Howard Linskey - The Dead

‘No need,’ I told him and I took the whisky bottle out of the bag I was carrying.

‘Eeh, you’re a grand lad,’ he said and he shuffled off to get us a couple of glasses. They were just about clean enough, so I poured us both a generous measure. I chose a rickety wooden dining-chair and it wobbled on loose legs when I sat on it. He settled into his one grubby, green arm chair.

‘I’d have cleaned up a bit if I’d known you were coming like,’ he assured me, ‘but it’s the maid’s day off and the butler must be shagging the cook ‘cos I haven’t seen either of them all day.’ Then he laughed at his own joke and I smiled gamely.

‘It’s nae bother Jinky,’ I told him, ‘how are you keeping?’

‘I’m grand,’ he said, despite the evidence of my own eyes. ‘Newcastle manager’s been on the blower, wants me to play centre forward on Saturday. I’ve said I’ll think about it.’

This was the Jinky I remembered, always joking, always taking the piss, usually out of himself, ‘I don’t go near the ground these days mind, on principle,’ he was absolutely serious about that, ‘it used to be a cathedral but that fat man’s turned it into a whore house. You should send that Joe Kinane round to have a word.’

‘He offered to do it.’

‘Aye, well, he should then,’ he conceded, ‘but I know you wouldn’t want anyone’s name in the papers.’

‘We were always too professional for that Jinky. Leave the headlines for the hard men who like to fight and feud with each other, while we hold the real power. That was always our way.’

‘That’s what I always liked about working for Bobby. We were a classy bunch,’ and when I gave him a look, he chuckled, ‘well, for villains,’ then he was serious for a moment. ‘I was sorry to hear about your ma,’ he told me solemnly, ‘truly sorry,’ and he looked like he meant it, ‘she was a touch of class that one, a cut above every other woman who worked in any of Bobby’s places and none of us ever forgot it,’ and he chuckled to himself. ‘None of us dared swear in front of her. She was a proper lady and we’d mind our manners when she was around, even Bobby… especially Bobby.’

‘Thanks Jinky,’

‘So,’ he said, ‘what can I do for you?’

I took my time and explained why I was there. Jinky listened intently and screwed up his face like he was trying hard to recall long-forgotten events. When I finished, he said, ‘Well he was always there, your dad, hanging around, and then one day he wasn’t. It wasn’t so unusual back then, for people just to go off and do something new, even if they did have a wife and bairns. There’s always easier money to be made some place else,’ he chuckled, ‘you’ve seen Auf Wiedersehen Pet . This has always been a place people left to go and do other things. I love it here,’ he assured me, ‘couldn’t live anywhere else me, but it isn’t exactly the land of opportunity. Geordies are like the Irish, we’re scattered all over the world. Your dad probably opened a bar in Marbella or somewhere and just never came back.’

‘He did do that,’ I said, ‘not the bar in Marbella. I’m talking about the leaving for work. My ma told me all about it. He’d been working away for years, but then she went to see him to talk about their future together. He was in London and they were going to work it all out between them. We were going to live down there, but it never happened. He wrote to her for a while and phoned her. One day the letters and the calls stopped. I wasn’t that old when she told me he probably wasn’t coming back. I don’t even remember him.’

‘Aye, well,’ he said, looking a bit uncomfortable at what probably sounded to him like a sob story. ‘Look on the bright side,’ he added, ‘if you’d have gone down there all them years ago you’d probably be a Chelsea fan by now.’

‘Aye,’ I said, ‘and think of all the glory I’d have missed out on.’ I didn’t want to stay too much longer in Jinky’s flat. It was a depressing place to call a home and I wondered why he’d allowed himself to end up like this. ‘What about you Jinky? Didn’t fancy the married life?’

‘No, not me. It’s a mug’s game. Women are more cunning than any man and I ought to know,’ and he chuckled to himself, ‘if it wasn’t for other men’s wives, I’d still be a virgin.’

‘They’re not all like that Jinky.’

‘Tell any woman what she wants to hear and she’ll climb into bed with you, whether she’s single, courting or married,’ he told me earnestly, ‘and by the time she’s climbed out again she’ll have convinced herself it was all her fella’s fault, so she won’t even feel guilty about it.’

‘I thought I was a horrible old cynic Jinky, but you take the proverbial Garibaldi.’

‘I’m telling you man. There’s only two kinds of blokes in this world; the ones who do the shagging and the poor mugs who know nowt about what’s going on behind their backs. Make sure you take wor lass out before some other man does… er… no offence like.’

‘None taken,’ I told him, ‘just don’t go round my house while I’m out or my lads will have to have a word.’

He started laughing heartily at that and the laugh became a spectacular coughing fit. I realised that poor old Jinky had become the victim of his own success. He’d been so adept at charming neglected lasses into his bed that he was left with an inbuilt distrust of all women. But look where that had got him, a loveless existence, in a squalid little flat. There was a certain cruel irony in that.

‘Do you want us to ask around, quiet like, to see if anyone knows anything about your dad? I see a lot of the old guys in the club.’

‘Cheers Jinky, I’d appreciate that. I figure someone might know what happened to him. Tell them there’s a few quid in it for them if they have information I can use,’ and I reached inside my wallet and took out a ton. He made a half-hearted attempt to wave it away. ‘You’ll need to buy a few pints if you’re asking around on my behalf,’ I said and I left the hundred quid on the little table next to his half-filled whisky glass. Then I wrote my mobile number on the top of his Racing Post .

‘It’s been canny craic,’ I told him, as I picked up the bottle and poured him a larger measure.

‘Thanks bonny lad,’ he said as I left him with the bottle and his memories.

Long gone were the days when we recorded CCTV on grainy videos to be wiped and recorded over, until all you could see was a snowstorm of white flecks on the screen. These days Robbie had it all linked in to a digital network. At the offices of our watchers, in a former call-centre, he and his team could summon up footage from any one of dozens of cameras that covered our sites, twenty-four-seven, all over the city.

‘Robbie, I need you to take a look at the CCTV footage for Cachet, inside and outside the building,’ I ordered, as I handed him the ten-by-eight of Gemma Carlton.

Robbie was a slight young man with an old-fashioned, straight haircut that looked like his mother had combed it for him that morning. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘Any sign of the girl. I’ve been told she used to go there. I want it confirmed. Find out who arrived with her and, more importantly, who she left with.’

‘What timescale are we looking at here?’

‘I don’t know. Start with the past month.’

‘A month? That’s a lot of footage. Any idea what nights she went out? Just weekends?’

‘No, she was a student, so it could be week nights.’

‘Shit.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘That’s a lot of footage. Say four hours a night, six nights a week for a month. That’s a hundred hours of tape on one camera alone and we’ve got a dozen, looking for a single girl among a shedload.’ He picked up the ten-by-eight, ‘and she looks like a hundred other girls we get in there every night. Do we know what she was wearing when she went to Cachet? That might help narrow it down, a bit.’