Helen Lamont looked up from her desk in the squad room when David Harper came in, running his fingers through his short hair to shake off the mist droplets that had condensed and settled in a dew as he walked back to the station.
"I heard you were looking for me."
"Nothing too important," he said. "I'll need help to go through some videos."
"Picking up porn now, David?" She gave him a wide-eyed innocent look and he went along with it, trading her an easy grin.
"Don't you wish, sleazy cow."
Her eyes opened wider and her mouth formed a small circle of surprise, even shock. "That's sexist. I could have your legs done for that, chauvinist pig."
"Whenever you can tell me who Chauvin was, I'll hold my hands up and take the rap." He knew she was kidding, and so did she.
She returned his smile. A bruise swelled purple just under her eye and two scrapes that went down the side of her cheek where the skin was still risen slightly. Apart from that, she looked undamaged, though he knew there was a handspan black and blue mark across her ribs where the doctors at casualty had taped tight, and another deep purple blossom on her belly where she'd taken the full force of the boot. She still looked almost frail, but he also knew she was as tough as anybody on the shift, as the knee in the thin man's groin testified. Back in the station he had claimed she'd assaulted him. His lawyer advised him against proceeding further. He was an accessory to a potential charge worse than receiving stolen goods. He had backed off, very gingerly, for his testicles were still paining him the following day.
David gave her an exaggerated up and down once-over, still kidding, though while he appreciated the fact that she was a good cop, a really good cop, he was also male enough to think she was a good-looking cop, and there was nothing wrong with having good looking policewomen around. She barely came up to his shoulders and she had a dark-eyed, almost soft appearance, but her looks were deceiving. On the first day they'd worked together on a case he'd seen her square up to Walter Gourlay down on Pollock Road when he'd come at her with a baseball bat. She'd ducked and there had been only two hits. She hit him on the throat and he hit the ground. He'd hardly been able to talk when he made his first court appearance and when faced with his oppressor in the Monday morning court, the judge had taken a look at the differences in their size and sex and he'd laughed big Walter down to a year in Drumbain jail.
"Before I forget, " Helen turned round, making a face as David shook the droplets from his coat. "May called."
"June," David corrected automatically. He was getting used to Helen Lamont's quirky sense of humour.
"May, June, whatever," Helen said, trying to keep the smile off her face. "Anyway, she called half an hour ago while you were out doing your Christmas shopping She wants you to pick something up."
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Does she ever want anything else? What is it this time?"
"Something from a delicatessen. For a fondue or whatnot. You're apparently having people around tonight. I put a note on your desk. She wants you to call."
David slumped down on his seat and ran his fingers through his hair again. It was short and dark, almost severe. It gave him a clean-cut capable aspect, almost tough. He was tough enough.
"Tonight?" he asked, letting his breath draw out in a sigh. "She actually said it was tonight?"
Helen nodded. "Sounds like you're in trouble boss, and now you're heading into more. It's the same old story. She's got you on a pretty short leash."
He lifted the phone and turned away while he dialled, putting his feet up on top of the old radiator which clanked loudly as it joggled on its loose wall bracket. She turned back to her notes and tried to ignore the stage whispered conversation. It went on for three or four minutes and then he put the telephone down. There had been no goodbye. No tailing off in the conversation.
"Where were we," he said. She could see the glitter of annoyance in his eyes. "Matter of fact, where were you today?"
"I hope I'm not going to suffer over the fondue, Sarge?"
He looked at her, eyes still fiery. Then he blinked and was normal again. "No, 'course not Helen. Anyway, the fondue is off. I'm too busy. She's known my rota schedule for weeks."
"Big trouble?"
"Jurassic."
"I'd rather hear about the porny videos. I'm up to here with relationships." She indicated a distance somewhere above her head. "My sister's engagement is off. My cousin's getting a divorce. And my mother's met some car salesman down at the ballroom and she's doing some pretty fancy footwork for a woman her age. Her hormones have gone haywire. All that and Christmas just round the corner. Let's not talk about relationships."
"Suits me," David said, shrugging off his annoyance. June was becoming more demanding by the month, both of his time and his attention and the more insecure she seemed, the more he found himself resenting her. That just made him feel guilty, for they'd had a good couple of years.
He backed away from thinking of her, realising as he did that he had been doing that for some time. Turning to Helen he told her about the video and how Carrie McFall had snatched the handbag. "Red handed, as they say in the movies. It was pretty smooth, no hesitation, right onto the shoulder and away. Cool as ever was our Carrie."
"And a heartless little bitch," Helen said. "The shoplifting's bad enough. She's been doing that since she was ten, but stealing from somebody who's dying on the floor, that's really a bit off."
"Don't worry. She'll have a great time at the preview premiere. We've got to get the bag back, if we can. I have to find out who the victim was."
"What's so important about her?"
"Who knows? She's caused a bit of a stir at St Enoch's. Something wrong with her blood. I'll tell you the details later. Donal Bulloch asked me to give it a look, and that's good enough for me."
Carrie McFall was easy to find, despite the fact that she'd changed address twice since David had booked her last. She still lived on the north side, in Blackhale, where he planners had opted for a supermarket housing policy. They stacked them high as they could, then forgot about them. Up I this part of the town, business was drink or drugs or moneylending. The local economy boomed and everybody was in the same gutter along with the shell-suits and pit bulls who ran the smack. Carrie McFall was just a product of a succession of slumps. Her record was pretty much up to date, and a little longer than the last time David had seen it.
Her boyfriend , a skinny runt with a bowl cut and a ring though one nostril flange opened the door, stuck a foot under it when he saw it was the police, but removed it pretty quickly when David leaned inside and snagged the ring between thumb and forefinger, all the while finding it hard to believe how stupid anyone would be to leave themselves so vulnerable. David twisted just a little and the boyfriend grunted, more in fright than in pain. The door opened and the boy pressed himself against the wall of the narrow hallway as David and Helen went past down the narrow hallway that bore the stale smell of burgers and onions. The wallpaper was peeling at the corner where a damp patch harboured its own fungus farm.
Carrie was watching television, sitting with her feet drawn up under her on a low sofa that had seen better days, lazily smoking a cigarette and chewing gum at the same time. She had dark hair almost to her shoulders and a silk scarf tied casually round her neck. Helen recognised the quality and she knew Carrie didn't have that kind of money. The girl turned round slowly. Her eyes widened just a fraction, hardly at all. She was cool. She was used to this. She eye them up and down with hardly a flicker of emotion, then stubbed her cigarette out. In the bedroom, a baby squalled.
"Got a warrant?" Carrie McFall demanded.
"Got a conscience?"
"You're not giving this place a spin without a piece of paper. I got turned over only last week." Carrie blew a pink bubble for emphasis. It burst in a small puff of smoke.
David leaned to the left, eased open the narrow cupboard. Black plastic bags bulged down at floor level. "Well, you should be a little bit more careful. What's in the bags?"
"Christmas presents. Open one of them and it'll be inadmissible, you know that."
"You've been watching too much television," Helen said. She pulled the cupboard door, giving it a quick jerk. One of the bulging bags toppled as the pressure on it was released. At least a dozen perfume bottles, still in their cartons, all of them expensive, slid onto the floor.
"Oh dear. Your presents seem to have all fallen out. Lovely stuff. Paris. Givenchy. Not cheap. Got receipts for them all?"
Carrie shot her a deadly look.
David sat himself down on the couch. It was cleaner than most in Blackhale on the north side of the city. Some people called the scheme The Sump and not without reason. It was where the dregs finally settled when their jobs had vanished, when their self respect had gone, and where they had fallen well clear of any social safety net. In some of the high concrete towers, you'd be lucky to find a seat and if you did, you'd never sit in it for fear of getting a needlestick puncture in the backside.
"But today's your lucky day. A very merry Christmas, I shouldn't wonder. Because I could forget all about the sweet smell of success in the bin-bags."
Carrie moved away from him. Her eyes flicked from David to Helen, suspicious as ever. She'd never had any reason to trust a policeman. Both of her brothers were up in Drumbain jail and neither of them were coming out again for some time.
"I could forget all about it," David repeated, "But I do want to know all about your new handbag."
For an instant, Carrie looked genuinely puzzled. David kept his eyes on hers.
"What new hand..." David caught the spark of understanding, swiftly masked.
"Yes, that one," he struck. "Good performance. You should be in the movies." He gave her a wide smile. "Oh, come to think of it. You are in the movies. We've got a lovely shot of you in the Waterside Mall. Very photogenic. What a mover."
Helen sat on the other arm of the settee, diverting the girl's attention. "And we want the bag."
"I never took it. It was empty, so I just dropped it."
"Nice try," Helen said. Her voice went brittle and cold. "The second camera picked you up going through the exit. Bang to rights, I can tell you. But remember Carrie, this is not a smack on the wrist job like lifting a few bottles of fake perfume. You see, you took a handbag that belonged to somebody who collapsed in there. That wasn't very nice."
David butted in, forcing Carrie to swing round to face him.
"Trouble is, her medicine's in the bag. She suffers from a very rare condition. They've got her hooked on a life support and they need her medicine. If they don't get it and she dies, then what are we looking at? Culpable Homicide? For sure. Could maybe even crank it up to murder, if you insist. If you persist."
"I never saw any pills," Carrie said, eyes shifting from one to the other, sensing real danger now. "There was hardly anything in it, honest. Just a purse with some money. I threw them away. But I can show you where."
David smiled again. It had been far too easy. The story he had spun had more holes than a garden riddle, but Carrie was in no position to be objective.
Half an hour later, a shivering Carrie, who had been so convinced she was facing a long stretch that she'd come with them immediately and forgotten to take her coat, showed them where she'd thrown the bag. She directed them down the narrow streets close to the river, not far from where David and Helen had arrested the three men with the stash of hardware. They passed under the motorway bridge, a black arch that rumbled with the passage of overhead traffic, making the ground shiver. The streets narrowed further the closer to the river. Here, an early evening mist curled up from the water, softening the outlines. It was cold and dank, and there were few people here at this or at any other time. There had been a day when these streets close to the old quayside had teemed with life and bustled with commerce, but no more. Like Blackhale, this too was a derelict part of town, depressed, forgotten; run down. Close to the river, where the railway paralleled the bank, there was a stretch of waste ground bounded by a tall barricade made of old railway sleepers. At one time it had been a shunting branch for the main line, serving the long gone yards and wharves, but now it was overgrown with the scrub alder and exhaust-blackened birch that colonises gap sites in all cities. The place was less than five hundred yards from the glitter and sparkle of the shopping mall, but it could have been a hundred miles away and a century distant. Here the buildings bounding the old sidings were tall and crumbling and the alleys between them narrow and lightless. Here the junkie hookers did a little business, hiking their skirts up in the dark behind the barricade. An occasional drunk would turn up stiff as a board, red-eyes frosted open on a winter's cold morning.
David made Carrie show her exactly what she'd done. She pointed to a gap at the corner where sometime in the past some vandals had set the old sleepers alight. He shone his small flashlight through. She had only slipped the bag in between the stanchions and jammed it down among the jagged twigs of the undergrowth. He reached through, groped blindly, snagging his fingers on the sharp ends of broken branches and getting a thin splinter jammed up under a nail. He cursed, found the bag's shoulder strap and hauled it out. It was old and tattered and inside, the lining was shredded and torn from long use. The purse was cheap and plastic, gaping empty except for a small black folder tucked into the outside pocket. Beside the purse a tattered account book was losing one of its covers.
"Can I go now?" Carrie asked. She was hugging herself tight against the cold that had come down hard, turning the thin mist into a sparkle of frost.
David motioned to her to stay. Helen stood close. He shone the beam over the front page of the book. It was a rent receipt account.
Thelma Quigley, the name read, written in block capitals on a light patch reserved for it. He flicked the cover open. Her name and a scrawled signature were repeated inside. There was an address. The small wallet showed a couple of photographs done in black and white. They looked old and faded. There was some faint writing on the back, not easily legible, but also old fashioned script, maybe from the fifties.
"See," Carrie said vehemently, hopefully. "There was no medicine. If she dies, it's not my fault."
"Oh, I should have told you," David said, giving her his best smile. "She's already dead. They couldn't save her. And how do we know there was nothing else in here?"
Carrie's mouth opened so wide her chin was almost on her breastbone.
"So it's murder then?" Helen asked.
"Looks pretty much like it."
Carrie started to babble. Her shiver became a shudder that had nothing to do with the cold. She was protesting her innocence, the words guttural and frightened, almost incoherent. Finally David held a hand up. He had what he wanted.
"Okay. Enough. We'll think about it. You can go for now. We'll be in touch."
The girl looked at him, disbelief slack on her face. He nodded to confirm what he'd said. She stood frozen for almost half a minute and then turned on her heel and ran away from them, her expensive running shoes thudding down on the hard surface, echoing back from the gaunt walls.
"I reckon that gave her the message. Scared the daylights out of her."
"But she shouldn't have taken the woman's bag in the first place," Helen said, her voice colder than the sparkling frost. "Not when she was lying there dying."
She went into her own bag, drew out her radio and thumbed the switch. It crackled in the dark of the alley down by the river.
When control room came on line, she stood there, eyes fixed on David Harper, and told them she had reason to believe there was stolen property at an address in Blackhale. When she had finished, she clicked the twitch with a hard jab of her thumb.
"I don't mind the shoplifting," she said. "But she shouldn't steal from the sick.. Or the dying. She's a damned parasite, and the world's too full of them."
David looked down at her. In the dark of the badly lit street, her dark hair was tumbled over her eyes, framing the heart-shape of her face. She looked soft and mild-mannered, almost innocent, despite the shadow of anger in her eyes. He remembered how she'd tackled the two men who had run out of the sstoreroom, how she had hung on despite the brutal kick in the ribs.
"Remind me not to get on your bad side," he said.
"Oh, you'll never do that," she told him. "You stopped me getting the rest of my ribs stove in, and that makes you one of the good guys." She gave him a big smile and it lit up her whole face. "Even if you are a chauvinist pig."
It was more than a mile from the riverbank sidings to the address on the tattered rent book. David was driving his own car, a mud-spattered four wheel drive which had seen better days and worse roads. The frost was condensing out of the still air, forming orange haloes around the lights on the far side of the water where gaunt cranes loomed over the black turbulence of the river's downflow dark and angular, stretching up to the dark sky, catching the occasional sweep of lights from a car on the bridge. In the mist they seemed almost to move.
"Like dinosaurs," David said, driving slowly. "Brontosaurs."
"Brachiosaurs," Helen told him. He looked round at her.
"I stand corrected. You're right."
"In this light, you can imagine them moving, all charging through the fog. They'd make the ground shake."
"Make me shake," he admitted. "And fill my pants."
She laughed out loud. The anger had gone from her voice. They moved on, past the tall bridge which spanned the river, its lights like a strong of bright pearls on the suspension cables. Just as they came out from under the first span, an immense flock of starlings came whirring across the water, screeching all in unison, and the sound of their wings loud enough to be heard over the sound of the engine and the low fog horn from five miles downstream.
Helen looked up at the birds as they came wheeling in, turning as one entity, to sweep under the shadow of the bridge to their roosting place. "Why do they swarm like that?"
"Apparently they're just checking the talent," he said. "I read somewhere they flock like that to get an estimate of their numbers. If the swarm is too big, they lay less eggs the following spring, so there's enough to go round. One of nature's control mechanisms."
"I didn't know you were a bird man," she said. A hint of a laugh made her voice warm in the shadows of the passenger seat.
"Ah, there's more to me than meets the eye. I take photographs of birds."
"More porn?"
"No, real ones. Whenever I get the chance. Birds, animals, any kind of wildlife. Been a hobby since I was small. I've had a couple featured in magazines.
"So you've not been a hard-bitten detective all your life then. I thought you were a born cop."
He laughed this time. "There's no such thing. I used to believe there were. There's only some good ones and some bad ones. Nobody's born for this."
"And you?"
"You already said. I'm one of the good guys."
The starlings flocked and wheeled and screeched like banshees in the winter dusk while the cold frost came dusting down from the darkness overhead. David drove along the river road, past the warehouses and the grain stores that had stood empty since the ships had abandoned the dying ports and the shipbuilding yards had left the giant cranes as reminders of their own extinction.
They reached the house they sought. It was a ground floor apartment in a small terrace off the main street in an old, run down part of the city, but it was as nondescript as much as anywhere could be. The garden had been covered in concrete which was now cracked and eroded. Bare tendrils of some creeper, an ivy that had withered and shrivelled, clung to the crumbling wall. The paint on the door and the window frames was peeling and behind the glass the curtains were shut. There was no name on the door, no plate to carry a name. It was completely anonymous.
David turned to Helen, asked her to check round the back of the house. She disappeared into the shadows and came back a minute or so later.
"No sign of life."
He reached to the door handle, gave it a twist. It made a low, creaking sound of protest, but it turned all the same. The latch clicked hollowly and the door opened a crack.
He pushed it, listening to the whine of the hinge, until it was wide open. The hallway was just a mass of shadows.
"Hello?" David called out. His voice boomed hollowly in the darkness. There was no reply.
It nuzzled into the warmth, eyes tightly closed, reaching out with its senses.
It, He, was safe for now. Safe in the hot dark and the smoothness of the new one. He turned his head just a little and found the nipple, lets his lips stretch and flow over it, pull together and begin to suckle.
The milk came slow, not yet the full flow, but that would come in time. he was hungry, as always, but instinctively did not suck his fill. The milk was rank and weak, too sweet and dilute. It did not have the essence of the nourishment he needed. He would get hungrier still, and desperate until she changed, this new mother. That would take time. He could sense her battle for control, could feel the internal jitterings and writhings as she fought for her own self. But he would win this one.
She was difficult, but it had happened all so suddenly and he'd been forced to take her very quickly. The old one had been dying. She had been drying out, shrinking into herself. He had sensed her slow decay, but it had still been too sudden when it came. His need had finally drained her, despite the flow of milk that had still been thick and strong. He had stolen her strength at last, sucked her essence dry.
But she had gone with dreadful suddenness, leaving him alone and helpless.
He had sensed the change in the old mother as he sensed the pull of the moon and the tides of the sea and the coming of the dark. He reached out his awareness, stretched it out around him, pinpointing the hot warmths that moved with sudden swiftness and uttered their thoughts aloud in jarring cacophonies of sound. He had sensed that alteration in the old mother, but he had been distracted by the new growth in his own body. That was something new after all this time of suckling and feeding and it had taken him unawares, diverted his instincts and changed his perceptions. He would have prepared, as he always had done, when the old mother began to falter. He would have chosen a new one first if he could, letting the old mother slowly fade out, dying from his hunger and discarded because of his need, while he reached his thoughts inside another one to prepare her to feed him. He had been distracted and the life in her had blinked out.
The loss had been intense.
It was as if a physical umbilical cord linking them had been severed. She hadn't faded away. She had broken. Inside of her she had burst, so violently it had stopped her in her tracks. The pain had come lancing across the distance, magnified by its purity and had slammed into him as he lay in the dark. He had called to her, demanding her attention, suddenly, for the first time in memory, afraid of losing her and being left alone in this place.
He had no recollection of fear, because he had never lost a mother before.
But then she had broken, he had called to her and she had responded because she carried the essence of him in her blood and the blood sang out in terror. She had tried to get to him. Her mind had sparked and crackled, fading then swelling strong as the lack of oxygen competed with the urgent demands of the other thing in her blood. She had tried to get to him but she had fallen and she couldn't force her broken body across the distance.
All around her he could sense the heat of the others, milling around, touching her. He could feel the stroke of the other one's hands and the punch-pound weight on the mother's chest transmitted from her mind directly to his and all the time her panic and fear had soared. He was losing her and she was losing him and her mother-love screamed out from her in desperation. The life had started to fade. He could sense the sparks of it, little flares of incoherent thought and sudden spasms of her need and his blood was sizzling inside her veins as it still battled to return, to reach him.
But then he screamed for help.
He had screamed the way a baby does, the way an infant will snatch at a human's emotions.
But he had screamed with his mind and all of his instinct. The glands had opened up and pulsed and the scent had gone hissing from him.
Far off, he felt the responses. He sensed a shudder here. He heard a groan there. Mental pictures danced within his own cold consciousness, picked up by the reflexive scanning that had powered up in this moment of intense danger and desperate urgency. Bright columns of warmth hovered close, passed on by. Way in the distance, hundreds of them milled together, each one a potential source of food and warmth. He screeched again, a powerful mental demand.
Close by, one response was stronger and he instinctively homed in on it. He turned his attention, focused his demand and speared it outwards. Way beyond him, he could sense the old mother's disintegration as her mind faded, leaving only the essence of himself in her blood which spasmed and kicked reflexively. He called out again, a powerful cry, but fined down so that it was aimed at the one target. The urgency was clamouring in him and the fear rising and that was another new thing, the fear. To be left motherless was something he had never experienced before and it made him feel exposed and vulnerable and there were minds out there that would not tolerate his, would not love him. There were minds out there that were cold as stone, that he could not appeal to, could never influence.
The moving warmth stopped. He felts its indecision, the sudden melange of repugnance and fear coupled with the new stirring deep within it.
He demanded.
She wavered.
He strained, focused tight and commanded. She turned towards where he lay and as he felt her approach a surge of satisfaction rolled through him. The old mother was fading away, the broken and empty chrysalis, discarded and useless. The new mother leaned down and pulled the covering away. Bright light seared his eyes and he hissed like a snake and his glands had opened under the intense pressure. She had looked down at him and recoiled and then the scent, coming reflexively in that first sight, had infused her.
Take me take me take me. His demand was unspoken, mere twists of thought pulsing out from him, urgent now, irresistible, inescapable. The sudden fear inside her fear was strangled back to whimper deep in her consciousness.
Love me!
She had reached and taken him and pulled him into her warmth. He had reached and felt the smoothness of her skin and the desperate fear had instantly begun to recede. He had made her move, chivvied her along his own familiar paths, brought her back to a place he knew.
Now in the dark, he suckled slowly, tasting the thin, weak milk, but he could also taste the trickle of blood oozing from where he had abraded the skin. Already, his own essence would be mingling with the blood, flowing inside her, making the changes he needed. It would take some time, but he had time. She was young and she was strong and she would last, this one would, for as long as he needed her.
In the dark of the room, pressed in against the warm smoothness, he could feel the ripples of her body as the slow sobs hiccuped through her and her own bewildered fear transmitted itself to him. He picked up her confusion and the desperate schizophrenic battle between her panic and her need. It would take time, but he had her now and she had him and he would bond her to him with an unbreakable imprinting that would last until beyond the span of her life. That was how it had always been.