Part 40 (1/2)

Buchanan did his best to achieve a slightly more upright posture as he said, 'So, you both gave evidence? Not just Jamie?'

She nodded, looking thoughtfully into her whisky.

'Jamie never tried to keep me out of things. I knew right from the off that he was into something and, of course, I wasn't supposed to know the details, but Jamie never could keep anything to himself. Kincaid -Jerry's dad, like enjoyed flaunting his ”family”, as he called us. He thought he was untouchable and he loved rubbing people's noses in it -the police and everybody else. He'd take us all out for flashy dinners every week, the boys and their wives or girlfriends -or girls hired for the evening. We all had to be done up to the nines, wearing bags of jewellery and fancy evening dresses -the works. Fifteen or twenty of us sometimes.'

She concentrated on her drink and a second cigarette for a few moments, smiling to herself with bitter rancour. 247. 'It was all so silly and childish, but at the time I thought I was living high, living life the smart way. Then Kincaid started giving me little jobs to do. Just once in a while. Just on the fringes of the operation. You know -taking stuff through customs, driving a van load somewhere, stuff that it's easier for a woman to get away with. I never got stopped. Maybe I looked too young and innocent. Being quite small, you know?'

Buchanan knew all right. He didn't look at Fizz as he asked, 'Jamie didn't mind you being involved?'

'No. Why should he? The money was good and Kincaid always said that if we got nabbed he'd get us off. He had contacts. That's what he told us anyway.' She leaned forward to stub out her cigarette. 'But then he started asking me to do other things, like luring a mark into a taxi and then b.u.g.g.e.ring off. I never asked why I was doing it but it eventually sunk in that I never saw that mark again.'

'You mean, Kincaid was b.u.mping them off?' Fizz wanted to know.

'That's what I believed, even though Jamie tried to tell me they'd just been told to leave town. Either way, I wasn't too happy about it and I told Jamie I wasn't doing it any more, but he wouldn't listen to me.' She twisted her lips nastily. 'Jamie had a way of making you listen to his opinion that had me in st.i.tches -literally.

More than once.

And Kincaid was another one who got ugly with people who didn't do what they were told. The way he put it, if you weren't with him you were against him.'

Fizz was about to start prompting as soon as Poppy stopped for breath but Buchanan sent her a warning look and waited. Poppy hauled herself up out of the sofa's close embrace and refilled their gla.s.ses. Both she and Fizz had already sunk more spirits than it would have taken to slow Buchanan's reflexes quite considerably, but only Poppy was showing it.

'Anyway,' she said, coming back to her seat and reclaiming Buchanan's hand, 'Jamie started to want out as well, 248. after a while. I think he was doing things for Kincaid, by that time, that were a bit much even for him. He never said, but I could tell he was getting scared. Then, this guy came along. I think they called him ”Bats”. He had a friend in the force -that's what he told Jamie, but we suspected he was really a police nark -and he put it to Jamie, bit by bit you know? -that if he gra.s.sed on Kincaid's operation he'd do pretty well out of it: no charges against him, a new house as good as the one we were staying in, a complete new ident.i.ty and all the rest of it.'

'So you went along with it?' Fizz got in.

Poppy nodded, guzzling her drink. 'You know,' she said, manifestly voicing the thought as it occurred to her, 'I'm really glad you two came in this evening. I needed a bit of company. I'm feeling better than I've felt since ... it happened. You're awf'ly nice.'

Fizz took that compliment to herself, smiling chummily at Poppy as if she were succ.u.mbing as rapidly as Poppy was to a whisky-induced euphoria. 'And after the trial you were set up in a rented house in Chirnside, right?'

'Just temporarily. They'd promised us a nice place like the house we'd left -not tucked away in the back of beyond like that one. It was driving me nuts, that place, with no-one to talk to but Liza Armstrong and the Pringles, for G.o.d's sake -Bonnie and Clyde with wrinkles, Jamie used to call them. I wish those two nosy old b.u.g.g.e.rs had got blown up into the bargain.'

Buchanan would have liked to free his hand. Hers was uncomfortably hot, suddenly, and a bit sweaty and besides, he had a suspicion that she was actually pus.h.i.+ng her luck a bit. Whether it was due to his comforting presence or the result of getting her story off her chest or, more likely, the whisky, she was undoubtedly on the mend. Her head was lolling on the back of the couch but she was, to his eyes, more elated than sleepy.

'So, how does Vanessa Gra.s.sick come into the story?'

Fizz said, still as razor sharp as ever, which was, to 249. Buchanan's mind, yet another sign of a mis-spent youth.

Poppy lifted her head a fraction but the effort was too much for her and she let it bounce back again. 'Vanessa?

Has she got something to do with it? How do you mean?'

'What was she doing in Brora Lodge?'

'She lives there.'

'Yes, but how come she was arriving at two-thirty in the morning?'

'How would I know?' Poppy retorted, with a certain lack of clarity and a happy giggle. 'I didn't ev'n know she was in there till they tol' me.'

That was not the answer Fizz had been hoping for. She said, 'You and Jamie -you weren't involved with the Gra.s.sicks?'

'You kidding? They didn't even wave to us over the hedge. Very pally with the Pringles, though. Old man Pringle looked after their house for them. Had done for years.'

'Yes, we know all about that,' Fizz said with a hint of impatience, and spent a little time tapping her gla.s.s irritably against her teeth. Then she said, 'But Vanessa didn't usually visit Brora Lodge on her own, did she? If she came at all she came with her husband, right?'

'Not always,' Poppy said, sounding a fraction defensive.