Beast of Burden (31 page)

“I can sort—”

“You can sort nowt,” says Tiernan. “Because I've got an idea who killed Mo, and it wasn't Alison.”

I watch Tiernan, don't say anything. Pray that we don't have to go round the Lads' Club.

Behind me, I can hear Darren come down the stairs.

And I stop breathing.

DONKIN

Getting late now, but Gray still had a light burning in the window. As I headed for the doors, I hoped that Constable John would keep his fucking head down. I wanted to keep this quiet for the moment and while everyone in here knew us, they'd think bad thoughts if I came back with a uniform.

Besides, I had a fucking rep to think about. If I was going to walk in there, I'd walk in alone. The constable was back-up, not part of the team.

And I was the gunslinger, hefting open the double doors and catching the glare of the bright strips right in the eyes. When I got my vision back, I reckoned the place was pretty much empty apart from the black flies that danced in front of my eyes.

“For fuck's sake.”

I squinted in the direction of the voice. It was Gray, standing there with a mug in his hand. “Yeah,” I said. “I want a word with you.”

“Thought we'd been through what we had to say.”

“No.”

“In fact, what I should do is call the police. Y'know, the
active
police.”

“Can if you want. But I'm not here to cause any trouble.”

“Says you.”

“Won't take long.”

Gray watched us for a few seconds like he was taking a fucking inventory of the damage, then he drank from his mug and turned away. “If you're really on your best behaviour, you might as well step into the office.”

There was me thinking I'd have a problem. But no, he was calm as. Maybe he felt sorry for us on account of I looked like a sack of bruises. I followed him out to the back of the place. Into the office, and there was that Frank bloke propped up in a chair, reading a wodge of papers. When he saw us, he moved his feet from the desk and glanced at Gray.

“Everything alright?” he said.

“Yeah,” said Gray. “Might want to give us a minute, mind.”

“Sure, no problem.” Frank moved from the desk, pulled his jacket off the back of his chair. “I should be off anyway.”

We watched the big lad go. Gray shut the office door and I said, “What'd he do?”

“Sorry?”

“It's been bugging us. He did time, didn't he?”

“Yes.”

“So what was it?”

“Armed robbery.”

“Huh,” I said. “He doesn't seem the type.”

“He's not. Which is why he got caught.”

“So where's his partner?”

Gray didn't say anything. Leaned against a desk and folded his arms. “We've been through this. And I thought you agreed that you wouldn't come round here looking for him.”

“You went through it. This is different.”

“Yeah, it's important, right?”

“That's right.”

“And you're doing it nicely, because you can't throw your weight around. Because I don't have to answer a single fucking question you throw my way.”

I smiled. “I know that. And there's no need to look so fuckin' smug about it, is there? Specially when your boy's in the shit.”

“I've heard that before an' all.”

“He been missing before?”

“He's not missing.”

“He's not at home.”

“Yeah, so—

“And he's not here, unless you've got him hid in a fuckin' cupboard somewhere. Which means, to
me
, that he's missing. So. Here I am. Looking for him.”

“Why?”

“None of your fuckin' business.”

“It is when I'm the one forced to listen to your bollocks” he said, straightening up. “You want to play that game—

“There's a police constable outside in my car,” I said.

Gray stopped flapping his gums for a second. Another second passed and it sank in. “How bad is it?”

“We need to make an arrest tonight.”

“Who?”

I didn't bother to answer that. Made a face like it was fucking obvious, wasn't it? Gray stared at us, waiting for us to say someone else, anyone but Innes. But I didn't.

“What for?”

“He's going to help us with our enquiries.”

“What's the charge?”

“At the moment?” I scratched my ear. “Lad's looking at murder, but a good brief'll get it knocked down to manslaughter, I reckon.”

See, now that did something to the poof — made his skin crawl, got him all antsy. You mention murder to an average pleb, they don't take you seriously. Murder's the remit of the telly and movies, not something that worms its way into an average life unless you're either unhinged or unlucky. But you mention it to someone who's done time, you watch the skin crawl right off his fucking body.

He breathed out through his nose. “Who?”

“Who the fuck d'you think?”

“Mo?”

“No prizes.”

“He didn't do it.”

“Oh, well, that's a fuckin' relief. There was me, I thought he had something to do with it on account of he physically assaulted Mo about six months ago, threatened to kill him if he ever saw him again. In front of a pub full of witnesses. And then there's the history the two of them had. And the fact that he was on the fuckin' crime scene the night the body was called in, with blood on that walking stick of his like he'd just used it to beat the shit out of a corpse. So you've got to understand, even if he
didn't
do it, it's pretty easy for me to
surmise
that he's got
something
the fuck to do with it.” I rolled my shoulders, gave the poof a good hard stare. “But if you reckon he didn't have nowt to do with it, then that's good enough for me, isn't it? I might as well fuck off home.”

Gray watched me, caught every syllable of my sarcasm and swallowed the anger, even though it was a tough fucking gulp. Because he knew I was right; he'd been around the bastard long enough to know he'd had something to do with Mo's death. And for a second, I reckoned it might be worth bringing
him
in.

Then I figured, nah. I had to focus on my target here. Couldn't waste PC John on this nonce.

“You can't pin this on him,” he said.

“I'm not pinning nowt. Just enquiries at the moment.”

“You want to bring him in and sweat him.”

“And you need to call him,” I said. “Right now. Before this gets fuckin' daft and we both do stuff we'll regret.”

“No.”

“Then I can't vouch for his safety.”

“You're the fuckin'
threat
to his safety,” said Gray.

“You can't honestly believe that, Paul,” I said. “Because if you do, then you're an ignorant bastard — you honestly expect us to believe you don't know he's working for Tiernan again?”

Gray didn't say anything. He pushed off the desk. Made for the door, but I got in his way.

“What?” All aggressive now. “You want to start something, Detective?”

“No,” I said, trying to be as open as fucking possible. “You know he's working for Tiernan, and you've been around here long enough to know what kind of bloke Tiernan is. And what he fuckin'
isn't
is the forgive-and-forget type. So you know, the slightest fuckin'
breath
of your boy being involved in Mo's death — and there's going to be more than a fuckin' breath, you give it a couple days — and he's dead.”

“Fuck off.”

“He's dead. Because Tiernan doesn't take any prisoners. You know that. He can't afford to, especially not when it's his son that's been killed. He has to tie up all loose ends, and fuck's sake, your boy's out there flapping in the breeze, isn't he? I don't know what the fuck he's trying to pull, but he won't make it.”

“Because of you,” said Gray. And there was a genuine accusation in his voice. “Because you'll bring him in. Doesn't matter that he didn't do it, you're going to pin it on him. So he's dead anyway, right?”

“Not if we do this right,” I said, raising both hands. “I want to do this the right way. That's why I brought the constable along. He's the one who'll make the official arrest, and we'll do this by the book, and I'll do everything I can for him.”

“He didn't do it.”

“Makes no difference.”

Gray moves away from us, heads back to the desk. He looks down into his mug, looks like he's going to have another drink, then passes by. If I didn't know better, I'd swear the bloke was about to start fucking crying. I knew he wasn't, right enough — he
couldn't
have been — but he was emotional enough to listen.

“There's only one way out of this,” I said. “And that's with me.”

Gray put one hand on the desk. A part of us reckoned he was feeling around for a weapon. Then he said, “What do I have to do?”

“Call him,” I said. “Get him to come here. We'll do it nice and quiet, won't be any trouble for you.”

He looked at the phone. Put one hand on the receiver.

“Then it'll be over,” I said. “Promise you, on my daughter's life, I won't bother you again.”

Then Paulo Gray looked up at us. His eyes were dry, his jaw set.

He picked up the phone, started dialling a number.

“I'll take you up on that,” he said.

And, looking at him, I didn't doubt it for a fucking second.

INNES

It's ringing.

Somewhere through that red fog that means I can't see, can't hear, can't move without pain, I can hear my mobile ringing. Bringing me out of unconsciousness and into a fresh, stinging reality where every breath feels like it's made of smoke, and the smell of shit and piss and blood and sweat hang heavy. I can't move. Can't even think about moving because the thought alone puts me on a bad route.

“Shit.”

Cutting through the haze. Tiernan's voice. A low growl, thick in his throat. Then there are hands on me, and they feel like they're made of fucking metal, gouging into my flesh. He's rifling through my pockets, but he might as well be wrenching out my fucking organs and throwing them to the floor.

“Dad. Don't.”

“You still here?”

“Yeah. So's Sam.”

“I told you to go to the bonfire, love.”

“I can't take him to the bonfire.”

“Why? Kids love fireworks.”

“Not Sam. He doesn't like them. They're too noisy.”

“Then he has to get used to them, doesn't he?”

“No, Dad, he doesn't.”

“It's going to happen every year. You don't want to have to tranquillise him, do you?”

“He's not a
dog
, Dad.”

“But he needs to go out for a walk, right? Busy here.”

“We've
been
for a walk, Dad. Remember?”

“Huh.”

And there's a moment where I picture Morris Tiernan standing there, his vest wet with my blood and spit, looking at me like he's wondering where all the time went. Then one hand clamps on my hip, I jerk like I've been shocked, and a weight moves from my pocket. I try to breathe out slowly, but it feels like boiling hot liquid spilling out of my throat.

“Fuckin' things.”

“Dad,” says Alison. “Seriously. If Sam hears you swearing, he's going to copy it, alright?”

The ringing stops. Tiernan breathes out. “Alright. Okay. Sorry, love.”

“And I'm not bringing him in here,” she says. “The mess you've made.”

“Yeah.” Tiernan sniffs. “Might want to put him to bed?”

“I will. But get it cleaned up. Properly, okay?”

“Right.”

“I mean it, Dad. I want it spotless.”

“I heard you. I'll get Darren in. You won't know we've been here.”

The kid screams from outside the door. The sound is enough to make me flinch on the floor. Alison tells the boy she's coming, but there's a pause before she leaves. I'm guessing she's shooting her father a glare.

Then there's nothing but silence apart from the sound of my own wet, sick breathing.

Tiernan shuffles his feet against the lino. He says, “You better be awake, Innes.”

I cough.

“Good.”

Another shuffle.

Then he plants one in my head that knocks me out.

The smell of pine in here. The slow, steady thrum of a car engine. The SUV. I'm on the floor in the back of the van, and when I move there's a plastic sound, which means they've taken the precaution of lining the fucking floor.

Just in case they have to wrap and dump my body somewhere.

And it's not far off. I should know. I've been there before. And there's that same smell in the air around me that I can't shake off. It's cloying, a musty mixture of sweat and urine that's overpowering enough to make me want to pass out. But I can't do that. Because if I do that, I know I won't wake up again. Something jarred loose in my head. I can almost hear it rattling around in there. Unconsciousness would mean it slides right into the fleshy part of my brain and then that'll be it.

Can't happen. Not the way Tiernan's talking now. Staring right at where he thinks I am in the rear view. Darren — or someone who smells just like him — is driving. He hasn't said anything the entire time I've been awake.

“… you hear me?”

I hear you, Morris.

“Think I'm daft, Callum, you ought to know me better than that by now. Thought we had an understanding. I don't know. Since the Newcastle thing — I told you I appreciated that, right? Well, since the Newcastle thing, I thought I could count on you as part of the … extended family. I thought if I had a problem, I could come to you and you'd help me out. That was certainly the way you seemed to approach the situation. But to have you mess us around like this …”

I hear a sigh from the front seat. Tiernan turns to Darren.

“You know what it's like, Darren? You trust someone and they play silly buggers with you.”

Darren grunts.

“Because that's all it is, Callum,” he said, back staring at me now. “I don't know what you thought you were playing at, trying to make us believe my own daughter was involved, when I know for a fact she wasn't and wouldn't have owt to do with Mo. I mean, you were all adamant about this hair or whatever, but you honestly think you're the only bloke I asked to look into this?”

I shift a little on the floor of the van. Try not to let the fear show on the working half of my face. When I move my features I realised that it's unlikely, considering I'm swollen to fuck. Tiernan doesn't see me, anyway. He might call me by my name, but he's talking to a bloke he didn't just pound into shit.