DS Ewan ‘Sooty’ Soutar popped his shaved head round the door and told us we were being moved elsewhere. ‘Orders from above.’
‘You’re babysitting? Who’d you piss off?’
Sooty didn’t respond, just shook his head and waited for us to stand. As I moved past her, Susan’s hand brushed against mine. A momentary touch, but comforting. Filled with a kind of promise I couldn’t put into words.
We left FHQ through the front entrance, climbed into Sooty’s unmarked. Susan took the front seat. I climbed in the back. Made sense. Susan was still a cop with a reputation. I was just an arsehole with seemingly limitless second chances.
Sooty drove us down through the centre. We hit the mess of roadworks that were the first stages of the city’s regeneration. Every time you came down, the layout changed subtly. More than once, I’d found myself accidentally heading over the bridge. And it seemed no different. But he didn’t seem to care. Halfway across, I realized that it wasn’t a mistake. We were crossing the bridge.
I leaned forward. ‘Mind telling us where we’re going?’
Sooty didn’t say much. I saw his face in the rear view mirror. Uncomfortable. He was a direct man. Lying didn’t come easy. In interrogation, he opted for the straightforward approach, relied on his size to get a confession. He never beat anyone. But the idea that he might was a powerful, psychological weapon.
Of course, physical intimidation aside, he couldn’t bluff to save his life. I’d learned that much during off-duty hands of poker back in the good old days, when we were friends by virtue of wearing the same uniform.
He pulled into the car park across the other side of the water. Same place where Griggs and I used to park parallel for face-to-face meets. Sure enough, I recognized the only other car waiting for us.
‘What the fuck?’ Susan said.
Sooty couldn’t look at us.
‘You know he’s under investigation?’
‘No one told me anything. I just know he’s SCDEA and he wants to talk to you.’ But there was a hesitation there. Maybe no one had told him anything, but he still knew the situation was dodgy.
‘My arse,’ Susan said. ‘You know Sandy. You two go back …’
‘He’s doing the right thing. It’s the bloody system that’s …’ His face was reddening. Frustration. Stuck between friendship and the job. He’d always told me that I didn’t know which side I was on. His world was simple: black and white. Right and wrong. He knew where his loyalties lay. Except that in that one moment, he didn’t. Because there was no right or wrong that matched up to what he understood. His friend and his superior was in the wrong. But because he believed so utterly on both things, he couldn’t accept that.
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.
He gripped the steering wheel so that his knuckles whitened. His jaw went tight. He spoke through a mouth that didn’t want to move. ‘Tell me you’ve always been in the right, McNee. Tell me how you were always morally fucking upright. Aye, Sandy’s made some mistakes, but …’
‘Last time I made a mistake like he did, you tried to break my neck.’ Like I said, Sooty could be direct. And when something offended him personally – and it was the rare person I couldn’t offend personally – he tended to get physical.
This time, he didn’t say anything. Or do anything. He was aware of his own hypocrisy. But couldn’t do anything about it. Not now.
I shook my head. Got out of the car.