Nine Lights Over Edinburgh

by Harper Fox

  ***

  They hadn’t wanted to kill him, or he’d have been dead.

  McBride made it to the end of Spital Wynd. Then his left leg gave beneath him, and he crashed into a shop doorway as an alternative to falling into the Lothian Street traffic.

  “Hoi,” said the whore who was already in occupancy. “Find your own patch, Charlie Bronson.”

  McBride looked up, grimacing. He could hardly see for blood. He thought his kneecap was dislodged. “Do I look like I’m selling my services, love?”

  “You dinnae look fit to gie them away.” Disdainfully the whore stepped over him, tugged straight her tiny leatherette skirt and resumed her watch of the street.

  McBride scrambled a little farther into shelter and promptly recoiled as his hand brushed clammy skin. Jesus, there’s someone else in here. By the light of his mobile phone—the only asset other than his clothes that Maguire and his mates had left on his body—McBride saw a filthy, bearded face, a hunched-up collection of stick limbs wrapped in a blanket. McBride swore, eloquently and at length. His lips were split and a punch had loosened one molar, but at least he still could speak.

  At least he had his phone. He had his job, his status. He was an officer of the law, one of Auld Reekie’s finest. And one advantage of carrying on a sporadic, inexplicable affair with his partner was, if he fell afoul of muggers in the night, at least he had someone to call.

  Andy’s mobile rang and rang. So did his desk phone at the station. The landline at his flat beeped and went to voice mail, and McBride hung up. He could have told him what had happened, just about. But he couldn’t make a damned recording on the subject.

  His mobile flashed a low-battery screen and switched off. McBride slumped against the wall. The down-and-out beside him grunted and edged closer, malodorously friendly or just seeking his body heat. Alive, then. You couldn’t be sure. Nights like this went like a scythe through the doorway dwellers, the railway-arch denizens of McBride’s city.

  He was washed up between two of them. What was there to distinguish him from either? He could arrest the working girl, he supposed—or the hobo, for vagrancy. He’d never done such a thing in all his fifteen years, even under pressure from his seniors to clean up the Old Town streets, but it might let him skin back over the fence, the divide. If he had his ID card, anyway. He shook with bitter laughter and began to cough.

  “Jesus, Bronson. Will you fuck off for me? You’re puttin’ off the trade.”

  “Oh. Forgive me, Nell Gwynne…”

  She cast a gum-chewing glance over her shoulder. “You need a taxi?”

  “Need the fare for one first.” Bracing against the wall, McBride tried to haul himself up. “All right. I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “Wait a bit. Cabbie owes me a favour.”

  She clicked away, miraculously keeping her stilettos out of the gaps between the cobbles. McBride waited. He couldn’t make it any farther, and he resigned himself to whatever pimp or pickpocket she would bring back with her. Nearly a minute passed in a blur of cold and grinding pain. Then, astounding to McBride as Cinderella’s pumpkin coach, a black cab pulled up and stopped outside the shop door.

  “What are you,” he enquired of the working girl, staggering to his feet, “the tart with the heart of gold?”

  “Not a bit of it. A tenner next time you see me, or I’ll find out where you live and tell your missus you like to be zipped up and left in a gimp suit.”

  Chapter Two

  Eight o’clock the next morning, all the dross and the glitter were gone. In their place, plastic and carpet tiles, and Superintendent Lila Stone, looking across her desk at McBride as if the cat had deposited him there. “James,” she began, her Oxford accent making McBride’s nerves twang. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed.”

  McBride shifted in his chair. He’d come on duty straight from the Royal Infirmary casualty department. He wasn’t hurt as badly as he’d thought—a black eye, cracked ribs and a sprained knee the worst of it—but otherwise he couldn’t help but concur. He cautiously sipped his black coffee, minding his swollen lip. “Aye, Lila. Me too.”

  She twitched. It was tiny, subsumed into a tap of the files on her desk, but McBride saw. Proud of her open, nonhierarchical approach to leadership, Stone. Chisel open her heart, and you’d see the words transparency, accountability and equality carved deep. She liked to call her staff by their first names; invited them to call her by hers. Oddly only McBride accepted the invitation, gravely and as often as he could. She hated it.

  She pretty much hated McBride. That much was apparent, if he hadn’t already known, in the cold-eyed relish with which she was looking him over. “Would you like to tell me,” she asked, viciously screwing her Biro into its plastic top, “exactly what became of you last night?”

  I’d rather poke myself in the puss with your paper knife, ma’am. Who the hell had given her one in the shape of a sgian dubh? It was the sort of thing a damn tourist would buy. Had she actually bought it for herself? McBride told himself—frequently—he didn’t hate her because she was English. No St. Andrew’s stickers in his rear windshield. Her narrow-lipped vowels went over his nerves like fingernails on a blackboard when he had a headache; that was all.

  “Detective Inspector? I need your report, please.”

  McBride shook himself. His skull was thumping, not just with the beating he’d received, but a good Cowgate hangover too. He made an effort. “I was working the Carlyle case down at the Grassmarket. Playing poker with a bunch of Fitz Maguire’s mates. One of the bastards made me.”

  “Made you?” Irritably McBride waited for her to quit pretending she didn’t know the term. “You were recognised? Your cover broke?”

  “That’s right, Lila.”

  A grey morning silence descended. Through Stone’s welcomingly inched-open door, McBride heard laughter, and the rattle and grind of the vending machine. Andy, getting his early fix of tea. Chiming through Andy’s rich Lowland baritone, the voice of the young female officer on transfer from Glasgow. A smart, good-natured lass. Just Andy’s usual type.

  “James, you’re one of our finest undercover officers. Please explain to me how you allowed a crony of Fitz Maguire’s to destroy four weeks of man-hours.”

  They were my hours. I’m the bloody man; don’t make it sound like I let down the whole Lothian and Borders. But McBride knew he had. His truculence was a frail shield against crippling shame. He clenched his fists in his lap. Sim Carlyle was an evil sod who needed to be stopped. McBride had had a chance and let it go. “I’m sorry, Superintendent,” he said sincerely. “It happened because I was too drunk to notice Malcolm Wilkes in the Red Bottle. I buggered it up.”

  “Yes, you did.” Stone opened a file. She sounded less grim—almost cheerful, as if his confession had been all she wanted. “It’s not the first time either, is it?”

  McBride blinked. He rather thought it was—or at any rate the first she could know about. Sure, a couple of times Andy’d had to pick up a bit of slack for him, come in and do paperwork McBride had been in no state to handle, loan him a hundred or so to cover a poker debt until he got paid. Still, he didn’t feel like agreeing with her. He opened his mouth to argue, but she was continuing, thoughtfully, running a finger down a page. “You’ve been a marvellous officer, haven’t you, James? One of our best. A consistent clear-up rate way above average for all the years you’ve been with us, though—” she paused and gave McBride a little smile he supposed was meant to be conspiratorial, “—I think we’ll agree my predecessor let you get away with a lot.”

  Her predecessor. Amanda Campbell, superintendent, retired. McBride was glad Stone hadn’t mentioned her name, because the day Amanda had announced her intentions to quit and spend her late fifties with her other half, Jennifer, was still painfully fresh in his mind. No open-door policy for Amanda. No first names exchanged—not until you’d worked with her at least ten years. She’d drawn lines of authority no one had ever even thought of crossing.
She had dealt with things as a lesbian copper in 1970s Edinburgh that would make Lila’s bleached hair stand on end.

  Amanda had been McBride’s friend. “Lila,” he said wearily. “My head hurts, and I’d like to change out of the clothes I got mugged in last night. Do you mind if I ask what we’re talking about here?”

  “Not at all. I’m glad you did. I’d have had to bring it up soon anyway. James, can you tell me whether all the drinking you do is necessary to your undercover work? Or do you do it these days because you can’t stop?”

  McBride stared at her. She had a pair of cold steel balls on her; he’d give her that. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It pains me to say this. Your record is exemplary, but it won’t protect you forever. And it’s your safety I’m worried about—yours and that of anyone who has to work with you. How old are you now?”

  “Why don’t you tell me, since that’s my personnel file you’re playing about with there?”

  Stone’s eyes glinted behind her reactolight glasses. It was no way to speak to his superior. He wished she’d tell him so. But fear ran under her assertiveness in all his dealings with her, inspiring in him the desire to run rings around her, but also a kind of embarrassed pity. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, ma’am. I turned forty last August. And…as far as the other thing goes, I do what I have to, to get my job done.”

  “That’s what concerns me. This time it didn’t get the job done, did it?” She picked up another file, much slimmer than the bible containing the misdeeds of James McBride for the past fifteen years. “I’m afraid I have to tell you, you’ve been under observation. We’ve let you run about after Sim Carlyle, but it’s been a kind of a test, a last chance. And you’ve failed.”

  McBride watched the grey carpet tiles at his feet. He wasn’t really there in Stone’s office anymore. He was one tough week away, at a Christmas party, watching his cheery, girl-chasing partner transform into the man who would suck him off in the locker room. He was back in attendance, a wondering ghost, at their few encounters since. Awkward, unconvincing. Andy always seeing to him, reluctant to be touched in return. “Superintendent,” he said dryly, a great arid desert opening up all around him. “Can I please ask you who we is?”

  “You can, but it’s irrelevant. A wrong focus. I’ve had the cooperation of the department, shall we say. The point is that you need help. And you need to come in off the streets.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t contemplate disciplinary action against you at present, but that’s conditional upon your accepting reassignment. I’m handing Sim Carlyle over to another team, and you…” She peered at him, half eagle, half frightened rabbit, over the top of her glasses. “Two things, James. First you help look after Ambassador Binyamin Zvi when he arrives tomorrow. He’s a fire-breathing Zionist, so even if it’s not street work, it should be plenty dangerous for you.”

  “Zvi? The Israeli guy coming in for the Freemason’s Hall summit?” McBride resisted the urge to hang on to the edge of his chair. He felt as if he were falling. “That’s a constable’s job. Babysitting!”

  “I’m not finished. Second…” She extracted a thin sheaf of papers from what McBride assumed was his personal investigative file. He stared in disbelief. The first sheet was a flyer—one he’d seen every day on notice boards around the building. Counselling services, for coppers who couldn’t cope anymore. And who shouldn’t have been coppers in the first place, McBride had always privately added, marching past the boards about his business. “Second you will enter the therapy programmes being run for officers addicted to alcohol and gambling. These aren’t suggestions, Detective Inspector. They’re what you need to do to keep your job.”

  ***

  McBride made a careful track down the corridor to his office. His knee had been efficiently strapped up, and he could more or less put weight on it. If he reached out unobtrusively to the wall from time to time, he thought he would look almost normal. Inconspicuous, anyway, which was all he wanted.

  He pushed open his door and went in. There was the same scene he had left the night before: an ordered explosion of files, in which he could always find whatever he wanted, even if nobody else could, a selection of Grace’s artwork ranging from the finger-paint to fairy-princess stages, photos of the unprepossessing brat—poor mite, she took after him—at the zoo, the Waxworks (grinning beside their Christ-awful effigy of Michael Jackson) and atop Arthur’s Seat. There were the mummified remains of the houseplants Libby used to send in with him from her horticultural business. Everything was as he’d left it. The utterly alien light in which he was seeing it must therefore mean the transformation was in him.

  McBride slumped into the chair behind his desk. He resisted the urge to sink his face into his hands. The room’s privacy was notional only: since Stone had ordered the HQ refit, walls had turned into glass panels, and each inward-facing office was fully visible from the others. The panels were equipped with blinds, but no one ever wanted to pull them down. Might as well advertise the fact you were beating up a witness or pinching the teaboy’s bum. No, you sat up straight, kept your nose clean and made sure you had nothing to hide.

  Well, fuck that. Deliberately McBride took hold of the counselling flyer and information sheets, pinched their top edges between his fingers and thumbs and ripped them in two, top to bottom. Then he carefully lined up the halves and tore the sheets into quarters, then eighths. Beyond that, the paper resisted him, so he let the bits fall, a festive wee snowstorm for anyone caring to watch.

  He tried to take in what had happened. It was bloody serious, he knew. Soon he would be devastated. But something about the end of his fight with Lila Stone brought to mind how last night’s battle with Maguire and his mob had concluded. He’d been getting beaten to shit, hadn’t he? Temper and basic karate had only carried him so far. Down on the Usher Close cobbles, a boot driving into his gut. Others poised, ready for his face and his groin. Then…it had stopped. At the time McBride had been too sick to register the suddenness with which it had all gone away. He remembered now. He also remembered Fitzy’s last words, flung back at him like a well-aimed gobbet of spit: “Watch yersel’, copper! Ye’re in deeper waters than ye know. Next time yer troubles might follow ye home!”

  A cold grey fear touched McBride. Home meant the shabby flat where he had lived, or camped out, for the past year, not the nice little semi in Corstophine where Libby was bringing up their kid.

  Then, if he had been too drunk to remember Malcolm Wilkes, what else might McBride have forgotten? And why had Wilkie and Fitz Maguire run?

  He lurched to his feet. There was Andy Barclay, still passing the time of day with the new female transfer. What was she called? Janice, wasn’t it? McBride studied the pair of them. They were almost comical, almost a bloody cliché. Andy, tall and handsome, gesturing around, displaying his kingdom; Janice smiling up at him, all soft hair and curves. Adam and Eve at the watercooler. An odd pain passed through McBride. He had never been in any danger of losing his heart to his partner, but what the hell had made him think for one second Andy could ever feel for him the way he did for even this most casual female acquaintance?

  Time for the truth. The fragile glass walls hardly rendered it necessary, but if anyone deserved a short, sharp shout… McBride swung his door open wide. “Andy!” he barked and saw with satisfaction that the young man left a good inch of clear air beneath his soles.

  ***

  “Where were you, then?”

  Andrew halted en route to his accustomed chair. After the initial yell, McBride had gestured him into his office courteously enough. “Where was… When, sir?”

  Back to sir, then. McBride, too stiff to make it to his seat, settled on the edge of the desk. Sir was for transparent working days and glass panels. Andrew, obedient to Stone’s preferred office policy, had left the door open behind him. “Close that,” McBride told him genially. “While you’re on, pull the blinds down.”

  “Um…the blinds
?”

  “My God, is there an echo in here? Yes, Andy. The blinds and the door. Then come and sit down.” McBride waited until his partner had gingerly obeyed. No secrets in Harle Street, except the ones Lila Stone wanted kept herself. “Where were you last night? Around half twelve, is when I’m interested in. Just after I’d got duffed in by Fitz Maguire and three of his lads.”

  “Yeah, I…I heard. I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

  “You heard?” McBride ran his hands through his hair. His fingers caught: there was still blood in it. “Right. Yes, I’m okay. A Grassmarket hooker gave me the cab fare to hospital. Tell me, laddie…” He paused, waiting until Andrew’s attention was fixed on him with painful intensity. “Tell me. I know things have been weird with us for the past week or so. But…have I got something enormously wrong here? Have you and me not been friends?”

  “What?” Andrew almost fell off his chair. McBride almost took pity on him. He’d come in with a mask of smiling bravado, but that had evaporated, the face behind it pale and dismayed. “No, sir! I mean, of course we have. You’ve been…” He tailed off, as if formulating the thought was making it freshly true for him. “You’ve been a great boss. The best.”

  “Then…Andy, why, for the love of God, have you let that little tin-pot dictator pull your strings like this? She set you to watch me, didn’t she?”

  Andrew swallowed. “She told you?”

  “No. You’re telling me. And that’s good, because if you lie to me now, we really are screwed. Why?”

  “She’s been worried about you. So have I. You must know things have been getting out of control.”

  “Nice. Also bullshit. Come on! You’re better than this. More bloody honest, anyway. What did she do to you?”

  Releasing an explosive sigh, Andrew leaned forward. He thrust back his fringe. McBride wondered if he recognised in himself the signs of a suspect about to crack under interrogation: certainly McBride had taught him well enough what to look out for. “Jesus. You don’t know what she’s like.”