“Detective Inspector? I need your report, please.”
McBride shook himself. His skull was thumping, not just with the beating he’d received, but a good Cowgate hangover too. He made an effort. “I was working the Carlyle case down at the Grassmarket. Playing poker with a bunch of Fitz Maguire’s mates. One of the bastards made me.”
“Made you?” Irritably McBride waited for her to quit pretending she didn’t know the term. “You were recognised? Your cover broke?”
“That’s right, Lila.”
A grey morning silence descended. Through Stone’s welcomingly inched-open door, McBride heard laughter, and the rattle and grind of the vending machine. Andy, getting his early fix of tea. Chiming through Andy’s rich Lowland baritone, the voice of the young female officer on transfer from Glasgow. A smart, good-natured lass. Just Andy’s usual type.
“James, you’re one of our finest undercover officers. Please explain to me how you allowed a crony of Fitz Maguire’s to destroy four weeks of man-hours.”
They were my hours. I’m the bloody man; don’t make it sound like I let down the whole Lothian and Borders. But McBride knew he had. His truculence was a frail shield against crippling shame. He clenched his fists in his lap. Sim Carlyle was an evil sod who needed to be stopped. McBride had had a chance and let it go. “I’m sorry, Superintendent,” he said sincerely. “It happened because I was too drunk to notice Malcolm Wilkes in the Red Bottle. I buggered it up.”
“Yes, you did.” Stone opened a file. She sounded less grim—almost cheerful, as if his confession had been all she wanted. “It’s not the first time either, is it?”
McBride blinked. He rather thought it was—or at any rate the first she could know about. Sure, a couple of times Andy’d had to pick up a bit of slack for him, come in and do paperwork McBride had been in no state to handle, loan him a hundred or so to cover a poker debt until he got paid. Still, he didn’t feel like agreeing with her. He opened his mouth to argue, but she was continuing, thoughtfully, running a finger down a page. “You’ve been a marvellous officer, haven’t you, James? One of our best. A consistent clear-up rate way above average for all the years you’ve been with us, though—” she paused and gave McBride a little smile he supposed was meant to be conspiratorial, “—I think we’ll agree my predecessor let you get away with a lot.”
Her predecessor. Amanda Campbell, superintendent, retired. McBride was glad Stone hadn’t mentioned her name, because the day Amanda had announced her intentions to quit and spend her late fifties with her other half, Jennifer, was still painfully fresh in his mind. No open-door policy for Amanda. No first names exchanged—not until you’d worked with her at least ten years. She’d drawn lines of authority no one had ever even thought of crossing. She had dealt with things as a lesbian copper in 1970s Edinburgh that would make Lila’s bleached hair stand on end.
Amanda had been McBride’s friend. “Lila,” he said wearily. “My head hurts, and I’d like to change out of the clothes I got mugged in last night. Do you mind if I ask what we’re talking about here?”
“Not at all. I’m glad you did. I’d have had to bring it up soon anyway. James, can you tell me whether all the drinking you do is necessary to your undercover work? Or do you do it these days because you can’t stop?”
McBride stared at her. She had a pair of cold steel balls on her; he’d give her that. “I beg your pardon?”
“It pains me to say this. Your record is exemplary, but it won’t protect you forever. And it’s your safety I’m worried about—yours and that of anyone who has to work with you. How old are you now?”
“Why don’t you tell me, since that’s my personnel file you’re playing about with there?”
Stone’s eyes glinted behind her reactolight glasses. It was no way to speak to his superior. He wished she’d tell him so. But fear ran under her assertiveness in all his dealings with her, inspiring in him the desire to run rings around her, but also a kind of embarrassed pity. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, ma’am. I turned forty last August. And…as far as the other thing goes, I do what I have to, to get my job done.”
“That’s what concerns me. This time it didn’t get the job done, did it?” She picked up another file, much slimmer than the bible containing the misdeeds of James McBride for the past fifteen years. “I’m afraid I have to tell you, you’ve been under observation. We’ve let you run about after Sim Carlyle, but it’s been a kind of a test, a last chance. And you’ve failed.”
McBride watched the grey carpet tiles at his feet. He wasn’t really there in Stone’s office anymore. He was one tough week away, at a Christmas party, watching his cheery, girl-chasing partner transform into the man who would suck him off in the locker room. He was back in attendance, a wondering ghost, at their few encounters since. Awkward, unconvincing. Andy always seeing to him, reluctant to be touched in return. “Superintendent,” he said dryly, a great arid desert opening up all around him. “Can I please ask you who we is?”
“You can, but it’s irrelevant. A wrong focus. I’ve had the cooperation of the department, shall we say. The point is that you need help. And you need to come in off the streets.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t contemplate disciplinary action against you at present, but that’s conditional upon your accepting reassignment. I’m handing Sim Carlyle over to another team, and you…” She peered at him, half eagle, half frightened rabbit, over the top of her glasses. “Two things, James. First you help look after Ambassador Binyamin Zvi when he arrives tomorrow. He’s a fire-breathing Zionist, so even if it’s not street work, it should be plenty dangerous for you.”
“Zvi? The Israeli guy coming in for the Freemason’s Hall summit?” McBride resisted the urge to hang on to the edge of his chair. He felt as if he were falling. “That’s a constable’s job. Babysitting!”
“I’m not finished. Second…” She extracted a thin sheaf of papers from what McBride assumed was his personal investigative file. He stared in disbelief. The first sheet was a flyer—one he’d seen every day on notice boards around the building. Counselling services, for coppers who couldn’t cope anymore. And who shouldn’t have been coppers in the first place, McBride had always privately added, marching past the boards about his business. “Second you will enter the therapy programmes being run for officers addicted to alcohol and gambling. These aren’t suggestions, Detective Inspector. They’re what you need to do to keep your job.”
* * *
McBride made a careful track down the corridor to his office. His knee had been efficiently strapped up, and he could more or less put weight on it. If he reached out unobtrusively to the wall from time to time, he thought he would look almost normal. Inconspicuous, anyway, which was all he wanted.
He pushed open his door and went in. There was the same scene he had left the night before: an ordered explosion of files, in which he could always find whatever he wanted, even if nobody else could, a selection of Grace’s artwork ranging from the finger-paint to fairy-princess stages, photos of the unprepossessing brat—poor mite, she took after him—at the zoo, the Waxworks (grinning beside their Christ-awful effigy of Michael Jackson) and atop Arthur’s Seat. There were the mummified remains of the houseplants Libby used to send in with him from her horticultural business. Everything was as he’d left it. The utterly alien light in which he was seeing it must therefore mean the transformation was in him.
McBride slumped into the chair behind his desk. He resisted the urge to sink his face into his hands. The room’s privacy was notional only: since Stone had ordered the HQ refit, walls had turned into glass panels, and each inward-facing office was fully visible from the others. The panels were equipped with blinds, but no one ever wanted to pull them down. Might as well advertise the fact you were beating up a witness or pinching the teaboy’s bum. No, you sat up straight, kept your nose clean and made sure you had nothing to hide.
Well, fuck that. Deliberately McBride took hold of t
he counselling flyer and information sheets, pinched their top edges between his fingers and thumbs and ripped them in two, top to bottom. Then he carefully lined up the halves and tore the sheets into quarters, then eighths. Beyond that, the paper resisted him, so he let the bits fall, a festive wee snowstorm for anyone caring to watch.
He tried to take in what had happened. It was bloody serious, he knew. Soon he would be devastated. But something about the end of his fight with Lila Stone brought to mind how last night’s battle with Maguire and his mob had concluded. He’d been getting beaten to shit, hadn’t he? Temper and basic karate had only carried him so far. Down on the Usher Close cobbles, a boot driving into his gut. Others poised, ready for his face and his groin. Then…it had stopped. At the time McBride had been too sick to register the suddenness with which it had all gone away. He remembered now. He also remembered Fitzy’s last words, flung back at him like a well-aimed gobbet of spit: “Watch yersel’, copper! Ye’re in deeper waters than ye know. Next time yer troubles might follow ye home!”
A cold grey fear touched McBride. Home meant the shabby flat where he had lived, or camped out, for the past year, not the nice little semi in Corstophine where Libby was bringing up their kid.
Then, if he had been too drunk to remember Malcolm Wilkes, what else might McBride have forgotten? And why had Wilkie and Fitz Maguire run?
He lurched to his feet. There was Andy Barclay, still passing the time of day with the new female transfer. What was she called? Janice, wasn’t it? McBride studied the pair of them. They were almost comical, almost a bloody cliché. Andy, tall and handsome, gesturing around, displaying his kingdom; Janice smiling up at him, all soft hair and curves. Adam and Eve at the watercooler. An odd pain passed through McBride. He had never been in any danger of losing his heart to his partner, but what the hell had made him think for one second Andy could ever feel for him the way he did for even this most casual female acquaintance?
Time for the truth. The fragile glass walls hardly rendered it necessary, but if anyone deserved a short, sharp shout… McBride swung his door open wide. “Andy!” he barked and saw with satisfaction that the young man left a good inch of clear air beneath his soles.
* * *
“Where were you, then?”
Andrew halted en route to his accustomed chair. After the initial yell, McBride had gestured him into his office courteously enough. “Where was… When, sir?”
Back to sir, then. McBride, too stiff to make it to his seat, settled on the edge of the desk. Sir was for transparent working days and glass panels. Andrew, obedient to Stone’s preferred office policy, had left the door open behind him. “Close that,” McBride told him genially. “While you’re on, pull the blinds down.”
“Um…the blinds?”
“My God, is there an echo in here? Yes, Andy. The blinds and the door. Then come and sit down.” McBride waited until his partner had gingerly obeyed. No secrets in Harle Street, except the ones Lila Stone wanted kept herself. “Where were you last night? Around half twelve, is when I’m interested in. Just after I’d got duffed in by Fitz Maguire and three of his lads.”
“Yeah, I…I heard. I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“You heard?” McBride ran his hands through his hair. His fingers caught: there was still blood in it. “Right. Yes, I’m okay. A Grassmarket hooker gave me the cab fare to hospital. Tell me, laddie…” He paused, waiting until Andrew’s attention was fixed on him with painful intensity. “Tell me. I know things have been weird with us for the past week or so. But…have I got something enormously wrong here? Have you and me not been friends?”
“What?” Andrew almost fell off his chair. McBride almost took pity on him. He’d come in with a mask of smiling bravado, but that had evaporated, the face behind it pale and dismayed. “No, sir! I mean, of course we have. You’ve been…” He tailed off, as if formulating the thought was making it freshly true for him. “You’ve been a great boss. The best.”
“Then…Andy, why, for the love of God, have you let that little tin-pot dictator pull your strings like this? She set you to watch me, didn’t she?”
Andrew swallowed. “She told you?”
“No. You’re telling me. And that’s good, because if you lie to me now, we really are screwed. Why?”
“She’s been worried about you. So have I. You must know things have been getting out of control.”
“Nice. Also bullshit. Come on! You’re better than this. More bloody honest, anyway. What did she do to you?”
Releasing an explosive sigh, Andrew leaned forward. He thrust back his fringe. McBride wondered if he recognised in himself the signs of a suspect about to crack under interrogation: certainly McBride had taught him well enough what to look out for. “Jesus. You don’t know what she’s like.”
“I bloody do, you know.”
“First of all she said she was lining me up for promotion. I’ve been waiting ages, James. And my mam needs private nursing now, not that shitty council place.”
“I know she does. I’ve been recommending you—not because of that. Because you deserve it.”
“Don’t,” Andrew said bitterly. “I don’t deserve anything. I fell for it. She told me you were going down, and you were likely to take me with you. That you were old-school police, and I was the new breed, part of an elite task force she’s putting together. Then she said I’d be doing you a favour by keeping an eye on you—saving your life, maybe.”
“Right. So last night you…”
“I followed you down to the Grassmarket. She’d told me not to interfere, just keep tabs on you. And when you got jumped by Maguire’s lot, I…”
“You let it happen.”
“Yeah. I thought—anything that scared you off or took you out of action for a bit had to be good for you. Then it looked like they were gonna kill you, so me and Janice scared them off.”
“Oh, great. Janice too.”
“Yes. Stone’s had us working together. She’s…”
“Another recruit for Team Lila. All right.” Wearily McBride stood. Against the wall there was another desk chair. He took some files and a dead plant off it and sat down, wheeling it a yard or so across the floor so he was face-to-face with his partner. Almost knee to knee. “I understand all this, Andy, just about. But what the fuck made you think it was a good idea for us to start shagging?” Andrew, who had gone through a few more shades of pale as McBride closed in, actually squirmed in his seat. “I assume that was under orders too. You poor bastard. It must have been killing you.”
“Oh God.” Andrew pressed a hand to his mouth and looked at McBride unhappily.
“Lila—Superintendent Stone, I mean—she told me to get closer to you. I told her we were close. So she asked me what I really knew about you, and I realised there wasn’t all that much.”
“What? I’ve told you as much as—”
“As you ever tell anyone. Right. But I’ve been your partner, James. You do know the first I heard about your bloody divorce was when you asked me to pick you up at your new flat instead of in Corstophine? Anyway, Stone wanted to give the Sim Carlyle job to somebody else, and she reckoned you were holding back in your reports.”
“Bloody hell. Don’t tell me the pillow talk was her idea.”
“No. It was…it was mine. I remembered that story you told me about Lowrie and how much you missed having a friend like that, and…”
McBride froze. He felt blood drain from the surface of his skin. Fitz Maguire’s boot had not taken the air so thoroughly out of his lungs. “Lowrie?” he echoed after a few seconds. “What the hell do you know about Lowrie?”
“Oh Christ, James—what you told me! You were leathered, but not so bad I thought you wouldn’t remember. About how he came to your father’s Sunday Bible class, and the pair of you used to sneak off into the hills afterwards and—”
“Barclay. Shut up.”
“Sorry, sir. I just—”
“No. I really mean it. Shut up.” McBride pushe
d his chair back. That got him near to the door, near enough that he could reach to pull it open. That was good. He wasn’t sure he could stand. “Get out of here. Please.” From the corner of his eye he saw Andrew get to his feet. He didn’t look at him—remained where he was, one hand on the door, waiting.
Andrew came to a halt beside him. His hand twitched, as if he wanted to reach out to McBride’s shoulder. “It wasn’t killing me,” he said quietly. “What we did. It was fake, but…it was no bloody hardship.”
“Andrew, get out of this room now. Or something very bad is going to happen.”
Chapter Three
A life turned upside down, and a new world to go with it. Stepping into the brilliant December morning outside Harle Street, McBride tried to link himself with the flash, arrogant bastard who had swung his way out of the Red Bottle the night before. But he couldn’t make the connection. He skidded on the ice outside the HQ building. Same feet—same shoes and socks too, unfortunately—as had found such firm grip on the wynds.
McBride would have said he hadn’t thought about Lowrie in years. Lowrie was a flicker of sunlight, a bright stretch of barley-field freedom in a childhood otherwise narrow and dark. He’d appeared in Pastor McBride’s congregation, a pair of defiant blue eyes, dragged there in the wake of his devout family. He and James had got away with edifying nature walks in the hills on those Sunday afternoons, almost a half year’s worth, until the pastor’s gamekeeping neighbour had caught them through the sights of his rifle, rolling naked together on the banks of Loch Beithe. The pastor didn’t believe in corporal punishment, but his son had wished fervently, in the silent months of ostracism that had followed, that the old man would just lash the hide off him and get it out of his system.
Why the hell would McBride have wanted to get pissed and spill his guts to Andrew about that?
Carefully he picked his way down the long slope that led from Harle Street into the city centre. Stone had suggested—by internal email, as if seeing him again would have killed her—he take the day off. McBride had no intention of doing that, but he’d be glad to go home long enough to shower and change. One benefit of his new life was being able to walk to and from work, though he’d scarcely thought about that when he’d left the house in Corstophine, just answering the first accommodation ad he’d seen in the Lothian Gazette. No, he wasn’t about to sit around his three-room flat and contemplate the shadow that remained of the man he’d been the night before. Or think about Lowrie, for that matter, or Andrew Barclay or an alcohol habit that had escalated to fits of amnesia. And he wasn’t about to give up the Sim Carlyle case. Washed, dressed and with a pint of coffee inside him, he would not be such a pushover for Lila Stone.
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