Redlaw - 01 (6 page)

Slocock did indeed see.

“The storm is rising faster than our projections predicted,” Lambourne said. “If we don’t bring the deadline forward, it may break, and if it does”—he splayed out his hands and shrugged his shoulders—“we all get drenched.”

“Not much choice then,” Slocock said. “I have to win Wax over.”

“Not much choice at all, I’m afraid.” Lambourne patted Slocock’s hand. “But I’m more than confident that you’re up to the challenge, my lad. In addition, I’ll be able to provide you with leverage to help.”

“Leverage?”

“Make sure you’re home tomorrow morning. Something will arrive that will give you what you need should negotiation fail.”

As Slocock was pondering on this, the
maître d’
shimmied up to the table.

“All iz well, gentlemen? Ze food iz to your lahkeeng? Zere are no, ’ow you zay, issues?”

“All is marvellous, thank you,” said Lambourne.

Slocock’s fork paused on its journey to his mouth. On it was impaled a lump of steak so rare it looked raw.

“Yes,” he said, smiling, as the meat dripped at his lips. “Yes, I think everything’s absolutely bloody marvellous.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Redlaw was in the canteen, having his first coffee of the night, when Khalid walked in. Redlaw stood, scraping back his chair. He and the sergeant had unfinished business.

Khalid didn’t take too kindly to being seized by the shoulder and being made to turn round.

“Take your hand off me,” he said, adding, “Sir,” with as much of a curled lip as he dared.

“Where’d you run off to last night?” Redlaw demanded. “I said I wanted words.”

“And I wanted to avoid precisely this sort of thing,” Khalid replied.

“A dressing down from a superior officer?”

“No, a scene.”

“I’ll give you a scene.” Redlaw was conscious of the dozens of eyes on them, the colleagues and ancillary staff watching. “You came barging in, all guns blazing. You reignited a situation I’d managed to defuse. You lost me an informant.”

“I think you’ll find you did that last one yourself, captain.”

“But what really matters is you were just letting that riot happen.”

“Forgive me, sir, but I value the lives of the people under me, and going into that SRA would have been suicide.”

“I went in. I’m still here.”

“Then you’re clearly a better man than I am.” Quite a few of the SHADE employees in the canteen smirked at this remark. A couple even laughed out loud—cronies of Khalid’s, Muslim brothers. Khalid was emboldened. “Permission to speak freely?”

“Go on then.”

“What you did was admirable, undeniably. But it didn’t save those truck drivers, did it? You know as well as I do that they were dead long before you got there—long before any of us got there. So what would have been gained by us trying to rescue a pair of corpses, except possibly more corpses?”

“It would have shown we mean business. SHADE has a reputation to uphold.”

“You mean
you
have a reputation to uphold, as a full-on hard nut.”

That was when Redlaw decided to deck Khalid. Not for being impudent; for being right.

Khalid got up off the floor, rubbing his chin. He rose to his full height, which outdid Redlaw’s by a good three inches.

“Captain or not,” he rumbled, “no one sucker-punches me and gets away with it.”

“Then let’s go, sergeant. You and me.”

“Everybody here’s a witness. You hit first.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t have you up on an insubordination charge. Let’s sort this out.”

Khalid dived into Redlaw, pushing him back so that he collided with the serving counter. Crockery went flying. Redlaw was winded but still managed to retaliate, ramming his elbow down onto the crown of Khalid’s head. The sergeant reared up with a roar. Redlaw blocked his first two punches, but the third got through, a roundhouse to the ribs that left him gasping. Khalid drew back his fist to repeat it, but Redlaw seized him by the ears and yanked his head down, bringing a leg up at the same time. Knee and face made crunching contact. Khalid groaned and staggered back, putting a hand to his mouth. It came away bloody, with a fragment of tooth cupped in the palm.

Khalid cursed in Arabic, then lunged for Redlaw once more.

Redlaw braced for impact.

“
Stop!
”

The shout resounded across the canteen, bringing instant silence and stillness. Even Khalid was halted in his tracks.

Commodore Macarthur strode between tables, her face bunched tight and radiating cold fury.

“What the hell is going on here?” she barked. “Two grown men brawling like school kids in the playground?”

“He started it,” said Khalid.

Redlaw shrugged. “It’s true. I did.”

“I don’t bloody care,” said Macarthur. “In headquarters? In full view of staff and officers? What’s got into both of you?”

Redlaw was about to speak, but Macarthur cut him off with a chop of her hand.

“John. My office. Now.”

She said this in the tone of voice she had perfected as a major in the Royal Highland Fusiliers, a sharp, commanding bark that must have been the terror of the lower ranks. Redlaw didn’t even try to protest. He about-turned and made for the canteen exit.

“Yeah, you slope off, Redlaw,” said Khalid. “And take your midlife crisis with you.”

“That’s enough from you, Ibrahim,” said Macarthur. “Go and clean yourself up. The rest of you? Finish whatever you’re doing. Sun’s setting. Time for work. Go be the watchmen on the walls, the guardians at the gate.”

“Marm, I can explain...”

“Not interested.” Slamming the door, Macarthur brushed past him and went to her desk.

“But—”

“You do not get into fights with fellow officers, John,” she said. “You do not. End of story. Whatever the provocation. Especially not you, a captain. I’m aware there’s long been bad blood between you and Khalid, but still. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t suspend you without pay for a month. Actually, one good reason why I shouldn’t just have done with it and sack you.”

“Because I’m the best shady you have?”

“Are you, John?”

“You know I am.”

Macarthur held his gaze for several seconds, then sighed relentingly. “Well, maybe so. But you’re also, not to put too fine a point on it, knocking on a bit. If this were an ordinary police force you’d have been put out to pasture years ago. At best, you’d be reduced to pushing paper at a desk and getting fat on Danish pastries. That still might happen. We’re desperately short-handed in the admin department and I’m seriously considering taking officers off the streets to whittle down the backlog of casework. You’d be a prime candidate for that.”

“Please, God, no.”

“It isn’t up to God, alas. Would that it were. It’s up to me. And right now I’m looking at a plainclothes field operative of mature years who’s done his bit tackling Sunless and keeping the peace and who, on recent showing, looks like he could do with considerably less stress in his life.”

“On recent showing? One minor infraction in the canteen?”

“John, I could at this point turn to my computer here,” Macarthur said, indicating the terminal beside her, the sole occupant of a desktop that was otherwise bare of paraphernalia and ornament, “and pull up your HR file and scroll through a list of—let’s call them infractions, then—dating back several months. I could do that, but I don’t need to. I have them memorised.” She tapped her head, with its shock of choppily cropped blonde hair. “All up here. Because I’ve been going through that file over and over lately, and wondering just what’s got into you, why you’ve become so damn erratic.”

“Erratic?”

“Don’t make out like you’ve no idea what I’m talking about. It won’t wash. Especially not while you keep fingering your ribs like that and wincing.”

“Bruised not broken, I think.”

“Glad to hear it.” She steepled her fingers. “Once upon a time there was a man who worked for me called John Redlaw who could be relied on to act with complete probity and do whatever he needed to to ensure ’Lesses stay where they belong and humans don’t get molested. I don’t see that John Redlaw standing before me right now.”

“Who do you see?” He was feigning indifference, but not very well.

“I see, for starters, a man who’s been cited seven times for failing to follow up on reports of Sunless attacks.”

“People lie about getting bitten, make up stories. Waste our time.”

“Nonetheless we have a duty of care. Every single claim must be investigated fully and with due diligence.”

“Even when it’s just attention seekers taking the mick? Or wonky-headed Goths messing around with fake fangs and suction pumps? Or nutters who just bite people for the sake of biting?”

“Even then. You have to prove it conclusively, with hard evidence to back your findings up. Not take one look and judge.”

“One look’s usually all it takes.”

“I know that, you know that, but we still have to go through the process.”

“Go through the motions, you mean.”

“Whatever.” Macarthur’s Scottish burr, faint after years in the south, still rolled the odd “r,” especially when she was in an irritable mood. “Whatever” became “whateverrr,” and Redlaw’s surname was almost growled:
Rrredlaw
. “The point is, we have to be seen to be doing our job. Otherwise people get anxious, more anxious than they already are. We’re the thin blue line between ordinary folk and a phenomenon they don’t understand but fear greatly. We’re a shield, and we need to seem impeccably sturdy. They depend on us.”

“So I should pretend it matters when some old biddy’s cat goes missing and she thinks Tibbles has been snatched by a vampire? Okay, I get you. Message received. I’ll try harder in future.”

Macarthur chose to ignore the drollery. “As long as you pretend convincingly, that’s fine. Then there’s the matter of the charges of assault that have been brought against you by civilians on no fewer than five occasions. Including a new one just today.”

“Don’t tell me. The Stokers from last night.” Redlaw rolled his eyes heavenward. “They had it coming.”

“You put two of them in hospital, John.”

“They should count themselves lucky that’s all I did.”

“One of them will never walk again unaided.”

“I’m fed up with ruddy Stokers. Giving their gang a fancy name and making out as if they’re some kind of grass-roots activist movement—it doesn’t legitimise what they do. Unless you have a government mandate to deal with the Sunless, you’re just criminals, meaning I have not just the authority but an obligation to stop you.”

“Nicely put. I’m sure you told them that, too.”

“They didn’t strike me as the type to listen to sermons.”

“According to their testimony, they’d unearthed a rogue ’Less. Doubtless, after you’d finished with them, you dusted it yourself.”

“I didn’t, as a matter of fact.”

Macarthur tweaked one eyebrow high. “Why ever not?”

“In all the confusion, he disappeared,” Redlaw said.

“Not like you to let one slip through your fingers.”

“You said it yourself—I’m knocking on a bit. When I was younger, four thugs wouldn’t have taken me nearly so long to polish off.”

The Commodore looked sceptical, but decided not to pursue that particular angle any further. “Broadly speaking, John, I’m on your side, you must know that. Stokers and the like need suppressing. The odd rap on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper does them good. Which is why I’m prepared to keep giving you my full backing when it comes to these charges. We’ll argue self-defence, and as long as we hold firm, any lawsuit will be dropped before it gets to court. However—and it’s a big however—you can’t rely on my support indefinitely. I can’t keep putting myself out for you, not without compromising my own position.”

“I understand, marm.”

“Do you, John? Really?”

“Really. May I go now? There’s work to be done. Watchmen on the walls and all that.”

“No, you may not go. I’m not done with you.”

Redlaw stifled a sigh of impatience.

“The way you’ve been acting lately...” Macarthur was trying to sound sympathetic, conciliatory. “Is it Róisín? Is that what’s eating you?”

“Leary? That was a year and a half ago, marm. I think I should be over it by now.”

“You were close, you two.”

“She was a hell of a shady,” Redlaw said stiffly. “A hell of a partner. I don’t know if I’d call us close, exactly, but we worked damn well together.”

“I’m not suggesting you and she were romantically involved,” said Macarthur. It seemed as preposterous to her as it was to him. “Nothing like that. But for a loner like you to stick with a partner at all, let alone the same person for, what was it, four years?”

“A hair over five.”

“Exactly. When, prior to that, you could barely put up with anyone for longer than a week.”