The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre.
Back cover.
Let us prey . . .

The press tend to talk about bank robberies as being daring,

ingenious and audacious. They don't describe many as Dadaist,

even the ones who know what 'Dadaist' means. But how else

does one explain choreographed dancing gunmen in Buchanan

Street, or the surreal methods they use to stay one

step ahead of the cops?

Angelique de Xavia is no art critic, but she is a connoisseur
of crooks, and she's sure that the heist she got caught up in

wasn't the work of the usual sawn-offsandblack-tights

practitioners indigenous to the parish. She knows she's dealing

with a unique species of thief, and it's her job to hunt him to

extinction - though the fact that it's not just his m.o. that's

cute might prove a distraction.

This thief, however, has greater concerns than his own

safety, and a secret agenda more valuable than anything he

might steal. He can afford to play cat and mouse with the

female cop who's on his tail; it might even arguably be

necessary. What he can't afford is to let her get too close: he

could end up back in jail, which holds terrors enough; but even

more scary, he could end up in love.

Honesty is a virtue. Deceit is a talent. Theft is an art form.
The Sacred Art of Stealing: prepare to be misled.

'Christopher Brookmyre is a genius'.
Mirror

visit the author's website at www.brookmyre.co.uk

ISBN 0-349-11554-0 CRIME FICTION
UK: £10.99
Recommended Retail Price
Can: S22.95

9 780349 115542


By the same author

QUITE UGLY ONE MORNING

COUNTRY OF THE BLIND 1 NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
ONE FINE DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

BOILING A FROG
A BIG BOY DID IT AND RAN AWAY

the sacred art
of stealing

Christopher

brookmyre


ABACUS

An Abacus Book

First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Abacus
Copyright (c) 2002 Christopher Brookmyre

'The Sacred Art of Leaving' written by Billy Franks (c) Billy Franks 2001

From the album Sex, Laughter & Meditation. Lyrics reproduced by

kind permission. Title artfully stolen, www.billyfranks.com

'Unemployed Boyfriend' words by A.R Alexakis, music by Everclear.

»From the album Songs From An American Movie Volume 1:
Learning How To Smile. Lyrics not reproduced, but any excuse to plug

the details of a magnificent record, www.everdearonline.com

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any

form or by any means, without the prior

permission in writing of the publisher, nor be

otherwise circulated in any form of binding or

cover other than that in which it is published and

without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious

and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 349 11554 0

Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Polmont, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

Abacus

An imprint of

Time Warner Books UK

Brettenham House

Lancaster Place
London WC2E 7EN

www.TimeWarnerBooks.co.uk

For Marisa

Debts of inspiration: Billy Franks and Art Alexakis.
Seek out their music. You may be inspired too.


prologue: consumer services

Was there anything quite so under-rated in this shallow,
plastic, global-corporate, tall-skinny-latte, kiddy-meal-andfree-toy,
united-colors-of-fuck-you-too world, than a good
old-fashioned, no-frills, retail blow-job?

It was one of the very few consumer transactions left in
which you really did get what you paid for, no more and
no less. No packaging, no marketing, no fake smiles, no
on-the-door greeters, no aspirational lifestyle kudos; just
functional, dispassionate cock-sucking for a pre-agreed flat
fee.

All those uptight assholes who took way too much pride
in telling you they never paid for it in their lives - they
didn't know what they were missing. And this was because
they didn't understand the nature of the transaction. They
thought paying for it was undignified, that it somehow
diminished them as men. What kind of insecure loser did
you have to be to believe that, when, in every other aspect
of your life, paying someone else to render you services
was what underlined your status? Yeah, sure, you could
pump your own gas, wash your own car, shine your own
shoes; you could roll dough and make your own fucking
pizza. But who the fuck wants to do that when you've got
money in your pocket? Having to do that shit yourself
because you don't have money in your pocket - that's undignified; that diminishes you as a man. Paying for it
didn't mean you couldn't get it any other way - it meant

that you could afford the convenience option, same as any
other service.

And talk about denial! 'Never paid for it.' Yeah, right.
Maybe not directly, asshole, but you fuckin' paid for it,
make no mistake. Sneakier than a stealth tax, and just as
unavoidable, there's a traceable dollar outlay connected to
every time she unzips your fly, whether she be your wife,
your mistress or a one-night stand. And this isn't just about
steak dinners and hotel rooms, either. This is about that
thousand-buck suit on your back, your health-club
subscription and your stylist's fee, too. Even if you're a
rock star backstage at the Hollywood Bowl: that seventeen
year-old with the doe-eyes and the awe-struck look is still
playing an angle, and she ain't leaving without a piece of
you bigger than the one between her teeth. Whether it's a
noseful of your best pure, or the cheque she'll get when
she tells all, one way or another, that blow-job is coming
at a cost.

Of course, there were also those who claimed it didn't
turn them on unless the girl was genuinely into them;
presumably the same deluded jerks who thought that no
broad had ever faked an orgasm while they were fucking
her. Sure. Like every girl who ever went down on them
did it because she found them irresistible. Were there really
that many chicks out there with a fetish for pot bellies and
beer breath? Come on. Even your ever-doting wife has to
feign her interest now and then. So if feigned interest is
what you need, a hooker could fake it better than most.
But that's only for those sensitive-flower or pretty-boy ego
tripper types who actually thought it made a fucking difference
whether the bitch gives a shit.

What these clowns didn't grasp was that you were
paying for their disinterest as much as their attention. That



bored look was an integral and essential part of the retail
blow-job experience. Jeez, it was an insult to your intelligence
for her to expect you to believe she was enjoying it,
so there was an invaluable honesty about the nature of the
transaction if she looked like she couldn't care less. There
was no have-a-nice-day fake sentiment bullshit. Blow-job, understand? Not blow-hobby. She wasn't doing it because
she liked it, she was doing it because she needed the dough
and you were going to give her it once she'd made you
come. Two blocks down, the girl flipping burgers at Mickey
D's would be looking even more bored for even less green,
but it didn't make your Big Mac tae any different whether
she had a fucking smile on her face.

This was raw, honest, old-school, pre-globalised capitalism.
You need her services, she needs your money, and
nobody is pretending there's anything else going on. No
branding, no mission statements and no customer loyalty
card. You want No Logo? Go get yourself some professional
head.

And if the chance presents itself, go get yourself some
Third-World head, especially. Shit, it was only natural that
there had to be some kind of benefit to balance out the
negatives about being stuck in fucking Mexico. The whole
place stank like a busted sewer, the beer tasted like anaemic
piss, and just driving as far as the fly-ridden corner store
was like entering a stock-car race - but goddamn if the
skanks weren't a whole different quality.

It was kind of reassuring to know that there were still
places in this culturally colonised and strip-mailed world
where you could find a hooker who wasn't about to put
every cent you gave her straight into her arm.
Unfortunately, those places also tended to be the most
economically deprived. That wasn't to say you couldn't

toss a rock down a Mexican red-light street without it
bouncing from crack-whore to smack-head like a pinball;
nowhere was isolated or backward enough to be immune
from that most successful example of globalisation. Jeez,
there was probably some junkie bitch selling her ass in
the middle of the Sahara fucking Desert right now. But
the thing about south of the border was that there were
girls down here who were selling it simply because they
were dirt poor from the day they were born, and hadn't
needed any drugs to put them on the street. There was
something satisfyingly pure and natural about that, and
at the basest level it was far more of a turn-on if the girl
didn't have track-marks up her arms or eyes like an
insomniac panda.

They tried harder down here too, though maybe that
was because he was an American and likely to be splashing
more money in reward for good service. Whatever the
reason, they definitely put more effort into it, and not that
embarrassing fake enthusiasm either: just professional
dedication, care and diligence. So much for the Protestant
work ethic. These girls gave you their best every time, and
they were Catholic to the last.

All of which made such exquisite distraction hard to
resist when he was stuck in this dump with nothing to kill
but time. When he was younger and keener, he'd have been
more disciplined about it. He remembered the rules, some
he'd set for himself and others he'd learned from guys
who'd been around the block, and one of those was not to
get laid until the job was over. A hard-on kept you sharp,
kept you focused, kept you ruthless. Bloodthirsty, even.
But now he'd been around the block enough to know when
it was okay - even advisable - to cut himself some slack.
He didn't have a fix on the target yet, for Christ's sakes,

and what was the point of hanging out in fucking Mexico
if you couldn't bang Mexican skanks?

The phone rang, its pre-historic bell-tone seeming to
shake the rickety bedside table, the sound probably loud
enough to be heard downstairs in the lobby. This was the
best hotel in town, but that wasn't saying much when the
town was Hermosillos. It was standard practice to stay
someplace anonymously low-key on this kind of business,
and he'd never minded hanging out in flea-pits, but all
things were relative. In this neck of the woods, a hotel was
classed as ostentatiously swanky if it had a phone in the
room, and that was something he really couldn't do
without right now.

It also had clean sheets (they smelled of cheapo detergent,
but that they smelled of detergent at all was worth
a star above the front door), an en suite and a colour TV,
for what that was worth. Cool if you were into Mexican
wrestling or soccer, both of which accounted for all but two
channels, the remainder offering Spanish home-shopping
and, inevitably, MTV. The most useful in-house facility he'd
installed himself. She was named Conchita - at least that's
what she was calling herself - and so far she was proving
far better value for money than the room rate, even minus
his Diners' card discount.

The girl seemed less startled by the phone than he was,
probably because it hadn't been five years since she'd heard
one sound like that. She knelt up and began moving across
the bed, intending to answer it. Sweet gesture, but it wasn't
a secretary he needed.

'What are you, expectin' a call or somethin'?'

'Pardon, senor.'

She didn't speak English, but it was still pretty clear she
got the point.

'Well I guess this'll be for me, then, huh? You just keep
talkin' into that pink receiver down there, sweetie. And
don't mind me, I can concentrate on two things at once.'

Conchita went back to work as he lifted the phone,
cradling it against his ear as he lay back on the pillow.

'Hey. Who's this?'

'Miguel.'

'Yo Mickey. What's up?'

'Pack your bags, Harry. You're in the wrong place.'

'I'm in the--? Bullshit. Says who?'

'Come on, how long you been there? Nearly a week?
You like Mexico so much you wanna hang out some
more?'

'Well, your mother's still givin' good head, so I figure
why leave?'

'My mother was born in Texas, fucko. She ain't never
been to Mexico.'

'Yeah, right. Not since she carried you 'cross the Rio
Grande in a shawl, leastways.'

'Whatever, Javier. We got a new lead. Vancouver.'

'A new lead? What the fuck is that? A lead is something
you put on a dog. Tell me you got a mark or don't waste
my time.'

'Nunez was seen, man.'

'Who by?' .

'What the fuck does that matter? He was seen, and that's
good enough for Alessandro, so it's good enough for you
to get on a fuckin' plane, okay?'

'Alessandro.' Harry spat the word, managing to keep a
laugh out of his voice. At least Miguel couldn't see the
smirk, but there was no question he'd be picturing it
anyway. Miguel didn't rate the kid any higher than Harry
did, but his position required him to be more circumspect

about it. He let the pause drag on a few seconds, allowing
Miguel to assume it meant acquiescence. It didn't.

'You're booked on flight--'

'I ain't goin'.'

'Harry, the--'

'Nunez is in Hermosillos, Miguel, trust me on this.'

'Fuck trust, Harry, we're dealing in proof. We got a
witness sighting in Vancouver, and what have you got,
'cept cheap burritos and cheaper blow-jobs?'

'Hey, just because they're a bargain don't mean they ain't
high quality.'

'I'm serious, man. We need a result on this, fast.'

'Sure, but you ain't gonna get it sendin' me to Vancouver
when the dude's in Mexico, are ya?'

'What makes you so sure?'

'Come on, how long I been doin' this?'

'Alessandro Estobal don't wanna hear about instincts,
Harry. You know what he's like.'

Meaning naive, ignorant and rash.

'Believe me, Mickey, Nunez will go to what he knows.
That's what people do when they're feelin' scared and
insecure. You're shittin' your shorts an' lookin' over your
shoulder the whole time - you think you'd decide that
was a good moment to head into the great blue yonder?
Fuck no. Vancouver! That little prick wouldn't know what
street Canada's on. He ain't been further north than
Barstow in his life. He ain't gonna go to a city he's never
been and where he don't know nobody. He'll wanna be
somewhere he thinks he knows the lie of the land, someplace
he associates with being safe and sound. Home.
Hermosillos. Remember that accountant a few years back?
The one who--'

The skimmer, yeah. Rounding down the figures and

syphoning the difference into his own little pension fund.'

That's the guy. Everyone said he'd gone to fuckin'
Lichtenstein, or Switzerland, or Disneyland fuckin' Paris.
Where'd I find him? Hidin' out in mom's basement, back
home in Incest, Alabama.'

'Well you ain't found this one in his mom's basement,
and Alessandro's gettin' antsy. He wants you on a plane.'

That would just be a waste of everybody's time and
money, Mickey. Yeah, I could fly to Vancouver and hang
out there for as long as it takes to demonstrate that this so
called "lead" is bullshit, and meantime I'd be checkin' in
with my contacts right here in Mexico. Then after that I'd
have to get on another fuckin' plane to come straight back
down to Hermosillos and check into the same fuckin' hotel
I'm sittin' in right now. Shit, it's all the same to me, but it
sounds like a lot of bills to pay just to teach Alessandro
the comparative values of being' antsy and being' patient.'

'Yeah, like I'm gonna tell him that. Give me somethin',
Harry, you know? Say you need two more days, tell me
you got some kinda fuckin' scheme in motion here.'

'Of course I got a-- Oh fuck me, Jesus, baby, aw, yeah.
Fuckin' A.'

'What did you say?'

'Aw, shit, sorry, Miguel. I just came.'

'You fuckin' what? You tellin' me you're gettin' head
while you're fuckin' talkin' to me on the fuckin' phone?'

'Don't sweat it. Your mom says hi.'

'You fuckin' asshole. Unless you got it in her ear, she
can hear every goddamn thing you're talkin' about.'

'Relax, for Christ's sakes. She doesn't speak English. First
thing I asked her. Hey, try this. Listen up.' Harry held the
receiver away from his ear and caught Conchita's eye.
'Babe, this is a freebie, right? That's what we agreed, yeah?'

'No ablo Iglese, senor.'

Harry cradled the phone again. 'Voifuckin'-la.'
'And it didn't occur to you that she could be lying? You
know, hookers have occasionally been known to be less
than honest.'

'No shit. Okay, she comes up to me in the hotel bar, she's
fishin' for trade. I ask her does she speak English. She
knows I'm fuckin' American and that the desired answer
is obviously yes if she wants to seal the deal, but instead
she lies and says no, just in case I happen to impart some
top-secret information. Gimme a fuckin' break. This is
Hermosillos in the hot summer, Mickey, not fuckin' Berlin
in the Cold War.'

'So do I go tell Alessandro you're too busy gettin' your
cock sucked to bother with his orders?'

Tell him whatever the fuck you like. Tell him I'm being'
an asshole if it makes your life easier. But I'll be expectin'
everybody to eat some crow when I finish what I came
here to do.'

'What? You mean if it turns out you're right, you ain't
gonna be your usual modest, unassuming, light-under-a
bushel self?'

'Fuck you.'

'He'll put it out to contract if you're not gonna be a good
doggy.'

'Suits me. Let some other prick freeze his nuts off in
Canada. Be my guest.'

'I think they have summer up there too, Harry.'

'Well at least the weather'll be nice for fuckin' sight- seem ', cause that's all there's gonna be for anyone to do.
Shit, I insist he puts it out to contract, how about that?'

'Sounds cool to me.'

'I don't see what the big fuckin' hurry is, either. Nunez


9

is gonna be a long time dead. Or does Alessandro think
the Respectometer is countin' down every minute the guy
who stiffed him is still alive?'

'Alessandro's young. That kinda shit matters more when
you still got to prove yourself to everybody.'

'Problem is he thinks it's the only way of provin' himself
to everybody. You ask me, the kid puts too much stock in
fear as a personal motivator. What, does he think Nunez
gipped him because he wasn't scared enough? Nunez
gipped him because Alessandro was being' cheap. He's a
major-league fuckin' gangster, for Christ's sakes, head of
the fuckin' Estobal family. Nunez was nothing but scared:
scared of the Estobals, scared of the cops. He's lookin' for
an exit at every turn, so it's no wonder he took the first one
offered. But Nunez would have relaxed a little if the kid
had made it more worth his while. Alessandro needs to
learn that you can terrorise people into doin' somethin' on
the cheap, or even for nothin', but it's not good business.
Just because somebody's afraid of you doesn't mean they
won't fuck you if they get the chance; whereas you can trust
someone a lot more if they know you're their meal-ticket.'

'There's a lotta things he needs to learn. What can you
do but wait?'

What can you do but wait. For what, Miguel wasn't
saying, but they both knew it wasn't for the kid to wise
up. Sooner or later, Alessandro was going to get himself
dead; understanding that was kind of a long-term strategy
among the wiser heads in the Estobal organisation. There
was no appetite for a coup from within - not yet leastways.
It would be too messy, too weakening, a further advertisement
to predators that the big beast was ailing. So meantime
it was the job of guys like Miguel and Harry to make
sure the kid didn't damage the operation too much before

10

he inevitably fell off the end of his way-too-steep learning
curve.

Alessandro had been The Man's only blind spot, maybe
worse than if he'd been his own son. That way he'd have
been close enough to notice the flaws, and no doubt influential
enough to iron them out. But The Man never had a
son, and so his nephew twinkled all the brighter as his
golden boy, the anointed. The kid got things too easy, things
he didn't earn, whether they be power or possessions, and
as a result he didn't know the value of any of them. He
confused fear with respect, obedience with loyalty, and
egotism with ambition.

The Man had been a survivor. Well, apart from the lung
cancer, obviously. But he'd known that the secret of survival
was to get up in the morning and ask yourself what the
world could teach you today. The kid didn't think the world
could teach him shit. Kids don't though, let's face it, but
the smarter ones grow out of it. The smarter ones survive.
It's called natural selection. The Man was aware of his limitations
too, another vital strategy in the game of staying
alive. He wasn't any kind of brainbox. Shrewd and streetwise,
yeah, but not clever, and he knew that, so he was
able to play to his strengths and avoid exposing himself
on his weaker fronts. Alessandro, unfortunately, reckoned
he was some kind of fucking genius, and that in itself was
his biggest weakness. Christ, he thought he'd pulled a
master stroke with this Nunez caper, and look how that'd
turned out.

'I always figured we'd get burned by these little art
fags,' Harry said, after a pause he reckoned long enough
for both of them to have silently acknowledged the
meaning of Miguel's last remark. They're sneaky and
they're smart.'




11

'They ain't that smart.'

'Don't kid yourself. They're fuckin' smart. Or maybe it's
just I can't get my head around 'em. I can't suss how they
think, and that makes them unpredictable. Nobody saw
Nunez's little flanker comin', did they?'

'No. Or else we wouldn't be havin' this conversation.'

'Exactly. We can't under-estimate guys like that, and I
think it should be pretty fuckin' obvious to all and sundry
that we definitely can't trust them. The sooner this is over
and put down to experience, the better.'

'Hmm.'

'What do you mean, hmm? What the fuck is hmm?'

'Something you're not gonna like. Not one itty bit.'

'Well I just had a blow-job. This is about as relaxed as
I'm gonna get for handlin' bad news.'

'I was supposed to tell you this once you got to
Vancouver, but as you ain't goin' . . .'
'I sure ain't.'

'The game's changed. Alessandro's got a new plan for
gettin' us out of this hole. Nunez still gets smoked, that's
a done deal, but it ain't the end of it, and you sure don't
put five million bucks down to experience.'

'So Alessandro has a new plan. Why do I feel like it just
started raining?'

'Don't worry, it won't be you who gets wet. It's goin'
down in fuckin' England - can you believe that? Some
place called Glasgow.'

'Who the fuck's gonna do a job for us over there?'

'Innez.'

'Felipe Innez? The guy's hardly been out of East LA.
He'd get culture shock in Vegas.'

'Not Felipe, Harry.'

'Well who the . . .' And then it hit him, the truth behind

12

the hmm, the thing he was not going to like, not one itty
bit.

Zal Innez.

'Aw fuck. No. No.'

'Uh-huh.'

'But he's in jail.'

'Gets out of Walla Walla in less than three months.'

'Sounds like a long time for matters to stay out of our
hands.'

'What we need ain't goin' nowhere in the meantime,
believe me. It'll be under big-time lock and key. Besides,
Alessandro might not be patient, but he knows something
this big requires the long-term view.'

'He's fuckin' nuts.'

'Who? Innez or the kid?'

The kid. Nuts, as in dumb, as in deluded if he wants
anything more to do with Innez, to say nothing of the freak
show that comes with the package. The kid's nuts, but
Innez is just plain crazy. Craziest motherfucker we were
ever stupid enough to get involved with. He's also smart,
devious, resourceful, entirely unpredictable and easily the
last person anyone with two fuckin' brain cells would want
to bring into this already fucked-up situation. He lives to
deceive. That's his nature, his raison fuckin' d'etre.'

'It's a shame, really. With a better upbringing, Innez
could have channelled his talents into a proper, structured
criminal career. That's probably why Alessandro reckons
he's the one guy who can pull this off.'

'Nah. Alessandro just wants to own him because Innez
makes him feel inadequate. Innez is ten times smarter than
the kid and the kid doesn't even have the brains to see that
and leave well enough alone. Innez will fuck us, you mark
my words.'




13

'Desperate meant people would try anything to get out of
the shit they were in. Round here, they were settling for
the shit they were in. Work, drink, fuck, fight, sleep, repeat.
Like they knew there was worse shit they could be in, but
they'd no spark left to try and find better.

This was where Nunez had come from. Sort of.
Geographically, leastways. Like most of those little art-fags
who made a big deal of their 'roots', he was quite definitely
from the right side of the tracks. Because even in a
grim industrial shit-hole like Hermosillos, those factories
have owners, and you can't rack up that much soul
crushing misery without it generating serious coin for
somebody. Nunez's father owned the steel plant, and this
was where he had been brought up. Of course, the family
hadn't stuck around long once they had the money to be
elsewhere. Who would? These days the home and hearth
was in Guadelahara, with Nunez Senior only flying in now
and again to keep tabs on what was now one of many
interests in the north of the country. Nunez Junior had his
studio on the Baha California, a couple of hours south of
Tijuana by road.

When Nunez went to ground, however, Harry knew he
wouldn't go back to Mama. Too obvious, even if he thought
Papa's wealth might be able to buy some protection.
Hermosillos was the next best thing. Nunez knew the place,
maybe better than he knew anywhere else in the world;
and besides, it was remote, anonymous and forgettable.
Who, he probably figured, would want to try looking for
him in a gloomy concrete maze like that? And if he kept
his head down and his mouth closed, how would they find
him?

How indeed. Well, problem is, people see things, hear
things, notice things, whether you've got your head down




Dunno, Harry. I think you're over-estimatin' the guy,
especially since he's spent the past three years gettin' his
ass fucked on D Block. I reckon Walla Walla will have
taught him a thing or two about respect.'

'Oh, I don't doubt it'll have taught him a thing or two.
So when he gets out he'll be all the things he was before,
plus a shitload tougher.'

'We've got an angle on him, Harry, believe me. He'll do
as he's told. Even the kid can learn from his mistakes sometimes.'

'What's the angle?'

'Ah-ah. All in good time. But it starts with teachin' Innez
what happened to the last guy who didn't do what he was
told, so you'd better hurry up and find the sonofabitch.
You're gonna need a camera too, one of them Polaroids.'

'A camera? What the fuck . . . aw, shit.'

'Yep. Make it messy. That was the kid's exact words.'

'Oh, it's gonna be messy, Miguel. Alessandro's makin'
damn sure of that.'

Hermosillos, Harry thought, driving through the nighttime
streets of what passed for downtown. Jeez, what a
bleak, ugly shit-hole. Heavy industry, hard grind, low pay
and the sweaty stench of bovine resignation. Places like
this were the reason alcohol got invented. Once you clocked
off at the end of the day, there was nothing else to do but
drink, fuck and fight, with the first playing an essential
role in encouraging participation in the latter two. Shit, it
wouldn't surprise him if the first heroin pedlar to hit the
town had got a civic fucking reception.

It wasn't desperate; he'd seen desperate, and the smokestacks
in those towns weren't spitting up anything but
birds. In a way, this was arguably something worse.

14

15

or not. And maybe you can keep your own mouth closed,
but you can't shut everybody else's, especially in a town
where money is guaranteed to loosen lips. That said, time
was marching on, and despite his reservations over
Alessandro's impulsiveness, Harry knew there was a fine
but important line between exercising patience and just
sitting around with your thumb up your ass. There was
also a more blurred distinction between giving someone
time to get results and being jerked off by some prick who
thinks you're a sucker, and it was getting clear which side
of this border his so-called informant was currently
residing.

Harry parked his car on the street and walked into a bar,
Hermosillos' idea of an upmarket joint with nightclub
pretensions. These extended little beyond there being a
postage-stamp dancefloor surrounded on three sides by couches, a shitty sound system playing nothing but Ricky
Martin and Gloria fucking Estefan, and the fact that the
place stayed open until the last drinker fell down. The principal
evidence of the establishment's status among the
clientele was that it was just about the only joint in town
where you could find a guy not dressed in snakeskin boots,
skin-tight denims and a cowboy hat. Oh, that and the fact
that there were women inside who might not be hookers.

Martinez was sitting on one of the couches, talking to
two girls who looked just about old enough to drink and
just about young enough to be impressed by a loser like
him. The little pretty-boy runt was probably having himself
some sort of Scarface fantasy, pretending he was something
other than a small-time hood in an even smaller-time backwater,
who didn't even have the sense to appreciate when
he was out of his depth. He pretended not to notice Harry
as he walked in, which Harry didn't like one fucking bit.

16

Harry bought himself a beer and walked over to the
snitch's table, at which point Martinez 'suddenly' looked
up and affected the air of unruffled nonchalance he'd been
preparing for the past three minutes.

'Harry,' he said, gesturing with an open hand to the stool
opposite, not bothering to even sit up straight. 'Have a seat.
How's it hangin'?'

'Lose the bitches, Luis. We need to talk.'

'Hey, that's no way to speak to a lady, man. You loosen
up a little, maybe they treat you right later, you know what
I'm sayin'?'

The girls might have been young, but they read the situation
far better than Martinez. They got up right away and
headed quickly for the bar, leaving him to his Senor
Geniality act.

'Listen, you little fuck, I'm payin' you to get me information,
not sit here drinkin' cocktails and sniffin' around
jailbait muff. It's been, what, nearly a week and you haven't
given me jack.'

Martinez kept up the unruffled front, though he dropped
the old-time buddies grin. 'You're payin' me to keep my
eyes and ears open, man. That's what you said, that's what
I'm doin'.'

'Oh that's what you're doin'? And in all this time you
ain't seen or heard nothin'? Is that what you're sayin'?'

Martinez shifted on the couch, slumping slightly to an
even more slothful (and as far as Harry was concerned,
even less respectful) posture, the right side of his face
contorting a little. Harry couldn't decide whether it was
supposed to be a smirk or a shrug, but he knew what it
was intended to convey. The little fuck did know something,
he just wasn't ready to give it up.

'Money for lookin' and money for talkin' - that's two




17


dTwelve hundred.'

'Is that with or without me deducting what I've been
paying for you to sit on what you already know for I don't
know how many days?'

Martinez finally sat up. 'A grand it is.'

'Okay, start talkin'. I'll give you two hundred now and
the rest if and when it turns out to be worth it.'

'No way, man. Up front, all of it. Yeah, like I'm gonna
see you again once you've found Nunez.'

'I only got two hundred on me.'

Then come back when you have a thousand.'

'I can only get you the peso equivalent at this short
notice. There an ATM someplace in this dump?'

'Opposite the railway station,' Martinez said, sitting
back. 'I'll give you directions.'

The fuck you will. Come on. I'm tired of this shit, I'm
tired of you and I'm tired of this fuckin' town. Get your
ass into my car. I want this over with.'

Martinez feigned a bit of reluctance and climbed
languidly to his feet. Yeah right, like he wasn't coming in his pants at the thought of holding that much money. Harry
walked briskly to the door, Martinez picking up the pace
too, like he was suddenly afraid of being left behind. His
keenness evaporated when they reached the car, however.

'No fuckin' way, man. I'm not gettin' in there. How do
I know you won't just put a gun to my head instead of
payin' me?' "

Harry sighed. 'Yeah, like you're worth a bullet. What
good are you to me dead? I put a gun to your head and
say talk, you know if I pull the trigger I'm only gonna have
to go through all this shit again with some other lowlife.
Gimme a fuckin' break and get in the car.'

Harry drove them to the station and told Martinez to



***1
ifferent kinds of money, man. The first kind is sort of a
retainer, you know?' He had a sip from his cocktail and
slumped back again. The second kind is more expensive.'

Harry took a long gulp from his beer, keeping his eyes
on the weasely fuck the whole time. He knew there was
only one thing to do.

'How much?' he said, putting the bottle back on the
table.

'Two thousand.'

Harry nodded. 'I can live with that. Two thousand pesos
it is.'

'Dollars. Two thousand American dollars.'

Harry laughed. 'Yeah, right. You been watchin' too many
movies, kid. It's not Jimmy fuckin' Hoffa I'm lookin' for.
Two thousand bucks. Get a job.'

This Jimmy Hoffa I don't know about. But I know Nunez
is who you want, and that's the price, man. Makes no difference
to me if we don't do business. This guy's got enemies,
maybe someone else wants him bad enough to pay what's
right. I can wait.'

The arrogant little fuck - probably wished he had this
on videotape: me playing hardball with the big American
gangster.

'Don't kid yourself, Luis. Me needin' your help is a gift
from the fuckin' gods, okay? That's why you've been
stringin' this shit out, because you know that once I'm
gone, it's back to pimpin' your sister or whatever the fuck
else you do when Santa Claus ain't in town. I'll give you
a grand and you'll be fuckin' grateful, okay?'

'Fifteen hundred.'

'I said a grand. But if you wanna barter, how about I
also throw in a promise not to beat the shit out of you?
There, that's my final offer.'

18

19

stay where he was while he lifted the cash. He bent down
and folded the notes into his left sock, in full view of his
passenger. Having left the engine running, he didn't want
him getting jumpy enough to switch seats and bail if he
thought there was anything hinky about the deal.

Martinez looked expectantly at him as he climbed back
in, like he was just going to hand it over there and then.

'Okay. Let's roll,' Harry said, pulling away and ignoring
him. He hung a U-turn across the plaza and then took a
right at the traffic lights.

'The bar's back that way, man.'

'Yeah, I'm gonna hand you a wad of bills in a crowded
public place. You're not the only snitch in town, Luis.'

'Where we goin'?'

'I'll tell you when we get there. Until then, shut up unless
you want to tell me where Nunez is right now.'

'Not till I'm holding the money, man.'

That's what I figured.'

Harry drove on in silence until they were out of the
downtown area and into the industrial belt, well away from
streetlights and sidewalks.

This'll do' he said, pulling into an empty parking lot
outside a warehouse. He stopped the car and put the inside
light on, then bent down, removing the bills from his left
sock.

From his right he palmed a flat-handled knife.

Harry placed the wad of bills on the dashboard and sat
back. 'All yours,' he said. When Martinez reached forward
to grab them, Harry stuck the blade into his thigh and
clamped his left hand over his mouth. He drew the knife
across slowly, his arm pinning Martinez's torso to the seat
despite his panicked writhing.

'Now you listen to me, you little come-stain. I just cut

20

your femoral artery. That's how the Romans used to
commit suicide, did you know that? It should take about
a half hour. So here's how it's gonna be. Either you can tell
me where Nunez is and I can drive you to the hospital, or
else I can sit here and watch you bleed to death. What do
you say?'

Harry took his hand away from Martinez's mouth but
kept the blade in his thigh. He gave it a twist, eliciting a
loud yelp, but there was nobody around to hear it.

'Clock's ticking, Luis.'

Martinez spilled everything he knew just as fast as his
hyperventilating little lungs would let him, after which
Harry pocketed the bills, withdrew the blade and opened
the passenger-side door.

'Get out.'

'You said you would take me to the hospital, man.'

'Phone a fuckin' ambulance, asshole' Harry said, kicking
him out of the car. He pulled the door shut and put the
car into gear, swinging it around until he was alongside
Martinez, who had by this time got to his feet and begun
limping towards the main road. Harry pushed a button on
his armrest and slid the window down.

'I hope you make it, Luis. I really do. And if you survive,
I hope you just learned an important lesson about who not
to fuck with. Adios.'

The 'house' was about fifteen minutes outside of town,
close to the main road south for ease of a fast getaway. It
looked like Nunez had placed his trust in secrecy rather
than security, as the place was an anonymous, rundown
pre-fabricated shack, definitely not capable of keeping out
the Big Bad Wolf if he decided to huff and puff. Harry had
driven past along the narrow road and parked out of sight,





21

then doubled back on foot to where he could get a clear
view. No lights on, no surprise. Little sign that the place
was occupied by anything other than rats and roaches,
apart from the large, indistinct shape of a black tarp at one side of the building - the side obscured from the road.

Harry got his things from the boot, cursing Alessandro
for this Polaroid crap. 'Make it messy.' What an asshole.
Like people wouldn't be afraid enough once you told them
they were dead unless.

He stalked silently through the sparse bushes and the
dust, making his way to the tarp by the light of the moon
and the glow of passing headlights from the main road.
There was no sound other than those of engines and tyres
on asphalt a couple of hundred yards away. Harry made
it to the tarp and crouched beside it, reaching into his bag
for a narrow flashlight. His hand could feel cold metal
under the tarpaulin, confirming his assumption that it
concealed a vehicle, most probably a dark blue 1999 Toyota
4x4. He pulled himself under and switched on the torch,
the sheet hiding the light from view. It was a blue Toyota,
sure enough, but he checked the number plate just to be
completely thorough.

Mark.

He made his way slowly towards the front of the house,
tentatively testing his weight step-by-step on the boards of the wooden porch, rocking back when he heard the beginnings
of a creak. The doorframe looked like it wouldn't
withstand being heavily pissed against, let alone a good
kick, but he opted to pop the flimsy, cheap-motel-style lock
instead. If for whatever reason it turned out Nunez wasn't
around, it would kind of remove the element of surprise
regards lying secretly in wait if he came back and discovered
his front door was missing.

22

Harry crouched on the porch and placed his gun on the
floor before taking a tiny, plastic-handled awl from his
pocket. Gently inserting the awl into the lock with his right
hand, he gripped the round aluminium doorknob with his
left, whereupon the knob came away in his fingers and the
door swung a few inches ajar. Harry scrambled for his gun,
almost falling flat on his face through a combination of
sheer surprise and sudden loss of balance.

There was no movement from within, and only blackness
to be seen through the narrow gap, but not all of his
senses were to be deprived. It was hard to tell what struck
him first, the smell or the sound of the flies, but there was
no question which hit the harder.

'Jesus.'

Harry barely swallowed back the impulse to gag. It was
a discipline learned hard from being around a lot of dead
people, two of whom he'd had to dissenter and rebury,
but this particular stench tested it to the limit, and he was
still on the porch. He bent down to his bag and pulled out
a cloth intended for wiping away fingerprints, tying it
around his nose and mouth like he was about to pull a
Wild-West hold-up. Then he took hold of his flashlight
again and reluctantly nudged the door open with his foot.

The flashlight barely penetrated the blackness, picking
out only tiny areas as it passed, like he was viewing a dot
matrix image one line at a time. Harry turned around and
pointed it at the wall just inside the door, eventually finding
a light switch. Unfortunately, it worked.

The shack consisted of a single bed/living room, with a
kitchen area in one corner and a separate toilet at the back.
The sink, two-ring stove and worktop in the 'kitchen'
constituted the only furniture, other than a fold-down sofa
bed draped with a single linen sheet. Other points of




23

interest included a careless scattering of empty food cans
and pizza boxes, a canvas bag containing male clothing, a
pair of men's shoes, a half-drunk Jose Cuervo bottle, a copy
of Hustler, a brown suede jacket, several dog-eared paperbacks,
and Nunez's head in a glass jar.

Oh yeah.

It was just sitting there at the end of the bed, on a pillow,
for Christ's sake, like it was the Hope fucking Diamond.
Bruised, slashed, swollen, discoloured and immersed in
fluid, but still recognisably Nunez, staring off to one side
with that goofy look corpses always got after a few days
underwater.

And everything around the place was streaked with
blood, like they'd used a fucking garden sprinkler: walls,
floor, trash, clothes, everything. The only thing spared, in
one respect, was the sheet covering the fold-down bed;
spared as in the streaks, not the blood. It was more kind
of smeared.

No. Blotted.

If there was a mercy, it was that there didn't seem to be
as many flies as the noise suggested. Probably amplified by his imagination, though he'd have expected the sound
to be tuned out a little once his brain got busier with all
the shit his eyes were throwing at it.

Harry approached the bed hesitantly, then thought better
of touching the sheet with his bare hands. He retreated
outside to retrieve a pair of latex gloves from his bag. In
truth he was motivated less by forensic considerations than
by a skin-crawlingly bad feeling about the blotting. He
returned inside, less than briskly, he'd have to admit, took
a deep breath and pulled the sheet away.

Immediately, he found himself clouded by a zillion flies,
disturbed from their all-you-can-eat glutathon under the

24

linen. He closed his eyes and swung his arms around in
an attempt to ward off at least a few thousand of them. If
he thought he'd done well not to gag when the door
opened, then he deserved some kind of award for keeping
his dinner down at this point. The smell worsened, accompanied
by the relatively harmless but nonetheless revoltingly
unpleasant sensation of several dozen insects
crawling through his hair.

After a few seconds of flailing, the intensity of the aerial
assault reduced, the majority of the flies returning to the
feast, and he felt confident enough to open his eyes again. F uck me.'

It looked like the rest of Nunez had been put in a blender.
The bed was covered from top to bottom in rotting flesh,
bones sticking out from the mass here and there, as well
as the odd internal organ. The lungs were the most noticeable,
sheer size meaning there was more of their shape still
recognisable after the attentions of the Beelzebub First
Airborne Squadron. Other than that, it was pretty difficult
to guess what any particular fly-crawling lump used to be,
especially as there didn't appear to be any skin remaining.
Had that been the flies too, or ... Fuck, who cared?

Harry had seen some funky stuff in his time - but this?
This looked like serious serial-killer psycho shit. Nevertheless,
certain habits died hard; maybe after a while they
became a reflex. Harry picked up the suede jacket and
patted down the pockets until he found what he was after:
Nunez's wallet. The credit cards were still there, as well as
some small bills, but there was a clear plastic window
where his driver's licence should have been.
Standard proof-of-hit procedure.
'Motherfucker.'
Somebody had beaten him to it, by a few days, too.




25

'Make it messy/

Alessandro. Fucking Alessandro. He'd put it out to
contract from the word go, the double-crossing little prick.
Perhaps that was even why the kid had wanted to send
Harry to fucking Vancouver - maybe he secretly had
Hermosillos covered. Son of a bitch.

But if so, then why did nobody know about it? Why did
they wait until this afternoon to phone him? Harry was no
pathologist, but he'd seen enough to guess Nunez had been
dead for at least two days. And what was it Martinez said?
'Nunez has enemies.' Harry had assumed the plural
referred collectively to the Estobals, but maybe they weren't
the only ones Nunez had screwed.

Shit.

Ah well. Either way up, the job was done, and that was
the main thing, for now at least. He could take his Polaroids
and get the fuck out of this toilet. However, he couldn't
help feeling a little deflated. That was the problem with
the free market. He knew he was good at what he did, and
everybody likes to feel special, but something like this
reminded him that in the grander scheme, figuratively
speaking, he was just one more hooker on a very long
street.

26

1

all your bank are belong to me .

Give a man a mask, and he will tell the truth.
Oscar Wilde





so much for the afterglow

Angelique could tae sweat on her tongue as she pressed a
palm to his chest. It had run off his top lip, her mouth mere
centimetres below, sharing the same hot, stale air; or maybe
they were close enough to be just exchanging spent breath.
Their feet were entwined at the ankles, sinews tightening as
they pulled against each other, her heels and shoulder blades
like four narrow casters as she arced to raise the weight of
both their bodies from the floor. They stayed locked in place
for a moment, both of their gazes flitting back and forth from
each other's eyes to the tangle of their bodies, as though they
were both verifying that the other grasped the significance
of what was finally passing between them.

She was giving in; had given in. She'd been vulnerable,
she knew, but it had still been her call to get into it at a
time like this. Distracted, weakened by this creeping diminishment
to her sense of self. So here he was, for once able
to slip through her defences in ways she had so easily
repelled before.

He knew it, too. After all this time together, there was
no way he could have missed it any more than she could
have hidden it from him. She reached for his face with her
free hand, but he brushed her away at the wrist with an
ease that both acknowledged and dismissed it as no more
than an obligatory and half-hearted gesture.

Stewart sighed with a disappointment that blatantly
invited query.

29

Angelique let her body go limp and felt the energy
suddenly dissipate from his, too.

'What's wrong with your face?' she asked, taking no
pains to mask her own irritation.

'I can tell you're not really into this.'

'What, just because you're on top?'

'You know what I mean.' Stewart took his weight on one
elbow and rolled off of her. He sat up, supporting himself
with his right hand. 'If you're not giving me your all, I
know I'm just kidding myself.'

'And is that such a crushing blow to your male ego?'

'No, but I'm honest enough to know that it's a waste of
both our time.'

This was fair comment. Angelique pulled herself into a
sitting position, wiping sweat-dampened hair from her
brow. 'I'm sorry. I'm like a half-shut knife at the moment.
I wouldn't even have come here today if it wasn't that I
thought it might kinna jump-start me, you know. Clear my
mind, just concentrate on something physical.'

'I know what you're saying. I've done the same myself
a few times, but in your case I don't think it's working. It's
like half of you's somewhere else.'

'Bit of a catch twenty-two. I thought being here would
help me blank out all the shite, but I'm bloody useless here
because I can't blank out all the shite.'

'Best thing for you in this state would be just to work
on your kata.'

'If you can't fuck you can always have a wank, is that
what you're saying?'

Stewart laughed. 'Sensitively put, as ever, but yes. If
you're concentrating on just your form and movement, that
might help because it's more basic; plus it's just you you've
to worry about. At the very least, if you keep at it long

30

enough you can knacker yourself. That usually helps flush
my mind out anyway.'

Thanks. But I think the best thing for me in this state
would actually be to call it a day. I feel like I'm just grinding
gears. Sorry.'

'No use pushing it if it ain't happening.'

'What about you? Are you . . .'

'I'm gonna do some work with the bags for a while. You
might be only half here, but even that half's still deflecting
my kicks like my legs are made of balsa.'

'I don't deflect--'

'"Just redirect", I know. But hearing you say that a
hundred times hasn't made me any faster.'

'You still haven't quite forgiven me for that time you
broke your clavicle, have you?'

Stewart smiled, self-consciously raising an instinctive
hand to the once-injured collar bone. 'It's myself I haven't
forgiven for trying a move that was equivalent to a rhino
attacking a hummingbird. The lesson's learned, but the
theory's still a sight easier than the practice.'

Angelique felt like she could stay under the shower all day.
Bad sign. It was the buffer zone between mental states, as
much procrastination as ablution, allowing time to prepare
for the condition of higher alertness that was imminently
demanded, or as often merely the opportunity not to think
about it for a few more minutes. There were times when
she wished she could remain in that protective stasis,
specifically that first moment when she turned and let the
warm water flow through her hair and down her back.

These were never happy times.

Even when she was pretending otherwise - lying,
denying - this was the place where she couldn't hide from




31

herself, the place where she would always get found out.
Angelique was more resilient than most, fuelled by high
levels of self-discipline and low reserves of self-pity. She
could put on a public face and convince enough people
she was okay that she might almost believe it herself, like
a tabloid editor looking at the results of a loaded-question
phone-in poll. But she knew that when the shower started
feeling like a refuge and she wished it was a suspended
animation facility, it meant she was suffering from a
psychological condition referred to in the medical journals
as 'all fucked up'.

This morning's abortive exercise had seemed an appropriate
course of therapy, intended to take her mind off
of ... well, there was why it hadn't worked. She couldn't
say what her mind was specifically and problematically on, and that was very much symptomatic of this current
malaise. There'd been plenty of times when a session at
the dojo proved the perfect respite from whatever
happened to be worrying her, when she'd channelled all
her concentration entirely into the physical, to the exclusion
of all peripheral concerns. She could lose herself in
the exertion, in a place beyond pain and fatigue, worrying
only about her opponent and the four walls that confined
their combat. As Stewart said, sometimes the exhaustion
simply cleared your mind; and better than that, sometimes
it helped reduce your worries to the basest facts, allowing
you to see only the issues and not the long shadows that
anxiety cast around them.

This morning, though, that just wasn't applicable. Worry
wasn't the problem. Worry, at least, was a sign of knowing
what was wrong, and of feeling sufficiently exercised about
the possible outcomes. Worry was a sign of giving a fuck.

In this state, she'd been lucky to walk away uninjured.

32

She and Stewart were careful about pulling blows during
these sparring bouts, with mere contact to specified spots
read as a point scored, but it was a sign of mutual respect
that they each expected the other to avoid certain attacks
(sometimes strategically depending upon it), so a lapse in
concentration could have highly damaging consequences.
Stewart had been her Judo instructor when they first met,
and he still ran police classes in it, but in recent years they
had combined their martial arts knowledge over countless
one-on-one sessions, two obsessives grateful to have found
someone else in no imminent danger of getting a life. Their
sparring was an indistinct mish-mash of different disciplines,
partly as a valuable means of practice, and partly
to level the odds a little: Stewart had an insurmountable
advantage if it was restricted to Judo; while Angelique held
the upper hand if it was restricted to anything else.

She'd never lost until today, though inevitably there'd
been some close-run things over such a proliferation of
encounters. However, it wasn't simply loss that was indicative
of Angelique's state of mind - it was the nature of her
defeat: the ease of it, and not for him.

It would pass, she knew. She'd get through it, come up
smiling on the other side, put it down to biorhythms or
whatever lie best obscured the true source. But what
seemed even more certain was that it would be back,
perhaps even sooner than before, and the spiral would coil
that bit tighter. The first time she'd felt this way, it had
forced the unpalatable acceptance that she had walked out
of Dubh Ardrain having sustained more damage than just
a few cracked ribs. Then, when it returned, it drove home
the even less welcome understanding that she still hadn't
recovered. Now, this third time, she was left to wonder if
it meant she never would.




33

Dubh Ardrain: her finest hour, or at least that was the
official line if anyone enquired about the police's efforts in
averting a potential catastrophe. Internally, she'd been
made to feel that her contribution was not received with
quite the same unqualified gratitude that her bosses were
happy to accept from the general public. She'd endured
police politics long enough to have become thoroughly
divested of any naive idealism she might ever have had
about the nature of the job, but it burned a new layer of
cynicism deep into the soul that the closest thing to an
official plaudit she'd received for what she pulled off at
Dubh Ardrain was the phrase 'disciplinary action would
be inappropriate'. Hey, don't get all gushy on me guys, it's
embarrassing.

There was something about all official debriefings that
made you feel your efforts were the absolute least you
could have been expected to do, and that you were
teetering on the brink of a negligence charge or due diligence
lawsuit for your sloppy and indisciplined actions.
Yes, it was true that they had to dispassionately examine
all of the events in order to learn from what took place,
but did that process really require an absolute excisement
of the bigger picture? The death toll could - would - have
been in the thousands, and yet they were talking about
structural damage and reconstruction costs. She had
averted a grand-scale atrocity assisted only by one civilian,
a brief element of surprise, gross complacency on the part
of the terrorists, and a jam factor rating in the ionosphere.
In the process of doing this, certain things got blown up.
Expensive things. Logistically-complicated-to-clear-up
and-reconstruct things. But ultimately replaceable things.
Material things. On September 11th 2001, did anybody shed
a tear over the loss of several million dollars' worth of

34

aircraft? Aircraft don't have mothers, don't have husbands,
don't have kids. Neither do power plants.

What they do have are owners, but she wouldn't kid
herself that the financial implications were what truly concerned the stuffed shirts she'd had to answer to after the
fact. Angelique had little doubt that if by a miracle someone
had been able to prevent the attack on the Twin Towers,
then he or she would still have found themselves staring
at a row of unearned epaulettes afterwards, being asked
'Why didn't you . . .' this, and 'Did you not consider . . .'
that.

All her decisions were minutely deconstructed, her
alternative options laid out under the full glare of the retro
spectoscope, her choices evaluated in an air-conditioned
room with fresh coffee and chocolate digestives. As far as
she could observe, lead and shrapnel were not complicating
their deliberations.

Maybe it would have been better if they had been. She'd
certainly kept a cooler head at Dubh Ardrain than at the
inquiry. Angelique had had to pull herself back from the
brink several times during the various interrogations, but
inevitably one accusatory hypothesis too many sent her
into meltdown.

'Everybody's Jim Baxter from the fucking Broomloan,
aren't they?' she'd railed, getting to her feet. 'It's a sight
different down on the pitch. Try and bear in mind that I
was shooting terrorists while you were shooting ten over
your fucking handicap.'

'Please sit down, DI de Xavia. You have to understand,
we're not necessarily criticising you, we're just trying to
build up an accurate picture of what happened.'

Not necessarily. That really was the clincher.

'Go and fuck yourselves.'




35

Ah, that coldly calculating careerist streak, seizing with
two firm hands her big chance to impress the men who
mattered. Also recognisable - and fortunately interpreted
- as spitting the dummy. Slack was cut her way over the
histrionics, she would have to concede. Calm words from
wise heads, indulgences sought by senior allies, allowances
made, outburst overlooked. It was perhaps unfair, then, to
accuse them of ingratitude, when saving several thousand
civilian lives had scored her just about enough points to
swear at the top brass and still keep her job.

Disciplinary action would be inappropriate.

And the Volvo you drove here in, pal.

Angelique wasn't lacking in approval from her rank
and file colleagues, naturally. Those closest to the front line
had understandably the keenest appreciation of what she
had achieved, and they weren't shy about voicing support.
However, under these circumstances, the back-slapping
and the words of solidarity merely added to the sense that
she was under a cloud. Support was what you got when
your reputation was on the line, and however well meaning
their sentiments, that was increasingly what it felt like.
Instead of a story to tell, it felt as though she had a case
to answer.

She wasn't looking for adulation or acclaim. That was
not the root of her disaffection. It had been her own choice to remain anonymous when the media sought 'the hero of
Dubh Ardrain', their normal hunger for such a figure
rendered ravenous just days later with the events of
September 11th. More than ever, people wanted to believe
that their own forces of law and order could protect them
from terrorism; and more than ever, the forces of law and
order wanted them believing it, too. In a time of barely
precedented despair and panic, they didn't just want a

36

hero, they wanted a superhero, and Angelique knew better
than most that they didn't exist. Dumb luck and sheer
coincidence had given her the drop on the Black Spirit and
his scum, nothing more. It wasn't down to professional
intelligence, security infrastructure, public vigilance, individual
ingenuity, or any of the things that people so desperately
needed to believe were at work for their protection.
One single coincidence changed everything, and without
that, the UK would have had its own Ground Zero. It was
in the police's interests to suggest otherwise, but she wasn't
prepared to be party to the deception.

Her decision was also motivated partly by the more
personal desire to protect her privacy, and to a greater
degree by the professional desire to be able to work undercover
again if required. Seeing her name and face splashed
all over the papers wouldn't just preclude that, it would
sentence her to an inescapable role in police public relations.
Having so long resisted senior officers' desires to
sideline her into the window-dressing role of a visibly
Asian and female figurehead, she was buggered if she was
going to be Strathclyde Police's ethnic posterchild now.

Not that giving them what they wanted would have
spared her the Star Chamber treatment, right enough. If
anything, it would have been twice as harsh, cutting her
down to size in case she started believing the hype they
would be selling the public about her. They were scheming,
two-faced, self-preserving, Machiavellian, intransigent,
conservative, deceitful, hypocritical bastards; in essence,
boasting all the properties necessary to attain and carry out
the work of high-ranking polis politicos. This was not a
revelation. So why, she was forced to ask herself, was she
bothered by the responses of people she so little respected?

The answer was the same reason her closer colleagues'




37

words of congratulation rang hollow, too. She didn't
need their approval any more than she needed the Star
Chamber's criticism. What she needed was to feel that
someone understood what the hell she had been through
at Dubh Ardrain, and to grasp that it hadn't been just an
exceptionally eventful day on the job. The epaulettes
wanted to hear explanations for the multi-million-pound
damage bill. Her colleagues wanted to hear tales of baddies,
bombs'and kicking ass. Nobody wanted to hear about night
sweats, vomiting, insomnia or breaking down in tears in
the M&S food hall.

It was easy, at first, to tell herself she was all right. She'd
come out on top, after all: saved the day, wiped out the
bad guys, unmasked the Black Spirit, and all at the meagre
personal cost of a shotgun blast to her Kevlar-protected
chest. The morning after, she felt like she could do it all
again, and this time single-handed; whatever doesn't kill
you makes you stronger and all that.

The morning after was Sunday. Tuesday was September 11 th. What she was about to experience was already in the
post, but the events in New York and Washington upgraded
it to Special Delivery.

The resilient feeling had been, she now understood,
merely the survivor's post-traumatic euphoria: an
enhanced sense of vitality brought on by having come so
close to death. In Angelique's case, it had also served to
maintain her adrenalin levels at the all-time high they had
reached during her battle with the terrorists. However,
sooner or later, the adrenalin and the euphoria had to wear
off, as did their physical and psychologically analgesic
properties. You could take Ibuprofen to replace the former,
but the latter had to be endured cold turkey.

Terror and revulsion were the principal, overwhelming

38

emotions, buffeting her like a sparrow in the tail-wake of
a 747 as the magnitude of what she had escaped finally
made itself felt. It was as though she was involuntarily
subjected to an all-sensory playback of what had happened,
containing everything her mind had censored at the time
in order to get her through it. Each memory, vivid even in
taste and smell, came with a payload of suppressed fear
that had to impact before any sense of relief was possible. What had seemed at the time discrete actions, physical
sensations, deductions, objectives, strategies, responses and
reflexes, now became unified and compounded, each
moment's fear and horror multiplied by the last within the
vast and dreadful context she could not previously afford
to contemplate.

And as though it wasn't enough to be mercilessly
ravaged by this belated understanding of just what she had
avoided, she also had to cope with the delayed comprehension
of the acts she had carried out - and the scenes
she had witnessed - in the process. Blood featured prominently
in this palette, lavishly strewn across an array of
images demonstrating vividly the human body's inability
to share space with more robust or tensile substances. Death
had come in many and various forms, most of them messy,
and the majority had come at her prompting.

There were few people on this earth who would be
mourned less or who had it coming more than terrorists,
but that didn't alter the fact that there were now indelible
images of horror, suffering and fatality imprinted upon
Angelique's mind. Her conscience might be clear, but she
would still have to live ever after with the knowledge of
what her hands (and feet) had wrought.

But then, they'd no doubt say, that's what counselling's
for, right? And these days, in the new touchy-feely polis,




39

you could get it if you'd witnessed a particularly traumatic
parking violation. The doors of the tea-and-sympathy
professionals were always open. Angelique, however,
didn't want the practised solicitude of strangers, taking
care of her little emotional problems for the greater convenience
of the Constabulary. What she wanted was those she
worked with - and worked for - to realise that a price had
been exacted from her by what she had done in the line of
duty; to appreciate that she had literally put her life on the
line at Dubh Ardrain, and had done dangerous, frightening,
painful, sickening and downright horrible things that day.
She needed her fellow officers - including those superannuated,
Freemasonic stuffed shirts - to understand this, not
some glorified social worker.

Their lack of empathy was not entirely down to indifference,
she would have to concede. She was now paying
a price for having presented that bullets-bounce-off-me
front for so long, putting her well down the list of people
anyone expected to need a sympathetic ear. In the beginning
it had been a necessary form of self-defence in the
face of those who'd been reluctant to accept her. They didn't
have to be racist or sexist to take a look at a skinny Asian
female and think 'positive discrimination', or worse,
'passenger'. So if the cliche was true that a non-Caucasian
or a woman had to work twice as hard for half the credit,
then in this profession she had to come across four times
as tough as everyone else and do a quarter of the
complaining.

It wasn't just the rigours of the job that had to be met
with this shield of impenetrability, either. There were the
slights, innuendos and blatant insults of colleagues to deal
with too, these falling into two categories. The first were
those who were, they would claim, testing to see whether

40

she could 'take a bit of ribbing' (though she must have
missed the meeting where these wanks were appointed
official character judges) and stand up for herself without
going off in the huff. The attainment of official 'all right'
status in their estimation required that she 'didn't make a
big deal' about her ethnicity. That this was precisely what they were doing was an irony they were tragically
inequipped to grasp, so there seemed little to be gained
from pointing it out. These weren't bad people, just immature
and inclined to unknowingly wear their insecurities
on their sleeves. To some of them, she had 'proven' herself,
and requisite respect was accorded henceforth; to others,
her ball-busting image made her a 'character', and thus the
role became expected of her.

The second category were those who genuinely resented
her and whatever their individual bitterness perceived her
to represent. These might never respect her, but the don'tfuckwith-me
attitude at least conveyed that try as they
might, they wouldn't be able to hurt her.

They often did, though. The shield was penetrable and
the image was merely that: a projection, a facade. It was a
mask that had proven invaluable in integrating with her
colleagues, but since Dubh Ardrain, she'd been using it to
conceal a growing alienation from them.

She wasn't kidding herself. It was a textbook symptom
of post-traumatic stress to feel apart from those who hadn't
shared the event, and thus proof that some form of counselling
was indeed required; but it was also why the only
'counsellor' worth a damn was Ray Ash. He was the one
person who could truly relate to her, beyond rehearsed platitudes,
practised compassion and sympathetic prompts,
because he'd been there. They had stalked, hidden, run and
battled side by side in those tunnels, chambers and pools,




41

through the firefights and explosions, through the fear, the
anger and the killing. Unlike Angelique, the closest thing
to combat training Ray had had to prepare him for the
ordeal had been playing Quake on his computer. Despite
this, he seemed to be the one handling the aftermath better,
which made him an even more valuable source of comfort.

Comfort, however, wasn't therapy, and while it made
her feel better at the time to talk to Ray, she knew it wasn't
entirely constructive. It wasn't particularly fair, either.
Angelique represented the worst thing that had ever
happened to Ray and his family, so she had to bear in mind
what she was bringing back every time she showed her
face around his house. Plus, as a single woman, there were
only so many times you could reasonably ask a married
man out for a drink.

And there was the rub. Ray had bounced back because
of what was waiting for him when the bullets stopped
flying and the last of the rubble hit the ground. The experience
had given him a hard-earned and uniquely focused
lesson in what truly mattered in his life. If Ray ever felt
troubled by the horrors he had witnessed or the deeds he
had done, then he only had to cast a glance at his wife and
children to put it into perspective. Not only did he
undoubtedly value what he had all the more for having
come so close to losing it, but his family constituted the
whole of the here, the now and the future, providing a
compelling motivation to leave Dubh Ardrain in the past.

What did Angelique have to return to, by comparison?
Only a job that she now understood, in her mother's told
you-so words, would never love her back. These days, in
fact, it was starting to feel like an abusive relationship, all
the worse for being the only one she had.

God knows she'd endured some trials of late, but was

42

there anything quite so awful as having to admit to yourself
that your mother was right? Um, yes, obviously: having
to admit to your mother that she was right. Fortunately,
Angelique's current depression hadn't reached the self
harm stage, so she had thus far resisted that particular act
of humiliation.

She reached limply for the shampoo, reluctantly beginning
the process that would all-too-soon leave her with no
further need to stay in the shower. Oh well. At least she
could now point her befuddled mind towards a specific
reason for not wanting to get out of the cubicle today: diner
chez sez parents ce soir, the one prospect that could almost
make her come over all nostalgic about Dubh Ardrain.

The job would never love her, she could agree with her
mum about that now. Where they continued to differ was
over the theory that nothing else would matter if she could
just find someone who did. Her mum talked about it as
though it was that simple, like some domestic appliance
she had pointlessly resisted purchasing: satisfaction guaranteed,
and the procurement no more problematic, merely
a matter of deciding to do so.

Just do it, as the child-labour sweatshop adverts said. If
you build it, he will come; and prematurely, going by
Angelique's experience.

'Is there still no-one on the horizon?' was Mum's
preferred oh-soreluctantbutIhavetoaskbecauseI-care
phrase for dredging up the subject, usually accompanied
by a wilting smile, already offering sympathy in anticipation
of the unfailingly disappointing reply.

'Not that I can see without a fucking big telescope,
Mummy,' she took great pains not to reply.

In fact, Angelique considered her mother's choice of
words unwittingly apposite. If there was a right guy for





43

her in this world, then the horizon was exactly where she'd
expect to see him, it being a place you can never actually
reach. There hadn't even been a particular wrong guy in a
while either, meaning that these days the only physical
entanglements she got to enjoy were in the dojo, and that
was in no danger of leading anywhere. Stewart was considerate,
friendly, attractive, quite beautifully built and tanta
lisingly single, but Angelique was sadly one penis short of
being his type.

Perhaps she should try a lonely hearts ad:

Embittered, disillusioned, increasingly shrewish
and expertly violent female workaholic
seeks horizon-dwelling male to make nothing
else matter. Must be n/s, gsoh, tolerant of
unsociable hours and unintimidated by
prospect of sleeping with someone who has
now killed more people than she has had
sex with. Please reply to Box 999, quoting
code DSPR8.

She'd phone it into The Herald today, then she'd at least be
able to tell her mother she was making an effort.

Her brother James had also suggested a remedy for her
melancholy, which Angelique had rather miserably failed
to conceal during the 'celebration' dinner his wife Michelle
had cooked the previous night. His cure sounded more
modestly plausible than Mum's, but he'd offered no greater
clues as to where it might be found. 'You need some fun
in your life,' he'd said.

Give that man a pipe and deerstalker. Then, for his next
case, he could deduce that the identity of the lifeless corpse
discovered in the Rangers eighteen-yard-box was Bert

44

Konterman. James might be right, but like ditching Bible
Bert, just because it was screamingly obvious to the whole
wide world didn't mean it would solve everything at a
stroke. That said, again like ditching Bible Bert, it was still
bound to be an improvement.

Where the comparison ended was in the execution. All
Big Eck had to do was stop writing the useless bastard's
name down on the team sheet. Angelique getting some fun
into her life seemed a less straightforward proposition,
especially feeling like this, today of all days.

Stewart was waiting for her when she came out of the
changing room. He was still in his gee, and looked to have
worked up quite a sweat during her self-imposed limbo in
the shower. The smell was more noticeable to her now thoroughly
washed, conditioned, deodorised and perfumed
person. Pheromone rush; far from unpleasant, but liable to
induce instinctive longings that were unlikely to be satisfied
any time soon. In his hand he held a pen and a clutch
of folded-up papers.

Thought you had melted in there.'

'Wicked Witch of the West Enclosure.'

'I thought your seat was in the Govan?'

'Yes, but it doesn't scan, does it?'

True.'

'Shower's hard to leave sometimes, you know?'

'Yeah, but there's usually two in it before I feel that way.'

'Slut.'

Stewart smiled, but he didn't exactly look happy-go
lucky. Angelique's own personal raincloud was evidently
starting to sprinkle more liberally around the periphery.

'Look, you doin' okay?' he asked, his voice soft and
serious. 'You seem . . .'	. ;

'Wabbit?'




45

'To say the least. Do you want to grab some lunch or
something? Have a blether?'

'Thanks, Stewart, but I think I'd be better off on my own
just now, instead of inflicting myself on innocent
bystanders. What's that you've got there?' she asked, before
he could make any well-intentioned but needlessly
masochistic attempt to insist.

Stewart unfolded the sheets and flicked through them,
pulling one to the front.

'It's annual registration stuff for the association. I just
need you to sign the bottom unless any details have
changed. You haven't moved in the past year or anything?'

'No.'

He began scanning the form, tapping panels with the
pen. 'So, name, address, phone, date of ... ah.'

Angelique sighed, bereft of any appropriate verbal
response.

'Well I suppose that would explain a lot,' Stewart said
with a small wince. Thirty today. I guess I won't be wishing
you Happy Birthday, given your demeanour.'

'Not unless you want another broken collar bone.'

Okay, so yes, that did explain a lot, but not everything.
Perspective was still required. Angelique didn't believe
there was a good time to turn thirty, just like there wasn't
a good time to concede a goal, but this felt bloody close to
the half-time whistle. It was difficult to believe that merely
seeing those two digits on a birthday card would have
made her feel quite so mortal if it wasn't coming on the
back of so many blows, figurative and literal, to her sense
of self. Maybe she was wrong, though. Maybe turning
thirty made you feel this way even if you'd spent the past
year on a yacht in the Caribbean. Perhaps the process was

46

as unavoidable as age itself: the approach of thirty prompted
a harsh evaluation of where you currently stood in life,
what you had done so far and what you still needed to do;
and she'd have found herself asking the same questions,
with the same jaundiced answers, even if Dubh Ardrain
had never happened.

One thing she was definitely right about was that she
needed to be alone right now, and in Angelique's experience,
there was nowhere better to do that than in the immediate
vicinity of 50,000 other people. It wasn't as daft as it
sounded: this was football we were talking about, and if
you went there unaccompanied, there were times when the
heart of a crowd could seem like the most isolated place
in the world. Not all of those times involved being two
nothing down, either; nor did it have anything to do with
being the only brown face in a sea of white (apart from the
ways in which it had everything to do with being the only
brown face in another particular sea of white).

Even with 50,000 people around her watching the same
spectacle, feeling the same emotions and wishing for the
same outcome - maybe even because of all that - it was
possible to seem removed from all human intercourse. This
was because no matter whether there were 50,000 of you
or only one, you were still just helpless spectators gambling
your emotions on the outcome of a contest between other
people. Maybe it wasn't the same if you were there with
your ten best mates (and maybe it was exactly the same),
but Angelique felt like her contact with everyone around
her was completely suspended until certain events had
resolved themselves, and that could mean the outcome of
a fifty-fifty ball or the duration of an entire match.

Sometimes she could lose herself in the game, and sometimes
she could just lose herself. It didn't need to be a




47

classic, in fact it didn't need to be any bloody good at all,
she could still drift somewhere entirely alone, as though
she was looking down on the stadium, the players and
herself. Her thoughts could be consumed by plays, tactics,
required substitutions and desired retributions; or her mind
could empty itself entirely, to be suddenly startled by some
incident that yanked her back to the game. Either way,

when the final whistle blew, it felt like her brain was a PC

being rebooted, with only the most essential elements
initially restoring themselves, allowing a precious window
of clarity and perspective before all the old clutter got
loaded up again.

She had always gone to the football alone, even before
the season-book tyranny had made it impossible for
specific people to sit together at less than nine months'
notice or for a duration of less than twenty-odd home
games. Angelique, however, couldn't actually cite any
friends from whom she was separated by this, and though
she was on nodding (and occasionally hugging) terms with
the guys who sat round about her, they were not 'acquaintances'
beyond the shared knowledge of which team they
supported and their vocal opinions on certain of those paid
to wear the jersey. Those she sat with every other Saturday
(or at least every other Saturday she was off-duty) knew
nothing else about her, while the majority of those who
knew a lot about her knew nothing about where she sat
every other Saturday.

This was because Angelique de Xavia was a Rangers
supporter.

No, it's okay.

Not that kind of Rangers supporter. Not the Catholic
hating, right-wing, BNP-supporting, anti-Irish, monarchist,
triumphalist, boorish, arrogant, ignorant, sash-wearing,

48

bowler-hatted, Crimplene-trousered, UVF-tattooed, flute
playing, King-Billy-portrait-on-the-mantelpiece, only
started-goingwhenSounessarrivedbutswearIwas-thereintheearly-Eighties,
snawaffadykewhenthe-team'sno-winning,
couldnae-name-a-non-Old-Firm-player, Union
jack-waving, Scotland-hating, Nazi-saluting, pipe-bomb
hurling, squeeze-the-toothpaste-at-the-top-end and fart-inacrowded-lift
kind.

Obviously.

Not the kind who would take all the worst traits and
features perceived of individuals within a very large group
and then indiscriminately attribute every last one of them
to every last person within it. No. That kind of person
would be a bigot.

Very few of Angelique's friends, and even fewer of
Angelique's colleagues, knew she was a football fan at all,
far less a Teddy Bear. She'd even managed to keep it from
James during her younger years, until the enormous temptation
to silence his Celtic-supporting self-righteousness
finally proved irresistible. Ironically, they had got on better
since this adolescent revelation, though not necessarily on
Old Firm days, and it had unfortunately come at the price
of him referring to her ever after as 'the Kampala Loyal'.

As an adult, however, she found herself enormously
reluctant to volunteer any aspect of this information,
different reasons applying to different groups. Outside of
work, she kept it from her social circle not because she was
in any way ashamed of it, but because she couldn't be arsed
with the disclaimers, explanations, apologies, clarifications
and all-round ideological delousing routine that the mere
mention of being a bluenose would entail in smug-liberal,
aspirationally-intellectual company. Inside of work, she
shunned football talk entirely, because she detested its




49

capacity for engendering a shallow camaraderie, and
simply would not demean herself by doing anything that
made her look like she was trying to be one of the lads. It
was also a cheap route to acceptance and approval: even
the Celtic supporters on the job would have no doubt felt
they could 'relate' to her more if they knew she (follow)
followed the game, and that pissed her off. If they overlooked
her other qualities but suddenly decided she was
'all right' because of the team she supported, or simply
because she supported a team at all, then she didn't want
their approval.

For that reason, staying quiet about it at work was easier
than staying quiet elsewhere, as it felt like a matter of moral
principle. However, it was her acute sense of moral principle
that could also make her feel most frustrated about
keeping her mouth shut on her own time. As a police
officer, nobody had to tell Angelique about the abominations
that could be carried out by certain of the pond-life
who aligned themselves with the name of Rangers Football
Club, and as a season-ticket holder, nobody needed offer
her any further insight into the less palatable sentiments,
opinions, beliefs and ideologies that could be heard around
Ibrox on match days. She accepted that in mainstream
popular perception, the worst images of Rangers fans were
the ones that had stuck, however unfair and unrepresentative
they might be (footage of 50,000 well-behaved Bears
going to the game, watching it and then going home again
not constituting much of a TV scoop, especially if it
happened every week). She accepted that constantly
singing a song about being 'up to our knees in Fenian
blood' was not a PR coup in a part of the world where the
word 'Fenian' was by most people's understanding a
crudely pejorative term for Catholics, regardless of whether

50

an informed minority more accurately considered it a reference
to early-twentieth-century New York politicos and
their subsequent followers. She accepted that the half-wits
holding their right arms straight out in front of them at
shoulder height during away games should not be
surprised if onlookers described them as presenting a Nazi
salute (as opposed to a gesture of solidarity with Ulster
Loyalists: an important distinction, one being a bunch of
thuggish, right-wing ethnic supremacists and the other
being German). She accepted that a degree of reassurance
would therefore always have to be imparted to people if
she happened to mention this little sporting enthusiasm of
hers, and she accepted that this was an unavoidable downside
of following a huge, wealthy, high-profile and enormously
successful club (St Mirren fans, for example, were
not generally required, whenever they announced their
allegiance, to apologise for the racist abuse of Ruud Gullit
when Feyenoord played at Love Street in 1983). Being a
fair-minded and morally principled person, as well as one
who understood that the sufferings of a misunderstood
football fan were unlikely to inspire a Thomas Keneally
work, she could accept all of these things.

What she could not accept was that the same rules,
values and assumptions did not seem to apply to those
plastic-Paddy motherfuckers across the city, who could
loudly trumpet their Sellickmanthruanthru credentials at
the slightest provocation without fear of the same potential
ostracism. Their support included just as many
bampots, glory-seekers, bigots and extremists, and their
club had just as many skeletons rattling in its closet, but
in polite company Celtic fans did not seem to be held individually
accountable for these shames and embarrassments
the way Rangers fans were. In fact, if anything, it was




51

presented as evidence of some kind of lefty integrity and
sympathy for the underdog (ignoring the fact that in
Scotland, Celtic were actually the club forty-first in line for
ratified underdog status). Nonetheless, whenever James
told someone he was a Tim (about three minutes after
meeting, on average), nobody ever asked if this meant he
was an IRA-supporting, Provo-loving, Proddy-hating,
terrorist-sympathising wannabe Irishman who'd never
been inside a football stadium prior to Fergus McCann,
sang songs glorifying child-murderers, condoned the club's
thirty-year cover-up of the Celtic Boys Club child abuse
scandal, backed the board's decision not to offer Jock Stein
a seat because he wasn't a Catholic and always put some
cash in a bucket 'for the boys' at the end of a night in the
pub.

When she pointed this inconsistency out to James, he
explained her travails as a consequence of Rangers being 'the
establishment club'. Given that half the current Scottish
cabinet held Parkhead season tickets and that every actor,
rock star, comedian and public figure of any other stripe was
these days proclaiming their life-long love for 'the Bhoys', it
was difficult to work out who this 'establishment' actually
included. Unless, of course, all those camel-coats in the Club
Deck constituted a shadowy coterie who secretly ran the
country. Hmmm. Maybe that explained why the bastards
were usually too busy to stay for the full ninety minutes.

Ironically, as unfair and frustrating as she found all of
this, Angelique would have to admit that it suited her in
a way, by maintaining throughout adulthood the special
status supporting Rangers had held in her younger life. It
had always been her private, personal secret, like a vice,
all the more thrilling for its being clandestine. Or rather,
not so much a vice, as there was nothing immoral about

52

it, but in fact a subversion. Going to a school full of Celtic
fans, she was the one who could genuinely call herself a
rebel.

Angelique had decided that she was a Rangers supporter
when she was at St Mary's Primary in Leeside, before she
even knew who or what Rangers were, before she knew
anything about or had taken any interest in football. All
she knew was that the people who hated her also hated
Rangers, and they seemed to hate them for a lot of the same
reasons. They were the others: different, alien, to be closed
ranks against, to be defined as apart from, to be despised.
So if the weans who were always tormenting the wee darkie
lassie with the funny name felt so strongly about these
'Rangers', then the wee darkie lassie with the funny name
reckoned she should be on their side. Then, having decided
this much, she endeavoured to find out who her newly
sworn allies actually were.

It never became an open stance, as she didn't need to
give the wee neds any further reason to single out the
school's most conspicuous target for abuse, but instead
constituted a comforting private defiance, like giving them
two fingers under her coat. From then on, hearing on a
Saturday night that Rangers had won or Celtic had lost
made her dread Monday morning that little bit less. Their
victories were her victories, Celtic's defeats the defeats of
every wee shite who had ever called her 'the Chocolate
Button'. Soon enough she was starting to look at the back
pages of the newspaper first, and becoming more excited
about Scotsport on a Sunday afternoon than Glen Michael's
Cartoon Cavalcade, which preceded it. In time, naturally, the
prospect of actually going to a game became as tantalising
a notion as it seemed unattainable.

By the time she was in Sacred Heart, James had long




53

been going to Celtic matches with his pals, something that
she always considered to have bought him an easier ride
from the school bampots. Apparently it mattered less that
you were 'a darkie' if, first and foremost, you were a Tim.
Playing for the school team gave her brother a certain
kudos too, an option not available to Angelique, even if
the status it afforded wasn't one she would have particularly
valued. In accordance with the same physical education
policies that forced girls to play a uniquely joyless variation of basketball, dispensing with backboards, dribbling,
skill and any sense of fun, she had to make do with
hockey at a competitive level, despite playing football
with the boys every interval and lunch hour, and despite
being more use than most of them too. This participation
inevitably led to her having more friends among her male
classmates than among the girls, but could hardly be said
to have earned her anyone's respect, other than that she
quickly ceased to be the last player picked.

With her own secondary school status confirmed,
Angelique was able to take advantage of the same freedoms
allowed James by her parents, freedoms they would
most definitely not have granted if they knew that she was
going to do the same thing with them. James getting
permission to go to Parkhead had come at the end of a
prolonged and tempestuous struggle, and even then only
amid many promises of friends' fathers, uncles and older
brothers being in attendance. Angelique knew that a
request to go on her own to a Rangers game would be met
with much the same response as a request from Idi Amin
to pop round for Sunday dinner, so she had to resort to a
degree of improvisation, or fibbing as it was more
commonly known. Reminding Mum and Dad that James,
at the same age, had been allowed to go all the way to

54

Aberdeen with his friends for a football match, the imminently
twelve-year-old Angelique ascertained permission
to visit the much nearer Paisley with her friends for a trip
to the much less dangerous Kelburne Cinema. The cinema
bit was a lie, as was the friends part, but she did go to
Paisley, for her first live glimpse of the Rangers in action.

They were utterly rank. They lost three-nothing, to goals
from Scanlon, McDougall and Jarvie, this coming on the
back of a dismal run that had the pundits making jokes
about an upcoming relegation four-pointer with Partick
Thistle. But for Angelique, standing atop the broad sweep
of the Caledonia Street terracing, they might as well have
been winning the Cup Winners Cup in Barcelona: they were
her team and she was finally watching them in the flesh.
Defeat, in fact, made it all the more imperative that she go
and see them again as soon as possible, which she would
continue to do, alone and in secret, for many years to come.

Thinking back to that cold, dark day in Paisley,
Angelique stopped and paused a moment at the top of the
staircase, taking a look around the steadily filling stadium
before she made her way to her regular seat. She thought
about the girl she had been back then and wondered what
she would have made of the woman who had turned thirty
today. Would she have been impressed with her career, her
abilities and achievements? Almost certainly: the young
Angelique had no end of admiration for those who stuck
it to the neds, the bullies and the hard men. Would she
have been disappointed that she was still living alone and
there was no muscle-rippling beau in the picture? A little,
though she never had any dreams of being swept off her
feet. Would she have considered, then, that the latter was
worth sacrificing for the former? Unquestionably. But then
what did a pig-headed twelve-year-old full of piss and




55

vinegar know about disillusionment? At that age, she still
had a stubbornly defiant appetite for slaps in the face,
still filled with redoubled energy at the tae of her own
blood. For Christ's sake, the silly cow thought a three-nil
cuffing from St Mirren was a fun day out.

This was pitiful, she thought, as she made her way down
to her seat, precisely the sort of sentimental and pointless
navel-gazing she'd have mercilessly scorned in anyone else
not so long ago. Jesus, that it should have come to this:
musing wistfully on the things she wished she could tell
her younger self, in anyone's book a hopeless admission
of failure and regret. Instead, it might be more constructive
to wonder what her younger self could still tell her,
shrill, hectoring and direct as it would no doubt be.

'Quit feeling sorry for yourself. You think you've got
problems? I'm watching us getting horsed at Love Street,
Graeme Souness is still three years from showing up and
Cammy Fraser's in the bloody team, but do you hear me
complaining? Show some spine, woman.'

Aye, those were the days. Not an era one would naturally
feel nostalgic for, in terms of the team on the park
and the comparative dearth of silverware, but like the start
of any relationship, it was the memory of that time that
still sparked the most tingles. In fact, if there was any consolation
for some of the club's recent shortcomings, it was
the glimpses afforded of the time when Angelique first
started going, especially towards the end of the season with
Celtic romping to the title. A goal or two down with fifteen
minutes to go, she could find herself sitting in a half-empty
stadium, surrounded only by the die-hards, all of them
having spent the game watching in hope rather than expectation,
as it had been once upon a time.

Angelique fancied them today, though, due to some

56

solitary, worn-looking remnant of optimism her mind had
managed to uncover amid the piled-up gloom. It was
Aberdeen, for God's sake, and the last time they'd won
here, Fred West could still have entered a full team for Family Fortunes. Or maybe it wasn't optimism, but sheer
bottom-rung desperation. She knew it meant she was at a
pathetically low ebb if she was relying on a football match
to lift her spirits, but today she would settle for a sclaffed
one-nil winner in injury time after ninety-three minutes of
total dross, because she really needed to feel that some tiny
little thing was going her way.

The teams took the field, the sight of the light blue jerseys
causing the stadium to instantly fill with sound. Angelique
got to her feet and added her voice to the din, feeling the
buzz of hope, fear and anticipation that went all the way
back to that first match in Paisley. This, above all, was what
she needed right now. At the absolute, barrel-scraping least,
the next couple of hours were hers to retreat to a place
where all that other shite couldn't reach her.

The teams changed ends and took position either side
of the halfway line. The goalkeepers kicked their posts and
threw spare gloves into the back of each net. The referee
looked at his watch then blew his whistle. Barry Ferguson
played the ball to Shota Arveladze, and Angelique's emergency
pager went off before the Mitre had left the centre
circle.




57

witness accounts:
andy webster (19)

Christmas had come early.

Well, actually, with there still being three weeks to go
according to the calendar, it was fairer to say that Christmas
was at least no longer cancelled this year. Hallelujah. Sing
Hosannah. Three more weeks, three more Saturdays
including today, ascendingly the busiest of the year and
therefore incomparably vital to the high street economy.
Three more pay-days, no longer threatened with destruction
of literally Biblical scale. Santa could saddle up again
after all.

A cut in interest rates in November had been gratefully
welcomed by the retail sector as it approached its most lucrative
annual trading period, with the benefit predicted to
reach even the remotest ancillaries. Andy considered his own
ancillary business to be tangential rather than remote, and
while not anticipating the trickle-down effect of this development
to be substantial in his case, nor denying that it
wouldn't hurt either, he nonetheless didn't consider it quite
as exciting as his counterparts in the mainstream of the
sector. Realistically, what the hell did he know - or care -
about interest rates? His was an operation with zero
borrowing requirements and, fortunately, very few overheads.
On the other hand, it was a business subject to other
uncontrollable variables that the rest of the retail sector did
not have to worry about. M&S, for instance, while fretting

58

about consumer confidence and whether they had correctly
pitched their 'brand' in a rapidly evolving marketplace, did
not have to worry about being moved along by the polis.
The Gap might be ideologically besieged by the anti
globalisation movement and precariously subject to the
damoclene whim of a sartorially fickle youth culture that
could at any moment decide drainpipes were the new baggy,
but it had never seen its earnings wheeched away by pubescent
neds with Kappa tops and Stanley knives. And
throughout November, the rest of the retail sector had been
toasting the Bank of England and greasing the rollers on
their registers' cash-drawers in anticipation of some serious
pre-Yuletide turnover, because the rest of the retail sector
were not having their pitch queered by some relentless
Yankee Bible-thumper with a microphone and a battery amp.

Andy busked on Buchanan Street, near the corner of
Gordon Street, as a means of generating some extra beer
vouchers and in an attempt to ensure that when he finally
paid off his student loan, it would be with his wages rather
than his pension. He worked his spot most Saturdays and
a few afternoons a week, the exact number a variable
dependent upon his lecture schedule, essay arrears and
whether the prevailing north wind was accompanied by
lashing rain rather than merely threatening to freeze-weld
his left hand to his fretboard. Having tried a few pitches
between Argyle Street and Gordon Street, he had eventually
settled for a stance just north of the latter, admittedly outside
the busiest stretch of the pedestrianised area, but for that less
prone to polis interference on the basis of obstruction.

He stood with his back to the weathered sandstone of a
former bank turned mobile phone 'boutique', figuring the
cellular vendors to be on relatively precarious ground if
they wanted to complain about unsolicited and intrusive




59

noise. Thus far this had proven an astute piece of thinking,
though the solidity of the stone and some state-ofthe-art
double-glazing were probably playing a substantial part.
A less qualified measure of his judgment was that the location
more or less directly faced the McLennan Building, a
faux Greek, Victorian-built mansion house named for its
architect but known principally for the financial institution
that had commissioned, built and occupied it ever since.
Andy didn't know quite what to call it these days - the
Bank of Scottish Presbyterian Austerity had merged with
the Grim Northern Building Society and he wasn't sure
which category the resulting behemoth fell into - but the
practical upshot was that it was now open on Saturday
mornings, which meant even more traffic than the cash
machines already generated.

The downside, of course, was that wherever there were
cash machines in this world, there were also Big Issue sellers,
proximity to whom was often nothing short of Busker's
Bane. Andy had nothing against the poor bastards, but business
was business, and the harsh fact is that if you've got a
spare pound coin rattling in your pocket and your avaricious
consumerist bingeing has prompted a minor twang of
conscience as you head back towards the multi-storey, then
you're more likely to give it to the bona-fide, badge-carrying
homeless guy than the hippy-looking student bastard who's
clearly doing well enough to own that twelve-string he's
rattling out No Surprises on. Fortunately, Andy's pitch was
a good twenty or thirty yards across the flagstones from the
bank, sufficiently outside the nearest BI-vendor's sphere of
influence to garner gratuities from those who hadn't reached
him yet, and possibly even to benefit from the belated guilt
pangs of those who had thought about buying a copy then
changed their minds and hurried on past.

So in fact, very little was hard and fast about the microeconomics
of busking. You could never entirely predict how
those random variables were going to come into effect, how
that butterfly beating its wings in the Amazon would affect
what fortune blew up from Argyle Street: maybe that half
a percent cut in interest rates would indeed be finding its
way into his guitar case; or maybe it would mean some
random bloke, who happened to like Green Day, would
spend that bit more on lingerie for the wife and have
nothing left but coppers in his pocket when he passed Andy
singing Time of Your Life. It was all swings and roundabouts.
Sometimes, for his own relief, he would divert from the
standards and belt out something a little less universally
familiar, which was normally at a cost of no bugger
knowing it and no coins being forthcoming, but which
could also have the unexpected upside of a punter being
surprised and delighted to hear a busker singing what he
or she personally regarded as an overlooked treasure. Closer
to Fine by The Indigo Girls had a high strike rate for this
phenomenon, though there had once been an ugly incident
involving a rather uptight female who accused him of insinuating
that she was a lesbian after he broke into it just as
she was approaching his pitch.

One random factor, however, had proven all snake and
no ladder, turning the vicinity into a pedestrian no-stopping
zone more effectively than even the most vomit-streaked,
Buckfast-chugging jakey (and without the inevitability that
he would eventually fall asleep or get bored and fuck off).
For the last three weeks, the centre of the concourse between
the bank and the cellular dealership had become the al
fresco pulpit of this voluble Jesus-junkie with a mountain
man beard and a raging case of verbal diarrhoea. He had
been there every Saturday morning and a few weekdays




60

61

too, spouting endlessly into his microphone and waving a
Bible in his other hand. This had the standard outdoor
evangelical effect, seen in pedestrian precincts the world
over, of causing the shoppers to hurry past, blanking out
all sound and vision inside a sensory exclusion zone whose
footprint sadly extended to cover Andy's spot. True, the
guy usually jacked it in around lunchtime, but by that point
he had already laid waste Andy's earnings for more than
half the day.

He wasn't some wild-eyed, ranting, fire-and-brimstone
loony, though the build on him was intimidating enough
to deter Andy from any attempt to tell him to fuck off.
Instead, he just stood there and wittered inanely but
unceasingly, causing Andy to think of him as the Less
Than-Manic Street Preacher. The guy could literally talk
for hours, and despite his taking up position bang in the
middle of the thoroughfare, there was no chance of the
polis cutting him short, in accordance with whatever
unwritten law excused any anti-social conduct as long as
its perpetrator had a firm grip on the Good Book. In the
case of the LTMSP, it was a firmer grip than he had on
reality. The guy just opened his mouth and let all manner
of junk fall out. He didn't even look like he was bothered
whether anyone was listening, just kept yakking away with
a faraway stare, his eyes focused somewhere in the middle
distance: he was looking into the banking hall but was
probably seeing another dimension. Andy tried hard to
tune him out, but even in the middle of singing and
playing, he couldn't help but pick up random snatches of
this gibberish, wondering whether the bits he missed either
side could possibly contextualise it in a way that rooted
the guy somewhere in the vicinity of planet Earth.

Underpants as a metaphor for Jesus's love, for fuck's
62

sake. 'Jesus and your underpants: you take them both for
granted, but what would you do without them? They do
things for you that you'd only notice if they weren't there,
but shouldn't you think about that now and again? About
that comfort and security, that support and warmth that
all seems natural because it's always there? Uncomplaining,
unconditional, too. But shouldn't you say thank
you now and again?'

Andy had briefly considered that the guy might be
taking the piss before remembering that these guys were
never, ever, ever anything less than entirely serious, sincere
and officially certified 100 percent irony-free. Plus, as it was
all delivered in that pious, over-sincere and affectedly
humble tone, it sounded much the same as any other
vacuous homily. The Parable of the Holy Underpants
wasn't any less poignant than the drivel you could hear
on Radio Scotland's 'Thought for the Day' on any given
morning. Yesterday it had been the Reverend Misery
O'Dreich delivering the obligatory annual whine about
over-commercialisation and the 'true spirit of Christmas'.
Andy had been close to phoning in and demanding a right
of reply, pointing out that the Yuletide traditions of
exchanging gifts, stuffing your face, getting ripped out your
tits and having intoxicated sex with highly inappropriate
partners had been around in these parts for a long time
before Christianity. He'd even go as far as to predict that
one day, somewhere around Salisbury Plain, archaeologists
would uncover a cache of parchments depicting nothing
but human arses, drawn during a winter-solstice piss-up
3,000 years before Xerox patented the first photocopier.

Faced with a depressingly under-commercialised festive
run-up, it was fair to say Andy had constituted a less than
receptive audience. On the basis of what he'd earned over




63

the previous three Saturdays, a few photocopies of his own
arse looked like being as much as he could afford to present
his friends and family with this year.

But lo, in this season of miracles, something wonderful
had come to pass. He'd turned up at close to half-eleven,
having written off the majority of Saturday morning and
equally discounted any prospect of knocking off early to
catch the last home game of the year at Brockville. Crossing
West Nile Street he looked ahead and saw, to the east, fuck
all. A wide, empty space where the LTMSP had previously
infested himself, some of the shoppers still walking around
rather than over the spot as though something in their
subconscious warned them to avoid it. Feeling a euphoric
rush of seasonal cheer, Andy bought a flashing Santa hat
from the greasy-looking punter who sold fag-lighters the
rest of the year, then strapped up and launched full-throated
into that Slade number he'd sworn he'd never play.
He had just about made it to the bridge part when, strumming
quieter in anticipation of building up the volume for
the last verse, he heard the shiver-inducing sound of an
amplified voice. With a tangible degree of relief he realised
that he recognised it, and the good news was that it was
neither live nor American. It was the spoken intro to One
Step Beyond, the extended album version. The bad news was
that it was already boomingly loud, the source wasn't even
in sight and it hadn't reached the music part yet.

In front of him, Andy could see heads turning en masse towards Royal Exchange Square as the quintessential
Madness instrumental hit that signature saxophone riff.
With any luck it would be a promotional car or a float,
advertising a bar, a panto or maybe a pre-January sale.
Knowing he had just been rendered invisible, he pocketed
his plectrum and stood on his guitar-case to see over the

64

shoppers, most of whom had stopped in their tracks to
gawp at what was coming. It was neither car nor float, and
if it had a promotional purpose then it was presumably to
sell anti-hallucinogens.

There were five people - he'd guess male, but it wasn't
easy to be sure - moving into the concourse in a human
train, doing the walk/dance made famous by Madness
videos and subsequently tarnished by the infamously ill
advised musical interlude in The Breakfast Club. It was a
stomping, stop-start gait of knees, fists and elbows, its
participants close enough for their joints to dovetail as they
moved in near-perfect synchronicity. Their coordination
would have been spectacle enough to attract attention on
a Saturday morning, even in Glasgow, but they were kind
of hard to miss visually too. All five had their faces identically
made up as the weeping clown, inhumanly green of
complexion, blue crosses over each tearful eye, and a beaming,
cheerfully malevolent grin stretching almost ear to ear.
They all had curly red hair, probably wigs, and they were
uniformly dressed in multicoloured baggy overalls, a broad
yellow 'I shape across the shoulders and down the trunk,
bordered on both sides by bands of green and blue.

The one in the middle was carrying the boombox over
his left shoulder, three of the others bearing luminous
yellow rucksacks, the accommodation of which made their
choreography all the more impressive. The one at the front
was excused any manner of porter duty, presumably
because he was smaller than the rest by an average of two
feet. A further reason for his lack of encumbrance was made
clear as they proceeded down Buchanan Street, when he
was picked up by the dancer behind him and tossed, somersaulting,
into the raised arms of the one pulling up the rear.
Upon the short one being replaced, backmost, on terra




65

firma, the group about-faced as one so that he was in the
vanguard once again.

This little stunt was performed a couple more times as
they marched up and down in front of the bank, amused
shoppers forming into a wide circle, the radius of which
left Andy hopelessly outside. Cutting his losses, he lifted
the paltry sum his first two verses had accrued, and made
his way over to watch what he hoped would be a brief
performance.

'I think it must be McDonalds daein' a publicity stunt,' ventured one voice, but Andy knew otherwise. The hair,
the overalls and the smile were all wrong, and it would
have been a short career in the Evil Global Marketing Corp
for the exec who suggested Ronald McDonald should have
tears on his cheeks. The iconic showman they were made
up as might have been famous for his greasepaint, but he
was definitely no clown. Standing a little closer, Andy was
surprised to observe that they were not only wearing identical
make-up, but that they were in fact wearing the same
face, the ginger curls attached to what were presumably
latex masks. It looked an expensive get-up for street
performers, which augured well for a non-financial motive.

The song reached its echoing, shuddering conclusion, the
performance with it, all five figures coming to a staggered
halt like a gradually braking steam engine. This drew warm
applause from the gathered spectators, several of whom
were vocally of the opinion that it was 'a lot better than that
robotic mime shite ye usually get doon Argyle Street'. Andy
grudgingly joined in, clapping a little more enthusiastically
when he saw that the troupe weren't collecting any cash.

Some of the shoppers moved on, but others stayed in
place awaiting whatever antics might follow. In keeping
with the law of pedestrian curiosity, the crowd was soon

66

swelled by others who hadn't seen or heard anything yet
but wanted to investigate whatever it was everyone else
had considered worth standing around in the winter cold
for. Fucking magic, Andy thought. They weren't even doing
anything and they were pulling more punters than he could
in a month.

The five of them had remained stock still since the end
of the song. It had only been about twenty seconds, maybe
less, Andy estimated, but the sense of unknowing and
anticipation fairly seemed to stretch it. Then the one in the
middle flexed a finger and music once again began
sounding out from the stereo: a low, rapidly pulsing bass
synth.

'Aw fuck, they are gaunny dae that robotic shite efter aw.'

Andy doubted it. He allowed himself a knowing smile,
recognising the track: Faith Healer. There wouldn't be any
pumping ska action from here on in, though it would be
interesting to see what they did have in mind. The guitar
crept in quietly, and with it they one by one became reactivated,
as though sparked in turn by the electric signal
carrying the chords. Then, like some ropily stop-motion
animated creature, they began juddering forward, tracing
a wide circle around the edges of the crowd. Having
reached their starting point again, they turned and began
moving towards the bank's wide stone front steps, the
crowd parting to let them through.

'Mibbe it's a protest or somehin'.'

'Aye. That bank probably supports a foreign government
that oppresses clowns. Geezabrek.'

'Naw, you know whit I mean. Mibbe they're sayin' the
bank are clowns.'

'Fuck off. They'll huv a hat roon in a minute, you wait
an' see.'




67
But so far, happily, a hat was still not forthcoming. They
snaked jerkily up the steps towards the glass double doors,
the short bloke stopping one step before the top and
kneeling down. The next two stepped over him, vying in
separate directions to grasp one door each, which they
pulled open in time with a crescendo on their portable
soundtrack. The rearmost two stepped over the little guy
and continued inside, the last one revealing the wee man
to be now facing the crowd, once again on his feet. He
bowed with a flourish, retreating backwards into the
building as he did so, then the first two stepped in front
of him and pulled the doors closed like a final curtain.

Outside, the crowd were bereft, a sense of sudden disappointment
palpable throughout the throng. It was as
though the aliens had landed, shaken their thang, and then
fucked off into the mothership before anyone could ask
them how Elvis was getting on and whether that shot from
Peter Van Vossen had reached the Horsehead Nebula yet.
This only lasted for the briefest moment, however, after
which the shoppers, as one, seemed to suddenly remember
that they still had to get that teasmaid for Auntie Senga,
and stepped back into their stride as if they'd never stopped
at all.

Andy, delighted to see the spell broken but disappointed
by the lack of resolution, returned to his spot and felt
inspired to pick up where they, rather than he, had left off.
With an energetically speedy strum, he broke cheerfully
into Boston Tea Party, blithely heedless of the fact that the
people in the vicinity most likely to know it had just disappeared
into the bank.

68

witness accounts:
michelle Jackson (26)

Michelle was trying to look busy behind a PC at the centre
of the bank's imprudently open-plan Customer Information
area, determinedly ensuring that none of the current
assembly of customers would catch her eye even if they
stripped naked and began daubing each other in woad.
With an unaffectedly concerned expression compressing
her features, she was pretending to examine a screen full
of meaningless figures while she awaited the results of a
search engine running in a minimised window. She was
looking up hangover cures, rated a pragmatic internet
search priority ahead of UK Employment law (to see
whether it outlawed being forced to work on the Saturday
morning after the office Christmas do), EC Human Rights
law (to see whether it outlawed being forced to work on
Saturday mornings full stop), and the address of the Exit
website, given the strong likelihood that she may have to
kill herself if a certain incident at the party went public.

Saturday bloody morning - it just wasn't right. Who
cared what time you got back during the week; what
bloody use is a Tuesday afternoon to anybody? Never mind
the Sabbath; in this part of the world, as far as Michelle
was concerned, Saturday was the day of rest, especially
when you'd been seriously shanting on the Friday night
before. Their union had been sold a dummy over the whole
issue, due to the complexities and potential pitfalls of the




69


merger. The building society lot already worked Saturday
mornings, which gave the new management collective a
hefty foot in the door on the issue, but naturally the main
bargaining plank had been guarantees of 'no forced redundancies'.
The bastards knew that going to work on a
Saturday morning sounded a lot better than having no
work to go to at all, though right then, unemployment was
sounding pretty bloody attractive.

There was only about fifteen minutes left until closing
time, but the sense of 'so near and yet so far' was a merciless
torture. It was a miracle she had made it this far, but
having survived three hours made her feel less that she
was on the home straight than that she was running on
fumes. Her head felt as though someone had removed the
inner-membrane of her skull with a Brillo pad and then
siphoned off approximately three-quarters of the insulating
fluid that normally kept her brain from banging against
the sides. Minor movements caused her eyes to close as
they involuntarily responded to flashes of white light that
were unfortunately emanating from the wrong side of her
lids, and though there was by this point nothing left in
her stomach to throw up, she knew that the dry boak was
but one waft of a chip-poke away. These, however, were
only the chemical aspects of her sickness, ordinarily surviv
able with the assistance of lemonade, Ibuprofen and a good
eight hours watching chick-flicks on her bedroom's wall
mounted telly. What Michelle was suffering was a phenomenon
far, far more terrible. The truly debilitating hangover,
the type that exacerbated all physical symptoms while
simultaneously rendering their alleviation irrelevant, was
resultant not of mere over-indulgence, but also of word or
deed committed thereby.

Oh, yes.

70

That kind of hangover: a uniquely cruel symbiosis of
toxicity and regret, whereby physical pain and emotional
fragility get together and multiply themselves by the power
of each other. Guilt times headache, nausea times embarrassment.
But even within that Stygian sub-stratum of
individualised suffering, there was still an upper and a
lower tier. There were those occasions when, even with the
smell of your own spew sticking two accusatory fingers
up your nostrils as you very gently tip-toed past the bathroom,
you could retain sufficient presence of mind to tell
yourself that your enfeebled condition was causing you to
fret way too much about behaviour or remarks that
everyone else was probably too pissed to notice and definitely
too pissed to remember. They were the hangovers
clinging on to the bottom rung. Below them - way, way
below them, in fact, far enough down to barely be able to
make out the ladder above - were the ones when all
consciousness was the enemy; where the moments of
respite from pain or nausea only allowed deeper contemplation
of the hideous effluence polluting your memory
and obliterating all sense of perspective.

Regret did not seem a big enough word. Regret was what
people felt when their house burned down or they failed
to take Stalingrad. Something new had to be coined to cover
getting stocious on Bailey's and giving the new Financial
Services Advisor a hand-shandy - no, Michelle, the whole
truth: in the unforgiving bitchy gossip stakes, if it passed your
lips for even a second it's a ... - okay, blow-job in a draughty
hotel stairwell.

Oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh
why . . .

She was in a very dark and lonely place, and it was
utterly inhumane that she should be required to interact




71

with other human beings - or even customers - at such a
time. She needed a period of solitude and convalescence,
at least the length of the weekend, before having to face
anyone, far less her fellow staff, to say nothing of him, Grant
Kelly. Thus far she had been spared this ultimate horror,
but only because he'd been in meetings all morning and
she had ducked behind the desk each time he popped out
into the main body of the bank to greet his next client.

He "had come to the bank after the merger, having
previously worked in a nearby Great Northern branch that
got 'rationalised'. They hadn't spoken much in the three
months he'd been there, so she had no greater impression
of him than that he seemed friendly, if a little over-confident
in a self-conscious-and-trying-too-hard-to-make-up-for-it
kind of way. He was also better looking than most of the
other guys in the bank, but definitely not to the extent
suggested by the duckings of her female colleagues. That
said, there was no denying that his being sought after by
her peers had rendered him more desirable when the
musical migrations of the after-dinner retro-Nineties disco
left the two of them seated together.

Like most other things around here, what happened next
was essentially the fault of the merger. As a result of the
ongoing uncertainty, indecision, upheaval and general
chaos, organising this year's Christmas party had been
overlooked until so late in the year that they could only
get a booking for the first Friday night in December, by
which point her mind and body were not quite warmed
up for full-on Yuletide saturnalia.

It was a catastrophic case of intoxicated flirting leading
to reckless sexual bravado, creating a rising balloon effect
whereby flirting became face-off and the price of backing
down seemed to get higher and higher. It was as though

72

part of her was flattered to be the subject of his attention,
but a greater part of her was determined to be an opponent
rather than a subject. He was talking big and so was
she, his charm and self-confidence simultaneously making
her fancy him but also piquing her desire to somehow get
one over on him. You had to be there: it made sense after
two vodkas, six glasses of wine and Christ knows how
much of that sickly Irish alcoholic phlegm. She'd been
expecting his self-conscious side to come to the fore and
that he'd decide he was out of his depth, forgetting that
guys, even when they are out of their depth, would never
admit it. Somewhere in her inebriated mind she was telling
herself she was Madame Verteille. Shame Laclos never
included any tips about getting come-stains off of black
Lycra.

Oh God oh God oh God oh God.

She was going to end up like that poor lassie in London
whose boyfriend relayed her sperm-swallowing 'yours was
yum' email all round the internet; twenty-first century
communications technology rendering the planet not so
much global village as global schoolroom full of sniggering
male virgins and bitchy female hypocrites.

It was some kind of cruel, sick karma, her payback for
KB-ing Alasdair Young at the school valedictory night ten
years ago. She should have danced with him, snogged him
and eventually married him. All right, by now she'd be
suicidally bored, stuck in a loveless marriage with a dull
husband, at least three weans and a cluttered semi in
Bishopbriggs - but at least she wouldn't have been around
to wank off Grant Kelly on the Central Hotel emergency
stairs.

Michelle looked up furtively, the hourglass icon on her
screen still stubbornly refusing to become a cursor arrow




73

and the effort of focusing on the statistics proving more
than her headache could tolerate. The people in the queue
were too intent on the teller windows to notice her anyway,
but it was probably best for the customers that they didn't
catch her eye. Her psychological condition was intermittently
veering between pathetically needy and snarlingly
misanthropic. If someone did manage to ask her a question,
she guessed the odds would be 3/1 that she'd successfully
answer it, with 11/4 that she'd burst into tears and 7/2
that she'd grab them by the throat, yelling, 'Okay, okay, I
admit it, I knuckle-shuffled the PSA. Are you satisfied, you
FUCKING BASTAAAAARD!'

It looked a stellar line-up, with the group directly in front
of her not so much a queue as a posed tableau of 'The Ascent of Man' in Rangers colours. 'We are the people' was
their motto, in which case Michelle was glad not to be.
Behind that lot were assorted female shoppers, some
sporting a bored husband as a logistical accessory, this
group mercifully but precariously separating The People'
from two further anthropological anomalies of a more
verdant hue. These two were modelling the Garngad
Winter Collection, following the tradition of bampot
couture that stipulated the colder the weather, the fewer
layers one must wear outdoors. With the mercury struggling
to break zero, the fashionable Tim-about-town
wouldn't be seen dead in anything heavier than a
gossamer-thin replica Celtic jersey. The People had at least
had the sense to wrap up warm, though they were unlikely
to be troubling the Paris Match fashion desk either.

Everybody seemed calm to the point of subdued, though
it was always possible that Michelle's beleaguered brain
was filtering out a lot of her sensory input in order to better
concentrate on things that aggravated her discomfort and

74

paranoia. So while the people in the bank seemed muted,
the uniquely irritating sound of saxophone music from
outside was going through the double-glazed windows
and directly into her ravaged skull.

Fucking buskers and street performers. A plague on the
lot of them. Inconsiderate bastards. Didn't these people
drink?

Eventually, the sax-assault ceased, but it was followed
by the depressing sound of applause, which meant
whoever it was would only be encouraged to reprise their
crime. And yup, sure as shit, the music soon started up
again, some other tuneless racket that she could swear was
getting louder. And louder.

Michelle could hear rhythmic clapping too, more morons
unwittingly complicit in adding to her personal torment,
while the music continued to get not only louder, but definitely
closer. She returned her attention to the screen and
tried to maximise the search engine window. The system
appeared to have hung, possibly coming out in sympathy.

'Aw hell, whit dae these clowns want?' said one of The
People loudly, ostensibly to his mate but beneficently
intending a wider radius to share his wit. 'Hih-hih-hih. Ye
gerrit?'

Michelle looked up to see what the joke was. If the saxophone
music was precisely the last thing she needed to
hear right then outside of a Primary Five recorder concerto,
then this visual assailment, in a garish palette custom
designed to grate on her optic nerve, was brutal enough
for her to take personally. And just in case the colours
weren't distressing enough on their own, they were
compounded by the kaleidoscope effect of one of the
clowns tumbling across the floor, doing handsprings and
somersaults.




75

Given the audacity with which they had marched in, to
say nothing of their choreographic prowess, they had to be
something more than street performers, which augured
poorly for them buggering straight off again. However, as
Head of Customer Relations, Michelle had been told nothing
about any publicity stunts, and she would almost
certainly have demanded an explanation if she had been
physically capable of standing upright and focusing on any
of them long enough to ask.

She did have just about enough stamina to look to Fraser
the security guard by way of prompting him to intervene,
but by this time some of the idiots in the queue were
acceding to the performers' entreaty to clap along with the
music, causing Fraser to grin idiotically at the unfolding
spectacle. Eventually he noticed her glare and took a step
towards the clown with the ghetto-blaster, who anticipated
the objection and held out the machine, which Fraser
accepted with guileless enthusiasm.

Two minutes, mate/ the clown said to him winningly.
'It's for Children in Need. Cheers.'

But of course. Any act of anti-social insanity was immediately
sanctified by the magic word 'charity'. As someone
once said, if Hitler had invaded Poland 'for Spina Bifida'
then everyone would have let him get on with it. And
Children in Need, along with Comic Relief, were the two
charities Michelle was least well disposed towards, and not
due to any ideological conflict or lack of sympathy with
their aims. It was because, wherever she had worked, the
most miserable, curmudgeonly, right-wing bastards who
never stopped muttering about dole cheats, asylum seekers
and scrounging single mothers, would convince themselves
they were the soul of giving because one Friday
afternoon a year they dressed up in a fucking chicken outfit

76

and cheerfully harassed their colleagues to 'chuck it in the
bucket'.

The floor-show was therefore now unstoppable. The performers
had a dwarf with them (Michelle didn't know the
politically correct term these days, but in her current mood
anything above 'short-arse' should be considered solicitously
polite) and he was tumbling back and forth between
two of the troupe, placing his foot in their interlocked hands
and executing balletic mid-air somersaults at each end.
Most of the customers were, depressingly, lapping it up.
As well as clapping every other bar, many were also raising
their hands at the prompting of the clowns each time the
song got to a line that went 'Can I put my hands on you?'.
A few others were, of course, utterly rigid, petrified of any
direct interaction and quite clearly hoping they weren't
going to be embarrassed into parting with any money.

Michelle's colleagues smiled smugly as they looked on
from behind the bullet-, collecting bucket-, embarrassment
and direct interaction-proof glass that divided them from
the unwashed. This sturdy frontage had been expensively
installed at the same time as their new security system,
with senior management less concerned than the front-line
staff about the fact that the top of the booths stopped a
good five feet shy of the ceiling. 'You'll only need to worry
if you see some men entering the bank with black balaclavas
and a large trampoline/ had been the heidbummer's
glib assurance.

This was no idle recollection, but a thought provoked
by the sight of the dwarf running, rather than tumbling,
towards his waiting assistant, then being punted over his
head and on to the top of the booths, from where he
proceeded to perform a deep theatrical bow. Even the
previously mortified members of the queue were moved




77

to applaud this feat, with more of them joining in the raising
of hands as the lyrical cue came around again. Perhaps it
was Michelle's hungover condition and resulting tetchiness
that was setting her apart from the other onlookers, but
her reluctance to be engaged by the spectacle caused her
to see what was otherwise being deliberately obscured by
artifice. There had been no trampoline required, but there
was now a man standing on top of the security barrier.
There were no balaclavas to be seen either, but there were
five people in masks taking up position in the banking hall.
And though nobody had drawn a gun, the customers
already had their hands in the air.

The force of the revelation caused her to voice her
thoughts before she realised she was speaking aloud.

This is a robbery/ she said.

The clown nearest Michelle turned around and pointed
at her, placing a finger to his nose with his free, surgical
gloved hand in the gesture people made to indicate a correct
answer during charades. Then he raised both of his hands
dramatically and boomed out: 'Alakazammy, stairheid
rammy!'

At this, the dwarf dropped down behind the barrier,
almost every eye in the bank focused on him. By the time
his feet hit the desk, he had produced what she would
guess to be a machine-gun from beneath his overalls and
was pointing it at the teller staff. Michelle, like everyone
else on the other side of the glass, then looked around the
floor of the bank and saw that four more weapons were
now being trained on them. The clown nearest the entrance
was covering the security guard, his back to the double
doors. He reached with one hand to the stereo and turned
the volume down, though, perhaps significantly, not off
altogether. The rest were making eye contact with as many

78

staff and customers as possible, gripping their guns in one
hand and putting fingers to their lips with the other.
Nobody had let out more than a startled yelp or an 'Oh
God' anyway, but the calm subtlety of the gunmen's actions
proved disarmingly effective in reducing the room to near
silence.

'As the young lady here accurately surmised,' announced
the clown closest to Michelle, presumably the leader, 'this
is a robbery. So those of you with your hands in the air,
please keep them that way for now, and those of you
without, please forgive this temporary breach of your right
to individual free expression and stick 'em up where we
can see them like everybody else.'

The teller staff had already done this in immediate
response to the dwarf's weapon, though it was impossible
to know whether any of them had kept sufficient presence
of mind to hit the emergency button first. There was one
of these under each till; pushing it sent out an automatic
call to the police and engaged a number of automated security
measures, but crucially did not sound any alarms,
which would only update the crooks on the state of play.

The man spoke confidently but not loudly, with an incongruous
air of pleasantry in his tone that suggested not only
a lack of aggression but even that there seemed no need
for it. His accent was American, but with confusingly occasional
Glaswegian inflections, like he might be a local guy
putting it on, or possibly a Radio Clyde deejay.

Thank you,' he continued, having ascertained that there
were no dissenters. 'Sincerely. Your cooperation in this is
greatly appreciated, and I can tell we're all gonna work
pretty well together this afternoon. There are a few preliminaries
before we get started, so can I ask you all to kneel
down on the floor just now. That's good. And the staff





79

behind the counter, if you could all please join us out front
here, that would be just tickety boo.'

Michelle got up from her seat on unsteady legs, her head
swimming from the change in altitude. She flopped down
on to her knees, feeling for a moment like she might be
about to faint, but disappointingly retained consciousness,
probably due to a restorative rush of blood from her rapidly
draining arms.

'Rest your hands on your heads once you're down,' the
leader suggested, noting a few strained faces. 'We don't
need you to look like a Pentecostal choir, and I sure know
how much I hate getting pins and needles.'

While the staff were escorted out through the code-locked
security door, at the other end of the hall the still upright
Fraser was being relieved of his keys as he continued to
hold the ghetto-blaster in both arms. The gunman instructed
him to kneel down and place the stereo carefully on the
floor, then fastened Fraser's hands behind his back with a
white plastic strip. This done, his captor pressed a button
on the machine to shuffle the track, after which Bach's Air
on a G String began piping softly through the room.
Michelle's colleagues filed out into the banking hall and
took their own places on the cold tiles. With their hostages
compliantly immobilised, the gunmen proceeded to remove
their canvas backpacks and place them on the floor in front
of the main counter.

'Are we sitting comfortably?' the clown-in-chief asked.
Then I'll begin. Firstly, to make matters a bit less formal,
allow me to introduce this afternoon's robbers. My name
is Mr Jarry, and my associates are Mr Dali here; Mr Chagall
next to him; behind the counter is Mr lonesco, who
performed those impressive acrobatics; and finally we have
Mr Athena over there by the door.'

80

Each of the men either nodded or waved by way of
acknowledgement as their names were mentioned. Michelle
was reminded of those ghastly meetings at the start of a
package holiday, where the reps patronisingly introduced
themselves to the holidaymakers before warning them
sternly against interacting in any way with the indigenous
culture. She half-expected Jarry's next line to be, 'And if
there's anything they can help you with today don't be
afraid to ask.' It wasn't, but the comparison still improbably
held up.

'Sadly places for today's performance are limited and
there are a few restrictions in force,' he said, pacing along
to where a tearful but determined-looking woman was
protectively cuddling a mercifully sleeping baby. 'This programme
is unfortunately unsuitable for children, Madam,
so if you wouldn't mind, please make your way over there
and Mr Athena will let you out in a few minutes. Sorry/
he added softly, offering her a hand to help her up. The
woman looked around, incredulous at her good fortune
and apologetically guilty towards those left behind.

'Jarry' then bent over two elderly ladies, again extending
a forearm to assist each one in turn to her feet. 'Without
meaning to be patronisingly ageist, I suspect our proceedings
today will not be to you ladies' taste. You are, of course,
welcome to stay if you feel otherwise.'

'Naw, son, we'll away before the Gordon Street branch
closes,' one of them responded matter-offactly.

'Awfy polite, wis he no'?' Michelle heard the other one
remark as they shuffled towards the exit.

'Now, anybody here suffering from asthma or a heart
condition?' Jarry asked. Almost every hand in the room
went up, causing him to laugh out loud. 'I'm Brian and
so's my wife,' he remarked. 'Okay, I'll ask again. Anybody




81

got either of those things and able to prove it?'

This time only four hands appeared, one of them that
chancer Arlene Fleck who carried a ventolin inhaler every
day, but was known only to require it when she was being
asked to explain her latest negligent calamity. Two further
inhalers were produced, along with a bottle of pills
clutched near-triumphantly in the hand of one of the press
ganged shopper-husbands. His euphoric relief was no
doubt cut short when it became apparent that his missus
was being allowed to accompany him.

'Is that everyone?' Jarry enquired.

Michelle looked towards the eternally mousy Caroline
Reilly, whose protective instincts towards her unborn child
seemed insufficiently developed for her to overcome her
chronic fear of causing a fuss. Michelle nodded silently at
her, beckoning her to respond, but the poor woman looked
paralysed. Caroline was the kind of woman who, when
she finally went into labour, would silently endure any
amount of pain rather than inconvenience the anaesthetist
in case he or she had more important things to do. Michelle
put a hand up. This woman is five months pregnant/ she
said, her voice still appallingly gravelly, a testament to her
success in avoiding conversation all morning.

'And unfortunately it is our policy that pregnant women
may not ride this attraction,' Jarry responded.

Michelle helped Caroline to her feet, knowing she'd need
the prompt as much as the support. Jarry helped Caroline
step past a couple more kneeling colleagues then looked
back at Michelle. 'No such exclusions apply to the hungover.'

'Don't do me any favours/ she muttered, kneeling back
down.

Jarry nodded to 'Athena', the clown at the main entrance,
who allowed the lucky ones to file out then locked the

82

double doors closed behind them. Upon the same unspoken
command, 'Dali' and 'Chagall' slung their weapons around
their shoulders and set about securing trembling hands
behind nervous backs with more white plastic strips. Jarry
paced up and down watchfully as his comrades busied
themselves. The smile might be painted on the latex, but
his voice suggested he was grinning underneath, too. All
she could see of his true face were the eyes that peered out
through the mask, and those appeared to be either twinkling
with mischief or dancing with gleeful but genuine
insanity.

'Thanks again, ladies and gentlemen, you're all being
truly adorable. I'd just like to reassure you at this point
that we have no desire or intention to harm any of you,
and that you do not stand to make any financial loss whatsoever
from today's proceedings, so there is really no incentive
for impulsive heroics. Even in the unlikely event that
one of you is able to overpower the five of us today, I can
assure you that the only material outcome would be a
grudgingly unreflective reward from the bank followed by
several weeks harassment from the right-wing press who
would be desperate to make you their have-a-go-hero. Or
indeed heroine/ he added, acknowledging the imbalance
of female staff. 'So think about what's worse: being taken
temporarily hostage by us polite bank robbers or being
besieged in your own home by uncouth tabloid journalists?
You know it makes sense.'

Michelle couldn't be sure whether the sense of raw terror
was dissipating or whether it was just that she'd spent the whole morning feeling like she was going to throw up and
had therefore just about grown used to the sensation. The
initial vertiginous sense of being overwhelmed by such
unexpectedly dramatic events seemed to be giving way to




83
pragmatic appraisal of a situation that was, while still in
many ways bizarre, ongoing and very much a practical
reality. A voice in her head told her that at least it put her
worries over last night's indiscretion well into perspective,
but the mention of tabloid newspapers reminded her that
there was no such thing as perspective when it came to
things like that. This just meant that come Monday
morning, there'd be two big stories for everyone to talk
about.

On the plus side, maybe they'd kill her; or even better,
kill Grant before he could get the chance to blab. With this
thought, it suddenly occurred to Michelle that Grant was
not present. Her head turned involuntarily towards his
office, the movement immediately homed in on by Jarry.
The chief clown directed his gaze at the previously overlooked
office door, which now seemed the more conspicuous
for being closed. Michelle bowed her head and looked
at the floor, equally angry with herself for giving Grant
away and for the unworthily flippant sentiment that had
preceded this. She was unaware of having written any of
this down on a flipchart, but evidently may as well have
done.

'Don't beat yourself up about it,' he said. 'Believe me,
it's better we get everyone where we can see them now,
than a nasty surprise leading to an accident later. Mr
Chagall?'

Chagall finished fastening the pair of hands he was
working on and walked purposefully but unhurriedly
towards Grant's office. Michelle attempted to assuage her
guilt at her unwitting betrayal with the hope that his being
overlooked would at least have allowed him the chance to
hit the alarm button, but her optimism was tempered by
the appreciation that these guys were clearly not engaged

84

in any kind of smash and grab attempt. They had just let
several hostages walk right out the front door, so they were
hardly intending to keep the situation a secret. Whatever
they were up to, they were getting dug in for the long haul.

She watched with a slight degree of surprise as Chagall
turned the handle and gently pushed the door, realising
that she had been expecting him to kick it open. Too many
movies. What was the need for over-wrought aggression
when you had four more machine-guns backing you up?
He disappeared out of sight, but returned again quickly
and unaccompanied.

'When he got there, the cupboard was bare,' Chagall
reported. This time the accent suggested either an
American trying to sound like an English toff or an English
toff trying to sound like an American. 'However, I don't
think whoever it is went off to play Bruce Willis. There's
an FHM shrink-wrap in the bin, but significantly no FHM.'

Jarry turned back towards Michelle. 'How many are we
missing?' he asked. It was only as he did so that she realised
she couldn't remember whether she'd seen Grant's last
client leave.

'One,' she answered.

'Mr lonesco,' Jarry called out. 'Have you finished your
sweep of the staff-only area?'

'Not quite.'

'Well can you prioritise the male toilet, please?'

'You got it.'

A few minutes later, a ghostly pale-faced figure emerged
from the code-locked security door, the armed dwarf at his
back, but it was not Grant. Fortunately, the startled client
was dressed in a suit and tie, so the gunmen didn't realise
they were still missing a member of staff. Michelle doubted
this would allow Grant to, as Chagall put it, 'play Bruce




85

Willis', but at least it meant she was spared eye contact
with him, so maybe this hostage situation had a plus side
after all.

In the meantime, the clown crew had started to move
more urgently into action. Athena was placed on patrol
duty, which consisted of little more than standing in place
with a finger over his trigger guard and his eyes on the
huddled hostages while his comrades got busy elsewhere.

Chagall and Dali took a canvas bag over to the front
entrance and removed from it a roll of masking tape and
two cans of spray-paint. One of them placed a six-inch strip
of tape at waist-height on the centre of each of the glass
double doors, then set about spraying them with white
paint from top to bottom. His pal, meanwhile, had already
set about similarly covering the windows. After that, the
taller and heavier Chagall gave Dali a leg up in order to
spray the lenses of each of the banking hall's five CCTV
cameras, which they presumably knew could provide an
outside feed as well as recording to tape.

Jarry went back behind the counters and systematically
cleared them of all cash, doing so neatly and without
disturbing any documentation. The customers wouldn't
know it, but he was being as good as his word regards
their own money being safe: their deposit slips remained
in place for processing, so the bank would still have to
credit them with the money he was stealing.

The dwarf, lonesco, was nowhere to be seen, which
meant he could be rifling the floor-level cupboards behind
the counters, but more probably that he was up to something
in the downstairs admin area, such as trying to gain
access to the basement. There was a further, more extensive
office suite upstairs, looking out on to the banking
hall through a windowed mezzanine level, but it was

86

closed on Saturdays (senior staff not having to drag their hungover arses to work at the weekend) and Michelle
hadn't seen Athena pass the keys to anyone. There was
nothing of value up there anyway, other than better
appointed staff bogs. The basement, however, was where
the vaults were located, housing the main safe and the
branch's 200 safety deposit boxes. If anyone had hit the
alarms, the doors to both of these would have locked
automatically.

Jarry emerged from the security door a few minutes later,
carrying only his weapon, his ill-gotten gains presumably
awaiting a more substantial supplement somewhere in the
back office.

'Mr Dali/ he called out, 'how's the view?'

Dali peeled back one of the stickers from the double
doors and crouched down to have a look through the gap
in the paint.

'Just uniforms so far/ he replied, yet another American
accent, this time one that suggested the face beneath his
mask was black. 'I make four . . . no, wait, five, currently
observing Headless Chicken protocols. They're movin'
people back 'cause they can't think of any other way to be
of use until the bossman shows up. So far one squad car,
no Armed Response Units. Early days.' Dali rolled back
the tape to re-cover the gap, then stood up straight again.

They'll be there soon enough/ said Jarry. 'If you're all
done down here, you should get yourself ready.'

'Sure thing.'

Dali walked briskly over to the counters where he
crouched down and began checking the unseen contents
of another canvas bag, while Jarry turned to address the
hostages.

'For our next trick, we're going to need some volunteers




87

from the audience. Specifically, we're first going to need
one Thomas Peat, who I believe has the position of duty
manager today.'

Tom didn't have to identify himself, the sudden flush of
colour on his liberally freckled skin making it extremely
obvious which member of staff was now very much regretting
having so successfully sucked up to the boss in order
to secure this ironically uncoveted responsibility.

'Come on, don't be shy/ Jarry told him, helping him to
his feet. 'I hate to put you on the spot, but I'm afraid one
of these naughty children tripped your automated alarm
systems, and we're gonna need you to give us a hand
opening the vault.'

'I -I can't do that/ Tom stuttered, possibly the first time
he'd spoken those words in this building. The guy was a
walking mission statement, the living embodiment of the
bank's ad-slogan-cum-corporate-philosophy: Of course we
can help. 'I mean, I want to help, I'm not refusing/ he added
quickly, either fearful of consequences or automatically
reverting to type. 'But if the security system's been activated,
I can't over-ride it locally. I mean, obviously I can
key in my password, but that won't do anything because,
see, it's the--'

'Remote Authorisation Delayed Double-Key System/
Jarry interrupted, 'as developed by Berkley Security
Solutions for Pacific Western Bank in 1998. The safe is
locked automatically and can only be reopened when the
manager or duty manager's password is co-authorised at
head office, after which there is still a six-hour built-in delay
before the bars roll back.'

'That's right/ Tom added with sheepish redundancy.

Jarry continued, as though reading from a manual. 'The
system is advertised to staff as being intended to protect

88

them in the event of being taken hostage, as any information
or cooperation that could be forced out of them would
be rendered futile.'

Michelle remembered hearing something along these
lines when the system was installed. Like just about
everyone else, she hadn't paid much attention at the time,
as nobody expects to see the thing in action for real, far
less to be able to anticipate a flaw the experts have missed.
Under the present circumstances, it seemed safe to assume
that there was a pretty big one, and she guessed Jarry was
about to point it out.

'Hate to be the one to break this to you, Thomas, but
the Remote Authorisation Delayed Double-Key System is
intended to protect the money, which is why so many banks
across the world have implemented it. Its purpose is to
buy time while the cops take position outside, encouraging
the bad guys to give up on the dough and instead turn
their attention to helicopters and non-extradition destinations.
In a hostage situation, it prevents staff like your good
selves from being able to unilaterally sell out the bank's
passwords and access codes for something as trifling as
their lives, but does not offer any protection against the
robbers then threatening to kill their hostages if head office
doesn't authorise the code and open the goddamn safe.'

It was not the most comfortable moment for Dali to stand
up again, holding the most frighteningly elaborate shotgun
Michelle had ever seen. By comparison, the identical
compact weapons all five clowns were carrying looked
puny and artificial. It had two vertically stacked barrels,
the top one tipped with a sight-finder, a pump-action grip
enveloping the lower, these both jutting from a formidable
looking steel trunk. However, the most disturbing part was
the extendable shoulder-rest, currently folded forwards




89

over the top of the weapon and accommodating a grey
cylinder through each of four circular holes. Michelle knew
bugger-all about guns beyond the fact that they went bang
and that it was better to be behind them at that point, but
she had been reluctantly dragged to enough macho movies
to recognise that this one was going to be firing something
bigger than bullets.

'But don't worry/ Jarry assured them, sounding more
insanely jovial than ever. 'We're not here to threaten
anybody. We just need Thomas to log us onto the network.'

90

mental siegality

Andy was having fun watching the polis panic. It was enormously
gratifying to see Shiftit and Liftit, the same glib
plods who always took so much pleasure in giving out that
super-confident and highly patronising 'make no mistake,
we're in control' patter, haplessly floundering now that
they were required to cope with something a wee bit more
strenuous than the everyday harassment of innocent
buskers.

The first sign that something was amiss came when he
saw some would-be customers turn back from the bank
steps and start running down Buchanan Street. He couldn't
hear what they were shouting, as he was continuing his
spontaneous Vambo tribute at the time with a predictably
head-turning rendition of Ain't Nothing Like a Gang Bang, but the shoppers they encountered generally stopped in
their tracks; apart, of course, from the ones who started
running in the other direction for a gawk at what was
happening. A nimble piece of footwork flipped Andy's
guitar-case closed, and though he was able to step on to it
again without missing a strum, the same could not be said
for his vocals once he got a look inside the bank. Either
the Cleminson Clones had enlisted the bank's customers
in a mass rendition of the Hokey Cokey or they were
holding the place up. Flashes of gunmetal at waist height
suggested the latter.

The well-known busker-busting double act of boys in




91

blue came stomping up from Argyle Street a few minutes
later, by which time a group of people had surprisingly been
allowed to leave the bank. Shiftit and Liftit were talking frantically
into radios as they ran, in a gait that suggested they
were trying to give the appearance of haste without actually
running as fast as they ought, probably praying the whole
time that someone else would get there first.

If so, they were out of luck. Having heard confirmation
of the circumstances from the exiting party, the pair found
themselves in (Andy hoped temporary) charge of a situation
they were conspicuously inequipped to deal with.
Thus bereft, they were deploying the catch-all default plod
tactic of randomly shouting at members of the public,
which may not achieve anything constructive but was principally
intended to give the impression that they knew
what they were doing. There was a lot of arm-waving too,
the general purpose of which appeared to be warding
people away from the bank, but could also have been an
attempt to fly; both possibilities proving equally ineffectual.
Two coppers, a three-way junction, a broad pedestrian
precinct and several hundred highly motivated
Christmas shoppers, predominantly Glaswegian: it was
exactly as it sounded.

Ever the opportunist, Andy resumed strumming and
began singing Police and Thieves, segueing into My Daddy
Was A Bank Robber and finally completing his Clash crime
medley with I Fought The Law. He made about a tenner
before Shiftit and Liftit remembered the one thing they were effective at and breathlessly told him to shut the fuck
up. However, before they could formally or physically
move him on, the cavalry noisily arrived, requiring them
to report the progress of their hand-waving activities to a
superior.

Two vans and four squad cars converged on the concourse,
one of each from Gordon Street and the rest bludgeoning
their way through the pedestrian precinct from West
Regent Street. There were more plods on foot too, running
towards the scene from all directions.

From one of the squad cars emerged a wee middle-aged
guy with a dreadful comb-over, wearing a charcoal coat
that was bigger than him. It enveloped him as rigidly as a
tortoise-shell, and looked like it would remain standing on
its own if its inhabitant extricated himself and walked away.
The fact that none of the other polis were laughing at him
indicated that he must be the ranking officer. He convened
a brief pow-wow featuring much stiff-armed pointing,
though it took a keen eye to spot whether any fingers
actually made it beyond the expansive reach of his sleeves.
Heads were nodded and cars were returned to, after which
a more effective cordoning operation got underway.
Vehicles were slewn across the three approaches, with the
gaps either side soon plugged by red-andwhite-striped
plastic barriers produced from one of the vans. Shiftit, Liftit
and their extended family took position around these roadblocks,
eagerly grasping the opportunity to play to their
undoubted strengths: viz, looking imperviously stern and
telling people to go away. The barriers, however, were
having the familiarly paradoxical effect of attracting people
towards them in order to see whatever it was they were
being excluded from. Crowds were building up on three
sides of the now empty concourse, like they were waiting
for someone to sink a final putt somewhere in the middle.

Andy was forced around the corner on to Gordon Street,
where he backed himself into a disused doorway that
afforded him both a slightly elevated view and space to
persist with his musical commentary, figuring that with the




92

93

polls otherwise engaged, it was unlikely he'd meet any
further official objection.

The Coat was standing nearby on the empty concourse,
a squad car between him and the crowd. He had a few
other plain-clothes officers in attendance, but though
discussion was taking place, it was clear that they were in
a holding position, most definitely waiting for something.

The something arrived ten minutes later via two more
squad cars, sirens audible for a while before they were able
to part the sea of curious onlookers and reach the end of
Gordon Street. Four men got out of each vehicle, kitted
with body armour and bearing automatic rifles. None of
them had to ask anyone to get out of their way as they
marched around to join The Coat.

More talking, more pointing, and not a few frowns when
the armed response cops noticed that they couldn't see into
the bank, the windows and doors having been deliberately
obscured. Nonetheless, four of them soon broke off from
the group and took position, two each side, next to the
barriers across Buchanan Street. They crouched on the
pavement, weapons pointed at the front doors, and
instantly had a greater impact in moving the audience back
than any number of requests from Shiftit and Liftit. One
glimpse of the hardware being pointed into the building
was enough to spark a widespread contemplation of what
might be pointing back out, and the entire throng took
several collective steps backward.

The second unit remained grouped around The Coat,
perhaps preparing for some specific tactical deployment,
but quite probably, like everyone else, at a loose end until
it became a bit clearer what was actually going on. One of
them was looking up at the surrounding buildings, though
Andy doubted The Coat's weighty sleeves would allow

94

him to point that high even if he did want people positioned
there. Then from one of the slewn squad cars there
came a plain-clothes officer holding up a mobile phone,
indicating there was a significant call on it for the attention
of The Coat. The ARU guys turned around with great
interest in whatever the plain-clothes bloke was saying, at
which point the entire group was suddenly engulfed in a
cloud of white powder.

Andy heard a series of muffled thuds and saw several
more such clouds rapidly appear on the concourse. The
first two scored direct hits on crouching armed officers,
and then four more landed around the remaining pair,
anticipating their attempted evasions. They did at least
manage to home in on the source and point their guns
towards the roof of the bank, but by the time they had
done so they were enveloped in billowing dust, from which
they emerged spastically, covering their eyes as they staggered.
Andy looked up with considerably slower reflexes,
in time to see a brief flash of movement on the roof before
a gust of wind brought a light waft of the dispersing cloud
his way. He closed his eyes and stepped back, the recess
of the doorway preventing all but a smattering from
blowing in.

The gathering in front of the barrier had not been so
lucky. The Coat must have turned his head at an opportune
moment, or simply withdrawn, tortoise-like, because
he got off considerably lighter than the rest. The ARU guys,
however, looked oven-ready, their faces coated and their
hair thick with powder, the effects of which were making
themselves swiftly and decisively manifest. The poor
bastards were consumed, effectively decommissioned as
surely as if someone had taken them prisoner. They were
coughing, they were rubbing their streaming eyes, they




95

were vigorously brushing and slapping at themselves, but
most of all they were scratching. It was as though they had
been swarmed by a million fleas, each one of the armed
officers clawing compulsively at any exposed skin, and
gymnastically attempting to get hands inside their clothes
to the places this spreading plague had penetrated. One of
them chucked his gun to the ground and began pulling off
his armour where he stood, while unsullied colleagues
made* feeble (and visibly reluctant) gestures of assistance.
Soon enough, people in the crowd were scratching too,
but in a far less extreme manner, and in sufficiently separate
instances as to suggest a psychosomatic response. It
did get them backing off even further though, as was the
case on all three sides of the cordon. Shiftit and Liftit, with
no option to similarly retreat, looked marginally but
nonetheless satisfyingly afflicted.

96

two tribes

Michelle's deduction that the robbers were in it for the long
haul was proving to be arse-numbingly accurate. After all
of the initial tension, confusion, fear and excitement, there
was now a whole lot of nothing going on, apart from the
occasional and persistently unheeded loud-hailer address
from the cops outside. Inside, fear was turning to boredom,
confusion into frustration; excitement was long gone, but
tension was an ever-present.

The last major development had been Dali's foray
'upstairs', which she had naturally assumed to mean the
previously ignored management offices, but turned out to
be the roof. Chagall, monitoring Buchanan Street through
his spy-holes, had reported the arrival of armed police;
the arrival of all previous varieties audibly heralded by
sirens. Following shouts, screams and a general rise in the
overall rubbernecker hubbub volume, the lookout clown
announced happily that the armed cops had been 'dusted',
a term Michelle recognised as one of the seemingly countless
euphemisms Americans had for killing people. With
her fellow hostages clearly sharing this concern, and
contemplating its ramifications for their own plight,
Chagall was moved to assure them that it was 'not what
you think', but irritatingly offered no further information.

Since then, there had been nothing to do but worry and,
in Michelle's case, suffer. Her hangover symptoms had
temporarily abated amidst the distractions of the robbery's




97

more frantic early stages, but now her mind was free to
concentrate on how rough she was feeling and how long
it had been since her last dose of painkillers. The Grant
Kelly issue had altered a little, however. Now, every time
she remembered him, instead of worrying about him blabbing
what happened last night, she was worrying about
him getting himself or everybody else killed, Jarry's
remarks about 'nasty surprises' and 'accidents' lingering
ominously in her mind.

Untroubled by any such knowledge or fear, certain of
the customer-hostages were increasingly disinhibited about
vocalising their own primary concerns.

'Haw, Jimmy, whit's the score here at aw?' one of The
People demanded of Athena, who continued pacing
without any visible inclination to respond. This is a bit ay
a liberty, like. I mean, how long are yous plannin' tae keep
us here?'

'As long as it takes,' Athena stated flatly. He hadn't said
enough for Michelle to get a handle on his accent, but what
she heard sounded American yet again.

'We're meant tae be at the Rangers gemme,' The People's
spokesman persisted. 'I'm just askin, pal, d'you reckon
we'll at least manage for the second hauf?'

'You'd have to ask Mr lonesco that question,' Athena
replied testily. 'But I hope you've set your video for Sportscene, that's all I can say.' This time the accent was
readily identifiable: unconvincing attempted American
with conspicuously raw Glaswegian edges.

What was also identifiable was that Athena didn't
believe things were quite going to plan, a suspicion
Michelle was already entertaining. Tom Peat had returned
from his soul-destroying act of betrayal only minutes after
being led away, and since then there had been no sign of

98

Jarry or lonesco, suggesting that the safe hadn't just popped
open at their smugly confident prompting. Maybe it was
the early symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, but she
couldn't help but hope for their imminent success, reckoning
what was good news for the robbers was good news
for the hostages. The converse was also chillingly true. If
you had to be robbed by somebody, you'd want to be
robbed by confident, competent, smooth-talking criminals,
rather than nervous, twitchy, desperate men, but all it
would take to change the former to the latter was failure.

Once again, not everyone endured the rising tension
silently.

'Can yous no' use your influence tae get us oota here?'
The People's spokesman inquired of one of the Celtic
supporting Antarctic expedition.

'Whit?' came the reply, the look of contemptuous bafflement
on the Tim's face enough to convey an aggressive
incredulity that the Rangers fan should even be addressing
him.

'Well this shower are bound to be Taigs, are they no'?
Maist criminals in Scotland are. I thought you might be
able to put a word in.'

'Aye, that's right, pal. An' there's nae Proddy crooks, is
there?'

'I'm no' sayin' there's nane, just goin' by the law of averages.
The percentage o' Taigs in Scottish prisons is umpteen
times their percentage o' the population.'

'An' that wouldnae be anythin' tae dae wi' bigoted
Orange bastarts discriminatin' against kaffliks when they
go for a job?'

'Hell, we've got a joker here,' the spokesman told his
mates. 'He's talkin' aboot Taigs tryin' tae get jobs. Why
would a Taig work when he can scrounge off the state in




99

a country he despises? There's an irony for yous: it's us
taxpayin' Brits that's effectively subsidisin' the season
tickets tae a fitba club that actively promotes terrorism
against oor country.'

'We're an Irish fitba club that just happens tae be playin'
in a Scottish league. An' wan man's terrorist is another
man's freedom fighter. If you want tae talk aboot a club
promotin' sectarianism, it wisnae us that wouldnae sign a
kafflik for a hunner years. And don't gie's that shite boot
Don Kitchenbrand, 'cause we know yous only signed him
'cause you hadnae done your homework an' never knew
he was a kafflick.'

'I'm no' listenin' tae any moral lectures fae a supporter
ay a fitba club that covered up systematic child abuse for
thirty years . . .'

And so on.

There was a certain breed of Old Firm fan for whom
hatred of 'the other lot' was so all-consuming that it overrode
not only their (seemingly incidental) interest in football,
but also their awareness of current circumstances, to
the extent that they would probably pick a fight against
the backdrop of a nearby nuclear explosion. Armed robbers
were therefore a minor consideration.

'And at least we never had our European trophy
presented tae us in a fuckin' cupboard because oor fans
were riotin' ootside. Yous are the only team in Europe taste
be banned fae defendin' your am trophy.'

'Says wan o' the coin-chuckers, the "Greatest Fans in the
World", who pan the ref's windaes in when they get beat
an' splits refs heids open when he gi'es decisions against
them.'

Athena continued to pace up and down nearby as the
argument raged on, giving a far less convincing impression

100

of ignoring the combatants than they were of ignoring him.
Inevitably, however, something had to give.

'. . . cheek tae talk aboot a sectarian signing policy when
your shower went mair than a hunner years withoot ever
havin' a Protestant on their board of directors. Wouldnae
even offer Jock Stein - your greatest ever manager - a seat
on the board 'cause he wasnae a Tarrier. Still, he wasnae
bitter aboot it - otherwise he might have came clean wi'
whit he knew aboot Jim Torbett an' the Boys Club scandal.'

Michelle had consistently no idea what the hell any of
them were gibbering about, but this last remark had
evidently crossed a line. The Celtic fan got to his feet and
aimed a kick at The People's Ambassador, but the
Ambassador sprang up also, with a speed that belied his
girth, and retaliated with a swing of his own boot that just
missed the head of the cowering Kathy Claremont. Before
any of their mates could join in the absurd fray, Athena
stepped forward and slammed the butt of his gun into the
Ambassador's face. He collapsed, bleeding heavily from
his nose, at which juncture the minimally dressed Tim
lunged forward with the intention of taking full advantage.
Instead he found his face in close proximity with the
other end of Athena's weapon. He stopped in his tracks
with a visible shudder and began backing away, but apparently
not fast enough. Athena changed his grip on the gun
and drove the butt into the man's stomach.

'Mister Athena!' called out a loud voice. Michelle turned
her head to see Jarry standing in front of the security door,
his own weapon slung around his back. Athena stepped
away and Jarry began walking towards the hostage huddle.
'Can you tell me where the spare hostages are?' he asked
Athena, loudly enough to be intended for all ears.

'What spare hostages?'




101

'My point exactly. So please don't damage the ones we've
got.'

They were--'

'I know. But cool off. Take five.'

'Yes, sir/ he responded with obvious sarcasm.

Jarry bent over the Old Firm contingent as they assisted
their injured. 'My apologies. What can I say? Goddamn
Partick Thistle supporters, huh?'

The Ambassador looked up, holding a hanky to his nose.
'It's as well he jumped in. I could take that Taig prick wi'
baith hauns tied behind my back.'

'Well, let's not try and prove it again, or we'll maybe
have to tie your feet up, too.'

Jarry stood up straight. 'My apologies also to the rest of
you. It seems we'll have to detain you good people a little
longer while Mr lonesco sweet-talks the computer into
opening the safe. She's been giving him the come-on, but
is so far turning out to be a bit of a tease.'

'How long?' asked Athena grumpily.

'To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, Mr Athena, great theft, like
great art, takes time. But while we're waiting, Mr Chagall,
perhaps you could provide our guests with a little distraction?'

'Oh, I'm sure they wouldn't be interested, Mr Jarry,'
Chagall replied, exaggeratedly bashful. 'I'd hate to take
advantage of a captive audience.'

'Too modest, Mr C. Go on, I implore you.'

'Oh, okay then. But if I start to bore anyone, please, just
raise your hand.'

102

witness accounts:
angelique de xavia (don't even think about it)

There was, as she had been promised on the phone, a blue
Rover waiting for Angelique outside the main stand, the
car easy to spot even when she turned the corner as it was
the only one the uniforms on traffic duty weren't
summarily telling to bugger off. She felt another tiny little
part of herself wither and die at the sight of it, partly in
response to the prospect of where the car would take her,
but more so at its confirmation that they did know where
she could be found on her free Saturdays. The car had
already been dispatched to Ibrox before the buggers even
made the call; probably waited till three so that there would
be no crowds to wade through outside.

Wading through the crowd inside had been bad enough.

'Haw hen, gie them a chance, it's no' that bad already
surely,' one Bear had called out as she made her conspicuous
way towards the exit tunnel less than two minutes
after kickoff.

The Subway Loyal are gettin' earlier every week/ joked
another.

'Will ye come back if Big Eck promises tae take
Konterman off?'

She wanted to call out a reply, show them a wink and
a smile, even thought of a rejoinder about not watching
another shitey 3-4-3 formation, but just didn't have the
heart. Instead she kept her head meekly bowed and walked




103

briskly down the stairs, past the scurrying, breathless latecomers
and the Cholesterol Loyal still loading up with
Bluenose Burgers in case malnutrition set in over the next
forty-five minutes.

She walked up to the Rover and waved cursorily at the
driver, who leaned over and opened the passenger side door for her. She recognised him: Bailey, new kid on the
CID block, young, diligent, deferential and enthusiastically
eager to please. A couple of years and one Dubh Ardrain
ago she'd have found it refreshing, even endearing. These
days she saw instead a careerist kiss-arse on the make and
another 'one of the boys' in the making.

'Hi/ she said curtly, climbing in.

'Afternoon, Inspector/ he greeted her with a smile. 'Sorry
to have to drag you away. I didn't know you were a--'

'Let's not go there, okay?' she interrupted tersely, determined
to terminate this entire avenue of discussion. It
didn't work, however, DC Pollyanna still imperviously
unable to recognise 'fuck off when he heard it.

'No, no, I'm not on the wind-up. I'm a blue--'

'--bottle who's still getting used to his plain-clothes suit
and tie. So just drive the car.'

'Yes, ma'am/ he muttered, chastised and noticeably
crestfallen. Petted lip coming up.

They whipped along Paisley Road West towards
Tradeston, siren on, weaving through traffic as Bailey transferred
both his huff and his unflagging desire to impress
into his driving.

'What's the score, then?' she asked him, details having
been scarce during the phone call. 'Why can't another
armed unit handle this? I'm Special Branch and it's my
fucking day off. We must have more than eight bloody
ARU guys in the whole city, surely.'


There's more coming in/ Bailey replied. 'But McMaster
asked for you specifically.'

Angelique allowed herself a bitter sniff by way of a
laugh, shaking her head as she did so.

'What?' asked Bailey.

'Nothing/ she muttered, but her sour smile remained.

McMaster. One of the all-knowing Star Chamber wanks
who had stuck it to her at the inquiry. 'Reckless' had been
his favoured censorious epithet, issued frequently from a
mouth like an arsehole in a snowstorm. 'Accountability'
was another hard-ridden hobby horse from the McMaster
stable, alongside 'command lines'.

She had a couple for him now: 'hypocrisy' for one,
closely followed by 'brass neck'. Angelique didn't know
whether to feel vindicated or even more pissed off, but
either way it was confirmation of what she'd suspected all
along. They knew they were screwing her, knew what she
was worth, knew what she could do, but they were fucked
if they were going to admit it until circumstances made it
absolutely necessary.

McMaster asked for you specifically.

Reckless. Unaccountable. Impetuously autonomous. Oh
yeah, and when the shit hits the fan, who ya gonna call?

Bailey drove her along Gordon Street, slowing down as
they approached the junction with West Nile Street, where
a crowd was blocking the road. She could see the tops of
police vans ahead, but she wasn't going to get much nearer
by car. Bailey reached to put the siren on again, but she
told him to pull over instead. 'I'll be quicker on foot.'

'Before you go/ he said, blurting it out as she reached
for the handle like it was his last chance to ask for a date.
'I know we're unlikely to cross paths much, so I just
wanted to say . . . what you did, you know, at Dubh




104

105

Ardrain . . . That took all the balls in the world. I know
it's naff, but I wanted to . . .' He offered a hand for her to
shake, too bashful or perhaps timidly reluctant to actually
say it.

Angelique gave it a firm squeeze. 'Still two balls short
of enhancing my career prospects around here/ she said.
'But thanks.'

She made her way less than briskly through the crowd,
her progress slowed less by the throng than by an unshakable
sense of ambivalence about reporting in to this numpty.
Any notion of enjoying his discomfiture at having to turn
to her in his hour of need was strongly countered by the
prospect of whatever he might require her to do. As far as
she was aware, this was an armed siege that was in progress,
and she hadn't been 'asked for specifically' because she was
known for her diplomacy or negotiating skills.

Even with so many bodies milling about and a loud
hailer obscuring his coupon, McMaster was not difficult to
spot, engulfed as he was in that ridiculous coat. He looked
like one of the Anthill Mob from the Wacky Races cartoons,
though today his favoured attire was looking unusually
piebald, nae bovine.

'I repeat/ he screeched through the bullhorn, 'we have
the building surrounded.'

Christ, did he really just say that?

'You are in a no-win situation, but we are ready to negotiate
to protect the hostages.'

Course we are. We're holding all the cards. That's why
we're calling in reckless and negligent Special Branch
officers on their day off.

Angelique approached the coterie gathered behind their
makeshift roadblock and held up her warrant card in
practiced anticipation of the nearest bluebottle reckoning

106

1

she looked too wee to be a cop and telling her she couldn't
pass. Instead he immediately turned and tapped McMaster
on the shoulder, the words 'DI de Xavia, sir/ readable on
his lips. All of the group turned around, each of them
quicker than the sartorially encumbered main man. She
recognised the faces: Dave Keogh, Graeme Hardie, Judith
Newman, Bob Hogg. Big hitters all. The line-up was top
heavy with experience, authority, intelligence and
expertise, while lined up all around the periphery was an
abundance of muscle. What they needed Angelique for was
therefore not immediately apparent, but she was starting
to suspect that the word 'mug' might turn out to be an
appropriate description of the role. Or 'fall guy', sex
notwithstanding.

McMaster's eyes were horribly bloodshot and ringed
with a pink-tinged swelling. Upon a second glance around
the gathering Angelique noticed similar if less pronounced
symptoms on several others.

'Angelique/ McMaster said with a nod and, golly, was
that a glimmer of a smile? 'Thanks for coming, and sorry
to pull you away on your day off.' Politeness, too! Mug
was definitely it. 'I hope you weren't in the middle of
anything vital.'

'No, sir/ she dutifully assured, by which time Bob Hogg
had started whistling the tune to Follow, follow, we will follow
Rangers, earning him a stern glance that he just laughed at.
'So what's the script?'

'In short, we've got five masked gunmen in the bank,
armed with automatic weapons, holding an unconfirmed
number of hostages, possibly twelve, maybe as many as
fifteen.'

'Unconfirmed?'

'We're going by the estimates of the ones they let go.'




107

'They let some hostages go? Why?'

They didn't make the grade/ Hogg chimed in. They
released OAPs, a mother and child, a pregnant woman,
bloke with a dicky ticker, even asthmatics.'

'Is this a robbery or an aerobics class we're talkin' about?'

This wasn't any smash and grab that's gone wrong,'
McMaster resumed. 'We believe they're planning a long
game and they needed hostages who could stay the
distance.'

'So what are they holding out for? What are their
demands.'

McMaster visibly seethed at this question. Judith
Newman answered it for him.

They haven't made any. They're refusing to respond.
They don't seem interested in entering into any kind of
dialogue.'

'Yet,' McMaster added archly, sounding like he was
trying to convince himself.

They've also painted over the doors and windows, as
well as the bank's CCTV cameras.'

'Can we access playbacks of when they walked in?'

'Way ahead of you,' said Judith. 'But they were already
masked when they entered the building.'

'Stockings over the heads as they walked up the steps,
then. What about exterior CCTV?'

They were masked outside, too.'

'Surely you're not telling me they walked along Buchanan
Street and up to a bank on a busy Saturday, wearing stockings
over their heads, without anybody noticing anything
suspicious?'

At this point, McMaster looked like he could have strangled
several small furry animals and still had glowering
tension to spare.

108

They were dressed as clowns, DI de Xavia,' he said,
barely controlling the rage in his voice. They posed as
street performers before entering the bank.'

They did a dance to an old Madness number. Drew quite
a crowd according to--'

'Yes, thank you, Inspector Newman. I think we can
dispense with certain of the less pertinent details.'

'Certainly sir.'

'And what happened to the ARU?' Angelique asked.

McMaster began blinking at the mere mention of these
words, then started rubbing his eyes. A couple of his
colleagues followed suit in psychosomatic sympathy.

'We were subjected to an attack using some form of
powdered skin irritant, fired from the roof,' McMaster said.

'Pump-action shotgun/grenade launcher, we reckon,'
added Hogg. 'A SPAS or a LAW, something like that.
Quality kit.'

'Our armed officers appear to have been targeted specifically,
so they took the brunt of it,' McMaster resumed.

'Skin irritant?' Angelique enquired, failing to keep a
degree of ridicule from her expression.

'Well, if you need both hands to scratch, and you can't
see a bloody thing because your eyes are streaming, you're
not going to be much of a shot, are you?'

'I guess not, sir.'

The poor bastards are all away for saline baths up at
the Royal Infirmary. It was nasty stuff, I can assure you.'

'It sounds like they've a sense of humour anyway.'

'Forgive me if I don't find anything funny about it
myself, Detective Inspector.'

'No, I mean they were making a statement. They fired
this stuff at the ARU. People accuse armed polis of having
"itchy trigger fingers". That's always the phrase, isn't it?




109

Maybe it was their way of saying they didn't want this to
end in a shooting match.'

'Well it's a good job you're here to interpret these semiotics,
DI de Xavia, seeing as that's the only communication
we seem likely to receive.'

'Anything to assist. But I can't imagine that's why you've
asked me here, is it, sir?'

'No,' he said, handing the loud-hailer to Hogg. 'Come
with me.'

McMaster led her back towards West Nile Street, away
from the roadblock.

'You're here because of Grant Kelly,' he told her.

'And who might he be?'

'At the moment, our man on the inside.'

'On the job?'

'No,' he said, irritated. 'Staff. Fucking Financial Advisor.
We rang his boss to make sure the name was legit.'

'I don't follow.'

'He was out of sight when these eejits took the bank.
Upstairs in the office suite, where nobody's meant to be
on a Saturday. Anyway, he called us on his mobile to say
he was stuck there, and that the gunmen don't know about
him. That's what I mean by checking he was legit, as
opposed to some joker in an office round here taking the
piss.'

'Got you.'

'He's been able to sneak a few quick peeks at what's
going on, because some of the offices have windows
looking down into the main hall. Only problem is, he's
understandably shittin' himself in case they find him, so
he's been communicating by text messages since the initial call. The girl that took it thought he was the world's
stupidest pervert at first, heavy breathing to the police

110

switchboard, but it was just that he was whispering. He's
also got the ringer turned off, so we can send replies
without attracting attention.'

McMaster turned into a lane leading back towards
Buchanan Street north of the West Regent Street roadblock.
As Angelique rounded the corner she saw a large black
van parked halfway along, hidden from sight of the bank.
Outside it stood six unpowdered ARU personnel in Kevlar
body armour and, this time around, visored riot helmets.

'The texts are coming through to this phone. Not much
doing of late, but he's sending one every so often to let us
know he's still on the loose.'

'Where do I come in?'

McMaster opened the rear doors of the van. The interior
looked like the polis had just raided PC World, possibly
confiscating the gear as evidence in a consumer rights
crackdown on shops who cynically fleece the gullible and
under-informed. There were rows of monitors down either
side, being scanned, operated and generally tended to by
two female uniformed officers, who must each have
climbed over the corpses of a hundred slaveringly
technophile male colleagues to get the gig. Most of the
screens displayed live-feed windows from CCTV cameras
in the area, manipulable via joysticks and keyboards in
front of each. On a shelf by the left-hand door there sat,
ominously, a spare Kevlar vest and an elaborate headset
with integrated video camera, earpiece and microphone.
Next to these were two further compact video cameras and
two small parabolic microphones with plastic stands.

'Let me guess. You're having trouble with one of these
tellys and you heard I was a whizz with a screwdriver and
a soldering iron.'

There's a hatch on the roof of the bank, accessible from




111

the second floor of the office suite. That's how their sniper
got up there. According to Kelly, nobody's been back up
the stairs since, and he'll keep us posted in case that
changes.'

That's why you haven't put another ARU out front: to
prevent any further sorties upstairs.'

'Exactly. We want them to think we're in a holding
pattern.'

'We are in a holding pattern.'

'For now, yes.'

'I don't like where this is going, sir.'

'Simmer down, de Xavia. We're not planning any reckless
assaults.' That fucking word again. 'I've no intention
of charging in there and causing a bloodbath. But we're
sitting here blind and deaf at the moment, so we need some
eyes and ears.'

His own eyes alighted on the headset and assorted
snoop ware. Angelique took another lingering look at it too,
then back at McMaster.

'Why me?' she asked, her tone so confrontational it all
but barged him in the chest.

He sighed loudly.

'I mean, is this hatch on the roof so small that I'm the
only one who can squeeze through it? Or is the headset
maybe too wee to fit anybody else?'

'What do you want, Angelique? Do you need me to eat
some humble pie? Do you want me to stroke your ego for
a while? Because there's people over in that bank with more
important things to worry about. We need to give them
the best we've got to offer, and in this kind of situation,
that means you. You know it and I know it. There, I've said
it. Are you happy now?'

'I'd have settled for please.'

112

Then I'll throw that in as well. Please.'

The magic word will get you everything.'

McMaster stepped outside while the two surveillance
officers briefed Angelique on the operation and desired
positioning of their equipment. They wanted two fields of
vision, which meant the cameras had to be placed at either
end of the offices overlooking the banking hall. The parabolic
microphones were remotely operable, rotating on
their stands so that they could be directed towards wherever
their targets stood. These therefore had to be set up
on an elevated flat surface close to the centre of the mezzanine
windows.

Angelique pulled on her body armour and stepped out
of the van, gadgets in a foam-padded nylon satchel slung
round her left shoulder, headset dangling from her right
hand.

'Just got an update from our man,' McMaster told her.
'Coast is still clear.'

'I need a gun.'

'Wilson,' McMaster commanded. The nearest of the
armed officers unslung his MP5.

'Not one of those clumsy efforts. I'll be clanging off the
walls. Gimme a hand gun, and as many spare clips as
you've got.'

Another member of the ARU stepped forward and dutifully
surrendered his Walther P990. 'It's forty calibre in the
clip, as opposed to nine millimetre,' he began explaining,
'so there's only twelve--'

A higher calibre glare cut him short.

'Officer de Xavia won't be requiring any weapons
instruction,' McMaster clarified politely.

Angelique checked the piece, ejecting the magazine and
checking the action on the top slide before slamming the




113

clip home again and chambering a round. She then took
the spare clips and thrust them into the padded bag.

'Ready?' McMaster asked.

'Not yet. I'm still missing one crucial item of equipment.
Has anybody got an elastic band?'

'Eh?'

While the ARU looked at each other helplessly, one of
the surveillance officers reached into a wall-mounted
pocket' and produced a selection.

'Cheers/ Angelique said, picking one and using it to
secure her hair in a tight pony-tail before pulling on the
headset.

'Now I'm ready.'

114

the gentleman thief

Further to her previous ruminations, while Michelle was
under no doubt that a greater danger was posed by incompetent
bank robbers, she was thoroughly ignorant as to
whatever the received wisdom might be on insane ones.
The description 'mad' was one of the most over-used and
seldom appropriate epithets in modern parlance, right up
there with 'nightmare' and 'ironic'. 'You must meet my pal
Mandy, she's mad.' They're all mad down our pub, so they
are.' 'You should've been at Eileen's party, it was mad.'
The most ordinary and dull people were awarded this
status as a kind of personality compliment, usually on the
basis of a truly minor quirkiness or in testament to some
occasion of (usually drunken) shared hilarity. Everybody
was 'mad'. Friends were mad, family were mad, colleagues
were mad, TV presenters were mad. Except that they
weren't. They were just people you found even slightly
interesting.

The people robbing Michelle's bank, however, were
utterly, utterly fucking nuts.

She had become more and more convinced of this with
each passing development, but what put the tin lid on it
was what she had witnessed over the past half-hour. With
lonesco still busy trying to get the safe open, Chagall had
been charged with the less-than-orthodox hijacker duty of
keeping the hostages entertained, which he had done by
recreating famous works of art on the whited-out windows




115

and doors, all the time inviting contributions from the
assembled 'audience'.

First he had drawn an anguished figure on a bridge,
head in hands, with two further individuals lurking in the
background. Michelle recognised the image, but couldn't
have told anyone it was called The Scream before Chagall
solicited this from one of the customers. He then amended
the image so that one of the lurking figures was shouldering
an enormous ghetto-blaster, and asked for suggestions
as to what song it might be playing. My Heart Will Go On was deemed the winning entry, rewarded by its title being
scrawled for posterity amid a rising flock of musical notes.

After that he drew on one of the double doors an incongruously
serene man, riddled with arrows as he slumped
against a tree. It was The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, according to the same apparently art-loving client, and
became the subject of a caption competition. 'Missed!'
proved the most popular, amid what Michelle guessed to
be a lot more laughter than was generally normal for an
armed siege.

On the second double door he drew 'with apologies to
Van Eyck' a heavily pregnant woman standing before a
man in medieval garb, making this the subject of further,
predominantly lewd, captions. (That's the last time I'm
letting the Mediaeval Baebes tour with Oasis' got the nod
on this occasion.)

Then finally, on the right-hand window, he recreated
another painting Michelle recognised, of a number of
wretches dead and dying as they clung to a storm-tossed
raft. The People's Ambassador took it as evidence to back
up his previous argument. 'I tell't you they were fuckin'
Taigs. He's drawin' thon album cover fae that Republican,
terrorist-loving Provo scum, The Pogues.' Or The Raft of the

116

Medusa, as one of the (presumably Pogue-loving rather than
art-loving) said Taigs was able to inform them.

Whatever Chagall's plans were to adulterate this particular
masterpiece, Michelle did not get to witness, as Jarry
made one of his periodic reappearances and was called to
by a strain-faced male customer who was, in his own
words, 'touching cloth'. It was perhaps indicative of the
paradoxical level of trust he had engendered that the bloke
should wait to ask the leader rather than just tell one of
the others that he was bursting.

Jarry ascertained who else required use of the staff facilities
and instructed Athena to escort them there in pairs.
Michelle, still thoroughly dehydrated, had no such need,
but she indicated otherwise because she felt she could use
the chance to at least stretch her legs. That chance came,
but not in the way she intended.

As he reached the security door, Athena, who had not
yet been through it, asked the nearest hostage what the
code was. Disastrously, the nearest hostage happened to
be Grant Kelly's client. When he responded, apologetically,
that he didn't know, Athena merely looked to someone else
to answer, but Jarry zeroed in on the significance right
away. The next thing he zeroed in on was Michelle.

She felt her cheeks burn as his gaze fixed upon her,
wanting to stare at the floor but feeling compelled to look
up, fearful of offering anything else that might be construed
as defiance. Jarry stepped closer and gestured for her to
stand, cupping his hand and beckoning her with four
fingers. Michelle climbed to her feet, her innards now in
non-alcohol-related turmoil.

'You're a cool customer,' Jarry said. T'd sure want you
in my corner if I was hiding out.'

A couple of the other clowns looked over, curious.




117

'We're missing a member of staff, guys. But don't sweat
it.' He looked at her name badge. 'Michelle here is gonna
help me clear this up, aren't you?'

She said nothing, just concentrated on not falling over,
all of her bones threatening to turn into the same gooey
mush that was churning in her guts.

Jarry followed her through the security door and told
her to head for the entrance to the mezzanine. 'lonesco
swept down here and, let's face it, there's not a lot of hidey
holes. Your upstairs offices don't open on a Saturday, but
I guess somebody had a key, huh? Who are we lookin' for?'

They both stopped at the door.

'Financial Services Advisor,' she mumbled.

'Oh that's good to know. Maybe he or she can help me
out with how to spend what's in the safe. But actually, I
was looking for a name. Look, you're not betraying
anybody. You did a pretty good job of covering up for this
long.'

Betrayal couldn't be said to be the primary source of
Michelle's reticence. It was a little more to do with being
content to have remained out of Grant's sight for the duration
of events so far; to say nothing of her continuing
embarrassment rendering her almost incapable of speaking
his name. Almost. It's amazing what the sight of a machine
gun can do for your sense of priorities.

'Grant Kelly/ she whispered, the words threatening to break up in her throat.

'You guys close or something?' Jarry asked, noting the
emotion in her voice. Michelle felt her face flush once more.
'Actually, that's none of my business/ he added, which in
a way was worse than further prying, to which she could
at least offer denials. 'So, what do you figure? He shows
his client to the staff bathroom, presumably at the end of

I

his meeting, and then sneaks off upstairs, where, strictly
speaking, he shouldn't be, naughty boy. Why?'

'Better bathroom,' she said with a shrug.

That works. Chagall found an FHM shrink-wrap but no
FHM. And you guys were quarter of an hour from closing,
so why not wait it out where nobody can bother you? I
admire that. You can't say slackers lack initiative.'

Jarry unlocked the door and led her quietly upstairs,
stopping in the corridor.

'Call his name,' he whispered. 'And tell him it's you.'

'Oh God/ she croaked, entirely involuntarily. Jarry
wiggled the machine-gun. Michelle swallowed, took a
breath and then finally spoke, trying forlornly to banish
the image of what she had been doing the last time she
spoke to him. 'Grant, it's Michelle.'

Jarry nodded and gestured with his gun. She took it to
mean 'again'.

'Grant. Can you hear me? It's Michelle. Where are you?'

There was only silence. She looked along the corridor,
where doors lined both walls, mostly ajar and some wide
open.

'Mr Kelly,' Jarry called, loud and stern. 'I know you can
hear me and I know you can hear Michelle. You have ten
seconds to give yourself up or I'm gonna splatter her
fucking brains all over this carpet right in front of me.'

Michelle turned around to look at Jarry in sheer horror.
He shook his head and waved a hand dismissively, but
began counting aloud. When he reached five he pulled a
lever on the edge of his weapon. It made a noisy ratcheting
sound that bounced threateningly off the corridor's
walls.

'Four, three, oh and after Michelle here, please bear in
mind who I'm most likely to kill next.'




118

119

At this, the words 'Okay, I'm in here,' issued hurriedly
from the doorway of Bob McEwan's office, from which a
hand tentatively waved.

'Stay right there/ Jarry ordered him, indicating to
Michelle to head to the doorway first.

She'd rather have been facing more gunmen. Grant,
however, was standing there looking like last night was a
long, long way from his mind. He was physically shaking,
his pallor deathly pale and his eyes filling up. Not having
witnessed the ongoing cabaret downstairs, he had nothing
but a terrified imagination for company.

Or so she thought. Jarry spotted differently.

'Would that be a cellular in your pocket or are you just
pleased to see Michelle?'

'Oh God,' she and Grant said at the same time, for very
different reasons. Grant surrendered the mobile in response
to Jarry's gesticulation.

Take a seat,' Jarry told him, then nodded to Michelle,
too. They backed into the regional assistant manager's
office, from where she could see the front of the banking
hall. The Raft of the Medusa was now being attacked by
The Lady of Shallot, whose coracle was packing a cannon
not normally seen in reproductions.

'Nice view,' Jarry said. He held up the mobile. 'Who you
been talking to?'

'N-nobody/ Grant spluttered. Michelle tutted and
sighed. It would make last night a whole lot easier if he
could appear just a little masterful and impressive.

'Shit, what a waste,' Jarry said. The? I'd have been on
to the cops in nothin' flat.' He began pressing buttons, his
eyes intent on the phone. 'Course I'd have to keep my voice
down, what with the bank robbers coming and going.
Maybe even send a text message.'

120

Grant said nothing.

'Look, what do you know? 15:56 "Stl ok. gmen stl dstrs.
good 2 go". Good 2 go. Now, whatever could that mean?
And let's see, before that. 15:47 "gman paining on windw. 1 out/sight". 15:39 "stil ok". 15: 29 "stil ok". 15:22. "hstgs
fightng selfs. gmen hittng hstgs now". 15:17 "stil ok". And
all the way back, yadda yadda yadda.'

Jarry's thumb continued to work the keypad as he
scrolled through Grant's messages. 'Quite a little running
commentary you've been filing. Don't think much of your
prose style, by the way, but shit, you're under pressure.
Woah.'

He stopped pressing and stared hard at Grant, anger
visible in his eyes, even if his painted-on expression still
suggested a more benign countenance.

They're sending someone in,' Grant blurted out. 'Please
don't shoot me. I'll tell you everything I know, everything
I've told them.'

Jarry waved the phone in his hand. There's nothing you
can tell me that I can't read from here. I know they're
sending someone in. But that's not why I'm pissed.'

Grant looked confused, to add to his wretched terror.
Michelle was thinking she ought to be less judgmental, as
she'd been just as pathetically compliant a few minutes ago
when she feared she'd been the one to bring down the
wrath of an armed robber upon herself. Poor bastard. What
he'd done had taken a lot of bottle.

'11:48 "Donny old bean! What a nite. Michelle J gave me
a gobble. Details later".'

Jarry glanced again at Michelle's badge to check her
surname, but the look of mortification on her face made it
unnecessary; nor would he need to ask whether it was true.

'You complete prick,' she screeched.




121

Grant bowed his head, colour rapidly returning to his
cheeks, mainly red.

'Who's Donny?' Jarry asked.

'My mate,' mumbled Grant, unable to look at either of
them.

'This isn't the kind of detail gentlemen should really
confide, in their mates or indeed anyone else. Is Donny's
number on here? Oh yes, here we are.'

Jarry began thumbing the keypad again, keeping a finger
of his other hand over the trigger-guard of his gun.

I'm sorry, I'm sooo sorry/ Grant said, sounding like he
might be about to burst into tears.

'Bit late for that,' Jarry said. 'But reparations can still be
made. Here we go. "Donny old bean! Bet that had you
going. Michelle J? In my dreams. G".'

Jarry pocketed the phone and gripped the weapon with
both hands, stepping forward and sticking the muzzle right
under Grant's chin. 'Now, here's the deal. You learn to keep
a lady's secrets secret, and nobody has to find out about
you jerkin' off to magazines in the upstairs bathroom. Cool?'

Grant's eyes bulged again as he wondered whether
anything of his own was secret any more. Michelle might
have felt sorry for him if she didn't at that moment hate
him with every hungover molecule in her body.

He nodded, as much as the gun-barrel allowed. 'Yeah,
yeah. Absolutely. Whatever you say.'

'Good. Now if you don't mind, it seems I've got visitors
to prepare for, so let's get your asses back downstairs.'

Jarry nudged Grant to take the lead, giving him a dig in
the back with the machine-gun. It was as though he'd been
jabbed with a cattle-prod, yelping and shuddering at the
sudden touch of metal.

Suffer ya bastard, Michelle thought.

122

It wasn't Stockholm Syndrome that was making her feel
closer to the gunman than to her fellow hostage. Only one
of them had treated her like a lady. Admittedly there could
be some jaw-dropping personal hang-up behind it, or some
psychotic rage that might be triggered by the wrong confluence
of events, but right then it didn't seem very likely.
That said, neither was she likely to start fantasising about
the man behind the mask. She'd had her act of sexual
desperation for this year, thank you, and by the least
probable combination of events, it looked like she was ultimately
going to get away with it.

They returned to the downstairs admin area, where
lonesco was staring with consternation at a computer
monitor. Jarry looked at his watch.

'How's it going?' he asked.

'Slowly,' said lonesco.

'Slowly but surely?'

'Surely as day becomes night, but I couldn't say what's
gonna happen first.'

'What's up?'

'It's this fucking 256-bit encryption.'

'But I thought you tested the compiler on 256bit.'

'The compiler's fine. Trouble is I wrote it and tested it
on a 2.2 G Athlon.'

'And these are?'

'Fastest CPU in here is a Celeron 400.'

'Fuck. So ... prognosis?'

'I've tweaked the set-up as much as I can . . . stripped
down the OS to bare bones. It's making a difference, but I
still can't say how long. There's nothing else I can do but
wait.'

'No point in you sitting here, then. Come on, I'm gonna
need you out front.'




123

'You got it.'

The four of them walked out into the banking hall, where
the other clowns immediately looked to Jarry for an update,
lonesco fitted Grant with the standard plastic restraint and
told him to take a seat on the floor. Michelle, meanwhile,
walked around the group to take a spot as far from Grant
as space allowed.

'Gentlemen, we've got a few issues to deal with,' Jarry
announced. 'First of all, we've got a visitor coming. Cops
are sending someone in to plant a few bugs. Bless 'em,
they've gotta try. We've got a few minutes, though. I've
told them to hold off for now.'

'You've told 'em?' asked Dali.

'I'll explain later. Mr Chagall, if you're all out of canvas
space, I think you'd better get busy warming up Plan B.'

'Aw shit,' Dali said.

'Bollocks,' agreed Athena, adding further unnecessary
confirmation that he was about as American as Mom's
sausage supper.

'It's just as a back-up. Mr Athena, I need your particular
talents upstairs. Dali and lonesco, the hostages are in your
charge.'

'You got it.'

'Cool.'

Plan B, Michelle thought. No matter what reassurances
Jarry was offering his comrades, there was no question
their operation was running into trouble. This was precisely
the kind of development she knew to fear most, but instead
a calm detachment was beginning to envelope her. Her
hangover had substantially subsided since Jarry sent that
text message, which made her wonder just what processes
of transference had been going on in her head up until
then. Despite the guns, the siege and the insanity, Jarry and

124

his men were not the thing she'd been most afraid of. That
having been lifted, she felt confident she could deal with
everything else.

It was undoubtedly six degrees of inappropriate to feel
gratitude towards a gun-wielding thief, but she wanted to
express it nonetheless; and besides, it wouldn't hurt to
remind Grant who she had in her corner.

'Mr Jarry,' she called as he was about to disappear
through the security door. He stopped and walked over,
crouching down beside her.

'I just wanted to say . . . thanks. I don't get it, though.
I don't get it at all, but . . . thanks.'

'Hey. Just because I'm a bank robber doesn't mean I'm
the bad guy.'

And with that he walked away.




125

when it all goes wrong again

'Al clr." gmen chckd u/strs - bck dn now. gmen wStng 4
smthng? gd 2 go'.

A curse on text messages, Angelique thought. She hadn't
seen so many heartless crimes against the English language
since she'd worked a paedophile sting and had to spend
hideous hours in internet relay chatrooms, longing for the
sight of a vowel, gmen wStng 4 smthng. Thanks for the scoop.

She was walking briskly through the Princes Square
mall, accompanied by two of the ARU numpties, the very
sight of their group scattering shoppers from their path.
The most depressing aspect was that she was the one
drawing most of the looks, and not just because she was
female. All three of them were wearing Kevlar around the
chest, but only one of them was sporting light blue phat
pants below the waist, or headgear that made her look like
a recently assimilated Borg. Well, at least it distinguished
her from the Double-Y chromosome escort, kidding themselves
they had a protective role when they were about to
simply wave her off and wish her good luck for when she
went in on her jack.

Even worse than the physical accompaniment was that
she had McMaster's disembodied voice in her ear. Now
she knew how a schizophrenic must feel, though in the
schizophrenic's case at least the voices might seem to make
sense now and then, if only at the time. The thought that

126

he could see what she was looking at and hear what she
was hearing was truly uncomfortable. It was one remove
from knowing what she was thinking, and just as well that
he couldn't, as it would have been less than reassuring.
For one thing, she remained suspicious to the point of paranoia
about why she had been brought in on this farce, with
the most plausible explanation being that she would make
a handy scapegoat if it all fucked up and a civilian got
shot. 'Ah yes, DI de Xavia, past record of reckless and
impetuous conduct. Tendency to go it alone outwith the
chain of command.' Blame it on one gung-ho cop rather
than tactical mismanagement.

Arguably even more disturbing for a telepathic eaves.
dropper was her current lack of confidence in her
abilities, and greater lack of conviction about implementing
them. Not only was she pondering how this morning's lacklustre
performance at the dojo didn't constitute ideal preparation
for the task ahead, but she was also finding it difficult
to focus on the imminent reality of it. Normally at this point
she'd be well in the zone, but despite being mere minutes
from harm's way, she found her eye (and therefore her
camera) distracted by a purple top in the Whistles window,
and by thoughts of what trousers might best go with it.

She was about to mutter 'I'm too old for this shit,' when
she remembered that the listening audience was greater
than the usual quorate.

With the assistance of a security guard, they made their
way on to the roof of the shopping complex, from where
Angelique had to abseil two storeys to reach the bank. She
pulled on her harness then had a look over the edge while
her escorts assembled the pulley and found something
sturdy enough to attach it to.
The hatch was not only visible, but still open, presumably




127

for rapid access if the police were daft enough to send
another ARU out front. Even with forewarning, they
wouldn't have much to aim at if the bad guys were firing
from an elevated position, and if the cops wanted to get
nasty, it might not be skin irritant that came raining down
on them next time. The thought was enough to belatedly
bring Angelique some of the sharp focus she'd been
missing thus far. A pump-action grenade launcher, such as
a SPAS or a LAW, would be more normally employed in
its principal fire mode, which was as a fully automatic
shotgun. The pump was only required for projectiles that
weren't gas-ejected. When it came to regular shells, those
babies could take eleven in the breach and one in the pipe,
and blast out all twelve in a matter of seconds. Angelique
knew what a shotgun blow to her Kevlar-protected chest
felt like, and that was just the best-case scenario.

The ARU goons finished setting up the rig and took positions
overlooking the bank's roof, levelling their HKs at
the hatch. Angelique resisted asking what the hell they
were going to shoot, other than her. Oh well, whatever
made them feel useful.

She made another check with the phone upon
McMaster's aural prompting, hitting the shortcode to send
a prepared message: 'Going in now. Still clear?'

Thirty seconds, maybe a minute passed, enough to
worry/hope the bloke had been rumbled, before the phone
vibrated silently in Angelique's hand.

Gmen stil w8tng. Good 2 go.

She tucked it into a pocket in her trousers and clipped
herself on to the cord.

'You bastards seriously owe me,' she said for McMaster's
benefit, then kicked off down the wall.

She landed softly, bending her knees to absorb the

128

impact, then swiftly unclipped the harness and stalked
towards the hatch, gun drawn. From a crouching position
she could see one wall of the room beneath, shelved
untidily with stationery supplies. It was a storeroom, the
suits understandably not wanting tackety boots on their
desks any time workmen needed access to the roof. She
crouched close to the gap, not yet peering directly in,
listening for the sound of movement. A breath of wind
carried the chatter of the crowd from below, and if she
looked up she could see all the way to Central Station,
taxis queuing outside, pedestrians swarming up and down
Renfield Street. The rest of the world had a coldly blithe
way of just getting on with itself at times like this, oblivious
of the drama and danger unfolding mere streets away.

There was an air vent less than a foot from the hatch.
Angelique tested its temperature and then hooked one knee
around it, pulling her calf tight to her thigh. Gripping the
Walther in both hands, she took a breath and swung herself
forward into the gap, tensing her stomach muscles to pull
her head almost level with the ceiling inside. She scanned
as wide an arc as her balance allowed, then relaxed her
stomach and leaned further forward, checking behind by
dangling upside down. There was no-one to be seen, just
more shelves, cupboards and spare office furniture: desks
and chairs either still in bubble wrap or at the other end of
their service life. The bad news was that the ladder was out
of reach, resting against a wall five or six feet away, so she
had no option but to 'dreep', as the technique was known
locally.

She needed two hands for this, so she had to tuck the
gun into her waistband. This was not something she
normally regarded as advisable, but in the case of a P990
it was okay to make an exception. The Walthers had three




129

separate safety mechanisms including the catch, so it was
nigh impossible for the things to go off by accident; to
actually fire them you all but needed to sign a disclaimer.
Angelique climbed into the hatch and lowered herself
nimbly and silently until her arms were at full stretch. This
done, her feet were still a metre from the floor, which wasn't
a long way to fall, but was liable to make a bit of a thump.

There was a desk a few feet to her left, so she manoeuvred

»

herself around ninety degrees and began swinging back and
forth to build up sufficient momentum to reach it. On the
fourth swing, she let go and leapt forward, landing off
balance but upright on the hardwood, much of the impact
absorbed by the frame.

Upon her feet hitting the desk, Angelique had to quickly
compensate for her rear-leaning stance, lest she topple backward
with a louder (and more painful) thump than the one
she'd been trying to avoid. She managed this via that classically
elegant technique (though not to her knowledge
pioneered by Nadia Comaneci) of bending forward while
flapping her arms like a particularly uncoordinated fledgling
heron. This did achieve the desired result, but with the
practical drawback of her hands being uselessly extended
either side of her when two clown-faced bank robbers
stepped from the shadows and levelled their full-autos.

Tuck.'

The taller of the two delicately plucked the P990 from
her waistband and placed it in his own, while McMaster
uselessly muttered, 'Oh Jesus' in her ear.

'Headset too, please, and the bag/ the taller clown
added, his American accent confirming the accounts of the
released hostages.

'Be my guest,' she told him, handing over the headset
first with no regrets.

130

These things expensive?' he asked, dangling the gadget
in his hand as Angelique lowered the padded bag on to
the desktop.

'I forgot to look at the receipt.'

'Well, my apologies to the taxpayer in any case,' he told
her, before dropping the rig to the floor and crushing it
under his heel. He then took hold of the bag by the strap
and stepped away.

'Mr Athena, if you wouldn't mind furnishing our guest
with the standard party tags?'

Angelique climbed slowly down from the desk to face
'Mr Athena', whose eyes were burning with an unchecked
animosity that his latex expression failed to hide.

'Turn round,' he ordered gruffly, filling the complementary
'bad robber' role with a passion she suspected
owed little to the Stanislavsky Method. Confirmation of
this came after she obeyed, when he struck her in the back
of the neck with his rifle-butt, shouting, 'On your fuckin'
knees, bitch.' Anger betrayed his albeit pitiful pretence of
an American accent. This was 100 percent pure Glaswegian
bampot, proven by his instinctive resort to violence at the
very sight of a police officer.

The blow was more surprising than powerful, and
Angelique dropped to her knees out of deliberate
compliance rather than the force of its impact. He then
pushed her, roughly, into a prostrate position and knelt
on her back, tying her hands with a white plastic
restraint. That done he gripped her painfully by the nose,
still kneeling on her spine, and pulled her head up by
the pony-tail so that her ear was closer to his mouth.
Before he could speak, however, his companion loudly
cleared his throat.

'Mr Athena, just a small question .. . Ehm, what the fuck




131

are you doing?' He spoke calmly and softly, as though it
was a casual inquiry.

'I'm just makin' sure this pig knows the score/ Athena
said, growling it into her ear.

'I'd  imagine the police officer, if indeed that's who you're
referring to, has firmly appraised the current situation vis
a vis us having all the guns. They're trained to be observant,
you know.'

That's not all they're trained for, IS IT?' Athena replied,
pulling harder on Angelique's nostrils. 'See, you forget how
it works, Mr Jarry. If you give these cunts a glimpse . . .'

'Well let me put my argument another way. You take
your hands off the lady or I shoot you where you stand.
You die and the rest of us get a bigger share of the money.
How does that work for you?'

Athena got off Angelique's back but kept hold of her
nose, pulling her up to a kneeling position. 'You don't have
the balls,' he said. 'And it would mess up your clever
masterplan.'

'Mr Athena, I'd call you an asshole if it wasn't that an
asshole is something I can't do without. You on the other
hand . . .'

Athena eyed the weapon levelled at him and finally let
go of Angelique's nose, but only so that he could take hold
of his own machine-gun in both hands and point it at Jarry
the second his guard dropped. Angelique didn't recognise
the models, but they looked state of the art. In any case,
from that range, an eighteenth-century duelling pistol
would be adequate.

She fought the urge to close her eyes. All it would take
was Jarry to grab his weapon again and the storeroom
would be turned into a giant Moulinex. Jarry, however,
remained impassive.

132

'Mr Athena, we're in the process of stealing a large sum
of money. Could you try to stay focused. Once we've got
the cash, you can pay a shrink and work on your ego problems that way.'

'Take your hands off the gun,' Athena commanded.

Jarry obeyed with a sigh, letting it hang from the
shoulder strap. To her considerable surprise, Jarry then
looked away from Athena and down at Angelique, still as
calm as though it was a bunch of flowers being pointed at
his chest. 'My apologies, officer. It's a teamster thing. Every
bank robbery crew must employ one psychotic shithead.
You don't mess with the unions.'

'Yeah, I'm a psychotic shithead and you're the genius.
But how about I blow you away, blame it on the pig, kill
her, and then I get a bigger share of the money? Never
thought of that, did you, prick?'

Jarry addressed his fellow robber once again, the small
note of exasperation in his voice like that of a patient but
weary father. 'Dude, I thought I'd made this pretty clear,
but let me outline it one more time. This is my show, and
you are still one entire brain short of being able to fuck
with me. So how about you put the gun down and let's
get on with what we came here to do.'

Athena looked from Jarry, to the weapon in his hands,
to Angelique and then back at his adversary. 'Actually, I
prefer my plan/ he said, and pulled the trigger.

Angelique dived forward on to her face, turning her
shoulder to cushion her impact. Above her, Athena stood
holding his machine-gun, staring with uncomprehending
eyes at the flag that had appeared from the barrel when
he'd attempted to fire it. It said, in bright red capitals and
blue lowercase:




133

A

Trigger

Happy

Empty-headed

No-brain

Asswipe

'What the fuck is this?' he asked incredulously.

'Proof that you're predictable as well as everything else
the flag says.'

'I checked and loaded this gun myself.'

'You checked and loaded a gun, but not that one. And
now, thanks to you, the police officer is in on a little secret.'

'Are any of the guns real?' Angelique asked him.

'Yeah, this one,' he replied, taking the P990 from his
waistband. 'So the situation is as you were. Mr Athena,
fortunately for you, I'm a forgiving kind of guy, so if you
get your ass back downstairs and be a good little shithead
for the rest of the day, nobody else needs to know what
just happened here.'

'And just what does everybody else know?' he asked,
pushing the spring-loaded flag back down the muzzle of
his gun.

'What do you think?'

'Fucking pricks,' he grunted, and made his exit.

'I'll be down in a minute,' Jarry called after him.
'Meantime think of the money.'

'What fuckin' money?'

Jarry waited for Athena to stomp huffily down the
corridor then went over and helped Angelique to her feet.
She thought briefly about kneeing him in the balls, but
with her hands tied behind her back and him holding the
only confirmed functioning firearm, it would have been no

134

more than a foolish and possibly suicidal gesture.

'You have a shotgun somewhere too/ she remembered.

'Oh yeah. No ammo, though. Just those powder bombs.
Have a seat,' he said, gesturing towards a bubble-wrapped
swivel-chair. He leaned against the desk she'd landed on,
rather idly poking about inside the padded bag. 'More
expensive gizmos. I guess you weren't meant to be the
cavalry.'

'Not exactly, no.'

He took a couple of steps closer and looked her up and
down. 'Where's your badge?' he asked. Angelique lifted
one thigh to indicate a velcro-fastened pocket. Jarry flipped
it open and removed her warrant card, examining it carefully.

'Cool name,' he said.

Thanks. Don't suppose you fancy telling me yours?'

'Not today'

Then you have the advantage of me/ she said, instantly
regretting it. Oh yeah, flirt with him Angelique, he'll be
putty in your hands. Idiot.

'Wouldn't that be my lucky day/ he said, distractedly
enough for him somehow not to sound like an arse. 'But
right now I'll settle for robbing the bank.'

'Boom boom/ she replied dismissively. 'So what do you
want to talk to me about?'

'Ehm/ he mumbled, as though either suddenly bashful
or improbably forgetful of the otherwise conspicuously
heightened circumstances. 'Oh yeah. Responsibilities, I
guess.'

I guess?

'A bank robber wants to talk to me about responsibilities?'

'Yeah. Where there is power, there has to be responsibility.
Right now, you're the one with power/




135

'That's not what it looks like from where I'm sitting.'

'No. I said right now. I meant. . . We're gonna go downstairs
in a minute, where as you now know we've got
sixteen people being held hostage by unarmed men. As
things stand, those hostages aren't going to get hurt.'

'As long as your pal Athena doesn't start whacking them
again.'

'Again? Oh. You got a text message about that, huh? It
wasn't what it seemed. Well, it was what it seemed, but he
was breaking up a fight between the hostages.'

The hostages were fighting amongst themselves? With
gunmen standing around? Aye, right. You expect me to
swallow that?'

'Well ... I ain't from round here, so you're in a better
position to judge. Some of them were wearing blue and
some of them were wearing green. How's my credibility
hangin' now?'

Angelique sighed. 'Pretty good,' she conceded.

'The point is, the situation is under control, so the people
downstairs are safe right now, and they're your responsibility,
right? Unless you got a lot of stock in the Royal
Scottish/Great Northern Bank.'

'Not last time I checked my portfolio.'

'So the most irresponsible thing you could do would be
to tell those people the guns ain't real, because then we
might have a situation that was out of control. That's when
bad things can happen.'

'Only if you fire the Walther,' she reminded him,
bouncing the moral onus right back.

'If I fire the Walther, but not only if. Your Armed
Response Unit buddies don't have the best reputation for
care and discretion in the heat of the moment. I'm told a
chair leg in a plastic bag is good enough for them to drop

136

you. And it's not just the hostages' lives that are valuable,
as far as I'm concerned.'

'You're very humanitarian for an armed robber.'

'Recently armed. Robber, yes. But I'm not the bad guy.'
There was laughter in his voice, like he didn't expect her
to agree but didn't need her to either.

'Why don't you just leave me up here, then?' she asked,
though she'd have been disappointed in him if he'd been
daft enough to do so.

'Sure, if you'd prefer. But I'd have to keep you in a real
uncomfortable position in case you did something completely
unexpected, like try to escape. These plastic ties:
they're good enough for gunpoint hostages you've got your
eye on, but they don't take much to wear down. I could
always gag you, I guess, but it would be insulting your
professionalism.'

'How so?'

'Because it'd show I didn't trust you to be responsible
like we just discussed.' Again the laughter: gentle, friendly
and distractingly incongruous. 'And I figure the first person
the cops sent in would have to be someone they trusted
not to jeopardise the hostages.'

It was Angelique's turn to laugh, but hers was scornful
to the point of bitter. 'Yeah, that's why they picked me.'

'Huh?'

'Chances are it was more to do with . . . Never mind,'
she said, trying not to contemplate what it suggested about
her current state of mind that she had just come embarrassingly
close to opening her heart to an armed bank
robber in a clown mask. His remarks also reminded her
that she couldn't have it both ways: either they were cynically
using her as a potential scapegoat, or Jarry was right
and it was further confirmation that the bastards knew




137

she had been anything but reckless at Dubh Ardrain.

'More to do with what? Am I not givin' you your due?
They sent you in because you're the number-one bad-ass
or somethin'?'

He was taking the piss. Not derisively, but the bastard
was amused at her, not something Angelique had ever been
particularly tolerant of.

'Haven't you got a bank to rob?'

'Oh,'shit, yeah, that. Let's get downstairs. You can see
what the gmen and hstgs are wStng for.'

Angelique rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. That
explained the two-man welcoming committee; at least it
meant she hadn't given herself away by being too clumsily
noisy. Jarry had been sending the text messages; or at
least the more recent of them.

'Was it you all along? Did you want a police hostage?'

'We found the guy. I could have put you off after that,
but yeah, I figured a cop would be a valuable addition to
our collection below.'

Jarry stepped aside and bowed beside the door, mock
ceremonially inviting her to go first. Angelique sent him a
glare, but she wasn't feeling quite as much animosity as
someone in his profession would ordinarily generate.

'So how's it going?' she asked, getting up from the chair.

'Huh?'

The robbery.'

'Oh. Comme gi comme ga, you know. Hostage handling/
police control aspects all got big ticks against them. Large
scale cash withdrawal part still kind of greyed out.'

'Bummer.'

'Yeah. Computer problems, but we do have a Plan B.
Appreciate your solicitude, by the way.'

'I'm a cop: we care, we can't help ourselves. Feel the love.'

138

'I'm feelin' it. Nine-millimetre love, here in my hand.'

'Forty calibre, actually. There's a lot more outside, too.
Us Brits get nervous when you point guns at civilians. What
do you need all these hostages for anyway?'

'Well, right now they're the only things stopping your
buddies from stormin' in here and makin' us do some of
that Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway breakdance action.'

'You know what I mean. They're your bargaining chips
as well as your human shield. What are your demands?'

'What are you sellin'?'

The? I'm not a negotiator.'

'No point in me demanding anything from you, then, is
there?'

'Give me a break here.'

'Golden rule of bank robbery, Officer de Xavia. Don't
negotiate until you've got the money. What use is a helicopter
ride and safe passage to a non-extradition country
if you're broke?'

'Better than a cell, a trauma theatre or a mortuary.'

'You don't negotiate until you're out of options.'

'I take it you've done this a lot?'

'What do you think?'

'So what options do you have?'

Jarry overtook her in order to open a door at the foot of
the stairs. There seemed a keen politeness to it until she
remembered that with her hands tied behind her back, she
wouldn't have been able to open it for herself anyway.

'Quit diggin',' he said, holding the door open to reveal
the bank's back office. There ain't anything much you can
do now, so why don't you consider yourself off-duty?'

'I was off-duty until you . . . eejits showed up.' She was
about to say clowns, but couldn't bring herself.

'My apologies. If there's anything we can do, you know,




139

short of calling off this little work in progress . . .'

'Don't suppose you happen to know how the Rangers
are getting on?' she replied, figuring that as he wouldn't
even know what 'the Rangers' were, it was as good as a
polite fuck off.

'Just a second,' he said, and reached into his overalls for
a mobile phone. He pressed a few buttons and looked at
the LCD window. 'Sixty-six minutes. Three nil. Arveladze,
two, and an OG. Guntveit. Cool?'

Angelique was flabbergasted. Was this bastard telepathic?
She couldn't see the LCD window herself, so it
was possible he was just making it up, but then how
would he know what names to give, or that Cato Guntveit
was a plausible candidate for blootering it past his own
keeper?

'Is there anything going on here today that you don't have complete control of?'

'Yeah, that,' he said, pointing to a computer monitor
sitting on a nearby desk. There was a progress bar on
display in a window in the centre of the screen, the blue
line having made it less than halfway across.

'What is it?'

The software that's supposed to be opening the safe for
us. We thought, what with being a billion-dollar international
concern and all, that the bank might have a decent
PC for us to run our hacking routine on.'

'How inconsiderate of them.'

'I guess they're just trying to save their customers money.
Banks care.'

'Sounds like having cheap computers might be saving
their customers a lot of money.'

'Hey, I'm the one in the clown mask. I'll do the jokes.
And I'll be laughing last. The software's running slow, but

140

I didn't say it ain't working. And time we got. Let me
illustrate.'

'So what's this Plan B about?'

'Still diggin'?' he asked, leading her to another door.
'You can always gag me/ Angelique reminded him,
though she had no idea why she should be doing so, or
more poignantly why she felt certain he wouldn't.
Something about their entire on-going exchange was just
. . . disarming. Wrong, even; but wrong as in it didn't add
up, not wrong as in bad. It should have been bad. She
should have been seething with resentment and dripping
with contempt, whereas talking to this guy was starting to
feel like the easiest thing she'd done in an otherwise
markedly difficult day. Perhaps it was merely resignation
kicking in: as Jarry had pointed out, the hostages were safe
as long as she did nothing, so maybe this was some wiser,
buried part of her sub-conscious telling her she might as
well kick back, for the time being at least.

Experience told her the sight of sixteen terrified hostages
would rapidly alter that mindset and her attitude to their
captor.

Jarry opened the door and ushered her quietly through
into the rear of the banking hall. The hostages were arrayed
with their backs to her, all of them seated either on chairs
or desks as they faced the front of the building. There were
plastic cups of water dotted liberally about the floor, a
couple of puddles marking spillages. She could see spoof
artworks etched vividly on the painted-out doors and
windows, captions and speech-bubbles supplying punchlines
or merely added irreverence. Standing in front of the
restrained gathering were two gunmen, one of them the
midget mentioned by witnesses. A third, undoubtedly
Athena, was standing off to the side. Despite their identical




141

latex faces and uniform dress, the gang's requisite 'psychotic
shithead' was not difficult to distinguish, as it was impossible
to imagine him engaged in his two colleagues' present
activity. They were talking to each other in a heightened
register, their exchanges too absurd and inconsequential to
be anything other than dialogue, by which much of the
forcibly assembled audience were nonetheless intrigued.

'What do we do now?' the little one asked.

'Wait.'

'But while we're waiting?'

'What about hanging ourselves?'

'Gets my vote/ shouted one of the hostages, prompting
a few giggles.

'We'd get a boner out of it/ resumed the little one, to
greater laughter.

Angelique looked round at Jarry, who was closing the
security door gently, as though to avoid disturbing the
performance. Similarly affected, Angelique spoke to him
in a whisper.

'What the fuck is this?'

'I told you they were waiting.'

'What for?'

'You're a detective, you work it out.'

Angelique watched in silence for a few more disbelieving
moments.

'Am I heavier than you?' the midget asked his strap
pingly built companion.

'You tell me. I dunno. There's an even chance. Kinda.'

'So what do we do?'

'Nothin'. Safer that way.'

'Wise words/ Jarry reminded her.

'Let's wait and see what he says/ suggested the little
one.

142

'Who?'

'Godot/ whispered Angelique in tandem with the
midget, the penny belatedly dropping. 'You absolute arse
hole/ she hissed at Jarry, but was unable to prevent a brief
giggle as she spoke.

Jarry's shoulders were shaking with silent laughter.

'Are you hoping to plead insanity? Have you heard
Carstairs is nicer than the Bar-L?'

Jarry reopened the security door and beckoned her back
inside. A member of the 'audience' turned around at this
point, noticing the movement behind her. She looked briefly
at Angelique, enough to take in the significance of her body
armour and the greater significance of her restraints, then
back at the performance, evidently the larger draw upon
her attention. Having satisfied herself that the intrusion was
not about to precipitate a full-scale rescue, Angelique was
half expecting the woman to say 'shhh!'

Not everybody was watching the show, it had to be said.
There was a group of men squatting on the floor behind
the seated hostages, mostly wearing football colours: some
Rangers, some Celtic. They were talking, but quietly so as
not to disturb the performance. She made out a few words
here and there, beneath the declamations from the 'stage',
enough to suss that their rivalries had been temporarily
put asunder as they discussed the one thing that bonded
and unified them: how much they hated those sheep
shagging bastards from Aberdeen.

Angelique paused in the doorway, reluctant to take her
eyes off the spectacle. Her statement was going to read like
it had been written on Mescaline.

Jarry waited patiently for her, holding the door.

'What does it say under Spike, there?' she asked him.

'Spike?'




143

'Yeah. Saint Seb.'

'Oh, him. "Missed".'

Angelique drew on years of training and hard-learnt
professional discipline in her attempt to keep a straight
face, but failed utterly.

'Yeah, I liked that one too/ he agreed. 'Can't give Chagall
the credit - that was one of the hostages' suggestions.'

'Chagall?'

'Yeah. You ain't seen him yet. He's workin' on Plan B.'

'I can imagine what he looks like. Roughly.'

Jarry leaned against the desk bearing the remarkedly
sluggish PC, and gestured to Angelique to take a seat. She
opted instead for leaning against another desk, not wishing
to concede the psychological advantage of being physically
spoken down to.

'Who are Vladimir and Estragon?' she asked.

'Still diggin'. For the record, lonesco and Dali, respectively.
Dali is the taller of the two. You're familiar with the
play?'

'I know it better in French. They're taking some liberties
with the translation.'

'Oh sure, that'll be why you didn't recognise it straight
off. Excuses, excuses. You speak French?'

'I speak French, Spanish . . / Angelique stopped herself
mid-sentence, some remnant of practical awareness enough
to derail her inexplicably casual train of thought. 'What's
going on here?' she asked. 'I mean, is this all . . .' She
fumbled for words, unsure of even what her questions
should be.

'I guess at this point you're thinkin' it would be easier
to get your head around if we'd cracked open a few skulls
and everybody out there was pissin' their pants.'

'Sounds messy. But you're right: I was off the day my

144

cadet class did Situationist Robbery Counteraction Techniques.
Care to give me a few pointers?'

'You're doin' okay so far. Strictly speaking I wouldn't
say Situationist. Situationism is by definition an end in
itself. What we're doing is merely a means. Though
whether skull-cracking or Situationist, your priority is the
same: hostage safety.'

'I think what's got me off-balance is how much of a
priority it seems to be for you.'

'I told you: I'm not the bad guy.'

'No offence, but given what you're doing here, you're
not quite coming off as the good guy either.'

'You're telling me this isn't a face you can trust?'

Angelique smiled, having decided it was pointless to
resist. In light of the unfolding events, she was feeling
decreasingly motivated to play the police's 'number one
bad ass', as he put it, and guessed it wouldn't make much
of an impact anyway. She was also under the unavoidable
impression that he liked her, and felt strongly drawn to
preserve this status. This was for three reasons, only two
of which - self-preservation and professional expedience could
be classed as rationally justified under the circumstances.
The third was that Jarry was being as solicitous,
respectful and pleasantly attentive as anyone had been to
her for a long time, and she wasn't in any great hurry for
it to stop.

'I'm not the good guy/ he continued, Angelique's smile
encouraging him to open up. 'You're the good guy. Girl.
Woman.'

Thank you.'

'But I do find it practical to be a nice guy. Hostage
psychology. They know you're in control as long as you're
the one pointing the gun, so you don't need to scare the




145

shit out of them the whole time. Those people out there
know we ain't about to let them go if they just ask nicely,
but they ain't worried we're about to blow their brains out
either. So they sit there, doing what they're told, waiting,
patiently.'

Tor Godot.'

'Boredom adds to the stress factor. Nothing else to think
about but fear. Fear leads to desperation. So we help them
pass the time.'

'It would have passed anyway.'

Touche. You do know the play.'

'And what if they decide to stop taking you seriously?'

'Do I look like a guy who wants to be taken seriously?'

'Yes: as long as you're carrying a gun, it doesn't matter
how you're dressed.'

'Correct. But if you mean am I worried about someone
tryin' to be a hero . . . Again, that's why you gotta be nice.
The vigilante impulse rises to the surface because guys feel
threatened and resentful of the power you've got over
them. Minimise the animosity - let them see you're stickin'
it to the bank, not to them. Hey, maybe the bank is stickin'
it to them. Before you know it, they're even rootin' for you.'

'You've done this a lot?'

'What do you think?'

'Not round these parts. We'd have noticed, even the
polis. Can I ask a less stupid question?'

'Still diggin'. Do you need the overtime? If you want,
I'll sign an affidavit confirming that you pestered me for
information throughout the entire duration of your detention,
save us both a lot of trouble.'

Angelique took this as a No, but asked anyway: 'How
are you planning to get out of here?'

'Richer,' he replied.

146

She threw her head back and sighed in exaggerated exasperation.
What was the use? Like the hostages out front,
she ought to just sit back and enjoy the rest of the show.
When you find yourself in a hole, you should know when
to ... ah, shit.

'About this affidavit,' she said.

Jarry clapped his latex-sheathed hands. 'She's learning.'

'I finally sussed why you've been telling me to quit
digging. It wasn't a reference to information, was it?'

Jarry shook his head. 'Friendly advice.'

'I wish you'd been there to offer that advice when I made
the mistake of getting out of bed this morning.'

There followed a pause, brief but long enough for both
of them to uncomfortably contemplate the involuntary
indiscretion of Angelique's last remark.

There are a thousand ways you don't want me to reply
to that, Officer de Xavia, so let me pay you the compliment
of saying, simply and sincerely, that I wish the same
thing.'

Angelique felt her cheeks burn, partly in embarrassment
at those thousand other possible replies, and partly out of
anger at having dropped herself into yet another hole. Jarry
had enough advantages without her gifting him the opportunity
to be patronising and lecherous towards his captive.
The fact that he chose not to take it seemed neither here nor
there. The cumulative emotional impact of the day so far
was suddenly threatening to catch up with her, and for one
extremely horrible moment, she feared she might actually
cry, after which she'd have no option but to hurl herself at
him in the hope that he'd blow her brains out.

Get it together, girl. She proffered another smile by way
of camouflage. 'I'm still digging and I can't help it.'
Jarry saw through it, Angelique's mask not being as




147

substantial as his. He looked at her silently for a second or
so, his blue eyes penetrating and inscrutable as they peered
from behind the latex. Angelique's reflex was to avert her
own gaze, but she fought it, out of a mixture of defiance
and curiosity. Those eyes were all she could see, all she'd
have to identify him if their paths ever crossed again, but
somehow she knew it would be enough.

The seconds stretched, the silence grew, muffled Beckett
dialogue somewhere in the background.

'I get the impression it hasn't been your day so far,' he
said, his voice suddenly softer.

'You got that right/ she said, sniffing back a drop of
liquid that she would affirm and swear in the highest court
in the land to be mucous.

'Who knows, maybe there's still time for it to work out.'

There's a very big deficit to recover, believe me.'

'How big?'

'You mean besides getting yanked into work on my day
off, to go abseiling into a besieged bank, being taken prisoner
by Situationist bank robbers, getting pistol-whipped
by your union-statutory psycho and having the piss taken
by a smart-arse in a clown mask armed with the police
issue handgun I brought here?'

'Yeah,' he said, laughing. That's penny-ante stuff. What
else you got?'

You asked for it.

'I turned thirty today.'

'Shit. Now that's gotta hurt.'

'Still think it could all work out?'

'Anything's possible/ He took hold of his mobile again
and thumbed some keys. 'At least your team's doin' their
part. Four nil. Hughes, ninetieth minute. There you go,
things are lookin' up already/

148

'I'm supposed to be going to my parents' house for
dinner.'

'Okay, I'm starting to see what you mean about a deficit.
On the plus side, you could still be a hostage at that point.'

'Is that a promise?'

Before Jarry could answer, they were interrupted by the
emergence of another clown from a security door at the rear
of the admin area, next to the staff toilets. By a process of
elimination, Angelique deduced that this was the one Jarry
had referred to as Chagall, who was 'working on Plan B'.

'Mr J,' he said, his voice naturally booming but slightly
breathless, as though he had been running upstairs.

'Mr Chagall. Meet Officer de Xavia, who's dropped in
for a while. It's her birthday, you know.'

'Hi there,' he said uncertainly. 'And happy birthday/

Angelique sent Jarry an admonitory glare, but he was
looking at Chagall.

'Are we ready to rumble?'

'Well, yes and no,' Chagall said anxiously.

'Huh?'

'I mean, we're definitely gonna rumble, but I ain't sure
we're ready. You better take a look/

'Shit/

Jarry hopped off the desk and nodded for Angelique to
do likewise. 'Where I go, you go,' he told her.

They followed Chagall hurriedly through the door and
downstairs into a basement corridor, at the near end of which
loomed the entrance to the safe. The glinting steel door
looked like the portal to an air-lock: it was cylindrical, jutting
out from the frame like a blister, hung on two enormous
four-pronged hinges that tapered almost organically into the
front panel. The safe was opened using a huge circular dial
that looked as though it ought to be servo-assisted, and in
149
the grip bisecting the dial's centre was a keypad with a
numerical LED display, currently reading nine zeros.

lonesco's electronic safe-cracking having become bogged
down by a superannuated CPU, Chagall had been busy
working on a more traditional method. There was plastic
explosive - a lot of plastic explosive - moulded around each
of the hinges, and an even larger third charge had been
shaped, like a crescent moon, around the other half of the
outer circumference. A network of wires connected the
three moulds, traversing the door from the topmost hinge
like a spare pleat from Rapunzel's tower.

Angelique was no expert, but it looked a highly professional
arrangement, and she had little doubt it would be
enough to take the door off of the safe. What seemed less
certain was whether the building would still be standing
afterwards.

'Looks good to me/ Jarry observed calmly. 'What's the
problem?'

Chagall nodded towards a gadget on the floor, into
which all of the wires ultimately led. Like the dial on the
door, it bore a numerical LED display. Unlike the dial on
the door, its numbers were changing; as in counting down
in minutes, seconds and blurred decimals thereof. There
were less than eight minutes remaining.

"The timer's on a ten-minute default setting,' Chagall said.

'I know,' Jarry replied, impatience creeping into his tone.
Everyone present could guess what was coming, but they
all still needed Chagall to hurry up and admit it before
they could move on.

'So when I pressed the reset to clear it, it started counting
down instead.'

'You pressed the wrong button? But there's a "confirm"
option when you--'

150

'No,' Chagall interrupted. 'I'm telling you I pressed the
reset button and the fucking thing over-rode me and started
the timer.'

'But we're not ready. We're still waiting for ... Jesus
Christ, man, what the fuck?' Jarry's air of unflappable calm
was evaporating rapidly. 'How could it over-- I mean, how
many times have you run-tested these things?'

'A thousand.'

'I've seen you run-test these things.'

'That's the point. I did what I've always done, but it's
malfunctioned. I dunno, probably got damp in the circuits
from all the fucking rain in this goddamn city.'

Jarry sighed restlessly, the tension visibly starting to exercise
his limbs. 'Should have used a remote,' he said, almost
under his breath.

'We went over this. There's too much stone. Banks back
home are all rebar and gypsum. This place is like a
goddamn cathedral. That's the only reason we could even
attempt to blow a safe like this. This much charge would
level most places.'

'How do you know it won't level this one?' Angelique
felt compelled to inquire.

'Can't you defuse it? Just disconnect the fucking thing?'
Jarry asked, both of them ignoring Angelique's question.

'Best I can do is try and run a bypass with an auxiliary
circuit.'

'What will that do?'

'Given that the box is already malfunctioning, I can't
honestly say. Theoretically it'll take the timer out of the
loop, but it's also possible it'll just trigger the charges.'

Jarry grunted in frustration, anger rippling through him.
It appeared to have passed, but then he grabbed his fake
machine-gun with both hands and battered it off the wall.




151

'All that planning, all that waiting, rehearsing. We're this
close and it all comes down because of one fucking short
circuit.'

'I'm sorry, man. But we have to decide what we're gonna
do.'

'I need a second here,' Jarry said defensively, turning
away from the two of them. 'I gotta think.'

Angelique looked again at the timer, now reading less
than six minutes.

'You don't have a second,' she told him. 'You've got
sixteen civilian hostages upstairs, and frankly I'm less
convinced of how this building's liable to cope with what
you've got wired-up down here.'

Jarry put a hand on the wall as though he needed support
to stand up. He looked at Angelique but said nothing. His
eyes were filled with understandable anxiety and less
affordable indecision.

Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure the auxiliary circuit
should be okay,' Chagall said, less than convincingly. 'I'll
give it a shot.'

'No!' Angelique demanded, stepping between Chagall
and the timer. 'The circuit's screwed up.' She was trying not
to shout but was unable to keep the anger from her voice.
'You can't chance it, you could bring the whole place down.'

Jarry pulled the P990 from his waistband and pointed it
at Angelique to ward her away.

'You didn't risk anyone's lives before, why start now?'
she pleaded. 'You're not the bad guy, remember?'

Jarry looked at her, then at the safe, at Chagall and finally
back at Angelique.

'You're right,' he said, lifting a pair of pliers from among
Chagall's tools. Turn around.'

Angelique complied. Jarry kept hold of the gun in his

152

left hand and snapped off the plastic fastener with his right.
Thanks,' she told him, relief enhancing her sincerity.
'You're doing the right thing.'

'Come on/ he said, putting a hand on her forearm and
leading her back up the stairs. 'Dunno what you're
thanking me for - you're gonna make dinner at Mom's
now.'

'Yeah, but at least I'll be alive to eat it.'

Jarry stopped before the security door that led to the
main banking hall, holding up the Walther in his right
hand. He ejected the magazine into his left and handed
Angelique the empty weapon.

'Happy birthday.'

'You shouldn't have.'

'You got that right. Okay, now when we go through that
door, I'm gonna call off the dogs and you're gonna lead
out the hostages. Dali'll open the doors for you, I'll make
sure of that. You just make sure nobody gets shot, okay?'

'Consider it done/ she said, reaching into a pocket for
the mobile McMaster gave her. 'What about you?'

'Once the hostages are clear, I'll give Chagall the okay
to run the bypass. If it works, then we'll have ourselves a
little leverage again. No hostages, but we'll still have a
bomb.'

'And if it doesn't work?'

'Let's not think about that right now, huh?'

'Fair enough.'

He reached for the doorhandle.

'Jarry?' Angelique said.

Jarry paused and turned around. 'Yeah?'

Take care of yourself.'

'You too, Officer de Xavia.'




153

1

exit strategies (i)

Andy was thinking about calling it a day. Darkness had
fallen and the cold was starting to take its toll on his chords,
but more significantly, the crowds had been noticeably
dwindling due to the lateness of the hour and the ongoing
lack of spectacle. Since that woman with the pony-tail had
abseiled from the roof next door and disappeared into the
bank, there had been a whole lot of nothing to look at, the
front of a building being no more interesting than usual,
even if you knew there were armed robbers inside.
Nonetheless, this being Glasgow, there had been a steady
procession of shoppers gathering behind the cordons just
to verify for themselves that there was, as the police liked
to put it, 'nothing to see here', and Andy had done very
well out of the passing trade.

Even the cops - well, one of the cops - had flashed him
a smile when he gave voice to Neil Young's plea for deliverance
from 'the powder and the finger', though most of
them were looking less than impressed with the same
artist's reminder that there was 'still crime in the city'.

He had just closed the clasps on his guitar-case when
the cops all burst into life simultaneously, as though they'd
suddenly had their batteries changed. Radios were held to
ears, arms were pointed, heads were turned and a sense
of near-panicked urgency was palpable. Naturally, all of
this ultimately manifested itself in shouting at the public
and telling them to back off. Unlike before, the public were

enthusiastically cooperative this time, the use of the word
'bomb' proving far more efficacious than the earlier
'please'.

Andy looked back at the bank as he retreated. The double
doors had opened and he could see the cop with the ponytail
leading people down the stairs, all of them moving
with as much haste as their tied hands would allow. They
were met by cops who escorted them away from the
building at speed, putting arms around their shoulders to
assist their balance as they ran.

The polis forcing the crowd back stopped at the corner
of West Nile Street, but few onlookers seemed inclined to
stay anyway, Andy among them. Armed sieges were one
thing, but exploding buildings, like motor racing, were a
spectacle best witnessed on television. You got the benefit
of replays, multiple camera angles, running commentary
and, most importantly, a far, far reduced risk of being
disembowelled by airborne blazing debris.

He decided to head for Buchanan Street Underground
Station, which was the other side of West Regent Street
from where the cops had closed the pedestrian precinct.
The place would be teeming with huns on their way back
from the game, but as he needed the line heading towards
Ibrox, his platform would be comparatively quiet.

All in all, it had turned out to be an unexpectedly
successful day, almost making up the deficit inflicted by
the Reverend Mumbles over recent weeks. The only downside
had been when a woman he vaguely recognised
reached out and threatened to help herself to some of his
takings as 'a refund'. As she rather heatedly explained, she
had asked him several weeks back where she could find a
recording of a tuneful little number he'd been singing about
a broken relationship, having found the song personally




154

155

poignant and even a little touching. It subsequently transpired
that she had been disappointed, to say the least, to
discover that in Blink-182's original version of What Went
Wrong, Tom deLonge was not mourning the fact that his
ex had mucked up his life; and she didn't go a bundle on
the one about shagging household pets, either.

156

exit strategies (ii)



McMaster was in his element, able to do some quality
ordering about now that the tables had been turned and
the bank robbers were no longer richly taking the piss out
of him in front of dozens of polis and hundreds of civilians.
Not even the hostages were being spared the ostentatious
'I'm in charge' performance, as he ordered them to be
detained en masse in a recently commandeered bar in
Mitchell Lane, off Buchanan Street.

Angelique's plea to cut them some slack after their ordeal
was met with a full payload of dick-compensating authority.

They're no longer hostages, DI de Xavia, they're now
witnesses, and I want them held until they've all been
logged and accounted for.'

Angelique reckoned if he got any more puffed-up, he'd
be in serious danger of actually filling that coat. His smugness
would have grated her nerves at the best of times, but
standing there, still slightly breathless from escaping the
besieged - and imminently exploding - bank, she was
finding it particularly difficult to take.

'I'm leaving no loose ends,' he told her. 'These guys are
going down. If you pull a stunt like this on my patch, then
you pay the piper.'

Yeah, right. His patch. His collar. She didn't remember
McMaster climbing into any buildings or facing down any
gunmen, and the implication that the end of the siege was
down to anything he had done was frankly embarrassing.

157

Up until the timer malfunction, Jarry had cut McMaster
out of the entire equation.

She looked at her watch. There were less than three
minutes left, unless Chagall got a result. She had only been
out of the bank a matter of moments but it already felt a
world away; and explosives aside, right then it seemed a
preferable world to the one she'd escaped to. The company
was better, for a start. There had been something about
Jarry a'nd his orchestrated insanity that at least challenged
her expectations, which was a lot more than could be said
for what the boys in blue had offered her lately. She'd even
have to admit that part of her had been disappointed in
the collapse of Jarry's scheme, if only because she'd never
get to know how he had planned to escape. And while
she could hardly condone Jarry's actions, it nonetheless
stuck in her craw to hear McMaster talk about 'taking him
down'. It was like some colonial smout in a pith-helmet
shooting a snared lion. Head to head, it had been a no
contest until dumb luck intervened. Given Jarry's ingenuity,
adaptability and resourcefulness, it seemed an ironic
and undeserving fate that he should be collared by such
a by-the-numbers dunderheid. He had anticipated so many
pitfalls and improvised contingencies against other unforeseen
developments, such as Angelique's own incursion, it
was incredible that he should be brought down by something
so trivial as a damp circuit.

Utterly incredible.

'Bastard.'

'What?' asked McMaster, outraged and misinterpreting.

The guy had the balls to mount a major robbery with
fake guns, so what would he be doing with real explosives?

'It's a decoy/ she said. The fucking charges are fake,
same as the guns. This is how he gets away, sneaky bastard.

We all run away from the building and he fucks off.'

'You're right: why would they be messing about with
computers and hostages if they could just blow the door
off the safe?'

Angelique drew the Walther. 'Somebody give me
another clip for this. I'm going back in.'

'You're going nowhere, de Xavia, and neither are they.
I've deployed armed units at all possible escape routes.
Did you not think I'd anticipated this? They won't be
sneaking out of any back doors or fire escapes, believe me.
Clown masks and itching powder, eh? Well we're about to
see who gets the last laugh.'

Which was when the explosives went off.

The sound was loud but slightly muffled; contained
might even be the word. There was no flying debris and
the ground didn't shake any more noticeably than whenever
an underground train passed beneath the street.
Angelique's first thought was to concede that they had
been right about what the grand old building could withstand.
Her second, upon looking at her watch and seeing
that there should still have been almost a minute to go,
was to hope Jarry was all right. Chagall, rather - he had
been the one planning to tamper with the circuits. All of
them, in fact. She hoped all of them were all right.

McMaster stepped out from behind the cordon and
summoned a group of four armed officers towards him.
Time to mop up/ he said.

'Can I come too, sir, or do I only go in when the bad
guys are packin' heat?'

'Don't be huffy, de Xavia. You are required, yes, and I
want you to bring the duty manager. We'll need him to
reset the systems.'

The ARU went in first, in standard two-by-two cover




158

159

formation, Angelique shaking her head at the sight.
McMaster looked disapprovingly at her.

'They're unarmed, sir, remember? Their guns were fake.'

'The guns were fake?' asked the duty manager, a drink
of water in a suit by the name of Thomas Peat.

'You saw one gun that was a fake/ McMaster chided.
The rest we don't know about.'

'I figure the one Jarry was smashing off the wall won't
be up to much now, either.'

'Then you've got nothing to worry about.'

Having made their storming entrance into the building,
the ARU then had to wait for Peat to open the security
door so that they could access the staff-only areas. It was
like seeing Rambo at a bus-stop. Once inside, they split
into two groups to scour the premises, one heading upstairs
to the office suite, the other more cautiously approaching
the vaults below. Ignoring McMaster's orders to wait,
Angelique followed the pair bound for the basement, impatiently
brushing past them on the stairs as they persisted
with their slow, silent stalk.

'Jarry?' she called. 'Chagall?'

The lighting in the lower corridor had failed, and visibility
was further hampered by the smoke and dust that
was hanging in the air. However, there was enough light
from the stairwell to reveal not only that the safe was still
intact, but that so were the explosives attached to it.
Angelique stood staring at it in bafflement as the two armed
officers ventured slowly past her, torchbeams barely penetrating
the corridor's smoky darkness. McMaster and Peat
followed behind them, The Coat's own curiosity for once
over-riding procedural prudence, but not enough for him
to go further than the foot of the stairs.

These didn't go off,' McMaster noted, showcasing the

160

detective skills that had propelled him so far up the ranks.

Peat, however, made the more significant observation.
The safe is open,' he said.

'What are you talking about?' McMaster asked. 'Look at
it.'

'I'm looking at the dial. The LED is all zeroes. That's
what it reads when it's unlocked. It's only this crap round
the rim that's holding it shut, in fact. The door's weight
makes it swing out as soon as the bolt retracts.'

Peat reached towards the moulding gripping the door's
outside edge, but was grabbed by McMaster.

'Don't touch it. It's still wired up.'

'If whatever else blew up down here didn't set it off,
then I don't think moving it a wee bit's likely to,' Angelique
reasoned, and yanked the 'explosives' away before
McMaster could issue a further eminently sensible note of
caution. As Peat predicted, the door swung open to reveal
a glaringly empty chamber.

'Jesus/ said the suit. They've cleaned us out.'

'How much?'

Peat swallowed. 'Neighbourhood of eight hundred K.'

'Upmarket neighbourhood/ Angelique remarked.

McMaster looked like he was about to retreat into the
coat.

'Sir?' called a voice from the blackness. 'You better get
down here. They've blown a hole through the wall.'

McMaster spun on his heel and looked down the
corridor, but there was still nothing to see but a faint glow
of torchlight dancing in the dust.

Through to where?'

'Looks like a tunnel. There's tracks.' Even amid the
smoke, Angelique could see McMaster's Adam's apple
bobbing involuntarily in his throat. 'It's blocked at the near




161

end. I think it's a siding for the underground. I'm not quite
sure of my bearings, but I think it's heading north.'

'Buchanan Street Station/ Angelique said.

'Oh, fuck,' was The Coat's reaction, from which she
assumed he concurred.

McMaster was issuing frantic orders into his radio as he
waddled hurriedly back through the bank and into the
street. One look at her watch told Angelique his efforts
would" be futile, and not just because Jarry's men had
several minutes' start.

She walked behind him through the double doors and
stood at the top of the stairs, from where she was able to
attain visual confirmation. Beyond the cordons, a couple
of hundred yards up the hill, there were approximately a
dozen officers running flat-out towards the entrance to
Buchanan Street Underground Station, where they would
have absolutely no chance of getting down the stairs, because there were several hundred Rangers supporters
currently swarming up them.

Angelique turned around again to face into the bank,
the much-punctured Saint Sebastian staring at her from the
inside of the wedged-open door. The solitary word 'missed'
seemed more apposite than ever.

'You fly devil,' she said, to a man who was no longer
there, and who had indeed got out richer.

'De Xavia/ McMaster growled angrily from the street.
'Get your arse down here. What are you looking at?'

But in truth Angelique wasn't looking at anything. She
was just facing the other way so that he couldn't see the
size of her grin.

162

the lyre of orpheus plays Follow Follow then segues into . . .

There's not a team like the Glasgow Rangers, no not one
and there never shall be one.'

The cramped carriage was vibrating even before it pulled
away, the raucous singing and stamping creating a sense
of energy almost as powerful as that running through the
third rail. Zal, standing next to the doors, knew he looked
like the happiest guy on a train full of happy guys. His
unmovable grin might not have been conducive to his
disguise had Rangers lost, but as he'd known they were
playing Aberdeen it hardly constituted a lucky break.

Merkland, on the other hand, was looking conspicuously
pissed off, but was fortunately facing the doors, his back
to his fellow passengers.

'You don't have to sing along,' Zal told him quietly, hand
cupped to his ear, their conversation engulfed by the noise. 'But if you don't crack a smile soon you're gonna blow
your cover.'

'What's there to fuckin' smile about?'

'Your "team" just got a result. Four-nil. Look happy. Or
are you playing the never-satisfied purist?'

'Aye, that's me. See, my team didnae exactly get the result
they were lookin' for, did they? Call me a purist if you like,
but I prefer games to end with me gettin' a win bonus, in
cash, know what I mean?'

'You don't think we'd all have preferred that? But we've




163

still gotta be professional. We always knew we had to leave
the field at the final whistle regardless of the scoreline, and
unless you want to be pulled aside for a very long post
match interview, you'll get into character fast.'

Merkland flashed a brief sarcastic smile, then glared at
Zal again and bowed his head, at least keeping his
seethingly miserable mug out of sight. What could you
say? Some people simply weren't cut out for acting;
perhaps if he was he'd have been better equipped to see
through the performances of the four guys who were at
that moment stiffing him. From the second they took off
their masks until the second they stepped on to the busy
platform, they'd all been faking grave disappointment at
having to bail out 'empty-handed', as well as sniping
bitterly at Karl for the 'failure' of his software. Jerome and
Leo in particular deserved accolades, as surely even Olivier
would have found despondency difficult to affect with four
hundred grand strapped to his body. However, once they
were in public sight, all dressed in vibrantly colourful
Rangers regalia, they were able to make their true feelings
manifest as part of effectively blending in.

No-one noticed five more Bluenoses slip from a door at
the rear of a platform already mobbed with fans who had
just disembarked and were anyway all facing the stairs. Nor
did anyone On board pay any heed to the fact that they were
getting on the train at Buchanan Street, where dozens of
those en route from Ibrox were getting off. When it was as
crowded as that, the guys nearest the door had to step on
to the platform to allow the others to exit, so every carriage
at every stop would witness a few Bears hopping aboard.

Jerome, Leo and, crucially, the money got on to a different
carriage from Merkland, Zal and Karl, with all of them due
to get off again at separate, pre-designated stops. Merkland

164

was to exit first, at Cowcaddens, which meant Zal only
had a couple more minutes to endure his resentful scowls.
Endure? Enjoy was more like it. Zal could watch an asshole
like that suffer all night. It was the only downside of using
latex masks that Zal hadn't been able to see Merkland's
expression when the idiot tried to shoot him. Still, priceless
as it would no doubt have been, it was nonetheless
nothing compared to how he was likely to react when he
turned on the news and found out that close to a million
pounds had walked off the train at St George's Cross and
Kelvinbridge respectively.

Merkland was supposed to get into a third carriage on
his own, but had predictably tagged on to Zal, still doing
that 'I've got my eye on you' thing. It would have been
annoying if it wasn't just plain laughable. Really, was there
anything more pitiful than a would-be hard-ass who just
couldn't accept that you didn't find him intimidating?

'You know, the only reason you're still alive is that you're
useful to us,' Merkland growled. 'I think you should bear
that in mind in light of today's grand-scale balls-up.'

'I'll meditate on it, dude. But shit, man, if usefulness was
the principal criterion for survival, your ass would have
been Darwinned way back.'

Zal heard Karl snigger, which warned him to keep his
voice a little lower.

'Aye, very good/ Merkland sneered. 'I'm just sayin',
you're being' tolerated, for now. But when the time comes
to let the dogs loose on you, I'm gaunny be there.'

'Well, that should boost my chances, shouldn't it, considering
you're eternally bound to fuck up.'

'You're kiddin' yourself if you think my gun won't be
loaded next time, pal.'

Zal gazed cheerfully out of the window at the station





165


signs as the train pulled into Cowcaddens, demonstrably
ignoring Merkland's attempted threatening stare. There
had been a time when guys like that could frighten him,
but it was three years, seventy stitches and two bodies ago.
He met Merkland's eyes again just before the doors slid
open.

'And you're kidding yourself if you think it'll make a
difference. Now fuck off back to Hannigan. It's your stop.'

Zal watched him walk away, but waited until the train
had plunged into the darkness of the next tunnel before
nudging Karl. Karl had a Rangers baseball cap pulled down
to cover his face, so that to all witnesses he appeared to be
a kid coming back from the game with his father. He didn't
look up, but Zal could picture his grin anyway. Instead he
held his palm up for Zal to slap, their fingers tightly interlinking
afterwards for a very precious couple of celebratory
seconds.

It was time to breathe out. The song was starting up
again, that irresistible force of volume and energy filling
the air and ringing out even above the rumble of the wheels
and the occasional screams of protesting metal. Zal felt as
though he was channelling all of it, an exhilarated swell
expanding inside him like a chain reaction as he clenched
a fist and joined in. Giving it voice was an exquisite release,
but only in that release could he glimpse the magnitude of
the euphoria welling within.

'Follow we will, follow we will.'

His system had been charged with adrenalin for more
than five hours, throughout which his mind had been
processing, suppressing and controlling more numerous
and intense emotions than anyone would normally be
required to cope with over five months, maybe years. This
wasn't to say he hadn't enjoyed it, every goddamn second,

166

but like a victorious footballer, it was only once the game
was over that he could let all of those stored feelings course
through him.

'Though the straits be broad or narrow . . .'

The release, the euphoria, the catharsis would have come
anyway, but that it should be in the throes of this song
caused it to disturb something stored far deeper, and thus
Zal found himself singing with tears in his eyes and a treasured
sadness in his smile.

'If they go to Dublin, we will follow on.'

His dad used to sing him that song, though in its original
form, without that shitty 'Dundee, Hamilton, even to the
Vatican' adulteration. He'd learned it and sung it as a kid
before he even knew what it was about, before he really
understood that this place his dad came from and missed
so much wasn't just another town in Nevada. But he now
realised that, apart from on TV, he had never heard anyone
else sing it, so to hear it up close, in that accent he'd once
associated with only one person in the world, made him
feel suddenly very vulnerable and more than a little alone.

Maybe it was just as well, as he needed something to
rein in his jubilation. It was one thing to blend in with the
guys coming back from the match, but nobody else had
been looking quite so delirious. After all, it was only
Aberdeen, and only four-nothing.

He watched Jerome and then Leo drift away along platforms,
among more departing Bears, then it was his and
Karl's turn at Hillhead. They said nothing to each other,
keeping their accents to themselves, Karl's head bowed and
the peak of his cap still tipped low over his face. Byres
Road was dark, busy and very wet. The rain must have
started recently, as all the Bears on the underground had
been bone dry and nobody in the street seemed to have an




167

umbrella. People were walking close to the buildings,
dashing between awnings and hovering hesitantly in shop
doorways. Zal and Karl just had to hit the sidewalk and
head towards Great Western Road. They made it as far as
Hillhead Library when they saw Leo's car approach, identified
to them in the dark and rain by a flash of the headlights
and the fact that it was indicating to pull in.

Karl opened the rear passenger-side door and climbed
in, pulling off the baseball cap once he was out of sight.
Zal leaned inside. Nobody said anything, they just all
smiled and laughed then joined in a brief three-way grip.

He closed the door and watched the car pull away. There
was still important business to be concluded in Glasgow,
but given the rarity of American-accented adults under four
feet in the city, it was vital that Karl laid low until he was
next needed. They were heading south, to Newcastle, where
they had a restaurant table booked for 8:30 as well as a
pocketful of forged on-course betting slips from that afternoon's
race meeting at Gosforth. Even now, Karl would be
downloading the results to his WAP phone then filling in
the final odds and discarding any winners, bookies having
a better memory for people they paid out to.

Jerome was still in town, but Zal didn't feel a desire for
celebration, even if it was private and discreet. He stepped
back and took temporary cover outside the library's front
entrance. With the rain still running down his face and the
world busily rushing past, he felt much as he might if he'd
spent the afternoon in the cinema: once he was back outside
in a cold, wet reality, what had just unfolded, however
dramatic, was nonetheless already closed off and filed
under Memory.

He could still feel a buzz running through him, but it
was hard to connect it to specific moments, merely a

168

residual impression. The euphoria was fading, as were the
tension and the fear. They would be replaced in time by
satisfaction and relief, followed a little later by exhaustion.
However, for now, something else remained; something he
hadn't quite noticed until more immediate concerns were
out of the way, but which had been there for a while
nonetheless, occasionally glimpsed amid larger but temporary
distractions.

It wasn't to be trusted. It was like an email attachment
from an unknown sender: he didn't know where it was
coming from, and that meant it was potentially disastrous
to do anything other than ignore it.

There were a number of plausible sources, any one or
any combination of which could be responsible for a
fragility that might be causing him to obsess. He was
suffering an inevitable come-down after the robbery, a
natural reaction to running on nervous energy for five,
maybe six hours. There was an unavoidable anxiety bound
to be preying on his insecurities considering he had just
stolen almost a million notes and was about to have every
cop in the country looking for him. Then there was that
song, and all the little emotional cluster-bombs it had scattered.
He was missing his father, loving him again, hating
himself for hating him before, all that shit. To say nothing
of those Rangers fans on the train and the bond among
total strangers as they joined in the singing; united by
something that made them feel they belonged together,
made them feel they belonged period.

And maybe it was none of that. Maybe it was just something
that had snuck in through his defences while his mind was busy dealing with everything else. But the
bottom line was that he couldn't get the girl out of his
head. While every other aspect of the robbery was fading




169

to the point of feeling like it had happened to someone
else, she remained vivid, tangible, real; and without question
she had happened to him. He didn't know how, he
didn't know why, but then again who ever does? She was
striking to look at, that was a no-brainer. Admittedly, not
having been laid in four years kind of lowered the threshold
on what it took for a female to grab his attention, but that
considered, none of late had held his eye quite so demand
ingly, even after she'd been disarmed. Zal didn't have a
Kevlar fetish or anything, but it was difficult not to be taken
by the sight of a woman so apparently petite and unquestionably
pretty, yet kitted for action and dressed literally
to kill.

However, none of that would have been more than jerk
off material if it wasn't that something had been going on
back there. Needs had dictated that he be at his most rationally
analytical throughout the afternoon's proceedings, so
it wasn't merely his imagination that she had seemed on
the verge of opening up to him a couple of times. She was
trained to remain cool in that kind of situation, granted.
Despite what she'd told him, she was probably also an
adept negotiator. These things offered a plausible explanation
for the fact that they had shared a civil conversation
under circumstances in which basic politeness might
ordinarily have been a lot to expect. But goddamn it, Zal
knew when he was being 'managed', and that didn't
include sniffing back tears or confiding that you turned
thirty that morning and weren't handling it too good. This while he's standing there with a clown mask and a gun?

No. Something had definitely been going on. She had
all the reason in the world to be pissed at him, even if that
asshole Merkland had just tied her up without taking a few
easy digs. To give himself some credit, after that Zal must

170

have seemed surprisingly civilised, not just by comparison,
but by expectation. He'd been on the receiving end from
plenty of asshole cops in his time, as had anybody engaged
in trying to earn a dishonest living, so he understood why
the average dick didn't get many Christmas cards from D
Block. However, the one thing he couldn't understand was
how sore some cons were on all cops, as a rule, like they
were offended by the very idea of these guys attempting
to catch them. They were fucking criminals, for Christ's
sakes. What did they want? Understanding? A greater
tolerance of their alternative lifestyle, and in particular the
aspect involving unauthorised removal of other people's
property?

It had briefly crossed Zal's mind to tie up Merkland and
let de Xavia loose on him, but they at least needed the
fucker to be able to walk, and bloodied faces didn't blend
inconspicuously with football crowds, except maybe after
Old Firm games.

He wasn't sure she'd have taken him up anyway.
Whatever she said, if she was the one the cops sent in first,
then it meant she could be trusted not to lose it, especially
in the face of provocation. Chances were it also meant she
could seriously take care of herself and she wouldn't need
Merkland tied up to kick him six ways from Sunday. She'd
barely given Merkland a thought, in fact, once the phoney
gun had been revealed and the threat lifted. All she cared
about were the hostages. Zal had known cops who would
leave the victim bleeding on the sidewalk while they chased
down a mugger, because to them it was a war, with bagging
bad guys counting more than collateral damage. De Xavia
was no such zealot, and it didn't sound like she was exactly
at one with her colleagues, either. She had attitude. Nah,
that was a stupid word, over-used to make some kind of




171

h virtue out of being an arrogant loud-mouth. Thus
d valued it didn't describe her at all, and it certainly didn't
do her justice. She had character.

He liked her accent, the sound of her voice, especially
when she was being casually deprecatory and yet somehow
polite. It was, it was . . .

It was nuts. This was nuts. Having just done, well, what
he had just done, he should have been basking in the afterglow,
reflecting on what it all meant, whatever. Instead, he
was standing in the rain and trying to picture her face,
wondering where she was right now. Picking through the
evidence, taking witness statements and generally making
preliminaries towards nailing his ass, was the answer to
that.

Forget her. Get the girl out of your kitchen, man.
The rain was getting heavier, and a wind was picking
up, whipping the downpour under the awnings and into
the doorways to deny any real shelter to those not behind
bricks and glass. He could hail a cab, but he could already
hear the hack giving his statement: 'Aye, I picked up a
bloke with a Yank accent on Byres Road around the time
you're talkin' aboot. He stuck in my mind because he'd a
Rangers scarf on, but he didnae seem tae know much aboot
what happened at the gemme.'

There was a bus-stop across the street. Any bus heading
across Great Western Road would do, as long as he had
change. He put a hand in his trouser pocket and was
surprised to encounter a piece of plastic, which he pulled
out and examined. It was de Xavia's ID card.

'Angelique,' he spoke quietly to himself, staring at her
picture. Insane thoughts were filling his head. He was
already calculating probabilities, exposure, contingencies,
cover. If he could rob a bank of over a million bucks and

I

walk out under the noses (okay, twenty feet under the noses)
of at least fifty cops, surely he could find a way to ...

Don't be nuts.

No, it was insane. Possible, but insane.

Possible.

No.

No.

No.

And that's final. Closed. Over. Punto.

Good. There was too much at stake, too much already
worked for, too much still to be done. This was no more
than a dangerous distraction, and he was glad to have
torpedoed it before it did any damage. But with that
resolved, what would it hurt to ...




172

173

stolen property

Angelique advanced quietly on the balls of her feet and
stopped a few yards short in the corridor, holding her
breath. She hadn't been seen, she was sure, otherwise there
would have been a reception committee already in wait.
There had been a look-out posted, visible from a distance
to the trained eye, but her practised stealth in the approach
ensured they wouldn't have the drop on her. Mind you,
she'd thought the same thing on the roof of the bank, and
look how that had worked out.

The door was in sight, but she needed to be psyched
before she made her move. She felt a low, sinking dread,
dull and heavy in her stomach like a regretted haggis
supper. Why the hell was she doing this? she asked herself
for the dozenth time. The answer remained the same,
inflexible and unfeeling: duty. It covered a multitude of
endurances and sacrifices, didn't it? None of which ever
really had to be explained or justified while they hid behind
that word.

Duty. Aye, right. This, under any other circumstances,
constituted self-harm, and she didn't remember signing up
for it.

But bugger it, what else was she going to do at this stage?
Walk away? Tempting in theory, but experience told her
the required explaining would be a worse ordeal still. There
was no going back, so she might as well just accept it and
concentrate her efforts on survival.

174

She took a deep breath, bit her lip and rang the doorbell.

'Angelique, mon cher, man petite, happy birthday!' her
mother yelled, her voice booming around the close as she
pulled her into a warm embrace, reminding Angelique as
always why she really 'put herself through this'. Here was
one person who would never let her down or take her for
granted. Of course, within ten minutes she'd be climbing
the walls to escape, but it wouldn't be family otherwise.

'Dad didn't see your car, we were looking out for you.
Come in, come in, birthday girl. It's great to see you.'

'You too, Mum.'

She stepped into the hallway, bracing herself and
wondering how long it would be before her mum brought
up those horizon-dwelling males. The current average was
approximately five minutes, roughly as long as it took to
boil the kettle, dish out some biscuits and sit her daughter
near-forcibly on the new settee. However, this being something
of a milestone occasion, a new record might be set
at either end of the scale: all-time quickest to cut desperately
to the chase, or all-time latest if it was kept for a more
profound - and prolonged - contemplation later.

Her dad emerged from the kitchen and gave her a hug
and a kiss. It felt the same now at thirty as it had when
she was three. Comforting, safe, home. The ten-minute rule,
however, still stood.

There's something for you in here,' Mum said, causing
Dad to roll his eyes with an indulgent but slightly arch
smile. 'We're dying for you to see it.' Mum wore a strangely
conspiratorial grin as she led the way, beckoningly impatient,
towards the living room. To Angelique, it felt like an
ambush, and she should know.

She walked towards her usual spot on the settee, but her




175

mum was pointing towards the fireplace, doing a good
impression of an over-excited toddler about to wet herself.
Angelique turned around, ready to be blindsided for the
second time that day. At least this time nobody would be
pulling at her nose.

In front of the fireplace was the most elaborate and
beautiful bouquet of flowers Angelique could imagine
outside of Graham Norton's dressing room.

'They arrived earlier this evening,' Mum said, barely able
to contain herself. 'And there's a little card. Are you going
to open it?'

The temptation to say no was enormous, but Angelique's
own curiosity was probably close to rivalling her mother's.
Who the hell would send her flowers? If she had a secret admirer, then he had certainly lived up to the name, covert
enough to be in MIS. Probably from someone at HQ to say
thanks, having remembered that rescuing the hostages was
quite important, even if the RSGN did lose close to a mill.

She bent down to examine the envelope, sitting in the
heart of the arrangement. It said simply 'Angelique', no
rank, no surname. So much for 'thank you' then, realising
as she read it how absurdly implausible her first theory
had been. She pulled the envelope delicately away from
the flowers and gently tore it open with her thumbnail.
Her forefinger slid out a white card, which appeared to be
blank until she turned it over to reveal only the words
'Happy Birthday', hand-written in ornately calligraphic
script. Secret admirer right enough, so anonymous as to be
taking the piss.

'Who's it from? Or aren't you going to tell us?' Mum
said with exaggerated coyness.

'It doesn't say,' Angelique replied. She squeezed her
hand to scrunch the envelope, which was when she felt

176

that there was something else inside, smaller than the card,
but flat and stiff. 'Hang on.'
'What?'

Angelique flattened the envelope and reached inside it,
pulling out her own laminated warrant card.

'You've got to be kidding/ she said, swiftly pocketing
the ID before her mum had time to see what it was.
'What is it? Who's it from? Do you know?'
'Oh, I know,' Angelique said, unable to keep a sly grin
of her own off her face.

Mum clapped her hands, still the excited wee lassie. 'I
knew it! You've been keeping secrets. Who is he?'
'I can't say/ she replied truthfully.
'Oh come on, tell us. Is it someone you know through
work?'

'Eh, yes, actually.'

'A lawyer? Please not another policeman.'
'He's neither, he's . . . kind of in an associated profession.'

'Why didn't you tell me? Has this been going on long?
Have you had many dates?'
'No. Just the one, to be honest/
'But it must have gone well, eh?'
'Mum, please.'

'Look at her, Joseph, she's going all bashful. I bet he's
handsome. Is he rich?'

'He has just come into some money, as it happens.'
'Oh, I knew it, I knew it. Now, you've got to tell us more.'
'It's very early days. We barely know each other.'
'But you are going to see each other again, right?'
Angelique looked again at the bouquet and nodded.
'Believe me, I'll be doing everything in my power to
make that happen.'




177

II


for my next trick
i'll need a volunteer

It is as pleasant to be cheated as to cheat.

Edwin Sachs, Sleight of Hand: A Practical Manual o
Legerdemain

if

the american ambassador

Fuckin' great.

Another fuckin' city, another fuckin' hotel, but oh my,
thank you sweet Jesus, another fuckin' blow-job.

Wasn't that just the cure-all? Jet-lag? Hangover? Lower
back pain? Stress? You fuckin' name it, a retail blow-job
could make it all go away. It was the only thing that honest
to-God, guaranteed, truly worked, and that was probably
why it hadn't been patented, processed and packaged by
Astra-Zeneca or SmithKline Beecham. Drug companies
weren't interested in cures, because where's the fuckin' money in that? They cure you and you fuck off, go do some
thin' else, make money for somebody else. They were only
interested in shit that they could sell you to make you feel
just a little bit better, so you'd keep coming back for more.
That was why there were no TV spots or celebrity endorsements
for retail blow-jobs. 'Here's Don Simpson, for 1-800
SUCK-YOU ...' Or 'Hi, my name is Hugh Grant. Whenever
I'm feeling under the weather, I reach for . . .' Seriously,
who the fuck would want Demerol after seeing that?

'Course, one of the major contributors to stress in your
life can be wondering where your next blow-job is coming
from, and that's no fuckin' joke. Prior to this little gift from
the gods dropping into his lap within the past hour, this
had been shaping up to be one bum trip.

Glasgow for Christ's sakes. Who the fuck even knew
where the place was? He'd never heard of it six months

181

ago, and up until Saturday night he'd never have thought
he'd be learning more about it than its name. But that was
before Innez fucked the Scottish guys, the Scottish guys
phoned Alessandro, Alessandro shit a brick and called
Miguel, and Miguel told Harry to get on a fuckin' plane
and straighten things out. What was there to straighten
out? Nothing that he could see. The main event was unaffected
- not even Innez would mess with them over that.
But feathers were ruffled, egos were bruised and everybody
was suddenly a whole lot more jumpy.

'We need an envoy/ Miguel had said.

'We already got Rico and Gomez goin' over for the
exchange. Why can't we just bring their trip forward?'
Harry protested.

'Rico and Gomez are just bagmen, and let's face it, they
look like fuckin' bagmen. Innez has got the Escoceses
thinking either we're gonna fuck them or that we don't
take them seriously. We can't send over those two hotrods.
We need to send someone of weight, smooth them down,
show them some respect.'

'So I gotta go over there and kiss ass, too?'

'No, entirely the opposite. You're goin' over there to
show we mean business. You're goin' over there to show
we don't take shit from nobody.'

'I can't spank Innez's ass for being' a bad boy, Mickey.
Especially not at the request of some piss-ant third party.
He knows there's only one threat that matters while we
still need him to get what we want.'

'We all know that, Harry. So your job is to tell them that
if we ain't worried about Innez, they shouldn't be neither.'

'Can't we do that over the fuckin' phone? To my mind,
sendin' someone out there on the overnight makes it look
like we are worried.'

182

There's a difference between lookin' unworried and
lookin' like we don't give a fuck. Your job is also to show
them we do care that Innez pissed them off, as well as
providing a little on-site management for us. You're gonna
be our ambassador, Harry.'

'Yeah, sounds like a fuckin' honour.'

'It is. Haven't you ever wanted to visit Europe?'

'Scotland's in Europe?'

'Of course. Where the fuck you think it was?'

'I durum I guess I never thought about it before.'

'You better start thinkin' about it now. You leave LAX
at six-thirty this evening.'

'Fuckin' great.'

Mickey had made it sound like they'd be lining up
around the block for this job, just because it was overseas.
Europe, yeah right. Fuckin' A. Did Mickey think Amerigo
sailed because he liked fuckin' Europe? Hell no. It was the
First World, and that had to be better than the Third World,
but if you already had the New World, what the fuck would
you want with the old one? And Scotland? What the fuck
was in Scotland? Men in skirts? If he wanted to see that,
he could go down to West Hollywood or up to San Fran.
Jesus, did they even have TV in a country like that?

But boom, here he was. One minute he's making plans
to hit Vegas for a few days, maybe bet on the play-offs, the
next he's barely got time to pack his bags before catching
the Saturday night flight, connecting in London and
checking into the Glasgow Hilton by dinner time Sunday.
Local dinner time, leastways. He didn't know what fuckin'
hour it was back in civilisation, and his body was still
running its LA schedule. As a result he felt constantly
hungry but nauseous as soon as he ate anything; drop
dead tired but wide awake whenever he closed his eyes.




183

The hotel was, fortunately, your regular standard Hilton:
same shit as every other fuckin' Hilton he'd ever been in,
but that was a comfort when he was feeling disoriented
and a long way from home. It turned out they did have
TV too, though a shitload of good it was. The play-offs
were on back home - the fuckin' play-offs - and not one
fuckin' channel here was showing them. Click: soccer.
Click: soccer. Nothing but fuckin' soccer. It was a disappointment
if not a surprise. As far as Harry was concerned,
it just proved a long-held belief that the further you got
from civilisation, the less American sport was on the
goddamn TV. If the immigration department wanted to
smoke out the illegals in East LA, they just had to look in
a few windows and the wetbacks would be the ones
watching soccer. You want to blend in properly in your
new, adopted home, you watch fuckin' football or baseball
or basketball or hockey. The only way you'd blend in
watching soccer is if you're an eleven-year-old, middle
class white girl in La Jolla. Outside of the Burbs, soccer
denoted a lack of true Americanisation, and the further
from the USA you got, the more pronounced the problem.
Christ, at least in Mexico you still got some wrestling, but
it stood to reason that if you went all the way back to
Europe, to the fuckin' source, if you like, you'd find no
trace of New World sport whatsoever. No use clicking your
heels together, Dorothy. You and Toto won't be watching
any fuckin' play-offs, even if you are bored, alone and
completely incapable of sleep.

Within three hours of arriving in this alien environment,
he'd therefore decided he needed the reassurance of a blow
job like never before. Sure, he was soothed a little by the
comforting familiarities that the hotel had to offer, but as
head wasn't on the room service menu, Hilton weren't

184

going to be able to meet quite all of his business-travel
needs.

The bad news, as it turned out, was that neither were
the local purveyors he encountered during his brief
nocturnal drive. A few discreet enquiries got him directed
towards the Blythswood area, just a few blocks away, but
when he slowed down to get a look at what was on offer,
he suddenly understood that there was a more than
semantic difference between saying you were desperate for
a blow-job and being desperate for a blow-job. Jeez, what
a fuckin' sorry sight. Heroin skank after heroin skank. No
way he was leading one of those through the hotel lobby,
never mind letting her near his dick. He'd left LA in such
a hurry, he didn't have time to find out what shots he
needed to visit Scotland, but he was sure there were no
inoculations against what these bitches might give him.
Yuck.

So instead he decided to hit the hotel bar, figuring as
sleep was proving difficult, he should attempt to anaesthetise
himself. In the event, sleep continued to elude him
for another few hours, but the local anaesthetic was still
pretty fuckin' good. Scotch, he discovered, was made in
Scotland. Can you fuckin' believe that? Who knew? He'd
just assumed the term denoted one of two types of whisky,
the other being Bourbon, and if anyone had asked where
each was made, he'd have guessed Bourbon in the South
and Scotch north of the Mason-Dixon. Just goes to show:
travel does broaden the mind, even if it also flattened the
brain cells. It sure broadened his palate: there were dozens
of different 'malts' as they called them, and he found
himself taking a miniature guided tour of the Highlands
and Islands via Water of Life Travel. The bartender was
only too happy to tell him about the background of each




185

and every shot that he lined up, and Harry was happy to
listen, not least because it shut the guy up from talking
about how Scotland invented every fuckin' thing of use on
the goddamn planet.

Harry woke up at two in the afternoon, feeling better
than he had any right to given how much whisky he had
consumed. It was probably just the relief of having gotten
any sleep at all, after reaching that stage in jet-lag where
it feels like you've lost the basic ability. That didn't mean
he felt good, understand, just not quite as bad as he had
the same time yesterday, or maybe just as bad but for
different reasons. You knew where you stood with a hangover,
at least; knew how to deal with it and how it was
going to deal with you.

He took a shower and phoned Hannigan, offering him
lunch at the hotel. Hannigan was having none of it,
however, and insisted on entertaining Harry at some
uptown restaurant where he was noted and quoted.

'You're in my town,' he said. 'Let me show you some
Glaswegian hospitality.'

It was a nice touch. Nothing confrontational, nothing
sulky or impatient, either. It showed respect. Subtle, too.
No home court advantage bullshit like if he'd insisted
Harry come to his office, with piss-ant goons hanging
around trying to flex their muscles. Just the two of them
over what was lunch for Hannigan and breakfast for Harry.
The guy even had the grace to wait until the meal was over
before broaching any shop-talk. It was little things like that
that were the mark of a real boss, things that Alessandro
showed no hint of understanding. Patience, for instance,
wasn't a sign that you were tolerant of being dicked
around: it translated into an expression of confidence that
you would in time get what you wanted, because you were

186

used to getting what you wanted. Showing deference to a
guest illustrated that you recognised the criteria for respect
in someone. How could you ever obtain true respect yourself
if you didn't give the impression that you even knew
what it was?

But the greatest evidence that the guy was a true player
was that he could see the bigger picture; specifically that
Innez giving them the finger wasn't worth getting too upset
about when there was a deal this size to be concluded. Hats
off to Miguel: it didn't take Harry flying all the way over
here to make Hannigan understand this; he understood it
fine, but Harry flying all the way over here anyway sent
out all the right messages.

'I appreciate you making this trip, Mr Arthur, especially
at such short notice.' Hannigan had been politely spoken
throughout their prandial small-talk, but nonetheless
Harry could tell the careful articulacy was a courtesy to
him. He appreciated it, but it wasn't entirely necessary. The
local accent was sure unusual, but back home you could
hear folks talk differently if you drove over the county line.
Having travelled extensively for his work, he had discovered
that you can understand just about any dialect of the
English language if you look the speaker in the face and
actually listen to what they're fuckin' telling you. You might
miss the occasional finer nuance here and there, but you
seldom missed the headlines, especially in this line of work,
where subtlety in communication was rare to the point of
extinction.

'Please, call me Harry.'

'Sure. I didn't mean for someone to be despatched forthwith,
you know? It's not that we were panicking this end,
just . . , concerned, and thought you fellas would want to
know the latest.'




187

'We appreciate that, Mr Hannigan.'

'Bud/

'Huh?'

'You can call me Bud.'

'Oh yeah. You got it. Sorry, just sounds kinda informal
where I come from, you know? Like pal.'

'Long as we're doing business, I am your pal. But it's
just what people call me.'

'Bud. Cool. So, how much did he take you for, Bud?'

Hannigan sighed and took a sip of espresso. He didn't
particularly like the question, which admittedly Harry
could have phrased better if his brain could only catch up
with the clock.

'The amount itself is not relevant, and let's be honest, it
was never my money for him to take. It's certainly not
significant in comparison to what we're doing business
over.'

'I heard eight hundred large, sterling. What was your
end?'

'Twenty percent.'

'Not exactly chump change, but yeah, it pales in the
grand scheme. Plus it's twenty percent of, as you say, some
thin' that was never yours. Gotta sting, though.'

'A little, yes. Kind of hard to miss the "fuck you" implied
by the whole affair, which has pretty substantial ramifications
for our relationship with Mr Innez, wouldn't you say?
A man in my position, a man with my responsibilities,
would be negligent in the extreme if he didn't interpret
this as a very vivid warning about what this man is capable
of.'

'Innez is not gonna waltz off with the prize this time.
He's got no way of moving it, so it's worthless to him.'

'And what consolation would that be to us if we were

188

left empty-handed after he pulled another flanker?'

'He won't fuck us on this. Delivering it is the only way
he's gonna get Alessandro off his back, and believe me,
that's what Innez wants most of all.'

'Yes, I was given the impression that he is working under
some duress. I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable about
that. People who don't have a vested interest in the bottom
line aren't the most valuable employees, in my experience.'
Harry nodded. 'Between you, me and the sugar-tongs
here, I'm not entirely comfortable with it myself, but it's
what we're stuck with.'

'So is it plausible that Innez would be looking for some
way of throwing a spanner in the works?'

'Innez? You bet your life he'll be lookin' for it. But as
long as we've got our leverage, he won't actually do it. He
ain't cut in on the bottom line, but he does have a vested
interest in the success of the operation, and that's what
counts.'

'You trust him, then?'

'Fuck no. But I'd say we can rely on him. He'll do what
he's told.'

'Hmmm. He'll do what he's told. That was what
Alessandro said. You'll forgive me if Saturday's wee
pantomime tends me towards the sceptical.'

'No, I'm saying he'll do what he's told over this.'
'Alessandro gave the impression Innez was under his
control.'

Harry just about managed not to laugh, but was unable
to prevent a smile crossing his lips.

'I guess you didn't need what happened on Saturday to
tell you otherwise,' Hannigan observed.

'Alessandro is ... used to having people under his
control,' Harry said, trying to dig himself out of dissing




189

the kid in front of a guy they were doing business with.
'He knows that ultimately he has Innez by the balls, but
he maybe didn't anticipate all the vagaries of a situation
where--'

'He said Innez was on a leash. Those were his exact
words.'

Oh Christ. The guy wouldn't be lying, either. Fuckin'
Alessandro. Fuckin' asshole.

I
'He said he'd be obedient and cooperative, and he'd be
effectively under my control until the big job was done.'

It was Harry's turn to sigh. No point bullshitting the
guy any further; Alessandro had done that enough.

'I'll level with you, Bud, just between you and me.
Alessandro doesn't know Innez, okay? I do, as much as
anyone outside that freakshow can, which admittedly is
not a fuckin' lot. Alessandro does have Innez by the balls
right now, and yes, he will deliver. I ain't got a doubt about
that. But that doesn't mean he's gonna do it with a fuckin'
smile on his face and wrap up the merchandise with a big
silk bow. You ask me, the bank thing was Innez markin'
his territory, carvin' out a bit of pride. It was his way of
sayin' yeah, he's here to do what we want, but that don't
mean we own him, that don't mean Alessandro can loan
him out like a fuckin' lawn-mower.'

'You reckon he robbed a bank just to prove a point?'

'Well I reckon the eight hundred K sterling was probably
why he robbed the bank, but knowing Innez, yeah, provin'
a point was probably on the agenda.'

'And now that he's proven his point, what's the chances
of me seeing my twenty percent?'

'Zero. Nada. Stiffin' you was his way of remindin' us
that we can't hurt him while we still need him to do the
job. You can chase him for it later, but I would give long

190

odds on you ever seeing the guy again, never mind the
money. He'll be puttin' as much effort into planning his
out as into stealing the cookies. Feel free to try and second
guess him.'

'Not after Saturday.'
That's what I figured.'
'Who is he? I mean, what's his story?'
Harry held his palms up in a don't-go-there gesture,
though he couldn't rightly say whether it was advice or a plea.

'I don't know much, and nothin' I could tell you would
make you feel any more at ease. Let's just say I'll be a
relieved man when this is done, and if Innez wants to disappear
after that, I reckon two hundred large is cheap insurance
against him coming back.'

'I hear you, pal. Do you know where he is now?'
'I can contact him, yeah. He has to stay in touch as part
of the arrangement. I'll be lookin' him up pretty soon. Want
me to say hi?'

'Aye, sure,' Hannigan said, returning Harry's smile.
Hannigan disappeared the check and escorted Harry to
his car. Harry scanned the landscape for Hannigan's own
ride. There was a Mercedes across the street with a guy in
a suit behind the wheel, waiting observantly for a nod.

'Anything I can do for you while you're in town, just
ask,' Hannigan said as Harry climbed into his hire car.
'Seriously. I'd be offended if you didn't. Food, drinks,
theatre, tickets for the game.'

'Still recovering from the flight right now, but I'll let you
know. Appreciate it.'

Harry closed the door and was about to drive off when
he remembered. He rolled down the window, causing
Hannigan to turn around again.




191

'fables of the reconstruction

Say, you wouldn't happen to know where I can get me
a decent blow-job, would you?'

Hannigan said nothing, acting like Harry had just made
a big fuckin' joke. In fact, he walked away from the car,
laughing and making a 'get outta here' wave with his left
hand, leaving Harry to drive back and contemplate his
austerely lonely options for the evening. These pretty much
amounted to watching soccer on the TV, getting shitfaced
to the accompaniment of Scottish Inventions and
Achievements Volume II, or forsaking his dignity and venereal
well-being for the ministrations of a zombie hooker.
Problem was, both of the first two had enormous potential
to precipitate the third, out of, respectively, sheer
desperation and gross disinhibition, though it came to
much the same thing in the end. The embarrassment of
letting an undead heroin skank near his dick would seem
less important after a dozen shots of Glen Whatever, just
like genital herpes would start to look like an acceptable
risk after two hours of fucking Scottish television.

But blow the fuckin' bagpipes if this little five-foot hottie
didn't just show up at his bedroom door in a tartan miniskirt,
chewing gum behind an exquisitely bored smile.
'Hiya, my name's Morag,' she said, looking him up and
down but hiding the results of her appraisal with practised
professionalism. 'Mr Hannigan told me you might appreciate
some genuine Scottish hospitality.'

'Not today, thank you.'

Yeah, right.

'Step right in, Morag. You're a sight for jet-lagged eyes,
believe me.'

'Jet-lag, is it? I know just the thing.'

Aw yeah.


Less than two hours into her shift on Monday morning,
Angelique was starting to wonder whether she had obliviously
slept for forty-eight hours and was now trying to
catch up with the week. Investigations could progress
rapidly in the Glesca Polis, but change normally happened
at a geological pace, so the differences since she'd left on
Sunday afternoon were proving a lot to take in.

She had been generously allowed to clock off after
submitting her report, though it had remained dubiously
hazy whether this was in acknowledgement of her contribution
the day before or a cheap way of buying back the
day off they had peremptorily nabbed. Either way, she was
glad to leave early for a change, even if it was only to spend
an evening alone in her flat, 'drinking supermarket Merlot
and listening to that depressing Mogwai garbage', as her
brother James had accurately predicted over dinner on
Saturday night.

When she'd left, McMaster was throwing tantrums as
his CID underlings set up their incident room. Angelique
had enjoyed the luxury of being amused by it, figuring
Special Branch's connection to the case had begun and
ended with her being briefly roped into the rescue mission.

Come Monday morning, it seemed the scenery painters
had been confusingly busy overnight. As she passed on
the stairs she could see that McMaster's incident room had
been struck, barely a drawing pin left, while further down




192

193

tsome bedtime story ubercop, 'the kind they don't make any

more', that they wished Shaw had been, rather than the
reality, which was a wily but pragmatic thief-taker who'd
never have got where he was if a fraction of the myths
about him were true.

He was directing the placement of a series of blown-up
photographs of the bank's interior around the walls of the
incident room when Angelique politely introduced herself.
Shaw turned around and greeted her with an unsettlingly
knowing smile, then ushered her out towards his temporary
office.

'I read the report on Dubh Ardrain,' he said, leading her
along the corridor. 'Pile o' shite. They were just coverin'
up the fact that you bailed them oot. They've written it up
so it looks like everything that was touch-and-go was doon
to you being' off the leash, rather than doon to them no'
havin' a scoob what was happenin'. Bawbags, the lot o'
them. You're the wan keepin' them in a job, Detective, and
don't forget it.'

It was going to be hard to dislike him after that.

The 'courtesy' turned out to be at least a little on his part
too, in as much as he was politely asking for her input
even though he had already cleared it with her superiors
for Angelique to be informally assigned to his investigation.
There was a time when she would have thrown a
quality strop about falling behind on her own ongoing
cases, but right now she just couldn't be arsed. Maybe it
was all that Merlot and Mogwai inducing an existential
listlessness, or maybe it just didn't seem to make much
difference whether she was being fucked about by CID or
fucked about by Special Branch.

'You were there, you spoke to the guy/ Shaw explained.
'That doesnae mean you could spot him in a crowd,




he corridor there was a lot of purposeful lifting and
carrying going on. When she got to her desk, there was a
message waiting for her, requesting that she 'nip down and
have a word with DCS Shaw as a courtesy'. A brief toddle
downstairs not only revealed the full extent of the
upheaval, but also happily confirmed that 'nipping down'
would not entail a flight to London, where Jock Shaw had
been working for at least the past three years.

Angelique got a heads-up from Pollyanna Bailey, whom
she had encountered as she stood staring at the ferment of
unaccustomed enthusiasm surrounding the assembly of a
new, larger hub for the inquiry. In short, McMaster had been
binned, or rather was 'taking leave due to stress', though
there were unconfirmed reports that his coat had turned up
for duty on its own. The gen was that as he had had the
piss taken out of him so comprehensively by the robbers
already, the brass weren't backing him to make up the shortfall
in the second leg. Thus, Jock Shaw, the one-time star
player who'd since moved on to bigger things, was being
brought back on loan to try and turn the tie around.

She had never worked with Shaw, but had sure heard
plenty about him in the years since he had gone to the Big
Smoke. The impression she'd been given was preposterously
larger than life, as people only become when the real
thing isn't around to temper exaggeration. He was 'old
school', she heard guys remark with embarrassingly boyish
reverence. By this she assumed they meant he was a thug
with a badge, with only marginally more regard for the
law than the neds he put away but a robust sense of self
justification best expressed through cliches about doing a
dirty job and not being able to make an omelette without
breaking a few noses. In fact, as she quickly realised within
minutes of meeting him, these guys were talking about

194

195

and commanded so much enthusiasm. He was working
the room energetically, part showman on stage and part
manager in the dressing room, drawing contributions from
all voices in the gathering. Some were significant, some
banal, but the important thing was that everyone felt
involved.

At this stage, an exciting sense of momentum always
built up as the available information was collated, giving
the impression that pieces of the puzzle were already
starting to fall into place. But sitting on the outside for a
change, Angelique could see that they were really only
recapping or confirming what was already known, and as
any child could tell you, the first pieces of a jigsaw to match
up were the straight bits around the outside, which seldom
gave any clue as to what was at the centre of the picture.
Shaw's talent was in making his charges believe they would
find it anyway.

'All right, as you all know, I just got here at pretty short
notice and therefore I've not had time to wade through
forty-odd witness statements, fascinating as I'm sure they
all are. So I'm gaunny outline what I think I know so far
and I want you lot to fill in the blanks.

'At approximately 11:45 on Saturday morning, five men
dressed in overalls and clown masks exit - and it would
be fair to say abandon - a van in a lane off South Hanover
Street. What do we know about the van?'

Total rustbucket stolen a fortnight ago from a builder's
yard in Maryhill, sir,' came a reply. 'Owner very disappointed
about it being found, as an insurance write-off
would have been a better deal than trying to offload it or
even scrap it. All prints exterior and interior matching
owner or employees, consistent with accounts that the
perpetrators were wearing latex gloves.'




obviously, but I reckon you'll at least be able to tell us when
we're barkin' up the wrang tree. I just want you to sit in
on briefings and let me sound you out when I need to.
That fair enough?'

'Sure.'

There were worse ways to spend a Monday morning,
and it was instructive to watch the proceedings from the
comfotf of an 'informally attached' perspective, particularly
when it gave her a ringside view of how Shaw operated.

Angelique didn't know whether the exact statistics
backed it up, but it was an enduringly valuable truism that
most murders were solved within twenty-four hours.
Thereafter, the chances of a solution diminished at an exponential
rate, with the seven-day point demarking the
steepest drop-off. This was usually explained in the media
as being due to the 'trail going cold' or 'the chain of
evidence breaking down', or some other such melodramatic
keech. In practice, the reason for the tapering success
rate was quite simply that most murder cases were laughably
obvious, and if an arrest hadn't been made within
twenty-four hours, it was because it had turned out to be
a bit less straightforward than husband/boyfriend stabs
wife/girlfriend or jakey lowlife bludgeons fellow jakey
lowlife after three-day drinking binge. When you found a
strangled corpse in the kitchen, you didn't have to round
up Professor Plum or Colonel Mustard if the kitchen also
contained two used syringes, half a dozen tea candles,
twenty-odd screwed-up scraps of aluminium foil and one
incoherent but weepingly contrite smack-head.

With a robbery, the investigative odds followed a similar
curve, but Shaw, despite a degree of private candour
towards Angelique, wasn't acknowledging that in front of
the troops. It was easy to see how he earned his popularity


196

197

'So they steal a heap of shit with wheels that nobody's
likely to be keeping an eye on - or an eye out for later. It
doesn't matter that it's not a reliable getaway vehicle
because they only need it to get them there. After that, they
wander casually round to Royal Exchange Square,
attracting plenty of attention but crucially no suspicion
because, well, let's face it, it's broad daylight on a busy
Saturday morning and if you're up to something naughty
you don't dress like Ronald McDonald. To compound this
and indeed maximise their visibility, they make the short
trip round to Buchanan Street, dancing to the accompaniment
of music on a portable hi-fi, and proceed to perform
for the passing . . . What is it?' Shaw asked, in response to
a raised hand.

'It's who they were dressed like, sir. It wasn't Ronald
McDonald. We interviewed this busker, and for what it's
worth he said they were all supposed to look like somebody
called Zal Clermiston. He was pretty strong on the
point, said not just the masks, but the colour pattern on
the overalls were a match too. Clermiston was--'

'An Edinburgh suburb/ Shaw interrupted. 'Zal Cleminson was, if I can remember the Seventies through the
haze, the guitarist with the Sensational Alex Harvey Band,
late of this parish. Described once as a cross between Jimmy
Page and Marcel Marceau. An unmistakable sight in his
time and one that these blokes must have known would
be recognised by at least somebody.'

'Sorry, sir. Cleminson. The busker also said they were
playing an Alex Harvey song on their stereo as they entered
the bank.'

'Which one?'

The officer consulted his notes. 'Faith Healer.'

'Very dramatic. Now, it's a wee while since I've been in

198

Tam Shepherd's, but I don't imagine five latex Zal
Cleminson masks would be available over the counter.
Somebody get on to where they came from: if they were
made to order, who by?'
'Yes, sir.'

'Now, still dancing, they enter the bank, where everybody,
including the staff, thinks it's a stunt up until the
point that guns are drawn and orders are given. They speak
in American accents of varying authenticity. I'd say this
could be an attempt to put us off the trail and disguise the
fact that they're local, if it wasn't that nobody round here
has ever given the impression of being remotely capable
of pulling off something like this. If they were, they'd have
done it before now. That said, we now know they chose to
dress up as a Seventies Glaswegian rock guitarist, the
significance of which I have no time to dwell upon.'
Another hand went up.

'A similar anomaly, sir: several witnesses report that the
leader, "Jarry", commenced the robbery with the words
"Alakazammy, stairheid rammy". Two witnesses and in
fact a few officers have remarked that the phrase is familiar,
though they're all buggered if they can remember where
from.'

Shaw nodded thoughtfully. 'Rings a bell with me, too.
The stairheid rammy part is familiar to anybody who's ever
witnessed an argument up a close, obviously, but the first
bit sounds like a magic word. Abracadabra, Open Sesame,
that kinna thing. Another smart-arsed joke, perhaps, of
which we know these guys are fond, and very possibly
another red-herring that it would amuse them to know we
were fishing for.'

Shaw walked a few feet towards one of the interior blowups.




199


'So far, it's a lot of show and clever distraction, but no
matter how good your element of surprise, you're still not

gaunny stop somebody hitting the panic button and
locking down the vault. At that point, you can maybe pull
a couple of grand from loose cash behind the till and then
hopefully walk back out into a crowd who already think
you're harmless. No, here's where they really start to distinguish themselves. They're after the big prize and they're
in it for the duration, so they need to get themselves dug
in. They take hostages, but not everybody who happened
to be there at the time. They release the very young, the
very old, the pregnant and the infirm, eradicating liabilities
and rogue elements, such as a heart attack or a woman
going into labour. It also goes down pretty well with the
remaining captives because it suggests they're not being
held by merciless psychopaths. In fact, on the whole they
are polite, calm and even respectful, with one exception,
of whom more anon.

'With several folk being allowed to walk out the front
door and the silent alarms triggered, they know the cavalry
will be along soon, so the next thing they do is blank out
all views into the bank, meaning we can't see what's going
on and definitely can't start taking pot-shots when the ARU
arrive. Moving this one stage further, they effectively take
out our ARU using non-lethal means and causing no lasting
damage. It's a message, telling us that they don't want
anybody getting shot and that everybody should just cool
their jets.'

Shaw then paced across to another photo, this time
showing the improvised gallery that had been exhibited
on the bank's doors and windows.

'Meanwhile, inside, their crowd control is ... ostensibly
mental but practically superb. They paint pictures, invite

200

audience bloody participation and even put on a play.
Every apparently insane thing they did was actually for a
very good reason. In this case, they reduce the tension and
with it the risk of desperate action on the part of their
hostages, who stop worrying about getting their heads
blown off and instead concentrate on wondering how long
they're gaunny be stuck there. But this in itself is part of
the ruse. They get the duty manager to submit his pass
code and tell everybody what their plan is: hacking the
computer system to open the safe, which is gaunny take a
wee while so everybody might as well get comfy. All the
time, however, they know they're leaving at the back of
five. Why is that, Officer Ford?'

Ford grinned bashfully, happy that his techie obsessiveness
had earned him a rare moment in the limelight, but
in true geek fashion not entirely comfortable about
addressing more than three people outside of IRC.

'Because they had actually hacked the computer system
twenty-four hours previously, sir, and may in fact have had
full remote access privileges for days, even weeks before
that.'

There were many sighs and much wry head-shaking
around the incident room.

They had complete control of the local intranet and shut
down all exterior connections a few minutes before the
robbery commenced,' Ford went on. 'One staff member
says she remembers her internet browser hung up just
before the five men entered the bank.'

'So they had a sixth member on the outside?'

'Possibly, but the sub-routine could easily have been set
on a timer. The main purpose, though, was so that no-one
at the bank's HQ could access their system once they knew
they were being robbed.'

201

'To circumvent the dual code system.'

'No, sir. The dual code system didn't need to be circumvented,
because the security sub-routines had all been
disabled anyway. The automatic call to the police still went
out, but the vault shut-down command did not. To any of
the staff who happened to look at a monitor, the system
would have appeared to be reacting as it should, but in
fact the computer had no idea the panic button had been
pressed. The exterior connections were terminated so that
HQ couldn't attempt to regain control of their own system.
Meanwhile, the robbers had the power to open the safe at
any moment they chose.'

'Any moment they chose,' Shaw repeated, once again
addressing the whole room. 'And yet they chose to string
it out, giving everybody, including our own DI de Xavia,
the impression that the ball was on the slates. This is
because no-one would be expecting them to make a break
for it until they got what they came for, unless something
untoward was to intervene. Something duly does, in the
shape of our wee bomb-scare, which gets everybody,
including the polis, running away from the building while
they make their escape. Then, by the time the smoke has
literally cleared and we figure out what's happened, not
only are they gone via the Underground, but we cannae
get near the place because it's learning with Teddy Berrs
on the way back from Ibrox.

They walk away with around eight hundred grand in
cash and leave us with bugger all but a communal riddy.
No fingerprints, no physical descriptions (apart from the
unmissable fact that one was a midget), merely a final
punchline in the shape of a canvas bag containing five fake
machine-guns to let us polis know precisely how badly
we've been hung oot.'

202

Shaw paused to let them feel the sting of this slap to
their collective pride, like Alex Ferguson tapping into that
siege-mentality resentment reservoir for motivation. It
should have doubled Angelique's own determination, but
something was keeping her in a state of comparative
ambivalence; possibly her 'informally attached' status.

'So/ Shaw resumed, 'who were they? What do we know
about them? These names they used, what were they
again?'

'Jarry, Athena, Chagall, Dali and lonesco, sir.'
'I'm assuming the names didn't register on any database
of known aliases - these guys are too smart for that - but
they're not Mr Blue, Mr Pink and Mr Brown, either, so
what's the score?'

They were surrealists and absurdists, sir,' ventured
Pollyanna Bailey with quite the least-expected contribution
of the morning.
'Eh?'

'Dali and Chagall - both surrealist painters. Jarry and
lonesco were absurdist playwrights. I believe two of the
robbers performed Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett,
which could also be classed as absurdist, though to my
knowledge it has more than two parts.'

They used hand puppets,' someone informed him.
'Well, I mean, no' puppets, but they made their hands talk,
according to the hostages.'

'How do you know this stuff?' Shaw asked Bailey, with
a look of distaste bordering on outright disapproval.
'PC Internet, sir. The officer with all the answers.'
Shaw looked relieved, having been previously appalled
to think that someone who knew about drama had been
admitted to the Glesca Polis in the time since he left.
Angelique was relieved too: up until then she'd been




203

revising too many preconceptions for comfort, so it was
good to see some hard evidence of where this 'old school' tag had come from.

'So what about Athena? He was the bampot of the bunch,
Mr Guess-who-doesn't-belong. What did PC Internet have
to say about him?'

'Her, as it turns out, sir. Greek goddess of wisdom. Makes
him the odd one out, in more ways than one.'

'Wisdom. They really were taking the piss.'

Angelique laughed, having suddenly worked out what
the name really meant. Prior to Bailey's contribution, she
had only heard of Dali, but now she got the gag.

They were taking the piss in more ways than one/ she
said, her laughter having attracted Shaw's attention. 'Dali
and Chagall were great artists, and in a broader sense, you
could say Jarry and lonesco were great artists too, yeah?
Athena, on the other hand, was that chainstore where you
went to buy cheesy posters, like the one of the female tennis
player scratching her bare arse.'

'Are you sure? Do they have those stores across the
pond?'

'No idea, but they seemed pretty clued up on other
aspects of our domestic culture. Seems too much of a coincidence,
given their overall attitude to the guy.'

'And yet,' Shaw mused, 'he was the one their leader
chose to back him up when they went upstairs to intercept
you. Reliable for muscle, perhaps.'

'No, sir, he was the guy Jarry least minded getting shot
if anything went wrong when the polis came through the
roof.'

'Fair point.'

'According to the hostage statement I took,' offered
another officer, 'he was the one they placed in front of the

204

doors prior to painting over the glass. If anyone was going to take a bullet, they were making sure it was him.'

Shaw was nodding thoughtfully. 'This guy could be our
best route in. He doesn't fit with the others and it's
obvious they neither like him nor trust him, so what's he
doing there at all? They're like nothing we've ever
encountered and he's just your common or garden ned,
so what did he bring to the table? Local knowledge?
Whatever connects them to him strikes me as their weak
point, if only we can suss what it is. He also strikes me
as the one most likely to screw up after the fact, maybe
by flashing his cash now that he's minted. Let's put out
feelers to our friends in low places, see what they know.
If we find Athena, I can't imagine there's any way he
wouldn't squeal on the others.

'Also, these fake guns - I want to know where they
came from. Ironically, these days replicas are more easily
traceable than the real thing, so let's get on it. The face
masks and this skin irritant, too. What actually was it? Is
it freely available or could the purchase be traced? And I
want somebody on to Interpol to see if these heidthebaws
have hit anywhere else. I cannae imagine the precise MO
will have been repeated, or we'd have seen it on the tail
end of the TV news, but there's no way this was a debut.'

Around the incident room, notes were keenly taken and
determined heads were nodded. They were raring to go;
probably would have been even without Shaw's pep rally.
Angelique could tell when cops were having fun, and a case
like this sure beat the usual depressing bread-and-butter
stuff. They had already taken a gubbing from these guys,
so there was a professional score to settle, but while there
were no corpses to clear up it would feel like light duty.

Shaw clapped his hands together to silence the growing




205

mutterings. 'Just before you all go off and get busy, is there
anything I've missed?'


'Yes, sir. There is the small matter of Mr Jarry sending
flowers to a police officer following some weird meeting
of-the-minds, mutual-flirtation encounter that went down
during the robbery,' Angelique didn't say. Instead she
watched the briefing wind down and disperse before
making her way back upstairs. It marked her first, albeit
minor, betrayal of her loyalties to the force. She'd known it
was coming, known all along she would be keeping it to
herself, but it was only once the opportunity to volunteer
the information had come about that it felt like any kind of
deed had been committed. As acts of disloyalty went, it
hardly compared to some of the duplicity people frequently
justified to themselves in this line of work, but she still felt
a tug of conflict, like picking up winnings after secretly
betting on her team to lose. A line had unquestionably been
crossed.

However, it wasn't like she was on the start of a slippery
slope. Quite simply, owning up just wasn't worth the
grief, not for what it would contribute. She had done her
own trace on the flowers, naturally. They had been delivered
to her parents' place by a Via-Flora courier. She called
the despatching branch, but found that the order had been
placed through the company's centralised website, paid at
premium rate for delivery 'within the hour'. She then
contacted Via-Flora's main offices in Walsall as an overture
to tracing the payment card, but was told the order had
been paid for using internet credits. These, it turned out,
could be purchased using cash at any Post Office, and most
crucially, were data-protected to the nth degree so that the
credit-holder's identity could not be faked online. Finding
out who had held the credits that bought the bouquet

206

would take a lot more than a warrant, and even then it
struck her as unlikely that the 'identity' behind them would
be Jarry's real one. The (inevitable) hotmail account used
to confirm the order was prefixed jarry(r).

If she did tell Shaw about the flowers, the only practical
impact on the investigation would be to put her in the spotlight
for having been the recipient, subjecting her to no end
of unwanted official scrutiny - surveillance, wire-taps, who
knows? - to say nothing of the juvenile innuendo that
would go along with it all. Fuck that.

The flowers were now sitting in a jar on her mantelpiece,
and had fairly brightened up the room, but due to their
source had proven a bigger distraction than a blaring TV.
The Mogwai and the Merlot were always conducive to a
bit of Sunday-night soul-searching, but the bouquet had
diverted her ruminations into some strange and dangerous
places. Many questions, few answers and but one conclusion:
she was keeping this to herself, long after the flowers
were wilted and binned. No-one needed to know, no-one
was going to know and no-one could know.

Threatening to instantly disprove this was the sight of
Shaw waiting for her at her desk when she got back
upstairs. Reminding herself that 'old school' did not mean
telepathic, she remained calm and waited to be told what
he did want.

'Sir?'

This Athena bloke,' he said. 'I'm trying to get a handle
on the dynamic here, if you like, between him and the rest.
You had this wee rammy with him just before he tried to
shoot whatsisface.'

'Jarry.'

'Aye. What's the score there? How do you reckon he fits
into the setup?'




207

'All I can say is not very well. The animosity was well
fermented. Jarry gave the impression he had been forced
to slap him down before, but Athena struck me as too
stupid to learn the lesson. Jarry told Athena he was a brain
short of being able to fuck with him.'

'I don't doubt it. And yet they still have him along for
the big job. There's something just doesnae add up about
this. They were so cute and calculated about everything
else, 90 why bring along this liability?'

'Maybe they calculated that too, sir. When I first went
in I thought it might be a bit of good-robber/bad-robber
psychology, but nah. The more I look back, the more I think he was being used.'

'Used?'

'They used me, didn't they? I was the one they got to
come down to the vault to see their supposedly malfunctioning
explosives. I doubt I was part of the original plan

-	probably one of the hostages would have done - but a
cop falls into your lap, who better?'
'So how were they using Athena?'

'I'm not sure, but I reckon they were relying on him to
be himself. Jarry's as smart as they come and clearly has
Athena's number, so he could definitely have handled it
cooler when they got into a stand-off - if he'd wanted to. He provoked Athena into firing that gun - what came out
of it proves they were expecting him to do it at some point

-	and Jarry made sure it happened in front of a witness
but away from the hostages.'

'What if he'd fired it downstairs? Bit of a risk, no?'
'The hostages would have no way of knowing about
the other four guns, would they, especially if he was being
obviously ostracised. But this was a safer way of getting it
over with, letting Athena know he was snookered.'

208

'So that's why Jarry took him upstairs. That and, as you
suggested, to be a human shield.'

'Hmm/ Angelique said, her logic circuits making
another belated connection.
'What?'

'Well, it's starting to dawn on me that there could have
been still another reason: to keep him out of the way while
they got on with something downstairs that they didn't
want him to see.' 'Like what?'

'Like stashing the money. Neither myself nor any of the
hostages thought the safe had been opened, so who's to
say he did either? In fact, there's no way he was in on the
real plan. I couldn't see his face, but there was no mistaking
that he was pissed off because he thought the whole thing
was going sour. He remarked upon it several times, and I
find it implausible that out of the five, he was the one with
a real acting talent.'

'But they got a convincing performance out of him
nonetheless.'

'Out of me, too. I was actually begging them to let the
hostages go and clear the building, in complete accordance
with their plans. They played me, they played everybody,
so why not a tube like him?'

'Especially if it meant twenty percent more to share out.
Fuck, well there goes the chances of him makin' any ostentatious
purchases, eh?'

'Yes, but if we do find him, he'll be even less conflicted
about grassing them up.'

'Except that he probably knows close to fuck-all about
them. If they knew they were gaunny screw him, they'd
cover their arses against the consequences.'

'He'll have seen their faces. That's more than anyone else.'




209

Shaw sighed, sounding weary in a very non-old-school
kind of way.

'True/ he conceded, 'but just between you and me, de
Xavia, I think we've got close to hee-haw chance of catchin'
these guys, whether we know what they look like or not.
No prints, no descriptions, probably some clever alibis, too.
Short of a confession, we could be struggling even if we
did have somebody to arrest.'

'With respect, sir, that's not exactly the up-and-at-'em
attitude I was led to expect of you by the keepers of your
flame.'

Shaw grinned at this last remark, and in that moment a
few things were silently understood between them.

'Oh, I'm all that and a puddin' supper,' he said after a
moment, 'but you need to be realistic aboot what you're
up against. I brought down a lot of bad bastards round
here, aye, and quite a few in London as well. But you know
what they all had in common?'

'They all loved their mothers?'

They were fuckin' eejits. You don't go intae crime if
you've got much of a brain, let's be honest. I don't mean tae get sociological aboot it, but if you've the faculties tae
make a decent living . . . you know what I'm sayin'. Look
at that job in the papers last month. Bunch of arseholes in
Cambuslang stole a bulldozer fae a buildin' site and tried
a ram-raid on a cash machine. Brought half the fuckin'
bank doon on themselves, all got read their rights in
hospital. That's what we're normally dealing with:
numpties wi' tights over their face haudin' up the local
buildin' society wi' a sawn-off shotgun. Not this. Poor
Drew McMaster'll be laid up for a month, gettin' his cerebral
cortex unravelled.'

'So why even bother?'

210

'I like a challenge,' he said, again sporting that sharp
grin in acknowledgment of the vacuous cliche. 'Naw,
here's why. Perfect crime, down in the Smoke a few years
back. Two blokes kill a guy to order: no witnesses, no
motives, no connection. Then comes the clever part. They
bury the body in a recently filled-in grave in a cemetery.
Nick in during the night, the earth's still loose, wheech
oot the coffin and put the corpse under it, in case the plot
gets used again. Cover it over and it looks same as it did
the day before. No motive, no corpse, no crime. Smart,
eh?'

'Very.'

'So how do I know this happened? Why are they baith
servin' life in Parkhurst? Because their idea was so fuckin'
clever they told everybody in the pub aboot it. These guys,
our guys, are probably too sharp for that, but the point is,
if they do find a way of screwin' up, I'll be waiting.'

Angelique's phone started ringing as she watched Shaw
walk away. If they find a way of screwing up. In the wise

words of Harry Hill, what were the chances of that
happening?

She lifted the receiver.

'De Xavia speaking.'

'Hi.'

He didn't say anything else for a moment, and neither
did Angelique, though she wasn't sure she'd have been
capable even if she'd wanted to. There was just no precedent,
no known means for responding to something like
this, and yet there was no question in her mind about
precisely who she was failing to respond to. Can you recognise
someone's voice from just 'Hi'? Can you recognise even an accent? Either something inside her instinctively




211

knew who she was talking to, or else she was merely
projecting on the basis of who she hoped she was talking
to, and both options said more than she cared to hear about
her current state of mind.

'You know who this is?' he asked, utterly misinterpreting
the growing silence.

'Mm-hmm/ she mumbled, suddenly and irrationally
afraid of being eavesdropped upon, presumably by
colleagues who were also telepathic and possibly omniscient,
given the brevity of their exchange so far.
'Okay,' he confirmed, preceding another pause, during
which Angelique's nervousness seemed to become contagious.
She heard a swallow at the other end, then he
resumed, less hesitant if no more certain. 'This is gonna
sound a little obsessive,' he said. 'I realise under the circumstances
I probably don't seem the sanest person, but . . .'
Another sigh, another swallow. 'I got the feeling, and
maybe I'm just going nuts, but I ... I got the feeling you
and I ought to talk. And I don't mean about . . . well, if
you know what I'm talking about, you'll know . . . what
I'm talking about, I guess.'

'And what we're not talking about.'

'Yeah. Otherwise, I'll put down this phone and walk
away, right now.'

The next silence had a timer on it, an ultimatum: every
second it grew carried an increased danger that the line
would go dead, and she very much didn't want that to
happen. What was he talking about? Angelique couldn't
articulate it any better than he had, but she still felt she
knew; at least knew enough.

'Presumably you know that it's now professionally
incumbent upon me to do anything in my power and say
anything I can think of in order to keep you on this

212

telephone,' she said, part stalling, part thinking aloud.

'And that anything you do say is interpretable according
to that consideration, yes.'

'So if I answer yes, why would you believe I'm telling
the truth when you know it's not an option for me to
answer no?'

'Because you wouldn't be asking me that if you were
lying.'

Angelique found herself looking around the office, this
ridiculous paranoia remanifesting itself. No-one was
paying her any attention - why would they? And yet she
feared scrutiny, like a wean following an unauthorised
withdrawal from the biscuit barrel.

'Okay, say we did have something to talk about. What
then?'

'We meet. I buy you a drink. We talk.'

'And I do this without informing any of my colleagues,
in abject dereliction of duty.'

'That's your call, but right now I'm just a voice on a telephone.
Do you inform your colleagues every time you meet
someone for a drink?'

'You're not just anyone, though, are you?'

'What are you afraid of? I'm the one taking a chance.'

'Afraid? I'm not afraid.'

'Then why are you whispering?'

'I'm not whispering/ she whispered, lowering her voice
even further than it had already involuntarily slipped.

He laughed. 'So what do you say?'

'Let me get this straight. You want to meet in a pub, face
to face, you and me. How would you know half the
customers weren't plain-clothes cops waiting to nail you?'

He laughed again, harder this time. 'I'd know/ he said.
'Cops don't need to be wearing uniform for you to see




213

blue. That colour never washes off. It sometimes fades,
though/ he added pointedly.

'If I do this, I'd advise you never to lose sight of what I
am/ she warned, rebutting what he was hinting at but
aware she might be protesting too much. 'You've no
rational reason to trust me, and as you've already played
me once, I owe you, remember?

'I'm very much aware of the stakes. But I've got a pretty
good hand right now. I walk in there and I think it's a trap,
I can walk back out again. Until I introduce myself, you
don't know what I look like.'

'But once you do, it's the point of no return.'

'It's not a date with destiny, it's a drink. At the end of
the night we can both walk away.'

'Return to our trenches after the kickabout?'

The war is over, believe me. You guys lost.'

'So why are you still here?'

'Maybe that's one of the things we're not going to talk
about.'

'Maybe. Fair enough. At least you didn't say it was
because of me.'

'Would you have bought that?'

'You played me once, pal. I'm on the lookout from here
on in.'

'So does this mean we're on?'

What was that about not being on the start of a slippery
slope?

'What have we got to lose?'

'Just off the top of my head, everything.'

Angelique smiled, though she knew he wasn't entirely
kidding.

'My kind of stakes/ she told him.

214

just a little drink/just a little pregnant

It was way past time for a bit of quality soul-searching harsh,
unflinching, look-yourself-in-the-mirror stuff. Item

one on the agenda: what the fuck do you think you're
doing? Alternatively, he could just phone Karl in Newcastle
and tell him what he was planning. The guy would go
straight into Jiminy Cricket mode and the effect would be
roughly the same.

'What, is everything going too smoothly, you feel you
need to put the whole operation on a knife-edge to keep
you sharp?' he'd ask. Something like that. Or maybe,
'We've gotta cross this river of burning lava, but you figure
it would be better if we all did it on a tightrope?' Yeah,
that sounded more like him.

'You could end up horsing this for all of us because of
a girl you don't even know.'

Closer still, to Karl and to the truth.

What the fuck was he doing?

It didn't feel like he was selling anybody out. Not yet,
anyway. He hadn't walked into that bar, he'd only made
a phone call. Even if she turned on him, the cops still had
no physical evidence that it was his face under that mask.
If it actually made it to court, which was improbable, he'd
walk, same as he could walk from the bar if it didn't feel
right.

He hadn't done anything he couldn't back out of - so
far. But what he was contemplating was unquestionably a




215

I

risk, to himself and, inescapably, to his friends also. At this
stage he could still merely think of it as a conflict of interest,
but the second he placed a drink in front of that woman,
he was making himself a double-agent in that conflict. Even
if nothing came of it, he was still putting their safety down
as part of his stake, without their say, without even their
knowledge, and that part just didn't sit easily with him.

It didn't matter that he thought he could handle it,
thought he could make it work. The point was that this
risk wasn't merely his to take. They were in this together
- Karl, Leo and Jerome - risking their asses to back him
up because of a debt that only they felt they owed him.

So what was he going to do, have a poll? Besides, that
wasn't the only reason they were in this, was it? There was
the matter of another, larger debt that they all quite definitely
owed someone, and in the grander scheme, Zal was
fully authorised to speculate on their behalf when it came
to ensuring they could pay it in full.

Chill. He wasn't betraying anybody. If it all went fugazzi,
it would have been because he'd been negligent, and that
wasn't a charge anyone had ever made stick so far.

Too much emotion, that was the problem, with its
Alpine molehills and white-squall tea-cups. It was also
the upside. They had never been closer and never worked
better, not since New York anyway. This, however, was
far more intense, for any number of reasons. Those New
York days had been a kind of adrenaline-addicted, hedonistic
existentialism, transparently symptomatic of an
attempt to extend their adolescence and its intoxicating
delusions of invincibility. There was no shortage of adrenaline
in Glasgow, but here it was merely fuel for the
engine, and they weren't doing anything simply for its
own sake. Here there were no delusions, most certainly

not of invincibility. Here was where they, the defeated,
divided and scattered, had regrouped: older, stronger,
smarter and wiser, grateful for what they had together
and singularly determined to make up for what had gone
wrong.

In Zal's case, to that potent concoction you also had to
add the unsettlingly giddy effect of just being in this city,
which could at times feel like a giant theme-park based
around his father's memory.

Since his dad's death, Zal had known he would come
here some day, just like he knew he would see his friends
again, just like he knew they would eventually have to deal
with Alessandro. Blind fate, prompted by Cream-T's
serendipitous career move, had dictated that all of these
things should happen at once. There were ways in which
he understandably felt this put him at an advantage, but
it sure was a lot for his heart to take in. After Folsom, just
a few drinks with his buddies would have been emotion
enough to last him a month or two. Instead they were
working on (and so far pulling off) the riskiest jobs of their
lives, in this place that had been his childhood's Neverland,
and in which he kept finding scattered fragments of the
mould that shaped the man who, for better or worse, had
shaped himself.

He did get that reunion drink with his buddies; it just
got eclipsed in the hot competition for sweetest moment
since he was paroled. Violating said parole within hours
of release by leaving not only the state but the country and
in fact the continent was a pretty good start.

They were all waiting for him at Glasgow Airport. There
were no high-fives, no grand gestures, just confident smiles
that demonstrated how intently everybody understood
what they were all there for. They'd been there the best




216

217

part of a month before Zal got out of Walla Walla, scoping,
researching, confirming and preparing. As Zal's dad had
taught him, you have to make sure everything you're going
to need is already in place before you even make your
entrance.

He'd seen all of them at some point during his time
inside, but geography meant visits had been understandably
far from frequent, with only Karl showing up more
than once due to living in California. Jerome had gone back
to his family in Vermont after his release, Leo to live with
his sister in New York, and it was more than two years
since he'd seen either of them in the flesh.

They were all looking damn good, or maybe they were
just looking damn good to him. People never look their
best when you're peering at them through steel bars or
reinforced Plexiglas, no matter which side of it they're on.
Karl's last visit to Folsom had been only two months back,
but even he looked different now that they were all
breathing free air. It was difficult to pinpoint: not any
specific physical feature, more an aura, a sense, something
in the way they stood, walked, laughed. Nobody had that
haunted air about them, that look of fucking apology,
shared guilt, regret and repression.

This was their time, and they knew it. Everybody understood
what stakes were on the table, but everybody was
equally happy to be in the game. Zal couldn't say it was
like old times, because what defined every second was a
common awareness that those times were gone and they
were different people now, but every second was valued
all the more for that.

Leo and Jerome were still bitching mercilessly at each
other the way they always had, but it was like a self
conscious parody of the animosity they once took so much

218

perverse mutual pleasure in generating; like Spock and
Bones in the Star Trek movies compared to Spock and Bones
in the original series. Way back when, their games of verbal
brinkmanship skirted recklessly close to very dangerous
territory, there being no such thing as agreed limits between
them. Now, however, there was no risk of real escalation
because no-one was letting himself become distracted from
the task in hand. There was also the matter of everybody
having a vivid appreciation of each other's fragilities these
days. In the past, they attacked each other as a form of
play, like tiger-cubs, because they didn't know what it was
to be truly hurt.

That said, anyone who didn't know their history might
sometimes find it difficult to believe that these people
considered each other friends. A sample exchange, stemming
from Jerome's objection to Leo's less than crucial
choice of which Beckett play he and Karl should perform
to entertain and distract their hostages:

That's it. That is fuckin' it. Tonight, I'm gonna find me
a girl who takes it in the ass, I'm gonna dress her up like
a spoiled white-boy preppy fag, all cravats 'n' shit, an' I'm
gonna call her Jerome. Then maybe when I'm fuckin' her,
like I said, up the ass, I can ask her what's goin' through
her vacant little mind an' begin to understand just a bit
about what it must be like to be you.'

'You know, the more time I'm forced to spend with you,
Leo, the more I'm happy my ancestors were slave owners.'

Zal wasn't sure whether it would help an uninformed
observer to learn that the hammily effete (but strictly
heterosexual) Jerome hailed from Vermont blue-blood
Unionist stock, any more than it would to know that Leo
was gay. He'd long ago given up his attempts to make
sense of what went on between them, and knew only to




219

stand well back if you wanted to watch the fireworks.

Sweet moments, so many sweet moments. However, if
he had to pick just one to savour, it would have to be an
incident during 'rehearsals' for the bank gig.

They had presented themselves to Hannigan and his
people shortly after Zal hit town. Quite a shower. So far
from home, it was comforting to observe that while gangsters'
sartorial predilections differed across the continents,
they were at least united in their belief that paying out
serious green for anything with a label on it was more than
a substitute for taste, elegance or even practicality. Zal
could picture these guys wearing their Armanis in the
swimming pool and still thinking they looked the cat's ass.

Alessandro had predictably given the impression that
Zal and company were entirely at Hannigan's disposal,
maybe just short of pulling on aprons and cleaning out his
sunken-style Jacuzzi (actually, he had no idea what
Hannigan had in his house, but there was just no way in
this universe that the guy didn't have a sunken Jacuzzi).
Zal chose to reinforce this by stubbornly disputing the
arrangement and struggling against Hannigan's attempts
at control, figuring that by tugging on the leash it would
emphasise to everybody that the leash was there. A demonstration
of compliant obedience struck him as being inter
pretable as potentially devious, and while the guy might
look like an asshole, he wouldn't be where he was if he
was stupid.

The RSGN robbery was never part of the agreement, far
less what Alessandro had sent them there to do, so Zal had
to make sure Hannigan got wind of what they were planning.
Otherwise, the first he'd have known about it was
when he heard it on the news, put two and two together
and come up with the only four guys in town who could

220

have carried it out. Bringing him in this way fitted the
enforced compliance angle.

Zal 'reluctantly' acceded to Hannigan's insistence that
he put a man on their team for the bank, and that a one
fifth split should kick back to him for 'allowing them to
work on his turf (yeah, right). The guy, one Barry
Merkland, would have to shadow them every step of the
way (stop laughing at the back), become integrated into
their plan (I mean it, you'll be sick) and be given a pivotal
role in the robbery itself (oh look, you've even got me
started now).

Perhaps the funniest part was that Merkland thought
they were taking the piss when they were telling him what
was going on. It was fair to assume his recreational tastes
didn't veer towards the fine arts, nor that he understood
that the practice of theft could be executed in subtler ways
than pointing a gun at someone and yelling 'gimme all
your money'. Consequently, his patience with Zal's
methods wore swiftly thin, while his resentment at having
to comply with Zal's orders grew more simmeringly transparent
by the day.

Karl was running a book on exactly when Merkland
would lose it, with an impartiality agreement that no-one
should provoke him in an attempt to win the bet. Jerome
scooped the pool the day they broke it to the guy that he'd
have to learn not one, but two synchronised dance routines.
This is fuckin' bollocks,' he decided. 'I'm fucked if I'm
daein' any o' this shite. Nae chance, man. Yous can fuckin'
whistle.'

'Cool with us/ Zal told him. 'We can live without a
passenger, though I'm sure Hannigan will kit out a replacement
for you just as soon as the Versace shop opens.'
'Or maybe he'll decide we're gaunny take this whole




221

thing over an' show yous cunts how we dae things roon
here.'

'Oh, that I'd love to see. Thinking about it, why would

you need us when you've already got such genius at your
disposal?'

'I'll fuckin' show you whit we've got at oor disposal,
son, if you're no fuckin' careful.'

'Are, you really dumb enough to believe your capacity
for violence gives you some kind of edge here? We're
robbing a bank, not mugging a senior citizen.'

'It gies me enough of an edge that I shouldnae have tae
staun here an' take shite fae fuckin' poofs like you.'

'Well I can't see how you work that out, considering you are standing here and taking shit from me, and will continue
to do so as long as your boss commands it.'

It might have been ruled a technical provocation if Zal
hadn't already lost his stake by that point, having backed
Merkland to freak a day earlier when they told him about
the itching powder.

'Is that right?' Merkland asked, which was as close as
he came to subtlety, a hand-written warning that he was
about to attack Zal being considered marginally too
obvious even for him.

Zal couldn't say he entirely enjoyed what happened next.
He couldn't say he didn't enjoy it just a little, either, but
he had his regrets. None of these were for what Merkland
suffered, but instead over the means by which that
suffering was inflicted and the reasons they were at his
disposal. There had been a time when a seasoned hardcase
like Merkland could have knocked Zal down with his spit,
six feet tall or not, but that was the guy who walked in to
Folsom. The guy who walked out dropped Merkland
bleeding to the deck in about six seconds. Still, there was

222

no doubt in Zal's mind as to which one he'd rather be,
given the choice.

So that wasn't the sweet part. The sweet part was when
Merkland got back up and pulled a gun.

'No, wait, don't do it,' Zal implored.

'Aye, you're no' so fuckin' smart noo, are ye?'

'I was talking to Karl, asshole.'

Keeping the gun pointed at Zal, Merkland stepped
around ninety degrees so that he could get Karl in his line
of vision. He was standing on a box near the door of the
warehouse, holding a knife in his right hand.

'How, whit's he gaunny dae?'

'Okay, Karl, show him.'

In a twinkling, the gun was in Leo's grip, via the floor,
while Merkland clutched his injured hand in his fist,
squeezing and yelping.

'Oh, put a sock in it, it was just the handle. Next time
he'll hit you with the blade, and that'll really give you
something to howl about.'

'You fuckin' bastards.'

'Yeah, yeah. Word of advice, dude. We all have to work
together, and it seems there ain't nothing we can do about
that, but it would be a whole lot easier if you just accepted
that you are one brain short of being able to fuck with me.
Now let Jerome stick a couple of band-aids on you and
then you better get yourself ready to shake your thang.'

'I'm not sticking anything on him,' Jerome objected.

'Why the fuck not?' asked Leo. 'You're the expert when
it comes to layin' hands on pricks.'

'I think it's too bad for Merkland your sister isn't here,
Leo. I don't know whether she's much of a nurse, but I'm
sure it would make him feel better to be in the company
of someone who goes down quicker than he just did.'




223

And so on.

Not everyone was as dependably stupid as Merkland,
but they had nonetheless played things pretty much faultlessly
so far, usually because they accurately identified
what they could depend on in individuals, organisations or
institutions. They could depend on bank security protocols
to turn a robbery into a siege; they could depend on the
cops to turn a siege into a circus, and they could depend
on everybody at the circus to run away from what they
thought was a bomb.

Angelique de Xavia, on the other hand, was an unknown
and therefore unpredictable quantity. Zal had no idea what
he could or couldn't depend on from her, and it was this,
rather than merely the fact she was a cop, that made what
he had in mind such a risky proposition. However, it was
also the reason no will on earth was going to be able to
stop him walking into that bar.

Angelique couldn't remember ever feeling so nervous, not
even going into Dubh Ardrain. Leading a two-person
assault against a dozen terrorists holding thirty-odd
hostages in an underground fortress really ought to have
held more fears than nursing a G&T in a city-centre pub,
but the difference was that during the former, she'd known
what she was doing and what she was up against. She had
also enjoyed the advantages of stealth, secrecy and the
resultant element of surprise. Here, she felt like nothing
more than a sitting duck, having voluntarily walked into
a situation that was entirely someone else's to control.

But that wasn't the sole source of the butterflies, now
was it, girl?

Oh, gimme a break, she argued with herself. What other
source could there be? What other source did she need?

224

She was exposed, vulnerable and isolated, going out on a
limb for reasons that had admittedly seemed easier to rationalise
before she walked into this place. But for God's sake,
she didn't even know what he looked like, so it wasn't like
she fancied him or anything. She was just. . . curious, and
who wouldn't be under the circumstances?

Curious, sure. That was why she went through three
changes of outfit before finally making it out the front door,
not to mention half an hour wrestling with the hair-drier
and her first resort to make-up since the late Nineties.
Curiosity.

Jesus, what the hell was she doing?

She was sitting in a booth opposite the bar in a newish
place called The Institution, the venue chosen by Jarry.
She'd never been in it before, indeed hadn't heard of it
prior to his phone-call, and figured that he must have opted
for it because it was central and, like most large, modern
pubs, conveniently anonymous. These places did have
regulars, but they were nobody's local, and the bar-staff
turnover was too frequent for them to remember many
faces. However, it was only when she arrived that she
understood his reasons to be less cautiously tactical: the
joint was a converted bank.

Angelique sipped at her drink, caught between the need for the alcohol's disinhibiting properties and the desire not
to finish it too quickly. Sitting on her own felt sad enough,
but sitting on her own with a second drink said 'stood up'
in very big letters. She was practising that invaluable self
kidding psychology: until she reached the bottom of the
glass, there was no need to look at her watch, because hey,
she hadn't even finished her drink yet, so the guy couldn't
be that late.

He could be here already, in fact, which was just one of




225

the things she was finding very uncomfortable to deal with.
The place was busy, from the bar to the overlooking gallery
level upstairs, and as in any crowded pub, there were many
eyes scanning around the gathering - looking for pals,
looking for talent, or just people-watching. She'd caught a few eyes glancing at her, and didn't know whether she was
attracting looks because she was a woman on her own, or
simply that being on her own, with no-one else to look at,
meant she was more alert to looks that would have come
her way anyway. Either way, the attention felt intrusive
when there was the possibility that any pair of male eyes
could be his, sizing up the situation or maybe even sizing
up her ('Oh dear, you looked so much better in Kevlar'),
before deciding whether to just walk away.

There was relief on offer in that eventuality, but only
from her own wretched insecurities. This inexplicable sense
of guilt was still lingering, making her feel like she'd been
caught dogging school. It was crazy. She hadn't done
anything to be guilty about yet. That mythical line hadn't
so much been crossed as snagged on her belt and stretched.
Who was to say she couldn't yet use this situation to bring
the guy and his accomplices to justice? No-one, nothing had been betrayed. She was following up a lead that was
only open to her if she acted on her own.

Aye, right.

'Impetuously autonomous,' anyone? 'Going it alone
outside the chain of command'? No, she wasn't betraying
anybody as long as she was engaged in precisely the kind
of conduct the Star Chamber had wrongly accused her of
in the past.

This thing had disaster written all over it; the only uncertainty
would be over the scale of the damage. Nonetheless,
she knew that if he didn't show, by far her strongest

226

emotion would be disappointment. That was why her G&T
was likely to evaporate faster than she was drinking it.

She stared into the glass, toying with the plastic stick,
toying also with necking the whole drink and hitting the
road. But she knew she wouldn't. If the bastard didn't
show, she could be here until closing.

This is gonna sound a little obsessive . . .

No kidding.

She hadn't been able to get those words out of her head,
not just because of what they had heralded, or even the
fact that they were an appropriate commentary on most of
her actions and thought processes since. There was something
else: they were naggingly familiar, even the way he'd
spoken them. He was quoting, she decided, some American
movie she must have seen a dozen times, but she was
buggered if she could remember which one. Further
confusing her, she was sure it was a woman's voice that
she could hear speaking when she tried to recall. It would
come to her eventually, she reckoned; it was unlikely to be
of any great import, but neither would it stop repeating
until she'd nailed it.

'Hi,' said a voice, sounding yards away as it stirred her
from the absorption of contemplating both her drink and
the unidentified movie quote. She looked up to see a figure
looming over her table. He was wearing a grey business
suit with the tie loosened, holding a pint of lager which he
was clearly summoning the courage to place masterfully
on her table. He wasn't there yet. 'Please understand, I'm
not in the habit of bothering women when they're on their
own/ he said. Such an apologetically considerate gambit
could only be the work of a true shark. It sounded well
rehearsed and well used to the point of stale.

Angelique glanced over his shoulder. There were three




227

otailback or some other transport problem. Beyond that, the
chances of him actually putting in an appearance began

to tumble.


Bollocks. There was only so much self-kidding her
dignity could endure. She pulled back her sleeve and took
a look at her watch, sighing with incredulity at what it
revealed. It felt like she'd been there long enough for the
Blue Nile to release a new album, and yet the dial told her
it was quarter past eight, meaning she'd only been there
twenty minutes. He was quarter of an hour late, so allowing
for a standard five-minute error margin between their
respective watches, to his mind he could be running as
little as ten minutes behind. Nothing to worry about.

Self-kidding rocks. Dignity? That's what gin was for.

She decided to get up and head for the bar, which was
when she saw him, standing a few feet inside the door,
appraising his surroundings with a casualness that surely
belied the degree of analysis going on behind his sharply
scanning eyes. It was him, had to be. Even allowing for
the skewing effects of wishful thinking, Angelique had little
doubt that the man who had just walked in was the same
person she'd been held by on Saturday afternoon. There
was an ease about the way he stood there that was definitely
familiar: an unaffected sense of being undaunted by
whatever was going on around him, and yet within it an
undistracted sense of purpose that was focused without
seeming intent. He looked as though a mass brawl could
break out around him and he'd still be calmly taking in
his surroundings, maybe holding up a powerful arm to
deflect a flying body here and there.

He had shoulder-length hair, peroxide blond, more than
a hint of Californian surf punk about it, a look somewhat
at odds with the blue chinos and crisp white shirt visible




ther suits staring her way, carefully observing how their
pal was getting on. They'd be on hand to back him up
verbally if he was getting anywhere, just as readily as they
were preparing their merciless demolition in advance of
his failure. Ripping the guy was a temptation, but these
types had thick skin, and the chorus loved a reaction.

'And I'm not in the habit of humiliating polite but unsolicited,
suitors. Let's neither of us make any exceptions
tonight, eh?'

'Can't shoot a man for trying,' he said, offering what he
thought was a boyishly cheeky smile.

'Operation Flavius would suggest otherwise,' she told
him.

'What?'

'SAS in Gibraltar. Quit while you're ahead, son. Your
pals are waitin' on you.'

The shark held his hands up in jokey surrender and
maintained the magnanimous expression for the benefit of
observers, but 'Eat shit, dyke' was emanating sincerely
from his eyes. He pirouetted on one heel and began walking
away, to the accompaniment of eager laughter from his
buddies.

Angelique sighed and looked back at the empty seat
across from her, then drained the drink, bringing it down
on the table with a frustrated thump. Screw you for putting
me through this, she thought. She knew at the same time
that she wouldn't yet be able to leave, but the sense of
compulsion was starting to diminish.

She stared at the empty glass, almost but not quite ready
to look at her watch. A second drink on her own wasn't
necessarily 'stood up', was it? Anybody could be late, and
until she looked at her watch, she wouldn't know how
late. Anything less than half an hour was a missed bus, a

228

229


beneath a flowing overcoat: Californian surf punk scrubbed
up to impress and wrapped warm for the Glaswegian
winter. She pictured him in overalls, replaced his face with
that of a clown.

Definitely.


Angelique, having been taken for a mug on Saturday,
decided to let him know she wasn't daft. She waited until
his4 attention came roughly her way and met it with a very
small wave, barely a ripple of the fingers on her only
slightly raised right hand. Self-discipline hid her smile as
his eyes caught the movement, homed in on it and then
locked there as he deduced that he'd just given himself
away.

Made.

She did him the courtesy of looking elsewhere again,
allowing him to approach without any sustained scrutiny.
Or maybe she just wasn't ready to fully face down his gaze
quite yet. She stared into her empty glass as he slid into
the seat opposite, then looked up to finally confront him.

He didn't say anything at first, which seemed improbable
given his performance on Saturday and his antics
since. Instead they just looked at each other for a few seconds, Angelique fronting an intense expression of
impassive scrutiny to disguise two things: the dawning
appreciation that she had little chance of sussing out what
was going on behind this guy's eyes, and the fact that she
nonetheless felt compelled to try. For his part, he simply
stared back with these two penetrating pools of deep blue
chaos, which hinted at a thousand things but betrayed not
one, not even whether he was about to smile or scowl.

'You're late/ Angelique said, unable to take much more
of the silence and attempting to put him even slightly on
the back foot.

230

'You're dry. Me too. What can I get you?'

'Eight hundred grand and five convictions. But right
now I'd settle for a gin and tonic/

'You got it.'

He turned and began looking around the pub, scanning
this time with considerably less care to be inconspicuous.
Angelique failed to either suppress or disguise a smile.

'What?'

This is Glasgow, pal. You'll be a long time looking for
a waitress.'

Without looking back at her, he bit his bottom lip, closed his eyes and briefly shook his head, then turned to face
her with a genuinely tickled smile.

'See me? See cool? I'll be right back.'

Angelique felt a grin spread across her face as she
watched him walk to the bar. He returned with her gin
and a pint of something dark for himself, placed the drinks
down and took off his coat before sidling into the booth
once again.

'Let's start over/ he said, offering a hand across the table.

'I'm Angelique/ she said, shaking it. 'And you are?'

'You can call me Zal.'

The guitar-playing clown. Very good. Do I not even get
your real first name to be going on with?'

That is my real first name. Well, strictly speaking it's
Sal, but I preferred it with a Z, so that's what it became.'

'Sal?'

'After Sal Mineo. My mom was a big fan of Rebel Without
A Cause.'

'So the Zal Cleminson look - that was kind of your way
of putting a signature on Saturday's events?'
He took a sip of his beer and gently shook his head. For
a moment she thought he was about to elaborate, until she




231

deduced that it merely meant he was not going to answer
the question.

'Was that a double bluff?' he asked.

'What?'

'The abject lack of subtlety. Make me think you can't be
wearing a wire because if you were you'd be more cute
about asking loaded questions?'

Angelique thought about it, not having anticipated that
he'd have this concern. Now that he'd brought it up,
however, there was no way of making it go away, short of
taking her top off, so she thought she might as well play
along.

'What answer would you believe?' she asked, offering a
coy smile.

That's good,' he replied, nodding. That's very good.'

'I suppose for the purposes of this conversation, you're
going to assume that I am wearing a wire.'

'Kinda. Except that if I really believed you were, we
wouldn't be having this conversation.'

'And yet you're going with the assumption. Kinda.'

'Let's just say I wouldn't consider the irony to be
poignantly poetic if it turned out my instincts were wrong.
It would be a little discourteous, too.'

'Discourteous?'

'You were the one who warned me never to forget what
you are. I didn't interpret that to only mean being a cop.'

'What else does it mean?'

That if I lose sight of the things that attracted me to you,
I'll be in a lot of trouble.'

Angelique sensed a surge in her bloodstream at the
sound of the word 'attracted'. It felt like a momentary burst
of static in her head, fading out her surroundings until
there were just the two of them in the booth, and no room,

232

no bar, no people beyond. Couldn't he have said 'interested'?
Couldn't he have said 'intrigued'? Attracted had
connotations of ... of ... all the things that made this
meeting so dangerous, ill-advised and yet impossible to
resist. Now that she had seen his face, she could tell that
matters weren't about to get any less complicated. Part of
her - that big, cowardly part of her that was there to protect
the fragile bits - had been hoping he'd look like he'd been
cobbled together from the pieces Michael Jackson's plastic
surgeon threw away. Physically, there was nothing of this
guy that she'd want discarded. Even the hair looked acceptable,
if only on him. And he was 'attracted' to her. Yes, sir,
he went on the record with that. However, no matter what
he looked like, she couldn't lose sight of what he was, any
more than he could of her.

'You're saying you consider me ... a threat,' she clarified,
dampening those connotations and cursing herself
for it. 'Or a match for you might be putting it better? I
must say, I find it hard to believe you would think so
highly of me after the ease with which you hung me out
to dry.'

He opened his mouth to respond, but remained silent
and took another gulp of his pint instead. 'Now that was
cute/ he told her. 'I was almost leaping in to defend you.
A far more subtle way of getting me to stray on to matters
I can't talk about.'

'So what matters can you talk about? Because if we don't
find some pretty soon, then what's the point in us being
here?'

'I guess that depends on whether you're interested in
more than what I was doing on Saturday afternoon; and
even if you're not, I figure you're smart enough to know
that not all of the answers you seek lie there anyway.'




233

Angelique considered his words carefully, taking a sip

of her own drink as he spoke. She put the glass down and
looked again into his eyes. His gaze was forbidding yet
compelling; like his evasively enigmatic statements, the
more he sought to conceal, the greater grew her determination
to find out what he was hiding.

'Okay, here's one. Why are we here? I mean, why did
you invite me?'

'Why did you accept?'

'Are you going to answer all my questions with questions
of your own?'

'I watched a lot of Jeopardy in ... recent years. But I
figure if you answer my question, you'll answer your own.'

Which put them squarely in the territory of matters she didn't want to talk about. Why did he ask? Why did she
accept? And which, if either, was the crazier for doing so?

'I had nothing to lose/ she said, which was untrue but
plausible. 'And I'd have to confess to being more than a
wee bit intrigued. Who wouldn't be.'

'By me personally or by the circumstances?'

'I consider both to be inextricable.'

'I guess that's your job.'

'Actually, in my book it's your job that makes the man
difficult to separate from his deeds.'

'You're saying I wouldn't have got a date if I was a bank
clerk?'

'Bank clerk? As opposed to bank . . . ? Impossible to
know now, isn't it. If you were a bank clerk I'd have at
least known in advance what you looked like. Anyway,
who says this is a date? All it would take is for me to read
you a caution and it would be a formal interview.'

'Figure of speech,' he said, smiling. 'It's kind of like a
date, though, isn't it? Boy meets girl, we have drinks in a

234

bar, we ask each other questions and try and get to know
a little more about ourselves.'

'Boy holds girl hostage, boy plays girl like a cheap fiddle
while boy robs bank, then later, yes, boy buys girl drink,
but boy speak with forked tongue and boy evades all of
girl's questions. The only thing I know about you now that
I didn't half an hour ago is your first name.'

'So ask me something else.'

'Okay. Where are you from? Assuming the accent is
genuine.'

'Lots of different places,' he replied, grinning in acknowledgment
of her exasperation. 'But originally Vegas.'

'Appropriate. A place that's made artifice a way of life,
and where everybody's looking for fast money they didn't
earn.'

'Ouch. Back in the knife drawer, Officer Sharp. Maybe I'll
offer you up a few harsh generalisations about your town.'

'Fire away. They'll probably be true.'

'No, it wouldn't be polite. I'm a guest here.'

'And you don't consider it impolite to rob your hosts?'

'Morality and decorum are different issues.'

'But not entirely separate ones.'

'Not always, no,' he conceded. 'Hypothetically, shall we
say, pointing a gun at an unarmed bank customer is not a
very pleasant - or morally upstanding - thing to do. But
it doesn't mean there has to be a suspension of common
decency.'

'Common decency. You're talking about something more
than politeness there.'

'I guess I am.'

'And morality is definitely bound up with that one.'


'All gets pretty fuzzy, don't it?'

'The law isn't.'




235

He laughed. 'Law and morality. Now there's two issues
that are definitely unrelated.'

'I'd say they were hand in hand when it comes to taking
things that belong to other people.'

Theoretically, yeah. But while the law remains black and
white, morality has more of a greyscale spectrum.'

'A greyscale spectrum?' Angelique asked, laughing. 'You
thought that one up yourself?'

'Sure,' he replied, just a hint of the bashful about his
smile. The white end we know about. But there's a difference
between mugging some old grandmother for the
savings she needs to live on and stiffing a major financial
institution for a few Gs that they're barely gonna miss.'

'A few hundred Gs. And they are going to miss them,
believe me. There's an old phrase round here that goes "every mickle maks a muckle". It's a philosophy that lies
at the heart of every financial institution, major or minor.'

'It's not gonna break them, though, is it? Or weaken their
stock, or make them vulnerable to a hostile takeover.'

'I wouldn't know. But I know that ultimately, it'll be the
ordinary punter who takes the hit. The fat cats arenae
gaunny make up the shortfall out of their annual bonuses,
are they? So if the books don't balance, the charges go up
and maybe a few staff will get laid off. That old grandmother
you mentioned banks at RSGN, so maybe now her
savings won't be earning as much interest, and her bank
teller granddaughter who helps out with the rent is now
skint because she got laid off.'

'You speak the truth, if served with a heavy ladling of
melodrama.'

'You reckon I overdid it?'

'A little, but I played the frail grandmother card first,
so fair enough. But what you described . . . the same shit

236

ii

4

happens if a flood takes a bite from the insurance arm;
Jesus, RSGN could lose the same amount if one of its stock
traders had one beer too many over lunch. There are worse
crimes than what happened on Saturday. Worse thefts. I
ain't saying it's right, but I'm morally at peace with it.'
'Morally at peace? What does that mean?'
'It means that it isn't keeping me awake nights, but that
doesn't preclude wishing it didn't have to be this way. Do
you know what I'm saying?'

'I think so, but let's imagine I don't, and then maybe
you'll say something that doesn't sound like the whines of
a thousand previous losers seeking to justify their actions
to themselves.'

'It wasn't my fault. I've had it bad, you don't know what
it's like. Society made me do it. Or do I have to come up
with something better than that?'

'Glaswegians make a tough audience.'

'Legendarily so. Under threat from rotten tomatoes, I
guess what I'm saying is that certain events can seriously
alter your perspective from that crisp black and white
divide you start off looking at. And even though you
remember how it looked from there, and you wish it could
still be that way, with you standing safe on the white side
of the line ... I dunno. The places you find yourself, the
things you need to do to survive mean you can't afford to
worry about keeping the division so neat.'

'So you surf back and forth along that greyscale spectrum?'

'I'm not selling you this, am I? I'd like to, though. I'd
like to explain and I think you'd listen.'

'You think I'd listen as a cop or just listen as myself.'

'You are a cop. I don't believe there's some other you
that's entirely detached from that.'

Angelique had to stifle a sigh. He was depressingly right:




237

i

there was no way to deactivate it, no place to retreat from
it and no way of cordoning off the rest of herself. That was
why so many polis ended up in relationships with
colleagues: they were under no illusions about what they
would each be sharing their partner with. Up until now,
she'd have said fellow cops were the only people who could
understand. She'd forgotten the crooks might have a handle
on it, \po.

'I am what I am,' she said. 'To quote Gloria Gaynor. Or
was it Popeye? Either way, I'm listening.'

'Problem is, I can't tell you anything without telling you
everything, and I just can't do that right now. But believe
me when I say this whole thing isn't just about a chunk of
change.'

This whole thing. So it definitely wasn't over, and whatever it was, was weighing heavily on the guy. He wanted
to talk, and something had made him reckon she was the
right person to listen. Angelique was appalled to feel an
unworthy pang of disappointment that this might be the
real reason he had called her.

'So how did we get from Vegas to this anyway?' he said,
breaking the growing silence, inviting her to collude in
changing and forgetting the previous subject.

'How did you get from Vegas to here might be more
pertinent/ she said, obliging for now. 'In fact, I didn't think
anybody was actually from Vegas, other than Andre Agassi.
I thought people just ended up there.'

'Gamblers who got jobs to pay the tab and ageing
crooners who can't get arrested anywhere else? Oh yeah,
we got 'em. But it's also the fastest-growing city in the US.
People do get born there. I was.'

'Your daddy was a gambler and your momma was a
showgirl?'

)

238

'I'd tell you off for taking the mickey, except you're not

a million miles off.'

'Your mum was the gambler and your dad was a
croupier?'

'No. My mom was a showgirl. Latterly, anyways. Just a
plain ole stripper when my dad met her. Well, not that
plain, and not that old, but a stripper for sure.'

'That might explain a thing or two.'

'Like what?' he asked. He remained calm, but she sensed
a fairly spiky defensiveness was being suppressed.

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean any disrespect. Just thinking
aloud.'

'Well it's out here now. What did you mean?'

'Your mother being a stripper. I thought it might have
had certain consequences for your attitude towards
women. Or rather your conduct regards other men's attitudes
towards women.'

'You'd be right, though I have to concede I'm at a loss
as to how you got there.'

'About time I had the advantage of you, I'd say. And I'd
tell you, but it's in that domain we can't talk about.'

'You can talk about it. I just can't respond.'

'Okay. I read through all the witness statements and
noticed one in particular was very reluctant to say anything
negative about you, despite being held captive for five
hours. She almost seemed afraid to say anything that could
be used against you. I went to see her, got her chatting off
the record. You know what I'm talking about yet?'

He nodded.

'Please say yes or no for the benefit of the tape.'

He smiled and took another gulp of heavy.

'You asked me earlier why I accepted your invitation to
come here tonight. What that girl said played a part.'





239

'Glad to hear it. My old man was never gonna make the
hall of fame for fatherhood or husbandry, but he did pass
on a few strong values. How you treat women was one of
them. 'Course, ideals and practice ain't always the same
thing. When you're walkin' out on somebody, being' courteous
ain't gonna be an awful big consolation.'

'Sounds like we're getting back to the difference between
morality and decorum again.'
'Just as long as you didn't think we were back to cliched
explanations for being a loser.'

'I mentioned previous losers. I never said you were one.
Not while you're sitting on a quarter share in eight hundred
K.'

'I thought you guys were looking for five robbers?'

'We are. But we also figure one of them is desperately
looking for the other four.'

'Did I say you were good before? I take it back. You're
real good.'

Angelique couldn't help but smile. It was a fun game
they were playing, and it felt good to score a point, even
when it struck her that he had learned something about
the cops from it without her learning any more about the
robbers. Nevertheless, he was tending towards the expansive
when it came to family, which constituted a major area
of development.

'So if your mum was a stripper, what was your dad's
line in Vegas?'

He turned those blue headlights on her again, full beam.
Reading what was in them was much like her attempts to
pick out and describe the flavours in a good bottle of wine:
there were notes and nuances she felt sure she could
discern, but all the time there remained the possibility that
she was just imagining it all and consequently talking out

240

}

of her arse. Her guess at this current vintage was a touch
of appellant sincerity, a hitherto undetected hint of vulnerability
and a sizeable dollop of calculated risk.

'You're a detective,' he told her. 'I'm gonna leave that to
you to work out.'

'Do I get any clues?'

'All the evidence is already out there, but you only get
one guess, so take your time.'

'Fair enough. I'll work on it. I've sussed who the gambler
in the family is, though.'

'No shit.'

'What I can't suss is what could be worth the stake you're
putting down by being here tonight. But then maybe it's
about playing the game. They say the serious gambler
doesn't get the buzz from what he might win, but from
what he has to lose. Is that you?'

'I'm not in this for thrills. Once upon a time, maybe, but
. . . these days I've got a pretty firm grasp of what I value.
You said Vegas was the world capital of artifice, and you
might be right, though LA's got it run pretty close on that
score. And you said it was where people went in search of
fast money they didn't earn. That's true too, but you gotta
understand that what Vegas is really all about is entertainment.
People go there to have a good time, whether
it's to see the bright lights, watch the fancy show or play
the slots and tables. To have fun doing those last two, you
spend what you've got going spare. You win, great; you
lose, you had fun anyway. But you never gamble with what
you truly value, because there's no odds can make it worth
the bet.'

'Which brings us back to my original question. Given

everything you've just said, why are we both sitting here?'

He finished his drink, put it aside on the table and leaned




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1

forward, looking at her now with an intensity that would
have made her recoil if it wasn't simultaneously so
imploring. Having shifted his position, his shirt hung open
around his neck, revealing the snaking black coil of a tattoo
across the top of his chest.

'Do you really want to talk? And I don't mean any more
of this cat and mouse, cops and robbers bullshit. Just you
and me» saying whatever we've got to say to each other
and dealing with the consequences after we've found out
where the truth takes us?'

There was no glib 'yes' to this question. Angelique didn't
know what he had in mind, but she knew it was balls-tothe-wall
for real. They'd had their games over whether she
could be wearing a wire, but she was sure this was something
he'd never suggest if he thought for a second that
her interest was purely professional.

'I won't know anything until I know everything,' she
stated.

'You got that right.'

'So let's talk.'

'Not here.'

'Where, then?'

'The question is more of when.'

'When?'

'When can you get a couple days off?'

'I'm off next Thursday and Friday. Time in lieu. Your call.'

'Thursday morning, then. The airport.'

'So you can do a runner if you think I'm about to huckle
you?'

'Neutral ground.'

'What's neutral about the airport? It's just Paisley, it's
still in our jurisdiction.'

'Yeah, but Paris isn't.'

interlude: Scotland's most intrepid reporter
(no, not that one)

Want to get ahead in the brave new Scotland? Simple. Go
and stick your penis up another man's backside and you
will be, in the vulgar modish parlance, sorted. Alternatively,
you could get yourself a bright, bushy tail and
call yourself Basil. Foxes and sodomites had it good in the
post-devolution apocalypse. Feel like buggering a cherubic
sixteen-year-old? Fine by us. Wouldn't want to impinge
upon your human rights while you're violating a confused
and vulnerable schoolboy, would we? And what's that?
You want to adopt? Marvellous. Please don't let anyone
suggest your predilection for anally penetrating the barely
pubescent should be considered an obstacle. It's obvious
you love children. That's why we've abolished all legal
impediments to you proselytising in our schools.

What's that? Education system in tatters? Standards
dropping faster than a single mother's lacy panties when
the rent man comes a-calling? Crime on the rise? All-out
surrender in the war on drugs? There, there, don't make
such a fuss. This is a caring, liberal society, hadn't you
heard? We love those little foxy-woxies. Couldn't countenance
a hair being ruffled on their fluffy and cute little
carnivorous, snarling heads. It's because we care. We care
so much it hurts. It makes our little hearts bleed to think
of all the suffering in our harsh, nasty society. That's why
we have to protect the rights of criminals, because how




242

243

else can we take away the sadness in their souls that makes
them do such beastly things? That's also why we have to
defend the rights of homosexuals to nail each other's
gonads to planks of wood if that's what floats their boat.
And shame on you for calling them perverts, you horrid
bigot. There's no such thing as perversion any more, didn't
you know? No such thing as pornography, either. It's all free expression, you see. Whether it be buggery in a public
toilet or hard-core sex videos in a municipal art gallery, it's
simply a vibrant celebration of the human condition.

We mustn't prevent people from expressing themselves,
must we, not in the new, liberal, forward-looking Scotland.
Oh, unless of course they happen to be white Christian
heterosexuals with a concern for the innocence of our youth
and an at least rudimentary understanding of what the
word morality once meant. Those scum are a plague on
our society, and are to be silenced at all costs.

Walter Thorn was under no illusions about it: he was
effectively an outlaw. Guilty of thought-crimes, and defiant
in the face of the charge. Persecuted for his beliefs under
a regime whose favourite buzzwords, with no hint of irony,
were 'tolerance' and 'inclusiveness'. Oh yes, we're tolerant,
but we don't tolerate just anybody. Thugs, junkies,
scroungers, pederasts, murderers, blasphemers, pornogra
phers and deviants - we tolerate all of them, but we have
to draw the line somewhere, and you 'dinosaurs' with your
'obsessions' are on the wrong side of it.

Great God, when did decency, when did morality, when
did values become obsessions? Difficult to say. It had started
a long way back, and had been a slow, putrid and decaying
process, but unquestionably its official ratification was
stamped 1 May 1997.

He'd been on the thought-police's hitlist ever since. There

244

were no round-ups, no mass executions in football stadiums
(not yet, anyway), but as a known dissident, he'd been
marked down for disappearance nonetheless. Instead of a
knock at the door in the middle of the night, it had come
over time, excruciatingly by degrees. In the past, he had been
chief speech-writer to two different Scottish secretaries:
Howard Clark and the tragic and much-misunderstood
Alastair Dalgliesh. He was prized and lauded for his wit,
his clarity and his passion; whether they needed to put fire
in the bellies of the faithful, or fear in the hearts of the
enemy, he was the man they trusted to deliver. There was
no thorn in the flesh of the left like Walter Thorn. But those
enemies did not forget, and would never forgive; nor could
they afford to let a dangerous subversive remain loose
armed with such a powerful weapon as the truth.

After the British electorate's Gadarene mass-suicide of
'97, like-minded veterans gathered to one another in
pockets of resistance. He returned to the vocation where
he'd made his name, accepting offers from two friends to
write columns for their newspapers, albeit only in the
regionalised editions. (Bloody everything had to be regionalised,
like bloody everything had to be divided, distinguished
and compartmentalised in case you gave offence
to a one-legged Welsh-speaking Pakistani lesbian.) So for
a while, he had still been able to strike back, shaming the
hypocrisy, ridiculing the absurdities and generally sending
out a clarion-call to the silent majority, reassuring them that
they weren't alone in their anger and disgust. But the resistance
was being slowly crushed, and in such times there
will always be traitors, turncoats and capitulators selling
out their comrades to save themselves. His column was
dropped from the Sunday Tribune when its editor-in-chief
shamelessly abandoned his principles in order to preserve




245


his own job following the stable's sale. The craven quisling
did everything but wear a pink frock and decorate his office
with Judy Garland posters in order to appear ideologically
on-message to the new 'gay-friendly' proprietor. The Tribune papers were 'reinventing themselves as a centre
ground alternative', which was marketing speak for
watering themselves down for the politically correct palate
and waving a white flag from the parapet. White flag? Pink
flag, surely.

At The Post his jettison was less blatant. He'd had a
relationship with the paper going back to the Sixties, having
started off there as a campaigning reporter before going on
to work as a columnist and leader-writer. All of that would
have stood him in fine stead if it wasn't that his old friend,
Michael Dunn, had recently retired and been replaced as
Scottish editor by some upstart female who short-sightedly
regarded the longevity of Walter's association with the
paper as a burden rather than a pedigree.

'It's the way forward for the right. IDS is big on this. We
need to be seen to be trying to shape the future, rather than
always harking back to the past. From now on this paper
is going to be about making people think that Conservative
doesn't mean old-fashioned, or disapproving of everything.
This doesn't mean our core values have changed,
but in expressing them we need to come across as proactive
forward-thinkers, rather than moral spoilsports.'

Moral spoilsports. An editor (editrix?) of the Daily Post, albeit in a regional bureau, had actually said that.

Of course, she didn't have the gall to just summarily
ditch him from the paper (and she was aware he still had
friends up the chain who knew he'd been penning editorials
when she was reading the Bunty). Instead, she was
trying to make things uncomfortable for him in the hope

246

that he'd fall on his sword. His column was axed first, then
he was edged off the leader team and finally the politics
desk, but he was not laid off and he was damned if he was
surrendering and giving the bint what she wanted. She
even gave him the letters page to edit, which she must have
been sure would finish him off, but she under-estimated
both his professionalism and his certainty that if he bided
his time, he'd still be around to see her get her jotters. He'd
seen plenty of deluded mediocrities knocked from their
perches in his time, and she'd be no different. Eventually,
she was forced to change her tactics, giving him an assignment
she surely thought he'd make a sackable mess of.

'You made your name in this game by being in touch
with the values and feelings of the silent majority/ she told
him, in an act of utterly transparent flattery. 'Now more
than ever we need to show the discrepancy between what
the man in the street really believes, and the politically
correct mumbo-jumbo he's being force-fed.' If the flattery
wasn't enough, the fact that this sounded like music to his
ears tipped him off that he was being set up, even before
she told him what she had in mind.
'I want you to go under-cover.'

'Eh?'

'Have you heard of FANY?' she asked.

'Fanny who?'

'Family and Natural Youth. It's a new pressure group,
kind of rising from the ashes of Families for Innocence and
all that lot.'

He remembered Families for Innocence all right, having
applauded them in print as 'the first wave of a rising tide',
ordinary people fighting back against the Executive's
dogmatism. They had come to prominence a couple of
years back, when they organised a Scotland-wide picket of




247


the Greencross chemist chain. Greencross was in cahoots
with Holyrood to set up 'advice' clinics for teenagers at its
major branches, the advice of course being that they should
have lots of sex and buy plenty of contraceptives from the
scheme's selfless patron. The group was disbanded amid
the hysterical media backlash after a couple of Greencross
staff were allegedly assaulted during the pickets, one
claiming to have had acid thrown in her face. It was
unquestionably down to the work of infiltrators, out to
discredit both the pressure group and the position it represented.
Why no-one else was able to see through this was
a matter of 'none so blind'.

'Liam McGhee was the driving force behind FFI, and
he's been involved in a few things since, under various
banners. Those Marie Stopes protests last year, and that
big stushie over links with Operation Rescue.'

'I know who you mean.'

'Well, he started up FANY a few months back, with a
far wider agenda than in the past. It's not just another anti
abortion or contraception pressure group. He says they're
about "putting the moral reality in front of the politicians'
ivory tower", something like that. They've not made much
of an impact so far; in fact a lot of folk thought McGhee
had just about chucked it after the reception they got at
their launch, but it turns out he might just have been
keeping his powder dry. The whisper is that they're planning
some really high-profile stunts.'

'And where do I fit in?'

'I want you to sign up. Get involved. Be there for the
exclusive, and have the in-depth inside track afterwards.
This sort of thing is precisely what we need - a marriage
of old-style values with a modern dynamic. It shows that
being conservative can be, you know, a bit rock 'n' roll, a

248

bit kick-ass. Taking a moral stance doesn't only mean
Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells firing off an angry letter
before going out to the bowling club. This is passionate,
it's pro-active, it's sexy.'

Sexy. Indeed. How very him.

Walter thought about it long into the night, eventually
going downstairs when his tossing and turning became
enough to irritate his wife, Mary, even across the gap
between their beds. Getting through almost a whole bottle
of barley water (it was just one of those nights), he sat in
his study and mulled it over until close to dawn.

He came very near to just chucking it. Going undercover
at this stage in his career, for goodness' sake. That sort of
thing was a task for the young and keen, greenhorns with
plenty to prove and little option to say no if they wanted
a career in this game. Walter Thorn had nothing to prove
to anybody, least of all some mini-skirted flash-inthe-pan
who didn't have the sense to realise she'd only been hired
as window dressing because the publishers wanted to look
more 'woman-friendly' in this sorry age of 'positive
discrimination'.

She probably expected him to balk, he realised, not even
get as far as messing up the job. Then she could fire him
without any substantial recourse from the powers that be.
He was supposed to just go quietly into the night, make
way for the new generation, in which case pity help us all.
When even the Daily Post's moral spine was buckling, it
was a sign of grim times indeed, to say nothing of the
declining standards of reporting evident throughout the
press in general. Take the nonsense the papers had been
full of lately, this bank robbery fiasco in Buchanan Street.

'surreal gone quids - artful dodgers make off with a
mill'




249

'art attack - classy robbers paint cops into a corner'
'crooked clowns laugh all the way from the bank'
'tricky situationists - thieves steal pounds m from under
cops' noses'

Unbelievable. They were treating crime as if it was entertainment,
practically applauding these villains simply
because their methods were a trifle more colourful than
any other bunch of shotgun-wielding thugs. They weren't
just thieves, you see, they were artistic thieves, so that made
it all right. Did that mean, then, that it would be all right
to anally rape a schoolboy as long as you sketched a faux
Picasso on the wall above the scene of your crime? None
of Walter's supposed journalistic peers seemed to be asking
that. Instead they were proving as distracted by the criminals'
frippery as the police had sadly been on the day.
What was worse was that they didn't appear to have a clue
what they were writing about. From page to page they
couldn't decide whether they were dealing with surrealists,
absurdists, situationists or even Dadaists, when it
should have been signally obvious that they were merely
dealing with crooks. Dadaists, indeed. That particular hack
had only used the term in order to show off that he was
familiar with it; a pity, then, that he didn't also know what
it actually meant.

The details of their allegedly artistic antics were
appallingly contradictory too, where they weren't exaggerated
beyond any plausible belief. Depending on which
paper you read, they had, in the midst of their misdeeds,
staged a full performance of Waiting for Godot, Hamlet or The Pirates of Penzance, and had apparently daubed the
walls with recreations of half the Musee D'Orsay.

What the police were thinking, God only knew. It would
never have happened under Thatcher, that was for damned

250

sure: no pussyfooting around outside, minding your step
in case you happened to cause a crook emotional upset by
loitering with intent to arrest. In those days, the police
knew that the government had their backs. They'd have
gone straight in and mopped it up in no time, and nobody
would have asked any questions later about a few dead
scum or even a few hostage casualties. Back then, people knew the blame lay squarely with the bad guys, not the
forces of law and order. Instead they'd been run rings
around while they worked out how best to politely request
the robbers to desist without infringing any human rights
they could sue over later. That was the real tragedy of the
situation, as much as the missing money, but the press were
too busy congratulating the crooks on their ingenuity to
notice.

Amid such reflections, Walter realised that he had a duty
to hang on, however grimly, even if it was only to remind
these idiots of the standards the newspaper had lost. He
wasn't going to be elbowed out just to make room for more
half-wits who wouldn't have lasted a morning back in the
old days. And thus resigned, the more he thought about
the assignment, the more it began to appeal. If he was a
decorated veteran of the old campaigns, then this might
well constitute the new breed of resistance. The left had
had the Sixties, their activism, their radicalism, their
'counter-culture'. Maybe now was the time for the right to
get militant, for what was conservatism these days if it
wasn't counterculture?

By the end of the night, he felt sure he'd made the right
decision, and by the end of the week he'd have said it was
inspired.

Family and Natural Youth was, as the editrix told him,
the latest venture of Liam McGhee, who had become an





251

ardent moral activist after rediscovering his faith while
serving a prison sentence for aggravated burglary. McGhee
had fallen into a life of petty crime after being expelled
from a seminary for selling its silver communion chalice,
though he claimed to have been framed for this crime by
'a bent Marist Brother' whom he alleged had spent the
proceeds on rent boys. Upon seeing the light and
renouncing the sins of his past, McGhee was seized with
a burning religious energy, which he channelled initially
into pro-life activism before broadening his scope to
include a wider spectrum of family and moral issues. His
media profile rose spectacularly in those early days, as he
represented a new, grass-roots voice in an arena previously
dominated by the more polished presentation and methods
of clerics and their spokesmen. Then, just as suddenly, his
star was forced to fade again in the aftermath of the
Greencross incidents, amid mock-outraged accusations that
his rhetoric and 'in-your-face' tactics had somehow incited
campaigners to violence.

Family and Natural Youth was supposed to relaunch him into the public eye and remind the powers-that-be that
he hadn't gone away, any more than the issues he was
bringing to their door. Unfortunately, the media's reaction
following the group's initial press conference suggested
that they were more than reluctant to allow him a second
bite at the cherry. There were a number of highly unflattering
reports, dismissing him as, in one callous phrase,
'an attention-seeking ned', and accusing him of mounting
moral crusades to avoid confronting the shames of his own
past.

However, what had really buried him was the name. He
had chosen it to reflect the concerns and values the group
sought to represent, with the term 'natural youth' in

252

particular drawing attention to matters such as the
Executive's highly corrupting sex education policies, which
when they weren't trying to turn children queer, were
aimed at sexualising them before they were out of primary
school. At the launch, assistants freely handed out car
stickers reading 'F&NY', as McGhee sat in front of a banner
bearing the same legend. The ampersand was picked out
in red, the idea being that the logo resembled those IV NY
stickers that tourists brought back from America.
Unfortunately, as the editrix's shorthand would attest, the
liberal reptile element seized upon an alternative acronym,
referring to the group collectively as 'Fanny', and its
members individually by an equally predictable term.

McGhee confessed to Walter that he had been thoroughly
depressed by this response and was not by any means
'keeping his powder dry', instead seriously contemplating
disbandment and a move to America, where there were
people who would harness - and better appreciate - his
efforts. So it was perhaps appropriate that the group's
recent renewed impetus should come in the form of a new
arrival from those very transatlantic shores.

His name was Monty, short for Montague Masterton: a
tall, burly and well-presented New Englander, who spoke
in a drawling accent that drew out every vowel sound but
took a refreshing pride in pronouncing every consonant.
He had introduced himself to McGhee two or three weeks
back during F&NY's picket of the Dalriada Gallery, in
protest at its forthcoming 'History of Allegory' exhibition.
They got talking and, well, a few minutes talking to Monty
Masterton and you'd understand how things must have
developed from there. He was truly a breath of fresh air,
capable of blowing away the cobwebs and invigorating the
most jaded mind or embattled conscience. Whether he was




253

addressing a meeting or just chatting over coffee, he made
one feel the moral war was not in the cataclysmic endgame
it often seemed, but merely beginning, if only we had the
courage to fight it.

'I have one very important thing to say to you,' he had
addressed the room on the first night Walter encountered
him. 'One thing that may seem simple, but only because
our enemies have clouded the facts, confused the issues
and made us afraid of ourselves. And it is this: It's okay
to hate fags. I'll say it again: it's okay to hate fags. Pretty
simple, isn't it? Again, with me: it's okay to hate fags. And
you know why? Because GOD hates fags. Don't ever forget
that. Never. When they're whining about equal rights or
they're complaining about discrimination, you just keep
that in sight. You're being discriminated against because
you're a fag? Well, buster, that's because YOU'RE NOT
SUPPOSED TO BE A FAG. God wants you discriminated
against, and who can argue against that? You don't have
equal rights? Oh boo-hoo. You don't get rights - you're a fag. You signed a waiver on all those rights when you took
the decision to put your dick in another man's ass. Got it?
God hates fags, you hate fags, I hate fags. It's okay. It's
how it's meant to be. This, as my coloured brethren would
say, is called keeping it real.'

It seemed revelatory, though it was obvious stuff, plain
as the nose on your face. But that was his talent, making
people see how obvious and simple things were when you
got rid of all the distractions that had been put there to
confuse you. It reminded Walter of himself once upon a
time, when he had an equally uncompromising way of
cutting through the camouflage to expose the truth.

'And don't be under the misapprehension that a fag is
merely a queer. All homosexuals are fags, but to be a fag,

254

you don't need to be homosexual. The apologists, the
fellow-travellers, the politicians who are helping them
proselytise, the do-gooders who want to put drugs and
pornography in classrooms: these are all fags. I have seen
how they operate, seen the damage they have done back
in my own country, and believe me, it is up to you to act
now before it's too late.

Tags are resourceful, fags are inventive, fags are insidious.
And the worst kind, I would say, are the art-fags,
without doubt the most insidious of the lot. They are the
propaganda wing of the fag war machine, every one a little
faggy Goebbels. If you have any doubt about this, then ask
yourself how your tax dollars have come to be funding the
display of pornographic materials in a place innocent children
have free access to. Danger: fags at work. You are
already aware that the Dalriada Museum's forthcoming
exhibition will feature hard-core - hard-core - porno videos
as part of a so-called "installation". But did you also know
that the museum's trustees have paid more than twenty
thousand pounds for a statue of a man sucking his own
Johnson? You couldn't make this stuff up. This city's schools are struggling for books, but hey, that's okay,
because if the kids are at a loose end, they can go to the
municipal gallery and look at twenty grand's worth of fag
propaganda.'

This, incredibly, was no exaggeration. The Canadian
cretin in charge of the Dalriada, one Thomas White, had
indeed seen fit to splash out the mentioned sum for what
was supposed to be a pertinent example of twenty-first
century allegory. This came in the form of a statue entitled West Coast (,) Man (the comma in parentheses apparently
never to be omitted from the name). In a vulgarly unsubtle
attempt at social satire, this gratuitously offensive metal




255


monstrosity depicted a man bent into a grotesque contortion
in order to perform oral sex on himself, while at the
same time sniffing a line of (supposedly real) cocaine from
the shaft of his penis. A snaking tongue apparently
protruded from the mouth and led, with tiresome predictability,
up his own anus, as two of his four arms held
mobile phones to each of his ears. His remaining hands
were reportedly engaged in obscene gesticulations, but
Walter had not bothered to disturb himself with further
details when he read the art correspondent's description.

Now, there would always be those who objected to
public money being spent on the arts, and Walter did not
normally count himself among them. In this day and age,
there would be no opera without it, for instance. There had
recently been an almighty fuss over what it was going to
cost the Kelvingrove Museum to upgrade its security
arrangements in order to temporarily host the Treasures of
the Aztecs exhibition 'when it could be spent on schools
and hospitals etc etc', and Walter had sided with the council
over that one. If you wanted the chance to see several
million pounds worth of ancient gold and jewels, you had
to cough up to make sure none of the local scruff decided
to melt it down and flog it off. But great God, who wouldn't
draw the line at funding unadulterated filth?

It was too late now, of course: the money was spent, and
F&NY's efforts to publicise the threat to children had been
largely ignored by the media. But that was before
Montague Masterton got involved.

'Family and Natural Youth is a public voice and a public
face for beliefs that ordinary people have been intimidated
from expressing, and it must continue in those roles. But
as you know to your cost, faces and voices can be ignored.
Action cannot.

256

'I am looking for volunteers tonight, volunteers to form
an offshoot, the elite unit that will take the fight back to
the fags and the hypocrites. That offshoot will be known
as Positive Action Direct. Who's with me?'

The editrix, even if she had been genuinely interested in
what the rejuvenated pressure group might be planning,
could have had no idea of just how big a story this was
going to be. What Monty had up his sleeve was not merely
more audacious than any publicity stunt, it was proof that
the battle for hearts and minds was about to become a
guerrilla war. And he, Walter Thorn, would be seeing active
service as well as filing from the front line.

He had not chosen to be an outlaw, that had been thrust
upon him. But when the law itself was unjust, it was the
duty of just men to break it. It was time for the good guys
to show they could fight dirty.

'This may not strike you as the biggest issue in this world
right now, or even in this city right now,' Monty told them.
'And it may not strike you as the greatest threat we face.
But the fight has to start somewhere, people, and the battle
against propaganda is one of the most important in any
war. We have to warn them that they can't ignore the will
of decent people and they can't hide behind the barricades
of political correctness anymore. F&NY-PAD are here now,
and it's gonna get bloody.'




257

be my downfall

'All this villain-catching stuff boring you, de Xavia?'

Angelique looked up from the statement she was reading
to see Shaw standing a few feet from her desk. The remark
sounded like a polite way of announcing his presence in
an open-plan office sadly bereft of doors to be knocked.
However, she wasn't aware of having yawned, which was
what usually provoked such a comment.

'Sir?'

'I've just learned that you're buggering off on me. Time
in lieu, starting Thursday.'

'Yup,' she said, offering no further elaboration, her way
of communicating that it was non-negotiable. Angelique
had a long record of voluntary cooperation when it came
to cancelling her own time off, something she used to tell
herself was a form of investment in her career. Latterly,
with the returns on that investment making Eurotunnel
shares look like blue-chips, she had been forced to
consider the possibility that the truth behind her uncomplaining
flexibility was instead that she was a sad mug
with no life. Nothing was going to stop her getting on
that plane with the mysterious Zal, especially not any
laboured sense of duty towards her job when the best
available means of doing her job was to get on the bloody
plane.

'Well, look, it's inconvenient, but given the informality
of the arrangement, it's not worth me being' a prick over.'

258

'And yet you're here,' Angelique said pointedly. 'No
offence.'

Shaw laughed. 'I'm here, aye. I'm just wondering
whether your plans are a reflection on how you rate our
chances of success. I cannae imagine someone of your reputation
wanting to miss out if things started to get. . . interesting.'

They've been interesting since the bank, but I'd put
down half my pension you're no' gaunny catch this guy
before I get back.'

'You're off somewhere, then?'

'Paris. You'll still be able to get me on my mobile if you
just need to pick my brains.'
'Paris, eh. Very romantic.'

Bloody polis, always prying. Even small-talk constitutes
a line of inquiry.

'I'm going with a friend,' she said. And an enemy, it
could be argued, but did she lie?

'Bit of Christmas shopping? Very nice. And I do have your mobile number, but I don't imagine you'll be giving
much thought to whoever robbed the RSGN while you're
gaddin' aboot in gay Paris.'

'I'm sure he won't be too far from my mind.'

'He? And you said "this guy" before, too.'
Angelique felt a shudder of panic.
'Sorry, it's just he was the only one I spoke to, so I was
kind of focusing, you know. When I think about what
happened, I tend to think first about him, and

She was babbling, trying to cover up something that
would have been hopelessly obvious to anyone who
actually knew to be looking for it. Fortunately, that did not
include Shaw.

'Keep the heid. I wasnae makin' oot you fancy him. Just




259

wondering if you concur that Jarry's the one to concentrate
on. Cut off the head and all that. Well, the brain anyway.'

Thus reprieved, Angelique recovered well. 'He's not the
only brain among them, that's for sure, but that level of
orchestration doesn't happen in a democracy.'

'Doesn't happen without a tight crew, either. Skills,
loyalty, mutual respect for what each other brings to the
table. But the man with the plan's got to be a bit special.'

'He's just a thief to me, sir.'

'I meant to them.'

'Oh, absolutely.'

'So, half your pension, eh?'

'Well, I've never worked with you before, sir. I wouldn't
want to risk serious money in case you surprised me.'

'And what would I have to stake against that?'

Angelique saw the story behind the banter.

'You've got something, haven't you? What is it?'

Shaw smiled coyly and shrugged. 'Maybe. Nothing
dramatic, but there is something I'd like you to take a look
at. That's if you're not too busy packing your suitcase.'

'Oh, I've got servants to do that, sir. Have to find some
way of spending the salary, and the south wing's been
painted already this year.'

Shaw took her downstairs to the incident room, where
he had a TV and a VCR set up on a desk. The blinds were
turned to prevent theoretical glare on the monitor, a highly
optimistic gesture for the time of year. Shaw pressed play
on a remote and the screen filled with a black-and-white,
closed-circuit image of Buchanan Street, swarms of shoppers
jump-cutting their way back and forth between staccato
refreshes.

'Is this the day of the robbery?' Angelique asked.

'Saturday before,' Shaw replied. 'Notice anything?'

260

She stared for a few seconds. Nothing struck her as
remarkable or out of the ordinary.

'Gap's got a sale on?'

'Very good. There's a dug has a shite in this corner at
one point as well. Anything else catch your eye?'

'Sorry, sir. Just looks like Buchanan Street on a Saturday
to me.'

'And to everybody else, except one person. You see this
area here, against the wall? Empty. Know why? There's
usually a busker stands there, the bloke that ID'd the
clowns as Zal Cleminson look-alikes.'

'Where is he?'

'At this point, still at hame, because of this guy.' Shaw
pointed to close to the centre of the screen, where a figure
was standing in the middle of the concourse, holding a book
and a microphone. 'Bible-thumper was queering his pitch.
Naebody could hear his singin' for this guy's blethers;
blethers, I should add, that were in an American accent.'

Angelique looked closely at the al-fresco evangelist, tiny
in the centre of the cluttered image. Detail was low at that
range, nor was it helping that he was facing away from
the camera, so only when he turned could she see even
enough of his head to note a bushy black beard and equally
bushy black hair. However, it was what he was facing
toward that significantly dominated the picture: the Royal
Scottish/Great Northern bank. Angelique noted the time
code. 'Saturday morning, 11:38.'

'Aye. According to our busker, this guy started showing
up three weeks back, every Saturday morning.'

'Why did the busker not find a new pitch?'

These guys are awfy territorial. Plus, he knew the Bible
basher never stayed after lunchtime. Knocked off around
the back of twelve every week.'




261

'When the bank closed. He was casing the joint in broad
daylight.'

'Perfect disguise. Naebody hassles a man doing the Good
Lord's work, and naebody pays a blind bit of notice to him,
either. Just goes to show you should never trust these God
bothering bastards.'

'I'd lift them on-sight if it was up to me.'

'Needless to say, there's no sign of him on the tape for
the day of the job.'

'Not without a more colourful costume anyway. Can we
get a better picture than this?'

These recordings are time-lapsed to save tape, so the
quality is generally shite, but we've had some enhancements
done.'

Shaw produced an envelope and upended it, allowing
two laser proofs to drop on to the desk. 'We've no current
plans to put them on posters, as I'm sure you'll appreciate.
The hair's probably a wig and the beard'll be long gone if
it was ever real to begin with. But the eyes are pretty clear
in one of them, and seeing as that was all you'd have seen,
I thought you should have a wee swatch.'

Angelique looked. One of the proofs was little more than
a profile, the contours of the face deliberately obscured by
the excessive hirsuteness. The other offered little more by
way of shape, and though the eyes were visible, the detail
was poor and the image pixelated to the point of blurry.
Nonetheless, there was no mistaking who they belonged to.

'Zal,' she said.

'Zal?'

'I mean Jarry. So many bloody aliases, it's very confusing.
But that's him.'


'You sure?'

'Well it's not the dwarf, and another of them was black,

262

so it's fifty-fifty, but I'd bet the other half of my pension
it's him.'

'Fifty-fifty's better than most of our leads have worked
out lately, so I reckon your first half's safe.'

'How come?'

'Ach, it was tuppence-hapenny stuff anyway. The guns,
for a start. They're not replicas. They're not real either, but
they're not reproductions of any fire-arm known to man,
or at least known to Ballistics. Total originals, and therefore
effectively untraceable. No joy on the face-masks
either, but safe to say, if they've the means to design and
construct their own fake weaponry, the Halloween outfits
would be a dawdle.'

'Especially for blokes with a proven talent for the visual
arts.'

'Aye. Mind you, here's a thing. Everybody's talkin'
aboot these guys being artists, what with the names and
the costumes an' aw the rest of it. I don't know, though.
I think this Jarry character's somethin' else. He's a
showman, all right, and he can act when he needs to, but
that's all part of the greater performance, if you ask me.
The paintings, the play, the lot - it's all part of his show,
but it's not an art show and it's not a drama show. It's a
magic show. Distraction, sleight of hand, misdirection.
Spectacle to keep your eyes off where the real work is
being done. A volunteer from the audience to become an
unwitting accomplice in the deceit. And for his last trick
he makes five people and the best part of a million sheets
disappear. Alakazammy, stairheid rammy!'

'A magician,' Angelique agreed, looking again at the
laser proof.

Like his father before him.




263

Sometimes you have to let your conscience have its say,
even when you know you're going to do what you intended
anyway. Maybe it's on the off-chance that it'll tell you
you're actually doing the right thing, or maybe it's so you
can pretend to yourself that you balanced up all the arguments
before taking an informed decision. Either way, Zal
was pretty sure he wasn't the only one who did it. However,
for most people it was a matter of internal dialogue, rather
than a confessional phone call to an obsessive midget with
an over-developed sense of responsibility.

'You don't change, Zal, do you? I mean through the
years, prison, everything.'

'What's that supposed to mean? I'm assuming it's not a
compliment.'

'You know exactly what it means, same as you know the
parts that are a compliment and the parts that are a warning
to save you from yourself.'

'I know what I'm doing, Karl. You know I can make this
work.'

'I know what you can do, buddy. I've known you longer
than anybody, and there's two other guys under no illusions
about how far you're prepared to go. But I'm not sure
we'd all agree on what constitutes "making it work". This
girl is a cop, a cop we took hostage, and you know little
more about her than her name. And yet, despite all of that,
you're sending her flowers, buying her drinks and flying
her to fucking Paris. I don't think you have any idea of
what you're dealing with.'

'I am entirely aware, I am on high-alert aware, of what
I'm dealing with. It's the very fact that she's a cop that
makes--'

'Zal, I'm not talking about her. I'm talking about you.
There's things loose in your kitchen that you don't know

264

how to handle, man. The fact that she's a cop isn't the only
thing you gotta worry about - it's just the only thing you know to worry about.'

'After Folsom, I can handle a lot, believe me.'

'Surviving is not the same as evolving.'

'New flesh still grows beneath scar tissue, Karl. I have
to let her in close for this to work, but if it doesn't, we can
still revert to Plan A. I always have an out, you know that.'

'Okay, I take it back. You have changed, but you've
changed in ways you're not even aware of, and that's where
the danger's coming from. You think this is just another
girl you can walk away from, same old Zal, like you walked
away from a dozen before.'

'I didn't walk away from anybody. Relationships break
up, Karl. Just because you and I are practically married--'

'Bullshit. You always have an out, just like you said. An
exit strategy, to make sure you don't get hurt. You always
walk away. You walk away before they can walk away
from you. And now you probably figure this one's the ultimate:
she's a girl you'll have no choice but to run from in
the end. Well, maybe that won't be as easy as you think.'

'How can you say that? You don't know her, you barely
even saw her.'

'Like I said before, Zal, I'm not talking about the girl.'

Damn it.

Okay, so there was another reason for letting Karl loose
in Jiminy Cricket mode, which was that he was a highly
accurate sounding board for the legitimacy of whatever
happened to be worrying Zal about himself. If Karl didn't
mention it, then it could be written off against general nonspecific
anxiety, self-doubt, hormones, biorhythms, the
alignment of the planets, bad burritos - the usual shit. On
this occasion, though, Karl had zeroed in with digitally




265

calibrated, on-board laser-guidance towards exactly what
was making Zal apprehensive about what he was getting
into.

This girl is a cop. You know little more about her than her
name. And yet . . .


And yet.

Karl wasn't worried about what Angelique de Xavia did
for a living. He was worried about what she was doing to
Zal, which made two of them. However, there are certain
mistakes that you know you just have to make, know
you're going to make, no matter what conscience, logic or
fear are telling you.

It's a simple truth of human existence. Across thousands
of years of civilisation, throughout the rise and fall of
empires and our stumbling ascent from the forests to the
stars, greater men than Zal had contemplated the wisdom
of their intentions before coming to exactly the same
conclusion.

And there was usually a girl involved, yeah.

266

paris v achilles

It was a cold and clear December Thursday, around noon,
and Detective Inspector Angelique de Xavia was walking
briskly through Montmartre in the direction of the Seine,
trying to keep up with the tall, athletic, charming and highly
untrustworthy American male who had flown her there at
his, or more likely the RSGN bank's expense. All of the
previously documented conflicts and doubts persisted, and
she remained as wary of his long-term intentions as she
was of her own unaccustomed vulnerabilities, but one thing
was indubitably sure: it beat the hell out of working.

They had flown out of Glasgow at seven-thirty, Angelique keeping her head down much of the time to
avoid confirmatory eye contact with any security staff or
cops on duty who might recognise her.

Zal had been waiting for her in the Departures hall,
greeting her with a slightly surprised (and not a little nervy)
'You came.'

'You don't sound sure that's a good thing. You getting
cold feet?'

'I'm from Nevada and this is Glasgow in December. I've
always got cold feet.'

They were surprisingly comfortable in their chatter on
the flight and in the cab, trading banter and small-talk like
they had known each other for years, probably due to each
trying very hard to disguise their own apprehension.
Angelique certainly was, and she knew that deceptive




267

impressions were something of a forte of her travelling
companion. However, there was to be no cutting to the
chase, something Zal made obvious with his now familiarly
irritating ability to not only bodyswerve the subject, but to
refuse to even acknowledge it.

The hotel was like nothing Angelique had experienced
or expected, though this might have been different had she
concentrated on her expectations of Zal rather than her
expectations of Paris. It seemed to have made a stylistic
and architectural virtue out of being neat and horizontally
compact, by basing its entire design around boxes and
rectangles. Even the minimalist reception desk was a
neolithically simple structure, one horizontal block on top
of an only slightly narrower vertical one.

'It's the world's first Cubist hotel,' Zal informed her as
she took in her surroundings. 'The aesthetic of geometry
even extends to the fittings in the rooms.'

'You've been before, then?'

'No. I read about it in . . .' He paused, long enough for
Angelique to interject.

'Stir?'

'I was actually trying to remember the name of the magazine,
but yes, that is where I was at the time. Very good.
How'd you guess?'

'Well, a crook doing some jail-time is hardly a million
to-one shot, but you gave it away the other day, said you
"watched a lot of Jeopardy in--", then censored yourself.'

'Bound to slip out, I guess. When that's where you've
spent the past three years, it tends to dominate the conversational
motifs unless you stay on top of it.'

Three years? What for?'

'Getting caught. What else?'

Angelique was relieved not to have to negotiate any

268

awkwardness over rooms, the receptionist handing her her
own keycard and a separate details form when Zal quoted
his reservation code (naturally in lieu of a surname). She
dumped her overnight bag in her regimentedly geometric
double room, ruffling the duvet as a statement of aesthetic
dissent, then met Zal back in the lobby, where he
announced their destination as the Louvre.

Despite the cold, neither of them suggested a preference
for the convenience or warmth of a cab. This was Paris,
after all, and on a school day. In fact Zal's walking pace
would have almost seemed philistinistic if it wasn't helping
raise their body temperatures, but as he spoke, Angelique
realised the real reason for his haste was that he simply
couldn't wait to get there.

'It was Diderot's suggestion that they make the place
open to more than just the elite. Dunno what he'd have made of the Belaggio, I have to say, but definitely a man
after my own heart. There's an egalitarianism about what
the Louvre represents that, to me, is the quintessence of
art's relationship with society.'

He was talking, with some knowledge and no little articulacy,
about the history of the world's largest museum, but
the unabashed enthusiasm and restless anticipation was
that of an excited wee boy going to Disneyland.

'After the Revolution, they displayed works that had
been pilfered from the clergy. I love that. Napoleon added
a shitload of stuff that he'd plundered from his campaigns,
though most of it got plundered straight back after the fall
of the empire.'

'A shitload? Is that the collective noun for accumulated
art treasures?'

'In my neighbourhood, sure. And do you know the
Richelieu wing was claimed back from the bureaucrats by




269

order of Mitterand in the early Nineties? It housed the
Ministry of Finance, and now it houses the truly invaluable.'

And so on, until they were outside the glass pyramid,
where Zal turned slowly to look at the palace enclosing
them on three sides.

'Okay, tell me/ Angelique said. 'Are we just two more
interested tourists here today, or are you casing the joint? Reverend.'

ZaUaughed, slightly taken aback, blindsided by the last
jibe as he prepared to respond to the first. 'I guess you now
know I'm not a natural blond,' he said.

'Yeah, like it took seeing a beard to tell me that.'

'I'm not casing the place, rest assured. There's six
hundred and fifty guards in there, and besides, it goes
against my principles.'

'To steal art?'

'Oh, shit no. But publicly owned art, that's sacred, and
this is a temple. Come on.'

She followed Zal down an escalator into the subterranean
entrance hall, where he paid for their admission
while she bought herself a bottle of water.

'So why have you brought me here?' Angelique asked,
wiping her mouth and accepting the fold-out museum map
he was proffering. She offered him the bottle, which he
drained and binned before starting off towards the Denon
wing.

'Who needs a reason to come to the Louvre?'

'Nobody. Nobody with a soul, anyway. But a thief needs
a reason to bring a detective here, even if she didn't have
a better offer for her day off.'

'We can talk here, that's why.'

'I can talk anywhere. Art makes you garrulous, is that it?'

'Loosens my tongue more than the finest wine,' he said,

270

before skipping ahead of her through the arch of a metal
detector. He turned around and smiled, taking a small bow,
at which point Angelique got it: she couldn't pass through
if she was wearing a wire. She made a sarcastic gesture of
applause and followed him through the machine.

'Did you really believe I'd set you up?'

'It's moot now, that's the point.'

'But if you didn't trust me . . .'

'I'm still paying you your due respects, remember?
Making you walk through that arch doesn't mean I didn't
trust you before you did it. And just because we're on the
other side of it doesn't mean I trust you now. But if a wire
was what I was concerned about, we could have talked at
the airport. Come on, I want to show you something.'

'Show me something? You mean there's something to
see here?'

'Yeah, I heard they got a coupla paintings, you know?
Probably shit.'

Making occasional reference to his floorplan, Zal led her
to the Denon wing's humbling hall of large-scale French
paintings. The seeming endlessness of riches made her feel
like she was Alice and someone had spent a few billion
doing up Wonderland's ever-stretching corridor. Zal clearly
had a specific destination in mind, and her curiosity made
her keen to reach this place where he might finally talk,
but despite this, she couldn't help stopping before several
of these imposing masterpieces.

Her companion was in no hurry himself, and appeared
at times to be spellbound before gods. Awestruck or not,
Angelique's flippant suggestion that art made him loquacious
proved to be right on the money, as he blabbered
sometimes breathlessly about David, Lorrain, Delacroix
and others. He did, nonetheless, restrict himself to a mere




271

smirk as they passed Gericault's Raft of the Medusa.

Eventually they reached their destination, their progress
latterly slowed not merely by the distractions on the walls, but by the rope-cordoned queue they had joined. Angelique
guessed correctly at the source of the hold-up, but had to
confess a little surprise at it being what Zal specifically
wished her to see.

'The Mona Lisa!

'La Gioconda,' he confirmed, the pair of them taking a
couple of steps back to allow the next group of gawping
initiants their turn at the altar. There she is, staring out at
five million people a year from behind six millimetres of
bulletproof glass. The real thing, all present and correct: the
mouth, the hands, the eyes, and Mordor there in the background.
The name means joyful, but the smile is ambiguous,
huh? The mystery of that curious smile, is that what brings
thousands of people filing past here every day?'

'I don't know. She looks kind of smug to me.'

'Well, you see the path there, and the bridge? Those are
the only evidence of human industry or artifice in the landscape,
representing man's limitations because they lead off
where she's looking: a dream world beyond. Is it contemplation
of that message that's led to a hundred yards of
rope down that hallway at our backs?'

Angelique didn't see what he was driving at, and feared
he might, under the influence of too much intoxicating art,
be seriously wigging.

'Who can say?' she muttered patiently.

'I can say. And the answer is no. There's five million
people a year standing in the spot where we are now simply
because this is the most famous painting in the world and
therefore you just have to go and see it. Doesn't matter if
you're more naturally drawn to landscapes, battle scenes,

272

religious paintings, whatever: you have to go see the Mona
Lisa, so it remains the most famous and popular painting
in the world by virtue of being the most famous and popular
painting in the world.'

'So what, you think it's shite?'

'I think it's magnificent, but that's not the issue.'

'Where are we going with this?'

'Cafe Richelieu is where we're going with it, first of all.'

'Hark, I hear the sound of procrastination.'

'Oh, I'm talking, girl, but I need a seat and an espresso.'

'You'll get them. But start talking now.'

'Okay/ he agreed, picking up the pace towards a massive
staircase. 'I'm talking about values. Who's to say what
makes the Mona Lisa greater than any one of the works we
saw on the way here? Nobody, right?'

'I think Leonardo's mum would probably be quite strong
on the subject.'

'Exactly. Bias, taste, personal preference. But what makes
one guy's work worth a million bucks and the other not
worth the canvas and oil?'

Talent.'

'In an ideal world, absolutely, but it's not the only thing,
not in this world. I guess I should have phrased it differently:
what makes one guy get a million bucks for a painting
while the artist next door can't raise the price of his canvas?
Could be dumb luck, could be connections, could be the
right gallery, the right agent, the right work at the right
time. In New York, probably the same in London, if a
certain dealer decides you're the dopest trip this month,
bang, you're made. Yesterday you were this close to eating
out of a dumpster, today this dealer is selling your work
for six figures to a wealthy client who needs to be told what
is good and what he likes. Suddenly you're a hundred




273

grand richer than the guy working in the next studio, but
what makes you worth it?'

'What makes an actor worth twenty million a picture?'

'Box-office receipts. The thing about remuneration in the
art world is that it requires no proof of popularity. You
don't have to appeal to a lot of people, just the right people.
Sure, it's arbitrary in Hollywood: a pretty face and a few
breaks and you're on percentage points for phoning in a
performance any number of actors could match. Tom
Cruise gets twenty mill for a cute smile and, oh yeah, he
can shake his fist if you need him to do angry, but Tom
Cruise can turn around and say fuck you, my picture
opened to seventy million bucks in its first weekend.'

They had reached the entrance to the cafe in the Richelieu
wing, and joined a queue for a table only marginally shorter
than the one preceding La Jocunde.

Ts this the part where you tell me you're an undiscovered
genius with a grudge against an indifferent society?'
Angelique asked.

'No, I'm an undiscovered mediocrity. A non-entity, in
fact. Mediocrity makes it sound like I'm mid-table in the
same division as talent. I'm a failed artist, yeah, justly and
correctly undiscovered. We all are, except Karl.'

'The Cleminson Collective, you mean?'

'The Failed Artists Collective, to be precise. That's what
we called ourselves back in the day.'

'But you were an artist.'

'I studied art, I wouldn't call myself an artist. Karl is an
artist.'

'Which one's Karl?'

'The Failed Artist formerly known as lonesco. He's the
one with talent.'

'Talent as in whizz-kid computer hacker?'

274

Zal laughed. 'Oh man, he'd love that. He knows his
code, yeah, but he wouldn't call himself a hacker, and
definitely not a whizz-kid. And why is it anyone who's
any good with computers is a whizz-kid? The guy's in his
thirties.'

'Whatever you call him, hacking a bank's security system
is more than just knowing your code.'

True, but not as much more as you clearly imagine.'

'You up for telling me how he did it then?'

'Long as we remain in no danger of getting a table, why
not? Karl just dropped a sub-seven trojan into the
manager's hard drive.'

'In English.'

'A sub-seven trojan, as in Trojan Horse, though sub-seven
Greek would be more accurate if you know your Classics.
They hide out in the system and can do things ranging
from reporting back with information to allowing you full
remote access. The one Karl used was pretty basic. It
wouldn't give you full access just by being there, because
of passwords protecting different levels of the system.'

'So how did he manage it?'

'His trojan recorded keystrokes, pretty common hacking
tool. That got him all the manager's passwords and ultimately
full control of the system.'

'But how did he get it into the system in the first place?
Didn't they have virus scanners?'

'You only have to be one day's modification ahead of the
scanning software. He put it on a website and sent a link
to the manager, but changed the account details so that the
mail appeared to have come from a colleague elsewhere in
RSGN. The guy clicks on the link and the first thing his PC
downloads from the page is the trojan.'

'What was on the page?'





275

'404. File not found.'

'What, the poor bastard didn't even get a peek at some
porn out of it?'

'He didn't need any more, from what Karl said about
the dude's temp cache.'

'So if this kind of thing is all in a day's work, where
does his real talent lie?'

'Someplace in the space between art and code, software
and hard copy. Since he got his first Commodore, he was
always doing amazing things with artwork programmes -
2D, 3D, animation - but he was eternally frustrated that it
could only exist on a monitor. The computers got more
powerful and the software more advanced, but that part
never changed, not in time anyway. If you can imagine
someone who starts off painting and finds two dimensions
a limitation, then he can move on to sculpture or installation,
whereas Karl couldn't. He could sculpt in three dimensions,
but the only way of rendering it was still restricted
to two.'

'And that's why he's a "failed artist"?'

'Yeah, pretty much. Snobbery attached to computers
didn't help, especially back in those days. But in the main,
his difficulty was his own frustration. He became fascinated
with this gap, this barrier that as he saw it imprisoned his
creations. He was just ahead of his time, that was the
problem. Five years down the line he could have worked
with holographic projectors and all sorts, but by then it
was too late.'

'Why can't he do that kind of project now?'

'Things have been . . . complicated in recent years. Plus,
time goes by, the impetus alters, ambitions and enthusiasms
change. He's still obsessed with bridging that gap,
though. He's been developing technology for creating

276

computer-generated moulds, using a grid of thousands of
tiny, length-adjustable pins. You know, you sculpt onscreen,
this gizmo mimics - or inverts - the shape in three-dimensions,
then you pour on your working material - cement,
clay . . .'

'Latex, perhaps.'

'Indeed. Latex works pretty good. As I'm sure you can
appreciate, the gizmo's got huge potential, but these things
always need development money.'

'I do hope he finds a benefactor. And does the gizmo
work with metal, may I ask?'

Zal laughed. 'You're talking about our guns? Nah. One
day, maybe.'


'So who made them?'

They were hand-crafted,' he said, grinning rather coyly.
'Not the artist's best work, but they did the job.'

The SPAS-12 wasn't handcrafted.'

'Spaz what?'

The shotgun cum grenade launcher.'

'Oh, that. Borrowed. Wiped clean. Returned. Forget
about it.'

At last they were shown to a table, where the sight of the
menu transformed Zal's need for espresso into a desire for
beer to wash down the platter he ordered. Angelique was
going to opt for more mineral water, but the opulence of the
surroundings and the lingering awareness that this was her
time off won out in favour of a second Kronenbourg.

'Cheers,' Zal said, raising his glass. Angelique chinked
hers against it, but wasn't for letting him get off track.

'If you're a sculptor, how come you know so much about
paintings?'

'I'm not a sculptor and I'm not an artist, but I did study
art.'




277

'Where? Vegas?'

'No need to be facetious. LA.'

'Is that where you guys met?'

'No, I've known Karl since we were kids. We lived in
the same street, grew up together. His father worked at
Circus Circus. He was a knife-thrower and an acrobat, and
more reluctantly a clown, too.'

'Reluctantly?'

'He didn't like the idea of being considered a figure of
fun just because he was short. I think it kind of weighed
heavily that people saw him as a novelty even when he
was doing his other stuff, no matter whether he was the
best knife-thrower they'd ever seen. Which he undoubtedly
would have been. You don't notice this so much when
you're a kid, but in retrospect I reckon he wasn't entirely
comfortable with what he did, period. He taught Karl a lot
of stuff - every kid wants to copy dad - but he was determined
Karl wasn't going to follow in his footsteps.'

'He was encouraging of his artistic ambitions, then?'

'No, not entirely. He knew Karl had a head for numbers
and a facility with computers, so he'd have been happy to
see him go into IT or accounting or something. Even Karl
being a graphic artist, as opposed to a performer, was still
too close for comfort, still the chance, as he saw it, of Karl
being a novelty. "I don't want you being made an exhibition
of," he used to say. It was the usual parental psycho
bullshit - transference of guilt, surrogation of your own
regrets - you know the deal. Ironically, he pretty much got
his wish. No exhibitions for Karl.'

'And that's why you're sore on the Mona Lisa?'

'Hey, I'm not taking it out on her. Shit, everybody knows
somebody like Karl, somebody who's way more talented
than a dozen, a thousand more successful others, but never

278

got the right break. I knew talented guys who did get the
breaks, too. Karl and I had a friend at art school in LA, a
sculptor who just had it, and we knew he'd make a name
for himself. It probably helped that his family had money,
but you couldn't take that away from his talent. You don't
get angry at the successful geniuses, you get angry at the
successful mediocrities, and at the people who can't tell
the fucking difference.'

'Forgive my obsessive professional angle on this, but I'm
curious as to how your anger is given cathartic expression
through robbing banks.'

Zal helped himself to another forkful of quiche before
answering the question, unfazed by but unavoiding of
Angelique's directness. There was something arguably
more surreal about his current candour than about any of
the methods he had employed to rip off the RSGN, and
she couldn't help but wonder where was the catch, or the
sting. In her more paranoid moments she found herself
thinking of Kevin Spacey spinning his web of lies in The
Usual Suspects.

'Karl and I moved to New York after college, back when
he was still undeterred by his inability to fully express his
gifts and I was still deluded about my lack of having any.
Possibly the dumbest move of either of our lives. We were
on the periphery of the art crowd there, you could say,
kind of like Pluto is on the periphery of the solar system.
Two guys from Vegas were never gonna be welcomed into
the heart of the most bitchy, elitist and cliquey scene on
the face of the earth, but we hung in there. Meantime, back
in LA, where we had contacts and did know some people,
our art school buddies were getting hired as critics, assistant
curators, putting on shows together. But we'd decided
New York was where it's at, and we are two stubborn sons




279

of bitches. We took jobs in galleries, real dogsbody stuff a
lot of the time, just to keep ourselves in the frame - pun
intended - figuring if we held out long enough, we'd eventually
get noticed. That's where we met Leo and Jerome.'
'Being Dali and Chagall.'

'Now you got the full set, yes. They met at art school
and had hung out ever since. I'd say they hit it off together,
but if you ever saw how they behave towards . . . never
mind. We kind of found each other. They were fellow failures,
and they didn't fit in too good, either. So we had our
own little clique of outcasts, misfits and failures, trying to
make each other feel better about all of the above.'

Zal smiled in reminiscence of something and took a drink
of his beer as he savoured the moment.

'There was this guy, called himself Mercuric, but his
real name was something like Brant Hetherington the
Third. Rich-kid asshole. Jerome knew him from prep
school, but being a preppy wasn't very cool, so Brant had
reinvented himself as Mercuric. Jerome couldn't reinvent
himself if he was on the Witness Protection Programme,
so he was stuck being what he was. Mercurio, meanwhile,
was an utter hack, but he had money to throw around on
clothes and parties, plus he was very good at kissing all
the right asses. So before you know it, there's an influential
dealer exhibiting his crap and these over-remunerated
yuppie assholes buying it for upwards of fifty grand a

canvas.'

He let this sink in while he finished off what was on his

plate.

'We decided these people needed to be taught a lesson

in value,' he continued.
'What did this entail?'

'We got the names and addresses of everyone who

280

bought one of Mercurio's paintings and we stole them.
Well, replaced them.'

'What with?'

'A framed message. It read - now let me get this right
- "Anyone who can afford to spend $50,000 on a piece of
shit can afford to lose $50,000 worth of shit. This message
has been brought to you by the Failed Artists Collective."
We thought we'd get that in before everybody else pointed
out our petty and transparent motives.'

'How did you steal them?'

'We researched the owners' schedules and went in when
only the help was home. Walked right in the front door of
their apartments in broad daylight and took the paintings
off the walls, telling the help we were taking them away
for insurance valuation. The replacements we mailed later.
We hit all four in the same day so that we could use the
same MO. All you need is some paperwork, a couple of
dudes in overalls and one friendly guy in a suit who speaks
Spanish like his Mexican mother.'

'You. But they could ID you later.'

'Leo could work with latex and make-up a long time
before Karl's gizmo came along. Not much we could do
about Karl's distinguishing feature, though, so he drove
the van.'

'What did you do with the paintings?'

'Jerome wanted to burn them, but Karl and I were kinda
squeamish about that. Even if it's shit, it's still someone's
work. We put them in a lock-up in Newark. To my knowledge,
they're still there, along with a few others.'

'You did it again?' 'There
was a lot of over-valued shit out there, and a lot
of idiots with money to burn.'

'Weren't they on their guard by this time?'





281

'Oh yeah, eventually, but we varied the technique. They
told the help not to let anybody lift their paintings, no
matter how official they looked or whatever documentation
they presented. We countered this at first by claiming
to be from the IRS, there to confiscate the painting because
there was tax due on it. Believe me, nobody is gonna tell
the IRS to fuck off, and definitely not some illegal on five

bucks an hour. Of course, we couldn't use that one forever


either, so later we'd just use distraction: I'd keep the help

busy in another room while Leo and Jerome lifted the shit.
We were a photographer and his assistants, there to shoot
the apartment for a magazine, scams like that.'

'Again, forgive the predictable angle, but what were the
NYPD doing while all this was going on?'

'Worrying about real crimes, where people get hurt. The
cops didn't need a framed message. To them, someone who
can spend that kinda money on any painting, never mind a shitty one, ain't gonna be on food stamps any time soon.'

'Still, money talks.'

'You would have thought so, wouldn't you. But you gotta
understand, this is New York we're talkin' about, and the art
crowd at that: the most self-conscious, faddish, style-obsessed
people in the world. It became cool to get robbed by us.'

'You have got to be kidding.'

'I shit you not. All of a sudden, you're nobody unless
you've been ripped off by the FAC. Most of them didn't call the goddamn cops. I'm saying they told the help to
look out for us, but really we just assumed that. A lot of
these assholes probably did nothing of the kind in case we
came calling and didn't get away with their stuff. I even
heard about one sad sack who bought a Mercuric, hid it
and then faked one of our message frames.

'Ultimately it got counter-productive. That's why we

282

stopped. There were people buying crap in the hope that
we'd steal it, and we raised the profiles - to say nothing
of the bank balances - of losers like Mercurio.'
'While making nothing for yourselves.'
'Well, we did get some kudos out of it. I mean, people
knew it was us. Nobody could prove anything, but they
knew, so we were cool for a while; a nanosecond or so.
Plus I finally discovered that I did have some kind of artistic
talent.'

'A hereditary talent,' Angelique stated softly. 'For
making things disappear.'

Zal nodded, smiling at her deduction, but there was
undisguised sadness there too: regret, missing.

'We used to tell ourselves the FAC was a form of
performance art, and maybe that was true in its context,
but in practice it was . . .' He tailed off, his eyes looking
away from her, retreating, but not far enough for him to
be able to hide the beginnings of tears.

'Come on/ he said, standing up and giving a small laugh
as though to disperse the moment just passed. 'It's time I
showed you a painting I hold in greater esteem than Ms
Jolly back there.'

After a brief consultation of his guide, Zal led her downstairs
to the lower basement entrance of the Sully wing.
There they followed the pathway around the vast moat,
stone columns and buttresses forming the foundations of
the medieval fortress that first stood on the site.

'I had no idea all this was down here,' Angelique
remarked. 'It's incredible.'

'Pretty cool, yeah. I mean, we've got better shit in Vegas,
and what's more, our castle at Excalibur is new, but you
gotta give these Frenchies some credit.'

Angelique watched him as he walked. The jokes would




283

fool nobody: the guy was enthralled, an awe-struck innocence
about those erstwhile cynical and calculating eyes.

'You've never been here before, have you?' she asked
sincerely, trying not to make it sound like a jibe or another
showy deduction.

He shook his head. 'Never been to Europe before. This
is my first time out of the US. Rumbled again.'

'You look . . . very happy. I take it it's everything you
expedted.'

'And then some.'

'You were going to come here anyway, weren't you?
Nothing to do with me.'

'Yes to the first part, but no to the second. I always
wanted to come here, long-term dream, if you like. But it
was also a long-term dream that I'd come here with a girl.
Pathetic teenage romantic ideal stuff, I know, but it stuck.
Once we got talking the other night, I started thinking, why
not?'

'I could think of a few obvious reasons.'

'I could think of a shitload, too.'

'I'm glad you didn't.'

'I'm glad you didn't, either.'

Angelique had spoken before she could censor herself,
but was surprised to find that she didn't regret it once it
was out. It didn't feel quite as unguarded as she might
have feared, nor did it even feel silly; it just felt easy, and
that was arguably even more scary.

'In this fantasy, were you always going to take the girl
to see the Mona Lisa?'

'I think when I conceived of the fantasy I probably didn't
know the Mona Lisa was here. I used to think it was in the
Vatican because it was Italian.'

'As this is your first time, then its kind of ironic that it

284

was the first thing you made for, given everything you've
said.'

'I made for the Denon. We saw a lot of cool shit before
we got to Ms Jolly.'

'Cool shit? Is that another technical term?'

'I told you I went to art school.'

'And where are we making for now?'

He checked the guide. 'Sully, deuxieme etage, salon vingthuit.
Almost there.'

'Do you speak French?'

'Nah. Just Spanish and American. You?'

'Oui. Spanish too, plus Dutch. Once I get around to
Italian, I reckon I'll have all the main criminal tongues
under my belt, apart from Cockney.'

'A valuable gift. You can hear people lying to you in four
languages.'

'Aye. Then you come along: someone who doesn't even
need words in order to deceive. That's a gift.'

'I'm not the first, as Monsieur La Tour would attest. Get
a load of this.'

They stopped in front of a painting of four people around
a table, two men and a woman playing cards, a second
female in attendance, pouring wine.

'The Cheat Holding the Ace of Diamonds/ Zal said. This
is one that really speaks to me. Check it out. The poor
sucker on the right is being taken in for the second time
that day, the first being by whoever sold him that stupid
hat with the feather. As well as the ace of diamonds, Rob
Lowe over there on the left also has the ace of spades
tucked into his cummerbund, probably the card Foghorn
Leghorn's holdin' out for. And everybody's in on the con:
the woman's looking for a signal from the servant girl,
who's got her eyes on the sucker's cards; dumb fop




285

probably doesn't even think the hired help understands
the game.


'But here's the killer: Rob Lowe looks bored, like he's
lost interest in playing. That's the true panache in this con,
that's what lays the kid wide open. You worry about an
intent opponent, not one who looks like he's about to jack
it in and hit the bar. The card up the sleeve is mere technique,
like Karl and his sub-seven. The real art is in selling
the illusion.'

'Like fooling some sap into thinking you're a bumbling
amateur who's about to level a bank because his explosives
have malfunctioned?'

'It's about letting people see what they want to see and
believe what they want to believe. You know the phrase,
"the hand is quicker than the eye"?'

'Gie's a wank while naebody's lookin'/

'Huh?'

'Old chestnut. Yes, I'm familiar with the phrase.'

'It's bullshit. Light travels at three hundred thousand
kilometres per second, so there is no hand in this universe
that can be quicker than the eye. It was coined and put
into usage by magicians to suit their own devious purposes.
The audience is always on the look-out for actions that
aren't even gonna be attempted, which means they don't
notice what the magician is really up to. Sleight of hand is
an invaluable part of it, but misdirection is the name of the
game. The hand doesn't need to be quicker than the eye if
the eye is looking in the wrong place. Everything the magician
does is about misleading the audience, everything:
how he stands, where he looks, where he points and
especially what he says. He will never be doing what he
says he is doing, and if he tells you what he's about to do,
he's lying.'

286

'I'll consider myself warned.'

'You'll never be warned, because he's like a chess-player:
he's always thinking several moves ahead. Allow me to
demonstrate.'

Zal produced a pack of cards from his jacket pocket and
sprung them expertly from one hand to the other before
shuffling them and fanning them out in front of Angelique.
The flicking sound attracted a few interested glances from
elsewhere in the room, not least the nearest security guard.

This kind of thing is normally restricted to around the
pyramid outside,' she chided, but he was not to be put off.

Then you better hurry up and pick a card, get it over
with.'

Angelique took one and examined it. It was the seven
of diamonds. She was about to put it back into the proffered
pack, then withdrew it again.

'How about I put it back in the pack and 7 shuffle it?'

'What you worried about? That I'm gonna use a pass,
surreptitiously put your card somewhere convenient near
the top or bottom of the pack? Or a Hindu shuffle, maybe?'

'All of the above. Gimme the cards.'

He handed them over with a resigned sigh. Angelique
had another look at the security guard, who was now
giving them a grin. 'He likes my style,' she said, looking
Zal in the eye. He glanced over to see what she was talking
about, at which point Angelique slipped the card randomly
into the pack and began shuffling.

'Okay, find my card now, Mr Chess Player.'

Zal accepted the pack and shook his head with a small
laugh, smiling bashfully. 'I can't.'

'Why not?' she asked, allowing herself a triumphant grin.

'Because Rob Lowe's got it,' he told her, and walked away.

She looked again at the painting. The eponymous cheat




287

at the end of the table, as well as concealing two aces behind
his back, was holding the seven of diamonds in his right
hand.

'Bastard.'

Angelique followed him into the corridor, where he was
waiting for her, chuckling.

'Okay, how the hell did you do that?'

'First rule of any trick: make sure all the pieces are in
place, where you need them, before you begin. I'm very
familiar with the painting so I knew what all the players
were holding.'

'But how did you get me to pick the seven of diamonds?'

'Trade secret. It's called a "force". There are many techniques
but one intention: get the subject to choose the card
you want them to.'

'What if they don't?'

'You have a contingency. A lot of times, you'd just
abandon the intended trick and do a new one that doesn't
rely on a force. My dad used to have a good way round
it, though. He'd ask someone else to pick a card too, giving
him a second chance to force it, then he'd get a third
member of the audience to "choose which card to throw
away", announcing very dramatically that this was to
prove he couldn't be forcing a card. If the third person
picked the right one, he'd say "You want me to use this
card? Very good." And if they picked the wrong one: "You
want me to throw this card away?'"

'What were you going to do if I didn't pick the forced
card?'

Zal fanned the pack again, this time face-up. Every card
was a seven of diamonds.

'Like I said, before you begin, you make sure everything you need is in place.'

288

'I need some air/ Angelique said. 'My brain's overheating.'

The sculpture courtyard is--'

'I think I'm gaunny need more air than that.'

Angelique was aware that Zal could have happily
wandered around the Louvre until they physically chucked
him out, so she considered it solicitous that he acquiesced
without complaint when she suggested they leave. They
took a walk along the banks of the Seine. The cold air was
blowing away plenty of cobwebs, but her brain still felt
like it had been tied in knots.

'Getting me to take the hostages and clear the bank, that
was a force too, wasn't it?'

'You can find new ways of applying them, but the principles
of illusion are always the same.'

'Principles every magician's son learns.'

'Yeah, whether he wants to or not.'

'You didn't want to follow in your father's footsteps?'

'Not exactly, no. I mean, when I was a kid, a young kid,
I thought he was the greatest, and I loved it when he taught
me stuff. I could do the Hindu shuffle before I could read.
At that age, every kid in the world wants to be his dad.
But nobody wants to be their dad when their dad starts being ' an asshole. A lot of guys end up turning into him
anyway, but that's probably because they're still trying to
be the guy he used to be.'

'What did he do, to be an arsehole, I mean?'.

'Disappearing acts. Appropriate, huh? His greatest
work, only performed for a select audience of his wife and
son. Now you see him, now you don't.'

'Drink?'

'I could use one if we're getting into this, yeah.'

'I meant--'




289

'I know. And yeah, he did. Came and went all the time,
you never knew what state he'd be in when he did show
up. I hated it when he wasn't there, because I worried he'd
never be coming back. Then when he did come back, he
and my mom just fought so much I wanted him to go away
again. I got my wish long-term. He got fired from one gig
too many, pretty soon no-one in Vegas would hire him, so
he went on the road looking for work. Said he'd send
money home, which he did once in a blue moon. Every
second blue moon he'd show up in person, usually because
he was broke.'

'How long did this go on?'

'Until I was thirteen.'

'What happened then? Did they divorce?'

Zal stopped walking and looked away, out over the river.
'My mom's car got hit by a drunk driver on Las Vegas
Boulevard. She didn't make it.'

I'm sorry.'

He nodded, then turned around and looked at her with
years of sorrow in his face. Amid her sympathy, Angelique
felt strangely grateful for what he was sharing. Often
when you thought people were opening up to you, they
could tread into this kind of painful territory and suddenly
clam up tighter than before, shutting you back out with
a slam.

'I could use a seat/ he said, and they made their way to
a nearby bench.

'What happened to you after that?'

'Weird. My dad cleaned up his act, literally overnight.
Moment of clarity, sudden kick to the head, all that shit.
Saw, once it was all gone, what he had been wasting. It
was too late to make it up to my mom, so he was gonna
make it up to me; or make it up through me. I went where

290

he went. Reno for a while, a few smaller casino towns, then
further afield. He'd get bookings at hotel lounges all over.
I musta changed schools every six months. Probably why
I stayed so close with Karl: he was the only real friend I
had, only one who I knew would always be there; Vegas
the only place I knew we'd always come back to.

'My dad worked evenings, mainly, and I helped out
backstage a lot of the time. I think my inner nine-year-old
was still really pissed at him, because I decided I didn't
want to be what he was, but I learned it all the same.'

'Did your dad want you to don the white gloves after
him?'

'Oh, you better believe it. Nothing would have made
him happier than seeing me on a stage waving a wand.
He wanted the opposite of Karl's dad, and there you go:
Karl and I did the same thing but managed to make both
of them unhappy. My dad said I was far better than he
could ever be. Said I had better hands, better technique, a
greater feel for the psychology of an audience. But I had
made my mind up a long time back that I wasn't gonna
be like him. Soon as I graduated high school, I was out of
there.'

'He give you a hard time?'

'Nah, he knew he'd already done enough of that. He
didn't make any secret of his regrets, but he gave me his
blessing. Money too, what he had. He tried, he really tried
after Mom was gone. I don't think there was anything he
wouldn't have given to have her back.'

Zal looked away again, but no amount of misdirection
could hide his pain.

'He's dead too, isn't he?' Angelique asked.

Zal nodded, gazing at the fast-flowing Seine, tourboats
battling the current as they returned to lie de la Cite.




291

'Died while I was in prison, nearly three years ago now.
I never got to say goodbye. Or "I forgive you", which was
what he really needed to hear.'

She reached down and grasped his hand. He didn't react,
other than to squeeze hers by way of acknowledgement,
or possibly thanks.

'That's why you came to Glasgow, isn't it? To say
goodbye and I forgive you in his old home town?'

Zal looked back at her. 'How did you work that out?'
There was no surprise or accusation in his face, just an
inquiring sincerity.

'Alakazammy, stairheid rammy. You said it at the bank.
That was his Abracadabra, wasn't it?'

'No. He used it, sure, but he didn't coin it. It was the
Abracadabra of the guy who taught him, a stalwart of the
Glasgow music halls.'

'Who was that?'

'Uh-uh, that's a whole different story. Maybe another
time. But yeah, when I was inside, I resolved to visit where
he came from. Kinda to say goodbye, but as much just to
know him a little better. I grew up on tales of this far-off
city that formed a big part of my childhood and yet
I'd never seen it. But that's not the only reason I came.
Or rather, I'm saying, I'd have come one day anyway,
but . . .'

'What?'

He stood up.

'I'm startin' to freeze my ass off out here, how about you?'

'I'm not from Nevada.'

'Well I'm only half-Glaswegian. I need shelter. How
about I buy you dinner?'

'Ooyah, stop twisting my arm. Okay, okay, but only if I
can go back and get changed. Put on my glad rags.'

292

'And your wire.'
That too.'

Angelique stood under the warm cascade, enjoying the feel
of the water, but enjoying her surroundings more. She
looked up at the square steel head, wondering blithely
whether a Cubist shower got you any cleaner than a normal
one. Regardless, it felt good; she felt good. She thought back
to the morning of the robbery, and a shower she didn't
want to get out of because it felt like sanctuary. This one
was embracing her, and Zal had told her to take as long
as she needed, but she knew she wouldn't stay under for
long. She was anxious to learn more and, no point denying
it, impatient to be back in his company, particularly when
it entailed dining out in Montmartre. There was still a voice
in there asking if she knew what she was getting herself
into, but there was no chance of her heeding it. Taking on
terrorists was filed in her memory and her conscience
under Doing the Right Thing. If this was a mistake, then
may all her mistakes be just as inviting.

They ate close to the hotel, the temperature having plummeted
beyond even Angelique's tolerance, and certainly
beyond the lower threshold of the outfit she'd brought. Zal
also looked like his choice of attire had bent closer to the
needs of looking good in a warm interior than the consideration
of getting there on a December night.

A waiter took their jackets as they reached their table,
revealing Zal's shirt to be of the short-sleeved variety, ordinarily
something of a fashion crime in Angelique's eyes,
but exceptions could be made when they exposed arms
like his. What they also exposed were the lower parts of
more tattoos, coiling black designs, like vines growing
around his biceps.




293

'Hell of a birth mark/ Angelique remarked, making light
of being caught staring.

'Prison/ he replied. 'It's funny, I never even thought of
having one before. Wasn't exactly peer pressure, more a
matter of ready availability and time on my hands. I got
pretty good at it.'

'You did them yourself?'

'Some of 'em. Not at first, but the guy who did me, we
got talkin'. He found out I could draw better than him and
had a steady hand, so we kinda got in business together
there for a while. It's kinda like . . . controlled damage, a
way of wearing your mental scars. You remind yourself of
the ways you've changed and the permanent ink means
you can never change back. Lessons you've learned, things
you've survived.'

'What was the first one?'

He pulled the sleeve up on his right arm, displaying four
words inside a frame that had too much of the Charles
Rennie Mackintosh about it to be entirely coincidental. The
words read: This too will pass'.

'The story goes, William Wallace once asked his men to
come up with a thought that would cheer him when he
was feeling low, but spell caution when he thought he had
it good. Thus: this too will pass. You need something like
that in jail. Good cheer and caution, only way to survive.'

'Am I allowed to ask what you were in for now?'

'It goes back to New York. You remember I said we were
cool for a nanosecond? Well, it was the wrong nanosecond.'

'How so?'

'There was another spoiled little rich kid putting himself
around, but not like all the others rebelling against their
parents until they rejoined them for summer in the
Hamptons. This guy was trash with cash, kind of a walking

294

exaggeration of every cliche about the nouveau riche. Lot
of money to throw around, but zero class, zero taste, and
talent? Jeez, he made Mercurio look like Francis Bacon. He
just kinda showed up. I don't think he was even at art
school, he had just decided that he was artistic, that he knew
about art, and I think he was pretty much used to getting
whatever he wanted up to that point in his life, so he
expected . . . Actually, I don't know what he expected;
whether he'd make a name for himself with his paint-by
numbers efforts or just be welcomed into the heart of the
art crowd and get invited to all the right openings and
parties. Neither happened, needless to say. Unlike
Mercurio, he didn't know how to spend his money to make
an impression, and he definitely didn't know how to kiss
anybody's ass, let alone the right ass. He was far more used
to people kissing his.'
'Why? Who was he?'

'His name was Alessandro. That was all we knew at the
time. We nicknamed him Sandy. He thought we were cool
- like I said, it was that nanosecond - and he wanted to
hang out with us, get in on the action. No, it being Sandy,
he wanted us to hang out with him, be his latest playthings
or accessories, I don't know what. Maybe he thought being
tight with us would make him look better to the people he
wanted to impress. Anyway, we told him to take a hike.
That was before we knew who he was. It probably wouldn't
have made a difference, but we might have been a little
more circumspect about our choice of words in dealing
with him.'
'Gangster?'

'Nephew of Hector Estobal, head of a major crime syndicate
straddling the border in southern California.'
'Shit.'




295

'Uh-huh. Alessandro was Hector's little golden boy
too, as he didn't have a son of his own. So he was used to
getting everything he wanted. Colossal ego, nil self
awareness, probably just convinced himself he was
"artistic" on an adolescent whim because he liked a few
pretty pictures. That was it, off to New York where
everyone would indulge him the way he was accustomed
to. I thinly I must have been one of the first people he ever
heard say the word "no" to him. Definitely the first to tell
him to go fuck himself.'

'So did he send the boys round?'
'He was still a kid, maybe nineteen, twenty. He had
money, but he didn't have people on the East Coast. The
syndicate did, but not at the command of some hothead
adolescent. When he didn't get what he wanted, he blew,
back home to LA where they'd make him feel like a big
shot again. A very big shot, as it turned out. A few years
down the line, old man Estobal dies, and guess who gets
promoted to head of the family?'
'But he was just a kid.'

'He was the anointed. Hector couldn't see past him; definitely
had a blind spot for his limitations. Family's all; no
meritocracy in that world. Suddenly he's the big boss and
those guys on the East Coast are at his command.'

Their wine arrived. Zal deferred to Angelique to check
it, which she did with a brief sniff,
'What did he have them do?'

'It was what he had us do. He came out to New York
and had a couple of guys bring me to meet him. I was
expecting a warehouse and a beating in a chair, but we
met in a fancy restaurant. It was so that he could show
off his status, while I'm sitting there in the clothes I slept
in. The restaurant's across the street from the Gigliotti

296

Museum - it's a big municipal gallery. He shows me postcards
of two paintings: a Poussin and a Lorrain. They're
both on loan to the Gigliotti, the Poussin from a movie
mogul and the Lorrain from a museum in France.'

Zal took a gulp of his wine, swallowing it with little
relish, but the bad tae wasn't coming from the glass.

'Next he shows me a photograph of my dad. He says
they're going to kill him unless me and my FAC buddies
steal both of these paintings for him. I start saying it's
impossible and he says that's my problem. So I changed
tack, pointed out that these paintings might be worth a lot
of money, but you couldn't possibly sell them.'

'Because everyone knows they're stolen.'

'Exactly. So the sonofabitch says he has no intention of
selling them. It's like corporate relations, he tells me. You
walk into the HQ of a big company and they've got major
artworks in the lobby. This would be the same deal: when
people came to his house they'd see that he had things that
were meant to be unobtainable, work that you were
supposed to only be able to see in a museum. The whole
world knows it's stolen, and here it is on your wall. That
was his line, anyway.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't believe he really expected us to pull it off, no
matter how smart he thought we were. I think he just wanted me to be his bitch. Jerk me around on his chain
and make the four of us do something that would get us
jailed or shot. But what was for sure was that he was
serious. When I got back from our little dinner, I found out
Karl was in the hospital. Three of Alessandro's guys had
picked him up around the same time as they apprehended
me. I got dinner; he was the one who got the warehouse
and the chair. They beat the crap out of him. Almost lost

297

an eye. The surgeons saved it, but it was touch and go for
a while. Motherfuckers.'

Zal winced at the memory, taking another gulp of wine
to help swallow back the lump in his throat.

'Real tough guys, going after Karl/ Angelique observed.

'It was to demonstrate their ruthlessness. Go after the
most vulnerable, show no mercy, let us know they were
happy to hurt us through hurting people we cared about.
It was *a message to demonstrate that we were out of
options. I gave Alessandro his wish.'

'How?'

'I went ahead, devised a plan. We acquired the building
schematics, bought or built the equipment we needed,
constructed disguises, wrote software, rehearsed, prepared
and practiced, until everybody believed it would work: the
guys, Alessandro, everybody.'

'But it didn't.'

'We'll never know. The way I saw it, we couldn't afford
for it to work. If we got him those paintings, he wasn't
going to just let us walk away afterwards. He'd be after
something else next, we'd never be free of him. We couldn't
refuse, obviously, or they'd have killed my old man, no
question. So I figured we had to fuck it up and get ourselves
caught. That way, Alessandro gets his revenge and forgets
about trying to use us, because we're just a bunch of losers,
nothing like what he imagined.'

'But you'd go to jail.'

That was always gonna happen. If not at this job, then
maybe the next thing he blackmailed us into. This way, at
least, it would be on my terms.'

'What did you do?'

'I didn't tell anyone things had changed, and we went
ahead as planned. I drove the van, with the rest of the

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guys and some of the equipment in back. But when we
got there, I locked the doors on them and went into the
museum alone. I figured it was the only way to minimise
the damage. We all got busted, but I was the only one to
get caught on the spot committing overt acts, breaking
and entering. The rest were arraigned on conspiracy
charges. I got three to five, they all got twelve months
max.'

'Greater love hath no man.'

'They didn't see it that way at first, as I'm sure you can
understand, but they sure came around when the lawyers
started explaining things.'

'I've heard of honour among thieves, but that was . . .
selfless to the point of noble.'

'It would only have been selfless if I had been giving up
another option. Like I said, I was going to jail at some point.
I just chose when, and I saw a way of doing it without
taking the rest of them down with me. Well, not for as long,
anyway.'

'Don't kid yourself. You found a way to save the three
of them and your dad from Alessandro. I'd put it down to
more than just taking one for the team.'

Zal looked up from his barely touched starter plate. He
seemed welcoming of her solicitude, but unconvinced of
her sentiments.

'Who did I save? We all went to prison. Some longer
than others, but six months in there is enough to fuck you
up for a long time after, believe me. Alessandro got his
pound of flesh. We carried out his orders, we fucked up,
we went inside.' Zal glanced away for a second, as though
he was about to reach again for his wine, then looked back
at Angelique. 'And then he killed my father anyway.'
There were no tears, just a calm, quietly burning anger.




299


'Christ. I don't know what to say.'

'I under-estimated him. I thought if we looked like losers,
if we cooperated but were incompetent, he'd forget about
my old man. I was wrong.'

'You can't blame yourself, for Christ's sake.'

'I don't. Not for a second. I blame Alessandro, and I
blame him every day I'm still drawing breath. I blame him
for my father's murder, I blame him for fucking up the
lives of "my friends, and I blame him for all the things that
happened to me inside; as well as all the things I did in
there to survive, many of which were not pretty. But I blame
myself for not saying certain things to my dad back when
I had the chance.'

Again, Angelique reached for Zal's hand, this time on
top of the table. 'You're not the first to think you had more
time to put it right with someone.'

'Yeah, but who's to say I would have? Maybe it's only
when it's too late that you can forget about all the bullshit
and see what was really valuable. Jesus, I threw away his
name - that's how much I hated him. I took my mom's
surname instead. Well, sorta. My mom was Mexican and
her name was Innez, but she changed it to Innes because
it sounded less Spanish. I changed it back. I wanted to be
more my mom's son than my dad's; more Mexican than
Scottish.'

'Innes sounds Scottish, actually.'

Zal smiled, the first time in a while. He had a forkful of
salad, using his right hand so that he didn't have to let go
of hers with the left.

'That's what my dad said when he was hitting on her.'

'When did Sal become Zal?'

'When I was nine and saw the Sensational Alex Harvey
Band on TV. I bought a few albums, posters for the wall.

300

If I'd known they were from Glasgow, it might have
tempered my enthusiasm at that period, but by the time I
found out I was way too hooked.'

'So let's recap: you ditched your dad's surname, took
your mum's but reverted it, and altered your first name.
Do you have a middle name, and if so, is it still intact?'
'Oh yeah. Unadulterated. McMillan.'
'After the prime minister?'
'Yeah, but not the one you're thinking of.'
'I don't think I'm thinking of the one you think I'm
thinking of.'

Try saying that with a mouthful of linguine. Which one
are you thinking of?'
The wee one.'

'Ian. Correct. But I forgot - I pulled you away from the
game on Saturday, didn't I?'

'I forgive you. Ian McMillan was a wee bit before my
time, obviously, but I've heard the tales.'

'Jim Baxter stealing the ball for him at the end of the '63
cup final. Yeah, I've heard 'em all. I was raised on those
stories. I remember - probably one of my earliest memories,
in fact - my dad throwing a party outside the house in
1972 when they won the European Cup Winners Cup. The
neighbours didn't have a clue, but hey, there was beer and
a barbecue. He had to call a bookie at Caesar's to find out
what was happening; they took bets on games all round
the world, so they had contacts on the news wires. I
remember my dad pacing up and down the carpet that
afternoon, calling this poor guy every ten minutes.
Eventually he just dropped to his knees, then got up and
started running around, hugging me and my mom.
Fortunately it was a couple of days until he found out
about the riot afterwards. That cut him up.'




301

Two sides to every story. The Spanish police grossly
over-reacted.'

'Is that your opinion as a police officer or a Rangers
supporter?'

'My professional opinion/ Angelique assured him,
smiling. 'They went in heavy against guys just trying to
celebrate, which was stupid enough, but nobody had told
them that Glaswegians don't react well to being baton
charged by fascists.'

'The cops got their asses kicked?'

'Oh yeah. The Catalonians don't remember it as a riot,
they remember it as the night Franco's polis got a right
good leathering.'

'Still, better to be remembered just for who won the game.'

'True. I get defensive about these things, go into automatic
debating mode. Too many arguments with my
brother. He's a Celtic supporter, sees them as an ideological
paragon of liberal virtue. Aye, right. We get on okay
otherwise, but when it comes to football, together we're
like a microcosm of all that's self-defeating about Old Firm
fans: definitely an unhealthy rivalry. Each side is always
finding ways to denigrate the achievements or history of
the other until both end up looking shoddy. The saddest
thing is that to most people, if you mention Rangers or
Celtic, the first thing they think of isn't football.'

'Yeah, my dad explained . . . well, nobody could explain it. He told me about it. He said it was a shame because
Scotland should be able to be proud of these two great
clubs, and that was pretty hard while they had all this crap
attached to them. Okay, I'll admit he had to be in a pretty
good mood before he'd say two great clubs, but you know
what I'm saying.'

'Better than most. You're talking to someone who started

302

going to Ibrox in the early Eighties as a Catholic schoolgirl.'

'Jeez. How'd that come about?'

'Racism, mainly. Let's just say I didn't get made to feel
much like I belonged at school, so I thought I might belong
among the other people my classmates hated.'

'And did you?'

'Well, nobody called me a black bastard, which was a
start. I'm not saying they wouldn't have if I'd been on the
other side of the segregating fence, but for a change I got
to feel I was being categorised by the colour of my scarf,
not the colour of my skin. But as for belonging, I'm not sure
that one's ever been resolved. Ask me when we're singing Follow Follow after scoring in a European tie and you'll get
a different answer from when I'm sitting on a wet Saturday
listening to yet another song about fucking Ulster. And yes,
the club's got a lot of fans from over there and blah blah
blah, but God, between that and Celtic fans going to a football
match to sing about a potato famine . . .

'I suppose what it taught me is that football stadiums
are full of people searching for a sense of belonging. Each
person who falls in love with a team would like it to represent
to everybody what it represents to them. So I'm sitting
there getting pissed off because nobody's singing about
Rangers. Couple of rows back there's some eejit who thinks
you're not a true fan unless you subscribe to his anachronistic
ragbag of ideological and pseudo-ethnic bollocks;
what he doesn't realise is that the guy in the next seat
thinks he's not a true fan because his anachronistic ragbag
isn't hardline enough. And all around are folk who think
the pair of them are an embarrassment to the club.'

'But you all feel you belong, so fuck anyone who thinks
you don't.'

'You got it. It was a valuable philosophy to learn,




303

growing up in Renfrewshire with the wrong colour of face.'

'Oh, I'd say the colour suits you/ Zal said. 'Don't change
it, you know, unless you see a jacket that just calls out for
pale skin.'

'Why, thank you. Do you like me in purple?' she asked,
indicating her blouse.

'Sure. But after Saturday I'll always picture you in black.'

'You think Kevlar suits me?'

'I think you know it suits you. But you're not as sure as
you once were about how much you suit blue.'

Angelique nodded. 'You're very perceptive.'

'Nah. You told me as much on Saturday. You didn't say
a lot, but what you did say was pretty candid to be sharing
with a thief during a bank robbery, so it had to be weighing
pretty heavy.'

'It was my birthday too, so it was weighing even heavier
under the circumstances, but not so heavy as I'd have shared
it with anybody. I found you dangerously easy to talk to.'

'Feeling's mutual. That's why I had to take a few precautions.
But I can't be that dangerously easy. I'm the one
spilling his guts today.'

'Between cop and thief, that's how it ought to be.'

Zal squeezed her hand gently. 'I'm not the only one who
needs to talk to somebody, Angelique.'

He was right. So over the rest of dinner she told him the
whole sorry tale of the Black Spirit, Ray Ash, Dubh Ardrain
and the aftermath.

It felt good, like a concentrated dose of the counselling
she never got, neither professionally nor from her times
with Ray. Zal was more than just a good listener; he was
an audience, rooting for the heroine, unashamedly partisan
when appropriate, objective (or at least pretending to be)
when required. It was cathartically vindicating to hear his

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gasps of astonishment, see him reel at the horror, and most
importantly, share the understanding that just because the
heroine killed all the bad guys didn't mean she lived
happily ever after.

'Which is why you're in Paris having dinner with a
wanted criminal.'

'Yes, but let's be clear: just because I'm in Paris having
dinner with a wanted criminal doesn't mean I'm about to
jack it all in. That philosophy I learnt at Ibrox still applies.
I don't compromise in order to fit in, and I'm not giving
in to any arsehole who wants to make me feel I don't belong
wherever I put myself.'

'We're alike in a lot of ways,' Zal said. 'It's not that we
don't belong, it's that we've learned we don't need to.'
'Amen to that.'

They were holding hands again as they walked back to
the hotel. There was no eye contact to mark the moment;
in fact, Angelique didn't even notice where and when it
had happened - as they left the restaurant? The street
outside? That first road they'd run across? Neither of them
seemed to acknowledge that it was happening, but neither
seemed much for letting go either. She couldn't remember
the last time she'd walked down a street holding hands
with anybody. Relationships in recent years had been
terribly adult (ie dull, functional and ultimately doomed),
where it seemed, absurdly, that just because you were
having sex with someone was no excuse for engaging in
such juvenile frivolity, or even petty affection.

She didn't have to try not to think about what it might
mean or where it might be going. The moment was enough
for now.

They had late-night armagnacs in the hotel bar, served
by the only member of staff still on duty, who cheerfully




305

and indulgently doled out the measures in between
washing down the coffee machine and filling out paperwork
at the front desk.

The brandy glasses were, of course, Cubist.

'This time last Thursday, I was freezing my arse off on
a surveillance gig in Partick, waiting for a suspected counterfeiter
to empty his bin. If someone had told me then
what I'd be doing right now, I'd have lifted them for class
A possession. I feel like I'm dreaming.'

'I definitely am. Have been for a while. I'll need to be
careful, that was my dad's downfall.'

'How?'

'He went from Garnethill to Vegas; music halls to five
star casinos. Met a beautiful Mexican stripper nearly
twenty years younger than him, and married her. Raintown
to desert heat, and a place where the Sixties really swung.
It must have been like he stepped into a movie. He was
living a dream come true, no question. But maybe when
you're living your dreams, it never quite seems like reality,
and for that, in his case I don't think it ever felt like home.
He missed Glasgow, no matter how good he had it in Vegas,
and I think he felt lonely, kind of isolated. That was why
he drank.'

'Why did he leave? Did he get "discovered" and made
an offer he couldn't refuse?'

'He never told me. Not that I didn't ask; he wouldn't
tell me. I think there was a serendipitous combination of
trouble at one end and an opportunity at the other, but I
never found out the details. I only saw the result: a man
who never quite connected with his new life, quite possibly
because it felt too good to be true. That was why I got
steeped in the culture he'd left behind. He loved talking
about it to me, would probably have liked nothing more

306

than the two of us visiting the place together some day.
The weird thing about it is that Glasgow now feels like my
dream. I see things that were practically mythologised in
my childhood, and for that they seem less real than the
artifice I grew up with in Vegas. Sometimes it feels like a
theme park, or a movie set.'

'Glasgow as Disneyland. Doesnae sound too probable to me, but I'm sure the city council would love to have you
in the tourism department. Just don't let on you're not a
Catholic.'

'I'm not kidding. I feel I can do anything there because
it isn't real. You think I'd have the balls to rob a bank back
home? Forget it.'

'You're not telling me that was your first time.'
That is what I'm telling you.'

'I don't believe it. No way. You seemed like seasoned
experts.'

'Oh we are, at a lot of things. As for the rest, faking it
is my gift, remember.'

'But the scale, the elaboration

'Over-egged the pudding here and there, didn't we? But
we needed all that stuff - the painting, the play - to keep
everybody's mind off the hostage situation.'

'I don't think the hostages could forget the situation they
were in even if you--'
'Not their minds - ours.'

Angelique laughed, though she knew he wasn't joking.
She just wished she could see McMaster's face if he ever
learned any of this.

'I'd never have attempted anything so audacious in the
real world. But in Glasgow it feels like the usual rules don't
apply, including the law.'

'Maybe us cops just aren't good enough at applying it.'





307

'Oh7 I'm sure you're plenty good enough. That's why I
have to remind myself it's not a dream.' He glanced around
at their bizarrely designed surroundings, then back at
Angelique. 'Being here with you isn't helping/ he said
softly.

Angelique slipped her shoes off and pulled her feet up
on to the leather sofa they were sharing. She snuggled back
into a corner, cradling her Cubist glass in both hands and
extending one leg towards him. He placed a hand on her
instep and just left it there: warm, human, mildly electrifying.

'When you called me up, the first thing you said . . . You
were quoting, weren't you?'

This is gonna sound a little obsessive,' he confirmed,
rather bashfully.

'I thought it was from a movie and I thought it was a
woman's voice. It drove me nuts but I eventually worked
it out. Well, I didn't work it out, I just happened to put on
the right album. It was Everclear, that song Unemployed
Boyfriend. The girl leaves a message on her pal's answering
machine at the start.'

'Yeah, sorry, I wasn't trying to be cryptic. I just didn't
know what to say and I guess my sub-conscious just threw
that one out there. I certainly didn't mean for you to pick
up on it.'

'I love that song.'

The too. So does my sub-conscious, apparently.'

'I'm not exactly the last of the great romantics, but I like
the idea of a man fantasising about being the right guy,
about all the things he'd like to do for a girl, rather than
about what he wants from her or putting her on a pedestal
like in most songs.'

'What are you talking about? That song is about a girl's

308

fantasy of the right guy just walking into her life. She's
sitting bored in the unemployment office, for Christ's sake,
and this guy comes along and actually thinks her blonde
streaks look good. Get out of here.'

Angelique gave him a gentle kick.

'It is so a male fantasy. He's seen this girl around a few
times, he fancies her and he's daydreaming about making
her happy.'

'Oh and how,' Zal replied, sitting up straight and putting
his glass down. This guy's gonna go to chick-flicks with
her, voluntarily, and says he's gonna make her the mother
of his kids. Yeah, right.'

'Well how about saying he'll always make her come,'
Angelique countered. 'If that's not a male fantasy, nothing
is.'

There you go. I'd have said that lyric was the clincher
for my argument. Not only is he gonna do all these other
things, but he's gonna be a great lay, too.'

Angelique sat up and put her glass down also, laughing
at his mock vehemence. 'Your Honour, I think you'll find
the clincher is that at the end she says he's actually quite
attractive, and she's obviously planning to call him. He's
gaunny get what he wanted: it's a dream come true.'
'Garbage,' Zal insisted, laughing. 'At the end she asks
her friend whether this can be for real? And on the music
track Alexakis sings NOOO! at the top of his voice: the
voice of reality. It was just a fantasy, just a dream.'

'It was both their dreams,' Angelique stated softly,
offering a truce.

Zal met her gaze and nodded. 'Just like this is ours,' he
said. 'Being here, the thief and the detective, taking a vacation
from reality.' The humour had gone from his tone,
replaced by a gentle regret. 'Vacations can't last. We both




309

have to go back, where I gotta do my job and you gotta do yours.'

'But not yet/ Angelique said.

She leaned forward and kissed him, delicate and tentative
at first, then deep, engulfing, abandoned. 'Not yet.'

Angelique never considered herself to have had much luck
with sex up to that point in her life, and if she was being
honest, she'd have to say much of that was her own fault.
She had gone into so many liaisons with low expectations
(unavoidable when the men were cops) or one eye on the
door (inevitable when they weren't), and if there really were
people out there who could have amazing sex but lousy
relationships, then she certainly hadn't slept with any of
them. People talked about 'physical compatibility' as if
there were technical obstacles that couldn't be overcome
between mismatched couples, but she thought it sounded
like an excuse to cover the fact that other more important
things were missing. Angelique had had unspectacular sex
with men she found highly desirable and who had assured
her that the reciprocal was true: physical compatibility was
definitely not the problem, but neither was it enough. She
wouldn't dispute that there was such a thing as sheer,
instinctive physical attraction, but sexual attraction was a
more intricate process, and the greater part of it happened
in the head. Good sex needed commitment, and by that she
didn't mean honourable intentions or proven longevity.
Commitment was about how much you were prepared to
let go. If you were with someone long enough, that came
through trust. Otherwise, it had to come through abandon.
Nobody in their right mind would trust Zal Innez.
Fortunately, abandon was something he had inspired in
her from almost the moment they met.

310

She had never felt so comfortable naked with someone
before, nor so relaxed about what they were doing; so much
so that she felt no anxiety, only a little surprise, when he
came almost instantaneously the second she put her hand
around his penis.

'Jeez, I'm so sorry,' he said, looking appalled. 'It's been
a long time.'

'Don't worry. We've got a long time. Not three years, but
tonight at least.'

'Just gimme a few minutes,' he assured her.

There's no hurry. You'll just have to find some way of
keeping me amused in the meantime.'

He did.

A perennial disappointment about Angelique's previous
lovers was that because she was renowned for being 'able
to look after herself, they seemed to assume sex with her
should take the form of unarmed combat. Perhaps they
were a little intimidated and thought they had to be physically
masterful in order to prove themselves, or maybe they
reckoned that as she spent a lot of time rolling around on
floormats, then wrestling with her on a mattress was the
way to turn her on. Either way, she didn't appreciate it,
and they'd be a long time looking for a female who did.
Like every other woman on this earth, whether they nursed
babies or wrestled alligators, in bed she wanted to be
treated like she was precious.

Zal had hands that had mastered uncommon subtlety of
touch, fingers that could manipulate with imperceptible
delicacy. He touched her with a softness and gentility she
had never known, until she didn't want him to be gentle
any more.

When at last he came again, tears came too. Not the
silent weeping that had manifested throughout the day, but




311

great purging sobs. Afterwards he lay holding her for a
long time without saying anything, just stroking her hair
or occasionally kissing her forehead. Angelique said
nothing either, not wishing to break the silence. She knew
he would speak when he was ready, and eventually, he
did.

'It's only when you reach a place so high that you can
truly see how far down you were when you bottomed out.'

'Jail?'

'Oh yeah. All these assholes - Republicans, Conservatives
you'd call them . . .'

'Assholes works for me.'

'. . . who say jail should be tougher, I'd sure like to hear
their ideas for what could be tougher than some of the shit
that goes on inside.'

'You'd be surprised at their imagination. Have you ever
read a Daily Post editorial?'

'A so-called family newspaper wouldn't even be able to
mention this stuff. All the stories you've heard are true,
and most of them happened to me. I wasn't cut out for
that shit, I wasn't a tough-guy. I was just fresh meat. You'll
get guys beatin' up on you . . . they don't know you, they
ain't even got anything against you, but the law of the
jungle says predator or prey. If you ain't beatin' up on
somebody, then you're the vulnerable one. You gotta look
like a bad motherfucker, or at least make it obvious that
there's easier meat than you on the block.

'I had it bad. After I heard about my dad, I came pretty
close to the edge. Somebody pulled me back: an older guy,
name of Parnell.'

'Why? If I'm not being too cynical.'

'He'd been there too, way back. The guy was nearly sixty,
made a lot of mistakes, lot of regrets, you know? He taught

312
me how to survive. Got me workin' out, physically and
mentally.'
'Mentally?'

'Yeah. Your body has to be ready for the fights but your
mind has to be ready for the headgames. In prison, guys are constantly probing for any weakness they can exploit,
even in what ostensibly appears to be a civil conversation.
It also involved what I might term a disciplining of the
conscience, by which--'

'Don't worry, that needs no further explanation.'
That was the hardest part to master, but I got some help
with that too. Not in quite such an obliging way, though.
When I said how low . . .'

Zal swallowed, a bitter expression on his lips, like the
memory had caused bile to rise in his throat.

'Parnell made sure I knew how to look after myself, but
nobody can be your guardian angel. Everybody's gotta
watch their own back first, and there's some fights that
nobody else can win for you.'

He paused again, his reluctance feeding the grimmer
aspects of Angelique's imagination.

'Whatever you think I'm talkin' about here,' he said,
'you're right. The guy's name was Marsh, real bad-ass, lot
of clout, and tight with one of the guards, Creedie. They
were both... involved. Tuesday afternoon, always Tuesday
afternoon.'

'Was there a reason for . . .'

'Yeah. They had more than me to play with: different
guy every day, practically. You see, Creedie had responsibility
for the role on the metalshop's work roster. That was
how he covered himself in case anyone was ever stupid
enough to make an accusation. He and Marsh could have
their fun, and if anyone tried to tell tales, he could say it




313

was impossible, 'cause he had it in black and white that
you were in the shop the whole time. There were other
guards in on it too. Not in on it, but they knew Creedie'd

scratch their backs on other scams.'

Zal shook his head. 'I thought they'd get bored, move
on to somebody else. I didn't understand: prison is full of
routine, even things like that almost get sucked into the
mundanity of it. So I had to make it stop.'

'How?'

'I killed them both/

He stared into space for a second, almost incredulous at
his own words, proving that this was not an oft- or fondly
revisited memory.

'It was the same routine all the time. Creedie took me
to this laundry store-room, then Marsh would show up a
little while later. Creedie liked getting his dick sucked. He
used to point his gun at my head, but that was only at the
start, until I became reliably cooperative. Stupid fuck just
left it in his holster.'

'You shot him? What about the noise?'

'I didn't. I beat him to death with his riot stick. Then
when Marsh showed up, I shot him. Put the gun in Creedie's
hand, slipped back to the workshop while the guards were
coming to investigate. And according to the role, I was
there the whole time.'

'But the other guards . . .'

'I left a scene that looked plausibly self-explanatory, and
nobody was in a hurry to investigate otherwise. Maybe
they suspected, but they couldn't say anything without
admitting a whole lotta shit that they didn't want the
authorities knowing about.'

'Jesus.'

The thing about prison: everybody knows everything,

314

nobody says shit. It was never spoken, but it was received
wisdom that I killed Marsh and Creedie. There wasn't a
big queue to fuck with me after that.'

'What about Marsh's friends?'

'Yeah, I was worried for a while, but Parnell told me guys
like Marsh don't have friends, they have hangers-on
and sycophants, flies on shit. You take the shit away, they'll
just move to a new one. He was dead-on.'

'Had he done a lot of time?'

'Oh yeah. This was his fourth stretch.'

'What for?'

Zal smiled. 'Can't you guess?'

She could now. 'Life inside wasn't the only thing he
taught you about.'

'Hell no. Anybody can commit a crime, but if you want
to learn to be a real criminal, you can't beat jail. Months
and years of nothing to do but compare notes on what you
did, how you did it, what you wish you'd done when you
had the chance, what you're gonna do when you get out
... I don't believe there is a university on this earth where
the students are so committed and intensely dedicated to
their chosen subject.'

'And you had one-on-one tuition.'

'Oh, Parnell knew it all. Security systems, staff protocols,
individual institutions' policies and procedures, police
response times and tactics, you name it. He had a dozen
ways to avoid hostage situations, mainly because they were
usually the ones in which he got caught, but when it was
unavoidable, he wrote the book on making sure nobody
lost their head.'

'Was there a chapter on surrealist painting or absurdist
drama in this book?'

'Different practice, same principle. Parnell had a few




315

party pieces, sure, but the main thing was just to treat them
with as much politeness and dignity as the situation allows.

'The most important lesson he taught me, though, was
that you plan a heist backwards. Any punk with a piece
can walk into a bank and get them to hand over the money.
It's getting out again, free of handcuffs and gunshot
wounds, that's the entire focus of your operation. That's
the first thing you should look at when you're planning a
job. If*you don't know how you're getting out, don't even
think about going in. With the RSGN, I was looking at
plans of the underground, a map showing all the parts that
people don't know about: disused tunnels that weren't
upgraded in the revamp, sidings, access passages. The main
thing was to get out unseen. Before I saw this map, I was
originally planning to hit a bank in Saint Rollox: it's next
to a warehouse conversion apartment block, and the warehouse
used to be a whisky bond. The basement extends
beyond the building's outer wall into foundations of a
previous building on the site. Backs right up against the
vault. I hope you're taking notes.'

'Where do you get this stuff?'

'Mitchell Library. A vast, untapped criminal resource, if
you ask me.'

'What about the explosives? Did Parnell teach you that
too?'

'No, that was Jerome's specialist subject. He did less than
a year, but he shared a cell with a guy who ran a demolition
business. He was in for fraud, but talking about explosives
made him sound a lot cooler on the cell-block. Parnell
would never have touched a fire cracker, never mind a stick
of dynamite. He didn't even like using guns, though it was
usually unavoidable.' Zal smiled affectionately. 'He'd have
been pretty proud of us last Saturday.'

316

'Is he still inside?'

Zal nodded, his expression more sincere.

'What?' Angelique asked.

Zal sat up, pulling his knees towards him under the
covers.

'Parnell's why I'm here. I mean, not here.'

'Glasgow. How?'

'Alessandro. Fucking asshole. Same shit all over again.
There's something he wants me to steal for him, except this
time there's no question over whether he really wants me
to succeed.'He wants this . . . stuff real bad, and he figures
I'm the guy who can get it.'

'But at the Gigliotti--'

'I failed, yeah, but Alessandro's not stupid. Well,
actually, he is stupid, but even he must have worked out
that I screwed up deliberately - that's why he killed my
father. At the time he didn't know he was gonna need me
later, so now that he does, Parnell is the only person left
he can threaten. Maybe not the only one, but the easiest to
get hold of, and someone I owe a debt to.

'Son of a bitch came to see me in prison, laid it all down.
This time, I can't screw up, deliberately or otherwise. No
excuses, no alternatives: I deliver or Parnell dies, and it
won't be by painless lethal injection.'

'And then what if you do deliver? It'll be exactly what
you made your sacrifice to avoid. He'll order you to steal
something else and you'll never be rid of him.'

Zal closed his eyes and shook his head. When he opened
them again, he looked sorrowfully apologetic.

'Parnell's first rule: plan your exit before you plan
anything else. We deliver and we disappear. That's what
the RSGN was for: our escape fund. Alessandro will get
what he wants, then he won't see any of us ever again.'




317

Angelique felt a tightening in her chest as the harshest
solitary consequence struck home. 'And nor will I.'

He took hold of her right hand and gave it a squeeze.

'Unless you catch me.'

'Don't even joke about that. Knowing what you've just
told me won't make it any easier, but I can't stand back
and turn a blind eye.'

'Angelique, I didn't tell you this so that I could ask you
not to do your job. I told you so you'd understand why I
have to do mine.'

'And doing yours could put you right back in jail. You're
not up against the same idiot you took the piss out of at
the bank. The guy in charge of this case now is as sharp
as they come, Zal. He thinks you're long gone, but if you
give him a chance, he'll take you down, believe me. You
caught everybody with their pants down before, but this
time we'll be ready.'

'Ready, sure. Except you don't know what, you don't
know where and you don't know when.'

'And I'll be trying my hardest from here on in to work
all of that out. It's gaunny do my head in, knowing the
consequences, but I can't stop myself, either. This is what
I do, Zal, it's who I am.'

Zal ran a hand through her hair. 'I wouldn't have it any
other way,' he said.

Angelique looked across the bed at him. He was smiling
again, but those blue eyes were once more sparkling with
inscrutable intent.

'Once we get back to Glasgow, it's game on, and I'd be
disappointed if you didn't try your absolute best to answer
those questions and catch me in the act. But the thing that's
really gonna mess with your head is, how do you know
I'm not counting on that?'

the sacred art of leaving

I only had to be cut once to know how to bleed
I know why we tend to love most those who know
how to leave

Take my hand and let me tell you

All but my love will soon be gone

And the exit wound will be quick and clean

So the sacred art of leaving passes on.

Billy Franks



318

hunted

Within moments of Angelique walking into the station, she
had sensed there was something wrong, and that whatever
it was, it was wrong with her. Averted eyes, sudden
silences, furtively traded looks. It could be that way any
time you came back from leave, the natural guilt and insecurity
of having lost some ground on your colleagues,
swarming off to live it up while they were still busy at the
coalface. Normally this effect required an absence of at least
a week rather than a fly couple of days, but the identity of
her travelling companion accelerated the process and
amplified her paranoia.

That said, it could be imprudent to let paranoia account
for all of your perceptions, and Angelique knew she was
detecting an authentic whiff of mischief, even malice in the
air. In the dank, unhealthy, badly ventilated atmosphere of
the station, gossip travelled like a disease. If one person
walks in with it, pretty soon everyone's got it, and this
wasn't the hushed discomfort of a group of colleagues
who've already learned some bad news and know you'll
be the last to find out. She hadn't exactly gone out of her
way to become the most popular person in the place, so
there was definitely a smug satisfaction about a few faces
as she walked through the cramped and stuffy building,
among the crappy aluminium and chipboard partitions,
past the open doors of offices. Clearly she was getting some
sort of comeuppance, and she didn't even know it yet.

321

By the time she had made it upstairs and reached her
desk, she was in need of a friendly face, or even just
someone who had the balls to come out and say what was
on their mind. Fortunately, Mclntosh met both remits,
though the friendly face didn't quite extend to being a
happy one.

'Robertson wants to see you soon as. He's in his office,
waiting.'

'Cneers,' Angelique told him, putting her bag down next
to her desk. 'I'll just dump this and go right in.'

She had begun walking towards the DCI's office when
Mclntosh spoke again.

'I should warn you, he knows what you were doing in
Paris.'

Angelique felt her breakfast turn instantly to lead in her
stomach, her eyes widening in response to Mclntosh's
information. She was scrabbling to choose between a dozen
questions when his phone rang, and he grabbed it like it
was a lifebelt in a sea of embarrassment.

It was only a few yards to Robertson's door, but it felt
like a long walk. It reminded her of the time she'd been
sent to the heidie's office at school for lamping some racist
bitch with a hockey stick, except this time she wasn't quite
so focused regarding her own moral indignation.

She knocked on the door and walked in. Robertson was
standing with his back to her, looking out of the window
in a posture that just had to have been deliberately
composed for effect. He wasn't a habitually pompous individual,
and in fact Angelique had a lot of time and respect
for him, professionally, but there was something about the
wielding of authority in chastisement that brought out the
Terry-Thomas in every superior officer.

'Have a seat, Detective Inspector.'

322

Angelique would have preferred to stand, but she
complied, not feeling particularly defiant under the circumstances.

'I have to say, I'm most disappointed to have to do this,
though I'd have to admit there's a strong whiff of the
inevitable about it. The signs were all there, and I suppose
certain of us really ought to look at ourselves, given the
way you were treated after Dubh Ardrain, but none of that
makes a difference now, does it?'

'Sir?'

'Paris, DI de Xavia. Care to do me the courtesy of coming
clean about what you were doing there?'

Shite. How did he ... how could he . . . ?

She regrouped, tactical defensive reflexes kicking in.
Robertson was a good boss, and she didn't like to treat him
this way, but right now he was acting as the instrument of
Them, the Star Chamber, the enemy that had ultimately
put her in this position. She was fucked if she was going
to make it easy.

'I was on leave, sir. That means it was my business alone
what I was doing there and you've no right to ask.'

'Well that's a tacit admission if ever I've heard one. Jesus,
Angelique, we've been colleagues a long time. You know
and I know what you've been up to behind everybody's
backs, so there's no point in carrying on the pretence.'

'I don't believe I know what you're alluding to, sir,' she
stated, stone-faced.

'It strikes me as a hell of a coincidence, then, that I should
get a phone call yesterday from Gilles Dougnac in Paris.'

Christ. Everyone said it was a small world. What they
didn't tell you was that it had a cop on every fucking corner.
It had gone up the chain to Dougnac and then directly back
to Glasgow.




323

'It leaves a bad taste the way it's come about, but there's
no avoiding the bottom line. You're out of here.'

'You're firing me, sir?'

'No, I'm not firing you, but I'll certainly be expecting
your resignation on my desk very shortly.'

So that was that? No formal inquiry, no procedure, not
even the nerve to address the issue at hand and the can of
worms it would open. Instead she was being handed the
revolver and told to get on with it, spare everybody a lot
of paperwork, embarrassment and inconvenience.

'I must say, I'm rather disappointed in Gilles, too/
Robertson added. 'He had to inform me, obviously, but he
had the bloody cheek to play as dumb as you are.'

'About what?'

'Oh for fuck's sake, de Xavia, how far are you willing
to take this?'

'To the point where you stop tip-toeing around the
subject, sir. Let's talk like adults.'

'I'm not the one who's . . .' Robertson stopped, took a
breath, closed his eyes and opened them again. 'You're
saying you didn't meet Dougnac in Paris?'

'Yes, sir. I mean no, sir. I mean ... I was there with a
friend, and no, I didn't meet Gilles Dougnac. What the hell
is going on?'

'Fuck. Does that not make me all the pricks of the day,
then.' He sat down, sighing heavily, then laughed with
embarrassment. 'I must apologise, though you have to
admit you can't blame me for how it looked.'

'Sir, with respect, any danger you could tell me what
you're on about?'

He nodded and composed himself.

'Dougnac's putting together a pan-European counter
terrorist operation. Intelligence, tactical resources, rapid

324

response, pre-emptive action. Best of the best.' Robertson
sighed again and looked her in the eye.
'He wants you.'




325


it's beginning to look a lot like...




Bad sign: Harry wanted a drink and it was only ten o'clock

in the morning. Jet-lag was no longer an excuse, as his
sleeping and eating patterns had returned to pretty much
normal; though his drinking patterns were turning into
something of a sprawling miasma. He'd never been
anywhere on Earth where there were so many bars, which
wouldn't normally have been an issue because, hey, who
wants to sit and drink alone like a loser? But in this town,
it was almost impossible to drink alone, because the second
you lined up a quick one at the bar, some uninvited asshole
started yakking to you; then before you knew it, you'd
heard his life story and lost count of what you'd drunk
somewhere between his mother's heart operation and the
Celtics winning the European Superbowl in nineteen-sixty
whatever.

He was running out of brain cells and beginning to worry
whether he'd still have a liver to take back to LA with him
by the time this whole stupid business was concluded. Yet
here he was, pushing a spoon disinterestedly around his
bowl of rapidly cooling porridge, thinking he could really
use a shot before his breakfast 'guest' showed up.

His lack of appetite was ominously symptomatic, too.
He'd started on this porridge stuff a few days back, kind
of a 'When in Rome' deal, and since then he'd been unable
to start the morning without it. The sugar and cream
probably weren't doing him much good in the long term,

326

but you needed internal insulation in this town, as well as
something to absorb the deluge of alcohol that would inexorably
follow throughout the day. This morning, however,
he couldn't face more than a couple of spoons, and the
reason was due in the door any minute.

Innez.

There was nothing made Harry more nervous about this
operation than that crazy son-of-a-bitch's involvement, but
that was okay, because right now it was Harry's job to be
nervous about precisely that. Nervous meant cautious,
nervous meant on-edge, sharp, vigilant, and he was all that
and a bag of chips. However, it wasn't just nerves that were
making Harry so apprehensive as to be playing with his
breakfast like a huffy kid.

Innez made Harry uncomfortable on a whole number of
levels. One was that when it came to being cautious, on
edge, sharp and vigilant, he knew he could never be nervous
enough. If Innez figured 'screw Parnell' and decided to fuck
them over, then there was no way Harry would be smart
enough to out-manoeuvre the guy. Another level was that
Innez had been shanghaied into this thing by the very
people he had the most reason to want to fuck over: the
people who had murdered his father. But the principal level
had to be that it was Harry who'd carried out the hit.

When you killed people for a living, you kind of forfeited
your right to describe yourself as a man of conscience, but
you still knew what was and wasn't right. In this business,
you didn't get many contracts to take out innocent, frail
grandmothers or retards in wheelchairs. You took out
enemies, people who put themselves in harm's way and
knew what the fuck they were doing when they made that
decision.

Killing Innez's father wasn't right. It wasn't like Innez




327

had called their bluff, and it certainly wasn't like Innez was
the kind of guy Alessandro needed to make a point to.
Alessandro should have had way, way bigger items on his
agenda than settling scores against little piss-ant art-fags
who posed him no threat. All ego and no character, that was the kid's problem.

Harry had spoken against the hit because he saw it as
a waste of everybody's time and could see no upshot to
making an enemy of someone who had very clearly got
the message. The guy knew he was out of his depth, which
was why he had put himself in jail rather than get in any
deeper with Alessandro. But when you kill family, reason
and fear take the train: you're making it this guy's purpose
in life to get some payback, at whatever cost.

Alessandro didn't want to hear it, however. He threw a
few toys out of his pram and started yelling about respect,
the usual shit. Harry was given the assignment himself, as
a punishment for his dissent and as an unspoken test of
his loyalty to the new regime.

He passed.

Innez walked into the hotel restaurant, punctual to the
minute. Harry hadn't seen him since he went inside. He
appeared bigger, more muscular, and he had a serious
blond dye-job on top, made him look like some punk-ass
rock star. When he took off his jacket, there were jailhouse
tatts visible around his neckline and upper arms. But the
main difference Harry noticed was that he no longer looked
scared.

'Innez,' Harry said, beckoning him to sit down and
offering a menu.

'American Harry,' he replied flatly.

American Harry. That was Innez's way of letting him
know that he was these days a lot more clued-in about the

328

organisation he was dealing with, enough to know his nickname
and what it referred to.

Harry's real name wasn't Harry Arthur, but Javier
Artero, and he took a lot of shit for his belief that roots
were something best left buried. He was a born American
- so fucking what if he wasn't obsessed with his ethnic
background like the rest of these wetback assholes? He was
sick of hearing guys like Miguel talk about embracing their
native culture. Shit, if you want to embrace it that bad, why
not move back across the fucking border, give up that nice
house with the swimming pool in San Bernardino, your
Mercedes convertible and your seats for the Laker games,
huh? Harry had embraced his native culture, and it was
the same culture all the rest of these jerks had bought into
wholesale, no matter how much mariachi music they
played on their goddamn Japanese CD players.

'How you doin'? This town's a piece of work, huh?'
Harry said.

'I'm finding it more hospitable than the surroundings
I've been recently accustomed to,' Innez replied.

'Oh yeah. Pretty fuckin' hospitable, I'm sure. The banks
have certainly been generous towards you.'

'Well, you see, my employment prospects took a bit of
a dent, what with having Walla Walla on my resume. Jimmy
Hoffa used to hire ex-cons, but he ain't been seen around
for a while, so I've had to find an alternative source of
income.'

'You're not still pissed about a little thing like goin' to
jail for three years, are ya?' Harry asked, trying to hide his
discomfiture behind callously cynical humour.

'Life's too short for regrets, Harry. I wouldn't let something
so trivial weigh me down, any more than the fact
that you motherfuckers killed my old man.'




329


Harry sighed, took a drink of coffee. Fortunately, his I
don't-give-a-fuck act was much-practiced and came easy
to the point of reflex. Innez's anger was actually paradoxically
reassuring. A pissed-sounding Innez was more
predictable and less disconcerting than if he had shown up
with a carefree smile and a spring in his step.

'Listen, pal/ Harry said. 'I don't wanna be here right
now any more than you do, okay? I think it's a fucked-up
situation and I'm not convinced it's all worth the risk, but
you know and I know that my opinion counts for shit,
same as yours. So how about we cut each other some slack
and get the whole thing over with to our mutual satisfaction,
huh?'

To Alessandro's satisfaction.'

'Whatever. Look, do you want a cup of coffee? You
should try this porridge shit, seriously.'

'I've already eaten. You called this meeting. Let's cut the
support and get to the headline act. What do you want?'

'I just wanna know everything's going to plan.'

'Everything is just about in place, yes. Why wouldn't it
be?'

'Well, you made a lot of people very nervous when you
pulled that shit with the bank. Mr Hannigan took a lot of
reassuring that he wasn't gonna get fucked over the main
event, too. That's why I'm here: had to get on a fuckin'
plane and come over here as a gesture of good faith.'

'Good faith? Pardon me if that sounds a little incongruous
coming from someone of your pedigree. What is
that, an honour-among-scumbags deal? Anyway, it wasn't
me who gave Hannigan the impression I was at his
disposal.'

'You know, I'm gonna let your attitude slide because I
know you got reason to be angry, but don't fuckin' push

330

it kid, okay? You could still pull off this job without your
left nut, know what I'm sayin'?'

Innez stared back defiantly, but he said nothing, so Harry
knew he'd made his point.

Is the date set?'

'Yup. Same as ever.'

'Seems like a lot of lead time to me. You've been here
how long?'

'I'm not knocking over a liquor store for the cash-register
and a bottle of Mad Dog. Something like this takes preparation.
Anyway, the lead time is irrelevant; it was the date
that was crucial.'

'Christmas fuckin' Eve. Jesus. I'm gonna be stuck here
on Christmas Day because of this shit.'

'It's the most opportune time. I've been through all this
with you people.'

'Yeah, yeah. With us people. But not with the person
who has to spend the fuckin' holidays here in fuckin'
Glasgow.'

'You can go home if you like. I'm assuming Hannigan's
been placated for now. Your part's done. It's Alessandro
who has to come here for the hand-over.'

'Yeah, I ... what? Alessandro? Yeah, right. No, kid, it's
Rico Dominguez and Paco Gomez who've comin' over for
that.'

Innez shook his head in a way Harry really didn't like. It
didn't make him angry, just, well, nervous. Uncomfortable.

'What?'

'I'm handing the stuff over to Alessandro, and
Alessandro alone.'

'Yeah, right. You think Alessandro's gonna haul his ass
all the way over here for fuckin' Christmas, just because
you say so?'




331

'He is if he wants the stuff.'

'No. You are gonna hand it over to Rico and Paco, or
else your old jailbird Good Samaritan Parnell is gonna end
his sentence slow but early.'

'You can only kill him once. Then what have you got?
Oh no, wait, I fucked up, didn't I? Alessandro's gotta have
at least a dozen guys lined up who could boost this shit
out of a European museum, huh?'

'We could find somebody. Don't flatter yourself.'

'I'm not flattering myself. Alessandro's the one who rates
my abilities, but you and I both know that's because
Alessandro doesn't have anyone to compare me to. Given
all the shit that's gone down between us, he wouldn't have
come to me if he had any other options.'

Innez was right, and the fucker knew Harry knew it,
too. Given the months they'd had to wait, they could
probably have found someone else capable of doing the
job in the meantime, but in Alessandro's limited mental
process, it was: think museum, think Innez.

'Why do you want Alessandro to be there? Sounds like
some kind of trap to me. It will to him, too.'

'No traps. I just want this to be over between us, face to
face. I want to be able to hand this shit to him personally,
not to some bagman. That way, if anything goes wrong, he
can see I did my part, played it straight, gave him what
he wanted. I don't want Parnell to die because one of you jerks screwed up.'

'If that's what you're worried about, forget it. We get the
shit, Parnell's in the clear. It won't matter who you give it to.'

'It matters to me. That's the bottom line. Alessandro
screwed up when he made it about Parnell. Maybe if he'd
cut me in, he'd have more room to negotiate, but while

332

Parnell is all he's got and I'm his only option, those are
my terms.'

'You're looking for a slice, is that what this is about?'
'No. I wouldn't accept a red cent from that piece of shit.
I'm just pointing out the corner he's painted himself into:
killing an old man in prison would be worth a lot less to
Alessandro than what I can deliver. Especially with business
the way it is . . .'

'What the fuck are you talking about?' 'You think the grapevine you guys tap in Walla Walla
only runs one way? It's like the fucking Wall Street Journal of crime: whether you give a shit or not, you can't help
but hear all about whose stocks are up and whose fortunes
are down. It's no secret to anyone in that place that the SS
Estobal is not a happy ship under Captain Alessandro. Hey,
it's okay, you don't have to rush to defend him. I won't
tell.'

Innez grinned, having rightly recognised that it hadn't
occurred to Harry to defend him, not even for appearances'
sake.

'Alessandro's young and inexperienced,' Harry said.
'But he's the head of the Estobals, and don't fucking forget
it. We're a strong enough organisation to be able to withstand
a few bumps and scrapes on the kid's learning curve.'
'Bullshit, Harry. Alessandro's head of the Estobal operation,
yeah, but that operation doesn't exist in a vacuum.
Other parties are looking on and taking note. Some of them
are getting concerned, and others are rubbing their hands.
He's got you all in some choppy waters, and the fastest
identifiable route to calmer seas lies via Glasgow.
Alessandro knows that, and so do you. If his ship went
down with all hands, make no mistake, I'd be machine
gunning the life-boats and laughing as I watched all you




333

fuckers go down. But if bailing him out is what I have to
do to keep my friend alive, so be it. I know what I have
to do, you know what you have to do, and he knows what
he has to do.'

'Sounds like Christmas in Glasgow for all of us.'

'And a happy new year.'

334

alchemy



Angelique waited alone in the glass-walled foyer of the
Dalriada Museum, feeling sure about nothing save the
knowledge that no-one else had any answers for her. It had
been a long and discomfitingly empty few days. Some
momentous events, once past, could very quickly fade or
become distantly dream-like as you got on with life. That
short time in Paris, however, echoed and resounded
tangibly in her thoughts, her emotions and even her body.
When she closed her eyes, she could still hear his voice,
still see him standing by the Mona Lisa, still feel his hand
clutched around hers.

The time since had felt hollow. She wasn't kidding
herself about their situation: they had agreed at CDG that
when they touched down in Glasgow they had to go their
separate ways and do their separate, entirely conflicting
jobs, but she felt like she was waiting for something
nonetheless. Insecurities visited like old school friends:
familiar, inevitable, and as welcome as a priest on a Pride
march. To head them off, she made some inquiries, calling
in a few favours at Interpol to get the gen from the US. It
was all there in the files: the abortive raid on the Gigliotti,
the deaths of prison officer Creedie and prisoner Marsh at
Folsom, Innez's recent release and the on-going incarceration
of one Dexter Parnell. Zal Innez might not be someone
it was wise to trust, but he wasn't a liar, either.

In time what she was waiting for arrived, in the form of

335

a phone call, finally delivering what she had hoped for
every time the thing had rung since she got home. He
wanted to meet, and suggested the Dalriada as both a
public and appropriate venue.

That was three days ago, so at least Dougnac's offer had
given her something else to think about in the meantime.
There was nothing quite like the possibility of uprooting
yourself and leaving everything familiar behind to just
peak that sense of being lost and alone.

She stood in the centre of the entrance hall, directly below
the bust of John Milton Horsburgh, his marble countenance
contentedly monitoring the flow of visitors to his vast
bequest. It was a municipal museum, run by the city
council, but Horsburgh had left a substantial trust fund to
finance the exhibition and upkeep of his collection, not
having envisaged palaces of the arts ever being considered
public utilities. This meant the place drew far less from the
council coffers than other attractions of comparable size,
but evidently didn't stop some people whining about whatever
public money was spent. She read recently that the
usual religious halfwits had been bumping their gums in
protest about the cost of the current History of Allegory
exhibition. There was only one commissioned work and
one purchase in the bloody thing, the rest being loaned
works as it was a temporary display. However, as far as
the God-botherers were concerned, the deposit off a crate
of ginger bottles would be too much of an outlay if it was
spent on something they disapproved of. As this included,
at the last count, every non-religious work in history, that
kind of narrowed the field.

John Milton Horsburgh. There was a man with no issues
about his place in the world, or his sense of belonging in
this city. The song said 'Glasgow belongs to me', and in

336

J

his case a lot of it had, at one time or other. He was a shipping
magnate, who made his considerable fortune through
'tobacco and cotton', according to the official blurb, which
politely avoided reference to the darkest third side of the
contemporary triangle trade between Glasgow, Africa and
North America.

He wanted to be remembered by the place. Those were
his exact words. Not by the people, but by the place, like
he wanted his soul subsumed and absorbed by the city.
Not a philanthropist, then, otherwise he might have
thought to bequeath the odd penny to the poor of the city
and be remembered for that. Instead he left his artworks
and his trinkets, so that his taste, his personality, would
forever leave its stamp. Thus: the Dalriada Museum, finally
built by his executors after a good century of legally
protracted arguing, and opened to the grateful city just too
late for the Empire Exhibition of 1938. In accordance with
Horsburgh's wishes, it belonged to Glasgow, whether
Glasgow liked it or not.

But what about Angelique? Did she belong to Glasgow?
Amin had booted her parents out of Uganda while she was
in the womb, so she'd been born in the city and lived in
it or its environs ever since. She'd been educated there, and
apart from a few temporary secondments had always
worked there too. She had the accent, the attitude, her flat
in the south side. It felt like home, sure, but belonging, that
was something else.

She had her season ticket to the 'Brox, but did she belong
there? And, she found herself wondering, had she ever
really wanted to? Was she drawn to places where she could
feel isolated but defiant, because those were the places she
had grown to most comfortably inhabit? Isolated but
defiant: that's how she was in the Glesca Polis, that's how




337

she'd been at school, and let's be honest, that's how she'd
been at Ibrox, regardless of her passion for the game. It
was a site of glories, a cathedral of sporting achievement,
but it was also a place tainted by a history of exclusion. In

some perverse way, maybe that was what she had sought.
She was not a Catholic any more, but she knew that having
gone to Sacred Heart, she was Catholic enough for some
of the brain donors in the stands around her. She was a
republican (small r) surrounded by hordes singing God Save
the Queen, an anti-imperialist amid choruses of Rule
Britannia. But she'd argue that Rangers were her team too
- isolated but defiant.

'We are the people'. That was the fans' motto, far more
than the club's official 'Aye Ready'. Her lefty-posturing,
flexibly-atheist-but-Catholicism-defending Celtic fan of a
brother took no end of exception to this simple little statement.
It had sinister undertones, he argued, toeing something
of a rehearsed-sounding Tim party line. It had its
roots in prejudice against Irish immigrants, those who
were, by implication, not the people. It was a motto of
Ulster Loyalist paramilitaries. It had connotations of racial
supremacy. And it was an anagram of 'Hitler was right',
nearly.

Angelique, who knew a lot more Bears than James, knew
different. No matter who appropriated it, quoted it, used
it or abused it, its origin was innocent, harmless and
Glasgow through and through. We are the people meant
we are the people. It was just a gallus affirmation of being
happy with who you were, and good luck to anyone who
felt that way.

Gallus. That was the only adjective that could truly
describe it, a word whose meaning, usage and etymology
were the quintessence of the place. It was coined at the

338

hanging of a thief and murderer known as Gentleman Jim,
who had remained his smiling, cocksure and witty self even
on the gallows.

'We are the people,' and indeed they were. But the question
remained, probing deeper in light of Dougnac's
proposal: was Angelique?

She was stirred from her reflections by a snicking sound
as something dropped at her feet. Looking down, she saw
that it was a playing card: the seven of diamonds. She
turned around to see Zal standing a few feet away.

'Howdy/ he said. Angelique wanted to hug him but
restrained herself; then, reconsidering and concluding there
to be no reason for restraint, did it anyway, her embrace
quickly turning into a prolonged kiss.
'So you ain't here to arrest me, I guess.'
They took a walk through the museum, Zal noticeably
guiding her towards the History of Allegory exhibition,
Angelique making a mental note to check up on what he
might specifically be guiding her away from. The exhibit
was laid out in a V-shape, each work annotated by smaller
prints or fragments of contemporary comparative pieces.
Zal was less vocal than in the Louvre, possibly because he
was less informed about what was on display, but he was
drinking it all in again nonetheless. Less informed was still
not uninformed, however, so he insisted on standing
Angelique a few feet to the left of The Ambassadors, a full
size print accompanied by a note acknowledging the
location of the original at the National in London. From
her deliberately skewed perspective, she was able to see
the indistinct shape to the bottom left of the painting's
eponymous subjects (and patrons) metamorphose into a
skull, which Zal proudly announced was 'the most famous
fuck-you in art history'. He was also able to inform her




339

that The Marriage Feast at Cana, on loan from a museum in
Toronto and attributed to 'the Unknown Master', was
rumoured to be a fake, having 'resurfaced' in the conveniently
tumultuous aftermath of the Second World War.


Whether Zal knew much about it or not, comment
seemed superfluous regarding the controversial West Coast
(,) Man, sitting shamelessly at the apex of the dog-legged
hall. Angelique could muster no reaction more articulate
than a fit of the giggles, and would go toe to toe with any
critic who wanted to argue that its intention was anything
more sophisticated than raising a laugh.

These Christian protestors,' Zal observed, also giggling.
'I mean, if you can't laugh at a gigantic statue of a guy
sucking his own dick, sitting here in the serenity of an art
gallery, what the fuck can you laugh at?'

'Is it true the cocaine's real?'

'Dunno, though I could think of a quick way to find out.'

'I'm just surprised it's still there. Actually, in this town
they probably have to replace it hourly.'

Their tour moved on to the equally prude-baiting Voyeur. It was a large, cube-like installation, inside of which was
a bench facing a TV monitor built into one wall, showing
a hard-core porn video. They went in and sat down for a
couple of minutes, giggled a little more at what was on
display, shrugged and walked out.

'What did you think?' Zal asked.

'Aesthetically speaking? I thought we did it better.'

'Yeah, we could give 'em some pointers. But look again.'

Angelique turned around to face the cube. On each of
the four walls, what had appeared to be white panels
revealed themselves to be video-projector screens, now
showing the pair of them sitting on the bench watching
the tape.

340

'Very droll, huh?' Zal observed.

'Oh aye. So does this kind of stuff rate above old Mona
on your accolade-deservance scale? Or are you just here to
case the joint?'

'Well, principally I'm here to see you, but admittedly I
could be casing the joint. The problem you have is that you
won't know whether I'm really casing the joint or whether
I just want you to think I am.'

'Indeed, congratulations. You found a way of rendering
just about anything you tell me effectively meaningless.
But I take it from that remark that everything is as was.
You're still going ahead with it, whatever it is?'

'You know I don't have a choice.'

'You have to do this, and then you have to disappear.'

'I have to disappear anyway, Angelique. I stole over a

million bucks from a bank.'

'No. You got away clean on that score. We can't
pronounce it officially, but believe me, as a cop I know
when a case is dead.'

'What about your hotshot boss, Shaw?'

'He's already given it last rites. He'll be telling the bank
otherwise, but he knows you left him nothing to go on.'

'Except for one of his detectives knowing exactly
whodunnit/

'I'm morally at peace with keeping that to myself.'

'Carefully chosen words,' Zal acknowledged.

'I'm less at peace with the thought of either never seeing
you again, or only seeing you in the Bar-L visiting area.
There must be a way around this, some means of taking
Parnell out of the equation. What if we could get him

protection, a move to another prison, a new identity, something.'

'With what? You've nothing to offer the US authorities





341

in return, and I've nothing to offer you. I don't think
anybody's gonna buy it as a new incentive-based crime
prevention scheme. What would you tell your boss? Let's
help this guy out so he won't rob someplace? He'd say:
here's a better idea - let's lock the son-of-a-bitch up for
robbing the last place.'

'But there's a crime being committed by Alessandro
blackmailing you into doing this. The authorities on both
sides of the Atlantic would surely be interested in that.'

'Not without proof. Angelique, believe me, I'm a guy
who looks at every possible avenue, every contingency,
remember? And there is no way of getting around what I
have to do.'

He had finished speaking, but Angelique could definitely
hear a 'but'. She looked at him and saw it confirmed
in his face.

'But what?'

There is another way of getting Alessandro off my back
for good.'

Shaw had evidently lost the power of his lower jaw by the

time Angelique finished speaking. If she had disclosed
anything like the true extent of her relationship with Zal
Innez, he might well have forgotten to breathe through his
gaping mouth, but what she did reveal was enough to have
him understandably aghast. Latterly, his silence had been
due to being increasingly astonished at what she had to
say, but she had warded off predictable early outrage by
the calculated opening gambit of asking how he'd like Bud
Hannigan served to him on a plate. She knew that was one
hell of a hook-line for any Glasgow cop, but in Shaw's case
the bait was extra tasty, having failed in his previous
attempts to nail the slippery little bastard.

342

Hannigan was notoriously adept at both evading the
attentions of the law and distancing himself from the activities
that nonetheless paid for his mansion in Drymen and
whatever his lady of the moment was driving. He had
cemented his position as the major drugs player in the city
following the death of his last serious rival, Frank Morris,
victim of a quite untraceable hit. Morris had been found
dead in his own back garden, having been shot through
the eye, but though there was no exit wound, there was
no bullet to be found, either. More curious still, less than
a week later, the ned rumoured to have collected on the
contract was found dead of a heroin overdose, a dashed
unlucky break for someone not previously known to have
a habit.

Shaw collected himself. It took a few moments, but he
got there. He sighed, stood up, walked back and forth
behind his desk, sat down, sighed again, stood up again,
ran both hands through his hair, made to speak two or
three times, then nodded decisively and returned to his
chair.

'You didn't exactly play by the book, de Xavia, but then,
what would you have got if you had done?'

'I think fuck-all would be the empirical measure, sir.'
'Quite. We've all got our snouts and we have to negotiate
a few moral grey areas to accommodate them, but I
think you now hold some kind of record. Nice to know I
was right about the magician thing, by the way. Makes me
feel not totally redundant to the process at hand. But
bearing that specifically in mind, and without casting
aspersions on your instincts or credulity, we can't lose sight
of the possibility that he's forced another card on you.'
'Sir?'

Well, he gives us his sob story and you suggest a deal,





343

a long, contemplative, pressure-cooker exhale. 'I'm not sure
I will forgive you for sharing that one, de Xavia. That's a
headfuck if ever I heard one.'

'It's also why I believe he's sincere about this deal.'

'Fair enough, but I think there's a gauntlet been thrown
doon, regardless of whatever headgames he's trying to
play. He's a smart bugger, but we didnae come doon wi'
the rain, and this time he won't be catchin' us with our
trousers down.'

'I told him that, sir. He said we should put on clean
underwear just in case.'

Shaw laughed, but his smile was thin and there was a
formidable determination in his eyes. 'Right. Now the
gauntlet's definitely been thrown doon. What was it he said
we didn't know? The where, the what and the when. Well,
let's just see if us daft polis can possibly figure oot a thing
or three.'

Angelique saw a near-gleeful enthusiasm grow in Shaw.
He'd caught a tae of blood in the water, irresistible to a
cop like him, with the added piquancy of a quite barefaced
element of challenge. She'd experienced the exhilaration,
the energy of it herself a hundred times, and felt
self-conscious that she did not share it today. She also,
despite his confidence (or was it bravado), felt concern for
Zal. Shaw would dearly love to bring down Bud Hannigan,
but that counted as two in the bush, and he would not let
even such a tantalising possibility distract him from the
more immediate task in hand. In that way, he was immune
to Zal's magic.

The same could not be said for Angelique. Up until now,
it had all remained theoretical, but seeing Shaw with the
scent in his nostrils rendered an unforgiving reality. It was
her job to stop Zal from doing his, her job to prevent him




of him, same as you insisted on evacuating the bank. He
gets what he wants but he makes you think it was your
idea, thus lowering your suspicions. He says okay, he can
get us Hannigan and this Estobal punter, but he can't
deliver either until after he's carried out his heist. So if
you polis don't mind keeping oot the way for a wee minute
... Then he nabs whatever he's after and fucks off, leaving
us with no Hannigan, no Estobal and definitely no Innez.
Christ, there might not even be a Parnell.'

There is. I checked.'

'But even so, even if everything is true, including his
motive, if he delivers for Estobal, he saves Parnell, and it
would be easier if we're waiting around like mugs for
something else to happen. He can get what he wants
without giving us anything.'

'In which case why offer us a deal?'

'More misdirection.'

'I won't pretend I can second guess the guy; you'd go
insane trying. But I know this much: he's not asking us to
look the other way. He knows we can't do that.'

'Bloody right. If this guy is planning another robbery
on my patch, you'd better believe I'm gaunny pull oot all
the stops to prevent it. And I'll be expecting you to do
the same, even if, as I suspect, you've a wee soft spot for
him.'

'I'll be giving it everything I've got, sir. I don't know any
other way. But if you'll forgive me, I feel I'm obliged to
infect you with the little virus he dropped into my head.'

'And what's that?'

'I told him, Parnell or no Parnell, that we had no choice
but to do our best. He asked how I'd know he wasn't
relying on that.'

Shaw sighed again, blowing air through pursed lips in

344

345

from appeasing Alessandro, and her job to effectively
ensure that Parnell would die. But Zal had known all of
this, and had said only, with that infuriating glint in his
eye, 'How do you know I'm not counting on that?' Maybe
he hadn't just said it to mess with her head; maybe it was
an absolution, a way of relieving her of responsibility
because he knew there were things he could not rightly
ask her to do. But equally, Zal was expert at getting you
to do what he wanted while believing it was both your
own idea and the right thing to do. Perhaps the words were
paradoxically sincere, and that only by doing her job could
she help him and, ultimately, his friend. Only by trying to
stop him could she do the right thing.

She took a deep breath, bent down and reached into her
bag. Then for Zal, for Parnell, for Shaw and for none of
them, she got on with what she did best.

'Let's start with where,' she said, opening up the map
and spreading it on Shaw's desk.

'What's this?'

'I got it from the Mitchell. It shows the old bits of the
underground as well as the new, with the streetplan overlaid.
Innez said he got the idea for the RSGN when he was
looking at a map of these tunnels. I wondered whether this
might have been while he was planning something else.
Here's where he asked to meet me today.'

The Dalriada Museum. Kinning Park. It runs practically
underneath.'

'The tunnel's been bricked off for thirty years, but it's
still down there, with potential exits close to Paisley Road
West, the M77 and the M8.'

They could be out of the city in minutes. But what with?
You said yourself, fine art's valuable, but not sellable. It
might tickle this Alessandro's ego to own a Rembrandt,

346

but I cannae see Hannigan being too fussed. In fact, I cannae
see where Hannigan fits in at all.'

'Allow me to illuminate. Innez took me to the History
of Allegory exhibition, in the South Hall.'

'So what do you reckon he was looking at there?'

'It's what we weren't looking at. We didn't go into the
North Hall, which houses the permanent Horsburgh
Collection.'

'More unsellables.'

'Not quite. Upstairs, gallery level, you'll find the
Horsburgh Hoard, as it's nicknamed. Trinkets, ornamentation,
plates, cups, salvers, statuary, goblets, and even a
very vulgar scale replica of the Horsburgh fleet's flagship;
vulgar, but cast, like everything else I've mentioned, in
solid gold.'

'Alakazammy, stairheid rammy.'

There's silver too, plus precious stones, natch. Again, all
of these pieces are identifiable, and unsellable once they're
known to have been stolen, but not once you've melted
them down. At that point the stuff would be worth far less,
pound for pound, but it would also be untraceable.'

'Which is presumably where Hannigan comes in. But if
this is the target, why wouldn't Hannigan just hit it
himself? Even if it hadn't occurred to him, why not go it
alone now that he knows?'

'Well, for one thing, Hannigan knows he's a big fish in
a small pond, and the Estobals wouldn't be a very sensible
bunch to start a war with. However, the main reason is he
couldn't, or someone else in Glasgow would have tried by now. But Alessandro reckoned he knew a man who could.
I'm guessing Alessandro identified the target and came to
Hannigan with the proposal. Alessandro had the plan, and
through Innez the means, but even recast, he wouldn't be




347

able to get the gold out of the country or into the US. So
there had to be some localised arrangement with Hannigan,
both to facilitate the smelting and to move the goods.'

'Reverse alchemy/ Shaw said with obvious satisfaction
and approval. Turning gold into brass.'

'So that gives us a where and a what. We still need a
when.'

'When matters less if you're monitoring the what and
staking out the where. I'll get men undercover on the security
staff, post officers in the tunnel.'

'Indefinitely?'

'Immediately, but indefinitely won't be very long. It's
less than a week until Christmas. My guess would be that
he'd hit when everybody's busy being festive. Christmas
Day, Christmas Eve . . . Hogmanay would be a good one.
Didn't someone hit the Ashmolean on Hogmanay?'

'Night of the Millennium, yes. Nobody could hear the
alarm for fireworks, if there was anyone sober enough to
do anything about it.'

'Well, we'll be sober this Christmas. And it'll be worth
it to see the bastard's face when he walks in and finds us
already waiting for him.'

'Hmmm,' Angelique said.

'What?'

'It's still just a theory, sir. I think we should keep a very
open mind.'

'Absolutely, absolutely. But don't let Innez mess with
your head either, make you think all your good ideas are
wrong just because he might be expecting them. He's a
magician, not a wizard. Magicians can't really read your
mind, they just know ways of making you think they have.'

'Understood, sir. But I have to ask ... if we're wrong,
or if we're right and . . .' She shook her head. 'Whatever.

348

If we do fail to stop him, despite - or even somehow because
of - our best efforts

'I'm a man of honour, de Xavia. If he delivers us that
wee shite Hannigan, I'll move heaven and earth to make
sure this Parnell punter's in the clear. It would be a small
price to pay. We can make a recommendation to the judge
too, get him a sympathetic hearing seeing he turned
Queen's and all that. But if he's expecting immunity, for
the Dalriada or for the bank job, he can whistle.'

'He didn't mention immunity sir. It wasn't on the
agenda.'

That's very noble of him. I suppose he's lain down his
liberty for his friends before. An honourable, if inconvenient
habit.'

'No, sir, I don't believe he thought it was an issue.
Whatever he's got in mind for Hannigan and Alessandro,
Innez doesn't expect to be caught.'

'My dear Angelique,' Shaw said, grinning. 'Name me
one convict who ever did.'




349

let us prey

'Ninety seconds/ Zal said, stopping his watch. 'Six slower
than last time, but outstanding nonetheless. Even faster if
this asshole Dominguez can handle a spanner. I'd say we're
about ready for a job in the pit lanes.'

'No, man/ said Leo, 'I can't see Ferrari authorising that
level of added weight.'

'Surely your adjustments don't add that much.'

'I wasn't talkin' about the adjustments, dude, I was
talkin' about Jerome.'

'Shame on you when he ain't here to defend himself/
Zal chided.

'Oh, you sayin' you want me to play Queensberry Rules
with that bitch-ass motherfucker?'

"Course/ said Karl. 'If you weren't here, I'm sure he
wouldn't let a word be said about you. Not any nice words,
anyway.'

'Well I'd sure hate to be around you guys when I ain't
here/ Leo observed.

'Okay/ Zal announced, 'that's everything accounted for,
double-checked, tested and in position. I'd say we're good
to go. Let's go pick up our passenger.'

'Good to go/ Leo confirmed, 'soon as I'm through
shakin' hands with the President. Or I guess it's Prime
Minister round here.'

'First Minister/ Zal corrected. 'But they're all pricks.'

Leo headed for the bathroom.

350

'What about the girl?' Karl asked, clipping a newly
charged battery pack into his laptop.

The deal's confirmed. I double-checked that too.'

That's not what I was talking about.'

Zal sighed.

'I know what you were talking about, Karl. Don't worry.
We both understood what we were getting into, and we
knew we'd have to get out of it too. Neither of us told the
other any lies. That's gotta be a new phenomenon in one
of my relationships. But she and I both know what has to
happen.'

'Knowing won't make it any easier to leave.'

'Leaving's easy, Karl. I've been doing it regularly since
I was a kid. Leaving's always easy. It's missing that's the
real bitch.'

'As Neil Young once sang: tonight's the night.'

Shaw smoked a cigarette as he paced nervously in front
of the squad car, a tall bundle of unused energy desperate
for a focused outlet. 'I can feel it with every instinct I've
got as a polisman.'

They were holding position in the carpark of a disused
cash-and-carry, less than a quarter of a mile from the
Dalriada Museum. There were two vans with them, one
for the Armed Response Unit and the second accommodating
six bluebottles, all as restlessly eager for action as
you'd expect in men who knew they weren't getting off
shift until this thing went down or dawn broke. At the
museum itself, there were two armed undercover officers,
as well as extra security staff, though the latter had been
briefed against being over-vigilant. The last thing they
needed was someone huckling the thieves before they
actually tried to steal anything; or the guards overreacting




351

to some minor incident and betraying that the place was
under extra surveillance.

'Forgive me, sir/ said Angelique, 'but would it be considered
insubordinate to remind you that you said the same
thing last night, too. Right down to the Neil Young bit.'

'Aye, and I'll say it tomorrow night, ya cheeky bessom.
It's the ranking officer's prerogative.'

'Yes, sir.'

Shaw had seriously stepped up the manpower the
previous evening, after they learned from immigration that
one Alessandro Estobal had entered the country at
Heathrow earlier in the day, in the company of two known
associates. The boss had necessarily prepared them for a
major swoop that night, but to be fair to him he had always
opined that Christmas Eve was the date his money was
on. He had also reckoned on the robbery taking place when
the museum was closed, rather than envisaging Zal risking
a second hostage situation. They were ready for it nonetheless,
but it seemed unlikely he'd back himself into a corner
a second time, especially knowing that a surprise disappearing
act couldn't work twice. An out-of-hours raid had
the further advantage of there being only minimum security
staff on duty, aside, that was, from the two armed cops
who would be covering the Horsburgh Hoard until their
relief showed up in the morning.

'He likes the cover of darkness,' Shaw had observed. 'He
went into that bank in broad daylight because he needed
it to be open, but he waited until it was pitch outside before
making his exit. Unfortunately for us, at this time of year
it's dark by four in the bloody afternoon.'

It was impossible to say that nothing had been overlooked,
and Shaw wasn't arrogant enough to believe he
could anticipate Zal's every move, but he was determined

352

there would at least be no excuse for getting stung by the
same method twice. Hence they had several poor bastards
posted underground, as well as surveillance in place at
several sites identified as potential entry/exit points to the
tunnel system. An IT expert was brought in too, to install
a new, state-of-the-art firewall and to monitor the
museum's computer system for viruses and trojans. So far
it remained inviolate.

Angelique hoped Zal's most perplexing remark really
was just a form of absolution. She'd done her job, just as
he'd told her she should, with the result that they now had
the Dalriada locked up tight as a camel's arse in a sandstorm.
If there was a way this giant rat-trap was going to
help Parnell, then she sure as hell couldn't see it.




353

wetwork

The first shots hadn't been fired yet, and the world didn't
know it, but the good fight was well underway. To the

untrained eye, Walter Thorn might look merely like a
middle-aged man crouching on a toilet seat in a cramped
and smelly lavatory cubicle, but in reality he was a highly
trained secret operative engaged in a covert assignment that
would take the moral battle right to the heart of the enemy.

He checked his pistol again, cradling its weight in his
hand. It felt good, like it had felt good every time he'd
picked it up to practice shooting until he could bullseye
the target nine times out of ten from the required range.
Everything about this felt good, so much so that he wished
he'd gotten involved in something genuinely active years 
ago. He wouldn't say he'd wasted his time with what he
had done - far from it, he'd performed an invaluable role
- but let's be honest, that role had always been a matter
of commenting from the sidelines. Now, however, he was
in the thick of the action.

Even Mary had remarked that he seemed to have a spring
in his step, and he'd have to admit that if this burgeoning
sense of energy and vitality persisted, he might well have
to insist on pushing their beds together some night soon.

His watch read 8:24. It was almost time. He'd thought
the waiting would be tough, with boredom and the threat
of doubt more a concern than comfort or cramp. However,
the opposite had proven the case. With each hour that

354

passed, his resolve only became stronger; while the sense
of excitement and anticipation grew by the minute.

He was in the elite of the elite, the three operatives
entrusted with the true 'wetwork' of the mission. The less
exalted (but nonetheless invaluable, make no mistake)
members of F&NY-PAD had completed their task and
would by now have joined the rest of F&NY in holding an
ecumenical vigil to pray for success. They had gone into
the museum within an hour of closing time, six of them:
Walter, Liam McGhee and Monty Masterton as the active
service unit; the remainder as logistical support. With Walter
and Liam both carrying concealed pistols, it was left to the
others to smuggle in the hammers, chisels and hacksaws
that were then deposited in the cisterns of the Male bathroom.
After that, upon leaving the museum, it was the logistical
support team's job to ensure that they each rotated the
exit turnstile twice so that the numbers in and out appeared
to tally. Then, right on closing time, the active service unit
took up position in the cubicles, partially but not fully shutting
them, and crouching on the seats to avoid the cursory
check that was carried out before the front doors were
locked.

It was a risky tactic, but it proved that Monty had more
than symbolism in mind when he chose the date for their
mission. As well as marking a night of Christian rebirth, it
was also an evening when the staff would be keen to get
closed up and out to the pub as swiftly as/possible.

Vindication came after a thoroughly nerve-stretching
twenty minutes, between the final PA announcement that
the museum was closing and what turned out to be a negligently
cursory check of the public conveniences. Whoever
it was had barely entered the room, probably only far
enough to see all five cubicle doors slightly ajar and the




355

urinals deserted. He'd called out 'Hello', and then, upon
receiving no response, promptly retreated.

As Monty had assured them, such checks were only to
make sure that no dopey visitors got locked in by mistake.
The rest of the museum's security arrangements were
considerably more stringent, but their weakness was that
they were only intended to stop people getting out of the
building with the so-called art work. There were no specific
safeguards against them demolishing it.

The silence during the ensuing hours was oddly
monastic. Walter could hear his companions breathing, but
nobody spoke, as had been agreed. Instead, they remained
aware of each other's presence, a reassurance that they
were none of them alone and a reminder of what strength
they had together.

The time ticked closer, less than a minute to go. Walter
thought he might be dreading this point, but though he
was trembling and almost nauseous with nerves, these
were part of a greater exhilaration, an energy running right
through him that would have to be drawn upon soon lest
he explode.

'Gentlemen, it's time,' Monty finally announced, maybe
fifteen seconds ahead of their synchronised watches. 'His
judgement cometh, and that right soon.'

'Amen,' said Walter and Liam simultaneously.

It was time for F&NY-PAD to get stuck in.

They each pulled a plastic Halloween mask over their
faces and exited the toilets. The corridor was in darkness,
but the entrance to the exhibition hall glowed beckoningly
ahead of them. The Fag Filth exhibition, as Monty called
it, was in the new South Hall, which was largely walled
with glass on one side, and thus partially illuminated at
night by the building's pale green exterior lighting.

356

Walter had a pistol in his hands, a hammer in his belt, a
chisel tucked into his sock, and, he was slightly discomfited
to note, an erection in his underpants. Oh well, he thought,
trying to put it out of mind. A few minutes ago he'd have
said every fibre of his being was stimulated by this illicit
activity, and now he knew it was no exaggeration.

'Remember/ Monty whispered. 'Once we cross this
threshold, move swiftly and don't touch any paintings.'

They had gone over the procedure a thousand times, but
Walter couldn't blame Monty for reiterating it now that it
was for real: in the heat of such a moment, it would be easy
to let the basics slip as one contemplated the principal task
ahead. The paintings were secured by wires that would set
off the alarms if they were even nudged off-balance, let alone
pulled from the walls. However, as Monty had explained,
their target, being such an outsize sculpture, required no
such electronic tethering, as you'd need a charging bull to
overbalance it and a forklift truck to remove it. Instead, it
was monitored remotely by a CCTV camera; or rather it was
surveyed by the camera, and monitored, like the ones they
were currently dashing past, by a nightshift security guard
reading the sports section of the Daily Record.

Nonetheless, the camera's output was recorded, and
recordings could be awfully helpful to the boys in blue
even if you were masked, which was why it was Walter's
job to shoot the lens out with his air-pistol. Then they
could get on to phase two. The black-out and the ensuing
noise would bring the night watchman running to investigate,
but that was what Liam's replica pistol was for.
None of them liked the idea of threatening someone - it
wasn't this poor chap's fault that the people he worked
for saw fit to exhibit pornography to innocent children but
the fake gun would certainly make it a lot easier to




357

get him locked in a cupboard while they made their escape.

Monty and Liam stood close to the walls and made ready
with their tools, waiting to move in once Walter had fired
the first shot of this new holy war. He took aim with both
hands, breathed in, narrowed his eyes, gave praise to Our
Lord and pulled the trigger.

Bullseye.

Glass fragments flew from the camera and cascaded to
the floor. Before the first shard hit the ground, however,
several alarms began ringing all around them. Internally,
Walter could hear bells, accompanied from outside the
building by an electronic klaxon sound.

'Oh dear heavens.'

He looked disbelievingly at the pistol in his hands for a
moment, too long a moment, then around the hall, where
he could see his two companions running in opposite directions,
neither having frozen like he had. At either end of
the gallery, metal shutters were rapidly descending to lock
them into the scene of a crime they hadn't even had time
to commit.

Walter looked to his right, in time to see Liam roll under
the descending barrier, disappearing through the narrowing
gap just before it hit the floor. He turned to his left and
observed that the other one was closed too, with Monty
nowhere to be seen.

'Oh good Lord.'

Worse still, on top of the alarms, he was sure he could
now also hear sirens.

He looked to the glass walls, then at the hammer in his
belt. The moment of hope faded as quickly as it had shone.
The walls inclined slightly from bottom to top, and each
massive panel of glass was at least an inch thick. If he did
manage to break it, he'd be showered with fragments.

358

Besides, if the police were on their way, he wasn't going
to be able to outrun them.

However, in that doomed thought came a glimmer of
reprieve. Nobody knew how many raiders there were, and
ironically Walter's slower reflexes might yet prove his
salvation. If Liam and Monty were caught - and given the
speed of the police's response, surely they would be - then
they might well be assumed to be the only perpetrators.
Indeed, if they saw that Walter hadn't been caught, they
certainly wouldn't betray him any more than he'd give out
on them: the agents of F&NY-PAD wouldn't buckle in the
face of capture.

He glanced around the gallery. The West Coast (,) Man abomination stood close to an enormous cube-like structure
at the apex of the obtusely angled hall, with paintings and
informative displays filling the exhibit down either side.
Right now he was standing in a CCTV blind spot, having
taken out the camera covering this area, and the entrances
at either end were locked off. No-one could see him, and it
was still possible no-one knew he was there, so if he could find somewhere to hide, then maybe he'd get out of this
after all. He'd have one hell of a scoop, too, though his
'source' would, of course, have to remain anonymous.

Taking a step closer to the windows, he noticed that there
was a large, double-wide doorway built into the wall next
to the exit furthest from where they'd come in. He ran
towards it, barely daring to hope, but found it to be locked,
a 'Museum Staff Access Only' sticker warning him off.

'Dash it.'

But who was he to be put off by a sticker? He was a
man of action now, with a hammer and a chisel. This called
for some Positive Action Direct.

He took the chisel from his sock, then looked back to




359

where he had left his hammer on the floor, which was when
he noticed that the cube-structure had an entrance on one
side.

'Hold your horses/ he muttered to himself. 'This could
be the very dab.'

Walter had a look through the gap. There was a blank
TV screen on one wall, and a long raised bench arrangement
opposite. When he took a pace inside, the interior
became brightly lit, which seemed to puncture any notion
of hiding in there until he noticed the white panelling
beneath the bench, intended to blend it geometrically with
the rest of the cube. His heart accelerating again, he
crouched down and forced the chisel between the top of
the panel and the underside of the bench. It came away
easily, revealing a crawlspace accessing several power
points, cables and a coaxial hub.

Sanctuary.

This, he decided, really was covert operative stuff.
Discovering secret compartments, improvising on the spot
and taking steel-nerved action to evade capture at the
hands of the state. Fear and dread were turning back into
excitement, the hollow feeling in his stomach back into a
sense of physical enlivening that ran all throughout his
body. All throughout.

He tried the space for size, pulling the panel back into
place. He could fit but it was quite a squeeze, not helped
by one part of his body traitorously attempting to take up
far more space than usual. That said, he'd have to admit
the sensation wasn't entirely unpleasant, and helped
distract him from other discomforts.

The alarms continued to ring despite the cessation of
the sirens, but he suddenly heard another sound from
right beside him, a rather disconcerting moaning that had

360

him almost bursting from his niche in fright. As it
persisted, he realised from the accompanying static hiss
that it must be coming from a speaker inside the cube.
He rolled out of the crawlspace to investigate, and saw
that the TV screen was no longer blank, instead now
showing a man and a woman, naked and locked in an
embrace.

'Goodness.'

Of all the stupid luck - he'd holed himself up inside the
pornographic exhibit. His first thought was to flee, but
reason told him he was low on alternatives. His entry had
triggered the lights and the videotape, but if it was off
when he arrived, then presumably it ran a finite loop. If
he bided his time, with any luck it would be in a state of
apparently deserted darkness again by the time anyone
came to investigate.

Just for peace of mind, he had a quick peak outside and
confirmed that the doors were still down. Time - and
perhaps not a little smart thinking - were on his side. On
the downside, he'd have to bundle himself back under the
bench or sit there and endure this filth until it stopped.
Well, so be it, he thought. He was a grown-up, it couldn't
harm him, no matter how unpalatable. He was stronger
than that, and anyway, maybe it was a worthwhile exercise
in knowing your enemy. It wasn't like it had a mystical
power he ought to be afraid of, for goodness sake. Those
made of sterner stuff wouldn't be affected by it, though
that didn't make it harmless; you certainly couldn't let just
anybody see this sort of thing.

If he was supposed to be shocked, then the so-called
artist had failed. It wasn't shocking at all. He'd seen worse
things on Channel Four. In fact, there really oughtn't to be
anything about the human form that did shock a civilised




361

adult, but that didn't make it right for people to cheapen
it by acts of exploitation such as this. Let's face it, we all
knew what a woman's breasts looked like, so we didn't
need anything like this to goodness gracious, she really
was rather beautiful, wasn't she? Admittedly, in the art
world there had always been a place for the aesthetic appreciation
of the female nude, from the busts of Aphrodite
through the pre-Raphaelite my God, she was . . . she was
... or rather he was, around her erect nipple with the end
of his ... and she was ... oh surely not oh surely not oh
sweet Heaven she was, with her mouth.

Walter was feeling dizzy, the alarms fading in his head
against a rushing sound as his pace heightened and his,
his, it swelled and strained against the inside of his trousers.

Calm down, for goodness sake. Just a lot of nonsense,
puerile and vulgar, getting all confused with the excitement
of good Lord he was actually going to put his tongue
in her, her ... he was putting his tongue in sweet Heaven
sweet Jesus and oh she likes it, she really likes it, and no
wonder, the little minx was . . .

Walter's hands seemed to be acting of their own accord,
unzipping his fly and taking hold of, of, the old chap. It
was the only way, a voice was telling him. Crucial to the
mission. Have to dispel this tension, clear your head, can't
afford distraction. Anyway, no-one can see, no-one will
know, and mother of Christ she was magnificent, she was
glorious, she couldn't get enough oh yes she liked it, she
liked that oh God yes and in that position too, Jesus this was art oh yes turn her over that's it she wants that she
likes that oh yes oh no don't stop oh no don't take it out
oh Jesus surely he wasn't but yes he was oh good Christ
Lord almighty he was actually going to stick it in her
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa . . .

362

. . . aaaaall over the TV monitor: violent, copious,
endless. 'Limitless, limpid jets of love, hot and enormous.'
Now he knew what Walt Whitman had been going on
about.

Oh Jesus. Oh God. Oh. Oh.

Oh bloody hell.

It was like waking from hypnosis to find yourself naked
onstage. Walter looked down at his already shrinking penis,
then at the floor and finally at the dripping monitor.

'Mother.'

Walter lunged forward and tried to wipe it away with
his hand, but succeeded only in spreading it across a wider
expanse of glass, as well as leaving a plethora of sticky
fingerprints.

'Bugger.'

He pulled his sleeve down over his fist and drew the
material across the screen, scrubbing so hard that it
squeaked. This was slightly more successful, in that his
jumper absorbed much of the moisture but covered the
entire screen in an amorphous film. At least the fingerprints
would be gone, though it wouldn't go unnoticed
that the porn video was now in permanent soft focus. He
was in the act of pulling down his other sleeve for a second
attempt when he heard a rumbling, whining electrical
noise, and realised with a hollow chill that it could only
be the sound of the shutters reopening.

'Oh please God no.'

Less than a second later, the videotape ended and the
cube's interior suddenly returned to darkness. It was a
Godsend, quite undoubtedly: clemency and succour for a
faithful servant only trying to do what was right. Walter
wasted no time. He crawled into his niche and pulled
the panel back into place. The message was clear: his




363

indiscretion, like his transgression against the law, were
immediately understood and forgiven. He was hidden
from sight, delivered from his enemies. The Lord protects
his own.

nothing in this hand



364

'We've just got the one so far, sir,' said the voice on Shaw's
radio. 'He had a replica pistol, but he dropped it pretty
sharpish when he saw we were carrying the real thing.
We're sure there were more, though. It was hard to see.'

Shaw and Angelique pulled up last, behind the two vans,
whose passengers had quickly dispersed to points inside
and around the building. One of the thieves had been
apprehended by the undercover officers before anyone else
could get there, a development announced over the
airwaves as they approached the gates to the park
surrounding the museum. Instead of the usual elation,
Angelique was reminded of how she felt when she was on
duty and heard Richard Gordon reveal that there'd been a
goal for the away team at Ibrox. The excitement and undisguised
pleasure in the voice on the radio was entirely at
odds with the impact on she the listener.

They walked swiftly towards the entrance, where a
uniformed officer held the door open for them.

'What do you mean it was hard to see? That Horsburgh
Gallery was supposed to be lit up like Blackpool. What
went wrong?'

They weren't in the Horsburgh Collection, sir. They
were in the South Hall. Hawkins thinks he saw three on
the monitors, but they made for the centre of the hall, where
it bends, and shot out the camera. That's what triggered
the alarms.'

365


Shaw and Angelique looked at each other, asking the
same unspoken question: what were they doing in the
South Hall?

'I'm at the front door,' Shaw said.

'We'll bring him to--'

'No, stay where you are. I'll come to you. All units, any

further suspects?'

Shavy rolled his eyes at the growing silence. It was broken
eventually by Anderson, Hawkins' undercover partner.

'Sir, the security shutters came down automatically when
they tripped the system. Chances are they're still inside.
We're having a bit of bother getting them to open again,
but the guy here says he'll have them up in a minute.'

'Okay. And when he's done, can you ask him if there's
any danger of turning these fuckin' alarms off?'

'Yes, sir.'

Shaw strode briskly through the lobby, heading for the
South Hall. Angelique trailed a couple of paces behind, but
it wasn't just his gait that was putting distance between
them. The sight of Zal in cuffs was one she now knew for
sure she was in no hurry to see.

Shaw turned the corner first, into the South Hall's glass
roofed vestibule area.

'Is this it?' she heard him ask.

'Yes, sir. He's saying nothing. Don't want us to hear that
accent, do you?' taunted Hawkins.

Angelique walked into the vestibule to see Shaw
standing over a cuffed but defiant prisoner, his face cast in
the stony expression of the seasoned arrestee. Her first
glance was cursory, sufficient to the primary concern of
identifying him as someone other than Zal. Upon a second
inspection, however, she realised she recognised him.

'When this wee ned does speak, the accent won't be

366

American/ she told them. 'It's Liam McGhee. He's the chief
Fanny.'

The what?' asked Shaw.

'Family and Natural Youth, sir. It won't have registered
down south. He used to be a small-time crook but he
discovered the Big Man in the Big Hoose and started his
own bampot Christian pressure group. What you doin' in
here, Liam? Or did you see the light on the road to
Damascus and convert back to thievery?'

Still he remained silent, staring into space, demonstrably
ignoring her.

'It's a wee while since you've been lifted, isn't it, Liam?
Right to silence has gone, you know.'

'Hawkins, bring him up to date on his rights,' Shaw
ordered.

'Yes, sir.'

This is a legitimate protest,' McGhee suddenly blurted.
'As Christians and parents we have the right to take action
against council money being spent on filth and immorality.
If the authorities won't protect our children against pornography,
then we have no choice but to act.'

'You don't have children, Liam/ Angelique pointed out.

'All children are our responsibility.'

Up ahead, the security shutters clunked lethargically into
action. Shaw and Angelique made for them immediately.
Angelique took hold of her radio, unsure if Shaw shared
her knowledge of the building.

'South Hall doors are opening. We're at the west
entrance. Somebody get to the east sharpish.'

Shaw nodded acknowledgement, then ducked under the
rising door.

'Can we get some lights in here?' he asked his radio.

'Yes, sir.'




367


I

Angelique bowed down and followed him into the gallery.

'A protest against pornography?' he asked her.

'Usual shit, sir. A bit more dramatic than placards and

hysterics, but the agenda's the same.'

'Never mind the agenda, it's the fucking timing that's
pissing me off. These arseholes will have blown the whole
thing.' He sighed wearily, looking like he was seriously
considering punching a hole in the nearest painting. 'Oh
well, let's huckle the rest of them and have done with it.
Any of you useless buggers found a body yet?'

'Sir,' came a response. 'PC Keir here, outside. There's a
vehicle round the back at the loading bay. Shit, sorry, forget
that. It's a cooncil van, up on bricks.'

'Marvellous,' Shaw grumbled. 'Mind an' gie's a shout if
you find any abandoned shoppin' trolleys, eh?'

'Sorry, sir.'

'Fuckin' muppet.'

They made their way through the gallery to the apex,
where they met up with three officers approaching from
the opposite end, conspicuously suspect-free.

'Surely it wasnae just that one wee scrote?'

'I would doubt it, sir,' Angelique assured him. 'He said

we

'Aye, but these pompous bastards always say "we".'
Shaw seemed to suddenly notice the statue they were
gathered around. He had a long, barely credulous look at
it, before breaking into a small chuckle despite himself. 'Is
this what the God Squad are up in arms aboot, then?'
'Afraid so. The big fella here seems to have upset them.'
'I wouldnae exactly cry it pornography, though.'
'No, the pornography is inside--'

Angelique was about to direct his attention to the Voyeur cube, but the installation beat her to it, its exterior video

screens suddenly flickering into life. Within moments, all
four of its walls were showing a ruddy-faced and rather
agitated man staring towards the camera.

Shaw regarded the screen with a wry expression.

'It's a while since I've worked Vice, but I cannae see
them linin' up for this doon Soho. Oh here, hang on.'

The man in the image then proceeded to pull out his
erect penis. All five police officers looked on in appalled
silence as he began to masturbate feverishly, pounding
away with a tortured, twisted expression until he ejaculated
messily, the emission arcing towards the screen.

'Good thing it's no in 3D, eh?' one of them observed.

'It's called Voyeur,' Angelique said. There's a porno tape
showing inside, but the gag is that while you're inside
watching it, there's actually a camera . . .' She stopped
dead, realising.

'What?'

'He's still in there.'

Shaw looked back to the cube. Wanking Man was wiping
at the screen with his sleeve, then they watched him climb
under the bench and pull a white panel into place in front.

'Get him,' Shaw ordered.

I'm not bloody touching him,' Angelique replied. 'He's
covered in jizz.'

Moments later, the quivering moral activist was dragged
from the cube between two officers.

'Talk about coming to a sticky end,' Angelique observed.

This is a legi ... I ... as a member of . . .'

'Hing on, you look familiar,' said one of the uniforms.
'Did you no used to have a column in The Post? With a big
photie, opposite the editorials?'

If Wanking Man could have turned any whiter he'd have
been ultraviolet.




368

369

'Aye/ said another. 'Now you mention it. Didnae buy it
myself, but the wife . . . Thorn, isn't it? In the flesh!'

'I ... look, this isn't what it ... Okay. I'm a journalist.
I'm under-cover. I infiltrated the ... I had to go along with
it, I had no choice.'

He began weeping, instinctively wiping his face with his
sleeve and inadvertently smearing it with semen.

'None of this was my idea. It was the American.'

'American?' Shaw and Angelique both asked.

'Yes. Masterton. Ask him, he's the ring-leader. He's the
one who . . .'

But neither of them were listening.

'Why do I feel I'm running the wrong way down
Buchanan Street again?' Angelique asked.

Shaw grabbed his radio, anger visibly rippling through
him, even to his fingers as they tightened around the plastic.

'Have we arrested anybody else? An American?'

Silence.

'Fuck. Well, can somebody at least turn off these fucking
alarms?'

'Sir?' came a voice eventually.

'Yes. What?'

'We've got reports of a fire, possibly an explosion at a
sub-station in Argyle Street, Dumbarton Road end. Close
to the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery.'

'Jesus bastardin' fuck. But we ... I mean, what's in there
that you could sell?' he asked Angelique. 'Apart from
stuffed animals and thon big Dali?'

'Treasures of the Aztecs/ said one of the uniforms. 'My
wee yin's dyin' tae see it.'

'Doesnae open until January/ Shaw told him. 'It's on
show in London the noo. They're still installing the security
system.'

370

'Aye, but sure they're behind schedule puttin' it in. It
closed in London end of October and was meant to open
here at the start of this month.'

'You mean the actual stuff is onsite?'

'Aye, down in the vault in the basement.'

Tell me this isnae happening/ he implored Angelique.

She couldn't.

'Mexican gold. Mexican gangsters.'

'And we're all scratchin' our arses on the wrang side of
the fuckin' river.'

Shaw began running, gesturing the others to get moving,
too.

'All units from Shaw. Proceed to the Kelvingrove Art
Gallery immediately. Robbery in progress. Repeat, robbery
in progress.'

He released the button and ceased transmitting, turning
to Angelique as they ran for the door. 'Who am I kidding?
Robbery all over, by the time we get there.'

They climbed into his car and took off at speed, the rear
of the vehicle slewing on gravel as Shaw gunned the accelerator.
Behind them the vans were filling up, sirens were
blaring and the Dalriada's alarms stubbornly continued to
sound.

'I must be gettin' too old for this malarkey/ he said. 'You
told me to keep an open mind, but I just decided this was
the place.'

'You were spot-on about one thing though, sir. Tonight
was the night.'

'Aye, but the Neil Young song should have been Why
Do I Keep Fuckin' Up.'

Zal's eyes remained on his phone, the dim glow of the LCD
display and the light from Karl's laptop screen the only





371

illumination in the crowded cramp of the van. He was
waiting for a text message, but it was as good a place as
any to be looking when you were sharing such a tight space
with four other people and the tension had had three hours
to build. It wasn't just the silent wait and the magnitude of
what was at stake that made the atmosphere uncomfortable,
either. Nobody could speak, but nobody had to say it
anyway. Karl and Leo had been in the back of another van
once, waiting silently and nervously, before being locked in
there by Zal when the action was supposed to start.

Added to all of that was the unwelcome presence of their
appointed interloper, Dominguez. It had always been a
strictly non-negotiable term of the arrangement that
a 'representative' of the Estobals be in the presence of the
goods from theft to handover, to make sure there was no
opportunity for any costly interference. The idea of Zal
being in unmonitored possession of such valuables was not
one Alessandro had been remotely comfortable with, even
if he did hold the leverage of Parnell's life, and this concern
was understandably reinforced in light of how Hannigan's
gimp had been stiffed at the bank. Thus, they had Rico
Dominguez, a cousin of Alessandro's, along for the ride.
Fortunately, he had at least assured them that he could handle an electric spanner.

The final message flashed up on Zal's phone.

'Okay,' he whispered. 'Green light from Jerome: he's
ready and in position. Just waiting for ... yep, there it is.
Confirmation: the sub-station is down. The lights are out
on Kelvingrove.'

'Time to get Alessandro his Christmas present,' said
Dominguez.

'Not quite yet/ Zal warned him. 'Give it a moment.'

Dominguez made to speak, but Zal held a finger to his

372

lips. A few seconds later, the sound of sirens joined that of
the constant, howling alarm.

'Karl?'

Karl turned his laptop around for Zal to see the screen.
It showed the front entrance to the museum, via one of
three miniature cameras Zal had secreted outside on the
day he went there to meet Angelique. The police vehicles
had all left, with only a couple of uniformed officers milling
around the lobby in discussion with museum staff,
including the recently arrived curator. Satisfied, he gave
the order.

'Gentlemen? Let's practise our art.'

The four of them climbed out quickly and silently, each
carrying a wheel and an electric spanner. They took position
around the vehicle, kneeling down to quietly remove
four piles of bricks whose true purpose was not to support
the van, but to conceal the bolted-on hydraulic jacks that
were. These were Leo's weighty adjustments, fitted out the
week before in a garage in Newcastle, and could be
deployed at the flick of one switch to take the vehicle's
weight in seconds, allowing swift removal or replacement
of the wheels.

They had driven up and stopped at the loading bay
shortly before the museum closed. It was a time when the
road through the park was busy with departing cars,
obstructing the view from the museum of the approach of
a solitary vehicle that was anyway inconspicuous to the
point of invisible, bearing as it did the Glasgow City Council
Parks and Recreation Department livery. Once in place,
Karl's laptop monitored the approaches from cameras either
side, to ensure all was clear when they rendered the vehicle
conspicuously and unsuspiciously immobile.

The sound of the alarms covered the noise of their




373

Daytona-speed wheel refit, which was task priority number
one: ready the getaway vehicle before you even think about
anything else.

The museum staff would be upstairs still trying to figure
why they couldn't get the system to shut off, unaware that Jerome had cooked the electrics at a maintenance panel in
the basement storage area. Right now the system was
responding to a general fault, which would register in the
control room as such but which they were undoubtedly
attributing to the destruction of a CCTV camera during the
raid. It would then most probably be put down to a general
malfunction when the South Hall's security doors came
down a second time, but even if it wasn't, at that point
nobody would be able to get in anyway: not the night staff,
not the uniformed cops, and not the two embarrassingly
obvious under-cover guys who were guarding the
Horsburgh Hoard.

The vehicle now back on four wheels, Leo got into the
driver's seat while Karl hopped back into the rear to
monitor the perimeter on his laptop. Leo turned the van
around and backed it down the slope towards the loading
bay's servo-assisted metal doors, which were in the process
of sliding open. Jerome stepped from the widening gap
and ushered them inside.

'You know, I find robbing a museum so much easier with
a full set of staff keys,' he said, jangling the said items with
a grinning flourish.

'How did you get those?' Dominguez asked.

Trade secret,' Zal told him, shooting Jerome a chastising
glare for treading on fragile ground. Jerome acknowledged
it with a gulp.

'I trust the Lord's work went well?' Zal asked, covering
the unspoken exchange.

374

'Oh, a mighty blow was struck for decency tonight. I
just hope those assholes enjoy jail as much as I did. Come
on, we've an appointment with a big ugly cocksucker.' He
looked at Dominguez. 'Oh yeah, and before that we've
gotta steal a statue for him, too.'

'Pendejo.'

'Bite me.'

Jerome led them into the double-wide lift, inside of
which he had already placed the hydraulic pallet-lifter that the museum staff used for moving heavy and outsize items.
It took about twenty seconds to ascend to the South Hall.
Jerome unlocked the double doors using one of his colour
coded keys, and they emerged at the east end of the History
of Allegory exhibition.

Jerome stayed with the lift while Zal and Dominguez
proceeded to the centre of the gallery, where they loaded
Pepe Nunez's West Coast (,) Man on to the pallet-lifter. Zal
used a pair of wire-cutters to free the statue from its electronic
mooring, causing the security doors to come down
as planned and preventing any rapid discovery or even
investigation of their activities.




375

hindu shuffle

They were halfway through the Clyde Tunnel, Angelique
holding on to the door-grip as Shaw swerved back and
forth across the double white lines, weaving between the
lanes. He had the siren going, blue lights flashing, pedal
to the metal, the car approaching Dianacide velocity in
Shaw's desperate haste to get to Kelvingrove. And that was
when it hit her.

'Fuck. We're doing it again.'

'Doing what again?'

'Running in the wrong direction. Turn around.'

'I cannae turn around, I'm in the Clyde fuckin' Tunnel.'

'Aye, and on the wrong side. We should be in the southbound
tunnel. It's a double bluff.'

'Hawkins and Anderson are still coverin' the Horsburgh
Collection. There's nae double bluff about it. And we've
got the Kelvingrove in darkness. We cannae ignore that.'

'You're right, sir, because we have to do our job - like he's relying on us to.'

'Aw, shite fuck pish bollocks/ Shaw said, which she took
to be concurrence.

Trust me on this. Let the rest of them check out the
Kelvingrove, but I want another look back there.'

Shaw executed a hand-brake turn as soon as they exited
the northbound tunnel, swinging the car across the interchange
and powering back down under the river. Angelique

376

picked up the radio handset and hailed Hawkins, who
didn't share her animated concern.

'There's nothing happening, except for the fucking
alarms still going off. Oh, and the doors to the South Hall
have apparently shut again, I'm told. I'd turn the bloody
thing off at the mains if I could find the plug.'

The South Hall. Exactly where Zal had taken her.

'Get in there, now.'

'In where?'

The South Hall. Get those doors open, or go in the
fucking window, but get in there.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

They were back at the Dalriada inside ten minutes,
Shaw's engine-punishing haste not even diminished by the
narrow road through the park.

'Go round the back,' Angelique told him as they
approached the building. He slowed to a less terrifying
pace and turned right at the fork marked by a sign admitting
'Authorised vehicles only beyond this point'.

There/ Angelique said, pointing to the loading bay at
the building's rear.

'What? I don't see anything.'

That's the point. PC Keir said there was a van up on
bricks at the back.'

Shaw eyed the whole load of nothing that was sitting
there now.

'You know, I'm actually glad we're no gaunny catch this
bastard/ he said.

'Why?'

'Because ex-polis get a hard time in the jail, and that's
where I'd end up once I'd battered his melt in.'

Driving on a few yards, they could see into the South
Hall, where there was an ominous gathering of museum




377

and police personnel. Angelique couldn't wait until she got
inside to find out what was going on. She grabbed the
radio again.

'We've just got the doors open/ Hawkins reported, a
worryingly apologetic tone to his voice.

'And?'

'It's the statue, the big wan of, hingmy, you know, the
boy s,uckin' his am boabby. It's gone.'

Shaw butted the steering wheel, adding the sustained
parp of his horn to the unending howl of the museum's
alarms. He lifted his head after a few seconds and looked
across to the passenger seat. When he spoke, it was with
admirable calm, though the quietness was surely a sign of
uneasily restrained fury.

'A number of questions come to mind, Officer de Xavia,
in light of this new development. Too many to list, in fact,
at this moment, but the chief among them must undoubtedly
be JUST WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS SHIT
ABOUT?'

Leo turned the van left into an industrial estate and pulled
into the carpark behind a large furniture showroom, where
he killed the engine. There was another van already waiting
there, similar in size but a different model and colour. Zal
got out from the passenger seat and immediately peeled
off the Parks and Rec livery, revealing that of TAG Courier
Services - We Deliver' underneath. Leo did likewise on the
driver's side as Zal opened the doors at the rear.

Dominguez looked predictably perturbed, particularly
when he saw the second van.

'Hey, what is this bullshit? This isn't the rendezvous.
What are you assholes trying to pull?'

'Nothing,' Zal assured him. 'Just . . . call me cynical if

378

you will, but I had this paranoid inkling that your boss
might have something unpleasant lined up for me once
I've outlived my usefulness.'

'I wouldn't know about that, but he's sure got something
unpleasant lined up for your amigo Parnell if you
don't get him his shit.'

'Oh, I'm gonna deliver. But the handover's gonna
happen on my terms, not Alessandro's.'

That's what you think/ Dominguez said, pulling out a
handgun and taking a pace back so that he had an angle
on all four of them where they stood on the tarmac. 'You
and I are getting back in that fucking van, right now, and
going to the rendezvous, comprende?'

'Or what? You won't get all four of us before we get you.'

'Don't put it to the test. Get in the goddamn van.'

'Go fuck yourself/ Zal told him.

Dominguez pulled the trigger, which locked tight against
the stock, as happens when you're out of bullets. Zal
punched him in the throat, following through with all he
had. Dominguez dropped to the ground, clutching his neck,
his gun clattering beside him.

Zal held a cupped hand over him and let a fistful of
bullets rain down on Dominguez's head, tinkling as they
rolled on to the pavement. Such tricks were easiest done
with playing cards and coins, but the more practised hand
could manage far heavier and more awkward objects. He
had picked the asshole's pocket within moments of
collecting him for the job, then replaced the empty weapon
while they were loading the statue back at the museum.

'Now, as I was saying, the handover's gonna be on my
terms/

'I'm not going anywhere . . . without the statue/
Dominguez croaked. That's the deal.'





379

'It sure is, and that's why you're gonna stay in the back
of the van with it until delivery. See, you're not just here to
make sure I don't fuck with the statue, you're also here as
my witness that I didn't. I'm only interested in Parnell, okay?
And I'm not gonna give Alessandro any excuse to kill him.'

'Where are you going?' he asked, as Zal walked towards
the second van.

'To the. rendezvous. Where else?'

Zal got there inside twenty minutes. As anticipated, the
address turned out to be not a warehouse or lock-up, but
a wasteground, where a single car was parked in wait. Two
men got out as soon as he pulled up. One was Paco Gomez,
another of Alessandro's Praetorian guard; the second
looked like one of Hannigan's Brotherhood of Versace.
They approached on either side, cutting off Zal's exits from
the van, both drawing weapons.

'I don't see Alessandro,' Zal said. 'That was the arrangement.
I hand over to him and him only.'

'You hand over to us or we blow your fuckin' brains
out/ Gomez told him.

'Just get oot the van and leave us the keys,' grunted the
other.

Zal climbed out, his hands in the air. 'Have it your way,'
he told them. 'But you better not forget about your buddy
Dominguez.'

'Go let him out,' Gomez told Versace. He turned to face
Zal again. 'And he better have marked you a good report
card.'

'Don't worry about that. I'm the one honouring his end
of the deal.'

'He isnae here,' announced Versace angrily from the rear.
'The fuckin' van's empty.'

380

Gomez nodded, smiling bitterly, not particularly
surprised.

'Alessandro warned us, you're a regular box of tricks.'
'Like I said, I hand over to Alessandro only.' Zal pulled
out his phone. 'Now, how about you put the guns away,
tell me where the real rendezvous is, and get back in your
fucking car. Then I'll call my buddy and get him to bring
Dominguez and the statue right there.'

Gomez shook his head. 'You're gonna call your buddy,
and you're gonna get in this fucking car with us.
Alessandro will want to thank you personally.'

'I didn't doubt it for a second. But I ain't getting in that
fucking car. I said I hand over to Alessandro and
Alessandro only. No guns, no gangsters.'

Gomez raised his weapon and pointed it between Zal's
eyes.

'Get in the fucking car and make the phone call.'
'You pull that trigger, you'll never see the statue again.
If I don't show up back in one piece, my friends will drop
Dominguez and disappear the statue forever.'

'Your friends, huh? Well how about this? I pull this
trigger and then we go pick up your friend Karl later at
number six, Botanic Crescent, where he's been staying the
past four nights. We take him someplace quiet with a load
of power tools and a blow-torch, and we torture him for a
few hours. Then, just before he loses the power of speech,
we offer to finish him off quick if he tells us where the
statue is.

'You ain't the only one who thinks ahead, asshole. Make
the call.'




381

just what the fuck all this shit is about

The place looked like it was fitted out pretty good for a
massacre, Harry thought, or a particularly messy torture
session. Plastic sheeting covering practically every square
foot of the warehouse floor, oxy-acetylene burner ready to
rock 'n' roll, and wall-to-wall hoods, most of them packing.
Hannigan's entourage looked like they were auditioning
for parts in a gangster movie, trying too hard to look like
the real thing. They were a bunch of fucking nobodies, just
white trash tough guys; the baddest kids on the block, no
doubt, but it was a real small block. Back home, there were
flatbed trucks bigger than this city. They were strutting
their stuff, flexing their muscles, part territorial pissing and
part subconscious compensation for feeling inferior now
that the real thing was in town. The fact that there was two
million pounds of their boss's money in two briefcases on
the floor was, admittedly, another factor in their bristling
postures.

Hannigan at least had the nous and the perspective to
see this whole deal for what it really was: a gift from the
gods, a happy quirk of fate, and not proof that he had
arrived on some greater stage. The Man would have
approved of Bud, Harry was sure. Hannigan was ambitious
but pragmatic, knew the realistic limitations of his
situation, but knew also how to make the best of what he
had. This deal would consolidate his position and give him
a new edge on the competition, but it didn't mean he was

382

now some kind of fucking international player.

And what about Alessandro, was he the real thing? He
sure as shit wasn't an international player, whether he was
here in Europe tonight or not. The Estobals were the real
thing, no question, but the kid was more like Hannigan's
wannabes, playing at being a gangster. Innez called it right:
he might have his hands on the tiller and the crew at his
command, but that didn't mean he knew how to steer the
fucking boat. He was standing there next to Hannigan,
smiling and trying to look like he was used to this kind of
shit being calmly under his control, just another multimillion-dollar
deal. A closer look would reveal his nails
bitten to the quick and his whole body tingling with nerves,
that so-near-and-yet-so-far anxiety as the moment drew
ever closer when he could finally get out of the hole he'd
dug himself into.

There were lean times in every business. People thought
organised crime was just in permanent boom, but they had
their own peaks and recessions like any other sector. Things
had been getting tough for the Estobals even before The
Man passed, because there were factors that no calibre of
leadership could control, even if he did anticipate them.
In such times, you needed a steady hand at the wheel, a
decision-maker who could guide the organisation through
the darker days so that it was in good shape when the sun
shone again. Alessandro, needless to say, did not fit the
bill.

The Man wasn't entirely deluded about the kid. He had
a lot of qualities that given time would shine through, as
experience and a few harsh lessons pared down his rasher
instincts. If Alessandro had become boss at a stronger time
for the organisation, his energy and even his impulsiveness
might have been the driving forces behind success




383

and expansion; at the very least the cost of his mistakes
would have been more easily absorbed. But he had come
in during a period of comparative austerity, and not only
did he lack the character to deal with that, he didn't even
have the brains to fucking see it. He thought it was party
time, his dreams come true, which meant he was too busy playing at being a gangster to get on with the reality of it.

Miguel was there to advise and consent, but while executive'power
remained with Alessandro, there was only so
much he could do, especially when Alessandro was
inclined to go against Miguel's advice, purely as a demonstration
of his autonomy and a reminder of who was boss.

The border was tightening all the time, and the law of
natural selection dictated that those who didn't adapt
would die out. Supply chains were breaking down and
matters of infrastructure needed to be addressed. Quite
simply, their business relied on getting cocaine into
southern California from Mexico, and if they didn't find
new ways to do that, they were history. Their stocks were
fast running out north of the border, while down south it
was piling up uselessly like a defunct currency.

Miguel was considering a number of options, but preparing
everybody for the unavoidable realities that came
with each. The new methods would necessarily mean a
slower and smaller supply, at least for a while, with obvious
knock-on effects on revenue further up the chain. Plus, in
the meantime they would have to consider the possibility
of selling the surplus south of the border at a massively
reduced price, against the risk of losing it for nothing in
the event of a bust, either by police or competitors, both
of whom were bound to know about it sooner or later.

Alessandro, however, had a better idea.

He knew about this guy, Pepe Nunez, who was making

384

a big name for himself as a sculptor, working in Mexico
but exhibiting in the US. Nunez worked with metals,
notably lead, which as well as being easily malleable, had
the tangential advantage of being entirely resistant to x-rays.
Alessandro's brilliant idea was to get Nunez to make
a trojan horse for his stockpiled cocaine: Nunez would pack
it inside a hollow lead statue, which would be 'bought' by
a gallery owner in LA and exported for exhibition. The shit
would be sealed in tight and the statue hose-blasted to
remove all traces on the exterior, but as insurance and kind
of a double bluff, Alessandro insisted that the statue should
be of a guy doing a line of coke.

Nunez already having such a high profile, it was easy
to get a reporter and a photographer down there, resulting
in an article in the LA Times about this controversial new
piece ahead of its export. Letters were written, complaints
were made, and despite the protestations of appalled
liberals horrified at this adulteration of his vision, Nunez
gave the cops an assurance that real coke would be substituted
by baby powder when the thing went on show in
LA. This, however, would mean that if the dogs did smell
something when it went through customs, there would be
a well-known and documented explanation. Sure they can
smell traces of coke, there was coke on the statue, but it's
all gone now, and besides, Officer, can't you see it's art?

Pretty fuckin' ingenious, apart from the fact that
Alessandro was threatening to kill Nunez instead of
making it worth his while in other ways, and you can't
trust a desperate man. Not that Alessandro did trust Nunez:
he had him working naked and under constant supervision
until the statue was complete, and a rota of guards
watching over the thing thereafter. Unfortunately, the
guards were only on the lookout for Nunez (or anyone




385

else) fucking with the statue; not for Nunez fucking with them.

The sneaky son-of-a-bitch Mickey-Finned the jerkoff on
duty one night, slipping something into his beer. When the
poor schmuck woke up, Nunez was gone and so was the
fuckin' statue. Next anyone knew about it, he'd sold it to
a museum in the UK, where it cleared customs without
any tsouble thanks to the local press picking up on the
background from the LA Times. That the artist himself had
disappeared from the face of the earth merely added to the
mystique.

So instead of arriving in LA, in a gallery that's just a
front for the Estobals, it goes to fuckin' Glasgow, to a public
museum where it will be under all the security and supervision
as if it was the Mona fuckin' Lisa. Alessandro has
put all his eggs in one basket and the basket's now halfway
around the world, on show to the fuckin' tourists.

Alessandro, in his desperation, figures on the one guy
he believes is capable of boosting the statue: Innez. He's
also the last guy on the planet Alessandro should be resting
his hopes on, but the kid's short on alternatives. But even
with Innez roped into the deal, he's still looking at a best
case scenario of having five million bucks worth of coke
3,000 miles from where he can sell it. So he has to find a
local buyer, someone who can not only move that much
shit, but with the ready cash to pay for it up front. Step
forward Bud Hannigan.

Hannigan's built his operation principally on heroin, but
has the network to move whatever else happens to come
into his hands. That, of late, has not included much coke,
as a cartel of competitors have been freezing him out of that
market so that they can get a better foothold of their own
in the city. Alessandro's precarious situation means that

386

Hannigan can suddenly get a massive supply at a bargain
rate, which is just simple economics, but it's what he plans
to do with it that would have pleased The Man. Hannigan
intends to flood the local market with cheap product and
thus drive down the price, reducing the profits of his
competitors and destabilising their entire operation.

Everybody wins. Hannigan gets five million bucks'
worth of pure for a little over half its value. Alessandro
redeems his fuck-up and, despite the fire sale, brings in a
better return than the more cautious Miguel's plans would
have earned over the same period. The hare beats the
tortoise and the good ship Estobal sails ever on.

But only if Innez delivered the statue, and didn't find
some way of fucking them in the process, which was why
Alessandro was as jumpy as a shithouse rat. They had
Parnell for insurance, but despite that, even Alessandro
had the brains to worry that Innez's insistence on him being
present looked a lot like a trap. That was why the kid had
gone to Miguel and for once actually sought his advice on
the matter.

Miguel sanctioned the trip on the tripartite grounds that
first, a trap was only a trap if you didn't see it coming;
second, that as they were beholden to Innez's expertise
then they didn't have any fucking alternative; and third,
that having to spend Christmas on the wrong side of the
Atlantic would teach Alessandro about the consequences
of making a deal that gives your enemy the whip hand.
This last he naturally shared only with Harry, as well as a
few choice words of advice regards contingencies.

West Coast (,) Man was already unloaded on the floor
of the warehouse when Zal was led in by Gomez and
Versace. Dominguez had driven it there, the guys having

387

surrendered him the keys and walked away after Zal made

his call. They had a car hidden just around the corner from
the carpark, and would already be out of the city by now,
heading south for flights out of Manchester in the morning.
He had shared Gomez's suggestions regarding the power
tools, just in case anybody felt like sticking around. There
was no need for stupid gestures: they all knew they had
done their parts and it was out of their hands now.

The'room was full of Hannigan's assholes, all in the regulation
uniform apart from the guy manning the blow-torch,
who was wearing a boiler suit and a protective mask.
Hannigan was watching the operation with keen interest,
standing beside the two briefcases he was there to hand
over in exchange for West Coast (,) Man's innards. American
Harry was there too, hovering less conspicuously in the
background.

Alessandro greeted Zal with two exaggeratedly open
arms and a beaming smile.

'Senor Innez, how good of you to come. Thank you for
your work. Sterling effort, truly. About two million sterling,
in fact.'

'I said I'd hand the statue over to you and you alone.'

'And here I am, as good as my word.'

'Not exactly alone, though, are you?'

'No, I wasn't really comfortable with that part.'
Alessandro gripped Zal's hair and pulled his head back
viciously. 'I had this crazy idea that maybe you'd try to
fuck me. Oh yeah, you need me to fly all the way over
here and meet me one-on-one for the exchange to happen.'
He let go of Zal's hair and took a step back. 'You think I'm
fucking stupid?'

'You came, didn't you? And I know you're fucking
stupid, Sandy.'

388

Alessandro punched Zal in the mouth, Gomez immediately
grabbing his arms from behind to facilitate further
beating. He had a few more shots at Zal's face and body
before his rage subsided. It hurt, but Zal had known a lot
worse. The guy was a pussy, always had been. He wouldn't
last a day in the joint, and not because he wasn't tough
enough, but because he didn't even realise that.

'You're the stupid one if you thought you could fuck
with me. What were you gonna do? Get me alone and shoot
me? Hand me over to the cops?'

'I'm not trying to fuck anybody/ Zal told him. 'I'm only
interested in Parnell. If all I wanted to do was take a shot
at you, why would I come all the way over here and go
through all this shit? Huh?'

Alessandro thought about it. You could almost hear the
logic counters clunking into place. He looked like his lips
would move when he read a book, if he'd ever read a
fucking book.

'You honoured your end of the deal, I'll honour mine.
Parnell will be okay. I only care about my business.
Unfortunately, that means you won't get to see him again.
All this polythene isn't just to catch the powder. Soon as
our business is concluded here, your business will be
concluded here, finally.'

'Waste of a valuable resource, is it not?'

The second we get that coke is the second you become
a liability, not a resource. Can't have that scheming little
mind of yours on the loose, can I? That really would be stupid.' He backhanded Zal across the face to underline the
point. 'No, I'm gonna hand you over to my local associate
Mr Merkland over here. I'm told you guys go way back.'

Zal looked to his right. Merkland waved at him with the
pistol he was holding, then drew a finger across his neck.




389

'Gonna cut my throat with a handgun. Still a born fuckin'
genius, aren't you, Athena?'

'Aye, very funny. What was your other line? Oh aye, I'm
wan brain short of being' able tae fuck with you. Well in
aboot two minutes, pal, you'll be wan brain short of being'
able tae dae any thin' but bleed.'

Zal looked away, back towards the statue. They were on
the far side of it from the guy with the burner, but the
sound of the flame shutting off alerted them that a panel
had been successfully cut away. Merkland tapped his
watch, smiling. Alessandro just folded his arms and looked
on.

The guy in the boiler suit coughed and spluttered, then
stepped back and straightened up, pulling off his mask to
reveal an expression of distaste.

'It's full o' shite.'

Alessandro wore a nervously quizzical look. Dominguez
reassured him.

'He means shit. They say shite.'

'Good shite, yeah?' Alessandro said, offering Hannigan
a winning smile. 'Real good shite.'

'Naw, I mean shite shite. Shite, as in keech, as in toley,
as in jobbie, as in shite.'

He held up a brown hand to illustrate. Alessandro and
Hannigan both immediately walked around to investigate,
with the rest of the goons leaning in to have a look too.

'What the hell . . . ?'

'Aw, Jesus.'

'Fuck me.'

That's giein' me the boak.'

'It is full of shite,' Hannigan said in an accusatory tone,
putting a hand up to cover his mouth and nose.

This is impossible. Dominguez

390

'I was with it the whole time, boss. Nobody touched it.'

'Well somebody fuckin' must have,' Hannigan said. 'You
cannae make a barrowload of coke disappear as if by
magic/

'Alakazammy, stairheid rammy,' Zal said quietly.

Alessandro almost hurdled the statue in his desperation
to grab Zal.

'Where's my coke, you fucking cocksucker?' he shouted,
shoving a gun in Zal's face.

'Like I told your boy Paco back at the wasteground, kill
me and you'll never find out. My friends are long gone,
and I'm the only one who knows where it's hidden
anyway.'

'Your friend Parnell will die screaming, motherfucker.'

'Not if you want your coke, shithead. The deal's still on
the table, Sandy, but the hand-over's got to be on my terms,
because I knew you'd try to kill me as soon as you had
what you wanted. I just want to save my friend, I don't
want your fucking coke. Like I said, I'll hand it over to you
and to you alone. No guns, no goons, just you and I. That
way, I can walk away safe when we're through.'

'Do it,' Hannigan advised sternly.

There you are/ Zal said. 'Mr Hannigan knows this is
just business. You drop your gun, we walk out of here, we
get in your car and I take you to the stuff. Or you can have
Mr Merkland drill me with two million pounds' worth of
bullet. Your call.'

Alessandro looked at the two briefcases sitting on the
floor, suddenly a lot further away from his grasp than
they'd been two minutes ago.





391

watch you burn

There was a solitary figure moving swiftly beneath the
sodium and neon, exiting the warehouse and making for
one of several cars parked in the lot outside.

'They're bailing out/ Bob Hogg whispered. 'Let's get in
there before it's too late.'

'Shut the fuck up/ Shaw hissed, holding up a clenched
fist both as a gesture to stay put and a threat of what would
happen if anyone didn't.

The figure stopped and looked around, perhaps having
heard something. Collective breaths were held, none more
anxiously than Hogg's for having broken the silence. The
man resumed walking, climbed into a blue BMW and drove
away, but stopped and killed his lights only a hundred
yards down the street.

'What's he up to?' Hogg asked impatiently.

'Why don't you go doon there and ask him?'

'If you'd bloody let me, I would. What are we waiting
for?'

'I'll tell you when I see it.'

They were lying face-down at the top of a grass embankment,
overlooking a warehouse in Port Dundas, less than
a mile from the snooker club in St George's Cross from
which Hannigan ran his operations. Out of sight in the
surrounding streets were several vans full of Kevlar-kitted
armed officers, ready to move in upon Shaw's signal. What
they were waiting for was Zal to leave the building with

392

Alessandro, though precisely why remained a matter of
some conjecture.

Angelique had received a call on her mobile back at the
Dalriada, while Shaw was threatening to take one of
F&NY's hammers to the South Hall's exhibits as an outlet
for his frustrations. Happily, she was able to offer him
Hannigan's head as an alternative.

The call was from Karl, Zal's oldest partner in crime,
giving her the address of the warehouse where the stolen
statue was being taken. They would find Hannigan and
his men there, along with two million pounds in hard cash.
However, in a phrase that bore Zal's hallmark, Karl insisted
that the cops 'would have nothing until they had everything'.
They couldn't move in until Zal left the building
with Alessandro, heading for a location Zal would only
provide once he got there. 'If you go in before that, all
you'll have on Hannigan is receiving stolen goods, and
with all respect to Pepe Nunez, that statue ain't worth two
million.'

Given his current frame of mind, Angelique couldn't see
Shaw abiding by this without some serious persuasion, and
possibly therapy, but instead he merely nodded, like some
deeper understanding was setting in.

'It sounds like shite to me, sir/ was Anderson's perspective,
but Shaw's demeanour had been transformed.

'We're gaunny dae exactly as Innez tells us/ he stated.
The guy was away clean. He doesn't need to be doing this
for us, and that tells me he's doing it for him. Bottom line
is, he's gaunny give us Bud Hannigan, and after the calibre
of our policework tonight, that's a lot more than we
deserve.'

There were voices from inside the warehouse: shouting,
anger, arguments. The words were unintelligible, but the




393

tension was unmistakable. Shaw and Angelique exchanged
some anxious looks, no doubt thinking the same thing.
Something was wrong, very wrong, and Zal was inside
there. She was about to implore Shaw to just give the
command when a door opened and Zal and Alessandro
walked out of the building as predicted.

They got into an ostentatious red Merc sports model with
rental plates, and drove off. The blue BMW waited a few
seconds after they had passed, then turned its lights back
on and pulled away in pursuit.

Shaw stood up and took hold of his radio. 'Go go go.
All units move in.'

The vans sped in without sirens, though the squeal of
their tyres and the sudden roar of engines was warning
and identification enough to the trained ears of their
targets. The police vehicles slewed across the carriageway
and pavement, cutting off vehicular access, while the
armed officers swarmed into the building on three sides.

They were making their way briskly down the embankment
when Angelique saw a loading hatch burst open at
the rear of the building. A man barrelled through it, firing
randomly with a pistol as he emerged into the concreted
passage at the foot of the grass slope. All three of them
dived for the floor, but while Shaw and Hogg bit the turf,
Angelique executed a practised roll to come up in a
crouching position. Resting on one knee, she fired four
shots with her Walther, throwing the gunman back against
the wall as his weapon spun off into the darkness.

'Fuck,' she said.

'What?' Shaw inquired. 'You got him.'

'I know, but it occurred to me a wee while back that I've
killed more men than I've slept with. I thought I'd scored
the equaliser recently, but that's me back in deficit.'

394

'Depends how soon the ambulance gets here,' Shaw said.
'But I'm grateful your concern didnae slow your trigger
finger.'

That was slow, sir. You should see me when I've not had
a man for a while.'

Angelique helped Shaw to his feet while Hogg radioed
for an ambulance. There had been no shots from inside, so
it sounded optimistically like they'd only need the one.

'I'll stay with this one,' Hogg offered, crouching beside
the injured man. 'Looks like you're slipping, Agent X. Only
three hits: right arm, shoulder, leg. He'll live.'

'Ya fuckin' bitch,' the man grunted. 'You're fuckin' deid,
I'm tellin' you. Fuckin' polis cunt.'

'Mr Athena! How lovely to hear your charming voice
again. Haven't seen you since Innez ripped the pish out of
you at the bank.'

This guy was the fifth man?' Shaw asked. The mug?'
'Aye. Falling into place, isn't it?'
'I'll tell you that once we've seen what's inside.'
What was inside turned out to be an all-star night for
Glasgow gangland's A-team. Hannigan was standing with
his hands behind his head, in the similarly postured
company of half a dozen known associates and Alessandro
Estebol's two travelling companions. Around them were
close to twenty armed cops, and in the middle was West
Coast (,) Man, who appeared to be in the process of being
disembowelled.

'Is there anything I can assist you with, Officer,'
Hannigan said as Shaw entered the room. That was
Hannigan all the way: he only ever spoke to the officer in
charge, and when he did, it was with a calm, butter
wouldn't-melt decorum. Even with his hands behind his
head and an arsenal pointed at him, he acted like they were




395

meeting over tea and scones. To give the guy his due, this
was also why no bloodbath had ensued, despite the
number of guns in the room. Hannigan was the kind of
crook who always reckoned he could beat the rap, mainly
because he so often had. There was absolutely no reason
to get into an against-the-odds shooting match as long as
there were still lawyers left in the world, so he'd pleaded
for a calm surrender when he realised what was happening.
Clearly not everybody had been listening, or just didn't
have the sense to hear, but Athena's Butch and Sundance
bid aside, the police were offered no resistance.

Shaw took a walk around the statue on his way towards
Hannigan.

'I see we're torturin' statues noo. Waste of time, Bud.
This wan'11 never talk. No' wi' his walloper in his mooth,
anyway.'

'Jock Shaw. Long time no see. What brings you back to
these parts?'

'Ach, nostalgia, really. I thought I'd arrest your arse
again, just for old time's sake.'

'What for?'

'Eh, well, to be perfectly honest, I'm no entirely sure yet.
But tell you what, we'll start with receiving stolen goods
and work our way fae there.'

These cases are both hoachin' with serious money, sir,'
one of the cops informed him.

'Aye. Two million, if my sources are correct. Which has
me a wee bit confused, Bud. See, I'm sure I read in the
paper that this statue cost the museum whit? Aboot twenty,
thirty grand?'

That's art for you, Mr Shaw. One day a picture's not
worth the canvas it's painted on, the next it's going for
three million at Sotheby's.'

396

'Aye, well, hard to see how this would be rendered more
valuable by cutting it open, especially as it seems to be full
of farmyard manure. Unless, of course, you were expecting
to find something else inside. Drugs, perhaps. What do you
reckon, DI de Xavia?'

'Drugs, sir? Bud Hannigan? And two senior delegates
of the Estobal family? Nooooo. And certainly not two
million worth. For goodness sake, that could put a man in
jail for twenty years.'

'As much as that, Angelique? Dear, dear, dear.'

'Aye,' Hannigan said. 'So it's a shame all you've got is
a big pile o' shite.'

This is it here. Pull over/ Zal said as the Mercedes
approached the alleyway. The studio was at the end,
constructed of two lock-ups knocked through into one.
Alessandro stopped the car and looked suspiciously at the
dark passage.

'Anything happens to me and Parnell loses,' he warned.
'Yeah, thanks for the heads-up, Sandy. That had almost
slipped my mind. Come on, let's get this shit over with/
They walked briskly between the two rows of facing
doors, their footsteps quiet on the concrete. A light rain
had started to fall, with a biting wind in the air that threatened
snow.

'Could be a white Christmas/ Zal remarked. T've never
seen snow for real.'

'It goddamn better be a white Christmas, or else you die
like that asshole Nunez died. You ever seen the crazy shit
a junkie'll do if you keep him from his drugs? Multiply
that by a thousand and you've got an Estobal.'

Zal produced a key and opened the door, beckoning
Alessandro to enter.




397

'You first/ Alessandro ordered. 'No tricks. And turn the
goddamn lights on.'

Zal complied. Alessandro followed him into the narrow
passage that functioned as an ante-room and supply
cupboard, its walls lined with shelves bearing the artist
proprietor's materials. Zal then opened the door to the
studio proper and flicked another lightswitch. It revealed
a cluttered room, the bottoms of the walls spattered with
paint in a thousand colours and shades where the grey
plaster was visible. Where it was not, this was because it
was obscured by drapes, great linen sheets hung like white
banners because the temporary resident artist preferred to
work inside what he called 'a blank space of the mind'.
The environment should have been confusingly, ominously
familiar to Alessandro, as should the style of a number of
works in progress positioned about the floor. However,
little Sandy was predictably oblivious, his albeit baffled
attention commanded slavishly and exclusively by what
sat, in pride of place, at the centre of the room: West Coast
(,) Man, identical and unadulterated.

'What the fuck? What the fuck? I don't get it.'
The original, as promised.'

'You switched them. That asshole Dominguez wasn't
paying attention and you switched them.'

'No, he was paying full attention to what we stole from
the museum. But the original was never in the museum.'
'So where, I mean how . . . what the fuck?'
'You know, my old man taught me . . . you remember
my old man? Guy you had killed just to prove a point?
Yeah. Well, he taught me that whether it's a street-corner
card trick or a grand-scale illusion, the guy in your seat
never knows who else is in on it, or how many. Maybe
there's one plant in the audience, or maybe he was the

398

blindfolded volunteer and everybody but him is in on the
gag-'

'I don't know what you're bullshitting about. How did
you switch the fucking statues? And where did you get
the other one? It's completely identical, right down to the
goddamn signature in his ass. How did you copy it?'
'I didn't.'

7 did.'

Alessandro turned around to see a figure emerge from
behind one of the drapes, and found himself standing face
to face with Pepe Nunez. 'Ola.'

'Chinga. Madre mia, Jesus.'

Alessandro reeled away from Pepe as though struck,
stepping backwards and tumbling over the statue to the
floor.

'Pepe and I go way back. We were at art school together.
Guess you didn't know that. Karl too, and a guy name of
Cream-T. 'Course, these days he has to go by the more
formal Thomas White, what with being curator of the
Dalriada Museum and all.'

Alessandro picked himself off the floor. The wheels were
whirring, but he still hadn't worked out the ramifications,
far less the imminent consequences. Maybe if he had another
month and a lot of paper to write down his working.

'Yeah great, so you art-fags are real tight and real clever.

But you're also gonna be real dead if my coke ain't inside
that statue.'

'Of course it's there, Alessandro. It has to be, for when
the cops arrive to arrest your ass.'

The cops? Bullshit,' he said, but the fear was writ large.

'Bullshit? Take a look at that/ Zal held up his phone,
showing him the pre-keyed text message that he'd sent

399

Angelique, having hit the Send button in his pocket the
second they entered the studio.

Alessandro made to run, but Zal halted him with a fist

to the stomach, letting him fall choking at his feet.
'Get a rope,' he told Pepe.
'My pleasure.'

'We're gonna tie you to this statue, one cocksucker to
another, and then the cops are gonna stick you in jail for
so long, the Lakers franchise will have moved to the moon
by the time you get out.'

That's not gonna happen,' said a low, growling voice.
Every head turned towards the doorway leading to the
ante-room, in which American Harry was now standing,
gun in hand.
'Fuck.'
'Shit.'

'Step away from Mr Estobal/ he ordered.
Alessandro climbed to his feet once again.
'Hey, the not-so-late Mr Nunez. You're looking better
than before.'

'I clean up pretty good, don't I/ Pepe said, by way of
bravado.

'Where the fuck did you get to?' Alessandro demanded.
'Something I learned from your Uncle Hector, Alessandro.
If something don't feel right, it ain't right. Soon as I saw
what was comin' out of that statue, I bailed. Thought I'd
take a back seat and see what was in the wind. Good thing
I did, huh.'

'Yeah? You're so goddamn smart, how come fucking
Nunez is still alive?'

'I told you what I saw. Showed you the pictures. Guess
none of us looked close enough. How'd you do it?' he
asked Pepe.

400

'Animal meat. Goats.'

'And the head? Oh yeah, you're a sculptor.'
That's right. I can work with more than metal/
'Yeah, real cute,' said Alessandro. 'Now let's kill these
assholes and get the merchandise out of here.'

Too late for the statue/ Harry told him. The cops are
on their way and we can't move it. Mr Innez has fucked
us up pretty good, just like I warned you. Not all your
fault, though. Hell of a coincidence you should go to Nunez
with your big idea and he should turn out to be Innez's
buddy. Can't legislate for that kinda bad luck. Hell of a
coincidence/

'Let's just get out of here,' Alessandro said. 'I fucking
hate this town. And I want you to know, Innez, before
you're even cold tonight, I'll have made the call on Parnell.
Then after that I'm gonna track down every last one of
your art-fag buddies and I'm gonna kill them too/

He spat in Zal's face, then turned to Harry.

'Do it/

Harry raised the gun and cocked the hammer. Zal looked
him in the eye.

'Let's see you magic your way out of this one/
Alessandro sneered.

'Nothing personal, kid,' Harry told him. This is just business/

Harry swung his arm thirty degrees and shot Alessandro
through the middle of the forehead. The bullet zinged right
through into the statue, from which cocaine started to bleed.

He looked back at Zal, still pointing the gun.

'I killed your old man, kid. I want you to hear that from
me. But this means we're square. No comebacks/

Zal swallowed, too many emotions to cope with flooding
in at once. Pragmatic survival instinct took over.

401

'No comebacks/ he confirmed.

Harry turned to Pepe.

'It was your idea, wasn't it? You came to Alessandro
with the plan and he made out it was the other way round.'

'I came to Alessandro/ Pepe confirmed. 'But the plan
was all Zal's idea.'

'You cooked up this whole thing from way back?'

'Yeah' Zal said. 'It's amazing what you can come up
with when you've got three years and nothing to do but
plan your revenge.'

'Yeah, well like I said, we're square. But you gotta disappear,
and I mean forever. You did this, you understand?
Not me. You fucked the Estobals, and I got here too late
to stop you killin' Alessandro.'

'I fucked the Estobals, but you ain't telling me this wasn't
sanctioned. You guys are using me to cover up an internal
coup.'

'You're smart, Innez. Way too smart. That's why you
can't come back to LA. We've got a business to run, and
right now we need stability. Everybody knew Alessandro
was gonna get himself killed eventually. We gave him the
chance to make amends, but . . . It's easier for everybody
to deal with if we can put the blame on an outsider. Don't
make me regret not killing you.'

'What about Parnell?'

'Miguel's gonna be in charge from now on. He's a businessman.
Parnell ain't his business.'

'Okay.'

Zal began walking towards the door.

'Hey kid?' Harry called.

'Yeah?'

'Hannigan busted?'

'Oh yeah.'

402

'Shit. I mean, that's what I figured, but
'What?'

'Don't suppose you know where I can get a decent blow
job in this town?'

403


encore

Angelique walked out of the pub's smoky, raucous hubbub
into, the quiet night of a rain-washed street. She couldn't
stay. Everyone was insisting otherwise and lining up drinks
for her, but she knew she had to be somewhere else. She'd
slipped away on the pretext of going to the Ladies, and
just didn't come back.

It was a celebration, but she didn't feel much like she
shared the mood, bearing emotions more appropriate for
a wake. They'd got Hannigan. Hip, hip, hooray. Two
million in cash and a stolen statue, identical to another one
packed with Charlie and sporting a single, blood-rimmed
bullet-hole. No Alessandro, but nothing was ever perfect,
and nobody was complaining. It was a hell of a result for
a night otherwise distinguished only by poor judgment
and serial ineptitude, dropped into their laps by someone
she now realised was gone for good.

She'd always known that this was how it had to end,
but only when she saw that second statue in the otherwise
deserted lock-up did it truly hit home that it had. Everything had ended, everything, and her colleagues
wanted her to celebrate.

In significant contrast to the aftermath of Dubh Ardrain,
everyone was toasting her as the hero of the hour, with
Shaw the principal cheerleader. Ironically, this made her
feel all the more that she needed to get out. After all those
years of isolation and defiance, it was their efforts to make

404

her feel she belonged that most confirmed she didn't.

Christmas was the time of miracles, they said. She wasn't
a believer, but she was grateful to accept when the word
TAXI' appeared in yellow light on this least likely night
of the year. She hailed it and jumped in, leaning back deep
into her seat as the cab moved off. It felt like a getaway.
She stared out of the window as the taxi drove through
the rainy night, staring at buildings, parks, statues, landmarks;
the places of a city as familiar as her face in the
mirror, but just as intangibly distant as that inverse world
behind the glass.

She had a decision to make. Well, no, that wasn't really
true. What she had to do was acknowledge to herself that
the decision had been made some time back. All that was
left was for her to pass it on.

The cab dropped her off at her flat, where she climbed
the stairs to the accompaniment of music from at least four
parties in progress elsewhere in the close.

'Merry Christmas.'

She looked up as she reached her landing. Zal was sitting
on her doormat, arms around his knees, damp and slightly
shivering.

'I thought you'd gone.'

'I should be. My flight sure is. I had to see you again,
even if it's just to say goodbye.'

'I could arrest you. You know that, don't you?'

'You can make this my Gethsemane if you want,

Angelique. It would be worth it for the kiss.'

She didn't kiss him, and she didn't arrest him, either.
Instead she opened her door and led him inside. They sat
in her living room, where she poured them both a single
malt to warm up.

'Alessandro. He's dead isn't he?' she asked.




405

Zal nodded.

'You killed him? Is that what all this was about?
Revenge?'

'I didn't kill him. American Harry killed him.'

'Who?'

The Estobals' primary enforcer. It was a coup, an
internal thing. But you got one part right. Revenge was
entirely what this was about.'

Zal explained it all as they sipped their malt, from initial
inception to final sting.

'I had other plans, other schemes/ he added. 'But this
was the one the parts fell into place for. We were gonna
pull it in Canada at first, but when Tom got his new job
last year, it looked a lot like fate was dealing a hand. I was
going to Glasgow, like I was always supposed to.'

Nothing would be provable against Thomas White, Zal
cautioned, and with Nunez already having made a third
statue (as well as those very cute fake guns), the museum
wouldn't have to miss a beat. The only losers were the
gangsters and the poor dopes of F&NY, whom White had
identified as viable patsies from the moment they showed
up protesting outside his gallery.

It had all been a massive illusion, planned to the final
detail and executed, with immaculate precision, only once
all the necessary pieces - and players - were in place. Which
was what had been troubling Angelique since she saw the fait accompli that was the scene in the lock-up.

'Alessandro wasn't supposed to die, was he?' she asked.
'He was your bargaining chip to get protection for Parnell
from the authorities.'

'Exactly as we agreed. Like Parnell would need it.
Dexter's tight with some bigger players than Alessandro,
but you have to be sure, so I needed the deal.'

406

'Except, you were always going to make that deal with
somebody; with whoever. You just got me to offer it, same
as you got me to chase everyone out of the bank. And if I
hadn't happened along, someone else would have filled
the same part.'

Zal said nothing. Angelique felt tears welling up. She
didn't want him to see her cry, but she knew it was
unavoidable. That's all I was. Just another sucker, another
volunteer from the audience.'

That's not true.'

'Of course it's true. You drew me in and played me from
start to finish, like you played everybody else. Christ, you
took me for a mug once, and that's understandable, but at
least I didn't have to go to bed with you the first time.'

It was way too late to stop the tears now; they were in
full flow. Zal knelt down in front of her and took her hand,
but she batted it away.

'Leave me alone.'

He sat back down.

'I think you should go now/ she told him.

Zal stood up, but didn't make for the door.

'Did I lie to you?' he asked quietly.

'You deceived me.'
'Did I lie, at any time? Did I really spin you a load of
bullshit to make you do things you didn't want? Make up
some phoney backstory, play a part? This is who I am,
Angelique, right here. You got it all, undiluted. Making you
part of this was the only way I could afford to get close to
you. And once I saw you in that bank, believe me, I knew
I had to get close to you. Even if it was just for a while.'

Angelique looked at him through the tears. Perhaps for
the first time, there was a weakness about him, an undisguised
pleading in those otherwise formidable blue orbs.




407

But what other way was there left for him to fool her? She
got up, had to stand her ground.

'You had a thing for a police officer and couldn't let a
little matter like her being on your case get in the way?'

'It was a little more than a thing. And Jesus, you know that. I didn't mean this to happen, any more than you. It
just did. Christ, it's not like I couldn't have done without
it at a t time like this, but that's how it worked out. And
what about you, Officer? When I called you on the phone,
did you figure: "I know, I'll hook up with a bank robber -
me being a cop, that sounds like a stable long-term relationship
in the making"? You knew it couldn't last - maybe
that was the attraction.'

Angelique sighed. Nothing hurt like the truth. It had
been easier during that brief spell when she didn't believe
him.

'Maybe that was the attraction,' she said quietly. 'But
attraction is only what happens at the start. It's what comes
next that you can't anticipate.'

'Ain't that the truth.'

She took hold of both his hands and looked up into his
eyes.

'Stay/ she said.

'I can't. You know that. I have to disappear. It's what I
do.'

'I'll find you,' she told him. 'That's what I do. Wherever
you go, I'll track you down and I'll find you.'

'I'm counting on it. But I still gotta disappear.'

'Not yet.'

Angelique lay awake in the darkness, her head on Zal's
chest as he slept. The sounds of the parties had gradually
diminished, though she could hear people singing as they


408


staggered and slalomed drunkenly home along the street
outside. She thought of Andie MacDowell and Bill Murray
in Groundhog Day, trying to stay awake because once they
fell asleep, this magic that they had between them would
be gone in the morning. Her eyes were closing, she knew,
her resistance fading. It would be over soon. But not yet.

She was woken by the ringing of her doorbell.

It took a few moments for her to come to sufficiently to
suss what the sound was, longer to recall what was
expected of her in response. She staggered groggily out of
bed, and had made it almost to her bedroom door before
she realised she was naked. That was when she remembered
what had happened the night before and reality came
flooding in mob-handed.

She turned around to see an empty bed, then nodded to
herself.

Quickly pulling on a T-shirt, back-to-front as it turned
out, she made for the front door and opened it to find a
large, rectangular parcel wrapped in Christmas paper. She
brought it inside the flat and ran to the window, looking
down on to the street. There was a man getting into a car
just outside the close. She only caught a glimpse, but she
was sure she'd seen him at the Dalriada the night before:
the Canadian curator, Thomas White.

Knowing no further progress could be achieved without
stimulants, Angelique made herself a cup of coffee and
brought it into the bedroom, along with the parcel. She had
a couple of essential caffeine hits then unwrapped it, laying
its contents against the fireplace once denuded of the red
and gold foil.

It was a painting of herself, recognisable despite the
indulgences of the artist's flattery. She had never looked




409

that pretty - not even her mother would say she'd ever
looked that pretty (okay, well, maybe) - but it was definitely
her, nonetheless.

She was standing in a gallery in front of what she recognised
as a painting by Monet. Her head was turned so that
she was in profile, her eye looking to one side as though
waiting for someone. Above her was a glass ceiling,
undoubtedly of allegorical import but also confirming her
location as the Musee D'Orsay. In her left hand she held a
greetings card, which upon close inspection read 'Bonne
Anniversaire'.

Further up her arm, her wrist displayed a watch, its
hands palmed at midday.

Tipping her head back to swallow another mouthful of
coffee, she noticed that there was a curious, unfocused
shape towards the bottom left-hand corner. She put her
cup down and placed the painting on the mantelpiece, then
knelt on the floor a couple of feet to the side.

Angelique smiled and nodded again as the skewed
image revealed itself. It was the seven of diamonds.

She picked up the phone and dialled. It rang out for a long
time, but she knew that this was one place that would still
be open on Christmas Day. They had to transfer her around
a few times, but eventually she got put through on his
home number, where a woman's voice answered.

'AlloT

'Bonjour,' Angelique said. 'Je voudrais parler avec Monsieur
Dougnac, s'il vous plait.'

410