Detective Inspector Sheila Maher and Detective Sergeant John Connolly swoop into the holding cell, stern-faced and determined to get my signed confession. They think I murdered Jack Behan and his wife Jinny, at their luxury apartment in one of Glasgow's most exclusive residential areas. The crime took place two days ago and I was picked up in the early hours of this morning.
Maher looks in her mid-thirties. She's of medium height, slender and elegant, pretty rather than beautiful. She's wearing a mauve linen jacket over tight cashmere sweater, cut low enough to reveal just the right amount of cleavage. She reminds me in a way of Jinny.
Connolly is in his late forties. He's tall and built like a bull; with hair closely cropped his face stubbled. His dark, casual jacket sits awkwardly on his frame, adding to his rough, disheveled look. He leans towards me, his breath reeking of stale coffee.
"So Michael, have you had time to think about this?"
"Nothing to think about," I say flatly, "I've told you all I want to."
Connolly glances at Maher and shakes his head. "You know this looks very bad for you," he says to me. "You had motive, opportunity and you have no alibi."
"Says who?"
Maher lifts a slim folder off the table and waves it at me. "Witness statements, Michael. They all point to you."
The two of them sit there, staring me out. I shift uncomfortably in my chair, my eyes focusing on a point on the wall behind them.
"Just tell us, Michael," says Connolly.
"We might even get it down to manslaughter. Crime of passion and all that."
"Crime of passion?" Maher gets tetchy. "Come on, Michael! Stop this charade! You're wasting our time."
"I'll tell you my story, but that is all."
The bull snorts in derision and rubs his tired eyes. He starts the tape-recorder, gives the interview details and tells me to start. Maher sits back in her chair, crosses her long legs in a knee length skirt, and folds her arms under her chest. Again, just like Jinny, I think. I shake myself out of this reverie and focus.
It was Jinny who I met first. It was a year ago today, in fact, when I went to Behan's Lounge Bar to ask for work. She was cool and business-like, telling me she wanted someone with experience and a good way with customers.
Behan's was one of Glasgow West End's oldest, most popular pubs. There was no loud music, TVs, gaming machines or pool tables. People came to drink and chat. I convinced Jinny that I had the experience she needed and she agreed to start me the following Monday. I found her a stunningly beautiful woman but I was well out of my depth with her.
There was a big red sign there with a white stripe through it. No entry. So from the day I started, I knew my place and treated her like I would treat any boss. I did what I was told and gave no argument, even when I thought she was being petty or fussy. As one of the pub regulars told me, you don't mess with Jinny Behan. It's only now I realize he didn't mean that in the way I understood it at the time.
I think it was about a month later that I finally met Jack. He was a larger-than-life character in size and personality. When he walked into the pub in a long, camelhair coat and an old fashioned hat, I thought, Lee Marvin. The customers all greeted him, chatting him up and slapping his back like he was an old friend, but I could see the fear in their eyes. He wasn't their friend. He was their patron and they were seeking assurance from him, as if afraid they might have somehow crossed him the last time they saw him. If any of them had, he didn't show it. He showered them with insincere affections, shaking hands and wisecracking his way to the bar.
As soon as his eyes fixed on Jinny, she tensed up and almost forced a smile. She poured him a Jack Daniels with ice and introduced me to him. He considered me at length with a suspicious stare and asked me a few questions about where I had worked before.
The people around us watched the exchange with rapt interest. So far, I had built up a good rapport with them but I sensed that if Jack withheld his approval, they would desert me. He nodded at me and shook my hand.
"Welcome on board, Michael."
The customers at the bar cheered and joined his toast to my good fortune. "Get on with it!" shouts Connolly. "Get to the point. You know? Two days ago? Jesus! I don't want your fucking life story!"
"Okay, Okay. I'm getting to it." I roll my eyes at Maher as if conspiring with her against The Bull but she offers not a glimmer back. I take a breath to recollect. Anyway, where was I? Yeah, things were going well in the job and by Christmas I was like part of the furniture. The regulars all called me by my first name and I knew theirs. Even Jinny had softened on me, making small chat with me before and after closing time, smiling at me as I bantered with the customers, flattering and flirting, making them feel good about themselves.
But one day I was chatting to a young woman called Breda, Breda Molloy, and she leaned forward at one point and whispered in my ear, "I've never seen Jinny smile at anyone the way she smiles at you."
I felt myself burn up and tried to laugh it off but Breda wouldn't let up. And just as she started to tell me she could read all the signs, in walked Jack and through the crowd he somehow managed to fix me with the coldest stare. Jinny noticed too but she didn't come to my rescue. I glanced at her, panic stricken, but she turned her back on me to serve a customer.
Breda wasn't much help either. Having applied the Judas Kiss, she scuttled away to a dark corner of the lounge bar. Jack came round behind the bar counter and placed a big, shovel like hand on my shoulder. "I want a word with you Michael; out back."
I looked round at all the customers as if for the last time and followed him out to the storeroom. He stood there like a hangman, staring at me as if measuring me up for the gallows. Big alarm bells were ringing in my head at this point. The way he looked at me when he came into the pub. The way Jinny turned in fear when I appealed for help. The way Breda fled the scene. The way he led me to this dark, cold store room.
He knew. If harmless Breda Molloy could see it then so could he. But if he did know, he didn't let on. Instead he patted my arm and asked me if he could trust me. My mouth was dry and I could hardly speak. I gave him a weak nod. He told me he needed a job done, a sensitive job, and needed a good man to do it, someone he could trust implicitly.
He was supposed to go with Jinny to Spain, on business, but something had come up and he had to cancel. But he still wanted her to go and take care of it for him, just not alone. He needed someone to escort her and thought I was just the right man.
"So can I trust you Michael?"
With the bells still tolling in my head and a shiver down my back, I smiled at him like a village idiot and said: "Absolutely, Mr. Behan! No problem!"
So he gave me an envelope packed with cash and told me to buy myself a good suit and use the rest for spending money. We were to leave in two days time, 30th December. The tickets were at the airport for us to pick up. I didn't dare ask him why he couldn't just send one of his heavies.
At this point in my story, Detective Maher slips a photograph from her files and places it on the desk before me. It's a picture of me and Jinny, at Glasgow airport. We're walking into the departures lounge. Her hand is rested on my forearm. We are looking at each other and laughing like a happy couple off on their honeymoon. I run a finger over Jinny's slender, dead frame and push the photo back.
"This proves nothing!"
"Looks pretty incriminating to us," says Maher.
"What? Two people sharing a laugh?"
The Bull Connolly just sits there, breathing heavy through his nose, cross-eyed and dangerous. Maher taps the closed folder with her long delicate fingers and smiles sarcastically.
"Michael, we have a whole roll developed in here and there are some dirty, dirty pictures."
I know she's bluffing. No photograph would reveal what passed between Jinny and me on that trip. She had warmed to me so quickly; it was like a rapid spring thaw after a deep winter. Breda Molloy had it right after all. She just saw it before I did.
The warm winter sun of southern Spain merely enhanced the feeling of something new, something growing between us. The soft, wanting glances, the merest touch of hand on hand, and when she called me to her hotel room that evening before dinner and had me sit on her bed to watch her undress and shower through the open suite door.
We barely exchanged a word or touch throughout. We just luxuriated in the adrenaline fuelled danger of discovery, and the unspoken understanding that I wanted to watch and she wanted to be watched.
The next day we met a Russian man, Valery Kirov, in one of those immense tourist hotels near Malaga airport. My job was to simply be there with Jinny, not to get involved in the business between them. Not that I could if I wanted to because they conducted their business in Russian. Maybe I was naive or maybe I didn't want to know or maybe I was just so lost in the image of Jinny's body under the hot steamy water the night before, but for some reason I didn't sense any danger in this situation.
