Killing With Confidence (11 page)

She felt sorry that
Jayne never enjoyed a drink the same way she had – maybe she’d
be more relaxed if she had. Her daughter insisted that watching her
mother boozing throughout her childhood had put her off. So worried
had she been about her mother’s alcohol consumption, Jayne had once
videotaped April coming in from a boozy night out with her pal Flo.
April and Flo had done a conga through the front door, then
proceeded to perform a Highland fling together in the living room.
The tape ended with April snoring loudly on the couch.

Instead of being
shame-faced by her antics the following morning, April had clipped
Jayne around the ear and warned her not to disrespect her mother in
that way ever again. However, she had shunned drink altogether over
the last few nights for her new addiction, hawking her wares on the
online auction site.

After April had
cleared out the clutter of her spare room her Womble-less Netbook
had been the first to go. Amazingly it sold for just forty pounds
less than she had paid for it as it was almost unused. She then
decided to raid her loft, and swiftly decided that nothing was off
limits from the old record player to some Jack Vettriano prints she
hadn’t got round to framing.

April was amazed
there was a market for her old junk. Every second morning she had
to make a stop at the post office to send various parcels on their
way, while her bank account began to bulge.

April would bore
Connor rigid with the details of her latest wheeling and dealing on
a Monday morning in the broom cupboard. She’d told him last week
how, ‘My aunt Jessie had given me some fine bone china when I got
married for the first time. It’d been too fancy to use as I was
scared to break it. Well, you know how ham-fisted I am. I actually
forgot I had it, but there it was, a complete twenty-four-piece
dining set. £320 I got for that. Well, it’s better off money in the
bank than gathering dust in the attic.’

Disinterested, Connor
had yawned and replied, ‘The pawn shop would’ve given you the same
and you wouldn’t have had to fanny around with post and
packaging.’

April had retorted,
‘And just where is the fun in that?’

In a few weeks’ time
Connor would ask April to flog his Asics Gel-Kayano trainers for
him on eBay. He would wear them only once after they’d served their
purpose.



Connor had
lied his way into the blue group of runners for the Great Scottish
Run, having told the organisers he regularly ran half-marathons in
one hour thirty-five. Being a journo from the country’s biggest
selling newspaper, they gave him a free entry. Now he found himself
surrounded by 15,000 other eager souls on a bright Sunday morning
in George Square, ready to pound 13.1 miles around the
city.

Covering crime for
the
Daily Herald
sometimes gave Connor a distorted view of
society. In his world it was all knife and gun crime with revenge
slashings and shootings, along with drugs and the highly organised
criminals who supplied them. Elsewhere in the paper were stories of
the country’s increasing adult and childhood obesity, with warnings
that we’d soon all be waddling around like fat Americans. But here
was the very antithesis of all that. Thousands upon thousands of
fit people, most of who were running for charitable causes. There
was camaraderie about them, like one massive football team where
everyone played for the same side. Connor liked how it made him
feel, to be amongst good folk.

DCI Crosbie was
thinking the exact same thought as he basked in the feeling of
goodwill. Connor and Crosbie had a lot in common. They were the
same age, where ambition has been replaced by weariness, but they
also missed absolutely nothing.

It was Crosbie who
spotted the reporter first. Like many coppers he never forgot a
face, but this one was out of context and Crosbie couldn’t place
him at first. Then the penny dropped. ‘The
Daily
cunting
Herald
. What does that fucking arsehole want?’

The crime reporter
soon managed to manoeuvre into position alongside the detective.
Without giving Connor even a sideways glance, Crosbie enquired,
‘First time?’

Connor had been found
out. ‘How did you know?’

Crosbie turned ever
so slightly towards Connor and smiled. ‘Well, for starters, there’s
the spanking new trainers. Then you’ve left the price tag on your
running top, and if you will forgive me for being overly personal,
you also have a slight beer belly. I’m afraid you don’t have to be
Sherlock Holmes to figure out you haven’t run a race since school
sports day. Oh, and just a little aside, your picture by-line
wasn’t taken yesterday either.’

Connor had to laugh.
He’d been well and truly busted. He hadn’t run since school and his
by-line pic was at least a decade old. But Crosbie’s friendly
demeanour gave him hope that he may be able to develop some sort of
relationship with him. He took a gamble by giving the cop a taste
of his own medicine.

‘Okay. Well, I see a
man who keeps himself to himself, who is bound by a sense of duty
but hates the politics involved with his rank. Someone who has
resisted recent promotion opportunities, because it takes him
further away from solving crime and feeling the collar of bad guys.
Someone who is determined to catch the killers of Selina Seth and,
just as importantly, Jackie McIvor. And someone who hasn’t had a
chance lately to run nearly as much as he’d like.’

Crosbie turned to
eyeball Connor again, staying momentarily silent. He eventually
said, ‘I would have told you to piss off until you said “killers”
and not “killer”. Glad to see you don’t actually believe the guff
your newspaper churns out.’

Crosbie knew he was
being disingenuous to the
Daily Herald
, a paper he secretly
liked. He’d also been reading Connor Presley’s articles for years.
He liked his style. His reports were always well informed and well
written. Connor didn’t tend to go in for flyers – when a grain
of truth is spun up into something it’s not. Some hacks didn’t even
start with anything as small as a grain.

In fact Crosbie had
often wondered what it would have been like to be in Connor’s
shoes. Not that he would ever let the journo know that. ‘Run with
me,’ he said warmly, before adding with a grin, ‘and see how long
you can keep up with the Glasgow polis.’



As Connor
was pounding the streets of Glasgow, April Lavender was also about
to indulge in a rare bout of exercise. She looked down at the spare
tyres of fat that rippled out beyond her ample bosom, all covered
by a straining layer of lilac-hued swimming costume and topped with
a matching frilly hat. ‘I look like the Sugar Plum Fairy,’ she
thought.

By any standards she
was quite a sight. To make matters worse, April was also terrified
of water, even though she would only be thrashing around in the
shallow end. She felt better when she saw a fellow Sugar Plum Fairy
self-consciously make her way into the pool.

‘Glad to see I have
another skinny supermodel for company,’ April grinned.

Both women roared
with laughter. ‘Well, at least we’re trying – got to give us
Brownie points for that,’ replied the stranger, before offering her
hand and introducing herself. ‘I’m Celia.’

‘And I’m April.
Pleased to meet you.’

With that the two
new-found friends entered the shallows together, like a pair of
hippos.



Osiris
pushed his frame as far back into the driver’s seat as he
could.

The prostitute he’d
picked up was clearly stoned. She fumbled at his belt buckle and
zip, before lazily giving him oral sex. Osiris was barely aroused.
He stroked the back of the prostitute’s vulnerable neck, like a cat
toying with its prey. She felt him stiffen considerably.

He loved the feeling
of life or death he held in his hands. There were more reasons to
kill her than not, but Osiris had bigger fish to fry. Osiris came,
before grabbing a handful of the prostitute’s hair and stuffing a
twenty-pound note into her mouth. Her eyes widened with shock. He
slapped her hard then snarled, ‘Now fuck off, you slut, before I
change my mind,’ and pushed her roughly onto the street, where she
scurried off like a frightened animal.

He always felt dirty
after sex and cursed himself. ‘Fucking whore – should have
made her a mercy killing.’

The wheels of his red
Mondeo spun wildly as he sped off into the night.

21

Bored Stiff

Connor
walked through the doors of the Peccadillo café safe in the
knowledge that April would be eating and baffling the waiting staff
as usual. Even from a distance he could tell that his
crime-fighting colleague was tucking into a particularly hearty
breakfast. He sat down opposite her, and she immediately started
speaking through mouthfuls of food. ‘Oh, hello, how are …’
Connor presumed she’d said ‘you’ but couldn’t quite make it out as
she sent speckles of half-chewed breakfast spraying in his general
direction.

April talked with her
mouth full a lot, partly because she ate continuously and partly
because she was always so friendly with folk she treated them like
family. Connor often had to transfer calls from April’s daughter
Jayne to her phone as both mother and daughter were incapable of
remembering April’s direct line. Jayne was usually eating at the
same time as her mother on the opposite end of the phone, causing
Connor to remark on more than one occasion how the apple hadn’t
fallen very far from the tree. Knowing the Lavender girls, they’d
have eaten the apple, too.

April was in a
particularly anxious mood this morning. ‘Let me tell you what
happened with Jayne this weekend. Well, you know how she and Jon
are getting divorced …’

Connor tuned out.
He’d heard every minute detail of Jayne and Jon’s strung-out
separation. He sat dead-eyed as April launched into the next boring
chapter of ‘he said that’ and ‘she did what’. It reminded Connor of
his own childhood when his own parents had separated. Dad had left
for a younger woman and seemed to be very happy with his new
arrangement. Mum, on the other hand, made her sole reason for
living the destruction of Dad’s newfound happiness. Everything was
used as a bargaining tool – birthdays, Christmases, holidays.
All of them tinged with the sadness that can only be brought on by
increasingly bitter parents who’d made Connor
piggy-in-the-middle.

He didn’t dwell much
on his past – there was nothing but heartache there. Now,
apart from his work, he lived his own life free of confrontation,
partly because he’d never entered into a steady relationship. Sure,
he’d had plenty of girls, but the thrill of the chase soon
evaporated on the third or fourth night they slept together. Connor
wasn’t the type to blame his commitment-phobia baggage on his
parents. As far as he was concerned his choices meant he was able
to live the way he chose, and not having screaming matches every
night was top of his agenda.

April gestured to pay
her bill, but when they both went to stand up they grimaced
simultaneously. Their weekend exercise had left them stiff as
boards. April laughed, ‘Look at the state of us – what a
couple of old crocks.’



The Weasel
didn’t allow the Special Investigations unit the luxury of taking
their jackets off before he began barking instructions at them in
his charmless style. ‘New week, same old serial killer on the
loose.’

Connor corrected him.
‘There are actually two killers on the loose.’

The Weasel continued
as if Connor hadn’t spoken. ‘What did you find out from that plod,
Crosbie?’

‘Ah,’ said Connor as
if he’d only just remembered, ‘that’s something I need to speak to
you and Bent about.’

The Weasel visibly
bristled. Connor couldn’t tell whether it was from his brazenness
at requesting a meeting with the editor or the contemptuous use of
his master’s surname.

‘Ten o’clock,’ he
snarled and slammed the broom cupboard door behind him.

Connor turned round
to see April’s eager face staring back at him.

‘Gosh, this sounds
exciting. What are we going to speak them about?’ she beamed.

Connor stared at her
ageing moon face in silence for a moment, before muttering under
his breath, ‘Different planet – she’s on a different
planet.’

Half an hour later,
at precisely 9.59 a.m., the Weasel chapped impatiently on the broom
cupboard’s door, which was a first.

‘I didn’t think he
knew how to knock,’ said Connor. ‘Let the bastards stew a few
minutes more.’ He giggled to himself.

April had just nipped
off for one of her regular loo breaks, keeping Bent and the Weasel
waiting even longer.

Connor decided to get
the meeting started without her. April’s flustered late arrival
would irritate the fastidious Bent anyway. Striding purposefully
into the editor’s office he didn’t bother with any
pleasantries – none given, none received. Instead, he quickly
outlined the subbed-down version of the conversation he’d had with
Crosbie and the special request the DCI had made.

‘And this flatfoot
has promised us the exclusive? He won’t go giving it to everyone
else at the eleventh hour?’ the Weasel snarled.

‘Nope – doesn’t
like dealing with the press, but he seems to have liked our
coverage, despite our front page linking the deaths of Seth and
McIvor, which was a pile of crap, to paraphrase Crosbie. But he’s
willing to overlook that to work exclusively with us.’

Connor let his
statement hang in the room knowing full well the two men before him
had planned that front page together, despite Connor’s insistence
it was inaccurate. They were dumbstruck by his bluntness. Finally,
Bent broke the tension. ‘Well, I don’t like it. I don’t like it one
bit. I think your DCI Crosbie plans to use us,’ he said, spitting
out the words. ‘I think it’s time the
Daily Herald
brought
this killer to justice since the cops seem to be incapable of
catching him.’