Ken McClure - Eye of the raven

‘ Maybe a couple of officers should go with you,’ said McClintock.

‘ I’d rather go it alone,’ said Steven.

‘ Fair enough,’ sighed McClintock. ‘Your idea.’ He gave Steven the address of Tracy Manson’s flat. ‘It’s about a mile from the city centre, at Tollcross: it’s the street runs up the side of the Kings Theatre if you know where that is?’

Steven said that he did.

‘ How are you going to get in?’

‘ I’d rather not tell a policeman that,’ said Steven.

‘ Shit, I didn’t ask,’ said McClintock.

‘ Peter?’ began Steven.

‘ I’ve asked forensics to test her blood,’ said McClintock, reading his mind.

The stairs leading up to Tracy Manson’s third floor tenement flat were spiral and dark because the bulb was out in the narrow ground floor hallway. Feeling his way to the wooden banister at the foot of the stairs made Steven even more aware of the smell of fried onions and cat pee. The stone treads beneath his feet felt worn and gritty as if they hadn’t been swept for some time as he climbed up to the third floor and found the door he was looking for: it was the second along the landing.

Unlike the other doors, which had formal name plates, Tracy Manson’s door had a piece of card Sellotaped to it with ‘Manson’ printed on it in blue marker pen. Steven guessed that she rented the place.

He looked at the locks: there were two, a Yale about a third of the way down and a mortise around the half way mark. The mortise would be a problem if Tracy had actually used it but many people didn’t. It was more convenient just to click the door shut behind them on the Yale. He put his right knee against the lower half of the door and pressed. He felt the door move ever so slightly inwards, indicating that the mortise hadn’t been used.

He took out his clasp knife and prized the door side panel open a little — just enough for him to slide a slim piece of plastic about the size and thickness of a bookmark through the gap until it reached the tongue of the Yale lock. Three or four attempts at pushing it further and the tongue slid back to release the door. He pressed the side panel back into place with the heels of his hands and stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind him.

He stood for a moment in the darkness as a strong smell of perfume — Tracy Manson’s perfume — kindled memories of the dream that wasn’t, bringing with them a strange mix of pleasure and fear that made him swallow hard and click on the light to break the spell. He began a thorough search of the flat.

Despite the knowledge that Tracy was dead, he still felt uncomfortable at rifling through her belongings, particularly when he came across an old photograph of her as a young girl on holiday with her family, smiling and looking happy and when he discovered her collection of cuddly toys on the dressing table in her bedroom, he felt even worse.

In a drawer in the kitchen he found where she kept paperwork, electricity and phone bills, a building society passbook, a methadone script that she wouldn’t be using today and a letter from the council saying that communal roof repairs were required. There was also a note from one of the neighbours suggesting that the residents agree on a recently submitted estimate for regular cleaning of the stairs and hallway. Replies were to be submitted to Mrs Grieve (1F1) by Friday.

The small bedroom with its single wardrobe and dressing table yielded nothing but clothes and make-up despite Steven’s hopes being raised at the discovery of a small metal box on top of the wardrobe. When he opened it however, it only contained Christmas and birthday cards. None of them was recent. One read, Sweet Sixteen, and was inscribed, Love and kisses to our very own princess, Mum and Dad. Steven closed the box and reflected on the raw deal that some people ended up with in life. He noted that Tracy’s bed was a single one. The cover had Paddington Bear on it. She obviously hadn’t brought her clients here.

He returned to the kitchen and switched on the electric kettle. He didn’t think Tracy would grudge him a cup of tea. While he waited for it to boil, he stood on a chair to examine the tops of the kitchen cupboards but again without finding anything.

He was beginning to think that maybe Tracy hadn’t kept any ‘insurance’ here after all. It wasn’t the kind of property to boast a wall safe and he couldn’t really see her having lifted floorboards — although he did open the cupboard under the kitchen sink where floorboards were often loose but not in this case. He rinsed the grit off his hands under the tap and dropped a tea bag into a mug before adding some boiling water.

While it infused, he ran through a mental check of all the possible places, room by room, where Tracy might have hidden something. In the bathroom he remembered that he’d overlooked the bath panel so he went back and examined the screws securing the plastic panel to its frame. His interest was aroused when he saw that the heads were bright as if they’d recently come into contact with a screwdriver. He brought out his knife and undid them.

At first he thought there was nothing there when he reached in and swept his hand over the rough floorboards but when he stretched behind the bath, his fingers came up against something in the far left-hand corner, something that moved; a container. When he finally managed to extract it, he found that it was a large, tartan shortbread tin. It carried the maker’s name on it and the legend, ‘Frae Bonnie Scotland’ above the smiling face of a boy in a kilt.

Steven opened it and found three videos inside, along with a notebook and some loose sheets of paper with names and numbers on them. ‘Eureka,’ he murmured, taking the box and its contents through to a flat surface in the kitchen. He had just opened the notebook when he heard men’s voices outside on the landing and a key go into the lock on the front door.

Assuming that McClintock had been forced — probably by Santini — to send officers round, he prepared to greet them. The two thickest men who appeared in the kitchen doorway however, did not strike him as policemen. He didn’t know them but they knew him.

‘ Fuck me,’ said one.

‘ Well, well, well,’ muttered the other. ‘Seems like this bastard didn’t get enough last time… he’s come back for more.’

Steven’s felt the hair rise on the back of his neck as he realised that these two were Verdi’s men, the bouncers from the sauna. His second thought as he saw the shorter of the two bring out a flick knife was that he had left his own knife lying on the bathroom floor. It was only a Swiss army knife but it would have been better than nothing.

Under normal circumstances he would have felt confident about taking on either of the men in front of him. They were the usual schemie hard men, the sort spawned by run-down council estates all over the country, young and heavily built but relying more on attitude than expertise. Watching Clint Eastwood movies didn’t make you Dirty Harry when you came up against those who had trained and fought with the best.

But these weren’t normal circumstances: he was a long way short of being fully fit and still hurting badly from his last encounter. There were two of them and the one with the knife was starting to come towards him.

‘ Verdi says he’s a doctor,’ said the other one.

‘ Is that a fact,’ hissed the knife-holder. ‘Well, ah’m the one who’s goin’ to be doin’ the operatin’ today an’ ah’m gonnae cut this bastard’s balls off.’

Steven’s back was already against one of the work surfaces: there was nowhere left for him to go. He searched with the flat of his hands over the surface, feeling for something he could use as a weapon but his eyes never left the knife in the yob’s hand. The only thing his fingers touched was a jar of marmalade. He snatched it up and raised it threateningly. The yob stopped then grinned, displaying bad teeth as he weighed the blade lightly in his hand and feinted moves to right and left as if daring Steven to try it.