The long knives, p.12
The Long Knives, page 12
Billy Connolly has a lot to answer for, Lennox considers. In his wake, every Glaswegian seems to think they are brilliant comedians. To be fair, many are.
But not all of them.
As they prepare to commence, Gillman confides to Lennox in a low whisper. — I’ll fucking swing for that fat Weedgie phantom. If ah git the promo, first thing ah’ll dae is send that spastic tae traffic!
Sipping at his coffee, stronger than many lines of ching Lennox has had, he keeps his counsel.
— Right, says Toal, as the group assemble, Harkness and McCorkel being the last of the stragglers, — Ray …
Stepping forward, Lennox opts to play it cagey. — Thanks, Bob. Okay, then. He nods at the gathered officers. — They targeted Gulliver, planning this meticulously. We still don’t know why he was here in the first place. Neither does his sister, Moira, nor his wife, Samantha, nor his business or political associates up here. So what’s going on?
The first to comment is Gillman. — Revenge attack. Cunt’s obviously been at the Mick Ronson. Find out every fucker Gulliver Cadbury’d and the killer is maist likely on that list. Two Ms Xs, or one ay them or her felly, must be prime suspects. And Graham Cornell, he panelled that cunt once, and he looks at Lennox in satisfaction, recalling an incident from when Lennox outed the relationship Gulliver was having with the civil servant.
Drummond comes forward, looks to Glover. — We checked him out. He has an alibi. He was working at a birds of prey sanctuary. Judy Barless couldn’t have been directly involved either, she was at a conference in Belgium, though that’s not to say either of them couldn’t have gotten associates involved.
— Need tae find they Ms Xs, Gillman snorts, looking at Drummond.
— It has all the makings of a revenge attack, Lennox agrees. A very vicious assault, but that’s what bugs me.
— How so, Ray? Peter Inglis asks.
Lennox avoids looking at Toal. Decides to drop a bomb. — The brutality of the assaults seems out of sync with the meticulous planning of the entrapments. The first one suggested that they were no strangers to cold, analytical planning, but perhaps not so experienced in the messy theatre of violence.
— Served the apprenticeship wi that London boy, then made nae mistake wi Gulliver, Gillman says, looking pleased with himself.
— Use of the plural, Ray, Drummond says excitedly, as if happy to drop Lennox in it. — Anything more from London to tie Gulliver to the Savoy case?
Toal’s rancorous stare tells Lennox that he has already fed too much of the Savoy assault into the mix, and this has not impressed his boss. — Can’t say for certain yet. Let’s stay focused on this case.
— What are you saying here, Ray? Drummond pushes.
— We can’t discount the possibility of more than one perp, Lennox contends. — Perhaps at least two people, working as a team.
Gillman looks snidely at him. — Obviously the London case backs this up.
Lennox thinks of the two shabby CCTV figures through those plastic sheets, the first masked one obviously female, the other an indeterminate mass. — I wouldn’t have gone down there had there not been some similarity in the MO, but there’s no hard evidence to link them so far.
— As I said, we shouldn’t be ruling anything out, Drummond says.
— Ruling fuck all out, Gillman snaps, then smiles. — Just hypothesising.
— Well, Dougie, Drummond pumps herself up, — as always, your tone suggests otherwise!
A round of bitter asides follows as Lennox looks to a wearisome Toal. The unspoken thought hangs between them: Monday’s interviews for the job have just started.
— Right. Lennox raises his voice, silencing the room. — You know what to do. Keep up the door-knocking and poring over the footage and the data. Good luck!
As Lennox hurries off, Gillman, breaking rank with Erskine, pursues him down the corridor. — Lenny! Hud oan!
Lennox stalls. Turns around.
— Brains and brawn combo, this one, Gillman states. — You’re on the right track here, then lowering his voice, he quickly amends the subject. — Watch Drummond. Ah ken you two have form, but she’s no your pal. In it for herself, that yin: just made DI and now wants tae queue-jump over us for Chief Super? She’s right up Toal’s erse!
Lennox allows himself brief amusement at the thought of Drummond in a strap-on ramming Toal’s anus, before he thinks of Hollis in the hospital.
Then Lauren. Gayle … maybe Gayle was in London, driving the van at Hollis and you … No, behave. You’re a mass of anti-tranny prejudice like everyone else …
— What? Gillman is confused with his posture.
— I can’t be bothered with this.
— My advice, Lenny, Gillman declares, — be bothered. She’s gaunny fuck you like you fucked Robbo. And we aw ken what happened tae that poor cunt. He draws a finger across his throat. Then seems to reconsider. — That was in bad taste. He cocks his head to one side, yanking it up with a hand on an invisible noose as his tongue darts out and eyes bulge.
— You, me, Drummond, Lennox says, maintaining a cool facade, — we all bring something different to the table. Reckon they’ll go ootside anyway.
— Mibbe, Gillman says.
Lennox shrugs and drives off to Glasgow, full of perturbation, to check in on his old friend. En route he opts to detour via Lauren’s home base of Stirling, taking the Kincardine Bridge, feeling fortunate to have avoided much of the oft-nightmarish traffic.
Professor Rex Pearlman, the Dean of Lauren’s university faculty, is a reluctant cooperator. Lennox quickly susses out that his priority is to avoid any scandal attaching itself to his department. A thin, athletic man with a mop of salt-and-pepper hair, he speaks in an accent Lennox judges as Canadian rather than American. The ice-hockey memorabilia, some decorated with maple leaves, confirm this. Lennox asks him for a list of students in Lauren’s classes. — What was she working on?
— She was concerned that the movement of genuine trans people was being hijacked by a coalition of toxic, mentally unstable, needy and highly sexist men, Pearlman discourses, his tone loosening up, clearly in admiration of Lauren’s work, — attention-seeking young narcissists and, even worse, serial harassers and sex offenders. She was preparing a paper to be delivered in support of the genuine transgender and women’s movements against those noxious interlopers, and he looks at Lennox as if for a reaction.
You don’t know, and you don’t really care. — This is fascinating stuff. All a bit of a mystery to me, I must confess.
— Things are changing so rapidly, Pearlman confirms, — I even worry that my ice-hockey stuff sends some sort of trans-exclusionary message.
For fuck sake …
Lennox leaves the Dean with gratitude. Heads to the campus coffee bar to quickly fire up his laptop, looking through social media accounts. The big unit called Gayle seems active on Facebook and Twitter. He switches to look at Trudi’s profiles.
Nothing new. Facebook still has her in a relationship. But with who?
Then he sees a smiling, denture-flashing picture of the new man. Traces it through her friends to the profile of: Dean Slattery, Dunedin Power. ‘You’ll find me all over the place, except between three o’clock and five o’clock on a Saturday, when I’ll be at Easter Road, cheering on the mighty Hibees!’
A Hibs bastard too … fuck sake … all bland shit: he sounds a right boring cunt.
Calls up the profile on LinkedIn. Slattery, after being headhunted from Shell, has recently joined Dunedin Power as a Senior Account Executive.
Young, handsome, ambitious, not fucked up; what does she see in him? Lennox finds himself sniggering in a nervous, manic dissatisfaction, jumping back in the Alfa Romeo to carry on west to Glasgow.
It could be perfectly innocent. Her dad might be seriously ill. Keep the desperation out your tones.
He types:
Baby, you have to let me know how you are and how your dad is doing. Please call me. xx
The hospital is in an area of the city he doesn’t know well, up a steep hill, close to Strathclyde University and the Merchant City, but also bordering the poorer East End.
An eerie stillness pervades as Lennox walks across the car park, coming to a fire door held open by what looks like gym weights. He walks in, following temporary handwritten signs for the designated ward. As he enters, the building inside maintains the spooky Mary Celeste feel. At one stage he thinks he can hear footsteps behind him. Stops. Turns. It seems to be his imagination.
Then he comes to the ward. The doors are shut. He presses a switch and a voice on the intercom asks him to identify himself. He does, and is instructed to push a green button. He complies and the doors give way. Lennox thinks of Confectioner, and how hospitals and prisons seem to get more like each other. A morbidly obese nurse sits at a desk, jowls up-lit by a table lamp. She seems not to see him. — I’m looking for Lauren Fairchild, he says.
— Room B10, she offers, jabbing a pencil to his left.
He walks down the empty corridor, looking through the windows into the rooms of sick, wizened and battered people. Sees a note taped to B10:
LAUREN FAIRCHILD
Pushes the door.
16
Ray Lennox has seen many assault victims. Humans rendered less so, by the brutalising force of violent, unremarkable men. After a while, the battered become just repellent, unsavoury things to look at, like a full ashtray to a non-smoker. But something about the state of Lauren induces a deep dread in him. Smashed up, she looks as if she’s reverted to a shabby version of Jim McVittie. And that’s because she’s been so badly pulped that now gender really is irrelevant.
All that work, rendered obsolete.
Jim … Lauren … just wanted to get on with it …
A tug on his bladder compels him to head into the toilet in the small room. Through the relief of his jet gushing into the water, he can vaguely hear a nurse administering care to his friend. He washes and dries his hands. Opens the door to see the screens pulled round the bed. Something makes him look in; he sees what he takes to be a large female nurse with powerful forearms, colourful bangles at the wrists, holding a pillow over his stricken friend.
Pressing it down over Lauren’s battered face.
There’s a gelid heartbeat where both parties regard each other. Some long strands of hair poke out from a surgical mask and cap the intruder wears. Through a space between them, two eyes blaze at Lennox, who shakes out his inertia and leaps forward. The intruder grabs a metal stand and hurls it at him. The bag splits and Lennox feels a tepid chemical coat his shoulder and the side of his face: the aroma instantly tells him that it’s piss …
Taking advantage of his confusion, the intruder smashes him with a powerful right hook, rattling his jaw. Its force and weight suggest a knuckleduster in the hand of the assailant. Lennox manages to stay on his feet, grabbing the screens, which snap from their rail. He boots out a leg, catching the retreating invader as they turn to exit. His opponent is briefly forced off balance, but with impressive agility for their size, they manage to correct themselves, careening through the door. All Lennox sees in departure is a hulking body, powerful calves, in a nurse’s dress.
Gayle …
Attempting to follow, he slides on the piss, ending up on his arse, the screen falling around him, as his coccyx makes disabling contact with the tiled floor. Forcing himself to his feet, he staggers to the door, screaming in frustration and burning humiliation for the staff to attend to Lauren, as the intruder whips round the corner. His slow stumbled pursuit is futile; by the time he gets to the fire escape that they have pushed ajar, all he can hear is the receding sound of feet slapping on stairs. This is followed by a further set of doors crashing open.
He goes to phone it in: no signal. Follows down the stairs and out the fire door, his tailbone still throbbing. A young couple are on the ground; the boy frantically pulls up his trousers, the girl straightens her skirt. — We were just … she gasps, pointing up the street, — they came tearing out the door, they went that way!
— Aye, fuckin pure mental, by the way, the boy observes.
As Lennox turns the corner, he hears the roar of a car engine, and a Toyota tears towards him. Over the mask: a pair of crazed eyes. He throws himself on the embankment as the car hurtles past him.
Again! For fuck sake!
Lennox pulls out his phone, trying to get a snap of the plates, but the vehicle has gone. Instantly thinking of the Savoy incident, he looks around for CCTV cameras. Can’t see any. There must be some. All he is aware of, in the still, cold car park, is the racing heartbeat in his chest and the smell of piss in his nostrils and an almost jaw-broken throb in the side of his face. It’s deserted bar the young couple, who are leaving, and he hears the girl observe, — That boy wis mingin.
He calls Chic Gallagher in Glasgow Serious Crimes. Heads back onto the ward, getting cleaned up as best he can, checking that Lauren has been stabilised. Fortunately, there seems no further adverse change in her condition, which the doctor explains remains perilous. Gallagher swiftly arrives. — I’ll get a uniformed spastic tae keep a lookoot, he confirms.
Almost too shaken to register that Glasgow Serious Crimes have appropriated their Edinburgh colleagues’ designation for uniformed officers, Lennox thanks Gallagher and the staff, then heads off.
Those bangles … it had to be Gayle; that powerful, manly build with the accessorising of a woman. Whatever pronoun you adopt, the antagonism to Lauren is palpable. But why you? Does Gayle think you’re getting closer to this than you are?
It must have been a shit mark in the essay …
Along the M8 motorway tension gnaws at his guts. Images burn through his head; the most persistent being Trudi, and he fires off a text to her:
Please call me! Where are you?
Then he scrolls his contact list. Under ‘G’, Keith Goodwin, the piously cheerful fireman who is still, nominally, his NA sponsor. Hesitating only briefly to feel the extent of his vexation, he gratefully pushes on to ‘H’ and his psychotherapist, Sally Hart.
Sally’s voice is reassuring; neutral, calming, Edinburgh bourgeois tones tailored with detached professionalism. — Ray … the last time I saw you, you had just come back from Miami.
— I really need to talk to somebody.
— Of course, but this is not a quick fix, or crisis management stuff. Sally’s voice takes on an authoritative charge. — If I’m to help you, you have to commit to a proper counselling relationship again. Can you do that?
— Yes, Lennox says, seeing an open stretch of road and opting to switch lanes. A BMW cuts him up.
Fucking spazwit cunt.
The idea of sticking his police siren on the roof and pulling the occupant over grips him tightly. Instead he draws a long breath.
— Then I can fit you in tomorrow, he hears Sally say.
He then phone-checks the CCTV footage sent by Chic Gallagher: the retreating back of a powerful man, bangles evident on the wrists. It has to be Gayle. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find. He calls Scott McCorkel, the ginger-headed Serious Crimes IT whizz kid. — I want you to find out all you can about a Stirling University Gender Studies student called Gayle. A well-known figure, around six foot four of solid muscle in a dress and highly visible custom-made heels, bracelets, bangles, belts and bag.
— Right … Male or female? McCorkel asks cagily.
— If you can find a satisfactory answer to that question, Scott, you should be a world leader instead of a polisman.
On his return to Edinburgh, Lennox heads to his flat and gets cleaned up. Even the rat-trap local of mercurial landlord Jake Spiers tempts him. He fights alcohol’s nag. Trudi has still not responded to his texts. Drives back to hers: once again empty, so heads on to her mother’s place. Also deserted. Looks through the letter box. An ominous feeling of abject despair seizes him as he returns home.
Mr BMW has moved her in … probably the old girl’s in the spare room … fuck … what the fuck …
Please! Just call me! I’m at my wits end here!
It looks pathetic, but he presses send. At the flat he checks the time. Tears off his clothes, pulls on a white shirt, black tie and navy-blue dress jacket. He has to be somewhere. Gets back in the car and drives north to Perthshire.
The burial takes place in a small graveyard within the family estate. Mourners are sheltered from a blustery wind by huge stone walls and an assortment of fir, pine and silver birch trees, which look like skinny-legged giants half dived into the soft soil. The funeral, turned around in great haste, seems designed to wrong-foot media attention. The post-mortem was completed with strings obviously pulled to issue the death certificate the next day. The plank-faced, John Lennon-spectacled minister is evidently a family friend. Nonetheless, this is far removed from Warriston Crematorium, the proceedings’ affluence illustrated by the formality of the mourners, who line up in expensive dark suits and black ties, dresses and hats. If Lennox’s instinct regarding attire to err on the formal is vindicated, he still manages to be an effortless pariah. Glances of outright disbelief and naked hostility are all trained his way.
Goth Ascot …
Lennox eyes several politicians, a TV presenter and a man habitually described as a comedian by the media, but who has never managed to wring so much as a chuckle out of him. Yet it’s important to be here. Statistically, there is a good chance that the murderer will be in attendance. They often find it hard to keep away from the victim, even in their death.
Inside the box: Ritchie Gulliver.
Lennox thinks about this man, who worked so relentlessly hard to forge himself as a totally abject, worthless piece of shit. Watching the mourners around the coffin, as John Lennon dispenses pieties, he wonders if Gulliver would perversely regard his demise as a fitting one.
A timely text from Gillman:
Ask them if the undertakers put a false cock and baws on the cunt.
As soon as the service is over, the mourners begin to make their way up to the stately home. Lennox scans them, but his eyes invariably go back to Moira Gulliver, who seems to linger close by. She’s talking to a man he recognises as James Thorpe, a disgraced property developer, just recently released from a cushy open prison after a major mortgage fraud.
