Doug Johnstone - Hit and run

‘He’s a widower, you know. Gets lonely being on your own sometimes.’

Billy stared at her. ‘You’re sleeping with him?’

‘Don’t be so crude, a bit of human companionship never did anyone any harm.’

They turned into Rankeillor Street.

‘Speaking of which, how are things with Little Miss Sunday Supplement?’

Rose had a thing about Zoe. Hard-working, veteran crime reporter for the Evening Standard versus privileged lifestyle and fashion journalist on the Sunday paper. It wasn’t hard to fathom the resentment.

‘Fine.’

‘You’re awful quiet today, Kiddo.’

Billy was trying to work out everything. Frank Whitehouse. They’d hit him, left him in the trees. Dead, apparently. But he was found two hundred yards away at the bottom of the Radical Road. What the fuck?

They were at the car now. Billy patted his pockets. Charlie had the keys.

‘I’ll need to get the keys, wait a second.’

He went inside and met Zoe coming out of Charlie’s room.

‘Jesus, Billy, where have you been?’ She glanced behind her. ‘Charlie, Billy’s back.’ She turned to him. ‘I texted you.’

Billy pulled out his phone. Three texts, right enough. He hadn’t even noticed.

Charlie came out, hair a mess, bleary-eyed. ‘Fuck’s sake, Bro, what are you playing at?’

‘I’ve been working with Rose. At a crime scene. Salisbury Crags.’

Zoe looked shocked. ‘Was it…?’

Billy nodded. ‘The guy we hit. But he wasn’t where we left him. He was hundreds of yards away in the bushes at the bottom of the Crags.’

‘How can that be?’ Charlie said.

‘You tell me, you’re the one said he was dead.’

‘He was.’

‘Then how the fuck did he end up somewhere else?’ Billy felt the stings in his hands throb, his neck muscles bunch up.

‘Oh God,’ Zoe said.

‘Cooee?’ Rose was in the doorway at the other end of the hall. ‘Don’t mind me, dearies. Looks like you all had quite a night of it. Kiddo here has already puked at a crime scene this morning. Billy, we need to get going in case the red tops get wind of this.’

‘Cool.’ Billy turned to Charlie. ‘I need the car keys.’

‘You OK to drive?’

‘I’ll have to be.’

‘Where are you going?’

Billy looked at Rose waiting in the doorway and lowered his voice. ‘We’re going to interview Mrs Whitehouse, the wife of the dead man, who happens to be Edinburgh’s biggest fucking crime lord.’

‘Holy shit.’

‘Yeah.’ Billy turned and left.

Outside, he unlocked the car and he and Rose got in. The seats were warm in the sun, the air stale. He wound down his window as Rose put her seat belt on. He stared at the steering wheel, tried to stop his hands shaking. He put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it.

‘You OK?’ Rose said.

He didn’t speak.

‘You’re not still drunk from last night, are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

He still hadn’t turned the key.

‘Look, if it’s about being sick back there, don’t worry about it. I was the same the first time I saw a stiff. You get used to it pretty quickly, trust me.’

Billy turned the key and the engine started straight away. Mum’s car had always been reliable, had seen them through some tough times.

He pulled on his seat belt and grabbed the gearstick. Vibrations from the engine chugged up his arm and through his body, like he and the car were part of the same beast.

‘Hey, you’ve got a wee chip there,’ Rose said, pointing at the top of the windscreen. Billy followed her finger and saw a small crystal of cracked glass in the shape of a star. ‘You better get that sorted, Kiddo, otherwise the crack will just get bigger and bigger.’

Billy put the car in gear, his feet twitching on the pedals, and pulled out.

Blacket Place was a leafy enclave of Georgian mansions hidden between the bustle of Newington Street and the student chaos of Pollock Halls. The Neighbourhood Watch signs were brass plaques, CCTV everywhere, and Billy’s ancient Micra was making curtains twitch.

The Whitehouse place was the swankiest of the lot, a gravel drive winding round an ornamental fountain out front, Doric columns fronting a two-storey edifice that was verging on stately home. They crunched up the drive and rang the doorbell.

After a while the door opened and a fair-haired young woman answered. She had an accent, Polish or Slavic, and she threw a glare at them. She was the nanny, Mrs Whitehouse wasn’t in and she didn’t know when she’d be back. End of conversation, door closed.

They mooched round the side of the house, having a nosey. A huge, well-tended garden with half a forest of oak and pine, a large treehouse and a pond. To the side of the house was a four-car garage. Locked, alarms, security cameras, no windows. Round the back, a gabled pine summerhouse hidden from the main building.

‘Leave, now.’

They turned. A thug in a suit, thick tattooed neck, muscles flexing as he tapped a baseball bat against his leg. A smaller guy lurked behind, same air of menace.

‘And you are?’ Rose said.

‘Out.’

‘OK.’ Rose lifted a placating hand. ‘We got a little lost trying to leave this palace.’

They shuffled towards the front gate, taking a wide berth round the goons.

Rose smiled at them. ‘Are you employees of Mr Whitehouse?’

The big guy shook his head and indicated the gate with the bat.

‘Well, nice talking to you.’

The men watched until they reached the car. They got in, drove round the corner and stopped for five minutes, then headed back to Blacket Place, parking further away from the house. The guys were gone. Billy killed the engine, his fingers still gripping the wheel.

Rose got her notepad out. ‘OK, let’s think about what we’ve got. Edinburgh crime lord dead. There’s our headline right there. We can assume he died last night.’

Billy nodded, although Rose wasn’t looking for input, just using him as a sounding board.

‘So what the hell was Frank Whitehouse doing up the Radical Road in the middle of the night? I don’t believe he’d kill himself, and I doubt he would be up there on his own at 3 a.m. or whatever, so that rules out an accident. Which means he was taken up there and thrown off.’

Billy was still nodding. He touched the bump on his head. Rose hadn’t asked how he got it. He touched his face, pushed at the skin over his cheekbone. He couldn’t feel anything. He was confused for a moment, didn’t know whether it was his face or his fingers that were numb. He rubbed his hands together. His fingers tingled. His brain felt sluggish, syrupy. Those pills. At least the pain had gone for now. He looked down. His legs were jittery, like a current was passing through them. He tried to stop them but couldn’t. He put his hands on his thighs but the vibrations just passed up his arms. He wound his window down and gulped air, but swarms of midges made him wind it up again.

Rose was still talking to herself, figuring it out.

‘Maybe he wasn’t up the Radical Road at all.’

Billy gripped his legs to stop them shaking.

‘Maybe he was killed somewhere else and dumped at the bottom. Or maybe he was killed somewhere else, then taken up there and thrown off to make it look like suicide or an accident. But that’s an awful long way to lug a corpse when you can just dump him anywhere. And if you’re going to dump him, why not do it where he’s less likely to be found? Or maybe the point was to make sure he would be found.’

Billy stared out the window, his mind fizzing. Or maybe it was a hit and run and he wasn’t dead like they thought and he got up and walked away, and collapsed in the gorse. Maybe they could’ve saved his life if they’d called an ambulance. Maybe.