IT WAS an excuse to spend time with Maeve, nothing more than that. There was no benefit to Darian in seeing what hole Gallowglass slithered into of an evening; it was something he could have uncovered for himself if he’d cared. Doing it alone would have meant doing it without Maeve. The two of them together in a small, battered old car, trundling north through Whisper Hill. The heater was on but it seemed to be blowing cold air, and Maeve kept looking at the needle to check how much petrol she had.
She said “We won’t run out…I don’t think.”
They drove in the shadows of the hills until they reached Drummond Street at the north tip of the city and turned onto Heilam Road going north out of Challaid. They were leaving the bright lights of what could generously be called civilization behind and going off into the moors toward the mouth of the loch. The day will come when the city sprawl will reach up there, too, you can be sure of that, but so far the landscape has held it back. There’s only a narrow passage between the steep hills and the loch at the very top of Whisper Hill, and the road north out of the city almost filled it. That stopped anyone developing up there, because everything had the ominous, or comforting if you like that sort of thing, sense of being cut off.
There was a dark gap through the moor before you saw the few lights of Heilam. It wasn’t much to look at, a council estate in the open that was supposed to be the first step in developing the area and turning Heilam into the seventh region of Challaid. Another of the council’s grand plans that went awry, started by one party with big dreams and a big budget and ended by the next. The houses, all white roughcast, had gone up in the early seventies when Labor led the council, the expansion stopped when the Democratic Party took over and was talked about without effect now that the Liberal Party was in power. It was probably only because they were out of sight and out of mind that these houses hadn’t been pulled down.
Late at night was the best time to visit Heilam. With the moon on the loch lighting the view out to sea, and with the hills rising darkly on the other side, the brooding graveyard behind you, you could almost believe it was beautiful. It was the sort of scene in which a songwriter would set their folk tale of heartbreak. It was the smudge of old council houses in the middle of it all that spoiled the picture. Remember that we’re talking about a village whose biggest selling point was the large number of bodies buried on its outskirts. You could make a sturdy argument that the dead had better accommodation than the living. The only building of any age was the old lighthouse at the north end of Heilam and no one lived there anymore.
Maeve said, “It was along here somewhere.”
She turned onto a short street with houses in blocks of two on either side of the road. They all had small front gardens and they all looked cold, huddled together against the weather on the moor like lost sheep. Maeve stopped the car across the street.
She nodded across at two houses and said, “It was either one of those two. My friend texted and told me to come and get her from here, she was standing outside that gate when I arrived. From what she told me, Gallowglass is hooked on madness. He was always looking for trouble and creating some if there was none around. Maybe he’s calmed down now he doesn’t have the police shield to hide behind, but he doesn’t seem like the sort who would. He’ll keep pushing his luck until life pushes back.”
“If the protection of the force let him run wild then he still has Corey looking after him now.”
They sat and watched in darkness. After half an hour a car pulled up and stopped, a little too close for comfort. Gallowglass got out of the driver’s seat and went into his house, not bothering to look around as he went. From where they sat he looked very ordinary. Mediocrity, when wrapped in the right kind of skin, can travel a long way before anyone thinks to challenge it. He slammed his front door shut with a bang that would wake the neighbors.
Maeve said, “Looks like someone didn’t find what they were looking for in the great city tonight.”
“It’s nice to be missed. Come on; let’s get out of here, bad enough he’s following me without him thinking to get on your tail as well.”
Maeve started the car and drove Darian back south. They chatted as she drove, a journey shorter than Darian would have liked. He hadn’t had a girlfriend for a while, too wrapped up in being a pretend private detective to have a relationship, and Maeve was reminding him how pleasant the sensation could be. Not because she was beautiful or sexy, although she was both, but because she was someone to talk and laugh with, to share time with away from work. She dropped him outside Three O’clock Station and he took the train home.