Double proof, p.23
Double Proof, page 23
The wizened lady pressed something on her keyboard. ‘No, son,’ she said. ‘Nothing like that. But he’d a blue bag.’
‘A blue bag?’ said Imelda.
‘Aye, pet,’ said the mop lady. ‘Like a carrier. From Atwal’s grocery.’
‘Thank you!’ said Gould, feet squeaking on the linoleum as he ran past the queue.
‘We saw Atwal’s earlier,’ said Imelda, as they emerged on to Battlefield Road.
Gould looked up. The helicopter had gone. ‘I think so,’ he said, picking up pace, his bare feet sore on the pavement. ‘It’s up near the roadblock, so we’d better hope there’s no polis looking for me.’
‘I’m getting scared,’ said Imelda. ‘We’re losing time. What if he’s–’
‘Don’t think about that,’ said Gould. ‘Focus on finding him.’
A bell rang over the door. The shop was gloomy and warm, the light from the street filtering in through a decoupage of posters and cards. ‘All right, pal?’ said Atwal, adding, when he saw Gould’s face: ‘Fuck happened to you?’
‘We’re looking for someone,’ said Gould, leaning on the counter. ‘Mr Inamoto. He was from Japan, and–’
‘Oh, aye!’ said Atwal. ‘He was in here every day. Shame, man, I saw what happened. Nice wee guy – loved his Irn-Bru.’
Imelda pushed Gould aside. ‘What else did he buy?’
‘Couple of bananas, milk, tins of fish–’
‘Every day?’
‘Aye, man, every morning. I kept telling him to try square sausage, but he didn’t speak any–’
‘Do you know where he lived?’
Atwal frowned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He went out and up the hill, like, but I don’t know. I hardly know where any of my customers live – it’s no’ the kind of thing you ask. “There’s your fags, mate, where’s your hoose?”’
‘Thank you,’ said Imelda, heading for the door.
Gould jogged after her. ‘In there every day,’ he said, ‘buying enough to keep them both going. We are very fucking close.’
She nodded, her eyes burning like coals.
Gould made a call.
‘Where the hell are you?’ said Sam.
‘Out and about,’ said Gould. ‘Listen, we know who took Albie Dalziel: Mr Inamoto, your hit-and-run victim.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because I’ve seen his prosthetic pinkie – the same finger he cut from Albie’s left hand – and we’ve just spoken to the guy who’s been selling him bananas and Irn-Bru. You need to help me now, Sam – where was he staying? Albie must be–’
‘We don’t know!’ Sam shouted. ‘He’d nothing on him, nothing in his pockets – no ID, no keys, and witnesses haven’t–’
Gould hung up. ‘We’re on our own,’ he said. ‘We’ll just have to ask anyone we can find – someone must know where he went.’
Holding up pictures of Albie and reciting Inamoto’s description like a prayer, they asked at the bus stop, the library and the garage; they quizzed the staff in every shop between the post office and the steady incline of Battlefield Road, criss-crossing the junction and climbing the hill as minutes turned to hours and the light began to leach from the sky.
As another bus pulled away without a usable lead, Imelda sagged on to the bench and buried her face in her hands.
Gould put a hand on her back. The soles of his feet were pink and sore. ‘We’re not stopping,’ he said, blinking away the weight behind his eyes. ‘But you need to eat something, drink something. You’re going to–’
‘I can’t, Robbie!’ she shouted. ‘What am I going to do, eat a fucking toastie while my son is dying round the corner?’ She let go a sob, leaned forward.
Gould squeezed her shoulder. ‘I’m going in there,’ he said, pointing at the blue frontage of the Grain and Grind.
‘We’ve already asked them,’ she said, exhausted.
‘I know,’ said Gould. ‘I’m getting a coffee before they shut. I’m not stopping,’ he added, seeing her face. ‘But I’m getting light-headed, and–’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. Go.’
‘I’ll get you something sugary,’ Gould said, giving her back a final rub before he limped across the road.
The place was in the process of winding up for the night – chairs stacked on tables, the coffee machine stripped to its parts. ‘Time for a quick latte?’ said Gould, hands on the bar.
The barista – a short girl with beehive hair – smiled. ‘You’re really going to make me clean the steam wand again?’ she said.
‘Black is fine,’ said Gould. He realised she was squinting at him. ‘What is it?’
‘Are you the guy who fell out Ali Kyle’s window?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Gould. ‘Here, you weren’t working earlier, were you?’
She shook her head. ‘Someone called in sick – I’m just in to close up.’
‘Then have you seen–’ Gould began. His eyes landed on the flowers she was fixing to the inside of the window. ‘What are those for?’
‘One of our customers was killed on Wednesday.’
Gould jumped to his feet. ‘The hit and run?’
‘Yes,’ she said, taken aback. ‘Why?’
‘Where did he live?’ said Gould, shaking her elbow. ‘Did you ever deliver stuff, or–’
‘No,’ she said, pulling her arm away, ‘but one of the girls was walking behind him last week. Sarah!’
‘What?’ came a voice from the kitchen.
‘It’s the guy who fell out Ali Kyle’s window,’ shouted the girl. ‘He’s looking for the hit-and-run guy’s house.’
Sarah poked her head through the bead curtain. ‘Why?’
‘I just need to find it,’ said Gould. ‘It’s really important.’
Sarah hung her apron on the wall. ‘I don’t know exactly where he was staying,’ she said, ‘but he went down Mansionhouse Road–’
‘Mansionhouse Road!’ shouted Gould, sprinting through the door. ‘Thanks!’
Imelda looked up.
‘Mansionhouse Road!’ he shouted. ‘One of the staff followed him there one day.’
She leaped to her feet. ‘Where’s that?’
‘Over the hill,’ said Gould, running, the aches of the last two days melting under the heat of his blood.
They ran together, pulling each other forward, the cooling air stinging their lungs as they turned on to Inamoto’s street. A long corridor of tenements loomed over them.
‘Oh God!’ said Imelda. ‘How are we going to find him in this?’
‘He’s not going to be in a busy tenement,’ said Gould, grabbing her hand and pulling her up the hill. ‘Someone could hear him. There must be something empty, something on its own, or’ – he saw the building site – ‘waiting for demolition.’
A darkened block, its windows boarded, stood apart from the others. They ran towards it, flying into the open close, their desperation echoing up the stairs.
‘Albie!’ Imelda screamed. ‘Albie, I’m coming!’
Gould barged open the door to the first flat, ran through rooms filled with billowing curtains through which he glimpsed the shadowy ghost of Amy Porter. He tried the door opposite, then ran to the next floor, punching through glass to reach interior locks as Imelda screamed her son’s name, finding every room empty until, in the penultimate apartment, they opened the door to a flood of warm human stench and found – in the little bedroom at the back, on a rotting mattress stinking of piss, chained to a radiator – Albie Dalziel.
Imelda fell on her knees, grabbing his face as he hacked and coughed, their tears pouring as Gould heaved at the chain. He went to the kitchen, found a knife and worked on the padlock, as Imelda cradled Albie’s head in her lap. When, at last, he was free, Gould sagged against the wall. Called it in.
Sirens wailed.
As mother and son held each other, Gould reached out to the little ghost in the doorway.
Watched her turn away.
44
Imelda jumped at the click of the door. Gould, balanced on crutches, hobbled into the room. Albie was sleeping, his torso gently inclined, a fluid drip swooping from his arm, legs spindly under the blankets.
‘How is he?’ said Gould, dropping into the chair next to hers. The room was stiflingly hot.
Imelda rubbed Albie’s arm.
‘He’ll be fine. He’s dehydrated, but there’s no infection – the doctors think he must have been given an antibiotic.’
Gould looked at Albie’s hand, bound, like his own, in layers of gauze. He reached over and fastened Howard Dalziel’s watch on his son’s wrist. Imelda sighed.
‘Will they be able to–’ Gould started.
‘No,’ said Imelda, smiling as she brushed her son’s cheek. ‘I did always hate that tattoo.’
‘See?’ said Gould. ‘Everything’s worked out.’
She nudged his broken rib, and he gasped in pain. ‘You’ve gone viral, you know,’ she said.
Gould rolled his eyes. ‘How bad?’
‘Eleven million views,’ she said, clicking the link. ‘No – twelve and a half.’
‘Don’t suppose I’ll get any royalties either.’ Gould looked at the door. ‘Where’s Bertie?’
‘On his way. You should have heard his reaction. I thought he was going to cry. We’re so . . .’ She took a breath. ‘Thank you, Robbie. Without you, with him there on his own, I don’t–’
‘Nae bother,’ said Gould. ‘I enjoyed it. I mean, not the stabbing or the torture, but jumping on the back of the pick-up was pretty sweet.’
She laughed. ‘Sam says forensics are in the flat now. Anything they find, she’ll–’
‘They’ll find fuck all,’ said Gould. ‘Lots of Albie, some of Inamoto, and that’s it. He was here on his own, and the yakuza can’t have known where – otherwise they’d have replaced him and you’d have kept getting robot phone calls.’
She nodded. ‘So, that’s it then?’
Gould leaned back in his chair. ‘Looks like it,’ he said, reaching for the jug of water. ‘At the start, when I didn’t believe you, I didn’t–’
‘You found him,’ she said, tears filling her eyes. ‘You found him. He’s here.’
They sat for a few minutes, the sound of Albie’s machines filling the room, the city lights beyond their reflections in the huge, dark window.
‘I just wish I could have pinned that fucker Mears for this,’ said Gould. ‘The yakuza thing . . . it’s too big to pull apart. Even the police will struggle. I was so convinced there was something in that fight at the Guild, but the timeline just won’t connect – the fight happened months before the whisky even turned up.’
Imelda frowned. ‘No, it didn’t.’
‘What?’
‘The fight – it was less than a week after the find.’
Gould sat up. ‘Bertie told me they found the Double Proof in May.’
‘No,’ said Imelda, shaking her head. ‘It was ratified in May – a master distiller had to sample the whisky to make it official. But Mears found it back in March.’
Gould pulled the crushed notes from his pocket.
‘You treat that stuff like a bible,’ said Imelda, ‘and I swear to God, there’s nothing there. It’s just a mess.’
‘It’s not,’ said Gould.
‘It is. Whatever it was that found Albie is in your head.’
‘Well,’ said Gould, ‘let’s see.’
‘How did you find Amy Porter, Robbie?’ Imelda said, as Gould went over his dateline, etching the ink deep into the paper. ‘You keep saying you’re not psychic, but you must have something.’
Gould shook his head. ‘I just read the paper,’ he said, concentrating. ‘Sam was in the hospital. I needed something else to focus on, so I drew the case out, like it was a story’ – he lifted his pen, revealing a broad arc that cut through his names and places at a new angle – ‘and it all connected.’
‘See?’ said Imelda. ‘Nothing.’
A turbulent weightlessness came over Gould, as though a swimming float was gripped between his knees, exerting a pull against which he was powerless to fight. He let the blood roar in his ears, watched Imelda’s lips move, heard her voice as an echo from a distant room. Gripping the slippery rope of his consciousness, he heaved himself upright, forced himself to look at his notes.
The scribbles were spinning, liquid and bright, around the heliocentric weight of Albie’s circled name – every scratch of ink connecting in an unmistakable pattern.
‘Robbie? What’s happening? Are you okay?’
‘Give me the car keys,’ said Gould.
‘What? Robbie, you can’t drive! Your leg. The doctor–’
‘I won’t be long,’ said Gould, grabbing the keys from her hand and barrelling from the room, his crutch falling behind him.
45
Gould unlocked the deadbolt and ran across the echoing hall, dragging his bandaged leg up the stairs towards Albie’s room.
There, exactly where he’d left it, was Ben Mears’ painting – face down on top of the drawers. ‘You fucking dancer,’ he whispered, grabbing the frame.
A muffled sound came from the office. Gould ghosted back into the hall, pushed open the door.
Bertie looked up from his desk. ‘Robert,’ he said, his cheeks bright with drink. ‘What a success! Incredible, really, incredible. I’m sorry I–’
‘I thought you were going to the hospital?’ said Gould.
Bertie held up his glass. ‘I am! But I’d already had a couple of nips when Immy called. Waiting on a cab. Join me in a dram, will you?’
‘I shouldn’t,’ said Gould, indicating his wounds. ‘The doctors gave me some pretty strong–’
‘Nonsense,’ said Bertie, grinning. ‘I insist.’ He took a bottle from the highest shelf, poured it into matching crystal glasses.
‘Dalziel No. 1,’ he said, handing one to Gould. ‘This is the last bottle anywhere in the world – down to its last couple of inches! And I wish to share it tonight, Robert, with you – a gesture, for all you’ve done.’
Gould raised his measure. It sparkled in the light and smelled like raisins. He took a sip. ‘Not bad,’ he said.
‘Not bad!’ said Bertie. ‘Finest bottle in the building, and he says it’s not bad! Still, I can see a wee glint in the eye. I knew we’d convert you.’
Gould took another sip. His stomach warmed around it, and he felt his muscles relax.
‘I can’t wait to see Albert!’ said Bertie. ‘How is he?’
Gould shrugged. ‘Thin. Sleeping. He hasn’t eaten in a couple of days, but he looked a lot better once they’d cleaned him up. I just–’
‘What have you got there?’ said Bertie, frowning. ‘Is that Mears’ thing?’
Gould turned over the painting. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It is. Listen, I’m glad you’re here – I wanted to ask you something. Mears told me about the money he gave you.’
Bertie’s eyebrows went up. ‘Oh?’
‘Aye. I forget exactly when he said it: definitely after I’d been tortured, but before I knocked him out.’
Bertie’s eyes flashed. ‘It must have felt good to strike that face of his! Highlight of a difficult week, hey?’
‘You could say that.’
‘And we appreciate it,’ said Bertie. ‘Speaking of which, I owe you a cheque, don’t I? Money well spent, my goodness. Without you . . .’ He signed with a flourish, tore the sheet from the book.
‘Thanks,’ said Gould, folding the cheque into his pocket. ‘But I worry you might need this yourself. Mears is pretty confident about winning the case.’
‘Of course he is,’ said Bertie, taking a long drink. ‘He’s confident about everything – walks around like he owns the Guild, when he’s not even on the committee.’
‘I can imagine. He told me how desperate you were to find the Double Proof, you know. You and Howard. He made out like it had been an obsession.’
Bertie pouted, then nodded. ‘I wouldn’t say obsession, per se, but we were certainly–’
‘Imelda used that word, too,’ said Gould, nodding towards the binders on the shelves. ‘Howard was interested, she said, but you took it further than that.’
Bertie inclined his head. ‘I took it more seriously,’ he said. ‘You have to understand, the Double Proof is more than an heirloom, it’s our family history – a birthright! And it would have restored the label’s reputation, instead of, well . . .’ He waved his hands, as though sweeping sand from the desk.
‘Everything being taken away,’ said Gould. Bertie shot him a look. ‘Just like your own failed businesses,’ Gould went on. ‘Why’d you choose those things, by the way? I always meant to ask.’
Bertie finished his whisky. ‘Mears was funding me. I took his advice on what might be–’
‘Useful for gangsters?’ Gould cut in.
Bertie’s face darkened. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Restaurants, quiet place to meet,’ said Gould, counting on his fingers. ‘Couriers, moving stuff around. Taxis? I mean, the mind boggles. And something else occurred to me on the way here.’
‘And what’s that?’ Bertie spat.
Gould took another sip. ‘Every one of these things is perfect for rinsing money.’
Bertie’s mouth fell open. ‘Are you accusing me of laundering money?’
Gould shrugged. ‘Easily done. Some extra parcels, couple of dodgy fares, a few more covers than you really have on a wet weekday lunchtime–’
‘That is a serious accusation, Mr Gould,’ Bertie interrupted. ‘If you continue on this path, I shall have to involve my lawyer.’
‘Go right ahead,’ said Gould. ‘You must be his favourite fucking client. But before you call him, listen to this – Mears told me something else that bugged me at the time, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was about court cases using bills of sale – he said you’d know all about him running them before. I thought he just meant you knew the industry. But when I found out he was your backer and thought about how obsessed you’d been with finding the Double Proof, it started to make sense.’
Bertie was still. ‘What did?’
‘You and Howard, traipsing up and down the A9, looking all those years. Mears called you the fucking Hardy boys. He knew you’d come to him eventually – knew running this bill of sale case would work too. Because he’s won them before.’
