Pamela said nothing but looked Narey straight in the eyes and nodded.
Narey mentally crossed her fingers and asked the question she hoped for an answer to more than any other.
‘Did Melanie ever tell you her real name?’
‘Yeah. She told me once when she was out of it and after that it didn’t matter. Her name was Una. Said she’d always hated it.’
‘Did she tell you her surname?’
‘No sure. She told people her name was Melanie McCulloch. Don’t know if that was real or not. Look, I’ve had enough. I need to go. Told you enough.’
Narey still had a head full of questions but could see that Pamela was right on the edge and had made her mind up to go. Anyway, she thought, she had a hell of a lot more to work with than she had when she sat down.
Joanne said that she would take Pamela home, noticeably refusing to say where that was, and Narey left them after picking up the bill for the coffees. She saw Joanne’s hand comfortingly placed over the girl’s but by the agitated look on her face it was going to take more than that to put her mind at ease.
The door of the Criterion swung closed behind her and she was immediately hit by the cool afternoon breeze that had picked up. Her first thought was to telephone Addison with what she’d learned until she remembered that the bastard had dumped her with this and she was the one in charge. Well, sod him and whatever he was attending at Harthill, she was the one with the breakthrough.
When she got to the Tolbooth she found a parking ticket stuck to the windscreen and swore at the paperwork that was going to be involved getting it overturned. Fuck it, it had been worth it. She turned her car round and threw it headlong back into the traffic heading for George Square and from there would go on to Stewart Street. Christ, it seemed even busier than it had been earlier. The traffic was at a complete standstill and there was nothing at all coming the other way. What the hell was going on?
Up ahead, she could see flashing lights, blue as well as red. For the second time that afternoon, she abandoned her car in the nearest available space, this one with double yellow lines, and continued on foot. The closer she got to George Square, the more she realized some serious shit was going down.
She pulled out her phone and got onto Stewart Street, demanding to know what was happening. As the answer came through, so the old red square came into view. Narey couldn’t believe her eyes.
CHAPTER 16
Narey arrived at George Square no more than fifteen minutes after the white van was parked up and about ten minutes before it began snowing. When the response came from the desk at Stewart Street, she raced the last couple of hundred yards until she reached the politburo splendour of the City Chambers itself.
A large crowd of shoppers and office workers had already gathered round the square and Narey pushed her way through them, alternately shoving, shouting and waving her ID card. She could see a ring of yellow-jacketed uniforms and two fire engines and headed for them as quickly as she could.
A uniformed inspector was standing at the nearest corner of the square, speaking into a walkie-talkie and looking like he was ready to punch someone or shit himself. Narey made a line straight towards him, trying to remember what his name was. Benson, Bett, something like that.
The guy saw her coming, looking her up and down in a way that made her want to puke. Prick, she thought. What the hell was the sleazeball’s name?
‘Inspector?’ she started. ‘I’m DS Narey, I-’
‘Yes, I know who you are. I’m a bit busy, Sergeant. What is it?’
‘We have reason to believe this is connected to an ongoing CID case and I need to ask you what you know about what’s happened here.’
‘Oh, do you now? What case is that then?’
‘The shootings of Cairns Caldwell and Malcolm Quinn. I’m sure you are aware of them.’
To Narey’s satisfaction, the inspector blanched, his eyes widening as he took in the consequences of what she said.
‘From what we’re told, the van came along the Queen Street side,’ he began. ‘It drove off the street and onto the square where it is now. No one’s got a clue where the driver is but we’re told he ran off as soon as he’d laid things out. You see the petrol canisters?’
Narey nodded.
The two green canisters sat close together about twenty feet away from where the van had been abandoned with its doors wide open. It sat on the red concrete, shunned by the statues that ringed the square, all with their backs turned to it.
Beside the canisters were a couple of dozen bricks, quite obviously kilos of cocaine, wrapped in white paper and stacked in four hurriedly constructed piles. She knew if it hadn’t been for the presence of the cops, the bricks would have been nicked in two seconds flat.
‘So did any one of your guys try to approach the van, sir?’ she asked the inspector.
‘Twice,’ he answered with a curt nod. ‘Both times they got shot at. Nothing too close the first time, maybe a few feet away but enough to scare them off. After the first try we got someone togged up and had another go but the second time the shot missed him by inches. We haven’t tried again.’
‘Okay. Where are the shots coming from?’
He shook his head.
‘We think it might have been from the north of the square, the City Chambers end, but to be honest, the place is in such chaos that no one’s sure. Everything was so quick that I don’t think anyone could have told you where their arse was. The only way to find out would have been to send someone in a third time but I couldn’t sanction that.’
‘Fair enough,’ she agreed, having to shout now above the growing clamour around them. ‘But what’s been done to find out where he might be? He’s got to be somewhere high up, right?’
The inspector stared hard at her, nodding but looking up and around him to prove his point. The square was surrounded on all sides and beyond by towering buildings that could have hidden a hundred snipers.
‘Which way did the driver run, sir? And do we have a description of him?’
The inspector – suddenly she remembered his name, Begley – began to answer but he was immediately interrupted by a huge roar behind him. He spun and they both saw a surge in the crowd near Queen Street station and the start of a punch-up as people barged into each other.
Narey looked around her and saw that a huge crowd had now gathered and the cops were struggling to hold them back. George Square was bang in the middle of the city centre and there were always hundreds of people walking along one of its sides or across it. Closing off the four streets that formed the square had immediately created a growing bottleneck and was continuing to draw a curious swarm. More people were joining the throng every minute and the human dam was threatening to burst at every access point.
The surge at the station seemed to be caused by another commotion a hundred yards down the same stretch of the street. A Sky news crew had somehow managed to talk and push their way through from North Frederick Street and had taken up a vantage point near the Millennium Hotel, not giving a toss for the people that had been standing there. Two officers had run over and were arguing with the reporter while the cameraman and sound guy were busy focusing on the white van.
Much later, it occurred to Narey that maybe it was all that the sniper was waiting for. Right then, though, when it happened, she had no time to think. Like everyone else round George Square, all she could do was duck.
The air exploded with a gunshot that had hit before anyone knew it had been fired. The first she was aware of was the result of the bullet thudding into and through the petrol cans. They burst into flames with a roar that immediately had police and public instinctively stepping back from the square. In seconds, the newly burning petrol had ensnared the cocaine bricks, setting them alight with a snarl.
Narey saw Begley’s jaw drop. To be fair, she could hardly blame him. In seconds there was a Class A funeral
