out into the bright, over-lit, open-plan area. Few of the assembled made eye contact. Or even attempted conversation. Their mouths opened and closed like fish as they gnawed on shortbread biscuits and supped beverages that they didn’t really want anyway.
They were dead. If any were alive once, they didn’t know it, or, had forgotten it. What did life mean to a fool? What did it mean to him? Brennan’s days had been full of death; brutal, sometimes barbaric death — as he looked around this slim section of the public, he questioned the worth of his occupation. Would any of these drones miss what they had if it was suddenly wrung out of them? If their precious life was snuffed out — what difference would it make to the world to lose one more of these lifeless cabbages?
Brennan shook himself. It was a pathetic indulgence that he had allowed himself: weighing the value of a life. Who was he, God? He knew it meant nothing — no more than the flip remark that death comes to us all. It was a stupid indulgence and he understood that, regretted it at once.
The victim was only one half of the equation — the perpetrator was the other. Any notion that the victim had to be of an exalted value to the human race missed the point. It was the act, not the consequence Brennan knew he had to concern himself with now. It was the cold cruelty. The malevolence. The evil. That’s what fired him. No matter how indifferent he was to the mass of men and their lives of quiet desperation, he could not conceive of killing anyone himself; it took another type of man to do that — the type he had sworn to protect all others from.
‘Black coffee,’ the woman on the counter shouted out.
‘Yeah, mine. Thanks.’
Brennan took it, held it steady as he returned to the car. He opened the door, stepped in behind the wheel. A little coffee escaped from the brim of the Styrofoam cup, slid down the side and scalded his fingers.
‘Shit.’
He quickly swapped the cup into his other hand, pulled out the holder on the dash and slotted the coffee cup in it. The DI exhaled deeply, gathered himself for a moment, then tugged over his seatbelt and drove off.
At the edge of Princes Street, the tram works — that eternal gutting of the city — had diverted traffic up Lothian Road in a snaking one-way system. There were new temporary traffic lights in operation. He couldn’t keep up with the changes in the city’s road layouts. There was a burning, sneaking assumption lurking in him that said the council was orchestrating this as a revenge for the public’s rejection of its congestion charge.
Brennan banged on the rim of the wheel, said, ‘Come on for fuck’s sake.’
The traffic was stationary. He had a full view of a tram — immobile — that had been installed at the foot of the Castle, on the main shopping thoroughfare. The idea was to give the city a taste of things to come; Brennan knew there would be snowballs in hell before a single tram got rolling. He readied himself to curse again as the light changed; he engaged the clutch and geared the car forward.
‘About bloody time.’
On Queensferry Street, Brennan removed a cigarette from his packet of Embassy Regal; he had reached the point where he didn’t care about giving up now. He had once tried to cut back, tried smoking milder brands, but now he was so entrenched in his own form of personal nihilism that he had abandoned the idea. He pressed the lighter in the dash and waited for the ping.
By Fettes, Brennan had smoked three-quarters of the cigarette and his coffee was now cool enough to drink. He stubbed the dowp on the tarmac and walked with his coffee cup held out in front of him. The door was opened by a waiting uniform. He nodded a thank you.
Inside, the desk sergeant greeted him. ‘Morning, Rob.’
More nods, the standard greeting. ‘Doesn’t feel like morning.’
‘You were on the early start out at Straiton… Saw it on the lunchtime news.’
‘Aye, so did I.’
‘You don’t sound chuffed.’
‘Would you be, Charlie.’ It wasn’t a question. More of a statement to confirm his position.
The older man leaned forward; the bright lights above the desk caught on his pate and momentarily blinded Brennan. ‘The Chief Super’s been running around like he’s got a bee in his bonnet.’
‘Really?’
A look to the left, a tweak of the nose. ‘I keep expecting the wee baldy fella to show up and Benny to start slapping his head!’
Brennan permitted himself a laugh. Chief Superintendent Bernard Hill had only been in the station a few months and had already earned himself the moniker Benny.
‘I better get up there… Though I suspect it’ll be no joke.’
Charlie pinched his lips like he was about to whistle, rested his chin on his knuckles. ‘Aye, well… He’s already pulled the station roster, counting the overtime up, that’ll be down to you, no doubt.’
Brennan dipped his head. He felt the blood stiffen in his veins. He had a murderer to catch, he didn’t need to have his every move costed and budgeted. He turned for the stairs. On the way up he passed a young WPC, she was carrying a blue folder and tried not to catch the officer’s attention; he remembered what it was like to be her age, at her stage on the career path, and afraid of senior officers. At that stage, Brennan had wanted to ascend the ranks, purely so he could be the one giving the orders. Was it just ego? he thought. Had his ego pushed him to this point?
At the top of the stairs Brennan took a sip from his coffee cup. He glanced down the corridor towards the Chief Super’s office; he was in, his secretary was sitting by the door typing up some no doubt important piece of documentation, like an RSVP to the Provost’s latest black-tie event. Brennan stared for a moment longer, he thought about the short distance that the Chief Super’s office was from his own and whether it was a distance he wanted to, or indeed ever would, cover. He had once spoken to Wullie about why he had never progressed beyond DI and the old boy understood intuitively where he was coming from. ‘You’re too smart to go chasing rank, Rob… You know already that, up or down, the ladder’s shaky, son,’ he had said. Brennan had a smile to himself as he thought of Wullie, he missed him around the place. There were far too many careerists and glory hunters on the scene now.
As he turned to face Incident Room One, Brennan heard his name called from the other end of the corridor. He glanced over his shoulder but already he knew the voice belonged to Benny.
‘A minute, please, Rob.’ The Chief Super stood in his doorway, buttoned up, spick and span as ever.
Brennan stared at him for a second or two, took in his worth. Hill was about the same age as he was, but he was shorter. The Chief Super had a weaker frame and he wore glasses; he didn’t look the type to go far in frontline policing. He leaned over his secretary’s desk, removed his glasses for a moment, then ushered Brennan like a toreador, ‘Well, come along.’
‘Coming.’ The DI nodded, started a slow trail towards his superior’s outer-office door. Once inside he closed the door gently, nodded and smiled towards Dee the secretary, and proceeded to the door marked B ERNARD H ILL, C HIEF S UPERINTENDENT.
‘Take a seat, Rob.’
‘Is it going to take that long?… I have a murder investigation on the go.’
The Chief Super returned his glasses to his nose, it was a delicate bulb nose and looked to be rimmed in red, like he had been battling a cold for too long. He indicated the seat with the flat of his hand. ‘Please.’
Brennan obliged him, pulled out the chair and lowered himself onto it.
‘I wanted to grab you before you went through… There’s been some developments.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Brennan felt himself shift his weight in the chair. ‘What would they be?’
‘We have ID’d the victim.’
Brennan tensed up, ‘What?… When did this come in?’
‘Look, calm down… It’s just in this minute, I’m literally just off the phone to the lab, I was on my way to call you.’
Brennan’s stock of anger subsided a little, ‘Well… Are you going to fill me in? I am the investigating officer.’
The Chief Super peered over his glasses at Brennan, his eyes were damp and red-webbed but the look was a definite warning. ‘Well, we cross-matched the victim’s dental records from those on the missing persons list, locally that is, there weren’t so many — we got a lucky break…’
Brennan felt himself gripping the arm of the chair tightly. ‘Really, lucky for who, sir?’
