of the car when he saw the DI.
‘Morning, sir.’
Brennan nodded, ‘Stevie.’
‘No signs of life, I’m afraid.’
Brennan frowned, looked him over.
Realisation dawned, ‘Sorry. You know what I mean.’
‘Pettigrew has confirmed a 7 a.m. start, aye?’
‘Sure has…’
As they chatted, a green Vectra pulled up and DI Jim Gallagher raised a salute. He was smoking a cigarette and some ash fell as he lifted his hand from the wheel. As he left the car he removed a necktie from his jacket pocket and started to thread it through his collar.
‘Rob, Stevie.’
The pair nodded in reply.
‘Quite an early start, isn’t it?’
Brennan watched Gallagher struggle with his tie, ‘Obviously a bit of a challenge for you, Jim.’
The DI seemed to infer something from Brennan’s tone, he curled his eyebrow down as he dispensed with the necktie. ‘Look, Rob, do you think we could have a chat…’ He looked at McGuire, ‘No offence, Stevie, I just want a private word with the boss.’
McGuire looked at Brennan, appeared to detect no opposition and raised his open palms in the DI’s direction. ‘Be my guest.’
Gallagher touched Rob’s elbow, nodded to the end of the street. Brennan watched another car pulling up, it was Pettigrew’s Mercedes. ‘Look, whatever you have to say, Jim, make it quick, eh…’
‘Aye, sure, sure…’ He removed a packet of Lambert amp; Butler, offered one to Brennan.
‘No thanks.’
‘Sure.’ Gallagher seemed nervous, anxious to get his words out but desperate to make a proper build-up that would confer their true import. ‘I just wanted to say to you, Rob, that I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with you.’
‘Bit late for that isn’t it?’
Gallagher bit the tip of his cigarette, produced a Zippo lighter; the smell of petrol came sharp in the morning air. ‘Look, I’m not here to step on anyone’s toes, Rob.’
Brennan removed a hand from his jacket, hushed Gallagher quiet. ‘You’re not big enough to step on my toes, Jim.’
The DI pocketed his lighter, his face firmed. The open, expressionless facade seemed to slip, gave way to a harsh-eyed stare. ‘You’ve no right to play the Big I Am with me, Rob.’
Brennan smirked, leaned over Gallagher, he was the taller of the two men by some way. ‘Jim, lad, let me tell you something, if I catch a poacher on my land he can think himself lucky if he gets away with an arse-full of lead.’
‘You’re all wrong, Rob…’ Gallagher inhaled a deep drag on his cigarette, ‘I’m all about the team, me.’
‘Your team only has one player.’
‘Oh, come on… We’ve a lunatic to catch!’ He stepped to the side, waved to Pettigrew as he opened up. ‘Rob, you’ve no rank on me, and you’re not the most popular DI in the force either. I wouldn’t go throwing up a genuine offer of friendship.’
A smile spread on Brennan’s face, ‘Why not?’
‘Let’s just say it could backfire.’
‘If you’ve got a threat to put on me, Jim… Let’s have it.’
Gallagher dropped his cigarette, pressed it into the ground with the sole of his shoe. He was staring down as he spoke, ‘I don’t make threats, Rob.’ He edged towards the morgue. ‘… I don’t need to.’
Chapter 14
Brennan watched DI Jim Gallagher approach the morgue, make his way up the steps. He waited for a moment, took a breath of air and started the slow trail behind him. DS Stevie McGuire was waiting for him, said, ‘What was that all about?’
Brennan held back for a moment, watched Gallagher enter the front door and strike up a conversation with Dr Pettigrew, then, ‘Just Jim being Jim… Look, did you check him out like I asked you the other day?’
‘His caseload, aye, aye…’
‘Well?’
‘Nothing spectacular, he seems to be flitting over to Glasgow quite a bit, helping out CID there with some tit-for-tat gang stabbings. But mainly he’s looking at the cold cases like our Fiona Gow.’
‘That it?’
McGuire scratched at his earlobe, ‘He’s counting his days, can’t be far off the pension now.’ He dropped his hand, ‘Is there something I should know about, boss?’
Brennan reached over, touched McGuire’s shoulder. ‘No. Not at all. I’m just a bit wary of him.’
‘In what way?’
‘He’s an old hand, you don’t get to his age in this racket without knowing where a few bodies are buried.’
McGuire’s eyes sunk in his head, his voice trailed off in a dull monotone. ‘Sounds tenuous?’
‘I just don’t trust him… Why is he taking such an interest in our case when he seems to be able to pick and choose the cases he works these days?’
A bin lorry started to roll down the street, the noise threatened to drown them out; McGuire pointed to the morgue, raised his voice, ‘Look, we should go in.’
‘Yeah, I know… Just keep an eye on Jim, let me know if he pulls any fast ones.’
Inside the building Brennan removed his overcoat and jacket, folded them over the crook of his arm, then walked the few paces to the cloakroom and hung them up. Gallagher and Pettigrew were already in there.
‘Morning, Rob.’
Brennan nodded to the doctor. He was tempted to have a dig about taking his time to get round to this postmortem but figured there would only be a grating reply about having to do private-practice work to pay for the Mercedes. He stilled his nerve and watched as Pettigrew bunched his brows on the way out the door. Gallagher stood square-footed in the middle of the room for a moment longer, a thin-eyed stare on Brennan, and then jerked his head to the side and followed the doctor out.
‘Ready to roll?’ said McGuire as he hung up his coat.
‘Let’s go.’
The steps down to the morgue were hard granite, the officers’ heels clacked on every one like hammer blows. No one spoke, the only sound came from the doctor as he lunged through the swing doors and made his way to scrub up.
Brennan and the other officers fitted themselves into green gowns and waited for the doctor by the edge of the room. The smell of the place was already settling in Brennan’s nostrils; he knew it would be on his clothes and skin for the rest of the day. His colleagues would notice and question him on it. After a visit to the morgue Brennan always felt like taking a shower, a long burning-hot shower, and smothering himself in a lather. The place had come to signify not only death but stagnation to him; when he went there he felt like it inculcated something that was alien to life itself, that seeped into him, right down to his bones.
‘Right,’ said Pettigrew, ‘get going shall we?’ He snapped his rubber gloves into place and opened the door to the refrigerated section; the corpse of Lindsey Sloan was lying there. Brennan looked at the trolley; it had the same kind of wheels as a supermarket one, a little larger perhaps, but the similarity always struck him. Since first making this observation he had always chosen a basket in Sainsbury’s.
Pettigrew asked McGuire to grab one end of the trolley and the pair removed the stretcher with the corpse on it towards the mortuary slab. The slab was grey as concrete and as the covering was removed Brennan noticed how
