Sunlight flashed on the wing of the Gulfstream G650 making its descent out of a blue sky into Glasgow Airport with its three passengers on board – Emil Rocha and two bodyguards. Sean Rafferty shielded his eyes. He’d visited Rocha’s villa in the hills above the Mediterranean and recalled the heavy security around it. He’d drunk iced tea in the shade of an orange tree the Spaniard had planted himself, listening to him talk about his family: orange farmers, who’d worked hard and died poor. The tree was a symbol, he’d said – a reminder of where he’d come from and how different it might have been.
Clearing Passport Control was a formality. For all his notoriety, the drug lord had no criminal record and was able to travel freely, although who he was and what he did was well known. Sean Rafferty envied him.
They’d met just once but spoken on the phone dozens of times. It was Rocha’s millions behind the waterside development. The Scottish gangster didn’t have that kind of money. Not yet.
The visitor threw his arms around him, as though he was welcoming a long-lost son back into the fold, grinning his pleasure. His English was flawless, spoken with barely a trace of accent. ‘It’s been so long. Too long. I can’t believe it.’
Rafferty examined the lean bronzed face, the white hair and dark eyes. Emil Rocha didn’t seem to have aged. At close to sixty, he was still a handsome man, who’d never married and bedded more females than he could remember.
‘Good to see you, Emil, you’re looking well.’
The Spaniard put a hand on his shoulder and whispered, ‘Unfortunately, Sean, I’ve been given some bad news.’
‘Surely not?’
‘Yes, the doctors tell me I’ve only fifty years left to live.’ He roared at his own joke. ‘How can I accomplish anything in such a short time? Seriously, I am well. How are you? How is your lovely wife?’
Rafferty was expecting the enquiry and had his answer ready. ‘She’s fine. Nervous about finally meeting the great Emil.’
‘She has no need to be nervous. Women are God’s gift to us and we must cherish them. When will I see her?’
‘Tonight, at the restaurant. I’ll drop you at your hotel and hook up later. Let me take your bag.’
Mistrust clouded the Spaniard’s eyes. ‘No, thank you, my friend. This bag is my mistress. It sleeps with me and never leaves my side. But, unlike a mistress, it never tells me lies.’ He laughed again. ‘We have a lot to discuss, you and me, eh?’
Rafferty led the way through the concourse and made for the car park.
‘We have, indeed, Emil.’
Dennis Boyd’s instructions had been intentionally vague, and as I left the city in the early afternoon and headed east on the M74 I wondered what it must be like to be the prime suspect in a violent murder on your first day of freedom after a decade and a half. To find yourself back where you started with whatever plans you’d had in the gutter and the police after you would be more than enough to make anybody careful about who they spoke to and where. Probably why Boyd had wanted a daytime meeting out in the open. If I was bringing the police, he’d see them and melt into the crowd.
I had no opinion on whether Dennis Boyd was guilty or innocent. In truth, I’d no idea. In the circumstances, why he might choose to meet at Strathclyde Park, twelve miles from the scene of the latest crime, was easy to understand. It was harder to see where I fitted.
At the Bothwell roundabout, a left turn took me past a Holiday Inn Express and the M&D’s theme park, where three children had been seriously injured in a classic example of wrong time wrong place, when a roller coaster derailed and plunged twenty feet to the ground. Not so with Boyd. Luck, bad or otherwise, had had nothing to do with it. Putting him next to the body lying in a pool of blood on the floor of a West End car park – if his friend Mrs Kennedy was to be believed – was exactly what somebody intended.
Four men and two women in their seventies jogged Indian file, determination fixed on their sweat-stained faces. I gave them a friendly toot of the horn, parked on a square of grey asphalt facing the man-made loch, and waited.
Out on the water, a dozen pairs of rowers bent to their task, tracing white lines that glistened in their wake. On a different day, just watching would’ve been a pleasure. Doubt nagged me and already I regretted getting involved.
Dennis Boyd was the most wanted man in Glasgow. What the hell was I doing?
This week had started badly and fallen away. The similarity between Kim Rafferty’s situation and where Dennis Boyd found himself was hard to miss – they were both on the losing end.
I wasn’t aware of him until the door opened and Boyd got in, filling the car with an intimidating presence. Introductions would have been laughable. We didn’t go there. He half turned to face me and I saw a man wearing thick-rimmed glasses who’d been handsome in his youth. His hair was short and grey and his clothes weren’t what I was expecting from someone who, only two days earlier, had been detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. The suit, shirt and tie under an oatmeal herringbone coat – inappropriate for the weather – gave him the look of a successful businessman rather than an ex-convict. Even his shoes were expensive.
But it was an illusion, not destined to last – Boyd brought out a pouch of tobacco and a packet of Rizla papers from his pocket. Thick fingers deftly rolled and shaped the materials into a thin white cylinder. I’d been quick enough to nip his former lover’s smoking habits in the bud. Dennis Boyd deserved no better, except he was a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders; good manners were well down his list. When he was satisfied, he gently smoothed the ends and struck a match. Through a sulphur cloud hard eyes assessed me with a detachment I found unnerving. But for Mrs Kennedy coming to my office we would never have met and life would’ve been a little bit less complicated.
Boyd spoke and I remembered the gruff voice from the telephone. ‘Diane said you’d help me.’
I laid down a marker, setting the tone for the conversation we were about to have.
‘Diane’s exaggerating. I agreed to meet you. Speak to you. Nothing more.’
‘What do I do to convince you?’
For me, there was more to it than that. ‘Tell me the truth. Anything else and I’m gone.’
‘Simple. I didn’t do it.’
‘Didn’t do what, exactly?’
‘Any of it. Not then. Not now. The guy in the car park last night wasn’t me. I wouldn’t be so stupid. Twelve hours after I’m released one of the people who put me away is murdered. A bit obvious, don’t you think?’
‘It’s what the police think that counts. Describe what happened in Elmbank Street.’
Boyd removed his glasses. ‘Can’t get used to these bloody things.’ He put the spectacles in his pocket and ran a hand through his cropped hair. ‘They set me up before and they’re doing it again.’
‘Who did? And why you?’
‘Honestly, I haven’t a clue. I was having a pint in a pub at George Square when the barman handed me a note telling me to be in the car park at ten-thirty.’
‘Where did the note come from?’
‘I asked the barman. He’d no idea. Don’t know what the hell I was thinking – must’ve left my brains in the Bar-L – because I went.’
‘And?’
‘Wilson was on the ground in a pool of blood. It was dark but I could see he was dead.’
‘Did you touch anything?’
‘Can’t remember. I fucking hope not.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Ran. Ended up at Central Station. That’s when I called Diane.’
‘And you don’t know who might’ve set you up?’ Boyd had to have thought of little else in fifteen years. ‘Is it possible somebody has a grudge against you?’
‘It’s possible, I suppose.’
‘You see, I’m asking myself why anybody would bother, unless they had a reason. A good reason. They had to realise you’d come after them. Why not just kill you and be done with it?’
Boyd stared at me as if he’d suddenly come awake and wasn’t sure where he was.
‘When you got out of Barlinnie, what were your plans? Did you intend to let it be? Move on?’
His gravel voice boomed in the car. ‘I was going to find the lying bastards and make them tell me who was behind it.’
‘Kill them?’
He didn’t shirk from answering. ‘If that’s what it took, yes. Year after year in Barlinnie that’s exactly what I planned to do.’
‘What changed?’
‘I was free. Whatever happened, I swore I wasn’t going back inside. The fuckers who set me up didn’t know that. I wasn’t about to tell them.’
And now I believed him.
‘Did you know the men who testified against you?’
‘No.’
‘Not at all?’
Boyd pulled on his roll-up and studied the rowers, the mind behind the eyes considering how serious I was about the truth. ‘Wilson asked me for a job once. I hunted him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he was a thug.’
‘Mrs Kennedy said he told the court you asked him to do a job with you.’
He blew smoke against the windscreen. ‘Never happened.’
‘Never? Could Wilson have taken you turning him down badly enough to hold it against you?’
Boyd flicked ash onto the floor and casually dismissed the suggestion. ‘Who knows? The other two were idiots; he was an animal. Hurting people was fun for him. Plenty of punters in the city will be glad he’s dead.’
‘What about McDermid and Davidson? Any history there?’
‘Until the trial, I hadn’t even heard their names. Small fish. Turned out McDermid did two years for resetting. Released early for good behaviour. The notion anybody would trust a word that came out of his mouth is laughable. Davidson was even less impressive, if that’s possible. Got caught with a dodgy credit card in Marks and Spencer, trying to buy a present for Mother’s Day. Nobody in their right mind would credit anything they said. It was ridiculous. Davidson just happened to be passing Joe’s place and saw a man who looked like me running away.’ He shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’
The jury hadn’t agreed.
‘Mrs Kennedy says her husband knew about you two. What do you think?’
He blinked and avoided looking at me. Odd behaviour for a cold-blooded killer.
‘I think Joe Franks was a victim in more ways than one. Doing him down never felt right.’ He ran a restless finger over the tobacco pouch. ‘The marriage was a mismatch from the off. People called them the Odd Couple behind their backs. Diane was a looker and Joe…’ Boyd let the assessment go unfinished.
‘All I’m saying is, she could’ve had her pick, and she picked Joe Franks. Joe wasn’t interested in anything except gems; diamonds mostly. The novelty of a sexy wife wore off pretty fast. If it hadn’t been me it would’ve been somebody else.’
‘What was your relationship with Franks?’
‘We got on well but we weren’t friends, if that’s what you mean. Keeping me around was business. Joe didn’t deal in wedding rings, engagement rings, or any of that crap. He bought and sold. Been in the game most of his life; knew it inside out. Had suppliers in Rajasthan, Cape Town, all over. Occasionally, he’d be asked to hunt down a stone with a defined cut, colour, clarity and documentation. When that happened, he was obsessed, wouldn’t bother to go home. Slept in the office. Faxes would arrive from all over offering him stuff. Joe wouldn’t commit to buying until he’d assessed the gem himself. That meant travelling to wherever it was. He’d go to Amsterdam or India or somewhere to touch base with people he worked with and pick up stones.’
‘Did you go with him?’
‘Hardly ever. Joe would only be gone a few days. Taking me would tell the world he was carrying.’
‘How did he find out about you and his wife?’
Boyd shrugged. ‘Joe wasn’t stupid.’
‘What was his reaction?’
‘Started acting strange. Secretive. At the time, I assumed it was because he’d sussed what was going on. I believed that was the reason he kept me in the dark about the diamonds in his home safe. I’ve had a lot of time to think, and it doesn’t add up. Joe wouldn’t do that. It was reckless. Didn’t make sense. I mean, if the guy working for you is fucking your wife, firing him is the least you’d do. Franks kept me on. Six weeks before he died, I heard him on the phone in the Arcade, talking to his contact in Greece. Three hundred grand was mentioned. A lot of money back then.’
‘It still is.’
‘Joe wasn’t happy; he was shouting. I asked if he needed me. He told me he’d handle it himself.’
‘So, probably the biggest deal he’d ever done yet he cut you out. If that wasn’t to do with his wife, what was it?’
‘All I can tell you is that Joe was strange those last weeks. Like I said, secretive.’
‘What was the contact’s name?’
‘Yannis.’
‘Ever meet him?’
‘Once.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Crete. It was 1953 down there. No customs to speak of. Easy to walk in and walk out.’
‘Then it’s possible Franks and this Yannis character might have fallen out, the Greek had Joe murdered and took the stones. You were just somebody to blame.’
Boyd rejected the notion. ‘As far as I knew, they had a good relationship so I find that explanation hard to swallow. Besides, he’d have no reason to pin Joe’s murder on me.’
‘To get that level of attention you’d have to have seriously pissed somebody off. Who might fit the bill?’
‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t need you, would I?’
A clever reply, though not the answer to my question. ‘The thing is, we’re dealing with murder.’
I didn’t mention my cases often included a dead body and Boyd took my little speech in his stride. ‘No problem. Whoever murdered Joe Franks has been missing for fifteen years. Find him.’
He opened the car door. Apparently, the meeting was over. I said, ‘One last question. Why me? How did you get my name?’
Boyd took a final draw and threw away what little remained of his skinny cigarette. ‘Yellow Pages. And no offence, you looked like the only one I could afford.’
Rocha glanced at Rafferty behind the wheel, confidently weaving through the motorway traffic. Sean deserved credit; when the opportunity had arrived to take over his father’s operation, he’d seized it with both hands. And he’d done well for both of them; their partnership had flourished. His mistake was in imagining he was different from the man who’d sired him. He wasn’t. Jimmy had been an ignorant thug who’d got lucky. In the Spaniard’s judgement, his son was no better. Ambition and animal cunning could never be substitutes for intelligence. The expensive clothes were a façade hiding his true nature and character – there was no guile, no substance to him. He was, in the alleged words of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, ‘a useful idiot’. But while there was money to be made in this city, Rocha would keep his unflattering opinion to himself.
He said, ‘How is married life treating you?’
Sean hesitated. ‘Some days are better than others, you know what females are like.’
‘Most men would envy you. Your wife is very beautiful. I’ve seen her photograph.’
Rafferty grunted. ‘She’s still a woman.’
Rocha laughed. ‘Yes, indeed. Being married comes easily to them, it’s their natural state. Us men find it more difficult.’
‘You never married, Emil. Didn’t you find the right woman?’
‘On the contrary, I found her many times, which convinced me it was unnecessary to settle for just one.’