Chapter 1
No sooner had Grace thumped the cell door shut again, than Kelman’s voice launched into a wobbly baritone, getting louder with every line:
‘Our nation pure, our nation fair,
Our nation—’
Tufty joined in, loud as a foghorn: ‘In its underwear!’
Which wasn’t professional in the least bit.
Couldn’t help but smile, though. What with Kelman being a racist twat.
Roberta stopped and gave the wee loon a token thump. ‘Naughty. Bad Tufty. Back in your box.’
He grinned at her, throwing in two thumbs up.
Having been knocked off his stride, it took Kelman a couple of breaths to try again:
‘Our nation pure, our nation fair,
Our nation brave and bold and true,
Our people joined in holy prayer,
Our proud flag flies: red, white, and blue!’
Urgh . . .
Preferred Tufty’s version, to be honest.
Roberta took hold of the barred gate back through to the custody suite, giving it a rattle as one of the other Polo-Shits sang along:
‘Our hearts beat for this hallowed isle,
Our Celtic blood flows staunch and true,’
A T-Shirt banged on their cell door. ‘SHUT UP, YOU FASCIST WANKS!’
Roberta gave the gate another rattle. ‘Shop!’
‘All right, all right.’ Grace unlocked the thing and swung it open.
‘Our sacred land none shall defile,
Our proud flag flies: red, white, and blue!’
The police contingent exited the cellblock as a second T-Shirt made their contribution: ‘SHOVE YOUR FLAG UP YOUR ARSEHOLE!’
Which seemed to be the cue for all the Polo-Shirts to join in on the chorus, belting it out:
‘We’ll drench the beaches in their blood,
With sword and shield, beat back the flood,’
‘THE ONLY THING YOU BEAT IS YOUR MEAT!’
‘Till Scotland’s glens and hills are free,’
‘WANKERRRRRS! WAAAAAAANKERRRRRRRS!’
‘Pick up your blade and FIGHT WITH ME!’
Then all the T-Shirts took up the cry, football-chant style: ‘WAAAAAAA-NKERRRRS! WAAAAAAA-NKERRRRS!’
Grace slammed the bars shut again and locked them, staring icy needles at Roberta. ‘Did you have to get everyone all riled up? They’ll be at it for hours now.
‘WAAAAAA-NKERRRRRS! WAAAAAA-NKERRRRRS!’
Roberta gave her a wink. ‘I do what I can.’ And escaped, out through the custody suite and into the station stairwell, leaving chaos in her wake. Which was the best place for it.
The stairs were those metal anti-slip ones, with painted breeze-block walls and a stale-sock smell.
‘Gu-uv?’ Tufty scampered along behind her. ‘If I is to be an “militant Antifa” does that mean I gets a special hat? You know, for fighting fascism with. Look upon mine hat, ye shitey and despair!’ Pausing on the stairs to perform some half-arsed ninja moves. ‘Pow! Zap! Kerblooie!’
She blinked at him. Gave herself a shake. Then set off climbing again. ‘I am no’ going to miss working with freaks and sodding weirdos.’
Tufty followed. ‘What is we doing now? Does we has An Cunning Plan?’
She stopped again.
The wee loon had a point.
A plan would probably help . . .
Trouble was: ‘We’re screwed on the interview front.
Can’t interrogate any more interns without their sodding solicitor, and there’s only one sodding solicitor, so that’s going to take all sodding day.
And our wee racist friends don’t even have one yet, so furch knows when we’ll get round to them.
’ Chewing on the inside of her cheek and frowning, because none of that actually helped.
‘Basically: the whole thing grinds to a halt, till—’
Ding-buzz.
‘Hold that thought.’ She checked her phone.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
Much though I hate to nag?!?
Bloody Davey, again.
‘Oh for . . . scrunks’ sake.’ Did the man have nothing better to do than haemorrhoid her bumhole?
She rammed her phone back in its pocket and stomped up the stairs, setting them ringing beneath her Doc Martens.
Should’ve stayed in bed this morning and to hell with the lot of them.
Roberta clattered into the incident room, jaw set, ready to tear someone a new Boris.
And as PC Disco Whatever-The-Hell-His-Real-Name-Was had his arse parked in an office chair, swivelling back and forth like a teenaged girl, while on the phone and doodling in a notebook, this was his chance to get ventilated.
He didn’t even look up as she thundered into the room. Still swivelling: ‘OK, right. . . . Uh-huh. . . . Uh-huh.’
She slammed a hand down on his desk, making him flinch. ‘Where’s my twunting murderboard? And those PNC checks?’
He pointed at the handset held to his ear, mouthing the words ‘I’M ON THE PHONE!’ in silent pantomime mode.
As if she couldn’t scrunking tell.
Then he swung himself around and pointed at the Big Desk instead. Where a brand-new blue folder had joined the laptop and Operation Demogorgon file.
Then Disco whirled back to face front, wiggling his finger at the wall beside the door she’d just stormed in through. ‘Yup. . . . I understand. . . . Uh-huh.’
Roberta turned to see what the lazy wee shite was pointing at. Whatever it was, it was hidden behind the open door, so she thundered back over there and slammed the thing shut.
Her murderboard seemed to consist of two diagrams of the lay-by, some printed-out photos of the crows’ nest where she and Tufty had found the stolen body parts – which must’ve come from the wee loon’s phone – along with a train timetable for the Inverurie-to-Insch stretch of line that had an extra column in the middle for ‘ESTIMATED TIME AT DEPOSITION SCENE’ for both north-and-southbound trains.
And yes, it was all very neat and tidy, but not a massive amount of use.
Pff . . .
But until they made some progress, it was all they had.
She slouched over to the window, sneaking a peek into the car park below, where that manky old VW Polo still sat, rusting away.
Bet that was Davey’s car. Couldn’t make his face out from up here, but that was definitely an arm, resting on the driver’s windowsill as he smoked a fag and munched on a custard doughnut.
The incident-room door swung open and Tufty loitered on the threshold, face all spanked puppy dog as he rubbed at his stupid pointy noise. ‘What was that for?’
She snapped her fingers at him. ‘You, Bumnuggets: PNC check.’ Reading out the VW Polo’s number plate nice and loud. Making sure that Disco had to poke a finger in his free ear and curl away from her to still hear his phone call.
Tufty copied it down into his notebook. Muttering away to himself. Scowling and pouting. ‘Slamming doors in people’s faces when they’ve not done nothing wrong . . .’
She left him to it, cracked the window open an inch and had a wee vape. Puffing out black cherry as she pinged dead wasps off the sill, into the baking afternoon. Watching Davey lurk outside.
Waiting for her . . .
Disco took his finger out of his lug again. ‘Uh-huh. . . . I see. . . . Yeah, OK.’ Writing whatever that was down.
Meanwhile, Tufty finished poking at the room’s ancient laptop and that massive printer whirred and clicked for a bit, then wheezed out a sheet of A4.
‘No, no: I understand. . . . Uh-huh.’ More notes.
Tufty wandered over to the machine, skimming the printout on his way back.
‘OK: registered owner is one David McLeod. No priors. Does has an weeny collection of parking tickets. Home address: 32 Kingswood Place, Kingswells. Former detective sergeant of this parish. Well, Grampian Police, but that am being way before my time, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and— Ow!’
‘I was Grampian Police.’ Flexing her whacking hand. ‘Get into whatever system it is and pull up his record.’
Tufty rubbed at his arm. ‘That was a really stingy one!’
‘You want another?’
‘And I can’t just “get into” other officers’ records. Wouldn’t be right. Need to go through proper channels, and Professional Standards, and the like.’
‘Sod that.’
Last thing they needed was the Rubber Heelers poking their beaks in.
‘Yeah, OK. . . . Thanks. . . . Bye.’ Disco hung up and scribbled some more in his notebook.
Then waved at them. ‘That was the hospital, Guv. Our stabbing victim’s been in surgery for two and a half hours.
’ Frowning at what he’d written. ‘Knife went in and up, so the blade’s gone through her small and large intestine, then into the liver.
’ A wince. ‘Apparently, it’s all a bit of a mess in there.
Every time they gave her a blood transfusion it just came squirting out again.
Think they’ve got the worst of it now, but there’s still a heap to do.
’ Waving a hand at his notes. ‘Not to mention all these potential medical complications I can’t even pronounce. ’
Bugger.
Poor Billie Nesbit.
‘She going to live?’
Disco just scrunched up his face and shrugged.
‘I hate today.’ Roberta went back to scowling down on Davey and his crappy car.
Bugger must’ve been psychic, because her phone went ding-buzz and there he was, sneaking into her messages again.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
Hello? Is everything OK? I’m still outside if it helps?
No, it sodding didn’t.
OK. Time for that cunning plan.
She pointed at Tufty. ‘You, Nerdarama: grab a patrol car: we’re going out.’
‘Don’t we have to be here for when the solicitor—’
‘Don’t be a prune.’ Grabbing the blue folder Disco had left on her desk.
‘Slick Larry has to consult with his client; then he has to sit in on the interview, so he can stop her saying anything useful; then he has to debrief her afterwards, before moving on to the next one. Rinse and repeat.’ Opening the folder revealed a trio of printouts: PNC checks on those number plates.
‘And while Sleazy McLawyer-Pants is consulting and debriefing, we’re bobbing around like spare jobbies in the hot tub.
Instead, we head out and get some actual police work done while he’s faffing about with his interns. ’
The wee loon’s mouth made an uncomfortable sine wave. ‘Suppose so . . .’
‘Patrol car. Now!’
He backed off a pace, probably worried the Whacking Hand would make a return visit to Stingy Town. ‘Yeah, but why a patrol car? Don’t you want to take the wee . . .’ miming driving her MX-5, ‘. . . vroom-vroom, beep-beep?’
Because it was still sitting out there, parked not far from Davey’s rustmobile.
Sigh.
But sometimes you had to make sacrifices for a distraction to work.
The benefits of commandeering a patrol car were twofold – one: members of the public didn’t like to look too closely at them, cos looking at them might make you appear suspicious, which might make the police officers driving said patrol car interested in arresting you.
And two: unlike pool cars, they weren’t mobile skips, full of empty crisp packets, coffee cups, sandwich wrappers, crumpled pie-shop bags, and that funky bin-bag smell.
Roberta and Tufty had the windows rolled down, to release the sticky heat, as the wee loon drove them through the reinforced gates that separated the private rear car park from the public one out front. Humming away to himself.
Teeny beads of sweat were already glistening on his forehead, because the idiot was wearing his stabproof and high-vis again. Should’ve ditched them on the back seat, along with his utility belt, like Roberta. But maybe he enjoyed having a pair of handcuffs digging into his kidneys?
Being much wiser, Roberta scootched down in the passenger seat, hiding her face with her peaked cap – peering through a wee gap between it and the car door.
There he was: Davey, loitering beside his rustbucket again, phone in one hand, frowning up at the station.
Good.
You keep looking that way.
Stay nice and distracted while they made their escape.
Tufty nodded at the folder in her lap. ‘So . . . is we going to visit the peoples what owns the vehicles what Disco did make PNC checks on?’ Stopping where the station entrance met the main road to let a minibus and a couple of mud-spattered four-by-fours rattle past.
‘Nope.’ Not yet, anyway.
‘But we is—’
‘They’re not for us, they’re for Davey.’
Maybe. Possibly. Depending on what turned up.
‘Eh?’ His forehead wrinkled up in a parody of thought. ‘Davey?’ Taking a left, following a filthy Ford Ranger. ‘Why can’t Barrett do his own PNCs?’ More wrinkles. ‘Anyway: thought he was off sick.’
She wriggled down a little further. ‘Not that Davey, you pustulating twit, the other one.’ Pointing ahead. ‘Up to the roundabout and left, back into town.’
Captain Slow-On-The-Uptake finally twigged. ‘The ex-cop?’ His eyes widened. ‘But . . . No . . . That’s . . .’
They drifted past the front car park, so close you could almost reach out and slap Davey on the back of the head as he poked away at his phone, then held it to his ear.
Well, if you had really, really long arms.
Might be able to spit on him from here, though.
Tufty stamped on the brakes. ‘You can’t interrogate the Police National Computer for funzies! What does he need PNC checks for? Is he a stalker? A murderer? Is he doing something illegal with the info?’
‘Well, that’s what we’re trying to—’
Her phone launched into its jaunty disco-pop tune, belting it out. And as all the patrol car’s windows were down, the car’s interior must’ve acted as a sort of loudspeaker, because Davey spun around.
And locked eyes with Roberta.
‘Bugger.’ She scooted down even further, till the seatbelt threatened to choke her. ‘Drive. Drive!’
‘I’m not being party to anything illegal! I has a bidie-in; I is a pillar of the community; we’re talking about getting a goldfish!’
Roberta thumped his leg.
‘Ow!’
‘Then drive, you idiot!’ Declining the call.
But Davey was already yanking open the door to his VW Polo McRusty.
Tufty accelerated again. ‘Just because you’re retiring in a couple of weeks, doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have careers to—’
‘Stop driving like a drunken granny and put your foot down!’ Roberta poked the button for lights and music. The siren wailed, the lights flickered.
Tufty switched them off again. ‘You can’t just— Ow!’
‘And there’s loads more where that came from!’
He put his foot down.