Autographs In The Rain Part 29

'Such as?'

'Maybe we'll know when we find it. Maybe we won't, but let's just have a look round with that objective in mind, and maybe we'll find something that will give us a clue about what was in that big bag the woman was carrying.'

'Is that likely?' Dell asked, doubtful once more. 'We know that the old man was injected within a short time of his death. It'd be reasonable to a.s.sume that the woman did it, but she was very careful to remove the syringe from the house.'

'Exactly!' exclaimed Mackenzie. 'And as big Bob Skinner pointed out

when we had our chat, that was a major mistake. Like he said, she should

have chucked the thing in the bath. We'd just have a.s.sumed that the old

126.

AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.

chap had shot himself up. The woman could have been the Avon lady going to the wrong address.'

'How d'you know about the Avon lady?' she shot back at him.

'My mother told me.' He opened the car door and stepped out into the rain. 'Come on, let's get on with it.'

The sergeant followed him up the path, with the collar of her heavy coat turned up to protect her hair against the rain as much as possible, then waited as he fumbled with the keys. Finally, he swung the door open.

The house was cold, with an unpleasant musty reek clinging to it. Dell shivered. 'I don't like this place,' she said.

'Eh? D'you think it's haunted?'

'In a way. I believe that evil clings to places and takes a long time to go away, and I feel that something evil happened here.'

He gave her a look that was a mix of scorn and cynicism. 'That'll sound good in the witness box. Let's find some evidence; in my experience that works better with juries. I'll take the bathroom and bedrooms, you take the kitchen.'

'Okay. But what am I looking for?'

'Look at, not for. Look at everything, and ask what it's doing there. If there's no good answer ...'

She did as he instructed and went into the kitchen. She looked around; it was neat and tidy, with neither utensils, cups nor saucers scattered around.

She began by opening the high fitted cupboards on the wall facing the door. One contained only food, in tins and packets; the other was full of crockery and gla.s.sware.

She went from cupboard to cupboard, drawer to drawer, but saw nothing in any of them that would have been out of place in any kitchen. Finally she glanced along the work surfaces. 'Toaster, microwave, blender,' she said, absently, coming to a rack on the wall, and flicking through its contents.

'Bills, bookmark, empty ca.s.sette box, postcard . . .' She took it out and looked at it.'... from Ruth. "Love from Corfu." Nice thought on a day like this.'

She left the kitchen and walked across the hall, into the living room. It was just as neat; two chairs were placed on either side of the gas fire, so that both looked at the television set in the corner. Redundant fire irons stood in the hearth, a bra.s.s knight in armour with poker, tongs, shovel and brush as weapons. Alongside a rack held newspapers and magazines. She looked around as Ruth had done; virtually the only other items left werethe old man's hi-fi equipment and his small collection of vinyl records and CDs, all of it gathered together in a purpose-made unit. The system looked impressive, if not new. It was made up of carefully chosen separates, like her own, all except the turntable from the Mission Cyrus range. She peered at it. 'Amplifier, power amp, CD player, tuner, Systemdek turntable.'

She paused, and her eyes narrowed slightly. She bent and looked at the recordings, lined on their shelves. Twelve-inch LPs and compact discs.

Straightening up she went back through to the kitchen and took the ca.s.sette box, empty of tape or label, from the rack.

'Dave?' she called, stepping back into the hall. 'Have you come across a tape player through there?'

The inspector emerged from the front bedroom. 'No. Why?'

She held up the box. 'He didn't have a deck in his system either. I was just wondering what this was doing here. It was in the rack in the kitchen, but Ruth could have put it there. I think she must have tidied up, after you left her here the other day.'

He took it from her and looked at it. 'Maybe. We'll take it anyway. It doesn't look as if it's been dusted, so we can always see if we can lift a print off it, other than Ruth's, the old man's and ours.

'I don't know what it'll tell us though.' His wicked smile flashed back.

'Here, maybe she had a karaoke machine in that box. Maybe the old fella was hooked on that as well!'128.1.36.When a man is six feet four inches tall and is brought up in Edinburgh, there has always been a fair chance that at some time in his youth, someone will persuade him to pack down in the back row of a scrum. (Today, when a woman is six feet four inches tall, that fair chance becomes a certainty.)

In Jack McGurk's case, most of his cla.s.smates in his year at the Royal High School had been vertically disadvantaged, and so, in his penultimate year, he had been pitched into the second row of the scrum and the middle of the line-out.

He had done well in schools rugby, not because of any inborn technical skills, but because his natural apt.i.tude for violence in close-quarter situations, particularly those on the blind side of the referee, quickly had earned him a reputation which had made most opponents back off.

Unfortunately he had carried this trait with him into senior rugby; his career had come to an end before his nineteenth birthday, two seconds after he had squeezed the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of a twenty-six-year-old policeman, and one time Scotland B flanker, named Andrew Martin, in the middle of a ruck.

A trip to Casualty, a bad case of concussion, and four lost teeth had been all that it had taken to make him realise that the game at that level was something entirely different, and that he wanted no part of it.

McGurk was fairly certain that ten years on there was little chance of the Head of CID, even if he remembered the incident... and it had been a fairly powerful squeeze . . . identifying him as the culprit. As it happened he was wrong, but Martin was not a man to bear a grudge, particularly since the referee, having seen the provocation, had been blind to the retaliation.

The detective sergeant's jaw ached as he wandered into Raeburn Place, the traditional home of Edinburgh Academicals Rugby Football Club, the very ground where his brief flirtation with the game had ended. The Second XV was the only side in action that afternoon, pitted against Jedforest Seconds; he had decided to go along to the match out of nothing more than129.

tcuriosity, to see whether Lander and his manager chum were any good at the game.

The rain was hammering down as he wandered into the ground, under his golf umbrella, and found shelter in the small grandstand. The first half was almost over and, already, Jed were fourteen points down. He could see why at the first line-out, when Arthur Symonds, on his own hooker's throw, had the ball stripped from him easily by a smaller, but more committed opponent.

'Look at that big lad,' a disgruntled Jed supporter moaned, in the general direction of McGurk, as the nearest available listener. 'He looks like a f.u.c.king tree stood among all the rest of them, but all he is is the f.u.c.king fairy on top!'

Accies' scrum-half used the unexpected good possession to feed his backs, but the inside centre was tackled in open field by a determined form whom the detective recognised as Glenn Lander. Unfortunately the flanker missed an easy opportunity to turn his man and regain possession. Accies'

scrum-half used the resulting ruck to reset his attack, before spinning a long pa.s.s directly out to his left wing who crossed the line and ran behind the posts.

'Look at them,' roared the Jed diehard beside McGurk. 'Boys against men .. . and the boys are still stuffing us!'

Had it not been for the incessant heavy rain, which continued all through the match, the policeman would have left at the half-time break. Instead he stayed under his shelter and watched the debacle until the end. A further converted try soon after the restart put the result beyond any doubt, and the home side seemed content to contain their opponents from that point on.

Happily, the referee exercised merciful common sense; with almost twenty minutes left to no-side, he abandoned the meaningless match because of the deteriorating ground conditions. Thirty players, and around the same number of spectators applauded his decision in evident relief, and, as a man, headed directly for the pavilion and the sanctuary of the bar.

The tall detective, who had come to the match by bus, saw the sense of this approach. As he hustled across the pitch, avoiding, like the rest, the most churned-up areas, he saw a man in a waxed cotton coat and matching flat cap walk over to Glenn Lander and speak to him. The young estate owner, his face a mask of mud, turned as if to reply, then caught sight of McGurk.

At first, it was impossible to read his expression beneath the camouflage,

130.AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.

until he grinned, said something to the other man and, as he turned towards the exit, headed in the direction of the policeman. 'Did you decide to follow us, Sergeant?' he asked, just as they reached the pavilion. He was still breathing heavily, evidence that at least he had tried until the end.

'Nah! I just got curious, that's all. I haven't been to a club game since I chucked playing myself, so I thought I'd come along to see what you boys

were like.'

Lander gave a short breathless laugh; as he folded his umbrella McGurk glanced at him and noticed that blood was seeping from a slight cut beside his right eye, mingling with the mud. 'And what's the verdict?'

'The truth?'