TAXI DRIVERS in Challaid would all be millionaires if there weren’t so damn many of them and they didn’t keep picking fights with each other. Our city is built in a U shape around the bottom end of Loch Eriboll, a sea loch on the north coast of Scotland. There’s a single rail line that runs through the six major districts, but if your destination isn’t close to the line you either need cash for a taxi or a comfy pair of shoes because there’s only one branching line which goes to the airport, no underground and an infuriatingly unreliable bus service made worse by the recent collapse of one of the local operators. The taxi ranks outside the stations were always frantic, but this time Darian decided to join the battle of elbows at the roadside. The journey to Long Walk Lane lived up to its nickname and he didn’t want to be late for the meeting with Vinny.
The driver who took him from Mormaer Station dropped him on Fair Road near the entrance to the lane because you couldn’t get close to Misgearan without running over six drunks and a cop and there was nowhere to turn at the end of the cul-de-sac. Darian paid the man and strolled through the smattering of people already milling around the narrow space between the ugly, flat, single-story buildings on either side of the road. On the left were the backs of the buildings that faced Fair Road and so were at least pretending to be respectable, but on the other side the buildings fronted the lane and backed against a large metal fence that blocked access to the railway line. Darian had spotted the rear of Misgearan as he whizzed past on the train many times and the only difference between that pitiful blur and the front of the building was the smell of booze, piss and vomit. At any hour you chose to visit, the picture of humanity splashed across that place suggested that if the end wasn’t nigh then it should be.
The front door led to the bar and the bar was no place to have a conversation, so Darian went to the side door and knocked. It took seconds for Caillic Docherty, the sixty-something manager of Misgearan who saw all and knew all, to open the door. No one had managed to persuade her to tell the stories of all that had passed there, the criminal chronicles of Misgearan, but there would be a lot of people lining up to hear if she did. She let Darian in without asking him what he was there for.
“I’m here to see…”
She was already walking along the corridor, ignoring him, opening the door to a small private room where Vinny was sitting. Darian went in and Caillic closed the door behind him, leaving them alone in a windowless room lit by a bare bulb with a small round table, two chairs and no room for a third.
Darian sat opposite Vinny and picked up one of the two whisky glasses filled from the half-bottle of cheap Uisge an Tuath in the middle of the table. He said, “This is romantic.”
“Isn’t it? You could lose your virginity in here and not be sure it happened, rubbed up against each other like this.”
Every room Vinny entered seemed to shrink around his booming presence, over six feet tall and with the barrel-chested build of a circus strongman. He had a large, wide face with an easy smile and twinkling eyes, pale skin that blushed red with the effort of his ebullient storytelling. He was loud and cheery and a bloody good cop and loyal friend. Among his greatest skills as a police officer was that he didn’t take the challenge of life too seriously, but as he took a San Jose cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it, to hell with the smoking ban, he looked unusually serious.
Vinny said, “You working on anything fun?”
“You call a middle-aged moron running off with other people’s pension money only to be shafted by his gymslip lover fun?”
“Round here? I’d call that an average day.”
Darian said, “So, Freya.”
“Aye, Freya. Saying her name still sends a shudder through me, but it’s a different sort now. She’s just disappeared and left Finn behind and he’s upset about his mother not being around and that’s upsetting me. He’s with my mother while I’m working; she picks him up from school, which she isn’t really fit for, her hip’s in bits and she won’t go to a doctor. The only thing I’ve got in common with Sherlock Holmes is that I once fell down a waterfall but even I can deduce the trouble in this. Freya’s never gone missing before, never left Finn. She was an unmanageable wife, but I would never knock her ability as a mother, not even behind her back. There’s no explaining it, Darian, and it needs explaining.”
“What’s the search party so far?”
“I reported her missing to Cnocaid station, that’s where her and Finn have been living. They’ll keep an eye out for her, up above and out beyond normal because she’s connected to me. We look after our own.”
Vinny had said it without thinking and didn’t notice Darian’s grimace. His experience of Challaid Police was not as optimistic as his friend’s, as the son of a detective framed for murder and currently serving a life sentence in The Ganntair, the prison in the city. The year before Darian had also become entangled in a case that centered on a bent cop and his corrupted acolytes, a man now out of the force.
“You want me and Sholto to join the hunt?”
“I do, yeah. The reason I didn’t go to the office with this is because I don’t have a lot of dough, Darian, so whatever I pay you will be half a peanut at best. Sholto’s always been a decent old duffer but he might be able to pluck up the courage to point out that what I’m asking for is charity and what he’s running is a business. I know you need to earn.”
Darian took another sip of the rough whisky and said, “I can keep an ear to the ground free of charge, I’ve got one to spare. I can ask a few questions for very little, so can Sholto. We’re mercenaries, we’re not bastards. Tell me what you know.”
“She dropped Finn off at my place on Friday evening, as usual, and she seemed the same as she always did, insufferable. She didn’t mention any trouble, but she wouldn’t anyway because only my failures get the spotlight. No hint that she wouldn’t be back on Sunday afternoon for Finn, that was the routine. She just didn’t show, and when I phoned to mock her timing the line was dead, not even voicemail. We went round to her house and couldn’t find her. Called her friends and her work but there’s been no sign of her. That was four days ago and there’s been nothing. Her keeping her mouth shut for four days? No bloody way. It’s something bad and every cop that can spare the time is looking and finding nothing. Right now no one has seen her since she left my place on Friday, which makes her miserable ex-husband the last person to see her. It’s not good, Darian. ‘I want her back’ might be the last words I ever thought I’d utter but that’s Freya, always taking me by surprise.”
They emptied the half-bottle as they talked about Freya and Vinny’s marriage. It had been a whirlwind at the start and a natural disaster by the end. As soon as it slowed down they realized they’d been spinning with the wrong person, but by then there was a child involved and that tied them together. They disliked each other with cheerful purpose, each committed to genially attacking the other without ever landing verbal blows Finn could see or hear.
It was after eight when Darian took the long walk to Mormaer Station, the cold night air helping to sober him halfway up and the journey a good opportunity to think of what he was going to say to Sholto. As with all the neatest equations, this one was pretty simple. Vinny couldn’t pay them much to help, but there was much goodwill to be won from Challaid Police by helping one of their most popular members. When you’re running a private detective agency under the false banner of a research company it pays to have the favor of the local law enforcers. Darian took the train down to Bank Station and walked up to his flat on the corner of Fàrdach Road and Havurn Road.
It was a small, one-bedroom place that easily contained the few fragments of Darian’s life that existed outside of work. It was in a good area, though, and from the living-room window he had a view of the loch and the lights crying into the darkness around it. He sat at the table there and thought of Freya Dempsey and the couple of times he had met her. She was unfriendly but interesting, harsh but smart, tough but not wild. People like her didn’t just wander off.