Roberta polished off the last of her pilfered KitKat. ‘You look like a dog with worms. Been calling you for ages!’
‘Nice people switch their phones off in Hospitals, you wormy wee spud.’ She crumpled up the KitKat wrapper and lobbed it in through the open passenger window. ‘Come on then: out with it.’
‘Mrs Galloway’s next-door neighbour: she says there’s two big thugs round there right now hammering away on the old dear’s door, yelling at her to open up!’
Roberta stared at him. ‘So get some sodding backup sorted!’
‘We’re closest. Going to be at least fifteen minutes till anyone else is free.’
Thugs.
Mrs Galloway. A grin spread across Roberta’s face, hard and sharp. ‘Get down with your bad self!’
Tufty backed away, chin pulled in. ‘Sarge? Why are you smiling?’
Because the dirty wee sods that beat up an old lady and microwaved her dog were about to come down with a serious dose of police brutality. ‘In the car, now!’
III
The lift juddered to a halt on the twelfth floor. Soon as the doors creaked open, shouting boomed in from the corridor outside.
‘Open up, you old bitch!’
‘Don’t be stupid, Agnes, you’re only making it worse on yourself!’
Roberta cranked her smile up a notch and charged out of the lift, Tufty right beside her.
Two massive bruisers, dressed all in black, battered on Mrs Galloway’s door. Boxers’ noses and rugby players’ ears. They could’ve been twins, except one was boiled-egg bald while the other had a stringy blond mullet and sunglasses. Both with Seventies’ porn star moustaches.
The bald one thumped on the door again. ‘I’m not kidding around here!’
His mate kicked it. ‘Open the bloody door!’
Roberta dug into her jacket and removed the extendable baton lurking there. Clacked it out to full length. ‘HOY, CHUCKLE BROTHERS!’
Tufty did the same with his baton, a wee canister of pepper spray in his other hand. ‘POLICE! NOBODY MOVE!’
Chuckle Brother Number One turned and peered at them over the top of his sunglasses. ‘Here to back us up, are you?’
She thwacked her baton off the corridor wall, adding to the scuffs and dents. ‘Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.’
Number Two held up his hands. ‘Nah, you got the wrong end, like.’
‘You battered an old lady. You wrecked her flat. YOU KILLED HER DOG!’
They both backed away at that, chins pulled in where their necks should’ve been.
Number Two frowned at Number One. ‘Dog?’
A shake of the head sent lanky blond wisps floating at the back of Number One’s head. ‘Nah, we’re totally not that.’ He pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘Bailiffs. Got a court order to seize goods worth two thousand pound, don’t we?’
‘We never killed no dog!’ Number Two’s face contracted around his broken nose. ‘What kinda people you think we are?’
Roberta stared at them. ‘You’re bailiffs?’
‘I got two cocker spaniels!’
The bailiffs stood in the middle of the living room, heads bowed, feet shuffling, hands clasped in front of them — a pair of schoolboys waiting for a thrashing from the headmaster. Only bigger. And more muscly. With the occasional tattoo poking out from the necks of their black T-shirts.
Mrs Galloway sat in her wonky armchair, somehow even thinner and older and frailer than she’d been this morning, a fibreglass cast on her arm. Trying no’ to make eye contact with anyone. Especially the massive pair of thugs who’d been battering on her door two minutes ago.
Roberta poked Bailiff Number One. ‘Go on then.’
He cleared his throat. Looked at his mate. Then back at the poor battered auld wifie sitting there like a broken sparrow. ‘Erm... Mrs Galloway? Rick and me got this warrant and...’ He swivelled his head from side to side, taking in the shabby wee room. ‘And I’m really sorry to hear about your wee dog.’
Bailiff Number Two, AKA: Rick, nodded. ‘That’s a shitty thing to do. See if I ever get my hands on the bastard what did that, I’ll—’
‘Anyway, we can see you got nothing worth two grand. So I’m gonna go back to the office and see what we can do about a payment plan, or something, right? Spread the costs?’
Rick tightened his fists. ‘A wee dog...’
The pair of them were waiting for the lift as Steel and Tufty stepped out of Mrs Galloway’s flat.
Tufty closed the door, pulling on the handle till the Yale lock clicked into place. ‘Think she’ll be OK?’
Steel marched over to the lifts.
Baldy shook his head, jaw tight and clenched. ‘I mean, what did a wee dog ever do to anyone? I tell you, Marty, I’m seriously gonna end that scummer.’
Mullet nodded. ‘Bastard.’
Ping: the lift doors slid open and Steel stepped inside, a small pause, then the bailiffs joined her. Tufty squeaking in just as the doors started to shut.
Steel stared at Baldy and Mullet. Cracked her knuckles. ‘You’re getting one chance to answer this, then I’m kicking both your arses for you: who are you working for?’
‘Landlord.’ Mullet nodded his head at the lift doors. ‘Owns about half the flats in the block. The old lady’s not paid her rent in, like, four months.’
Baldy shrugged. ‘Sent her dozens of letters, hasn’t he? But these auld biddies?’ A grimace. ‘Wishful thinking, innit? You don’t open the post, it don’t count. Maybe the Denial Fairy makes all that back rent you owe disappear. Then me and Marty got to pay them a visit.’
She poked him in the chest. ‘Someone’s loansharking down here. I want to know who.’
Baldy growled. Bared his teeth. ‘He the one microwaved that poor dog? Cos if it is...’
Mullet folded his massive arms across his chest, like a big red-neck genie. ‘Can do you better than a name. I’ll show you where you can find him.’
‘Here youse go.’ Chuckle Brother Number One, AKA: Marty, opened the door, revealing the lounge bar in all its retro glory. Red vinyl on the seats, a sticky lino floor, dark wooden tables and bar. A line of optics for Bell’s and Grouse and own-brand vodka. The pub’s name spelled out in red-and-blue on the mirror behind the bar: ‘THE BROKEN SPIDER’.
Roberta stepped inside, Tufty tagging along like an idiot puppy.
Jimmy Shand’s accordion diddledy-twiddled out of the jukebox, competing against the bings, squeaks, and electronic sirens coming from the puggy machine at the end of the bar. A knot of wee loons were poking away at it in their mismatched tracksuit tops, bottoms, hoodies, and baseball caps — most of which were on the wrong way around. All ten of them looking as if they’d failed the audition for Crimewatch.
The remaining patrons were never going to see forty again. Drinking pints of Export, having a game of dominos, keeping an eye on the racing playing quietly on the telly.
Bailiff Rick closed the door and stood in front of it, blocking the exit.
Then Bailiff Marty raised a hand and pointed at a table in the corner, by the gents. ‘That’s him: Phil Innes.’
A bruiser sat there on his own, back to the wall, nursing a Guinness and a nip. Big bloke. Expensive-looking leather jacket, silk shirt, side parting in his blond hair. Designer stubble and a diamond earring.
‘Right, you wee shite.’ Roberta marched over and flashed her warrant card. ‘Philip Innes, I’m detaining you under Section Fourteen of the Criminal Justice, Scotland, Act, because I believe you to have committed a crime punishable by imprisonment.’