Chapter 10
Want to know how you could tell God was an utter bastard?
Hangovers. No beneficent all-powerful deity would ever have plagued womankind with sodding hangovers.
And they especially wouldn’t inflict them on paragons of virtue like Roberta Steel, who’d done nothing at all to deserve the mariachi band of hobnail-booted scumbags currently fiesta-ing it up inside her skull.
Who weren’t even keeping time with whatever crap was currently yodelling out from the car radio. Which made Roberta’s stomach dance to a tune of its own.
Could’ve been at home, slobbing about in her jammies, instead of out here, nursing a bandaged left hand and bruised knuckles.
Wearing sunglasses and her all-black Police Scotland get-up: clingy T-shirt, itchy trousers, peaked cap, Doc Martens, and the kind of scowl that could kill a detective sergeant at twenty paces.
Just a shame it didn’t work on pointy-nosed wee detective constables.
DC Quirrel – AKA: The Wee Loon, AKA: Captain Bumlumps, AKA: The Massive Pain In Her Hoop, AKA: Tufty – sat behind the wheel, nodding his stupid pointy little head along to the radio.
His hair was cropped to the bone, like a half-arsed Irn-Bru-coloured velvet.
One of his watery blue eyes was bloodshot, the skin beneath it lined with purple and green, another bruise riding high on one cheek.
He was in the full Police Scotland black too, but he’d accessorised with a stabproof vest, high-vis waistcoat, and every item of kit known to man – attached to his utility belt and various clippy bits.
Because he was an idiot.
He kept the MX-5 at a safe-ish distance, following the tail end of a teeny police convoy: consisting of one patrol car, a police van – complete with riot grille – and a Scenes Transit that had seen better days. But not the soggy slap of a soapy sponge. At least, not this side of the millennium.
The front pair of vehicles were little more than muffled shapes in the gloom as their miserable cavalcade crept its way along the A96, with only the occasional hatchback and four-by-four coming the other way to break the whispered monotony.
Still, at least the lead patrol car had its lights on, flickering away in blue-and-white. About as festive as a mortuary Christmas tree. Decorated with post-mortem leftovers.
The ‘musical’ interlude came to a halt, and the tossers on the radio started singing again.
The tosser in the driver’s seat joined in:
‘And everyone-nun-nun is made of plas-ta-sceeeene!
And everyone-nun-nun has got an augh-ber-geeeeeen!
And evvvvvery-onnnnnne can—’
Roberta thumped him.
‘Ow!’ Tufty rubbed at his arm. ‘No hitting the driver!’
‘No annoying the detective inspector!’ Waving her thumping hand in threat. ‘And stop being so spudging cheerful. No’ even singing the proper words.’
‘Not my fault you had a bucket yesterday, Guv.’
She hit him again.
‘Ow! Stop it!’
The horrible song on the horrible radio clattered to a horrible halt, followed by a horribly upbeat tit of a man:
‘There you go, told you it was fun.’ Comedy honking noise. ‘It’s twenty-five to eight, and we’re breaking with tradition here to have a wee bitty of a phone-in! So: after the Union Street Riot this weekend, we want to know your—’
Roberta switched the radio off, then sat there, massaging her throbbing forehead, trying to stop her whole cranium from falling apart as the mariachi bastards really got into the swing of things.
Another couple of cars growled past on the other side of the road, emerging from the fog then vanishing again. Then another, and another, as rush hour began to build. Not that there would be much rushing going on with visibility down to a dozen feet.
Tufty gave her the side-eye. ‘Do you even remember going home from the barbecue last night?’
‘Shut up.’
‘How about falling off the climbing frame and breaking the Sarge’s bird table?’
‘Hmmmph!’ She folded her arms and turned the scowl up a notch.
‘See: people think you soon-to-be-retired types is all full of sensibleness and The Wisdom Of The Ancients and stuff, but you is totally rejecting that stereotype.’
‘Should’ve let Harmsworth drive. You’re a crap sidekick.’
A grin. ‘Nah: I’m a spudging delight.’
The wee shite reached for the radio, but she slapped his hand away.
‘Ow! No hitting the driver!’
Roberta was about to give him another wallop when her Airwave handset bleeped three times, announcing an incoming call.
Lund’s voice crackled out into the foggy morning: ‘Acting Guv: safe to talk?’
‘Only if you’re no’ calling to wind me up, Veronica, cos I’m a sodding danger to shipping!’
‘We roused the head of Road Maintenance from his scratcher.’ A sniff. ‘Wasn’t very happy about it.’
Ahead, another set of flickering lights bloomed in the fog, faint and far away, but growing brighter and flashier as the convoy got nearer.
Roberta went back to squeezing her cranium again. ‘And are you planning on telling me what he said, or do you want me to hunt you down and stuff my boot so far up your—’
‘They’ve got loads of people off with the lurgy, so nearly every bit of roadworks in Aberdeenshire is going absolutely nowhere. Normally, it’s budgetary restrictions – you know, robbing Peterhead to pay Portsoy – but—’
‘Swear to Christ: I’ll no’ even lube it first. And I’m wearing my big boots the day!’
Lund groaned. ‘All right, all right. Flipping heck . . . Your lay-by’s been coned-off since the twenty-fifth of April. Chuckies and the like were dumped there: morning of the twenty-eighth. And no one’s done a stroke of work on it since.’
Oh for God’s sake.
‘Well, that’s a whole heap of sod-all-help, isn’t it. You’ve narrowed down the window of deposition to forty-nine snidging days!’ Idiots. ‘Put Davey on.’
‘His highness, Acting Detective Sergeant Barrett is currently indisposed. Coughing and spluttering, trying to kid on he’s got the plague.’
She sat up. ‘He better no’ have!’
‘It’s not the snottery virus he’s suffering from, it’s,’ Lund’s voice jumped a couple of decibels, ‘too much vodka and pickled onions, yesterday! . . . Yes, you: with your face like a puckered frog’s bumhole!
’ Then the sound went all muffled, as Lund presumably pressed the handset to her ample bosom. ‘It’s herself. Wants to talk to you.’
‘No’ if he’s infectious, I don’t.’ Cos it was bad enough with half the division off sick and another third crippled after Saturday’s protest-cum-riot . . . Mind you, calling it a ‘protest-cum-riot’ made it sound a lot more fun than it was. Stickier too.
Anyway, where was she?
Ah yes: motivating her team of halfwits and ne’er-do-wells. ‘And to be frank, DC Lund, I expected better of you! Letting Barrett get that blootered, at a family barbecue, on a Sunday night; what were you thinking?’
‘Supposed to be a rest day, today! And how is he my responsibility? You were the one screaming “Dos mezcales más, por favor!”, clicking your fingers, and dancing round DCI McRae’s garden like a—’
‘Unlubricated, size six, bovver boots – express delivered to your flipping colon!’
There was a decidedly chilly pause, then: ‘Oh go . . . poop in your sombrero.’
And with that, Lund ended the call.
The police convoy had slowed to a crawl, and now the lead patrol car’s blue-and-whites took a left, leaving the main road.
Roberta turned her scowl on Tufty again, cos the judgemental wee sod was staring at her. ‘What?’
‘Didn’t say anything, Guv. Did I say anything? Cos I don’t remember saying anything. Not a word.’
‘Shut up.’
The police van pulled in too, followed by the arse-end of that filthy Scenes Transit, exposing the entrance to a coned-off lay-by, complete with ‘KEEP OUT’ signs.
‘Here we go.’ The wee loon brought up the rear, and the MX-5 lurched as one of its front wheels disappeared into a pothole – pulling a gravelled scrrrrrrrraping noise from the undercarriage.
‘Watch it!’
He winced. ‘Oops.’
Give him something to wince about.
‘OW! Stop hitting me!’
She pointed. ‘Park, you idiot.’
And, soon as he did, she lowered her sunglasses an inch and gave him the kind of bloodshot glare that had him shrinking back in his seat.
Should think so too.
Roberta poked her glasses into place again and climbed out into the . . . flipping heck. There was a decided whiff to the air. As if the fog was three weeks past its sell-by date and hadn’t been too fresh to start with.
A manky, pale-brown hatchback slouched at the far end of the lay-by, fading into the fog, just outside the cordon of yellow-and-black ‘CRIME SCENE – DO NOT ENTER’ tape that boxed off a council wheelie bin and something tipped over on its side. Like a black plastic coffin.
Which was a bit awkward, because that meant half the lay-by was now inaccessible, and Roberta’s mini convoy had to all jam together at this end. Bumper to bumper. And not in a sexy way.
The flickering lights they’d been aiming for belonged to a patrol car, parked half on the semicircle of long grass that sat between the potholed tarmac strip and the A96.
It should’ve had a two-person crew, but only a single uniformed PC was visible: arranging a bunch of traffic cones into a defensive wall.
She was in the full high-vis get-up, with her sandy hair crammed into a tight bun and a bowler hat.
Because unlike Roberta, she’d clearly bought into all that sexist bollocks about male officers wearing peaked caps while women were stuck with stupid bowlers. Like Charlie Sodding Chaplin. Whatever happened to sticking two fingers up to the patriarchy? Then kicking it in the balls?
The unemancipated PC looked up from her task – over her shoulder towards the cordoned-off bin – revealing a faceful of angry acne. Her eyes narrowed.
But she wasn’t glowering at Roberta, she was giving a pair of crows the evil eye as they hopped sideways towards that plastic coffin thing.
Then PC Plukes abandoned her cones and charged at the cordon, waving her arms about. ‘GET OUT OF IT, YOU THIEVING FEATHERY GITS!’