Quite Ugly One Morning (19 page)

It was plausible that Dr Slaughter had just coincidentally been accessing the GRH bed-usage files for routine patient location. But he had to know, and there was a way to find out.

He downed another treble and called Medway to ask which doctor this Marylebone character had been shadowing last night as part of this ‘twenty-four hours in the life of the Trust’ nonsense.

‘It was Dr Sarah Slaughter, sir,’ Medway told him cheerily. ‘In fact by coincidence I’m just off the phone to her. She was wanting confirmation that the “Great Medical Ethics Debates” were your own idea. Sir? Mr Lime? Mr Lime?’

Kneeling on the floor, hugging the pub’s single, extremely smelly, stained and pube-encrusted toilet bowl when the agonising dry heaves finally released him from their crushing grip, Stephen Lime realised there was still an escape route.

That idiot Mortlake had been the cause of all of this, but appropriately there was a way that he could get him out of it.

After the lumbering moron’s disastrous fuck-up, Lime’s first instinct had been to get Darren out of Edinburgh as fast as possible, but when he had calmed down he realised that it was wisest to keep him around as a kind of insurance policy.

Now it was time to cash it in.

‘In the name of Christ, Jenny, would you slow doon for fuck’s sake,’ gasped McGregor as the rear of the car swung out to the left across the junction, then whipped back into line as Dalziel changed down and floored it, having turned right through the red traffic lights, siren blaring and eyes flashing with malicious delight.

‘Sorry, but you have to understand, sir. I’m compensating for my feelings of inadequacy as a female in a male-dominated profession by over-asserting myself in a traditionally macho activity.’

She banked out into the oncoming lane and sped past three cars before lurching joltingly back into the left as the angry lights of a massive Shore Porters lorry blazed before them.

‘You’re scaring the fucking shite out of me, that’s what you’re doing,’ yelped the Inspector, checking his seatbelt again and gripping harder on the inside door-handle with his left hand.

‘Aye, that’s the other thing I’m doing. I thought now might be a good time to resume discussions of my controversial haircut.’

‘Don’t fuckin’ push it,’ he growled. He heard a furious retort from the engine as the car torpedoed alongside another line of traffic, headlights bearing down upon them from a rapidly decreasing distance ahead. ‘Oh, look, would you watch the blood . . . Jesus sufferin’ fuck.’

Jenny glared at the image afforded by the grubby rear-view mirror of the inevitably slow Mini Metro – sorry, Rover 100 (she thought with a sneer) – that had caused the tailback.

‘What is it, don’t those things
have
a fourth gear?’ she muttered.

McGregor dared to let go of the underside of the seat with his right hand to wipe sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief.

‘You know, we’re not actually in automotive pursuit, Detective Constable.’

‘Aye, but if we don’t get him at his house we might be.
Won’t do much good if we get there and he’s buggered off.’

‘And it won’t do much good, wherever he is, if we’re married to a fucking skip lorry.’

Parlabane had raised the stakes. There was a bloody surprise. Send the guy to look for a stolen box of fireworks and he’d probably find an international nuclear missile smuggling network.

‘Fuck,’ she had said, which hadn’t really covered it. ‘Thirty?’

‘About that,’ he had replied.

She had been debriefed in Parlabane’s bedroom (although she would think twice about putting it like that in any company), Sarah sitting on the edge of the bed, the Glaswegian catastrophe-magnet leaning against the wall beside her.

‘There’s a chance that two or three might be coincidences,’ he went on, ‘but I don’t think margin of error is likely to be a big plank in the defence’s case.’

‘No,’ she concurred. ‘Either way, it’s a respectable haul.’

‘Yeah. It’s all right, we’ve phoned Guinness,’ said Sarah sharply.

‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ offered Jenny, remembering Sarah’s inextricable link to this diabolical shambles, and noticing the red in her eyes and the puffiness around her face. Explaining it all to Parlabane would have been plenty, but having to go through it all again had obviously been painful.

‘It’s okay,’ said Sarah, shaking her head and waving her hand dismissively. ‘I’m dealing with it. To be honest I’m starting to feel more embarrassed than anything else. Thank Christ I changed my name back. Never thought Slaughter would have
less
murderous connotations than the alternative.’

‘It’s not going to do much for the professor’s career, I wouldn’t have thought,’ Jenny reflected. ‘It
was
coronary care you said he was in, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ Sarah sniffed, managing a small smile. ‘Don’t imagine he’ll be doing any more papers in the BMJ about the relationship between potassium and cardiac dysrhythmia.’

Jenny watched Parlabane place a hand on Sarah’s shoulder, caught her glance back up at him. His body language had been unmistakably protective towards Sarah throughout her revelations, hers noticeably less relaxed on the occasions he had moved away or left the room to fetch disks, documents
or drinks. It had clearly been a tough and furiously hectic few days for both of them, Jenny thought sympathetically. But as there was definitely no need for any
more
bloody tension, she was sure they would both feel a sight better about a whole lot of things if they stopped fannying about and just got on with shagging each other.

‘Look, I don’t think we should allow Dr Ponsonby’s record-breaking achievements to distract us,’ Parlabane said. ‘Tabloid shock-horror aside, Jeremy is really just the sad fuck here.’ He looked down suddenly at Sarah. ‘I mean, eh . . .’

She shrugged.

‘No, it’s OK. Sad fuck does it for me.’

‘Fine. The evil bastard, let’s not forget, is Lime.’

‘Nae kiddin’,’ said Jenny. ‘I’m not sure if there has ever actually
been
a charge of “conspiracy to mass murder”. Under those circumstances I would give him marks for originality, if it wasn’t that the whole thing ultimately boils down to another tawdry get-rich-quick scam, albeit with an unprecedentedly high body count. I must say, I’m seldom surprised at how many corpses some people are prepared to climb over to get to the gold, but this guy was going to need Sherpas.’

‘He’s a bad, bad man,’ Parlabane had said. ‘Go get him.’

Lime had already left the RVI by the time they got there, and as his secretary explained, he had in fact gone home early that day, complaining of feeling unwell.

‘He certainly looked very queasy,’ she had said. ‘To tell you the truth, he hasn’t exactly looked in the pink all this week.’

‘Must be something preying on his mind,’ Jenny had reflected.

She pulled the car up in sight of Lime’s house, McGregor drawing her an unforgiving look as he felt finally able to unplug his seatbelt.

They sat there silently awhile, until they saw Gow and Callaghan approach on foot from the opposite direction.

‘I told them to park round the corner, out of sight,’ McGregor explained.

‘What about the rest of the happy crew?’ Jenny inquired.

‘There is no rest. Just us wicked.’

‘What? This is a mass murder suspect, sir.’

‘Aye. And he’s a very well-connected mass-murder suspect,’ McGregor said, climbing out of the car. ‘We can’t scream up
in about five motors and go steaming in like the Sweeney. This bloke’ll have lawyers out the arse. After the shite we’ve been through on this case, I’m not having the bastard slip the net because we fucked up on some rights technicality. We’re just going to knock the door, play it all very calm and above board.’

‘And what if his knife-wielding china’s in there too?’ Jenny inquired, locking the car. ‘Are we just going to politely ask him to accompany us down to the station as well?’

‘If the hitman’s there, all the better. It’ll make it a sight simpler to establish their connection in court.’

‘Aye,’ said Jenny. ‘I’m sure a blade through the guts will be much easier to take as long as I know it’s going to help secure a conviction.’

‘Aw dry your eyes.’

Gow and Callaghan went around to the back of the house as Jenny and McGregor approached the front door and rang the bell, its electronic Big Ben melody chimes sounding from within.

After a couple more tries and a few more minutes, Gow reappeared to confirm that they had seen no one through any of the windows, although Callaghan was staying put in case Lime was lying low and waiting to make a break for it.

‘Back door locked, aye?’ McGregor asked.

Gow answered with an apologetic nod. The Inspector tutted.

‘Hang on,’ said Jenny, and walked across the lawn, past the bare-breasted, amphora-carrying fountain statuette in the middle of Lime’s pond, to the driveway in front of the garage, which adjoined the house on the right-hand side. She had spotted that there was a slight gap between the bottom of the tip-up door and the concrete below.

‘Doesn’t appear to be closed properly,’ she said. ‘Looks like someone might have shut it in a bit of a hurry.’

She wedged her foot into the gap and hauled it back towards herself, the grey metal panel suddenly swinging upwards and open to reveal an empty floor marked by oily tyre-tracks, and in the left-hand wall, a door leading into the house.

‘Golly gosh,’ she muttered, and walked slowly inside.

‘Careful, Jenny,’ McGregor said from the garage entrance, as she nudged the unlocked door open from the side, and cautiously climbed the two steps up to it.

The sharp crack of a light-switch being flicked on reverberated around the empty space as McGregor and Gow proceeded into the garage.

‘Oh my God,’ they heard Jenny gasp, horrified, from within.

The two men looked at each other gravely.

‘No again,’ muttered McGregor, closing his eyes. ‘Please God, no again.’

Gow was too pale in anticipation to say anything at all.

They both took a deep breath and headed up the steps, behind where Jenny was standing transfixed in the hall.

‘It’s just hideous,’ she said.

They glanced down reluctantly at their feet, their shoes almost submerged in a green, savannah-like shag-pile carpet; then upwards, where a monstrous glass chandelier hung straining from the hall ceiling above a stretch of the staircase; then dead ahead, through the glass double-doors into the lounge, where from above the green-marble mantelpiece, a huge and screamingly gaudy oil portrait of the great man smiled down, his insufferably smug visage depicted against the backdrop of a billowing Union Jack in a work evidencing all the subtle colour coordination of a goalkeeper’s jersey.

‘I think I preferred the place with all the puke,’ Jenny observed, before moving forward, perversely entranced, to meet the gaze of the householder, captured behind a glass sheet on the wall.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said with elated disgust. ‘Yes indeed.’

She rubbed her hand across the back of Lime’s jet-black, Real Leather sofa, listening to the resultant squeak with a chuckle, and giggled as she pirouetted with girlish delight to take in the suite’s remaining constituents and the marble-topped bar built into one corner of the room.

‘You have absolutely no idea how much money it takes to make a place look this cheap,’ she said as McGregor entered the room. ‘I can’t wait to see the bathroom. There just
has
to be a Jacuzzi, and I’ll bet we find a waterbed in the boudoir.’

‘I’d much rather you found a shotgun,’ McGregor stated darkly, throwing her a small, red, empty cardboard box which, according to its markings, had at one point contained two dozen shells.

‘That was on the kitchen table. Where do you think the contents are?’ he asked. ‘More to the point, where do you think he intends the contents to go?’

‘Jenny off to the RVI then?’ asked Sarah, emerging from the bathroom, gently patting her wet face with a towel. The tears had gone, and although her eyes were still a little bloodshot, her skin had regained a uniform colour.

‘Yeah, five, ten minutes,’ said Parlabane. ‘Thought you’d drowned yourself in the wash-hand basin. You look better for it, though.’

‘Thanks. So, what d’you reckon Lime’ll get?’

‘Fat lady hasn’t sung yet, Doc. I’d wait until he’s been found guilty before wondering about that. He’ll have heavyweight legal representation and we’ll get to see some quality squirming before he’s nailed. It would sure help if they could find the hitman.’

‘Have they made any progress?’

‘Well, they reckon they almost got him last night. He was holed up in a boarding house down on Pilrig Street in south Leith. Jenny says the old B&B wifie marked him, but by the time the cavalry arrived he had had it away on his toes. However, as he was at a B&B they figured he would have nowhere to go, so they’ve been combing the streets all night and all day. There’s a police artist’s impression in the
Evening Capital,
apparently.’

‘So if he was staying at a B&B, that means he’s from out of town,’ Sarah said.

‘Cockney accent, with a nice line in day-glo shellsuits, according to the landlady. From my experience, I’d say Essex. East of Barking, west of Sarfend. Lime’s partner in this dodgy Capital Properties carry-on is based in Romford. I wonder, I wonder. Maybe the partner’s in on this too. Some kind of Bad Clothing County conspiracy. I wonder what Edinburgh District Council would have said when they submitted plans for an office block with twenty storeys of stone cladding and a used-car lot in the forecourt.’

Sarah poured herself a glass of water from the kitchen tap and gulped it down, then offered Parlabane some, but he declined.

‘One question, Jack. If this hitman has been brought in from out of town, what’s he doing hanging around so long after the job? Especially as it didn’t appear to go very smoothly.’

Parlabane irritatingly changed his mind about the water and cupped a few handfuls from the tap to his mouth.

‘At the request of his employer, I’d guess,’ he said. ‘Either he’s being paid to wait around or he’s
not
being paid until.’

‘Until what?’

‘His responsibilities are fully discharged.’

‘And what does that mean?’

Parlabane smiled. ‘Not what
he
thinks it means. I’ve told you before. Bad guy psychology one-o-one. Work it out. Actually, come to think of it, I’m surprised Lime hasn’t made his move before now. But if his boy’s out on the street he’ll be forced to pretty soon.’

‘I’m sorry, Jack, I don’t follow.’

Parlabane walked out to the hall.

‘I’d better call the station, make sure Jenny’s figured it out too,’ he muttered.

As he picked up the receiver, the doorbell rang, sharply and briefly.

‘And as if by magic,’ he said, putting the receiver back on its cradle and walking to the door. ‘That’ll be a cop from across the Square now.’

He glanced through the spyhole but there was no one in front of the door. Curious, Parlabane opened it and walked forward, leaning over the banister to look further down the stairs. Then he felt something cold and metallic pressed into the back of his head.

Arse, he thought.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

‘Back up. Into the flat,’ said a low, nervous voice.

‘Why?’ Parlabane asked, not moving.

‘Because there’s a shotgun pointed into the base of your skull.’

‘How do I know it’s not just a wee length of pipe?’

He heard the unmistakable racking sound of the shotgun being pumped.

‘Why don’t you just take my word for it?’

‘Well, ordinarily I tend not to take the word of fat Tory bastards, but by the law of averages they’ve got to be telling the truth once in a while.’

Parlabane slowly backed up, turning his head slightly to see Lime staring wildly at him down the shaft of the weapon. He looked tremulous and very pale, his eye twitching and his beard flecked with what looked suspiciously like vomit.

‘Hands in the air,’ he hissed, giving Parlabane a blast of his breath.

‘Jesus,’ Parlabane reeled, lifting his arms. ‘Breath’s worse than the Princess of Wales’. You know, bulimics are supposed to be a bit skinnier than that.’

‘Shut up and get inside, you little shit.’

Sarah gaped in horrified disbelief as the pair entered the hallway and Lime kicked the front door shut behind them.

‘Impromptu employer courtesy visit,’ Parlabane said. ‘See, the Trust really does care.’

The look on Parlabane’s face puzzled and did not comfort her. It was a livid mixture of apology, rage and – most strangely – tedium, like he had had enough of this crap but had no choice but to tolerate some more.

The look of pale, breathless fear he saw reflected upon Sarah’s visage did little to temper Parlabane’s emotions either.

‘Oh how lovely,’ Lime said. ‘You’re both together. Two birds with one stone and all that. This is very convenient.’

‘We aim to please,’ Parlabane muttered.

‘Very interesting. The snooping journalist is screwing the ex-wife.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Parlabane said. ‘You know, just because I’m not hairy, fat and ugly doesn’t necessarily mean I get the girl, Pork Boy.’

‘Watch your mouth, you little prick. Now, down the hallway, the pair of you. Into that room. Slowly. No false moves.’

Parlabane walked delicately and deliberately behind Sarah into the sparsely empty living room.

‘Did he actually use the phrase “no false moves"?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, in a frightened whisper, then cleared her throat. ‘I’m afraid so,’ she added, louder.

She was trying very hard, Parlabane knew. She was a brave woman, and his anger grew that she was being put through this – and by that sweaty, fat turd.

‘What a twat,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What a fucking grade-A cock-end.’

‘I think you’re forgetting who’s got the gun here, Mr Marylebone.’

‘That’s Parlabane,’ he spat. ‘Jack to my friends. You can call me Mr Nemesis, the end of your sad little wank-in-the-corner world.’

Lime stood in the centre of the room with his back to the close-curtained window, indicating to his captives to take position a few feet apart, two yards in front of him.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Mr . . . Parlabane,’ he said, trying unconvincingly to sound calm. ‘You don’t get to be a man of my achievements by being stupid. I’ve got the situation well under control.’

‘No no no no no,’ said Parlabane quickly, shaking his head. ‘Believe me, tubby. When you’re standing in a stranger’s living room with two hostages at gunpoint, twitching away like Herbert Lom, then from my experience that means the situation is a considerable fucking distance from being under control.’

Lime’s eyes bulged. ‘Shut up,’ he grunted. ‘And you’re no one to lecture me about being in control. You’re the idiot that raided my computer but forgot to re-encrypt all the documents you were snooping through.’

‘Fuck,’ whispered Parlabane furiously, trying not to catch Sarah’s dismayed glance.

Lime grinned at Parlabane’s discomfiture.

‘Now. Both of you – on your knees, this second.’

‘Afraid we can’t, chubster,’ Parlabane spat. ‘Sarah’s got a bucket-handle cartilage and I’m not religious, so I find the kneeling position extremely demeaning. Sorry.’

Lime shook the gun, the veins popping out of the side of his head.

‘On your fucking knees or I’ll blow them off here and now.’

Sarah knelt down, her eyes rigidly fixed upon the sweating and unhinged figure before them.

Parlabane, infuriatingly, remained standing.

‘If you were going to shoot me, wobble-arse, you’d have done it by now. I think we both know that the second that gun goes off, the stop-watch starts counting down to the arrival of the polis, and if all you’ve done by then is pop a hole in
my leg, then you’ve not really achieved a great deal with this wee expedition, have you? Now, it seems likely to me that the reason you’re here is that you think we’ve rumbled you – we have, by the way – but that you think there might be a way out of it, correct? In which case, the second you blow one of us away, the second you pull that trigger, is the second that your last chance evaporates. So no, Pork Boy, I’m not going to fucking kneel. Why don’t you just get on with telling us what you want?’

Lime pointed the shotgun directly at Parlabane’s head and clicked off the safety catch.

‘What you are forgetting, smart-arse, is that
unless
I can use you two to get out of this, I’m looking at about a dozen life sentences. So if I decide all is lost or you decide not to cooperate, it’s not going to make much difference to the judge if I kill you two interfering little cunts as well. Now on your knees.’

Parlabane dropped slowly to the floor and looked over at Sarah, who glanced back glumly at him.

‘Interfering little cunts, he said, Sarah,’ Parlabane remarked. ‘I think he meant “interfering little
kids”,
you know, like if it wasn’t for us, Scooby and Shaggy, the old haunted amusement park scam would have worked a treat.’

Sarah managed a small laugh.

Herbert Lom, fast becoming Marty Feldman, looked less amused.

‘You know, fatso, the cops are on to you,’ Parlabane stated matter-of-factly. ‘We’ve told them everything. So you could go ahead and kill us, I suppose, but I think you should maybe just skip to the “killer turned the shotgun on himself” part right now.’

‘I’m getting pretty fucking tired of you,’ Lime rumbled breathily. ‘If the police were on to me, they’d have done it by now. And if they’re on their way, if you’ve already told them everything, then I’ve got no reason to keep you alive. So, this time the truth: what have you told the police?’

‘Nothing,’ Sarah said instantly, nervously. ‘That’s the truth. We’ve told them nothing.’

Parlabane closed his eyes and nodded. ‘She’s right. But why don’t you just shoot yourself anyway? Go on. Go for the old shotgun blowjob. Make it come in your mouth, big boy.’

‘Shut up.’

‘No. Come on, go out in style. Gargle those pellets, Stevie baby.’

Lime took a step forward, clicked the safety back on and rammed the barrel of the gun into Sarah’s head, leaving a large gash on her cheek underneath the right eye.

She squealed and bent over, pressing both hands to her profusely bleeding face. Parlabane began to move towards her.

‘FREEZE,’ Lime barked, pointing the weapon. ‘Now,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Enough of this bluffing nonsense. You’re right, Mr Parlabane. Shooting you is my last resort at this stage. But, as I’ve just demonstrated, there are interim measures to encourage cooperation.’

Parlabane slowly pulled a handkerchief from his pocket – waving it to assure Lime of what it was – and tossed it to Sarah, who dabbingly applied it to her traumatised cheek.

‘You know what I hate about guns, Mr Lime,’ she said bitterly. ‘They make killing too easy. They can put the power of death into the hands of anybody, even a bullied-at-school, sad little wanker like you. All you need to do is pull a trigger and someone dies. It takes no effort.’

Lime patted his mouth in a yawning gesture.

She shook her head gently, staring into his nervous, ugly eyes. ‘You fucking arsehole. If you knew what it’s like, what it takes to repair someone, to restore their body to working order . . . you’d understand the obscenity in being able to rip it all apart at the flick of a switch. It’s too easy. You don’t even need to want it that much.’

‘It’s not the most subtle or elegant of weapons, I know,’ he said, suddenly very smug as he realised he finally had them under control. ‘But needs must and all that, Dr Slaughter. And you’re wrong, you’re very wrong. Because if I have to shoot you, it will be because I do want it, a great deal. If you are jeopardising my investment, I’ll have
millions
of reasons to want to kill you. You see, we have a saying in business: Do anything you can to protect your investments. Anything you can, Dr Slaughter.’

‘You know, we have a saying in Glasgow, too,’ growled Parlabane. ‘It’s you’ll get yours, ya bastard.’

‘Yes, Mr Parlabane, I’m shaking in my shoes here, really,’ Lime said tiredly, glancing at his watch. ‘Now, why don’t you cut the crap and tell me how much the pair of you know.’

Parlabane glared into Lime’s piggy little eyes.

‘Why don’t
you
cut the crap, fuzzball. You know fine what we know. If you didn’t think we knew everything you wouldn’t have turned up here with a fucking shotgun. If we
didn’t
know what you were up to, that’s the kind of behaviour that might make us a wee bit suspicious.

‘We know you had Ponsonby murdered, in case anyone ever found out you had paid him to kill long-stay geriatric patients at the GRH, so that you could close the place. We know that you’re authorising the underpriced sale of the GRH to Capital Properties. We know you own half of Capital Properties and we know you stand to make a lot of money from building . . . whatever on your fresh, new, city-centre site.’

Lime smiled. ‘Hotel. Conference facilities. That sort of thing. Multimillion-pound development.’

Sarah snorted. ‘A word of advice,’ she said. ‘Don’t run the hotel like you ran the Trust. If you keep closing beds every day, you won’t have anywhere to put the guests. Oh, and if you keep having them all injected with potassium chloride, you might find they have difficulties paying their bills.’

Lime’s eyes widened involuntarily, and he glanced at his watch again, more anxiously this time.

‘Well, maybe you didn’t know we knew
that
much,’ Parlabane said, ‘but you knew we were on to you. So what do you really want, eh?’

The doorbell rang, shave-and-a-haircut.

Lime blew out a small sigh of relief and smiled.

‘I really want . . . you to meet someone.’