“Detective Sergeant!” Lila barked. “McBride is under arrest. I need two of you—Davies, Royston—to escort him downstairs immediately and confine him while I decide what to do.”
McBride pushed Andrew gently back. He looked at the floor. There was no reason, he knew, for his former teammates to do anything other than obey. He’d walked away from them, pursued a solitary path. Abandoned them… But after a long moment, Lenny Royston said, incredulity painting his Ormiston burr, “Your bairn’s been abducted, McBride?”
“Yes. He snatched her to punish me for trying to bust his Grassmarket op.”
“How long?”
How long? McBride fought the urge to close his eyes. Forever. Since Arthur’s Seat was live and blasting lava into the heavens. “Two nights. Three days.”
The silence that followed was not dead at all. McBride hadn’t heard it in a long, long time, and he got his head up to listen. Lenny was looking across at his partner, Davies, and Davies in his turn leaned forward to glance first at Andrew and then the others. This was the electric hush of a good team deciding—not what to do, but how to do it. Of widely disparate men drawing together, coming to agreement.
Because, apart from Lila, everybody in this room knew Grace. Things had been different with McBride back then. His colleagues had followed the progress of Libby’s pregnancy with the usual jokes and dire warnings. And when he’d brought the child in for the first time, a huge-eyed scrap in her white woollen blanket, every one of them had gathered around, even the tough bastards, awkward and grinning. “I need…” he began, and then his voice died.
A hand pressed the small of his back. Even through his thick coat, McBride felt the strength of it, the comfort. “We need to set up a sting,” Toby went on for him, and again McBride was aware of that group consensus, the ripple of energy as attention shifted and refocused. Something else too—the clicking of a door, although no one spared the newcomer a glance. “We think Carlyle will try to traffic Grace tonight. I will go in as a buyer with a better offer, try to get her out quietly that way.”
“What, just…buy her?”
That was Royston. Toby nodded and received an approving grunt. An economical lot, these Scots, although not in the way of their national reputation. They just liked to do their jobs as simply and directly as they could and with as little drama. “If I fail,” Toby continued, “we can’t risk leaving the child with him any longer. We need a team to monitor the body mic I’ll be wearing and another to keep surveillance all round the building. He’s holding her somewhere in the Black Cat club’s premises in Cowgate. If he or anyone else tries to leave with her—”
“Excuse me.”
McBride jumped. He saw his reflex echoed in a few bodies around the room: they’d almost forgotten Lila Stone. In that room of northern brogues, where Toby’s softly accented English blended too, her knife-blade vowels carved a chilly track for themselves. She was on her feet but looked ready to drop, as if the last recognisable sands of her world were running out.
“May I ask who the devil are you?”
Toby frowned. “I’m sorry, Superintendent? I believe we were introduced to each other at—”
“No. I mean who the devil are you to walk into my offices, take over my team and start to set out some half-baked plan for an operation I haven’t even sanctioned, let alone—”
A new voice rang out. Calm. Female. No, not new at all—utterly familiar. “Oh, now, Lila. I hate to disagree with you in public, but it’s not a half-baked plan. I think it’s quite a decent one myself.”
The echo of a thousand mornings here in this very room. Turning, McBride saw Royston, McKay, Davies, all of them—hearing it too, and with the same thoughts, the same surmise dawning. My God. Yes—there was Amanda Campbell, leaning on the wall by the whiteboard as if she’d never been gone. He blinked and rubbed a hand over his eyes. Superintendent Campbell, or ex, except that…
She was in uniform.
“Aye,” Campbell said, returning McBride’s openmouthed stare with a half-apologetic little shrug. “Assistant Chief Constable now, I’m afraid. I’m very sorry, Lila—they more or less drafted me, after this business with Ambassador Zvi.”
Lila gulped audibly. “I don’t… Ma’am, I don’t understand.”
“I know. I’ll speak to you privately in just a minute, once I’ve sorted out this matter of—”
“No.” Lila was shaking her head. “You have no business sorting out anything in here. This is my department.”
“Where you’ve been so busy kicking backsides, you probably haven’t had time to check your inbox and voice mails. Some mornings are like that around here. You’ve been suspended, Superintendent. Now do us both a favour and don’t make me go into details in front of this mob.”
For a moment McBride was afraid Lila would fall down in a fit. “You have no authority—” she began, then broke off, visibly remembering that ACC Campbell had. “This operation Leitner’s proposing—I’ve heard nothing about it from General Sharot. It hasn’t been sanctioned by Lothian and Borders either, as far as I know.”
“That’s right. As far as you know. But since you’ve been taken off duty, pending the outcome of General Sharot’s investigation, you have to consider the possibility that there are things your superiors may not wish to tell you at present.”
Lila’s mouth dropped open. Then she gathered herself and, with more composure than McBride would have given her credit for, surged through her surrounding officers and left the room.
Amanda watched her go. Her expression was almost regretful, as if she’d just witnessed the circus leave town. “There goes trouble,” she said thoughtfully. She turned to face her men. “If any of you enjoyed that, stop. She’s right. I am in charge now, and she has been suspended—but as for official sanction, you only have mine. If anyone here’s uncomfortable with that, he’s free to leave now.”
No one moved. McBride, breathing shallowly, vibrantly aware of Toby’s steady presence behind him, felt as if tides of time had closed over his head. He wanted to let them—to be back in that old world where his colleagues still liked him and Superintendent Campbell ruled Harle Street. Amanda looked utterly at home in her old place by the whiteboard. Her eyes were serene and determined. “Very well,” she said at length. “In that case I suggest we go out and find this bastard that’s taken my goddaughter.”
* * *
Gearing up for an op. McBride had forgotten how that felt. Not pulling on fancy-dress tartans, but Kevlar vests, and no longer in proud solitude, but as part of a unit whose acceptance had once given him equal pride. Dark had come down outside the bright Harle Street windows. The squad room was mutedly buzzing with voices and life—equipment being checked, strategies run through once, twice, a third time to be sure. Toby had gone to meet with General Sharot and get clearance for his part in the night’s activities. McBride, if he couldn’t be there at his shoulder in Sim Carlyle’s club, would do the next best thing and listen to every word and breath of him from the surveillance van. He went to join Amanda at the table where she was studying spread-out floor plans of the Black Cat’s premises. “You got hold of those fast.”
She nodded. “Guy at the Land Registry owes me a favour or two. Couriered them over on a bike.”
That was the difference, McBride thought, scanning the plans for himself. An officer like Campbell had men and women all over the city who owed her a favour or two, and not only that but they liked her enough to act fast when she called them in. Not looking at her, he said, “Is this permanent, then? The honour of your presence?”
“I don’t know.” She traced the line of a wall with one finger. “Whether it is or it isn’t, James, you’re going to have to accustom yourself. Bosses like Lila Stone—not Lila herself, I don’t think. She’s made the kind of mistake they don’t forgive—but her breed… They are the future for this police force. Not me.”
“Christ.”
“There’s a lot of good in Lila. People of her sort—the co
st-cutters, the politicians—will still be around when this scythe of a recession’s finally passed over us and gone. And so will their departments.” Amanda straightened and looked at him. “Part of Lila’s trouble was that she didn’t have a senior officer she could trust. She didn’t have the trust of her most senior DI.” McBride looked down. She didn’t damn well deserve it died on his lips. He’d hated her from day one, hadn’t he? Had never given her a chance. “God, James,” Amanda went on. “Was it because she’s a woman? You worked with me like a lamb for ten years.”
“Aye, but you’re—”
“What? Old-fashioned? A lesbian?” She was smiling at him a little, her narrow, clever mouth curling up at one corner. “Is that easier, for someone like you? I often did wonder.”
“Someone…someone like me?”
“Mm. Poor Libby. Poor you, if that’s the game you’ve had to play. Is it over now?”
“Amanda, I’ve…absolutely no idea what it is that you’re talking about.”
“Oh, right.” She nodded at him genially, then returned to her study of the maps. “Then you’ll no’ have noticed how grand of a shine that nice Israeli officer’s taken to you. And if you have, you’ll no’ care.”
McBride drew a breath, though with very little idea what he would do with it when it came out. His heart was thudding hard. Images flashed around the edges of his terror for Grace: Toby, a reflection in his kitchen window, and then a reality breathing in his arms. Toby waiting for him when he’d stumbled out of bed that morning, all lit up with the beautiful fires of his rage. McBride had thought only he in all the world could see that shine…
“Amanda,” he began, but got no further. The squad-room door opened wide. Campbell, McBride and all the other officers stopped what they were doing, and then after a small tense pause, a ripple of laughter went round. “Och, the pair of you,” Amanda said, her expression a mix of amusement and disgust. “I’d arrest you both on sight.”
McBride couldn’t even find a smile. It was too unsettling, to see Toby like this. His disguise—Andrew Barclay’s too, though McBride had never noticed him leave—was hardly flamboyant. Incredibly subtle, rather, and depending for more than half its effect on the way Toby held himself, the new set of his shoulders and his head. He was wearing a suit finely calculated to imitate expense and miss the mark. His hair was oiled and slicked back. He was so dark his five-o’clock shadow had come in with piratical vigour. He looked…sleazy.
And still McBride would have given his arm and a week’s pay to drag him off to bed. At this moment, in the middle of all this hell. What had Amanda said? “Someone like you.” Someone queer, then. Homosexual. He shoved his own old word for it out of his mind, and then his father’s stone-cold, heart-killing label.
Someone gay. It still wasn’t right, but it would do for McBride for now. It would do until better days. “Bloody hell, Toby,” he said in awe. “I’d have walked past you in the street.”
“And kept right on going, if you’d any sense,” Toby returned, a sudden smile restoring him. “And your young colleague—is he sufficiently vile for you too?”
McBride dragged his eyes off Toby. Andrew had on a similar uniform, except he’d transformed into the kind of flash young club lout McBride often found groaning and vomiting in the Harle Street holding cells of a Sunday morning. For the moment he was glancing around, too pleased with himself and his badness to carry it off, but when Toby gave him a tiny admonitory look, he dropped back into role. And now McBride did laugh—a snorting, almost painful rumble. “Aye. He’s horrendous. What the devil did you do to him?”
“Very little. This lovely suit and a lesson in personal deportment.” Toby turned to Campbell. “With your permission, ma’am. I will need immediate backup inside the club, and DS Barclay volunteered. He hasn’t been seen with DI McBride during the Carlyle investigation, and—”
“And I wanted to make it up to you, Jim,” Andrew interrupted him, blushing brick-red.
What was McBride meant to say to that, in front of the whole squad? Eyebrows were on the rise, none more expressively than ACC Campbell’s.
It didn’t matter. Not the audience, anyway. What mattered was the young man’s willingness to risk his life to rescue Grace. “There’s nothing to make up for,” McBride said quietly. “Nothing at all. But thank you, Andy.”
* * *
Almost eight o’clock. The Black Cat would be open. In another hour or so enough of the right type of customers would have gathered for Sim Carlyle to conduct his business discreetly. For Toby and Andrew to enter the premises without drawing attention too, and so Campbell’s men bided their time.
Behind a partition screen, McBride helped Toby take off his shirt. Once that was done, and the garment set aside on the desk, McBride picked up the wire spool the Harle Street technician had given him. Both he and Toby kept their attention rather intently fixed on the body mic as McBride placed it carefully just beneath Toby’s right collarbone. He tore two strips of tape off their roll and pressed them to Toby’s smooth skin, securing the wire. “There. That should do it. How’s your shoulder?”
“The muscles are seizing a bit now, but it’s all right. I had the dressings changed while I was off becoming Viktor Maralek.”
McBride nodded in approval. Yossi Maralek was real enough, and his shadowy tribe of cousins enough of a legend in the trafficking underworld to have a ring of truth if Sim Carlyle asked. “Who’s Andy going to be?”
“Oh, he’s a nameless nobody tonight.” McBride handed Toby his shirt and held it while he stiffly shrugged into it. “Much more than that to you, though, James. Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Much to my surprise, I do. I will later—after the op, when you’re safe home. But…it’s over. Okay?”
Toby watched him in silence for a moment, taking in this answer and McBride’s reasons for giving it. “Okay,” he said softly.
“Should I wire him up too?”
“No. We don’t really need it, and if things go wrong, it gives him plausible deniability. He can get away.”
But I want you to be able to get away. Where’s your deniability? McBride closed his lips tight on these words. He’d sent scores of men into danger, walked into it himself scores more. Anxious questions never helped. “Thanks,” he said. “He’s a good lad.”
Both of them glanced across the room. Andrew was standing in the window, his back turned, his head bowed thoughtfully. As they watched, he straightened a bit. “It’s snowing,” he said. “Properly this time. Had anyone else apart from me forgotten it’s Christmas Eve?”
A few of them had. Not the ones with kids—McBride saw Lenny and a couple of the others glance at their watches, surreptitiously hopeful. Not Amanda either, McBride was sure—she and Jenny always made a quiet, fervent thing of it. “I remember, Andy,” she said, laying aside the gun she was checking. “Make your good wishes to one another now, if you like—just in case it’s after midnight before we get done.”
McBride glanced out into the dark, where big white flakes were whipping past the streetlights. He knew what she meant. Say it now, in case you don’t come back at all. He nodded wryly at the gruff and offhand twenty-first-century blessings being tossed his way; threw back a few in kind. Then he turned to Toby. “Happy… Oh.”
Toby smiled. He hadn’t finished fastening his shirt. Even in his Maralek guise, to McBride he was such a perfect sight that he wanted to fall into his arms.
Toby held them out for him. Professional to his back teeth, he’d chosen the one spot in Lila’s glass office from which neither he nor McBride could be seen, though McBride only noticed this slowly, locked in his embrace: he was lost, would have seized him and kissed him on the Scott Monument if that was where they’d happened to be. “Ah, James,” Toby said to him unsteadily, “it’s last night of Chanukah too, if that makes you feel better. But it’s all just a festival of lights. Your city is a city of lights, and you’re the brightest of them. I’ll never forget what I found here.�
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Chapter Ten
The heart of the city was slowing. Patches of frenzied activity continued still, and would to the bitter end—shops along Princes Street holding wide their doors until ten for frantic last-minute shoppers; clubs like Carlyle’s that would pulsate into the small hours with garish life. Nevertheless McBride could feel it. As the surveillance van nosed through the crowds on the George IV Bridge and into the Cowgate’s network of closes and wynds, he knew that for every reveller out on the cobbles tonight, thousands of ordinary, tired men and women were going home. Closing themselves in with their families or their solitude. Starting the sweet, dumb, commercialised pantomime of Christmas with their kids.
“James?”
The van was slowing. McBride looked across to Campbell, sitting opposite him in its rear. In her council worker’s overalls and the high-vis vest, which would ironically make her invisible, she looked the part. She’d tucked her hair into a black woolly hat. “Grace will be all right, you know.”
McBride swallowed painfully. He knew he looked the part himself, in donkey jacket and vest. Maybe this was what he should have gone in for—patching up road surface from a council truck. Then the world—a tiny, boring world, but sacred and intact—would still be on its axis. “I thought I’d know too,” he said hoarsely. “Always did know in the past, if she’d hurt herself or anything was wrong. But now I can’t get any sense of her at all.”
“Doesn’t mean anything. Just hold on.”
Lenny Royston, sour faced and convincing at the wheel, pulled the van up just behind the plastic barricades where genuine roadworks had been going on. Amanda nodded in approval, and the two sound technicians they’d brought with them went to work, hitching up recording equipment and headsets. McBride and Campbell got out into the snow, leaving Lenny and his partner in the van’s front seats, beginning their surveillance. “This’ll do,” Campbell said, frowning critically into a hole in the tarmac. “McKay and Janice Dee have got the other exit.”
His for the Holidays Page 18