Hour Of Darkness Read online

  ‘Not both of them, surely?’

  ‘From what you said that seems unlikely, and not according to Mrs Austin either. But why is Cheryl unobtainable too? I want you to go to their house now, Ray, and take a very quiet, very discreet look around.’ She gave him the address.

  ‘On my own?’ he asked, as he noted it down.

  ‘Yes. I don’t want to draw any attention to this situation until we have to. Just pay them a casual visit.’

  ‘And if nobody answers the door and the place is locked up?’

  ‘Then you’ll have the chief constable’s authorisation to do whatever’s necessary.’

  ‘As in kick the door in?’

  ‘Whatever’s necessary, there’ll be no comeback, I promise you.’

  ‘My first wife promised me too,’ he countered, ‘to love and honour me till death did us part. Then she fucked off with a car salesman.’

  Chambers chuckled. ‘Maybe that’s what Mrs Mackenzie’s done, and maybe David’s out there looking for them. Whatever, we need to find out. If the door’s too solid to kick in, should you have to, call me on my mobile and I’ll send a car up with a ram.’

  ‘I’d be happier if there was a search warrant in it.’

  ‘We don’t know what we’re searching for,’ the head of CID pointed out. ‘I’m all for doing things by the book, but the book that covers this one isn’t written yet. Let me know what you find.’

  Twenty

  Ask me on the record if Lennie Plenderleith is a friend of mine and I’d probably deny it. I’m not sure I’d pass a lie detector test if I did.

  I’ve known him for twenty years, maybe more, since back in the days when he was a gangster’s minder, and the most feared young man in Edinburgh. At first I put him in a mental filing cabinet, the one where I kept the names of all the capital city’s thugs, boxes to be ticked every time one of then got put away for a worthwhile stretch.

  I’m not certain when perception of him began to change, but probably it was after Tony Manson installed him as manager of a pub he owned down Leith way. Over the door it said ‘The Milton Vaults’, but in the locality it served, and in the Queen Charlotte Street police office, it was known as ‘The War Office’.

  Its reputation as a rough pub went back for decades, but in the eighties and nineties, it got worse and worse, even after it was acquired by Manson from the previous owner in exchange for the write-off of a large gambling debt. Tony was a career criminal, but of the executive type. He called himself a businessman, and so he was loosely, but those businesses fronted for drugs, prostitution, loan-sharking and other activities.

  He had two core skills: he never allowed any chain of evidence to lead to his door, and he never picked a quarrel that he even suspected he might not win. That was why he was able to co-exist in Edinburgh with a man called Perry Holmes, and his brutal and much less subtle younger brother, Alasdair.

  If Scotland ever had an undisputed champion of the criminal underworld, it was Perry. In his time he was a feudal overlord of sorts, and his vassals were the likes of Manson, Grandpa McCullough, and others in their fiefdoms in Scotland’s cities. His power was based on intellect, money, control of all drugs importation into Scotland, and an utterly ruthless ferocity, demonstrated when necessary by his brother, and a big beast of a man called Johan Kraus.

  Those days are long gone. They came to an end when a worm called Billy Spreckley, brother of the newly deceased Bella, finally turned, walking into the Holmes brothers’ Edinburgh office and starting a gunfight that was reminiscent of the OK Corral, and left as many people dead, Al Holmes and Billy himself among them. Perry survived for a few years, as a quadriplegic in a wheelchair, still with power and considerable influence, but not quite as much as before, as nature began to fill the vacuum that his limitations had created.

  But I digress; back to the War Office. There came a point when the place got so bad that my old gaffer, Alf Stein, the head of CID himself, went to see Tony Manson and had a serious word with him. When Alf had a serious word, you listened, no matter who you were, and he didn’t go easy on our local Mr Big. I know because he took me along with him when he did it. My brief was to say nothing, just to be there, and not to smile under any circumstances.

  When I was a boy I read Damon Runyon’s Broadway stories from start to finish, over and over again. There’s a character in them called Dave the Dude. When he went to a meeting he took a guy with him whose only function was to nod, whenever Dave looked at him and said, ‘Yes?’

  I was Alf’s nod guy at that meeting, so I know that when he told Manson that if he didn’t turn the Milton Vaults into the best-behaved pub in Leith then he, Alf, would make sure personally that it burned to the fucking ground with him, Manson, inside it, the message was received, well and truly.

  His response was to install his gigantic young driver, gopher and general sidekick as manager. The gambit worked, in double quick time. Lennie laid down his law. He had to make believers of a couple of fools in his first fortnight in the job, and he did it so effectively that pretty soon the Milton Vaults became a place where you could take your granny . . . if she liked a pint.

  I dropped in there myself a few times, just to check on the place. Lennie didn’t mind. He even offered to give cops a discount, but I told him the chief constable might not be too keen on that.

  It was during the chats we had in those days, twenty years ago now, that I first realised that young Plenderleith was more than just a six-foot six-inch mountain of muscle, and that there was a good brain working in there, in spite of everything.

  Where Lennie was brought up, in a part of the city that isn’t standing any more, kids often missed out on education, and he was one of those. His family background could not have been worse. His mother was a prostitute and his father was her pimp, he told me once, in a moment of frankness.

  If only Manson had been sensible enough to keep him in the War Office full-time . . . but he wasn’t. He still made use of his physical talents on occasion, and finally, inevitably, on one occasion too many. Lennie was caught in the act of passing on a message from Tony to some idiot who’d upset him and he went away for a few years as a result.

  I wasn’t involved in his arrest, and I was surprised when it happened, since the big lad was usually very discreet on those assignments. It took another ten years for me to discover that Lennie actually wanted to be caught. He’d got himself married to a woman in the same line of work as his mother, he was miserable, he was desperate, and he wanted to find a way out of the life.

  Perth Prison helped him do that, for a few years. It also started to educate him properly. He used his time there to gain the leaving certificate that his background had denied him, and picked up more Higher grade passes than he ever would have at school.

  In an ideal world, he’d have gone from the jail straight to the university, but it isn’t ideal, is it? Never was, never will be. When Lennie got out, two things happened, one after the other, very quickly. His wife was murdered, and then his old boss was too. Finally, Manson had underestimated some people and it cost him his life. The wife? It was pretty obvious to us at the time that she’d pushed her husband too far.

  Lennie could have run, but he didn’t; he had something to do first and he did. He tracked down the guys who had killed his benefactor and took them out. But it took him a little too long, for I caught up with him.

  An hour later and he’d have been gone. As it was, he tried to go, through me, but there’s always someone who has your measure, and I had his . . . just. The Crown made a couple of murder charges stick, and he was sentenced to life. I could have charged him with assault and resisting arrest too, but I figured he had enough scores against his name.

  That would have finished most people, but Lennie was philosophical. He saw his stretch, however long it might turn out to be, as free higher education, and he threw himself into Open University courses. The years went by until he had more letters after his name than I have (MA (Hons) QPM, as it h
appens). He was able to study without the distraction of family visitors, or any other sort, save one. Me.

  My first visit was professional. I wanted to ask him about something I was investigating that went back to his old days. But I was so struck by the change in him that I paid him another visit a few months later, and another, and another. I never gave advance warning; I just turned up, unannounced. We never met in general visiting areas either, always in one of the private interview rooms that prisons have available.

  Mostly we talked about his studies, but occasionally he’d ask me how I was getting along. He never asked me about my work, only about my kids, my golf handicap, and such trivia as I have in my life. He once asked me if I was a Mason. When I said that I wasn’t, he laughed and said, ‘That doesn’t surprise me. You always were an atypical cop.’

  I was thinking about that observation as I sat in my garden room, out in Gullane. The kids had welcomed me back, and had stayed up later than usual, until I called time and reminded them that next day was school as usual. Once they had gone upstairs, I picked up the phone and called a mobile number from my list.

  ‘Elgin,’ a brisk voice answered. The director of Kilmarnock Prison always sounds more like an insurance executive than someone who locks people up for a living.

  ‘James,’ I said. ‘Bob Skinner. I wonder if you could pass a message on for me to your senior resident. Please tell him I’d be grateful if he could find time in his busy day tomorrow to call on me in my office in Pitt Street.’

  Twenty-One

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Ray Wilding said, aloud, to nobody but himself as he pulled up, facing a red Renault Clio.

  He switched off his engine and stepped out of his car and on to the pavement in front of the Mackenzie family home. It was a villa, situated in a cul-de-sac in a new tight-built estate, the kind of street that has no through traffic and consequently little privacy, in that each new arrival can be noted easily by those of a mind so to do. He glanced around, but saw no twitching curtains.

  Even if he was being observed, he would have looked like the most casual of visitors as he strolled up to the house in jeans and a Waikato rugby top, casting a long evening shadow across the driveway that led up to an integral garage. He noted that it blocked off any direct access to the rear of the house. ‘Bugger,’ he whispered. ‘I’d rather be kicking in the back door if I have to, not the front.’

  Hoping against hope that he had been sent to chase wild geese, he pressed the bronze button in the middle of the glass-panelled door. From within, eight bells chimed, in parody of Big Ben. As he waited, he looked for signs of movement through the thick obscure panes, but saw none. Checking his watch, he gave it half a minute, then rang the bell again.

  He dropped into a crouch, pushed the letterbox open and shouted through it. ‘Superintendent! Mrs Mackenzie! It’s Ray Wilding. If you’re there will you come to the door, please, otherwise I’m instructed to make an entry.’

  His right knee cracked as he straightened up. Becky had been nagging him to see their doctor about it, and a sudden flash of pain made him concede that she might have a point. He looked at the solidity of the door and considered his capabilities. ‘Left-footed?’ he murmured. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Yet he was loath to summon the man with the ram. In the era of Twitter, a cop’s door being knocked down could become global knowledge in seconds, even in such an upmarket street.

  He stepped across to his left, to the garage, examining its door. It appeared to be sectional, designed to open upwards and roll inwards. It also appeared to be locked. With fingers crossed, he grabbed the low-set handle, twisted it and pulled upwards, smiling with surprise and relief as it yielded to his strength and rolled open.

  There was no car to be seen; the only wheels in there belonged to two children’s cycles, one with stabilisers, that stood against the far wall, beside a door that had to lead to the back garden. The place was shelved, and those were stacked with an assortment of kitchen utensils and household items: tins of paint, a box of lightbulbs, a tool kit, a big flashlight, a power washer. The impression was one of neatness, everything in its place, with a single exception. A pile of towels had been disturbed; one hung half off its shelf and two more lay on the floor below it.

  Wilding stepped inside, pulling the roller door down behind him, and plunging the space into semi-darkness. In the sudden gloom he became aware of a sliver of light, to his right, from a second doorway that was very slightly ajar.

  ‘Oh yes?’ he murmured, moving towards it, then pushing it open. It led into a small utility room, where a narrow window, set above a Belfast sink, looked out on to the rear enclosure. A work surface, with washing machine and tumble dryer below, ran from the sink to a second door, which stood wide open, accessing the kitchen. On its right an ironing table was set into the far wall, with a pile of crumpled clothes upon it, and a steam iron standing on end, plugged into a wall socket. He reached out towards it, palm up, and felt the heat of its plate from a foot away.

  ‘David! Cheryl!’ the DI shouted, but he knew it was in vain. He stepped through the open door, into a big dining kitchen and looked around. Chairs were drawn to a round table. Two people had eaten there, and had left the evidence behind, uncleared: plates, cutlery, a tall wine glass with the dregs of something white, and lipstick around the rim, and two bottles of Miller Draft, one empty, the second with only half an inch left.

  He moved through to the front of the house. The living area was open-plan, L-shaped with a formal dining table and sideboard in the smaller segment, and seating in the other aligned towards a flat-screen television that was set on a swivelling wall mount. Another dead Miller Draft was perched on the wide black leather arm of one of the sofas.

  ‘For a man supposed to be on the wagon,’ he murmured, ‘you’re leaving a lot of empties around.’

  He moved through the rest of the house, quickly. The only other room on the ground floor was a small study, with a swivel chair, desk, and an Apple computer, to which a pair of candle-shaped Soundstick speakers were attached.

  The Mac’s keyboard was on a shelf that rolled out from beneath the desktop. Wilding nudged it gently, and the screen sprang into life. Whoever had used it last had been looking at the P&O Ferries home page.

  ‘Fuck!’ he whispered as half a dozen scenarios jumped simultaneously into his mind.

  He almost ran from the room and up the slatted open staircase. There were four bedrooms on the upper floor, and he looked into every one. The children’s rooms were strewn with toys, but their beds were made and everything else about them was tidy. The third bedroom was clearly for guests, and equally clearly there had been none, not for some days, maybe weeks, maybe months, for there was a musty smell about it and a thick layer of dust on its unadorned dressing table.

  There was a family bathroom, but it was unexceptional, towels on a heated rail and the kids’ little toothbrushes in a glass by the basin.

  He opened the last of the five doors and looked into the Mackenzies’ bedroom . . . then recoiled. There were clothes scattered on the floor, and on two chairs that stood in different corners of the room. The interiors of wardrobes gaped from either side of sliding mirrored doors, and several drawers had been pulled open. He saw himself reflected in one of the doors, saw the grimness of his expression.

  Ray Wilding had been in many crime scenes in his burgeoning CID career; he knew instinctively that he was standing in another. The only thing lacking was actual evidence of any crime.

  He found it in the en-suite bathroom. It was as chaotic as the bedroom. Cabinets lay open, Mackenzie’s Gillette razor lying by the basin, a bottle of Kouros men’s eau de toilette tipped over on its side, a smear of cosmetic on the mirror. A peach-coloured bath wrap lay in the shower. He bent and touched it; still damp.

  As he did so, another towel caught his eye, same colour but smaller, one of a set probably. It lay on the floor in a corner between the shower cabinet and a clothes basket, as if it had been thro
wn there, discarded.

  He would have left it there but for the mark on one exposed corner, a mark that meant he had to pick it up. He did so carefully, with thumb and index finger, holding it aloft, letting it unfold itself, letting it reveal the stains of the blood that it had absorbed.

  His pulse was thumping in his ears as he replaced it, as close to its original position as he could manage.

  This was not a great idea, Mary, he thought. Discretion or no fucking discretion, I should not be here. Dorward will go ape-shit.

  He backed out of the small shower room, and headed for the bedroom door. He was almost there when he stopped in his tracks, his attention grabbed once more, not by an object, but by the lack of one.

  He looked at the bed, at the dented pillows and at the crumpled, stained, undersheet and he asked himself, ‘What’s wrong with this picture, Raymondo?’ then replied with barely a pause, ‘You know what’s wrong. Where’s the fucking duvet?’

  Twenty-Two

  ‘Can we keep this quiet?’ Mary Chambers asked, looking through the Mackenzie living-room window into the street outside, where the unmarked police vehicle that had brought them was parked next to Wilding’s car. The similarly anonymous blue van that had brought the CSI team was parked in the driveway.

  ‘Should we keep it quiet?’ Mario McGuire countered. ‘We’re dealing with a scene that indicates violence and suggests that at the very least a man has abducted his wife. At the very least, mind. As far as I’m concerned, if the blood on that towel doesn’t belong to Cheryl Mackenzie, and a comparison with her mother will resolve that, then you are looking at the next Archbishop of Canterbury. What do we normally do in cases like this?’

  She smiled at the mental image of McGuire in vestments. ‘This isn’t a normal case, though.’

  ‘Tell me why not. Is national security involved? Is there any legal reason why we should hush it up? Is there any practical reason?’