Savage Night - Allan Guthrie [7]
"What did you say to the waiter?" he asked Smith.
"Never you mind." Smith tapped the book on the table. "To business."
"A phone book. Very kind of you to bring me a present. I'm afraid I don't have one for you."
"I really hate mouthy wankers like you." Smith flicked through the book. Opened it. He turned the book round to face Tommy. "Fifth name from the bottom. " Smith gestured with an outstretched palm. "Go on. Look at it."
Tommy played along. "Which page?"
Smith swivelled the book round. Looked at it. Swivelled it back again. "Left."
Tommy let his gaze travel up from the bottom. Counted five lines. Mr E McCracken. "Never heard of him."
"You will." Smith reached into his bag. Produced a pen. A pink marker. "Mark it." He handed Tommy the pen.
Tommy looked at the phone book. Looked at the pen. Looked at Smith. And drew a line through the name and address in Sleigh Gardens. The pen wasn't a marker, it was a highlighter.
"All the way along," Smith said.
Tommy shrugged. Whatever made the fool happy. He rubbed the nib over the rest of the line, highlighting the phone number too.
Smith fished around in his bag again, tongue poking through the ski mask as he concentrated, and surfaced with a notepad and a biro. He handed them to Tommy. "Write down the name and address, please."
"Why?"
"Cause I want you to remember them."
"I've got this." He showed Smith the telephone directory.
"Nope." Smith took it from him. "I've got it." He held it so Tommy could see the address. "Now write it down."
"What's the point of all this?" Smith didn't answer, so Tommy scribbled down McCracken's details. Handed the notepad back to Smith.
"That's yours," Smith said, bagging the phone book. "You've done well, Tommy. Don't lose that name and address. I'll be in touch."
Tommy could hardly wait.
Smith got up and left without another word. Tommy looked at the notepad, at the name and address that meant sweet fuck all to him.
He called over the waiter, the one whose ear Smith had whispered into. "The guy with the ski mask," Tommy said. "What did he say to you?"
"You don't know?" The waiter bent over. "He wasn't your friend?"
"Just some guy I was meeting for lunch."
The waiter looked at the table, repositioned the vase in the middle. He said, "You want to eat?"
"I'm not that hungry, thanks."
"More coffee?"
"Just tell me what he said."
The waiter clasped his hands together. "His face," he said. "He said it was horribly disfigured. He was the victim of an acid attack. The sight of it, he said, would put the other diners off their food."
A likely story.
Tommy nodded and when the waiter went away, ripped off the page from the notepad and stuck it in his pocket.
***
THE FOLLOWING DAY Tommy got another call.
Smith said, "Hope you still have that name and address." He didn't wait for an answer. "Buy a Scotsman and turn to page four."
For a while afterwards, Tommy pottered about on his home office computer, deliberately ignoring Smith's instructions. He wasn't going to buy a newspaper just because some skinny creep with a whiny voice and a cheap ski mask told him to. But after an hour or so, Tommy was fidgeting so much, and so unable to concentrate, that he rescued the crumpled piece of paper from his desk drawer. Not sure why, cause he hadn't forgotten the name. McCracken.
Tommy went down to the corner shop and bought a paper, resisting the urge to look at it until he was back in his office.
Page four had three stories, but the one his eye was drawn to first was the one Smith wanted him to see. It read:
KILLER ON THE LOOSE
Police said today that they had no clues as to the killer of Eric McCracken. The unmarried thirty-six-year-old was brutally murdered last night in Lochend Park as he jogged in the shadow of Easter Road football stadium. Mr McCracken, manager of the St Bernard's wing of the Meredith House Nursing Home on Parker Road West, was strangled to death with a length of clothesline left behind at the scene by the killer.
A police spokesman revealed