“Whit?”
“Knock it off, Jack.”
“Perhaps you’d prefer to speak to my associate, Nicole Carrow. I believe you know her.”
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
“Hello? Who’s this?”
“It’s Jack.”
“Fuck’s sake, Jack, it’s the middle of the night. What is it?”
“Where’s the fuckin’ story, Fraz? Nobody’s read it, nobody’s heard it, nobody’s even seen it. What’s the fuckin’ score, here at all?”
“Oh, sorry, Jack, didn’t tell you. We ran a decoy first edition so we’d be the only paper with it. Make sure the opposition didn’t see it until it’s too late.”
“A decoy? Too late? It was almost too late for me, ya fuckin’ idiot. Three men who didn’t know we were on to them broke into my flat a couple of hours ago and tried to kill me, Sarah and Nicole Carrow. This was kind of the scenario I was trying to avoid when I gave you the fuckin’ tale in the first place, ya stupit Jambo moron.”
“Christ, I’m sorry Jack, I’d no idea. I would never have done it if . . .”
“I should fuckin’ well hope you would never have done it if. But you fuckin’ well did.”
“I’m so sorry, Jack, believe me. Really, really sorry. But you must understand I had to make the most of it. It was the scoop of the decade.”
“No, Fraz. What I’ve got now is the scoop of the decade. Names and evidence of who killed Voss. Name and a motive for who needed him dead. And exclusive access to Tam McInnes, Paul McInnes and Cameron Scott.”
Parlabane could hear Fraz swallow.
“I said sorry before you told me that, Jack, remember? I was sorry already. I’ll give you whatever you want. You can name your price, within reason. In fact you can be reasonably unreasonable. Fuck it, you can have anything you ask for.”
“I thought you’d say that. Well, you can get me a helicopter for a start.”
“A helicopter?”
“That’s what I said. Six-seater or bigger, ready to leave from Ingliston in one hour, or the story goes elsewhere.”
“Two hours. I’ll need at least two hours.”
“Ninety minutes.”
“It’ll be there.”
The helicopter swooped into the wide glen, banking around a truncated spur and down between the hills. Parlabane was leaning into the cockpit talking to the navigator, gesticulating at the map he had brought, and pointing out of the windows. They had received a stern police warning over the radio about twenty minutes earlier, telling them to change course and generally fuck off out of what was – temporarily – restricted airspace, i.e. the areas they were flying their own choppers around in search of the fugitives. Tam McInnes had told them the cops had hitherto agreed to look in the wrong places, but with the widespread realisation this morning that the game was a bogey, such cooperation had clearly been withdrawn as they endeavoured to bring the fugitives in and wash their hands of any complicity ASAP. It was like lunchtime in the Serengeti, there were so many birds hovering around, scanning the surface terrain for pickings. But happily, even with the security forces trying to look in the right places, they were still way off-target, and the restricted airspace did not include Parlabane’s destination.
He glanced back, looking at Nicole as she stared through the glass at the landscape below. Her reddened eyes had the full Samsonite set under each, and her top lids had slid down a few times on the flight north, but she was wide awake now. Parlabane needed her to be there so that McInnes knew who they were and that it wasn’t a trap, but even if this hadn’t been the case, there’d still have been nothing could have stopped her getting on that helicopter.
The same went for Fraz. Parlabane had asked just how much of heaven and earth he had needed to move to get the’ copter at such short notice, to which he replied that he had merely phoned Angus Gilmore, who was very happy to assist. Gilmore had a lot of connections in the heaven- and earth-moving businesses. The bird was in the air shortly after dawn. Its proprietor would, Gilmore took open delight in saying, shit blood if he knew how many laws they would be using it to break, and its two crew were happy to hear no more than directions, allowing them to bailout on a “we didnae know” ticket if there were any future consequences, or even just future awkward questions.
Fraz sat at the back, next to the large ghetto-blaster he had insisted on bringing aboard, only to be told once airborne that he couldn’t listen to it as it buggered up the flight instruments. Parlabane wormed it out of the navigator that this was actually a bit of a fib intended to protect him and the pilot from potentially dreadful music – “that beard, he looks a bit of a folkie; this is a strictly No-Runrig flight” – and got the go-ahead for Fraz to tune into Radio Four, which he jacked up loud to compensate for the noise of the engine and the blades.
“You know, you can actually die of smugness,” Parlabane warned, watching Fraz lap up the broadcasts.
“. . . stunned reactions to this morning’s revelations in The Saltire which detail an attempt on the life of the lawyer representing the Voss Four, and draw a connection to the death of Finlay Campbell, also of Manson & Boyd – as well as claiming the four accused couldn’t have carried out the murders of Roland Voss’s two bodyguards . . .”
“. . . has since emerged that three men are in custody following a further attempt on Nicole Carrow’s life in the early hours of today, as well as attempts to murder John Lapsley, the journalist who wrote this morning’s stories, and his fiancée, Dr Sarah Slaughter, at their Edinburgh home . . .”
“. . . arrest of two men outside Strathgair late last night. Sergeant John Shearer has made a statement in the past hour that one of the men’s fingerprints matches some of those found on the bus which crashed en route to Peterhead Prison on Tuesday night. However, police have no record of a fifth prisoner being on board . . .”
“Know what that sound is, Nicole?” Parlabane asked, with the most misanthropic smile she had seen this side of Jack Nicholson. She shook her head, not sure she even knew what sound he was talking about.
“It’s the sound of the shit hitting the fan.”
“. . . who has been coordinating the search has said that these developments do not change his mission to apprehend the three remaining fugitives. ‘Their guilt or innocence has to be decided in a court of law and it remains my job to make sure they appear in one’ . . .”
“. . . for Scotland, Alastair Dalgleish, told journalists that there was a real danger of media hysteria obstructing the investigation. ‘We must wait for the full facts to emerge before jumping to conclusions.’”
“That would be a fucking first,” Parlabane muttered.
“‘The high profile of the late Mr Voss and the understandable level of public interest in these developments over the past few days has made everyone hungry for further sensation; and as the manhunt has not yet delivered a satisfactory conclusion, people are therefore likely to over-react to any fresh angle or apparently related event. The public – and the media – should remember that the only proven facts we have right now are that these men were apprehended at the scene of Roland Voss’s murder, and that they subsequently absconded from a prison bus, leaving three more bodies at their backs.’”
“Prick,” said Fraz.
“Well, we’ve made some impact on the pompous tit,” said Parlabane. “He’s started referring to them as men rather than animals. Wonder if he’ll call Michael Swan one when we prove he did it?”
“. . . editor of The Saltire has said Miss Carrow is not under police protection because there is growing evidence that members of the police and/or security forces may have connections to the men involved. He has refused to reveal the whereabouts of the lawyer to the police and has defended harsh criticism of his newspaper’s conduct from Charles Mo . . .”
The helicopter came in low over the small loch, the water’s blue surface streaked with long orange lozenges, stray canoes, scattered and unmanned, bobbing on the wa
ves. It dropped its speed and altitude further as it traced the south-running river, all eyes scanning the ground and the water below.
“There,” said Parlabane with a laugh, pointing it out to the pilot. “It’s you they’re waiting for, Nicole.”
She looked to where Parlabane had indicated. It was a small shore of grey pebbles, cut into the bank at a bend in the waterway, like a bite out of the land, not quite overhung with trees, a tousily unkempt field on the other side. A place the water would flood into and pound during the rains of winter, but for now a niche, where three orange canoes were arranged in an “N” shape.
The helicopter came down gently on the long grass, sheep scattering in reflexive panic. Nicole and Parlabane climbed out and ran across to the fence that warded the woollier residents away from the bank. Parlabane pulled a strand of wire up to allow Nicole to climb through, then ducked under it himself and jumped down the three-foot drop to the water’s edge.
“Mr McInnes?” Nicole called, her voice almost lost in the noise of the rotor blades behind her.
Tam McInnes’s head emerged slowly from inside one of the canoes, then with some effort he squeezed his body out of the hole and knocked on the other two vessels. He stood tall, defiant, redoubtable. Parlabane recognised Paul McInnes from photographs that had repeatedly popped up on news programmes, and recognised Cameron Scott from photographs that had repeatedly popped up on nature programmes. A cross between a sloth, Emo Philips and a broken umbrella.
The three of them waded quickly through the thigh-deep water to where Parlabane and Nicole helped them up on to the grass banking next to the fence. Tam McInnes clutched Nicole’s wrists with both hands and smiled, saying nothing, just nodding his head. She laughed a little, sniffing as a few more tears found their way out of her overworked ducts’ emergency reserves.
“This the double-glazing joker?” he said, indicating Parlabane.
“This is Jack Parlabane, yes,” she answered. “He has his irritating moments, but he has saved my life twice in the past forty-eight hours.”
Tam held out a hand.
“I’m sorry about your friend, Mr McInnes,” Parlabane said solemnly, gripping it. “They killed a good pal of mine too.”
Tam looked him in the eye and nodded again. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr Parlabane.”
Parlabane pulled the door closed and gave a signal to the pilot, and the chopper lifted off again. There was a palpable release of tension around him as the runners left the grass. He sat down beside Tam, Nicole behind him in the seat next to Paul, Fraz at the back, his radio displaced by the invertebrate who insisted on answering only to “Spammy”, which sounded about right to Parlabane.
Fraz began to pour cups of hot soup from a hideously cheerful tartan flask, passing them forward to each of the new passengers, who drank them down gratefully before moving on to some filled rolls he produced from a polythene bag.
As they ate, the three of them continued to scan the skyline restlessly, turning their heads back and forth to look out of the windows on both flanks. All eyes locked nervously on to the right-hand side as another helicopter came into view, before the fact sank into each of them that they were heading away – at speed and undetected – from where they were sought. In the distance they could see two more of the birds, intent and oblivious.
“What are they lookin’ for?” Spammy asked.
“You three,” said the incredulous Fraz, who really would have to learn.
“Why?”
Tam shook his head.
Fraz reached into his poly bag once more, this time lifting out some small disposable tumblers and a half-litre bottle of Glenfiddich, the squat green affair renowned of airport duty-free shops.
“It’s a bit early in the morning, I know, but I’m sure you could do with something else to warm you up,” he said. “It’s the after-meal complimentary drink as part of the Air Saltire in-flight service.”
Parlabane turned round to take hold of his and Tam’s measures, catching a look at Nicole, who surprised him by knocking hers back in a gulp and gesturing for a refill. Fraz obliged. More relaxed, she began to sip the second glass. Paul beside her was smiling through tears as he cradled his drink, his mind and body being mercilessly racked by just about every emotion on the backlogged list, now that he felt safe enough once more to feel anything. Nicole’s eyes filled up again too, then she laughed out loud at herself for doing it. Paul laughed also. Above the constant hum of the aircraft, Parlabane could hear them all start to chat to one another, as the fear and the danger dissipated in the helicopter’s slipstream.
Tam had a slow, closed-eyed sip at the pale, golden liquid, then sighed and raised his glass to Parlabane, who lifted his own, mirroring Tam’s unsmiling expression.
“This isnae over yet, you know that, don’t you?” Parlabane said to him.
Tam nodded.
“Aye,” he growled darkly. “You’re fuckin’ right it’s no.”
THIRTEEN
Knight got back into his car and pulled slowly away from the petrol pumps, then accelerated swiftly on to the slip-road, leaving the South Lakes service area behind and rejoining the motorway. Despite all the shit, he couldn’t help but feel a thrill run through him as his mind and body reacquainted themselves with almost forgotten excitements. The buzz, the sense of challenge, the discipline, the exhilaration; damn it, playing again. He was the manager who had come off the bench and got stripped himself because the team were losing; all the old touch was coming flooding back, the rust and cobwebs shaken free.
It had gone wrong. It had gone very, very wrong, on a scale and at a rate that would have precipitated despair and inevitably panic in most others, but then he was a very long way different from most others. He had lost five men – his entire covert crew on this op – in the space of a few hours, and none of them had even managed to neutralise their targets in the process. They wouldn’t talk – he could rely on that, at least – but it was nonetheless a disaster of such apparent totality that it had stretched even his nerve to remain calm and survey the situation dispassionately.
Discipline. This was about discipline. Remaining calm in the face of catastrophe was little more than a trained suppression of reflex, something even pampered politicos like Dalgleish had mastered. What took discipline was the ability to maintain your judgment, to be able still to move forward, even if that meant finding a path between the crashing pillars and burning bodies. And the first discipline was not to feel sorry for yourself, which was a bigger feat than it sounded. It was a dangerous weakness because it offered consolation, but consolation was for the defeated. The seductively comforting thought that you had done your best, done all you could, but had been the victim of astronomically improbable bad luck. We woz robbed, Brian. It was surrender with excuses; I lost but it wasn’t my fault. Luck, fault, mitigation – none of it mattered, because your performance in this game was judged only by whether you got away with it.
He had been unlucky, devilishly so. But he wouldn’t have been professional if he hadn’t been ready for that. You didn’t go ahead with an op like this if you weren’t prepared for all the possibilities, and that included all-hands disaster.
That was what Dalgleish hadn’t really grasped. You could plan something with micro-fine meticulousness, account for every contingency your experience and imagination can list, but it’s never watertight. There’s always the chance of a rogue, unforeseen factor, and there’s always the possibility of simple, old-fashioned bad luck. And you’ve got to be ready to accept it and deal with it if it comes to that. Dalgleish had sat and listened to him say this, but he hadn’t heard. That was the difference between them. Blokes like Dalgleish thought you could cover all the bases. Even if they knew they were playing the percentages, and that therefore there was still a minute chance of failure, they didn’t really believe it would happen, and they never contemplated what they would do if it did. That was why his portable had been ringing non-stop since dawn, Dalgleish probably flappin
g around in his office, shitting himself since he heard, and trying to get through to him for reassurance that everything was going to be all right. Well it was, kind of. But apart from the fact that he wasn’t going to tell anyone what he was up to, Knight thought it would do Dalgleish good to sweat it out for a while. It would be a valuable exercise in panic-management, as well as reminding him starkly of where, who and what he was without Knight’s assistance and patronage: respectively, lost, nobody and fucked.
Knight had been let down, badly, but the time for anger, self-pity and retribution was not now. Discipline. Professionalism. And downright maturity. You make a decision and you live with it, and you accept – from the word go – that you’ll still live with it if it backfires.
The arseholes had contrived to miss the original barn door from ten paces. Unarmed, unsuspecting civilian targets. Fucking hell, talk about fish in a barrel. But he had harboured doubts for a while. He had already been thinking about a change of personnel, but then the Voss thing had come along. Very little notice; a matter of weeks. And stakes so high that he couldn’t afford to pass on the job. Never mind the money; that was the slightest consideration. It was the threat to Dalgleish and the fortunes of his whole party posed by Voss’s grip on their collective testicles. Whether they acceded or not, Dalgleish, Swan and the whole parade were going down. A corruption scandal that would sink their careers and scupper an already holed and sinking administration; or a political action – effectively legalising hard pornography – that would turn the stomachs of even their most traditionally loyal voters, for which the party chiefs would exact revenge . . . by which time they’d be in opposition. Which was the real threat. If the Tories went down, well, it wasn’t exactly the end for Knight’s ambitions, but it would certainly slow the pace for a while.
He knew they were past their best. Unfit, stale, and getting complacent through having things go their way too long and too easily. Thinking about their wallets and their stomachs, using their positions to line both, forgetting the real reasons they had got into their jobs in the first place. It was time for a clear-out, anyone could see. And if he had been given a couple of months’ notice, he’d have done just that. Fired them all, got in a new crew. Guys who were young, hungry, sharp and out to impress. Guys who were in the job for the job’s sake, not for the wages or because it made them feel important. Guys who just wanted the high, the excitement of carrying out an op, like those five stupid fuckers did once upon a time.
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