Callum pushed her latte across the sticky tablecloth, till it was in front of her. ‘Is it the Media, Detective Superintendent Ness, or the high heedjins from Tulliallan causing problems?’
‘You remember the swabs Cecelia took from under the taps at Ashlee Gossard’s house and the flat Ben, Brett, and Glen were doing up? Well our oh-so-wonderful labs came back with the results.’ Mother ladled sugar into her latte, thumping each spoonful in, as if she was punishing it. ‘Would you like to guess who our prime suspect now is?’
‘Lord Lucan.’ McAdams still had that grin plastered across his skeletal features. ‘No, wait: Anne Widdecombe. Oh, I know: J.R. Hartley! It was, wasn’t it?’
She thumped him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t be facetious.’ More sugar was thrown to its death. ‘According to the labs, Imhotep is sitting right here. At this very table.’
‘It’s Callum, isn’t it? I always thought his shifty little eyes were hiding something. You can tell by the way they’re all piggy and—’
She hit him again. ‘It’s you, you spanner.’
‘Oooooooh.’ Both of McAdams’ eyebrows made a break for the top of his head. ‘Now there’s a twist we didn’t see coming: the trusted old police officer is actually … dan-dan-daaaaa! A psycho killer! OK, so it’s a trope of genre, but who doesn’t love the classics?’
Mother stared at him. ‘You’re just all-the-time hilarious, aren’t you?’
‘I like to think I have a certain homespun charm, yes.’
‘Gah …’ She lumped in more sugar. ‘If I ever get my hands on the idiot who awarded our forensic-lab services to the lowest bidder, I’ll throttle them with their own innards.’ She took a sip of her latte and grimaced. Pushed it away and helped herself to a couple of Dotty’s chips instead. ‘They’re rerunning the tests again.’
‘I was definitely in the flat after we discovered Ben Harrington’s body in the bath. But I don’t think I’ve ever been to the Gossard house, have I?’
Callum joined the free-for-all on Dotty’s chips. Stuffing one in his mouth and chewing through the words, ‘I’ll bet it was the same idiot who cocked up the samples on my mother’s head.’
‘Oh, I can top that.’ McAdams licked a smear of tomato sauce from his fingertip. ‘Did you know that they IDed a strangulation victim as Wee Davey Roberts, last week? Didn’t seem to matter that Wee Davey is, last time I checked, a fifty-four-year-old man with an artificial leg, and the victim was a twenty-one-year-old woman with all her own limbs. They thought they’d got a DNA match and that was it.’
Mother snorted. ‘I heard one of their lab techs has come up as a positive match in eighteen murder cases. Keeps picking his nose when he’s running the samples and forgets to change his gloves.’
‘Well I heard they had our very own Constable MacGregor down for trying to batter DCI Reece Powel to death. And— Ow!’
Callum kicked him under the table again, for luck. ‘Serves you right.’
‘It’s a disaster.’ Mother flopped in her seat, head back, arms dangling. ‘All right, we go back to the plan: interview everyone at Strummuir Smokehouse till they squeak. Someone has to know something. Don’t they?’
Everyone looked away.
Rain clattered against the window.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’ McAdams thumped Mother on the back. ‘Look at you all sitting there with your faces like fizz. We should be celebrating!’
Nobody set off a party popper.
He shrugged. ‘All right, so whoever Monaghan was working with has slipped free to strike again. And yes: the labs couldn’t identify a breezeblock in a box of cornflakes. But we just saved Ashlee Gossard’s life! She’s alive because of us, and that’s worth celebrating.’
Still no party poppers.
‘Isn’t it?’
Dotty drained her tea and banged the mug down on the sticky checked tablecloth. Fixed them all with a hard gaze. ‘I’ll get some more chips.’
Callum looked down at the Mondeo keys nestling in his palm. ‘Are you sure?’
The road outside the Tartan Bunnet was packed with cars, parked with a studied disregard for the double-yellow lines on both sides. That was the trouble with police officers – no respect for the law. If they couldn’t get a parking spot at Division Headquarters, why not abandon their cars on the surrounding streets?
At the end of Doyle Lane, the ugly Victorian red-brick bulk of DHQ loomed over the surrounding sandstone buildings, like an angry drunk challenging them to start something.
Mother nodded. ‘Just don’t crash it. Or run anyone over. Nothing that’s going to cause me a backside full of paperwork.’
‘Thanks, Boss.’
‘I’m serious – don’t make me have to explain to Professional Standards why I let a suspended DC borrow a pool car.’
He pocketed the Mondeo’s keys. ‘If you need any help chasing anything down, unofficially, off the books, give me a call, OK?’
She inched back a little, staying in the shelter of the café doorway as the wind shifted, keeping out of the rain. ‘How did Andy seem to you? When you were searching the house, was he OK?’
Ah …
Callum licked his lips. ‘He gets out of breath all the time. He looks like death. And he’s developed a kind of sour funky smell. A bit like a cat that needs a bath?’
‘I’m worried about him.’
‘He blames himself for what happened to Watt.’
‘He’s skipping his chemotherapy treatments. He thinks I don’t know, but I didn’t climb out of a packet of Wotsits yesterday.’ Mother picked at the front of her fleece, pulling off little bobbly bits. ‘He turns every-thing into a big joke, but he’s dying, Callum. He’s dying and he’s scared and there’s nothing I can do about it.’
The door behind her swung open and Franklin squeezed into the doorway. ‘You ready?’
Callum nodded. ‘If you are.’
Mother reached out and took hold of his arm for a moment. ‘Don’t tell him I know. Please.’
Her cheek was soft and warm against Callum’s lips. ‘Our little secret.’
The kiss left her blushing. She mumbled something, turned, and headed back inside.
Franklin watched the café door close, then raised an eyebrow at him. ‘So now you’re trying to snog Mother? Just can’t keep it in your pants, can you?’
‘I can wait if you like?’ Granite houses slid past the Mondeo’s windows, stonework darkened to charcoal by the rain. ‘Not a problem. I’m not doing anything anyway.’
Franklin poked away at her mobile phone, not looking up. ‘I’ll get a lift back with Dotty. We’ll be hours.’
‘I’ve got a book to read, I’ll be fine. Be glad of the peace, to be honest. You know, after everything.’
‘Callum, we’ve got to interview everyone that works there all over again. Do you have any idea how long that’ll take? And you’ll be what, pining away in the car, waiting for me? Like a lovesick Labrador?’
Straight through at the roundabout. ‘Did it maybe occur to you that you’re not as irresistibly desirable as you think?’
‘Says the man who thought we “had a thing”.’
‘I’m just trying to be nice, OK?’ Up ahead, the traffic had slowed to a crawl, backed up behind a council lorry laying out yet more orange sodding cones for yet more sodding roadworks. He took a left at the next junction. Cutting through Castleview proper. ‘OK, you want the truth? I don’t want to go back to Dotty’s and sit in the dark, brooding about Alastair, and Leo McVey, and Elaine-and-Powel …’ The big granite houses gave way to brick tenements. ‘I don’t know what to do any more. I’ve not been on my own since I started seeing Elaine.’ Her name was bitter on his tongue. ‘I’ve not had a family since I was five years old. Everything’s changed. It’s all … It’s like someone’s cut the anchor free and all these big chunks of me are drifting away.’
Franklin looked up from her phone. ‘Oh, Callum …’ She reached across the
car and squeezed his leg. ‘Man up and grow a pair.’ Then went back to texting.
‘That’s the last time I open up to you.’
‘Good. Do us both a favour.’
He took a right at the lights. A couple of small tower blocks poked up from the surrounding houses. Gathered in a square.
Franklin put her phone down. Frowned out at the scenery. ‘I thought Strummuir was that way?’
‘It is. We’re just taking a tiny detour. Ten, fifteen minutes tops.’
‘Oh God, not this again. Why did I let you drive?’
He headed straight for the tower blocks. ‘I’m suspended, remember? I needed someone with me who can still arrest people.’
‘You never change, do you?’
The rows of brick tenements gave way to a semidetached council estate, centred on the quartet of tower blocks. And right in the middle of the blocks: some yellowing grass, a little play park, and a shopping centre that looked as if the apocalypse had come early and stayed for tea.
‘Ainsley Tyler Dugdale, forty-one, last known whereabouts: the Silver Lady strip club on Calder Road. Home address: fifteen B, Bowmore Avenue, Kingsmeath. Divisional have been looking for him since yesterday.’
‘So what are we doing here?’
Callum pointed through the windscreen. ‘That.’
A small, old-fashioned-looking pub sat at the corner of the shopping centre. Whitewashed walls and a neon ‘T’ in the window. Its name was painted in a wide strip of hoarding that ran the length of the building, ‘THE PEAR TREE’.
‘Dugdale’s favourite boozer. And if we’re lucky, the devious little sack of crap himself.’
‘We’re supposed to be finding Monaghan’s partner!’
Callum parked outside. ‘Dugdale battered a police officer and left him to die in the woods. Doesn’t matter if Poncy Powel deserved a kicking or not, he’s still one of our own.’ And besides, if they did Dugdale for the assault, Professional Standards would sod off and bother someone else for a change.
She sat there, face clenched. ‘Five minutes.’
‘Fifteen, tops.’ Callum climbed out into the rain, locked the car when Franklin joined him, then hurried across the car park and in through the Pear Tree’s front door.
Warmth wrapped its arms around him. The smell of beer, peanuts, and Far Eastern spices. It was as old-fashioned on the inside as it was on the out: bare wooden floor; little round tables; chairs, benches, and stools upholstered in red vinyl; hunting prints and landscapes on the walls; and above a crackling fireplace, an oil painting of a tree with a single golden pear nestled within its dark leaves.
About a dozen customers, most of them in their sixties, were gathered around the fire, playing dominos, eating curry, and drinking half-pints.
Callum wandered over to the bar.
The large lady behind it gave him a dimple-cheeked smile. ‘What can I get you, love?’
‘Looking for a friend of mine: Ainsley Dugdale. He been in?’
Her eyes flicked left for a tiny beat, towards a wooden door with ‘GENTS’ on it. ‘Dugdale?’ A frown. ‘Dugdale, Dugdale … No, doesn’t ring a bell, sorry.’
‘Big guy, bald, boxer’s nose. This is his regular.’
‘Can’t say I’ve ever seen him in here. Maybe you’re thinking of another pub? Try the Hare and Goblin on Wisdom Road.’ The smile got a bit more strained.
‘Right.’ A nod. ‘I’ll just nip to the bogs before I go.’
And the smile disappeared altogether. ‘Toilets are for customers only.’
‘Fine. I’ll take a can of coke. To go.’
‘You’re barred.’
‘Nice try.’ He turned and waved a hand at Franklin. ‘Shall we?’ He marched over and shoved the door to the gents open. Stepped inside.
Black and white tiles on the floor, the grout yellowed and greying. More white tiles on the wall, chipped and broken by the line of three sinks on the left. The sour sharp piddley smell reaching out from the urinals on the far wall. A pair of cubicles on the right.
Humming came from one of them: an old Donna Summer disco tune, from the sound of it.
Then some rattling and a grunt or two.
The sound of a zip being done up.
A toilet flushing.
And the door opened.
Dugdale had kitted himself out in jeans and a black hoodie – hood up, earbuds in, the white cables disappearing into the pocket at the front. His nose, chin and cheeks were a mass of purple and blue bruises, fading away to green and yellow. Willow Brown had obviously given him a serious kicking while he was lying unconscious on the pavement with a face full of pepper spray. But he still hummed along as he swaggered across to the sinks, throwing in a little hop-skip in time to the music.
Franklin nudged Callum. ‘Well?’
‘Let him wash his hands first. Be more hygienic.’
Another skip-hop-skip and Dugdale turned on the taps, swaying his hips and nodding his head.
Callum let him get as far as lathering up, before stepping right behind him. Reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.
A tiny high-pitched squeal broke through the humming and Dugdale spun around, eyes wide, mouth open. Then he saw Callum. Swore. And lunged.
Both soapy hands smashed into Callum’s chest, sending him careering back, crashing into a cubicle door. Arms flailing, feet skittering on the tiled floor, trying to stay upright.
Dugdale was off – barrelling into Franklin.
She bounced off the toilet wall and went sprawling while Dugdale disappeared back into the pub.
Callum hammered after him, jumping over her as she struggled to her hands and knees. Out.
The OAPs were on their feet. One of them grabbed a bottle of Beck’s by the neck and smashed its bottom against the fireplace – turning it into a glass dagger.
Dugdale battered out through the front door and Callum followed. Ducking as knives, forks, and dominos were hurled in his direction. Into the rain.
‘COME BACK HERE!’
But Dugdale was off, arms and legs pumping, head down.
Well, he was out of luck this time. Callum yanked out the car keys and plipped the Mondeo’s locks. Jumped in behind the wheel. Cranked the engine and whacked her into reverse, setting the tyres screeching on the wet tarmac. ‘Come on, come on, come on …’
Dugdale was fast, but not fast enough.
Any second now …
He jinked to the right, skidding onto a section of grass, leaping down the bank and onto a path.
Callum hauled the wheel hard over, hauled on the handbrake, and the car spun on its axis, facing the right way as it lurched over the edge and thumped down the grass and onto the path. Slithering and fishtailing as the tyres fought for purchase.
Dugdale risked a glance over his shoulder and his eyes widened again. Head back down.
Closer.
Closer.
Callum tightened his grip on the steering wheel. ‘You’re mine, sunshine!’
There was no way Dugdale could have heard, but he wheeched to the left – leaping over the waist-high chain-link fence that bordered the playground. Dodging the empty swings. Making for the other side.
Callum slammed on the Mondeo’s brakes and the back end slid, caught the chain-link and yanked the whole car to a sudden stop hard enough to set off the airbags. The white balloon punched into Callum’s face, forcing his head back, filling the car with the eye-scratching reek of spent fireworks. Leaving the air tasting of rotten eggs.
He coughed and spluttered his way out of the car. Stood in the rain and watched the tiny figure of Dugdale disappear into the distance – vanishing between two houses. And gone.
‘SODDING HELL!’
He limped around to the back of the car.
Most of the rear wing was gone, torn off and dangling on the end of a metal fencepost. What was left was gouged and tattered.
Yeah, Mother was going to kill him.
Franklin climbed out of the car, stared at the passenger-side wing then ducked her head back inside. ‘You’re right, Mother’s going to kill you.’
Behind her, Strummuir Smokehouse slumped in the rain, a long curl of white snaking up towards the heavy grey clouds.
Scraps of white dangled from the middle of the steering wheel and the dashboard above the glove compartment. Callum gripped one and yanked it free. Dropped it into the footwell. ‘Because today wasn’t bad enough, was it? No. Course it sodding wasn’t.’
‘Maybe you could get a garage to fix her up before Mother finds out? Weld on a new panel. Fit replacement airbags …?’
He let his head fall back against the rest. ‘If anything happens, if you find out who Monaghan’s killing partner was, let me know, OK?’
‘We’ll do our best.’ Then Franklin turned and headed in through the smokehouse doors, leaving Callum alone with the rain.
There was a figure in the office above the main entrance, partially silhouetted in the floor-to-ceiling windows, on the phone. Stupid 1930s haircut, both arms covered in tattoos – Star Wars down one side, X-Men down the other. Skinny jeans. Finn Noble, the smokehouse manager. What was it Watt had named him, Darth Wolverine? He raised his other hand and waved at Callum. Then turned and disappeared back into the room.
Idiot.
Oh, he looked all trendy now, but give it five years when the fashion had moved on to something less lumberjacky. What was he going to do with all those tattoos then?
Callum shook his head, turned the wheel, and steered the crippled Mondeo back towards town. A strange ticking clunk came from the back end now, the engine sounding a lot louder and more gravelly than it had.
He clicked on the radio to drown the noise out, getting a bland poppy number for his troubles.
‘Ooh baby, you know I need you; And I want you; And I’ll be true …’
Maybe Franklin was right – get the car to a mechanic and hope they could hide the damage before anyone else found out. Assuming no one had caught the accident on their mobile phone and uploaded it to YouTube already.
‘Together, we can be free, / We can make love, / Have a baby …’
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