You may have a reputation among women as a dangerous guy, Stevie, but as far as I'm concerned you're a nice bloke. You listen, and you care.
So listen to this. The thing is, I'm glad that Paula and Mario are indulging themselves with each other. Because it takes a big weight off of me! Understand?"
He put his hands on her shoulders; to her inward surprise, she did not flinch, not pull away. "I think so," he replied. "Now you understand this, Detective Superintendent Rose. I don't know what's happened to fuck up your head, and instinct tells me that I do not want to know, but whatever it is, however awful, it is not big enough to overcome your spirit. You are a very attractive woman, Maggie, but you're more than that. You're the strongest woman I've ever met, and I've admired you through all the time we've worked together. You may have given in to self-doubt, and persuaded yourself that you can never overcome this problem, and have let it dictate how you live your life. If you have, you are wrong. I don't believe there is anything that you can't face down, with what's in here…" he put a finger against her forehead
'… and in here." He tapped the same finger against her chest, between her breasts.
He took her hand in his, squeezed it and held it. "Sorry to be a little informal, ma'am," he murmured. "But you're worth it."
She looked solemnly up at him, and realised that for the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt no hint of revulsion at the touch of a man. She lifted his hand, in turn, to her face, and held it gently against her cheek for a few seconds, then let it go.
"Forgiven, inspector," she murmured, full of confusion, but smiling.
"And thanks for caring. What if you're wrong, though?"
He raised an eyebrow. "You're not going to tell me, are you, that you don't have the courage even to try?"
Forty-Two
It had been years since Neil Mcllhenney had seen Lenny Plenderleith.
Bob Skinner had told him that the man had changed during the years of his imprisonment, and for the better, in many ways, but one thing remained. He was still as big as ever.
The giant laughed softly. "So I can trust you with my life, can I," he said. "He hasn't lost his touch, has he. So you're his man, are you? What's happened that he can't come to see me himself? He always has before."
Mcllhenney was struck by Big Lenny's quiet confidence. He had changed indeed from his days as principal enforcer to the late and almost unlamented Tony Manson. The gang leader had been mourned only by his protege, a fact which had proved unfortunate to his killers.
Skinner said, after Lenny's imprisonment for the murder, that the greatest mistake a man could make was to underestimate him. Some of those who had were no longer around to regret it.
"He's got problems; family things. He's in America at the moment, trying to sort them out."
"He's got one in Scotland that I know about; tough luck about his brother winding up in that lady's basement. Do they know what it was yet? Did somebody do him?"
"He died of a heart attack… while he was salmon fishing maybe."
Lenny Plenderleith leaned across the Shorts Prison visiting room table; they were alone, at Mcllhenney's insistence. "You and I will get on better, Mr. Mcllhenney, if you don't spin me any more fairy tales.
Nobody goes salmon fishing when a river's in full spate, and bursting its banks, especially not, as the Scotsman informed me, an alcoholic who's lived the last thirty years of his life in a Jesuit hostel. Maybe he did die of a heart attack, but how did he wind up in the Tay?"
"We don't know," the inspector admitted. "But he died of natural causes, so finding out is not at the top of Tayside CID's things-to-do list."
"They'd better move it up then, or is Bob not coming back from the States?"
"He'll be back, all right, but I'm not sure when."
Lenny frowned. "So what's happened in America that's more important than his brother?"
"It's a family matter, that's all; it's got nothing to do with this visit, I promise you."
"I'm curious, though. I read about his in-laws being killed a few months back; I even had a look at the New York Times website. The old man rated quite an obituary; he was a friend of the Kennedys and the Clintons, so it said."
"You certainly keep yourself informed," Mcllhenney observed.
"I have to do something in here; I've done my Open University degree. I did ask if I could get day release from here to do a doctorate at Napier, but they wouldn't wear it. Bob said that after I'd done ten years I should ask again, and he might be able to help. In the meantime, I'm writing; I've done the obligatory reformed lifer's autobiography, a book about the career of Tony Manson, drug lord with a social conscience, etc." and another about his murder and what happened after it. I wanted to do one about Bob Skinner, too, but he won't play."
"So what'll you do instead of that? Fiction?"
"Eventually maybe, but not yet; next I plan to do an academic study of the homicidal mind. It'll go on to look at people like West, Dahmer, Shipman, Sutcliffe and so on, and it'll try to give voice to their thoughts as they did what they did."
"What about your own?"
Plenderleith looked sternly at his visitor. "Please, spare me that.
Although I have killed people, I don't have a homicidal mind in that sense. I am a sociopath; that's allowed me to do what I've done in the past. But I am also a clever sociopath; I know that I cannot continue to do those things and retain the possibility of ever breathing free air, and thanks to my inheritance from Tony I won't be under any pressure to do them when I'm released. No one has a problem being left alone with me; I'm probably the safest man in this place." He grinned at Mcllhenney.
"I do virtually all my research on the internet. When I'm logged on I read a selection of world newspapers, to keep up with current affairs.
There's some interesting stuff out there." Plenderleith paused and glanced across at the policeman. "I even read about this actress," he said, 'a year or so back, who chucked it all to marry some dumb copper in Edinburgh… lucky bastard that he is."
"Sure," said the inspector, with sudden bitterness. "So lucky that his first wife died in her prime and left him with two kids. But you know about widowhood, don't you, Lenny? You killed your wife."
The giant drew a breath; for a while, Neil thought that the interview was at an end. But then he exhaled and glanced across to the window.
"Wrong subject for us, then," he murmured. "I'm sorry; I didn't know that."
"You must have missed the Scotsman that day. My Olive had a fine obituary; Bob Skinner wrote it."
"We all owe Bob, then," said Lenny, 'me as much as anyone. He might be the guy who got me banged up in here, but he was only doing his job …" he laughed '… not that I made it easy for him. He wasn't just doing his job, though, when he put in a word to get me a standard lifer's tariff, when any other copper… you included… would have left me here to rot, doing a minimum thirty years. So how can I help him?"
Mcllhenney leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Apart from his family things, the boss has had another problem lately. There's this councillor, Agnes Maley; she's had it in for him for years. Just lately, she's really been getting above herself. It's time she was brought under control."
Lenny shook his huge head, smiling. "Black Agnes, eh."
"You know her?"
"Oh yes, I know her. If I'd read that she had been fished out of a river the other day, rather than Bob's brother, it would have surprised me a lot less. But you'll need to be nifty on your feet to get anything on her."
"Maybe we have been. I've been looking into her past, and at some of the people she's been associated with. About twelve years back, there was a nasty murder in Edinburgh. It involved a rent boy, called Paul Deary… yes, I know, an appropriate name. He was found, naked, in a skip just along from the Elsie Inglis. Not just a murder; the way he was killed told us that the lad had been made an example of. His throat was cut and his balls were stuffed in his mouth." The inspector gave an involuntary shudder.