by Lesley Kelly
‘Just before you do, can I ask you something?’
There was another slightly loaded pause. ‘Sure. We’ll answer if we can.’
‘Is the professor in danger?’
‘No immediate danger.’ Ian took his eyes off the road so that he could make eye contact with her. ‘Seriously. We’ll give him protection until his speech tomorrow, then there will be a full review of his security arrangements, and those of his family.’
‘Including the daughter in London?’
‘Definitely. Now that people seem to know where she lives she could be a target.’
‘For the nutters on Twitter?’
‘Exactly.’
Fuck you, she thought. Her life had been put at risk by people who thought so little of her that they thought she’d buy some cock and bull story about Internet weirdos. And poor, poor Maria. No sooner does her long-lost dad find her than she ends up needing personal protection. Not the best of starts to the prof rekindling their relationship.
Ian pulled off the motorway. Mona watched the little blue dot on the car’s satnav twist and turn as they moved closer to the big red arrow that indicated their destination.
Bob gave the professor a gentle shake. ‘Sir, we’re here.’
He woke with a start, and stared blankly around for a second before recognition set in.
‘Good, good. But where exactly is “here”?’
They appeared to be parking in a car park containing nothing except three recycling vats and a Portakabin.
Ian pointed at the building in question. ‘That, folks, is the Gretna Green Health Check Centre.’
‘And they are expecting us?’ Mona looked at her watch. It was only just after 7am.
‘Yup, special arrangements have been made.’
The professor opened his door.
‘Hang on a minute there, sir. Just need to check in case it’s not just the health centre staff who are expecting us.’
Mona saw his hand move to his hip.
‘I’m going to do a quick recce. Bob, can you and Mona keep an eye out, and, Professor, if you can get ready to move quickly if necessary?’
‘I’m not sure I can do any more running. I’m not twenty-five anymore, you know.’
Ian disappeared round the back of the Portakabin, appearing a second later at the other side. He knocked on the door, had a moment or two’s conversation with someone they couldn’t see, then went into the building. All the time he was gone, Bob kept up a watchful eye on the surrounding area.
Ian reappeared. ‘All clear. Bob – do you want to do the honours of getting him into the building?’
Mona and Ian followed them, then took up position on either side of the door. Inside she could hear the sounds of the professor being greeted by a female voice.
‘So this will get the professor off the hook?’ She kept her voice low.
‘People can arrange to have an early Health Check if there’s a compelling reason why they can’t make it. You don’t get into trouble for having an early Health Check, only a late one.’
‘It’s still going to look odd, him having a Health Check here.’
‘I think you’ll find it was prearranged for him by his personal assistant, who knew he would struggle to make it back to Edinburgh in time after he had to attend to some urgent family business in London. There’s a paper trail to show that, or at least there should be by now. And from what I’ve heard about his PA, she’ll play along.’
‘We met her in London. I think she’d do anything to protect him.’
‘She was down there too? Explains why we couldn’t find her. Anyway, as soon as he’s logged on the system, we’re home free.’
‘Well, almost. We still have to get him safely to the Parliament building.’
‘Believe me, we’ll have plenty of reinforcements for that.’
The door opened and the professor emerged, waving a cheery goodbye to the staff.
‘OK, sir, ready for the last leg?’
6
‘Where are we going?’
He looked at the man who had bundled him into the car. He was very large in a way that suggested that once upon a time he’d been fit and toned, but in the intervening years had developed a solid layer of flab covering whatever muscle definition remained. In a nod to the stereotypes about fat men, he seemed inordinately cheerful.
‘We’re off to Disneyland, son. The boss wants to buy you some candyfloss.’
‘I don’t know who your boss is.’
The fat man didn’t answer, so he turned to his other captor. He was younger and thinner, and although he hadn’t yet spoken, his tanned skin made Bernard think that he was foreign. He wore a battered brown leather jacket, a jacket that Bernard suspected he’d seen before. The jacket that had disappeared into the park when he had twigged that someone was following him. The thought that he’d been watched for days before this made him even more panicked.
‘I think there’s been some kind of mistake. I’m just a health enforcement officer. All I’m interested in is getting people into their monthly Health Check. I don’t care what they do with the rest of their life. It’s none of my business.’
The man ignored him and continued staring out of the window. Bernard turned back toward his other travelling companion, who grinned at him, then winked.
Bernard could feel his heart racing, and forced himself to take some long deep breaths to stop panic overwhelming him. Should he be doing something to free himself? He could attempt to wave to a passer-by, but this might result in a swift retaliation from one of the other members of the car. Besides, he hadn’t seen too many other people on the empty backstreets that they had driven through.
Kidnapping hadn’t been one of the eventualities they had prepared for at his HET induction. Being kidnapped had obviously been such a ridiculous proposition that it hadn’t even been touched on in the syllabus. Being spat at, being hit, having a knife pulled on you – all of these were dealt with in a single morning of training. The trainer – another cop in the Mr Paterson mould – had finished by concluding ‘and of course none of those things are going to actually happen to you lot. Worst you’re going to see is a bit of bad language.’
Wrong.
He’d been spat at.
He’d been hit.
And if he hadn’t yet had a knife pulled on him, the day was still young.
He couldn’t blame the instructor. His training had been over a year ago now, and in that time things had changed. Much had been made at induction about the temporary nature of the post, how they would probably only be needed for a few months. But the Virus was still here and so were they, along with every shyster who thought he could make a quick buck out of the misery caused by the situation, by selling placebos of hope to the hopeless. Or for those who had given up on medicine, conventional or otherwise, there were the purveyors of mind-altering drugs to assist people to forget that there was ever a Virus to worry about. The HET were wandering around in the middle of it, under-resourced, unarmed, and if the last couple of days were anything to go by, totally out of their depth.
The car turned into Bruntsfield, heart of Edinburgh’s student land, and suddenly there were shops and people. If he was going to cry for help this was his chance. The fat man sensed his sudden alertness.
‘Keep your hands on your knees, son. I wouldn’t want to have to break your fingers.’
Bernard felt his stomach heave at the mention of violence. He did as he was told. The car turned off the main thoroughfare and negotiated the empty residential streets of Morningside, where large detached houses were set back from the road behind high stone walls. Bernard recognised where he was. He’d been here before, recently, he was sure of it. They turned a corner and he found himself back at the second house he had visited. The house that had contained a beautiful woman, but no actual sign of Kerr. But he couldn’t be the boss in question, could he? He was barely twenty-five.
The car turned into the driveway, the gravel crunching under
the tyres.
‘Time to get out, son, if your legs will carry you.’
A large hand reached into the car and pulled him out. For all that the thug was joking, Bernard’s legs did feel decidedly wobbly at the thought of walking into the house. Was he about to receive a beating? His legs gave way slightly at the thought and he stumbled.
The man in the leather jacket pushed open the door, and a blast of music hit them. It was sixties stuff, with high female voices singing in harmony.
‘We’re back!’ yelled the man in the leather jacket. As Bernard had suspected, his English was heavily accented.
The volume was lowered slightly in response to their arrival.
‘I’m in here.’
The fat thug nudged him. ‘Just follow the sound of the music, pal.’
Bernard looked at him in confusion. The man pointed at one of the doors. ‘In there.’
He pushed open the sturdy wooden door, and saw a young man sitting cross-legged on the floor, in front of an old-fashioned record player.
‘Grab yourself a seat.’
Bernard lowered himself into a leather armchair, and looked around the room. The furniture didn’t match the occupant. It was an older style, expensive, solid, but slightly dated. The kind of furniture his grandparents would have invested in, seeing in it a lifetime of use. But the man on the floor was distinctly of the IKEA generation.
One wall of the room was given over entirely to records, shelf after shelf of thin album spines. The young man lined up another couple of 45s. Bernard watched fascinated as he fitted the records onto the narrow metal pole in the centre of the turntable, and held it in place with the plastic arm. For the second time he was reminded of his grandparents.
Satisfied with his choice of music, the man swivelled round toward him. It took a certain kind of confidence, the kind that Bernard would never have, to be totally in command of the room even when you were lolling on the floor at someone’s feet.
‘So, you guys were looking for me. I’m Scott Kerr.’ He reached out a hand, which Bernard shook, nervously. ‘What do you think of my record collection?’
Bernard considered how best to answer the question. He felt as if he’d woken up on Mastermind with a specialist category he hadn’t chosen. Except the worst that could happen on Mastermind would be a humiliatingly low score. He didn’t want to think about what could happen here if he inadvertently insulted the man’s choice of music. He opted for a safe answer. ‘I don’t really know anything about music.’
‘Allow me to educate you. That music you heard when you came in was The Supremes.’
‘Oh, I’ve heard of them.’ He felt a rush of relief. ‘Diana Ross, wasn’t it?’
Kerr shot him a withering look. ‘Of course you’ve heard of them. Everybody’s heard of them. But I bet you don’t recognise this band.’
Bernard made a show of listening to the record, but short of the band being The Beatles or ABBA it was unlikely he was going to recognise them. ‘It sounds quite similar but I couldn’t tell you who they are.’
Kerr roared with laughter. ‘It does sound similar, doesn’t it? That was the point. But this band, the Tronettes, were Edinburgh’s finest girl band, back in the early sixties. And you know who that was on lead vocals?’
With a feeling of panic, he searched his mind for ‘sixties’ and ‘Scottish’. ‘Lulu?’
‘Naw! That’s my granny you’re listening to.’
‘Wow,’ said Bernard, in what he hoped was a sufficiently impressed tone.
‘My grandad was their manager, and he fell in love with her.’
‘That’s a really lovely story.’
‘Not for her. He made her give up singing when they got married, and she hated him until the day she died. But you probably knew my grandad, Angus McNiven?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t recognise the name.’
Kerr sat back on his heels, and regarded him with a look of disbelief. ‘Really? I thought you were police?’
‘No, I work for the Health Enforcement Team.’
‘But they’re all ex-coppers, aren’t they?’
‘No, only about half of us are. I used to work in health promotion.’
He smiled. ‘That explains a lot. Anyway, enough of all my family history. I got you here for a reason today. You had a visitor to your home yesterday, didn’t you?’
‘I wasn’t in, but I believe so.’ His heart started beating faster. Did Kerr know that he’d already spoken to the police about the incident? Did that make him some kind of grass in Kerr’s eyes? Because if he knew one thing from TV cop shows, it was that it never ended well for informants.
‘Must have given your wife quite a scare.’
Bernard opened his mouth to contradict him, but thought better of it. If Kerr thought that Megan was his wife, let him. It would stop him ever getting the idea of visiting Carrie. He felt bad, but if it helped to keep his wife safe . . .
‘So . . .’ Kerr stretched the word out, ‘I wanted to apologise for that.’
Bernard’s jaw dropped; he literally felt the bottom of his face make involuntary contact with the collar of his coat. There were many people in this world who he felt owed him an apology, most of them currently working for the North Edinburgh HET, but never would he have suspected receiving an apology in this setting. ‘OK. Thank you very much for that.’
‘Allow me to explain what happened. It was the work of my idiot cousin, Stevie. He lives at 3 Colinton Gardens, although you already know that. He lives with a lady, and I use the term loosely, called Danielle Campbell, who I think you are also looking for in relation to one of your colleagues getting a boot in the face. Of course, we also apologise for that. You have a job to do, a very important one in these difficult times.’
‘Thank you.’ This was the most gratitude that Bernard had received since he started in the job. However, he felt that there was a very important issue here that he was not quite grasping.
‘So, now you know exactly who has committed these two outrages.’ He paused, and Bernard felt that some kind of response was required from him, although for the life of him he couldn’t quite work out what it was. He started with the obvious option.
‘You want me to have them arrested?’
‘No.’ The music ended, and there was a silence while Kerr changed the record. Bernard had a brief pang of nostalgia for watching his grandfather doing a similar task when he was a child. Not that his grandfather had been anything as glamorous as a manager of girl bands. His grandad had spent thirty years working in a paper mill just south of Edinburgh, and once retired had never missed one of Bernard’s badminton matches. ‘I can see why that would be your first instinct, and that’s very commendable. And I’m sure your investigations would have led you there over the next few days. But I’d rather you didn’t. In fact, I’d like you to do everything in your power to stop them being arrested.’
Bernard was unclear whether to reach for a ‘what’ or a ‘why’ first. Kerr sensed his dilemma and laughed.
‘I can see I’ve confused you. And I know that you’ve got a lot of better things to be doing than sitting here and listening to me moan, but if I can impose on you for a minute or two I’ll explain. Can I get one of the lads to bring you a tea or coffee? Or something stronger?’
Bernard declined the offer. He was sure the men from the car would be less than delighted to rush round addressing his hospitality needs. He still wasn’t sure where this discussion was going and he definitely didn’t want to antagonise them.
‘OK. Well, if we can dive back into the McNiven family history for a minute. My grandad took me in after my dad scarpered, and my ma – his daughter – started drinking. And I’ll tell you this for nothing, Grandad was an evil old fucker, didn’t take any crap off anyone. He fell out big time with my uncle, Stevie’s dad, who three months later gets pulled out of the Water of Leith after an impromptu swimming session.’
‘He killed his own son?’
‘Naw, the Italian-Gla
swegians took care of that. Big Og, as everyone called my grandad, just stood by and let it happen. So between my ma’s drinking, and Uncle Gus’s inability to float, old Og is short of an heir apparent. Now, Stevie is the only son of Og’s only son, so by rights he should be stepping up to the mark. And under other circumstances I’d agree with him; I’m all for maintaining dynastic traditions, you know?’
Bernard nodded enthusiastically.
‘But Idiot Boy was never going to be able to hold things together, not while him and his skanky girlfriend are too busy shooting all kinds of junk into themselves. Never touch the produce, that’s the motto of any successful drug dealer. Which I assume you know I am?’
‘I sort of got it from the context.’
Kerr nodded, approvingly. ‘So, Big Og decides that muggins here, his eighteen-year-old grandson, is going to be trained up to run the family firm. And I have to give credit to the man, he’s taught me plenty over the past seven years.’
Kerr stretched his arms out and cracked his knuckles. Bernard wondered exactly what skills he’d picked up.
‘So I’m loyal to Og, well to his memory anyway. The Virus took him, three months back. I would have liked to give the old fella more of a send-off than he had. If it was up to me I’d have liked the funeral to have brought the traffic to a halt across the whole of Edinburgh, you know? Have the MSPs and lawyers and that all at a standstill while Og’s horse-drawn hearse trots past the Parliament. But you know what it’s like with undertakers these days. Stack ’em high and plant ’em cheap.’
Bernard nodded in what he hoped was an empathetic manner.
‘Now he’s gone, every Glaswegian fucker thinks they can move onto the territory that my grandad worked so hard on. And just to add to my troubles, my big cousin thinks that the time has come for him to be having a say in the way things are done. Obviously I’d welcome a bit of input from a family member, but as you’ve noticed the boy lacks a bit of finesse. I mean, him throwing his weight around like that with your wife? What was that going to prove?’
Bernard gave a wan smile, and hoped the conversation moved away from his ‘wife’ as quickly as possible.