Darian was on the next train up to Whisper Hill, the carriage a mix of people silently annoyed with the others who were drunkenly loud. He was content to let the couple get ahead of him. It took fourteen minutes before the train stopped at Three O’clock Station in Whisper Hill and Darian got off. He walked out through the eastern exit of the sprawling station, each expansion adding a new architectural twist to the last stop on the city line, a glass and steel frontage on old brickwork on the east side of the tracks, a long, thin, white-panelled extension on the west and the back end of the building twice the height of the front.
There was a time, probably, when Whisper Hill would have been attractive. The hills, the narrow stretch of moor and then Loch Eriboll; who wouldn’t find that pretty on a rare day of summer, midges the only pollution? Now this area of the city was dominated by the large industrial docks built in the thirties around an inlet, and the ‘engineering marvel’ of Challaid International Airport built on top of Whisper Hill itself, the hilltop mostly levelled to accommodate it. No one in the last century has put the eyesore area on a postcard.
The lights up the steep hill shone bright, and Darian walked that way. Along Drummond Street, the long road that ran from the docks to the airport, the first half flat and the second a steep climb out of the tangle of concrete and up the heather-clad hillside. Darian turned right before he reached the bottom of the hill to walk down Gemmell Road, a narrow street with ugly brown three-storey flats on each side. This was low-cost housing built for people working the docks in the thirties and forties. Short-term housing for temporary residents. It was the sort of area, buildings tightly packed together, a squash of inhabitants with a high turnover of tenants, in which a person with secrets could live a life unnoticed.
Darian knew he was looking for the second building on the left; he had spent time on Gemmell Road already, and went in through the front door and up the stairs to the first floor. There was no need to creep around now; they would have been inside the man’s flat for more than five minutes.
Darian pictured them, kissing intensely, hurried, all that energy bottled up since meeting at the party cracking the glass with its intensity now.
Tension racing wild as soon as it was let off the chain.
Clothes being pulled off as they moved into the bedroom, onto the bed.
The girl underneath, that was the pattern.
The man licking and then biting, the girl getting scared as he forced her to roll over.
She would try to push him off, slap him, and he would ignore her.
When she moved too much for him, made his mouth’s work too difficult, that was when he would reach for the knife, that’s when he would want blood.
Darian stood outside the front door, eyes closed, trying to calculate the time that pattern would take to play out. There was a scream from inside, quickly muffled. Darian took a step back and kicked, aiming for the lock of the front door, knowing how cheap and feeble such fixtures were. It was the smash and grab burglar routine; kick, damage, repeat, the same methodical impact taking three kicks before the door cracked open. Darian was into the corridor and pushed open a door to find a bathroom, pushed open the next one to find his target.
A lamp was on beside the bed, showing the walls painted a dark blue, the bedside cabinet and a wardrobe opposite, no other furniture. The girl with the black bob was sitting up on the pillows, her eyes wide, a single drop of blood tickling down her left breast. The man, Darian knew his real name was Ash Lucas, whatever he was telling the girls, was standing at the foot of the bed, naked and excited. He had a large silver knife with a serrated edge in his hand and he spun to face the door when Darian walked in.
It took a glance for him to see it all, to understand that the pattern was indeed being repeated. Not pausing because delay gave the knife an advantage, Darian took a step towards Lucas and swung hard with his right fist, aiming accurately for the bridge of the nose. He hit the smaller man hard but he didn’t hear the crack he was hoping for. The tactic was to hurt the bastard, and fast. Lucas stumbled backward, gripped the knife harder and reeled forward to his front foot to try to make a thrust at Darian. A second punch caught Lucas around the left eye, Darian’s longer arm jabbing over the knife before he danced a step away.
That punch hurt both of them, Darian’s index finger cracking, but he didn’t show it, didn’t react to pain in a fight. Lucas dropped sideways onto the bed. Darian took aim, his boot this time, the girl shouting as Darian stamped down on what we’ll chastely call the man’s excitement, scuffing down the skin. Lucas opened his mouth and instead of screaming he gasped loudly for breath as his eyes bulged, dropping the knife onto the floor. Darian picked it up and pointed it at Lucas.
He said quietly, ‘Got you, you piece of shit.’
He was about to say something reassuring to the girl when she bolted across the bed and out of the room, scooping up enough of her clothes in a bundle to cover herself as she ran down the hallway, struggling to dress as she hopped and stumbled out through the broken front door.
Darian shouted, ‘Hey.’
She didn’t come back and he didn’t chase, couldn’t leave Lucas unguarded. Another punch, this one to make sure Lucas didn’t kid himself by thinking he had the same freedom to run his victim did. Unlikely that he could have moved fast anyway, hunched over and crying quietly as he was, hissing through his teeth. Darian took his mobile from his pocket and scrolled down through his contacts. He knew the nearest station was Dockside, and he called his contact there.
3
HIS CONTACT CAME round in minutes in a police car with another uniformed officer. They used to say that all the toughest cops in Challaid were based at Dockside station because Whisper Hill was by far the shittiest area, populated by people who saw violence as another form of exercise. It might not be as brutal now as it was in more casually violent times gone by, but the Hill remained the home of the darkest nights in town.
It was two reassuringly large coppers who stood in the bedroom doorway of the flat, looking at Darian standing over the prisoner. Darian’s contact was PC Vincent Reno, a barrel-chested bruiser in his thirties and the sort of honest rogue who made the ideal friend in the force. Vinny had a wide, smiling face, pale skin prone to flushing red when he was talking energetically as usual, and he looked like he’d been born in the uniform. Darian didn’t know the other cop, he was very young and quite tall, narrower than Vinny, and looked like he’d borrowed his uniform from his father to play dress up.
Vinny was looking down at Lucas, relishing his discomfort, pleased to see the smudge of blood under his nose mingling with tears. He looked at Darian and said, ‘So this is how Darian Ross spends his Friday nights, is it?’
‘Aye, very good. There was a wee girl with no clothes on as well, but she did a runner.’
‘Happen to you a lot, does it?’
Darian gave him the classic don’t-push-it-too-far-pal look, and Vinny knew him just well enough to take the hint. Knew him enough to know this was a mixed blessing. Darian had no business chasing after this now-naked bastard, not legally, but Vinny was among a group of coppers who knew exactly what sort of arsehole Ash Lucas was, what he had been getting up to and getting away with. He’d take any chance to put a stop to it, even a bloody awkward one.
Vinny said, ‘Right, get some clothes on you; I’m not looking at that ugly wee willy of yours all night. We’ll take you for a drive to the station.’
Lucas looked up at him through teary eyes and, with spit on his lips, said, ‘Fuck you, I need to go to the hospital.’
Vinny smiled and said, ‘That’s not really for you to judge, that’s for me to judge. They won’t have much room for you at A&E in the Machaon on a Friday night anyway, better off trusting yourself to doctor professor Reno. That’s me, by the way.’
Lucas groaned a lot as the younger cop threw a random selection of clothes at him to put on and Darian and Vinny stood in the doorway and watched. Vinny wasn’t gentle as he led Lucas down
the stairs and out to the police car. Challaid cops seldom are. It was a short drive, nobody speaking a word in the car on the way.
Whisper Hill rattled past them, gloomy and menacing where the high buildings faded above the lights, figures walking through a welcoming night in search of easily found fun or fleeing from the amusements of others. Countless stories that would never be told. They went down past Three O’clock Station and left onto Docklands Road. It was a long street filled with large, irregular buildings, on one side the backs of the huge warehouses whose fronts looked onto the dock itself and on the other a line of large buildings intended to serve shipping in other ways; among them the much-needed police station. They drove up the side of the whitewashed block and round to the walled car park at the back.
Vinny led Lucas by a well-gripped arm to be booked in, shouting happily to the sergeant at the desk, ‘Ash Lucas, assault and attempted rape. Suffered a few cuts and bruises to the face, but I believe most of the damage was done to the, uh, front of his rear end. He’ll live, just at a higher pitch.’
Before the smirking sergeant responded the young cop, still remaining nameless, put Darian into an interview room to await interrogation. If the young cop looked nervous it was because he knew this might turn out to be uncomfortable for Darian. They all knew who he was, knew who his father was, and they knew what Darian was doing for a living.
He sat in the small, windowless room, just the table and two chairs on each side of it, and waited for eight minutes. He ran his finger along the ridge in the light blue table top where someone had tried to gouge something – likely a name because people are stupid enough to do that – on it but had stopped before they’d finished an identifiable letter, maybe a p or B, presumably after being caught.
The detective who came into the room introduced herself as DC Angela Vicario. He didn’t need the name to see her ancestors had sailed across from one of the Caledonian countries, but her accent was purest Challaid so she was a few generations rooted. The young PC came in and sat silently next to her, but she didn’t bother to introduce him either. Poor bugger seemed doomed to never get a namecheck. That told Darian this wasn’t going to be a formal interview with a witness but a casual chat among people who could help each other out. He’d never met her, she looked too young to have worked with his father before things went sour, so he had no idea what her approach would be.
DC Vicario had long dark hair, tied back, black eyes and a large mouth that smiled easily at him. The Hispanic look was quickly overwhelmed by the Challaid accent when she said, ‘I’m not sure I should thank you for a gift like Mr Lucas, like a cat bringing a half-eaten mouse to my door.’
‘It’s the thought that counts, and I thought getting him off the streets was a good idea.’
‘Why don’t you start by telling me how you ended up in his flat, booting him in the unmentionables?’
‘I was at a party in Bakers Moor, house party. I noticed him there with a girl, remembered that the company I work for had been hired to track him down regarding money he owes. He and the girl left the party together and I went after him.’
‘All the way to his flat?’
‘All the way.’
‘You didn’t manage to catch him up between a party in Bakers Moor and his flat on Gemmell Road, protect the girl before the attack began? Must have taken a series of remarkable quirks to prevent you, falling down open manhole covers, shoelaces tied together, that sort of thing. Did you take the train or did you decide it was such a nice evening you would walk?’
‘Him and the girl must have been on the train ahead of mine.’
‘I see. So you got to the flat...?’
‘I got to the flat and I heard the girl shout as I reached the front door. I didn’t know what to do, call you guys and wait or try to help on my own, but I decided I should try to help. I kicked open the door and went in, stopped him from attacking her with a knife. Then I called you.’
DC Vicario nodded and smiled again. ‘Could you identify the girl if we find her?’
‘I think so. Young, mid-to late teens I would guess, black hair in a short bob. I’d know her if I saw her. The party was on Haugen Road, the flats on the left just where the road straightens on the way up. Someone there should be able to identify her.’
‘And you just happened to be at the same party? What are the odds?’
‘You never know your luck.’
‘Are you still working as a private detective with Sholto Douglas?’
‘We’re a research company, not private detectives.’
‘Right, because private detectives have a long set of rules they have to operate by, like not kicking in doors, stamping on cocks and arresting sexual assault suspects. Research companies have a little more leeway.’
‘Douglas Independent Research, down on Cage Street in Bank, that’s us.’
She looked like she was enjoying this now, the two of them batting back and forth and ignoring the young PC beside her. She said, ‘So you have someone hunting Lucas for money?’
‘We were asked to research his whereabouts, if he had left the city. Just happened to spot him at the party and I’m glad I did.’
‘I’m glad you did, too. I’m sure you’ll be called to give evidence, probably be interviewed a few times more before then, but you can go.’
Darian got up and walked out the way he had been led in, to the car park at the back. Vinny was leaning against the wall just outside the door, smoking a cigarette, a San Jose by the smell of it. He dropped it on the ground and crushed it under his boot, reached into his pocket and took out a packet of mints.
Darian said, ‘Last time I spoke to you you’d quit smoking.’
‘Last time you spoke to me all was quiet on the western front.’
His ex-wife lived over on the west side of the loch, in case that comment needs some explanation.
Darian said, ‘You see much of the boy?’
‘Every weekend, we all get on all right, it isn’t as bad as all that. I wouldn’t weep if someone threw her in the loch, but... You need a lift up to the train station?’
‘Thanks. You need to wait for your ten-year-old pal?’
They had started walking across to the police car they’d arrived in, a Volvo that was probably the most expensive thing anyone had ever trusted Vinny with. ‘Nah, I’ll run you up the road and come back. He doesn’t need to work anyway, that one, he’s a Sutherland.’
‘Not an actual one?’
‘An actual fully functioning one of the bastards, and not some distant wee branch at the bottom of the family tree either, mainline. Wanted to be a cop instead of a banker, whizzed through training and into the force, got sent here.’
‘You’re pulling the piss out of me. A Sutherland and they sent him to Dockside.’
‘I reckon it’s what the family wanted, put him somewhere they think is the arsehole of humanity, hope it scares some sense into him and he goes screaming back to the family bosom. The kid’s all right, he’ll stick it out.’
‘Won’t be too hard if he’s working next to you with your effort avoidance techniques.’
Vinny, aghast, said, ‘Are you insinuating I don’t work hard? Do you remember that gathering of wee fascist fuckwits with goofy haircuts they had and only six people showed up? Do you know how hard I had to work to come up with an excuse to belt the leader of that rabble? Don’t tell me I don’t make an effort.’
Darian said, ‘You smacked him? Won’t that get you another complaint?’
‘Oh sure, people like him are always the whiniest, and the disciplinary panel will file it straight into the shredder. We’re getting more and more of those pricks crawling out of the internet and into daylight, bunch of half-witted, shrieking virgins. Let me tell you something, Darian, punching a fascist in the face will ever be prosecuted in this city.’
He was right. Our city lost almost a third of its young adult males in the Second World War, and on top of Stac Voror we built a tower that can be seen from every
corner of Challaid as a constant reminder. Out beyond the mouth of the loch, a few miles to the east, you can still see the metal mast of the Isobel, a destroyer docked in Challaid during the war and sunk by a German U-boat as it left with two hundred and six men lost, the ship wedged in the rocks underwater with the radio mast breaking the surface, a maritime grave untouched by man and left to nature, a reminder of the danger of worshipping power and identity more than the rights of the people. Many of the young men who fought in the war came back to a broken city, an economy held together by the women they’d left behind, and few jobs available to them, so a lot were fast-tracked into the police service, itself a struggling mess at the time. They could easily have slipped the other way and fallen in love with the uniform, seeking to protect those who aggrandised their power, but instead turned their violent power against those who tried. You can accuse, accurately, the woefully corrupt Challaid Police Force of many, many, many indiscretions, but forgetting their history is not one of them.
Vinny dropped him in a no parking zone outside Three O’clock Station and Darian rode the train down to Bank. It was an eight-minute walk up Fàrdach Road to his flat on the corner with Havurn Road. He was moving slowly, full of himself after what he considered a good night’s work. Fàrdach Road is on the edge of the Bank district, which is the city centre and full of old-money businesses and pubs, clubs and venues, but this little knot of residential buildings was usually peaceful.
It was an expensive place to live, even a flat as small as Darian’s, and it was unusual that a young man on his own could afford to buy there. The flats were old and sturdy, all well-maintained three-storey, sandstone blocks with large bay windows and ornate black railings out the front. Darian was able to afford his place because of the ugly way his family fell apart, but more on that later.
In the Cage Where Your Saviours Hide Page 2