Vic said, ‘What about the other two? The husband and wife?’
‘We talked to them,’ Maria said. ‘They claim that they don’t know anything.’
‘They told us that Drury and the others rolled out a couple of days ago,’ Alain said. ‘They don’t know where they went or when they will be back. Your friend claims to know even less. You want to talk to him here or in the squad room?’
‘I want to take him for a drive,’ Vic said.
Alain and Marie extracted Little Dave from their car and walked him over to Vic’s. The man was nervous, avoiding Vic’s gaze.
As Little Dave stooped to wedge himself into the back seat, Alain put his hand on the stubbly boulder of the man’s head, gripping it like a bowling ball, and banged it against the sill. ‘Oops. I forget to tell you to be careful how you get in when you are handcuffed.’
Little Dave had the sense not to reply or complain. Sitting on his hands in the back seat, staring ahead, trying not to flinch when Alain slammed the door, almost succeeding.
When Marie handed him the handcuff key, Vic said, ‘I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m just going to put him on the spot.’
Alain said, ‘Why are you telling us? We aren’t even here.’
In the car, Vic adjusted the rear-view mirror and stared into it until he had Little Dave’s attention. The fucker looking like a child who knows he’s been caught but is trying to tough it out. Piggy eyes smouldering with resentment, lips clamped tight.
Vic said, ‘Don’t ask me what this is about, because I know you know. In fact, I don’t want to hear one word from you until we get to where we’re going. If I do, I’ll pull over and haul you out and shoot you in the face and send a photo of it to your fucking mother.’
Part of it was his tough-cop act, a role he could put on and take off. Part of it, surprising him, was for real.
He drove north and east out of the city, past the airport and into the hills beyond, following the road to the quarries that supplied much of the construction stone for the city. He overtook flatbed trucks, tipper trucks, and about five kilometres out turned down a track that dipped into a valley where a small swift river ran between tumbled rocks, and parked on a flat ridge near the stark frame of a burned-out wooden house.
Vic got out and opened the passenger door and told Little Dave to get out too. He made the man assume the position against the side of the car, unlocked the handcuffs. ‘Let’s go for a little walk.’
Little Dave followed him to the edge of the rise. Fans of scree fell to the river. A herd of biochines, jointed six-legged things, was grazing amongst stiff bushes up on the far side. In the distance something was making a nagging whine that sounded exactly like a plane saw, rising and falling in the cold breeze.
Vic said, ‘Way back when, people tried to raise goats here. The goats didn’t make it past the first year. All of them got eaten. But we should be safe enough for a little bit.’
The biochines were harmless herbivores, but Vic was pretty sure that Little Dave didn’t know that.
Little Dave took out an ecig. Trying to look casual, although his gaze kept going back to the biochines. He was in shirtsleeves, hunched against the cold clean wind. He said, ‘I’m dying for a puff. All right?’
‘Best not. It can drive biochines crazy.’
‘If you’re trying to put the fear in me, it isn’t going to work,’ Little Dave said, but he put the ecig away.
‘You came up five years ago,’ Vic said. ‘Ever been outside the city before?’
‘What’s the point? It all looks like this.’
The man was uncertain, sullen and suspicious. Watching the distant biochines rather than Vic.
‘You come all the way to a wild alien planet, but you aren’t interested in what it’s really like, or in making a new life for yourself…’
Little Dave shrugged.
‘So why not stay at home?’
‘I was born in Romford. You ever been in Romford?’
‘I bet you were in and out of jail, back in Romford.’
‘That’s all in the past, innit. Doesn’t count here.’
‘Is that why you came up? Because you were running away from the consequences of a serious crime?’
Little Dave shrugged again.
‘Did you meet up with Cal McBride’s people in prison, or afterwards?’
‘I told your friends I don’t know where he is.’
‘You told them you don’t know where Danny Drury is. But what about your old boss? Where is he? The reason I ask,’ Vic said, ‘is because he hasn’t been seen at his hotel. The Petra Carlton, where he has a suite. He hasn’t been at the construction site for his pleasure dome, either. I have to confess, I’m a little concerned about his safety. If he’s had an accident, ended up at the bottom of a foundation trench or in a shallow grave out on the playa, you’d be doing yourself a big favour by telling me about it now.’
‘I don’t have nothing to do with him no more.’
‘That’s right. The new boss came up while McBride was in prison, and you switched sides. Just like that. As if three years of working for the man meant nothing at all.’
‘I didn’t switch anything. I’m still in exactly the same job.’
‘And what job is that, exactly?’
‘I look after the house, don’t I?’
The man sounding plaintive.
Vic said, ‘Doing what? Mopping floors, emptying wastebins…’
‘Security and such.’
‘You like to think you’re a badman, don’t you?’
A shrug.
‘There was a Big Dave once upon a time, wasn’t there? Cal McBride’s right-hand man, killed in a traffic accident. If it was an accident.’
Little Dave shrugged again, pretending to be interested in something way beyond Vic.
‘I just realised why Danny Drury and his goons still call you Little Dave, long after Big Dave copped it. Because you’re small-time. A minnow amongst sharks. You’re their pet. They let you stay on after they kicked out Cal McBride because you’re harmless. A joke. And now they’ve left you here to face the fucking music, while they’re somewhere out there playing Cowboys and Indians.’
‘I just look after the house. I don’t know nothing about any of that.’
Vic unsnapped his shoulder holster and pulled out his gun, the Colt.45 he kept locked in the bottom drawer of his desk. The gun he’d never worn on an investigation until now. It got Little Dave’s attention straight away.
‘Someone killed a cop. Not just any cop. My partner. My friend. Tell me again you don’t know anything about anything,’ Vic said, ‘and I’ll shoot you in the fucking kneecaps and leave you here.’
Little Dave stared at him, and plainly saw something he didn’t like. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right! They went back to Idunn’s Valley. And that’s all I know, I swear.’
‘This is Danny Drury and his goons.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What about Cal McBride?’
‘I told you. I don’t have nothing to do with him no more.’
‘Don’t lie to me, or I swear I’ll shoot you and drive you over to that pack of biochines and kick you out of the car.’
In that moment Vic knew that he could shoot the little fuck dead if he had to. He could see himself doing it: it rose up from some deep part of himself.
Little Dave flinched from his gaze, saying, ‘You’re fucking crazy.’
‘You bet I am. You bet your life. Cal McBride. Is he alive or dead?’
‘Alive, last time I knew.’
‘Meaning Danny Drury didn’t kill him, or have him killed.’
‘Drury wouldn’t dare.’
‘Where is he now? Cal McBride.’
‘I might have heard he went to Idunn’s Valley.’
‘And that’s why Danny Drury went back there. Yes or no?’
‘Yes!’
‘Back to that Elder Culture site. Site 326.’