‘You’re a terrible liar. And you can relax, Detective Constable Quirrel, I’m no’ waiting for you to piffle off so I can go round Jack Wallace’s place with a cricket bat and a blow torch.’
Oh thank God for that.
Tufty let out a long happy breath. ‘Good.’
‘I’m going to use a chainsaw.’
He stared at her. Sitting there with her hair all Albert Einstein. ‘No, but really?’
She stood and grabbed her coat. ‘I’m going home. You can follow me if you want.’ A wink. ‘But no tongues.’
Tufty followed the rear lights on Steel’s MX-5 as she drove down Union Grove, her head rocking from side to side as she went. The sky was streaked with orange and scarlet, clouds fading from purple to black. Streetlights flickered out their yellowy glow. More light spilling from the windows of the granite terraces that lined both sides of the street.
She went straight across at the roundabout, onto Cromwell Road.
Tufty did the same, his Fiat Panda making its weird grindy-rattling noise again every time he changed gear. Probably should get that looked at. But what if the garage wanted to put Betsy down? What if they couldn’t see the beauty in her rusty wings and hub caps? In that dangly bit at the back held on with half a roll of duct tape? In that burning-plastic smell that oozed out of her wheel arches if she had to navigate a bumpy road?
The playing fields drifted by on the right — all the floodlights on so some fat old blokes could pretend they were actually playing rugby.
Steel slowed for the roundabout with Anderson Drive.
OK, so it was a bit of a long way around, but they’d go right here, up the dual carriageway, and nip into... Nope. She wasn’t indicating, she was going straight across.
Tufty leaned forward, making the steering wheel creak. ‘Where are you going, you devious old horror?’ He pointed. ‘Your house is that way.’
An eighteen-wheeler trundled by, heading south.
Tufty nipped across the roundabout onto Seafield Road. A nice chunk of parkland on the left, fancy-looking granite semis on the right. He put his foot down, catching up with the Horror’s MX-5. Flashed his lights.
Two fingers appeared in the little porthole at the back of her car.
‘Daft old funkbiscuit...’
All the way up Seafield with its big houses and massive gardens. Past the Palm Court Hotel. Past the wee row of shops. And up to the junction. Straight through the green traffic lights.
‘Where are you going, you monster? Some of us have boxed sets of Buffy to get home to!’
She indicated left and pulled into a car park beside a squat ugly little building and some sort of community centre. Crawled past a chunk of council recycling bins then stopped. Reversed into a sort of hollowed-out recess in the building painted all beige and brown.
He pulled up next to it. Checked his phone.
According to the map app, this was Airyhall Library. Open nine-till-seven Monday and Wednesday; nine-till-five Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday; ten-till-five on Saturday — shut for an hour at lunchtime; and closed on Sunday. So she wasn’t here to borrow a book.
He climbed out of his car.
The sound of someone singing rattled out through the car’s soft top.
Was that Steel?
It was, belting it out. Singing along with the radio — the music all banjos and accordions.
He opened the door and slid into the passenger seat.
Steel drummed away on her steering wheel.
‘Got home today, and what do you say,
My lover’s gone Fifty Shades of Grey,
He says we’re gonna do things all his way,
And I said: “No way, Jose!”’
She was actually pretty good, in a smoky-voiced rock-granny kind of way.
She leaned over and poked him. ‘Come on, Tufters, don’t be shy.’
Yeah... No.
‘Get gone,
Get gone,
Get gone three times, I’m on my own!’
An accordion solo wheezed out of the radio.
He poked her back. ‘You said you were going home!’
‘I say lots of things.’
Tufty peered out through the windscreen at the prison-wall-blandness side of the community centre. ‘This isn’t going to get me fired, is it?’
‘Would I do that to you?’ Still drumming along in time with the music. ‘And we’re singing in five, four, three—’
‘Only I really don’t want to get fired.’
‘Got home today, but I can’t see,
What the hell is wrong with me,
Why can’t these crows just let me be,
Tormented for eternity!’
That was cheery.
‘Sarge?’
‘Get gone,
Get gone,
Cos this old world’s all made of bones...’
She grinned at him. ‘Come on, Tufty, all you’ve got to do is sing “get gone” a dozen or so times till the end. Ready? Here we go...’
He mumbled along, face getting hotter and hotter with every repetition. Till finally the DJ faded the bloody song out.
‘An oldie but a goodie! Catnip Jane there, with “Three Times Gone”.’
Tufty slumped back in his seat. ‘Thank God for that.’
‘Don’t forget, Call-in Karaoke’s coming up at eight, and we’ve got a special guest, talking about the protest this Saturday by the Northeast Farmers Union. But first here’s some messages from—’
She killed the engine. ‘You got a girlfriend, Tufty? Or boyfriend? Or favourite sheep?’
He took a look out of the passenger window — a big grey roller door, then a gap and the edge of a Portakabin kinda building. A tree-shaded path, a wee shed, and the back of a housing estate. The gap between the library’s brick wall and the recycling bins looked out on the little car park. No sign of any cars, well, except for the manky brown van abandoned in the corner with two flat tyres, a crumpled bonnet, and a ‘POLICE AWARE’ sticker on the cracked windscreen.
Tufty sat back again. ‘Jack Wallace isn’t going to suddenly appear looking to return a copy of Wind in the Willows or something, is he?’
‘Everyone should have someone to love. Someone they can trust. Someone who doesn’t need shearing twice a year.’
‘I am not shagging a sheep.’
‘Takes all sorts.’ She fiddled with the controls down the side of her seat, reclining it a bit. ‘Now, then: I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with “L”.’
Tufty pursed his lips and nodded. ‘... then I went out with Rebecca. She was nice. Sang in a country and western covers band.’
‘No accounting for taste. You give up yet?’
‘But she went off to university in Manchester, so that was that. “Bread Van”?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then there was Siobhan. Don’t know why we ended up going out; she never seemed to like me very much...’ A sigh. Didn’t matter what he did, it was always wrong. And she snored. ‘“Big Vehicle?”’
‘What about that perky Wildlife Crime Officer with the lovely breasts?’
‘What about her?’