Crime

banister. — Just wait here a wee minute, Lennox says, going back inside and closing the door behind him.

He crouches over Lance Dearing, astonished he still has the gun in his hand, dragging it along the floor, manoeuvring it towards his own head. The throw partially spills off his bloody face. He fires again before Lennox is able to react. The bullet grazes the top of his skull and ricochets down the hall, sticking in the bottom of the bathroom door.

Dearing’s next shot whistles into the skirting board. Lennox pulls back the remainder of the throw to expose the whole of the broken face. — Help me, Lance Dearing croaks softly, — finish it…

Lennox slowly shakes his head. — I already have, Dearing. But I’m fucked if I’m finishing you. No way, he says, stepping on Dearing’s wrist, then, with his other foot, kicking the gun from his weak grip. — I’m no helping a fuckin nonce. With the blood you’re losing, I just hope that the ambulance gets here in time and can patch you up. I don’t want you to die, because you don’t fuckin deserve it. You should be made to live with what you’ve done. Lennox feels gripped by a terrible energy. — Help a cunt like you? A stoat? A beast polisman? I look fuckin sweet, he spits, knowing that Miami’s cons will be harder on Dearing than any bullet, and he wants this man to have the same fate as Confectioner: to live in fear of being stabbed, bummed, bullied, and he’s shamed by this realisation. They’ve won. Diminished us. Dragged us down to their level with our pathetic bloodlust. You could wipe them all off the face of the Earth, and you would still lose.

Starry’s screams and Dearing’s throaty groans fill the apartment in a dread orchestration of misery. — SHUT THE FUCK UP, Lennox roars cathartically, and for a few seconds the noise abates. — Just shut the fuck up, ya nonce cunts, and think about how totally fucked youse are now, and he hears the burning growl of angry satisfaction come from deep within him.

He steps outside to see Robyn. Shivering, and self-cradling, she now looks about the same age as Tianna. But the crucial thing is that she isn’t.

A young guy in a vest and tracksuit bottoms comes bounding up the stairs as Lennox shuts the door. — I thought I heard noises, he says. — It was like gunshots, I—

He sees the blood on Lennox. Looks at him in slack-jawed shock.

— It certainly was, Lennox agrees. — Somebody’s just shot himself. Might be an idea to call the police, and an ambulance, he says, ushering Robyn down the stairs, his arm round her thin shoulders.

— Sure thing! The guy eagerly bounces back down the stairs ahead of them.

They get outside and into the Volkswagen and Lennox drives to the car hire. On the way he hears sirens, wonders if they might be for Dearing. Perhaps not. The shock is kicking in, and he feels a pervasive numbness swamping him. Then, as he sees the signs for a gas station, the mundane thought hits him: fill up the tank. — I need to bring back a full tank of gas, he astonishes himself by saying to a perplexed Robyn, as he pulls into the forecourt.

T.W. Pye is working the graveyard shift. He looks suspiciously at Lennox as he walks into the office. Then his eyes expand bulbously as he notices the blood and dried vomit down the foreigner’s front. They go outside to the returning lot where the German car stands. Pye shuffles round it, lowers his great perspiring bulk inside, and pokes about for a bit. Lennox notes that a rash of oxide blight, like spots breaking out on someone’s face after an alcoholic binge, has spored on the green body along the rim above the wheel. This has either escaped the clerk’s attention or has no relevance to him. — Well, the car looks okay, he says, hoisting himself up and looking at a trembling Robyn. — And you got a full tank, he gripes at Lennox. — But you seem in a bit of a mess there, buddy.

— The other guy would kill to be in my shoes.

The sides of Pye’s face burn. — Righty, I’ll just… ehm… He waddles back to the office, followed by Lennox, and fumbles in the till, nervously counting out five hundred dollars.

— Great car, by the way, Lennox says as he takes the money and pockets it, starting to feel sorry for the fat man, who would head home to his one deadly friend, silent, white and immutable; the refrigerator that was killing him every time it greeted him with a big, brash light-bulb smile. He and Robyn head for the taxi rank. Thinking of Starry and Clemson, he can feel his adrenalin leaking, and the depression setting in, the penny-wise gain followed by the pound-foolish debit: the emotional mathematics of practising violence or abuse. They climb into a taxi. — Fort Lauderdale.

In the back of the cab he explains the situation to Robyn, leaving her in no doubt that he’s calling the shots. — Here’s the deal; you come and see Tianna in Fort Lauderdale with me. Then we go to the police station and tell them everything. Tianna’ll stay with my friends for a week or so, until this shit’s cleared up.

— But I need her with me—

— It’s got fuck all, sweet fuck all, Lennox emphasises, thinking of Tianna and So Fucking Awesome, — to do with what you need right now. That wee lassie isnae gaunny be your sister any more. She’s just a kid and you’re a grown woman. If you don’t start acting like it, I’ll tell the authorities you’re a slut and a cokehead, and believe you me they will listen. You’ll do time for child endangerment if I show them that tape. Believe.

Her face buckles further under his onslaught. — But I thought you were our friend…

— I’m her friend, not yours. You have to start earning friendships and respect. Lennox’s tone softens as self-reproach filters through him. — Get yourself together and you’ll come out of this as a heroine in Tianna’s eyes. Make her believe in you, Robyn.

She nods through her tears. And then he finds himself rambling; telling her that he’s just a Scottish cop who wanted to be with his fiancee in Miami Beach and recover from a bad time. And plan a wedding. Maybe do a bit of sunbathing, with some fishing and sailing thrown in. Then Robyn tells him her tale, and it humanises her, as all stories do, and he sees a person of great misfortune, victimised and pulled apart like carrion by hyenas. And he remembers the trinity of bullies that made him a cop.

You can get better. He’d been as wretched as Robyn when they pulled him off that bar-room floor in Edinburgh, slain by the pub comic’s sick joke. More so, when found lurking in the tunnel after his dad’s funeral, hand pulped, ranting like a madman, protesting he had cocaine under control, as a wrap burned his jeans’pocket and his nose’s cavities. Trudi, though, had taken charge; de facto moving him into Bruntsfield, going to his Leith flat to pick up his mail. She’d been in touch with Toal, agreeing sick leave, and signed him up with her doctor, not the police one, as he’d never bothered to register. He was prescribed the antidepressants. She’d already booked the Florida sun, now the holiday would have the added agenda of executing the matrimonial plans. But first there had been his father’s funeral.

The day before he’d gone round to his sister’s place: a dull, wet and cold afternoon with progress down the leafless, grey avenue a turgid war of attrition against a vicious wind. Jackie had stayed strong during the period leading up to the funeral. She took charge of the arrangements, handled everything in her usual practical manner, displaying scant emotion. That morning when he called round at her home she flabbergasted Lennox by grabbing hold of him in the hallway, the one with the bottle-green Axminster that always smelt slightly of damp, though it had been lifted, aired and cleaned several times. — Ray… my wee brother. You know I’ve always loved you, she’d said.

This came as a shock to him, even more when he smelt the gin on her breath. — I hadnae suspected a thing, he told her, and she thought he was joking.

— You should go and see Mum, Ray. She needs us all.

— Has Jock been round looking after her? he asked quietly.

— Thank goodness for Jock, he’s a star.

So she didn’t know. Lennox fought his rage down. — Aye.

— You should go and see her, she repeated, this time with the assertion of a barrister.

— Aye, ah’ll mibbe go n see her later oan, eh? he said in his cop voice, shot with the harsh vowels and scheme argot he habitually used around Jackie, to counterbalance her posh affectations. It killed the last of the intimacy between them. He then made his excuses and left, back to the order of Trudi’s.

Sometimes a benign despot is more suitable than self-determination, he considers, particularly if you’re a hopeless fuck-up. He looks at Robyn, sees her staring ahead, focused on something invisible. — It’ll be okay, he says to her, and he hopes that he’s right.

* * *

The reunion in Fort Lauderdale is emotional and tearful, as is the subsequent parting. Lennox informs