One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night (30 page)

She ran out of words, sighing, closing her eyes. When she opened them again she was looking away. Davie felt banjoed by the sheer weight of what she’d been carrying around with her all this time. He watched her blink away more tears, then reached into his pocket for a paper hanky.

Seek no absolution
: his penance and his protector; his pain and his strength; and, most of all, his guide. But still, it didn’t say anything about dishing it out. The very least she deserved was the truth, the substance of which forced out a small laugh.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘I think you must have gone aboot school wi’ your eyes shut, Catherine,’ he told her. ‘Do you no’ remember who I was? The way you’re talkin’, it sounds like some storybook act of chivalrous gallantry, for which the hero was unjustly imprisoned. It wasnae. I was a fuckin’ nutcase, an absolute class-A bam. I was on aboot ten last warnin’s fae the polis an’ the panel an’ everybody else by the time that happened. An’ if I hadnae been sent away for that, then it would have been for somethin’ else no’ long after.

‘Get this straight: I wasnae comin’ to your rescue that night. I was in the art room because I was bored o’ the disco an’ I was lookin’ for glue to sniff. When Deek dragged you in, I didnae see your face, because all I needed to see was an excuse. Bang: you were my maw, he was my da, if you want some cheap retro‐
psychology. I just waded in. You’d nothin’ to do wi’ it.’

Catherine looked even less sure of herself, but that was understandable: he’d thieved her sackcloth, so now she was naked. She tried to steal some back.

‘But you must have hated me – hated whoever the girl was.’

‘Oh Christ, aye. Fuckin’ bitch. This was what I got for tryin’ to help somebody. If I’d just left that lassie tae her fate, nane o’ this other shite would’ve happened. All that stuff. Loads o’ that stuff. Damn right I hated whoever she was – it was a big comfort to have somebody else to blame for everythin’. Better that than if I’d got sent away just for hammerin’ some poor bastard who never deserved it.’

Davie shifted position on the floor, turning to face her more directly.

‘See, the biggest fuck‐
ups you meet inside are the guys who cannae stop hangin’ on to one wee thing that wasnae their fault, one wee thing that they think, if it hadnae been for that, everythin’ would be different. “If that tube had just minded his ain fuckin’ business, I’d never have ended up glassin’ him, an’ I wouldnae be in here.” Because no matter how long or short you’re inside for, you never really get out – up here, I mean – until you cut all that shite loose.

‘I did terrible things, Catherine, believe me. Inside an’ out. I tortured people. I mutilated people. I inflicted damage an’ pain like it was a fuckin’ religion. I could’ve improvised a lethal weapon oot a bag o’ marshmallows if it was the only thing to hand. That’s who I was; and I know that that’s who I still am and always will be. But the difference now is that I can choose not to do those things, a choice I couldnae make until I’d accepted that the person makin’ it was me. I could blame the prison system for a lot of it – an’ I still do blame the fuckin’ prison system for a lot of it – but it had to be
me
that changed. Otherwise I’d still be there, in the endless circle of gettin’ fucked by it, retaliatin’, then gettin’ fucked again.’

Catherine squeezed his hand. ‘I feel kind of daft now,’ she said. ‘But it’s been with me for so long. Now and then I’d forget about it, but something would always bring it back, so when this reunion thing came along …’

He returned the squeeze. ‘Cut it loose,’ he told her. ‘Cut all the shite loose.’

She nodded, even managing half a smile.

‘Okay. Consider it cut.’

‘Good. Now all you need to worry aboot is gettin’ oot o’ this place alive.’

This stuff went all the way back to his schooldays, he knew. He’d never been able to shake it off, it had always transmogrified itself to become part of whatever he was doing; in fact, when he looked back now, he saw that it had probably
dictated
what he was doing. Since he was eleven years old, William Connor had been striving to impress Finlay Dawson. The stupidest thing was that he didn’t even fucking like him.

He and Dawson had met at Craiglethen College, south of Edinburgh, where mere alphabetical juxtaposition threw them together in their first class, seating Connor, last of the Cs, at a double desk next to Dawson, first of the Ds. It was as arbitrary as that. Very few of the boys knew each other, so for the eternity of that first morning, the person you’d been plonked beside was the only one you could talk to.

Dawson was probably as lost and apprehensive as everyone else, but Connor found himself looking up to him almost immediately. He always had just that little bit more: a few centimetres taller, a few months older; he was a boarder while Connor was a day‐
boy; his father was a colonel while Connor’s was a farmer; he’d been to Murrayfield while Connor had only been to the Melrose Sevens.

Thus began the unfulfilled lifelong quest for his approval.

Connor made schoolmates that he got on better with, that he had a better laugh with, but if anyone asked who his best friend was, he’d have told them Dawson, even though he knew Dawson was unlikely to give a reciprocal answer. It wasn’t that Dawson had better friends; more that Dawson wouldn’t have a ‘best friend’ anyway. He was always very self‐
sufficient and even slightly aloof, which in retrospect Connor could see made his endorsement all the more desirable. It was also, however, eternally unobtainable.

In later years he heard someone say of Dawson’s haughtiness, ‘If he hasn’t eaten it, he’s fucked it’, but that expression usually carried the inference that the subject was lying. In Connor’s experience, Dawson had always been hard to impress because he usually
did
have something that beat your hand. For instance, when Connor finally persuaded his parents to buy him a Chopper like Dawson’s, with its nifty three‐
speed stickshift in the middle, he returned after the summer to find that Dawson had moved on to a racer, with drop‐
handlebars and a
ten
‐
speed lever‐
gear system.

And, of course, when it came to their shared fascination with and ambition of soldiery, Dawson, with his family’s military background, was always at an advantage. Connor owned a Dinky model of a Chieftain tank; Dawson had been
inside
a Chieftain tank. Connor had been to the Imperial War Museum; Dawson’s house
was
the Imperial War Museum.

Even on the rare occasions when he was bested, Dawson had a way of making you feel that the things you were good at mattered less than the things he was good at. Connor may have won the mile race, but it was the sprint that was the big one. Connor might be better at the javelin, but the discus, well, that was the event that took
real
skill.

Military life had been much the same. As things worked out, they didn’t see that much of each other down the years, but when their paths did cross, Dawson was always that rank higher; his unit had always seen that bit more action. Then when later they both turned mercenary, Dawson always seemed to be making that bit more money, operating that bit higher up the chain.

Christ, he thought, here he’d been, all his days, trying to measure up to this indifferent cypher, in whose presence he felt instantly inadequate. It was pathetic. He reflected that if he became a billionaire and he found Dawson rotting in a gutter, he’d probably start wondering why he’d never had the vision or the balls to throw away all the pressures and trappings for the free life of a tramp.

When Connor decided to put together his own outfit, harvesting some of the respect his career and abilities had sown among his peers, there was an excruciating inevitability that Dawson should turn out to be his first employer: that one bloody place above him again. It also seemed inevitable that things wouldn’t go to plan, the way you were bound to have your worst game on the rugby field the one day your girlfriend came along to watch. For that reason he should have passed on the job, spared himself the grief and waited until he had the right personnel before tendering for any business.

Nonetheless, there were bigger reasons why he couldn’t refuse, not least the huge payout that was up for grabs at a time when start‐
up capital would come in very handy indeed. There was also the low‐
risk factor – unsuspecting, unarmed civilians; isolated location; limited response options – ideal for a debut outing. (This was countered ever so slightly by the operation being criminal rather than military, but that was an issue of morality, not logistics.)

However, the most irresistible reason was, quite simply, that Dawson needed him. No matter what shine he wanted to put on it, or how patronising he would doubtless act, for once Dawson couldn’t do without Connor, and the self‐
satisfied bastard knew that. Since the old sheik snuffed it and the new regime turfed him out, Dawson had found himself at a bit of a loose end, having been effectively off‐
the‐
market for such a long time. So when some dodgy associate of Dawson’s threw him the floating‐
resort scenario (in exchange, no doubt, for a reflective slice of the proceeds), he knew his next alternative pay‐
packet could well be a long way off: short notice or not, he had to grasp the opportunity. And to do that, he needed the help of his old school chum, William Connor.

This morning’s fiasco had been everything he feared, presided over infuriatingly by Dawson’s practised look of laboured, pitying tolerance. However, since then, Connor had delivered a smooth and ordered operation, the pieces slotting into place seamlessly and on schedule. The set‐
up was necessarily more streamlined on account of the various personnel they had lost, but, if anything, he felt it was running more efficiently as a result. In the field it was often the case that the less room there was for mistakes, the less you tended to make them.

Dawson could have little reason for complaint.

Primary incursion: undetected and bang on schedule. Communications rendered inoperable, telephone links under control.

Secondary incursion: undetected and bang on schedule. Defensive rocket teams in position. Watch details deployed. Elevators and alarm systems deactivated. Even the inevitable rogue factor – a stray member of staff spotting Booth in Hotel B – had been dealt with cleanly and without raising alarm.

Assault on ballroom: hostages brought swiftly under control, no casualties, bang on schedule. The only blemish (literally) had been that bloke in the air vent puking on him, but compared to what Connor had already been soaked in that day, it wasn’t worth getting too upset about. He’d been obliged to give the guy a bit of a going over,
pour encourager les autres
, but decided to cut it short when that woman intervened, mainly because he didn’t want Dawson thinking he’d lost his cool.

The fact that there were still a few civvies unaccounted for at that stage was nothing to be alarmed about: they couldn’t have expected absolutely everyone to be conveniently assembled in the ballroom when they made their move. That one of the strays happened to be Hutchison was unfortunate, but hardly a crippling setback. They’d get him soon enough. Everything was under control.

Dawson’s announcement that he was going for a walk was a typical piece of pantomime. Connor had delivered on everything else, so the prick had to make a big deal about the one little detail that wasn’t quite there – yet. But it would be. Damn right it would be.

Connor decided to lead the search himself, determined that they should get a result before Dawson came back from ‘taking the air’. The pompous bastard might be wearing a ski‐
mask, but Connor knew he would still be able to read that can’t‐
you‐
get‐
anything‐
right expression in his eyes if Hutchison was still missing when he returned.

He put Jackson in charge of the hostages: given Acks’ earlier reservations, it was the best way of ensuring the situation in the ballroom stayed calm and stable. If the other two monkeys started fucking around with the prisoners, Jackson would rip them a new one.

Connor deployed sentries on each stairway, then divided the rest of the men into two units: one would start from the bottom, the other from the top. He reminded them that stealth was still a consideration, because if their target was several floors up, he might not have heard the gunfire and could be blissfully unaware of what was going on below. Very blissfully, if Dawson had guessed right about what Hutchison might be up to. There was even a chance, in that case, that when they overrode the doorlock system, it would bring Hutchison downstairs of his own accord, to investigate what was going on. However, realistically he might also be cowering in a cupboard, so the orders were to comb every inch.

Connor’s team worked from the top, Gaghen’s from the bottom. The computer had said Hutchison was quartered in the Orchid suite, so Connor started there. No booting‐
down‐
doors stuff: they quietly turned the handle and moved rapidly inside. The bed hadn’t been slept in – or indeed anything else. Connor looked underneath it while Dobson went through the walk‐
in wardrobe and Pettifer checked the terrace. Dobson climbed on a chair to remove one of the ceiling tiles, then Pettifer gave him a leg‐
up to investigate whether anyone was hiding in the cavity above. Still no joy. Satisfied that it was empty, Connor pulled them out and they began repeating the drill methodically, suite by suite.

They laboriously swept four of the bloody things without finding so much as a fugitive midge, all the time Connor glancing anxiously at his watch. Then he got a call from Jardine, who was posted outside the Laguna’s front entrance, to say that he’d noticed lights on in one of the rooms. Connor ordered his own men to continue their systematic search, then headed downstairs to meet Gaghen, Quinn and McIntosh on the third floor.

Jardine described the location relative to the central stairway (‘fourth balcony to the left’), so that they were sure they had the right room. The four of them moved along the corridor in near‐
silence, barely the clink of a belt‐
clip to be heard as they delicately cushioned their footfalls. Quinn and McIntosh took position either side of the prescribed door, from beyond which they could hear nothing. Gaghen looked to Connor for a signal. He gave the nod. Gaghen gripped the handle and quickly turned it, throwing the door to the wall and charging inside. His speed meant he’d gone four or five feet before they noticed that the room was in complete darkness.