Saturday night and the pub was busy, both with regulars and, McNab could hear from the voices, tourists, come to taste the wide variety of whiskies on offer. He made his way through the throng to the bar and, showing his ID, asked to speak to Barry Fraser.
The young woman disappeared round the back and, minutes later, a tall, blond man emerged, looking worried.
McNab flashed his ID again. ‘Barry Fraser?’
When the guy nodded, McNab asked, ‘Anywhere we can talk in private, Barry?’
He looked unsure. ‘The cellar’s about the only quiet place tonight.’
‘That’ll do.’
Barry looked nonplussed at this, but realizing McNab was for real, lifted the counter and ushered him inside. As they passed the shelves lined with malt whiskies, McNab kept his eyes firmly on Barry’s back.
A narrow corridor led to a door that opened on a set of stairs. Barry headed down them and McNab followed. The cellar was tidy and well stocked with a row of barrels attached to pipes leading upwards. There were shelves with whisky bottles all arranged by distillery. It was something a connoisseur would notice and McNab did. How the hell anyone worked here and didn’t imbibe, he had no idea. Barry took up a stance in front of a barrel and waited with worried eyes for his interrogation to begin.
‘I wanted to ask you about someone who was in here last night.’
Barry gave him a disbelieving look. ‘Have you any idea just how many folk were in here last night?’
McNab nodded. ‘This one you would have noticed.’
‘Okay. Try me.’
‘A young woman. Auburn hair. Green eyes. About five five. A real looker. She was with a pal. Pretty, petite, blonde. They were in here about ten o’clock?’
The barman eyed him warily. McNab guessed he had seen Leila. She would have been hard to miss and he thought Barry Fraser would be well practised at bird spotting in his bar.
Barry was considering his reply and wondering what it might lead to. Curiosity tinged with a little concern eventually decided him.
‘It sounds like Leila Hardy. Why, what’s happened to her?’
McNab ignored the question. ‘You definitely saw them?’
He nodded. ‘Sure. They were over in the corner with two lads.’
‘Can you describe these lads?’
He shook his head. ‘I notice the lassies, the lads don’t interest me.’
It was a fair comment. Had McNab been asked to describe one of the crowd of blokes propping up the bar tonight, he would have been hard pressed to do so.
‘Did you see Leila leave?’
In that split second, McNab knew his barman was about to tell a lie. Call it police intuition or psychology in action, but he just knew.
‘No.’
‘What about the blonde one?’
‘Leila, I noticed. The pal not so much.’
‘How well do you know Leila?’
McNab already suspected the answer to that, but he was pretty sure Barry wouldn’t reveal it. Not until he sussed out why the policeman was interested.
McNab decided to go for the jugular.
‘Leila Hardy was found dead this morning.’
Barry’s eyes widened. The shock appeared real enough for him to seek a seat on the edge of a nearby barrel.
‘Jesus,’ he whispered under his breath. He looked up, his face now suffused with anger. ‘You bastard, you never said anything about that on the phone.’
McNab decided not to warn him about swearing at a police officer, but waited as Barry tried to pull himself together. Eventually he did and rose to his feet again. ‘What happened to her?’ he said, genuine concern in his voice.
‘That’s what we’re trying to establish.’
Barry searched McNab’s expression. ‘You mean she was murdered?’
‘She was found hanged in her flat.’
Barry looked as if he was trying to compute and couldn’t. ‘Leila committed suicide?’
When McNab didn’t respond, Barry came back. ‘No way. Leila had everything going for her. She really enjoyed life.’
‘So,’ said McNab, drawing the conversation back to where he wanted it to be. ‘When did she leave the pub and who was she with?’
This time Barry thought. Hard. ‘I came down here to change a barrel sometime after ten. When I went back up she had gone and the blonde was on her own.’
‘You were keeping an eye on Leila?’ McNab suggested.
‘I wasn’t stalking her if that’s what you mean,’ Barry declared.
‘Just taking a keen interest?’ McNab smiled. ‘I take it you two were once an item?’
Judging by Barry’s expression, he was contemplating another lie, then thought the better of it. ‘No, but we did get together on occasion.’
‘You had sex with Leila on occasion?’ McNab said.
‘Sometimes she asked me back to her place,’ Barry said defensively.
Lucky you, McNab thought. ‘But not last night?’
‘No. Not last night.’
‘The guy she did take home with her. What did he look like?’
Now that Barry knew that Leila was dead, he was more forthcoming about his rival. ‘Tall, maybe six foot. Late twenties, early thirties. Blond. Worked out by the shape of him. Was wearing a blue striped shirt with short sleeves and jeans. By the clothes, the Gucci watch and the wallet, I’d say he wasn’t short of cash,’ he added.
The description, McNab noted, was a close match to Shannon’s, although she hadn’t mentioned that he’d looked affluent.
‘What about the mate?’
‘Dark hair, not as tall, dressed the same, but he never came near the bar. They moved in on Leila and the blonde quite quickly after that.’
‘You don’t know Shannon?’
He shook his head. ‘Leila came in a lot, living round the corner.’
‘What about security cameras?’ McNab said.
‘One on the front door, one on the side.’
So they might have footage of Leila and the guy leaving, if they weren’t obscured by a crowd of smokers. McNab thanked him.
‘Someone will be round for the security tapes.’ He handed Barry a card. ‘If you remember anything else, give me a ring.’
McNab fought a desire to reward himself with a dram and headed outside. As he suspected, the entrance was encircled by smokers all within sight of the security camera. He took a look in the back lane and discovered the fire exit standing wide open. Just inside was the Gents, so the mate could have exited here when he’d deserted Shannon on the pretext that he was going to the toilet. If so, there was a chance that the back camera had caught him.
McNab left the lane and took the short walk between the pub and Leila’s flat. There were plenty of revellers about the city centre at this time on a Saturday night. No doubt there were folk about last night too, who might have spotted the auburn-haired Leila and her tall blond companion walking the short distance home.
Once the post-mortem was over, they could get down to the business of looking for witnesses, unless the pathologist decided McNab’s intuition was suspect and that Leila Hardy had simply taken her own life. That was a possibility, of course. Suicides were extremely adept at carrying out their wishes, often against the odds. If their aim was a cry for help, that was usually evidenced by the method they chose and the circumstances in which they made the attempt, which often had a ‘way out’. A bit like driving down the wrong side of the road until you met an approaching car, then swerving to avoid it. Alternatively, courting death could be used to make life more exciting or maybe just bearable.
A condition McNab had been known to suffer from himself.
Tonight, the real and present danger presented itself in the form of numerous bars, from which music, chatter and female laughter escaped to surround him in a warm embrace.
McNab walked with a determined step, eyes forward, fighting the desire to say ‘Fuck it!’ and head into the next one he passed. He hadn’t drunk alcohol in the last three weeks and planned a month at least, just to show that he could. Relieved to find that he could function without it, he’d convinced himself that although he’d been drinking heavily, he was not, yet, dependent on it.
Back at his own flat, he contemplated how to pass the midnight hour, alone and sober, knowing that tomorrow, Sunday, wouldn’t be any easier. He phoned out for a pizza and put the recently purchased coffee machine on. While the coffee was brewing, he stripped to his boxers and did fifty press-ups. Anything to keep his mind off the open bottle of whisky in the cupboard near the sink. Kept there undrunk, it had become a symbol of his success.
Sex would have helped, but staying away from pubs had meant the only females he met were the ones he worked with. He’d long ago made his way through the fanciable ones, apart from Janice, and was pretty sure none of them would welcome a return visit however fit and sober he was now.
Janice had suggested, as they parted company, that now he was no longer a DI, he might like to come out for a drink with the team again. McNab was secretly pleased by her suggestion, but didn’t trust himself to do that, yet.
Then there was his Rhona obsession.
He may have kidded himself in the past that they might get back together on occasion but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Ever. He was like the barman, with one eye on the object of his affection and a constant hope that she might just, in a weak moment, ask him back to her place.
Sad bastards, the pair of them.
McNab slipped on a T-shirt and answered the buzzer for his pizza delivery.
Sitting on the couch now, feet on the coffee table, a double espresso already drunk, he was reminded of another night, when Rhona had sat opposite him, sharing a pizza. They’d exchanged words over the girl he’d been bedding at the time, young enough to be his daughter.
Rhona had been less than impressed, and she’d been right.
But the memory of those sexual encounters with Iona were as difficult to forget as the bottle of whisky. McNab abandoned the remains of the pizza and headed for the shower.
Ten minutes later, reddened by the force of the hot, then cold shower, the bullet scar on his back glowing, he poured another coffee and carried it through to the bedroom. The room was stuffy and warm, so he opened the window a little, then lay down naked on top of the bed and listened to the siren sound of his fellow officers dealing with the fallout from too much alcohol on a Saturday night.
Staring at the ceiling, McNab set his caffeine-buzzed brain to figuring out what had happened to Leila Hardy after she left the pub and headed home for sex with the unknown blond guy.
In all the possible scenarios he came up with, not one, but two men figured.
One thing his gut told him.
Leila Hardy hadn’t died by her own hand.