Duff lay on the large double bed staring at the ceiling, at the crack in the paint he knew so well.
‘Afterwards, as I was leaving the meeting, Duncan took me aside and asked if I was disappointed,’ he explained. ‘He said we both knew I’d have been the natural candidate for the post.’
The crack had offshoots spreading in an apparently random way, but when he scrunched up his eyes, thereby losing focus, the crack seemed to follow a pattern, form an image. He just couldn’t work out what it was.
‘And what did you answer?’ came the voice over the running water in the bathroom. Even now, after having seen as much of each other as any two people can, she disliked him seeing her until she was ready. And that was fine by him.
‘I answered that, yes, I was disappointed. When he said they wanted Macbeth because he didn’t belong to the inner circle, my being one of those who had supported Duncan’s project right from the start was used against me.’
‘Well, that’s true. What did—?’
‘Duncan said there was another reason, but he didn’t want to mention it with the others present. The Sweno raid had only been partly successful as Sweno had got away. And it turned out I had received the tip-off so early that there would have been enough time to inform him. I had almost undone a year’s undercover work by what looked a lot like an ego trip. And Macbeth and SWAT had saved the whole operation. Therefore it would seem suspicious to choose me ahead of him. But at least he did give me a consolation prize.’
‘He gave you the Homicide Unit, and that’s not bad, is it?’
‘It’s smaller than Narco, but at least I escaped the humiliation of being a subordinate officer in Organised Crime.’
‘Who persuaded Duncan anyway?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Who argued Macbeth’s case? Duncan’s a listener; he likes consensus and goes for group decisions.’
‘Believe me, my dearest, no one lobbies for Macbeth. I doubt he knows what the word means. All he wants in life is to catch baddies and make sure his casino queen is happy.’
‘Speaking of which.’ She posed by the bathroom door. The gauzy negligee revealed more than it hid of course. Duff liked a lot about this woman, some things he wasn’t even able to articulate, but what he idolised was plain enough: her youth. The glow from the candles on the floor made the moisture in her eyes, on her red lips, on her shining teeth, sparkle. And yet tonight he needed something more. He wasn’t in the mood. After what had happened he didn’t feel like the buck he had been when he had started the day. But that could perhaps be changed.
‘Take it off,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘I’ve just put it on.’
‘It’s an order. Stay where you are and take it off. Slowly.’
‘Hm. Maybe. If I’m given a clearer order...’
‘Caithness, you are hereby ordered by a superior officer to turn your back, pull what you’re wearing over your head, lean forward and take a good hold of the door frame.’
Duff heard her little girlie gasp of shock. Perhaps it was put on for his sake, perhaps not. It was fine by him. He was getting in the mood.
Hecate strode across the damp floor of the central station, between the peeling walls and mumbling drug addicts. He noticed the gaze of two guys stooped over a spoon and syringe they were obviously sharing. They didn’t know him. No one knew him. Perhaps they were thinking the big man with the mustard-yellow cashmere coat, the carefully groomed, almost unnaturally black hair and the resplendent heavy Rolex looked like perfect prey which had just walked into the lion’s den. Or they may have had suspicions; perhaps there was something about the self-assured, determined gait, something about the gold-capped walking stick, which made a rhythmic tick-tock in time with the stiletto heels of the tall broad-shouldered woman who walked two steps behind him. If she was a woman. There might also have been something about the three men, all wearing grey lightweight coats, who had entered the station immediately before him and taken up a position by the wall. Perhaps that was why they sensed that they were in his den. He was the lion.
Hecate stopped, and let Strega go first down the narrow stairs reeking of urine to the toilet. Saw the two druggies lower their heads and concentrate on the task in hand — heating and injecting. Addicts. For Hecate this was a statement of fact without contempt or irritation. After all, they were his bread and butter.
Strega opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, lifted a sleeping man to his feet, bared her teeth to show him her mood and a thumb to point him in the right direction. Hecate followed her in between the cubicles and the running sinks. The stench was so intense that Hecate could still get tears in his eyes. But it also had a function: it kept away curious eyes and made even the hardened addicts keep their visits as brief as possible. Strega and Hecate went into the furthest cubicle with the sign DO NOT USE on the door and a bowl filled to the brim with excrement. Furthermore, the neon tube in the ceiling above had been removed, so it was impossible to see or hit veins in there. Strega removed one of the tiles above the disconnected loo, turned a handle and pushed. The wall swung open, and they stepped inside.
‘Close it quickly,’ Hecate said and coughed. He looked around the room. It had been a railway storeroom, and the other door led to the tunnel for the southern lines. He had moved his production here two years after the train traffic had ceased. He’d had to chase out some tramps and junkies, and although no one ever came here and Chief Commissioner Kenneth had been their highest-ranking protector he had installed camouflaged CCTV in the tunnel and over the stairs down to the toilet. There were twelve people in total on the evening shift, all wearing masks and white coats. On this side of the glass partition dividing the room into two, brew was chopped up, weighed and packed into plastic bags by seven people. By the tunnel door sat two armed guards keeping an eye on the workers and the CCTV monitors. Inside the glass partition was what they called the inner sanctum or simply the kitchen. The tank was there, and only the sisters had access. The kitchen was hermetically sealed for many reasons. First, so that nothing outside could contaminate the processes inside and because some idiot might inadvertently flick a lighter or throw down a lit cigarette end, blowing them all to pieces. But mostly because everyone in the room would soon be hooked if they inhaled the molecules floating in the air on a daily basis.
Hecate had found the sisters in a Chinatown opium den in Bangkok, where the two had set up a home-made laboratory to make heroin from the opium in Chang Rai. He didn’t know much about them, only that they had fled China with Chiang Kai-shek’s people, the disease that had ravaged their faces had reportedly spread through the village they came from, and as long as he paid them punctually they would deliver whatever he asked. The ingredients were well known, the proportions the same, and others could follow the procedures through the glass window. Yet there was a mystery about the way they mixed and heated the ingredients. And Hecate saw no reason to deny the rumours that they used toads’ glands, bumble bee wings, juice from rats’ tails and even blew their noses into the tank. It created a sense of black magic, and if there was something that people would pay for in their all-too-real working lives, it was precisely that: black magic. And brew was going down a bomb. Hecate had never seen so many become so desperately addicted in such a short time. But it was equally obvious that the day the sisters produced a slightly less potent product he would have to get rid of them. That was how it was. Everything had its day, its cycle. Like the two decades under Kenneth. The good times. And now with Duncan, who if he was allowed to go his merry way would mean bad times for the magic industry. It is obvious that if the gods bring good and bad times, short human lives and death, you have to make sure you become a god yourself. It is easier than you might think. The obstacle to most people achieving god-like status is that they are afraid and superstitious, and in their anxiety-ridden submission they believe there is a morality, a set of heaven-sent rules that apply to all people. But these rules are made by precisely those that tell you they are gods, and in some strange way the rules serve these gods. Well, OK, not everyone can be a god, and every god needs followers, a client base. A market. A town. Many towns.