Shrike (Book 2): Rampant (11 page)

My phone buzzes against my chest. One street away from Tasha's, I halt, crouching by a chimney on a roof to pull it out and look. It's an SMS from Taog.

Northwest window
is all it says.

I can see the northwest window of Tasha's house from where I am. I text back.
How many did she see?

Waiting, I look for any sign of movement. He's got to still be on the line with her, or he would have said something. 

Still just the one,
he responds.

Shite. If it's just one, it could be Granger. If it's her, I can't let her see me first or she'll hit me with that stun gun again. And if I know Granger, she'll have upped the voltage.

In spite of the trepidation I feel approaching, my chest fills with fierce excitement. If it's Granger, I can get her. I can stop this. 

I army crawl across the rooftop toward Tasha's house, eyes trained on the rhododendron in front of her northwest window. It's a hulking plant, twice as tall as a full-grown person and with more than enough space inside for one person to hide out.

The movement when I see it doesn't come from the bushes. I see a hunched-over shape shift behind a small Fiat parked on the street. It's too dark even for me to make out whether that shape is Granger or not. I have to get closer. 

The houses here are staggered, and there's a drainpipe wedged in the corner between Tasha's and her next-door neighbour's. I use the two foot outcropping to shimmy down the pipe, making sure my feet land in the mulch and not the gravel someone dumped at the base of the pipe. I don't see any more movement behind the car, and I fall into a crouch on my side of the short fence separating Tasha's garden from the one I'm in.

I circle out wide, using trees and my speed to keep me hidden. No one would see me unless they already knew exactly where I was, and if anyone's seen me so far, I deserve to be caught.

The shape is there, dark against the pearlescent grey paint of the Fiat. Ten yards away. The person's body is oriented in the direction of Tasha's garden, and as I watch, they lean around the rear of the vehicle to look again.

I pounce, leaping onto their back and spinning them to land face down on the street before they can make a sound. My left leather glove seals off their mouth, and my right hand pins their arms together behind their back.

It's not Granger.

"Who are you?" I hiss the question, removing my left hand from the woman's mouth.

"Tamara Hayes, police!" 

I let her go and hop back, staying crouched behind the Fiat. She turns herself over in one smooth movement, removing a handgun from her belt. When she sees me, though, she slides it back into the holster. 

"I'm on the surveillance detail for Tasha Smith," she says. She coughs, massaging her throat.

"Sorry about that," I say. "If you're on surveillance, why are you letting yourself be seen?"

She starts, then darts a glance at Tasha's home.

"She rang a mate of mine because she saw someone skulking around outside of her house. You lot are supposed to stay out of sight, not hide in the bushes or behind Italian cars."

I hear a beep from Tamara Hayes's belt, and she pulls out a radio. "I'm fine, Jack," she says. "Shrike."

Succinct. 

I pull out my mobile and send Taog a text to tell Tasha she's fine.

A moment later, a man emerges from the rhododendron. He stands next to Tamara, looking me over with distrust written in the tension of his shoulders. 

"So you're not alerting the people you're protecting to your presence?" I ask. They're supposed to be out of sight so Granger can't see them, but they're not meant to be terrifying the very people they're supposed to be keeping alive.

"We were told not to," Jack says, looking to Tamara for corroboration. She nods.

"By whom?"

"Sergeant Trevor McLean."

Bollocks, Trevor. What are you up to? 

"Carry on, then. But I'm telling Tasha you're out here so she doesn't think you're the ones trying to off her."

"We have orders —"

"Bugger your orders. She already knows you're here, because she thought there was an intruder. What am I supposed to tell her, that I shooed away the bad robber-slash-murderer and she can sleep safely?" I don't wait for their responses. "I'll deal with Trevor."

I ring Trevor from his doorstep and barely wait for him to unlatch the door before barging in on him. "Your people scared Tasha half to death," I say. "And the whole point of this is to keep her all the way alive."

"Good evening to you too," says Trevor. Evening's one way to call after midnight.

He looks different out of uniform, which only stands to reason. He's just over six feet tall and, though he had a bit of a forming beer belly when I met him, looks as though he's dropped weight faster than his wardrobe budget could keep up. His white t-shirt hangs from his shoulders like a cotton sack, and I can see from where I stand that the belt holding up his trousers is two notches past the worn, tattered crease that's now tucked through a loop. He doesn't look happy to see me, and I can't really blame him. But I don't have time to mince words.

"Something's got to change," I tell him. "Either you need to let these people know they're being watched by the police for their own safety, or you need to be prepared for them to all think their conspiracies and paranoia are justified. Because how do you think they're going to feel when they find out there are bobbies camped on their doorsteps watching their every move?"

Trevor gestures to a chair in his salon, and I plunk myself down. I don't take off my mask or my boots, and he pads into the room in his stocking feet, sitting across from me. "Bloody hell. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. My superiors are the ones who gave the orders not to tell these people they've grown tails. Even putting people on them didn't save Timothy Strand, and I really fancy the idea of Taog not losing any more people. Gu Bràth is starting to look like the premier organisation in Scotland to join if you have a death wish."

"Strand wasn't Gu Bràth," I say without thinking.

"Aye, I ken that as well as you do. But you're the one who gave me the list. At least half the names on it were affiliated."

He's not wrong. I take a deep breath and look around his house. It's pretty spartan, with only basic Ikea furniture and a couple afterthoughts of decorations — a plain black vase here, a generic highland scene on the wall there — and I guess he's decided the perpetual bachelor lifestyle suits him.

There's something else I need to tell him, and I'm not looking forward to it. "Did you hear about Magda?" I ask.

He nods. "One of the constables told me. I've a flag on anything attached to your name or hers. And Taog's," he adds belatedly.

I relate the story of the night, from the excitement of Magda's new designers to Abbey's short, bewilderingly not very sweet speech, and about how Abbey came up to me right as Magda passed out.

It's there Trevor's face smooths into Bobby Face. Impassive and listening, but reserving judgments behind a facade of impartiality. 

"Did the toxicity screening come back on the champagne glass?" I ask.

"It did." Sergeant Trevor McLean looks at me as if he's just drank month-old milk. 

"And?"

He sighs, and he places one hand on each knee. "I need you to be open minded, Gwen."

"I'm always open minded."

He raises an eyebrow. "I'll hold you to that."

"Just out with it."

"The lab found flunitrazepam — that's the proper name for rohypnol — and strains of a hallucinogen in the glasses. All of the glasses used at the party. In fact, it looks like that entire case of champagne was dosed. They used three bottles for the toast, and after it became clear that all of the glasses had traces, I had a constable pick up the rest of the case. And there's more." 

I never thought I'd get excited about getting drugged, but his words make me want to crow. "So Abbey fed everyone a drug?"

"No, Gwen. Abbey wasn't there."

Any excitement in me turns to sludge. "What?"

"Abbey wasn't there at the lounge."

"That's not possible. He gave a toast in front of everyone."

"One of his associates gave the toast," Trevor says gently. "Abbey himself has an airtight alibi. He was in Glasgow at a board meeting for four hours surrounding the party time. There's no way he could have been in Edinburgh."

"Have you spoken to him?"

"Aye, via phone."

My fingers worry at the seam of my tutu. "You're telling me I imagined seeing him."

"Hallucinated. There's a difference."

"Aye, a wee one." I think back to the night, to Abbey's cryptic words, the way he leaned over me in front of everyone and no one seemed to notice. Could that have all been in my mind? Confused, I look at Trevor, who's watching me with eyes full of pity. There's something I'm forgetting.

"Magda's glass seemed to have a higher concentration of the chemicals; that's why she fainted," he says, but I barely hear him.

"No. That's wrong. My metabolism." I eat thousands of calories a day. I guzzled a full litre of vodka once at Magda's behest and didn't even feel a buzz. There's no way I'd be affected by drugs in a single glass of champagne I merely sipped.

"Gwen—"

"No, Trevor. You're wrong. I know what I saw. He was there. He basically told me he was involved in Britannia."

Trevor starts, then sits back in his chair. "What?"

"Abbey. He was going on about how amazing it is what humans are capable of when they work together, how they could pull strings and manipulate people. He's the head of Britannia; I know he is."

I watch, holding my breath even as I watch Trevor inhale deeply, then exhale through his nose with a hiss. 

"He wasn't there. Abbey was in Glasgow. I don't know what you saw or what caused it, but it wasn't John Abbey. He's just a businessman."

"Well, so was fucking de Fournay!" I leap to my feet, memories crowding around me at the mention of Annamaria de Fournay's name. I see the bullet hole between my mother's eyes and shunt the image to the side.

"Calm down, Gwen."

"You bloody calm down. John Abbey was there, at that lounge, and you've just told me he drugged everyone at the party. He must have planned this."

"You didn't let me finish. I said there was more." 

He motions to the chair again, but this time I don't sit. Instead I stand five feet in front of him, my muscles wanting to quiver with anger even as my body holds them still and placid as Loch Lomond. 

I look at him, and my voice is flatter than a tuppence on a train track. "Well?"

"When word got around the precinct, one of the detectives came to me to let me know that they had someone undercover in that lounge investigating allegations of abduction and…other things."

I know what rohypnol is used for. "You're saying the drugs were on the premises already."

"I'm saying we're looking into it, but yes, that's what it looks like. The allegations are that they'd use that champagne for stag and hen nights and—"

"Stop. I don't want to hear it." I squint my eyes and swallow hard. 

Trevor suddenly looks very tired. I think I'd rather deal with crazed psycho killers than allegations like he's describing. And still I can't shake the feeling that I'm right and he's wrong. I know what I saw. John Abbey was there, in that lounge, whispering in my ear. I saw him gesture to Magda right as she fell. 

I leave Trevor's house feeling like I've got a thousand puzzle pieces in front of me and no idea how any of them fit together.

eleven

I pop into Magda's room at the hospital at quarter of nine on Sunday morning with a bag of scones and two cups of tea, wondering if I'll ever have a normal sleeping schedule again. She's awake and scowling at the nurse, who has one hand on Magda's wrist and the other fiddling with a blood pressure gauge. It makes me miss Shannon, though if I never set foot inside Edinburgh Sick Kids again, I'll have it written on my epitaph that I died a happy woman.

Magda brightens when she sees me. Her blonde curls are piled in a messy bun atop her head, and her sequinned cocktail dress from last night is draped across a chair in the corner. She has partially-scrubbed mascara under her lower lashes, which makes her look tired. She probably is.

My mobile rings right as I'm in the middle of hugging my friend.

It's Trevor.

"Fucking
wanker
." It's addressed more at my mobile than at Trevor, and I ignore Magda's raised eyebrow — and the nurse's disapproving side-eye — to answer.

"Hullo, Trevor." I resist adding how low on the list of people I want to hear from right now he actually is. Somewhere around Saddam Hussein's ghost and that bloke who wrote that You're Beautiful song. 

Some of it must come through in my voice anyway. "I know you probably don't want to hear from me right now, but there's been another murder. Two murders, actually."