When The Devil Drives (26 page)

It was interesting to learn a little about what had happened to some of the characters she remembered, but it only served to emphasise the separation she felt from those times and those people. They had once loomed so large in her world; now they were merely names and stories, drifting away on the tide of life and getting smaller as the distance grew. It made her grateful to have cultivated this contact with Polly, grateful too to Polly for bringing Carol, as Jasmine often felt she’d been left a little isolated by the events of recent years. She had a compelling urge to ensure they got together and did this again soon, an impulse not entirely down to the vodka.

The music had become louder as the evening wore on and the place grew busier. They ended up talking at the tops of their voices to be heard, huddled all the closer in their booth, increasingly oblivious of their surroundings except when going to the bar or the toilets.

A girl rather purposefully approached their table and for a moment Jasmine thought she might be handing out fliers for a club, but when she got Polly’s attention, she stood up and welcomed her with a hug. The girl slid into the booth next to Polly as she sat down again, perching on the outside edge to indicate she wasn’t joining them for long.

Polly introduced her as Katrina, her former flatmate. They ran into each other in Kave fairly frequently, so there wasn’t a great deal of catching up. Katrina was just saying hello, as well as informing Polly with an impish grin that there was ‘a guy pure checking you out’.

‘Where?’ Polly asked, interested and wary at the same time. There was mischief here, as there always was around this subject, but she couldn’t quite read it.

‘We’re over in the alcove,’ Katrina said, gesturing towards a darkened niche at one end of the room where purple drapes and velveteen pouffes were arranged in a way intended to suggest ancient Araby, but conveying more camp than Bedouin. ‘I could see him watching you. Couldnae take his eyes aff, in fact.’

‘Where’s he sitting?’ Polly asked.

‘At a booth over there,’ she indicated, gesturing with a nod to a spot over her shoulder. ‘Don’t look,’ she added.

Polly was leaning around anyway, desperate to see.

‘What’s he like?’

‘Seemed quite mature,’ Katrina replied, smirking.

Polly craned her neck and finally worked out who Katrina meant.

‘Ya bitch, he’s pure ancient,’ she said, and they both burst out laughing. ‘Must be in his bloody fifties. Oh, shite, he’s getting up.’

It was Jasmine’s turn to crane her neck, while Polly and Katrina returned their attention to the table lest they make eye contact. She was too late: she only saw a figure disappear around the curve of the bar, catching a glimpse of the back of a grey-haired head and a long dark coat.

Jasmine looked to the table where the man had left a half-finished drink.

‘Nursing that same pint the whole time as well,’ said Katrina. ‘Stingy bastard.’

Jasmine faked a laugh, concealing the complete change in her mood. She had quickly triangulated the sight-lines and concluded that the unfinished pint was on precisely the table she’d have chosen if she was surreptitiously surveilling the occupants of this booth.

He’d been nursing the same drink for a long time, staying in position, not returning to the bar, not going to the toilet and not consuming much alcohol. He had got up and left as soon as he realised he’d been noticed, moving swiftly out of sight, quite possibly leaving the premises, and doing so via the door on the blind side of the bar, from Jasmine’s point of view.

Pure ancient. In his fifties.

Suddenly Jasmine wasn’t having fun any more. A big part of her wanted to leave, but she didn’t want to take off at short notice, not when everything had been going so well. Nor did she want to admit defeat and have her evening ruined by this. It was, after all, still possible that the guy had been just some bloke whose date didn’t show, or even some old lech perving on the sight of some young women who were oblivious of his rapt attention. In either instance he might well have bailed in embarrassment when he got caught looking. However, Jasmine’s instincts insisted otherwise.

She switched to mineral water as a precaution, though she had sobered up very fast anyway. The conversation kept flowing but she felt disconnected from it now, faking responses to conceal that she could only think about the man who might be following her.

Polly asked if she was getting tired, observing that she hadn’t said much for a while, and she seized the opportunity to make her excuses, citing a long run of early starts.

Promises and phone numbers were exchanged on the pavement at the top of Kave’s stairs, the trio’s parting proving an extremely protracted affair. Carol seized Jasmine’s mobile at one point, expressing incredulity that she wasn’t using certain social networking utilities, and drunkenly demonstrated how to set up accounts on her phone. She launched several applications that Jasmine didn’t even know the device had, and which she had no intention of launching again once Carol handed it back.

A black cab was passing with its yellow light on as Polly and Carol
began meandering towards Hope Street, trying too hard to look sober as only tipsy people ever do. Jasmine was about to hail it when Polly announced that they were headed to Central Station and asked if she was going that way too.

Her more cautious instinct told her to grab the wee black bus and get herself delivered to her front door, but the memory of her initial flight from the silver Passat still itched. She was on to this guy tonight. In all probability he would have given it up when he was noticed in the bar, but if not, there was a chance she could burn this bastard. She wanted a face.

Hope Street was very quiet at that time of night, making it impossible for anyone to conduct a foot-follow without being seen. She stole a few backwards glances as they progressed, but the only people visible further back were two older women dressed for a night out. There were other options, however. A group of three girls, moving as slowly as they were, would be easy enough to track from a parallel street. He could skip a block east to Renfield Street and keep pace, stopping at each junction to watch them cross as they made their progress down the hill. Besides, if he had any brains, he’d have worked out where they were heading and would be waiting at Gordon Street to acquire them there, or maybe inside the station itself.

Polly and Carol said some more goodbyes, then they finally parted company with Jasmine, heading off to the low-level trains that would take them to Uddingston and Hamilton respectively.

Standing on the concourse all alone, drunks meandering past like malevolent bumblebees, all of a sudden Jasmine didn’t feel so bold about noting anybody’s face. She glanced at the station clock on the departure board: she hadn’t realised it was quite so late. The last trains were leaving, a time of the evening when it was sensible to avoid all eye contact, so scanning strangers to see if they might be the man from the bar was quite definitely contra-indicated.

She just wanted to get home now, and to make sure she wasn’t followed as she went.

She got on to the rearmost carriage of the Cathcart Circle train and remained standing by the door, though there were plenty of seats. She didn’t see anybody in her carriage who looked a candidate for
the man who’d bailed out of Kave, and she kept her eye on the platform, watching who else was getting on further forward. The carriage got busier in the last couple of minutes before departure, and her view further down the platform was obscured as an arriving train disgorged a surprising number of passengers presumably heading for the clubs or for nightshifts.

She got off at the first station, dawdling on the platform, then skipped back on again just before the doors closed. The train pulled away and she caught the eye of a middle-aged man in a long coat, staring at her through the windows as the train pulled away. Could have been him, she supposed, or it could simply have been someone having a closer look at the daft lassie who couldn’t seem to make up her mind where she was getting off.

Her station came up next. This time she waited on board as the rest of the passengers disembarked, then hopped off when the urgent bleeps warned that the doors were about to close. The train pulled away, leaving Jasmine the furthest person back on the platform, from where she could see the last of the passengers making their way to the top of the stairs up ahead. Ordinarily, she felt vulnerable when she found herself walking through the station alone when it was late and dark, but tonight she only felt relief at the isolation, that finally she could be sure there was nobody following her.

Jasmine reached the top of the stairs and turned right on to the narrow passageway that spanned the tracks. As she did, she saw that the tree-lined lane leading to the station entrance on the main road was cut off by the figure of a grey-headed, heavy-set man in a long, black raincoat. Pure ancient. In his fifties.

He moved surprisingly fast but it was largely immaterial. Jasmine had nowhere to run but back down the stairs to the platform, and she had just got off the last train of the night. In any case, the paralysis of fear stifled the urge towards flight. She froze against the wall, cornering herself, her legs threatening to buckle.

Never mind run, she was doing well to remain standing.

‘Jasmine Sharp,’ he said. ‘Ever get that feeling when you realise you’re out of your depth to a quite catastrophic extent?’

His accent said London. Not pearly-king cockney; somewhat less
of the lower orders than that, but definitely the capital. Quietly authoritative, a voice used to being listened to.

‘Four words. Glass Shoe: leave it. Understand?’

He thrust his face close to Jasmine’s and stared into her eyes. He had a big thick neck and a head so solid-looking she imagined you could hit it with an iron bar and the bar would bend.

She said nothing, her voice too dry to speak.

‘I’ve got four words too,’ said a second voice somewhere behind him. ‘Can I help you?’

This time the accent was local, the voice quiet, a polite inquiry.

Thick-neck didn’t turn around, barely took his eyes off of Jasmine. He glanced to the side only briefly, checking the position of the third party rather than giving him a full up-and-down.

‘This doesn’t concern you, mate. It isn’t what you think. The lady and I are just talking, and I don’t appreciate interruptions, so I strongly suggest you fuck off before you get hurt.’

‘And there was me about to say the exact same thing. What were the odds? You and I are on a wavelength, I can tell.’

Jasmine recognised more than just the accent this time. She couldn’t see past her tormentor but she knew who was standing behind him. Hope and release flooded through her and she issued an involuntary blubbing sound, part nervous giggle, part tears.

Her sense of relief was instantly truncated as thick-neck took a step back and his right hand slipped inside his coat. It emerged again in one swift, unbroken motion to extend in a straight line from his shoulder to the muzzle of a pistol.

Jasmine could see past him now. He was pointing the gun straight at Glen Fallan.

This was
strongly
contra-indicated.

Fallan looked thinner than she remembered, but perhaps this was because the man in front of him was squat. Fallan was built like a sprinter, the Londoner like a shot-putter. It was speed versus solidity, but it didn’t matter while thick-neck was holding a gun.

Fallan understood this, but seemed unnervingly relaxed. He explained why.

‘You’re not going to shoot me. I know that for two reasons. The
first is that you reek of cop. I’m figuring ex, as you’re no spring chicken, and going by that accent you’re a long way off your old manor, so you do not want to end up explaining this to the Glesca polis.’

‘And what’s the second reason?’ thick-neck asked testily.

‘That you’re standing there listening to me talk.’

This was when Fallan demonstrated vividly that unless you’re going to use it, a gun is just something extra to carry. With his arm extended and an unnecessary weight at the end of it, thick-neck was off-balance and encumbered as Fallan made his lightning move. He seemed to hit his opponent in four or five different places in blindingly rapid succession, so quick that he didn’t even have time to reel from one blow before he was sustaining the next.

Fallan pinned him to the concrete face down, a foot on the small of his back, his arm stretched out behind him, locked straight in a strained and twisted-looking hold. The man’s face was pale and dazed, his breathing one elongated, broken gasp. Pain hadn’t fully registered yet: this was still the shock of impact.

The gun lay a few feet away, but Fallan didn’t seem interested in it right now.

‘I’ll give you this much,’ Fallan told him, his voice calm and quiet, ‘you chose your spot and your time really well. Late night, quiet and isolated. Statistically very unlucky you got interrupted. And statistically very unlikely I will either.’

Fallan gave the slightest tweak on the man’s fingers, eliciting a strangulated groan.

‘There are two hundred and six bones in the human body Do you know which one is the most painful to break?’

Jasmine saw the strain on his face as he summoned up a response.

‘Why don’t you tell me?’ he spluttered. It was intended to sound defiant, but his voice was too strained to suggest he had much in reserve by way of stoicism or nihilistic rage.

‘Sure,’ Fallan replied. ‘The answer is none, if you’re the one doing the breaking. As for which one is the most painful to
have
broken, well, that’s something we’re going to find out together over the next wee while unless you explain in detail who you are and what you want with my acquaintance Miss Sharp.’

‘It’s not me,’ he said immediately. ‘I’m just doing a job. And I wasn’t gonna lay a finger on her, I swear.’

‘Your name,’ Fallan prompted.

‘Rees. Darren Rees.’

‘Who are you working for?’ Jasmine asked.

‘Hardwicke Chambers. It’s a law firm.’

‘You don’t look like a silk to me. Jasmine, fire up your phone and look up that name.’