DARIAN FELT exhausted and decided to go home. He dumped the food from Mr. Yang’s in the bin, but he didn’t go to bed when he got back to the flat. Instead he sat at the living-room window and looked out at the lights of the city and the darkness of the loch, the lights of a single boat snaking through the water toward the southern docks. There was often a squat boat out dredging the loch in the darkness, keeping it clear for larger shipping than the first people to dock there had dreamed possible. It was a view that usually soothed him. His mind was racing and he was feeling frustrated, the overwhelming sense that the end of this investigation was close but wasn’t in his grasp. Corey still had the power, so he could dictate events while Darian had to sit and wait for things to happen to him.
As he ran his finger over one of the many fissures in the table he closed his eyes and tried to line his thoughts up in a neat row. He had wanted to destroy Corey from the moment he met him, and he still believed he could. Going to Viv for help just showed how scared he was, how much he had to hide. All of this because of the Moses Guerra killing, and Corey’s devotion to covering it up. The cop knew more about what had happened than anyone, and it was another secret he would have to be forced to spill.
It was a pathetic and selfish feeling and he shook his head when it ran through him, but he couldn’t help resent the fact it wouldn’t be him who got the credit for bringing Corey down. Whatever cop led the investigation into their colleague would get most of it; Sholto would be sure to gather up whatever crumbs were left, and Darian and Maeve would be left with little but a pat on the head for their efforts.
Darian took a look at his watch and tried to work out where Corey would be right at that moment. Viv would have been in touch with him by now, would have told him she confronted Darian, but that Sorley and his gang showed up and forced them out of the building. Corey would hit the roof, accuse her of chickening out and blame her because his last resort was closing down. Viv would probably shrug it off, a smart enough woman to know that Corey had reached the end of his rope and might be out of her hair if she could play for time just a little longer. Hard to know what a man like Corey might do next.
Darian looked down at the street where Gallowglass had been sneaking around stalking him. Darian wanted to do something, to break the inactivity and quieten the voice telling him he needed to be out in Challaid making use of the dark hours before someone else did.
The heavy silence was chased from the flat by the shrill ring of his phone, lying on the table. He was guessing it would be Maeve, Sholto or Sorley, and wasn’t expecting any of them to be calling with good news. He picked it up and looked at the screen. A number with no name was showing, someone who had never called before. That made him nervous, but he pressed green anyway.
“Hello?”
“This is finishing now, Ross, it’s finishing now. I’m not letting him get what he wants, I’m going to get that bitch of a girlfriend of yours and you’re all going to tell the truth about it, you understand me?”
The phone cut off. It had been the angry voice of a young man spitting with emotion. Young in that he was younger than Corey, but not as young as Darian was at the time. The sound quality had been poor, but he was sure it was Gallowglass, ranting into his phone as he drove. That had been the background noise, the drone of an engine moving fast and needing a gear change that a driver with his phone in hand couldn’t execute yet. A man barely in control of himself and his car.
The threat was to Maeve. Gallowglass was going there and he was going to get her, and his reasons made little sense in the few seconds he’d spent shouting them. Gallowglass was driving to Maeve’s flat. He called Maeve, growling for her to answer as the phone rang through to voicemail. He tried again with the same result.
Darian sprinted out of the flat, the keys to the Skoda in his hand, pulling the front door shut behind him with a slam. He jumped down the stairs two at a time, almost falling down them, and ran out into the street. It was the one time he drove the Skoda and didn’t notice the smell, pulling out into the middle of the road and racing east through Bank. There were still plenty of cars on the road—there are at every hour in this city because there’s never a better alternative—and the city didn’t race past nearly as fast as he wanted it to. It felt like the longest drive up the east side he’d ever made, despite the fact he almost lost control a couple of times when he clipped the curbs, calling her again on the phone and getting no answer. He turned onto Sgàil Drive and stopped with a screech on the street outside her flat, parking between the car he had seen Gallowglass drive when Maeve took him to see Gallowglass’s house and the car in which Corey had taken him for his nocturnal chat after their unexpected encounter in Moira’s house.