An old woman clumped past the car, dragging a big fat Yorkshire terrier behind her. Pausing only to make ‘wanking’ gestures through the windscreen at us.
Off in the distance, a small motorbike revved and revved and revved its engine.
The streetlight we were parked under flickered off and on.
Shifty’s hands fell from his face. ‘You do know this plan is totally insane, don’t you?’
‘How about we don’t torture the people on Alice’s list, then? How about we interview them, like Alice did. Would that make you feel any better?’
‘You want to break into Wee Free McFee’s scrapyard and steal six million quid’s worth of swag from right under his nose, but you think not torturing people’s going to make me feel better?’ He stared up at the car’s roof. ‘I must be off my bloody head.’ But he put the car into gear anyway. ‘Where next?’
43
Meathmill House and Meathmill Park stood sentry on either side of the road, eighteen-storey tower blocks, with lights glittering in nearly every window. Monolithic and ugly, even in the darkness. The pool car slipped down the ramp between them, disappearing into the curved embankment and an underpass that was almost solid graffiti. Not the artistic kind, either – the concrete walls were caked in decades of tags and swearing and claims that X loves / shags / ‘takes it up the arse’ from Z, Y, and their own dad. Had to be a foot thick in places.
We emerged out the other side and there was the huge architectural monstrosity masquerading as Burgh Library, perched on top of its dumpy hill. All curved concrete walls and ceramic tiles and weird rooflines that dipped and rose like a sales graph. Far too much glass on show, and not enough taste. Most of the lights were off, leaving nothing but a faint orange glow on the ground floor.
Shifty pulled into the car park, and I pointed towards the far corner, where the CCTV cameras dangled from their mounts like rabbits hanging in a butcher’s shop window. That was the joy of the Kingsmeath side of things, anything designed to help law enforcement didn’t usually last long.
I undid my seatbelt. ‘Stay in the car.’
‘Humph.’ Shifty killed the engine. ‘That’ll be shining.’
‘And before you get all stroppy it’s for your own good.’
A small laugh. ‘Ash, there’s no way—’
‘I’m serious. In – the – car.’ The wind wasn’t bad down here, but the roar of traffic, wheeching its way around the top of the steep embankment, was pretty much constant. That’s what happened when you built your library right in the middle of a massive great roundabout. ‘And stay here till I get back.’
I thunked the door closed and hobbled off to stand with my back against a sign advertising upcoming author events and computer classes for the over-sixties. My breath plumed in the sharp peppery air.
Hand was starting to throb. That would be the local anaesthetic wearing off.
Come on, Joseph, finger out.
At least he had all of his.
Good job I’d scored a blister pack of Naproxen from Dr Fotheringham when she’d finished stitching me up. Two got forced down, dry. Could’ve gone for something stronger, but being semi-stoned was probably not the best idea for tonight.
Not given what I had planned for whoever put Alice in Intensive Care.
Her phone buzzed as I unlocked it: bang on quarter past eleven, according to the screen.
No text from Joseph or Francis, saying they’d be late.
You’d think gun-peddling-thugs-for-hire would have better manners than that.
There, nestled amongst the rows of apps that covered Alice’s screen, was one with a bullseye target and a big arrow pointing at the middle. It sat above Henry’s left ear, the wee lad grinning, tongue dangling out the side of his mouth like a big pink sock. Couldn’t remember what the app was called, probably something spelled with ‘Z’s instead of ‘S’s and a couple of numbers or unnecessary asterisks replacing random letters. The tracker app she’d installed on my phone.
Meaning there was no need to sod about with official channels to find Leah MacNeil and Gordon Smith. Assuming they hadn’t ditched my mobile somewhere.
My finger hovered over the icon.
Of course, what I really should do is call Mother. Find out where the app said my phone was and let her send in the heavy mob. An end to Gordon Smith’s fifty-six-year reign of horror. Picture in all the papers, commendation from the top brass. Closure for Smith’s victims’ families. And he’d spend the rest of his life in a padded cell with no hope of ever seeing the outside world again.
Yeah, but you promised Helen, didn’t you? As she died.
You promised her.
What about Leah? She’d probably get off on a diminished-responsibility plea: eight years, tops. Bet she’d be out in four. If that. And if I brought her in, she’d tell everyone what I’d done to Gordon Smith. And that would be me screwed, because there was no way I could let him live. He had to die, which meant she did too.
I’d made a promise.
And soon as I’d sorted out whoever it was that’d hurt Alice, I’d keep that promise.
Because what was the point of a man if he didn’t keep his—
Here we go.
A shiny black Range Rover growled its way up the ramp from the Blackwall Hill side, headlights sweeping the car park as it turned. I stepped out into the glow of a lamppost and raised a hand. The Range Rover swung towards me. Came to a halt, when I was level with the passenger window.
It buzzed down and Joseph smiled out, that lump of cotton wadding looking more than a bit ridiculous, perched at a jaunty angle on top of his scarred head, as he leaned on the sill. ‘Mr Henderson, while your choice of location is perhaps a touch less suitable for clandestine exchanges than the one proposed, I have to express my approbation for choosing a library. Bravo.’
Francis leaned over from the driver’s seat and gave me a nod. ‘’Spector.’
The thousand pounds made a disappointingly thin slab of slithery plastic and paper as I handed it over. ‘Count it.’
‘Oh, I trust you, Mr Henderson.’ Joseph slipped it into an inside pocket. ‘After all, we’re both gentlemen, are we not? Our word has value beyond the mere pursuit of Mammon’s favours. And in exchange, I give you this.’ He held out a small yellow-and-blue backpack, done up to look like a Minion, complete with one 3D eye-goggle and a big cheesy grin. ‘In case you’re interested in the details of such things, it contains a Walther P-Twenty-Two Q.D. renowned for its tactical styling, exquisite trigger, and second-strike capability. Holds ten rounds in the magazine, one in the breach, and the slide is textured – making it easier for someone with restricted hand mobility to “rack in a round” as our American cousins would say.’
Wouldn’t be surprised if he was sporting an erection at this point, going by the expression on his face.
‘I have furnished you with twenty-five rounds, which I believe should be sufficient for all but the most prolonged gun battles. Somehow I think you’re more inclined to precision than the “spray and pray” approach, but if you require an additional stock, please don’t hesitate to get in touch as our customer loyalty scheme is most generous.’
I lowered the rucksack. ‘Is it clean?’
‘As a nun’s conscience, Mr Henderson.’ He gave me a wave, then faced front again. ‘Francis, it’s time we were away. I believe Mr Henderson is most eager to be about whatever business instigated his purchase from us this blustery night.’
Another nod from Frances. ‘’Spector.’
‘Oh, one more thing.’ Joseph held out a crisp white business card. ‘If the occasion arises, Mr Henderson, when you feel you might benefit from the assistance of two very capable gentlemen who possess those most admirable of traits: determination, dedication, and a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to other people’s physical wellbeing, I do hope you’ll think of us.’
Well, you never knew. I accepted the card and tucked it away.
‘Excellent. Oh, and I like your new jacket.’ Then the wind
ow buzzed up, the Range Rover swung around and disappeared off down the ramp to the Blackwall Hill side of Blackburgh Roundabout again.
Twenty-five rounds would be plenty for what I had in mind.
I took my new Minion back to the pool car.
Shifty glowered at me, from behind the wheel. ‘Tell me that wasn’t who I think it was!’
‘Who we going to interview first?’
‘Ash, I’m serious – that better not’ve been Joseph and bloody Francis!’
My seatbelt clicked into place. ‘Why do you think I made you wait in the car?’
‘OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!’ Battering a fist off the steering wheel. ‘How could … Have you forgotten what they did? To me?’ Pointing at his eyepatch again. ‘HOW COULD YOU?’
I sat there in silence and let him seethe at me while I struggled my right hand into another nitrile glove.
Then unzipped the Minion’s head and pulled out a clear-plastic Ziploc bag with the gun in it. Stubby and black, almost invisible in the gloom. Didn’t weigh much, probably not even half a kilo, but that was without the magazine or bullets, of course.
‘You want to know how I could?’ The gun swung in the bottom of the bag as I held it up. ‘This is how.’
Shifty’s shoulders curled inwards as his scowl turned away from me and out of the windscreen instead. ‘I hate those guys.’
‘You don’t have to go through with this, Shifty. You can drop me back at the hospital and walk away. I’ll take care of it.’ I dipped into the rucksack again. Two more Ziploc bags: one with the empty magazine in it, the other containing a drift of small brass-cased bullets with grey tips. Like tiny metallic lipsticks, not much bigger than a finger bone. Assuming you still had all of yours. ‘But if you are walking away, I need another favour before you go.’
He didn’t look at me. ‘What?’
‘Can you load the bullets into the magazine for me? My hands don’t work properly any more.’
‘Should never have let you talk me into this.’ Shifty pulled up at the kerb, outside a classic seventies bungalow on Muchan Road. Grey harling and brown pantiles. A second-hand Audi in the driveway and a well-manicured garden out front, turned monochrome in the pale-yellow glow of the lamppost two houses down.
‘I told you, you didn’t have to come.’ The Minion joined me from the rear footwell. ‘I can do this on my own.’
‘Bloody reverse psychology.’ But he undid his seatbelt and climbed out of the car anyway.
I joined him, and we hobbled up to the front door. Leaned on the doorbell.
‘But we’re only questioning them, OK?’ Shifty jerked his chin out. ‘No violence, or shooting anyone.’ Pointing at my Minion. ‘Not unless we’re one hundred percent positive they’re the one who tried to kill Alice.’
Deep inside the house, the ringing went on and on and on and on.
‘I said that, didn’t I? God, you don’t half whinge.’ Nudging him with my shoulder and smiling to let him know I didn’t really mean it. In that manly, non-communicative way.
And still the bell rang.
‘Maybe this Dr Lochridge’s not in?’
Beginning to look like it. But of all the addresses Sabir texted me, this was the one closest to the library. Alice’s eleven o’clock appointment – Oscar Harris’s school therapist.
‘OK, who’s next on the—’
A clunk and the door swung open, revealing a middle-aged woman in a silk kimono, eyes bloodshot and unfocused, not exactly steady on her pins. Bottle-blonde hair frizzy and down past her shoulders. Orange dust on her fingertips. She licked her lips a couple of times. Sounding as if she was trying to keep the Aberdonian twang out of her slurry voice. ‘Hello? Can I … help?’ The words rode out on the sweaty-armpit stink of fresh weed, tempered with tangy cheese.
‘Dr Lochridge?’ Shifty showed her his warrant card. ‘Police. Can we come in, please?’
Her bloodshot eyes drooped a little and so did her shoulders, then she turned around and scuffed away down the hall.
We followed her in, down a tidy corridor lined with framed children’s drawings, and into a living room dominated by a saggy leather couch, covered in throws and cat hair. A big ginger tabby, sat on the coffee table, paused in the middle of cleaning itself to glare at us.
Dr Lochridge collapsed into the couch and helped herself to a fresh bag of Wotsits. Eyes drifting to the half-smoked joint perched on the edge of a handmade ashtray. ‘It’s only for personal use. And I never do anything around the children.’
Couldn’t care less.
I took the matching saggy leather armchair. ‘You met with Dr Alice McDonald earlier today.’
‘Did I?’ A frown. ‘Suppose I did. She talks … a lot. And really quickly. How does she manage it? It’s like she never even breathes.’
‘What did you talk about?’
A loose-limbed shrug. ‘Oscar Harris, I think. How was he, did he seem upset or troubled by anything before he went missing?’ More Wotsits disappeared. ‘Course he was. Between you, me, and Sigmund, I think someone was abusing him. Only he was too scared to admit it, even to me. People think that kind of thing doesn’t happen to kids who attend a good school, but it does.’ She chewed, face sagging. ‘Poor tiny soul.’
I looked at Shifty.
He grimaced. Sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Yeah, we got a distinctly greasy vibe off … someone we interviewed, but they had an alibi for when Oscar went missing. Even so, they clammed up and set their lawyer on us.’ Not like Shifty to be so careful about not giving out any hints.
‘So did Alice say anything before she left?’
Dr Lochridge squinted at her cat for a while. Then nodded. ‘She said she liked Sigmund. Which is good, because he’s the loveliest cat in the world.’
Ann Tweedale blinked at us with bleary eyes, voice a clipped whisper. ‘No. Of course I don’t.’ Soon as we’d appeared on her doorstep, she’d hissed us to silence and escorted us into the kitchen of her tiny mid-terrace house, on Blackwall Hill, right next to the railway line. It ran on a cutting along the end of her back garden, twelve feet higher than the ground her home was built on. Be amazed if much natural light ever made its way in through the windows.
Tweedale was a sporty type, with bags under her eyes and an oversized ‘DONALD TRUMP EST UN BRANLEUR MASSIF!’ T-shirt that hung down to the knees of her penguin pyjama bottoms. Furry slippers on her feet. Curly hair yanked back in a messy comet-tail.
Shifty leaned against the worktop and folded his arms. ‘And there was nothing else?’
‘Shhhh!’ Tweedale pointed up towards the ceiling. ‘You wake Charlene up, I’ll bloody throttle you.’ She gave him a good glower. ‘Your doctor woman turned up, asked a load of questions about Lewis Talbot – all of which I’d already answered for your idiot police mates, by the way – then went away again. I helped all I could, but I was his social worker, not his mother. Lewis had a shitty life, his mum battered the hell out of him, his grandad abused her, and so on and so forth, yeah unto the tenth generation. Then some bastard throttles Lewis to death.’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘And I know I shouldn’t, but sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t for the best.’
She must’ve clocked the expression on my face because she rolled her eyes, arms hanging loose at her sides. ‘I said “sometimes”, OK? You don’t know what it’s like down in the trenches. You police kick in their doors, seize their property, and cart off their relatives – it’s us poor sods that have to try and stitch them back together. You know what Lewis had to look forward to? Poverty and abuse and no opportunities.’ Voice getting louder and more bitter with every word. ‘They wouldn’t let me put him into care because apparently there’s bugger all left in the budget this financial year. Who’d be a bloody social worker?’
The wail of a small child boomed out through the ceiling above.
Ann Tweedale glared at me, voice back to a harsh whisper again. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’
‘So what do you think?’ Shi
fty took us back under the railway bridge. ‘We any nearer to catching this bastard?’
‘Don’t know.’ I checked the list again. ‘What’s closest: Ditchburn Road, or Corriemuir Place?’
‘From here?’ His top lip curled. ‘Six of one.’ He reached out and clicked on the radio, landing us halfway through a song where some popstar tosser moaned about how unfair life was.
Take a number, mate, and get to the back of the queue.
‘Your choice, then.’ I pulled out Alice’s phone and called the hospital as Shifty headed east, back towards Kingsmeath, rather than Castleview. ‘Hello? I’m calling about Alice McDonald.’
The switchboard put me through to a woman with a lisp and a Geordie accent. ‘There’s no change at the moment, pet, but it’s early days. We’ll give you a call if anything happens, and you’ve got me word on that.’
‘Thanks.’
A glance from Shifty when I put my phone away. ‘No change?’
‘No change.’ My head fell back against the rest. For some reason, there were footprints on the inside of the pool car’s roof. Not shoeprints – bare feet. ‘Tell me about this “greasy vibe” you got, when you were interviewing someone about Oscar Harris?’
‘Hmmph. His uncle’s a DJ, does club nights at Bang-dot-Bang-dot-Cheese and the House of Ultimate Ding. Bloody places these days, whatever happened to sensible names? He’s one of those … neckbeard types, you know? The ones who don’t grow a moustache to go with it.’
‘Doesn’t make him a paedo.’
We drifted down Hillside Drive, past all the peaceful side streets with their trees and working streetlights.
‘Never trust anyone who doesn’t grow a moustache to go with their beard – man or woman. It’s a sign something’s very badly wrong in their heads. And you didn’t hear the way he talked about Oscar. Like the kid was a family pet.’ Shifty put on a faux-posh Oldcastle accent, stressing the vowels in all the wrong places. ‘“Such a clever boy.”, “He’s a good boy, yes he is. Very good.” And, like I said, soon as he trotted out his alibi he lawyered up. That says “dodgy bastard” to me.’ A small smile. ‘Even if his lawyer was a total shag.’
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