I rolled onto my back.
Ayer became a shapeless blob. I liked him better that way.
“Give you a fuckin’ concussion, mate,” he said. “If you keep that up.”
Liman laughed. No, he giggled. Like a child.
“You know Danny’s brother,” Ayer said again. “The fat fuckin’ farmer. So don’t try to say anything. She told us everything before she died.”
Liman giggled again.
“We went to have a word with him today. Took a bit of work to get a fuckin’ address, you see. Else we might have been out of this fucking armpit of a country a lot sooner. As it is, the cunt’s done a vanishing act. Figured you’d know how to get in touch with him.”
He gave me a moment to reply.
I gave him nothing.
“Else you’d know where the fuckin’ money was.”
The phone call Robertson had received.
“I don’t know anything about any money. Neither does my client.”
Liman said, “These fuckin’ Scottish arseholes, Matt, they don’t exactly fuckin’ share the wealth. Tight bastards.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that, too,” Ayer agreed. “It’s what made England great, you know. Never have had a fuckin’ hero like Robin Hood up here in Jock Land.”
“Keep his fucking money in his tights, he would.”
“Yeah.” Looking at me, now. “Wouldn’t you say?”
I wanted to tell him where he could go. I wanted to say a thousand things. I wanted to pick myself up off the floor and punch his fucking lights out.
But I stayed where I was. Said nothing. Did nothing. I wasn’t stupid.
“So tell me,” said Ayer, “about the fucking farmer.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
Ayer took two steps forward, and bent down. He wrapped one large hand around my throat, pulled me up. I went with him. Didn’t have a choice. He pushed me against the wall.
Squeezed.
Tears leaked from my eyes.
Blood vessels throbbed in my temples.
“You saw what we did to that bitch.”
“I don’t fucking know.” He had to understand that I didn’t have the information he wanted.
He let go of my throat.
I collapsed to the floor, coughing as I struggled to get the air back into my lungs. My chest felt like it was being stabbed from the inside.
“He doesn’t fucking know,” Ayer said.
“No?”
“Fuck all we can do that about that.”
Liman tucked his shotgun away beneath the long coat. “Pity, that.”
“Yeah, real shame. All you can do is ask, eh?”
I stayed on the floor, watching as they made to leave.
Ayer said, “You know, I can never tell when a man is lying. So how about we call this a gentle fucking reminder of what happens if I find out you haven’t been telling the truth.”
And, casually, as he walked out the door, he shot Bill in the stomach.
Chapter 20
I thought for a moment that the noise of the gunshot had blown out my eardrums.
Bill fell back, smashed off the desk, thumped onto the floor.
When I looked up, Ayer and Liman were gone.
I tried to move, but my body had shut down. I was going nowhere.
Fuck that.
I forced myself onto my feet. Slowly.
Moved over to Bill. He was on the floor, behind his desk. Legs tangled up in the toppled chair.
Blood leaked onto the wooden boards. Already, he’d lost too much.
He looked at me with wide eyes and said, “I thought it would hurt more.”
“Hold on,” I said. Grabbed the phone off the desk.
The woman on the other end told me to remain calm. She sounded like somebody’s mother. Comforting. Authoritative. I told her a man had been shot, and I was doing pretty well considering the circumstances.
An ambulance would be with me shortly. The police had been informed.
The office was two minutes walk from FHQ. I knew who’d get here first.
She asked me to stay on the line but I told her I couldn’t. After hanging up, I tried to move Bill into the recovery position.
I just had to touch him and he screamed.
“If I stay still,” he told me, “it’s fine.”
Sure.
“Look at me,” I told him. “Just keep your eyes on me.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Fuck, no,” I said. I knew basic first aid, but the last thing I expected to see in my office was a man shot in the gut.
“There’s a surprise, man.” He giggled. Blood pumped faster.
I grabbed Bill’s jacket from where it was slung in the cupboard that laughingly passed for a cloakroom. I bundled it over the wound, pressed hard.
“Fucking hell!”
“You’ll bleed out,” I said. “I don’t want you dead.”
“Funny way of showing it.” Speaking slower, now, his words slurring. His eyeballs rolled.
“I’d rather hurt you than watch you die.” He smiled at that, but I could see he was getting away from me. “Fucking stay awake,” I said. He wasn’t dying. Not if I could do something.
Not this time.
“Look at this fucking prick! There’s your criminal right there.”
I remember thinking I should never have walked in. I should have stayed out of the way. But I couldn’t help myself.
Lindsay started to stand up, his eyes fixed on mine.
I ignored him.
“Martin,” I said, with no idea of how I was going to continue.
“Fuck you.” Elaine’s father stood up. His chair scraped backwards across the floor.
We needed to talk. If he would just listen, maybe we could reach a kind of understanding.
But instead of saying anything, all I did was clear my throat.
Lindsay said, “This couldn’t wait?” He’d already turned off the tape recorder. This confrontation was never going on the record.
Martin Barrow was a tall man, with a sinewy body and muscles like thick rope. He had been bald since his late thirties, and his prominent nose gave him an almost regal appearance.
He walked round the desk.
Lindsay stood between us. “Mr Barrow, please sit down.”
I tried to say something. “I just wanted to—”
Elaine’s father made to rush me. The tendons in his neck stood out. His eyes bulged. His skin darkened with rage.
Lindsay held him back. Looking at me. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Martin Barrow kept trying to force his way past the other man. “He knows it, too. He knows what he did. The fucking coward. Can’t even face up to his own responsibility.” Then, perfectly still, his eyes on me: “This was your fucking fault.”
How could I argue with that?
“Follow my finger.”
“I’m fine.”
“Follow the finger.” The doctor wagged a digit in front of my face. I followed it as best I could. She nodded, apparently satisfied. “No concussion.”
“I could have told you that.”
She sighed, and folded her arms across her chest. “You were lucky. From the sound of it, anyway.” She was a tall woman with curly dark hair and a strong Mancunian accent. And an expression that told me she wasn’t going to take any shite. Not from me. Not from anyone.
“How’s Bill doing?”
“The man who came in with you? I don’t know.”
She turned away. There was a sink on the wall behind the bed. She scrubbed her hands there.
“I could find out,” she said.
“I’d feel better if you could.”
“That’s something, I suppose.”
I tried to stand up. She watched me and said, “You didn’t mention any discomfort in your leg.”
“Old injury.”
“Really?”
“Aye.”
“We should take a look at it.”
“How long ago?”
“Long enough.”
“It could be worth another examination. They might have overlooked something the first time round. Or you’ve developed something since….”
“No, its fine.”
The Mancunian doctor told me to lie back down on the bed again and wait for someone to come and have a word with me.
“You said I was okay.”
“Wait,” she said.
I lay back down on the bed, let my head sink into the pillow. I stayed like that until she was gone. Then I swung my legs over the end of the bed.
I moved out from behind the curtains and limped through A&E. My calf muscles screamed in protest.
A nurse confronted me. A short woman who could have been any age between twenty and forty. I doubted she ever smiled. Didn’t have the features for it. “Can I help you?” Nothing helpful in her tone, either.
“I’m looking for a friend.”
“Visiting hours are—”
“I know,” I said. “He was brought in here maybe half an hour ago. Gunshot wound…”
She nodded. “I heard about that. Unusual for the Dee, eh?”
I agreed with her.
She looked almost ready to let me go, and then: “You came in with him. With the police.”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t be walking about.”
“I just need to know that my friend is…”
She pointed back the way I had come. “I don’t have time for this. None of us do. It’s not just you and your friend… we’ve got all the usual bloody headaches to deal with, too.”
“It’s okay,” said a voice from behind me. “We’ll have a word with him.”
Lindsay nodded in greeting when I turned to face him.
“How is he?”
“Your wee pal? He’ll live.”
“Good.”
“I don’t know about you, but I could do with some fresh air.”
The nurse said, “I’m not sure that it’s safe for the patient to—”
“Oh, he looks fine to me,” said Lindsay. “I’m no doctor, of course.” His own joke provoked a genuine smile.
I guess someone had to find him funny.
Outside, we looked to the west of the city. From the A&E entrance we could see all the way down to the Kingsway. Car lights slipped through the dark.
“It was touch and go,” said Lindsay, “when they got him in.”
“But he’s fine?”
“He’ll live.” He sparked up a cigarette. “Like I said.”
“But?”
“He might be paralysed.”
“Fuck.”
Lindsay took a puff on the cigarette, then turned to look at me. “That’s one reaction.” Here we were again. Someone’s life thrown in the shitter and it all came back to me.
I could look for someone else to blame, but here was the truth: I was the one who had put him in the position where those bastards could shoot him.
Lindsay offered me a cigarette. Nothing friendly in the gesture.
“I don’t smoke.”
“You did when you joined the force.”
The first time we ever met: the now defunct smokers’ lounge in FHQ. Even then, our relationship could only have been described as hostile.
Love at first sight?
In this case, try “loathing”.
“I got health conscious.”
“Self-righteous prick.” The insult was slung half-heartedly.
“You wanted to talk.”
“That’s right. Because I think you’re full of shite.” He shivered as he blew out smoke. “When you say you don’t know why these pricks shot your friend, I don’t believe a word of it.”
“I told you everything I know.”
“Everything?”
Not quite. “Yes.”
“When you don’t like someone, you start to lie to them instinctively. I know how it is. There was an old DI… Buchan, that was the bastard’s name… Jesus, can’t even remember his first name… Adam, maybe? Alex? Who cares, right? He used to tell me I would never make it. Told me I had to be willing to bend a few rules here and there to uphold the principles of being a copper. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t bent, he was just… flexible. And a stubborn shite with it. When I joined CID, some smart prick thought it would be funny to put us together. We had the worst fucking history of anyone in the division because we started lying to each other. Each one trying to fuck the other over. For shits and giggles. Or just because we didn’t like each other’s faces. Fucking disaster.”
He blew out more smoke, watched it drift in the air. Waited, as though expecting me to say something.
I pretended I hadn’t been listening.
“Fine,” said Lindsay. “Sulk like a fucking child, see if I care. But get this, pal: I know you’re kidding me on. You know something, and this keeping shit to yourself won’t do anyone any good.” He dropped the cigarette, stubbed it out with his toe. “Least of all that poor prick in surgery.”
Chapter 21
Back inside, I saw Andy, Bill’s boyfriend, in the A&E waiting room. He was a tall, gaunt architect with Jarvis Cocker glasses that magnified his serious eyes. He was pacing back and forth across the room. Restless. Pent up energy waiting to find release.
I saw myself, one year earlier.
The memory made me want to turn round and get the hell out. But I forced myself to stay.
When he saw me, Andy quit stalking and his lips pressed tight together. He turned his head to the side.
“Andy,” I said. But didn’t know how to continue.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I understand,” I said. “But…”
“Listen,” he said. “Billy’s in fucking surgery and I don’t know if he’ll walk again. The one thing I’m sure of is that all of this is your fault. Playing at being a fucking private eye.”
“I’m not playing.”
“Like that makes it better?”
There was nothing I could say to him. All I could do was hope that when this was over he would understand that all of this was outside of my control.
When this was over. When Bill was walking. When everything was normal again.
Except normal seemed a long way away.
I clammed up on Andy, backed out of saying everything I wanted to say.
And walked out.
I found an empty stairwell, sat down at the top of a flight and placed my head in my hands. My body shuddered uncontrollably. The anger and frustration tried to shake itself out of me. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted to scream. Break some bastard’s neck. Anything. Just find a release.
All I could do was feel my insides boil and my brain smash against the inside of my skull in frustration.
Andy was right. Elaine’s father was right. Fucking Lindsay was right.
All of them, on the nose.
I was responsible.
Me.
Alone.
“Fuckers!” I screamed it out in the stairwell.
Was I looking for someone to blame? Someone to take it all out on? Aye, well who better than those two pricks. The ones who had violated my fucking life. Near killed my friend.
Murdered a woman in cold blood.
Maybe they thought they were hard men. But their actions reminded me of the cowardice of the schoolyard bully.
I could find them. They had unfinished business, these fucking cowards. They wouldn’t leave until they had completed their master’s bidding.
Daniel Robertson was dead, beyond their reach. Katrina Egg’s betrayal had been dealt with. But the money, as far as they were concerned, was still out there. They wouldn’t leave without that. Gordon Egg, the greedy prick, wouldn’t allow it.
I stood up. Fire in the back of my legs. My muscles protesting, threatening to knock me back down on my arse. I ignored them, walked down the stairs to the ground level of the hospital. Each step
deliberate, measured, as I kept that anger inside me, bubbling gently. I would need it, I knew.
A small voice in my head whispered, this isn’t about justice or friendship or compassion: this is about making you feel better.
But I didn’t listen.
Or care.
Chapter 22
I didn’t sleep well that night. I sat in the front room of my flat, listening to the sounds of the city; the rush of cars down the street outside, the shouts of drunken pub crawlers a few streets away and the occasional squeal of fire engines and police cars.
It had been around half ten when I got home. I was trying to work out what my next move should be.
That morning, I’d told Robertson: go to the police. Advice given half-heartedly, as though I had already known the path that was before me.
Shortly after I got through the door my mobile rang. I checked the number: withheld.
“You back home, then?”
Ayer.
I stood up. Involuntary. “What the fuck is it to you?”
He laughed. “How’s the poof?”
“Alive.”
“I’m glad.” He paused, then: “No, really. Fucking glad. Because that was a warning, yeah?”
“A warning?”
“That’s right. In our line of business people don’t listen if you just use fuckin’ harsh words. They got to know you mean business.”
“I would have listened.”
“Didn’t want to take the chance.” I could picture him smirking on the other end of the line.
But I was only half listening. Straining to hear background noises: anything that might give me a clue where he was calling from.
“You talked to the farmer?” he asked.
“It slipped my mind.”
That gave him another laugh. I imagined his body before me, battered and broken.
Kept myself focused on that image.
“Good one, mate. Fuckin’ good one. Awright, guess you got a point. Gotta make sure the little poof’s doing fine, yeah? Well, you know the cunt’s going to live so now you can find that fat fuck and tell him we want our fuckin’ money.”
“Find him yourself.”
“He isn’t answering his phone no more. Doesn’t want to talk to us. Shame, really. He gives us what we want and we just go away. Nothing fuckin’ magic about it, yeah? I’ve had enough of this fuckin’ place to last me a lifetime.” I thought he was going to hang up, but he wasn’t finished. “You tell the fat fuck that he’d better talk to us the next time we call. Tell him he’d better give us what we want. You think what happened to that poof in your office was bad, it ain’t nothing. We was gentle with him, mate. Like fuckin’ pussy cats. I hope you got the message this time. Because next time isn’t no fuckin’ warning.”
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