‘it’s a general term, as in “compromising your promotion chances”. Sarcasm can be good for that.’
He smiled, calmly. ‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir. Now will the three of you please fuck off and let me get on with it.’ Dorward was untouchable and he knew it. He was a genius at what he did, and rank meant nothing to him.
We peeled off our sterile gear and stepped back outside, where Alex was waiting with McGuire. ‘Where’s Mr Jay gone?’ she asked, frowning as if she knew.
‘Home. I’ve taken over the investigation.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a suspicious death.’ I was always matter-of-fact about my job when I discussed it with my daughter. I didn’t believe in euphemism… not that she’d let me get away with any since she was five, and she’d forced me to use the ‘D’ word when I tried to explain why her mother wouldn’t be coming back from the hospital. For almost a year after the accident, that’s where I’d said she was, but with kids such deceits don’t survive a week at a village primary school.
‘You mean a murder?’ she persisted.
‘We don’t know yet. Nothing’s ruled out till we can prove it couldn’t have happened.’
‘So what happens now?’ She seemed excited by the situation.
Good question, kid. If I’d been any good at delegation, I could have given my three subordinates orders and taken Alex home; but I’m not, and never have been. I wanted to be the one who did what had to happen next; I wanted to see the expression on Bella Watson’s face when I told her that her second son had died a violent death.
I took a few steps away, nodding to Alison to follow. ‘Would you do me a big favour,’ I whispered, ‘one that’s completely unfair of me to ask a colleague of your rank? And don’t fucking call me “sir” when you answer.’
A faint grin touched the corners of her mouth. ‘Sure, Bob. I’ll do it.’
‘You know what it is?’
‘Of course. You want me to take your daughter home and wait till you get back there.’
‘You don’t mind?’ I said.
‘No, but so what if I did?’ The grin became a wide smile, reminding me of how attractive she could be. ‘You can hardly send her home with a uniformed cop, and I wouldn’t trust my mother’s cat with Andy Martin.’
I didn’t expect Alex to make a fuss when I told her what was happening, but neither did I expect her to be quite as enthusiastic as she was. She’d met Alison once before, by accident, when we were on a clothes shopping expedition in the junior designer section of John Lewis, and for a while after that she’d looked at me curiously.
The two of them headed off towards Alison’s car, which was parked at the top of the street, leaving me with Martin and McGuire. ‘You were in this at the start,’ I told the PC, ‘so you can stay for the ride. You and DC Martin are both seconded to Serious Crimes… temporarily, I stress… so you can lose that uniform for a while.’
The Irish Italian beamed. ‘Yes, boss. What do you want me to do?’
‘What you’re told, and no more. You are not CID yet, so don’t let it go to your head.’ I checked my watch: twenty minutes to nine. ‘There’s a mugshot of Marlon Watson in the drugs squad office at headquarters. Have it faxed to St Leonards, then take it into all the pubs in the area, not just that one across the road. There’s the cellar bar in Chambers Street, the Irish pub along South Bridge, and a couple more; you’ll have time to check them all before last orders. Show it to the staff and any regulars they point you at. Ask whether anyone saw him on Tuesday, or even Monday. We shouldn’t rule that out, he may have died earlier than we think.’
‘What if someone saw him on Wednesday?’ McGuire asked. (He was flippant from the start; it’s one of his strengths, funnily enough, for it encourages people to underestimate him.)
‘Then arrest him, because he fucking killed him! Report to me at headquarters tomorrow morning, in the SCU office. Andy, while Mario’s doing that, you and I are going to find the mother, to break the bad news.’
Martin looked back at me. ‘What about the father?’
‘He hasn’t been around for donkeys. He was a seaman; worked the trawlers, they said. As far as I know he sailed away twenty years ago and never came back. I doubt if he even knows that Ryan’s dead. That’s if he isn’t himself.’
‘Wife?’
‘Marlon? Not that I’ve heard of; last time he was lifted he gave Bella’s address.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, heavily. ‘When Billy shot the Holmeses, there was a whisper from an informant that it was Bella who bought the gun and told him to do it. DCS Stein, the head of CID, put it to her himself. I was there at the time. She told him to either prove it or fuck off. Perry made one of his rare mistakes there. He should have told his brother to kill all three Spreckleys, not just Gavin. If he’d ever met Bella, maybe he would have.’
Two
The Watson family home was in a crumbling council estate on the south side of the city. It was one of the urban sores that Scottish Homes had been set up to eradicate, and it should have been high on its agenda, but wasn’t. The police station that had been built there a few years earlier might have been the work of an architect who’d seen Assault on Precinct 13. Indeed that had probably been in the design brief.
There were a few kids hanging out in the street as I parked in the gathering gloom, and I cursed myself for lack of foresight. I had two cars, a BMW 3 Series saloon that I used socially, and a battered, scratched six-year-old Land Rover Discovery that was my work car. Since Myra’s death I’d always gone for solid vehicles with good all- round protection. When I’d left home, because Alex was with me, I’d taken the Beamer, without thinking ahead. It was a nice car, gunmetal blue metallic, and it drew admiring glances, even in Gullane, where upmarket was the norm. Where we were, it was more likely to draw gunfire.
We got out, and as I locked up I looked around; a few yards away a group of half a dozen boys and youths stood, some eyeing me up, a couple looking at the car and almost salivating as they did. ‘Just a minute,’ I said to
