Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel Read Online Free PDF

uncle’s, cut off after they’d been killed. We never found the bodies, but Tommy Partridge . . . he led the investigation . . . reckons that he knows what happened to them.’

    Jay scowled. ‘That’s not bad luck as far as I’m concerned; it’s good luck for the rest of us.’

    ‘The boy was fourteen,’ I barked at him. ‘A year older than my daughter is now; he never stood a fucking chance, being brought up in that environment.’

    ‘Tough shit. I remember the wee swine now; he carried a razor, and cut somebody with it, one of our guys.’

    ‘Sure, and you carry a spring-loaded baton in your jacket pocket, Superintendent.’ His face flushed with anger, and I stopped short. I’d been drawn into an argument with the guy in front of his own troops, not a smart thing to do. ‘But the family trouble didn’t end there,’ I went on, cutting across any potential retort. ‘We all remember that,’ I glanced at the DC, ‘apart from you, Martin.’

    ‘What happened, sir?’ he asked me.

    ‘Mayhem. Partridge and his team knew who did for the pair of them; there wasn’t much doubt about that. Spreckley was a known dealer; his supplier was a guy called Alasdair Holmes, the younger brother of a man called Perry Holmes. I won’t give you Perry’s life story, but you can take it that he was a man of many business interests, some straight, others criminal on a national scale. Every cop in Scotland wanted him, but none of us could get near him. Anyway, the Holmes brothers knew nothing of what had been going on in the school, and when they found out . . .’ I felt my eyebrows rise.

    ‘The belief was that uncle and nephew were killed by Al Holmes and a big German monster who worked for them, called Johann Kraus, and Partridge’s bet was that they were cremated in an incinerator on a smallholding that Perry owned and where Kraus lived. He also believes that they made Gavin’s brother Billy watch the executions. If Gavin was small-time then Billy was tiny, a gopher, no more than that.’

    I smiled, but I wasn’t laughing inside. ‘However,’ I continued, ‘there was a wee bit more to him than they thought. It took him a few years to work up the courage, but one day he walked into the Holmes business office just off Lothian Road and shot both the brothers. Alasdair was killed instantly and Perry took four bullets. He should have died, but he didn’t; instead he wound up in a wheelchair, paralysed. As for Billy, Johann Kraus saw him off, then he went berserk himself and killed an innocent bystander. There was a short siege, before one of our snipers blew his brains out.’

    ‘So what do you think this is?’ Higgins asked. ‘The next round?’

    ‘Perry Holmes exterminating the Watsons? No, I don’t see that. Perry’s a quadriplegic; from what I’ve heard he’s looked after by a couple of male nurses. He still runs his kosher businesses, but that’s all. The other side of his life ended when that bullet lodged at the base of his brain, where it is to this day. It all seems to have passed over to Tony Manson now.’

    ‘So is DI Higgins right?’ Jay interrupted. ‘Did this Marlon guy connect to Manson?’

    I knew where he was heading, from the tone of his voice. ‘Closely,’ I told him. ‘He was his driver.’

    ‘So it is one for your drugs squad,’ he exclaimed, beaming at the prospect of spin-passing a tricky investigation to someone else.

    ‘Maybe yes, maybe no. Tony does other things, as you know very well.’

    ‘Sure, among them prostitution, which still makes it your baby.’

    I sighed, because I knew that one way or another, he was right: but I wasn’t for letting him know it. ‘We’ll let the boss decide that,’ I declared. ‘How did he get in here?’ I asked Alison, to avoid any debate.

    ‘There’s a door at the side. It’s been jemmied. The building isn’t alarmed, so there was no risk.’

    ‘Time?’

    ‘The janitors call in twice a week. The entrances were all