GILCHRIST FROZE. NANCE stood as stiff as a puppet.
It felt as if the world was waiting for Topley to lower his hand. Even the music seemed silenced, the dancers stilled.
“Tell the heavies to vanish,” Gilchrist said. He felt his muscles tense and wondered if Nance would take out the man to her side, or if she would expect him to do that. Or maybe both of them would be frog-marched from the Club and deposited into Drury Street.
Then, as if kick-started, Topley’s head jerked with a drunken nod and the man called Ray pushed himself to his feet. Gilchrist sensed the space behind him clear. A gang of five men in suits as dark as their slicked-back hair trundled to the bar where they eyed Topley’s table like a pack of dogs just itching to crunch their teeth through meat and bone.
Gilchrist took Ray’s seat. It felt warm.
Nance pulled up the chair beside him.
Topley tried a smile, but some part of his nervous system was not working the way it should. On the stage by Topley’s left shoulder a blonde in a thong, with breasts the colour of milked coffee, stretched into a backward crab and rolled onto the floor. A group of men at the table to Gilchrist’s left huddled in conversation, oblivious to the torsioned nudity by their side. Another group seated to his right ordered drinks. The blonde skipped to the middle of the stage, breasts bouncing like water-filled balloons.
“You’re a persistent bitch,” Topley said to Nance.
Topley gave a gold-tooth grin then shoved the notes over to her. “Go on, take it,” he said. “You can owe me a blow-job.”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Not yet.” Topley grinned. “Maybe later?”
Gilchrist felt his eyebrows lift as Nance picked up the money. Then he smiled as she tapped the notes together like a pack of cards, ripped them in two, then again, and let the pieces flutter from her fingers onto the table.
Topley chuckled. But Gilchrist worried that some part of the man’s psyche was about to crack and the bouncers would be called with the flicker of an irritated eyebrow. He tried to distract Topley’s annoyance by leaning forward.
“You never told me your mother was Wee Kenny’s aunt,” Gilchrist said.
Topley turned dead eyes Gilchrist’s way. In the shifting light, colours danced in time with the music, casting shadows that made Topley’s face look as beaten as a boxer’s. “So?”
“So you want to get even with Jimmy?” It was Nance.
“What’s it to you?” Topley snarled.
“Tell us,” she said.
“Tell you what, darling?”
“How to fuck Bully.”
Topley pulled himself forward, pressed his chest against the table. “You don’t look like you need a lesson in fucking anyone, darling.”
Like a referee, Gilchrist stepped in. “We know you’re getting ready to take on a big shipment,” he said to Topley.
Topley turned the full heat of his leaden glare onto Gilchrist. Half-shut eyelids narrowed. Fingers balled into bruised-knuckle fists. If anything was going to happen, it would happen in the next few seconds.
“What the fuck’re you talking about?”
“Drugs,” Gilchrist said. “Isn’t that what you do?”
Topley glanced over Gilchrist’s shoulder. Had he just called his team over? Gilchrist readied himself for the thump of muscled hands.
“You’re walking on thin ice, Mr. Gilchrist. You’re talking about things that people like you do not talk to people like me about.”
Gilchrist sensed it was now only a matter of time until Topley’s bodyguards threw them out. “I’m not interested in your grubby little empire,” he snarled, “or how you make your money. I only want to find my daughter.”
Topley’s half-shut eyes almost opened. “Well, Mr. Gilchrist, this may come as a surprise to you and your pretty sidekick with the big tits.” He reached forward, gathered in the torn notes, then held them up. “But I am interested in making money. Lots of it.” He balled his hand, crushed the notes, and deposited them into his pocket.
Gilchrist waited.
Topley sat back. “What’s in it for me?”
“I won’t press charges.”
Topley guffawed, head back, eyes to the ceiling.
A waitress arrived, carrying a tray on which stood a bottle of champagne and three crystal flutes. She placed a glass in front of each of them and without a word topped them with fizzing champagne. Topley palmed her a single note as she left the table. Another hundred, Gilchrist thought.
“Charge me with what?” Topley said.
“Why don’t you just cough up or shut up?” Nance said. She lifted her crystal glass and took a sip. “Not bad.”
“Dom Perignon,” Topley purred.
“I prefer Moët.”
“I’ll have a crate sent to your home, darling. All I need is your address.”
“And if I give it to you?”
“Two crates of Moet would be delivered to your doorstep.” Topley placed his hand to his chest. “With all my love.”
“Who would do the delivering?”
“Whoever you want, darling.”
“And would the delivery boy stay and help me polish off a bottle or two?”
Topley leaned forward, puzzled by the change in Nance’s attitude. Gilchrist’s ears were perked, too. “Whatever you like, darling, could be arranged.” Topley reached across the table, and Nance took hold of his hand.
“Someone once told me,” she said, “that men with money make the best lovers, because they can have all the toys they want, but can’t buy a woman’s love.” She squeezed Topley’s hand. “So, tell me, Chris. Just how much money do you have?”
“More than enough.”
“More than enough to keep a girl happy?”
“More than enough to keep a girl very happy.”
“Even someone who’s difficult to please?”
“Especially someone who’s difficult to please.”
Nance leaned lower. Her breasts swelled against the table. “I’ll make a deal.”
Topley seemed to hold his breath. Nance had his full attention. Gilchrist’s too.
“Do you have a good memory?” she asked.
“Why?”
She released his hand, then lifted her champagne to her lips. Over the rim, her eyes seemed to glitter with cheekiness. “I’ll say my address once,” she said, “and it’ll be up to you to remember it.”
Topley’s lips twisted in a smirk of victory.
“But first.” She took a sip, then said, “You have to answer some questions.”
“How can I trust you?”
This time Nance smirked. “You can’t.”
Topley frowned and smiled at the same time, and Gilchrist caught the street cruelty of the man. Here was a man who could kick another man to death then hand his widow money at the funeral. Topley downed his champagne with barely a breath, then snapped his fingers over his head. Within seconds a bouncer as large as a lock forward stood at his side.
“Another bottle of this stuff,” Topley ordered.
The bouncer retreated.
“Right, darling. You were saying?” Topley reclined in his chair, as if settling in for the evening. On the stage behind him, a dancer pirouetted like an ice skater, her arms almost clipping his shoulder, her body close enough for Gilchrist to smell her perfume.
Nance returned her glass to the table. “You spent eighteen months in Barlinnie.”
“Don’t tell me you hold that against me.”
“And you shared a cell with Bully.”
“Had to share with someone, darling. Bully’s better than some. He’s not into plugging holes, if you get my meaning.”
“Bully mentioned Maureen’s name.”
Topley paused, as if trying to work out if she was telling or asking, and if giving the wrong answer would blow any chance of being given her address. Gilchrist realised with a spurt of disbelief that the man’s brain was too far gone on drink and drugs to see Nance’s scheming for what it was. He really thought he had a chance to get a leg over. Amazing.
Topley nodded. “He did.”
“What did he say about her?” Nance asked.
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“I want to hear all of it.”
Gilchrist felt a shiver tingle his spine. The thought of a convicted criminal talking about his daughter meant only one thing. Bully had been plotting his revenge for years.
Topley glanced at Gilchrist then grinned at Nance. “He told me how he’d love to tie her father down, nail him to the floor, then fuck her in front of him.”
“Anything else?”
“Then he said he would make her watch while he did him in.” Topley grinned. “He’s a bit sick that way, is Bully.”
“Charming, is he?”
“Charming isn’t what Bully’s about, darling.”
They sat tight-lipped while another waitress topped up three more champagne flutes. Liquid frothed over the rims, puddled on the tablecloth. To the side, a table-dancer straddled the thigh of a bleary-eyed businessman and bunched her breasts together, nipples as large and flat as saucers.
“He’d never seen Maureen, though,” Nance said. “Right?”
“He had a photograph of her.”
Gilchrist almost jolted. “Where did he get that?”
Topley shrugged. “You’d be surprised what you can get inside. Nude books. Porno videos. The real thing if you know who to ask and have the dosh to pay for it. A photo of your favourite Detective Inspector’s daughter is a piece of piss to these guys.”
“Would he still have the photograph?” Gilchrist asked.
“He wanked that much over it, it would have dissolved into spunk by now.”
Nance shook her head, and Gilchrist could tell she was having a tough time keeping her tongue in place. “What else did he say about my daughter?” he tried.
“That she was the way to get back at you for putting him inside, the way to make you suffer for what you did to him.”
Being beaten up by Bully was something Gilchrist could handle. It would not be the first time he’d taken a beating. But having Maureen’s life threatened was a different matter altogether. He bristled, struggled to stay calm, took a sip of champagne. It tasted sweet. He gulped a mouthful.
Topley chuckled. “Bully had it in for you. I can tell you that much.”
Gilchrist thudded his glass to the table. The champagne bubbled and fizzed. “Other than shooting his load over Maureen’s photo and nailing me to the floor,” he growled, “did he ever tell you how he would make me suffer?”
“Can’t say that he did.”
Something in the way Topley quipped the denial told Gilchrist he was lying.
“Or when he planned to do it?” Nance added.
“No.”
“He wouldn’t want to do in someone the instant he came out of prison, would he?” Nance continued. “He’d be straight back inside.”
“Bully’s not scared of prison.”
“But he likes his freedom.”
“We all do.”
“Did he tell you he wanted his brother, Jimmy, to do it?”
“No.”
“So, he told you nothing?”
“About that subject. Yes. He told me nothing.”
Nance sat back. Gilchrist leaned forward. “How about Robert Burns?”
Topley seemed puzzled by the question.
“What’s Bully’s obsession with Robert Burns?” Gilchrist asked.
“Never knew he had one.”
“Come off it,” Gilchrist snapped. “He’s got an epitaph on his father’s grave that’s a direct quote from Burns. And he did nothing but quote Burns to me. He even rewrote one of his opening lines: “Oh princess, by thy watchtower be.”
At first he thought the change in Topley’s face was anger, then realised something was working through the man’s mind. He glanced at Nance and saw she had seen it, too.
“You’ve remembered something,” Nance said.
Topley frowned, as if puzzled at finding himself in the company of two detectives. Then he said, “Bully read a lot of stuff. Jimmy would bring it in for him—books, tapes, CDs. And he was always writing poems. He let me read some of them.”
Bully as a poet did not fit Gilchrist’s image. “Can you remember what any of them were about?” he asked.
Topley shook his head. “Mostly about killing and raping and stuff like that.”
Now they were getting back on track.
“But he did mention a watchtower,” Topley added.
Gilchrist pulled himself forward. The bulging breasts on display over Topley’s shoulder shifted from his peripheral vision. “I’m listening,” he said.
“About a week before I got out.”
Gilchrist held his breath.
“Said I should keep my eyes and ears open. That one of those days I was going to read about a killing. The watchtower killing, he told me.”
“Were those his exact words?” Nance again.
“Can’t remember. Bully ranted on about a lot of stuff. His mind was getting fucked with the drink and drugs and revenge and stuff.” Topley fixed a dead-eyed stare on Gilchrist. “Told me you were going to rue the day you ever had a daughter. I remember that much. I remember thinking the two were linked. You know? Watchtower killing. Your daughter. Because he said he would send you a blank postcard and you would know it was from him.”
“Why would I know?”
“Because it would have a watchtower on it.”
“What kind of watchtower?” Nance asked.
“Like the old watchtowers in cemeteries.”
Gilchrist felt his blood turn to ice. There, he had it. He’d been right all along. But was he right about the Auld Aisle? And what did it mean? Then a thought hit him, and he wondered if he was stretching his rationale too far.
“Did he ever tell you what he would do with the body?” he asked Topley.
Topley frowned. “What body? Bully wasn’t going to kill her. He wanted to bury her alive. That’s what he told me. He wanted you to know he had buried her alive.”
Gilchrist stilled, as if every molecule of muscle and fibre and sinew in his body was about to coil in, then unfold in fury against Bully.
“And he said something else I thought was odd,” Topley added. “I never gave it a thought. Not one. Until you mentioned watchtower.”
Gilchrist’s lungs seemed to stop. His heart, too.
“He said that it was all ready, just waiting for her, as soon as he emptied it.”
“Emptied it?” Nance asked. “The watchtower?”
“The coffin.”
All of Gilchrist’s senses fired alive, as if his mind and body were acting as one. He heard the breathing of the dancer as she writhed her sexual dance to his side, the soft shuffle of her shoes as she turned and shifted across the stage. The music seemed clearer, too, as if the instruments were whispering in his ear.
Buried alive. The coffin was ready. Those were the key words.
“The drug shipment,” Gilchrist said. “When was it to be moved?”
Topley’s face deadpanned, as if his dreams of sex with a full-chested policewoman had just evaporated. “I thought we agreed not to talk about that.”
Gilchrist leaned closer. “I’m not interested in your drug-shipping empire,” he said, and prayed Topley would believe him. He would get down on his knees and beg if that was what it would take. “Was it soon? Were the drugs to be moved in the next couple of days?”
Topley turned away, offered his heavy-lidded gaze to Nance.
“St. Andrews,” she said. “One hundred North Street.”
Gilchrist held his breath. Would Topley recognise the address of the Office? “She could still be alive,” he urged.
Topley glanced left and right, as if to ensure no one was listening. “Rumour has it something was going to happen tomorrow night. But I wouldn’t know about that, of course.”
Gilchrist pushed his chair back and stood. The coffin. They were not supposed to find it. But they had. Which could mean only one thing.
Maureen was no longer going to be buried alive.
She was going to be killed.