A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  I know exactly what they’re all up to, being the one person who can say for sure that they haven’t been abducted by me. They’ll be keeping their heads down for as long as they dare, long enough to remind everybody of how famous and important they are, then they’ll pitch up with some excuse about going off to the wilds seeking solitude. ‘No idea all this fuss was going on. Slightly embarrassed, but it’s very touching to know everybody cares...’

  Part of me is curious to see who blinks first: Cassandra or the Cadzows; how many days they’d each be prepared to lie low, knowing the longer they’re missing, the bigger the story, but that the first to break cover will scoop the most publicity. Unfortunately, I’m unavoidably about to pull the plug on the three of them by bagging my final public figure.

  I’m standing in the hallway outside the apartment, my golf bag waiting on the floor, my invisible vehicle parked nearby. It’s a pitiful little dwelling for an ostensibly successful professional at this stage in life, so telling to have an existence that can be comfortably accommodated within such a conveniently compact space.

  It will be a simpler affair than the other three. I can’t take any chances: this is not someone I want to be tangling with at close quarters, especially not a man in my condition. It’s also someone more likely to recognise me than Charlotte, Danny or Katie, so I can’t allow my quarry the chance to scamper.

  There will be no cameras or limos or dangling of bait. No publicists, chauffeurs, make-up artists or even hookers to worry about. Tragically, no lovers, partners or spouses either: the price of being married to the job, giving the best years of your life to your career so you’re left eating M&S ready-meals for one in front of Newsnight before sloping off to your lonely bed. Still, look on the bright side. I will very soon be introducing you to some very interesting new people, a big chance for matchmaking.

  That’s half the appeal of these shows, isn’t it? Who fancies who, who’d like to do what to whom, the vicarious excitement for the audience of seeing their own desires manifested by proxy, whether that might be sexual gratification or beating the show’s most annoying cunt to death. All right, that’s a bit more than previous celeb-reality productions have actually seen fit to broadcast, but if you ask me, that’s where they’ve been going wrong.

  It is pitch dark outside, a little after three in the morning. I consider it appropriate that I’m turning the police’s favoured witching hour upon one of their own. They prefer to stage their snatch raids in the wee small hours when the suspects are sufficiently heedless of the impending danger as to be sound asleep, catching them unaware, disorientated and as unprepared to do a runner as anyone in their pants and stocking soles can imaginably be. I am appropriating their scheduling but modify my tactics as to eschew blue lights and battering rams. A gentle finger on the doorbell will suffice.

  Angelique is dreaming that she heard the doorbell and has got up to answer it. In her dream, she’s in the hall, fully dressed but in her first police uniform, then in her primary school uniform, and the door she’s approaching is now the one from her parents’ first house in Leeside, in front of that swirly carpet James used to pretend was a pond spotted with lily pads. She hears the doorbell again, and this time the sound is enough to evaporate the dream and tell her that what prompted it was a genuine first ring.

  It takes a couple of goes but I am patient. I know it was a long day for the poor dear, with much to keep a troubled mind awake despite the fatigue, too. I hear the sound of footsteps and conceal the gun behind my back, its tranquilliser payload prepped and ready.

  Angelique lifts her head to look at the clock, feeling the swimmy-headed, extreme grogginess of being pulled from the most profound depths of a sleep it took a frustratingly long time to fall into.

  The knackered part of her suggests she ignore it and go back under, woozily conjuring up images of drunks at the wrong door. Who would be looking for her at this hour? This in its own fuzzy-logical roundabout way prompts the first coherent thought to strike her slowly waking brain: that it might be Zal. It’s enough to get her sitting up, though she needs another moment to haul her body fully upright. The old t-shirt she’s wearing barely covers her pants, but her intention at this stage is only to stick her head around the door sufficiently to establish the identity of her visitor. If it’s him, she won’t be worried about what she’s wearing, and if it’s anybody else, they can fuck off.

  She opens the front door, still squinting as her eyes adjust to the brightness of the hall light after the dark of her bedroom. That it isn’t Zal is the first thing to register. She finds herself looking into a male face. It is familiar, but in her bleary, halfdazed state and in this unexpected, dislocated context, it takes her a moment to recognise him. When she does, she feels a sudden, horrified fear, accompanied by the sensation of falling.

  Rescue

  Angelique is not so much holding the door slightly ajar as holding on to it for balance. She can’t bring herself even to speak, just stares helplessly at him, paralysed by this vertiginous feeling that her worst fears are about to be made reality by his word. The sight of Jock Shaw appearing outside her door at six o’clock in the morning would seem to precipitate only the most dreaded possibilities. A friendly face, a trusted mentor, a fellow Scot: of course he would be the one they sent. He’s here to tell her that her parents are dead; or at best that the police now know they’re missing and she is consequently off the case.

  ‘I’m sorry about the early reveille,’ he says, ‘but believe me, mine was earlier. You better let me in.’

  Angelique analyses his words and his manner like she’s sifting through rubble for survivors. His tone is sombre, but the fact that he didn’t go straight to it means it’s not the death message. You don’t preface that with a remark about yourself. Doesn’t mean she’s out of the woods regarding her secret being known, but anything north of the absolute worst feels like a relief. She feels her sense of self return, like she’s been on the outside looking helplessly down on the scene for the previous few seconds.

  ‘What is it?’ she manages, squinting and accentuating the grogginess in her voice to disguise her reluctance to fully open the door. If she’s busted, he’s not going to say it to her out here, with her standing around in her underwear.

  ‘The last mystery guest just signed in,’ Jock tells her. ‘It’s Dale.’

  Angelique gapes, then remembers herself enough to open the door. She stands aside to let Shaw pass, then uses the excuse of getting dressed to buy a moment alone in the bedroom. She switches on the light and glances at the crumpled duvet as she pulls on a pair of trousers left draped over the back of a chair. A few minutes ago she was asleep right there, and in the time since, she’s been dragged abruptly to consciousness and forced to contemplate absolute loss before being rattled by a new sucker punch. Shaw’s revelation didn’t even allow her a moment of relief from the fears it had dispersed before instantly supplanting them with a new horror, one now enhanced with a generous helping of guilt. Her own dilemma remained in its stasis, oh whoopee fucking doo. And now Darcourt had Dale.

  ‘Keen woke me up an hour ago,’ Shaw explains, launching Firefox on Angelique’s laptop, which he has booted up without seeking her leave. ‘Your man Meilis alerted him around the back of four to say Dale had just shown up in Darcourt’s final wee windae. He gave me the caretaker-manager role, told me to hold things together until we work oot where the fuck we are.’

  ‘And what am I, club captain? Is that why I’m getting briefed ahead of the troops? You could have phoned.’

  ‘You’re on my route to HQ. But to be honest, hen, once I learned that thon bampot had taken Dale, I wanted to see for myself that you were all right. You’ve crossed swords before and he’s as vengeful as he is deceitful. Just because he showed just one window left to fill didnae guarantee anything. I was afraid he might be selling us a dummy.’

  She recalls Zal’s words yesterday: Everybody’s focusing on what’s going to fill that window. Which ensure
s his next move will be something none of you sees coming.

  ‘He already has.’

  Angelique looks at her laptop, where the embedded media-player has finished buffering and now shows David Dale pacing a cramped room in a sleeveless vest and jogging bottoms. He clenches his fists by the side of his head and lets out a scream of fury, but neither she nor Shaw hears it. There’s no sound feed from the holding rooms, only the common area.

  ‘Aye,’ Shaw agrees, the word voiced in a bitter exhalation. ‘He’s been pissing all over us the whole time. Now he’s taken the man leading the hunt, the public face of the investigation, and made his the next head on his trophy wall. He’s telling the whole country the police cannae touch him.’

  ‘Darcourt loves to sing when he’s winning,’ she agrees, ‘but I think there’s more to this, sir. It’s not what he’s telling the country: it’s what he’s telling us.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Check.’

  Shaw looks reflectively at the screen, watching Dale strain against his confinement: he looks angry, frustrated, apt to start tearing the place up in his rage, but somehow silently and invisibly restrained.

  ‘I hear you, detective. Meaning our next move could be the one he’s relying on to set him up for Mate.’

  ‘No pressure.’

  Shaw lets out a tired sigh of a laugh.

  ‘I’m gettin’ too old to be dealin’ with this kinna pish, let me tell you. I’ve worked some no-win cases in my time, but from what I can see, this one is a rabid dug loose in a slurry pit. Anybody that goes near it is gaunny end up covered in shite, and that’s only before they get bitten on the arse.’

  ‘Welcome aboard, captain,’ she says wryly. ‘And thanks, by the way.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For your concern. For coming by in person.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ he says, a little too archly for Angelique’s comfort. ‘Truth be told, I wasn’t without reason for my concern. Been in the wars, I see?’

  The question diverts her before she can descend into further paranoid speculation. She puts a hand to her forehead. It’s tender to the touch, but until Shaw made mention, she’d forgotten all about it.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she tells him. ‘You should see the other guy.’

  Shaw looks her in the face.

  ‘I have seen the other guy,’ he says. ‘Or rather, I’ve had a phone call from the other guy’s boss.’

  Now she feels the lurching, vertiginous sensation return with a vengeance, the drop she was merely looking over the edge of when she discovered Shaw outside her door. She stares back and says nothing, which would have been a solid enough admission even before they abolished the right to silence.

  ‘As the lady once said, there are three of us in this marriage, detective.’

  Angelique swallows, buying a moment to consider her response and making sure her voice doesn’t break when she gives it.

  ‘Don’t we have enough else to be worrying about?’ she suggests heatedly, a dual gambit of deflecting attention back to other matters, while simultaneously implying that what he is referring to is not directly related to those other matters.

  ‘Fortunately for you, as of a couple of hours ago, yes, I do have enough else to be worrying about. And if these were two entirely separate spheres, I would regard one as having massively superseded the other. However, this wee nippy sweety Holland at the RSGN said you came to her, sniffing for leads on Zal Innez, only a couple of weeks back. Yesterday he turns up in a London hotel room, in your company. Now, I don’t know what was happening behind the scenes in Glasgow five years ago, and I made a point of not asking. But the shit we’re up to our necks in now means that, if I’m making you club captain, as you put it, I need to know you’re being straight with me. What’s the Hampden, Angelique?’

  She looks at the floor a moment, suddenly a wee schoolgirl in front of the heidie, a stumbling amateur who knows the most accomplished liars couldn’t deceive a guy like Shaw. However, chucking him just a little truth might be enough to keep him off the scent of the real stash.

  ‘If by “behind the scenes” you mean was I sleeping with him, then I’ll admit it: yes I was. It might be early but I can’t imagine that’s the biggest shock you’ve had today. But that was, as you say, five years ago, and I hadn’t seen or heard from him since. I tracked him down again because we were fumbling in the dark here and I thought he might know where the light switch was.’

  ‘What, an armed robber?’

  ‘No, somebody who can make several armed robbers disappear from a building surrounded by a hundred cops. Somebody who is an expert in precisely the kind of deceit, misdirection and outright showmanship that has so far allowed Darcourt to rip the pish out of us.’

  ‘Well, could you not have asked Derren Brown instead of fraternising with a guy who could bring a pile of shit down upon us if this Holland woman gets what she’s after?’

  ‘He’s my informant, sir. That’s all.’

  ‘Your informant? We’re talking about the only listed suspect in an unsolved major armed robbery file – with my name at the top.’

  ‘And would you have been happy to disclose the nature of your relationships with all your snouts down the years, sir?’

  ‘Well, I never shagged any of them, if...’

  Shaw cuts himself off with a sigh of frustration.

  ‘We turned a blind eye back in Glasgow because Innez was the bait for a bigger fish. This time he’s an unnecessary risk – to everyone, including himself. I’d advise you to advise him to do another disappearing act, because if I get the chance to collar him, I’m taking it. I’m a bawhair away from retirement and it might make up for being caught in the middle of this farce if I can sign off by closing another outstanding case.’

  ‘With respect, sir, you never turned a blind eye because you never had eyes on him, never mind handcuffs. This won’t be any different. He was smarter than us, he’s smarter than Holland and I’d bet on him being smarter than Darcourt.’

  ‘It’s what you’re staking on that bet that’s bothering me, Angelique.’

  ‘Needs must when the devil drives. But once we’ve got Darcourt, Innez will vanish again, for good. You won’t see him before that, and afterwards, you won’t need to worry about me or anyone else being compromised by the fall-out.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  Angelique remembers her resolution of the night before. Coming from Jock Shaw, she couldn’t ask for a sterner test of its fastness. There’s a pang of regret, but it holds.

  ‘I guarantee it.’

  Oh, David, David, David. Chin up, old bean. Can’t you manage a smile for all the lovely people watching at home? Dear, dear. Detective Superintendent Dale looks so down in the mouth, so humiliated. It’s almost as if he can feel the wave of national disappointment that has greeted the announcement of his name as the final player in my new game. From those assuming it would be Cassandra or the Cadzows; to those maybe holding out hopes for a marquee name to top the others, such as a British-based Hollywood star or even a royal; to the lateral thinkers putting their smart money on a member of the cabinet: they’re all letting out a collective ‘Aw, that’s rubbish’, with only the third constituency perhaps nodding sagely to themselves in congratulation that they were on the right track.

  I almost wish I could go in there and put an arm around him, tell him not to take it to heart. I’m grooming him to be the star of the show, my most dynamic performer. These people out there have no vision, I’d tell him, and short memories too. It wasn’t so long ago that they were making the same complaint of ‘Who?’ at the mischievous inclusion of non-celebrity Chantelle in the Big Brother house, only to vote her the winner a few weeks later. They don’t know what makes a celebrity: they just accept it once they’re told that you are one.

  I’m watching Dale in the common area, where he has recently been introduced to Katie, Charlotte and DJ, and though he’s already demonstrating his dynamism, he’s not provin
g a good influence on his new friends at all. He’s been thumping the walls to test their integrity and is now climbing on the furniture, a plastic fork in his hand, looking rather intent upon reaching one of the cameras I’ve got suspended from the ceiling. I anticipated this response to his being granted common-room privileges. The only reason I didn’t warn him off this conduct in advance is that I was already planning to demonstrate to all of my guests what was expected of them by their host at this juncture anyway.

  The widescreen TV on one of the walls is showing a countdown, with less than an hour to go. Perhaps that’s what’s got him so jumpy. The same clock appears on the website, as well as an inset on the several TV channels currently carrying the feed. They’ve got it on varying delays, Sky sailing closest to the wind with only ninety seconds, the Beeb stolidly protecting the nation’s sensibilities as ever with a buffer of a whole five minutes.

  I’m guessing whoever’s got control of the cut-off buttons will be pressing them very soon. I hope they enjoy the accompanying buzz of justly executed authority, because I won’t be allowing them this opt-out for much longer.

  The clock on the big telly shrinks to a corner as the screen is filled with a feed from Anika’s room. It shows the new patron saint of reality TV secured to the steel frame of her bed by handcuffs at each of her wrists and ankles.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Dale,’ I say, my voice booming around the common room from speakers embedded in the ceiling. ‘I’m sure you’d rather not force me to rape the young woman you so movingly swore you’d do everything to protect. Please, play nice.’

  And my, do they all sit quietly after that. Nobody says a word for the ten minutes or so that I leave the bound Anika visible to them, and there’s precious little more gets said once the screen reverts to the countdown. The four of them are good as gold, sitting intently but impatiently round the telly, like kiddies waiting for Watch With Mother, anxious to discover what today’s programme will be. Calibrating the scale, with Camberwick Green representing a short video announcing their imminent release, I’d estimate that what does follow is probably equivalent to the widely dreaded Ring-A-Ding and Teddy Edward double-bill.