Butcher Page 29

  And now he had Tay, and no time to think of anything else.

  He looked along the landing at the flight of stairs leading up to Tay’s eyrie and he felt the stab of a sudden headache. He was queasy and tired, and couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten.

  Tay’s door was shut. He straightened his back, knocked and went inside without waiting for a response – politeness wasn’t expected of him, so he’d live up to expectations.

  The room was lit only by a small desk lamp.

  Very Gestapo, Perlman thought.

  Tay sat behind his desk, big hands clamped. Because of shadow, Perlman could see only half Tay’s face – it was like a rock fallen from a sea cliff and eroded by tides into an impressionistic human countenance. One eye, one nostril, one ear. Tay by Picasso. Perlman ransacked the gloom.

  There was Latta, in his Sunday best, a dark brown serge three-piece number and a necktie of horrible red and yellow stripes. Latta’s chair was drawn close to Tay’s desk as if he might feed off any fallen crumbs of authority. And in the corner, bearded and taciturn, sat the long-armed Tigge, gazing at Perlman with a frown. Tigge’s nasal passages made a quiet squeaking sound as he breathed.

  The gang’s here, Perlman thought. And they know something I don’t. He was at a disadvantage, which was the way they’d want him to feel.

  Tay made a mighty show of looking at his watch. Wait for the sarcasm. Tay never disappointed. Harumph. ‘Glad you could see your way clear, Perlman.’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’ Perlman noticed an empty chair but didn’t take it, although he longed to sit. Upright, he hoped he gave the impression of self-confidence.

  ‘We’ll take your word for that.’ Tay had a folder in front of him, the only object on the desk except the lamp. He opened it slowly, tapped the papers inside with his stub of an index finger. ‘These are the conclusions of forensic examinations carried out by Sidney Linklater,’ Tay said with measured formality, needlessly adding, ‘Doctor of Medicine.’

  He leaned over the sheets. Latta tilted himself slightly forward, ever closer to il Duce, and turned his face briefly to Perlman and there it was, that bitter glint in the eye, a provocation: let’s see you walk away from this, Perly. The desk lamp buzzed curiously, a weird glitch in the stream of electricity.

  This hand was violently amputated from the body of …

  Perlman heard him intone Miriam’s name and he lurched. He experienced a ghost pain sear his own arm. Sweet Christ no, Miriam, no, he was hearing this wrong, picking up distorted signals. Tay’s voice became a dirge that rendered language as blocks of grievous sound, like a pibroch.

  This hand … amputated pre-mortem …

  Perlman swayed a little. He had to remain upright. Don’t reveal anything, don’t let an emotion show. They’ll come in for the kill if you do. You’re wounded, and in pain, and they smell blood—

  Wait, back up, how did they know the DNA sample from the hand was Miriam’s? How the fuck did they know that? He’d come here anticipating – what? At most – to be informed that the hand had belonged to a woman or a man, that was all. But he saw now that had been a vain expectation; they wouldn’t bring him in for that scrap of news, never, not in a hundred years, they’d leave him outside the loop. Perlman, pah, he’s nobody. Tell him shit.

  No, he was here to be led in another cruel direction.

  He stared at Latta, who had a look on his face of assumed innocence. ‘What the fuck did you pull?’

  ‘Pull? In what way?’

  ‘The fucking DNA way, Latta. If this is Miriam’s hand, you ran a comparison.’

  ‘A hair from Miriam’s hairbrush,’ Latta said.

  ‘Nicked from the loft.’

  Latta didn’t respond.

  Tay looked at Perlman with his dishwater-grey eyes. ‘When did you last see Miriam?’

  He couldn’t remember. Some time after the gull crashed into the skylight – where and when, he didn’t know. That history was lost to him all at once. His head was like a gaunt tenement abandoned and he was wandering empty rooms dreamlike. Tay’s office had gone silent, and the world with it – no phones rang anywhere in the building, no traffic moved along Pitt Street.

  He broke this insufferable quiet. ‘How does that matter?’

  Latta said, ‘It matters.’

  Now Perlman was beginning to hear odd little echoes when other people spoke. He was coming down with something: flu, no, more a case of serious alienation. The pain in his head raged. He yearned for one of his painkillers, which he’d left at home. ‘I’m not evading anything, Latta. I just don’t think it’s any of your fucking business when I last saw her.’

  Latta looked at Tay as if to say, see what we’re dealing with?

  Tay made a chubby steeple of his fingertips. ‘Don’t take that attitude, Perlman. Not here. Keep that for your pals in the streets.’

  ‘Oh please forgive me,’ Perlman said and feigned a cringing humility. ‘By pals in the street – d’you mean pavement scruff, losers, dossers, wasters? Is that what you think populates my sad wee corner of the world, Chief?’

  ‘Don’t push my bloody patience,’ Tay said and gave Perlman a homicidal stare. Sometimes he looked like a mug shot of a serial killer. ‘Frankly, I’d prefer to be at home at this time on a Saturday evening instead of sitting here.’

  ‘Or tucking into grub at The Potted Calf,’ Perlman said.

  ‘Is that a dig at my personal life? I warn you, Perlman—’

  ‘Warn me? Oh God, what will you do, Chief? Get some uniforms to throw me into the street? I’m already on the fucking street, which is where you sent me months ago.’

  ‘And where you deserve to be,’ Tay said, collapsing his steepled fingers.

  Perlman stepped toward the desk, glaring at Latta. ‘You fucker, you think you can railroad me?’

  Latta smiled. ‘I do? Where?’

  ‘Into that rusty depot where you store all your fucking stupid fantasies and your petty spites. More than your teeth that’s corrupt, Latta – your soul.’

  Tay wagged a finger at Perlman. ‘Enough. You’re here to answer some simple questions. Why is everything always so bloody personal with you, Perlman?’

  ‘She was my fucking sister-in-law, of course it’s personal. We’re not talking about some scruff sleeping under a railway bridge—’

  Ignore Tay. He was irrelevant and insensitive, a stupid man. This was about Perlman and Latta. This was about Latta’s dementia.

  ‘Let me guess your Christmas wish list, Latta. One, absolute proof of Miriam’s crime, two, evidence that I was her partner in this wrong-doing and three – since the hand was found in my bloody house, I was obviously the one that cut it off.’

  Latta pinched his nose like he was locking a laugh down. ‘It’ll take an awfy big stocking.’

  ‘Why else would you ask for a DNA comparison test? On the basis of your sick suspicions, you steal a hairbrush from her loft because you so desperately want that hand to be hers, it clears the way for you to poke one of your hirsute fingers at me. Perlman did it, Perlman’s got a saw or a machete, ya ya ya, the meshuga butcher—’

  Tay said, ‘Nobody’s accused you of severing this woman’s hand, Perlman.’

  ‘I’m sure Latta has another point of view. Right, George? Do me a favour and unlock the shrivelled wee walnut that passes as your heart and squeeze out the truth.’

  Latta said, ‘I don’t want to contradict the Chief—’

  ‘Oh, heaven forbid—’

  ‘But I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t take you into account as a possible perpetrator. I emphasize possible. You had motive.’

  ‘Oh aye, the loot I drooled over,’ Perlman said.

  ‘And you obviously had opportunity.’

  ‘Opportunity galore, Latta. But explain this, because I’m getting slow in my old age – why would I cut off her fucking hand? What’s the point in that? Mibbe you think I administered one of those barbaric medieval punishments – because she tried to screw me out
of the bounty, right? So tell me, where did I get the saw and the expertise?’

  Latta said, ‘Maybe your old friend Benjamin Tartakower supplied you with an instrument. You’ve been spending time in Govan, after all.’

  Perlman thought: so they watch me. Why should he be surprised by anything now? Men in doorways, passers-by, characters you wouldn’t look twice at, a city of spies. ‘Seeing as you know so much about my fucking movements, Latta, did you ever observe me leave Tartakower’s carrying a suspicious implement? Or did that happen on your day off? Or maybe you don’t have days off?’

  ‘And maybe Tartakower gave you instruction, Perlman. Showed you the best way to handle a surgical saw. It’s not beyond possibility.’

  ‘Aye, and it’s not beyond possibility we’ll wake one morning and the Clyde will be flowing in reverse.’

  ‘So why did you visit Tartakower anyway? What have you got in common with a felon?’ Latta smiled tight-lipped, showing no teeth.

  Paint me in black, Latta. ‘I’m his fucking spiritual advisor.’

  ‘He must be in an awful bad way then.’ Latta glanced at Tay, then looked again at Perlman. ‘I understand he’s got some kind of gang connection.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m overlooking that. He’s well in with a mob of vicious thirteen-year-old boys in hoods.’

  Flustered, Latta skipped Perlman’s response. ‘What about this cleaning woman?’

  ‘What’s she got to do with anything?’

  ‘After she’d been working for you a few days her son turned up dead, didn’t he? One of those so-called surgical victims we’ve been getting.’

  ‘You think I had something to do with that?’

  ‘Only following the threads, Perlman.’

  ‘And making silly patterns.’

  ‘I don’t know if they’re patterns. Just pointing some things out, that’s all.’

  ‘You forgot to mention I haunt casinos and hang out with some questionable people.’

  ‘I was getting to that—’

  Perlman interrupted. ‘So if I’m a right bad bastard that sawed off her hand, what did I do with the rest of her?’

  Nobody responded. Silence consumed the room again. It had menace in it, the charged stillness in a landscape before a storm. He sensed waves of suppressed emotion roll toward him all at once. Then out of the quiet emerged a gathering of tiny sounds: Tigge’s whistling nose and Tay, in a move he might have rehearsed, sliding his folder toward Latta and Latta taking something from it.

  I’m excluded from this conspiracy of small noises.

  Latta said, ‘Here, look at this.’

  Perlman reached for the object, a photograph, a coloured shot of fresh earth and tangled roots awry and broken blades of grass. The arrangement puzzled him a moment.

  Look at the centre. Look at what the busted earth reveals.

  Look at what they’ve really brought you to HQ to confront.

  He was drawn down into the picture, into its pixels. Making sense of the chaos. Trying to. Not wanting to. The appetites of bugs, the blind explorations of worms, all the seething turbulence that fed and thrived a couple of inches under the surface.

  Tigge said, ‘She was discovered last night by some kids digging for worms. The precise location was, ah, now …’ He picked through his notes. ‘Close to St Peter’s Cemetery, some grassy waste ground … primary examination of the remains indicate she’d been dead for about two months, perhaps longer. Cause of death not yet established.’

  ‘St Peter’s Cemetery,’ Latta said, as if he’d only just realized a damning fact. ‘Across London Road from Tollcross Park. Isn’t that your part of the world?’

  The photograph in Perlman’s hand shook. He willed his fingers to be firm. He had that flu-like sensation again: an inner shivering. Give these buggers nothing, nothing, never give them a sign, a sniff of what you are going through, whatever it is. ‘Is there positive ID?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tay said.

  ‘How can you be so damn sure this is who you say it is?’

  ‘The body’s missing a hand,’ Tay replied. ‘Not conclusive in itself, of course. But it led us to check dental records, which establish beyond any doubt that this is the body of Miriam Perlman.’

  Perlman looked back down at the picture. Not for long. Long enough to see the matted frizz of lifeless hair, the ruined face, the bones, a few of them still fleshy, in disarray. Who needs to scrutinize such a horror? Out of the earth. What was once human. He tossed the picture back at Latta, who caught it.

  They’d brought him here to bushwhack him. They’d brought him here to batter him into submission: the hand is Miriam’s, but hold on a minute, that’s only a tasty appetizer, we’ve got more, open the box, here’s a corpse for you as well. They were dealers in the craft of malice. They knew how to twist the knife.

  ‘And so conveniently close to where I live,’ he said quietly.

  Latta said, ‘Remarkable.’

  ‘And that makes me a suspect.’ He affected nonchalance, amazed by his own ability to hold at bay the babbling chorus he knew waited for him in the ante-chamber of his consciousness. An effort of will: dig deep, Lou.

  ‘It puts you neatly in the frame,’ Latta said.

  ‘And am I alone in this frame, Latta?’

  ‘For the moment. Others may turn up in due course.’

  ‘You’d like me to confess now, and save you all some time. Where I got the saw. Did I use an anesthetic and how did I know how to use it? Did I buy equipment from a surgical supply store? Where did I do the cutting and what really caused her death? How did I transport her? What sort of spade did I use to dig her grave? Bladdy bladdy. So many little details you have to gather. It’s work.’

  Tay said, ‘In your own interests, you may want to seek the advice of a lawyer, Perlman.’

  Perlman wasn’t about to pause and acknowledge this eejit’s suggestion. No, he’d fly through the storm as long as he could. ‘All these intriguing little details aside, we haven’t explored motive, have we? Was it because she was this greedy cow that Latta likes to imagine, and she was stealing money? Was it because she scorned my advances and broke my patient heart? Or what about – she found herself a lover and I was deranged with murderous jealousy? There must be others.’

  Tay leaned across his desk. ‘A lawyer, Perlman. A good one.’

  Perlman couldn’t stop himself. Silence was his enemy. ‘You might as well book me. Look at me, so mild and compliant, I’m helping you build a fucking case. I want to be a model suspect. I don’t want to get unruly and smash up the room. Am I doing well, Latta? Tell me.’

  ‘Champion,’ Latta said, without enthusiasm.

  Perlman felt his energy dip but he wasn’t letting that stop him. He extended his arms, offered his wrists to Latta. ‘So cuff me. Come on, Georgie, the cuffs. What kind of cop-shop is this where you don’t whip out the cuffs? Stick em on me. What’s your problem, Latta? Forget your cuffs? Leave em at chez Latta?’

  Latta looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s not—’

  Tay interrupted. ‘This isn’t the way it works, Perlman, and you bloody well know it.’

  ‘All I know is I want cuffs. I have a right to be cuffed. How about you, Tay? Cuffs in your desk there? Get them out, here’s my wrists, lock me up and throw away the key. Yodel-ay-ee-dee. Model suspect, model prisoner, all in one package. Any cuffers on offer here?’

  Tay rose. ‘I advise you yet again to talk to your solicitor.’

  Perlman took long exaggerated steps toward Tigge. ‘Where are your handcuffs, King Kong? Here’s my wrists. Stand up and be counted, Tigge. Be bold. Cuff me. Fucking cuff me.’

  He was into it now, the crazy dance of the cuffs, turning this way and that, his arms held out and flashed under Tigge’s beard and then, spinning, he offered his wrists to Latta, who pushed them aside, and then he confronted Tay, rolling up the sleeves of his coat and opening his hands. ‘Come on, Tay, cuff me.’

  Tay said, ‘Stop all this silly-bugger stuff and go home. You’ll
be advised of our further investigations in due course, and when we move you’ll be the first to know. Now get out of my bloody sight.’

  Perlman walked to the door. ‘You’re sending me home. You sure?’

  Tay said, ‘Yes, yes, go. Get legal help.’

  ‘Mental help more like,’ Latta said, grinning.

  Perlman was about to turn on Latta, but he let it go. He gripped the door handle. He was reluctant to turn it. It’s easier to stay in this room, he thought. Out there alone, dear Christ. Who knew what. He kept moving. Blood roared in his brain. He shut the door behind him – and then his whole life appeared to be in silent rewind, he was moving in reverse down a flight of steps and along a corridor and out past the reception desk where Wren was talking backwards and then he was back in the street with the rain blowing into his face, and he was walking to his car, the entire world arse-backward … if he kept going in this direction he’d make it down through all the years to the womb, a foetal mote and finally nothing. This was grief, this reaching back to a hiding place where you were safe from scarring.

  He reached his car, lost his balance, slumped against the chassis. He remembered saying to Miriam that night long ago in the loft that his heart was a harp silent half a lifetime until she’d come along. And she’d pressed a finger to his lips and simply said Lou – maybe with affection, maybe not, he’d never know now.

  All he knew was he’d loved her once, dreamed of her for long years, and daydreamed of her, until she turned to mist, a figure he saw only on the far-off edges of his vision. And then he failed to see even that, she diminished gradually, faded daily, reduced to the isolated essence of a person – an impression he received through a sensory organ he never knew he possessed. Love rots in neglect and unfulfilled longings. And Miriam. Miriam was twice-lost to him – the first in love, the second in death.

  He sat in his car, and realized he was weeping quietly.