by Val McDermid
He looked away and sidled a couple of steps away from her. ‘I’ve told you what I saw,’ he said.
Allie recognised evasion. Her voice slipped into the register she used for small children. ‘Are you scared, Jimmy? Has somebody threatened you?’
She saw the flare of panic in his eyes. ‘He never— I mean, no, nobody threatened me, honest, they never.’
Allie reached out and patted his arm. ‘Or did they maybe pay you a consultation fee, like I did? In exchange for you forgetting they’d been here?’
He frowned, anxious. ‘Nothing happened.’
‘I think you’re not telling me the whole story, Jimmy. Danny was good to you, wasn’t he?’
Reluctantly, Jimmy conceded with a nod. ‘Aye. He used to bring me a curry sometimes when he was getting a carry-out for himself.’ A half-smile. ‘And he gave me these for Christmas.’ He held out his hands, displaying a pair of filthy woollen gloves.
‘Would you not like to do something in return?’
‘How? He’s dead.’ Jimmy shrugged. ‘He’s not gonnae know.’
‘Something’s bothering you, Jimmy. I’ve only known you a wee while, but even so, I can see you’ve got something on your mind. You’re right, you can’t make Danny feel better now. But you can still make yourself feel better. By doing something he’d want you to do.’
He pulled away from her touch and fumbled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of a pocket. He half-turned away to light up, the sudden blurt of the match’s flame revealing uncertainty. He inhaled sharply. ‘You’re like the rest of them, you want something for yourself.’
Allie shook her head. ‘I want justice for Danny. Somebody caved his head in, Jimmy. I can’t sleep at night for thinking about what that must have been like for him. You know what it is to be scared, Jimmy. Imagine how it was for Danny.’ His only response was to smoke as if the cigarette was a transfusion of security. ‘Do you think whoever did that to him deserves to get away with it? I don’t.’
He reached the filter in his cigarette and tossed it in disgust. ‘I saw a man hanging about in the close mouth opposite Danny’s,’ he gabbled. ‘He was in the shadows. At first I thought he was just a shadow. But then he keeked out to look up at the tenement. Could have been Danny’s flat.’
‘Did you recognise him?’
‘I couldn’t get a good look at him. But when the gadgie with the flash motor came back out of the close, the other guy started to cross the street. I’d only just taken the parking fee for him at number ten, so I was standing near the pavement and he saw me clocking him.’ He took a shuddering breath. ‘He headed straight for me and grabbed me right here.’ He gripped the lapels of his coat, near his throat.
‘He goes, “What the fuck are you looking at?” And I says, “No’ nothing.” And he goes, “Damn right. You saw nothing. And see if you ever say different? That’ll be your last words.” He was fucking terrifying. Then he let me go. He took two fivers out of his wallet and said, “Away and get pished and forget tonight ever happened.”’ Jimmy was shivering, and Allie figured it was nothing to do with the cold.
‘That would have freaked anybody out, Jimmy. I’m honoured that you trusted me with it.’ She took a step closer and put a hand on his upper arm. ‘Thank you.’ Pause. ‘Did you see where he went?’
‘He pushed me away and I just legged it back to my car. But I looked back, and I saw him going round the corner towards Danny’s close. I cooried down behind my steering wheel, but I kept an eye out. He was back on the street inside ten minutes, hoofing it down the pavement, heading for the main drag.’ He let out a long breath. ‘I’ve not seen him since.’
‘Jimmy, I want you to take a look at a couple of photographs. To see if you maybe recognise him? Is that OK?’
His face crumpled, as if he were on the edge of weeping. But no tears came. ‘It’s going to get me into bother.’
‘You’d be helping.’
He shook his head, but said, ‘What’re are the chances anyway?’ A nervous laugh that turned into a cough.
Allie pulled from her bag the envelope Bobby G had given her. She extracted the best image of Thomas Torrance, a black-and-white shot that captured him full face. Wordlessly, she held it out to Jimmy.
He recoiled physically, refusing to touch it. ‘How did you know it was him?’ he shouted. ‘Is he a pal of yours, or what?’
‘He’s no friend of mine. Thank you, Jimmy. You’ve done great. I just need to check one more thing with you, then I’ll leave you in peace. I’ll be right back.’ Allie didn’t even bother locking her car. She hustled across the slushy ground and into Danny’s close, taking the stairs two at a time. Heart racing, she arrived outside his door. Would the cops have removed the key on the string or would it still be in place? She’d told them about it, after all. On the other hand, it wasn’t evidence.
Muttering a prayer to the god she didn’t believe in, Allie slid her fingers through the letterbox and groped for the string. At first, she couldn’t feel it but when she slid her hand to one end, her fingertip brushed the coarse nub of the knot. She struggled to grasp the string, realising it was snagged round something on the inside. She feared it had been tied but at last she worked it loose and pulled the key through.
Sweating now, she let herself in. Hopefully the neighbours hadn’t heard her. She wasn’t planning to be there long, but she’d still prefer the police to be unaware of her visit. Allie headed for the kitchen. She knew that was where she’d find what she was looking for.
There on the wall above the table in the bed recess was a family photograph. Danny, his parents and his brother Joseph. The man most likely to have a flash car with Paragon folders on the passenger seat. Allie reached up and lifted it from the hook. She was about to put it in her bag when she heard a sound that turned her guts to water.
The front door she’d carefully locked behind her was opening.
54
Allie froze momentarily, then fear galvanised her into action. She had never moved faster. She stuffed the framed photo into her bag and pulled off her scarf. She’d barely completed the move when a man appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded. ‘And what are you doing here?’
‘My name’s Allie Burns. I worked with Danny. I’m the one who found him.’ She didn’t have to ask who he was. She recognised Joseph Sullivan from the photo she’d hidden in her bag moments before. Her breath was fast and shallow; all her instincts told her she had no reason to trust him.
‘Right.’ He dragged the word out. ‘You’re the one who helped him shaft me. I’m his brother, in case you didn’t know. And you’re trespassing. This is my flat now. So I’ll ask you again. What the hell are you doing here, Allie Burns? I could call the police on you, you know that?’ His tone was light but he was standing too close to her. She felt an undeniable air of menace.
She forced a smile and waved her scarf at him. ‘I realised this morning when I went looking for my scarf. I knew I had it on Sunday, and it dawned on me that with the shock, and everything . . . I figured I must have left it here. So I thought I’d come and get it.’
‘You broke into a crime scene for a scarf?’
She couldn’t blame him for his incredulity. Nothing for it but to play the ditsy wee woman. ‘I know, it’s mental, right? But it’s my absolute favourite. I know it doesn’t look much, but my granny knitted it for me, and she died last year. It’s almost like it’s my lucky charm.’
His lip curled. ‘It wasn’t very lucky for Danny, was it?’
She looked down. ‘I’m so sorry about Danny. He was a great guy.’
‘Not from where I’m standing. The pair of you, you cost me everything I’ve worked for. Thanks to you, I’ve lost my job, my reputation. I could still go to jail – did you think about that when you were writing your smartarse story?’
‘Danny did everything he could to keep y
ou out of it. But he couldn’t ignore the fact that the people you worked with were a bunch of crooks.’
‘Unlike the people you work with,’ he sneered. ‘You tell lies, you sneak about with fucking terrorists, you don’t give a fuck what damage you leave behind you. You and Danny, you broke our mother’s heart, did you know that?’
Fuck ditsy. Allie’s dander was up now. ‘In all fairness, I think it was you that did that, Joseph. When you became the errand boy for a bunch of crooks.’
He moved even closer. ‘Get the fuck out of my flat.’
‘Your flat? You keep saying that, but Danny’s not even in his grave.’ She knew it was his flat. But how did he know? She was the one with the will, not him.
‘Not that it’s any business of yours, but he phoned me on Friday to beg me to speak to our mum, to get her to forgive him. He dangled the bait that he was leaving this place to me. Compensation for what the pair of you did to me. That, and his death-in-service benefit from the paper. Enough to move abroad and start again, that’s what he said.’
‘But why would you expect to inherit that any time soon? It’s not like Danny had terminal cancer.’
He shrugged. ‘I wasn’t looking for it. I thought it was a pretty empty gesture. But that was what he said. He was desperate to get back into Mum’s good books. Besides, the kind of people you and him have been turning over, it could only be a matter of time.’
‘What? You expected him to die soon?’
He scoffed unconvincingly. ‘What are you suggesting?’ Now, a little laugh. ‘What the fuck has any of this got to do with you anyway, Allie Burns? Did you have the hots for my baby brother?’
Was there nobody who could imagine a man and a woman just being pals? ‘He was my colleague and my friend. Seeing him lying dead next door was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.’
For a moment, his expression seemed to grow softer. But not his words. ‘Get on your way, before I lose patience and call the cops.’
Allie held up her hands, palms facing him. ‘OK, OK, I’m going, soon as you get out of my road?’
He stepped to one side. ‘You better not have been lying to me.’ Then, as if it had just dawned on him, ‘You better not have stolen anything.’ He snatched at her bag, but Allie saw the move coming.
‘You lay one finger on me, and I’ll be the one calling the polis. How dare you accuse me of robbing the dead? Your brother was my friend.’ As she spoke she backed away. ‘You think I want to be here? The last time I was here, I came face to face with the murdered body of my friend. I’m not the grave robber here. You’re the one who can’t wait to get your hands on Danny’s things.’
She made it to the front door and pulled it open. At the last minute, she turned back and said, ‘Good luck finding the will, by the way.’
Allie stood in the lee of the stairs, trembling. She was determined to be in command of herself when she returned to Jimmy. In spite of Joseph’s behaviour, she was struggling to believe he could have killed Danny. They’d grown up cheek by jowl in a close-knit, loving family. Joseph was an insurance clerk, not a gangster. On the other hand, she’d met men like him before, men who felt entitled to grab whatever they wanted from the world. Nevertheless, it didn’t seem likely that he’d attack his brother so brutally.
Thomas Torrance, on the other hand . . . A man familiar with a world where violence was so often the proffered answer. Why had Torrance visited Danny, if not to silence him? He had no legitimate reason for being there, and he’d been so determined to stay under the radar that he’d put the fear of God into a homeless derelict that no police officer would ever take seriously.
Once she’d calmed down, she returned to Jimmy’s fiefdom. Sitting a few yards away from her car was the sports car he’d described – a bright red Triumph TR7, its wedge-shaped bonnet unmistakable, the square metal cut-outs covering the lowered headlamps. There was no sign of Jimmy.
She picked her way across to where his car hunkered down on its wheel rims. He was sitting in the passenger seat, a can of Tartan Special on the dashboard in front of him. At her approach, he wound down his window. ‘Did you see your man?’
‘I did. I just about jumped out my skin.’ She pulled the photograph out of her bag. ‘Just to confirm. You saw this man on Saturday night?’
A finger ingrained with dirt tapped Joseph’s face. ‘That’s him. Same guy you just saw, right?’
‘Right. And he went in after Danny’s wee pal and before the guy that threatened you?’ Jimmy nodded. ‘And they’re the only people you saw going into the close, apart from the folk that live there?’
‘Uh huh. Well, not counting her on the ground floor’s fancy man. Have I earned my consultancy fee?’
Allie managed a sad smile. ‘You have, Jimmy. And if the polis come and ask you about it, mind you tell them what you’ve told me, OK? Even if they are arseholes.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘If you say so.’
Allie walked away in a state of conflict. She had not one but two candidates for the killing of Danny. She also knew the testimony of a homeless jakie wouldn’t cut much ice with the police. She needed more.
First, she tried the close opposite Danny’s. Eight flats, five with somebody home. Two housewives, one night-shift worker, a retired couple and a teenage daughter. None of them had noticed anyone hanging around their close around nine o’clock on Saturday night. But then, as the pensioner wife said, ‘If we’d noticed anything like that, we’d have told the polis when they chapped our door on Sunday. It’s not every day we get a murder in the street.’
She’d come back later and hope for better luck.
Jimmy had told her Joseph’s car had been parked down the street, outside number five. Maybe the occupants of the ground-floor flats had spotted it. It looked striking; it probably sounded throaty enough to draw someone to the window. It was worth a try.
It took ten minutes for Allie to find out that the residents of both flats had been too engrossed in the TV to have noticed anything short of a bomb going off in the street. She sheltered in the close mouth and lit a cigarette, debating whether to go back to the office to try to convince Carlyle that she had something.
A pair of kids came storming out of the close opposite, skidding along the slippery packed snow at the edge of the gutter. It was hard to tell their gender, wrapped up as they were against the weather, but when they reached the gap where the cars were parked, they stopped and nudged each other. Judging by their apparent fascination with Joseph Sullivan’s car, she guessed they were boys. It was Glasgow, after all. Girls seldom showed much interest in cars before puberty.
‘I wonder,’ she muttered, tossing her half-smoked cigarette into the gutter. They barely glanced at her when she came alongside. ‘Nice motor, eh?’ she said.
‘It’s a belter,’ the taller of the two said. ‘Triumph TR7. My dad says it’s the car of the future.’
‘Have you seen it before, then?’
They both nodded enthusiastically. ‘It was parked across the street from us on Saturday night,’ the little one said. ‘I wanted to go and look at it close up, but Dad said it was past my bedtime.’
‘Your dad saw it too?’
‘Aye, that’s how he said about it being the car of the future,’ the first boy said impatiently.
‘Is your dad in?’ She tried to make the question sound casual.
‘Aye. He’s on earlies this week, he’s at his dinner.’
‘You think you could take me to meet him? I’d like to talk to him about the car of the future.’
55
Angus Carlyle’s expression gave nothing away. Allie had caught him on his way out the door and persuaded him that what she had to say wouldn’t wait. He’d led the way, grumbling, to the quiet corner of the canteen that she was beginning to feel was her home from home. He sat down heavily, hands on his knees, overcoat spread out on e
ither side of him marking his substantial territory.
There was no denying her apprehension. She’d gone out on a limb on a story she suspected they wouldn’t be able to print, thanks to the laws that caged them. And along the way, she’d stumbled over something she hadn’t expected but which could be equally problematic. Each was a story that had to be told, first to her boss and then ultimately to the police. If she played her cards right, she might not even have to mention the existence of the alibi William Morrison had provided. That would secure her a valuable contact for the future. It would please Rona too. And for some reason she didn’t want to examine, Allie wanted to please Rona.
Step by step, she outlined what she’d learned about the visits to Danny Sullivan’s flat on Saturday night. Carlyle’s eyebrows rose momentarily. ‘Christ, the place was going like a fair!’ His face returned to its impassivity. ‘Let me get this straight, Burns. After the lad Curran had left, brother Joseph showed up, stayed for half an hour then went away? And then Torrance put the frighteners on Jimmy the jakie before he disappeared into Danny’s close? You’re sure about all this?’
‘I know it all sounds unlikely, but honestly, boss, Jimmy seemed very clear about it. I know he’s living on the streets, and he obviously takes a drink, but he’s a damn sight more coherent than half the newsroom in the Printer’s Pie on a Friday night.’
Carlyle almost cracked a smile. ‘You’re setting the bar kinda low, Burns.’
‘I’ve got a wee bit of corroboration, though. Stuart Paul, the man who lives on the ground floor at number four, is adamant that Joseph Sullivan’s TR7 was on the street after nine. He remembers specifically because when his wee boys pointed the car out to him, he realised it was past their bedtime. And on a Saturday, that’s nine o’clock. So it’s hard to make a case for Barry Curran murdering Danny. I can’t conceive of any reason why his brother would discover Danny’s murdered body, not call the polis, then hang around for half an hour before he left.
