Alex Gray - Pitch Black

‘He was wasted,’ Baillie began. ‘Don’t know what he’d had before he came into the club. This is a clean place, we don’t tolerate substance abuse,’ he continued, sounding as though the phrase was a practised one that rolled off his tongue whenever authority loomed. ‘But he had a real skinful in here and then just started the aggro.’

‘Can you describe what took place?’

‘He had this bird.’ Baillie made a grimace of distaste. ‘Wee lassie she was, all gooey-eyed to be fancied by a footballer. They’re all the same,’ he complained, ‘daft wee lassies running after the Armani suits, sniffing a bit of glamour. And money,’ he added cynically. ‘Anyway,’ the bouncer caught Lorimer’s warning glance at this further digression. ‘He has this girl up against the wall and she’s screaming blue murder. Then a lad appears from the dance floor and tells White to leave her alone. Next thing we know he’s laying into the boy and then, before I could step in, there’s a real free-for-all going on. Lassies screaming and bottles being flung across the room; White in the middle of it all. He’d head-butted the lad and there was blood runnin’ down the boy’s face. I grabbed White and told him to cool it, but he just went mental, so we called the police and had him carted off.’ Baillie looked from one to the other. ‘That’s it, really.’

‘So,’ Lorimer began, ‘how did you react when he returned to the club the night he was killed?’

Tam Baillie dropped his gaze and the DCI sensed his discomfort.

‘Ach, the boss said to let him in if he came back again.’

‘Is that company policy? Don’t you normally ban troublemakers from your club?’

Baillie met Lorimer’s intent stare. ‘The boss is a Kelvin supporter. Obviously. Likes to encourage the lads,’ he muttered.

‘You didn’t approve of that?’ Cameron asked quietly.

‘Naw, ah didnae,’ Baillie retorted, his attempt to match the DCI’s fluent tones suddenly deserting him. ‘Ah follow Kelvin an all, but if it had been up tae me ah’d have banned the wee nyaff!’

‘But your boss thought differently?’ Lorimer asked.

‘Aye.’

‘Who exactly is your boss, Mr Baillie?’

Tam Baillie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Mean, youse didnae know?’ The man looked from one officer to the other. ‘It’s Pat Kennedy.’

Lorimer tried not to look surprised. ‘And he didn’t ban White from his club?’

The former bouncer shook his head. ‘Naw. I even phoned Kennedy up that night, like he’d asked me to.’

Lorimer swallowed hard. This was one bit of information the Kelvin chairman had not thought to share with the investigating team. Still, it wouldn’t progress things to take out his displeasure on Tam Baillie.

‘So White was no trouble that night?’ he asked, keeping his tone as diffident as he could.

‘Naw,’ Baillie smirked suddenly. ‘Tried tae pull a bird but she wasnae havin any of it. Gave him a right dizzy. So he jist left.’

‘And that was the last you saw of him?’

Baillie sat up suddenly as if he had heard something in Lorimer’s tone that he didn’t like. ‘What’re you saying?’

Lorimer stared at the bouncer, his blue gaze unwavering. ‘Just that. Did you see him after he left? Which direction did you see him take?’

Baillie’s relief was palpable as he answered, ‘I was in the doorway. On duty. Saw him go down the lane. But I didnae see which way he went. Told your other lot that,’ he added, sticking out his lower lip petulantly.

‘Thank you, Mr Baillie. It’s really helpful to have an idea of the background,’ Lorimer said, rising to his feet and extending a hand.

‘Tam,’ the bouncer told him, ‘jist call me Tam.’

Tam Baillie waited until the two men were out of sight then pushed the black door hard-shut. He clenched his fists and found that they were damp with sweat. Rubbing them on the seat of his new Slater suit, Tam shook his head. That hadn’t been so bad, the busies were just doing their job, checking up. And he’d told them the truth, hadn’t he? The boss couldn’t fault him for that, surely.

‘There’s something I think you should see, sir.’

Lorimer looked up from the mess of papers that littered his desk to see WPC Irvine hovering at his doorway. He frowned at her, from sheer habit, though the interruption was not unwelcome.

‘Yes?’

‘One of Kelvin’s first team, sir. His background report …’ Irvine hesitated, tucking a wayward strand of dark hair behind one ear. She approached his desk. ‘Thought you should know.’

Lorimer glanced at the A4 page then leaned back into his chair with a whistle.

‘Interesting,’ he remarked, then gave her a smile that made her own face light up with a mixture of pleasure and relief. ‘Let me know if you find any more like that, will you? And thanks,’ he added, catching her eye and nodding his approval as the policewoman slipped out, leaving the door ajar.

Lorimer’s smile faded as he read the report. So, it seemed that Donnie Douglas had a bit of a past. The footballer had been signed during the previous season from Inverness Caledonian Thistle, a team that had rocketed up the league tables in recent years. Lorimer remembered his performances on the pitch; he was a solid mid-fielder but a sharp eye could see that he hadn’t really settled into the team. According to the report, Douglas lived in digs in Glasgow’s West End. But what really interested the DCI was the note about his father. Douglas senior was currently being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure in Peterhead prison for manslaughter. Lorimer read on. The victim’s death had been the result of a bar-room brawl. But it had not been his first conviction for violence, which included the illegal possession of firearms, and Douglas had been sent down for fifteen years.

Lorimer felt a stirring in his blood. Donnie Douglas had not turned up for training since Jason White’s body had been discovered. He’d not been the only one, but there was a yellow Post-It note stuck to a page quarter-way down the heap on his desk that was meant to remind the SIO to find out why. Lorimer nodded to himself. The boy might’ve gone to ground deliberately, feeling threatened by his father’s criminal record. Whoever said that mud sticks was right; few people ever managed to escape their past, though the footballer must have been making a real effort to do just that. Still, it might be a lead, and should be followed up.

‘Donnie Douglas? No, he hasn’t. Yes, we’ve tried to contact him at home. No, there wasn’t a reply. No, we couldn’t reach him on his mobile either. Sorry. What? Why d’you have to do that? Oh, I see. Oh. Well…’

Ron Clark put the phone down, his hand trembling. It was a stupid oversight on his part, he supposed. The out-of-towners had been allowed a bit of time off from training this last week and the Kelvin manager had simply lumped Douglas with them. His Highland accent was to blame, perhaps, making Clark forget that he was a Glasgow resident now. So, where was Donnie? He bit his lip. The police were going to obtain a search warrant for the player’s flat. With a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, Ron Clark tried to wrench his thoughts away from what they might find there.

‘Strathclyde Police.’ DC Niall Cameron held up his warrant card for the man to read. A pair of treacle-brown eyes glanced at the card then came back to look him up and down. Mr Singh, a turbaned man in his late fifties with a luxuriant pair of well-oiled moustaches, stood in the doorway. Then with a show of reluctance he stepped aside, letting Cameron and his colleague enter the flat in Barrington Drive. They’d taken the underground to Kelvinbridge then walked along the tree-lined avenue, noting several tiny well-tended gardens. The small patch that hugged the entrance to Donnie Douglas’s flat had a resplendence of crimson-coloured roses, their stems bent under the masses of blooms. As they’d waited on the front steps for Mr Singh to answer the bell push, Cameron had drawn in their scent and for a fraction of a second he’d been reminded of home; a fleeting image of the garden with its waterfalls of climbing roses came to mind before the landlord’s voice had obliterated that fragile memory.