Alex Gray - Sleep like the dead

Billy strode up the corridor, glancing now and again out of the tinted windows. It was still daylight but the sky had a rosy pink hue where the light met the horizon. For a moment he slowed down, the bravado he'd been feeling lost in the realisation that he was in a different country now. Och, but it was Spain, Majorca, where Glesca folk came all the time on their holidays. They'd all speak English, eh? Billy tried to reassure himself. Then the corridor opened out into a large hall where loads of people were sitting waiting on rows of plastic seats. Waiting to go home again, he thought, seeing sun-reddened flesh and down-turned mouths.

And ah'm jist arriving, he told them silently.

Joining a queue to show his passport, Billy kept staring straight ahead as though fearful that his expression might give the game away. But it was a quick in and out, a Spanish hand waving him along as the man in the booth barely glanced at his picture.

Further along past the luggage carousels he could see holiday reps with placards showing the names of their companies. But nobody was there to meet Billy Brogan. A shiver passed down the young man's spine. Whit the hell wis he doin' here onywey? The sudden panic made him want to turn straight around and get back on that plane bound for Glasgow. But that wasn't possible any more, was it?

A familiar sign just ahead of him quickened his step. An advertisement for Burger King was plastered across the wall. That was okay, then, he sighed, letting out his breath. It was just what he'd promised himself. A wee home frae home. Then on to pastures new.

Outside the airport building Billy glanced past the rows of palm trees till he saw what he wanted. Taxi. Another international word.

'Hey, pal. Any chance of takin' me intae Gala Millor?' Billy asked, pronouncing the Millor like Miller. He'd seen the place on the internet when he'd booked his ticket. Remembered a name he'd been given a long time ago.

The taxi driver seemed pleased as he slung Billy's pack into the back seat, the price of forty euros agreed as Billy shrugged his shoulders. Forty euros? An hour's journey. Sounded okay, he thought, settling back into the leather seats. Plenty time to chat the guy up, find a hotel he'd recommend. The driver looked the sort of person he could trust.

Billy smiled to himself, remembering what his big sister had told him.

'You're the only person I can trust, Billy,' she'd said. And it was true. At least for what she had in mind. He would find out the right person, he'd promised her. No contact made with her, personally; that was guaranteed. He'd be the go-between, the middle man; wee Billy Brogan, sure of himself, cocky as you liked, living somewhere in the shades where she dare not enter. It was just a question of how much. Ten thousand pounds didn't just drop off the trees. But luck had helped them with Amit's timely arrival into both their lives.

Handing it over to little brother Billy seemed to be as much a relief as knowing that it would all be over soon. And hadn't he promised her that it would be? He'd left her happy, assured that now she could sleep easy knowing that he was the only person in the world that she could trust.

The flame burned low, melting the pale wood, then the wick spurted and she let the blackened matchstick fall, sizzling into the water, before it burned her fingers.

Lying back she slid down as far as she could, hair spread out like waterweed. Eyes closed, she could smell the fragrance from the scented candle: frangipani. Funny how evocative a scent could be. Memories flooded back now. Warm blue lagoons with sun umbrellas made from twists of thatch; sitting out on their own private deck at breakfast time, the mynah birds chattering; multicoloured fish darting in the reef- electric blues and stripy yellows; flower petals strewn across their beds at night by some discreet, unseen hand.

In the beginning it had all been full of promise, full of hope.

He'd lavished so much on that honeymoon, hadn't he? Seduced her into believing this would be paradise on earth, just the two of them.

She fingered the place on her neck where bruises had formed so often, so very often…

Despite the warmth of the bathwater, she shivered. Time to soap her arms, rub away the day's sweat and dirt. Sitting up, she displaced the volume of water, hearing it swoosh around her legs. The spent match bobbed towards her, adrift on the scummy sur face. She scooped it up on the third attempt and flicked it on to the floor. For a moment she let the water settle around her, trying not to imagine what it had been like at the end. Darkness.

Gunfire. A sudden blast and then he was gone.

Like that spent match. All his fires out.

"The wife's last address, sir,' DC Irvine laid the paper on Lorimer's desk. 'You were spot on about further education.

She did a course at Anniesland College two years ago so she could apply for Glasgow University.'

Lorimer's raised eyebrows showed his unspoken question: What then?

Annie Irvine blushed. 'No trace of her after that so we don't even know if she's still in the country. But we're working on it.

Sir,' she added earnestly.

Lorimer made a face. 'Tracing Mrs Kenneth Scott is becoming a nuisance. Maybe the current girlfriend, Frances Donnelly, can fill us in better anyway,' he raised a questioning eyebrow at his detective constable. 'Women like knowing things about their lovers, especially the other women in their lives,' he smiled wickedly.

Annie shook her head, giving Lorimer a mock smile. Did he think the divisional headquarters was a hotbed of sexual intrigue or something? If only.

'Take Fathy with you to the call centre, will you? We want to know all that the girlfriend can tell us about Scott, especially where he was the week before he was killed. Okay?' 'Sir,' Irvine backed out of the doorway and breathed a sigh of relief. The Scott woman had vanished into thin air, apparently.

And that made it all the more suspicious, didn't it? Why would someone disappear like that, not want to be found, unless they had something to hide?

Annie Irvine gave a little skip as she crossed the corridor to the room inhabited by lesser mortals like detective constables. Out with Omar. That was a lucky chance. She ran fingers through her short dark hair then paused. A quick visit to the loo and a touch of lippy wouldn't go amiss before she called the handsome Egyptian to heel.

The call centre sat cheek by jowl beside a roundabout overlooking the MN motorway on one side and a huddle of fifties terraced housing on the other. Its tinted glass windows caught the sunlight a moment is Irvine parked the pool car, making her glance up quickly.

"it's an okay place to work,' she remarked to the man in the pommor mut.

'Better then your division?' Fathy asked, a crooked smile on his face.

'Oeh, I'm happy where I am,' Irvine told him. 'It's not everyone who gets to stay put when you change from uniform to CID. And I've always liked working with Lorimer. He can be a moody beggar at times, right enough, but he's dead fair. What about yourself?

Did Grampian not suit you or were you looking to see what this big, bad city had to offer?' She winked at him, then before he could reply, 'C'mon then, let's be having you. Or the boss'll have our guts for garters.'

Irvine watched as the young man slid out of his seat then brushed himself down. There was something both elegant and effete in the gesture, making her heart plummet. Was he gay? And if so, were the lascivious thoughts she'd been having about the new DC utterly pointless? She jerked her head towards the doorway.

'Right. You've been briefed about the girlfriend, but let me do the talking, okay?'

He was at the doorway of the call centre in two strides, holding it open for her with a twinkle in his eye as if her misgivings about his sexuality had been completely transparent.