we really need to do is just find the bugger before he decides someone else is in the way of his great love affair.’
‘And how are we going to do that?’ asked Wattie.
‘Not by interviewing the bloody flatmate, I’ll tell you that, but if we don’t we’ll never hear the end of it. You ready to enter Paradise?’
Wattie didn’t look happy. ‘Do I have to?’
McCoy ground his cigarette into the carpet, pocketed the cassette.
‘Yep. Do you good to see how the other half lives.’
SIX
‘What’s the flatmate’s story then?’ asked Wattie as they drove up and over Todd Street from Shettleston.
McCoy dug in his pocket, got the note from Murray out. ‘Peter Charles Simpson.’
‘Never heard of him,’ said Wattie.
‘Me neither,’ said McCoy. ‘In the squad apparently.’
‘Must be shite then.’
They parked beside the school in London Road and walked up towards the red-brick stadium.
‘If my dad could see me now,’ muttered Wattie glumly as he walked through the double doors of the offices at the front of the stadium.
‘He’d turn in his grave,’ said McCoy.
‘Naw,’ said Wattie. ‘He’s still alive, he’d give me a punch in the chops.’ A woman behind the reception desk told them Peter would be down in the changing rooms, pointed them to a stairway.
The changing rooms were deserted, their feet loud on the tiled floor as they walked in. A young man was sitting on a bench by an open locker folding up a tracksuit. He looked up.
‘Mr Simpson?’ asked McCoy. ‘Said you’d be down here.’
He nodded, stood up. They introduced themselves, he shook their hands. Simpson was tall, blond, zipped-up tracksuit, sandshoes. ‘Peter,’ he said. ‘Just call me Peter. Mr Simpson’s my da’s name.’
McCoy took out his wee red jotter. ‘Fair enough. Maybe we can just start with yesterday. Could you tell us what happened after the game?’
He nodded to a bench and they all sat down. ‘We finished up here about the back of five. Charlie was on the bench and I was just here watching so didn’t take long to get ready. Didn’t have to have showers or a debrief, anything like that.
‘We got home about half five or so. Watched the end of World of Sport. Charlie made some toasted cheese. We ate it, he ironed a shirt, said he had to get ready.’
‘Ready for what?’ asked McCoy.
‘He didn’t say exactly. I just thought he must be meeting Elaine. Usually did on a Saturday night. He got changed, a taxi peeped his horn outside, he shouted cheerio from the hall and that was it.’
‘And that was it?’
Simpson nodded, still looked a bit shell-shocked. ‘That was it until I heard it on the news this morning. Still cannae believe it.’
He shook his head, eyes started to tear up. He rubbed at them.
‘So what’s she like then, this Elaine?’ asked Wattie.
‘Wears the pants, but I think he quite liked that. Told him where to be and when. Even bought his clothes for him. Got him all the trendy gear. Didn’t see so much of him once they started going out.’
Simpson stood up, opened the locker door. There wasn’t much inside: a couple of pairs of football boots, a tin of Brut talc, balled-up socks. The remnants of someone’s life.
‘Just packing his stuff up for his maw,’ he said.
Somehow it was always that kind of stuff that stuck in McCoy’s mind. The blood spatter on the ‘Souvenir of Blackpool’ plate hanging on the kitchen wall. The scrapes round the lock on the inside of the cellar door. The discarded socks at the bottom of the locker. Was the kind of stuff he thought about when he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. The damage done.
‘McCoy?’
He turned and Wattie was looking at him.
‘Sorry, he ever mention a man called Connolly?’ asked McCoy.
Simpson sniffed, tried to settle himself. He shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. Who’s he?’
‘He works for Elaine’s dad,’ said McCoy.
‘The famous Jake Scobie,’ said Simpson. ‘Thought the sun shone out of Charlie’s arse, he did. Wanted to be his big pal.’
‘And what did Charlie think about that?’ asked McCoy.
Simpson hesitated. ‘He didn’t really like him. But he was a bit scared of him, didn’t want to offend him.’
‘Why didn’t he like him?’ asked McCoy.
‘Jake used to take him out for a drink. Supposed to be just Jake and him, but when they got to the pub all Jake’s mates would mysteriously turn up. Jake would kind of parade him about – look at me with my Celtic player son-in-law, that sort of thing. Charlie is a shy guy really, he didn’t like it.’
‘How did a shy guy end up going out with someone like Elaine?’ asked Wattie.
‘Easy. He was in the first team. Good-looking. Going places. Women were always coming on to him. Elaine set her cap at him and that was that. It happens.’
‘Happen to you?’ asked Wattie, grinning.
Simpson smiled. ‘Not yet. Hopefully one day.’
McCoy and Wattie stood up to go. ‘Anything else occurs to you, let us know, eh?’
They were halfway across the changing room when Simpson spoke.
‘There was one thing,’ he said. ‘He was a bit drunk couple of weeks ago. We’d been to some club dinner thing, were coming back in the taxi. He said he thought maybe Elaine was seeing someone else.’
‘Did he say who?’ asked McCoy.
Simpson shook his head. ‘He didn’t know who it was, just had the feeling she was getting a bit tired of him. As if she was busy with someone else. Someone new.’
He’s ordered a tea and a scone. Smiled at the waitress, made some small talk about the bad weather. He can do these things. Shift. Shift what he is, what people think he is. He fingers the pictures in his pocket. Remembered the first time he’d heard about a Polaroid camera. Couldn’t believe it. Meant that finally he could take the kind of pictures he wanted.
He looks round. Treron’s tearoom. Third floor of the department store on Sauchiehall Street. Him
