‘I happen to be an old friend of DI Ransome’s. Don’t think I won’t run to him if you touch so much as a hair on Mr Mackenzie’s head!’
‘Bad move, Laura,’ Mike muttered.
‘He’s right, missy – means you’ll be coming with us now…’
Mike lunged at the two men, yelling for Laura to run. But Glenn brushed him to the floor while Johnno took Laura’s arm and spun her round, his other hand muffling her cries. Mike was up on one knee when a foot caught him under the chin, launching him backwards to sprawl across the kitchen floor. Glenn knelt on him, and Mike felt his organs want to explode. There was a grin on the face behind the fist, and then the fist itself connected with the side of Mike’s jaw. He had a moment to register that he was spinning towards unconsciousness. He wondered if his boat was waiting for him.
And also if he would ever see Laura again.
34
Ransome woke up and knew that was his lot. It was almost five – not bad for him; he’d managed four and a half hours. Mrs Thatcher, he seemed to recall, had got by on as little if not less. He left Sandra in bed and padded towards the bedroom door, leaving the landing light off as he made his way downstairs. In the living room, he turned on the lamp next to the sofa and reached for the TV remote. He knew that checking the news headlines on Teletext and Ceefax would keep him occupied for ten or fifteen minutes. After that, there was either Sky News or BBC24 on Freeview. He peered through the inch-wide gap in the curtains. The street outside was silent. Years back, whenever he woke up early he took delight in heading into town, stopping at bakeries and all-night cafés, listening to cabbies telling the story of their night’s work. But Sandra had started complaining that he was waking her and their neighbours both, revving the car as he reversed out of the driveway. Not too many of his colleagues had ever met Sandra. She didn’t like official functions or parties or the idea of the pub. She worked in NHS admin and had her own group of friends – women who would attend talks in bookshops and museums, or plan outings to foreign films and tea rooms. Ransome’s theory was that she felt she should have done better at school, maybe gone beyond secretarial college – a university degree, perhaps. She gave off an air of quietly simmering dissatisfaction with her lot, and he had no wish to compound this with early-morning engine noise, even though none of the neighbours had actually ever complained to him about it.
The kettle might wake her, too, so he stuck to a glass of milk and a couple of indigestion tablets. The faint peeping noise in the hallway he put down to a small bird outside, but when it persisted he knew he was wrong. His jacket was hanging up behind the front door. The coat rack had been Sandra’s idea, and woe betide if he draped his clothes over the end of the bannister or on the backs of chairs. His mobile was in the inside pocket. The noise wasn’t because it needed charging. It was a message from the previous evening. Donny was a guy Ransome knew who worked at the Criminal Records Office. The message was succinct: PHONE ME. So, having gone back into the living room and closed the door tight, that was exactly what Ransome did.
‘Donny, it’s me.’
‘Christ, man, what time is it?’
‘I just got your message.’
‘It can wait till morning.’ Donny was coughing and spluttering.
‘Spit it out,’ Ransome commanded.
‘Give me a break.’
Ransome listened as Donny got out of bed. A door opened and closed. More coughing and loud sniffles. Another room had been reached, the rustle of papers.
‘Got it here somewhere…’
Ransome was at his own window, staring at the outside world again. A fox cantered down the middle of the road, for all the world as if it owned the place. This time of day, maybe it did at that. Ransome’s street was quiet and tree-lined. The houses were from the 1930s, which kept prices low compared to the Georgian and Victorian properties only half a mile away. The area had been called Saughtonhall when Ransome and Sandra had moved in, but solicitors these days tended to say Corstorphine or even Murrayfield instead, in the hope of adding a few thousand to the price. Sandra and Ransome had even joked for a time about whether their street qualified as ‘South Murrayfield’ or ‘South South Murrayfield’.
Any further south and we’d be on the doorstep of Saughton Prison…
‘Take your time, Donny,’ Ransome muttered into the phone.
‘Here we go.’ A final flourishing of paperwork. ‘Right nasty piece of work.’
‘Who?’
‘The Viking with the tattoos – you asked me to track him down, remember?’
‘Of course I did; sorry, Donny.’
‘His name’s Arne Bodrum. Hails from Copenhagen but spends most of his time elsewhere. Served two years for what we’d probably call GBH. Ran with the Hell’s Angels and is now reckoned to be an enforcer for same, specifically a chapter whose HQ is Haugesund in Norway. It’s thought they make their dough running drugs into countries like Germany and France – not to mention the UK.’
‘That much I already know, Donny. What else have you got?’
‘More along the same lines, plus the guy’s mug shots. The whole lot’ll be on your desk in about three hours.’ Donny paused. ‘Can I go back to my pit now?’
‘Sweet dreams, Donny.’
Ransome ended the call and placed the phone on the windowsill. Hate was acting as a go-between. No… more than that… he was an enforcer. Glenn had said Calloway owed money on a drug deal, the creditors being an overseas Hell’s Angels chapter. It meant Chib was hurting, needing a quick injection of cash. And who did they both know had cash? Step forward, Mike Mackenzie. Or First Caly, come to that – and hello again, Allan Cruikshank. Ransome reckoned this was the sort of thing he could take to the Chief, ask again for a full-scale surveillance and maybe some of those search warrants. He wasn’t stepping on Hendricks’ toes – there was no need to mention the heist – so there’d be no reason to turn him down. If a budget couldn’t be found, Ransome would do the whole thing by himself, gratis and for nothing.
All he needed was permission.
He had walked away from the window and now had his back to it, which was why it took him a moment to realise his phone was vibrating. Incoming calclass="underline" had to be Donny with something else, maybe something crucial. But the sill was narrow and the phone fell to the floor just as Ransome was reaching out towards it. The casing went one way and the memory chip another and the thing went dead. Cursing under his breath, Ransome reassembled the phone, then had to switch it on again. The screen had suffered a fracture, but the LCD display behind it was readable. No messages. He went to last call, didn’t recognise the number, but then he didn’t know Donny’s mobile number, did he? Hit ‘callback’ and pressed the phone to his ear.
‘Thanks for getting back to me, Inspector. I think we were cut off…’
It wasn’t Donny’s voice. Ransome couldn’t place it at all. ‘Sorry, who is this?’ he asked.
Silence at the other end, as though options were being weighed – last chance to hang up, et cetera. And then a clearing of the throat, and when the name was announced Ransome put the face to it straight away. After all, hadn’t he just been thinking about the man? Could this really be happening? Had he dozed off and this was all some bizarrely satisfying dream? First Arne Bodrum, and now this… Ransome sat himself down and crooned his opening words into the mouthpiece.
‘Something must be troubling you, Mr Cruikshank. Why don’t you tell me all about it…?’
Nice of you to drop by,’ Chib Calloway said.
Opening his eyes, Mike knew where he was: the abandoned snooker hall. Chib was standing in front of him. Some way off, Hate was studying the positions of the balls on one of the tables. Five chairs had been arranged in a line, and Mike was seated to the far right, hands tied behind his back, feet strapped to the chair legs. He looked to his left and saw Laura next to him, similarly bound. He gave a low groan of apology in her direction, which she acknowledged with a slow blinking of the eyes. Westie was next along, his own eyes brimming with tears, then came Alice, whose sharp gaze was nothing but venom with Calloway as its target. At the furthest end of the short, unhappy row sat the hapless curator, Jimmy Allison, looking dazed and bereft, and whose only crime had been to become a recognised expert in his field.