The End
The Skin Game
Book Three of the Midnight Eye Files
One
WHAT’S THAT STAR ON THE WALL FOR?
Dog tired.
I’d heard the phrase, but never understood its true meaning. I was about to find out.
We had earned a rest. The business made enough money on the John Mason case to keep me in beer and pizza for months; Doug was off on holiday with his new genealogist girlfriend and I had nothing to do but sit in the old armchair and let the world go by.
I smoked too many cigarettes, sipped too much Highland Park and let Bessie Smith tell me just how bad men were.
For once the sun shone on Glasgow; the last traces of winter just a distant memory. Old Joe started up “Just One Cornetto” in the shop downstairs.
All was right with the world.
I should have known it was too good to last.
The first case came by phone at two thirty. I nearly let it ring out, but my Pavlovian conditioning kicked in at the last second.
“Derek Adams? Adam’s Detective Agency?” the voice said. He wasn’t Scottish, and that, on its own, got my attention. Most of my work came from inside the city limits, and anything outside of that was something different, something that might even prove interesting.
“That’s me. First in the book, first for satisfaction.”
“You should change your patter,” the person on the other end said, laughing. “You sound like a massage parlor.”
“Come on over,” I said. “I’ll even throw in some extras.”
He laughed again, and I knew at that moment that I would be taking his case.
“What can I do for you?” I asked as I put the whisky away in a desk drawer.
“I’m being ripped off by a bookie.”
“You and a few million others son. What makes you think I can do anything about it?”
“No… you don’t understand. This isn’t about betting… this is about horses.”
I had the accent now… somewhere in the middle of England at a guess.
“Again, what can I do for you?”
“I want you to come with me to meet the bookie.”
“If it’s muscle you need, you’d be better off elsewhere…”
He interrupted me.
“No. They said in the boozer that you were best known for your smarts.”
“And they’d be right.”
“Then you’re the man for me.”
“I charge three hundred a day… plus expenses,” I said.
“No problem. My name’s Mark Turner… and I’ll pick you up the day after tomorrow. Let’s say nine a.m. outside your office?”
“A bit early for a bookie’s visit,” I said.
Again he laughed.
“That’s the point… maybe we’ll catch them off guard.”
“Son, bookies are never off guard.”
“Well maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Naiveté is a bad thing to have when visiting bookies.”
“Then it’s just as well you’re coming with me then,” he said, still laughing.
He hung up on me. From previous experience I knew there was only a fifty-fifty chance of him turning up, but I wasn’t worried either way.
Like I said, I had earned a rest.
Bessie Smith was still on the stereo. I let the blues wash over me for a while, but something in the old girl’s voice kept reminding me of the Mason case, the siren song in the harbour, and the carnage I had wrought under the bar in Skye. I turned to the radio instead, but got only modern pap and talking heads too intent on making a noise to wonder whether it meant anything. I tried to read the newspaper but it was all politics, show and tell, lies and deceit. There were just too many celebrities and not enough fame to go round.
And always my mind would turn back to Skye and the bound god. When I closed my eyes, I could still see it, still feel the guts…
They are like warm sausages in my hands as I coil and knot them over Loki until the stone has nearly taken him.
Then we start on Hel, binding her to her father with her own innards, all the while with her screaming and roaring till my ears ring.
My life is narrowed to gore and screams, and I am in a frenzy as I pull and knot, hands a mass of gore, nostrils full with the stench of death, mouth full of the taste of corruption.
I’d found myself thinking of Skye more and more recently; and not just about the events in the chamber. I daydreamed, constantly, of mountains and green places, of sea spray on my face and wind at my back.
I’ve always been a city boy. Even as a lad, living in the country, the highlights of my holidays were the days spent here, in Glasgow. Throngs of people, all going about their business, none of them knowing or caring about the other; that’s what always made me feel safe and comfortable.
But no more. The last few cases had shown me that the world was a far darker, far more dangerous place than I had ever imagined. There are way more things than I had ever dreamt of in my philosophy. Scary, supernatural entities lurk in the dark corners of mankind’s domain.
And I felt like leaving them to it.
Unfortunately, I had to make money somehow, and this is all I knew. Every day sitting at a desk, thinking about drinking, waiting for someone to dump their troubles on me.
Luckily the big money case came in five minutes later, and just in time to stop me getting the whisky back out of the drawer.
I heard him coming up the stairs. Sherlock Holmes could have told you his height, weight, shoe-size and nationality from the noise he made. All I knew was that he was fit; he’d taken the stairs fast.
He rapped on the outside door.
Shave and a haircut, two bits.
“Come in. Adams Massage Services is open for business.”
If he heard that, he didn’t show it. He was old-school rich through and through. A squad of little old ladies on Harris had toiled for years to make his suit, his school tie was knotted just right, and his brogues squeaked as he walked across the room. He was in his sixties, but held his back ramrod straight. He dyed his hair, but did a good job of it, with just the right amount of gray showing at the temples and in his carefully trimmed moustache.
“Come in,” I said. “I’m always pleased to see men and their money.”
Although his mouth smiled, his eyes told a different story. He strode into the room as if he owned it and thrust a hand at me that I couldn’t refuse to shake.
“Mr. Adams?” he said, “I’m Lord Collins of Stratheyre, and I believe there’s something you can help me with.”
He smelled…of hair gel and after-shave, and underneath that, the faint but unmistakable odor of whisky.
“I’m Adams. And all investigations can be undertaken if the fee is right.”
“I’m not so sure you’ll like this one,” he said. “It’s a bit out of the ordinary.”
“My specialty,” I said.
He looked around, taking in the torn linoleum, the battered desk and the old leather armchairs on either side.
“You don’t put up much of a front, do you?” he said.
I tugged at my ear and gave it my best Bogart reply.
“There’s not much money in it … not if you’re honest.”
“That line is older than my mother,” he said
“Yep. And not half as pretty.”
That didn’t get me a smile. Maybe the lad earlier had been right. Maybe it was time to change my patter.
“You know, you’re the first Lord to be in here.”
He sniffed and looked around again.
“I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“I don’t need Lords coming round insulting me,” I said. “I can get punters off the street for that.”
“Go ahead then,” he said. “Impress me.”
“What with?” I replied. “I have an extensive knowledge of malt whiskies, film noir, card games and local blondes. Which do you want to know about? If you want to put money on
it, I’m betting it’s a blonde.”
“You lose.”
“And I am surprised. When a Lord comes to a place like this, it’s usually about a woman; and usually a wife, lover, or whore.”
“It’s been a while since I had any of those three,” he said, and for the first time I saw him for what he was… an older man, proud and keeping himself together, but fighting the same constant battle against boredom and booze that I recognized only too well.
I motioned him towards the chair opposite me, but he wasn’t ready to sit yet, wasn’t ready to talk business yet.
Do you work hard at it?” he asked, looking me up and down. “The image I mean?”
I wore my work clothes; black high-waisted trousers with the watch-chain running from the belt loop to the pocket, black braces attached to the trousers by large wooden buttons, thick white cotton shirt and a kipper tie that reached only two-thirds down the front.
“The suit came from Oxfam, the pocket-watch from my grandfather, but the rest is all me.”
He looked around the room, mouth set in a prissy pout.
“So which is it?” he asked, “Spade, Hammer or Marlowe?”
I was surprised he knew the names.
“It depends on how tough I’m feeling,” I said. “Today I’m a pussycat, so you get Marlowe. He gets a better class of client.”
He smiled, and this time I saw the real man hiding there. He wasn’t a man to be idly messed with… not if you wanted to have all your teeth in your head afterwards.
Again I motioned him to the customer armchair. I half expected him to dust it down first, but he sat without a second thought, falling into its depths. I leaned back in my own chair, feeling much more comfortable… now I had him where I wanted him.
Time for business.
“Before I start,” he said, “I must tell you, this is strictly confidential. Word of this must not leave this room. It could seriously damage my reputation.”
“Very dramatic,” I said.
I took out my silver cigarette case, just to show him that I wasn’t quite the low-life he thought me to be, and made a big show of lighting up a Camel with the Zippo.
“What do you want me to do; sign the Official Secrets Act?” I said through the initial smoke. “Just tell me what you need… we can discuss the security arrangements if I decide to take the case.”
“I’m afraid I must insist,” he said. “I need your word on the matter.”
“And I’m afraid I must insist,” I replied. I gave him a big smile. “I can’t give you my word before you tell me what you want me to keep quiet about. If you don’t like it, you know where the door is.”
I watched him squirm. He wasn’t used to being refused, and his red face told me he wanted to take my offer and leave. But he stayed in the chair. Whatever it was that bothered him, it was big enough to override his pride.
Finally he sighed, and relaxed back into the chair.
“I need you more than you need me… is that it?” he said.
I smiled again.
“Well, I suppose I’d better tell you,” he said. “But remember…”
“I know… the economy will collapse, the future of the planet depends on it, all that happy-crappy.”
It was his turn to smile again, but once more his eyes would have nothing to do with it.
He played with his shirt, rearranging a silver cufflink, not looking at me as he laid out his problem.
“It’s my collection,” he said. “Over the past three nights someone has meddled with the artifacts.”
“Ah. Meddling with artifacts is it? It’s a pity my researcher isn’t here… that’s right up his street. But I don’t know why you’ve come to me. This sounds like a job for the police.”
He sighed again. It looked like something he did a lot.
“I tried that. The trouble is, I have a state of the art security system, and it hasn’t been triggered. The police don’t think a crime has been committed… at least not one important enough for them to pay any attention.”
I tugged at my ear and blew a smoke-ring at him before replying.
“So I take it nothing has been stolen?”
“Not yet. But display cases have been broken, and exhibits scattered on the floor.”
“Vandals?”
“That was my first thought. But if they’re smart enough to evade security, they’d be smart enough to actually steal something.”
“So, it’s an inside job then? Could it be a disgruntled employee?”
He nodded.
“That’s my guess. I had to introduce staff pay cuts last month, and it didn’t go down well.”
I blew some more smoke rings to show him who was boss.
“So what can I do for you?”
He sighed again, a little whuff, almost a sob.
“I’ve heard you have security experience. I want to hire you to… what do you chaps say? … case the place tonight. Find out what’s going on. There’s a couple of hundred in it for you.”
“I charge five hundred a day, plus expenses.”
“I can’t sanction that kind of payment.”
“That’s OK. There’s the door,” I said, waving the cigarette at the way out.
He stayed in the chair. I watched him wonder whether to get angry, then think better of it. In the end he gave me another tight little smile.
“Are you always this hard to hire?”
“Only when I’m in a good mood,” I said.
He did the little whuff again. He took out his wallet and counted out ten fifties. He laid them down on the desk, slowly, as if afraid to part with them.
“Be at the front door of my house at seven-thirty tonight. The night watchman will let you in.”
“Why not have him do the job?”
“Because I don’t trust him,” he said baldly. “He’s rude to me, he drinks too much, and he has no respect for authority.”
“I like him already.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon listening to Billie Holliday and smoking a succession of Camels. At six thirty I locked up and went down to Joe’s for some fresh cigarettes and some gossip on my new client.
Joe was in his usual place behind the counter. The old man was there, day in, day out, for nearly fifteen hours at a time. He had a wife who took over to allow him time to eat, but the rest of the time he stood there, from six a.m. to nine p.m., every day including Christmas. He’d been doing it for more than fifty years.
“I don’t know anything else,” the old man said once to me. “And I don’t want anything else.”
It was either dedication or stupidity. I wasn’t sure which, but I wished I had his stamina. He must be in his eighties, and hadn’t changed much in all the years I’d known him. He’d grown a little bit fatter, a little grayer, but he was still as sharp as a whole jar of buttons.
“So, you’re hob-nobbing with the landed gentry now?” he asked as I entered.
“You saw him?”
He nodded.
“Lord Collins. You’re definitely getting a better class of client these days.”
“And?” I asked.
Joe knew what I was asking. The old newsagent was my eyes and ears on the street around here, and knew what the jungle drums were saying.
“He’s old-school rich,” Joe said.
“I’d noticed,” I replied, taking the two packs of cigarettes that Joe offered.
“Then I hope he’s paying you well.”
“Five hundred a day,” I said, and knew immediately that I’d made a tactical mistake.
“Good,” Joe said smugly. “You’ll be wanting to pay off your tab then?”
“Let’s not be hasty,” I said laughing. Joe laughed back. He knew I’d never let the tab run more than twenty pounds at a time.
“About the Lord?” I asked again when Joe showed no signs of continuing.
“As I said, he’s old-school. The lordship is a family thing, and it goes back many centuries. They were on Bonnie Prince Charl
ie’s side in the rebellion, but they survived that, and made a lot of money in sheep farming in the last two hundred years. As far as I know he’s kosher,” Joe said.
“No skeletons?”
“No. He lost his wife years ago and turned to drink. He’s almost a recluse and he collects war memorabilia.”
“He’s not a closet Nazi or anything?”
Joe shook his head.
“Naw. His father was a war hero… on our side.”
“Anybody got a grudge against him? Or any juicy sex scandals I should know about?”
Joe shook his head.
“Not that I’ve heard. But if you find any, I want to know about it. And if it’s juicy enough, I might even waive that tab of yours.”
He came out to the front door with me and took a deep breath.
“Fog later,” he said, “Then a clear night. Mark my words.”
“How do you do that?”
“Years of practice,” he said. “And the BBC Weather forecast.”
He suddenly looked serious.
“Be careful Derek,” he said. “Collins is one of the elite. Messing with them is like pishing with a sprinkler attachment on. You never know how far the mess will spread.”
Half an hour later I was headed for the Lord’s townhouse, armed with the two packs of cigarettes.
Glasgow is a city of contradictions. It is the place in Scotland where you’re most likely to get into a fight with a total stranger for no apparent reason. It is also the place where you’re most likely to meet with random acts of altruistic kindness.
When I was a lad, we lived in a town 20 miles south of Glasgow, and it was an adventure to go to the big city when I went with my family on shopping trips. Back then the city was a Victorian giant going slowly to seed. It is often said that the British Empire was built in Glasgow on the banks of the River Clyde. Back when I was young, the shipyards were still going strong, and the city center itself still held on to some of its past glories. It was a warren of tall sandstone buildings and narrow streets, with Edwardian trams still running through them. The big stores still had pneumatic delivery systems for billing, every man wore a hat, collar and tie, and steam trains ran into grand vaulted railway stations filled with smoke. To a young boy from the sticks it seemed like a grand place. It was only later that I learned about the knife gangs that terrorized the dance halls, and the serial killer, Bible John, who frequented the same dance floors, quoting scripture as he lured teenage girls to a violent end.
The Midnight Eye Files: Volume 1 (Midnight Eye Collections) Page 41
