Ahead of the Game

by JD Kirk

  It wasn’t deliberate. He tried very hard to listen and get involved. He’d even offered a couple of opinions, although both had been wrong.

  The truth of it was, though, he didn’t care about any of it. Not about who sat where, or who ate what, or what they danced to and when. All that stuff was just window dressing. It was the side-salad that came with restaurant meals that he never touched.

  All he cared about was a vow. A kiss. Her hand in his. Nothing else mattered. Not one bit.

  Well, apart from the karaoke he’d suggested, but that had been shot down in flames very quickly.

  He was idly tapping a rhythm on the steering wheel, thinking about which of the X-Men he’d most like to be, when a name cut through the haze.

  “Wait, what?” he asked, shooting her a glance. “What did you say?”

  “Which bit?” Sinead asked.

  “Just then. A second ago. You said about inviting…?”

  “Oh. Yeah. I just… I feel bad for him.”

  “Who?”

  “Hoon.”

  “Hoon?!” Tyler cried. A passing car blared its horn as he drifted across to the wrong side of the road, and he hurriedly jerked the wheel to the left. “As in Hoon Hoon? As in psychopathic ex-Detective Superintendent Hoon? That Hoon?”

  “I just… He’s had a rough time. I think it would be nice.”

  “For who? Not us! Not anyone else present. He’s insane!”

  “I thought you liked him,” Sinead said.

  Tyler did a double-take, and this time almost steered them into the verge at the side of the road. “What? Why?! How have I given you that impression? He’s a terrifying lunatic.”

  “I know. I just… last time we were down here. The Glenfinnan Monument case. You seemed to have a good time with him.”

  “He could’ve got me fired!” Tyler reminded her. “Or killed!”

  “You told me you had fun,” Sinead countered.

  Tyler ran out of steam a bit then. “I mean… I suppose it was kind of fun, yes. Kicking in doors and all that. But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s deranged. And that he hates me.”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” Sinead said. “He told Jack he liked you.”

  Tyler shook his head. “No, he didn’t. Who, Hoon? No. Told the boss? No way. Nuh-uh. No chance.” He flexed his fingers on the wheel, then blew out his cheeks. “What did he say, like?” he asked, clicking the indicators and turning onto the street that led to the Lennons’ house.

  A small white van shot towards them, forcing Tyler to wrench the wheel to the left and swerve the car up onto the pavement.

  “Ooh, fuck,” he ejected, as the van flew past, a wild-eyed older man wrestling with the wheel.

  “Was that…?” Sinead asked, spinning in her seat in time to see the van go careening around the corner. “That was him. That was Clyde Lennon!”

  The brakes squealed as Tyler stamped down on them. Up ahead, the front door of the house stood ajar, Lana’s car parked up in the driveway.

  “Shit,” Sinead hissed, a sinking feeling forming in her gut. She unclipped her seatbelt and threw open the door. “Get after Clyde. Don’t let him get away.”

  “You be alright?” Tyler asked.

  “Fine. Just go. I’ll call it in,” Sinead said, jumping out of the car. She hesitated, not yet closing the door. “And please… Be careful.”

  “I always am,” Tyler said, checking his mirrors before clicking the indicator.

  Sinead considered him sitting there in the driver’s seat, listening to the fading roar of the van engine. “Yeah, well,” she said. “Maybe not that careful…”

  Logan was led through the corridors of the school, past classrooms and cloakrooms, until they reached a set of swing doors that led through to an empty changing room with a dozen or so bags hanging from hooks, and similar numbers of clothing piles bundled untidily on the benches.

  From another door at the far end of the room came the squeaking of trainers on polished wood, and the thack-slap of basketballs being bounced with neither skill nor enthusiasm.

  “Through here,” the janny urged, barrelling through the other door without bothering to knock.

  Almost thirty children filled the hall. Most of them seemed ridiculously small and far too young to be in secondary school. First Years, Logan assumed, although none of them looked like they had growth spurts looming in their immediate futures, and they may well have been Primary Fours out on a day trip.

  The few who had been successfully managing to bounce their basketballs lost control of them as they turned to look at Janny and his giant new friend. A young female teacher in grey joggies and a yellow t-shirt shot the newcomers an inquisitive look from the back of the hall, but made no move to intercept.

  Logan got the impression that you didn’t question the caretaker. If he turned up on some mission to faff about with the lights, or board up some broken window, you kept your mouth shut and you let him get on with it. The school was his world, and everyone else was just a pain in the arse who happened to be passing through it.

  The janny stopped by a dented metal storage cabinet, and Logan’s eyes were drawn to the keyhole in the handle. Before he could figure out if the lock was the right size for the key, Alan opened both doors, negating the need to bother sizing it up.

  The sagging shelves inside held different coloured sports bibs, tubes of tennis balls and shuttlecocks, and various other bits of equipment that were likely necessary for the running of the department. Nothing obviously untoward, or even worthy of closer examination.

  “Here. What about this?” the caretaker asked, gruffly indicating a drawer down near the bottom of the cabinet, on the right-hand side.

  The front was only a few inches high, the stainless steel scuffed and scratched from years of use, and probably a good few months of misuse, too. The janitor gave it a tug, shaking the whole cabinet as the locking mechanism thunked against the metal frame.

  “Been locked for months. No bugger knew where the key was,” he explained.

  “What’s in it?” Logan asked, eyeing up the keyhole. It was about the right size and shape for the key in his pocket.

  “Not much,” the other man said with a shrug. “Nothing they didn’t have others of, or haven’t been able to do without. I’ve been meaning to try to get it open, but… Well.”

  “Always something more important to do,” Logan said. He nodded. “Aye. I know the feeling.”

  He took the evidence bag from his coat pocket, unsealed it and removed the key, then hesitated for a moment with it pointed at the lock. If this worked—if this opened—it could change everything. Fergus Forsyth had gone to quite the extreme to hide it, and Logan might finally be about to find out why.

  He slid the key into the lock.

  He turned it.

  Click.

  Yes!

  “Right, then,” he announced, wheeling around to face the class of basketball-challenged youngsters. He clapped his hands a couple of times, getting their attention before the echo had finished its first lap of the hall. “Class dismissed.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Sinead phoned in to the station as she ran towards the house, told Ben about Tyler being off in pursuit of Clyde’s van, and requested backup at the Lennon house.

  He told her to wait outside. She told him that she couldn’t do that, then hung up and hurried up the path, stopping at the front door of the house just long enough to knock and announce her presence.

  “Mrs Lennon? It’s Sinead Bell. I’m coming in.”

  She pushed through into the hallway, a sense of dread slowing her movements and honing her focus. There was music playing in the kitchen, some upbeat 80s number, half-buried beneath the excitedly mundane witterings of a radio DJ.

  The kitchen door creaked as Sinead nudged it open, braced for what she might find inside.

  Nothing. The room was empty, the back door closed.

  A tap was running, the water rumbling like distant cannon-fire again
st the curved metal base of the sink. Sinead left it, and turned her attention to the other doors in the hallway.

  “Lana,” she called, but no answer came.

  She stopped at the bottom of the staircase, listened for any sound up there, then opted for one of the other doors on the ground floor. The first was a small dining room, barely large enough for the table and four chairs that clustered together in it.

  One of the chairs had been pushed back until the back legs touched the skirting of the wall behind it. A notebook stood open on the table, revealing the beginning of an apology letter composed in Mrs Lennon’s familiar fastidious handwriting.

  A slim metal pen lay on the floor, halfway between the table and two glass-panelled doors that led through into the living room. Both were open.

  The music in the kitchen became something slower and more solemn as Sinead shuffled around the furniture and approached the doors. Other than the music and the thunder of the tap, the house remained silent. Still.

  Empty, perhaps.

  Empty, she hoped.

  But empty, it was not.

  Tyler reached the junction where the A86 met the A82, and had a decision to make. Left would take him back down the road towards Fort William. Right would lead north, up past the Commando Memorial, and onwards to Skye, or Inverness, or any one of a number of possible escape routes.

  Where would Clyde go? South would be familiar. South would also make Tyler’s life a lot easier, as the cavalry would likely be tearing up that road in the next few minutes, perfectly positioned to intercept.

  He groaned. Nothing was ever that easy.

  “Fuck it,” he said.

  North it was.

  He hit the sirens, indicated, waited for the traffic to slow, then pulled away to the right and powered up the steep climb at a nippy-but-sensible fifty miles per hour, forcing the cars ahead to pull in at the layby right before the memorial turn-off.

  There were a few straights ahead. Prime overtaking territory. If Clyde had gone this way—and Tyler was sure he would have, because this was the way that made the detective’s life more difficult—then he could be flying on up the road already. With a clear-ish road, the wind at his back, and a total disregard for the speed limit, Clyde could be close to Letterfinlay by now. It would take some fast driving to catch the bastard now.

  Tyler edged the accelerator pedal down, and the Audi crept smoothly up to sixty. He had just hit the first of the long straights when his phone rang over the car audio, and Hamza’s name appeared on his screen.

  “Ham. Not a great time,” Tyler said, after thumbing the answer button on the steering wheel.

  “Aye, I heard. Where are you?”

  “Headed north. I just passed the Commando Memorial.”

  “Have you got eyes on him?”

  “No. Had to make a call. He might’ve headed down the road to the Fort, but—”

  There was a thunk and the wheel jerked in his hands, swerving the car towards the centre of the road. Tyler swore, tightened his grip, and brought the car back under control.

  “What happened? What was that?” Hamza asked.

  “Fucking pothole,” Tyler said.

  “Take it easy. Don’t take any risks. If he gets away, he gets away.”

  “Oh, he won’t be getting away,” Tyler replied. “I’m nearly doing sixty.”

  There was a lengthy pause from the other end of the line. Tyler had just started to wonder if the signal had dropped when Hamza’s voice returned.

  “Sixty? Is that it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Is that it?’” Tyler spat. “Sixty’s fast.”

  “Aye, if you’re an old woman,” Hamza told him. “I bet he’s no’ doing sixty.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll crash, then! And, anyway, I bet he doesn’t feel sick on the twisty bits.”

  “Alright, alright,” Hamza said. “You’re there, I’m not, you make the judgement call.”

  “I will,” Tyler assured him. “I am.”

  “Uniform’s still knocking around in Invergarry. I’ll get them to head south and try to intercept.”

  The call ended, leaving Tyler alone with the screaming of the sirens and the mid-tempo thrumming of the car’s engine.

  Sixty was plenty.

  Sixty was fast.

  It certainly felt bloody fast, anyway, and that was before the twisty bits.

  But Clyde Lennon wouldn’t be sticking to the limit. Not with everything he stood to lose.

  “Fuck it. What’s the worst that could happen?” Tyler muttered, then he floored the pedal, and the Audi roared like a beast uncaged.

  The first thing Sinead noticed was the hammer. It lay on the floor just inside the living room, one side clawed, one side blunt, both sides bloodied and wet.

  She saw a shoe next, abandoned and alone.

  A foot. A leg.

  A body.

  It had to be a body. Not a person. Not anymore. There were too many injuries. Too much blood. The damage to the head and face so significant that it could’ve been anyone lying there. Anything, almost.

  But it wasn’t just anyone, Sinead knew. It was Lana Lennon.

  What was left of her.

  She checked for a pulse she knew she wouldn’t find, but to her amazement found one. Weak, feeble, but there.

  And suddenly, panic kicked in. The overwhelming sense that this woman’s life was now in her hands. That everything that happened next was her responsibility. Her fault. Her burden to carry.

  She didn’t fight the panic, but let it flare all the way up to maximum for a few seconds, then pushed it aside and forgot about it. Not forever—it would come back someday when she least expected it, she knew—but she was rid of it for now, and that was all that mattered.

  Dropping to her knees, she did her best to clear the blood and mucus from Lana’s airways. The English teacher’s face was like nothing Sinead had ever seen, not even in the shitty horror films Tyler had made her watch after she’d subjected him to a double bill of both Mamma Mias.

  Her cheeks were concave. Her jaw was shattered. Her nose was… gone, battered back into the pulpy mess of her skull.

  With some effort, she rolled Lana into the recovery position, then whipped out her phone and started calling for an ambulance.

  “It’s OK, Lana. You’re going to be OK,” she soothed.

  There was no way the woman could hear—please, God, don’t let her be conscious—but that didn’t matter. The words were designed to calm Sinead herself, more than anything.

  She requested the ambulance, hung up, and checked Lana’s vitals again. The pulse was still there. Her chest was moving, though her breathing was faint and laboured. Given the beating she’d taken, though, it was a miracle she was alive at all.

  And then, Sinead heard it.

  The creak of a floorboard behind her.

  Before she could react, a hand caught her by the hair and yanked her backwards, and Sinead cried out in pain and in fright as she was dragged, off-balance, to the floor.

  Chapter Forty

  The snap of Logan’s rubber gloves rang out like a gunshot in the empty gym hall. He could hear the excited chattering of the boys and girls in their respective changing rooms, as they speculated wildly about the abrupt end to the lesson, and the man who had brought it about.

  Once the gloves were on, Logan gave an experimental flex of his fingers, then hooked both index fingers around the outer edges of the drawer, where it was least likely he’d disturb any fingerprints, and eased it open.

  The metal drawer did not slide out easily, and the slow, drawn-out squeal it gave relegated ‘fingers down a blackboard’ to Logan’s second least favourite noise.

  With a bit of tugging, some side-to-side jigging, and a few encouraging swear words, the drawer finally opened enough to reveal its contents.

  Which were precisely fuck all.

  “What? No,” Logan muttered, yanking harder until he could see all the way to the back of the drawer. The back half, to his disma
y, held exactly the same as the front half. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said a little louder this time, as he shoved his hand inside and swept it around the edges, in case something might be tucked away there.

  There wasn’t.

  He wasn’t sure if the drawer was meant to come all the way out, but he gave it a big enough tug that it screeched free of its fittings, leaving him holding it in one oversized hand.

  This only served to confirm the emptiness of it, which did nothing to ease the rate at which his mood was darkening.

  “It can’t be fucking empty!” he announced, refusing to believe the evidence of his own eyes, and his outrage at the very suggestion of it boomed around the hall. “Why would it be empty?”

  He turned the drawer over in his hands, checking the bottom, then fiddling about at the catches in case some secret compartment was revealed.

  Setting it down, he dropped to his knees and peered into the gap that the drawer had left. He thrust a hand in, felt along the top in the hope of finding something taped there, but came away disappointed.

  “How can it be fucking empty?” he demanded, scowling down at the drawer sitting on the scuffed gym hall floor. “What’s the point?”

  His resentment got the better of him, and he gave it a kick. It skidded a foot or so across the floor, then stopped with a clack and a rattle.

  Odd.

  Logan squatted beside it, but didn’t pick it up yet. He eyed it from a variety of angles first, like a bare-knuckle fighter sizing up an opponent, and only then lifted it off the floor.

  He gave it a shake, and heard the same rattling sound as before. With a bit of experimentation, he narrowed the sound down to the front panel, close to where the keyhole was.

  His heart sunk a bit then, assuming the sound was coming from the locking mechanism, but a bit more shoogling and shaking revealed it was coming from elsewhere in the front.

  He tipped the drawer from side to side, and listened to something sliding around. The front was made of a single piece of metal, bent around the locking mechanism to form a slim rectangular box, with a gap of a few millimetres where the back didn’t quite meet the drawer’s base.