47

The underground garage was cold as an igloo. Perlman blew into his hands. Fucking hell: temperatures in the city had plunged. By morning Glasgow would be one great construct of ice. No buses, no traffic except for the foolhardy, no trains, no planes, no escape. He stared at the four-door Merc that had belonged to Lindsay.

Inside, a Sergeant called Cameron Tubb was probing around, hands encased in latex gloves that looked like big multi-teated condoms. He wore a protective plastic suit and plastic boots. He was a thin man with an adam’s apple the size of a prize-winning pomegranate. ‘Lindsay kept a clean car, Lou. Fastidious fellow. A lintfree life. Contents of glove compartment. Car registration, an AA members’ handbook, a small folded rag he might have used to clean his glasses. That’s it.’ Tubb placed these items inside a plastic bag and labelled it, then wrote with a felt-tip pen on the label.

‘Anything else in there?’ Scullion asked. His breath made a cloud on the air.

‘Looking,’ Tubb said. ‘Sometimes I find. Sometimes I don’t. I like to sing when I work. That trouble you gents?’

‘Is it country-western?’ Scullion asked.

‘It bloody well is not, Inspector.’

‘Then sing all you like,’ Scullion said.

Tubb sang, ‘If you throw a silver dollar down upon the ground …’

Perlman said, ‘Jesus, you’re really raiding the archives there, Cameron.’

‘Fifties was a great time for popular songs,’ Tubb said, and clambered into the back seat of the car. ‘It will roll roll roll, because it’s round round round.’

Scullion said, ‘This is affecting my brain, Cameron.’

‘Sorry, sir. I know other songs.’

‘I’ve heard enough,’ Scullion remarked.

‘Everybody to his own, I say.’

Perlman lit a cigarette. He puffed smoke without taking the cigarette from his mouth because he stuffed his icy hands back inside his pockets. He thought about Ruth Wexler’s call and the promise he’d so casually given her. What else was he supposed to have told her? Ruthie, look, it takes time, there are pieces to fit together. Somebody’s murdered: it’s like an explosive device detonating – and all a cop could do was sift the shrapnel the way Cameron Tubb was poking around inside the Merc. I have some of the fragments. I have to reassemble them. I have to see where they join.

Scullion said, ‘I wonder how the car found its way to Kelvinbridge.’

‘Whoever killed Lindsay left it there,’ Perlman said.

‘But what for? If you murdered a man, why would you drive his car away?’

‘Maybe he was killed right where the car was parked,’ Perlman suggested. ‘Maybe Lindsay met somebody, and they drove around talking, and then the killer asked Lindsay to pull over.’

‘Which implies he knew the killer.’

‘Right. Lindsay parks. All of a sudden there’s a gun at his head, and a bag of cocaine going into his mouth.’

‘Then what? He was transported to Central Station Bridge in another car?’

‘Why not? But there are other alternatives, Sandy –’

‘Save them for later, Lou. My brain’s running on empty. Cameron, come on, I’m turning to a block of ice here.’

‘You can’t hurry this job, Inspector,’ Tubb said. ‘Suppose in the haste of my preliminary examination, I disturb something microscopic but essential? What would the lab boys say? See how I move in slow-mo, Lou? Time is frozen for me.’

‘Well for me it’s my fucking balls that are frozen, Cameron.’

‘You’re a crude man at times, Perlman.’

‘I had a crude education.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Tubb said. He went into Mexican-accent mode. ‘What ees thees leetle theeng?’ He probed the space behind the front passenger seat and surfaced with a small crunched-up brown paper bag in his hand.

Scullion stepped closer to the Mercedes. ‘What is it, Cameron?’

‘Let’s see.’ Tubb opened the bag carefully and peered inside. ‘Here.’

Scullion peered inside. ‘Looks a bit like sawdust.’

Perlman gazed at the contents. He had a rush of familiarity. ‘It’s not sawdust,’ he said.

‘You know what it is, Lou?’ Tubb asked.

‘Only too well. I had a wife who ate it all the time, said it helped her stop smoking. That dust, pupils, is the residue of sunflower seeds. She picked up the habit of munching on said seeds during a trip to Tel Aviv. Told me everybody chewed on seeds over there. It was a bone of contention in our marriage. I was always complaining about her crunching on these things and spitting out the pods. She did it in bed – which was about the only thing she did in bed, as I remember.’

‘Sunflower seeds?’ Scullion said.

‘She called it gar gar … something.’

‘So our neat and tidy solicitor chewed on these seeds and then dumped the bag on the floor of his otherwise meticulous Merc,’ Scullion said. ‘And what did he do with the bits you spit out? Did he just expectorate from the open window? Why am I not seeing that clearly?’

‘Maybe the bag belonged to somebody else,’ Tubb said.

‘The killer,’ Scullion said.

‘Careless of him if he dropped it, though,’ Perlman said, and looked at Scullion. ‘What was that phrase you used to describe him, Sandy? Arrogant amateur?’

‘I remember.’

‘So it just fell out of his pocket, and he overlooked it?’

‘Possibly.’

Perlman snapped thumb and forefinger together. ‘Garinim. That’s the word I was looking for. That’s what they call this stuff.’

Tubb tucked the paper bag inside a plastic one. He sealed it, stuck a label on it, scribbled something. ‘We’ll get it fingerprinted, gents.’

Perlman let his cigarette fall and crushed it underfoot. He was anxious to get back to his unfinished business with BJ Quick and Furfee. He imagined their tiny minds in turmoil. What to say? What half-truths? What might they fudge? They couldn’t collude in a fiction either: how frustrating that had to be for BJ Quick.

Scullion said, ‘Send us your report asap, Cameron.’

‘Will do, sir.’

Perlman and Scullion moved towards the stairs. As they did, Mary Gibson appeared. She looked drawn, vitality drained. Her makeup had faded in the course of the day. The bloom was off, and her eyes lacked light. Perlman didn’t like her expression. Something of sorrow, of anger, it was hard to tell. She didn’t look like the Mary Gibson he saw on a regular basis.

‘There’s been another one,’ she said. ‘This fucking city’s having a mental breakdown.’

Perlman had never heard her curse before. She pronounced the g in ‘fucking’, which gave the word a decorum it normally lacked.

‘Another murder?’ he asked.

‘Another one. Correct.’

‘Who’s the victim?’ Perlman asked.

‘This’ll kick-start you, Lou. Shiv Bannerjee.’

‘Bannerjee? I saw him only – what? Four or five hours ago?’

‘Then here’s your chance to see him again, Lou. Just go to the Waterloo Hotel in Sauchiehall Street.’

Perlman didn’t wait to ask more questions. He hurried to the stairs. He heard Scullion rushing behind him.

‘I’ll drive,’ Scullion said.

‘Be my guest.’

‘My car’s just up the block.’

The night air was arctic and brittle, the sky clear in the brilliant way of extremely cold weather. The moon, crystalline and indifferent, was motionless against the stars. A mental breakdown, Mary Gibson had said. Or a bad spell, Perlman thought, cast over the city by the black deeds of bad men.