He’s even told us that McCann and Weir stopped him from finishing his revenge by killing you. He’ll go to the High Court for sentence and he’ll do time, but you don’t have to worry, because the law will give you complete anonymity.’ She sat down, we stayed on our feet.
‘That brings me to the real reason we’re here. You’re by no means an idiot; you’ve got a degree in journalism and you must have known that rape victims’ identities are protected, so why not make a complaint?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I felt sorry for them.’
‘Don’t make us laugh. After what they’d put you through? If Telfer told us the truth about what happened to him at Maxwell Academy, you didn’t feel sorry when he tried it on with you then. He reckons you sent your brother to cut him after he tried his hand with you.’
‘Then he’s wrong. I told Ryan, but I was laughing about it. Telfer was a spotty wee tyke. I’d no idea that Ryan would decide to defend my honour. Mind you, I suppose I should have. I knew what he was like. My little brother was a psycho, Bob.’
‘And your Uncle Gavin,’ I added.
‘No, Gavin wasn’t; he’d never have done anything as stupidly gratuitous as that. Gavin had aspirations, he wanted to be Mr Big, but he was never in the same league.’ She said that with feeling. ‘In the end he turned out to be Mr Remains Never Recovered.’
‘Ryan did defend you, though, psycho or not. Which leads us to ask, who have you turned loose now?’
‘What the hell are you talking about, Bob?’ she challenged, coolly; too damn coolly, too damn confidently.
‘I’m talking about the man who’s been taking out the rapists. Andy Weir, attacked a few days afterwards, died ten days later, just after Albie McCann was stabbed to death. Two down and one to go. Telfer was offshore and out of reach or I’m sure he’d have been the first to go. So who was it, Mia? You’ve run out of brothers, so who’s your avenging angel this time?’
‘I have no idea what you mean, and I have no knowledge of these things. There must have been a queue of people waiting to kill those three.’
‘But not with your immediate motive. Who’ve you got in your life that we don’t know about?’ And yet, as I put the question I remembered her saying that it had been a while since she’d had a man in there properly, a man in her bed. I’d believed her then, and I still did. ‘Or did you pay someone? Is it as simple as that?’
She shook her head. ‘Stop these allegations, please. I’m a victim, pure and simple. You’re barking up the wrong tree. I’ve paid nobody, and I’ve asked nobody, to do anything to those poor sad clowns.’
‘If only I could take your word for that,’ I told her, honestly. ‘But I can’t. I tell you now that we’re going to be looking at your bank accounts for cash withdrawals, we’re going to be looking at your phone records for contacts and we’re going to be following up every possibility.’
‘Then do that,’ she snapped, ‘but you’ll find nothing, I promise you. Now please leave. I have to get ready to broadcast this afternoon.’ For the second time running she was throwing me out of her house.
If Alison had sensed any frisson between Mia and me, she said nothing about it. ‘Do you think we’ll come up with anything?’ was the only question she asked.
‘Honestly? No. But we’ve got to do it.’
‘Is it possible,’ she wondered, ‘that she doesn’t have anything to do with the murders?’
‘They say that time travel’s possible,’ I replied, ‘but don’t go booking your trip to the twenty-first century and expect it to take any less than three and a half years to get there.’
Twenty
I had to leave Alison and her small team to begin the trawl through Mia’s private life, because I had other things to do. There was the matter of Hastie McGrew to be resolved, but more immediately, there was Marlon Watson’s funeral at Seafield Cemetery, only an hour away by the time we left Davidson’s Mains. I dropped Alison off at her office then headed for mine, to pick up a companion.
Andy Martin was head down at his desk over a pile of mobile phones, and of course the clumsy Jeff Adam, who’d never have been handling a ram in the first place if there had been room for another large body in the chopper, was at home with his foot in plaster, so I pointed at Mario McGuire. ‘You. With me.’
The lad was irrepressible. He jumped to his feet. ‘Yes, boss. Where are we going?’
‘A funeral.’ He smiled, and followed. If I’d told him I was taking him to the zoo to be fed to the lions, he’d have done the same, although that might have been bad news for the king of the jungle.
We made it to the depressing boneyard with ten minutes to spare. The prepared grave was easy to spot. To my surprise there were a few mourners there already: a middle-aged man, fifty-something, probably, four guys, all around the age that Marlon would never exceed, and three women, one of them in black, and ready for a good cry by the looks of her. On closer inspection, the other two seemed to be supporting her. That interested me; Bella had never mentioned a girlfriend, but Bella never mentioned anything to the police, so no real surprise. The younger set knew what we were, if not who. The guys edged away from us as we approached, but the girls stayed where they were. ‘Big shock, I expect,’ I said to the tearful one. She nodded and dabbed at her eyes. ‘Did you see a lot of Marlon?’
One of the ladies-in-waiting actually sniggered… at a graveside. I looked more closely at her pal and noted that she was either pot-bellied or pregnant. The dy-nasty’s assured, I thought. ‘He was my fiance,’ she mumbled.
‘What’s your name, love?’ I asked her.
‘Lulu. Lulu Ford.’
‘Were you with him on the day he died?’
‘In the afternoon, later on; he came to see me. He could, because his boss was away.’
‘When did he leave?’
‘About five; a wee bit after.’
‘Do you know where he was going?’
The sniggering girl decided to intervene. ‘Hey, leave her alone, you. Can ye no’ see she’s upset.’ McGuire leaned forward and whispered in her ear. She turned, stared at him and backed away. I repeated my question to Lulu.
‘To the pub,’ she whispered. ‘The Vaults.’
‘That I know, but afterwards.’
She gnawed at her bottom lip. ‘He said he’d a meeting. I asked him what it was about, but he wouldnae say. He said he’d tell me if it worked out all right. He was lookin’ forward to it, though. I could see that.’
McGuire tapped me on the shoulder. I glanced round, and saw the cortege approaching: a hearse and a single limo. As it grew closer, I could see that Manson had done well by his late employee. The coffin was solid wood, not chipboard, and there were a couple of wreaths on it that must have set him back a few quid.
The small procession drew up a few yards away and the living passengers emerged. Six of them: Bella, stone-faced, in a black suit and hat, Manson, Dougie Terry, Tomas Zaliukas, a surprise to me, and Lennie Plenderleith, newly returned from his wee holiday. They were followed by a minister in a long white robe.
The bereaved mother looked around. She nodded in my direction, more reaction than I’d expected, and beckoned Lulu towards her. And then her eyes fell on the other mourner, the fifty-something bloke. I’d never seen Bella look anything close to tender. In any encounters I’d had with her she’d always been stern-faced, occasionally combative, but when she saw that man her face showed all sorts of stuff I’d never seen on it before. I’m good at reading expressions, but even I was challenged to take it all in. There was shock, instantly; it was replaced by fear, and by curiosity, until they merged together into a grimace of pure hatred. Then she seemed to tear her eyes away from him.
Manson walked round the grave and approached me; his right cheek was bruised, just below the eye. ‘For once,’ he whispered, ‘I’m glad you guys are here. I’m a couple short with the cords. Will you take one each?’
There’s a thing we do at funerals, in Scotland at any rate, maybe elsewhere too, I don’t know. The deceased is lowered into the grave by up to eight family members and friends, traditionally male, although at
