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  ‘They’re nothin to do with me.’

  Perlman said, ‘It’s got to be a very shaky proposition running a gang, Rube.’

  ‘Gang? Whit gang? You polis all live in a comicbook world.’

  ‘Do you ever wonder what all these wee men are thinking about the Big Man? They must talk about you. The Big Man says this, the Big Man does that. Mibbe they’re critical. Mibbe they don’t like some of the things you do, the decisions you make. Mibbe some of them feel a little leftover allegiance to Citizen Stoker or the late Curdy—’

  ‘You’re a flowin river of shite.’

  ‘In your shoes, I’d be lying awake at night wondering if I hear anything moving in the bushes, worrying about this guy or that guy, are they plotting against me? I’d be on a tightrope, Rube. I’d need a second army to protect me from the army that’s already protecting me.’

  Chuck laughed. ‘Some imagination, Perlman. A second army. You’re a comedian.’

  ‘And I’d be worrying about the polis as well. What are they up to? What do they know? They’re fucking sly bastarts.’

  ‘You should know—’

  ‘And their powers, oy. Search and seizure. Imprisonment without specifying a charge under the new terrorist laws.’

  ‘I look a terrorist? You see a towel round my heid?’

  Perlman sailed on. ‘You don’t know half the powers they possess. Or the pressures. They’d wear anybody down so fine you could pour them through a salt-cellar.’ Perlman strolled the room again, singing quietly to himself, ‘These Sleepless Nights Will Break My Heart in Two’.

  ‘I’ve heard crows with better voices, Perlman.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware I was singing.’

  ‘Sign of old age,’ Chuck said. ‘I was about to leave when you came in. You’ve cured my headache though.’

  ‘I thought you had a guru for that.’

  ‘Oh aye. Your mate Scullion’s a nosy bastart.’

  ‘He keeps an eye on you, Rube. He’s manic when it comes to you.’

  Chuck felt little thrusts of pressure in his head. ‘He’s got me aw hot and bothered, I don’t think.’

  ‘You should be. You’re number one on his list.’

  ‘Number one, eh? Top of the pops. I’m a hit.’

  Perlman smiled. ‘He’ll get you, Rube. Don’t have any illusions about that.’

  ‘He’d need to be awfy sharp off the mark. He’s on to plums, Perlman.’

  ‘Sharp and relentless.’

  Chuck clapped Perlman on the back as he edged him toward the door. Scullion, he thought. Perlman delivers rave notices about his old china. He’ll get you, Rube.

  Predictable pish.

  ‘I’ll walk out with you.’

  On the landing Chuck locked the door, turning the key twice. He went downstairs with Perlman and into the street.

  ‘Here, try my bistro some might,’ Chuck said.

  ‘What’s it called? The Pissed Ox?’

  Chuck released a big fake laugh. ‘You know the fuckin name.’

  ‘Too rich for my blood,’ Perlman said. ‘When I’m flush, mibbe.’

  ‘The chef’s a fuckin magician.’

  ‘So I hear.’

  Perlman walked toward his car.

  Chuck laughed at the Ka. ‘You driving a purple flyin saucer these days?’

  ‘I boldly go,’ Perlman said.

  Chuck watched him drive away. He didn’t believe Perlman had a meeting with Glori. She’d never set up such a thing. Perlman was a liar, a good liar, but a liar all the same. What roused the hissing snakes in Chuck’s head was the simple question he couldn’t find an answer for: why had Perlman come here if Glori hadn’t asked him?

  Simple question, my arse. There’s no such thing any more.

  Complex world.

  The Jaguar approached and braked beside him. Ron Mathieson got out and opened the back door for him.

  Chuck got in. ‘The Temple, Ron.’

  ‘Right-o, Mr Chuck.’

  36

  Perlman made a phone call to The Triangle Club from his car. A girl answered, sing-song little voice. ‘Fi-on-a. How can I help you?’

  Perlman had hoped he’d get the irrepressible Rhoda. ‘Is Jackie working tonight?’

  ‘She’s here training some new dealers. Hang on, I’ll get her for you.’

  Perlman cut the connection. He’d have Dysart to himself. Good.

  He travelled east through a heavy drizzle that had just begun. He thought about bumping into Chuck, the human smear test. The slick-haired douche bag had looked ill at ease, which could be ascribed to Lou’s unexpected appearance – but more. Chuck was obviously undone because he couldn’t find Glorianna, and it was twanging on his nerves like a truly awful country song. His tics came into urgent play. The hollow laugh, the way the eyes protruded, two black moons expanding from internal pressures. Chuck was running on low, and vulnerable, and his lies were as transparent as a school of jellyfish.

  Reuben Chuck always left a sour taste in Lou’s mouth, like he’d sucked on the heart of a lime.

  So where are you, Chuck’s golden girl?

  He found the house much as The Pickler had described it, an unexpected red sandstone Victorian, high-walled, gated, austere in its dilapidation. Tall chimneys crumbled, chimney-pots were missing. He parked a few yards away from the gates. He heard dogs bark with the sound of hand-grenades exploding.

  He could see, beyond the walls, the rooftops of the housing scheme with their satellite dishes. In the hardening rain the view was dismal. Maybe once, in the dreamy summer days before the Great War, the house had been enchanting and toffs came out to visit in their primitive motor cars or graceful horse-drawn carriages, and tea was served on the lawn by a cast of low-bred maids happy to be on tuppence a week. He’d always thought it curious how you never saw horse-droppings in old sepia tints of the city.

  He hesitated before getting out of the car, checked to see if he’d brought his umbrella. A pair of old leather gloves, but no fucking brolly. He was going to get wet no matter what. He hated damp overcoats, leaky shoes, water dripping down his face. I belong to Glasgow – and yet. Sometimes the bones yearned for warmer places, blue skies, blue sea. He pulled on the gloves, his hands were chilled.

  He opened the car door, slammed it, caught his raincoat. Bloody rain was chucking down now. He opened the door again, freed his coat, hurried to the gate and pressed the enamel button set in the wall. Two big Dobermans appeared beyond the gates, white-fanged, barking with harsh savagery.

  We guard this space. We are Dobes, the SS of dogs. My name is Heinrich, my chum is Rudi.

  Nobody answered the bell. He rang again and made angry growling sounds at the dogs, inciting them to jump. They obliged, rose on their hind legs, flattened themselves against the gates. They were six feet or more fully extended. Huge buggers.

  A man appeared on the gravel driveway beyond the gates. He had a yellow plastic raincoat over his head and he ran hunched against the downpour. When he reached the gates he calmed the dogs while he scrutinized Perlman’s face.

  Perlman introduced himself. He uttered his name and rank in the stern tone of a debt-collector. He knows my name, Perlman thought. Jackie told him.

  The man wore glasses and had the expression of a worried scholar interrupted on the last page of his monumental PhD thesis. ‘What is it, s-something w-wrong?’

  A stutter. Perlman always had a soft spot for anyone even slightly disadvantaged. ‘You’re Dysart?’

  ‘Doctor Dysart.’ He uttered his title proudly, without faltering.

  ‘Doctor Dysart, eh? I’d like a word.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘You see anyone else? Do I have to stand out here getting drooned?’

  Dysart offered a small awkward smile and said, ‘M-my manners. I don’t get a lot of company. In a place like this,’ and he gestured with his head toward the housing scheme. ‘I k-keep to myself.’

  ‘Understandable. A rough element.’

  Dysar
t unlocked the gates. He grabbed the Dobermans by their collars and yanked them aside with enormous effort. They eyed Perlman and snarled.

  I am top of their foodie wish-list, Lou thought.

  He stepped through the gate, which Dysart immediately locked. Still straining with the dogs, Dysart led the way up the drive toward the house. He released the dogs, shooing them off with wild hand gestures, and they scudded away into the rain.

  Dysart went inside, dropping his mac on the floor. Perlman followed him along the hallway, noticing a pair of gloomy oil portraits that seemed to scrutinize him, as if they suspected an admission fee was being avoided.

  ‘In here please.’ Dysart showed Perlman into a room with drawn blinds. An old rolltop desk, a couple of worn leather chairs, a wood floor badly wormholed. Dysart switched on a desk lamp, which gave a frugal light.

  ‘I leave the b-blinds down … for privacy. Sometimes Slabbite spawn climb the walls.’

  ‘Slabbite?’

  ‘From over there,’ and Dysart nodded toward the scheme. ‘They try to see in. They g-give me a hard time.’ He sat down and grinned unexpectedly, as if a funny thought had popped into his mind. It gave his mouth a lopsidedness. Perlman had the impression of a man not entirely attuned to the exchanges of everyday life, but trying hard to figure them out for the sake of sociability. The smart navy blue blazer and grey flannels he wore seemed to make him uncomfortable. He sported them as a dummy in a tailor’s window might.

  Perlman was drawn to a diploma on the wall: University of Glasgow, the degree of Doctor of Medicine conferred on Dorcus Dysart, June 1997. ‘Are you in practice? Here, maybe you can advise me about these painkillers I’m told to take, personally I think they’re far too strong—’

  Dysart interrupted. ‘I used to w-work in hospitals. But n-not now. I don’t like them.’

  ‘Hate them myself. What’s your reason.’

  ‘They’re t-too impersonal. I n-never felt at ease.’

  Perlman didn’t probe this line. He suspected he knew where it would lead. He’d learn that Dysart wasn’t really a team player. Something about him suggested the nervous loner who wandered the night shift corridors, riding the lifts as much as he could, trying to avoid the nurses who jokingly flirted with him.

  Dysart asked, ‘What can I do for you, Sergeant?’

  ‘I have a report of a woman seen running out of this house a couple of nights ago. In some distress, it seems. Tell me about it.’

  ‘A woman? N-no woman was here.’

  ‘So the report is false.’

  ‘Yes, certainly yes. A complete lie. A Slabbite lie.’

  ‘They do this kind of thing often?’

  ‘Oh, they do much w-worse. Trash my yard. S-say all kinds of things. They call me a p-pederast. Or I’m a junkie doctor struck off. My hou-house is haunted.’ Dysart shrugged and waved a hand as if to dismiss the effect the Slabbites had on him.

  ‘Haunted, eh? Ghosts and things that go bumpetty in the night?’

  ‘I suppose so … They don’t know any b-better, Sergeant. Poor education, b-bad health system. Society fails so many people.’

  He tolerates the unwashed plebs, Perlman thought. Nice guy. What could it be like to live in a house this alienated from its neighbours, a house from another era? You’d be the object of all kinds of suspicion and scandal. It was a tradition – yobs united against the big house, which symbolized a resented upperclass. Name-calling, spreading rumours, throwing shite over the walls: Perlman could see it. One day they’d probably torch the place. History was relentlessly cyclical.

  ‘You seen anything of a supernatural nature yourself?’

  Dysart shook his head. ‘I’m a realist.’

  ‘What do you mean by realist?’

  ‘I mean … I b-believe in what I c-can see and touch.’

  ‘And nothing beyond.’

  ‘A … such as?’

  ‘Faith, for instance. In God.’

  ‘I don’t have faith in any god.’

  ‘A godless man, eh?’

  ‘That m-makes me sound t-terrible. Call me agnostic.’

  ‘So you’re waiting for proof, or divine manifestation, or a deathbed conversion.’

  ‘Any of the above.’ Dysart smiled and seemed pleased with himself, visibly a little more relaxed, as if Perlman’s questions were part of a test he’d been rehearsed to pass.

  Perlman thought, Basic Conversation, Book One.

  ‘Live alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Monster house for one,’ Perlman said.

  ‘M-most of the rooms don’t get used.’ Dysart ran a hand across his short hair.

  ‘I’d really enjoy a guided tour.’

  ‘There’s n-not much to see. Unless you have a taste for damp empty r-rooms—’

  ‘Damp, give me damp over dry every time. If I enter a room that isn’t damp my body cries out, Turn around, get out, we’ll turn into a prune, Lou.’

  ‘You need a certain amount of m-moisture in the air. For health.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Perlman smiled, removed a glove, took out his small notebook and wrote something down. Scribbling in a notebook sometimes caused people to become ill at ease. They felt they were being recorded for an inscrutable official purpose, and so they became nervous and garbled. He wrote: bollocks, underlined it, and shut the notebook, then replaced his glove.

  ‘So you make a living how?’

  ‘I was left some m-money. And the house of course.’

  ‘Big upkeep.’

  ‘It’s a weight, granted.’ Dysart’s hand flew to the knot of his tie as if he’d suddenly discovered a growth beneath his larynx.

  Doesn’t like neckties. Only wears them – when? Social gatherings? Restaurants? Why was he wearing one today? Expecting company? ‘I assume the legacy you got isn’t enough to cover everything that needs repairing.’

  ‘There’s wet rot in the basement—’

  ‘Wet rot? Christ. Talk to me about wet rot. You don’t get that seen to, it spreads like the plague. I had some in my own cellar. I live in an old house myself, not huge like yours, but a total pain in the arse maintaining it all the same.’ Like I try. Perlman shook his head in sympathy.

  ‘I have plans,’ Dysart said, brightening. ‘I’ve t-talked to architects and b-builders about restoration. This house d-deserves to be restored. It really d-does.’

  Perlman wrote in his notebook again. Call Betty. He wrote it on the page where he’d placed Kirk McLatchie’s snapshot, which he’d meant to return, but forgotten: holes in his memory nets wide enough for schools of dolphin to pass through. ‘Forgive my curiosity, awful habit. Has it ever crossed your mind to sell, since you don’t have the wherewithal to maintain?’

  ‘Are y-you trying to give me financial advice?’

  Perlman laughed and made it sound hearty, two pals enjoying a chuckle and a coupla pints. ‘I’m the last person, Dorcus. All right if I call you Dorcus?’

  ‘Feel free.’ Dysart clearly wasn’t sure it was all right.

  Lack of trust. He’s unhappy, a cop in his house. Most people are. Most people have some secret they’d prefer to keep. What’s yours, Dorcus?

  ‘My bank manager pulls a paper bag over his head and tries to hide every time I enter the bank,’ Perlman said.

  Dysart issued a thin laugh and ran his fingertips down the sharp creases in his trousers. Good hands, Perlman noticed. Sensitive fingers, such as you’d expect to find on a violinist. The nails had been buffed and trimmed. Recently, too. They hadn’t had time to become imperfect. So, a necktie he isn’t accustomed to wearing, a new manicure, throw in the good blazer and flannels with creases you could cut yourself on, plus the neatly laced sensible black shoes built to outlast ocean liners – is Dysart dressed up for going out, or waiting for somebody to come in? Such finicky questions. The polisman’s mind, all fluff sticks. I’m DS Velcroheid, pleased to meetcha.

  Dysart said, ‘Are you done with me?’

  ‘Just about. I wonder if you’d mind
,’ and Perlman suddenly tugged the chord that released one of the blinds and it ravelled at velocity, exposing window, overgrown gardens, tops of the towers. He needed a sense of the outside. The melancholy atmosphere of this house was a weight on him.

  ‘I t-told you I never raise the b-blinds.’ Dysart blinked several times, and got up from his chair and walked quickly into the hallway.

  ‘Sorry.’ Perlman went after him. ‘A wee bit of light just helps me see better. We can talk here, I don’t mind.’

  ‘I thought w-we were finished—’

  ‘Two minutes, I promise. So you don’t want to sell up. Old family home, emotional bonds. I understand. But this place is a money-pit, and if your inheritance isn’t enough I assume you work at something else. Odd jobs here and there, this and that.’

  ‘I h-have just about enough to live on. But n-not enough for all the planned r-repairs. I’m talking to some people from the National Trust, b-because they often finance this kind of work.’

  ‘Civil servants. Paperwork. It’s a mire sometimes.’

  ‘They’ve b-been very optimistic about funds.’

  ‘I hear it’s a lottery. I hope you get lucky.’ Perlman gazed into the room he’d just vacated. Rain thudded into the grass and bent the branches of trees and blew over the towers, causing the satellite dishes to quiver. ‘Does Jackie kick in a few pounds now and again to help?’

  ‘Jackie?’ Dysart looked as if he was about to deny knowing anybody called Jackie. ‘I n-never ask Jackie for anything.’

  ‘I just thought since you and her have been friends a long time, mibbe she’d lend a hand. I imagine she makes good money at The Triangle.’

  ‘Don’t think I’m rude, Sergeant, but I answered what you c-came to ask me, and I d-don’t feel easy talking to a stranger about m-my m-monetary situation or p-personal matters.’

  Perlman coughed into his gloved hand, then took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and eased one out. ‘You mind?’

  ‘I do m-mind as a matter of fact. But s-smoke if you n-need to. All smokers are selfish.’

  ‘I won’t smoke if you don’t want me to.’

  ‘No, smoke.’ Dysart moved toward the front door and bent down to pick up his wet plastic mac. ‘You c-could quit if you had the willpower.’