SHOLTO ARRIVED on Havurn Road quicker than expected, which left Darian with the image of his boss hunched over the steering wheel, knuckles white, eyes bulging as he watched the road ahead, pushing the car as fast as forty miles per hour. It stopped at the side of the road and instead of getting into the passenger seat Darian walked onto the road and round to the driver’s side.
He opened the door and said, “I’ll drive.”
They had made this mistake before and weren’t going to repeat it. Sholto unclipped his seat belt and got out, stumbling into the road and running round to the passenger side. Darian noticed how rumpled his boss looked, even by his standards, shirt hanging down at the back, hair all over the place so it almost covered the baldness on top. This was Sholto in a state of rush Darian hadn’t seen from him before.
He got into the driver’s seat and as soon as Sholto pulled the passenger door shut behind him Darian accelerated away with a screech, the momentum forcing them back in their seats.
Sholto said, “Whoa, Nelly, calm it down and put your seat belt on as well, we’re no use to anyone if we’re wrapped around a lamppost.”
Darian pulled the seat belt round in between changing gear and trying to work out the quickest route from Bank to Simon’s house. In the daytime it wouldn’t be the obvious one, using the main streets that looked the quickest route on a map but would be clogged, but at this hour of the morning when the roads were much clearer it made sense that the shortest route should indeed be the fastest.
Sholto, with one hand on the door and the other gripping the side of his seat, said, “What did Sutherland say to you, exactly?”
“He said someone was in the house and he wanted me to come round. He was talking in a whisper and he sounded terrified.”
“I suppose we’re about to find out if he’s as good an actor as I think he might be. What did you say to him?”
“I told him I was on my way round and to phone the police.”
Sholto mumbled something under his breath and said, “Well, if he did call them I wouldn’t rely on him to get the message across, and if you don’t nail the point with that lot you’ll be lucky if they show up at all. Who else did you call?”
“I left a message with Vinny but I haven’t gotten an answer yet.”
“Not your girlfriend?”
“My…? Vicario? I wish she was and, no, I haven’t.”
The conversation was annoying Darian because he was busy reminding the car that thirty miles an hour was a legal limit but not a technological one. They were in Cnocaid already with the yellow light of lampposts flashing past outside, occasional bursts of white from twenty-four-hour shops standing out among the darkly sleeping buildings. It was disorientating but Darian could find his way on instinct.
Sholto mumbled something like a prayer under his breath and then said, “A message won’t do it, I’ll make a few calls. I don’t want us being at the house alone, getting caught with our pants down. We need some honest backup.”
Darian focused on the road while Sholto wriggled unpleasantly and pulled his phone from his pocket. He held it in one hand as he scrolled unsteadily through the numbers. Darian had caught a glimpse of the list in Sholto’s contacts before and it was Tolstoyan in length, seemingly everyone who had ever committed, investigated, witnessed or heard a rumor about a crime in Challaid in the last twenty-five years and owned a phone. It was the benefit of experience that Sholto liked to point out: if you stick around long enough you’ll learn who to talk to.
He pressed dial and Darian heard one side of a short conversation, Sholto saying, “DS MacNeith, it’s Sholto Douglas here, sorry to wake you. We’ve just had a call from Simon Sutherland to say that someone’s breaking into his house, you’ll want to get your people there…Yes, of course we are. Goodbye.”
Darian said, “That sounded like you hung up before she could tell you not to do something.”
“Aye, well, I have other people to call and not a lot of time to call them, the speed you’re going at.”
The next person he phoned was DC Vicario, a call containing the same information but in a friendlier tone.
That ended when he hung up, and in his grumpiest voice, Sholto said, “She told me she would come straight round, and to say hello to you. There isn’t something going on between you two, is there, Darian? Tell me there isn’t, not you and a cop.”
“Concentrate on your calls.”
A third call went through to Sholto’s contact at Piper Station in Barton, the nearest to Simon’s house and the ones who would handle any investigation into a crime there. That was a confused conversation, Sholto having to try and explain that it was a Sutherland, that he never left the house and that he might have been involved in two murders, or might not have done anything wrong and could be a victim himself. That the cop Sholto was talking to didn’t know who Simon was and what he had recently been accused of showed how little communication there was in the force.
He hung up on the last call and said, “Right, at least when we go in there’ll be a battalion of nice uniforms on our heels, although I’d prefer a few of them to be in front of us.”
They passed shops and restaurants far too expensive for either of them ever to frequent and turned onto King Robert Street, a few businesses and a couple of blocks of very expensive flats and a triangle of grass at the corner with black railings that acted as a private park for the people living hereabouts. It was small but it was flat and that gave them a view down toward the loch and the back of Geug Place. Reaching out of the dark sky a finger of black cloud seemed to have stretched down to the ground, touching a glow at the bottom.
“Is that smoke? Chee whizz, that’s smoke.”
Darian nodded. A column of thick black smoke, and as they headed for the corner with Geug Place, they didn’t have to guess where it was coming from. They were driving straight toward it.