was listening, that he had my full attention. ‘Some bloke got plugged. They found him about ten bells, got to be a radge walking there at that time. Looks like he was mugged… Be some wee schemie with his first shooter — all got them now.’
The uniform guffawed, set his mate off; he slapped the dash then the pair of them high-fived. They laughed me up, but I wasn’t in on the joke. Hoped, by the kip of them, I never would be.
My heart thumped as we reached the station. I saw Fitz standing at the glass-fronted doors, his hands stuck deep in his coat pockets. He looked more like a university lecturer than a copper. It had been a while since I’d seen him and he’d collected some grey streaks at the sides of his hairline. More than a few pounds had been added to the waistline as well.
The flatfoot changed his tone before Fitz: ‘This way, Mr Dury, please.’
‘Please… You found the charm manual on the way in, then,’ I said to him. Fair bust his little act.
Fitz removed a hand, held it before the lad. ‘Jaysus, has this little tool been giving ye a hard time, Dury?’
I shook my head, said, ‘As if.’ I was delighted to hear Fitz revert to my surname. Things couldn’t be so bad then, could they?
He flicked back his head. ‘Don’t think about getting yerself down the cannie, Wallace. The city won’t patrol itself.’
The uniform slunk off, his driver coming in at his back and removing his hat at the sight of Fitz, who sparked up again: ‘Go on, the pair of ye… Won’t ye be tucked up in your wanking chariots soon enough.’
I watched them retreat, prodded: ‘You been jumping the ranks again, Fitz?’
He smiled; a roll of meat spilled beneath his chin. ‘Holy Mother of God, ’tis a sight for sore eyes ye are, Dury.’ He thrust out a hand, I took it and his other tapped my elbow. It was all a bit of a show. I felt the hollowness in my chest return, shoot up my throat and freeze my jaw. ‘Get away in, Dury.’ He turned. ‘Come on, follow me.’
We moved towards the back staircase. I read signs indicating routes to the morgue and various offices. Fitz yakked away about this and that. Mainly that. It was all avoidance chat, the kind of clatter that I usually switch off to. None of it bore any relation to my current predicament. None of it raised even the slightest amount of interest, except for his uncharacteristic gratitude for my handing him yet another collar from my last case, allowing him to put one over on his number one rival on the force.
‘But still, Dury, that was some name ye made for yerself there, was it not… You must have had a power of offers come yer way since grabbing that killer.’
That case had nearly been the end of me. ‘Fitz, I’m out the game.’
‘You’re what?’ His lip curled up — his teeth seemed whiter than I remembered; he’d either had them bleached or been fitted with veneers.
‘I’m out that racket for good. Look, I’m back with Debs and… we’re happy.’
Fitz blinked, pushed through swing doors to a small office, sat on the corner of a desk. He took a pewter hip flask from his pocket and unscrewed the cap. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Believe it.’
He slugged deep, flashed his teeth again, offered the flask.
‘No thanks.’
‘You what? ’Tis Talisker, Dury.’
I shook my head.
‘Fuck me, you’re not off the sauce as well!’
I nodded. ‘Six months without a drop.’ I still carried a quarter-bottle of Grouse in my pocket, but that was to test my mettle, not for emergencies.
I fired up: ‘Look, Fitz, what the fuck is this about? I’ve been hoicked out my pit in the middle of the night. If I’m on a charge, or there’s something else, it’s time to shit or get off the pot.’
He rose. ‘Okay, okay.’ Fumbling about, fidgeting, hands in and out of his pockets, until he found a packet of smokes, B amp;H Superkings. He lit up and offered me one. I waved it away. ‘You’re not off those too.’
I took out my Marlboros. ‘I’ll smoke my own.’
‘Suit yerself.’ He paced over to the other side of the desk and removed a black folder, looked inside and then turned back to me. He sighed, closed the folder, then picked it up, tucking it under his arm. ‘Shall we?’ He indicated a doorway marked ‘Morgue’.
Fitz started chattering again, some bullshit about the bigger picture and most of the force’s young hotshots wanting to walk before they could run. ‘’Tis the world we live in, everyone wants something for nothing. They see those feckin’ bankers with their bonuses and the celebrities and footballers and the idea of graft goes out the window… Graft, feckin’ no clue of it.’
He had a key for the morgue. Inside there was a strip light that took what seemed like for ever to flicker into life, then the grey sterility of the place dominated.
‘We’re heading for the feckin’ abyss this recession, ’tis only the starter — we haven’t brushed the cuff of this feckin’ credit crunch bollocks.’ Fitz fiddled with the black folder again, turning over pages. I saw fag ash falling on the floor; it seemed like sacrilege.
I felt my heart quicken again. My spine grew rigid and a cold line of sweat formed on my brow. I was getting twitchy, then I spotted the stainless-steel table, holes punched in the metal, heavy legs supporting a long drip-tray underneath. On top was a blue-grey cloth: it was clearly draped over a corpse.
Fitz caught me staring, stopped talking.
‘What’s that?’ I said.
Silence.
I dragged my gaze away from the mortuary slab, said, ‘Fitz, what is this? Why am I here?’
He fumbled — for the first time since I’d known Fitz the Crime he fumbled his words. I had a moment of clarity. Suddenly everything became clear. The call. The uniform jokers. Fitz’s fucking stupid avuncular manner.
I walked over to the slab, my hand trembling for a moment. I watched my fingers hover over the blue-grey cloth that hid the face of a corpse. My thoughts danced. I jerked my hand away, wiped at my mouth. I was shocked to feel my lips so cold, so dry. I felt the cigarette fall from my other hand and I looked to the floor to see the head of ash collapse in a million pieces, followed instantly by a shower of orange sparks.
Fitz came over. ‘Gus, I–I…’
I turned to look at his face. His brows made an apse above his eyes. He was the image of inscrutability; a shrill scream for answers. I looked back to the corpse and removed the cloth.
My mind filled with mist.
Nothing could have prepared me for this. Nothing in the world.
I drew the cloth further.
The body was white, clean. Not a mark. Except a small grey hole beneath the heart, barely half an inch wide, where the bullet had entered, and taken a life away.
I felt Fitz’s hand on my shoulder: ‘Is it?’
I realised my breathing had stilled. I felt dizzy, drew a gasp of air. ‘This is Michael… This is my brother.’
Chapter 2
There’s a phrase, I was a million miles away. Were it possible, I was two million miles away. My head felt as if it had been used as a battering ram. Thoughts raced in and out, questions, assumptions. And anger. Fitz spoke at my side, words, all words. I couldn’t access the part of my being that processed communication, it was all sensation to me now. Feelings. The predominant one, hurt.
I saw Fitz out the corner of my eye gesturing to a chair. I didn’t move and he wheeled it over to me, tried to cajole me to sit. I lowered myself into the stiff, hard-backed, office-issue plastic and tried to regain composure. I looked up towards the ceiling; the strip lights hurt my eyes. Fitz offered me some water. I shook my head, tried to say ‘No’, but it felt as though someone else was in charge of me, my somatic nervous system in the hands of a puppet master.
There was a moment, a memory sparking:
