Country of the Blind

by Brookmyre, Christopher

  The editor handed him his drink and raised his own.

  “Fuck ‘em all,” Gilmore said with a grin, and they chimed their glasses together.

  Ken looked at the proof on the desk in front of him, Jack Parlabane’s shattering stories screaming out at the reader under The Saltire’s distinctive, page-wide banner. The crisp, sharp photograph of the remote-controlled booby-trap, and the colourful graphic showing the positions of the bodyguards and the hallway, with arrows emphatically denoting the distance to the staircase. Keith and Lump had really come through on that one.

  Among the many grateful compliments Gilmore had paid him, he had perhaps most enjoyed being applauded for his judgment in retaining the sometimes problematic services of Jack Parlabane. This was because the plaudit was delivered in front of the assistant editor and acted as a pretty hefty slap in the face to the pompous prick, who had (as Gilmore knew) only recently clashed with Ken over precisely this subject. The assistant editor had been peering through the books and questioned the amounts of cash Ken sent Parlabane’s way, by way of a retainer and in payment for individual stories.

  “Jack Parlabane works for as long as it takes to get a story,” Ken had stated. “Days, weeks or months. He frequently risks life, limb and the jail to find out what he’s after, and he gets stories no-one else would find in a million fuckin’ years. Do you think I should pay him wordage?” Ken had toyed with telling him to phone Jack about the matter, but it would have been very ugly and he didn’t want complicity in such an atrocity on his conscience.

  He glanced at the other front-page proof lying next to it, then at Gilmore, and smiled again. He’d had his reservations about the new man. He was a Scot by birth, apparently, but had worked most of his career in Canada, and Ken had thought he might be another glorified accountant brought in by the proprietors. But when he’d agreed to this, Ken knew he was a true newspaperman like himself. In fact, the bugger was as excited about it as he was.

  Gilmore hadn’t just agreed, he’d pulled out all the stops. Ensured maximum cooperation from the printing and distribution people, got in all the top men, regardless of what shifts they should have been on. This kind of chance didn’t come along to a newspaper too often, and they couldn’t afford to waste it. They couldn’t let all the competition see it and re-hash it for their own later editions. Couldn’t let them reproduce the sensational photo from The Saltire’s front page and cover the plagiarism with a tiny boxed paragraph from their pies editor about how great the shot was, legally claiming they were “appraising the photograph”.

  This was to be an exclusive, in the true, old-fashioned sense of the word. If you want to “read all about it”, buy the fucking Saltire.

  They had run a dummy front page, with a few tales promoted from page two below a wire lead about the Voss manhunt and the death of Robert Hannah. The dummy went to press on a limited print-run for the first edition, the one the competition would receive and quickly glance through to see what they had. The rest of the distribution staff had been briefed not to panic when their usual first-edition bundles didn’t show. First edition, they were told, had effectively been cancelled.

  The edition that arrived a wee bit later, the edition that they chucked into their vans, that rolled up to the Highlands and down to London overnight on trains, that sat in wrapped bundles on the doorsteps of newsagents waiting for dawn, and that would make the country choke on its Rice Krispies, led with something a bit more tasty.

  The people of the UK would have to wait just that bit longer than usual for a look at The Saltire’s real front page, that was all, Ken thought with satisfaction, sipping his Springbank. It was just a wee delay. A delay that would earn them record-breaking sales. A delay that would boost the paper’s reputation through the roof. A delay that would win them every journalism award going.

  And a delay that would sign Jack Parlabane’s death warrant.

  *

  Among those people of the UK not yet alerted to the exposition of the plot to murder Nicole Carrow were three men on a rooftop on East London Street, who coincidentally were there for precisely that purpose. Also among that number was their boss, who had given the green light for the operation and had therefore seen no reason to call it off.

  Morgan signalled to his two companions as they pulled on their balaclavas: silence now. The entire op would be silent. No radios, no phones, no whispers. And no fuck-ups. He had briefed the other pair sternly, and they knew it wasn’t just him who had to redeem himself. Knight had been ape-shit over the car thing, and they had all been keeping their fingers crossed that they’d get a second chance to put it right. Now that it had presented itself, they were on full concentration to make the most of it.

  She had phoned her own flat, stupid bitch. She had one of those remote-controllable answering machines, and had rung up to listen to her messages – mummy, daddy, auntie, sister and office, all wondering where the blazes she had got to – staying on long enough for them to run a trace. Some pad in Edinburgh, a bloke named Parlabane.

  Morgan had reluctantly called Knight. He knew Knight had said he didn’t want to hear from him until the girl was dead, but he thought the big man might want a say over what they should do next. He did.

  The girl was to be taken from the place alive, but anyone else who had the poor judgment to be there was to join the ranks of the mystery slain. They needed to find out what she knew and who she had spoken to, but not at the flat. She had vanished; no-one knew where she was – except this Parlabane bloke, and his missus if he had one – so no-one would know she had ever been there once the witnesses were eliminated. Knight didn’t want any connection traceable between her and whoever happened to die in this place. And the girl’s body was not to be found. She would just be someone who disappeared one night and was never seen – living or dead – again.

  Morgan was point man. He abseiled down the short drop to the kitchen window of the top-floor flat, placing his feet on the sturdy wide stone of the ledge. He shone a small but powerful torch inside, below the bar where the top and bottom halves of the window met, and all around the frame. The guy was either very paranoid or had bought the place from someone very paranoid. The frame was wired; if he opened the window, the alarm would trip. Not that he could have got the window open anyway – not without a bit more noise than he could afford. There was a very solid-looking lock on the bar, a key-operated number, too, so he couldn’t just cut a hand-hole and reach in. Where it broke down, though, was the window itself. Ancient but no doubt trendy and attractive stripped wood, old as the building, surrounded on the interior by pine panelling. Way too beautiful to haul out and replace with dull, clinical, functional and secure PVC double-glazing. And as for the glass! It was so old, warped and bevelled that the inside of the room looked like it had been painted by that mad Spanish cunt with the moustache.

  He took a knife from a pouch on his trouser-leg and sliced quietly and easily around the crumbling putty of the bottom left-hand panel, then tipped the loose glass towards himself. He gripped it tightly in one gloved hand, then held it up for Harcourt to lift on to the roof.

  And in they went.

  He and Addison got the girl. She was asleep on the sofa in the living room. He had the gag in her mouth and the gun between her eyes almost before she could open them.

  He was something of a connoisseur of terror. He knew how to recognise all breeds and variations of it in those wide pools, in the moments of surprise, of panic, of sudden realisation. The bewilderment, the horror, the anger, the astonishment. And in hers he could see they still had work to do. This wasn’t the realisation of any wild nightmare; this was the realisation of a specific nightmare.

  She knew why they were here.

  He slugged her between the eyes with the handle of the gun, knocking her cold. Blood began trickling from the wound as Addison lifted her, his arms under her knees and shoulders. Addison nodded to indicate the bleed, and Morgan dabbed at her forehead with his sleeve as they moved stealthily
back into the hall.

  Harcourt was standing outside the bedroom, waiting for his signal. To Harcourt’s surprise, Morgan didn’t give it, instead beckoning him towards the living room. He pointed at the bedding on the sofa, Harcourt taking a look at it for a moment and then nodding. He was to put it away before he left, as even the cops might think it suggested someone else had been staying.

  Morgan carefully unlocked the front door, slowly sliding back the bolts centimetre by centimetre, and turned the knob. He swung the door inwards slightly, and glanced at the brass nameplate: two names, one above the other. He held up two fingers to Harcourt, then mouthed the word “remember”, and made a few short up-and-down motions with a closed fist.

  Frenzied stabbing. That was Knight’s order. Nothing too slick, nothing too professional. Nothing too painless, either, Morgan thought. Knight didn’t much appreciate people sticking their oar in.

  He gave Harcourt his signal as Addison carried the girl out into the close, watching him draw his long, serrated knife and grip the bedroom door with his other hand. Morgan backed out of the flat, glancing again at the brass plate as he pulled the front door to, now able to make out the actual names in the brighter light of the close.

  PARLABANE

  SLAUGHTER

  He smiled to himself and walked swiftly down the stairs.

  III

  “All governments are lying cocksuckers.”

  – Bill Hicks

  ELEVEN

  Bowman looked at the four figures standing among the trees and fingered the handle of his automatic in its holster, just touching it for reassurance of where it was. The way Paterson wanted to do this made him uncomfortable. Three against two at close quarters was unnecessary risk, even if they were unarmed, and even if you’d done this shit a thousand times. Percentages. They were desperate men with absolutely nothing to lose; what would it matter if they went down lunging at their executioners if they were about to be shot anyway? The oldest one, McInnes Senior, he might be tired but he was a big man and he looked like it might take a few bullets to put him down, especially if he dived for you and you couldn’t make the headshot. The kid had fear to the point of madness in his eyes; he was unstable enough to just lose it and precipitate something ahead of Paterson. And then there was the weirdo druggie; he wasn’t going to be a threat, but the pessimistic side of Bowman thought that if it all went haywire, it would be just too ironic if the only one left standing was the one who looked least like he knew he was alive in the first place.

  Actually, truth be told, it wasn’t only how Paterson wanted to do it that made him uncomfortable; it was working with Paterson full stop. Bowman had suggested they scatter the three of them, split them up and take them out one at a time. The light was failing but that wouldn’t matter as he figured they could finish it in fifteen minutes. Twenty max. One each then whoever catches up with number three first.

  But that was the problem. Paterson wanted to do them all himself. Round them up, all in one place, bang bang bang, let loose a few rounds from the semis they took from the bus and place them in the corpses’ hands, make it look like there had been a fire-fight. That way, Paterson explained, on the off-chance one of them did manage to run for it, they could shoot him in the back, as long as they added a few rounds to the face and body as well – in a five-way shoot-out, there’s bullets everywhere.

  It was true, Bowman had conceded. Plus there was the overall advantage of greater plausibility – taking out all of them in what would look like a last stand would elicit fewer questions than three more single bodies. But the logic of it was merely convenient. The real motive was that Paterson liked to kill Jocks and he didn’t want to share. It wasn’t that he had ever said it, just something you couldn’t help but notice after a while. He liked to hear the accent, liked to know where they were from. Pretty strange considering the short-arsed little bastard was Scottish himself, but fuck knew what was behind it. They said serial killers tended to hunt inside their own ethnic groups; maybe there was an element of that. Or maybe it was some anthropological, hypermacho, dominant male monkey trip, and the psychotic cunt thought that it made him master of his own race. Add all that to the obvious Napoleon complex and you had a well-volatile mix.

  Problem was, it wasn’t volatile enough for Paterson to be a liability, something Bowman regretted any time he had to work with him. A psychiatrist might get lost wading through the mess inside the little bastard’s skull, but, however much it looked like he might, he never fucked up on the job. If he was a liability, Knight would have disappeared him ages ago, like that mental Welsh fucker, Davis, a few years back. Almost blew the whole show down in Cornwall because he couldn’t resist raping that girl before they torched the place. He vanished after that. Morgan said it had been contracted outside, but Bowman was pretty sure Knight had done it himself. Knight didn’t tolerate screw-ups much, and he certainly didn’t tolerate loose cannons on the staff.

  If you fucked up because the job went sour, that was one thing. But if you fucked up because you were a flake, you got erased. Because flakes don’t simply fuck up, flakes talk. Especially if they’ve got a grievance.

  The penalty for just plain blowing it was simple and understood. If you could still put it right, then you moved heaven and earth. If you got caught, you were on your own. The suits wiped all trace of you, all connections. You took the heat and you kept your mouth shut. And Knight made it worth your while, in as much as you stayed alive. The same went if you wanted out. If you didn’t fancy it any more, you said so right away and you didn’t do one more job. You didn’t wait for someone to notice that your heart wasn’t in it or your mind was somewhere else. Knight might be pissed off to lose you, but he wanted one hundred per cent or nothing at all. You just handed in your notice and you fucked off, and you developed acute amnesia, which ensured that neither you nor your family got a late-night visit from Harcourt and his stainless-steel collection.

  Knight’s Little Helpers. It sounded so fucking stupid. But then the CIA equivalent was “wet boys”, which made you sound like a bloody poof, so maybe they should be thankful for small mercies. Ex-army, ex-cops, sometimes ex-cons. The line-up had been the same for a while now, which had its good points and bad points. They all knew each other’s strengths and abilities, knew who could handle what. But sometimes Bowman feared it could get a little cosy. Sometimes you needed fresh blood, a new face, someone you didn’t know – someone you didn’t yet trust – to keep everyone that bit sharper. Christ, you only had to look at what had happened in Glasgow to see the problems seeping in. He was trailing round the fucking hills and glens playing hide-and-seek with Paterson, while those stupid cunts down there had the easy end of it, yet they’d still managed to miss one of their targets.

  Booby-trap malfunction, last he heard. Addison must have been at the fucking vodka again when he was putting the gadget together. They didn’t see as much of Knight these days, mainly just talked on the phone, and that was probably a good thing too. He’d blow a gasket if he found out some of the things that had been going on in recent jobs. Bloody complacency, that’s what it was. Addison and Morgan had often turned up looking too hung-over to walk properly, never mind work an op, and none of them was quite as fit as he used to be, except maybe Harcourt. A certain chauvinism made Bowman like to think it was the ex-cops who hadn’t quite retained their discipline – or never had sufficient discipline to begin with – but Morgan was ex-army like himself, and the strain at Bowman’s own belt reminded him he wasn’t quite at fighting trim either.

  Fuck, even Harcourt had only been off the sauce and shaping up because he was partnering Knight at Craigurquhart, and the thought of carving a world-famous billionaire had proven sufficiently intoxicating on its own. But if it hadn’t been that Knight decided he needed a blademan, Harcourt wouldn’t have bothered doing the first press-up. Bowman couldn’t see why they didn’t just shoot Voss and his missus, but Harcourt told him it was to do with apparent motive or some other bollocks. The
wanker had been trying to come across like it was just another job to a pro like him, but Bowman could tell the guy’s cock was like granite at the thought of it.

  Killing a billionaire didn’t make you any richer, he had wanted to tell him, except that it wasn’t strictly true. They all stood to clean up on this job: fifty per man, but close to seventy K once all the exes were added on. The government stuff never paid like this. It was Knight’s independent ops – “homers”, as they jokingly called them – that really laid down a purse, and this was the biggest ever. The client was going to be shelling out close to half a mill, he reckoned, once everything was totalled up, and no wonder, as it was a hell of an ambitious show.

  Maybe the money was making him nervous as much as Paterson. Suddenly there was a lot to lose. It wasn’t the answer to his prayers or anything. Fuck, he wasn’t exactly going to retire on it. But he was getting too old for this nonsense, and it was losing its appeal. They said you could never give it up, never go and do something ordinary, but with what he had already banked plus seventy K, he could at least try and do something else. Fucking hell. Short-timer’s itch after all these years and all this experience. All right, he wasn’t exactly quaking in his boots but he wasn’t quite laid-back and whistling while he worked either.

  As usual, only Knight knew who the client was. From some of the arrangements and some of the considerations, Bowman had felt fairly sure it was someone in government, someone high up, but with Knight going on about TV coverage and news deadlines, he was starting to think it might be bloody Trevor McDonald.