by Caro Ramsay
He went back to the photograph of the body lying before the post-mortem had started, lying as if he was sleeping. Peaceful, extremely … pretty was the word that came to Anderson’s mind. Pietro had looked like some actor, a young Jude Law maybe.
Pietro had been five feet seven, had weighed nine and a half stone, with slim, well-defined muscle, when he died. Anderson stared at that picture for a long time, looking at the eyelashes. Some men were blessed with very long eyelashes, his wife had remarked on that often. But his beard line was non-existent. Were there metrosexual men in the last millennium?
So what was Pietro Girasole doing? Out enjoying the New Year celebrations. Then what? He looked back at the bare feet. He needed to get those clothes up from the productions archived store as soon as possible.
He went back to the body of the email.
It was postulated that the body was undressed after he was murdered and then redressed in clothes that were not his – the white T-shirt, the jeans. That had echoes of Mr Hollister. Right down to the lack of shoes. And if they could …
The door burst open, it was Mulholland looking uncharacteristically excited. ‘Sir, you need to see this—’ he pointed at his own monitor – ‘on the CCTV coming out of the Auditorium, which was a nightclub up near where Oran Mor is now. The film is black and white and as gritty as anything … But there she is. Blondie. And she’s heading down towards Ashton Lane.’
Anderson sat down on his sergeant’s vacated seat. ‘With this guy. Who’s he? Too tall to be Pietro. Much bigger build.’
‘And once we move on down the road, she gets very pally with him.’
‘Let’s isolate that bit of film.’
‘He looks sober, he has his arm round her shoulder at this point. But then she kind of shrugs it off, and here he adjusts his hair, preening, all to look good for Blondie …’ said Mulholland.
‘OK, he’s interesting but she is the one of interest. Follow her all the way, sooner or later, she will walk into Pietro Girasole. Sooner or later …’
‘She’s a rather grand lady, do you get a lot of them in here? You know, actresses all swanning around being lovely, the old guy in the front room? What happened to him exactly? And don’t even try to pull the confidentiality trick this time.’ Costello smiled, sweetly.
‘Oh, I don’t know if I can tell you that,’ said Matron Nicholson, looking very starchy and efficient in an office that was pleasingly chaotic.
‘I am a police officer,’ said Costello, which had no relevance whatsoever in the case of Deke Kilpatrick but it often did the trick, that and the fact she could see the matron of the home was desperate to talk about something.
‘He was burned in a fire. Just over there.’
‘Marchmont Terrace? 1989?’
She looked surprised. ‘Goodness, that long ago? Yes, I think so.’
‘And the Duchess, does she ever speak? Could she be interviewed?’
The matron looked a little confused at the sudden change of subject. ‘Doubt it, she just speaks the odd word here and there. In Italian.’
‘Do the Duchess and Mr Kilpatrick ever communicate?’
‘No. They really don’t like each other, they are like kids.’
‘Yes, I noticed. The way they glare at each other. Do you think they knew each other from before?’
‘They might have done. They were both from round this area. The Girasoles were theatre people and he was a singer, no a saxophone player, I think. His wife was an actress. Or a dancer. She died in the fire, so sad.’
Costello held her stare for a long time.
‘So what’s her name? The Italian with the opera diva hair?’
‘Everybody just calls her the Duchess, it’s one of the few names that she actually responds to.’
‘Her real name?’
‘Ilaria. Ilaria Concetta Girasole.’
‘Her son died.’
‘When? That’s terrible.’ The matron looked shocked, her breath went as though she had been punched in the stomach. She sat back on the edge of her crowded desk. ‘That’s terrible. He was here only … well, an hour ago …’
‘No, I mean her other son.’
‘She only has one son.’
‘I mean Pietro. He was killed in 1999.’
The matron looked a little puzzled, ‘Oh, thank God. I thought you meant Paolo. I thought he was an only child and he was here this morning, alive as anything. Nice boy, very nice boy.’
‘Paolo? I think he’s a cousin.’ Costello sat on the edge of the single armchair in the office, inviting more chit chat. ‘He helped her identify Pietro’s body. I think over the years, they have grown close.’
The matron smiled, then her eyes flitted round the room, as if she had just remembered something very unpleasant. She stood up and straightened her uniform. ‘God, that’s sad, maybe it does explain why they are so close. But not in a mother to son way. But he does everything for her; he pays all her bills.’
‘And Deke Kilpatrick? No family for him?’
‘No, not him. No visitors. He has very little memory nowadays.’
‘Can I have a word with him?’
‘If you think it’ll do any good, of course. He’s in his room. Come on, I will take you there.’
Costello followed her, with her neat little nurse’s walk, along the lower-floor corridor to a small single room.
Deke was lying on the bed, a thin blanket over him. He tried to move slightly as the two women came in, trying to wriggle away from them. The dark eye looked ahead, then followed after the matron when she left, leaving the door open. He was suspecting an attack was coming from somewhere but had no idea where from.
‘Hi. I think you know that I am a police officer.’ She placed her warrant card right in front of his good eye. ‘I want to talk to you.’ She picked up a few records and flicked through them. ‘Dexter Gordon? You rate him? I’m more of a Julie London fan. Lena Horn, Stormy Weather and all that.’ She pulled out her mobile, turned on the media player and flicked down. ‘You recognize this?’ She pressed play. ‘“The Blue Bossa”, you like it?’
The dark eye stared straight ahead, but he didn’t slide away. If anything he leaned in a little closer, listening to the slightly tinny noise coming from the phone speaker. She sat beside him, nodding her head along, not really wanting to say that this wasn’t really her thing. Derek ‘Deke’ Kilpatrick was a real jazz musico and to do anything but listen in silence to a jazz blues classic would be sacrilege. The track finished, she turned it off. The head stayed inclined, but turned away slightly. She leaned forward to see into his face better. The face turned away ever so slightly, but not before she had seen the tear.
‘I want to talk to you,’ she said, ‘and I think you want to talk to me.’
The eye opened, looked straight at her.
‘When I first saw you I thought you had committed a crime. But I was wrong; you have been the victim of a crime. And now, there’s nobody looking out for you. You are on your own. I’ve looked into your background.’ She pulled out a small buff envelope. ‘I found some of these, maybe if you looked through them? Some are from the internet, just pictures I pulled out. Some of the jazz clubs around Glasgow. My friend was a fan of yours, imagine. And here is one of you and Alice.’ She placed that into his hand; he tried to turn it over. ‘She died after the Marchmont Terrace fire, didn’t she?’
She could swear that he nodded. She took a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at his eye. The black eye had a jagged line across it. The other eye was a bright blue, solid yet marled. Another scar from the Marchmont Terrace fire.
But his body language had changed. The hand moved forward and reached out to her. Just one simple movement.
‘When you saw me, you knew I was a cop, didn’t you?’ Her eyes held his steady, watching for a response. ‘Why was that? Do you have something you want to tell me?’ The hand tightened on hers a little. ‘You want to tell me something? About your wife? About the fire? About the McEwans? Did they start the
fire? Did they do something deliberate? Did the boy?’
That got a response.
‘Do you know where the boy is?’
She thought she saw a smile play round his lips. A faint movement of the finger, trying to point.
‘Has he been here?’
Another slant of a smile.
‘Ah,’ was all Costello could say. And played “The Blue Bossa” again. She thought she might get to like it.
Paolo sat down, the fiscal and Costello sat opposite him in the small visitors’ area on the first floor. He had left the Duchess in her room. They could hear the soft flow of opera coming out from behind it.
Paolo didn’t look troubled. Just a little nervous; enough for an honest citizen, not brazen like the guilty.
‘Can you confirm your relationship to Ilaria Girasole, please?’
He laughed lightly. ‘I wish I could. I have the same surname and as kids Pietro and I naturally gravitated to each other. I was told I came over from Italy young, grew up in care, you can check all that out. I ended up going to the same school as Pietro. The name brought us together and if anybody asks I say I am a cousin, a distant cousin. And I think I have been saying that for so long, I believe it. The Duchess does. I would have said that when I identified Pietro’s body. And deep down, I think the Duchess knows who my mother was. I think she might have guessed who my father was. Her husband was a bit of a lad when he was alive. You get the picture?’ He made a very Italian gesture with his hands. ‘All I know is that the Duchess, and old Guido, bless him, have always looked out for me. Treated me the same as their own child.’
‘So where were you on the night of the millennium?’
‘In bed with flu. I know that very well. I remember trying to get out of bed when the Duchess got the news. If I had been there, it wouldn’t have happened.’ He opened his big blue eyes very wide. ‘The Duchess isn’t one for turning back the clock. My own mother left me, I was brought up in the Nazarene care system. So I was always very glad to go to the Girasoles. The Duchess has never got over the shock of Pietro.’ He started to cry.
Costello went to the toilet and brought him back some tissue.
‘I’m sorry, the Duchess is very ill. Some things just bring it all back. The incident at the end of the lane, the unknown boy? That really got to me.’ He shook his head.
‘I’m sorry. We didn’t know she was unwell.’
‘I forget her age. You believe some people are going to go on for ever.’
‘So who is this then?’ She held out the picture of Blondie again.
Paolo wasn’t fazed. ‘Like I said, she looks like somebody Pietro knew. His girlfriend would be putting it a bit too strongly. Oh, I don’t know. He never said.’ Paolo rubbed his eyes, tired suddenly, the emotion too much for him.
‘But you two were close.’
‘Time is a river that rolls on, it takes you where it takes you. I was growing into his family. Maybe Pietro was growing away from his, as boys of that age should do. I think he met a girl and didn’t tell me or the family. I think that’s her but I thought she was older than that. She never came to the funeral. She never came near the family once, not once.’
‘What was her name?’
Paolo looked at the picture and shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’
‘What did the family do, Ilaria’s family?’
‘The Girasoles ran the Vinicombe Street Children’s Theatre. Just like the one in Central Park in New York. I saw it had burned down. I’m trying to stop the Duchess from reading that or hearing about it. I feel like everything I have is being taken away.’ He looked at the ceiling. He was a beautiful man, a young God. ‘I used to like looking in that window when I was a boy. So maybe I knew it was in my blood. Then Pietro died. His father died. We lost the theatre. And I had to get a job in the council.’
‘Do you know about the Facebook campaign for the theatre? It was very active.’
‘Oh yes, but it’s more about politics than puppets. I don’t know Pauline Gee. She doesn’t know the Duchess. Or me. So go figure.’ He shrugged.
‘OK, we will leave it there; I hope the Duchess feels a wee bit better.’ Costello stood up.
They left, walking slowly along the carpet before turning to go down the wide sweeping stairway. They passed within inches of Sandra hiding against the corner wall, where she had been for the duration. She counted to a hundred then walked neatly round the corner carrying her bundle of towels and did a good act of stopping dead in surprise when she saw Paolo.
‘Has anything happened to the Duchess?’
‘No. Sorry. I need to go into work. I don’t want to talk about it.’ Then he relented. ‘Well. Not now. We’ll go out for something later.’
She smiled her widest smile, straightened up his collar and sent him on his way saying that she would stay with the Duchess. She walked into the room closing the door behind her. The old woman was sitting in the bay of the window, looking out.
Sandra sat on the bed and looked at herself in the mirror, trying not to get excited. She recognized that nervousness. He wasn’t upset, he was nervous they were going to find out a secret. She turned her head so she could see the Duchess, and looked round the room. He was a cousin, the son had been killed. Nobody knew who by. And Paolo claimed to have been in his bed with the flu. And who benefited from all that? One person. Only one person. Paolo. He would have all this. Sandra doubted he worked for the council, he was never there. He had given her a car. He had money. He let the mad old bitch think that he was Pietro. She had called him that at least twice in Sandra’s earshot and he had not corrected her. And he had all this. No wonder he was so nice to the old cow. It was guilt.
And maybe that was why Paolo liked her. Did he sense the same thing in her?
‘Game on,’ she thought, ‘Game on.’
Costello walked down the hill past the gardens and into the lane. It was empty, but of course it would be. She had arranged for Rosemary Lucas and Eddy Urquhart to meet her at the site of the fire. Not in the lane behind it. She retreated back out of the lane, the chill in the air eating into her bones. The sky was getting heavier by the hour. She looked up at the oppressive clouds, the same slate grey as the roof of Athole House, almost blending together.
Rosemary Lucas was standing there, looking at her watch. Middle-aged now, a neat haircut with blonde covering the grey, dressed in an old-fashioned, light raincoat that would be rolled back up into her bag if the rain stayed away. It rustled as she walked. She had on Pavers shoes, a slight swelling of the ankle carrying an overhang. She looked like a woman who would still go to church and mean it.
‘Rosemary? DI Costello. Thank you for coming along. Sorry if I am going to stir up bad memories.’
Rosemary Lucas nodded, nervously. They shook hands.
‘I’ll be as brief as possible. I hope the rain stays off. It’s going to be a downpour.’
They were silent in tacit acknowledgement that Scottish weather was a law unto itself.
‘So, Rosemary, do you recall the night well?’
‘Of course I do. I was just over there when I heard the crash. That was the first thing we heard, my husband and I. We were walking home after the midnight mass, it was snowing lightly. All very romantic and Dickensian. There was a smell of smoke in the air but it was very pleasant. Like wood smoke, not like burning plastic.’ She spoke well, clearly. Costello let her speak. ‘And there was the heat, never felt anything like it.’
Rosemary bit her lower lip, looking round her. ‘We ran round the corner. We were in hell. The paint on the front door of the house was melting right in front of my eyes. There was a man behind the glass, trapped. The smoke kept burling round and round, sometimes I could see him, sometimes not. I tried to reach him. God knows I tried.’
‘Deke Kilpatrick.’
‘Yes, then the …’ She turned at the sound of shuffling footsteps of an old man walking slowly along Marchmont Terrace, waving a magazine in front of his face, trying to give life to th
e dead air. Rosemary sidestepped to let him pass. But he stopped and looked at both the women.
‘Rosemary Lucas?’ he asked, extending an old, liver-spotted hand.
‘Yes?’ she replied.
The old firefighter was struggling a little, emotional and breathless. A hand under his red rheumy eyes wiped away a light tear. Costello stood back, letting them compose themselves. They were standing on the pavement, shaking hands. He held on to hers far longer than was polite. Then Rosemary gave him a hug that was strong and heartfelt.
Costello wondered if firefighters ever met their successes. Of if they were eternally haunted by their mistakes? This man had sent another man to his death. Not an easy thing to deal with. Costello knew that.
She waited until they broke up. ‘Thank you both for coming. I know it can’t be easy.’
‘It’s refreshing to know that you are still trying to get to the bottom of it.’ Urquhart’s voice was rough.
‘It was an accident, surely,’ said Rosemary. ‘The boy? That poor wee boy who was taken away, kept from the public eye, poor child.’
Eddy Urquhart snuffled in what might have been a snort of disbelief.
‘Did you know him? The family?’ Costello directed the question to Rosemary.
‘Yes, I knew him. Paul. Used to wear a sunflower yellow duffle coat. He walked back and forth to school in it. Nice wee kid, I used to feel a bit sorry for him. He was a lonely child. Always on his own. No other family. No friends. Nobody at all, not afterwards.’
‘Happy child?’
‘Not a word I’d use.’
‘Maybe that was why he did what he did,’ said Eddie, looking up at the new build.
‘Do you think it was deliberate?’ Costello asked.
