telling me the truth right now.’
He turned his head away, looked out of the window and muttered something.
‘I didn’t hear that.’
‘Yes!’ he cried out. ‘Yes I did. I phoned Perry.’
I moved round to face him ‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him Alafair was doin’ my head in, and I asked him, please, if he’d fucking talk to her.’
‘How did he react?’
‘He told me to leave it with him, that was all.’
‘How long have you and Alafair been married?’ I asked.
‘Just over a year.’
‘How long had you known her before that?’
‘Seven or eight months.’
‘Did she tell you right away who her father was?’
‘No. I didn’t even know she had a father. She told me she’d been brought up by her mother, and that she was dead. She never told me about him till after the wedding. He’d just moved into his new house.’ He snorted. ‘House? Private nursing home, more like. She took me up there one day, in the close season, and introduced me to him. Poor bastard; spoon-fed by the one guy, lifted and turned and all his tubes changed by the other. He’s game, though, Perry. He’s still got a smile about him.’
‘Do you see him often?’
He nodded. ‘I go there about once a month, just to say hello. I feel sorry for him. I take him videos of the Hibs games; the club films them all, for training. At first both of us went, but lately it’s just been me. I think he and Alafair fell out about something.’
‘Has he ever told you how he wound up in his wheelchair?’
‘No, but Alafair did. She said that a business rival tried to kill him.’
‘Mmm,’ I murmured. ‘And did she tell you what happened to that so-called rival?’
‘Yes, your lot shot him, didn’t they?’
‘Well now, that’s not exactly true, but never mind. Tell me, Derek,’ I continued, ‘when did things start to go wrong between you and her?’
‘Oh,’ he drawled, lazily, ‘it must have taken all of a couple of months. She started to complain about being left on her own when I had to train, then when I was away on Scotland trips. After that it was my gambling, although she never minded when I took her to the casino. I know why that was now. Her and Tony bloody Manson.’ He frowned. ‘When I get back on my feet…’
‘You’ll what? Derek, these people are in a different world from you. What you should do when you get back on your feet is go and take a coaching qualification, or get a nice job as a TV pundit. You got off with your life. Leave it at that.’
He made a derisive noise. ‘Hmmph! That’s easy for you to say.’
‘You’re right,’ I agreed. ‘It’s easy because I don’t want to be there when they fish you out of the sea. I don’t want to be walking past those new offices at the west end wondering which one you’re underneath.’ I felt a burst of real sympathy for the poor naive lad. ‘You’re in an alien world, mate. You’re mixed up with some very bad people. You’ve already seen what Manson can do to people who upset him. Well, let me explain this to you in football terms. Tony’s a first division player, sure, but Perry, your wife’s old man, he is premier league.’
He stared at me, wide-eyed, and then laughed in my face. ‘Perry? You’re kidding. He’s a property developer.’
‘Yes, and Mussolini was an MI5 agent: so what? Derek, you must have friends in newspapers.’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, you get one of them… the Saltire would probably be the best source… to let you see its file on Perry, the stuff they’ve printed and the stuff they can’t.’ I stopped. ‘Do it if you can be bothered, but Perry isn’t the reason I’m here. You’ve answerd one of my questions. This is the other. Where can I find your brother-in-law?’
He blinked and shook his head, as if he was trying to clear it. ‘He’s in fucking Swindon, and so’s my sister, and so are their kids. But what’s Jamie got to do with any of this?’
‘I wasn’t talking about him, Derek. I meant your wife’s brother.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, man? Alafair doesn’t have a brother.’
‘Oh, but she does.’
‘Then I have never met him, and she’s never mentioned him. Neither has Perry. And that’s the God’s honest truth.’ It was, too. He was beginning to realise how far out of his depth he was, and he was scared. ‘Look, go away, please,’ he begged.
‘We will,’ I said. ‘But you don’t want to be on your own. Do you have parents?’
He nodded. ‘My mum and dad. They live in Falkirk; that’s where I started out. They’re just ordinary people, though.’
‘So are you, Derek.’ He really was a sad figure. ‘Shame, but that’s how it is now. You want my advice? Stick close to your folks, and to your football club; they’re the only ones who’ll look after you. Forget you ever knew the crew you’ve been mixing with.’
Martin and I left him to it. The DC said nothing until we were out in the car park. There he ventured, ‘Sorry, sir, but where are we on this?’
‘Wait till we make our next call,’ I told him. ‘If I’m right, it’ll become clear then. Fettes first, though.’
We headed back to the office. When we got there, McGuire was looking more downhearted than I’d seen him. ‘I’m getting nowhere, boss.’ I hadn’t expected that we would need his research, but now that we did, I wasn’t too surprised by what he told me. ‘Peter McGrew’s not on the phone, his NI contributions are in arrears, and he’s not registered to vote anywhere that I’ve found. He’s vanished.’
There was no good news from Newcastle either, but there was a note on my desk from Fred Leggat passing on a message from, of all people, Tony Manson, letting me know that Marlon Watson’s funeral had been set for the following afternoon, a burial in Seafield Cemetery.
It was almost lunchtime, but I wasn’t hungry. I sent the boys off to eat, then called Alison. ‘Fate is on my side,’ I told her. ‘It doesn’t want me to get on that helicopter.’ When I told her what had come in the way, she understood; she knew it was my practice to attend the funerals of murder victims in cases I was working.
As it happened, it didn’t matter. ‘Fate’s working for you on two fronts,’ she said. ‘The Met Office have given the North Sea operators a bad weather warning for Wednesday, and possibly Thursday as well. All routine flights to platforms have been cancelled.’
‘I can smell another weekend on the water looming up for us.’
She laughed. ‘I thought that was on the cards anyway. I’ve been expecting you to take me looking at boats.’
‘We’ve got four years to wait, remember, but I suppose we could start with something small.’ What a difference a day made. Less than twenty-four hours before I hadn’t been joking.
She went all Robert Burns on me. ‘ Nae man can tether time or tide ,’ she quoted. ‘When I see you try, I’ll stop believing that, but not before.’
I couldn’t come up with a poetic counter. ‘Until then you could take up golf,’ I suggested.
‘You’ll roast me on a spit first,’ she replied, cheerfully. ‘How did Lowell’s tip play out?’ she asked.
‘Pure gold, my love, pure gold.’
‘Stop calling me that, it’s unsettling. I’m glad you’re still moving forward, for I’m bloody stuck. If you were being objective, you’d have removed me from the investigation by now.’
‘Alastair Grant would love me to do that,’ I chuckled. ‘He can wait, though. You just need a bit of good fortune. Tell you what, you can swap Hugh Grant’s kid brother for McGuire if you like. He’s my lucky charm just now. Cherchez la femme indeed.’
As I hung up, I felt the first pangs of hunger. There was still time to go up to the big boys’ dining room. That seemed like a good idea, but just as I rose from my chair, my mobile sounded.
No preliminaries. ‘I’ve got your car, sir,’ Ciaran McFaul announced. ‘It’s a shit camera, but there’s a clear shot of it arriving at eleven twenty-three, and leaving eleven minutes later. The driver’s a lean guy, and judging by his height against the vehicle, he’s around six feet. There is no chance of an identification, though. He’s wearing a black garment with a hood, SAS-style.’
