Robert Ellis had fitness’s sheen and his eyes glinted with purpose. You never smoked but always took along a pack of cigarettes when visiting prisoners. Ellis politely declined the offer. You hated that this impressed you, but it was clear that some sort of a journey had been undertaken. Ellis was well aware of the irony of his condition: the prison in which he was wrongly incarcerated, and had spent the last few years trying to get out of, was perversely the making of him. — Even though I shouldn’t be here, this place has saved me, he admitted. — I was a fucked-up idiot. But a child killer? He laughed in derision. — Do me a favour.
— Parka man.
— Didn’t see much of him. He wore a scarf over his mouth. All I got was crazy eyes pointing at me from inside that big hood. I’m normally dead good at staring people out, but I felt the chill in his look, I’ll tell you that for nothing.
— What did he say?
— After I said, ‘It’s a sad thing,’ he goes: ‘Kids die all the time. Malnutrition. Disease.’
— Has anything about his voice come back to you: pitch, accent?
— I couldn’t place no accent. It wasn’t, like, Jock, Ellis smiled at you, then nodded to the silent screw in attendance, — or Northern, or even like mine. It was sort of posh, but not like a toff, just pretty nondescript.
— Why did you say those things about Nula? At her grave?
Ellis’s jaw clenched and something dulled in his eyes. You thought it might have been shame. — Cause I was a saddo. Fucked up, full of anger and desperate for attention. And guess what? He looked around his spartan surroundings and smiled broadly. — It worked! Then his grin receded a little. — But I don’t plan on getting too comfortable here.
— Oh aye?
— Cause you’re gonna get me out, ain’tcha?
Perhaps the journey wasn’t as pronounced as you’d given Ellis credit for. Under the polished facade, you smelt the old incarnation rising to the surface. — I’m gaunny find the bastard that killed Britney Hamil.
— Same thing, mate, Ellis said.
But for an excruciating few days the heat continued to pile on Cornell, who broke down and confessed. But not to Britney’s murder. He revealed the affair he’d been having with a married MSP, which was maliciously leaked to the papers. The MSP had the indignity of having to confirm these liaisons and destroy his career, in order to get the innocent man off the hook. Toal was shattered by this; he agreed then to let you set up the bogus gravestone and the CCTV cameras at Stockbridge cemetery.
Britney’s bogus funeral became an official one. Angela so skint, she’d pleaded, — Could youse no just, like, bury her for real? I’ll never be able to gie her anything like that…
So the local-council taxpayer footed the bill from the police budget. And then, after Britney’s remains were lowered into the earth, you waited in the van, watching on the screens every mortal soul who came close to her place of rest. It was a bleak and frustrating duty for everyone. It was impossible not to get backache or a stiff neck. November was on you and the world beyond the glass window was cold like curved marble.
On one occasion you’d gone for a piss. When you came back you found Notman standing outside, chatting to a woman. Enraged, you ran over to your colleague. — What the fuck are ye playin at?
Notman apologised as the bemused woman quickly walked away. — I just stepped out for five minutes to stretch my legs.
You went inside, played the tape back on one of the monitors. Nothing. Your heartbeat settled down. You thought about your team. It meant nothing to them, outside of their sneering pub and canteen bravado. It was just a fucking job: there were corners to be cut, time that needed stealing back. And you knew this because with anything else you were exactly the same. Notman, too, was now painfully aware of it. — This one’s special to you, right, Ray?
— I want the cunt.
— I hope you don’t think I’m talking out of turn, Notman said, — but you look fucking terrible. Are ye getting any kip?
— Naw. That wee lassie, she’s getting plenty for both of us.
You took double shifts. Tired and psychotic, you popped Benzedrine and snorted lines of cocaine to stay awake in the unmarked surveillance van outside the graveyard. You knew you would only have one chance.
At the same time, another local drama was unfolding. Most of the officers were supporters of Hearts Football Club, and were shocked that popular manager George Burley’s replacement was Graham Rix, an Englishman who had served a prison sentence for having underage sex with a fifteen-year-old girl. It was the afternoon following this announcement in the office at HQ, and you were preparing the Stockbridge surveillance rota. Dougie Gillman came in with a new Scotland coffee mug, discarding his Hearts one into the metal waste- paper basket.
— What’s up wi the Jambos’ yin? Notman asked.
— I wouldnae put it near ma fuckin lips as long as there’s a nonce in charge. Makes a mockery ay everything we stand for, Gillman barked.
Strung-out, you’d looked up and rounded on him. — What do we stand for, Dougie? What did you stand for in Thailand?
— We were on holiday. It’s different.
— Different, my arse.
But Gillman wasn’t at all defensive. — What about you, here? Wi Robbo? That wee lassie?
You fought the impulse to swallow hard. — That was nonsense… Robbo was a fuckin bam!
There had been a time when you and Robbo had been on an investigation and had barged in on a young couple having sex. The girl was underage, the boy not that much older. Robbo had gotten you to question the boy in the other room, while he spoke to the girl in the bedroom. He’d found pills, Ecstasy, in her bag. He’d briefly nipped out to ask you to confirm this. Then he’d gone back into the bedroom and cut a deal with the young girl. You often shuddered when you thought of what kind of deal it was, but no charges were pressed.
— Robbo was aw around the canteen wi that tale. Made the bird gam um, Gillman said. — Heard the wee lassie OD’d after. Stomach-pump job.
— If that did happen ah had nowt tae dae wi it!
— You kent what Robbo was like. Like you sais, a bam. You left him alaine wi an underage lassie. Think aboot that, Gillman sneered, sly and couthie. — Think aboot that when ye get on yir high horse and start telling tales oot ay school. Keep it oot, Lenny boy. Gillman provocatively tapped the side of his own nose. And you felt your eyes water, just as they had done in that Bangkok bar when the forehead of your colleague had smashed into your face.
But there were other things to think about besides your escalating war with Gillman. At almost 4 p.m. on an afternoon already swimming in dreich, nebulous darkness, those lonely, tedious days and neck-cricking nights of sitting in the van finally paid off. You’d been at Greggs, and were enjoying the sharp brief pleasure of solitude en route to bringing back sandy-coloured pies and coffee for yourself and Notman. Out of the blue, you were mugged by hail. The cold white stones stung you like pellets from an air rifle. You dived into the van, where Notman was glued to the monitors. The cantankerous weather drummed on the vehicle’s metal roof. It’ll pass, you’d thought, and it did, but not before intensifying furiously. You gratefully sipped the coffee as you’d talked about Hearts and its new East European owner’s penchant for controversy. The team under Rix was growing as quiescent as the overhanging trees in the graveyard, having their own winter shutdown.
Then you saw him on the screen. The man in the parka. Same parka. Same man. Standing above Britney’s grave. The man who was at Nula’s before being disturbed by Ellis. That snorkel hood of the parka, and the thrashing hail: would the mike pick up anything? It didn’t matter, you were flying towards the front gates, yelling at Notman to get round to the side entrance and head him off.
You bombed down the wet path, at one point almost losing your footing. But the man didn’t sense you advancing from behind him. Slowing down, you closed up on your quarry, creeping so near you could see the frosted breath coming from the side of the hood. — Sir! you shouted, pulling out your ID. — Police!
And Notman closing in from the other direction. You had him in a pincer movement. You anticipated a struggle, perhaps a desperate one. But the man didn’t run. Instead he turned round slowly, as if he’d been expecting this moment.
You knew it was Confectioner. Eyes arresting, yet at the same time strangely dead. Thick brown hair,
