“THIS ISN’T going to be worth our valuable time.”
Darian was sitting in the passenger seat of Sholto’s Fiat. He said, “You don’t think?”
“Nah, no chance.”
Sholto enjoyed speaking as a master to his apprentice, letting Darian know he’d done this all before. It was an act of basic kindness to let him ramble on about it, even though Darian already knew why the boss was right.
Darian asked, “Why not? He’s Uisdean’s friend, he was with him on the night. If anyone saw something it’s bound to be the friend.”
“Well, first of all, that beating the boy took, whatever it was for, it was a setup. They knew he was in the club and they tiptoed up behind him when he came out. The friend didn’t go with him down the alley, so he wouldn’t have seen the attacker because the attacker would have made sure he didn’t. Place as busy as that and no one saw him? This person knows how to play the game. Second of all, Uisdean doesn’t want us to know what really happened, so there’s a good chance this reliable pal he’s willing to name will have his lips sewn shut as well. They’ll look out for each other.”
“So why bother at all?”
“Passes the time, and Kotkell’s paying by the hour.”
It wasn’t just their own time they were passing, it was Darian’s sister Cat’s as well. Leandro Oriol lived in the halls of residence at the university in the south end of Cnocaid, in the same large building she stayed in. They were sticklers for security, so Darian and Sholto needed someone with a pass to get them in. He had called Cat and asked if she could help. She had said yes, but only if she got to sit in on the interview, because seeing them at work promised to be entertaining and maybe even educational.
She was waiting for them at the main doors. The building was old, finished in 1762, and came with a high, arched entrance and doors thick enough to make an invading army pause for thought.
Darian smiled when he saw her, walked over and gave his sister a hug. “Good to see you, Cat.”
She was always the little sister to him and Sorley, with her thick, red hair, wide smile, pale, freckled skin and slight frame they thought she needed all the protection they could give. That was complete nonsense, of course, and especially so by the time they arrived at the door of the university halls. She was twenty, already planning to be a journalist, and knew her way around the worries of the world without the need of a guiding hand.
Sholto smiled, shook her hand firmly and said, “Catriona, it’s lovely to see you. Goodness me, you have your mother’s look if ever I saw it.”
A lot of people who had known their mother said the same, and Cat never quite knew how to react to reminders of her. Death chips a small corner from you, leaves you a different shape than you were before, a less complete person.
Darian knew any mention of their parents would make things awkward so he said, “Thanks for helping us with this, Cat.”
“I’m just getting you in and watching the show, it’s no big deal.”
She led them through the hall and across to the side. The security didn’t really kick in until you left the main hall and tried to go down one of the corridors to the rooms. That was where you needed a swipe card to enter, which was where Cat came in handy. She held the door open for them and led them along the wide corridor and round to room seventeen. She had checked the register to find out what room Oriol had.
She said, “Here we go. These are some of the better rooms; you usually have to be pretty well connected to land one down this end.”
Sholto knocked and the three of them waited. The door opened and a middle-aged woman looked back at them. Cat didn’t recognize her so she wasn’t a lecturer or member of staff, and it was a fair bet she was a parent. She didn’t look surprised. She was tall and blonde, bright red lipstick against pale skin, and she looked at them with the irritated expression Darian and Sholto were used to.
Sholto said, “Hello, love, my name’s Sholto Douglas, this is my colleague Darian Ross, and Catriona Ross. We’re from Douglas Independent Research and we’re needing to speak with Leandro Oriol. Is he at home?”
“What is this about?”
“Don’t worry now; he’s not in any bother at all. A friend of his was knocked about like a crisp packet in a tornado and we were hoping young Leandro might be able to tell us one or two things about the stormy night in question.”
She frowned more deeply still and said, “You’d better come in.”
She stood at the door and the three of them walked past her. It was obvious they were expected, and that, whoever she was, she was there to deal with them. The rooms were bigger and better than Cat’s, basically a small flat with large windows and nice views of the side gardens. Cat was two floors up in tiny rooms she shared with two other people and several patches of damp that had lived there a lot longer than them.
The room she led them into was the kind of living room that every student wanted but very few could afford. Gadgets galore, gaming consoles and a bookcase full of games, VR headsets and framed movie posters on the walls. There was a cabinet that had an assortment of bottles in it, many of them still full, which meant it must have been restocked often. They weren’t cheap bottles either. On the couch, which had remarkably few stains and no visible rips in it, sat an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old boy. He was darker than the woman, but there was a resemblance there. Where she had the pasty look of a local, the boy’s father was presumably Caledonian. Leandro was chubby and he needed a haircut because the long style he was aiming at wasn’t working for him. He had a double chin, a fuzzy attempt at facial hair and small glasses, and he was wearing the sort of jeans and hoodie combination that looked like a sarcastic impression of a working-class kid.
Sholto looked at the drinks cabinet and said, “Hoo, I could get half-drunk on a year’s salary on that lot, eh?”
Leandro didn’t smile and the woman just frowned again. She said, “Mm. My name’s Kellina Oriol, this is my son Leandro. I’m a lawyer, so if you don’t mind I’ll be sitting in on this interview.”
Sholto said, “Oh. Good. We’re not police, just so you know.”
“I already do know. You’re a private investigator pretending to be something else, I’ve checked. So go ahead and ask your questions.”
She sat on the couch next to her son and Sholto and Darian sat on the second couch in the room, Sholto slumping back and saying, “Obh, obh.”
There was a spare dining chair against the wall by the door, presumably for when their gaming sessions got crowded, so Cat pulled that beside the second couch and sat on it.
Sholto said, “You don’t mind if we take the weight off, do you, Leandro? No point wearing out our feet while our brains are working.”
He half nodded and then looked at his mother to see if he was giving the right answer. It was too late; bums had already hit the seats.
Sholto pushed on. “Now, Leandro, seeing as Uisdean’s already been in touch to tell you we were coming you can crack on and tell us what happened the other night outside Himinn and we can get out of your mother’s lovely hair.”
“I don’t know what happened; I didn’t see any of it. I didn’t know it had happened until this morning.”
Leandro had a deep voice that sounded like it was coming from somewhere else, and his tone said he didn’t like having to use it in this company.
Sholto said, “Oh, we know that, but walk me through the things you do know. You weren’t so blootered you can’t remember, were you?”
Kellina Oriol tutted and Leandro said, “No, I remember. We went out for a few drinks, stopped in at Himinn and stayed for, I don’t know, a couple of hours. We left at the same time, but I went up the street because I was going to stay at my parents’ house, so I went up toward Ciad Station. I think he was coming back here so he went down the street to use the alley to get across to the taxi rank on Cala Street.”
All said in the clipped tone of an over-rehearsed performer scared of mistakes. Sholto nodded cheerfully along and said, “That was it? There was no one at the club trying to turn the dancing into something more physical, or even just keeping an eyeball on you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“A nightclub in Challaid and there was no one there looking for a rumble? That seems unlikely.”
“Nobody approached us, or spoke to us. We had no trouble at all.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh. And what sort of mood was Uisdean in?”
“Mood? He was fine, normal.”
“Good, right. So when you left the club I suppose there would have been some people out on Malairt Street, always busy out there in the festive hours. Did you notice anyone on their own, anyone taking an interest in you?”
“I didn’t see anyone I can remember recognizing. There were a few folk there, but just ordinary groups of people.”
“So Uisdean, a good enough looking lad, money burning a hole in all his pockets, probably a wee heartbreaker, am I right? Got a tidy wee girl or three on the go, maybe picked one of them up from another lad who didn’t want to let go, something like that?”
“No. That’s not Uisdean. I don’t think he has a girlfriend. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You’re his mate.”
“I don’t think he does.”
His mother said, “Really, Mr. Douglas, they’re young men in college together, they’re not Siamese twins.”
“I think they prefer to be called conjoined. So, Leandro, you probably don’t know him well enough to know of anyone who might have it in for him.”
“No.”
“No. The big N O. Nothing else springs to mind, nothing that might help us find out who tried to use your not-as-good-a-pal-as-we-thought-he-was as a piñata?”
“No.”
Sholto glanced at Darian and they both stood up, so Cat did the same. She had come to see Darian at work but it was Sholto who had made an impression on her. He had always seemed so bumbling, her father’s former colleague who had become a byword for sloth. The way he handled that interview, and the lawyer present, was far more impressive than she’d expected. If you wound him up, like Leandro’s mother had, he still had some life left in him to spit out. This was the moment Cat realized her brother was in good hands.
Sholto said, “We won’t take up any more of your expensive time, Mrs. Oriol. Or yours, Leandro. This card here has my office number on it, just in case a flash of memory hits you and you need to get in touch about it.”
Cat led them back out and through the hall to the cavernous entrance. Darian said, “Well, that card will be in the bin by now.”
“Aye, and I bet the bin cost more than Mrs. Douglas’s weekly shop. Imagine a student having all that gear. A student. I could have gone swimming in his carpet. Did you feel it? The kind of people that go on skiing holidays and sail boats around the Mediterranean with no cargo to deliver, they are. Closest I’ve gotten to a foreign holiday in the last five years was chasing a debt dodger down to Carlisle.”
Cat said, “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
Darian said, “It wasn’t worthless. Leandro’s obviously holding back, he knows something about what happened to Uisdean. His friend and his mother both told him what to say and he picked the best-sounding answers from their short list of options.”
Sholto said, “Aye, a couple of well-brought-up liars, that pair. That’s the thing about posh people, the rest of us tend to think they stick to the law better, don’t duck under it for a quick buck, but they’re actually worse because they think they deserve to get away with it.”
Cat said, “As long as it’s keeping you busy.”
“Oh aye. We caught a killer this week, did Darian tell you that?”
“No.”
Darian said, “It’s complicated; I’ll tell you in proper detail some time.”
“I look forward to it. Say hello to Sorley if you see him before me.”
They parted, and Darian and Sholto walked back to Sholto’s car. Darian said, “Will we hit Himinn then, see what they have to say there?”
Sholto looked at his watch. It was half-four in the afternoon. “Nah, better to leave it to tomorrow morning. We’ve done enough work for one day so I’ll drop you back at home if you want. You take my advice, don’t become a workaholic, it’s one of the worst aholics you can be; it can be the end of you. Nearly happened to me.”
“Did it?”
“Oh yeah, when I was your age I worked all the hours they would pay me for. You get wiser as you get older.”
Darian said nothing to that, but he was thankful for the lift home. It meant he would dodge Bank Station, where Gallowglass would be waiting.