What You Pay For

by Claire Askew

  Amy was nodding. ‘It was always a long shot,’ she said, ‘that any of them might testify against Solomon, right?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Birch was thinking about Rab: their conversation in Kay’s Bar, then in the canteen. His kindness. Why was he being so nice to her? She tried to snap back in. ‘I mean, yeah; from the sounds of things, Solomon and his higher-ups don’t look kindly on those who grass.’

  ‘Honour among thieves.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Birch said. ‘The worst kind of honour. Was it Shakespeare said that?’

  Amy smiled. ‘Common misattribution – Shakespeare said thieves had no honour. It was actually Walter Scott.’

  Birch narrowed her eyes. ‘I’m not sure whether to call bullshit,’ she said, ‘or bagsy you for the next team-building pub quiz.’

  ‘I’d probably disappoint, I’m useless under pressure.’ Amy grinned, but quiet fell between them.

  ‘What I can’t get over,’ Birch said, speaking into it, ‘is this informant. Someone obviously thought it was worth their while to talk.’

  Amy was nodding. ‘Yeah . . . and look what happened to him. Cautionary tale, I guess.’

  Birch flinched. ‘Wait,’ she said, ‘what do you know that I don’t? Has the informant turned up dead?’

  ‘Oh. No, sorry. Just speculation on my part. But it’s what everyone’s saying. Bit convenient, no, that he’s disappeared without trace? My theory is Solomon knows he talked, found him, and shut him up.’

  Birch realised she had to agree. ‘Makes sense,’ she said. ‘Solomon has form for disappearing canaries – it’s in the file. It’s just a real bitch for us. It would all have been open and shut if the guy could have testified. I don’t know who in Glasgow he was talking to, but I suspect their head will roll for letting him run, right on the eve of the operation.’

  Amy was looking at her, and Birch reddened. As a senior officer, she probably ought not to speculate on the conduct of her colleagues, especially when she’d recently had her own wrists slapped.

  ‘So,’ Amy said, after a moment. ‘What does an underappreciated woman work on when her case is wasting away under a less qualified DI, anyway?’

  Birch flushed. ‘All right, keep your voice down. Door’s open.’

  Amy only grinned wider. ‘Everyone thinks it, marm,’ she said. ‘Even DCI McLeod is regretting his life choices, I think.’

  Birch pulled a face. ‘All he’s missing is the chance to tell me he was always right not to trust Anjan,’ she said, ‘and lawyers are all the same and can’t be trusted, blah blah blah. Bet DI Crosbie’s just loving that little speech.’

  ‘Oh trust me,’ Amy said, jerking her head backward in the direction of the bullpen, ‘we’re all of us basking in the glow of his current Zen state.’

  ‘Jeez, I’m sorry.’

  Amy shrugged. ‘It’s all right. The place wouldn’t feel like home otherwise.’

  Amy rewrapped the two-thirds of coronation chicken sandwich she hadn’t eaten. Birch had put what was left of her cheese ploughman’s – not more than a couple of bites at the snub end of the baguette – down on the desk. She sometimes forgot how dainty Amy’s manners were.

  ‘No all-nighters, that’s the main thing.’ Amy stood, the sandwich in one hand, her untouched coffee in the other. Birch wondered if this was a comment on her bloodshot eyes. ‘I’ll leave you to it, marm.’

  ‘Give ’em hell, Kato,’ she said, as Amy juggled her unfinished lunch to pull the door closed.

  Quiet settled on the office then. Birch looked down at the Lockley file in front of her, and the words swam into moving, furry lines. Why was Rab being so kind to her? she found herself thinking again. If she concentrated, she could feel the scribbled business card in her blouse pocket. It was comforting to have someone to call. Right, Helen? Comforting. Yes, it was.

  Back home, she wedged Rab’s business card on the mantelpiece, in the corner of the brass frame that held a photo of her mother. It sat there almost like a caption in an art gallery – like the woman in the photo had been named BIG RAB – and had it not been the photo it was, Birch imagined she might have been amused. Instead, she was trying in vain to relax. It was a wild night outside: the weather forecast said gusts of up to 70 mph were due, but above the roof of her little terraced house it seemed as though they’d already arrived. She’d parked her car elsewhere: a few blocks up in a crescent-shaped residential street, nearer to Portobello’s main drag. She’d then walked those few blocks along the prom, in spite of the squall of weather that seemed to be blowing in straight off the sea. Had she walked up the road, any dark-coloured Merc driving by could have spotted her, but the prom was largely deserted. A couple of hardy joggers pounded past, and she saw a few cyclists weaving back and forth in the wind, their helmet-mounted strobe-lights guttering. She’d let herself into the house in the dark, and before locking the front door made a full patrol of every room, the same as she had this morning. The wardrobe, the under-stairs cupboard, the garden with its uncut grass blustering wildly. She’d done this without putting lights on: instead, she’d used the pin-point torch on her mobile phone, feeling like Dana Scully in The X-Files. In one hand, the torch, and in the other, her baton: a poor substitute for Scully’s Walther PPK.

  With her search complete, Birch locked both doors, then traversed the house once more in the dark, closing curtains and blinds. No lights on this time: as far as the rest of the world was concerned, she was out. No car outside, no windows lit. Nobody home.

  She’d allowed herself a few tealights, dotted about the lounge. In this room, the curtains were thick and the blinds were closed behind them. One flame burned beside her mother’s photo, making the picture seem to move in small jerks like the slow frames of a silent movie. BIG RAB, read the caption. On the walls, the candle shadows danced in time with the building wind.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said to herself, startling at the sound of her own voice. ‘You don’t know the calls and the flowers are connected. Not for sure. You don’t know if anything’s connected.’ But she couldn’t shake Rab’s words: Let’s see if we can get them to show their hand. She hadn’t seen him again that day: he and DI Crosbie had been locked in one endless interview with Solomon, still ongoing as she left the station. She didn’t know if Rab had managed to ask whether anyone else on Operation Citrine had been phoned, or experienced unusual behaviour. It might not just be her. But anyway, staying in the dark felt safer.

  She’d made toast: the only thing she didn’t need light for. She hadn’t even needed to open the fridge. She’d made four slices, spread two with peanut butter and the other two with chocolate spread. A two-course meal, she thought, as she crunched through the first slice, enjoying the salt slick on the roof of her mouth. Tea of champions. Eating like a queen.

  She was trying to keep her spirits up, wartime bomb-shelter style. But it wasn’t working: really, she was listening, coiled tight as a mantrap. Clenched between her knees, a cup of tea was turning cold. She’d tried playing a podcast, the volume kept low, but it spooked her, those alien voices in her house. Now she just listened to the wind, the way it rattled the windows. The way it sounded like feet on her chapped upstairs floors; like big men wrestling through the garden hedge to press themselves up to the windows, scrabble at the door. Through her teeth, she cursed it. On her phone screen, a new missed call flashed up, marking the half-hour exactly. She picked up the panic button Rab had requisitioned for her, but she couldn’t call for back-up just because she felt a little spooked.

  In the kitchen, the infernal ticking of the clock.

  Birch shuddered awake as though she’d been kicked. I’m on the couch, she thought. Why am I on the couch? Then she remembered.

  Around her, the tealights had burned out. At some point she must have lain down: her head was on the padded sofa arm with a cushion wedged under her neck. The position was painful. She’d pulled a throw halfway over herself, but the room felt cold. She needed to pee. That must have been what woke her. Birch lay ther
e a while, her body a stiff Z, marvelling at the fact she’d slept at all. I was tired, she remembered, I was so tired. Then she kicked herself: but Helen, you were meant to be listening.

  And yes, wait – there was a noise. A small, deliberate noise: not the banging about of the weather outside, but a hand-made noise, like the plucking of a harp-string without the note. Behind her, beyond the sofa-back, the hallway door was ajar. And on the other side, at the front door, a series of delicate clicks. She froze. This was what had woken her. Outside, somebody was picking the lock.

  She felt her body kick up through its gears, towards fight or flight. Okay, Helen, she thought, trying to keep herself level. Okay. You have a few seconds. Let’s think about what to do.

  Birch had played these kinds of what if? games with friends and colleagues many a time over the years. There’s a zombie apocalypse, what do you do? Your house is on fire, what one thing do you save? Now there was someone breaking into her house: where did she want to be? Top of the stairs, she thought, armed. Best defensive position. But she didn’t fancy her chances of getting up there before the front door opened: she definitely didn’t want to come face to face with whoever was on the other side, or, worse, be caught retreating with her back turned. Can you get out through the kitchen? She glanced past her feet at the back door. Yes: but she remembered the dark-coloured Merc. These guys didn’t work alone. The garden wall was eight feet high and she wasn’t the climber that the skull bloke was. She’d be cornered. She was cornered. Oh fuck, Helen, she thought. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck . . .

  The final click was louder than the rest, and then there was a more familiar noise: the lock sliding back and the door leaning inward on its hinges. The wind whipped in through the gap: above her, the lampshade swung on its flex. Her phone was out of reach on the mantelpiece: she’d have needed to stand up in order to reach it. The panic button was somewhere near it, though in the dim light she couldn’t make it out. But her baton was on the floor beside the couch. She dipped a silent hand from under the blanket, and gripped it, imagining the best way to swing the weapon, depending on how an assailant might approach. They don’t know you’re here, she told herself. They don’t know you’re here . . .

  The lock-picker stepped into the hallway: Birch felt the air in the house change as he – she assumed – pushed the front door slowly, slowly closed. He was alone, she was almost sure: only one set of feet had padded in over the spiky hall mat. Only one. Okay, good. The lock clicked back into its groove. Now they were alone together.

  Go upstairs, she willed him. On the table, that tantalising distance away, her phone display read 02:47. It’s three in the morning. Assume I’m asleep, and go upstairs. But as though he’d heard her command, she felt him lean on the living room door, and slink his way inside.

  Oh Jesus. Now the man was walking past the sofa: she felt him run his hand along its padded back, just inches above her. In the dark, she’d be a greyish mass – a pile of cushions, the detritus of any living room. I’m just cushions, she shouted in her head, as if she could will herself to disappear. Don’t look any closer.

  She could hear his breathing: yes, this was a man. He sounded winded, as if he’d been running. She could feel him trying to still himself, could see the dark shape of him as he stood at the far corner of the couch, his back turned to her. Had she been better positioned, she could have reared up then and felled him, or at the very least made a break for the door. But she was still in that same weird Z shape, her legs half tangled in the blanket, her neck pulled into a searing twist so she could watch him move around. He calmed himself, then listened, his head cocked. She held her breath, imagined he could hear her heart, as loud in her ears as a gunning motorbike. Somehow, through the noise of her panic she heard her mother’s voice then, soothing as it ever got: Fear makes the wolf look bigger. It was a saying she’d used only rarely, but one that Birch had liked and stored away. Now, it made her focus. This is a crime scene. Get a description.

  Okay. This wasn’t a tall man – he’d be five eight or so, she guessed – but he was big. Broad in the shoulders. She could see his neck was thick, even in the dark. She’d be no match for him, even though she had height on her side. Fuck . . .

  He’d stopped listening. As she watched, he padded away from her, into the doorway of the kitchen. He paused there again, and then – to her horror – he flicked on the torch on his phone, and swept it around the kitchen. She registered a dark red jacket, Harrington style, with tartan at the neck. Mousy hair, longish on top, with a trendy fade on the back and sides. Tattoos: on the back of the neck, on the backs of the ears, perhaps on the face. Black jeans. A textbook thug. In her head, she began to pray to something, anything at all. For a moment, the phone torch had thrown an oblong of light back across the couch, illuminating her pale, scared face, the useless baton shaking in her hand. Don’t let him turn around, don’t let him turn around, don’t let him . . .

  Something heard her. Instead of turning, the tattooed man stepped sideways, disappearing into the long leg of her galley kitchen’s L. He must have propped up his phone somewhere, because the light became still. She heard him open a cupboard – the one with the mugs in, the one that creaked – and hiss out a curse.

  This was it. Her one chance. Fight or flight, what’s it to be? She allowed herself the briefest half-second fantasy of vaulting the couch and nipping out through the front door, phone in hand, without him even noticing: she could pelt along the prom to the car, mash the panic button and call the boys in, or even just bang on a neighbour’s front door and fall on their mercy. But no. It was risky: if these guys were smart, they’d have another of their number stationed at the gate. They might be armed. They might have found the car. No. Okay, Helen. Fight it is.

  She kicked the blanket off her legs and it shushed to the floor. The tattooed man was rattling around now – carefully, but making a little noise. Looking for something, opening drawers. She unfolded herself off the couch, thanking herself for apparently kicking her shoes off before she’d lain down. She picked up her phone, and felt better to be holding it, but still, she didn’t want to illuminate the screen and risk catching his attention. She swept a hand across the mantelpiece, and almost cursed aloud as she felt the panic button drop to the floor. She bit her lip. Idiot, idiot, idiot. It was now somewhere in the dark well between the fireplace and the coffee table. She ran a hand around in front of her feet, but could feel only carpet. Okay, stupid, she thought. What’s Plan B?

  Her first move was to zigzag out of the man’s line of sight. The shadows thrown by his phone’s white light were a thin comfort, but she padded through them to the threshold of the kitchen door. Remember to breathe, Helen. But she couldn’t. The tattooed man was feet away: a stud wall all that stood between her and whatever he’d come here to do.

  She could hear him still rooting about, trying to be quiet but growing annoyed, she could tell. What was he looking for? A weapon? Something to hurt her with? The knives were in their block by the sink, clearly visible. Wait – was this a random break-and-enter, not Solomon’s goons out to get her at all? She almost laughed. Was this man just looking for her valuables? If she stood here quietly enough, might he just nick the telly and then disappear?

  Just as she was forming the thought, the tattooed man fucked up. He opened the low-level cupboard at the kitchen’s far end, the one she threw her baking trays and cooling racks into and never tidied out. Every time, that cupboard avalanched a clatter of tins and lids out onto the floor, and every time she’d think, Fucking bastard swining thing, and promise herself that one day soon she’d clean it out and keep it all better in future. But now she thanked the lucky star of her own domestic sluttery, as the cupboard performed its party trick and she heard the tattooed man drop to his knees to try to stop the cascade. She stepped into the kitchen, vision twinging at the edges, her hearing cutting in and out with terror. Don’t you dare fucking faint, she thought, as she closed the three-pace gap between her baton-end and the b
ack of his vulnerable neck. He was scrabbling on hands and knees, bent almost foetal, trying to stuff the noise he’d made back into the unit and close the door. As she flicked on the kitchen light, Birch registered tattoos on the backs of his hands, and lettering on his knuckles: B-A-B-Y G-I-R-L. Birch looked at the baton and realised it wasn’t enough. She tucked her phone under her arm, lunged for the knives and pulled the largest she could reach from the block: its serrated blade flashed under the ceiling light.

  ‘Police!’ Birch yelled, summoning as much ferocity as her terrified body could muster. ‘I am armed and I am pissed off and you are in my fucking house.’ She heard her voice cracking at the edges: fear and rage. ‘So I highly recommend you do not move, not one fucking inch, do you hear me?’

  She stiffened, waiting for him to whip round and lunge at her. But instead, the tattooed man obliged. He let his arms go limp, and as he did, the cupboard swung back open, the baking trays all slithering out around his knees. After the noise subsided, there was a moment of calm: outside, the wind seemed to have died. Behind her on the wall, the clock ticked. Oh shit, Birch thought. What do I do now? Her phone was wedged in her armpit, her hands full of weapons.

  The tattooed man shifted his weight.

  ‘Fucking stay still, I said!’ Birch heard her own voice reverberate off the tiles.

  Then, without moving, the man spoke. ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said. ‘I’m not armed. But will you just keep your voice down, please?’

  After that, things happened one by one. Birch lost her grip on the big knife and it hit the flagged floor, ricocheting under the dishwasher and out of reach. She felt something give inside her, like someone had clipped an invisible drawstring. She blinked hard to right herself, and saw that the tattooed man was uncurling out of his crouch. The arm she’d been holding the baton with went slack. The stick’s thin end hit the floor and then it, too, fell from between her fingers. As the man turned round to face her, she fell to her knees on the cold floor. I said don’t you dare faint, she thought, but knew it was too late now. He stood over her, one hand held out as though he might place it on her head, a blessing.