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  ‘And what about Jake?’

  ‘I fucking know that.’ She hissed. ‘He’s asleep, isn’t he? He’ll not be if you can’t keep your fucking voice down. What about you? You can stop in for us. I mean, you can, can’t you?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ he said quietly. ‘I would, if I’d known, it’s just – I can’t explain.’

  She was glaring, vindicated. ‘Right. That’s all it ever is wi’you, John.’

  ‘Oh, you say –’

  ‘Just a quick squirt you were after tonight, then?’

  ‘That’s not –’

  She flounced round him and out. He yanked up the zipper of his trousers and slumped down onto the edge of the bed – heard a door swinging but not quite closing, the hiss of the shower, towels being yanked from a hook.

  Stonily he looked around her room. The gonks, the bottles, the trinkets, all the feminalia on which he had no purchase. The clothes rail. Beneath the forest of frocks and tops, amid the detritus of shoes, the Adidas logo stared back at him. The old orange bag, Stevie’s bag, its incongruity amid Lindy’s frills somehow more brutish than usual.

  Without rising he was able to lean forward and hook the bag’s handle, dragging it out of its cover, though the unanticipated weight made his lower back shout in protest. He wrestled the bag into his lap, picked a little at its cracked plastic exterior, then drew the zip across. The old wadded wash-towel bristled up at him, and by inches he tugged it out, bringing forth a few rattling pharmacy-issue boxes. He inspected one such, stamped with a sticker that read TESTAVIRON, stocked with ampoules of clearish liquid. Delving back into the bag he withdrew another cardboard carton, this more tightly packed, and thumbed open the top.

  The sight he met put him sharply in mind of the back of his dad’s old telecom van – the umpteen boxes and buckets of screws, rivets and widgets. These, though, were bullets – stunningly apparent, a glinting cluster of copper-jacketed live ammunition.

  He plunged a hand to the floor of the bag, found and withdrew a black-and-white football shirt, mere swaddling for some concealed package, which he unwrapped as delicately as if it were a gift he wished to gaze upon one last time before relinquishing. He was fascinated by his own calm, surprised too as he yielded to the need to trace a finger along the blue-black metal barrel. The slubbed grip seemed also to invite fingers wrapped around it. Some better angel counselled him otherwise.

  His first thought arrived in the voice and tone he knew best: Gently now. Everything now will need greater care. Higher precaution.

  His next thought, near-sneakily euphoric: I’ve got him.

  His next thought: Did she know?

  *

  Attentive to the thrumming from the bathroom he squared all things away as he had found them. Then he lay back on the bed again, his mind clicking over at high speed.

  Presently he heard a thump on the stair, flinched, leapt up and swung the bedroom door. Coulson was ascending two steps at a time to the top landing.

  ‘You again, eh? Where’s she at?’

  Flummoxed, Gore glanced toward the bathroom door. Stevie nodded and grasped the handle.

  ‘Steve, she’s –’

  ‘How, man, it’s nowt I’ve not seen.’

  He ploughed blithely in. Gore froze, his scalp crawling.

  ‘Howay, Stevie, man!’

  ‘How you. You’re late. Eh, I remember that. Has it changed colour? You give it a lick of paint?’

  Gore kept staring at the closed door for moments that crawled until Coulson made his exit, grinning, and bounded back down the stairs.

  Gore padded down the hall, rapped the door.

  ‘Aye?’

  He stepped in. She was towelling herself vigorously, her wet skin pink and blotchy, her pale breasts jogging, the snake tattoo scaling her lumbar region. He studied her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you not have a problem with any of this?’

  She straightened, he saw the tension in her shoulders, then she turned and her mouth was clenched, babyish, tears being fought back. What came out of her at last was an aggrieved gasp.

  ‘I can’t believe – can’t believe you can’t see how it is for me. I mean, who are you, man?’

  ‘I’m the one who cares for you.’

  ‘Aw, keep trying, John, someone might believe you. One day.’

  ‘Can you never just tell him? Tell him to piss off out of your life?’

  ‘Like you have?’

  ‘I have done, yes. You, but, you don’t ever seem to get sick of being – I don’t know – indentured to him.’

  ‘I’m sick to the back teeth. Who am I s’posed to count on, but? Eh? You?’

  She was past him again, as though he were a cone on the road.

  The top barely came down to the band of the skirt, itself about two inches higher than mid-thigh. Hurriedly she slathered on the Lancôme foundation, drew the arches of her eyebrows, brushed at her lips. Gore remained in the doorway, letting the silence deepen.

  ‘Lindy, I know about the gun.’

  She half-turned. ‘Eh? What you talking ’bout?’

  He had expected to scrutinise her face but there was no need, such was its scowling conviction that he was simply the living end of all things. He ducked his chin to his chest.

  ‘No, sure, that’s all I need to know.’

  ‘What you talkin’ about, but? Is that what you said? “Gun”?’

  He shook his head and she waved an impatient hand, turned to scribbling on a sheet of drawing paper. ‘Well, gan on then,’ she muttered without looking up. ‘If you’re gannin’, I’ve to lock up.’

  ‘Lindy, it’s not because I want to.’

  ‘Then what do you want?’

  *

  He sat for some time in his dull parlour, under the harsh bulb, leafing his hardbacked notebook. He poured a glass of water, considered the time on the kitchen clock. Then he climbed the stairs, saw the blue light under the door, rapped gently. The boy had his arms behind his head, the rancour of the depressive as tangible as the overflowing ashtray.

  ‘Tony, there’s something I have to ask.’

  The boy pushed himself to his side, toward the wall.

  ‘Don’t … ignore me, please. I’m tired of this and I’ve not got the time. It’s a simple question.’ He saw the twitch of the shoulders. ‘Your mother told me you have a mobile phone. Just for work, she said. Was it Coulson gave it to you? Just say yes or no, will you? Was it from Coulson?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘What for? What did you do for him?’

  Some answer was muttered into a pillow.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Said you know what. I kept deck. Lookout for him. Watched his place when he were out.’

  ‘Watched for what?’

  Now he had the favour of the boy’s dour face. ‘Just people. He said there might be people hanging about. After him.’

  ‘What people? Police?’

  ‘Anybody. That’s what he said. Anybody. Even his lads, like. Said any of his lads come round I’d to call him. Didn’t trust none of them.’

  Gore nodded, taking this much onboard for solace. The fit course of action had proposed itself to him at first slyly, now forcibly.

  Chapter II

  CONSPIRACY

  Sunday, 24 November 1996

  It was in the act of upturning the collar of his topcoat against the perishing wind that he saw himself, all of a sudden, as a sort of third-rate private eye. That had once seemed to him a compelling make-believe of a job – a licence to watch and wait for the moment to intrude upon the guilty and their plans. Now, somewhere past two on Sunday morning, loitering in a low pedestrian tunnel, the numb cold of the cobbles seeping through the soles of his shoes, he felt only shabbiness and misgiving, more vagrant than detective. A few yards behind him in the shadows of the tunnel were two heavy lidded dump-bins on wheels, full to bursting with ill-sorted garbage. In the wait he had toyed with hunkering down between them, parking his backside on a crushed c
ardboard box. This until he noticed the trampled sleeping bag and the soiled blankets in the shape of a man, and turned to hoping instead that their owner would not be reclaiming his patch before this vigil was done.

  The Quayside was still alive with what remained of Saturday night, people streaming to and fro across the Swing Bridge six feet over his head. For a while a certain trickling number – mainly couples clutching one another – had been making their exit from Teflon’s front doors, picking their way toward parked cars. But now the thump of the music seemed to have been permanently stilled, punters coming forth in droves, sweaty and part-exposed to the cold, exuberant or truculent, proceeding on foot or stopping to harangue the few parked taxi drivers. Gore tried to recede into the brickwork as an all-male mob came lurching through the tunnel, kicking stray rubbish and clattering tin cans before them. He kept one eye on those main doors, another on the mesh gates before the fire exit at the side. It was with something of a pang that he observed Lindy leaving arm-in-arm with another young woman, not obviously jaded by the night’s labours, sliding directly into the back of a cab.

  And there, at last, was his man. For one drastic moment Dougie Petrie was there with him too. But it was only a hand on an arm and a muttered farewell before Petrie ducked back indoors. Then Robbie was headed right, and Gore pushed himself out of the shadows in pursuit, keeping a measured distance, dogging his strides across the cobblestones, past the club and the cars clustered under the High Level Bridge, across a small square where two girls huddled on a bench, high heels crossed, one consoling the other as she wept bitter tears.

  ‘He’s not worth it, Lisa,’ Gore overheard. ‘Honest he’s not.’

  ‘He is, but.’

  Gore was close now, but reckoned a hand on the bullish shoulder would be unwise. ‘Robbie?’ he ventured.

  Wheeling, the young bouncer’s headlights flared. ‘Aw, Christ alive.’

  ‘I have to talk to you –’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘– about Coulson.’

  ‘Fuck off out of it, man, how stupid are you?’

  ‘I’m serious, it’s vital, will you just hear me –?’

  ‘Shut up, man, get back behind us.’

  He strode off at high pace, put yards between them – then ducked sharply right, into some form of narrow alley beside a pub. Gore rounded this same corner and there stood Robbie, glaring through the dimness at the foot of steep-rising stone steps. Two flights up ahead a pair of young lovers were wrapped avidly, selfishly around each other.

  In the silence of the staring match Gore looked anew at the heavy brow, the broad nose, the thick trunk, the general demeanour of a defensive footballer, and probably a handsome lad when ill temper didn’t so convulse his features.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, to trouble you. But it’s important.’

  ‘Fuck off youse two,’ came a casual sneer from on high.

  ‘You fuck off, dickless,’ Robbie roared, turning, fists clenching. It seemed to do the trick. He spun back to face Gore. ‘I’m gunna get in me car. You gan up there’ – he jerked a thumb – ‘and wait for us. Corner of Forth Street and Railway Street, that tunnel under the railway, y’knaa? I’ll fetch you from there.’

  Then he darted aside, vanished round the corner once more. Gore weighed his instructions for some short moments, then turned and began the stiff ascent of the Long Stairs, giving the widest possible berth to the surly lovers and some broken glass beyond them. After three flights he was breathless. He surfaced on the Forth Road behind the high wall guarding the lines and sidings of the Central Station, and trod the deserted pavement, past a desolate car park and a row of shuttered lock-ups, until he came to the tunnel. He heard a shimmering whistle, saw a late train trundle by overhead. The tarmac of the tunnel floor was all pigeon shit and feathers, the walls peeling and dripping. He looked down the long steep Forth Bank toward the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, and saw a green Saab steadily gaining ground. As Gore grasped the handle of the front passenger door, Robbie was cranking down the window. ‘Nah, you get in the back, scooch yourself right down. Flat.’

  Gore obliged mutely, resolved to obey any and all such conditions. As they accelerated away, his cheek pressed to a cool padded cushion behind the passenger seat, he could make out the upper facade of Martin Pallister’s office block, his very own window, his glass-and-metal vantage onto the city.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’ll tell ya when we’re there.’

  From his low cramped vantage Gore quickly understood that they were fleeting over the Redheugh Bridge into Gateshead. Silence prevailed, until Robbie snapped on the car radio – some inoffensive rock station, but the volume was blistering. Recumbent, Gore assessed what he could see of his driver under the strobing light. A heavy fist on the gear stick, a tattoo of twin samurai swords curving elegantly from bicep to forearm. His hair would probably have been curly if not sheared so short. The hostility he could excuse, for a life so divided surely had to be a factory of tension. Whatever the brusque handling and the cramp, Gore felt his nerves at least steadied by this much progress.

  He watched roadsigns and motorway lights streak by across the night sky, a strange lunar landscape, all colour leeched from it. It was a canvas he half-recognised from childhood, from trying and failing to sleep in the back of his father’s car as they returned late to Pity Me from some call upon an uncle or aunt. Robbie, though, drove very much faster than Bill, played his music louder, bashed at his horn with impunity.

  Gore was starting to feel queasy. They had attained the junction for the Western Bypass and the distance covered was unsettling him anew.

  ‘Robbie, I have to know how far –’

  ‘We’re here.’

  He was taking an exit off the bypass, pulling into a parade of small convenience shops, reversing and parking. Gore looked to Robbie’s glowing dashboard clock. It was 3.34 a.m.

  ‘You want owt?’

  He raised himself up and followed Robbie’s gaze to the bleary yellow lights of Herbie’s Hot-Dogs’n’Burgers. A quiet spot for a quiet chat.

  ‘Could I have a tea?’

  Gore stretched his stiff limbs and studied Robbie through the glass as he transacted, pacing, unsmiling still, pushing some coins into a slot machine. On his return to the driver’s seat he handed back to Gore a lidded polystyrene cup, molten to the touch.

  ‘Do you mind if I join you up front?’

  ‘Nah, just you stop back there.’

  Robbie unwrapped his steaming repast, the hot-grease odour strong in the cramped car. Gore sniffed, sipped, and burned his tongue.

  ‘I’m waitin’ then. What ya want?’

  ‘Can I ask first? Who you are?’

  ‘Y’knaa who I am, man, I’ve telt ya.’

  ‘No, look, I’ve got to know – exactly who I’m talking to. For what I want to say.’

  Robbie bit, munched and swallowed, before glancing at him grudgingly. ‘I’m DC Robert Chisholm, Northumbria CID. All better now?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Right, so what then?’

  ‘I’ve got some information, I think you could do with. For what you’re doing. What I assume you’re doing.’

  ‘Oh aye? What’s that?’

  ‘Well, I mean – you’re after Coulson, aren’t you? Investigating him?’

  Another glance, with some amusement discernible there amid the contempt. ‘Might be. Some of what I’m doing. What’s it to you?’

  ‘Well – you know. He and I have had this association.’

  ‘Aye, been a bit of a star for you, hasn’t he?’ He laughed shortly. ‘So now you want him shopped, do you?’

  ‘I – made an error of judgement. Stupidly. Didn’t see things in the round …’ Gore caught hold of himself. How much did he intend to explain – confess – in this babbling manner? ‘Things have got clearer to me. His influence, in my community, people I know. The range of what he gets up to.’

  ‘Oh aye, he’s a busy lad is our
Steven.’

  ‘I mean, I realise, he’s mixed up in drugs and all of that.’

  A short laugh. ‘You sussed that one out?’

  ‘I’ve known, I mean – I gave a funeral for a man called Michael Ash.’

  ‘Nice, was it?’

  In the silence Gore felt himself reproved and tongue-tied. ‘What I’m saying is, I realise my befriending him was a mistake.’

  ‘He’s not a pal you’d want, no. You don’t want to get wrong off him neither, but. That might drop you right in the shit.’

  ‘I’ve already been told to – to leave alone, I think.’

  ‘Off Steve?’ Robbie whistled. ‘Fuck me. You wanna listen to that.’

  Gore sat back, rebuffed again, watching the windows fur up with steam from the rancid takeout, this hopeless dialogue.

  ‘I’d have done something sooner if I’d known he was such a … a ringleader.’

  ‘He’s not, man, he’s just a guard-dog. All he’s ever been. He’s got an owner, a boss-man, pulls his lead. That’s the bugger we’re after.’

  ‘Can’t you just arrest him? Coulson? I mean, you must –’

  ‘Nah, we can’t. Thanks for the idea, but.’ The lip was curled. ‘What, you reckon I should just drop the act, eh? March in, say “Howay, Steve, the game’s up so come quietly, eh?” Nah, thanks, I don’t fancy gettin’ hoyed out a window with wuh balls in wuh mouth.’

  They both heard the muffled chime of a phone. Robbie reached into his coat.

  ‘Well I never. You keep it tight shut now, hear? Not a peep.’ He clamped the phone to his ear. ‘Stevie, man? Aye. Nah, I’m nearly home. Aye man. Nee bother. Nah, I’m there.’ He balanced the phone on his knee. ‘See? Good doggie, that Steven. Got a thought for everyone.’

  ‘You sound like you think he’s alright.’

  ‘You’ve had his company. He can be canny. When he’s not stamping on your face. That’s the laugh of it.’ Robbie rubbed at his brow. ‘Not all that funny, like. Listen, I’m sure you think you can make yourself useful here, being you’re that sort. All you’ll do, but, is balls things for me. You think you can tell us owt about Stevie? When I’m working for him, every day? What I told you, it was for your own good – to get you out of the shit. Not so you could go pester us in the street. Put me in the shit. Didn’t think about that, did you? So if you don’t mind, just get yourself home abed and leave alone.’ He blew on a handful of chips in his palm and then shovelled them into his mouth. ‘I mean, fuck sake, man, if it was as easy as you coming up to me all vexed you think I’d be riskin’ me arse like I’m doing?’