Condition Purple

by Peter Turnbull

  Loughram said, ‘The Black Team?’

  ‘You might know them by a different handle.’ Donoghue crossed his legs and took out his pipe.

  ‘Not in here, if you don’t mind.’ Loughram nodded politely and good-humouredly to a No Smoking sign on the wall of his office.

  ‘Of course.’ Donoghue slipped his pipe into his jacket pocket.

  ‘The Black Team? Enlighten me.’

  So Donoghue enlightened him.

  ‘I confess I didn’t know that it was organized now,’ said Loughram. ‘Thirty- to forty-year-old women who no longer make money mugging the fifteen, sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds is as old as the game itself, but this is the first time I’ve heard of any organization being put into it. Usually it happens when a young girl bumps into an older woman who has had a bad night and it’s a question of right, hen, down you go, thank you very much, you can earn it again in a couple of hours, I can’t, so it’s mine, and don’t get angry because you’ll be doing it yourself in ten years’ time.’

  ‘Fifteen-year-olds?’ said Donoghue.

  Loughram nodded. ‘Fifteen is not uncommon, there’s nothing you can do if a fifteen-year-old wants to go on the street. We lift them when we see them, but as often as not they’ve got a mate keeping the edge so they clear the pitch before we can grab them. If you want ages to worry about try fourteen, thirteen and even twelve.’

  ‘Twelve!’ Donoghue’s own daughter was just nine years of age.

  ‘Youngest known yet was a twelve-year-old Asian girl. I don’t wish to be racist but Asian girls are very vulnerable. I’ve visited the subcontinent and I can tell you that Indian women are treated like horseflesh from an early age. Asians bring their cultural values with them when they relocate in the United Kingdom, just as British migrants to Australia carry our culture with them. So we found this twelve-year-old girl “servicing”, as it’s said, “servicing” the men in her extended family plus a few neighbours, she was being rented out by her father—her own father, mind. The girl was taken into care.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But you’re a cop yourself, and you know fine well that for every one we find, there’s ten we don’t find. But back to the Black Team: all I can say is that we haven’t heard of them.’

  ‘We’ll be going out and talking to the ladies again tonight,’ said Donoghue. ‘If we hear anything of significance we’ll let you know.’

  ‘Thanks, but it’s not Vice, strictly speaking. That’s probably why we haven’t logged anything about them. I mean, if they’re controlling the girls, that’s Vice, but if they’re mugging them, that’s just uncomplicated theft.’

  ‘That’s a fair point.’ Donoghue nodded. ‘Now the second question is, what do you know about Glasgow’s other film industry?’

  ‘What?’

  So Donoghue told Loughram about Toni Durham’s flat, the basement therein and the equipment in the basement.

  ‘Wow,’ said Loughram.

  ‘I’ve had a preview of the videos,’ said Donoghue, ‘just to see if they can shed any light on the murder inquiries. They haven’t so far. The content is heavy duty pornography and of course we’ll be handing the tapes to you.’

  ‘Thank you. Small studios like the one you describe are discovered from time to time and offensive material is seized. All that happens is that they shut down and open up again somewhere else. The tapes they make are copied and that’s part of the operation we haven’t yet found. Somewhere, maybe, in fact most probably abroad, is a room with banks and banks of sophisticated video-recording equipment that can enable a master tape to be reproduced at high speed. If we can locate that part of the operation we can shut any such operation down. The problem for us is that most tapes go for export, there’s a bigger market for pornography on the continent than there is in the United Kingdom.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So it’s our guess that the reproduction is done abroad. It’s easier to smuggle one tape to Scandinavia than two thousand.’

  ‘Of course. Now do you know of any name connected with the pornography industry in Glasgow? We’re particularly interested in a guy called Purdue.’

  ‘Purdue?’

  ‘Sometimes called “the Rodent”.’

  Loughram shook his head. ‘Rings no bells. What does he look like?’

  ‘He’s well into his fifties, stocky character, drives a black Mercedes, scarred face, going bald so he grows his hair long at one side and combs it across the top of his head.’

  Loughram stood. He walked across the office floor to a filing cabinet, opened a drawer and lifted out a file. He took a photograph from the file and handed it to Donoghue.

  ‘That’s the man,’ said Donoghue quietly. The photograph showed Purdue walking in the street.

  ‘Shot through a telephoto lens,’ said Loughram, resuming his seat. ‘We think he’s behind a lot of vice in this town, the massage parlours particularly, and maybe he’s into films as well. We know him as “Fingers” McLelland.’

  ‘Fingers?’ said Donoghue.

  ‘Apparently he’s good at breaking people’s fingers when he’s trying to get a point across.’

  ‘We know him as James “the Rodent” Purdue. He’s a knifeman, already served ten years in the slammer for murdering a girl when he was a young man. If you have to approach him, approach him with caution, but I’d like to talk to him about something a little more substantial than immoral earnings.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Double murder.’

  ‘Substantial enough.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘We don’t know.’ Loughram shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘He’s seen around, we’ve never had to put a tail on him for any reason, we know him because he keeps cropping up in all the wrong places.’

  ‘Well, from now on if you happen to see him just stick to him like a pair of wet denims until we can get there. Better still, just lift him for us.’

  ‘Pleasure,’ said Loughram. ‘We see him once or twice a week, then he disappears for a month or two. We have the impression that he stays locally, by which we mean the Glasgow environs, but it’s just an impression.’

  Donoghue thanked Loughram. He took his hunter out of his waistcoat pocket as he walked down the corridor. It was 12.17. Perhaps a stroll to Kelvingrove Park and a light lunch in the cafe that he had recently discovered?

  Chapter 9

  Thursday, 1230-2130 hours

  Montgomerie thought that he never changes, this man, he just doesn’t change. Not only does Tuesday Noon not change, but Montgomerie couldn’t even imagine him growing up, looking at him, gnarled face, whiskers, scars, a hot rasping breath. Could he ever have been a wee boy running home from school? Could he ever have been a young man experimenting with alcohol and chasing women? It was hard for Montgomerie to associate the growth process with Tuesday Noon, it was as if he had always been like this and would always be so. And he never changed his habitat, always here in sawdust of the Gay Gordon where the chairs and tables are chained to the floor, where young men and women openly shoot up, where they say a revolver and six rounds of ammunition can be bought over a table for cash and no questions asked, where the colour television sits high on the wall with both the colour and volume turned up too high. Right then it was racing from Newmarket.

  His manner doesn’t change either. Montgomerie had placed a glass of Teacher’s in front of him and Tuesday Noon picked up the glass with weatherbeaten red hands with short stubby fingers and sank the drink in one. Neat. Then, as always, the glass was put back on the table and pushed across towards Montgomerie, sliding easily on the spilled alcohol, with as always Tuesday Noon looking at Montgomerie.

  ‘You know you never change.’

  ‘Aye, Mr Montgomerie.’

  ‘You’ve no news for me yet?’

  The sun streamed in through the window and the interior of the Gay Gordon, greenhouse-like, was hot and stale, smelling strongly of unwashed bodies and alcohol vapour. Neverthe
less, it was more honest in Montgomerie’s view than many of the modern Glasgow bars which subscribe to the ‘casino principle’, no natural light, no clocks, soft dark furnishings, dim lights, everything geared to creating an illusion of unreality to assist punters to part with their money all the more readily. Reality comes hard on closing time, when the burglar bell is switched on, the lights turned up and the bar staff start yelling. Then comes reality, the night, cold and wet or the white nights of summer, the gutter. Montgomerie glanced at his watch: 12.30, better make this quick, Malcolm, got to tear over to the Long Bar in time to pick up Collette when she finishes the first part of her split shift.

  ‘I’ve been keeping my ears open. Nothing about the girl who was stabbed. Nothing, not a thing that wasn’t in the Record.’

  ‘You’re not pulling your weight, Tuesday.’

  ‘I need time. I mean, it was only Tuesday that it happened. Just forty-eight hours past. Rumours and whispers need time to spread.’

  ‘Well, keep listening. In the meantime tell me what you know about a man called Purdue? Also known as “the Rodent”. Mean anything?’

  Tuesday Noon caught his breath.

  ‘So it does mean something to you?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Montgomerie took a photograph from his jacket pocket. That the guy?’

  ‘Aye. He’s been around for years. He’s changed his name.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Aye.’ Tuesday Noon clicked his tongue. ‘He’s calling himself Fingers something.’

  ‘Fingers something?’

  ‘Aye. He’s not a nice man.’

  ‘Very few people we are interested in are nice, Tuesday.’

  ‘See, I hadn’t heard of him for some time, he was a hard wee sewer rat in his day, but he came up in the world, still hard but he doesn’t stay in rat holes no more. I knew him by sight, I heard he was a pure swine in the drink, without the drink he’s just a swine. Then I clocked him in a bar, I asked a guy, the guy says, “Aye, that’s Purdue, only now he’s Fingers Mc-something.”’

  ‘Mc-something?’

  ‘Aye. He’s called Fingers on account of what he does to the fingers of people he doesn’t take to.’

  ‘I see.’ Montgomerie stood. Went to the gantry and brought back another measure of Teacher’s. ‘I’m all ears, Tuesday.’

  ‘Stays out of town,’ said Tuesday, bringing the glass back down on to the table and, never changing, pushing it hopefully across towards Montgomerie. ‘Not too far out, Strathblane, Fintry, that way out, they sort of places, places I’ve never been. Got a big house, fenced off all round with Rottweilers in the grounds.’

  ‘Rottweilers?’

  ‘Aye. They say Rottweilers eat Dobermans.’

  ‘So I hear,’ said Montgomerie. ‘So where does he hang out when he’s on the town, I mean now that he’s come up in the world?’

  ‘I saw him in a bar down by the Cross but he was only in there because he was looking for a guy. I hear he likes a flutter, so you could try the casinos.’

  ‘OK, Tuesday, you’ve earned your crust after all.’ Montgomerie handed him a five-pound note.

  As Montgomerie left the pub through the narrow double doors he glanced over his shoulder and saw Tuesday Noon, already at the gantry, waving the note at the barman.

  Outside, Montgomerie breathed the relatively clean air pushing out the stale air he’d accumulated inside the Gay Gordon. It was a hot day, the housing scheme on the hilltop gleamed in the sun, panes of glass winked at him, and over to his right the sun made the old stonework of Port Dundas glow. He walked towards Charing Cross and stopped at the phone-box close to St George’s tube station. He phoned in Tuesday Noon’s information and asked the constable on the switchboard to read his message back to him: Purdue, now known as Fingers Mc-something, domicile Fintry, Strathblane area, approach with caution because of dangerous dogs; Fingers thought to visit casinos; information for Inspector Donoghue as soon as possible. Then he put the phone down. Lucky, he thought, that the Inspector was out to lunch, otherwise, following the transmission of information, Donoghue, Montgomerie knew, would inevitably ask, ‘What are your movements now?’ and finding that Montgomerie had no immediate task, there would follow a summons back to P Division and an immediate task would be allocated. Donoghue, Montgomerie thought, is someone else who doesn’t change.

  The city was baking, cars with soft tops had them buttoned down, girls looked cool in summer cotton, guys sat in doorways, stripped to the waist, pulling on cans of lager. Montgomerie strode up Great Western Road with long, effortless strides, his jacket slung over his shoulder, enjoying as he had since he was seventeen the admiring glances of women as they passed. He was making for Kelvinbridge, for the Long Bar and a delicate pretty thing who would be just finishing up for the morning. Montgomerie had in fact a hard and a firm idea of his movements that afternoon, largely helped by Collette and her Thursday split.

  In a sudden penetrating icicle of realization Elka Willems saw that being torn apart by James ‘the Rodent’ Purdue, also known as ‘Fingers’, was one of the few acts of passion that Toni Durham had experienced. She said so to Richard King.

  ‘What do you mean?’ The chubby, bearded cop looked up from the desk drawer in which he was rummaging.

  ‘Well, look at this flat,’ she said, glancing round her from where she sat on the settee. She put down a folder of papers beside her. ‘There’s no life here in this house, there never has been any life here, look at it, wall to wall carpets, three settees, full-length drapes over the windows, hardwood furniture, all dead. It’s like being in a furniture shop. It’s a place to work in, to eat in, breathe in and nothing else, and all that sweating and groping that went on in the basement in front of the cameras, that was just mechanical. No passion there at all. And look at these letters, just bills, letters from the garage, letters from solicitors, letters from businessmen, all typed on headed notepaper, not a personal handwritten letter among them.’

  King nodded. ‘Point taken.’ He returned his attention to the contents of the drawer.

  ‘So when this animal clawed her open, well, what I mean is she had no passion in her life but the poor wretched girl had it in her death.’

  ‘You’re feeling sorry for her?’

  ‘Yes.’ Elka Willems crossed one slender leg over the other. She had very feminine movements, even to King, who had eyes for no one except his beloved Quakeress wife. Even to King, the unflattering serge skirt and crisp white blouse of Elka Willems’s uniform did nothing to hamper a femininity which she exuded from every pore. She definitely had that little bit extra which is difficult to define and which some women have and some women have not. Even to King.

  ‘That’s a dangerous emotion,’ he said. ‘Remember the importance of retaining professional detachment. Toni Durham had to be a hard woman to survive like this without any emotion. Try to look at it that way. If you had to pinch pennies in a damp single end and you live without emotion, then yes, then you are a tragic case. But if you live like this, velvet curtains, deep pile carpets, without any emotion, then that’s a decision that you’re taking. Frankly, I don’t feel anything for her. If you ask me she put folding green above everything and she may well have sucked Stephanie Craigellachie into this spider’s web and look what happened to her, a knife in her throat in some downtown alley.’

  ‘Since you put it like that.’ Elka Willems picked up the folder of pages.

  Moments later King said, ‘Gold dust.’ He held an address book in his hands.

  Donoghue turned the pages of the address book. Elka Willems and Richard King sat patiently in front of his desk as he did so. They heard the occasional page ‘crack’ as Donoghue methodically leafed through the book. ‘Either it’s new,’ he said, ‘or she didn’t use it much. My guess is that she didn’t use it much. There’s hardly any entries. The two that we need are here, though. Did you see them?’

  ‘Yes,’ said King. ‘I glanced at it. Noticed an entry for “home”, just a te
lephone number, a Springburn number, I think. That was the only one I could see that might be of use to us. But you say there’s two?’

  ‘Yes, a useful phone number here against the name Fingers.’

  ‘Fingers?’

  ‘There’s been developments while you have been out, Richard. I paid a call on our friends in the Vice Squad who were able to inform us that our prime suspect—’

  ‘Purdue.’

  ‘The one and the same, is also known as Fingers McLelland. When I returned to the office after lunch there was a message from Montgomerie, informing that Purdue is also known as Fingers something, has an address north of the city, lives in a house guarded by a pack of Rottweilers. Fingers, also known as Purdue, is apparently to be seen in the city’s casinos. He enjoys a flutter, so we are informed.’

  ‘So I assume we plan to lift him in the city rather than at home?

  Donoghue reached for the phone on his desk. He dialled 9 for an outside line and then 100 for the operator. ‘You assume correctly, Richard.’ He paused. ‘Ah yes, DI Donoghue here, P Division at Charing Cross. Can I speak to the controller, please? Thank you…Yes, controller, DI Donoghue, P Division here, we’re making inquiries in connection with a serious crime. I have two telephone numbers here, if I give them to you could you identify their location? Yes, of course you can call back.’ He read out the two telephone numbers and replaced the phone. He lit his pipe. ‘Taken any holidays yet?’

  ‘Crete, sir,’ said Elka Willems. ‘Very enjoyable.’

  ‘Not yet, sir,’ said King. ‘We’ve pored over the brochures but haven’t booked anything. I feel guilty about taking holidays when there’s so much work to do on and in the house, such as the shelves I’ve been promising Rosemary for months now, I’ve got so far as buying the wood, and it’s still leaning where I left it, she hasn’t complained, she never does. We might grab some winter sun in November.’