Стюарт Макбрайд - All That’s Dead

Ian McNab slouched on a bench, in black tracksuit bottoms and a replica Aberdeen Football Club shirt. Peaky Blinders haircut. Big rampant lion tattoo all the way up one arm. Fag in one hand, the other rocking a pushchair back and forward a few inches — its occupant asleep. A small child hurtled around and around the bench, shrieking and waving his arms, dressed as a mini version of his dad, only without the tattoo.

McNab looked up at Logan and King, then shrugged. ‘Yeah, I saw Haiden on the telly.’ He pointed at them with his cigarette. ‘He was on this screen thing behind you pair of poofs. Mind? You were sitting there like someone just shagged yer mum wi’ a flagpole?’

King tried his looming trick again. ‘Has he been in touch?’

It had the same amount of success on McNab as it had on Cindy Norton. Sod, and indeed, all.

‘In touch wi’ me? Naw , Officer, I’m no’ allowed to consort wi’ known criminals, am I? Condition o’ ma release. Staying oot a prison for ma bairns, like.’ Sounding more bored than contrite.

The kid made another circuit. ‘Look at me, Daddy! Look at me!’

McNab didn’t. ‘Aye, very good, Timmy.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke at King. ‘Anything else I can help you poofs with?’

Logan had a go. ‘If Haiden went into hiding, where would he hide?’

‘Naw, that’d be cheating . First rule of hide and seek: naebody likes a clype.’ McNab closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and smiled at the sun. ‘Now be good wee poofs and bugger off. I’m trying tae work on ma tan here and yer blocking the light.’

Jacob McCain ran a hand over his shaved head — not so much a fashion statement as an unavoidable necessity, going by the paucity of blue stubble up there — and loaded another box of cheese into the chiller cabinet from the cage at his side. He wore a long-sleeved high-necked white T-shirt beneath his blue stripy tabard, twin bands of tattoos just visible in the gap between his cuffs and his thick black gloves. Not the tallest of men, and not the broadest either. But there was... something imposing about him. Something dangerous. As if asking where the hummus was might get you stabbed.

King held out Mhari’s picture again. ‘Come on, Jacob, at least pretend to look at her.’

McKinnon’s Family Market — ‘Bargantuan savings since 1998!’ — on Holburn Street wasn’t going to challenge Asda, Tesco, or Sainsbury’s any time soon. It was more of a strip-light and tin-can, pile-’em-high and sell-’em-for-a-moderate-markup kind of place. Somewhere you could get knock-off Lithuanian KitKats and Tundidor’s Tasty Caramel Wafers, all in lookalike packaging.

Jacob dumped another thing of Bulgarian cheddar on the shelf. ‘Don’t need to. I know the bitch.’

Finally: someone prepared to admit it.

‘You know her name?’

‘Mary. Only she spelled it the Gaelic way, with an “H” and an “I”.’ Armenian Edam joined the ranks of cheese. ‘Was a fashion for that, back in the good old days, yeah? Gaelic-ing up your name so you’d look more committed to the cause. Driving the English out.’ He shook his bald head. ‘Utter bitch, like.’

Logan handed him the box of Spanish Bleu. ‘Did Mhari say anything about herself. Where she came from?’

‘Only met her once.’ He slit the box open with a Stanley knife and banged the contents one by one onto the shelf. ‘Went up to visit Haiden in Peterhead, didn’t I? Took him some fags. And there she was, the sainted sodding Mhari.’

A young-ish guy in a shirt and stripy blue tie stalked around the end of the aisle, holding a clipboard to his pigeon chest. Pale and clean-shaven. Like an intestinal parasite that had landed a middle-management job. He raised his voice, scowling along the dairy aisle at their bald informant. ‘Is there a problem , Jacob?’ Sounding about as friendly as prostate cancer.

Jacob shook his head. ‘No, Mr Cousins.’

‘Then why are the police in my store, Jacob?’

Logan raised a hand. ‘We’re in getting some supplies for the station. Jacob here was advising us on organic versus nonorganic dairy products.’

‘Oh.’ Pause. ‘Well, that’s all right then.’ He stood up to his full wormy five nine and fixed Jacob with what was probably meant to be a steely gaze. ‘Soon as you’ve finished here, get around to Cleaning Products and Pet Food. Someone’s dropped a litre-bottle of fabric softener and it’s all over the aisle.’

Another nod. ‘Yes, Mr Cousins.’

‘Good.’ He turned and marched off, heels clicking on the linoleum floor.

Soon as he’d gone, Jacob’s hands turned into fists for a moment. ‘Wanker.’ Keeping his voice low as he hammered cheap smoked cheese in plastic casings in beside the pre-grated mozzarella. ‘Rip your bastarding arms off and make you eat them...’ Then Jacob seemed to remember that he was standing there with two police officers, because he cleared his throat and looked away. ‘Just a joke, like.’

Not given Jacob’s record it wasn’t.

Logan picked up a packet of Cheese Rope. ‘So you actually met Mhari?’

‘What? Yeah, the fags. She wouldn’t let me give him them. “Haiden’s giving up,” she says, “he’s getting healthier for the cause,” she says.’ A wee growl, then a sniff. Then Jacob went into the cage for a box of Cheerful Cattle Spreading Triangles. ‘Next thing you know, I’m not allowed to visit him any more. Bitch said his old mates were a bad influence. We’re—’

Mr Cousins’ voice battered out through the supermarket’s PA system, echoing and distorted. ‘Jacob McCain to Cleaning Products and Pet Food. Clean-up on Cleaning Products and Pet Food.’

‘Gah!’ He hurled the box back in the cage and slammed the grilled front shut. ‘See if I wasn’t on licence?’ Then took hold of the cage and stomped off, pushing it in front of him as he went, the wheels squeaking like tortured gerbils.

Logan watched him go. ‘Five quid says Mr Cousins comes to some sort of very unfortunate and painful accident before too long.’

King leaned in closer. ‘And, to be honest, he’d sodding well deserve it.’

Couldn’t argue with that.

Tartan Tam’s was the kind of establishment that gave old-fashioned Scottish pubs a bad name. Small; dark; with a short bar featuring four pumps, a line of greasy optics, and a bored-looking woman hunched over a Scottish Daily Post . A puggy machine dinged and wibbled away to itself by the bar — enough flashing lights on it to give half the city seizures as it offered them nudges, lucky sevens, and lemons.

There wasn’t a surface in the pub that didn’t look sticky. That included the table Logan and King stood in front of, staring down at a guy with a teddy-boy quiff, pint of Guinness, a packet of dry-roasted, and a ‘F*CK THE ENGLISH!’ T-shirt.

He slouched in his bench seat, arms along the back. ‘So?’

King leaned his fists on the tabletop, trying for another loom. ‘Look, Mackers, have you seen Haiden or not?’

A shrug. ‘I’ve seen his handiwork. Get it?’ A smile and a wink. ‘ Hand -iwork? Cos he chopped off that professor tosser’s hands?’

Logan pulled out his notebook. ‘You saw him do it? You were there at the time?’

‘Naw, in the papers , like.’ He took a swig of Guinness, chased it down with a couple of peanuts. Talking before he’d finished chewing them, grey and white residue sticking to his teeth. ‘Good for Haiden, though. Them Unionistas need a short sharp shock. With any luck he’ll go after the papists next. Then the immigrants: Pakis, Poles, and Darkies. Purge the whole fucking lot of them. Scotland for the Scottish!’