‘True.’ Tufty tried a stick of his own. Scuttling over to the other side and poking his head and shoulders through the metalwork railings. ‘Mind you, it’d help if we had some evidence. Maybe we could try going door-to-door again? Someone might change their mind and talk to us.’ He made a wee boat out of the paper bag his samosa came in and dropped it at the exact same time Roberta released Stick Number Three.
They looked at each other for a heartbeat, then raced to the other side.
‘Come on, Boaty McBoatface!’
‘Come on Sticky McStickface!’
Tufty stuck his arms in the air. ‘I has a win!’
‘What else have we got?’
He dug into the carrier bag and came out with two Eccles cakes.
She took her one and held it out through the railings. ‘On three, two, one … go!’
Rush to the other side.
‘Ha: two-nil to the Magnificent Detective Constable Quirrel!’
‘Yeah? Well I know something that’ll wipe the grin off your smug wee face.’ Roberta marched back to the car and popped the boot. Rummaged through the bits and bobs gathered there. Where the hell were … Ah. Bingo. She grabbed two of them and hurried back to the bridge. Held one out to Tufty.
He recoiled. ‘That’s a massive dildo!’
‘Don’t be such a wet blouse, it’s no’ been used.’
He stuck his hands into his armpits. ‘Why …? What?’
‘From the Great Rubber Willy Burglary last year. Two blokes broke into Ann Summers and filched half the stock. I sort of forgot to sign three or four into evidence. Oops.’
‘Never been used?’
‘No’ so much as a dry humping.’
‘OK, then.’ He took the big purple one and they rushed to the side of the bridge again.
‘On three, two, one …’
Sploosh!
‘Oh.’ He leaned out through the railings, frowning down at the water below. ‘I was expecting them to float.’
Roberta hit him. ‘Waste of two perfectly good—’ Cagney & Lacey wailed out from her phone. ‘No’ again! Leave me alone, it’s lunchtime!’ But she pulled it out anyway, holding her other hand above the screen to block out the sunlight. ‘UNKNOWN NUMBER’.
She pressed answer. ‘Hello?’
‘Miss me?’
Took a second to place the voice, but there it was – like a sour taste in her mouth: ‘Wallace.’ Dirty raping wee turd. ‘What the hell do you want?’
‘Did you enjoy grovelling this morning? Feel good to be on your knees?’
‘Listen up, sunshine, you’re going to screw up sometime and when you do I’m going to ram my boot so far up your …’
Tufty was staring at her, pointing at the phone and mouthing, ‘Jack Wallace?’
She pressed the button to put it on speaker.
‘—never learn, though. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to …’ Pause. ‘Did you just put me on speakerphone?’
‘Course no’: I’m in the car. Hands free.’
‘Yeah, I’m not a moron, Sergeant.’
And the line went dead. He’d hung up.
Roberta wiggled the phone at Tufty. ‘You heard that.’
‘Yeah … Well, I heard you threaten him, then him say he wasn’t stupid. It’s not exactly Watergate, is it?’
Of course it wasn’t. Because there was no way Jack Wallace was going to say anything incriminating with witnesses present.
‘Sodding hell.’
‘No chance.’ Mrs Galloway’s neighbour crossed her arms and jerked her chin up. Her toddler clung to her tracksuited knee, staring at them – thumb in his mouth.
Tufty held out the photo of Phil Innes again. ‘Please, just think about it, OK?’
Steel sniffed. ‘Come on, Helen, you know who this is, and I know that you know, so why no’ save us all a heap of time and talk – to – me.’ Really leaning on the words, forcing them in like a blunt knife.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ She nodded at the sooking toddler. ‘I’ve got a wee boy. You think I’m putting Justin at risk?’
‘Has Innes threatened you?’
The round cheeks darkened, pink spreading upwards from the neck of her T-shirt. ‘No one’s threatened me. And they won’t, because I’m not doing your bloody job for you!’
‘My job? Have you forgotten what he did to Agnes Galloway?’ Teeth bared. ‘Have you?’
Tufty stepped between them. ‘OK, let’s all just calm down a little.’
Steel thumped him on the arm. ‘Calm?’ She marched away a couple of paces, then back again, arms jabbing away for emphasis. ‘How can I do my job when none of you buggers will say a sodding word? They won’t give me a warrant unless I’ve got corroboration! Witnesses! Evidence!’
The chin came up a little higher. Voice a little louder. ‘That’s not my fault!’
‘You won’t bloody speak to me! I can’t even search the bastard’s house because of you lot!’
The toddler made whingy gurning noises.
Steel shoved Tufty out of the way. ‘I can’t get forensics from Innes without a warrant. No forensics, no evidence. And I can’t arrest him with no bloody evidence! Help me! If you don’t help, we can’t do anything!’
‘Don’t you dare!’ They were almost nose to nose now, eyes bugging. ‘You’re the police, you should know what you’re doing! That poor woman’s nearly dead because you poked your noses in and didn’t arrest the bastard!’
Steel’s right hand curled into a fist.
Tufty grabbed her sleeve. ‘All right, come on, this isn’t helping.’
‘Do you want him to keep doing it? Is that what you want? Philip Innes running this place like his own private gulag?’
‘I want you to do – your – job!’ Helen grabbed her toddler and marched back inside, slamming the door in their faces.
Steel stood there, fuming at it.
‘Wonderful.’ Tufty let go. Stepped back. ‘That went really well.’
‘Just because she’s too chicken doesn’t mean everyone else is.’
‘You’ve been spitting wasps since Jack Wallace phoned and it’s genuinely not helping. We need more softly, softly, and less shouty ranty.’
‘Arrrgh!’ She stormed off, arms in the air, bellowing it out: ‘SOMEONE IN THIS GOAT-BUGGERING TOWER BLOCK IS GOING TO TALK TO US!’
‘I said no. Now leave me alone.’ The old man thumped back inside and slammed the door.
‘I didn’t see anything, how many times do I have to tell you people that?’ Little Miss Hairy shoved the door closed again.
A watery eye stared out at Tufty through the gap, the security chain stretched tight. ‘Go away. I have nothing to say to you.’ The door clunked shut.
Tufty knocked again. ‘It’s the police. Can you open the door please?’
A woman’s voice came from the other side of the painted wood. ‘Go away, I’m not in.’
Roberta slumped against the wall beside the door. ‘Why do we bother?’ Ungrateful bunch of turdholes. You try to save them from a violent scumbag and do they help? Do they buggery.
‘I know you’re in, because I can hear you talking to me.’
‘I’m not talking to you! I’m not talking to anyone. Now go away!’
She checked her watch. Ten past seven. ‘We’re achieving sod-all here. I’m calling it.’ Then turned and scuffed towards the stairs. It wasn’t even a nice tower block. Graffiti. Peeling paint. That faint, peppery-mouldy smell.
Tufty slouched up beside her as she pushed through into the stairwell. ‘Maybe the labs will find something?’
‘Honestly, why do we bother? No one here gives a stuff about Agnes Galloway but us. They’re a bunch of selfish—’
Cagney & Lacey blared out. Again. Roberta stopped. Grimaced. ‘You know what? That theme tune was fun for the first couple of days, but it’s beginning to seriously get on my tits.’ She hauled the phone out and answered it. Barked out the word with all the welcoming warmth of a shallow grave
: ‘What?’
Big Gary tutted. ‘You get worse, you know that? Your mobile phone man is in again, wanting his Nokia back.’
‘I don’t care. Tell him to go shag a bollard!’
She hung up and rammed the phone back into her pocket. Stared upwards, through the gap between the flights of stairs, all the way up to the ceiling fifteen storeys above. Hauled in a deep breath. ‘NO’ ONE OF YOU BUNCH OF BASTARDS GIVES A TOSS ABOUT AN OLD LADY GETTING BATTERED HALF TO DEATH!’ Another breath. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’
Tufty raised an eyebrow. ‘Feel better?’
She stomped down the final flight of stairs, through the entrance hall, and out into the sunshine. Turned and stuck two fingers up at the tower block and its rancid occupants. ‘Sodding, badger-ferreting, FUNKBISCUITS!’
A couple of old farts on the other side of the road stopped and stared at her, their cairn terrier yapping and twirling at the end of its leash.
She gave them the Vs as well. ‘Oh, bugger off!’ Then stormed away to the car.
The in-house forensics lab was awash with blue plastic evidence crates. They were stacked up everywhere – on the floor, on the filing cabinets, on the work benches, on the superglue/fingerprint cabinet, on the two upright fridges that stood by the door … The only bit that was crate-free was the central work table with its light boxes and magnifying glasses.
CSI Miami, it wasn’t.
Tufty stood by the door, hands at his sides, shoulders hunched. Sniffing the chemical-scented air as if hunting for something that had gone off.
Roberta leaned back against one of the fridges – setting bottles inside it clinking. ‘What if I said pretty please?’
‘Urgh.’ The lab technician picked a bloody knife off the light table, holding it between two purple-nitrile-gloved fingers, and popped it back into its tube. ‘You know I can’t do that.’
Roberta gave her a smile, piling on the charm. ‘Come on, Gloria, there’s a little old lady in intensive care because of this scumbag.’
A slow, sad sigh, then Gloria pointed at a stack of evidence crates. ‘Husband came home and battered his wife to death with the iron.’ Another box. ‘Bus driver got pissed at lunchtime and flattened a motorcyclist.’ Another. ‘Bunch of teenagers gang-raped a grandmother.’ Another. ‘Brother and sister decided their parents were squandering their inheritance and took an axe to—’
‘I get it. I really, really do. But no one’s talking, Gloria. This scumbag’s going to get away with it. Right now you’re my only hope.’
Gloria’s shoulders sank. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Roberta beamed. ‘I could kiss you. And cop a feel of those magnificent breasts as well.’
‘Don’t you dare! Last time was bad enough.’ A blush darkened her cheeks as she rummaged out an evidence crate from the stack by the storeroom door. Thumped it down on top of the work table. A hand-printed label was stuck to the lid: ‘GALLOWAY MRS ~ 12-6 CAIRNHILL COURT, CORNHILL’. Gloria opened it and peered inside. ‘And I’m not promising anything. If there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there.’
‘Fair enough. But the offer of a grope still stands.’
Tufty eased the lab door closed and hurried down the corridor after Steel. Caught up to her just before the stairs. ‘Doesn’t really matter what she finds if we don’t have anything to compare it with.’
‘Blah, blah, blah.’
Through into the stairwell, their voices echoing back from the walls. ‘The whole floor could be covered in bloody footprints, but if we don’t have Innes’s shoes to match them against it’s worthless.’
She blew a raspberry at him, thumping down the stairs. ‘Are you being a party-piddler on purpose? Optimism, Tufty. Optimism.’
‘Just being realistic. If we’re going to pin this on Phil Innes we need a warrant first.’
‘Do we?’ She stopped and stared at him, eyebrows up, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. ‘Wow. Twenty years in the job and I never knew! You must be some sort of idiot savant.’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘Well don’t.’ She started down the stairs again. ‘Our luck’s going to change, Tufty, I can feel it. No more dog days for us. Success: here we come.’
Yeah, right.
III
Tufty checked his phone. Twenty to nine and the only silly sods still silly enough to be hanging around the CID office were him and Steel. Everyone else went home ages ago. Lucky spods.
He was stuck here.
Waiting.
Bum was getting sore from all the sitting as well. He shoogled in his seat. Fiddled with his keyboard. Checked his phone again. Still 20:40.
Steel didn’t look up from the notepad she was scribbling in. ‘If you’re needing the toilet, just go.’
He stopped fidgeting. ‘We going to be much longer?’
‘If you’ve finished writing up the door-to-doors: go home.’
‘Yeah.’ He stayed where he was. ‘Finished those about half an hour ago.’
She narrowed her eyes and frowned at him. ‘You’re keeping an eye on me, aren’t you?’
‘Me? No.’ Doing his best innocent face and voice.
‘You’re a terrible liar. And you can relax, Detective Constable Quirrel, I’m no’ waiting for you to piffle off so I can go round Jack Wallace’s place with a cricket bat and a blow torch.’
Oh thank God for that.
Tufty let out a long happy breath. ‘Good.’
‘I’m going to use a chainsaw.’
He stared at her. Sitting there with her hair all Albert Einstein. ‘No, but really?’
She stood and grabbed her coat. ‘I’m going home. You can follow me if you want.’ A wink. ‘But no tongues.’
Tufty followed the rear lights on Steel’s MX-5 as she drove down Union Grove, her head rocking from side to side as she went. The sky was streaked with orange and scarlet, clouds fading from purple to black. Streetlights flickered out their yellowy glow. More light spilling from the windows of the granite terraces that lined both sides of the street.
She went straight across at the roundabout, onto Cromwell Road.
Tufty did the same, his Fiat Panda making its weird grindy-rattling noise again every time he changed gear. Probably should get that looked at. But what if the garage wanted to put Betsy down? What if they couldn’t see the beauty in her rusty wings and hub caps? In that dangly bit at the back held on with half a roll of duct tape? In that burning-plastic smell that oozed out of her wheel arches if she had to navigate a bumpy road?
The playing fields drifted by on the right – all the floodlights on so some fat old blokes could pretend they were actually playing rugby.
Steel slowed for the roundabout with Anderson Drive.
OK, so it was a bit of a long way around, but they’d go right here, up the dual carriageway, and nip into … Nope. She wasn’t indicating, she was going straight across.
Tufty leaned forward, making the steering wheel creak. ‘Where are you going, you devious old horror?’ He pointed. ‘Your house is that way.’
An eighteen-wheeler trundled by, heading south.
Tufty nipped across the roundabout onto Seafield Road. A nice chunk of parkland on the left, fancy-looking granite semis on the right. He put his foot down, catching up with the Horror’s MX-5. Flashed his lights.
Two fingers appeared in the little porthole at the back of her car.
‘Daft old funkbiscuit …’
All the way up Seafield with its big houses and massive gardens. Past the Palm Court Hotel. Past the wee row of shops. And up to the junction. Straight through the green traffic lights.
‘Where are you going, you monster? Some of us have boxed sets of Buffy to get home to!’
She indicated left and pulled into a car park beside a squat ugly little building and some sort of community centre. Crawled past a chunk of council recycling bins then stopped. Reversed into a sort of hollowed-out recess in the building painted all beige and brown.
He pull
ed up next to it. Checked his phone.
According to the map app, this was Airyhall Library. Open nine-till-seven Monday and Wednesday; nine-till-five Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday; ten-till-five on Saturday – shut for an hour at lunchtime; and closed on Sunday. So she wasn’t here to borrow a book.
He climbed out of his car.
The sound of someone singing rattled out through the car’s soft top.
‘Got home today, and whadda you know,
My TV’s covered in electric snow,
Got a “what devours, comes from below”,
And here’s me missing my favourite show!’
Was that Steel?
It was, belting it out. Singing along with the radio – the music all banjos and accordions.
‘Get gone,
Get gone,
Get gone three times and turn to stone!’
He opened the door and slid into the passenger seat.
Steel drummed away on her steering wheel.
‘Got home today, and what do you say,
My lover’s gone Fifty Shades of Grey,
He says we’re gonna do things all his way,
And I said: “No way, Jose!”’
She was actually pretty good, in a smoky-voiced rock-granny kind of way.
She leaned over and poked him. ‘Come on, Tufters, don’t be shy.’
Yeah … No.
‘Get gone,
Get gone,
Get gone three times, I’m on my own!’
An accordion solo wheezed out of the radio.
He poked her back. ‘You said you were going home!’
‘I say lots of things.’
Tufty peered out through the windscreen at the prison-wall-blandness side of the community centre. ‘This isn’t going to get me fired, is it?’
‘Would I do that to you?’ Still drumming along in time with the music. ‘And we’re singing in five, four, three—’
‘Only I really don’t want to get fired.’
‘Got home today, but I can’t see,
What the hell is wrong with me,
Why can’t these crows just let me be,
Tormented for eternity!’
That was cheery.
‘Sarge?’
‘Get gone,
Now We Are Dead Page 17