Butcher Page 20

  ‘I just don’t want to remember those times. They belong to another person’s life. Surely you can understand that?’ Jackie Ace made urgent, dismissive movements with her hands, as if rasped by a wasp.

  ‘I’m investigating a crime, Jackie. I don’t have the luxury of sparing your feelings about the past. I’m sure Tartakower wouldn’t be as sensitive as you.’

  ‘I don’t believe he’d want to look back either.’

  Perlman patted his coat pockets. ‘Can you lend me one of your cigarettes?’

  ‘Help yourself. I haven’t smoked in eight years. I like the idea of having them around. In case there’s a sudden lapse. Or a need. Or something.’

  Perlman took a du Maurier from the box on the bureau. He rolled the cigarette between his fingers before he lit it. He liked the crinkle of tobacco inside paper. ‘I’ll arrange a meeting.’

  Jackie Ace said, ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I need clarification.’

  ‘Of what? You’re dealing with an old man’s memory, and how reliable is that?’

  Perlman said, ‘My problem is I smell shite, Jackie.’

  ‘Then your nose is too near your arse.’

  It wasn’t a ladylike remark, Perlman thought, and it shocked him unexpectedly. How weary he was of obfuscation and the great dissembling roil of humanity in general. Deceptions, sleights of hand, smoke bombs. He strolled the room, looking for a place where he might dispose of the du Maurier, the taste of which he didn’t like. He flicked it carelessly into the open fireplace – and noticed too late that it was no longer a working fireplace, but a small whitewashed cave with designer pretensions, an arrangement of bonsai trees, glittering seashells and chopsticks balanced carefully in the shape of a steeple and dried herbs hanging from strings hidden in the chimney-piece.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Jackie went down on her knees and scrambled to retrieve the burning cigarette end. ‘I worked hours on this.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ Perlman said. ‘I just did that without looking. Everywhere I go, I leave a mess. Is it OK? Nothing lost?’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘I’m so haunless sometimes. Just last week I left my new contacts on the edge of the wash-basin and I reached behind me for a towel – you know, groping blind. And just as I grabbed the towel, my free hand knocked the contacts down the sink,’ and Perlman, demonstrating the backwards stretch for the towel, clattered into the delicate vase that contained the lilacs. Water slicked across the surface of the bureau and the vase cracked and the lilacs slid in the stream of spilled water to the floor.

  ‘Oh Jesus, I’m sorry—’

  ‘That vase was a gift,’ Jackie Ace said angrily. ‘It had sentimental value for me, Perlman.’

  ‘I’ll clean it up, let me, show me where you keep—’

  ‘I’ll do it myself.’ Jackie Ace picked up the flowers. She rushed into the kitchen and came back with them in a drinking-glass half-filled with water.

  ‘At least you saved the flowers,’ Perlman said.

  ‘But not the vase.’

  Perlman sussed the orderly room, thinking it was just the kind of organized living-space he disliked. So fastidiously arranged, so empty of charming clutter. It needed a touch of shambles.

  Ace placed the lilacs on the mantelpiece and stood with her hands on her hips. The look she gave Perlman was one of deep contempt.

  ‘You’re a bit of a disaster.’

  ‘I’m not much of a guest, Jackie, granted.’

  ‘Technically you’re not a guest at all, I never invited you.’

  ‘I know, I came barging in …’ Perlman gazed at the red slatted blind. ‘I meant to say, I love the blind, eye-catching.’

  ‘Don’t go near it. Please.’

  But Perlman reached out, fingered a slat. Jackie Ace, panicked, edged between Perlman and the blind to protect it. ‘I’d like you to go. I’m asking nicely.’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ Perlman said. ‘It’s funny how I can come into somebody’s flat and turn their world upside down in a minute, Jackie. Born clumsy.’

  ‘I think you do it on purpose, Perlman.’

  ‘No, no, I wouldn’t do that.’

  Perlman’s face was close to Jackie Ace’s. He smelled aniseed on her breath and saw turmoil in her expression. He felt a surge of pity for her – poised as she was in uneasy balance between sexes, and facing the trauma of intrusive surgery, the long months of healing.

  ‘I’ll leave, give you some time.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Remembering.’

  ‘You might have a very long wait.’

  Perlman let himself out of the flat and closed the door. He was sweating. The light on the landing threw his shadow, grotesquely distended, against the stair wall. He rubbed his eyelids, took a few steps down. His shadow altered. He held the banister, his palms damp on the wood. Clumsiness was hard work. Sometimes it helped, because it created agitation, and dented politeness, and people often said what was really on their mind.

  He half expected Ace to have a change of mind and call after him. It didn’t happen. He reached the bottom of the stairs, then walked the tiled close to the street.

  He sat in his car and thought for a time about Betty and how she was coping. The need to see her overcame him. He imagined her sitting in a room with dimmed lights and drawn curtains.

  He phoned The Pickler. ‘Are you sober?’

  ‘I’m just back from seeing Gers play Motherwell. Shite game.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question.’

  ‘I’m sober enough.’

  ‘I want you to do something for me. Now.’

  ‘I was just about to watch a boxing match—’

  ‘Forget it. Meet me in Hill Street. I’m parked near St Aloysius’.’

  ‘You joining the Jesuits?’

  ‘I’ve got enough problems without having to sit round and analyze them all day long. Get a taxi. I’ll pay.’

  ‘What’s the job?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’

  There was a sound of bottles falling. Obviously The Pickler was in the act of standing and had collided with a pyramid of empties.

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  31

  Chuck made a point of visiting The Potted Calf once a week. Mainly he wandered from table to table, glad-handing, saying hello, playing the host. He didn’t like the smells from the kitchen, otherwise he might have come more often. Pieces of animals sizzling in butter, the pungent stench of the Basque stew that was a favourite with the customers. Sometimes he had Pako Sg, the chef, make him up a small bowl of noodles with vegetables, or a simple salad, and he ate standing close to the back door, which he always opened a little way.

  Tonight he had no appetite. He was restless, his session at the Temple hadn’t cleared his head or diminished his concern about Glorianna. He’d sent Mathieson to her flat with a pass-key and he’d come back to report there was no sign of her. Now Ronnie was checking the taxi companies, searching for the driver who’d picked her up from Dysart’s place.

  Chuck shook hands with the maître d’, a smooth silver-haired man called Rory O’Blunt who’d worked some of the best rooms in Europe – Paris, Florence, London. O’Blunt was about fifty but had one of those seamless shiny faces that suggested years of self-control and careful diet.

  ‘Evening Mr Chuck.’ O’Blunt pressed the meat of Chuck’s hand between his own. The Sandwich Shake.

  ‘Busy the night.’ Chuck surveyed the room, which had been decorated by an Edinburgh interior design firm called LaScala, fussy painstaking fudgepackers who squealed a lot over books and paint samples. Oh we must go with this, we must we must. Chuck had spent four hundred and thirty-nine thousand pounds on making The Potted Calf luxurious and comfortable. The textured light tan wall covering looked like calfskin. There were small pen and ink portraits here and there of famous Scots. He hadn’t wanted these, but the interior design people jabbered on about the importance of a Scottish identity.
Chuck grew bored reminding them that the menu was a mix of European and Asian cuisine.

  Rory O’Blunt said, ‘Booked to the rafters, Mr Chuck.’

  ‘Excellent.’ That was one hundred and forty covers at an average of just over one fifty per cover. Some of this money was cash and could be disappeared very easily.

  Chuck listened to the buzz of diners and the clack of cutlery and the easy laughter of people half-cut on silly-money wine. He worked his way across the room, a little more quickly than he normally did, nodding and smiling, shaking hands, tapping a shoulder here, an arm there, dropping an occasional joke. It was what you did in this biz if you wanted to be a success, the human touch. He wasn’t much up for it tonight.

  Chuck spotted Chief Superintendent Tay in the far corner, seated with other high-ranking polis, mainly overweight men in anonymous suits. Tay was slurping soup du jour, pulped lettuce and ginger in a wine and beef stock broth, on which slivered leeks floated.

  ‘Everythin OK, Super?’

  Tay slowly raised his big boulder of a head like a man interrupted at prayer. His tiny mouth eked out a smile. ‘Interesting soup. Not too leeky. I’m not a leek man.’

  ‘The chef’s always on the leek-out for new tastes,’ Chuck said.

  ‘You’re a card,’ Tay said and went back to his soup.

  The other cops regarded Chuck with interest. He knew they’d arrest him in an eyeblink if they had evidence. A strange situation, and unsettling, as if there were two Reuben Chucks, one a respectable restaurateur, the other a criminal.

  As he looked at Tay, Chuck imagined Scullion saying to the superintendent I’m digging deep into Chuck’s background, getting warmer …

  Fuck Scullion, he thought.

  ‘What’s your main dish tonight, Super?’

  ‘I chose the game pie.’

  ‘Enjoy.’ Chuck drifted away, but not before he noticed three bottles of fine wine – marked up seventy-five per cent from the dealer’s price – on the Super’s table. And the money rolls in. He nodded to O’Blunt, then left the bistro, which was discreetly concealed by willows. Once upon a time it had been an exclusive little hotel favoured by rich old ladies who liked its seclusion from the traffic on the main road.

  He walked toward the Jaguar. He had two minders track him. They wore black leather jackets and black slacks. They were attuned to sudden, inexplicable movements. Chuck felt protected – and yet not, bothered again by thoughts of fuckin Scullion. Keep on him, don’t let up: did Tay say somethin like that? Did they confer on a daily basis and devise strategy and sift such evidence as they might have gathered?

  What fuckin evidence? They don’t have any. They don’t have beans.

  He saw Mathieson in the car, and climbed into the back seat.

  Mathieson said, ‘I checked the taxi companies.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nobody remembers picking her up.’

  ‘Somebody has to. Mibbe one of them gypsy cabs. Start askin some hard fuckin questions. Get on it as soon as you drop me off at Hack’s.’

  Mathieson glanced in his rearview mirror and said he would.

  Chuck thought: holy fuck, did I just hear myself curse? No. Like an alkie taking a drink after years of abstinence, he felt regret and shock. He’d been careful with his language. He’d watched over it like a puritan at a witch-trial. I let myself down. I looked away. Shit. Baba said find the still space at the heart of the storm. Get a grip.

  Mathieson drove until he reached Woodside Place, near Charing Cross. He parked outside a refurbished Victorian house.

  Chuck said, ‘Wait for me. Work the phone. Get out the word to these gypsy cabs.’

  ‘I will,’ Mathieson said.

  Chuck went inside the building, which had a brass plaque on the door that read: Roman, Glebe & Hack, Solicitors.

  Mathieson thought: Chuck isn’t himself today, not by a country mile.

  Gerry Hack was a dyspeptic man who wore gloom as if he kept remembering he’d been dragged into the world by a pair of surgical forceps. He essayed a smile whenever Reuben Chuck entered his office – which was hung with degree certificates – but he wasn’t a smiler by nature. Chuck paid him a retainer enormous enough to lighten his heart, but sometimes Hack had to do some deft paddling to get around the fact that Chuck lived in rough waters well outside the legal limits.

  Chuck sat facing Hack across a desk carved in Acapulco by Mexican craftsmen. This desk, with its Aztec faces and configurations, had been written up in style sections of Sunday newspapers. It was spectacular, twelve feet long by nine deep, a size that served to keep some distance between Hack and his clients, most of whom were villains.

  Chuck said, ‘I hate that desk.’

  ‘Only because you covet it.’

  ‘It’s a piece of Mex crap.’

  ‘I turned down your last two offers. Don’t waste my time.’

  ‘It would make great kindlin.’

  Hack’s smile widened. He might be the essence of flexibility when it came to that borderline where Crime met the Law in a tangle of contentious issues, but in the matter of the Acapulcan desk he was granite.

  He laid his hand on a bundle of manila folders. ‘You spawned every one of them. Whenever I think of you and these files I’m reaching for the Zantac.’

  The whites of Hack’s eyes were a jaundiced colour. He suffered from alopecia, which had destroyed his eyebrows and all the hair on his head.

  Chuck always thought he was an odd sight. ‘I pay you enough. You could throw in the desk for what I pay you.’

  ‘This fucking desk stays where it is. As for your paying me, I cost you an arm and a leg because I’m the best and I keep your arse out of jail. If it wasn’t for me, do you think you’d be able to stroll around town like a man with a halo? Buses for the handicapped. Donations to religious charities. Free sessions for senior citizens three nights a week at your health spas. Instead of sitting in a cell, you’re at liberty to glow in the darkness of Glasgow, Rube, like one of those electric Christs I nearly bought at Knock.’

  Knock, Chuck thought. He knew Knock all right. It was a form of low-grade Catholic Vegas, a place where the depressed and the maimed laid bets on the wheel of fortune they called Faith, cap F. ‘Don’t talk to me about Knock, Gerry.’

  ‘Right. You had a falling out with God.’

  Chuck eyed the stack of files. ‘How’s your security here?’

  ‘Your files are safe, Rube.’

  ‘What if the cops raided this place?’

  ‘You don’t think I store the files here, do you?’ Hack lit a thin brown-papered cigarette. ‘So Scullion’s bothering you.’

  ‘Gettin on my tits. Has he asked you about that paperwork?’

  ‘Not yet. When he does, he’ll get it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Don’t meddle. I don’t reveal trade secrets and I never name connections.’

  Chuck imagined he’d figured out Hack’s methods: a conspiracy of lawyers and clerks in Government offices was involved, what else could it be? Hack played footsie with Stoker’s lawyers, and Curdy’s as well. They traded documents and deeds, every doc doctored in the appropriate places, a legal stamp here, a signature there, whatever it took to construct an appearance of legality. When they heard the first whisper of the big changes coming in the map of lawless Glasgow, they smelled huge profit in paper-shuffling. Chuck could see them hold clandestine meetings in quiet country hotel rooms where they hatched treachery. Bram and Curdy were on the skids … who’d want yesterday’s men for clients? Who’d want to be associated with losers?

  The smart money follows the winner every time.

  This was the way Chuck liked to see it, an association of bent lawyers looking out for themselves. And, incidentally, his neck too.

  Hack pointed his cigarette at Chuck. ‘Scullion’s covered for now.’

  ‘For now – what does that mean?’

  ‘I mean he might come up one day with a request I can’t fulfil. Highly unlikely, but in the r
ealms.’

  ‘Wait a minute—’

  ‘What worries me is your mindset. Think in advance next time you decide on a flamboyant takeover.’

  ‘It was planned like a military op, Gerry.’

  ‘More Keystone cop.’

  ‘The amount of schemin that went into—’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ Hack said, singing the words in a thin funny soprano, and covering his ears and closing his eyes. ‘What I’m telling you is this, consequences are easier to deal with if you root out loose ends before they become loose ends.’

  He’s Baba in another form, Chuck thought. ‘Somethin might throw you for a loop, is that it?’

  ‘Who knows? Bottom line, I’m only telling you if you have future plans put them on hold. Let things cool.’

  Chuck was quiet. Future plans. All he wanted was peace. He couldn’t stop thinking about gypsy cabs. You couldn’t trust them. What if some bandit picked up Glori and took a shine to her? Rape was always a possibility. A desirable young woman alone in an unlicensed cab with some horny fuckin Romanian or Greek at the wheel on a stretch of dark isolated road and who knows what.

  Hack shook his head. ‘Here’s my best advice. Keep your hooter clean. Do some more low-level charity stuff. Be Mister Nice.’ Hack pushed his chair back from the desk. ‘Go home. Relax. Count crystals or whatever you do.’

  Chuck snorted. ‘Count crystals? Shows what you know.’ He got up from his chair. He needed to have faith in Gerry Hack. He needed to believe there was no angle Gerry Hack couldn’t cover. ‘Scullion’s a fuckin pancake. You could snaffle him for breakfast, right?’

  ‘With my ulcer?’ He stood up and walked Chuck to the door.

  They shook hands and Chuck left, feeling not the reassurance he’d come here for but a little dissatisfied and insecure. How good was Hack really? And if he was capable of entering into a conspiracy of lawyers, how could Chuck know that something similar might not happen in the future – only this time he’d be the one conspired against?

  A weird thought, I’m replaceable.

  He went outside. Ronnie Mathieson was in the passenger seat of the Jag, talking into his mobile phone.