40

Sometimes when Detective-Sergeant Lou Perlman listened to experts, forensic know-alls with their university ties and big brains, his attention wandered. After all, what did he really need to know about the temperature at which paper burned, or the amount of oxygen required to conduct flame through a narrow enclosed space? Cubic this and cubic that. It was all just so much slosh, like milky tea spilled into a saucer.

‘Is there a point you’re getting to, Sid?’ he asked, sounding raspy and sullen. ‘No hurry anyway. I’ve got all bloody day to waste.’

Sidney Linklater, a graduate of Edinburgh University, thirty-three years of age and a Force Support Officer – a civilian – blinked at Lou Perlman in surprise. It always astonished him that others could fail to be fascinated by his world of fibres and threads, of flames and melting points, of decomposition and putrefaction. He likened the non-scientific mind to an asteroid turning pointlessly in space.

‘All right, I’ll hurry along, Lou, if you’re finding this a bit of a bore,’ he said.

‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Sid. Some of us are cut out to be scientific. Others of us are just men with big feet and big bunions and wee brains. Like me. The dogged sort. We pound pavements. We’re happy just chugging along. Clip clop. Fucking Clydesdales in human clothes.’

‘I find false modesty indigestible,’ Linklater said.

‘So is all your fucking data, Sid. No offence intended.’

Linklater said, ‘Sometimes I feel like a missionary preaching to savages.’

‘I am a savage, Sid. Keep that in mind when you talk to me. Simple words. Short sentences. See Dick pish. See Spot shit. Remember, I was brought up in the Gorbals. Correction. I was dragged up. We’d only just got electricity installed the day before the demolition people moved in. I’m a child of the gaslight generation. We didn’t have PCs and websites. Ours wasn’t the Information Age. We knew fuck all.’

‘And I was delivered by a stork.’

‘Oy vey,’ Perlman said. ‘Those hankie deliveries can be tricky.’

Linklater shrugged and looked round his workroom. Assorted objects, seemingly unconnected to one another, sat on shelves. Two pairs of Wellington boots. A charred shotgun. A couple of hunting knives with shiny blades. Bottles of various chemicals. A bicycle bent out of shape. Spades, trowels, a big fishing net. A microscope, also a load of computer gear that Perlman, who was quite proud of being misaligned with the electronic age, couldn’t identify – maybe they were scanners, or photograph enhancers, or some kind of UV equipment, who cared?

Not Lou Perlman.

Linklater, whose hobby was making charcoal rubbings from ancient tombstones, pushed his glasses up his long nose and gazed down at his work-table. He wore see-through plastic gloves. In his right hand he held a pair of tweezers. ‘Let’s go the number one route just for you, Lou. No frills. No fancy cocktails.’

‘My boy,’ Perlman said.

There was debris on the table, and Linklater poked at it. One plastic ashtray, a couple of misshapen cigarette filters. A small pile of wet ash and scraps of scorched paper. A square wallet of black leather lay to one side in a small dark puddle. There was a smell of petrol.

‘These would-be arsonists splash a little petrol inside the van,’ Linklater said. ‘Strike a match, drop it in, buzz off. They leave the window on the passenger side open – a slit, no more than that. They overlook a basic principle of the firemaker’s skill. Flame needs oxygen. This fire goes, but it isn’t the spectacle it’s supposed to be. Some of the spilled petrol burns, sure, but this isn’t a movie, Lou. The tank isn’t going to blow up. We get some flame, enough to destroy the fabric on the seats. More dramatic black smoke than flame. The fire suffers oxygen deprivation, so it’s too slow for the light display the arsonists must’ve wanted. Anyway, there’s bugger all in the back of the van to burn, no rags, no papers, nothing, just this wallet … then along comes the fire brigade, hoses blasting. The wallet was just beginning to ignite. There was blood on the floor of the van which the firemen, despite their zeal, didn’t manage to hose entirely away. It’s AB neg. No fingerprints on the steering wheel. Some in the interior. There’s mud on the tires. Fresh.’

Linklater touched the wallet with a latexed fingertip. ‘I emptied it carefully,’ he said. ‘I set the contents over here,’ and he tweezered to the side a sheet of opaque plastic, under which lay banknotes that had been browned along the edges, scarred first by fire then doused with water. Linklater gently shoved the wilting money aside and concentrated on a sheet of lined paper.

‘This appears to be a page out of a cheap notebook, Lou. The writing’s felt-tip and the water’s made it run. It seems to be some arrangement of numbers. An accounting, maybe. Somebody adding and subtracting.’

‘Ah-hah. What else have you got?’

‘It wasn’t exactly stuffed with goodies,’ Linklater said. ‘But there’s this.’ He edged a piece of folded pink and green paper towards Perlman, who bent forward and looked at it through his one good eye. The other eye, lid still swollen from the insect bite, smarted beneath the patch.

‘A driving licence,’ Perlman said.

He bent until his face was only six inches from the table. There was no photograph in the licence, but the name of the owner was legible. Perlman heard birdsong in his head. He straightened up and smiled, and in a very bad voice cranked out an 80s song lyric. ‘The tide is high, I’m moving on.’

‘What in God’s name is that appalling noise?’ Linklater asked, feigning great terror.