Barry Maitland - The Marx Sisters

Brock shook his head in disbelief. ‘Let’s go and join them, then. What did Finn have on his record, Kathy? Is he a thief?’

‘One charge of theft as a juvenile. Since then GBH, resisting arrest, and, most recently, about ten years ago, assault. A charge of attempted murder was dropped.’

She ran after Brock as he thundered down the wooden stairs.

Peg answered Kathy’s knock, looking fresh and with her morale restored. She was wearing a burgundy knitted suit with flowery blouse and pearls, her white hair carefully coiffed, and she welcomed them with a delighted smile, as if they were old friends she hadn’t seen in years.

‘How lovely of you both to come and see me again. And in such terrible weather! You’re just in time for morning coffee to warm you up.’

‘We just wanted to check how you were, Mrs Blythe. Are you alone?’ Kathy was looking over the top of her head into the room.

‘Peg, dear, please.’ She put a neatly manicured, arthritic hand on Kathy’s arm and spoke in a confiding whisper. Kathy bent her head to hear, and smelled her lavender cologne. ‘I have another visitor, a dear friend of mine that I invited to visit me.’ She looked at Kathy with a twinkle in her eye and patted her arm. ‘Come in and meet him.’

Seated in an armchair was a wiry little man of about fifty, with a badly broken nose. In one hand he held a teacup raised to his lips, and in the other the saucer upon which was perched a chocolate biscuit. He put these encumbrances carefully down on the coffee table in front of him and rose to his feet.

‘Danny, I’d like you to meet the charming police officers I was telling you about. Kathy and…’-she hesitated-‘Chief Inspector Brock. This is Mr Danny Finn.’

Finn put out his hand. ‘How d’ye do. Peg’s been telling me about ye. Come away and sit down.’ He turned to Peg. ‘Peg, hen, I’ll be on my way. Ye’ll have things to discuss with the officers, an’ I need tae be gettin’ back anyhow.’

‘Actually it was you we really wanted to see, Mr Finn,’ Kathy said coolly.

Finn looked at her carefully. ‘Oh, aye?’

‘But you will take a cup of coffee, won’t you?’ Peg lifted the phone. ‘Now I remember you take black, Inspector,’ she said flirtatiously, ‘but what about you, Kathy, dear?’

‘No, really, Mrs Blythe, we won’t stop for coffee,’ Brock said.

‘Of course, you’re so busy. Well, do please sit down for a moment. Danny here has been such a help. I find it so useful to talk things over with him. He’s been giving me advice on security for when I return to my flat. He feels I need better window locks. What do you think, Inspector?’

Brock grunted, ‘Very likely. We’ll get a Crime Prevention Officer to call again. But you mustn’t be thinking of that until we find who was responsible for the death of your sisters. Surely you must understand that.’

‘I do so appreciate your concern, Inspector. Have you no clues at all?’

‘We believe that Mr Winter was responsible for the acts of vandalism and the attempts to frighten you and your sister in the past five months. We charged him this morning.’

Peg put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. ‘Oh no. Poor Terry. I know you suspected him… Poor Caroline too, and the girls…’ She shook her head.

‘I’m not surprised,’ Finn said. ‘I said as much to ye weeks ago, did I not, hen?’

Peg nodded. ‘Yes, you did, Danny, and I didn’t believe you. I just couldn’t imagine that Terry would really do such a thing. To his aunties! He was such a dear little boy. Meredith did spoil him, I know. We all did… But surely, Inspector, you don’t imagine that he could have’-her voice dropped to a whisper as she struggled to articulate the awful thought-‘murdered his own mother… and his aunt!’

‘We don’t know, Mrs Blythe. He hasn’t been charged with that. And that’s why, until we are satisfied that we’ve got the person responsible, you shouldn’t think of going home. Nor of telling anyone where you’re staying. That’s the whole point after all, isn’t it?’

She didn’t seem to understand at first, and then she looked at Danny Finn and blushed.

‘Oh dear! You mean… Oh, but Inspector,’ she recovered herself with a tinkling laugh, ‘you can’t mean Mr Finn. He is a good friend. With him I feel as safe as houses.’

Danny Finn returned with Kathy and Brock to the interview room upstairs at 20 Jerusalem Lane.

‘How long have you known Peg Blythe?’ Brock began. Finn seemed quite relaxed, taking an interest in all the activity going on around him in the incident centre. He was dressed in an anonymous business suit, pale blue shirt and dark tie, with a diary and gold pencil forming a bulge in his shirt pocket.

‘Oh, let me see. The demolition contractor moved on tae site at the beginning of November last, and I came round tae see the two sisters maybe a week or two before that.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, they were the last people on the site who hadn’t agreed tae sell up and go, and I was concerned we might have some trouble from them. You know, complaints about noise and the like. So I went round tae see what they were like, and try tae explain what was goin’ tae happen.’

‘You befriended them.’

‘Aye, I suppose ye could put it like that. Tae tell ye the truth I liked the old dears. They’re real characters. Ye know about their politics? Make Wedgie Benn look like a rabid Tory.’

‘And no doubt you could give them disinterested advice on whether they should sell up or stay here?’ Kathy’s voice was cold with scepticism.

‘Look, lassie, I don’t like sarcasm. If ye have something ye’re trying tae say, you just say it.’

‘Well, Mr Finn, I suppose what I’m trying to say is that it seems to me your main purpose in befriending the two sisters was to persuade them to sell up to your company.’

‘Aye, that’s exactly right. Look, I like things simple, and it was obvious that those old dears livin’ in the middle of a building site wasn’t goin’ tae be simple. It seemed obvious tae me that they should sell up. But equally it seemed obvious that yon wallies at Jonathan Hockings had made a pig’s ear of negotiating with the ladies, an’ I can imagine that greedy wee Terry only made things worse. So I decided that it needed someone tae talk it over sensibly with them.’

‘Someone impartial, like you.’

‘Someone like me who understood what the score was, yes. I made no pretence about where my loyalties lay, but equally I told them how they could get the best deal from First City. They weren’t under any illusions, don’t you worry.’

‘And now, you’re still negotiating?’

‘Mrs Blythe phoned me today, Sergeant. Not the other way around.’

‘From what you said earlier, Mr Finn, you knew Terry Winter,’ Brock said. ‘How come?’

‘He was goin’ spare when it turned out that his aunts wouldn’t leave even after his mother died. He an’ yon Quentin Gilroy’-he pronounced the name as if it were a weak joke-‘got together, an’ Gilroy suggested Winter speak tae me about ways tae persuade the old ladies tae leave.’

‘Why would he suggest your name, Mr Finn?’

‘Because he knows my reputation as a total bastard, I expect, Chief Inspector.’

‘Or perhaps your record of violent crime, Mr Finn.’

Finn laughed. ‘Well, I don’t think that Quentin knows about any imaginary “record of violent crime”, though no doubt if he did it would only go tae enhance my professional reputation.’

‘ “Imaginary”? Theft, assault and attempted murder don’t sound too imaginary, Mr Finn.’

‘Chief Inspector, no young lad with any gumption came out of the Gorbals in my day without a record. When I was fourteen I had a nice wee business supplying plumbing materials tae a builder’s supply yard. At night me an’ my pal would climb over the wall and pinch the pipes, and next day we’d take them back an’ sell them tae them again.’ He chuckled at the memory. ‘I was a budding entrepreneur, that’s all. A Thatcherite ahead of my time. Later on I got in a bad fight in a pub, an’ that was where the GBH an’ resistin’ arrest came from. It was all a long time ago.’