The bang was like a shotgun going off – cubes of safety glass exploded across the Vauxhall’s interior. The car kicked up on my side, hurling me into the seatbelt as the airbags detonated. Filling the world with white and the stench of fireworks. Then down again, bouncing, safety glass pattering against my skin like rain. Nostrils filled with the smell of dust and spent airbag and petrol.
Everything clicked back to normal speed.
O’Neil hung forward against his seatbelt, arms dangling at his sides, blood seeping down his face from the gash in his forehead and broken nose. The Transit van’s radiator blocked his window.
I fumbled with the seatbelt, a high-pitched ringing filling my head.
Out… I shoved open the door and stumbled into the road, holding onto the pool car’s roof to stay upright.
Someone screamed.
The Fiesta was bent around the lamppost, the passenger side all buckled in. The lamppost hadn’t fared much better. It was bent and twisted, the glass head dangling from a couple of wires.
Yellow and black dots swirled around me, dimming the street.
I blinked. Shook my head. Cracked my jaw. And the ringing dropped from deafening to just painful. Christ, what a mess…
Glass crunched under my shoes as I picked my way across the road.
Whimpering came from the back of the Fiesta – a pair of brown eyes stared out at me, wet nose pressed against the cracked hatchback glass. Then the driver’s door creaked open and the bastard fell out onto the road: baggy blue tracksuit, trainers, big woolly hat pulled down over his ears. Couldn’t see his face, just the back of his head.
‘You! You’re under arrest!’
And that was it. He was up on his feet like he was on springs, not looking back, arms and legs pumping as he sprinted towards the blue-and-white monolithic Travelodge on Greenwood Street.
No you bloody don’t.
I lurched after him, dragging my handset out again. ‘I need an ambulance to the junction of Canard, Nelson, and Greenwood. Officer hurt. And get the Fire Brigade too – there’s a dog trapped in the wreckage.’
Moving faster, pulse thudding in my throat, roaring in my chest.
Around the corner of Greenwood. The train station loomed ahead – a big Victorian upturned boat in wrought iron and glass, with a blocky 1970s concrete portico stuck on the outside for taxis and smokers to loiter under.
I shoved my way through the main doors, into a din of people shouting and pounding music. The interior was one big open-plan space, with walkways arching over the tracks, connecting the half-dozen platforms. Light filtered down through the dirty glass roof.
Someone had set up a big tent-stage thing by the ticket office – the Castlewave FM logo emblazoned on either side with ‘TURNING MILES INTO SMILES!!!’ in the middle. A table at the front was draped in black, a pair of tossers standing behind it clapping their hands above their heads in time to the music, still holding their microphones.
A sea of bodies clapped back at them, shoulder to shoulder, crowded into the concourse.
‘Ha, excelente mi amigos!’ The music faded out. ‘What’s the total, Colin?’
‘Well, Steve, we’re all the way to Calais in France already, how cool is that?’
‘Megatastic coolio!’ Followed by a grating honk from an old-fashioned horn.
Where the hell was he?
No sign of anyone running, or of anyone getting up, swearing, shaking their fists because they’d been knocked out of the way.
‘You’re listening to Sensational Steve and Crrrrrrrazy Colin. It’s five past one, and we’re live, live, live from Oldcastle train station in Logansferry!’
The crowd roared out a cheer.
Had to be here somewhere…
‘You’re not wrong there, Steve, and we’re here cycling all the way to the Philippines to raise money for the victims of Typhoon Nanmadol! Six thousand, six hundred and seventy-four miles!’
I pushed into the crowd. There – blue tracksuit. ‘You! Don’t you dare run!’
‘That’s a lot of miles, Colin.’
‘It’s a lot of miles, Steve!’
People complained as I shoved them out of the way and grabbed the guy by the arm. Spun him around… Only it wasn’t a he, it was a she. A lumpy woman with a short haircut.
She wrenched my hand from her arm. Glared at me. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Get away from us, you freak!’ She backed up a pace, baring her teeth. ‘God, what happened to your face?’
Sodding hell. There was another woman in a blue tracksuit over by the automatic ticket machines. And a couple of men too – all wearing blue tracksuits with the Oldcastle Warriors logo stitched onto the left breast. Bloody local football team colours.
‘So if you’re listening at home, why not come on down to the train station and take a turn on one of our stationary bicycles? Help us turn miles into smiles for those poor Philippine people!’
‘Guv?’
I turned.
Constable Rhona Massie had her hands in her pockets. Blue tracksuit top on over a sweat-stained red T-shirt and a pair of stonewashed jeans. The bags under her eyes were shiny with sweat, cheeks hot-pink against her long pale face. ‘You OK? Jesus, what happened? You’re bleeding…’
What? I put a hand against my forehead, it came away red. That’s when it started to sting. And not just my head, a wave of aches and pains rolled up my right side, crashing at the base of my neck. Something sharp throbbed deep inside my left wrist. ‘Where is he?’
‘Right, time for another stellar tuuuuuune. I want to see everyone getting their funky thang on for Four Mechanical Mice and their “Anthem for a Shining Girl”!’ A big wobbling piano chord blared out of the speakers.
Rhona grimaced, showing off a row of perfect white teeth. ‘You look like you’ve been in a car bomb, or something!’
‘A guy, ran in here a minute ago. Woolly hat, white trainers, blue tracksuit.’
She stepped closer and brushed a flurry of safety glass off my shoulder. ‘We need to get you a doctor.’ She turned. ‘I NEED A DOCTOR OVER HERE! SOMEONE’S HURT!’ Then back to me. ‘You’re probably in shock.’ She held up a hand, the fingers splayed. ‘How many fingers am I—’
‘Get that out of my face.’ I slapped her hand away. ‘I want all the exits sealed. No one in or out. Get everyone in a blue tracksuit rounded up. And why aren’t you in uniform?’
‘She’s incandescent, she’s all ablaze…’
Rhona stared at me. ‘It’s my day off, I’m down raising money for the typhoon victims.’
‘She is the sound of a million glass grenades…’
‘Not tomorrow, Constable, now!’
‘Yes, Guv.’ She turned and ran off to the front entrance, waving her arms at a couple of guys in fluorescent yellow waistcoats with ‘SECURITY’ printed across the chest.
‘She is the shattered dawn, tearing round the world…’
Knots of broken concrete rolled their way through my spine. Jagged bars of rusty iron jabbing through the base of my neck. My knees refused to hold my weight.
Bloody Rhona. Felt fine till she started rabbiting on about how battered I looked.
‘She’s dark and light and home tonight, cos she’s the Shining Girl…’
I sank down, till my backside was on the cold tiled floor. Curled my throbbing wrist against my chest.
God, everything ached…
A circle of people formed around me, all of them staring. A couple had their mobile phones out, filming me sitting there, covered in broken glass and blood. Then someone shouldered their way through the cordon.
‘Come on, give the man some room to breathe. Back up.’
‘Who died and made you God?’
‘I’m a nurse, you moron, now back up before I put you on your arse in front of all your friends.’
I blinked up at her. A familiar face: broad forehead, small eyes, hair in a ponytail – blonde wisps sticking t
o her shiny face. A T-shirt with sweatmarks under the arms and between her breasts, white shorts and trainers. Wide hips and thick legs. A ‘TURN MILES INTO SMILES!!!’ towel draped around her neck.
She blinked back. ‘Inspector Hutcheson? Bloody hell… What happened?’
‘Henderson. Not Hutcheson.’
‘Of course, yes, sorry.’ She knelt on the ground beside me. Took my head in her hands and stared into my eyes. ‘Are you experiencing any nausea? Dizziness? Ringing in the ears? Headache? Confusion?’
I grabbed her hand. ‘Who are you?’
‘OK, that’s a yes on the confusion. It’s Ruth. Ruth Laughlin? Laura Strachan’s friend? You came to the flat after they found her, remember? Talked to all the nurses?’
‘She’s still alive.’
‘Of course she is. They let her out of hospital two weeks ago.’ Ruth shifted herself around, placed one hand on the back of my neck, pressed her other against my chest. ‘Come on, let’s get you lying down… There we go. You know, you’re lucky I was here. Concussion can be very serious.’
A distorted voice burbled from the station’s loudspeakers. The words echoing back and forth until they were little more than a smear of syllables fighting against the song. ‘… the train now departing from platform six is the one seventeen to Edinburgh Waverley…’
For God’s sake – why didn’t Rhona tell them to cancel the trains? Fifteen minutes from now he could be in Arbroath. Dundee in twenty-five.
Not too late – call Control and get patrol cars to the nearest station. Have the bastard picked up right off the train…
‘Inspector Henderson?’
Bloody fingers wouldn’t work, Airwave handset was all slippery…
The wail of sirens cut through the end of the announcement. That would be the backup I called for. Late as always.
‘Hello?’
Yellow and black dots bloomed in the siren’s wake, growing, spreading, blanking out the glass ceiling behind Ruth Laughlin’s head as she frowned down at me. A halo of darkness.
‘Inspector Henderson? Can you hear me? I want you to squeeze my hand as hard as you can … Inspector Henderson? Hello?’
Monday
9
I eased Alice’s door closed and crossed the corridor to my own room. It was small, but functional, just big enough for the double bed against one wall, the chest of drawers, and wardrobe. A pair of dark-blue curtains that still had the same creases as the ones in the lounge. A cheap-looking alarm-clock radio on the floor beside the bed, glowing 00:15 at me.
My cell was bigger than this.
An old-fashioned brass key sat on top of the duvet, with a cardboard tag attached to it by a red ribbon. Spidery handwriting: ‘THOUGHT THIS MIGHT COME IN HANDY’.
Ah…
I turned. There was a lock fitted to the bedroom door, specks of sawdust dandruffing the floorboards underneath it along with a few quavers of shaved wood. The key slipped right in, and when I turned it, the bolt slid home with a clack.
After two years inside, it was strange how comforting that sound was. Especially combined with the muffled rattle of Shifty’s snores coming through the wall.
The laptop went on the bed, while I stripped, folded all my clothes, and placed them in the chest of drawers. Old habits.
I took out my shiny new mobile phone and thumbed in the number on Shifty’s Post-it note. It rang, and rang, and rang…
Crossed to the window, eased one side of the curtains open a couple of inches. Just concrete, gloom, and streetlights. Someone crept their way across the garden opposite with a torch. Good luck finding anything worth stealing around here.
Then a click, and a muzzy voice crackled from the earpiece. ‘Hello? Hello, who’s this?’
‘You Alec?’
Some rustling, a hissing noise, then a clunk. ‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’
‘I need a piece. Tomorrow. Semiauto—’
‘There must be some mistake. I offer spiritual guidance to wayward souls. Are you a wayward soul in need of guidance?’
Ah. Right. Cautious. Probably a good trait in a gun dealer. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think… I think that you’re on a dangerous path. That your life hasn’t turned out the way you hoped. That darkness surrounds you.’
Why the hell else would I need a gun? ‘So, what now?’
‘I think you should come see me. We can meditate on your predicament. Drink some herbal tea. Find a core of peace within you.’ A muffled yawn. ‘Now, do you have a pen and paper?’
I stuck Shifty’s Post-it to the windowpane. Went back to the wardrobe and pulled a pen from my jacket pocket. ‘Go.’
‘Thirteen Slater Crescent, Blackwall Hill, OC12 3PX.’
‘When?’
‘I shall be available for spiritual guidance between the hours of nine and five tomorrow. Well, I might head out to the shops around lunchtime, but other than that…’
‘OK: tomorrow.’
‘Peace be on you.’ And he was gone.
A rogue firework screamed up into the sky from a couple of streets over, booming and crackling in a baleful eye of scarlet.
Peace wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
I let the curtains fall closed, slipped in beneath the duvet and powered up the laptop. Propped it up on my chest and settled back to watch the rest of Wrapped in Darkness.
Laura Strachan picks her way along the High Street, ignoring the olde worlde charms of the surrounding buildings – now converted into charity shops, bookies, and places you could get a payday loan or pawn your jewellery. ‘What happened to me that night, and over the next couple of days … it’s slippery – difficult to hold onto. Like… Like it never really happened to me. Like it was happening to someone else, in a movie. All larger than life and shiny and fake. Does that make sense?’
Which might explain Baywatch Steve and the cheesy dialogue.
‘I wake up some mornings and I can almost taste the operating room. The disinfectant, the metal… And then it fades, and I’m left with this feeling like something’s crushing my chest.’
Then the scene shifts to the briefing room at Oldcastle Force Headquarters – the old one with the sagging ceiling tiles and sticky carpet. Before the refit. Journalists pack the seats, cameras, microphones and Dictaphones bristling towards the four men sitting behind the table at the front. Len’s at one end – bald even then – in his ancient double-breasted black suit. Next to him is the Media Liaison officer, ramrod-straight and sweating. And next to him…
Something popped deep inside my ribcage, letting out a little grunt of pain.
Dr Henry Forrester stares out of the laptop screen at me. He’s got more hair than he did at the end. More life about him. Before his cheeks sunk and the wrinkles stopped looking distinguished and started looking haggard. Before the guilt and the grief and the whisky hollowed him out.
‘Henry. You silly, silly bastard…’
The man sitting next to Henry – the last person on the table – can’t be much older than twenty-four. Slope-shouldered, a fringe of curly brown hair hanging over his eyes, a nimbus of it fluffing out around his head, coiling over the shoulders of a grey suit, shirt, and tie. Get a sensible haircut and he would be invisible.
A voice-over talks above the muted babble of questions and answers. ‘But while Laura was struggling to come to terms with the horrific events that had left her stricken with nightmares and scar tissue, the operation to catch the Inside Man faced struggles of its own.’
Cheesy, but correct.
A reporter sticks his hand up. ‘Detective Superintendent Murray, is it true you’re bringing in a psychic to help kick the investigation back to life?’
Someone else’s voice cuts in before Len can answer. ‘Think they’ll be able to contact your career?’
Laughter. Swiftly brought to a halt as Len hammers his fist down on the table. ‘Four women are dead. Three others will be scarred fo
r life. Exactly what about that do you find funny?’
Silence.
Len jabs a finger at the crowd. ‘Any more of that and I won’t just clear the room, I’ll have you all barred. Are we clear?’
No one speaks.
The footage jumps forward, and someone else is having a go. ‘Is it true you almost caught him, but let him get away?’
Len’s face darkens. ‘No one “let him get away”. An officer was forced to abandon chase due to serious injuries sustained during the pursuit. If I see anything in print suggesting we “let the Inside Man go”, I will come down on you like the wrath of God.’
The scene cuts to wobbly mobile-phone footage of a large man slumped to his knees on a tiled floor, surrounded by a cordon of legs and mobile phones. Blood makes a red smear down the left side of his face, oozing out of gashes in his scalp and forehead, darkening his collar and suit jacket. Then a woman pushes into shot and takes his face in her hands. Lowers him down to the ground. Folds a tracksuit top and puts it under his head. Makes him comfortable.
Whoever’s doing the voice-over says something, but it’s just noise…
Did I really look that awful? No wonder Rhona wanted to call an ambulance.
I rewound a bit.
‘… down on you like the wrath of God.’
It’s not surprising I couldn’t stay upright – it looks like someone’s taken a baseball bat coated in broken glass to my head. Then Ruth Laughlin appears in her shorts and T-shirt and makes me lie down before I fall down.
Poor bloody woman. If I hadn’t let him get away…
‘Details are thin on the ground about what actually happened that day in Oldcastle, but what we do know is a high-speed chase across the city ended in a near fatal collision. Detective Inspector Ash Henderson pursued the Inside Man into the train station, but collapsed from his injuires and was rushed to Castle Hill Infirmary suffering from concussion, two cracked ribs, a broken wrist, and whiplash. The irony is that the woman seen helping him is Ruth Laughlin, who went on to become the Inside Man’s final victim.’
Because I didn’t stop him.
A Song for the Dying Page 7