Quintin Jardine - Hour Of Darkness

‘Didn’t the newspaper stories explain it?’ the DS asked. ‘Your father was murdered because the man he worked for was having an affair with Hastie McGrew’s sister Alafair.’

‘They killed him for that?’

‘They did. McGrew’s father paid the men who did it; he was a ruthless and evil man, and his son’s no better. When the police looked like tracing them, Hastie killed them to keep them quiet. That’s who you were on your way to try and frighten with a blunt potato peeler. I don’t think it would have worked, Marlon.’

Tears filled the young man’s eyes. ‘Why did my mum and Duane keep it from me?’ he moaned. ‘I grew up hating my father.’

‘I’d imagine they did it to stop you from growing up to fuck up your life by doing something as bloody stupid as this,’ Chambers replied. ‘Fortunately you didn’t, so this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to buy a kitchen knife to replace that one, because we’re keeping it, then you’re going to pack in your job with the McGrews’ company and you’re going to move in with your granny. I’m told she’s a good woman. Is all that agreed?’

Marlon nodded. ‘Yes, lady.’

‘Good. I shouldn’t need to say this but I will, just in case you take another daft turn. If you come anywhere near the Oakmount Nursing Home again, you’ll be lifted and I’ll charge you with the first thing that comes into my head. Now go on, son, and think yourself lucky that DS Neville saw you when she did.’

They watched him as he walked away, until he reached the junction and passed out of sight.

‘Do you think he’ll behave himself?’ the head of CID asked the DS as they returned to their car.

‘I’m pretty sure he will. He’s a nice kid at heart. I wouldn’t like to have a shock like he’s had.’

She drove on, taking the second turning on the left as she had been instructed, and seeing the nursing home immediately, a modern three-storey building taking up half the street on which it stood. She swung into the car park and slid into a bay next to a police patrol car. Its occupants, two constables, were waiting for them in the home’s reception hall.

‘You can stand down,’ the DCS told them. ‘The panic’s over. But wait for me; I’m going to need a lift to Gayfield Square. Do you happen to know which floor McGrew’s on?’

‘He’s in room one eleven,’ the older officer told her, ‘first floor. Not that we went up there: I heard a woman asking for him at reception a few minutes ago. She said she was his sister. There was a guy with her, a baldy fella. He’d a walking stick; looked as if he belonged in here himself.’

‘That’s handy,’ Chambers observed. ‘It might save us a second visit.’

The two detectives took the stairs up to the first floor. ‘The baldy guy will be the husband, Derek Drysalter,’ Neville said.

‘Mmm,’ her boss murmured. ‘I saw him play for Scotland once. He had hair then. And speak of the devil. .’

Drysalter was standing in the corridor, outside room one hundred and eleven. He frowned as they approached him, warrant cards in hand. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he exclaimed. ‘At a time like this? What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Visiting the sick,’ Chambers replied, sharply. ‘We need to talk to your brother-in-law.’

‘You’ll have a job,’ Drysalter snapped, trembling with anger and tension. ‘He went into a coma two hours ago; my wife and I have just seen his doctor. She says he’ll probably not come out of it. Tough shit, eh. He does nearly twenty years and then gets only a few months on the outside.’

‘Life’s a bitch and then you die,’ the DCS said. ‘Look at it this way: in another era, they’d have dropped him through the floor with a rope round his neck. Anyway, a man can do a lot in a few months; possibly even enough to earn him another twenty years, him and anyone involved with him.’

‘Listen,’ the former footballer protested, ‘I know nothing about any of that stuff, any of it. I didn’t join the family firm when I married Alafair.’

‘In which case we’ll need to talk to her. You know,’ Chambers told him, as she moved past him, ‘I used to have a Scotland shirt with your name on the back. Pity about the hair, by the way.’

There was music playing in Hastie McGrew’s room, just loudly enough for Alafair Drysalter, who was standing at the end of her brother’s bed, not to hear the detectives as they entered. When Neville coughed, she gave a little jump and spun round.

‘Who the. .’ she began, stopping short as she saw the cards. ‘Oh no,’ she sighed. ‘Do you people never stop?’

‘We tend not to,’ the DS said. ‘We came here to interview your brother, but it looks like we’re going to have to talk to you instead.’

‘About what this time? Are you still on about my father’s death?’

‘No, it’s not about that, for now at any rate. The situation is that we can put your brother in Bella Watson’s flat. So far your DNA hasn’t shown up there, but it won’t surprise me if it does.’

‘Look,’ she exclaimed, ‘Hastie couldn’t have killed the bloody woman. I thought you’d established that.’

‘But he knows people who could.’

‘In which case he’d have been bloody silly to go with them while they did the job, and silly, Hastie is not. And by the way, you can stop looking for me there, because I wasn’t.’

She nodded towards the still, pale, hairless figure on the bed. ‘As for my brother, look at him. What’s the point in pursuing this any further?’

‘Because a woman’s been murdered,’ Chambers replied. ‘She might not have been a very nice woman, a monster in fact, and she might have been involved in the drugs trade, but she was still murdered, and whether we can be arsed or not, it’s our job to find out who did it. So, why was your brother in Bella’s flat? Was it because he was involved in the methamphetamine racket with her?’

‘No!’ Alafair snapped. ‘It’s because he wasn’t. That’s all I’m prepared to say.’

‘In that case we’ll be charging you with obstructing justice. You don’t want that, Mrs Drysalter, do you? Up to now you’re the clean one of your family. My officers tell me you have a child at Mary Erskine. How’s she going to take that?’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Are you really that naive?’ Karen Neville laughed. ‘Of course we’re threatening you. And we’ll follow through on it unless you tell us what the bloody hell’s been going on here.’

‘Okay,’ she sighed in defeat. ‘The fact is that Hastie was approached almost as soon as he got out of prison and offered a deal to import and sell methamphetamines. He told me about it and said it looked pretty foolproof. The quantities would be very profitable but there would never be silly amounts in circulation.

‘He reckoned it could stay under the radar for quite some time if it was handled properly. Well, I went bat-shit, let me tell you. I said that I’d done my last prison visit, and I forbade him to have anything to do with it. Believe it or not he does listen to me. He said okay, if I was that set against it he’d pass it on to somebody else.’

‘To Bella Watson?’

‘Yes. He told me he’d found out by accident from a guy in the jail that she was living somewhere in Edinburgh, and that he’d been able to track her down. He went to see her and offered her the deal; he told her it was compensation for what happened to her boy. Hastie always did think Dad went too far with that,’ she offered in explanation. ‘That’s why he was in Bella’s flat, to set up the drug route. The old cow went for it, but for security, Hastie didn’t tell her who the supplier was.’

‘Not ever?’

‘Not that I know of. I told him never to mention it to me again.’