The Red Red Snow, page 24
‘He said nobody would find out it was me. Nobody was to know about us. That’s why I took the job in Glasgow – it was easier to be ourselves in the city. And we wanted to be. But I had to be back here when the Cattersons were here, so I left my job.’
‘You told your dad you were let go?’
‘I lied. Jon wanted me back here.’
‘Were you and Jon sexually intimate?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, you need to give us dates when you were together. We need proof.’
‘It’s true.’
‘But we need proof that Jon Catterson can’t disprove. It has to be beyond all reasonable doubt, and he is playing a clever game of obfuscation. He doesn’t really deny it. He’s going to say you misunderstood, and he’ll add that you have had mental health issues. You need to help us here, Martin. The one thing that he cannot do is be in two places at one time, so when was he with you?’
‘Can you run me home? I need to collect something. I’ve a diary – it’s about us, me and Jon. If I can get that, then he’ll need to admit what there was between us.’
‘And what else?’
‘I know his email address off by heart.’
‘Big deal. Do you have any pictures of the two of you together?’
Martin thought for a long time. ‘He didn’t like us getting photographed together.’
‘Where were you out together? We can request CCTV. Did you ever go out for a meal?’
Martin thought about that. ‘No, he came to me, at the flat. No. We did go out. Once. It wasn’t that long ago. November.’ He reached for his mobile. ‘I had to leave the job so that I could be up here for the snow, for the party. It might have been the last chance we had because they might not rent the house next year, as his dad was getting fed up with it. It would be the last time we would be able to meet until afterwards. He wasn’t keen to go out, but I insisted.’ He scrolled through. ‘There – we went to Bryn’s. We had steak. The waiter will remember that we had steak because Jon sent his back.’
Anderson was slowly getting a very bad headache. Running the dynamic duo of Mulholland and Wyngate remotely was getting difficult. They were out and about more, chasing down leads. He listed the claims of evidence that Jon Catterson had met with Martin, and sent down a picture of Martin, looking red-eyed and weary. All he could do was sit here and wait. It made sense and it made no sense.
Martin and Costello had gone up to the house. Martin had become very distraught when he couldn’t find the little book he was looking for, a book he had described in great detail. It wasn’t there. He had screamed at Isla, losing the plot as if the world was conspiring against him.
Costello had asked Isla, quietly, out of Martin’s hearing, if there had been any visitors to the house.
At first she misunderstood, thinking she meant paying guests. Then she said that one of Martin’s old friends had popped in to see how he was. Jon Catterson had heard some rumours about him and was wondering how he was keeping. ‘Such a lovely boy. Doesn’t deserve that family he was born into,’ said Isla, nodding.
After a few moments Costello established that Jon usually did pop in when he was back in the glen, and that he had asked to use the toilet. He had gone upstairs even though there was one downstairs.
Costello had brought a very distraught Martin back and returned him to the room at the church hall. The wind was getting up and the slates on the roof were rattling.
In answer to Anderson’s questions, Costello had voiced her opinion that they didn’t match as a couple, Martin and Jon. There was something wrong, even in the simple fact that Jon was the smart young doctor. Martin wasn’t exactly the brain of Britain.
Anderson sat watching the information coming back. The email address was not identified as an account at the moment, but they would dig deeper.
There were no pictures on social media of them being together.
Bryn’s was a trendy steakhouse in the West End, only a couple of streets away from West End Central, so Vik had popped out to the restaurant and used all his charm to find out which staff were on that night, and from the till receipts the code of the waitress who had served them. Veronica said, nervously, that she would have remembered a nice-looking young man like that. But no, she didn’t recall them at all.
Anderson knew by the pause that there was more. Mulholland had more.
‘So I hung around a bit. Sure enough, the barman gives me the come hither. He did remember it, though, because he saw the good-looking one come back ten minutes after they left and slip her a tenner. For what, do we think? If anybody asks, you didn’t see us. She was a bit on edge. She’ll crack if we push.’
‘Name?’
‘Veronica Whyte with a Y.’
‘OK, get that all documented. It’s the only thing we have.’
‘We’ll need more than that.’
‘Like I say, if we push …’
The face that looked back was pathetic; red-rimmed eyes that had given up, defeated senseless, worn out. Beyond fatigue, Martin had been hurt more than he thought it was possible to be hurt, and nobody liked that. He was a man who had had everything taken from him and had found hope in a situation that he never thought he would find himself in. It had been a cascade of events that had brought him to this.
It was a tragedy all the way round, everywhere you looked.
‘Martin?’ Costello flashed a look at Anderson, whose face remained Rushmore impassive. ‘Do you still have feelings for Jon? After all this.’
Martin’s mouth opened, but no words came out, just a blink, then more tears.
‘I’m just trying to understand, you know. We see it all the time in this job, Martin. People fall in love with people. It’s very powerful. In this uncertain world, it’s the one thing that we want to hang on to, the love of another human being.’
Martin had at least lifted his head a little. Costello shoved the box of tissues over to him again. A red, podgy hand reached out to take one. He had been searching his own phone, finding nothing but innocent and infrequent texts between him and Jon Catterson.
‘We know you brought about the Korders’ demise,’ Costello continued. ‘A jury will prove that beyond reasonable doubt. But you are a good boy, Martin. You got caught up in something that you couldn’t understand – you were playing a dangerous game and Jon didn’t tell you the rules, and he’s going to walk away from this.’
‘He said that he loved me.’
‘Yes, I know. I think he said a whole load of things, but only to you. He told his girlfriend that you were stalking him, that you held him in high regard and that he was a bit of a hero figure to you. He always had been, according to him. I was just wondering’ – Costello leaned in, making Martin incline slightly too – ‘if he had used those exact words?’
‘Those exact words. How could I have been so stupid?’ he whispered. Even the quietness of his words echoed in the room.
‘You weren’t stupid, Martin, but he was cleverer. He was nasty, he was manipulative, and he isn’t a nice person. Instead of carrying out the murders himself, he tried to get you to do it for him. And Jon is going to walk away and talk about this at dinner parties and live off this story. He is laughing in your face, and mine, and that really hacks me off. You would never have done this if it wasn’t for him and his coercion. I know you’re scared, and you’re angry. I want to know how we can nail the bastard so that he gets a longer sentence than you do.’
Martin shook his head slightly.
‘Martin, look at me. He doesn’t deserve your loyalty.’ She got up and nodded goodbye, resisting the urge to pat Martin on the head.
‘Can I talk to you alone, Mr Anderson?’
‘Yes, of course.’ They were breaking every other protocol, so why not this one as well?
As she went out, she gave Anderson a quick wink.
He waited until the door was closed.
‘I just wanted to say that he did love me. We got the same tattoo to show our love,’ and he moved his hands down, as if to lower the zip of his jeans. ‘It’s a tattoo of Chinese love dots. They had them in China when a couple who loved each other couldn’t be together – you know, unrequited love, when they were gay, or one was married. He explained it all to me.’
Martin was keen to talk now, reliving a pleasant memory. ‘So we have those. Some have them on the hands, on the base of the thumb, so that when they walked hand in hand, the dots made a continuous line.’
‘I’m not going to ask where you have tattoos, where they might make a continuous line.’
Martin smiled. ‘They are on my inner thigh and so are his.’
‘So this is where we ask him about the tattoo and he’ll show us it.’
‘Yes, he will.’
‘You know, Martin, we have heard that Jon’s engaged, to a nice young woman called Johanna.’
‘Yes, I had heard that, but it’s all a ruse. He … couldn’t really stand up to his dad or his mum. Suzette is lovely, but she has the future of her children all planned out and, well, I wasn’t included in that, was I? Somebody like me couldn’t be.’ He talked as if he was on sure ground now. ‘So we hatched a plan.’
‘It sounds just a wee bit stupid, Martin.’
That seemed to hit home. Anderson watched the fight drain out of him.
‘Yes, I think it’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever done.’
Anderson sighed, looked at his watch and hoped either Mulholland or Wyngate was up for a bit of overtime.
‘I thought we had already spoken. It’s getting a bit of a trial, this, the way you are hounding Jon. He told me on the phone that you have even disturbed him on holiday.’ Jon Catterson’s girlfriend had been warned by the time Wyngate got there.
‘I’ve one question, and I don’t really want to ask it standing on your doorstep. Just one question,’ Wyngate said. ‘I don’t want to embarrass you, but does Jon have a tattoo?’
‘No, he doesn’t. Why?’ She opened the door of her flat further, inviting him in.
‘We just need to know if he has a tattoo on his thigh, his inner thigh, and there’s not that many people we can ask about that.’
‘No, he doesn’t have a tattoo there. He doesn’t have a tattoo anywhere.’ She opened her mouth as if thinking about saying something and then changed her mind.
Wyngate smiled his most geeky smile. ‘Well, if you can recall anything, think of anything that might be relevant, you will let us know?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Her lips smiled, but her eyes were thoughtful. He could see a step change going on – he had said something that had resonance with her.
He commented on how nice her flat was, how some of them were not refurbed as well as this one was. And that there was nothing like having your own front door, and it can be difficult to close once you let a monster in. Then he let himself out, knowing that he was leaving her to stew in whatever those thoughts were that had crossed her mind. He could almost see her joining the dots. Literally.
ELEVEN
‘Can you make a tattoo disappear?’ Anderson was on the landline to Jess Gibson. He had no time to deal with the slowness of the internet at that moment.
‘Yes, with laser or a skin graft, or you can go over it with another tattoo. Neither is very satisfactory, and can take a long time, depending on the size or the site of the tattoo, the quality of it. It never looks right. And the dye remains in the lymph nodes for ever. The body considers the tattoo an insult and it excretes most of it in any way it can. Why do you want to know? Has Claire got one?’
‘Why, what have you heard?’ asked Anderson.
‘Nothing,’ said Jessica, ‘nothing at all. Just that when a man of a certain age asks a question like that, well, there will be more to it. More likely the daughter or maybe the wife. So if it’s not Claire, is it Brenda?’
‘How should I know that? It’s a case. Person A says that Person B has a tattoo. According to Person C, Person B doesn’t have a tattoo. Over a period of time, now you see it, now you don’t.’
‘And that’s relevant for identification?’
‘Could be.’
‘Do we have identical twins, one with and one without?’
‘No.’
‘Is it a coloured tattoo?’
‘No, just black, or brown. So how can it be there, in June, but not July, back in August, away in September? They can’t be taken off and put on again.’
‘Well, a proper tattoo can’t but a henna one can – they aren’t permanent.’
‘But he got it done in a tattoo parlour.’
‘Which one?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘You know, the one chap who could have answered that was in here last week. Eric Callaghan – his tattoo was spectacular. Maybe ask where he worked. Inkermann, with two Ns. That investigation is going nowhere; you should ask Vik Mulholland – he is on it.’
Anderson closed his eyes, feeling that the circles of this investigation had just come together. ‘Tell me.’
‘Eric Callaghan was the guy murdered at the food court, the one near the Hydro.’
‘And when was that?’
‘Friday the thirteenth. Not a date you forget.’
Mulholland was glad to see Velvet again, the girl with the snake down the side of her face. She was very pretty, if you went for the goth-in-a-sweetie-shop look. Her white skin and black lipstick just made her look a bit silly and a bit vacant, yet she spoke well and was obviously still very upset at the murder of her boss.
‘We are looking for a particular tattoo,’ he started.
‘Do you have a date when it was done?’ Her hand reached out to the keyboard.
‘Nope, but there might have been two men booked in at the same time, a sort of “his and hers” but it was more a “his and his”. Inner thigh.’ He showed her the photograph of Martin and the image of Martin’s inner thigh he had on his phone, where it just looked like a constellation of black dots.
Velvet smiled. ‘Oh, yes, he was with the pretty posh boy.’
Mulholland didn’t believe her. ‘Of all these tattoos you do, you recall that particular one.’
‘Oh, yes. Only one of them was a tattoo. The other was a transfer. He wanted a template that he could spray. So it wasn’t permanent,’ she said simply.
‘What?’
‘Yes, a stencil so he could henna it in and then wash it off – not that uncommon in people who want a tattoo to wear with a certain dress or for just when they are on holiday. It’s not unusual.’
‘But why in this case, do you think?’
‘Don’t know. I didn’t meet them. Eric told me about them. He was a bit insulted, asking an artist like him to draw a bunch of dots. But he must have done it because the posh one came in a couple of weeks later and left him a gift – looked like vouchers or tickets or something.’ Mulholland looked at the security cameras in the shop. Everything here was secure. If Catterson didn’t want to leave Callaghan as a witness, he had needed to draw him out to eliminate him.
‘Did he say why they wanted that type of tattoo?’
She shrugged. ‘Well, I know that Eric thought the bloke had a girlfriend but swung both ways. Nothing wrong there, but the lack of honesty about the tattoo showed some kind of unsavoury behaviour, and Eric didn’t like that.’
‘What, getting a tattoo done behind his girlfriend’s back?’
‘No, telling his boyfriend it was real, when it was temporary. Some people like living double lives, you know. You see it all in here, believe me.’
‘Oh, we do believe you. But, Velvet, you never met them?’
‘No. But that was the only Chinese dot tattoo we did for ages.’
‘Where were the tattoos?’
‘They are usually on the inner thigh, so when you are having sex the tattoos …’
‘Yes, we heard about that.’
‘Anderson is up for it? We have the green light. How far have you got? You got any potential murders in your corner?’ asked Mulholland, looking at Wyngate’s double screens, one an image of the fast-food court, the other a spreadsheet full of colours, numbers and letters.
Wyngate pointed to his screen with the end of his pen. ‘I’m being sexist and assuming it’s a bloke, and a relatively young person, under fifty. Older than seventeen. It’s quite an interesting age demographic because the show was the early one. The hooligans and the youth of today were still at home applying fake tan and drinking shots before coming out. The audience at this performance were parents, grandparents and really young kids.’
‘OK,’ said Mulholland, paying attention. ‘And I have a note here that this bloke and that bloke do nothing. They come in and go out without buying anything to eat.’
Wyngate consulted his screenshot and then his spreadsheet. ‘No, he went to the loo, and that one’ – he tapped – ‘went to get change. If so, then’ – he consulted his sheet – ‘that bloke there, he’s his brother. Do we have anything on this bloke?’ He tapped at the figure in the red baseball cap. ‘Those caps are no use for elimination purposes – there was a promotion along the main hall giving them away.’
Mulholland looked at the other screen, the database, and then he printed out a sheet. ‘No, not him.’
‘DB324, his number is; Mr Baseball Cap. He walks in, buys a couple of coffees, then walks back out again.’
‘Two coffees? Who was the other one for?’ They both watched the screen roll backwards. Wyngate was watching the camera angle from inside the foyer of the fast-food restaurant. Being inside a concert venue, it did not have a door as such, just an arched open shopfront through which people meandered, pausing to look at the menu up above the tills before they came in or moved on.
‘Here he is, walking towards some friends, and handing one of them a coffee.’
‘Are those women with them?’
‘Could be?’
They watched the interplay. It was obvious there was some relationship between the four of them.
‘So can we trace them?’
They froze the frame, studying the detail carefully. ‘Get a close-up on what she has in her hand? What is that?’
