Стюарт Макбрайд: Now We Are Dead

‘What if he was actually saving me?’

Tufty poked her. ‘Is it “Black Dog”?’

‘No.’

‘Erm... Sarge?’

She kept her eyes on her phone’s screen, thumbs poking away at the buttons. Maybe if she pretended she couldn’t see or hear him he’d shut up about sodding gravitational lensing?

How did you get on at the golf then? Are

you going to be a grumpy old Susan when

you get home?

Send.

Tufty poked her. ‘Sarge?’

Don’t give up — keep ignoring him and he’ll go away.

Ding-ding .

Six under par! A personal best! Only Gillian

McMillan to beat & the Great Hazlehead

Ladies Challenge Cup is mine for another

year!

MINE!

My Precious!!!!!!!!

;P

At least someone was having a good day.

Another poke. ‘Sarge? Hello, Sarge?’

Damn it — ignoring him didn’t work. Ah well, it’d been worth a try.

She gave Tufty a free sigh: nice and exasperated so he knew what a pain in the ring he was. ‘OK, OK: “Beech Tree”.’

‘No. Well, yes it is “Beech Tree”, but that’s not what I’m Hello-Sarge-ing about. Jack Wallace.’

‘El Magnito del Turdo.’

‘Yeah, him. What I was trying to say earlier, but you threatened me with a coconut suppository: why are we here? I mean, it’s a waste of time, right?’

She glowered across the car. ‘We are here because some poor woman’s going to be raped tonight!’

‘I get that, but why are we here , here? Wallace called you up with his pre-alibi, right? He’s going out for a meal, then off to the pictures. He’ll make sure he’s on CCTV so we can’t pin anything on him. Whoever does the actual raping, it won’t be him. And suppose he does come home and we grab him — he knows we can’t rattle it out of him. All Wallace has to do is keep schtum and wait for his lawyer to appear. He makes a complaint, we have to let him go, then DCI Rutherford kicks us in the nads till we squeak and fires us both.’

‘Aye, I’ll do the motivational speeches, thank you very much.’

‘But I’m right, aren’t I? He knows we’ll check, so his alibi’s going to be tight as Harmsworth’s wallet. All we can do here is cock it up and get ourselves chucked off the force. Wallace wins.’

Roberta ground her teeth for a bit, scowling out at the trees, the houses, the horrible blue sky.

Sodding hell.

The ugly wee spud was right. Wallace knew there was going to be a rape, but short of tying him to a chair and beating the living hell out of him with a sock full of batteries, how would they get him to talk? No’ that the battery/sock thing wasn’t appealing...

Hannibal Lecter, remember?

Gaaaaaah...!

There you go: Tufty was right and she was wrong.

No way she was admitting it, though. ‘I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with “DM”.’

‘... so the two kids you found in that wardrobe are sorted.’

Roberta had a dig at an armpit. ‘Good foster homes?’

There was a pause from the other end of the phone. ‘No, crap ones. We like children to have a really horrible upbringing wherever possible. Keeps us in work.’

God save us from sarcastic social workers. Mind you, was there any other kind?

‘What about Harrison Gray?’

‘Other than changing his name to something less bullyable? Going to take a while. But we should have something by the time he gets out of hospital. Maybe a family with a dog so he can find out what Pedigree Chum is really for?’

‘Thanks, Pauline, I owe you one.’

‘Oh you owe me several.’ And Pauline was gone.

Tufty was staring at her. ‘What?’

‘You’re smiling. Why are you smiling?’

‘None of your business. And you’ve got three guesses left: “HP”.’

‘“Happy Police”?’

‘No.’

Her phone ding-ding ed at her again. Harmsworth this time:

I hate to disturb whatever important mission

you’re on, but is there any chance you could

actually turn up at the pub? Or are you just

hoping Owen will starve to death here?

Because that’s what I’m

Ding-ding.

doing!!!

As if there was any chance of that happening. He had enough blubber reserves to last him till next Christmas. Still, it wasn’t as if they were achieving anything here, was it? And surely Tufty would’ve forgotten it was his idea to leave by now, wouldn’t he? The wee loon had the attention span of a butterfly.

Look at him, sitting there in the passenger seat banging on about sod-knew what.

‘... and how can you come up with a theory of quantum gravity if gravity doesn’t really exist? Stands to reason.’

So the choice was sit here — just to prove a point — or head down the pub and drink the Chief Superintendent’s two hundred and fifty quid?

No contest, really...

She stuffed her phone away. Buttoned her dungers up again. ‘OK, that’s it. If I have to sit here for one more second I’m going to commit manslaughter. Well, idiotslaughter in your case.’ She cranked the engine, setting it growling.

Tufty waggled his eyebrows. ‘Pub?’

‘Let’s get utterly crudweaselled.’

A cheer went up from the table in the corner as Steel and Tufty pushed into the Flare and Futtrit. Lund and Barrett were on their feet, whooping and whistling in their knock-off Trading Standards finest.

Harmsworth stayed in his seat giving them a slow handclap. ‘About time!’

The jukebox oozed smooth classics into a lounge bar that had probably been trendy around the same time as big hair and shoulder pads. Abstract neon shapes in pastel colours glowed around the grey checked wallpaper. A carpet that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the seats of a bus.

A vast array of platters covered the table: deep-fried things, sandwiches, bowls of crisps, sausage rolls, wee individual quiches, more deep-fried things, wee individual pork pies, yet more deep-fried things.

Barrett toasted them with a half-full pint of something lagery. ‘They say they’ll do us some chips too, if you want?’

Lund whooped and knocked back a shot of something. ‘Chips!’

‘Now, if you don’t mind,’ Harmsworth peeled the clingfilm off a platter, ‘can we finally start in on the buffet? I’m starving...’

‘Hoy!’ Steel chucked a beer mat at him. ‘No’ so fast, greedy guts. Got something to say.’

He crunched back in his seat and covered his face with his hands. ‘Argh, what fresh hell is this?’

‘Listen up, people: we did good today... Well, Tufty and I did good — tackling two jobbie-flinging tractors while the rest of you stood about dripping like spare socks at an orgy — but the important thing is: we prevented a riot.’ She gave them all a good hard stare. ‘Chief Superintendent Campbell, DCI Rutherford, DI Vine: they think we’re a bunch of idiots. That they can keep us out of trouble by wasting our time with stupid stolen mobile phones. That we can’t be trusted with anything else. Well, you know what? Sod them. Sod them in the ear with a stick!’

Yeah... If this was meant to be inspiring, it wasn’t really working.

‘We are damn fine police officers. We’re the best police officers. Nobody has better police officers than I do! And we’re no’ going to let them village-idiot us any more. As long as there’s rapey bastards like Jack Wallace out there, we’re going to be the ones who get in their way. We’re going to be the ones who catch him before he hurts anyone else. And if DCI Crudweaselling Rutherford thinks we’re going back to returning mobile sodding phones, he can jam the lot of them up his motherfunking bumhole!’ She banged her fist on the table. ‘I didn’t join the police force to be a glorified Christmas Elf at the Lost-and-Found Workshop, did you?’