Кит Мори - Deathly Wind

The butler swallowed hard, conscious that little beads of perspiration had begun to form on his brow. ‘In … in the pantry, sir?’

‘Aye, in the pantry, sir!’ Jock McArdle repeated abruptly; then leaning forward his hand dipped into the open drawer and came out again with a tin that he placed on the desk. ‘And I wanted to talk about my dogs, Dallas and Tulsa – and this tin of – arsenic, I think!’

‘I – er – don’t understand, sir.’

The butler’s eyes widened as Jock McArdle’s hand again dipped into the drawer and came out again, but this time with a short-barrelled revolver. He laid it carefully on the desk beside the tin.

‘Aye, let’s talk about my dogs and how they may have had some of this … arsenic,’ he said in an unnervingly quiet and calm voice.

Torquil groaned when Morag told him that Superintendent Lumsden was on the telephone again.

‘Your laird is mightily displeased with your attitude, McKinnon, and I have to admit that I think he’s got a point. He is thinking of lodging an official complaint. He feels that you were heavy-handed with him this morning when he identified his employee.’

Torquil had felt his temper rise as his superior officer used the word ‘laird’ again.

‘We have information about McArdle, sir. He isn’t what—’

‘Inspector McKinnon,’ Superintendent Lumsden interrupted, ‘you seem to have a problem with Jock McArdle, I realize that. But just let me tell you, he is an influential man.’

‘You mean he has a lot of money, Superintendent?’

The voice on the other end of the line sounded as if it now came through gritted teeth. ‘I mean that he has powerful friends. You would do well to realize that, Inspector. Two of his employees have been killed and he wants police protection.’

Torquil gasped. ‘Protection?’

‘That’s right. And I said you would see to it. So see to it and keep me informed about the case.’

There was a click and Torquil found himself staring at a dead line again.

Moments later he relayed the superintendent’s message to the Incident Room.

‘The man is a fool,’ said the Padre, voicing his disbelief.

‘Didn’t you tell him about Morag’s information, Torquil?’ Ralph McLelland asked.

Torquil shook his head. ‘I didn’t really have time. The superintendent rarely listens. Besides, I’m not sure that he needs to know just yet.’

‘Be careful, laddie. Remember that the superintendent had it in for you in the past,’ said his uncle.

Torquil nodded. ‘I’ll be careful, Uncle.’

He looked at Morag. ‘Go on now, Morag. Tell us about McArdle, or Cardini.’

‘Well, my contacts at Glasgow told me that Giuseppe Cardini served five years in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow for culpable homicide. But apparently it was touch and go as to whether he went down for the murder of one Peter Mulholland, one of the twins who jointly ran one of the biggest gangs in the Glasgow area. They were into drugs, prostitution and extortion in the city. Giuseppe Cardini was thought to have murdered Peter Mulholland, although he claimed it was self-defence.’

Morag looked up at the assembled men in the room. ‘And now comes the interesting bit. The police had been put onto him by an investigative journalist who had infiltrated the gang that Cardini worked for. Her name was Rhona McIvor.’

Ralph gasped. ‘Well, I’m damned! I knew that she was a writer of sorts, but I didn’t know she was into that sort of writing.’

‘I thought I might be able to get a copy of her article off the internet, but I couldn’t access it,’ went on Morag. ‘But I did manage to get a copy faxed from the records department. I have a cousin who works there. It was her first job of the day.’ She opened a file and pushed a copy of the article across the desk for Torquil to see. ‘I’ve highlighted a few interesting bits,’ she pointed out. ‘Matthew Mulholland, the other twin, had also claimed to have been attacked by someone, and a bullet-riddled car was pulled out of the River Clyde.

‘So Cardini went to prison and while he was inside Luigi Dragonetti, the head of the gang, died of a heart attack. When Cardini was finally released, he just disappeared for a few months. It was then that he changed his name by deed-poll to Jock McArdle. And somehow he seemed to have been able to finance himself in the confectionary business, although the Glasgow police believe, and still believe but have been unable to prove, that he made his money through vice and extortion.’

‘But what about the other gang?’ Torquil asked, as he scanned Rhona’s article.

‘Mathew Mulholland, the surviving twin, died of a stroke on his way home from a Celtic match a week after Cardini reinvented himself as McArdle. Apparently he ran his Mercedes into a wall. Somehow the gang just disappeared – or rather a lot of the gang “went straight” and ended up on the new Jock McArdle’s payroll. He just went from strength to strength, invested in several companies and became a millionaire.’

‘And what about this animal rights thing?’ the Padre asked.

‘Ah yes, that was one of his companies. They bred mice, rats and guinea pigs and supplied them to several university and government laboratories. Highly lucrative, until they attracted the attention of animal rights activists. Unluckily for them!’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Torquil, raising his head from the article.

‘There is nothing concrete to go on here, but apparently there was an active cell of animal rights activists operating in the south of Scotland. There were a couple of attacks on the homes of some of the McArdle company workers, and even a fire-bomb attack on Jock McArdle’s house. A few weeks later a couple of bodies turned up in the river. They were identified as being members of the animal rights cell.’

The Padre whistled softly. ‘Not a nice chap, it seems. And now he says he wants police protection.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Well, I should let him wait a while if I were you. What about Sartori and Reid? Where do they fit in?’

Torquil tapped the article in front of him. ‘I am thinking that they were what Rhona called enforcers or punishers. That is how she described Cardini when he was a young man. That would certainly fit with their bully-boy antics on West Uist.’

Wallace Drummond raised a hand. ‘Excuse me, but what was the significance of the bullet-riddled car?’

Morag shrugged. ‘I am not sure. Rhona made the point that the Mulhollands had probably killed whoever was in that car.’

‘But was there was no body?’ Douglas asked.

‘No body, so no charge against Matthew Mulholland. He denied any connection. It was only supposition that it was connected. False number plates and everything. But inside the glove pocket they found a gun, a Mauser, and a library book about guinea pigs.’

‘Guinea pigs?’ repeated Wallace.

‘Could that be the animal rights folk again?’ his brother asked.

‘The police checked and the book had been taken out by someone called Enrico Mercanti, who was on the Dragonetti gang payroll. The police think that he was a fellow punisher with Cardini-McArdle.’

Torquil stood up and went over to the whiteboard, and added a few more notes under Jock McArdle’s name.

CARDINI

PUNISHER

PRISON – 5 YEARS

ANIMAL RIGHTS CELL – BODIES FOUND

He drew a line between McArdle’s name and Rhona and added a balloon with the word ARTICLE inside.

‘Cardini to McArdle. Sounds similar, as if he wanted to retain the sound of his name. So does the Italian connection have more significance than we thought?’ He suddenly snapped his fingers and added in capital letters the word FAMILY to the notes under McArdle’s name. Then he drew a line from there to the notes relating to Ewan McPhee’s diary, where the same word stood out prominently.