Read Where the Bodies are Buried Online
Authors: Christopher Brookmyre,Brookmyre
Where the Bodies are Buried
QUITE UGLY ONE MORNING
COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
ONE FINE DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
BOILING A FROG
A BIG BOY DID IT AND RAN AWAY
THE SACRED ART OF STEALING
BE MY ENEMY
ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL SOMEBODY LOSES AN EYE
A TALE ETCHED IN BLOOD AND HARD BLACK PENCIL
ATTACK OF THE UNSINKABLE RUBBER DUCKS
A SNOWBALL IN HELL
PANDAEMONIUM
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-7481-1857-1
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 Christopher Brookmyre
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
A One-Way Trip to the Campsies
In memory of Gerry Haetzman
My thanks to: Marisa and Jack for their understanding and indulgence; Andrew Torrance and Steve T for their technical insight; and Frightened Rabbit for the soundtrack in my head.
It didn’t seem like Glasgow.
There was a mugginess in the air despite its being a clear night, not a wisp to obscure the moon and stars. Not like last
night, when the clouds had rolled in on top of a sunny day like a lid on a pan, holding in the warmth, keeping hot blood on
a simmer. It was warm on the street at nine o’clock that morning, and now, past eleven, it felt as though every molecule of
air was drunk and tired. If a clear night wasn’t cooling it down, then the next clouds were going to bring thunderstorms.
The inside of the van had been stifling, smells of sweat and aftershave battling it out with piss and blood. When Wullie stepped
out on to the gravel and weeds, the horseshoe of the quarry walls like an amphitheatre around him, he had expected to feel
the welcome relief of a freshening breeze, but the temperature drop was negligible. Only the smells changed. There was a sweetness
in the air, scents from the trees you never smelled in the cold and rain, mixed with the charcoal and cooked meat of a thousand
barbecues wafting from the city below, warm smoke, warm smells borne on warm air.
No, it really didn’t seem like Glasgow at all. Apart from the guy lying on the deck in the advanced stages of a severe kicking.
That was as authentically local as haggis suppers and lung cancer.
Jai didn’t struggle as they hauled him out of the van. All the fight had been booted out of him long before that point. He
half-lay and half-sat on the ground in a disjointed and blood-soaked heap, like a big pile of washing. He was shaking with
shock and fear, making it look incongruously like he was shivering. If anybody could be cold right then, it would be him:
cold in his fear, cold in his isolation: the loneliest man in Glasgow. He knew he had nobody, and making it worse, he knew
what to be afraid of, because he had been among those dishing it out plenty of times in the past.
Nobody thinks it’ll ever come to them, especially once they’ve found themselves with a bit of clout. Money in their pocket,
fancy
motor, smart threads, folk fearfully averting their eyes when they walk past, others kissing their arses any chance they get.
Dodge a couple of prosecutions because nobody will talk, or somebody down the food chain takes the fall, all of a sudden they
think they’re invincible, and that’s when they get greedy, that’s when they get careless. They think they can take on the
bigger guys, think that just being young and hungry gives them some kind of edge, forgetting that a lot of folk have been
young and hungry at some point; forgetting that the guys at the top are where they are – and have stayed where they are –
for a reason.
Jai made no attempt to get up, most likely in case it was interpreted as flight or resistance, but just as possibly because
he couldn’t. He kept his eyes down, but they were still scanning back and forth, checking the positions of his captors. They
stood in a triangle around him, Big Fall just climbing out from the front cab to make it a square.
It was the arrival of a fifth that was going to answer all his questions. If Jai thought he was broken and defeated before,
then he was a proper Pollyanna compared to how he’d feel when the self-styled Gallowhaugh Godfather made his entrance.
He was just arriving now, in fact. He’d followed the van at a necessarily careful distance, but now that he’d parked, he was
deliberately taking his time, making their captive wait. Making
everyone
wait. Prick. If conceit was consumption, Wee Sacks there would be dead.
He slammed the door of his big BMW to herald his arrival, alert their prisoner that there was more to this than he had already
understood, as much as you can understand anything when you’ve been ragdolled around the back of a van by three guys battering
your melt in. Then he walked across slowly, taking the long way around the side of the van to further protract the anticipation
before he would make his presence known to the poor bastard quivering in the dirt.
Wullie detested him, always had. Gallowhaugh Godfather? Gallowhaugh Grandfather more like. All right, the guy was only about
forty, but he was always wearing gear that was too young for him, which had the paradoxical effect of making him look older
even than his scarred and lived-in face would indicate; a face you would never get sick of kicking.
Wullie resented being here, dancing to the jumped-up old throwback’s tune. It was one thing playing along to keep the peace,
but that wee cock just loved this all too much. The bastard should watch his
step, see he didn’t make the same mistake as his ex-pal lying on the deck. Seemed to think he was gangland royalty because
he’d been around the game for a while, saw himself as ‘old school’ and somehow more respectable than the new breed. He shouldn’t
forget who was the biggest gang in this city. Just because they found it expedient or mutually profitable to help you out
didn’t mean you could take liberties or start kidding yourself about the nature of that relationship. Wee Sacks thought Big
Fall had come to him because he ran Gallowhaugh. Truth was, Wee Sacks ran Gallowhaugh because it suited Fall to allow him
to.
That the wee shite had insisted on being here tonight said it all. Small-man behaviour. He should have risen above it, just
been content in the knowledge that the problem was being taken care of, discreetly too, ensuring no uncomfortable fallout.
Not Wee Sacks, though. He was taking unnecessary risks simply because he had to let Jai here know he’d got the last word,
that it had been trying to put one over on the mighty Godfather that had sealed his fate.
He wanted to sing when he was winning.
Jai lifted his head at the sound of this unexpected late arrival. The intended response was etched large upon his bloodied
features: a mixture of confusion and despair as he tried to work out how this was possible then calculated the implications
for his own chances. He said nothing, incredulity at the revelation of this unholy alliance giving way to a grim resignation
as the true nature of things made itself unforgivingly clear. Jai thought he was the one who had been fly, doing secret deals
with his boss’s enemies, but now he was seeing who was truly fly, and why his boss was the boss.
Jai truly, inescapably, knew the score, and that should have been enough. But not for Wee Sacks. He pulled out a gun, even
though that part was meant to be left to Big Fall’s crew. He was using it as a prop, milking Jai’s fear as he started spelling
everything out, starting with a potted history of their relationship so that he could ham up his claims of hurt at Jai’s betrayal.
He held the gun to Jai’s forehead. Jai closed his eyes, as though he could shut out what was to come. He squeezed them tighter
and tighter as the moment endured and the shot didn’t come, tears eventually seeping from them as he broke down. Then the
wee prick took the gun away again and started talking some more, further elaborating upon his indignation. He was getting
too much from this to have done
with it quickly, although not in some sadistically frivolous way. There was boiling fury in him, incredulous outrage at Jai’s
temerity. It was as though this moment was not reparation enough, killing him merely the once insufficient vengeance. He would
kill him over and over if he could, and this was as close as he could get to doing that. He was an angry wee dog, barking
all the louder in rage against his size.
Fall wasn’t having it, though. The big man had heard enough. He took out his own gun and barged the yappy terrier aside.
‘Don’t kick the arse oot it,’ he warned, and shot Jai through the head.
Jai slumped backwards, his head haloed on the ground by a spreading arc of blood as the shot reverberated like a ricochet
around the walls of the quarry. It seemed to echo back upon itself, sustained like a feedback loop; then, as the report of
the gunshot slowly faded, Wullie became aware that within the reverberation was a second sound: a human scream.
It wasn’t a healthy sign that it took his initial surprise to remind him that most normal people still found this kind of
thing shocking.
‘Subject vehicle is taking a right right right on to Byres Road. Foxtrot Five make ground. I’m letting him run straight on
at the lights before subject becomes able to draw my face from memory.’
‘Yes yes,’ she replied, feeling her heart speed up far faster than the little Renault was accelerating.
She had eyeball now.
This time, Jasmine Sharp vowed to herself, I won’t screw up.
She watched Uncle Jim’s car – no,
Delta Seven’s
car – veer left ahead of the junction, heading west along Dumbarton Road, and found herself suddenly closer than she intended
behind the blue Citroë n minivan. She had to step on the brakes quite stiffly, her anxious literal response to the ‘make ground’
command causing her to forget that the subject would be slowing to a stop as he waited to turn right. She hoped he wasn’t
looking in the rear-view, as nothing grabbed the attention quite like the appearance that you weren’t going to stop in time,
especially with this guy.
Jasmine watched him indicate, almost hypnotised by the blinking light, focusing on it so that she wasn’t tempted to look at
his rearview mirror.
It took seven or eight oscillations before she realised that she’d neglected to indicate herself. She corrected her omission,
feeling as she always did on this job that she had too many balls in the air, and that her efforts to get the procedure right
were in danger of causing her to forget to take care of the basics. It was bad enough when she was the secondary in a two-car
surveillance, but when it was she who had eyes-on, she kept expecting at any second to stall the engine, if not smash into
a lamp post, pedestrian or double-decker bus she had failed to notice due to her attention being so singularly directed at
the subject vehicle.
I won’t screw up, she vowed. I won’t screw up. Not again. Not like the previous vehicle surveillance, in Paisley last week,
when she lost the subject in the cinema car park. Not like Duntocher the week before, when she managed to get burned by following
the subject twice
around a roundabout. And not like Monday. Sweet Jesus, no, please, not like Monday. She’d be feeling embarrassed about that
when she was vegetating in some old folk’s home, in her dotage: embarrassed for herself and mortified about how badly she’d
let Jim down. She could feel her cheeks burn just thinking about it.