White Rage by Campbell Armstrong Page A

‘Can you toss the ball back, mister?’
    â€˜Fuck off,’ Bobby Descartes said. ‘Fuck you and your fucking ball.’
    He turned away, swung his arm, launched the ball in the other direction. It rose into the last light of day and vanished as it fell against the backdrop of darkening trees. It must have gone up a hundred, a hundred and twenty feet, he thought.
    â€˜Yer a shite,’ the boy shouted. ‘A total shite.’
    â€˜That’s me,’ Bobby Descartes said. ‘That’s what I am. A total shite.’
    He flashed a vigorous V-sign at the boy. You don’t know the half of it, sonny. I have killed. I have killed another human being, and I’m ready to do it again.
    Any old time.

10
    Perlman felt edgy whenever he travelled deep into the southern part of the city; Pollokshields was too close to the neighbourhoods where the Aunts lived. Hilda and Marlene and Susan had small tidy bungalows in Giffnock and Newton Mearns, and led comfy lives behind lacy curtains. They baked a lot. They forced hefty scones and slabs of fruitcake on him whenever he visited, which wasn’t often. They slaughtered him with kindness and well-intended counsel. There’s a lovely woman you should meet, Lou, Sadie Plotkin, recently a widow, such a shame …
    Scullion parked his Citroen outside a red sandstone Victorian villa sheltered from the street by trees. Perlman was first out of the car. He walked to an iron gate that led to the driveway and paused. Gupta. Why did that name suddenly ring a tinny little bell in his private steeple? He rummaged his memory; nothing came up. Store it away. Once upon a time, his memory would have pounced on any loose fragment like a piranha in a feeding frenzy. Not now: synaptic difficulties. Sometimes they self-repaired, sometimes not.
    He pushed the gate and walked up the path. Scullion followed. The house was imposing and self-assured in the Victorian way; the future will always be British, old boy, the colonies eternally grateful. Confident nineteenth-century dreams of infinite commerce and infinite profit, Perlman thought; the city of Glasgow had been one of those dreams, where tobacco barons grew rich and built grand houses like the mansion that faced him now.
    He rang the doorbell. The sky was almost entirely dark. A breeze blustered through the trees. A young man appeared in the doorway. He was Indian, wore a stylish grey suit and a grey shirt and a brown tie. Perlman and Scullion showed ID and the young man introduced himself, in a Glasgow accent, as Dev Gupta, Indra’s brother. He invited them inside a foyer that was a deep burgundy colour; a mellow spice perfumed the air. Cinnamon, Perlman thought, but he wasn’t sure. Candles burned on a sideboard.
    The house was crowded. He listened to noises from rooms whose doorways lay open: a woman crying, other voices offering comfort, and from elsewhere a man speaking firmly and with obvious anger in what Perlman assumed was Hindi.
    Dev Gupta led them into an empty room at the rear of the entranceway. ‘It’s quieter in here,’ he said.
    â€˜We can come at another time,’ Scullion suggested.
    Kind-hearted Sandy, Perlman thought, showing respect in this house of death. But the process of law doesn’t stop. We can go away, but we always come back later.
    â€˜This time is as good as any,’ the young man said.
    Perlman glanced round the room. The furniture was old-fashioned; there were a few tapestries of stylized dancing girls, which he imagined had some religious significance.
    â€˜Krishna dancing with the gopis ,’ Dev Gupta said. ‘My father’s fond of these old things. If this was my house, I’d change a few items around. But it’s not.’
    An old family resentment, Perlman thought. It was in the voice.
    Scullion said, ‘Let’s talk about Indra.’
    â€˜What do you want to know?’
    â€˜Anything at all. Her personal