“No concern of yours if I did,” Campbell huffed. “You’re not my boss yet lassie.” Looking for one last chance of back up from McKay, which was consistently absent, he returned to his paper.
“No,” she agreed, before making herself a cup of tea without offering one, just to make the point. “Not yet.”
Davie wasn’t having the best of mornings. First of all the Bobcat had started playing up again, hydraulic problem or something, which meant he couldn’t reply on its loader to do the donkey work and would have to start carting bales to bed up the cows by hand. Colin had buggered off with the quad bike, taking that option out of the game too, so it was all down to muscle, the old fashioned way. His dad said it would do him good. About time he did some exercise that didn’t involve pulling levers, pushing throttles or lifting pints.
To be fair he wasn’t in the best condition these days, should never have jacked in the rugby this year but they’d dropped him from the first team and even though he knew he was taking a hacksaw to his nose just to piss off his face he still had his pride to think about.
Looking at his dad’s belly was enough to remind him that you really did need to keep active. Even then you probably couldn’t rely on exercise too much. You probably needed to cut out the chocolate biccies at eleven o’clock too, judging by the way the fat ginger yin’s gut was starting to stretch at the poppers on his boiler suit. Surely the old boy should just go for a bigger size and stop kidding himself, trying to hold it all together with a big belt he’d brought back from a trip to California many moons ago when he was still young and not out of touch the way he was now.
Not that Davie would attempt to tackle him, even now. He’d never admit it, but the old yin still put the fear of god in him, towering above as he seemed to, even though they were technically the same height and Davie probably had a year or twos growth left in him if he could only give up the fags.
He tried texting Andy a few times through the course of the morning but nothing doing. Huffy bastard. Alright, so they had to leave him there when those Polish boys had given chase, but there were a few of them and they looked like they meant business. They had taken it all a bit seriously if he thought about it. It had only been a bit of fun. Not like anyone meant any real harm was it? Fair enough they had kind of battered Andy, or at least knocked him out and left him to sleep it off but the guy probably did deserve some kind of revenge. He had lost his two front teeth after all. He shouldn’t think that way though. Andy was a mate and you should always stick up for your mates. Even if they were being particularly whiney you had to have their backs.
Still no response though, even after he’d kept his mobile on all night, turned the ringer up just in case, still nothing. Maybe he’d been in such a huff with them he’d just phoned that sister of his to come and pick him up before they had plucked up the courage to go back looking for him. He might have said though. Would have saved them some time. She could pick Davie up any time she liked. Not that it was likely, she was a couple of years older and a couple of light years out of his league. What could you do though? You couldn’t write yourself off like that. You had to keep trying.
He decided he’d text Andy again one last time and leave it at that. If the huffy wee bugger didn’t want to play ball that wasn’t Davie’s problem. Some people just needed more of a sense of humour about them.
24
Edwards was starting to outstay his welcome. It wasn’t so much that he did or said anything to make him any more annoying that the average career hungry wannabe top-dog. It was more the fact that he seemed to believe and embrace his own hype so wholeheartedly. It was more what he didn’t do or say in terms of his dealings with everyone around him that had the effect of making him an irritant. He was like an eyeful of chilli pepper, or maybe more like an eyeful of annoying condescending bastard.
It was implicit, Burke supposed; the air of grandeur and unquestioned sense of entitlement that can only be instilled from a young age.
Whatever; common decency dictated he should at least try to be tolerant, which was how they wound up in The Cask and Barrel, hanging off a pair of pint glasses, filled only with coke, owing to the time of day.
“I need this James, like you wouldn’t believe. Everything’s contracting. Know what I mean?”
Burke had a feeling he did.
“Everything’s being centralised, we’re all set to be one service and it won’t be long before the axe falls, you mark my words. First we’re part of a bigger beast, Police Scotland, one force, which could seem ok for movement and progression, seamless transition to different roles in different areas but you know there won’t be the opportunities, that’s the thing. They’ll be cutting expenses as always and this whole independence thing looming.” He snorted. “That’ll cut us off from everything if it happens. I’m off. I’ll tell you that much.”
“Really?” Burke heard himself say a bit too enthusiastically.
“Yes.” Edwards replied, dragging out the vowel as he clearly thought for a second and decided to confide his monumental plans. “Serious Organised Crime.”
“Serious Organised Crime?” Burke repeated, losing the will to live with every syllable as he looked longingly out of the window at what seemed to be welcoming drizzle right then.
“Yes. Serious Organised Crime. The UK’s very own answer to the FBI or who knows, maybe Europol. You have to think big.”
“Europol.” Burke repeated, wondering how bad pneumonia really was.
“Shouldn’t feel like a big fish in a small pond anymore. That’s the whole thing for me James. We’re part of a bigger world, a global village.”
Burke noted that he could make a suggestion for village idiot if required, should the vacancy become available.
Edwards sat up as though addressing a much larger audience, which was no small achievement, given the size of the booth they were in. “Let me ask you this Jim. What’s the most important factor in getting on in any business?”
“Knowing how to make a decent cup of coffee?”
“I’ll give you that.” Edwards conceded as he pulled a pen from his pocket, looking as though he was about to move this lecture along into one involving diagrams on the table, but instead merely attempting to use it as a pointing device, though directing it at nothing in particular. “But before that.”
There was a pause as Burke wondered whether he was actually supposed to answer what may or may not have been a question, realised he was and then fought a mini battle in his own head; one where he resolved not to utter the phrase “I don’t give a shit” purely on political grounds.
“It’s not what you know…” Edwards encouraged, seemingly unaware he was simultaneously encouraging the urge Burke had to break his nose or at the very least stamp on his toes before repeatedly jamming his fingers in a door. Instead he decided to frown in a way he felt sure suggested a state of abject confusion but equally could have conveyed constipation or the onset of coronary arrest.
“It’s… who…“ Edwards continued in the manner of a school teacher who has lost all sense of irony and self-respect.
“You bribe.” Burke suggested.
“Might help to grease the wheels I’m told but I couldn’t possibly comment. I was going for ‘who you know’”
“I see,” Burke replied. Not like he was a detective inspector or anything.
“All I need to do is get my name out there, you know, make some connections and I’ll be in. I’ll be playing on a whole other field. The same with Europol. Europe is just such a bigger thing to get my teeth into. There are so many opportunities there. I just need a starting point.”