Chapter 19
EDINBURGH
The bookshop was in Newington, down a little side street. It had once been a science-fiction bookshop but had turned into just a general bookshop years before.
Brodie parked outside the Greenmantle pub on double yellows, put his hazards on and placed the police sign on the dash.
‘You read?’ he asked Lucy Warren as she was about to get out of the car, looking over her left shoulder to watch for traffic entering the tight one-way street.
‘I read magazines,’ she said, getting out.
Brodie looked over the roof of the car at her. ‘You don’t read books?’
She closed the car door. ‘I have done. But who’s got time these days to read books?’
‘I have. Michael Connelly is one of the best. Not to mention James Patterson.’
‘They’re all detective novels, aren’t they?’ she said, coming round the car.
‘Thrillers. You should try them. Or are you one of those closet romance readers? The books where all the guys have their shirts off, and they all look the same.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t think so.’
Inside, the bookshop was stuffy. A little bell above the door announced their arrival. Brodie could smell the books as soon as he entered.
Rows of bookshelves ran away from them off to the right. At right angles to the others, there was a shelf that ran from floor to ceiling, the one where Gabriel Kane had stood. There were no customers in, and Brodie wondered how the place made any money.
Brodie walked up to the shelf, to roughly where the book had been put back on the shelf.
‘It’s still here,’ Sylvia Green said, standing and staring at them. ‘Leaves of Grass. The one that Kane was fiddling with. If people want it, I tell them it’s not for sale.’
Brodie looked but couldn’t see it.
‘It’s not up there any more,’ she said when she saw him eyeballing the shelf. ‘Somebody would steal it in a heartbeat. The book that famous serial killer Dr Gabriel Kane was playing with? It would go for a song.’
‘You’re not interested in selling it, Mrs Green?’ Brodie said as he and Lucy approached the counter. It didn’t look like anything had changed since he was last here, and he felt that he could describe the whole place to a T since he had looked at the DVD so many times.
‘I’m waiting for the day when I can’t afford electricity then I can sell it and pay the bill.’
‘Listen, Sylvia,’ Lucy said, ‘you don’t mind if I call you Sylvia, do you?’ She carried on without waiting for an answer. ‘We’re here just to ask you a quick question.’
‘The question is not about Kane,’ Brodie said. ‘It’s about the assistant who was working the day Kane was in here.’
‘What assistant? I don’t have an assistant. As you can see.’ She swept an arm theatrically around, turning to the area behind the counter which was large. Several bookcases were behind there, one with books on it with rubber bands round them with bits of paper as if people had ordered them.
‘What are those?’ Lucy asked, nodding to the books with the slips of paper.
‘I have regular customers who are looking for certain books. I look out for them and, if I get a copy, I put it aside with their name on it and give them a call.’
Brodie nodded to the door behind the counter. It suddenly opened and a few seconds later a woman came out holding two mugs.
‘Here we are, tea,’ the woman said. Then she stopped. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll just put these down here.’
The woman put the mugs down on a table at the back.
Sylvia Green sighed and let her breath out slowly. ‘Detectives Brodie and Warren, this is a friend of mine, Karen Blair.’
‘Work here, do you?’ Lucy asked.
‘Just part-time—’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ Sylvia said.
‘No,’ Karen said, her face turning red, like she had gone onstage and forgotten her lines.
‘Come on, Sylvia,’ Brodie said, ‘we’re not here from Revenue and Customs. We don’t care that your assistant is working off the books.’
‘I just need help sometimes,’ Sylvia said. ‘I have MS. I struggle.’
Brodie nodded. Eric wasn’t a complainer, but he had lots of issues and would call him just to vent. If this woman was telling the truth, he felt for her.
‘We just need to know who was in here working with you the night Gabriel Kane was here,’ he said.
Sylvia looked sheepish for a moment. ‘Will I get in trouble?’ she asked.
‘Not if I put in a good word with the procurator fiscal’s office.
You could be charged with withholding information.
Which carries up to two years in prison.
’ Brodie was just spouting numbers now, hoping for a reaction.
He got one from her friend Karen, who gasped and clutched her chest like she was about to drop down.
‘I think I just peed,’ she said, scooting off through the back again.
‘I didn’t employ her full-time. She was a friend of mine.
Lived on her own and didn’t have many other friends.
We got talking one day, and I told her that I could do with a hand in the bookshop.
You know, just working the till, filling shelves.
Sometimes easy tasks like that are a pain.
Literally. I would go and have a seat in the back for a little while just until I felt better. ’
‘I understand,’ Lucy said. ‘Can you tell us her name?’
Sylvia nodded. ‘Ivy Jack.’
‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘Oh, let me think; it was a very long time ago. She just stopped coming around, and I lost touch with her. She wouldn’t return my calls, and I ended up getting a new assistant.’
‘You didn’t have a falling-out or anything?’ Brodie asked.
Sylvia shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that. I think she was a bit shaken up to see that Kane was in here when she was working.’
‘Did Kane have any interaction with Ivy?’ Lucy asked.
‘Yes. She spoke to him. That DVD I gave you from my security camera? It shows Kane looking at the Walt Whitman book. Then it shows him leaving. I told you that was the only time he was in here. I lied. He came in again, but I was in the back and Ivy served him. She was pleased to see him. When I came out of the back, they were laughing and joking. She felt comfortable with him because… she knew him.’
Brodie felt the adrenaline kicking in. ‘Knew him from where?’
‘I really shouldn’t say,’ Sylvia answered. ‘I’m scared. You have to understand that.’
‘Dr Kane is in a psychiatric unit,’ Brodie assured her. ‘He’s not going anywhere. You’re safe.’
Sylvia snapped her head at him. ‘Just like those other women were safe?’
‘Kane wasn’t behind bars then.’
She looked at him, the sudden flash of anger dissipating. ‘She was in therapy. She was one of his patients. Why do you think he came here? Because he knew Ivy.’
Brodie looked at Lucy before looking back at Sylvia. ‘What did he buy?’ Brodie asked.
Sylvia looked at them both before answering. ‘A Bible.’
‘I’m going to need her details,’ Brodie said. ‘Where she lives.’
Sylvia wrote an address down on a slip of paper and handed it over.
‘That’s the last known address I have for her.
When she didn’t come back, I went to check on her, but there was no sign of her.
One of her neighbours said he hadn’t seen her in a long time.
It was like she had disappeared off the face of the earth. ’
Brodie slipped it into his pocket. ‘You told us at the time that you didn’t know the other two people who were on the DVD, who were in at the same time as Kane. Is that true?’
‘Look, you have to understand, I’m a one-woman business. I didn’t want to attract any more people in here than was necessary, like the Revenue people.’
‘You lied about them,’ Lucy said.
‘Only about me not knowing them. Well, I didn’t know them, per se. They were regular customers. I knew them just to say hello to and to talk about books. I didn’t know anything about them personally.’
‘Who was the woman?’ Brodie asked.
‘She would come in every couple of weeks and buy a couple of books. But her name was Marianne. I heard her talking with Kane before she came up to the counter.’
‘What did she say? Can you remember?’ Lucy asked.
‘Nothing specific. He just said to her, that’s a good one.’
‘Do you remember the book she bought?’ Brodie said.
‘It was a cookbook. She told me she was having somebody round for the first time and she wasn’t a good cook, but she liked a few of the recipes in there, so she bought it.’
‘What about the man behind her?’ Lucy asked. ‘Do you know his name?’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘No, I swear. I never really spoke to him. He was quiet.’
‘Do you remember the book he bought that day?’ Brodie asked.
Sylvia nodded. ‘It was the other copy we had.’
‘The other copy of what?’
She was silent for a moment before answering. ‘Leaves of Grass.’