It was felt she had established dialogue with the killer and that it would prove beneficial if she was in charge of the case. Almost right. I was in charge. Not her. The dialogue, my dialogue, was beneficial to me. She would have known nothing unless I chose to reveal it.
Strathclyde Police said they now felt that dialogue had now run its course and was no longer an asset in trying to track the murderer. No shit, Sherlocks. I would decide when the dialogue had run its course. I would decide when it would stop. The murderer would not be tracked down.
I could restart dialogue with Rachel any time I wanted. As long as it was still an asset. They couldn’t tell me who to talk to at Strathclyde. Not their decision.
I had no idea who this jumped-up English bastard Lewington was. Lewington of Nottingham and his five other Nottingham cops could get to fuck. I would deal with who I wanted. The Englishman would bring a fresh approach he said. Convinced the murderer would be caught. Bollocks. They had taken over because the men in suits had said so. Brought in to show the Jocks how it was done.
He said he would build upon the excellent work already carried out by his colleagues in Strathclyde. Probably laughing at them. Laughing at Rachel. Well, he could get to fuck. Robertson and Narey have worked long and hard to catch the killer, he said. Patronizing cunt. He means they tried but weren’t up to the job. You think you are up to it, Lewington? You won’t catch me. Guaranteed. Will take a header off the Science Tower before that happens.
Says he will rely heavily on local knowledge. Thinks the Glesga plods will do the dogsbody work for him and he will take the credit. Wise up. I’ll decide what happens from here on in. Just like I have up to now.
I’d thrown that paper across the room and had sworn out loud. Raged at their nerve. I wasn’t dealing with this Lewington, he was getting nothing from me. It was Rachel or no one. I’d kill who I fucking wanted, post to who I wanted to fucking post to. This was my plan, my rules.
But maybe this was what they wanted. Was that their game? Were they messing with me, trying to throw me off balance? Were the cheeky bastards trying to fuck with my head?
Think, think. I was posting to Narey. They said she had established a dialogue with me. Knew it was me that had started that dialogue. They knew that. They were trying to take that away from me. Break that connection so that I couldn’t get what I wanted. They were cutting me off from her so that I would make a mistake. The bastards.
They thought they were smarter than me. Thought they could control my mind.
I’d seen through them. Saw their little game. They’d need to be a lot cleverer than that. I wasn’t rising to it, not angry any more, I was in control. I picked the paper up and sorted the pages. Placed it back on the table, smoothed it down. In control. Patted the paper so it looked untouched.
But what if they weren’t clever at all? What if they weren’t trying mind games and had simply kicked Narey into touch?
Head bursting with this. Needed to think straight. Concentrate. Sort it.
Bastards. Messing with me. My plan. My rules.
Stick to the plan. Whatever their game was I would stick to the plan. They wanted me to switch course and make a mistake but I’d do what I intended to do. When I wanted. Wouldn’t be rushed. Wouldn’t be panicked.
I knew my next move and I’d make it when I was ready. I’d decide. They’d made me think but they couldn’t make me change course. Too long in the planning, not for changing for anything. I resented them getting rid of Rachel Narey, for whatever reason they’d done it. But I wasn’t getting angry, not for long anyway, I was getting even.
I got on a bus. The number 40 from Maryhill into town.
Three of us at the bus stop. Me, a drunk and a woman doing a fair impression of Maw Broon. They were safe. Whoever it was, it wouldn’t be them.
The drunk was making a fair bid to be elected, right enough. He was doing the lurching tap dance and mumbling to himself. A look in his direction brought a glare, that special Glasgow glare that happens when a guy has drunk enough to think he is six inches taller, two stone heavier and a whole lot harder than he actually is.
I let it go. Other fish to fry.
When I wouldn’t play the game, he tried Maw Broon instead but she had seen plenty of his kind and didn’t bat an eye.
‘Who do you think you are looking at?’ she demanded.
‘Eh?’
‘I said who do you think you are looking at? Don’t fucking look at me like that. Away and fuck off.’
‘Aw, c’mon missus. Nae need for that.’
‘Don’t missus me, ya wee arsehole. Any ay your shite and ah’ll shout ma man doon here to sort you oot.’
It wouldn’t need her man to come down and sort him out. In a square go, my money was on Maw. Straight knockout in the first round, no problem.
The drunk was drunk enough not to have worked that out though.
‘For fuck’s sake. Get him doon here then,’ he came back. ‘Ah’ll tell him how sorry ah ah’m for him, being married tae you and that.’
Mrs Broon breathed in an indignant harrumph and I was sure she was just about to deck him when the number 40 swung round the corner and pulled up in front of us.
The drunk threw her a lopsided smile and stood aside, letting her on first with an exaggerated bow and a low sweep of his arm.
She stormed past without looking at him and took up residence halfway up the bus, her handbag pulled tight to her formidable bosom.
The drunk pulled himself into the first empty seat and let his head smack off the window as it lurched off, feeling no pain.
I sat four rows behind Mrs Broon and had a quiet look around. There were maybe twenty people on board the 40. Glasgow in miniature that bus. All human life was there. White and Asian. Young and old. Shoppers and office workers. Crooks and cops. Prods, Papes, Poles and Pakis. Enough racist opportunity for everyone.
Wee boys in bad suits heading for call centres. Neds in tracksuits heading for street corners. Guys heading for the bookies and the offie.
A couple of kids were pushing and shoving at each other. The first one slapping the second round the head, the second calling him a fud and the pair of them giggling. The wee bastards should have been at school.
A mother with two kids and two big bags of shopping. The five of them squeezed into two seats, her on the outside and them and the messages trapped between her and the window. Weans wriggling like eels, shopping bags bouncing. Trapped but trying to escape.
Another mother. This one no more than mid-twenties and with three kids. Every person on that bus soon knew their names. Chloe. Chantelle. Candice. Chantelle in particular was a real charmer, swinging on the post at the front of the bus, drawing daggers from the driver and shouts from her mother.
Fuck. This was getting harder. So much harder. Had been from the moment that Wallace Ogilvie died.
There was a hard case in a torn leather jacket. His face torn too, an old knife wound scarring him from ear to lip. He was staring at the back page of the
Daily Record
and shaking his head. The front page had the latest on The Cutter but all he was interested in was who Celtic were supposed to be signing.
Two rows behind him was a junkie, no more than seventeen and off her face. Her scrawny arms tugging at her hair, head twitching. She was bouncing in her seat, bouncing more than the two kids. Energy was bursting out of her. Life leaking out. She must have been good-looking once.
Two guys in white overalls, painters maybe. One of them sleeping on the other’s shoulder. His mate looking out the window at every bit of passing skirt. Knocking on the glass at a couple of them. Winking. Waving with the free arm, the one that wasn’t squashed in by his pal.
Glasgow in miniature. Didn’t look much like a city living in fear, a city living in the shadow of The Cutter. Though it should have done. This bus more than anywhere else. I had already decided it would be the first person who got off at the Viking on Maryhill Road. No particular reason.
The mother had already got off two stops earlier, pulled and pushed down the stairs off the bus by the weans and the shopping. I was glad to see them go. The kids who were plugging the school were still on but I was sure they were headed all the way into the town. Hoped they were. Had to be.
Approaching the Viking. Any time now. I could feel the tension in me. Could feel my heart rate pick up. Any one of them. Anyone.
The hard case in the leather jacket moved in his seat and my eyes turned to him. He’d do. But he was just turning the inside sports pages, settling himself again. Wasn’t him.
One of the two boys stood up and my heart dropped a foot. My breathing stopped. He skelped his pal on the back of the head, got his own back and sat down. Wasn’t him.
My breathing had just started again when a woman brushed past me. She was getting off at the next stop. All I could see was her back. She was as wide as she was tall, just squeezing between the seats. Short and round, thick legs perched on sensible black shoes. A dark raincoat and a scarf. All topped off with a bowl of reddish hair.
She was getting off at the next stop. She was the one.
The woman stood at the front waiting for the bus to come to a halt and copped some chat from the drunk that had already chanced his luck with Maw Broon. I couldn’t hear what he said or what she replied but there was no doubt who had won. The roly-poly snapped something at him and he turned to the window, wrapping his arms round his ears and his head in exaggerated protection. Just wasn’t his day. Slayed by two of Glasgow’s finest within twenty minutes.
I waited until the bus had stopped before getting up from my seat and making for the exit. By that time a couple of people were trying to get on and I earned a bit of a glare from the driver. It was worth it though, the roly-poly was off and waddling down the street without ever catching sight of me.
As soon as she got off the bus, she’d reached into her handbag and took something out. Whatever it was, she moved it from hand to hand and then seemed to put it back in the bag. She went just a few yards then repeated the exercise.
Maybe ten yards further, just as she’d passed the Viking itself and crossed the road, she was back into the bag again. She took out whatever it was and this time huddled over it for a few moments before walking on. She’d lit a cigarette.
I was still on the other side of the road, watching her turn right and head back in the direction we’d come. Watched her charge purposefully ahead, fat but fast, rolling like a battlecruiser in stormy seas.
Then suddenly she took a sharp pavement left and turned into the Tesco on Maryhill Road. I followed, grabbing a basket for cover. Cameras saw me enter the store but it wouldn’t matter. I was one among hundreds. Hundreds today and thousands this week.
I walked up and down the aisles but couldn’t see her anywhere. Fruit and veg, toiletries, dog food, tinned foods, all the way to the butchers and bakers without sight of the roly-poly. I started to walk quicker, doubling back, scanning the heads of all the shoppers.
Nothing.
Fully five minutes, up and down, back and forth, getting desperate, had to find her. Surely she couldn’t have gone in and out so quickly. Had to still be there. Panicking a bit.
Then I saw her. Not in any of the aisles but sitting behind a till. Ten items or less. The roly-poly had been on her way to work at Tesco.
I picked up enough things to make it look like I had actually been shopping then joined a queue already three deep at her till. There were shorter queues but not so many that it would have looked odd that I chose this one. Just like a once a month shopper who didn’t know any better. Women were probably shaking their heads at me and smiling patronizingly.
She looked up and saw me standing there, another impediment to an easy day. She exhaled noisily and shook her head at my stupidity. Keep shaking it, I thought. She was maybe fifty-five although I had the feeling she wasn’t as old as she looked. She’d made herself old. She’d smoked her face old and scrunched it up into a meaner, harsher version than her God had intended. If she looked fifty-five then she was forty-five tops. Her podgy face was framed by that bowl of red hair and set off by a pair of practical specs and a permanent scowl.
You wouldn’t want to take a burst pay packet home to this one.
Her name badge said she was called Fiona. Then the young girl on the next till called her Mrs Raedale. Fiona Raedale. Welcome to my world.
She was unpleasantly plump and dressed older than she looked. Which meant she dressed at least ten years older than she was. Fiona Raedale was someone in an eternal bad mood. She didn’t like people. Maybe she thought people didn’t like her.
The woman being served had a wee girl with her, maybe three or four years old. She was hanging near the till and obviously wanted to help. She was reaching for the food as it came off the conveyor belt and a couple of times she made a grab for it before Mrs Frosty Drawers had the chance to pass it across the machine that reads the bar code.
If looks could kill. Raedale snatched a packet of HobNobs out of the wee girl’s hand and treated her mother to a glare that could fry eggs. The woman looked back at the queue with raised eyebrows and I shrugged in some sort of sympathy.