‘But I did. Thanks to you and his mother. I wasn’t sure what she meant by Grahamston, not at first, but a couple of phone calls and a visit to Google and I was certain. The only problem was finding exactly where he was hiding down here. It’s a big place.’
‘How did you find your way in?’ Winter asked, somehow still hoping that the answer wouldn’t include the lane behind McDonald’s.
‘Through the front fucking door, what do you think? Never you mind, you won’t need to find your way out. You’ll be spending the rest of your days down here. The good news is it won’t be for long.’
‘Oh you’re a funny man, Monteith. You should be on the telly.’
He laughed in Winter’s face, a cackling laugh that disappeared in a flash and was replaced by a snarl and a rifle barrel shoved against Winter’s forehead. He felt it rough and hard and cold, scraping against his skin, pushing his head back.
‘Maybe I will be on the television, Winter. Maybe I am already, maybe all over the world. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll be having the last laugh. Is that all right with you? Is it?’
The bastard was losing it and Winter didn’t want to give him any excuse for squeezing that trigger. He knew he was halfway to dying but as much as he wanted to meet his mother again, he didn’t want it to happen any sooner than it had to. He nodded his head the best he could.
When Winter gave in to him, Monteith seemed to calm down a bit. He pulled the rifle off Winter’s head with one last scrape of the barrel for good measure leaving a tear of skin and a squeeze of blood.
‘As I was saying. I had to find McKendrick down here. Big place but not that hard, even a fuckwit like you managed to do it,’ he sniggered. ‘I wandered around till I found this place; it was obvious he had been here and then all I had to do was wait.’
Monteith hesitated to allow Winter time to be impressed but he wasn’t giving him that satisfaction.
‘The way the sound reverberates down here you can hear someone coming from a long way off, especially if they don’t expect you to be waiting for them. And if they are as stupid as you are. McKendrick was no better.’
He smirked at Winter, daring him to answer but he didn’t.
‘He walked in here and virtually begged me to club him over the back of his head with this four by four. He had a rifle so I had to put him down in one go. He went out like a light. The man was twice your size but went down just the same. There he was, the man they called the Dark Angel, the man they were all talking about, at my feet.’
This guy was seriously fucked in the head. Winter could hear his sense of himself growing with every word that spewed from his mouth. He was boasting that he had managed to knock McKendrick out when the man hadn’t been looking. In his own head, he’d done what no one else could. But what had he done next?
‘Did you talk to him when he came round?’
‘Of course I did. That’s my fucking job. Think I don’t know my job? Of course I talked to him. I wanted to know everything he had to say. He wasn’t exactly shy about it anyway. He was . . . he was pleased with what he did. And so he should have been. He should have been fucking proud of it.’
Monteith was wandering on the spot now as he talked. It was spilling out of him like blood from a wound. Just to be sure, Winter was going to stir his pot even further.
‘What did he have to be proud of?’
He paid for it with the butt of the rifle being spun and crashed against the outside of his left knee. It wasn’t as bad as the kick had been to the other one but the hurt still shot through him, sharp and deep.
‘Are you kidding me? He took out the bastards that were responsible for the shit that was going through the veins of all those kids out there. Quinn and Caldwell got rich, fucking minted, by selling death. They had been fucking up this city and so had the cunts that went before them and those that would have come after them. They’ll think twice now though. Maybe not be so quick to push out drugs if they know there’s someone out there who’s going to take them out.
‘What did he have to be proud of? You’re only a fucking photographer but you’ve still been out there, you’ve seen what that stuff does. Stick insects chasing powder up their nose or firing shite into their veins. Their kids starving and half naked, their chances completely fucked of doing anything other than following in the footsteps of the bampots that spawned them. Entire communities screwed because of that stuff. Stealing off each other, walking round like zombies, no fucking interest or energy in getting a job even if they could stay clean long enough to find someone stupid enough to give them one.
‘Drugs have killed this place. You walk five minutes in any direction from Buchanan Street and all those million-pound shops and you’ll find some poor bastard who barely has the strength to pick up their giro because their body is shot to pieces. You drive five minutes from George Square and you drive past shitholes full of people who never had a fucking chance. You drive fifteen minutes and you hit schemes where those who aren’t on drugs aren’t trusted by anyone else.
‘Do you really think these poor bastards want to spend their lives stealing a fiver from some prick that’s got a fiver more than they have? You really think that girls want to go on the game and blow some fat drunk for a tenner? Think they wanted to grow up and be skanky whores? It’s the fucking drugs and it’s the fucking bastards that push it at them. Of course he should have been proud. He did something when everyone else did fuck all.’
Monteith fell back against the wall, the exertion of his rant leaving him momentarily breathless. Maybe Winter should have known better but he recognized a soft spot when he saw one.
‘Is that why you took over where he left off?’
The cop lifted his head off his chest slowly, his eyes suddenly full of fire. His lip curled back and Winter wished he hadn’t said what he had but that thought was quickly overtaken by pain as Monteith rushed towards him, rifle butt high. He turned his head to the side to avoid the blow but Monteith had fooled him. The kick came to his balls and the pain seared through him like lightning. Winter doubled over as much as the bindings would let him, his balls throbbing and screaming. His eyes watered and he spat out the ache that soured his mouth.
Monteith stood over him, the rifle still clenched between his fists, raising it up and down threateningly but Winter doubted he could hurt him more with the gun than his boot had.
‘I’m telling the fucking story,’ he raged. ‘You just shut up and listen. Just keep your questions to yourself.’
‘Fuck you.’
Monteith giggled at that. An off-the-wall, manic giggle that worried Winter far more than the threat.
‘Listen to the big man. McKendrick did more for this city in a few days than you could do in a lifetime. He took action. He avenged his wee brother and he did so much for this place while he was at it. He had reason to be proud.’
Winter settled for just lifting his eyebrows by way of a question. Monteith was doing fine without prompting. Winter didn’t need any more hurt before the cop did whatever he was going to do.
‘He was more . . . angry, though. Just very angry,’ Monteith continued. ‘Like he had unfinished business. That bothered him more than the fact that I’d knocked him out and taken his rifle off him. He didn’t seem to give a fuck what happened to him except that it stopped him from doing what he’d planned. He just sat there fuming, ready to rip Monteith’s head off the first chance he got. Like a caged bear. I told him that I didn’t blame him for doing what he’d done but it didn’t wash with him. He just wanted to have a go.
‘He kept going on about his brother. How it was his job to look after Kieran and that he’d let him down. How he’d failed him and how he had to make up for that. The poor bastard had lost it. I think the post-traumatic stress disorder thing from the Navy was only half a lie. If you ask me, he was probably wired to the moon before his brother died and it just pushed him over the edge.
‘I asked him how he knew where to get at Caldwell and Quinn and he was
happy to tell me. He roughed up some two-bit dealer, the cunt who sold the gear that killed his brother. Shook him down for every bit of info he had, which was plenty. The guy squealed like a stuck pig, told McKendrick everything he needed to know. Places, likely times, habits. Told him about couriers and their schedules. Told him the entire hierarchy of firms across the city. The lot.
‘Then when he had Strathie and Sturrock, he learned more. Beat the shit out of them until they coughed as well. He felt bad about the old boy Turnbull at the services. Shooting him had been a mistake. Still, it all helped lead him to Haddow and Adamson. Bang bang, another two scumbags down. He had a list, a long list. He had all the stuff that we should have had. But even then we couldn’t have taken these bastards down within the law. He didn’t need to bother about that though.’
Monteith stopped and looked at his watch.
‘So what happened to him?’ Winter asked.
‘It’s time for me to go.’
It wasn’t an answer, it was an aside. Winter decided he was going to push his luck.
‘So what happened to McKendrick’s list?’
Nothing.
‘Did someone decide to finish it for him?’
Monteith looked at Winter blankly before coming over behind him and taking his watch off his wrist. Monteith fished into Winter’s left pocket then his right where he found his mobile phone. Standing up again, he dropped both onto the ground in front of him. He looked Winter in the eye again briefly before stamping on first the watch and then the phone. Both lay in bits.
‘I’ve got work to do,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t miss me too much.’
He turned and closed the door behind him, leaving Winter trussed on the floor next to the rotting corpse of a killer, somewhere deep in the bowels of the city. A key turned in the lock from the outside. A bad day had just got a lot worse.
CHAPTER 47
Winter listened to Monteith’s departing footsteps, trying to work out which way he’d headed so that he’d know if he used the same entrance or a different one. It was hopeless though. He’d no idea if the cop had gone straight out or had done something else first. He’d obviously taken the rifle out of the cupboard with him but if he was going on duty then surely he wouldn’t take it above ground with him. That might mean he had planked it somewhere and then headed in another direction. Although the ‘job’ he had to do might have been something else entirely from police work
Winter hung intently on to the ever-diminishing noise of Monteith’s shoes clacking against the foundations, catching the point where it merged with the sound of the dripping water then was subsumed by it, leaving him alone in the bowels of hell.
He put his head back and screamed silently, roaring nothing at no one. Monteith leaving should have made him feel safer but it did anything but. Bound hand and foot in the half-light from the hurricane lamps, he felt like Jonah in the belly of the whale with another misbegotten soul, the remnants of an earlier meal, lying by his side.
McKendrick was reeking. Winter had been trying to block it out but there was no getting away from it, the body seemed to be getting riper by the minute. It was like a piece of rotting steak meat had been left in the sun for days on end and had been sprinkled with a couple of drops of cheap perfume to make it sweet. Monteith’s speech had taken his mind off it while he was there but now there was nothing else to occupy his mind. It invaded every inch of the cupboard and attacked his nostrils like a snake.
His gag reflex was working overtime and he wasn’t sure how long he could go without chucking up. Once the horror of the smell lodged itself in his brain he could think of nothing else. His cheeks puffed out and he swallowed back down the bile that wanted to escape. He turned his head away from the body in a futile gesture because it was everywhere. The longer he sat there, the more it crept into his clothes, his hair, his skin. He edged away the little he could, shuffling on his arse so he was at least not touching him.
His stomach eventually let him down. He pulled his head to the side as it tightened its grip and he threw up. Fucking great. As if the stench of McKendrick wasn’t bad enough, now he had the smell of vomit to contend with as well. The only consolation was that at least it was his own sick. This didn’t seem much of a comfort as a second belch rose from his stomach and joined the rest. Emptied, he spat the last of it from his mouth.
The effort exhausted him, causing him to inhale and immediately bark out the smell again. His stomach had no more to give and disgusting as the stink was, he could handle it. Maybe vomiting had broken the hold that it had on him.
He looked around the cupboard and saw that apart from him being a prisoner, nothing seemed to have changed from his last visit. The cardboard box with the remains of the Special Ops’ survival rations. The four boxes of ammunition. The notebook and the photographs that had led him back here to Monteith. What a smart idea that had turned out to be.
He sat and listened. The dripping water was through the door and to his left, maybe twenty yards away. Way above him, Glasgow was still there and doubtless still awake but he couldn’t hear it. He didn’t know what time it was but the last train had gone for the night and the sounds of the cars and the food vans wasn’t making it down this far.
No, apart from the water and his heart, all he could hear was the darkness beyond.
His phone was just a couple of feet away but useless to him. Danny and Rachel were on the other end of that mess of broken technology, maybe wondering where he was, maybe not. Why hadn’t he listened to them?
Suddenly there was noise and his ears twitched at it. A scrape. A number of scrapes. Then silence. The wind? There was water down here so why not wind too? Then there it was again, closer, louder, more of them. The light of the hurricane lamps picked out the space below and beyond the bottom of the door and in the shadows he saw the shapes approach. Maybe it was the smell of vomit that attracted them. Maybe it was McKendrick, their unfinished meal. Maybe it was him.
There was either one big fucking rat or lots of them because the shadow moved and whispered as one. The scrapes that they had made across the floor were slowly, feverishly replaced by their chatter to each other. The squeaks soared to the roof as they had obviously decided that the time for deception was past. He could only imagine that they were considering the merits of charging into the room.
His breath was fast and shallow and he realized he was truly terrified. He’d seen what they’d done to McKendrick and didn’t fancy some of the same. Ryan hadn’t exactly been able to fight back but with his hands and legs tied, Winter wasn’t going to be much better off.
They were getting louder and nearer. Instead of just shadows, he could now see tails and feet and the odd inquisitive head darting below the door frame. Fuck this.
He roared at them. He put his head back and bellowed with every bit of energy that he had left inside him.
His face must have been the colour of beetroot as he threw a random collection of angry swear words at them but he was determined that they’d get the message. It wasn’t enough to be loud, he needed them to hear rage and danger.
It must have worked because they shrieked and turned, disappearing from the doorway as soon as the explosion of noise hit them.
He continued to shout like a madman until he ran out of breath. His head collapsed onto his chest and he panted like a rabid dog. He didn’t know how long he sat like that, weary and fretful, wondering how the fuck he’d got there and how he’d get out.
His head occasionally lifted enough to sneak a glance at the door but the little furry bastards were elsewhere, doubtless hatching a plan. He stayed quiet and tried to think.
He watched the hurricane lamps. One was burning much brighter than the other and maybe it was his paranoia but the weaker one seemed to be on its last legs. From where he sat, he couldn’t see the length of the wick on it but he worried it would burn itself out before too long. He studied them. Watching how quickly they burned, trying to gauge how long they had left.
Not that he had any real concept of time any more. With his watch and phone smashed and no passing of daylight, it could have been crawling or racing for all he knew. He guessed it had been maybe two hours since Monteith left but it could have been half that or twice it. He was fucked. He heard another squeal.
His head flew from the lamp to the door in time to see pink feet and ink-black eyes steal fearlessly into the room. Just one rat rather than the pack. An advance party, perhaps.
The little bastard scanned the room, nose twitching, giving him no more than a contemptuous glance in the passing. Winter roared again but it didn’t flinch, just looked at him curiously wondering what he thought he was achieving. Maybe it was because it could see that the noise wasn’t connected to movement or had worked out that he couldn’t move. Either that or they’d just sent in the bravest or the stupidest one they had.
It was well inside the room now and on the move. He pulled his legs instinctively towards him but it scurried past and made for the cardboard box with McKendrick’s rations. The black tail disappeared from view as it slipped inside and in seconds the sound of munching came from the box. Energy bars or biscuits, he guessed. The crunching stopped and he saw the rat’s head pop up into view, checking to see if Winter had found the ability to move. When it saw that he hadn’t it must have encouraged it to be braver still rather than go back into the box because, just as the first of the lamps gave up the ghost and flickered no more, it hopped out and onto McKendrick.
Standing on its hind legs, it sniffed at the air then in a flash buried itself under the blanket that covered the body. The squelching sound that floated over to him made his stomach turn. It was like fingers being stuck into blancmange then pulled back out. Judging by where the bump of the rat was on the body, he could only imagine, hard as he tried not to, that the munching slurping sounds were coming from McKendrick’s face. The image of Ryan’s half-eaten lips already scarred his mind and it seemed the rat was now finishing the job.
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