Siobhan ignored this. ‘I don’t usually get free drinks until after I’ve identified myself as a detective.’ She held up her warrant card as proof.
‘Good choice, Malky,’ a man said. ‘I suppose it’s about young Donny?’ Siobhan turned to the speaker. He was in his sixties, a flat cap perched above a shiny dome of a head. He held a pipe in one hand. There was a dog lying at his feet, fast asleep.
‘That’s right,’ she admitted.
‘The lad was a bloody idiot, we all know that... Didn’t deserve to die for it, though.’
‘No?’
The man shook his head. ‘Lassies cry rape too quick these days.’ He held up a hand to stifle the barman’s protest. ‘No, Malky, I’m just saying, though... put a bit of drink in a girl, she’ll walk into trouble. Look at the way they dress when they parade up and down Main Street. Go back fifty years, women covered themselves up a bit... and you didn’t read about indecent assaults every day in your paper.’
‘Here it comes,’ someone called out.
‘Things have changed...’ The drinker almost relished the groans all around him. Siobhan realised that this was a regular performance, unscripted but dependable. She glanced at Malky, but he shook his head, telling her it wasn’t worth fighting her corner. The drinker would relish such a prospect. Instead she excused herself and headed to the loo. Inside the cubicle, she sat down, placing Ishbel’s address book and Susie’s note on her lap, comparing the writing to the messages on the wall. Nothing new had been added since her last visit. She was pretty sure that ‘Donny Pervo’ had been done by Susie, ‘Cook the Cruik’ by Ishbel. But there were other hands at work. She thought of Angie, and even the women under the driers.
Claimed in blood...
Dead Man Walking...
Neither Ishbel nor Susie had written those, but someone had.
The solidarity of the hair salon.
A town full of suspects...
Flicking through the address book, she noticed that under the letter C there was an address that looked familiar — HMP Barlinnie. E Wing, which was where they kept the sex offenders. Written there in Ishbel’s hand, filed under C for Cruikshank. Siobhan went through the rest of the book but found nothing else of note.
All the same, did this mean Ishbel had written to Cruikshank? Were there ties between them Siobhan didn’t yet know of? She doubted the parents would know — they’d be horrified at the thought. She walked back into the bar, lifted her drink, fixed her eyes on those of Malky the barman.
‘Do Donny Cruikshank’s parents still live locally?’
‘His dad comes in here,’ one of the drinkers said. ‘He’s a good man, Eck Cruikshank. Near did for him when Donny was put away...’
‘Donny didn’t live at home, though,’ Siobhan added.
‘Not once he came out of jail,’ the drinker said.
‘Mum wouldn’t have him in the house,’ Malky chipped in. Soon, the whole bar was talking about the Cruikshanks, forgetting they had a detective in their midst.
‘Donny was aye a terror...’
‘Dated my lassie for a couple of months, never said boo to a goose...’
‘Dad works at a machine-tool place in Falkirk...’
‘Didn’t deserve an end like that...’
‘No one does...’
Siobhan stood there taking sips of her drink, adding the occasional comment or question. When her glass was empty, two of the drinkers offered to buy her another, but she shook her head.
‘My shout,’ she said, reaching into her bag for money.
‘I won’t have a lass buying me drinks,’ one of the men tried to protest. But he allowed the fresh pint to be placed in front of him anyway. Siobhan started putting her change away.
‘What about since he got out?’ she asked casually. ‘Been catching up with any old mates?’
The men fell silent, and she realised she hadn’t been casual enough. She offered a smile. ‘Someone else will come round, you know... asking the self-same questions.’
‘Doesn’t mean we have to answer,’ Malky said sternly. ‘Careless talk and all that...’
The drinkers nodded their agreement.
‘It’s a murder inquiry,’ Siobhan reminded him. There was a chill in the pub now, all goodwill frozen.
‘Maybe so, but we’re not grasses.’
‘I’m not asking you to be.’
One of the men slid his pint back towards Malky. ‘I’ll buy my own,’ he said. The man beside him did the same.
The door opened and two uniforms walked in. One of them carried a clipboard.
‘You’ll have heard about the fatality?’ he asked. Fatality: a nice euphemism, but also accurate. It wouldn’t be murder until the pathologist gave his verdict. Siobhan decided to leave. The uniform with the clipboard said he’d need to take down her details. She showed him her warrant card instead.
Outside, a car horn sounded. It was Les Young. He came to a stop and waved her over, winding down his window as she approached.
‘Has the sleuth from the big city broken the case?’ he asked.
She ignored this, instead filling him in on her visits to the Jardines, the Salon, and the Bane.
‘So it’s not that you’ve got a drink problem then?’ he asked, gazing past her to the door of the bar. When she said nothing, he seemed to decide the time for teasing was past. ‘Good work,’ he said. ‘We’ll maybe get someone to study the handwriting, see who else Donny Cruikshank might have considered an enemy.’
‘He’s got a few champions, too,’ Siobhan countered. ‘Men who think he shouldn’t have gone to jail in the first place.’
‘Maybe they’re right...’ Young saw the look on her face. ‘I don’t mean he was innocent. It’s just... when a rapist goes to jail, they end up segregated for their own safety.’
‘And the only people they mix with are other rapists?’ Siobhan guessed. ‘You think one of them might’ve killed Cruikshank?’
Young shrugged. ‘You saw the amount of porn he had — pirate stuff, CD-ROMs...’
‘So?’
‘So his computer wasn’t up to making them. Not the right software or processor. He must have got them from somewhere.’
‘Mail order? Sex shops?’
‘Possibly...’ Young gnawed at his bottom lip.
Siobhan hesitated before speaking. ‘There’s something else.’
‘What?’
‘Ishbel Jardine’s address book — looks like she was writing to Cruikshank when he was in prison.’
‘I know.’
‘You do?’
‘Found her letters in a drawer in Cruikshank’s bedroom.’
‘What did they say?’
Young reached over to the passenger seat. ‘Take a look, if you like.’ Two sheets of paper, with an envelope for each, encased in polythene evidence bags. Ishbel wrote in angry capitals.
WHEN YOU RAPED MY SISTER, YOU MIGHT AS WELL HAVE KILLED ME, TOO...
MY LIFE’S GONE, AND YOU’RE TO BLAME...
‘You can see why we’re suddenly keen to speak to her,’ Young said.
Siobhan just nodded. She thought she could understand why Ishbel had written the letters — the need for Cruikshank to feel guilt. But why had he kept them? To gloat over? Did her anger fuel something within him? ‘How come the prison censor let them through?’ she asked.
‘I wondered the same thing...’
She looked at him. ‘You called Barlinnie?’
‘Spoke to the censor,’ Young confirmed. ‘He let them through because he thought they might make Cruikshank face up to his guilt.’
‘And did they?’
Young shrugged.
‘Did Cruikshank ever write back to her?’
‘Censor says not.’
‘And yet he kept her letters...’