Country of the Blind (43 page)

head backwards so that he could see the cold stone of the close floor, four storeys and forty feet below.

Parlabane stepped a pace to his left, resting his right foot over the failure's insteps as they dangled a couple of inches off the floor. In one movement he yanked the gun out of the man's mouth and pulled backwards at a thick handful of balaclava and hair with his free hand, before jamming the gun between the intruder's eyes and pressing down so that matters remained in the balance, as it were.

"Maybe you can talk or maybe you can fly," Parlabane told him, pulling his securing right foot a few centimetres away from the failure's legs until he gasped in fright, then reapplying the pressure. "But trust me, if you don't demonstrate one ability right now, you'd better be ready to make good with the other. Where is she? WHERE IS SHE?"

The failure looked away, trying to turn his head as if needing confirmation that the ground
was
forty feet down. Parlabane watched his eyes flit back and forth before returning to face his own. The man had glanced at his arms, flailing uselessly against the air as he fought against the conspiracy between gravity and his own upper-bodyweight, still looking for options.

"Murrayfield," he suddenly gasped, generic Home Counties accent. "A place in Murrayfield."

"The address?" said Parlabane, twisting the muzzle of the Beretta. The eyes flitted again.

"Murrayfield Park," he said, with as much of a nod as he could manage, eyeing his interrogator beseechfully.

Parlabane looked down ponderingly at him for a moment, then nodded himself.

"Ach, fuck you," he said, pulling his arms away and easing the cocked hammer safely back, as he switched his right foot from in front of the man's insteps to behind his ankles, and kicked both legs up.

"BARNTON! IT'S BARNTON PARK," the failure yelled at that moment, feeling his body tumble back, a fraction before Parlabane swept his arms across the banister to catch his insteps as his feet shot into the air.

"Number?" he added, while the man dangled, trying somehow to grip the wooden bar between his thighs and his calves.

"Thirty," he whispered breathlessly but without hesitation. "Thirty. Thirty. Thirty Barnton Park."

"Thank you."

The failure gripped one of the metal railings at the base and kicked out at Parlabane with both feet, one boot catching him in the mouth as they whipped free of his hold. He swung down, twisting his grip as his weight jolted heavily at his wrist, leaving him hanging by that one hand, dangling above the drop. 246

Then he kicked his legs in the air and swung himself agilely outward, letting go on the return swing, aiming for the landing below Parlabane's. The failure's left leg cleared the downstairs banister cleanly. Unfortunately his right leg didn't.

"Aw, Jim, that's gotta hurt," said Parlabane, looking down. "I felt that from
here
."

The failure struggled to his feet but didn't quite make it, settling at first for all fours, then gripping the handrail for assistance as he hobbled slowly down the staircase.

"You're fucking dead, mate, you hear me? Fucking
dead
," he grunted, gripping the banister tighter and looking up to see Parlabane's less-than-worried expression.

When he turned back and resumed his descent, he found himself face-tobalaclava with Dalziel, who broke his nose with the heel of her palm.

"You're under arrest, Fuzzy," she told him.

"Bitch," he spat defiantly, lying dazed and sore on the grey stone. "What for?"

"I don't know yet, but from experience, if you're fucking with Jack Parlabane, you've
got
to be up to no good."

"I knew that was the neighbourhood gone when you hetero trash moved in round the corner," Jenny said, sitting on the stairs by the now handcuffed failure as the now dressed Parlabane and Sarah descended towards her. "I mean, if you're going to have your S&M friends round," she continued, holding up the balaclava, "you're going to have to make sure they stay indoors."

Sarah held up a plastic bag. "This is his gun and his knife. You're going to find my prints on both, just so that you know."

"Let's shift," said Parlabane urgently, taking one arm of their prisoner as Jenny gripped the other. The failure hobbled like an old man, his spirit broken like his nose, his whole system suffering the aftershock of severe bollockbanister trauma.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Barnton. They've got Nicole there."

"How come these bastards have always got such posh digs?"

"Would you rather it was Wester Hailes?"

"Not at this time of night, no."

Sarah unlocked the boot of her Civic coupe, her Honda Sensible, as Parlabane called it, while he retrieved his bag o'tricks from his own car a few yards away. He tossed the bag into the Sensible's back seat as Jenny bundled the prisoner over the tailgate and into the boot. At this point he regained some energy and attempted to climb out again.

247

"HELP!" he yelled. "HEmmmmmffffmmm." Jenny kicked his legs back into the boot and stuffed the rolled-up and blood-damp balaclava into his mouth.

"Right. Let's get going," Parlabane announced, gripping the boot and preparing to close it.

"Shouldn't we make some airholes for him or something?" Jenny suggested. Sarah gave her a reproachful look. "You're not putting any holes in
my
car for this piece of shit."

"There should be enough air for him to reach Barnton," Parlabane said. "So as long as he's not been lying to me again, he should be all right. You got anything else to tell me, Jim?" he asked, pulling the balaclava out.

"Fuck you."

"As you wish."

Parlabane plugged the woollen gag back in and slammed the boot closed, walking around to the driver's door. Sarah jerked a thumb at him, telling him to get over to the other side.

"They're going to kill her, remember," Sarah said. "It's a fucking emergency."

She turned to Jenny as she climbed behind the wheel and the policewoman clambered into the backseat. "He drives like a pensioner," she explained. Sarah backed the car out of the space, changed into first and hit the accelerator.

"I can
not
believe you had a gun in our house and never told me about it,"

said Sarah angrily, rounding the corner into Inverleith Terrace and gunning the engine noisily to wake up all the consultants who lived there.

"I'm sorry, could you say that a bit louder in case the law officer in the back seat didn't quite catch it," Parlabane replied.

"A
gun
?" asked Jenny.

"You're not hearing this," he told her, turning round.

"A gun," confirmed Sarah. "A nine-millimetre automatic. Can you believe this guy?"

"Well, funnily enough," said Parlabane defensively, "I had this outrageous idea that it might come in useful if someone happened to break in and attempt to murder us."

"Yes, but. . . "

"Something, I would remind you, which has happened to me more than once in the past, and which has indeed happened to the both of us together, if you'll cast your mind back to an incident involving your former employer."

"But what if it had gone off by accident? That bed
has
been known to get the odd violent shake. Even you can manage that once in a while."

Parlabane heard Jenny snigger. He thought it highly inappropriate. Bitch. 248

"It would have been pretty fucking difficult for the gun to go off by accident considering there were no bullets in it. The magazine was taped about a foot away."

"And where did you get it?" Sarah continued indignantly. Parlabane knew she was genuinely upset and not just having a dig at him for its own sake when she sped past the Disney Draws Gormenghast towers of Fettes College and neglected to give her usual salute in recognition of how many modest, cooperative, considerate, charming and open-minded colleagues had attended it. Parlabane figured she was rechannelling her understandable shock and anger at what had happened on to him, as he was available. He would have tried harder to just sit and take it if he hadn't been so wired by the whole thing himself.

"It was that lunatic pal of yours, wasn't it? Tim. Tim Vale, when he came up to visit you last year. Wasn't it?"

Parlabane sighed. "Yup."

"I
knew
it. He's a menace to society."

Parlabane nodded. He sure was. Tim Vale was a former "intelligence operative" (i.e. spy), one of many left somewhat purposeless by the end of the Cold War. He had been getting too old anyway by the time the Wall fell, but rather than retire to a cottage to pen his memoirs, he had started an endearingly shady freelance surveillance firm, putting old tricks and old contacts to good use. He and Parlabane shared an enthusiasm for unorthodox informationgathering. Their meeting had been almost inevitable. They didn't trust each other a great deal - doing so would have been "a frightfully disrespectful breach of etiquette", as Vale put it - but they did get on. Vale had given him "a present in gratitude for his hospitality" after coming up to stay a few days, not long after Parlabane moved to Edinburgh. He was still living in that cursed place in Maybury Square, back when he and Sarah had only just started seeing each other. Vale told him not to open the gift until after he was gone. Parlabane knew it would be a gun, but that it was a Beretta nine mill was typical of the bastard, keeping him guessing as to whether it was a coincidence or how Vale could know he had used such a gun in LA - and what for.

Death's Dark Vale, Parlabane called him. He patted the Beretta in his jacket and resolved to write and thank him again.

Sarah took her left hand off the wheel and put it on Parlabane's thigh, giving it a conciliatory squeeze. He placed his right hand on top of it and she smiled, then changed up and floored it as the approaching Quality Street lights turned amber.

249

"I found out who. . . who was in that interview room with your friend, Jack," said Jenny.

Parlabane turned his head around expectantly.

"It was the big cheese, chief spook, who's apparently in charge of everything in the whole world. Knight's his name."

Parlabane stared beyond her for a moment, then nodded, mouthing the word to himself, storing something away.

"I don't know his first name; it was hard enough finding out his second. Everyone at the station just refers to him as Bomber."

"Why?"

"After that guy in
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet
, remember him?"

"So he's a big fella then? A real bear?"

"Aye, but it's more the accent that got him the name. 'Zounds loik 'e's fram the Wess Con'ree, moi dear'," she mimicked. "Specially when he loses the place."

"Like a country bumpkin?" Parlabane asked anxiously. "A yokel?"

"Well I'm sure they all find
our
accents hilarious too, Scoop."

"No, I mean. . . I talked to a chef at Craigurquhart who said the bloke in charge of security for Voss's visit was a huge guy who spoke 'like a country bumpkin' when he got upset. That would put this Knight character at the scene."

"Why not. He's in charge of fucking everything else. Nobody in the HQ right now is allowed to
fart
without authorisation from him. It would certainly add up that he would be ultimately overseeing the murder investigation if he was overseeing the visit."

"Then
he
did it," Parlabane stated determinedly. "If he killed Donald, he killed Voss. Even if he didn't draw a blade, he was there, and he knows a man who did. He's a man Voss's bodyguards wouldn't have reacted to if he walked down the hall towards them that night. Him and someone else on his fucking spook staff."

"But why would he want to kill Voss?" Jenny asked.

"He's not the man with the motive," Sarah chimed in. "He's just the errand boy. The hitman."

"You pair are telling me you know who's behind the hit?"

"Oh yes, not inconsiderably," said Parlabane, doing a reedy-voiced John Major impression, at which Jenny's eyes bulged.

"You're not saying. . . "

"No, no," he added quickly, realising with a wry smile how she had wrongly interpreted his figure of speech. "But coincidentally, he could be a fringe beneficiary. You're in the right neighbourhood."

"One of his cohorts?"

250

"Well, I think the word Mr Major used was actually 'bastards'," Parlabane offered. "Personally, I prefer 'cunts'. It's the caring and likable Michael Swan."

"
What?
" She knew better than to ask if he was serious. "But why. . . what motive has he got?"

"Have to tell you later," Sarah said, pulling the car in and switching off the engine. "We're up."

Pain erupted inside Nicole, deafening, shaking, flooding her, enough even to shut out the fear for a moment, before it seeped back in where the agonies were subsiding. She was bent over, head on her knees as she sat on the plastic chair, which had seemed to appear under her as her body was buckled by the blow.

She had been standing before him in just a white T-shirt, in this room with its peeling-paint walls and Blu-tack smudges; its thin grey carpet under her bare feet; its bed where the second man sat, with the off-white candlewick, looking like it had lain undisturbed since the last time anyone actually used a candlewick; its wobbly MFI flatpack bureau; and the plastic chair. Like the lamenting bedroom of a daughter who didn't live there any more, haunted by the ghosts of her presence, where posters once looked down on the bed she slept in and the desk she studied at.

Like a mockery of the place she had felt safest.

She wasn't safe here.

He had put a hand behind her trembling shoulders, her hands cuffed behind her back, her eyes either refusing to focus or too tear-clouded to do so, then he had punched her viciously in the stomach and dropped her on to the chair, where she croaked and gasped, feeling like she had been run through. Your mind was supposed to blank at times like this. It was supposed to shut out what you couldn't handle, some Mary Whitehouse reflex objecting to the disturbing images and censoring the broadcast. Merciful oblivion, wasn't that what they called it? Taking you elsewhere - maybe above, looking down from one cushioning remove, maybe outside yourself, maybe somewhere deep within.