THE FOLLOWING morning Darian and Sholto met at Glendan Station and took the train together up to Three O’clock Station in Whisper Hill. Darian had called Vinny and told him they needed to force another conversation out of his ridiculously wealthy junior colleague, Vinny texting back a few minutes later to say Philip was happy to meet.
Sitting on the train Sholto said, “That wee cop loves his uncle. I could see it when we went to Castle Greyskull.”
“You think he’s going to talk to us and then call up his uncle to share the transcript.”
“Aye, and then the uncle tells Raven and we have that army of arseholes keeping pace with us.”
“Vinny trusts him.”
“And with good reason, I’m sure. The boy will have his back; they have the kind of relationship forged on the wicked streets of The Hill late at night when blades flicker under lamplight. But he’s still a Sutherland, and if his uncle is after info then family comes first.”
“I’ll mention Raven to him, see what his reaction is.”
Sholto nodded and said no more, believing he had imparted enough wisdom for one train journey and keeping the rest stored away for future use rather than spoil Darian with it all at once. In their working relationship each thought he was teaching the other about how the world really worked, and to some extent they were both right.
They walked out of Three O’clock Station and made their way to Bluefields Road, a short enough distance on foot. Bluefields was next along from Docklands Street, the road that ran around the huge industrial docks and was lined with large buildings that served shipping, among them the police station. The streets around it had the noise and smell of the shipping industry, and captured the spirit of the city’s history in bottles of seafaring nostalgia. Darian always liked to visit, but it would have taken considerable danger money to persuade him to work at the police station there.
About halfway along Bluefields Road was the Silver Cinema, a cavernous place built in the thirties that had undergone more facelifts than anyone who appeared on its screens. It had been opened with much fanfare in 1932 by some Hollywood starlet on a flying visit to the city and had been on a crawling decline ever since. Its last makeover had been about ten years before and had been a noble attempt to recapture the style of its lost youth, dressed up to look something like it had been back in those optimistic early days. But instead of looking young again it looked old and caked in enough makeup to give it an air of desperation. No matter what it wore, the building seemed to make just enough money to keep operating and one of the reasons why was the huge café that now occupied the front of the building. Vinny and Phil, in their uniforms, were sitting under a poster of Gregory Peck and a fishy friend, a nod to the whaling past of the city, over in the far corner where the sleepy young woman behind the counter wouldn’t be able to hear them.
As they sat at the small table Vinny said, “I hope you’ve made more progress than we have because we’ve been a dog chasing its tail in a tumble dryer.”
Darian said, “I don’t know if I’d call it progress exactly, but we’ve got a couple of questions worth asking. DS MacNeith interviewed Dent as well and she didn’t like the shape of his attitude any more than we did. I followed him yesterday, mostly just running your uncle around, Phil, but he went to one of the mansions on Geug Place with a boot full of groceries in the afternoon, I couldn’t follow without being seen so I don’t know who…”
Phil put up a hand to stop him. “My cousin Simon lives on Geug Place. My uncle Harold mostly looks after him, makes sure he’s all right.”
Sholto said, “He can’t look after himself?”
Phil shook his head. “He’s severely agoraphobic, never leaves the house. I heard he has severe OCD as well and I don’t know what else, a shopping list of terrors. I haven’t seen him for two or three years, he doesn’t like visitors, but last time I went round with Uncle Harold he was, I don’t know, nice but shy, nothing to say, didn’t want any part of the outside world getting in.”
Sholto said, “Is there nothing they can do for him?”
“Uncle Harold has tried, but apparently Simon doesn’t want to be helped. He has his own world and it’s very small and he has total control over it and that’s all he wants. Uncle Harold gets his shopping delivered, has a housekeeper go round to cook his meals, makes sure he’s looked after. Look, people think that because you’re a Sutherland you’ve won life’s lottery, but Simon got the short straw in the parent sweepstakes. There were three siblings. My mother was the youngest, Uncle Harold was the oldest and Uncle Beathan in the middle. He took after both of his parents, my grandparents, who were a pair of flakes by all accounts, and I’m not sure Simon’s mother was a stabilizing influence on that shipwreck either. I was lucky with my parents, but our family has been very rich for a very long time and that’s corroded the wires that attach us to reality.”
Darian said, “So he doesn’t like visitors, huh?”
“No, they upset him, and it would upset me if you went round there. The man doesn’t leave his house; he has nothing to tell you.”
“But he sees Dent regularly?”
“I don’t know who delivers his food. I would assume the housekeeper. She’s the only one he allows in. You guys are swinging from the wrong tree here.”
Darian nodded and said, “Well, we seem to have shaken your family tree already. Raven have been on our heels for the last day or so, and I can’t think of anyone other than your uncle who would have called them in.”
Vinny looked sharply from Darian to Phil and said, “Why would your uncle call in Raven?”
“Shit, it’s probably instinctive. They do it a lot, whenever there’s any investigation going on that might affect the company in any way, cause bad PR, hurt the finances. They’re obsessed with knowing what’s happening and what’s going to happen to them in the foreseeable future. They see it as allowing them to control the direction that future goes in. It’s probably nothing, but your best bet would be to pretend you haven’t realized they’re there because once you acknowledge them they’ll move against you. I won’t mention any of this to my uncle, though; make sure he can’t pass anything on to Raven.”
That was said in a way that showed obvious hope that he had won a favor from Darian, like leaving his cousin alone. Vinny and Phil got up to leave, and as they were going Vinny shot Darian the sort of urging look that told him to keep on pulling the thread he had caught ahold of. Darian and Sholto left the Silver and walked back up toward Three O’clock Station.
Sholto said, “Not hard to picture a scene in which a lonely obsessive millionaire gets his creepy chauffeur pal to lift a girl off the street, is it?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“See, that’s jumping to conclusions and a good investigator always keeps his feet on the ground. We have no idea if Simon Sutherland or Dent were even involved, and there are no estimates in this business. It’s certainties or nothing.”
“So what do we do?”
“We go have a peek at this hideaway on Geug Place and see if it has stories to tell.”