Half Moon Chambers (16 page)

Chapter Seven

I
did have a shift that morning, though not the
early
one I'd told Rowan. I had time to go home,
shower
and change, and mercifully not enough to
think
about the process, the new scents on my skin,
the
trace of semen in the corner of my mouth.

Prompt at nine o'clock I was at my desk
in
Mansion Street, and by five past Bill Hodges was
on
the other side of it, asking how I'd got on with
my
witness.

I did my best to tell him. I was used to
handing
over my reports, and even with the large
essential
gaps I had to leave, I managed to give a
coherent
picture of why Rowan Clyde would be an
unreliable
witness at best, and at worst, an
absolute
liability for our side - forced into the
witness
box, vulnerable. I outed him as a
recovering
addict, feeling a pang of guilt but
figuring
I'd do the poor sod more of a favour this
way
. Anyway, it was true. Any decent lawyer
would
read the signs of it in him and go after him
like
a shark.

It wasn't what Bill wanted to hear. I watched
the
disappointment gathering on his face, a look I'd
never
put there when I'd run in to tell him about my
nights
cleaning up the streets of the city he loved,
and
I wished, not for the first time, that the
dockland
sniper had been a better shot. Bill was
decent
as always, but Rowan had been our last
chance
. Maric's defence team were already
screaming
for the trial process to come to a halt.

We had nothing. I felt as if I'd made it less. I sat
after
Bill left me, staring at the surface of the desk.

There wasn't much to look at any more
--
my
successor could have moved in without inconvenience
--
except the white bottle of pills. I'd
already
had a dose at home. I'd badly needed that
one
. I was still hurting now, though less so. I shook
a
couple more into my hand, and swilled them
down
with cold coffee, for the first time
acknowledging
that, as well as pain, they took the
edge
off intolerable thoughts.

There had to be some way I could get my life
back
on track, or at least crawl out of this latest
wreck
. The second dose had put a low-key
morphine
buzz into my brain.
A false sense of
euphoria
, the side-effects label warned, but I was
hardly
in that exalted state
--
just a fraction less
depressed
, and anyway, how could it be false if I
was
feeling it? I went into Bill's office and told
him
I wasn't well. He seemed almost relieved to
hear
it. Maybe it excused my failure to
have
Rowan Clyde in here, packed and ready for the
safe
house; gave him a reason not to write
whatever
he'd been about to in the personnel file
he
had open on his desk. I hadn't missed a day's
work
since I'd been declared fit for it, and I'd often
thought
it would be easier for Bill and my
colleagues
if I just took to my bed. A comrade
killed
in action would have been one thing. Living
with
his ghost was another. Bill dismissed me
home
with warm paternal concern. He even called
up
a constable to drive me there in a squad car.

I got changed once more, shivering in harsh
noonday
light. My flat after Rowan's was
a
Meccano scaffold, a skeleton barely sheathed in
concrete
skin. That didn't matter. I'd be seeing very
little
of it for the next few days. The clothes I
chose
were casual. I didn't have a special
cupboard
where I kept my range of undercover
disguises
, my hats, wigs and adhesive moustache,
but
I did know what the junkie down-and-outs of
my
city wore to work.

I owed that knowledge to Phil. I'd seen plenty
of
him and his mates, their tracksuit bottoms pulled
down
low, their knock-off designer sports hoodies
gaudy
with labels, as if any of them would
recognise
the inside of a gym. I knew where to find
them
. That secret too came to me from my brother,
from
the countless nights when I'd still cared
enough
to go and drag him home. I knew my city's
underworld
better than its scrubbed-up millennial
surface
. Of course there was a chance that I'd be
recognised
, but the demi-monde population was a
shifting
one; high turnover, long-term memory not
improved
by lifestyle. I put some gel into my hair,
rubbed
it till it stood up in short, aggressive
-
looking
spikes. I found a pair of trainers Phil had
nicked
and given me one long-gone Christmas. I
hadn
't been a copper then, and turning him in
would
have anyway seemed churlish. He had still
loved
me. I knew that, but his whining declarations
when
he wanted a loan had sickened me of the idea
by
then. Usefully, I hadn't shaved. I hadn't wanted
to
look in a mirror for the time it would take, and
my
stubble had come in fast and disreputable. That
would
do.

I spent the day trawling the dark side. Phil's
mates
, that loose shoal of small-time dealers and
hoods
, hardly swam in the same waters as a shark
like
Goran Maric, but somebody somewhere had
to
know something. Not about the Half
Moon
Chambers case, maybe, but any other of the
countless
inroads Maric had made into law and
order
in this town. I couldn't believe, after a few
hours
looking into all those starving, vacant eyes,
that
somebody somewhere wouldn't take a fat
police
bribe to testify about something. Christ, if
that
ran contrary to all our new rules of
transparency
and accountability, I would slip
someone
the cash myself out of my savings. There
had
to be a way.

But Maric, or the fear of him, had zipped up
junkie
mouths from Cowgate to South Shields. I
soon
realised I was wasting my time. I gave it up
when
the short afternoon began to fade, made my
way
home and sat staring at the walls. I had no
mind
-blowing murals to distract me here. I only
had
the regular shriek of the lift, and time and
space
to realise that despite my efforts not to think
of
Rowan Clyde, I'd done little else since I'd left
him
. Leaning in cobbled back alleys, dragging on a
cigarette
to fit with my companions, the gaunt
skinheaded
lads who emerged from the brickwork
to
chase their next score, my mind had flown back
to
Half Moon Chambers, to a warm solid bed and
a
smiling, golden-eyed man who had laid me
down
, straddled me, taken me into his body and
rocked
with me until sunlight had exploded in my
spine
.

At least I still had my own drugs. As soon as I
realised
I was looking forward to the next dose, I
lurched
off the sofa, grabbed the bottle on the shelf
and
the back-up I kept in my coat, unscrewed the
caps
and chucked both lots down the toilet. I was
shaking
. Addiction, or the tendency toward it, ran
in
families: I'd learned that much from my training
courses
, but I couldn't blame Phil for my urge to
crack
open those pills. That was just me, cold and
sick
and seeking a quick, easy comfort. I went to
look
out at the windswept street. Almost
immediately
, Rowan Clyde appeared on the
pavement
opposite the gallery. He was walking
quickly
, his coat collar turned up against the cold.

He crossed at the lights, stopping on the island to
glance
back over his shoulder. He moved like a
hunted
man. I couldn't see his bruises from this
distance
but I knew they were still there, warning
from
a predator who could reach out with deadly
force
from his cage.

I could see him safe to work from here. If I
timed
it right, I could watch over all his comings
and
goings.

Great. Suppose I sat up here, a wingless
guardian
angel, and one of Maric's thugs jumped
out
of the carefully landscaped shrubs around the
gallery
. What was I going to do
--
chuck peanuts at
him
? There had been a time, scarcely imaginable
to
me now, when I'd had access to a long-range
sniper
rifle and all the skills and confidence to use
it
. I would have to undergo reorientation now
before
Bill Hodges let me carry so much as a riot
shield
.

All right, I was screwed. I'd lost everything.

A handful of the pills would make that better for a
while
, or at least stave off the truth of it, and that
was
how I had been using them. I rested my brow
on
the glass. They were gone. I closed my eyes,
and
I imagined how my craving for them would
feel
, magnified a thousand times into a crackhead's
need
for dope. For the first time in my life, I
experienced
compassion for a junkie.

And that was no fucking good. I couldn't be a
drugs
cop with that roiling around in my chest.

Worse, it was half a year too late: Phil's poor
girlfriend
had made her last appeal while my
angry
, stony heart was still intact. Before I'd
realised
how easy it would be to fall.

My fists clenched. I kept my nails short, but
still
they drove hard enough into my palms to draw
blood
. No fucking good, any of these thoughts
--
I
swung
round from the window and went to grab
my
coat. I had to work. I had to bury myself in
Bill
Hodges' admin tasks, make coffee for him, empty
the
bloody Mansion Street wastepaper baskets if
necessary
--
anything rather than sit here and
realise
I'd abandoned my brother, snatched back
my
hand when he'd reached for me, as good as let
him
drop into the Tyne.