Truth Lies Bleeding

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Authors: Tony Black

BOOK: Truth Lies Bleeding
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Four teenagers find the mutilated body of a young girl crammed into a dumpster in an Edinburgh alleyway. Who is she? Where has she come from? Who has killed her – and why?
Inspector Rob Brennan, recently back from psychiatric leave, is still shocked by the senseless shooting of his only brother. The case of the dumpster girl looks perfect for getting him back on track. But Rob Brennan has enemies within the force, stacks of unfinished business, and a nose for trouble.
What he discovers about the murdered girl blows the case – and his life – wide open.
‘Tony Black is one of those excellent perpetrators of Scottish noir . . . a compelling and convincing portrait of raw emotions in a vicious milieu.’
The Times
Also by Tony Black
Paying for It
Gutted
Loss
Long Time Dead
TRUTH LIES BLEEDING
Tony Black
This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form (including any digital form) other than this in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Epub ISBN: 9781409023579
Version 1.0
  
Published by Preface Publishing 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Tony Black 2011
Tony Black has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Preface Publishing
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
An imprint of The Random House Group Limited
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at
www.randomhouse.co.uk
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84809 189 4
Contents
 
For Jim Divine, Tony Francis,
Tom Maxwell and David Lewis
Prologue
THE GIRL’S SCREAMS WERE ENOUGH to give away their hiding place. It took a lot of noise, a racket, to have heads popping out of windows in a Muirhouse high-rise but it wasn’t the noise alone that alerted the neighbourhood.
‘Oh my God . . .’
The young girl didn’t recognise her own voice – it was loaded with an emotion she hadn’t heard before. The tone was higher, seemed to tremble more. It was as if she had somehow tapped into a world she’d only encountered on the television, or at the cinema. It sounded alien to her.
‘What is it, Trish?’
The three teenagers surrounded their friend. They’d been smoking, drinking, having a laugh and a joke, whiling away another day that they should have spent at school. But this wasn’t any other day; Trish knew it the moment she had started to scream.
‘Trish, what’s up?’
The girl stood rigid. When her friends touched her she jerked herself away and started to shiver. Tears fell down her cheeks soon after. They felt cold on her hot skin.
‘Trish?’
She didn’t answer, the words wouldn’t come.
She felt the colour draining from her face. She closed her eyes tight, tried to shut it all out but the images were still there inside her head. She started to bite her lip. Her breathing altered, became shorter. She felt the corners of her mouth turning down and her whole head now seemed to be shivering out of control. More tears came. The shivers stopped suddenly, then instantly started again as she opened her eyes and held up her hands.
Trish knew the streaks of blood were spotted by the others at once. They were dark red smears moving slowly down her fingertips towards her palms. It took her some time to register the blood was actually on
her
hands – nothing seemed real now – but when she became aware of what she was looking at her mouth opened wide and her throat tightened.
No sound came from her. As the girls stared at her everything felt like it was locked inside her. Trapped.
‘
Trish . . .
’
Her mouth widened some more; she started to gag, wanted to be sick but nothing would come out except a noise. A shrill, desperate animal wail. The others stepped back. They watched Trish shaking as she screamed out. She stared at her hands, and felt her eyes widening at the sight of the fresh blood.
‘Keep the noise down!’ A man hung his head from an open window in the high-rise above the alleyway. He turned to the girls below, looked down, but didn’t call out a second time.
The girls stared at each other, looked scared. One shrugged. Another ran to Trish, clamped arms around her. As her wailing turned to sobs Trish fell into her friend, weeping and shaking. The young girl held her, trying to keep her steady on her feet but the pair were forced to slump onto the ground.
‘What is it, Trish? . . . What is it?’
The other two girls watched for a moment, then one of them pointed back up the alleyway. There was a large bin on wheels, a communal bin, a dumpster. A few moments earlier Trish had gone over there to drop off an empty bottle. She watched the girls staring at each other, wondering what she’d seen. She could tell that thoughts were passing between them: they were curious.
One of the girls started to walk; the other followed.
Trish tried to call out, to bring them back, but words still wouldn’t come out.
She watched them go. Tried to claw out to them, pull them back.
They kept walking up the alleyway.
It was a large bin, almost as tall as they were. When they got up close they pointed to the bloody finger-streaks. Trish watched as they turned to each other as if to ask, ‘What’s inside?’
For a moment they stared on, frozen, then one spoke. ‘Go on, open it.’
‘No, you do it.’
The girls stood, unmoving. Trish tried again to call to them but all that came from her now was screams, shrill roars she couldn’t control.
They looked back, then, ‘We’ll do it together.’
A firm nod. ‘Okay.’
They reached out hands, raised the lid of the dumpster. Their breathing looked to have stilled as their thin arms pushed the black rubber lid back. The dark interior of the vault was exposed now. For a second or two the girls peered into the blackness, but didn’t seem to see anything. They drew closer, raised themselves on tiptoes.
As they edged nearer the rim, Trish remembered the sweet smell that had come from inside. She knew it would take a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the bin, to make out the light and shade. To piece together familiar shapes, in an unfamiliar setting. To take in with their eyes what their minds wouldn’t want to believe.
In the next few seconds the air filled with the screams of two more young girls; they were running from the alleyway.
Chapter 1
DI ROB BRENNAN STOOD OUTSIDE the Chief Super’s door with his fist held tightly, knuckles out, hovering beneath the brassy nameplate. He thought about pounding the wood panel, thought again, then gripped the handle and stomped in.
‘You want me?’
Chief Superintendent Aileen Galloway, phone in hand, blasted some poor DC about the state of his handwriting in the mileage log for the new Cavaliers.
‘If it’s not a good time, I’ll call back,’ said Brennan.
She turned, keeping up her rant, and flagged him to sit down. It was multi-skilling, or man-management, something like that, he thought; something women were always better at than men. Wasn’t that the received wisdom?
Brennan walked over to the desk. It was immaculate. Little rows of yellow Post-it notes lined up with geometric precision on the carefully stacked files. A set of pens, only two, and a photo-frame containing a picture of a smiling man and two perfect young children – looked like a mortgage advertisement from an era before the banking crisis, before the ads had shifted towards images of cast-iron stability, more meat and potatoes, less gloss. Or maybe they hadn’t changed at all. Maybe it was the way he viewed them now; maybe everything had lost its gloss.
Brennan took out a Silk Cut. Not a real fag: these were for Saturday smokers and teenies who bought packs of ten for a sly puff between home ec and maths . . . But something had to give. A lot of things had to give, thought Brennan.

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