‘I can get you the money, but I’ll need something in exchange.’
‘This?’ Alice guessed, waving the camera. Mike nodded slowly. ‘It’s a nice piece of kit,’ she teased, pretending to examine it. ‘Not sure I could bear to part with it.’
‘For five hundred pounds, I think you can.’
‘A grand,’ she corrected him. Mike had his hand stretched out, palm upwards. ‘You want it now?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Before we’ve even seen the colour of your money?’
‘Can’t leave it with you, Alice.’ Mike’s voice still lacked all emotion. ‘You could copy the footage, download it – anything.’
‘But handing it over would mean trusting you.’
‘Then make your decision.’ Mike was brushing something invisible from his tailored jacket. ‘Just so long as you know – you’re part of this now, and that means all our futures are linked.’
‘Like worry beads,’ Alice offered.
‘Or dominoes – only takes one to fall the wrong way…’
Her smile was more expansive this time. The camera was placed in Mike’s waiting palm.
‘One goes, they all go,’ Alice was saying.
‘That’s right.’ Mike slipped the camera into his pocket, and although his eyes were still boring into Alice’s, Allan couldn’t help thinking that the whole exchange could just as easily have been aimed at him.
13
‘Your boss,’ Detective Inspector Ransome said, ‘is getting good at losing us.’
He was seated in a coffee shop on the High Street, just up from the Parliament building, talking into his mobile phone. The man he was talking to was seated three tables away. They held eye contact and their phones to their faces, but couldn’t risk an actual meeting.
‘That’s because he won’t let me drive,’ Glenn Burns said into the mouthpiece. ‘Or Johnno, come to that.’
‘You think he’s suspicious?’
‘If I thought he was on to me, I’d have packed my passport and fake beard by now.’
‘He’s the one who’ll be going away, Glenn,’ Ransome stated with confidence. ‘Leaving his little empire going begging.’
‘And you just let me take over? How do I know you won’t try shafting me, same as you’re doing to him?’
‘We’ve been through this before, Glenn,’ Ransome said with a grin of reassurance. ‘I will try shafting you – but you’ll be top dog, not just a spear-carrier. And you’ll be wise to me.’
‘Plus you’ll owe me one.’
‘That, too, of course.’ Ransome broke off eye contact long enough to lift the oversized mug of coffee to his lips. The liquid was scalding and tasted mainly of frothed milk.
‘Is that the latte?’ Glenn asked into the phone.
Ransome nodded. ‘What’ve you got?’
‘Hot chocolate with whipped cream.’
‘Sounds disgusting.’ Ransome wiped the foam from his top lip. ‘So what’s your employer up to, Glenn?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Thanks for sharing…’
‘No need to get sarky,’ Glenn said huffily. ‘He’s up to something, though.’
‘You just said he wasn’t.’
‘What I said was, I don’t know what he’s up to.’
‘But there is something?’
Glenn nodded. The door opened with a tinkling of its bell and both men looked round, checking the new arrival, in case it was someone they should avoid. But it was just another young mum pushing a buggy.
‘They should ban nippers from places like this,’ Glenn was commenting, staring at the table of mothers and infants that was greeting this latest arrival. One of the kids was griping, and didn’t look like stopping any time soon.
‘I agree,’ Ransome said, ‘and I’d stop students coming in, too.’ He glanced over to where a solitary teenager, coffee long finished, had spread laptop and coursework over a table intended for four. The laptop was sucking electricity from a socket nearby. ‘But then the place would be half empty,’ the detective relented, ‘and we’d stick out all the more.’
‘Suppose so,’ Glenn agreed.
‘So that’s the important issues of the day taken care of… maybe we can get back to your employer?’
‘He’s keeping me and Johnno out of it.’ Glenn sounded aggrieved, and Ransome knew now why the man had asked for a meet: he had some steam to blow off. ‘But a couple of the pubs we’ve been to, he’s been asking about kids.’
‘Kids?’
Glenn saw that he’d been misunderstood. ‘Tearaways, soccer casuals… not kiddie kids.’ With a nod towards the table of young mums.
‘So give me some names.’
Glenn shook his head. ‘No idea.’
‘What does he want them for?’
‘Dunno. It all started when he bumped into this guy he was at school with. I mean, he tells me they were at school but I can’t see it – the other bloke’s a class apart, if you get my meaning. Chib and him went for a drive a few days ago, and when Chib came back he was starting to think about putting together this posse of kids.’
‘Reckon you’re being put out to pasture, Glenn?’
Even at a distance, Ransome felt the power of the big man’s stare. ‘Nobody’s putting me out of the game, Mr Ransome.’
‘All the same, if he’s putting together a “posse”, there’s got to be something they’re after.’
‘Something or someone…’ Glenn let his words hang in the air between them.
‘You’re talking about a hit?’ Ransome’s eyes widened. ‘Who could he be planning to whack?’
‘Well, there’s this big tattooed guy, foreigner, comes from Iceland or somewhere. He’s in town to collect a back payment on some merchandise. Problem is, your lot grabbed our goods. Hell’s Angels still want paying.’
‘And Chib’s unwilling to cough up?’
‘Four or five schemies with pool cues might be his way of thinking.’ Glenn paused again. ‘I doubt they’d cause this guy too many problems though, not unless they were seriously tooled up. And even if they were, there’d be others where Hate comes from.’
Ransome thought he’d misheard. ‘Hate?’ he repeated.
‘That’s what he calls himself.’
Ransome jotted down Glenn’s description of the man, then flicked back through his notebook a few pages. He’d run a check on all three of the names Laura Stanton had given him: Mike Mackenzie, Allan Cruikshank, Robert Gissing. He’d drawn a blank with Cruikshank, though she’d said he worked at First Caly. Gissing had done a bit of painting a while back, and had also written lots of boring-sounding tomes about art. Mackenzie… well, Mackenzie was some sort of computer fat-cat.
‘What does Chib’s old school pal look like?’ Ransome asked into his phone. Glenn’s description fitted Mackenzie like a glove.
‘We were in a wine bar when Chib bumped into him. Dunno what happened after that, but suddenly they’re pals.’
Ransome tapped his pen against the notepad. ‘Could mean something or nothing,’ he admitted.
‘Yeah,’ Glenn agreed.
‘So what’s the deal with Hate? Is he just scratching his arse while he waits for the cash?’
‘We’ve been looking for him. Bastard must be camping under the stars on Arthur’s Seat or something – nobody in town seems to have seen him, and trust me, he’s a hard man to miss.’
‘Is Chib bricking it?’
‘He thinks he’s got something up his sleeve.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘He’s keeping it to himself.’
‘Maybe this hit he’s planning.’
‘Maybe.’
Ransome sighed. ‘Christ on a bike, Glenn – you’re supposed to be my guy on the inside!’