Complicity

CHAPTER 5: NAKED FLAME

The Mercedes estate comes grumbling down the drive, splashing in dark puddles under the dripping trees, car draws up by the blank gable end of the dark cottage. As the headlights are switched off, you turn the night sight on. He gets out of the car carrying a large leather flight and walks to the front of the cottage. He is balding and of medium build, though with a paunch and rather a fat face. You watch unlock the front door to the cottage. He enters, turning on the light and closing the door. You hear the alarm delay beep briefly before he turns it off. The rain patters down in front of you, heavier drops from the overhanging trees plop all around. A light comes on at the back of the cottage, in the kitchen.

You give him a couple of minutes while you put the night sight away and take out a pair of thick, wire-rimmed glasses, then you go to the front porch, put the glasses on and bang urgently on the solid wooden door.

You take the bottle and the sanitary towel from your pocket, the towel's loops over your fingers, soak the towel with the liquid in the bottle, then put the bottle away again, holding the reeking towel closed in your fist.

You hammer on the door again.

"Sir Rufus!" you call when you hear noise behind the door. "Sir Rufus! Ivor Owen here, from down the road!" You are modestly pleased with your gruff Welsh accent. "Quick, Sir Rufus; it's your car!"

You hear an English voice saying, "What!" and then a bolt slides. You let the door open. Mr Carter is holding a shotgun, but it is pointing downwards. You can't tell whether he has his finger inside the trigger guard or not but you have no choice; you dart forward, punching him hard in the stomach. He goes "Oof!" and starts to fold at the waist and knees. The gun drops from his hand as you jump to one side and clamp the sanitary towel over his mouth, then get behind him and lock your other arm round his neck. He manages to fling you back against one wall and your glasses come off but you hold onto him. He is still winded, struggling for breath, and the ether works quickly. He sags and collapses. You go with him to the floor, keeping the towel tight over his face. He moves once more, weakly, then goes still.

The keys to the cottage are in his trouser pockets. You put him in the recovery position and go to the door. You put out the hall light, take the night sight from your day-pack and look around. It looks peaceful enough. You close the door and lock it but leave the alarm system off. You take off your moustache and wig, pick up the cracked glasses from the floor and stuff them all in the day-pack. From it you take your black ski balaclava and slip it on.

You have a look in the kitchen but it's a slate floor. You drag him into the living room, put more ether on the towel and leave it over his face, then you roll back the carpet. You take the nail gun out of the day-pack and use it to nail him to the floor through his clothes, pinning each leg of his trousers and arm of his jacket and shirt to the thick boards in five or six places. It's a noisy business. You take the sanitary towel off his face and pry his mouth open with the nail gun, to make sure he hasn't swallowed his tongue. You turn his face to the side.

Sir Rufus Caius St Leger Carter, to give him his full, wonderfully English title, dribbles saliva onto the dusty boards.

You take off one of his shoes and a sock, then shove the balled sock into his mouth and seal his lips with masking-tape. You hesitate, then you put the barrel of the nail gun onto the right cuff of his jacket, over the point where his upper wrist joins the bones of the arm; the place to put nails where they can't be torn out. You're not sure whether to do this or not; the nails through his clothes will hold him, trapped like an Armani-suited Gulliver; you don't need the nails through his arms, and it seems more elegant to use the nail gun and yet not do the obvious thing. You shake your head and put the nail gun aside.

He moans, then his eyes open slowly and he sees you and tries to move but can't. He screams down his nose. You are becoming familiar with men making this noise now.

You leave him shaking and screaming and go through to the store room off the kitchen, where there are a couple of calor-gas cylinders near the back door. One bottle is empty, waiting to be picked up after running the cottage's stove and central-heating system. The other cylinder feels full. You roll its chilly bulk through to where Sir Rufus is still making a racket on the living-room floor. He's sweating despite the chill. A corner of the tape over his mouth has come off. He's trying to shout something but you can't tell what it is.

You pull an easy chair over to where he can see it, near the cold, dark stone hearth. You roll the calor-gas bottle over to the chair, then haul the cylinder up and onto the chair until it rolls down the arms, resting against the back of the seat. The chair threatens to tip over backwards and you push it against the stones and slates of the fireplace so it can't move. Sir Rufus is still trying to work the gag off. You look in your day-pack and pull out the valve with the length of rubber pipe and the brass nozzle attached. You secure it to the top of the calor-gas bottle.

There is a hacking, spitting noise from behind you. "Look! For Christ's sake! What is this? Stop! I'm rich! I can —»

You go over to him, plant one foot on his head and soak the sanitary towel again.

"Ah! Look, I can get money! Christ! No —!"

You clamp the towel over his face again. He struggles for a while before he goes limp. You put another, bigger strip of tape across his mouth.

It takes a while to get the nozzle set just so on the seat of the easy chair. Then, as you are testing the gas-flow, you hear a whistling, retching noise, and turn in time to see twin streams of vomit spurting from Sir Rufus's nostrils and spattering over the floorboards.

"Shit," you say, and go quickly over to him, tearing the tape off his mouth.

He gasps and splutters, almost choking. More of the vomit comes up, rolling out of his mouth and onto the floor. You smell garlic. He coughs some more, then breathes more easily.

When you are sure he isn't going to drown on his vomit and he's starting to make semi-comprehensible noises again, you hold the wispy hair at the back of his head and wind a length of tape right round his head a couple of times, sealing his mouth again.

You put your stuff away in the day-pack as he lies there, moving weakly then more powerfully, the noises coming down his nose faint, then strong; moans followed by what would be shouts if he could open his mouth.

You squat down by the side of the easy chair, where the rubber hose from the calor-gas bottle loops down and round and up before it ends in the brass nozzle. Sitting on the cushion of the easy chair, looking black and incongruous, is the iron grate from the living-room fire. You have tied the brass nozzle to the grate with wire, pointing it up at the scuffed red wall of the gas cylinder about fifteen centimetres above. Sir Rufus's head is about a metre and a half from the easy chair. He has a good view of it.

"Well, Sir Rufus," you say, tugging a pretend forelock and still imitating the sing-song of a Welsh accent. You tap the wall of the cylinder. "I suppose you know what a blevey is, don't you?"

His eyes look like they're coming out of their sockets. His voice, coming down his nose, sounds strangled.

"Of course you do," you say, smiling behind the mask and nodding. "That ship; that LPG carrier of yours — well, your company's — did just that in the Bombay docks, didn't it?" You nod again; a sort of floating, bobbing nod you somehow associate with the Welsh. "Thousand dead, wasn't it? Mind you, they're only Indians, eh? Still fighting it in the courts, are you? Shame these things always take so long really, isn't it? Of course, altering the corporate structure like that, making the ship the only asset of the company; that makes life a bit easier for you, doesn't it? Not nearly so much compensation to fork out, I suppose?"

He coughs down his nose, then sneezes and seems to be trying to shout something.

"Terrifying things, bleveys, they say," you tell him, shaking your head. "Ever wondered what one looks like close up, have you?" You nod again. "I know I have. Well," — you turn and pat the cold, fat shoulder of the gas cylinder — "here's one I prepared earlier."

You turn the knurled wheel on the valve. The gas hisses gently. You take a cigarette lighter from your pocket and hold it to the mouth of the little brass nozzle tied to the grate. You flick the lighter and the gas ignites, a small flickering yellow and blue flame blowing up towards the gas cylinder.

"Oh," you say. "That looks a bit tentative, wouldn't you say, Sir Rufus? You could be here all night!" You turn the valve wheel slowly until the jet is roaring and the fierce yellow-blue flame licks around the curved cylinder wall. "That's better." Sir Rufus is screaming quite hard now and his face is very red. You hope he doesn't have a heart attack before the blevey. That would be… well, just what you'd expect from a man like Sir Rufus: getting out of something through a loophole. Sadly, you can't hang around to make sure.

You take a quick look from the front door with the night sight, your hands shaking as you listen to the distant roaring sound coming from the living room (even though you know it will take a while yet), and the faint, almost childish screams.

It's still raining. You close the door and lock it and walk quickly off into the night.

Five minutes later, as you're about to start the bike and beginning to worry that it hasn't worked, that he's got free somehow, or the gas jet has blown itself out, or his mistress got here earlier than expected and had a key, or something else has gone wrong, the explosion bursts suddenly, fabulously into the night, lighting up the whole rain-swept valley and the clouds above and producing a small mushroom cloud of incandescent gas, climbing and rolling into the darkness. You start the engine with the noise still rumbling down between the Welsh hills.

"Right, Mr Colley, I'd better tell you what's happening here."

"Suits me," I say, with only slightly more bravado than I feel.

Detective Inspector McDunn and Detective Sergeant Flavell are sitting across the boardroom table from me. The Caley's boardroom is directly above the editor's office, set into the slope of the building's castellated roof. It's an impressively raftered room containing a massive, venerable-looking table and seats that look like smaller versions of the one in the Ed's office. The walls are oak panels; they support dully formal paintings of former editors, stern faces glaring down to remind you this is one of the oldest newspapers in the world. Being a floor higher than the Ed's office, the view is even better but, despite the fact I haven't visited here before, I'm not spending too much time looking out the window.

The DI is a dark, heavy-set man with an accent that sounds half Glaswegian and half English. He wears a dark suit and he's carrying a black coat. Young Sergeant Flavell, who's in charge of a cheap-looking briefcase, looks a little like Richard Gere with a thin moustache but spoils the effect by wearing a blue quilted anorak over his suit. Still, at least he's warm. I left my jacket hanging over the back of my seat in the news room and it's cold up here. Eddie suggested we used the boardroom after I went to his office, was introduced to the two cops and told they wanted a word with me.

The DI looks round the room. "I suppose it's all right to smoke in here?" he asks me.

"I suppose so."

Sergeant Flavell spots an ashtray on a window-ledge and goes to get it. The inspector lights a B&H. "Smoke?" he asks me, seeing me watching him.

I shake my head. "No, thanks."

"Right, Mr Colley," Inspector McDunn says in a getting-down-to-business sort of way. "We're carrying out an investigation into a number of serious assaults and murders, plus related crimes. We think you might be able to help and we'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind."

"Not at all," I say, breathing deeply as the cloud of smoke from McDunn's cigarette rolls over the table towards me. Smells good.

"Sergeant, could you…?" McDunn says.

The sergeant takes an A4 manila envelope from his briefcase and hands it to the inspector, who takes out a single sheet of paper. He hands it over to me. "I assume you recognise this."

It's a photocopy of a piece of TV criticism I did for the paper about fifteen months ago. Not exactly my speciality, but the regular guy had come down with an eye infection and I welcomed the opportunity to editorialise a bit. "Yeah, I wrote this," I say, grinning. Hell, my name's at the top of the piece, beside the headline RADICAL EQUALISER?

Inspector McDunn smiles thinly. I read the piece while the boys in blue — well, black and blue — look on.

As I read, and remember, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. This hasn't happened for twenty years or so.

I hand it back. "So?" I ask.

The inspector looks at the A4 sheet for a moment.

""Perhaps,"" he quotes from it, ""somebody should make one of these programmes for those of us who're fed up seeing the usual suspects get theirs (corrupt landlords, substance-abusing youths and of course the inevitable drug dealers; reprehensible villains all, no doubt, but too predictable, too safe) and introduce a Real Avenger, a Radical Equaliser who'll take on some alternative hate-figures. Somebody who'll give people like James Anderton, Judge Jamieson and Sir Toby Bissett a taste of their own medicine, somebody who'll attack the asset strippers and the arms smugglers (ministers of HMG included — listening, Mr Persimmon?); somebody who'll stand up against the tycoons who put their profits before others" safety, like Sir Rufus Carter; somebody who'll punish the captains of industry who parrot that time-honoured phrase about their shareholders" interests coming first as they close down profitable factories and throw thousands out of work, just so that their already comfortable investors in the Home Counties and Marbella can make that little bit extra that always comes in so handy darling when you're thinking about trading up to a 7-series Beamer or moving the gin-palace to a more expensive mooring."" The detective inspector smiles briefly, humourlessly at me. "You did write that, Mr Colley?"

"Guilty," I say, then give a small laugh. Neither man laughs uproariously, slaps his thigh or has to wipe tears from his eyes. I clear my throat. "How is that nice Mr Anderton, anyway? Enjoying his retirement?" I sit back in my seat, feeling the carved wood against my back. I'm cold.

"Well, Mr Colley," the detective inspector says, slipping the photocopy of the article into the envelope and handing it back to the sergeant, "he's all right, I believe." McDunn clasps his hands on the table. "But Judge Jamieson and his wife were assaulted while on holiday in Carnoustie during the summer; Sir Toby Bissett was murdered outside his home in London in August, as I'm sure you're aware; and Mr Persimmon was murdered last month, at his house in Sussex."

I'm aware my eyes are bulging. "What? But I didn't know —! There's been nothing about Persimmon — he was supposed to have died peacefully at home!"

"There was a security aspect to Mr Persimmon's murder, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, Mr Colley."

"But you kept it quiet for a month?"

"Needed a D-notice on one of the London papers," the sergeant says, smirking. "But they were cooperative."

And it never got round the journo jungle-network. Shit. Must have been the Telegraph.

"And then on Friday night there, somebody blew up Sir Rufus Carter at his cottage in Wales. Burned to a cinder, he was; they only just identified the body."

I don't react for a moment. Oh my God. "Ah, sorry; what?"

He tells me again, then asks, "Mind if we ask what you were doing on Friday night, Mr Colley?"

"What? … Ah, I stayed in."

Sergeant Flavell looks significantly at the inspector, who doesn't return the look. He's watching me. He makes a strange sucking noise with his teeth, like he's straining something through them. I don't think he's aware he's doing it. "All night?" he asks.

"Ah?" I'm a bit distracted. "Yes, all night. I was… working." I can see he spotted the hesitation. "And playing computer games." I look from the detective inspector to the detective sergeant. "There's no law against playing computer games, is there?"

Christ, this is awful, I feel like I'm a child again, like I'm up before the headmaster, like I'm back being castigated by Sir Andrew for that botched Gulf trip. That was bad enough but this is ghastly. I can't believe they're actually asking me this sort of stuff. They can't really think I'm a murderer, can they? I'm a journalist; cynical and hard-bitten and all that shit and I do drugs and I drive too fast and I hate the Tories and all their accomplices, but I'm not a fucking murderer, for Christ's sake. The sergeant takes out a notebook and starts making notes.

"You didn't see anybody else that evening?" McDunn asks.

"Look, I was here, in Edinburgh; I wasn't in Wales. How on earth am I supposed to get from here to Wales?"

"We're not accusing you of anything, Mr Colley," The DI says, sounding mildly aggrieved. "Did you see anybody else that evening?"

"No; I stayed in."

"You live alone, Mr Colley?"

"Yes. I did some work, then I played a game called Despot."

"Nobody called round, nobody saw you?"

"No, they didn't." I try to remember what happened that evening. "I had a phone call."

"About what time would that be?"

"Midnight."

"And who was that from?"

I hesitate. "Look," I say. "Am I being charged with anything? Because I mean if I am, this is just ludicrous but I want a lawyer —»

"You're not being charged with anything, Mr Colley," the inspector says, sounding reasonable and slightly offended. "These are enquiries, that's all. You're not under arrest, you don't have to tell us anything, and certainly you may have a lawyer present."

Sure, and if I don't cooperate they might arrest me, or at least get a search warrant for the flat. (Gulp. There's a couple of quarters of dope, some speed and at least one ancient tab of acid in there.)

"Well, it's just, I'm a journalist, you know? I have to protect my sources, if —»

"Oh. Was this midnight phone call on a professional matter then, Mr Colley?" the inspector asks.

"Ah…" Shit. Decision time. Now what? What do I do? Fuck it; Andy won't mind. He'll back me up. "No," I tell the inspector. "No, it was a friend."

"A friend."

"His name's Andy Gould." I have to spell his surname for the sergeant, then give them the phone number for Andy's decrepit hotel.

"And he called you?" the inspector says.

"Yes. Well, no; I called him, left a message on his answer-machine and then he called me back a few minutes later."

"I see," the inspector says. "And this was on your home phone, correct?"

"Yes."

"The one that comes with your flat."

"Yes. Not on my mobile, if that's what you're driving at."

"Mm-hmm," the inspector says. He folds the last three centimetres of his cigarette carefully into the ashtray and takes out a little notebook and flips it open to where the page is held by an elastic band. He looks from the notebook to me. "And what about October the twenty-fifth, and September the fourth, and August the sixth, and July the fifteenth?"

I almost laugh. "Are you serious? I mean, are you asking me do I have alibis?"

"We'd just like to know what you were doing on those dates."

"Well, I was here. I mean, I haven't left Scotland, I haven't been anywhere near London, or… I haven't been down south for nearly a year."

The inspector smiles thinly.

"Okay, look," I say. "I'd have to check in my diary."

"Could you fetch your diary, Mr Colley?"

"Well, I say my diary; it's in my lap-top. My computer."

"Ah, so you do have one of those. Is that in the building?"

"Yeah. It's downstairs. I just got a new one but all the files are transferred. I'll —»

I start to stand, but the inspector holds up one hand. "Let Sergeant Flavell do that, eh?"

"All right." I sit down again, and nod. "It's on my desk," I tell the sergeant as he goes to the door.

The inspector sits back in his seat and takes out his B&H packet. He sees me watching him again and waves the packet at me. "Sure you won't —?" he asks.

"Um, yeah, I will, thanks," I say, reaching out to take the cigarette and hating myself as I do it but thinking, Christ, these are exceptional circumstances here; I need all the help I can get; every prop counts.

The inspector lights my cigarette and then stands up and walks to the windows facing out towards Princes Street. I turn in my seat to watch him. It's a blustery day; cloud-shadows and patches of golden sunshine slide quickly over the face of the city, turning the buildings to dark then shining grey.

"Lovely view from here, isn't it?" the inspector says.

"Yeah, great," I say. I'm getting a fairly decent hit from the cigarette. I should give up more often.

"Dare say they don't use this room much."

"No. No, I don't think they do."

"Shame, really."

"Yes."

"Funny thing, you know," the inspector says, peering out over the city to the distant fields of Fife, grey-green under heavier clouds on the far side of the river. "The night Sir Toby was killed, and the morning after Mr Persimmon was found, somebody rang up The Times and claimed they were IRA attacks."

The inspector turns to look at me, face wreathed in smoke.

"Yes, well," I say, "I heard the IRA claimed they killed Sir Toby, but then retracted."

"Yes," the inspector says, looking, seemingly puzzled, at his cigarette. "Whoever it was used the same IRA code-word both times."

"Oh?"

"Yes; that's what's funny, you see, Mr Colley. You and me, we both know there are code-words the IRA use when they phone in a bomb warning or take responsibility for a murder or some other crime. You have to have these codes or otherwise any Tom, Dick or Paddy could call in and claim they were the IRA; close down London, they could, first time. But our murderer… he knew one of the code-words. A recent one."

"Uh-huh." I'm feeling cold again. I can see where this is leading. Brazen it out. "So, what?" I say, pulling on my fag, eyes narrowing. "You suspect an ex-policeman, yeah?"

I am favoured with the inspector's thin smile again. He makes that funny sucking noise with his saliva and moves towards me and I have to lean to one side to make way for him. He reaches past me, flicking some ash into the ashtray, then steps back to the window. "That's right, Mr Colley. We did think of a policeman, serving or not." The DI looks like he is thinking. "Or a telephone operator, I suppose," he says, as though surprising himself.

"Or a journalist?" I suggest, raising my eyebrows.

"Or a journalist," the inspector agrees blandly, leaning back against the window-frame, silhouetted by the bright gleam of rushing cloud outside. "You wouldn't happen to know those codes, would you, Mr Colley?"

"Not off the top of my head, no," I say. "They're kept on the paper's computer system these days, protected by a password. But I do write on defence and security matters, amongst other things, and I do know the password, so I have got access to the codes. I can't prove I don't know what they are, if that's what you're getting at."

"Not really getting at anything, Mr Colley. It's just… interesting."

"Look, Detective Inspector," I say, sighing and putting out my cigarette, "I'm a single man, I live alone, I do a lot of work from home and from… all over Scotland; I phone it into the paper. I'll be honest with you; I really have no idea whether I've got alibis for all those dates or not. Quite possibly I do; I have a lot of professional lunches and dinners and just general meetings, keeping in contact with people; people whose word I think you'd take, like police top brass and lawyers and advocates." It never does any harm to remind an inquisitive cop you know people like those. "But, come on." I laugh lightly, holding my arms out. "I mean, anyway; do I look like a murderer?"

The detective inspector laughs too. "No, you don't, Mr Colley." He draws on the cigarette. "No," he says. He brings the cigarette carefully over to the table, leans past me to fold the stub into the ashtray and says, "I helped interview Dennis Nilsen; remember him, Mr Colley? Guy that killed all those blokes?"

I nod as the DI returns to the window. I don't like the way we're going here.

"Young men, lots of young men; under his floorboards, buried in the garden… bloody football team of stiffs, he had." He looks out the window again, away from me. He shakes his head. "He didn't look like a murderer, either."

The door opens and Sergeant Flavell comes in with my new lap-top. Suddenly I have a bad feeling about all this.

I'm in the bar of the Cafe Royal, through the wall from the restaurant where I had lunch with Y and William last week. Above the noise of the bar's chattering patrons I can hear the distant clanking and clattering of cutlery and crockery coming over the tall partition wall and echoing off the place's high, ornate ceiling. I'm staring at the gallery of the island bar while my pal Al is away having a pee and I'm experiencing an optical illusion or something because things are not right; I can see those bottles on the gallery ahead of me, and I can see their reflections behind them, but I can't see me! I can't see my own reflection!.

Al comes back through the throng, politely elbows his way between a couple of people, lifts his coat off his bar stool and leans on the bar beside me, drinking his pint.

"Help me Al," I say. "I'm going crazy or I've become a fucking vampire or something."

Al looks at me. He's older than me — forty-two, I think — mousy hair, teacup-sized bald patch, a couple of fetching parallel scars above his nose that make him look like he's frowning all the time but usually he's laughing, actually. Bit smaller than me. Engineering consultant; met him at one of these stupid paint-ball-guns-in-the-woods boys" games that management tend to think are such a team-spirit-building hoot.

"What are you talking about, you incredible cretin, Colley?"

I nod at the gallery ahead of me. I can see people there, behind the bottles, just as I can see people behind me. I swear they're the same people and I ought to be between them and the mirror behind the bottles but I still can't see myself. I nod again, hoping that the movement will show up in the mirror but it doesn't.

"Look!" I say. "Look: in the mirror!"

It is a mirror, isn't it? I stare. Glass shelves. Brass supports. Bottle of Stoly Red facing me and its back visible in the mirror; likewise a bottle of blue Smirnoff, label facing me and the plain white back of the label visible through the bottle and the vodka inside. Same with the bottle of Bacardi alongside. I can see the little label on the back of the bottle in the mirror, and see it through the bottle from the front. Of course it's a mirror!

Al moves his head so that his chin is on my shoulder. He peers forwards. He takes a pair of glasses I know he's a little sensitive about from his jacket pocket and puts them on.

"What?" he says, sounding exasperated. A bar person gets in the way, pulling a pint and then turning to the optics above where I'm looking, and I have to move my head, trying to see, but I can't until she moves away.

"Cameron, what are you gibbering about?" Al says. He turns, looking at me. I look in the mirror again.

Christ! I can't see him either!

Maybe it's all those Southern Comforts we had earlier, drinking to Bush's defeat by Clinton. Thank fuck we didn't have Buds like Al suggested; how could he even think about polluting our bodies with a brewed-in-the-UK copy of a beer that's basically just fizzy piss even in its original incarnation (and they have the nerve to advertise it here as "The Genuine Article'! Another one of those Great Lies In Advertising, aimed at the brain-dead of Essex, their grey matter irretrievably compromised by years of reading the Sun and drinking Skol, the bastards).

I point, getting a funny look from a bar person passing at the time as I almost poke her in the eye.

"I'm invisible!" I squawk.

"You're pissed," Al says, going back to his pint.

One of the people in the mirror is looking at me. I realise I'm still pointing. I turn and look behind me but there's just a whole load of backs and bodies; nobody looking at me. I turn back and stare at the mirror, just as the bar person I almost assaulted reaches up and takes the bottle of Bacardi down from the shelf. I stare. Its reflection is still there! Even more amazing!

The man who was looking at me is still looking at me. Then it occurs to me I can see a bit of a tile mural on the wall above him. I turn round and look above the people behind me; there is still a fair bit of light coming in through the tall, engraved windows. No mural. I turn back again as the bar person puts the Bacardi bottle back on the shelf. It is not quite straight, and slightly out of position. One of the older male bar staff passes by, reaches up and sets the bottle in exactly the right position again to maintain the mirror illusion before going to a pump and rilling a couple of pint glasses with 80-shilling. I glare at him as he comes towards me. The complete bastard. Then I pull back, afraid, as he comes right up and puts the glasses down in front of Al and me. I look down at my own glass and see it's empty just as the bar man takes it away and accepts the money from Al, who pours the last few millimetres from his old glass into his new one.

I shake my head. "No, man," I say, sighing and looking up at the ceiling. "I can't handle all this."

"What?" Al says, frowning.

"I can't handle this. Today's just been…"

"You look like shit, Cameron," Al tells me. He nods past me. "Look, there's a couple of proper seats. Let's sit down."

"Okay. Let's get some fags, eh?"

"No! You're giving up, remember?"

"Yeah, but it's been a difficult day, Al…"

"Just head for those seats, okay?"

I forget my coat but Al remembers it. We sit at the end of one of the bar's ribbed green leather semicircular benches, pints on the oval table.

"Do I really look like shit?"

"Cam, you look shafted."

"Fuck off, you uncivil bastard."

"Just calling it the way I see it."

"I've had a traumatic day," I tell him, pulling my Drizabone about me. "Grilled by the fuzz."

"Sounds painful, certainly."

"Thanks for coming for a drink, Al," I tell him, looking into his eyes with drunken sincerity and punching him lightly on the forearm.

"Ouch! Will you stop that?" He rubs his arm. "But anyway; think comparatively little of it."

"Al, you got any fags on you at all, Al?"

"No, I still haven't."

"Oh. Oh well. But I really appreciate you coming for this drink, really, Al. You're my only pal who isn't another fucking hack… Well, apart from Andy. And… well, anyway; I really appreciate being able to tell you all this shit."

"And share it with the rest of the bar if I didn't keep telling you to shut up."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't believe what they're getting at. I mean, you wouldn't believe what they're trying to fucking pin on me."

"A badge that says Nil By Mouth, perhaps?"

I wave this away and bend closer to him. "I'm serious. They think I've been murdering people!"

Al sighs deeply. "What a gift for dramatic hyperbole you possess, Cameron."

"It's true!"

"No…" Al says calmly. "I think if it was true they wouldn't have let you go, Cameron. You'd be in a cell; you'd be looking at bars, not trying to drink one dry."

"But I haven't got an alibi!" I whisper angrily. "I haven't got any fucking alibis! Some cunt's trying to set me up! I'm not kidding; they're trying to set me up! They call me on the phone and get me to go to some lonely spot and wait for a phone call on a public box or get me to stay home all night, meanwhile they're offing some fucker! I mean, by the sound of it every one of the bastards deserved to die… though actually he hasn't killed them all, just seriously assaulted some of them, whatever the hell they mean by that, wouldn't tell me… but I didn't do it! And the police are fucking crazy, man! They think I had enough time to get to the fucking airport, get down south or wherever and kill these Tory fuckwits. Christ, they took my new computer! My lap-top! Heinous bastards! They've even told me to keep them informed of my movements; can you believe that? I've got to report in to the local police if I go anywhere! What a nerve! I tried ringing some of the cops I know, top-brass types, to find out what they knew about all this, but they were all out or at meetings. Suspicious as fuck." I glance at my watch. "I got to get home, Al; I have to flush all my stuff down the toilet, or eat it or something…" I drink some of my pint, spilling a little on my chin. "But I'm being set up, I'm not kidding; some bastard rings up calling himself —»

"— Mr Archer," Al sighs.

I stare at him. I can't believe this. "How do you know?" I screech.

"Because this is about the fifth time you've told me this."

"Shit." I think about this. "Do you think I might be getting drunk?"

"Oh, shut up and drink your beer."

"Good idea… You got any fags on you at all, Al?"

An hour later and Al's made me return a packet of fags I bought and taken one slim panatella from my lips just as I was about to light it at the bar and taken me round to the Burger King and made me eat a cheeseburger and drink a large milk and I seem to have sobered up a bit except now my balance has gone and I'm having trouble standing. Al has to help me and insists we get a taxi and refuses to drive or let me drive and I accuse him of being scared because of his record.

"I'm heading for the hills, I'm telling you," I tell him as we make it out through the door and into the open air.

"Sound thinking," Al says. "It's always worked for me."

"Yeah." I say, nodding emphatically and gazing up at the sky. It's sunset and the air is cold. We head west along Princes Street. "I'm heading for the hills, getting out of town," I tell him. "I'm going to ditch all the gear in my flat first, but then that's me; I'm off. I think I'll tell the boys in blue exactly where I'm going so they can check up I'm not this fucking serial killer/assaulter or whatever, but I'm rattled, man, I'm telling you, I don't mind admitting it. I'm off to the Highlands, I'm off to Stromefirry-nofirry."

"Where?" Al buttons his coat as we turn up St Andrew Street and the wind gusts down from St Andrew Square.

"Stromefirry-nofirry."

"Ha!" Al laughs. "Aye, of course; Stromefirry-nofirry. I've seen that sign, too."

Al leaves me propped against a wall while he pops into a shop and gets some flowers.

"Get us a packet of Rothmans, Al!" I shout but I don't think he hears me. I stand there sighing heavily and smiling bravely at passers-by.

Al reappears with a bunch of flowers.

I throw my arms wide. "Al, you shouldn't have."

"Good, because I haven't." He takes me by the arm and we head to the kerb, looking for a taxi. He sniffs at the flowers. "They're for Andi."

"Andy?" I say, surprised. "All right; I'll take them." I reach for the flowers but miss.

Al nudges me in the ribs. "Not that Andy," he says, waving at a taxi with its light on. It clatters by. "They're for my wife, you buffoon, not this dissolute "eighties boom-victim moping in his gloomy mansion."

"Hotel," I correct him, and help him to wave at the next taxi. Somehow I stagger into the gutter and almost fall but Al saves me. The taxi — which was slowing down and turning towards us — steers away and picks up speed again. I glare after it. "Bastard."

"Idiot," I hear Al agreeing. He takes my arm again and starts to lead me across the street. "Come on, Mr Sobriety; we'll get one from the rank on Hanover Street."

"But my car!"

"Forget it. Pick it up tomorrow."

"Yeah, I will, and then I'm heading for the hills, I'm telling you."

"Good idea."

"Heading for the hills, I'm fucking telling you…"

"Yes, you are, aren't you?"

"… for the fucking hills, man…"

I get home and Al sees me to my door and I tell him I'm fine and he goes and I dump all my stuff down the toilet except for some speed which I snort, and the rest which I suck. Then I go to bed but I can't sleep and the phone rings and I answer it.

"Cameron; Neil."

"Oh, wow, yeah; hi, Neil."

"Yes… well, I'm just calling to say sorry, but I can't help you."

"Yeah, right… what?"

"Do the words «chase», «goose» and «wild» mean anything to you?"

"Ah, pardon?"

"Never mind. As I said, I can't help you, old son. It's a dead end, understand? There's no link; nothing to find out. It's your story, but if I were you I'd drop it."

"Ah, yeah, umm…"

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah! Yeah, I'm…"

"You sound stoned."

"Yeah… No!"

"Well, I'm glad we've got that cleared up. I'll reiterate; I can't help you. You're on a wild-goose chase, so just let it drop."

"Okay, okay…"

"Yes, well, I'll let you get back to whatever combination of substances it is you're currently abusing. Goodnight, Cameron."

"Yeah; "night."

I put the phone down and sit on the edge of the bed, thinking, What the fuck was that about? So these guys all just died coincidentally? There's no connection with my Mr Archer or Daniel Smout? I really don't like the sound of all this.

I lie down again and try to sleep but I can't and I can't stop thinking about guys tied to trees with nooses round their necks waiting for a train, or jerking around in baths while a drill sparks and bubbles under the water, or drowning in farm cesspits; I try to stop thinking about that sort of gory, ghastly stuff and think about Y for a while instead and have a wank and still don't sleep and eventually after a lot more not-sleeping I'm dying for a cigarette and so I get up and go out but I must have slept after all because it's half two in the morning all of a sudden and there's nowhere open and by now my head's sore but I really need some tobacco so I hoof it uphill through Royal Circus and up Howe Street until finally a cab stops and I get him to take me through the quiet streets to the Cowgate where the Kasbar's still open, God bless the awful dive that it is, and at last I can buy some fags — Regal because that's all they have behind the bar and the machine's not working but it doesn't matter; I've got a cigarette in my mouth and a pint in my hand (medicinal, and anyway I don't think they serve Perrier in the Kasbar and even if they did some seven-foot biker would probably push a glass in your face just on general principles and then drag you screaming into the gents and shove your head down an unflushed toilet but hey I'm not complaining that's part of the character of the place) and I'm happy now.

I leave at four, walking from the Cowgate up to Hunter Square where the waist-high glass-tiled roof of the underground toilets glows with hundreds of little blue marbles; one of the Lux Europae exhibits. I head down Fleshmarket Close, forgetting the station is still closed at this time in the morning, so detour up Waverley Bridge and stroll along Princes Street beneath more abstract light sculptures, watching a street-cleaning machine as it trundles growling along the road, brushing and sucking at the gutters.

I'm home by five and up again by eleven when there's a phone call that's more than ordinarily interesting that changes my plans and so I go into work and have to pay Frank ('Milltown of Towie? Give in? Molten of Toil!) his twenty quid because the Tories scraped through the Maastricht vote with less of a margin that I'd anticipated and I try to phone Neil to make sure I didn't dream that call last night, but he's out.