The Sirens - 02

by William Meikle

  "I should have known the jungle grapevine would be working," I said as I took a beer from him. "How much do you know?"

  "Enough to ken that it's not a junkie the Police should be chasing," he said. He waved me down to the quiet end of the bar. "Down this way. Suspicious ears might be listening in...the coppers lost one of their own last night, and the narks can smell money in the air."

  "Anything being said about the killer?" I asked.

  Dave shook his head.

  "It's all quiet as to the identity. But there's plenty of speculation. The more superstitious are saying that it's got something to do with Arthur Dunlop...that you brought him back fae Skye. Any truth in that?"

  "No," I said. "I only wish it was that simple."

  The pub was quiet, which gave me plenty of time to lay out the whole story for him. I sipped slowly at the beer as I talked...I had the feeling it was going to be a long night, and I needed a clear head.

  As I was talking I realized how far out there my story would seem, but Dave didn't bat an eyelid. Then again, he was a fully paid up conspiracy nut...the wilder the better. He read more outlandish material than my wee story every night after he closed the bar.

  "It's not quite the story Jim Morton told me," he said when I'd finished. "But it's close."

  "The wee man's been here already?" I asked.

  "Aye. This afternoon. He was looking for you in particular. Something about needing company in keeping a watch on a flat in Govan. He's away over there with a flask of whisky and his big camera."

  "The stupid wee bugger's going to get himself killed," I said.

  "Aye. We can always hope so," Dave said with a smile.

  I downed what was left of my beer in one gulp.

  "If he comes back in, tell him to keep away. I've seen this thing in action. It'll have him for breakfast."

  "Again, we can always hope so," Dave said to my back as I left.

  I headed for the underground station. I thought about going back to the office for the car, but it was too big, too conspicuous, and I didn't know how many people might have seen it last night. Besides, if I did meet up with Jim, the chances were that strong drink might be involved at some point in the evening.

  * * *

  The underground system in Glasgow is known affectionately as 'The Clockwork Orange', but tonight someone had forgotten to wind it up. The tannoy was reporting twenty-minute delays, and the growing crowd on the platform was getting restless. Tempers were beginning to fray, and as the brightly colored train finally pulled into the station the crowd jostled for position. Somebody stuck an elbow in my back and I squealed in pain as one of last night's bruises flared back into action. I gave a baseball-cap-wearing teenager behind me a hard glare.

  He glared back.

  "Whit's your fuckin' problem?" he spat at me.

  I turned away. Kids looking for a fight were ten-a-penny round here. The trick was not to give them an opening. Unfortunately this one didn't need an opening. He put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me towards him.

  "I was talking tae you, bampot," he said.

  My mouth took over before my brain had time to stop it.

  "Is that what it was. I'm sorry, I don't understand ape-speak."

  It took him a second to realize he'd been insulted...you could almost see each individual brain cell struggle for a synaptic connection. Eventually, realization came to his eyes and he remembered to be outraged.

  The train had come to a stop, and I began to move with the crowd towards it. The kid wasn't finished with me, though. He stepped around in front of me and stood, nose to nose.

  "It's a square-go you're wantin', is it?" he said in that belligerent swagger that only a young Glasgwegian can muster.

  "No. I just want to get on the train."

  "Aye. Well, you'll have to get through me," he said.

  "Okay," I said, and hit him as hard as I could manage. He didn't see it coming, and he went down in a heap at my feet, his eyes rolling in their sockets.

  I stepped over him, and boarded the train, aware of the gaping commuters staring at me. I smiled sweetly back, and they turned their gazes elsewhere. I was about to write the encounter off as just another hazard of the city at night when the kid got off the ground, screaming.

  "Fuckin' bastard! I'll have you!"

  As he came forward he took a carpet knife from his pocket.

  "You're getting chibbed," he said, "I hope your mother can sew."

  Just before he reached the door of the train I stepped forward. Making sure no one else could see, I took the pistol from my pocket. I gave him my best Sean Connery impression.

  "Trust a ned to bring a knife to a gunfight."

  He stepped back so quickly that he fell over his own feet and landed on his backside, eyes suddenly wide in fear.

  "Don't worry," I said as the door closed between us. "I'm feeling in a good mood, so I'll let you off this time."

  I put the gun away before turning back to face the rest of the passengers, but even at that nobody would meet my eye...I was the nutter they'd rather avoid discourse with, even although I was the one who'd had to deal with the random attack from the kid. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection in the window. The top half of my face was a mass of yellow-black bruises, and my nose had been mashed across my face. I looked like an aging boxer who'd just had his one fight too many. Hell, if I'd seen me on a train, I'd have avoided eye contact as well.

  But it was part of the job, part of the price I paid for being independent, working for myself and keeping my own hours. The occasional bruise, the random acts of violence, were worth it if it kept me away from having to hold down a 9-5 job. Judging by the long faces and tired eyes of the commuters around, I'd made the right choice.

  The train trundled along, disgorging more passengers than it took on at each stop, so that by the time we got to Govan there was only a handful of us getting off. I headed for the nearest bar...I knew how Jim worked. It was too early to stake out the flats, and there might be some gossip to be had in the local pubs.

  I was nearly right. He wasn't in the first bar, or the second, but he was in the third one I went into. From the outside it looked like a small, street-corner local boozer, but inside it was a cavern, a dimly lit hall, long and narrow, stretching to a small stage at the far end nearly twenty yards away. There were only half a dozen customers, and none of them were paying any attention to the half-naked girl who was looking decidedly bored as she took off her clothes on the stage.

  Jim was two tables down, talking to two old men. He saw me and nodded, then went back to his conversation. I went to the bar, bought us both a drink, and took them to the other side of the room. Rather than watch the girl reach the end of her act, I used the time to phone the hospital. They didn't tell me much. Doug was comfortable, he would be out sometime tomorrow and his mother was with him. Given that Doug's mother had been dead for five years, I presumed Jessie Malcolm was visiting...if not, this case was getting just too weird.

  As I got back to the bar the girl on stage took off her bra with something less than a flourish, and wandered slowly off. One man near the stage clapped briefly, then went back to his beer. Jim finished his business with the old men and came over to join me. Dave had been right...he was carrying a large camera and a bag over his shoulder.

  "Nice place," I said.

  "Fucking shit-hole," he replied. "But at least it's not full of bloody Rangers supporters. Those buggers have had it in for me since last year."

  Jim had written an article exposing links between Rangers Supporter's Clubs and paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. It had caused a furor at the time, and he had even received death threats for months afterwards. Some of the more rabid fans of the club still held a grudge...and we were in their stomping ground.

  "So what's the plan?" I asked, nodding towards the camera.

  "You and I both know that it's not a junkie the Police should be hunting," he said. "And I'm going to fucking prove it."
/>
  He patted the camera.

  "You heard about Doug?" I asked.

  "Fucking shame," he said.

  I told Jim exactly what I'd seen the night before. I hoped it would give him cause to think, but it only made him more determined.

  There was a sarcastic cheer from up near the stage as another bored girl began her act...more grind than bump. Jim didn't even turn to look.

  "Imagine if I got the picture? It would go nationwide...fuck, worldwide."

  "Aye," I said, taking a long pull of beer. "Pity you'll be too dead to reap the rewards."

  "I just want one picture," he said. "I don't want to capture the fucking thing...whoever it is. Without the picture that bastard Brown will never run the story."

  "Well, if you're going after it, you'll need some Dutch courage," I said.

  I went to the bar and got us both doubles. Maybe if I got him drunk he'd forget about his 'hunt'...at least for one night. As we drank I filled him in on the bits of the story he didn't know already.

  "Five grand? Five fucking grand?" he said, astonished. "Fucking amazing. But how the hell are you going to earn it?"

  That was something I'd been asking myself all day. The deal I'd done in the City Vaults might help. But not tonight. Tonight I'd planned to lie low and hope John Mason was doing the same. But Jim was having none of it. He downed his whisky in one.

  "Right. I'm off to case the auld dear's flat. You coming?"

  The weight of the pistol hung heavy in my pocket. I looked at my beer, I looked at Jim, and I looked at the bored girl as she got down to her bra and pants. I didn't want to see any more.

  "Okay. I'll keep you company," I said. "But if he turns up you're on your own. I'll be well away."

  He sneered. "Pussy. And here was I thinking you were a hard man."

  "Man, aye. But the thing you're after isn't a man. Not even close."

  Jim still didn't quite believe. I could see it in his eyes. He knew something or someone had come from Skye with me, but I'm sure he was half convinced that he was the victim of some elaborate scam. The only way he would be convinced would be to see it with his own eyes. But if we got close enough for that, we might not live for long.

  * * *

  The closer we got to the block of flats, the more I wanted to turn and run. But with Jim it went the opposite way. He seemed to be getting the scent of the hunt in his nostrils, and was walking ever faster. He led me through a warren of warehouses and portable office accommodation as if the knew the place intimately, and brought us out through a narrow alleyway barely four-foot wide that finally opened onto the street opposite the block of flats.

  "So, where are we going to wait?" I asked. "In the car park?"

  "Bugger that for a lark," he said, and dangled a set of keys in my face. "We're going in. I got a spare key from a wee woman on the ground floor in exchange for her name in the paper."

  Someone had scrubbed the pavement since last night, so there was no reminder of the blood that had been spilled, but my back gave me a twinge of pain, just to remind me how stupid I was being back here.

  Jim opened the front door and led us into the quiet, empty hall. He stepped into the lift, and made sure his camera was ready for action before shutting the door and taking us up. I got the pistol out of my pocket and checked that a round was chambered. Jim's eyes went big at the sight of the gun, but neither of us said anything as the lift came to a halt and the door opened.

  The landing in front of the lift door was clear. I could see the door to Mrs. Malcolm's flat. The door had been put back in place, but even from here I could see it was just leaning against the jamb. Police crime-scene ribbons crisscrossed the doorway, but Jim just parted them and climbed through. I followed more slowly. My hind-brain was telling me to run, and it was only a matter of time before I started to pay attention to it.

  The flat was quiet, and looked to be just as the old lady and I had left it. In other parts of the city it would have been cleaned out and sold off by now.

  Jim led me into the front room...a room that was dominated by a huge flat screen television. One wall was given over to shelves containing a large collection of films, which proved on examination to be mainly war and cowboy movies, which I guessed had belonged to the late Mr. Mason. The far wall was almost all window. The police had left it open, and there was a damp spot on the carpet where rain had been coming in. I moved to close the windows, but Jim stopped me.

  "Leave it," he whispered.

  "So, what now?" I asked as we looked out into the darkness beyond the window.

  "Now we wait."

  He sat in the armchair opposite the window, camera in his lap, and I sat in the chair in front of the big television, still holding tight to the pistol. Neither of us spoke. Jim was an old hand at the waiting game, and the pair of us sat in silence, lost in our own thoughts, as the sounds of the city diminished with the coming of a new day. Every so often a car would pass in the road outside and the headlights would send a band of shadow chasing around the room. And each time it happened, my grip on the pistol tightened.

  I had to force myself to relax...my wrist was getting stiff and sore with the tension. I lit a cigarette and smoked it, left-handed. I relaxed my grip on the gun, but I wasn't about to put it down just yet. Calm was a long way away. When I forgot to think about John Mason, I started to think about Doug, and that brought me right back to the room again. Then I remembered Doug's last riddle, and I finally found my way into the waiting state. I stopped noticing the traffic outside and managed to concentrate at last.

  I was trying to find an actor to link Boris Karloff and Fred Ward when Jim moved.

  "Too much fucking beer," he whispered. "I need a pish."

  He left me alone, in a room that suddenly seemed to have too many dark corners. My grip on the pistol tightened again until my knuckles hurt, and when a hand touched me on the shoulder I jumped a foot and nearly put a bullet in the television.

  "Christ, Derek," Jim said. "I never had you down as the jumpy kind."

  "I wasn't, before last night," I whispered.

  Jim rummaged in his bag and came up with a hip flask. He handed it to me.

  "Get some of this inside you," he said. "But not too fucking much. It might have to last us till morning."

  I sucked a mouthful of whisky and tried to calm my racing heart. I moved slightly in the chair, and something hard refused to give way. I found a remote control unit down the side of the cushion.

  "Let's check teletext," I said. "Our pal might have been busy already."

  Jim nodded.

  "Just keep the fucking noise down," he whispered. "Christ, it's like amateur night. If I didnae know better I'd take you for the Police."

  I switched on the television, being careful to keep the sound at mute. There was plenty of news on the text service about the ongoing police manhunt, but nothing we hadn't heard already. If John Mason had broken cover tonight, the news services hadn't learned of it yet. I switched to the BBC twenty-four hour news service, but there was nothing new there...at least not concerning Glasgow. A famous rock star had been caught at an airport with a condom of drugs up his rear-passage, the world's oldest dog had been recognized by the Guinness Book of Records, and a foreign politician had called our Prime Minister a dick-head. Just the usual stuff that passes as news reporting these days.

  I switched off the telly, we lit another cigarette each, and the waiting started again. Images of Karloff as Frankenstein began to merge with Chaney as the wolf-man and at some point I fell asleep, to be chased through forests by an old gypsy with one eye who insisted he had something important to tell me, if I would only stop and listen. But given the fact that the gypsy kept changing into John Mason, I kept running. And it kept chasing. I ran through a misty glade, and chanced one look back. It was at my shoulder! I put on a spurt of speed just as it reached out for me...

  ...and I woke, disoriented, unsure as to where I was. I sat up too quickly, and my back made me aware of how it felt
after sleeping upright in a chair.

  I groaned, and was shushed by Jim.

  "Quiet, man," he whispered. "We're in business."

  * * *

  And then I heard it...the scrape and rustle as something came up the wall. Jim sat, perched on the edge of his seat, the camera held out in front of him like a weapon. I grabbed for the pistol, and came up with the remote control, which I then dropped to the floor as I clumsily fumbled for the gun. Although it only produced a dull thud when it hit the carpet, it was enough to bring a halt to the noise from outside.

  For three heartbeats we sat there, fixated on the open window. Then a hand grabbed the rail of the small balcony, and the dark shadowy hump of a body pulled itself in. In the dark it was hard to see more than a silhouette, but then Jim took his shot. And in the instant that the flash lit up the room we saw the almost-human thing that had come up the wall. It was the creature of my nightmares...the fixed grin of the ape-like face, the thick, scaly skin that hung in folds on a thin chest, the yellow talons on the hand that it threw up to cover its face. Jim took another flash, and the beast screamed, so loud that my head rang. I saw its eyes blaze silver in the flashlight, just before the figure fell away out of our sight with a parting shriek.

  Jim seemed rooted to the spot, but I was already out of my chair and halfway to the door.

  "Come on, man. You're got the picture. Let's get out of here."

  "What the fuck was that?" he said. He was as white as a sheet, and shaking.

  I lifted him bodily out of the chair.

  "It's what you came for. We can find out what it is later when you get it developed."

  Outside, from ground level, something shrieked in anger. That got Jim moving. Just as we reached the door of the flat there was another scream, but we couldn't pinpoint its source.

  "Shit," Jim said. "Where is it?"

  I wished I knew. Then I might have some idea where to go next.

  "Stairs or lift?" I asked.

  Jim was staring back at the darkness of the living room.