Robert held on to me as we walked. Barely able to manage a straight line. Not pissed, but also embarrassed. His breath came in short bursts. A panic attack, perhaps. A sudden realization of what he had done. An epiphany of sorts. Wouldn’t last long. Give him a night of sleep, he’d dismiss the incident as a momentary lapse: a drink-fuelled anxiety that he didn’t need to worry about.
But these things always run deeper. I knew that better than most.
‘I always looked up to him,’ he said. ‘My uncle. Wasn’t supposed to, like, but who doesn’t love a gangster?’
‘He’s a businessman,’ I said. But even I couldn’t lie to a drunk man.
‘Piss off. You work for him. You know the truth. You … know … like …’ Beginning to mumble, trailing off at the end of sentences, thoughts fading before they completed themselves.
I didn’t say anything. Just ensured that he stayed upright as we limped past the police station and down to the traffic lights. Just a short hop across the road and we’d be back at the car. Then I could take him home, tuck him up and get some rest.
But I knew I’d be sleeping on his couch. Couldn’t leave him alone in this state. No matter how much of a prick he was or who his uncle happened to be, he was still a client. Which made him my responsibility. Something I took seriously.
It would be easy to dismiss Robert Burns as not worth the effort. But repulsive as he was to me, he was still a human being. With all the flaws that implied. He was trying to live up to an ideal he could never match. He would never be like his uncle, and he knew it. He’d always be a wee boy playing at being a gangster, never with the balls to be the real thing. Men like his uncle were not made or created. They were born that way. They couldn’t help who they were. Just as a man like Robert Burns couldn’t help being a wannabe. He would always be running to play catch up with the big boys. His reality could never match his ambition. And in a way, I felt sorry for him because of that.
The minute you stop trying to look for the humanity in people, you’ve already lost. I had known monsters in my time, people whose actions and perversions had made them into outcasts from the world. And yet every time, I had seen in them a glimpse of who they might have been, who they could have been, if they had not given in to the worst of themselves.
Robert Burns was no monster. Just a guy with an inferiority complex and an uncle he admired. For all the wrong reasons.
We crossed the Marketgait, waiting for the green man, not risking Robert’s slow progress on the roads that rushed up between the station and the old Tay Mills. We were in the very centre of the city and yet at this time of night, cars treated the road like a racetrack, bombing up and down with little thought for pedestrians or other road users.
The irony of the police station’s presence was all too obvious.
We walked down the roughly cobbled street at the side of the Mills, round to the car park at the rear of the building. A woman walked past us, smiling at me as she did so. Early forties or late thirties, tall, with bobbed blonde hair and an understated dress sense. She didn’t look like she’d been out on the piss. Maybe she was getting geared up. Or heading home after a late night at the office.
‘Your pal looks a little worse for wear.’
‘You know how it is.’
She nodded. ‘You driving, then?’
‘Designated.’
‘Poor bugger.’ Smiling a little too much. Maybe she had been drinking, was just one of those people who hid it well. Some people, they get drunk, they only hint at it when they smile. ‘You, I mean.’
‘I’ll have a belt when I get home.’
‘Bet you will. You boys have a blast.’ She toddled past, throwing a wee wink. Flirtatious? Perhaps. It was that time of night. But still, I figured it was bold for a woman to stop and chat to two drunk strangers in a side street that was half-lit at best. Maybe the presence of the police station just a few feet away made her feel safe. Or maybe she just didn’t give a toss. Maybe we didn’t look that dangerous.
I pulled Robert to the car. He leaned on the hood while I unlocked the door. Gulping in the night air.
Something about the woman was bothering me. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. And not in that way. Paranoid, maybe. Tired. Jumping at shadows. The work getting to me. When you’re waiting to be found out twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you can be forgiven moments of unjustified uncertainty.
‘McNee!’
I turned. Kellen. Following us. Feet clicking on the cobbles where we’d just walked.
‘I just want to have a wee chat.’
‘This isn’t a good time.’ I stepped away from the car. Leaving the key in the driver’s side lock. Robert was still leaning on the hood, drawing breaths, trying to convince himself that he really was alright.
I didn’t want him to hear any conversation I might have with Kellen, no matter how pissed he was. How likely to forget.
I met her halfway. Far enough from the car that Robert wouldn’t be able to earwig with ease. ‘What the hell do you want?’
‘We never finished our conversation.’
‘This isn’t a good time.’
‘Just wanted to let you know, you’re not getting off lightly.’
Hammering the point home with a mallet. I graciously decided not to point that out to her. ‘He’s a client. Long as he doesn’t break the law in my presence, I have an obligation to—’
‘Don’t give me that, McNee. Just … just don’t.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m beginning to think you actually believe your own bullshit.’
There had been moments over the last seven or eight months I’d just wanted to yell at someone, tell them the whole damn story. But I couldn’t. I was undercover. All the way. Walking a line where I couldn’t see how far the drop was on either side.
Kellen had been riding me even before I agreed to work for Griggs. She saw only what she’d been told to see. Focussed only on what backed up her truth.
If I was going to yell at anyone, I wanted to yell at her. Loud enough that there’d be no question of her not understanding. I wanted her to see the truth. Needed her to see it. She was a good cop. Her sense of morality was on the money. I needed her not to think of me as one of the bad guys. To know that I was doing the wrong things for the right reasons.
But to tell her would be suicide. Professional. Personal. Maybe literal.
‘You don’t get it do you?’ I said. ‘That sometimes you don’t see everything. You don’t—’
I heard the noise of a car door slamming. Turned round to see Robert in the driver’s seat.
‘Fucksakes!’ I took a step forward.
The engine coughed. Of course it did. I’d left the fucking keys in the driver’s door.
Again.
The cough. The catch.
He was going to drive home drunk. Last thing I needed was for a man connected to David Burns to be found in my car and incapable of driving.
I made to run. Hands out, signalling him to just fucking well stop.
Didn’t even manage the first step.
It was the second time in my life I’d been caught in the path of a bomb. The second time I’d been unprepared.
But I knew what was happening. Realized as the world slowed down. The punch in the centre of my chest, the feeling of rising heat, the sensation of weightlessness. Déjà vu all over again.
I slammed back into Kellen. We tumbled. Landed hard on the dashed pebble surface of the car park.
I closed my eyes.
Exhaled.
Inhaled.
Tasted ashes in the air.