Doug Johnstone - Hit and run

‘It’s all speculation until forensics come back with something.’

The gears in Billy’s mind ground together.

‘What sort of things can they find out?’

‘It just depends. It’s not like CSI, but they sometimes come up with a useful nugget. Precise cause of death would be handy.’

Billy thought about that for a minute.

‘I reckon the Mackie boys must be the prime suspects,’ Rose said. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the cops have brought them in for questioning already, checked their alibis.’

Billy raised his eyebrows.

Rose looked at him. ‘Wayne and Jamie Mackie. For a crime reporter, you really don’t know much about Edinburgh’s criminal underworld.’

‘You’re supposed to be teaching me.’

‘How did you get this job again?’

A running joke. Rose and the paper’s editor and news editor had been the interview panel. The other two had wanted another candidate with more experience, a hotshot young woman from down south. Rose had talked them into hiring Billy. She sealed it by pointing out he’d be cheaper and she could train him up. She reminded him at every opportunity.

‘Yeah, the Mackies had the most to gain, rival criminal gangs and all that, and they’re just about the only guys in town capable of something like this.’ Rose looked at Billy. ‘It takes a lot of bottle to kill someone, you know. More than you’d think.’

A lot of bottle, thought Billy.

A silver Lexus swept past them and turned into the Whitehouses’ drive.

‘Aye, aye,’ Rose said. ‘Look lively.’

She huffed as she got out of the car, and Billy followed. She scuttled to the house as he caught her up.

The car had stopped at the front door and a man and a woman got out. The car drove on to the garage, the driver waiting for the garage door to slide upward electronically.

The couple were walking up the steps, the man with a hand placed on the small of the woman’s back. He was short and skinny in a loose suit, she was taller, red hair to her shoulders, wearing a black polo neck, tight skirt and heels. She had a graceful walk.

‘Mrs Whitehouse?’ Rose called out as they approached.

Both figures turned at the door. The man had close-set eyes and stubble. He tried to steer the woman inside the house but she didn’t budge. She wore large, round sunglasses. Billy was struck by how beautiful she was — old-style, full-figured glamour.

‘Mrs Whitehouse, I’m Rose Brown from the Evening Standard, I wondered if we could have a quick word.’

The man stood in front of the woman. ‘Adele has nothing to say to you.’

‘Mrs Whitehouse?’ Rose looked past the man at her.

The man snarled at Rose. ‘If you don’t leave immediately, I’ll call the police.’

‘Was it your husband, Mrs Whitehouse? At the morgue?’

The man stepped forward and pressed a finger into Rose’s chest. ‘You don’t want to mess with me, darling, I can bring you a world of fucking pain, believe me.’

Rose smiled at him. ‘Can I quote you on that?’

‘Here’s a quote for you,’ the man said. ‘My brother Frank was a much loved husband and father, and an upstanding member of this community.’

‘So it was a positive identification. Mrs Whitehouse, how do you feel about the suggestion that your husband committed suicide?’

The woman raised a hand to her forehead, but Billy couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He noticed some discolouration of the skin around her right eye and cheek, the edge of a bruise.

‘Fuck off,’ the man said. ‘Frank didn’t kill himself.’

‘So you suspect foul play?’

Billy almost laughed at the quaint phrase Rose had used, like something out of Miss Marple. He couldn’t take his eyes off Adele Whitehouse. She hadn’t said anything yet. He wanted to hear her voice.

The man was right in Rose’s face now, spit on the corners of his mouth as he spoke.

‘When we find out who killed Frank, they’re gonna wish they’d never been fucking born. And you can quote me on that.’

‘Thank you, I’ll do that. Mrs Whitehouse, do you have anything to add?’

She turned from Rose to Billy. Billy wondered what colour her eyes were.

‘No comment,’ she said.

A soft accent. A hint of west coast.

She turned and walked into the house. Billy stared at her figure, the sway of her red hair on her shoulders, the confident strut in those heels.

‘You heard the lady,’ the man said, giving Rose a gentle shove. ‘Now fuck off and leave us alone.’

‘Of course.’

The man walked into the house and slammed the door.

‘So sorry for your loss,’ Rose shouted after him. She turned to Billy. ‘Nasty little prick. Did you notice her shiner?’

Billy nodded.

Rose laughed a big, throaty laugh. ‘A crime lord dead in suspicious circumstances, a vengeful brother, an abused widow. Oh boy, have we got a front page to write.’

‘This is dynamite.’ Tom McNeil sat in his office looking at his computer screen.

Rose grinned. ‘Isn’t it?’

The editor turned to Billy, who was tangled up in an uncomfortable metal chair. ‘Old-school reporting, doing the footwork, doorstepping the story,’ he said. ‘You could learn a lot from Ms Brown here.’

‘I already have.’

‘Screw blogs and tweets, this is real news.’

Billy had already had this lecture when he was hired. Modern mass media and digital formats were all very well, but old-fashioned foot-pounding journalism, getting out there and actually covering a story, blah blah.

McNeil was the same generation as Rose, and Billy could see what he was getting at up to a point, but they were on their way out. The whole newspaper industry was dying. The vast majority of his fellow Napier students had wound up writing online content in one form or another. He was one of the few working in print. And that wasn’t out of any principles, just the only job he could get, like snaring the last berth on the Titanic right before it launched. Lucky boy.

Billy looked at McNeil as he talked, and wondered if Rose had slept with him too. McNeil was a solid and handsome fifty-five, sleeves rolled up, broken nose adding to the rough charisma. Billy tried to think of himself at that age, but couldn’t get his head round the idea.

Just like this story. Rose had written it up in two hours like the pro she was. Leading on the suspicious death, using Dean Whitehouse’s choice quotes about his brother, alluding to Adele Whitehouse’s bruising, rounding up with the dog walker who found the body and the police call for witnesses.

It was all way ahead of the curve. The police hadn’t officially even given out Frank’s name yet. The tabloids would be sniffing, but not too hard, it wasn’t a major story until the Whitehouse name came out, just another jumper.

They were dismissed from McNeil’s office with pats on the back. Billy excused himself and went to the toilets. He splashed water on his face, then took two of Charlie’s pills. His head was pounding again, the pain swimming into his neck and shoulders. He wondered how long it would take the pills to kick in.

He tried to think, but his mind was sludgy. A muscle twitched under his left eye. A tingle spread across his face, the feeling back after the numbness of earlier. There was a sharp pain across his temple and something flashed in the corner of his eye. He moved his head in that direction, but it was gone. There was a whiff of something amongst the stench of urinal cakes, an electrical burning smell, then everything went black. The last thing he felt were his legs crumpling beneath him.

*

Cold tile against his ear. The sound of water trickling in the urinals. Disinfectant smell.

He opened his eyes and look at his watch. Hardly any time had passed. What the fuck? Must be the stress and shock. He was so fucking tired. He felt full of fatigue, his bones aching at the joints. His headache was still there. The cold floor against his face was soothing, but he dragged himself up and checked in the mirror.