The Storm Without

by Tony Black

  I unlocked the Audi, got in and started the engine. The TT purred as I pumped the pedal and pulled out onto the road. I drove towards the A77; the car needed a short burn to let out some grunt. The road was busy, lots of 4x4 Doonfoot tractors on the school run. I spotted one with an Ayr number plate, had a little smile to myself: it was heading back towards Alloway — but weren't they all?

  At the Whittlets Roundabout I exited at the gym and followed the road back into town on auto-pilot. I knew where I was headed, knew what I had to do. I had driven past the guest houses on Queens Terrace a couple of times on this visit already; was I subconsciously planning to hole up there at the time? I didn't doubt it — so many of my choices seemed to be pre-programmed these days that I felt like an actor in my own life.

  I had picked out the place I wanted to stay; it was at the far end, next to the court. As I pulled up I noticed a sign on the outside wall which read: licensed to residents. I didn't think I had seen this before; at least, I hadn't registered it. Still, it dug at my conscience after the lecture I'd given my mother.

  I made my way inside, lowered my bag at the front desk and looked about. A woman in her bad fifties wearing a tabard was at work with a Henry hoover. She spotted me and made her way over to the front desk with a slow gait.

  'Yes?' she said.

  'I'd like a room.'

  'Long or short stay?'

  I didn't know the answer to that, shrugged.

  She put on a pair of glasses that sat round her neck on a chain, looked me up and down. 'We don't take people on benefits …'

  'I'll pay cash.'

  She twisted her mouth, seemed to doubt me. 'Name?'

  'Doug Michie.'

  As she scratched my details in a big brown ledger I watched the Biro's nib execute her intricate copper-plate.

  'You have beautiful handwriting.'

  She never turned a hair; handed me a key attached to a long plastic slab that could have doubled as a doorstop. 'Room 7 … upstairs on the left.'

  'Is there a view?'

  She sneered. I went for broke. 'There wouldn't be a Jacuzzi on the premises?'

  The glasses came off, the hoover went on. I didn't get an answer.

  I carried my bag up to my room by myself. The view was of the back close; if I raised myself on tiptoes I could see the sometime crazy golf course. I opened the window, let out the musty air. My test of the bedsprings was answered with a rusty squeak. I patted the back of the room's one chair and evacuated a cloud of dusty effluvia that started me coughing. I grabbed a glass from the side of the sink; it was wrapped in hard white tissue paper, the kind we used to trace with at school. The glass inside — after a million washes — was almost opaque with scratches. I filled it with water and took a slow draft. My throat soothed instantly and I felt my mind still.

  I looked around the grim room. Registered the Nylon bedspread. The Gideon's Bible. The patched carpet. The faded print of a crying girl being comforted by a Lassie dog. So, this was home for the short term. I shook my head and lowered myself slowly onto the bed.

  If this was home, then I was here for a reason and I knew what that was. I removed my mobile phone from my pocket and opened my email. A list of names I'd requested had come in. I scanned them; none meant anything to me, but they might soon. Glaring by their absence, however, were some names that I definitely had to query.

  I closed down the email. Dialled a number.

  Ringing.

  'Hello …'

  'Hello, Lyn …'

  'Doug.' Her voice was high, hopeful. 'Have you heard anything?'

  I felt the edges of my mouth tighten into a grimace. 'You'd be the first to know.'

  A pause, reality flooding back in. Then, 'I take it you got the list I sent.'

  'I did, yeah … but why aren't Kirsty's parents on there?'

  Her voice trembled, 'I want to let sleeping dog's lie.'

  I didn't buy it, not for a second. 'Lyn, their daughter has been killed. There's no way I can conduct an investigation into Kirsty's death without talking to her parents.'

  'I just want to leave them be …'

  I registered the emotion behind her chant. 'Lyn, it's in their benefit to speak to me too, you know that.'

  'I know! But, I just want them left alone. Please, Doug, you have to understand …'

  I understood.

  'When we last spoke about Kirsty's people you said you had something to tell me …'

  She cleared her throat. 'I know …'

  'And?'

  Her tone changed, became lighter. It was as if she had practiced a response. 'Where are you?'

  I straightened my back. 'I'm in Ayr … in a guest house.'

  'Where?'

  'Down the front … Queens Terrace.'

  'I know it. I'll meet you at the Horizon Hotel in an hour. Can you make that?'

  I stood up, walked towards the window. It was raining again.

  'One hour … with answers, Lyn.'

  Chapter 9

  The rain was back. That familiar, insidious drizzle that felt light enough to sit on the air. I walked a few steps down Queens Terrace towards the port with my head dipped to the pavement. By the end of the street I was brushing a heavy layer of moisture from my shoulders. The wind seemed to be soughing out at sea, whispering across the sand. I turned my ear to catch the ghost of a voice drifting up from the beach — it was a haunting roar — but as I stalled I caught sight of a walker. She was roaring after a runaway dog.

  I felt on edge, and I knew why.

  I'd taken on a case, my first since leaving the force. But it wasn't any case; it wasn't a missing persons or an errant husband playing away from home. I'd agreed to look into a murder. As the days stretched out, however, I had started to wonder what I was really doing.

  It wasn't the simple fact that I was back in Ayr, my old home town, where there were ghosts everywhere, it was the unshakeable fear that all was not as it seemed. I'd learned to trust the nagging, gnawing voices that accompanied an investigation: they were there for a reason, but right now they were being bawled out by an opposing set of voices. Auld Ayr meant more to me than I had assumed. It was more than the town of my childhood, my youth. I had grown up here, there was a part of the place that I carried with me wherever I went: the town, its people — they had formed me. I couldn't escape that. It was a visceral identification and it stirred deep inside me. I wondered if Lyn saw this.

  I reached the end of the terrace, turned the corner, bracing myself against a blast of sand-filled wind. I stepped on some blue mussel shells dropped by the circling gulls. They cracked like gunshots underfoot.

  The Horizon Hotel had changed since I last saw it, but so had a lot of the town. I stepped inside. Soft furnishings and mood lighting greeted me. The smooth-lined fixtures and fittings looked neat and clean, too clinical for the purpose of my visit. I spotted Lyn seated on a leather sofa by the wall; she seemed distant. I nodded to the barman and made my way towards the other side of the friendly room.

  'Hello, Lyn.'

  She started. 'Oh, hi.'

  The barman came. I ordered a coffee. 'Are you okay, Lyn?'

  She smiled. 'Yes, fine.' She was lying. In my racket, you learn the cues early.

  Lyn reached into her bag, removed a few sheaves of paper. 'I thought I'd print out the list you wanted.'

  I took the contacts of Glenn's known associates, turned it over. It felt too soon to bring up what I had on my mind, but I'd never been very good at keeping a lid on things. 'And, Kirsty's parents: are they on there now?'

  Lyn bit her lip, jerked her head towards the window. The sea beyond had started to turn nasty. White rollers frothed, battered at the beach. 'I—I … look, the thing is …'

  I decided to make it simple for her. 'Without the parents the investigation is dead in the water.'

  She jerked back from the window, her eyes widening. 'What?'

  I had attracted her attention, got her focus. It was where I wanted her. 'It's like this, Lyn: th
eir daughter was murdered, and they knew things about Kirsty that no-one else did. They're holding important information and I need to access it.'

  'But …'

  'Lyn, it would be easy for me to find them, pay them a visit. Only, I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing it for you, and for Glenn. If you don't want me to, then we go no further.'

  'What are you saying, Doug?' Her stare intensified. She seemed to lock into my thoughts.

  'I'm saying, we have to do this my way. I'm saying, you have to trust me.'

  Lyn touched the edge of her mouth. I noticed the cherry-coloured polish on her nails had chipped. For a moment she was still, then she dipped her hand into her bag and removed a pen, took up the paper once more.

  'This is Frank and Sheila's address … they stay out on the Dunure Road. They're good people, nice people …'

  I knew she was stalling, holding back. 'But?'

  Her lips pursed. 'They never liked Glenn.'

  I lowered my voice. 'Why?'

  'There was one or two … incidents.'

  'Go on …'

  Lyn turned back to face the window. 'Glenn had a hot head,' she sighed, 'took that from his father, but he was a good boy. He would never harm anyone and he loved Kirsty.' She turned to face me. 'I know that.'

  'Okay.' I watched Lyn's eyes moisten; her complexion lost some of its colour. 'So why the animosity from her parents towards Glenn?'

  She shook her head. Her shoulders drooped. 'I don't know, I really don't. I think it was as simple as they never thought he was good enough for their daughter … he was from a broken home. He didn't work and Kirsty did … she was their little princess.'

  I knew I wasn't getting the full story. 'And this hot head of Glenn's wouldn't help.'

  She bit. 'He never harmed her. Never harmed a hair on her head … you have to believe that!'

  I saw the ice in her glare. 'Okay. But you said yourself that they rowed.'

  'They were kids. Come on, Doug, remember what we were like at that age? Fought like cat and dog because we didn't know any better.' She leaned forward, stretched her hand out and took mine. 'You know I'm right. We needed time to learn how to get along with each other but we never gave ourselves the chance. Doug, we were too young to know any better.'

  I looked down at our hands, entwined. Every instinct I had wailed at me to get up and walk. Back through the door. Back to the guest house. Back to my life. My life, not the one I thought I was living.

  'Lyn, this isn't about us,' I said.

  She firmed her grip. I was close enough to see the flecks of grey in her dark brown eyes. 'We never gave us a chance, Doug. Not a chance.'

  Chapter 10

  What Veitchy had told me about Jonny Gilmour could have filled the back of a postage stamp. A particularly small postage stamp. By contrast he'd been voluminous in his praise of him, and that, coupled with my sighting of Gilmour at the King Street police station was enough to set my antennae twitching. Once he was warmed up, Veitchy had played to type — his type being the tin-pot hard man that the west of Scotland pushed out like paving weeds. He liked to be known as a player in the Auld Toun but he was just another bottom feeder. A scrote. His status was garnered from close alignment to bigger fish: those like Gilmour.

  The pair had started out as football casuals but that was just a front, a vent for Gilmour's psychopathic tendencies; Veitchy went along to soak in the testosterone-filled air and hope some kind of rep' brushed off on him. In a way it did: Mason and myself certainly got to know him. He was what we called a ferret back then, the type of contact that was so easy to lean on, to manipulate, that you could flush names out of him. A ferret like that has a short shelf-life though; scrotes soon know to keep their traps shut around them.

  Veitchy had been of some use to me though. He'd let slip that Gilmour liked to hold court at the Davis Snooker Club over at Tam's Brig. I knew the place; in my day it had been the antidote to The Bobby's snooker hall. I remembered The Bobby's fondly; the broad, dark hall had something that seemed in the process of being scrubbed from the new Ayr: atmosphere. It was a place for patter, for passing the night somewhere other than the pub. It was a bloke-ish domain. A million miles from the trendy coffee houses and super pubs that filled the place now. As I fell into reverie, I saw how far the town had come, but wondered about the direction.

  I checked my watch; I'd been in place for the best part of an hour. This was the low-glamour end of detective work. The American TV cops called it stakeout — a surprisingly sprightly name for freezing your backside off in a car park at night. Jonny Gilmour's silver Lexus sat to the far left of the car park. I had the private reg' — surprisingly not one containing Ayr — in sight. On the driver's seat I had a camera with a telephoto lens; I doubted there was enough light to take decent shots, but I'd get a good view of Gilmour when he showed and that might tell me something. I knew if I had to rely on Veitchy, or Mason for that matter, that I'd be waiting a long time.

  I lit a Regal, rolled down the window. It was the first of a new pack that I'd bought from a shop down the shore and it tasted a little funny.

  'What the?' I looked at the tip of the cigarette; it was burning quickly, the paper turning brown half-way up the underside of the cig. I took another quick drag. If this was a Regal, I was Ruud Gullit. I flicked the filter tip into the night. A hail of amber sparks showered the tarmac.

  I removed the pack from my pocket, checked the side. The Government health warning was there, but it looked smaller than I remembered. 'Out of date?' I was murmuring to myself, going stir crazy in the cold of the car, when suddenly the sound of footfalls alerted me to raise the camera.

  It was Gilmour. There was a smaller man with him, grey suit and a navy-blue tie that was loosened round his neck. He looked corporate and quite well-to-do. He wasn't on the lower rungs of the ladder that was for sure. The pair seemed to be relaxed in each others company, though, starting off a mock light-sabre fight with their cue cases.

  'Very friendly boys,' I muttered, before firing a comment of Rabbie's at Gilmour: 'wretched is the person who hangs on by the favours of the powerful.'

  I battered off a few pictures. The more I focussed the lens on the suit, the more he seemed familiar to me. He wasn't police. At least, he wasn't any kind of police I recognised. He might have been a desk jockey or a bean counter. But I steered clear of that lot. The thought struck me: maybe I wouldn't be sitting in a grimy Ayr car park scoping scrotes if I'd paid more attention to the suits who ran the RUC. I pushed Ulster from my mind; I needed to keep my thoughts clear, my mind open and alert.

  The pair got into the Lexus, drove off. I turned the ignition on the TT, pulled out. I let them get past the roundabout, watched them head for Prestwick and then let out the clutch and followed at a proper distance.

  'Okay, Gilmour … lead the way.'

  A thought jumped at me: you might be wasting your time, Doug. I nodded it down. Sure, I could be. But something told me I was onto something with Gilmour. Mason's reaction was writ large in my mind. He warned me away. He was never a man for subtleties, our Mason, but he knew how the job got done.

  'What were you hinting at, Mason?' I was still mumbling to myself, still airing my thoughts when the Lexus pulled over and stopped outside a villa on the Prestwick Road. It was one of the old red sandstone jobs, I'd be guessing four bedrooms at least, kind that attracted a tidy price tag. The suit got out the car, raised his cue case and put up his collar as he jogged up the drive.

  Gilmour tapped the horn twice and pulled out.

  I followed on.

  Prestwick town had changed, seemed busier. Seemed even further down the path to yuppie-dom than Ayr. The pubs looked to be doing good trade, plenty of teenage girls teetering on vertiginous heels. The sight of them put a knot in my stomach. Kirsty wasn't much older than them. She was too young. The loss of such a young life was a wrong that enraged me, but the way she had gone made my fists grip the wheel tighter.

  At The Dome I looked in the big windo
ws, thought of the roaring fire they lit during the winter months. Gilmour had beat the lights, headed for the Cross. I followed on, past The Red Lion on my left and made for the Monkton Roundabout. The Lexus driver had other plans though, veered to the slip road on the left, headed for Troon. I dropped the gears, snuck in behind a Micra and watched the car in front.

  We hadn't gone far when the blinkers started and Gilmour pulled in to a gated driveway. I clocked the number on the white stanchion out front, then drove past, slowed my speed and stopped. As I turned in my seat I had just enough time to catch Gilmour pulling up outside a dreary looking, overly lit mansion.

  Jesus, Jonny Boy, you've come a long way in a short time … From council curtains to Southwoods.

  Chapter 11

  I dropped the revs on the TT, slipped down the gears and flicked the blinkers on. It seemed an overly cautious trip to be taking, but Mason insisted. I hadn't been out this way, save passing through, for some time. A host of McMansions had sprouted up on the other side of the road from the entrance to Belleisle golf club. An overt display of wealth, incongruous with the news full of nations facing bankruptcy. I thinned my eyes, allowed a squint towards the bricks and mortar someone had mortgaged their life to: what was the point? Money, greed, it had taken over. Everywhere. This was Ayrshire. I still remembered the Thatcher years. The pit closures and how the miners fought, in the end, for nothing. They closed the pits anyway. The miners got a few bob, but that was cold comfort for having their way of life taken from them. The money went fast — six-month millionaires they called them; I wondered if they felt right having it. Some of us still held onto values you couldn't measure in pound signs.