The Renault burst effortlessly through what turned out to be an anorexic privet, and immediately encountered something more substantial in the form of an astonished and transfixed Cheviot. McGregor heard a gassy groan – half-baa and half-burp – as the sheep was bounced into the air, the Renault bludgeoning onwards beneath. The ewe flew over the hedge, into the roadway and crashed through the windscreen of the next arriving squadcar, which consequently ploughed into the two units forming the make-shift roadblock.
McGregor grappled with the squirming steering wheel as the Renault thumped along the grass, somehow managing to aim the car through an open gate and back on to the Queen’s highway. His detour had taken him diagonally across a section of the grazing field before emerging forty yards down from the junction, where steam and smoke could now be seen rising above the hedge. He trundled the car slowly up towards the crossroads, above which the helicopter was now hovering.
Choppers and roadblocks. Jesus. Something very big was going down, almost certainly related to whatever he’d stumbled upon back at the farm. He could see two more police cars arriving at speed, blue lights and sirens. They pulled up at the junction and six men exploded out, kitted in full body armour and bearing automatic weapons. Christ, an Armed Response Unit! He remembered the shellcase in his pocket and decided his suspicions must have been bang-on. Someone extremely dangerous was on the loose.
The ARU guys filed across the road ahead of him, he assumed to take up covered positions behind the roadblock. But instead they knelt down in formation on the tarmac, pointing all of their guns directly at the slow-approaching Renault. Then they shot out all his tyres.
‘In the name of the wee man,’ McGregor yelped, jumping on the brakes and ducking down behind the dashboard.
‘This is the police,’ came a hailer-amplified voice. Like there might be hunners of other blokes running about in kevlar around Rosstown. ‘Turn off your engine and step out of your vehicle with your hands up.’
‘Aw, for fuck’s sake,’ McGregor muttered, a grim realisation descending upon him as he eyed the spare body-part lying across the passenger-side floormat.
‘Step out of the vehicle, I said. Come out right now with your hands in the air. Slowly. Come on, let’s see those hands. I want to see those hands.’
McGregor looked again at the arm and decided he owed it to himself.
‘If we can go over it once again, you’re claiming that at this point, whilst out walking, you were suddenly attacked?’
McGregor was getting bored now. His head was still sore and he wanted to go home to his bed. He hadn’t had anything to eat all day and the only liquid refreshment on offer was tea that he wouldn’t have foisted on a mass-murderer back down the road in Edinburgh. He’d used his phone call to ring Molly and ask her to come down and collect him, guessing he’d have explained his way out in a matter of minutes, but that had been reckoning without Sergeant Mutton-Molester.
Playing the dunderheid could sometimes be an effective interrogation technique: you pretended you didn’t quite understand, made yourself out to be slow on the uptake. It forced the suspect to repeat himself and get frustrated, and that’s when the inconsistencies started to come out. Unfortunately, as this particular interview wore on, it was becoming depressingly clear that Sergeant Mutton-Molester wasn’t pretending.
‘I was knocked unconscious, yes,’ McGregor said steadily, using his experience on the other side of the table to keep his emotions in check. ‘I’m assuming it was the arm that hit me, but I don’t think I’d call it an attack. It’s not as though the bloke had a lot of say over where his arm was going at the time.’
‘So you’re saying your assailant was out of control?’
‘No, I’m saying my “assailant” exploded.’
‘He exploded, yes, he exploded with rage and he attacked you. Set upon you in the woods when you were minding your own business. But you retaliated, didn’t you, Mr McGregor? You exacted terrible revenge.’
Oh for Christ’s sake.
When he’d first set eyes on his interrogator, McGregor pegged him for some young up-and-comer who’d be heading south for greater things once he’d cut his teeth in the sticks. However, a closer look at his coupon betrayed that the red hair and freckly chops had conspired to knock a deceptive few years off his appearance, and a few minutes of witnessing the numpty in action told McGregor that the bright lights of the big city would most definitely not be beckoning. In fact, if at any point in the past this tube had made it down to civilisation, there was little doubt he had been posted back north to sheep-shagging country to keep him the fuck out of the way of serious police work.
McGregor took another long, slow, deep breath.
‘Look, Sergeant, I’ve told you this three times now, and if you play the tape back you’ll see my story’s been entirely consistent—’
‘Ah, so you admit it’s a story. Now we’re getting somewhere. So why don’t you save us all a lot of time, forget about your story, and just tell us where the rest of the body is?’
McGregor leaned forward until his forehead touched the plastic table-top. Maybe if he went to sleep he’d wake up in his own bed. He helped himself to yet another long breath. The calming effect was diminishing every time.
‘I don’t know where the rest of the body is,’ he mumbled, his head still resting face-down on the table as he spoke. ‘And I really think you should start to address the issue of what caused it to disappear in the first place, especially as there’s ample evidence of some kind of firefight having taken place at the same locus. I mean, that to me would seem to be the most pressing matter, but then maybe I’m lacking the advantage of your detective skills.’
Sergeant Mutton-Molester slapped his hand down on the table-top, close to McGregor’s ear. In a saner parallel universe, McGregor throttled him to death for it. In this one he remained still and listened.
‘What you’re lacking, Mr McGregor,’ the eejit announced loudly, ‘is a plausible explanation for why you were apprehended in a hijacked vehicle with a severed arm in your possession, and why in your crazed desperation to evade capture, you contrived to wreck three police cars, injure four men and inflict fatal injuries upon a prize-winning and highly regarded local sheep.’
McGregor sent the bucket down the deep-breath well one more time. It hit the bottom with a dry clatter and came back empty.
Right.
He had been entirely cooperative, lucid, forthcoming, truthful and generally everything that suspects, in his vast experience, were dedicatedly not. He had, quite definitely, up to this point, done everything he could to help, and it had not proven rewarding. It was now his moral right to be a pain in the arse.
His head still resting face-down on the sweaty plastic, he began mentally composing the most lengthy, tediously elaborate, irritatingly detailed, thoroughly fib-filled and utterly outrageous statement it would ever be this half-wit’s misfortune to transcribe, at the end of which he would refuse to sign. It was only a matter of time before hard evidence intervened on his behalf, proving his original story true and forcing them to let him go, so he might as well keep himself amused.
However, at that point there was a knock at the door, and Sergeant Mutton-Molester was drawn outside for a brief conversation in the corridor. McGregor couldn’t make out much above mumbling, but the words ‘Lothian and Borders’ were definitely uttered, as were ‘decorated officer’. The words ‘your arse is oot the windae’ were not, but the import was clear from the sergeant’s failure to return and his replacement with a highly apologetic and obsequious more senior detective, DS McLeod, who’d just come on shift via the farm at Nether Kilbokie.
Fifteen minutes later, McGregor was being driven home in Molly’s Primera, powering back along the same road he’d travelled earlier but this time without airborne accompaniment. The polis were satisfied that his story about the explosion was true, having been out and checked the site themselves, but they still didn’t share his evaluation of the significance
of the spent shell. Tomorrow, they would have people examining what had been found at the farm to try to determine what caused the explosion and – if possible – the identity of the fatality. However, they remained conspicuously unworried about the possibility of foul play.
There’d been much arse-kissing by D S McLeod regarding how long it had taken to confirm that McGregor was indeed who he claimed to be, and more regarding the scepticism shown in the interim. However, the patronising bastard had nonetheless let slip something about retired policemen occasionally having over-active imaginations. ‘I don’t think we need lose too much sleep over mad bombers, Mr McGregor,’ he’d offered glibly. ‘I mean, what could terrorists find to interest themselves around here?’
Smug prick.
Molly gunned the engine to climb Kilbokie brae, taking them above the liftings yard. As they came over the brow, that daft floating-hotel fiasco loomed enormously into view.
17:38 ‘tropics’ bar cocktails and aperitifs
‘There you are, big man. Grab a pew. Whit you fur?’
‘Eh, pint o’ heavy would be lovely, Eddie.’
‘Right you are. Two pints of heavy, please, Jim.’
‘Coming right up, sir.’
‘Grand.’
‘So, is this whit you’ve been dein’ wi’ yoursel’, Ed? Mighta known. Where’s the wife?’
‘She’s upstairs gettin’ the good frock an’ the warpaint on.’
‘Aye, Tina’s the same. I thought I’d best leave her tae it. She’s bad enough at the best o’ times, but she’s really gaun for it the night. Brought two dresses an’ she’s changed in an’ oot o’ baith o’ them aboot five times already, no’ sure which wan looks best. Of course, then she asks me. It’s wan o’ thae questions you can only get wrang, no matter whit you say. You say you like the blue wan, so she says does that mean you don’t like the black wan? And she’s no’ even started on the shoes yet. I had tae get oot. She’s up tae high doe, so she is. You know whit it’s like. Says she doesnae want tae show hersel’ up in front o’ aw these auld schoolmates.’
‘Bit late for that – look who she came wi’.’
‘Aye, very good. Comin’ fae Man at Poundstretcher sittin’ there. How long have you been here, anyway?’
‘Ach, don’t look at me like that, Charlie. It’s a free bar, for fuck’s sake. You’ve got tae make the maist o’ these things. I’m just surprised you wurnae in here sooner.’
‘Aye, well, Tina wanted tae see roon the place, so we took the wee tour. Were you no’ curious for a wee swatch yoursel’?’
‘You kiddin’? I mean, I know they’ve spent a lot o’ money buildin’ this place an’ aw that, but I find it hard tae believe they’ve installed anythin’ on it that could possibly be mair of an attraction than Jim, there.’
‘How’s that, then?’
‘He pours you drinks an’ he doesnae ask you for money.’
‘Better than Disneyland, then, Eddie, eh?’
‘Sure is.’
‘There you are, gentlemen. Two pints of heavy. That will be … nothing whatsoever.’
‘Ooooh, I just never get sick o’ hearin’ that wan. Keep the change, pal.’
‘Thank you, sir, most generous of you.’
‘Cheers, Eddie.’
‘Cheers, big man.’
‘So, have you been in here yoursel’ the whole time? Just you an’ your new best pal here?’
‘Naw, there’s been a few familiar faces drifted in an’ oot. Kenny Collins,of course. He was here for aboot hauf an ’oor, durin’ which, bless me, Father, I must confess for the first time in my life I began to have doubts aboot the merits o’ free drink.’
‘So how’s he no’ here noo? Cannae see Kenny poppin’ in for a quick Dry Martini then poppin’ back oot.’
‘There’s two bars in the hotel, thank fuck. Somebody tell’t him you could get snacks at the other yin. Oh, which reminds me. You’ll never guess who did pop in for a quick wan. Matt Black!’
‘You’re kiddin’ me on.’
‘No shit, Charlie. Matt fuckin’ Black is here. Came by, had a wee blether.’
‘Christ. Did he remember you?’
‘’Course he did. He was brand new. He’s no’ changed, really. Had tae tell him, right enough, that American programme he’s on is fuckin’ shite – an’ he never even took the huff. He was askin’ for you, by the way, says he’d make sure he got a word wi’ you later.’
‘Serious?’
‘Aye. He even asked who you were playin’ for these days. He was well impressed when I says it was the Arthurlie, but I didnae want you gettin’ big-heided, so I tell’t him aboot you gettin’ sent aff last week as well.’
‘Thanks a bunch.’
‘Never bother, it was a blessin’: you wouldnae have been able tae come here the day if you werenae suspended. Besides, I tell’t him it was against Pollok, so you only went up in his estimations.’
‘That’s mair like it. So, whit’s it tae dae wi’ food?’
‘Oh aye, right. Kenny was still hingin’ aboot like a bad smell when Matt came in. Matt goes up tae Jim there an’ says, “Can you make me a large cappuccino, pal?” Jim says sure. So at this point Kenny pipes up an says, “Aye, gie’s wan o’ them ower here as well. I’m fuckin’ starvin’.”’
‘You’re a fuckin’ liar, Eddie. Christ, last time I heard that wan it was Lorenzo Amoruso an’ Barry Ferguson. An’ before that, it used tae be Mark Hateley an’ Duncan Ferguson.’
‘Aye, an afore that it used tae be Butch Wilkins an’ Iain Ferguson, but I’m no jokin’, it fuckin’ happened. You tell him, Jim. What happened in here earlier wi’ Matt Black?’
‘Oh don’t, please. I almost gave myself a palsy trying to keep a straight face.’
‘See?’
‘Aye, ferr enough. Class act, the boy Kenny. Jesus Christ.’
‘So whit aboot yoursel’, big yin? Whit faces fae the past have you run intae so far?’
‘Eh, no’ many that werenae on the bus, tae be honest. Lisa McKenzie, I saw her. She was on the tour. She’s a lawyer noo, lives through in Edinburgh. Works for the procurator fiscal, she says.’
‘Married?’
‘Naw, she was on her own. Lookin’ very well. No’ as quiet as I remembered her. I suppose you’d have tae come oot your shell if you’re prosecutin’ crooks, right enough. Oh aye, an’ I saw Tommy Milligan, speakin’ o’ lawyers.’
‘He a lawyer as well? He was always a brainbox, right enough.’
‘Too true. Daein’ well for himsel’ by the look of it. Dear-lookin’ watch on one arm an’ a dear-lookin burd on the other.’
‘He must be defendin’ the crooks, then.’
‘Aye, must be. He says tae gie you his business card.’
‘Very good. Cheeky bastard.’
‘Naw, just kiddin’, Eddie. Noo, who else was there. Aye, Eileen Stewart.’
‘Oh aye, I remember Eileen. How was she?’
‘Much the same, just a bit rounder. She’s still a cheery wee soul, but to be honest, I can only take so much of hearin’ aboot other folk’s weans, you know whit I mean?’
‘What’s her man like?’
‘Well, he cannae shut up aboot them either,so I didnae really get tae fin’ oot much else.’
‘An’ presumably you got a closer look at Gavin.’
‘Aye. I recognised him once I saw him, but it’s nae wonder we didnae remember him that well. He was awfy quiet at school, far as I can recall. Nice o’ him tae remember aw us, right enough.’
‘So whit was the tour like, big man? Was I the only wan that missed it?’
‘Eh, naw, no’ exactly. I think Gavin’s nose was a wee bit oot o’ joint aboot the numbers, actually. Bit daft o’ him tae organise it for when everybody’s just got here, though. Maist folk want tae unwind efter the journey, have a lie doon or a shower, you know?’
‘Aye. Bit daft o’ him organisin’ anythin’ in competition wi’ a free bar, if you ask me, but I know what you’re sayi
n’. So how come you went?’
‘Politeness, I suppose. Plus Tina insisted – she wanted a nosy.’
‘Are you comin’ here your next holidays, then?’
‘Aye, that’ll be fuckin’ right.’
‘So’s it a dump?’
‘Naw. Naw, far from it. Everythin’ – the bits that are finished, I mean – everythin’s really posh, lot o’ money been spent. It’s just … I don’t know. It’s … it’s … it’s a fuckin’ oil rig! There’s just nae gettin’ away fae that. Well, that’s no’ fair. It’s no’ like there’s any trace o’ whit it used to be: there’s nae drillheids lyin’ aboot roon the swimmin’ pools, or nothin’. But it’s so kinna enclosed. You’ve got these big hotels loomin’ ower you on all sides, an’ at the parts where you can see ower the edge, it just freaks you oot. It’s as if that’s where there should be a road oot the place, but aw there is a fuckin’ sixty- or seventy-fit drop.’
‘Nice view, though, is it no’?’
‘Aye, lovely. An’ I’m sure it’ll be lovely doon in Africa an’ all, but it’s … it’s the fact that you cannae touch it, you cannae get any nearer it, so it might as well be wallpaper.’
‘Sure, but is that no’ the idea? Nice views, warm weather, an’ loads o’ stuff tae dae roon the resort?’
‘Aye, I suppose so. There’s plenty of activities, right enough.’
‘Like what, then?’
‘Well, there’s the Lido first of all. You’ll have seen some o’ that yoursel’ on the way in. Aw thae swimmin’ pools connected up wi’ wee channels an’ tunnels an’ bridges an’ that. The weans’ll love it, that’s for sure. Folk’ll never be able tae find the wee buggers again, but then mibbe that’s another sellin’ point for the parents. The Lido’s no particular tae any wan o’ the hotels – it’s the kinna centrepiece o’ the whole resort. I think he said two o’ the hotels have got their own indoor pools as well, but the Lido’s the main sunbathin’ area. There’s a wave machine in wan o’ the pools, an apparently aw the wee totey wans dotted aboot the place are actually jacuzzis. An’ aw roon the Lido there’s terraces, so’s you can sit ootside an’ have a drink or a bite tae eat.’
One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night Page 12
