Blood Lines (28 page)

Tanya’s face was squashed against the wall. I hissed into her ear.

‘Who is the Mr Big, then, Tanya, if you don’t mind the cheesy terminology?’

Obviously, she did, because she didn’t reply.

I leaned my shoulder against her – we were close enough for me to smell her last cigarette.

‘You’d better start talking, Tanya,’ I warned her, ‘or you’ll be out of here so fast your arse won’t have time to hit the pavement before you’re back in Cornton Vale.’

I leaned against her again. The good thing about her completely ignoring me was that I couldn’t be that heavy, otherwise she would be capitulating and screaming in pain. Even then I was thinking of diets – how bloody pathetic was that?

‘Okay, I’ll tell you. Just get off me, you fat bitch.’

She’d found my weak spot. So I leaned in once more, just for good measure.

‘You’ve got it all wrong – both of you,’ she hissed, moving away from the wall and smoothing herself down. She looked no worse than if she’d had an uncomfortable night’s sleep. I would make a pathetic bouncer.

We stood shamefaced on the thick-piled carpet as she circled around us, the playground bully, taunting us for our stupidity.

“‘Who’s the Mr Big? Who’s the Mr Big?” Arseholes.’

This was her moment, and we had to let her have it. Although it had to be said that we were kind of at a loss for words.

‘There is no Mr Big.’

Moses and I could forget being Butch and Sundance, we couldn’t even make it to Thelma and Louise.

‘Okay,’ interrupted Moses. ‘We get it – you’re so smart and we’re so dumb. Just tell me who it is before I break your irritating scraggy junkie neck.’

She stared him out.

‘I’ve seen your sort before, Moses Tierney,’ she finally said.

I doubted it, but said nothing.

‘You’re pathetic. You know nothing about me, about my life.’

Again, she was wrong – she couldn’t imagine in her worst nightmares what Moses had been through. Neither could I, even though I knew some of the story.

‘And you know nothing about what I know. So, I’ll give you a free bit of help – I don’t know who Mr Big is. Now, can you piss off and leave me alone?’

‘If you’re lying to me, Tanya, I’ll come back and get you,’ Moses informed her. ‘You obviously don’t know what happens to people who cross me, people who disrespect me. You lie – I get hacked off. I get hacked off – you hurt.’

Tanya couldn’t have looked less bothered.

‘Oh boo hoo, Tierney. If you two idiots have spotted I’ve got smack in here, I don’t suppose it’ll take the staff long to catch on. I know I’ll get kicked out – at least in Cornton Vale I’ll be safe from your pathetic threats and crap double act. Now piss off before I get you thrown out for upsetting me.’

Pathetically, we were happy to oblige.

Chapter Thirty-Six

‘Slow down – you’re going too fast, Brodie!’

I refused to listen to Moses. I wanted to get back to Edinburgh fast and he was a lousy passenger on a bike, whether I went fast or at a snail’s pace.

He just didn’t get it.

I loved the twisting country roads that led from Tanya Hayder at Castle Fearns back to Edinburgh, but, like most men in my experience, he couldn’t follow me. Lavender was great as a passenger. When I leaned into a corner, she came with me. Once she even fell asleep on the back of the bike; not something even I’ve been able to achieve.

Moses was another story altogether. When I leaned into a corner, he went the other way trying to straighten me up. Instead, we almost came off. This didn’t help his nerves.

‘I swear I’m never getting on this bloody bike with you again, Brodie,’ he screamed in my ear. ‘My arse is numb and my coat is covered with dirt and shit from the road – I’ll never get it clean.’

‘Stop moaning; you own a bloody launderette and dry-cleaner’s, you soft get! Have you figured out who Mr or Mrs Big is yet?’

We were approaching Biggar, a pretty market town in the Borders about twenty miles from Edinburgh. We’d left Tanya over an hour ago and we still weren’t any closer to figuring out who the mystery mover was. The Fat Boy was attracting attention, as usual. I had slowed to thirty miles an hour to go through the centre of the town. It gave the pedestrians a chance to gawp at the Harley, which looked pretty magnificent.

Joe – why did every thought lead back to him? – had fixed the oil leak in the engine. He’d also had all the chrome on Awesome shined to within an inch of its life, restoring my beloved bike to his glory days. I tried to persuade Moses to wave back at the children along the route who were desperate to catch our attention, but he didn’t want to play.

‘Sulking’s no good – we’re still no nearer finding out who’s behind this,’ I shouted at Moses, trying to be heard over the engine.

‘Alex Cattanach knows who’s behind it,’ he shouted back.

‘If you’d seen her, you’d know that she’s not in a fit state to talk about anything.’

‘I thought you said that she was going to be given electric-shock treatment, not drugs, because that was the only thing that worked?’

‘The only thing that
might
work. Moses, I don’t think she’s got a snowball’s chance in hell of ever making it back to the real world.’

That thought depressed me. To make matters worse, the skies opened and a heavy summer shower fell on us. I had an open-faced helmet on and the rain was splashing in my eyes making it difficult to see. Luckily, Moses was too busy moaning about his boots getting soaked to notice that I was having difficulty handling the bike.

At the moment, Alex Cattanach’s recovery was my only chance. Even if she did recover, I couldn’t see why she’d want to do me any favours, given how much she’d hated me before the attack. In fact, in her madness, the only thing anchoring her to reality was her hatred of me.

We struggled on.

The rain was coming down so heavily it was almost like a flash flood. Just outside Edinburgh’s city boundary, I pulled over to the side of the road and suggested that we take shelter under an oak tree. Moses was only too delighted to jump off the Fat Boy. The Pentland Hills behind us were lost in mist.

‘Sorry about this, Moses – my boy’s built for the long, dry roads of California, not the crap of Scottish weather.’

‘Spare me your petrol-head nonsense, Brodie. You going to break into a Beach Boys’ number next?’

‘Just hurry up and get under here before you catch your death – there’s nothing worse than a summer cold,’ I told him, sounding like Mary McLennan.

We slumped miserably against the thick, gnarled trunk. Moses placed his foot on a raised root. In spite of the fact that he was now making a valiant effort to get on with it, he was sadly out of place. Dark Angels don’t do countryside or daylight very well. It was a good job there was no mirror nearby; the rain had caused Moses’ mascara to run, giving him panda eyes. I knew it wasn’t a look he would appreciate so I kept quiet.

‘There are things that are worse than a summer cold, Brodie,’ he pondered.

‘Okay,’ I indulged him. ‘What’s worse than a summer cold?’

‘Him.’

Moses pointed to the police car that was parked behind Awesome in a lay-by. Duncan Bancho was out of the car, clearly having recognised the bike, and was scanning the surrounding area, looking for me.

‘Trying to catch me having a piss behind a hedge, Duncan?’

Peggy Malone, who had been driving, sniggered behind her man. Moses hit me in the ribs with his elbow.

‘DI Bancho. How’s it going? Can we do anything to help you?’

‘You’re as bad as one another, Moses,’ he answered. ‘She’s a cheeky cow, and I’m not fooled by your offer of useless assistance. Is this your bike?’ he asked officiously.

‘Cut the crap, Duncan, you know it is.’

He lifted his boot and kicked the brake light with such force that the Fat Boy fell on his side.

‘No rear light, Miss McLennan – you’ve got seven days to hand in your driving licence and insurance details to the nearest police station.’

Peggy Malone wasn’t smiling now. She shrugged her shoulders at me; there was nothing she could do. I hadn’t expected her to. I tapped Bancho’s shoulder and faced him up.

‘Why don’t you go after the people who are really committing crimes, Duncan? Find out who was blackmailing Alex Cattanach about a porno video she’d made. Another thing you could do that would be a bit more useful is to find out who’s bringing heroin into Peterhead on fishing boats. Don’t know? Maybe it’s about time you did.’

He pulled away from me; I was so angry I was almost spitting.

‘Don’t forget,’ he sneered back at me, ‘hand those documents in within seven days.’

Without looking back, he jumped into the passenger seat beside Malone. We stood and watched them disappear, then Moses playfully punched me in the shoulder and jumped up and down.

‘That good cop, bad cop routine of ours is really effective. But you’re getting to be a real bad ass, Brodie; I’ve never been the good cop before.’

‘Rubbish! You’re always crawling to cops – scared they might get you on something if you don’t at least look like you’re co-operating. Anyway, it only works if we get results, which we didn’t – how come he was out here?’

‘He must have been following us.’

‘So he knows we both went to see Tanya?’

‘Ach, that’s nothing. Brodie, you’re her lawyer – you have to go and see her.’

He had a fair point with only one snag. Moses had no reason for his visit. The two of us together could only mean that we had gone to pump her for information.

‘I’ll tell you something that freaked me out.’

‘If it’s sexual, Moses, I don’t want to know.’

He kicked me on the backside as I climbed back onto Awesome. Although my darling bike was hurt, he started first time.

‘Bancho doesn’t know who Mr Big is either,’ continued Moses. ‘And that is fucking scary, because if
he
doesn’t know who his paymaster is – who does?’

‘Don’t let nerves make this harder than it is, Moses – everything we know points to Duncan Bancho. He’s setting me up, for Christ’s sake – I’ve been arrested twice because of him.’

‘Are you sure? Because my gut’s telling me he’s not our ring-leader. He’s no fucking Snow White – I’ve paid him off in the past and I’ve no doubt that he’s bent, but he didn’t know about the video.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Just because you don’t want to hear it, Brodie, doesn’t make it a lie – I saw it in the man’s eyes.’

Moses was used to making life or death decisions based on what he saw in someone’s eyes.

‘Well, if he’s not involved, why is he pursuing me?’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you are very irritating, Brodie McLennan?’

I sat in silence for the rest of the journey, pondering what he’d said. Traffic, as usual, was busy, but unusually it was flowing quite well and gave me plenty of time to think. Moses was also obviously deep in thought or he would have complained that I was taking the long route back to dropping him off at the Dark Angels’ headquarters.

I drove down my favourite street in Edinburgh. When I was a little girl I used to badger Mary McLennan to take me there, after I had been to St Bernard’s Well. Ann Street, named after the painter Henry Raeburn’s wife, hasn’t changed since it was built in 1817. The road is narrow and cobbled and it is tapered in even further by the fact that cars are allowed to park on both sides. The houses look as if they have been designed by Enid Blyton. If a child has to live in a city, then how blessed they would be to live in one like this. Each house has a long front lawn, intended for games of cricket on hot summer afternoons, so there is plenty of birdsong. I used to think that the children who lived behind these walls were the luckiest kids alive. The strange thing was I never actually ever saw a child playing in the grounds.

Awesome didn’t like cobbles, and the noise from his exhaust disturbed the peace of the street. The Georgian windows reached from the floor to the ceiling, offering the casual passer-by an excellent chance to snoop.

The owner of number 189 looked out and watched, as did many of her neighbours. But, unlike them, she waved hello at me. Her guest didn’t. Moses almost fell off the back of the bike and it wasn’t because of my driving.

‘Slow down, Brodie! Let’s go back there a minute. I can’t believe what I just saw!’

I ignored Moses completely and opened up the accelerator faster than a greyhound out of a trap.

Unfortunately, I could still hear him wittering behind me.

‘Christ, Brodie, who would have thought it? Glasgow Joe shagging Bridget Nicholson?’

‘They were hardly shagging, Moses,’ I snapped. ‘He was in her kitchen having a glass of wine and some supper.’ I couldn’t keep the snippiness out of my voice.

‘No such thing as a free lunch – or supper,’ he replied in his version of a posh voice. ‘I thought she was supposed to be a lesbian? Do you think big Joe’s enough of a man to turn any maiden’s head, eh? Well, almost anyone.’

Moses was enjoying my discomfiture. I wasn’t going to make him stop by telling him about the reality of the past I’d had with Joe.

‘Don’t worry,’ he went on, ‘my loyalties won’t be divided. I don’t want to shag either of you.’

He jumped off the bike, laughing at his own wit, and blew me a kiss whilst swaggering up the road in his own unique fashion.

I was left a bit annoyed, a bit afraid – and a lot alone.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

From:
Frank Pearson

Sent:
Tuesday 23 August 2005, 2.30 p.m.

To:
Brodie McLennan

Subject:
Are we fucked? 

Can you hear my screams from here? Have just come in from court and plain brown paper envelope was on desk. Had a really bad feeling about it as soon as I saw it – please tell me am wrong. Open the attachment and email me
immediately
. I’m in Crown Office – have feeling am being watched. Don’t phone me.
 Frank xxx 

I stared at the screen. The time had passed slowly since Bancho had harassed me and I had seen Joe cavorting with that cow. Nothing of particular interest had happened, apart from my heart breaking and my bowels going hell for leather. Now, I wanted more of nothing.