Riven
Authors: A J McCreanor
Riven
A. J. McCreanor
Constable • London
CONSTABLE
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Constable
Copyright © A. J. McCreanor, 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than
those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons,
living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-47211-230-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-47211-236-1 (ebook)
Constable
is an imprint of
Constable & Robinson Ltd
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY
An Hachette UK Company
www.hachette.co.uk
For Don
Friday, 13 December
William MacIntyre took advantage of the shift change at Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary. The nurses were congregated around the desk at the far end of the ward. The day shift was ending and the night shift was beginning. It was eight o’clock, and, outside, icy sleet fell in sheets from the sky. At the hospital entrance, a diverse group of smokers huddled in the rain, sucking tar deep into their lungs and holding it there before reluctantly exhaling. MacIntyre ignored them and shuffled on, his head bent against the sleet. His movements were slow but eventually he reached his destination.
The bridge.
Pulling his coat tight around him, he swayed slightly before finding his balance again. Christ but it was cold. He clamped his jaw shut to stop his teeth from chattering. Despite the methadone, pain had started to gnaw at his kidneys. Instinctively he put his right hand over them and rubbed the three stumps where his fingers had once been, over the pain, kneading them into his back. Under his coat the flimsy green hospital gown crackled against his paper-thin skin. Above him, sodium streetlights bled over the wet concrete, staining it nicotine-yellow. He tried to take a deep breath but the night air was coated with ice. MacIntyre inched closer to the edge, heard the constant thrum of the traffic beneath him. Castle Street fed into the High Street, one of Glasgow’s main arteries, and the road below him snaked around the Victorian facade of the infirmary, past the gothic cathedral and the crypts of the Necropolis where the official number of bodies entombed lay at 50,000.
At the bottom of the High Street, a bus pulled away from the stop and gathered speed. MacIntyre waited until he saw the driver’s face before scrambling over the barricade. Screwing his eyes shut, he muttered a curse before stepping into air.
‘Christ, that was brutal.’ Andy Doyle sat at a table in the Victorian bar in the Bluestone Theatre. ‘I thought pantos were meant to be a laugh.’
His companion, Smithy, nodded in agreement, making the deep folds of fat around his neck wobble. ‘Aye, it wis garbage right enough.’ He took a sly glance at Doyle, wondering whether or not to risk a comment. ‘Thought Stella was good though.’ Waited for the response.
Doyle stared at him until he looked away. ‘Stella’s way off limits to you.’
Smithy realised his mistake and tried to make amends by digging himself a bigger hole. ‘Am just saying though, she looked great up there on the stage. Great part that. Back of the chorus line, right enough, but she’s a real talent though, eh?’
‘Mibbe,’ Doyle replied, but his attention had shifted to a skinny boy who had come into the bar. The boy wore a ripped cagoule and filthy jeans and his face was scarred with acne. Doyle turned to Smithy. ‘Piss off. Go wait in the car.’
The boy approached the table and stood waiting, dripping rainwater onto the floor.
Doyle sipped his drink. ‘Well?’
‘Okay Mr Doyle?’
Doyle looked across to the bar. ‘What’ve you got?’
‘Bit of news, thought you’d want to know.’ He clawed at the track marks on his arm. ‘Guy jumped off a bridge earlier on in the night.’
‘Anybody important?’
The boy raked his nails through his skin, drawing blood. ‘MacIntyre. William MacIntyre did a flyer off the bridge near the Royal.’
Doyle sat back in his chair. ‘Thought he was in the hospital. An overdose?’
The boy stopped scratching, began clenching and unclenching his fists, shifted from foot to foot. ‘Aye, but he left. Just walked out the door – nobody stopped him or nothing.’
‘Is that right?’ Doyle gave the boy his full attention.
‘Aye.’
‘So he just walks out of the Royal and then he jumps?’
The boy nodded then made a downward gesture with his hand. ‘Splat.’
‘Nasty.’
‘Very nasty,’ the boy paused, tried for a smile, almost succeeded. ‘Baxters.’
Doyle glared at him. ‘Come again?’
‘He’s soup.’
Doyle smiled. He saw Stella come into the bar and scan it anxiously for him; he raised his hand. She smoothed down her silver dress and made her way towards him, high heels clicking on the wooden floor.
The boy gave a shaky thumbs up. ‘Right then,’ he paused, ‘I’ll be off then Mr Doyle.’ He waited.
Doyle kept his voice low. ‘Tell Smithy I said okay. One bag. He’s round the corner.’
He watched Stella teeter towards him. The news of MacIntyre’s death made up for him having to sit through her atrocious performance.
She reached the table and held onto it to steady herself on her heels, stuffed the chewing gum into her cheek before asking, ‘Well babe, what’d you think?’
Doyle put his hands together and made a little clapping noise. ‘Great, Stella, you were wonderful.’
‘It’s okay then that I go out with my pals to celebrate?’
Doyle looked at her, saw the blush, saw her look away. Kept his voice calm. ‘Of course, I need to go see Weirdo for a wee chat. Business. Need to tidy up some lose ends.’
Stella’s face relaxed. ‘Great, we’ll hook up at home later? Have a good meeting.’
‘You have fun,’ he grinned, watching her. Saw her smile fade for a second before she pasted it back on. For someone going out to celebrate, she didn’t look too happy.
Monday, 9 December (four days earlier)
It was early evening and the sky over the East End of Glasgow was gunmetal grey, solemn and cold. Beyond the stone wall, the old graveyard stretched out, the dead earth waiting patiently for the turn of the year and then later, spring, when longer days and shorter nights would see a thaw and the rebirth could begin. Gravestones that had been toppled long ago rested in shrouds of lichen and moss. The trees were naked, their branches stretched heavenwards in despair at the desolation surrounding them. Beyond the graveyard stood a solitary house, silently hoarding its secret, its back door ajar. Waiting.
The two youths stood in the rain peering at the door; through the slit they could make out a dark hallway. Alec Munroe was the smaller of the two. He wore a yellow shell suit, trainers and black woollen gloves. His dark hair was shaved close to his head. He spoke first. ‘Am no sure, Rab. What if someone comes?’ The tremor in his voice gave him away.
‘You shittin’ it wee man?’ Rab Wilson tried for a laugh but it was a hollow sound. A head taller than his friend, he assumed the authority in their relationship. He wore denims, a fleece jacket and old, battered trainers. He hadn’t bothered with gloves, but had wound a long red scarf around his throat. His thick blond hair was dark with rain.
They waited, listening. The wind moaned around the house, breathing into cracks and gaps. Rab glanced back at the dirt track. Empty still. Much of the noise from the traffic on the London Road was muted by the heavy rain but he heard the occasional roar of a lorry on its way to the English capital. Rab wondered how his father was doing in London and if he would ever see him again.
Alec folded his arms tight across his chest to stop the trembling. ‘Ye sure there’s nobody about? That his car over there?’ He nodded in the direction of a blue Ford Focus parked a short way from the house.
‘Fuck knows, but there’s naebody here. There’s nae lights on. Come on ya numpty.’ Rab pushed open the door and paused, waiting for the creak to die away before stepping into the hallway. ‘See, it’s empty. Let’s have a wee shuftie and mind we’re only takin’ what we can carry.’
‘God, it’s mingin’,’ muttered Alec.
‘Aye well, we’ll mind tell folk that old Gilmore’s hoose stinks.’
‘Dis stink but.’
‘What kind of a cunt would live in a hoose like this?’ Rab tiptoed to the sitting-room door and tentatively pushed it open. They were there to steal what they could from Gilmore’s house. A wee bit of thieving and money in their pocket if they could sell it on. It was the way forward. A career of sorts and the only one open to them at present. Rab knew Gilmore worked at Watervale Academy and that there was a parents’ night that night at the school. All the staff would be there. Rab stepped into the shabby room and adjusted his eyes to the dim light. ‘Noo just grab stuff an’ remember—’, but he didn’t finish his sentence. Instead he stood transfixed by the image in front of him. The bloated body was hanging from a hook on the wall, its neck almost completely severed by the rope. Its blackened eyes bulged at them from a face livid with bruises.
James Gilmore was still at home.
Alec wrapped his arms around himself, swallowed hard, tried but couldn’t look at the body.
Rab moved towards it and stared into the dead man’s face for a full minute before turning his back on the corpse. ‘Alec, my wee pal?’
‘Aye.’
‘Call the polis.’
A voice, angry, accusing, bellowed into the darkness.
‘STAY WHERE YOU ARE! DON’T MOVE!’
The sound of gunfire.
Silence.
In the People’s Theatre, in the middle of the third row, Kat Wheeler held her breath.
‘STOP!’
More shots.
Then silence.
Wheeler felt the familiar rhythm of her heart, heard her breathing return to its usual pace, soft, gentle, unwilling to disturb the silence.
Darkness and silence.
Then the beat of a single drum. The glare of the searchlight trained on the audience. The sound system, loud.
‘YOU!’
‘STOP!’
The blinding light, too harsh after the cool of dark, scanned the audience. She blinked hard, felt the familiar vibration begin on her leg, small and tremulous but insistent. She wriggled, tried to extract the phone from her jeans. Two fingers flailing. Failed.
‘FREEZE!’ bellowed the voice.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
The vibration stopped.
‘ARE YOU READY TO DIE?’
She hadn’t thought too long and hard about it.
‘YOU CAN’T ESCAPE DEATH!’
The searchlight off. Welcome darkness. Silence.
The vibration returned; this time she was ready and yanked the phone from her jeans, its glow a solitary prick of light in the darkness. The too-familiar number blazed silently on the screen.
The searchlight was back on, scanning the room. ‘WELL?’
Her voice less than a whisper, ‘I have to take this.’
Beside her, Imogen’s reply, ‘Have to? Or choose to?’
Wheeler stumbled over feet, pushed past knees, finally forcing a large woman in a red dress to stand to let her through. Wheeler mouthed a silent apology while noticing the stubble around his lipsticked mouth, saw the Adam’s apple move.
‘WHAT’S IT TO BE?’
She saw the gold necklace, a pentagram. He smiled as she pushed past him. She flickered a smile in return, noticed his hair, a short undercut with a bit of a quiff on top, a haircut identical to her own. She wondered fleetingly if they went to the same barber. She moved on, ignoring the scowls and huffs of disapproval from the other people in the row, until finally she lurched through a door and heard it close behind her. In the corridor she leant against the wall, flipped open her phone and punched in the number. Kept her voice low and controlled. ‘This had better be good.’
Five minutes later she had texted her apologies to Imogen and was driving out towards Carmyle Police Station in Glasgow’s East End. The station was in the centre of the triangle between Auchenshuggle, Mount Vernon and the South Lanarkshire border. Twenty-eight minutes later she barged into the station, took the stairs to the CID suite two at a time and was rounding the corner just in time to hear a familiar sound. One of the team whining.
‘Weather’s shite.’ Detective Constable Alexander Boyd nodded towards the window before slurping black coffee from a chipped mug.