31

The Heavenly nightclub. Do they have a sense of irony when they name these places? Maybe they realize that their clientele are all pissed when they turn up, so they can’t judge their surroundings. It’ll be dark inside at night anyway – that hides the multitude of heavenly sins. Fisher walks along the edge of the dance floor to the bar. Someone’s cleaning behind it. He hasn’t seen anyone else since he came in. Noticed the CCTV cameras on the outside, though. Good start.

‘Excuse me, I’m looking for the manager,’ he says brusquely. The stout woman behind the bar looks at him and then points towards a door across the dance floor.

Who does she think he is? She didn’t even ask. Maybe she recognized that he’s a cop. He hates that. Some people pretend they can spot a cop a mile off. He doesn’t believe it. Never has. The cleaner has probably been told not to ask questions of those who come looking for the manager. Never mind. Across the floor and through the door, into a dingy corridor. It doesn’t seem like a building that’s had a great deal of money spent on its upkeep. That’s a concern. First thing to suffer when money is tight is often security. Maybe those cameras don’t even work.

He’s walking down the corridor slowly, inspecting everything, when someone emerges from a room ahead. The man stops and looks at him. Surprised, obviously. Not happy to see someone in the private area of his club.

‘Can I help you?’ the man’s asking. Trying to sound hard. Trying to sound like he’s not in the business of helping people. Fisher encounters this a lot.

‘I hope so. Detective Inspector Fisher, Strathclyde Police. I’m looking for the manager.’

‘You found him.’

‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’

The man knows Fisher isn’t here to arrest him; he wouldn’t be by himself if he were.

‘Aye,’ the podgy little man nods, ‘this way.’

Do I know who the manager of Heavenly is? Fisher’s thinking to himself. No. Should I? Maybe. He looks like someone with something to hide. Balding, short in the arse, chubby, mid-thirties at the most. Many people in his business have connections they shouldn’t. A lot of others fear the police because they don’t want their place getting that sort of reputation. Might be nothing.

‘What’s your name?’ Fisher asks him.

‘Adam Jones.’

No bells are ringing. Fair enough. Off the hook. For now.

Into a little office. Small and cramped. Whitewashed walls, a single small window high up on the wall. It feels like someone converted a toilet. Not a sign of a luxurious establishment. He’s been in the offices of club managers before. He can’t remember one like this.

‘Last night a man named Lewis Winter was shot dead in his house. He was here at the club before he went home,’ Fisher says.

‘Okay,’ the man nods needlessly. Trying to show off how casual and relaxed he is. Trying badly.

‘I want to have a look at your CCTV. The killer may have been here too. We’ll want copies of everything you have from last night. Everything.’

The manager leads him along the corridor to another room, the security room. There are two tiny monitors on a rickety table, and a chair in front of it. That’s the extent of the security room.

‘The footage from last night should be here,’ the manager’s saying, picking up tapes from the table. ‘Obviously we keep everything, just in case. Cameras go on when we open, off when we shut. Expensive stuff, ya know. Very expensive.’ He’s shoving a tape into a machine and switching on a monitor. ‘What time was yer man here?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fisher tells him, and ignores the sigh that follows. He knows roughly when they arrived, and roughly when they left, but that’s not the point. It’s not them he’s looking for. It’s the people near them. It’s the man who shared the cab with them.

Fisher sits in that little room for more than an hour. He fast-forwards through long sections of video. He picks them out when they arrive. He watches the footage of the night and gets a new impression of the relationship between Winter and Cope. They arrive with others. They dance together for a while, but he looks absurdly out of place. Hard to spot an older person there. She starts dancing with a younger man right in front of Winter. Treating him like shit with legs. Getting close to this young man.

The rest of the hour is taken up in watching Zara Cope dancing close with a young man, looking to all the world like a couple. Winter is sitting by himself. A lonesome figure. Downing bottle after bottle of beer. Numerous questions are flitting into Fisher’s mind now. They can wait. First priority is picking out anyone at the club who seems interested in Winter. Nobody stands out. A woman, apparently desperate, goes and sits next to him. The pictures aren’t good, jumpy and at a distance. They look like they’re talking. Eventually the woman gets up and walks away. It takes Fisher a few minutes to realize that Winter is asleep at the table.

Nearly an hour later – after half past midnight on the security-camera clock. Club should be shut at midnight. Cope and the young man she’s been getting happy with walk across to Winter. She’s talking to him. She’s sitting beside him. She’s helping him up. Struggling. The young man steps in. It looks like young siblings carrying their embarrassing father to the exit. They go out through the hall. Fisher marks the time. A quarter to one. He ejects the tape and finds the one for the doorway CCTV. The manager has long since disappeared, leaving the detective to his own devices. Said he had a lot of work to do. Probably gone to call the owner. Remember to check who the owner is too.

The doorway tape in the machine. Fast-forwarding. He’s given up on looking for the killers. Long shot that they would have been there. Probably waited at the house. That makes the taxi driver and the young man who shared the taxi more important. First problem. Damned club. Bloody idiots. Who-ever’s in charge of their security wants shooting. The camera doesn’t record a wide enough area. You can see the doorway and most of the pavement outside, but you can’t see right up to the road. It’s too close. He won’t see them getting into the taxi. Shit! Why the hell have they got the camera focused on so small an area? Ah, easy enough to guess. They don’t trust their own door staff. They want to keep an eye on them. Hard to blame them for that.

Not as good as he hoped it would be. Interesting, though. The three of them come out of the club and onto the pavement. Zara hails someone, presumably a taxi. The younger man helps Winter across to the taxi and they move out of view. Can’t see the taxi, can’t see who gets into it. They shared the taxi with a young man who just happened to be leaving at the same time as they were. That’s what she said. Coincidence; not someone she knew. Random stranger – don’t know his name. Nope, not buying that any more. She was lying about this much at least. Look at Winter. Jesus, look at him. He can hardly stand.

Think about her story. They share a taxi with a stranger. He helps her get Winter to the door, then leaves. She gets Winter all the way up the stairs, along the corridor and onto the bed by herself. No fucking way. Not a chance. Look at him! He can barely stand up. If the young man wasn’t helping him out of the club, he would have been face-first on the pavement. Lying bitch. You did not get him all that way by yourself, not in that state, not a wee girl like you. Someone helped you. The young man. He came into the house. Had to. He came into the house, and yet he’s nowhere to be seen when the plod arrive. Fisher rewinds, gets a shot of the young man, mostly the back of his head. That could be our killer. More than a stranger.

Fisher goes looking for the manager. He finds him in his office, on the phone. The manager hangs up when he enters without knocking.

‘D’you have a list of the taxis that wait outside to pick up your customers?’

‘Aye,’ Jones is saying, reaching into the drawer of his desk. ‘Your lot made us draw up a list, keep a watch on who uses the place.’

Your lot. Charming. The manager passes a list across to him. At a glance, he sees nothing that stands out. There are taxi firms that he knows are owned or controlled by organized crime, but he sees none of them on this list.

Fisher shoves the list into his pocket. He looks at the manager, sitting looking back across the desk at him. Looking nervous. Looking at the tapes, wondering what’s been found on them.

‘I’m taking these tapes with me. They’re important. I might send someone else round to have a word about a few other things I happened to notice while I was here,’ he says and leaves the office. It’s an idle threat. If the club was open past its hours, then that’s for the plods to deal with. He might send someone to warn them about it, though, so that they can bitch about the positioning of the security cameras while they’re there. Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Make them see that they need to have a better view of the outside.

Back to the station. Give the tapes to someone with the time to go through them in detail.

‘Find out who the guy leaving with them is. Try and spot anyone else that might stand out.’ They won’t spot the killers. That’s too much to ask for. You never know what might come up, though. They might spot someone talking to Winter or Cope that he didn’t spot. They might find out that the younger man has connections. A bit of luck. That’s what he needs. Luck. Now the taxi driver. Find him. He can add to the picture. The picture of Cope and the younger man.

A thought. A grim thought. Cope wasn’t treated as a suspect. She was a witness and she was a victim. There was no pressure to make sure that they knew where she was going next – people assumed the house where Winter had died. Maybe not. Maybe she goes somewhere else and he has no way of getting to her at short notice. Fisher stops in the middle of the office.

‘Someone get me that plod that was looking after Cope.’ He’s worried. She’s a suspect to him. She lied to him repeatedly when he interviewed her, and he now has the proof. She’s hiding something, and that’s something he wants to find. First, Fisher has to know where she is.