Beast of Burden (13 page)

From the way my brother talked about the people he knew at the Outreach, I expected more of them to turn up. Maybe the overdose scared them away; the few that did attend looked to have been dragged there by Declan's girlfriend, Rachel. I watched her, one hand on her pregnant belly, her head down the entire service.

In all other respects, the funeral was an almost-ran. My mum attempted grief, but only succeeded in pulling a series of tight faces. Kenny attempted to console her, but there was obviously no need. And the sky threatened to break open, drench us all in a traditional funeral downpour, but all we ended up with was the kind of drizzle that prompted a slow, sick feeling to spread through my stomach.

Once the priest stopped talking and we'd finally committed my brother to the ground, Declan's friends started to mill out towards the gates. Talking amongst themselves, noticeably less tense, glad the inconvenience was over. I stayed put, didn't want to draw attention to myself. When Kenny told me that him and my mum were heading back to the house, I nodded. I didn't need a lift. Had my own transport. And I didn't plan on going back to the house. Not yet, anyway.

I found Rachel by the needle bins, a cigarette in her mouth.

“Should you—”

“Don't,” she said.

“Okay.” I dug around for my Embassys. “How are you?”

She blew smoke. Looked at me, one eyebrow crooked. “Better than you.”

“Yeah. Suppose.”

We smoked in silence for a moment. Then she said, “You'll want to know why he did it. That's what you're working up to, right?”

I nodded, but didn't look at her.

“Responsibility.”

I looked up to see her blow more smoke, one hand on her bump.

“He couldn't hack the responsibility, so he went back to the gear.”

“You know where … he got it?”

She smiled a little, but there was no humour in it. “What difference does it make?”

“A lot.”

“What're you going to do about it?”

I stared back at the graveyard. Heard the thin crackle of cigarette paper as I sucked on the filter. “I don't know. Something.”

“Dec told me you were a Scrappy Doo.”

“What's that mean?”

“That you spend most of your time looking for a fight.”

I shook my head, half-smiled. “Nobody …
likes
Scrappy.”

“Exactly,” she said. “So leave it.”

“I can't.”

A chill breeze moved her hair across her face. For a second she looked almost pretty, but she had a face that could never stay soft. Rachel finished her cigarette, dumped the butt. It bounced once, landed near the end of my walking stick.

“He wasn't perfect,” she said. “In fact he was kind of weak. Probably because every time there was trouble, someone bailed him out.” She breathed out, and for the first time I noticed a sheen on her eyes. “But sometimes, with some people, all that does is postpone the inevitable.”

“Still,” I said. “Someone—”

“Please,” she said. “For me? Just leave it.”

“Why?”

She didn't answer. Instead, she walked away, leaving me to chain another Embassy off the glow of the previous. I watched her catch up with one of the girls who'd come along from the Outreach, and the pair of them headed to a waiting taxi. I thought about going back to the graveside, but people didn't really catch any revelations in the company of corpses, not in this weather. Only thing they caught was a chill.

And what Rachel said made sense. Because sometimes there was no big conspiracy. Sometimes people just couldn't hack it anymore.

But that didn't stop me from looking for someone to blame.

DONKIN

Mo fucking Tiernan was dead.

He was dead, and there was bugger all I could do about it right then because I was stuck talking to our DCI. He hadn't said much, but I could feel a volley of shite coming my way any moment. I never bothered learning the bastard's name, because the way things were run around here — the words “piss-up” and “brewery” came to mind — he wouldn't be in the job come next Christmas, so it didn't matter.

Besides, you only needed to look at him to know how he got the DCI position. It wasn't because he was a good copper. More like it was because he was a
paki
copper. What the yanks called affirmative action; what I called taking the fucking piss. You asked me, it was those bastards causing all the trouble in the first place, but you'd have to ask us somewhere we knew we weren't being earwigged.

DCI Ali was one of the educated ones. Been to university, studied hard like his family expected him to, and ended up with a brass plate on his desk, which was the only reason I knew his name. I stared at that nameplate the entire time he was talking because I got the feeling that if I looked up and caught the expression on his face, I'd lose control and pan it right the fuck in. His voice was bad enough — like one of those sniffy twats on the telly who told people that they were fat and ugly, about to give them a makeover, the “I know what's best for you” spiel. Him tearing me a new arsehole, sounding like he was ordering fucking ice cream.

“I appreciate you've had some issues with some of your colleagues, Iain, but we can't have
anyone
acting out in the office.”

“Acting out?” I said.

“Demonstrating unacceptable behaviour,” he said. “I mean, besides the fact that it's unprofessional, say it leaked to the press. How would it look for the force if people picked up the
Evening News
to find you on the front?”

“How likely's that?” I said. “Really?”

“These things have a way of escalating. You know that.”

“It's only Kennedy. Nobody else I have any problems with.”

“Why Detective Inspector Kennedy?”

Shook my head. “Just a difference of opinion.”

“Which is?”

“I think he's a cunt; he thinks different.”

“You see, that's something
else
—”

“My language,” I said.

“Yes.”

I let out a short breath. “Tell you, if this is just going to be fuckin' random character assassination—”

“No,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I'm sorry, Iain. I didn't mean to sound as if I was judging you.”

“Course you did.”

He steepled his fingers on the desk in front of him. Probably reckoned it made him look important. It didn't.

“I'm not in the business of bringing people into my office to harangue them. But there are a number of issues I feel we have to address, okay?”

“Look, if I'm in here because you're going to bollock us, that's fine. I appreciate that you got a job to do. If someone made a complaint, you have to look into it, else you look bent. We both know Kennedy's a cunt — apologise for the use of language, but, y'know, if the fuckin' cap fits — and I appreciate that what happened yesterday probably got some of that lot's knickers in a twist. So here's what I'll do: I'll stay out of his way, do my job, and everything should be fine. That seem okay to you?”

There was this long silence. I'd said my bit, so I was just waiting on Ali to give us the wave, then I'd be out of there, back on with my day. Which, to be fair, was what I was desperate for, because I had a bit of a hangover and not enough time this morning to get some scran down my neck. So I had stuff I needed to do, and the only thing I wanted out of him sitting opposite was a thank you, come again.

Ali ground his throat, pulled a face that made his lips disappear. Then he looked at us with big, stupid cow eyes.

“We've had a complaint, Iain,” he said.

“I know. Kennedy complained because I raised my voice at him or something, right? Offended his delicate Scouse sensibilites.”

“No, this isn't internal.”

I kept schtum. I
wanted
to say, well yeah, of
course
you had a complaint, then. People complained about coppers who did their jobs, it was a fact of life. You collared them for anything, they all cried brutality and didn't I have any real criminals to be chasing down? Course, when it was
their
motor that'd been nicked, then it was supposed to be red alert. So I reckoned, fuck it, it was nothing I hadn't already heard a million times before.

Ali grabbed a couple of stapled sheets of paper, frowned at it. “Do you know the name Patrick Reece?”

It took us a moment — must have been the hangover fogging us up a bit — before it clicked and I burst out laughing. “Oh Jesus. Oh man, you had us going there for a second.”

Ali turned the frown on me. “Excuse me?”

“Paddy fuckin' Reece? He's the one that complained, is he?”

“I just told you that, yes.”

I leaned forward, grinning. “Paddy Reece is a fuckin'
smackhead
. The lad's off his box three-quarters of the time he's awake. The rest of the time he's scratching so bad he'd swear down you were the Milky Bar Kid if it meant he could spoon up.” I held up a hand, swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but. “He's a good grass, don't get us wrong, but the bloke's hardly stable. Or credible, for that matter.”

The DCI's jaw was all knotted up as he stared at us. He looked back down at the paper. “Mr Reece alleges that you accosted him on the street—”

“I talked to him.”

“Just that?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn't engage in a spot search?” He checked the paper again. “Which included for some reason the man's shoes?”

I kept quiet. Tasted my teeth. But I was still smiling, still trying to see the funny side.

“These would be the same shoes that, after allegedly assaulting Mr Reece, you threw to places from which it would be” — he paused, poked at the words on the paper to keep them in place — “
dangerous to retrieve them
.”

Still nothing from me. I was just waiting to see if Paddy had dug himself any further into the shit. Ali smoothed the statement out on his desk, licked his lips quickly like a lizard.

“Do you have any response to this?” he said.

“When'd he say all that, then?”

“Mr Reece was brought in on a shoplifting charge yesterday afternoon.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,
sir
, that he's spreading shit to get off the charge.”

Ali raised both eyebrows. “And the fact that he'd stolen shoes to replace those that you'd disposed of, that would be irrelevant, would it?”

“Well, considering he's fuckin' lying, yeah.”

“And the assault?”

“He didn't touch us.”

“Your assault on
him
.”

“And I didn't touch him.” I cleared my throat. “Much.”

Ali let out this sigh, started to say something, but I leaned forward, got in his face.

“Wait a second,” I said. “It used to be that you were well within your fuckin' rights to cuff someone round the lug if they were giving you gyp. And so what, suddenly that's out of order now, is it? Because you'll have to excuse us if
I'm
the criminal here. Y'know, as opposed to the smackhead with priors who's up on a fuckin' shoplifting charge.”

Another sigh out of him, and he was starting to sound like the most put-upon bloke in the world. He dropped his hands to the desk, looked at us with his chin down. “We want to resolve this locally, Iain.”

“You're joking. You're going to take this seriously?”

“We have to.”

I shook my head. “Can't fuckin'—”

“And we will resolve it at that stage. This doesn't go any higher than it needs to, Iain. I'm trying to keep the brass out of this.”

I wanted to tell him that he
was
the fucking brass.

“But I will not let it leave this station that one of my sergeants goes around beating up civilians. And if we go to the next level, that will most probably happen.”

“He's a grass.”

“Was he a suspect?”

“Paddy Reece,” I said, nice and loud, “is a lying cunt.”

He ignored us. “You'll have your chance to submit your version of events in due course. If there's anyone you'd like to have sit in with you — your union rep, someone like that — then it can be arranged.”

I didn't like the way this was going. Of course I'd been in the shit like this before, knew my wriggle room, but it'd never sounded this formal. There was always a wink before, something that meant that even if it was all written down, stamped and filed, there was nothing to worry about. In the end, it was all for the bureaucrats, and easily lost as long as I kept my head down for a bit.

But this Ali bastard, I realised I'd never been in the office with him before. And it looked to me right then that he was doing everything in his power to fuck with my job.

“Right,” I said, because there was nothing else to say. “You do whatever you reckon's necessary. Now, if you'll excuse us, I've got work to be getting on with.”

“You know the procedure, Iain.”

“Yeah.” I got out of my seat, smiling at him. “Old hat to us now, eh?”

“Still, it'll give you time to sleep off your hangover.”

I couldn't hang on to the smile then. “You what?”

“When you go home. You've been through this before, then you know you're suspended until we reach a resolution.”

“You're fuckin'
kidding
us.”

“Standard procedure, Iain, when a grievance has been officially filed.”

“Well, how the fuck did he make it official? I mean, who took the complaint in the first place?”

“Iain, don't make this worse for yourself. It doesn't matter who took his statement.”

Of course it fucking mattered. If you couldn't trust your colleagues, who could you? I needed a ciggie, but I couldn't spark one in here unless I wanted the suspension to turn into the sack. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, wanted to go out into the office and force them to tell us who'd taken Reece's statement, but then the rational part of us said that it wouldn't do any good. Better to make a show of calming down, and after a minute of slow counting in my head, I found a smile to give to the DCI.

“You're right,” I said. “I'm just … How long d'you think it'll be before I can get back to work? There's a body that just came in—”

“Belongs to Kennedy.”

“You can't—”

“It requires a DI.”

“It's just a dosser. You give it to Kennedy, he won't bother his arse.”