Chapter 9 #2
Tufty grinned. Pervert. ‘But then I did work my devious charms, and telled him: “We is poor hungry police officers in dire need of sustenance, jolly innkeep!” Well, buskeep, but you get the drift. And . . .’ Whipping out a large-ish paper bag. ‘TA-DAAAAAAAAAH! He fired-up the grill, just for us.’
Roberta stuck both hands out this time. ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme!’
Tufty dipped into the big paper bag, producing a collection of smaller paper bags, all of which were promisingly spotted with grease. ‘Got bacon; bacon and egg; sausage, egg, and egg; sausage, bacon, and egg; and a Neptune’s delight.’
She grabbed the bag marked ‘SB thought you were dead!’
Tufty chewed fishfinger butty at her. ‘Pound in the swear jar.’
She flipped him the Vs and went back to her phone. ‘You’re no’ dead, are you?’
‘Might as well be . . .’ A huffed breath. ‘Listen, don’t suppose you could do me a teeny wee favour?’
Cos that didn’t sound dodgy. ‘Oh aye?’
‘Normally, I wouldn’t ask, but everyone I know’s off with this bug that’s going round. . . . See, there’s a—’
‘Well, look what the cat coughed up.’ Roberta lowered her phone as Harmsworth staggered into view – beetroot of cheek, shiny with sweat, and breathing as if he’d just run a marathon. When the pie-stuffed snudge could barely run a bath.
He was clarted in pine needles, sticky Geordies, rosebay willowherb, and other assorted bits of undergrowth. Both shoulders spattered with what looked like splots of yoghurt. But probably weren’t.
She slapped her phone against her chest, covering the mic. ‘Might’ve known. You snidgers can smell a bacon butty at six hundred yards!’
Harmsworth collapsed into a spare seat. ‘Had to . . . get across . . . railway line . . . before the eight twenty-three . . . Aberdeen to . . . to Inverness.’ Wiping at his sweaty face. Then a sniff. Chin and eyebrows raised in hopeful expectation. ‘Did you say something about butties?’
Tufty tossed him a paper bag.
He caught it, read the wobbly Sharpie letters – ‘B squirting blood red all over his bacon and egg.
‘Rotten flipping crows.’ Biting into the butty and chewing as if it was a bitter chore.
‘Pigeons aren’t the rats of the air, crows are. Rottweilers with wings!’
‘Did you find my missing phalanges or no’?’
‘I got dive-bombed!’ Hunching his pooped-on shoulders. ‘Could’ve put my eye out.’
‘Oh for . . .’ What was the point? Useless sods were always going to uselessly sod, because that’s what useless sods always did. And Harmsworth had to be the uselessiest and soddiest of them all.
Roberta was chewing at him in a disapproving manner, when a tiny, muffled, tinny voice squeaked into her right boob:
‘Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?’ Ex-Detective Sergeant Davey ‘I Need A Favour’ McLeod.
She popped the last chunk of butty in her gob. ‘Davey? Yeah, I’ve got stuff on the boil here, so it’s been lovely catching up, but—’
‘I’m not asking much! Just run a couple number plates, that’s all. I wouldn’t ask, but I’m dying here.’
‘Haven’t heard from you in over a decade, Davey, and you call up asking for favours?’
Silence.
She sooked her fingers.
Crumpled the empty butty bag.
Tossed it into the back of the van.
‘Jenny’s cancer’s not responding anymore. We’re . . .’ Deep breath. ‘I want to do something special, but . . . It’s . . . I need help, OK?’
Jenny.
Who the hell was Jenny? Davey’s Labrador? Wife? Child . . .?
Yeah.
Roberta sagged. ‘Maybe. Text the buggers over and we’ll see. I’m no’ promising anything, mind.’
‘Thanks! Thank you, that’s great! That’s—’
‘Aye, I’m a sodding saint.’ Or a soft touch, one of the two.
She hung up.
And there was Harmsworth, polishing off the last corner of his bacon-and-egg butty – already reaching for the sausage-and-double-egg.
‘Oh no you don’t.’ Snatching the paper bag before he could get there. Unwrapping it as she jerked her chin at Tufty. ‘You:’ then at Harmsworth, ‘as Fart Boy here is sod-all use, you’re on crow duty.’
‘Guv.’ The wee loon crammed the last morsel of Neptune’s delight into his gob, chewing as Roberta searched through the sauce sachets for more mustard. But while she was distracted by a rogue portion of raspberry jam, the thieving snudge plucked the butty from her fingers.
‘Hey!’
Could barely make out a word over the fish-fingery mouthful: ‘Need to extract the corvid tax.’ Tufty plucked the two sausages from her bun and dropped them, naked, back into the paper bag. Then returned the eviscerated, meatless corpse of her butty. As if that was any sodding consolation.
‘Gimme back my sausages!’
‘Nope.’ And off he scarpered, both hands held high above his head. ‘Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo!’
Harmsworth watched Tufty go. ‘Told you: we should’ve had him tested.’