DARIAN NEEDED a bit of help. For day-to-day work it was fine to take the train; he was rarely in a terrible rush and spent more time sitting stationary outside places like the Murdoch warehouses than was conducive to a healthy lifestyle. To do the job he wanted to do that night he needed a car, and that meant going to Tuit Road in Bakers Moor to visit JJ’s car hire. It was a place you went when you had a sad lack of funds and didn’t care what state the car was in, as long as it was basically mobile. It was a small building and patch of dirt tucked away in the gloom under the hills, and that might have been why standards authorities hadn’t swooped in and shut it down yet. JJ made most of his money selling death-traps masquerading as automobiles, but he hired out to customers he knew wouldn’t complain, and they included Darian. JJ was another useful contact to have.
In the yard behind the office, JJ and Darian sauntered among the cars. If you took a photo of the parking lot and said it was a wrecking yard all the evidence would suggest you were telling the truth. JJ’s face was almost perfectly round and yellow, with a damp-looking, thin beard, like someone had cleared out a drain and slapped their findings on a turnip. He dressed in filthy blue overalls and he plainly didn’t give a crap what his yard looked like. When he spoke it was with a heavy slur that suggested he was halfway into a long line of mini-strokes and was determined to bluster his way through them.
“This one will stay underneath you.”
Darian looked at the dark blue Skoda Octavia, nearly a decade old. “How many miles has that got?”
“Eesh, round the world and back, hundred and fifty thousand. It goes, though, Darian boy, got a few thousand more left to run before I turn her into parts.”
It was what he was looking for, an ordinary-looking car that could trundle round the city without drawing the eye. It was also remarkably cheap, which put it right in his price range. JJ went back to the office to get him the keys. The car, when he opened the door, smelled overwhelmingly of sweat, and even JJ, used to ignoring the hellish stenches that floated around him, grimaced.
“Hold on, I’ll get you a wee doofer to put over the blowers.”
He got an air freshener from the office to clip over the heaters, but when Darian tried to switch them on, no air come out.
“Hold on, I’ll get you a forest of magic trees.”
So Darian left with four colorful trees hanging from the rearview mirror, a mixture of sweet smells that was only slightly better than the sweat. He drove north, through Earmam and Whisper Hill and out to Heilam with the windows open. He parked round the corner from Gallowglass’s house and waited for the former cop to make an appearance.
At twenty to eleven Gallowglass came out of his house and got into his car. He drove south into the city and Darian hung back, putting his tailing talents to the test. He wasn’t going to the station to watch for Darian, which meant that the spying mission had been terminated. Tracking suspects was one of the things Sholto was markedly better at than him, because practice made perfect and Darian didn’t have as much experience as he’d expected because following people didn’t happen too often in the world of pretend private detectives. He had decided at the start that he would rather lose him than risk getting too close. Turning the tables was fine so long as you didn’t smack into one of them.
It was a long drive, back down to the end of the loch and round into Cnocaid. They went through neighborhoods that were familiar to Darian, near where he’d grown up. All the streets look the same round there, detached houses with small front gardens, close together so few have driveways and there are rarely available parking spaces out front. Some roads have trees lined beside the pavement; Treubh Road where Darian had grown up had cherry blossoms. There were none on Pagall Street, where Gallowglass’s journey ended.
He stopped when Darian was too close to do the same without being spotted, so he drove past and caught a glimpse of the ex-cop, sitting in the car and watching a house across the street. Darian drove to the end of the road, circled round the block and came back to the top of Pagall Street, finding somewhere out of view to park. He took out his phone and zoomed in the camera function, just able to make out the back of Gallowglass’s head, still in the car.
This was more the sort of work he was used to. Sitting in a smelly car watching nothing at all happen nearby. For all the skills that investigations require, patience is the most important. Darian recognized what Gallowglass was doing; it was the same tactic he had used on Cage Street when he stood outside the office, unpleasant and unmoving. He was watching the house that was directly opposite his parking space, which guaranteed that anyone inside would have a perfect view of him when they looked out of the window. This wasn’t a man trying to spy on someone; he was trying to intimidate them.
Shortly after three in the morning another car drove past Darian’s and stopped further up the street, just in front of Gallowglass. A man got out and leaned down to the window of Gallowglass’s car, talking to him. It was DC Alasdair MacDuff. They shared a short conversation in which the man in the car did most of the talking and the man leaning down to the window looked somewhere between angry and embarrassed. MacDuff went back to his car and sat in the driver’s seat while Gallowglass pulled away.
MacDuff did as Gallowglass had done before him, sat there and watched the house directly opposite, making no effort to look like anything other than a thinly veiled threat. At about twenty past seven there was movement, and Darian was just able to see a man appearing at the front gate. He hadn’t seen the door open—the angle he was parked at didn’t give him a great view of the house—but MacDuff had. When the middle-aged man reached the gate, the young detective started his car and drove away. No need to stick around in daylight, with neighbors seeing him, now the message had been delivered.
Darian waited for a few minutes, until he was sure the householder had gone back inside. MacDuff had wanted to be seen but Darian didn’t, not until he knew who the person he was stalking had been stalking. He drove the Skoda back to his flat and parked outside. He left a message on Sholto’s work phone saying he would be late in because of some extra work he had done, not specifying exactly what because Sholto was still detective enough to guess, and he went to bed.