by Claire Askew
I waited to see if the gates would close behind me, to see if someone was watching me on the in-built CCTV. If they were, they did nothing. I turned my back on the driveway and walked. At the bus stop, I texted Izz, and then made my way back into town, to the Emerald, which would be – I knew – just the way I had left it.
Sunday
Birch had not been able to follow the panda cars to the station as she’d hoped. Fenton had broken the radius in her lower left arm, the paramedics informed her. She really needed to get to A&E – they’d given her quite the stern telling-off – and she absolutely could not drive. The rather schoolmarmish motorcycle medic cleaned and patched up Birch’s face: daubing stinging fluid onto the wounds as she tried to sit very still on her couch, and not flinch.
‘You’ll get yourself to a dentist at the earliest possible opportunity,’ the woman said. It was very much a command. ‘And I don’t think it’s broken, but this jaw could do with an x-ray, too, just in case.’
Yeah, yeah, Birch thought, I’ll add it to the to-do list.
‘Sure,’ she said, the medic’s face very close to her own. ‘Of course. Yes.’
They took Kristof/Jones away in the back of the ambulance, then. Birch knew his nose was broken, though she kept quiet about the fact that she’d administered the blow. Charlie, it turned out, had bruised his ribs, and the man was pretty well bloodied all over. But the medics’ cursory check – Birch’s neighbours out on the prom in dressing gowns, Jones sitting gawped-at in the half-open back of the ambulance – found no life-threatening injuries. The motorcycle paramedic and one of the panda cars followed behind as the ambulance set off, flinging its blue neon out across the beach. The other two police cars had already gone: Birch had watched from the doorstep as Park had ushered Charlie into the back seat of her car.
‘I’ll be right behind you,’ she’d called out to him, though it was Park who looked up at her and nodded, as though the remark belonged to her. As the young officer closed the door on his tear-stained face, Charlie attempted to press one palm against the inside of the car window. He was cuffed, and Birch could see it was a struggle. She gulped down the lump in her throat.
‘See you soon,’ she’d mouthed, as the panda car rolled away.
He and Fenton would be at the station by now, most likely. She imagined Charlie in the custody suite, a place he’d avoided for fourteen years. The medic’s face floated across Birch’s vision.
‘Call a taxi,’ the medic advised, ‘go and get yourself checked out.’ But no, A&E could take a flying jump. Birch needed to be there. She needed to be wherever her brother was.
As the ambulance and its motorcycle escort crawled off up the pedestrian-only prom, Birch felt like waving: they were relatives who’d overstayed their welcome, and were finally leaving her alone. It was nearing four in the morning, and for the first time Birch’s house felt peaceful again – safe, even. She sat down on the couch and dialled Big Rab’s number, her fingers prickling on the broken screen of the phone. She no longer needed the scribbled business card: she remembered the number off by heart.
‘Sorry to wake you, Rab.’ She didn’t even give him a chance to say hello. ‘But I need to get to Fettes Avenue, now, and my arm is broken so I can’t drive.’
On the other end, she heard him make a spluttering noise.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s Birch. I can brief you on the way in.’
They’d reached the Leith Street roundabout by the time Birch finally paused, and drew breath. She’d been waiting for him on the street beside the China Express when he arrived, her handbag slung over her still-good shoulder, her breath fogging the black air. Rab stopped in the middle of the road, yanked his handbrake on and got out, leaving the driver’s door open, the dashboard pinging to tell him his lights were still on. Birch noted that his was an Insignia, the model above her car, and newer. But before she could turn up her nose, Rab was on the pavement next to her, his hands outstretched towards her wrecked face.
‘Oh Jesus Mary Mother of God,’ he said. She saw his cheeks whiten, even under the streetlights. He was dressed, but still wearing his slippers. ‘What in the name of Christ happened to ye?’
As they drove, Birch reeled off the edited version she’d been mentally rehearsing. It helped that Rab already knew about Fenton, about Thursday’s assault in the close. She wasn’t going to tell him – or anyone – that Charlie had shown up four nights earlier, but by the time they reached Leith Street, he knew Charlie had turned up, which was all that really mattered. He’d skipped out the night before the Operation Citrine raid and showed up at her place only hours ago. Where was he in the intervening days?
‘I don’t know,’ Birch had said. ‘Hiding out, I guess. Running.’
She talked at a fast clip, her edited version of the last few days’ timeline falling out of her into the still air of the car. She was worried that if she kept quiet for any length of time, Big Rab would do what the paramedics had: tell her she needed to be going to A&E, not to work. He might offer to handle things for her, taking away the last chance she might have to see her brother, or hear him speak. She also didn’t want him asking too many questions, knowing Charlie as he did, and perhaps still suspecting her of something. But when she finally fell quiet, Rab said nothing. She looked over at him, surprised, and saw he was chewing over her story, almost literally: his mouth was making silent words in the air.
‘The night you got attacked,’ he said eventually, ‘doon the close.’
‘Yes?’
‘That wis Thursday night.’
‘Yes.’
‘And the guy asked where yer wee brother was.’
‘He did.’
‘And did ye know?’
Birch frowned. ‘Sorry?’
‘Did ye know, on Thursday night, where your brother was?’
No, Birch thought. By that time he’d left me again. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Like I said, at that point I had no idea.’
It wasn’t a lie, but still, being questioned on the timeline of the last week made her want to close her eyes, screw up her face. The reply felt like a sour taste in her mouth. Look normal, she told herself. You’re going to have to do this again, a lot of times.
‘He jist showed up?’ Big Rab asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Tonight?’
Birch nodded, as emphatically as she dared. ‘Yeah.’
Rab made a sort of snort noise in his throat. ‘Fuck me,’ he said, a smile beginning to occur to his face, ‘if that isnae some bloody magical timing.’
Birch waited a moment, then smiled too, though Rab wasn’t looking at her. He’d either bought it, or decided to buy it – decided to let her off. The smile said, Okay, I’m with you. He was helping her. He’d been helping her all along.
That seemed to put an end to the conversation. She could see from the movement in his jaw that Rab was still chewing things over. Every so often he took an inward breath that was a little deeper, as though he might be about to say something. But the words never followed. She had, after all, made his own problem – the lost informant, and the hunch that never came good – disappear. Besides, her jaw rang with pain, and she’d talked enough as it was. She’d be fine with making the rest of the journey in silence.
But as they approached Comely Bank, Birch realised Rab had relaxed his face and broken into a broad smile. Apparently he’d done his thinking, and was satisfied with whatever conclusion he’d reached.
‘Remember how I said I wis careful about who I bought drinks for?’ Rab was steering with one hand, and wagging a finger at her with the other. ‘In Kay’s Bar, Monday night, ken how I said that?’
Birch raised an eyebrow. ‘I do.’
Rab stabbed the finger of his pointing hand at her once more, as though drawing a full-stop in the air. ‘I wis right,’ he said.
Birch couldn’t help it. She smiled, too.
As the car slowed to turn into the car park, she remembered what she’d said to Charlie: I know a really, r
eally good lawyer. She fumbled her shattered phone unlocked and thumbed out a text to Anjan.
It might be a good idea, she wrote, if you head along to Fettes Avenue, asap. Major new breakthrough re Solomon Carradice. Feel you ought to be in the loop. H x
‘Who’re ye texting?’ Big Rab had pulled into the staff car park, and now leaned over her, trying to read.
‘A friend,’ Birch said. ‘But I was thinking I’d text DCI McLeod, too.’
Rab let out a hoot of laughter. ‘Text him? Jesus, lassie!’
Birch smiled. ‘What, you think I ought not to?’
Rab opened the driver’s door, and began rearranging himself in order to climb out.
‘Jesus, no,’ he said, trying to sound serious in spite of his obvious mirth. ‘We’ll phone him! I’m awake. No fucking reason he shouldn’t be, too.’
Charlie had been put into the custody suite, in a cell at the opposite end to Fenton. They’d led Charlie in first, and advised him to keep quiet. Fenton had no idea he was there. When Birch walked in, with Big Rab beside her and DCI McLeod bringing up the rear, it was clear that Fenton thought they were there for him.
‘Come to let me out, have ye?’
He pressed his face against the little gap in the cell door. Someone must have examined the wound on his head – there was a large, comically orange-coloured plaster on it – and he’d been allowed to wash his face. But Birch could smell the stale odour of him even with a steel door between them.
DCI McLeod stopped at Fenton’s little window. Birch watched him rise to his full height and peer down at Fenton’s boxed-in rodent face.
‘Who,’ McLeod said, in the voice he usually reserved for brand-new police constables who’d made a fuck-up, ‘is this?’
Birch tried not to smile. McLeod was dressed in plain clothes, looking more dishevelled than she’d ever seen him, but he was still a presence. She imagined Fenton’s knees shaking under him.
‘Wan o’ the lads involved in the attack, sir,’ Rab said.
Birch was glad that Fenton couldn’t see Rab’s slippered feet.
McLeod looked down at Fenton as though he were something that had crawled up from a drain. ‘A frenzied attack on a senior police officer?’ he said.
Fenton smirked, rolled his eyes at Birch.
‘I am addressing you.’
McLeod’s raised voice echoed off the concrete walls. Birch saw Fenton jump, hitting his forehead on the little sill that ran around the opening. No one spoke until the echoes had subsided. Inside the gloom of the cell, Fenton seemed to shrink.
‘Come to let you out?’ McLeod went on at last. ‘I think not. Rather, I suggest you make yourself at home.’
He reached up and slammed the little window, blocking out Fenton’s face as he opened his mouth to reply.
‘Thanks, boss,’ Birch said.
McLeod sniffed. ‘You do look dreadful, Helen,’ he said. ‘We really must get you to the hospital, soon.’
Birch bit her tongue. Guess a ‘you’re welcome’ was out of the question, then . . .
They walked on down the suite, and stopped outside the furthermost cell, where the custody sergeant was already waiting, a fistful of various keys and fobs in his hand. McLeod nodded at Birch.
‘Five minutes,’ he said.
She felt her eyes widen.
‘Yes,’ McLeod said, ‘I mean it. But literally: five.’
The custody sergeant swung the cell door open.
‘Thanks, boss,’ Birch said again, then she was inside, and the heavy steel door had swung closed at her back.
She felt tears, again, for about the thousandth time that week, come burning up the back of her throat, threatening to spill over. Charlie was curled up on a bench, hugging his knees. She’d been in the cells before of course, plenty of times, but they’d never seemed as grim as this one did, right now, with her baby brother inside it. It was cold. The smell of disinfectant made the air feel thick. Birch walked the two steps over to her brother, and he unfolded himself to make space for her to sit down.
‘Well,’ he said, stitching together a false, watery smile, ‘it’s not the Balmoral.’
‘Sorry,’ Birch said. She’d meant it to sound jokey, but it didn’t.
Charlie shrugged. ‘I had this girlfriend for a while,’ he said, ‘Hanna. She was Russian. Like, five foot tall, tiny feet, white-blonde hair. Really sweet girl. She was an amazing cook.’
Birch was able to smile at this, for real. She’d always imagined Charlie alone, the whole time he’d been gone, and this gave her a weird kind of cheer, to know he had been loved, for some of the time, by someone.
‘She believed in all sorts of folklore and stuff,’ Charlie was saying. ‘She was into her old sayings and her superstitions and all that. Used to tell me children’s stories she’d grown up with. Anyway, she had this thing she’d say: that there was really only one curse – or one spell – that could ever be put on you. And whether it was a curse or a spell depended on who you were and what you were like.’
Birch frowned. ‘What was it?’
Charlie looked at her for a second. His eyes were just the same as they’d always been: the same freckles and quirks in all the same places.
‘May you get what you pay for,’ he said. ‘Makes so much fucking sense, doesn’t it?’
Both of them sat for a moment, in the weird silence those words left behind.
‘What happened to Hanna?’ Birch asked.
Charlie shrugged. ‘Fucked up, didn’t I? Like always.’
Birch saw him register her frown, the alarm in it.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I didn’t do anything to her, Nella, I just mean I let her down. I disappointed her. She left me. It was for the best.’
Birch nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ Charlie replied. ‘She was right, wasn’t she? Got what I paid for. I always have, really. Stupid of me to think I could outrun it.’
Birch gave her head a small shake. She couldn’t believe how sanguine he seemed now, how resigned.
‘Charlie,’ she said. ‘You were so determined, on Wednesday night. You were so determined to run.’
He looked shamefaced. ‘Yeah.’
‘So . . . what made you come back?’
Charlie blinked at her. ‘Oh jeez,’ he said. ‘Of course, you don’t know! I’ve got to feeling like you know everything – that’s the way I used to feel as a kid. I thought you could see what was in my head, and I could see what was in yours.’
Birch smiled. ‘Felt that way sometimes, right?’
Charlie smiled back. Birch could see her mother in him, then.
‘So yeah,’ he said. ‘After I left your place, I took a risk. I went to a phone box, and I called a guy I know. One of Solomon’s guys. Turns out you’ve met him, in fact—’
‘Wait . . . Mr Toad?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. I know you’ll think he’s a scumbag, but he’s been the closest thing to a da that I’ve ever had. I swear he’s saved my life, more than once.’ Charlie’s voice faded.
‘He tried to save Vyshnya’s, too. He had this deference to Solomon, I think because he’d been in prison in Russia, years ago. Hierarchy is huge in that world. But he also has this weird moral code: to Toad, there are some lines you just don’t cross. Turned out, Vyshnya was his second cousin. Solomon was the boss man, but even the boss man doesn’t come before family.’
Charlie hung his head. ‘It’s a lesson I ought to have learned from him, I know. He had his priorities right, in the end.’
Birch smiled. ‘A nice gangster.’
Charlie nudged her, though not hard. ‘Whatever. Anyway, Toad came through to Edinburgh and met me, bought me a drink, and we talked. He told me about Vyshnya. So much stuff made sense: the guy Toad got rid of, the murder I witnessed the night I disappeared? He was Vyshnya’s boyfriend. A really nasty piece of work. It turned out Toad put me in the sauna to keep an eye on her. He trusted me.’
Charlie’s eyes had gone glassy
. Birch didn’t follow everything he was saying, but she could see the revelation was significant, and he was processing it slowly, turning it over in his mind.
‘Then what?’ she asked. McLeod’s five minutes were ticking away.
‘Oh,’ Charlie said. ‘He didn’t stay long. Left me with some cash. Got me a cheap shite phone, too.’
Birch nodded. When she’d arrived, she and Rab had looked at the list of items the custody sergeant had confiscated from Charlie. It wasn’t much: a wedge of cash, in twenties. A wristwatch. A mobile phone.
He was still talking. ‘Anyway, last night he texted that phone. Said he felt like I’d been a son to him, and they were coming to storm your place at 2 a.m., and if I ever let anyone know he’d told me then he’d rip my throat out before anyone else had a chance.’
Birch laughed. ‘Yeah, what a nice guy.’
Charlie dropped his gaze, but he was smiling, too. ‘That’s Toady for you,’ he said.
Birch tried to recall the huge, tattooed man she’d attempted to interview alongside DS Scott. It had only been a week ago, but it felt like a lifetime. She couldn’t square this tip-off to Charlie – this act of altruism on Toad’s part – with that smug, gap-toothed perp, nor with the snarled phone call he’d made to her office on Friday afternoon.
‘He didn’t seem nice at all, when I tangled with him,’ she said.
Charlie shrugged. ‘He’s complicated, I guess. We all are.’
Birch could think of no reply. She sat and looked down at her feet on the painted concrete floor, her brother’s feet next to them. They’d had the same shoe size since Charlie was seventeen, and used to share Doc Martens, slippers, flip-flops. She’d forgotten all about that, until right now.
