Miss Take - Chapter 15 (4686)

 

Chapter 15 (4686)

Kelly spent the night at the police station at St Leonards, under the shadow of the looming basalt cliffs of the Salisbury Crags. The Crags jutted out from Arthur’s Seat, the central rock of Holyrood Park like the prow of a ship, a great plate of titled rock with steep scree slopes tumbling down to the park roads below.

They came and woke her at eight in the morning and she was bundled into an interview room. A short red-faced man with a squashed strawberry for a nose was introduced to her as Mr Payne, her legal consul. He looked like he’d just woken up, she could still smell the toothpaste on him.

A few minutes later two plain clothes policemen entered the room and introduced themselves as Detective Inspector Martin Harvey and Detective Sergeant William Milk. Harvey was a tall man with a hooked nose, he seemed happy and eager. Milk was an older man, fat and bald, he smelled of cigarette smoke.

After the preliminary introductions and a brief explanation of the interview process, Harvey could contain himself no longer and cut straight to the chase.

‘Your name is Gavin Newgate, is it not?’ he asked.

Kelly looked at Payne. ‘Do I have to answer that?’

‘Ahem,’ Payne cleared his throat, as if surprised to be addressed. ‘Well, hopefully your rights have been explained to you. You don’t have to answer any question you don’t want to.’

‘No answer then,’ said Kelly looking back at the cops. ‘No comment.’

‘How old are you Gavin?’

‘No comment.’

‘You had no ID when you were arrested,’ said Harvey. ‘However, you did have a mobile phone on you. Please provide us with the PIN number to unlock it.’

Kelly didn’t need to look at her lawyer to answer this one. ‘You need a RIPA for that one, copper.’

Harvey leaned back in his chair and smiled in annoyance.

‘You may think you’re very clever, Mr Newgate,’ he said. ‘But all you are doing is proving to me that you are a criminal, if you are as familiar with the law as you appear to be.’

Kelly shrugged. All they had was a brand-new burner phone and it only had one number on it – Corum Lavius, but she’d be dammed if she was going to make this easy on them.

‘Now, young man,’ he began again. ‘I can sit here and ream off all the places you’ve broken into over the years, up to and including Wraithston Manse and Button Grove, but what we are really interested in is you telling us what happened at the Pebble Guesthouse in Portobello on the night of the 25^th.’

Kelly kept her head down and said nothing.

‘Three men died, Gavin,’ Harvey said, trying a softer tone. ‘They had families. Think of them. One of them, Mr Campbell had a young daughter. Don’t you want to help find the man that murdered her father?’

Kelly kept quiet. It sounded like they were fishing and if they thought she was Gavin then they were still a fair way away from the truth. Did that mean that Corum hadn’t been behind this after all? This was all too much to take in at once, she tried to stay calm, but her pulse was racing. She knew that they could only hold her for twenty-four hours without charge, but she was sure that if she didn’t co-operate then they would charge her with the burglaries. The rules all changed though, if she was considered under-age, but she couldn’t remember what they were. She had just never planned on being arrested, crazy as it seemed to her now. She’d always thought that if she ever was, it was game over and that was the end of it, so there was no need to torture herself with looking things up on the internet.

‘And Officer Yoyuwevuto,’ added Milk mildly, dragging her away from her thoughts. ‘Price killed her too. She had two children; you know?’

‘I read the papers,’ muttered Kelly.

‘She was my friend,’ said Harvey. ‘She was everyone’s friend.’

Harvey tapped the table with his fingers, as if thinking, then appeared to try a different tack.

‘Listen,’ he went on. ‘You’re nicked, right? And we can charge you right here and right now with a dozen burglaries, right of the bat. Is that what you want?’

‘No,’ snarled Kelly sarcastically.

‘Well then,’ he smiled. ‘Why protect Price? What’s he to you? Are you scared of him? Why were you even there that night?’

Fishing again, thought Kelly, and remained silent.

‘Who are your people?’ Milk suddenly interjected. ‘Your old man is Niles Makepeace, right? Your foster dad, is he? Should be bring him in too? We could do him for aiding and abetting if you don’t co-operate.’

Kelly looked at her lawyer, who again cleared his throat before speaking.

‘You are threatening my client’s family, Sergeant,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ll thank you to stop.’

She had been shocked at first, but then realised they could not have checked Niles’s background yet if they thought he was fostering Gavin Newgate. That meant they were miles behind Corum. She relaxed a bit and sat back in her seat.

 

And so it went on, no matter what they tried Kelly kept quiet. It didn’t take long for them to run out of ideas, and they began to swap between offers of a plea deal for information on Price and threats of how many crimes they could charge her with if she didn’t start talking. She could start talking any time though, and she wanted to hold on as long as possible.

In reality, what they had on her was thin, and she was starting to wonder if Corum had been involved in this in any way at all, when suddenly, he turned up. Milk got up and left and Lavius sat down beside Harvey, putting down a cold takeaway coffee cup on the table.

‘Sergeant Lavius,’ said Harvey with a rather twisted smile. ‘Gavin is your informant is he not? Is there anything you can say to him that would make him tell us what happened with him and Price at the Pebble Guesthouse?^’

‘Well, sir,’ replied Lavius evenly. ‘Gavin Newgate is indeed my informant, and I do hope that he will lead us to Price, but you should have talked to us over at Major Case first before lifting him.’

‘If Major wanted him all to themselves,’ said Harvey through gritted teeth, ‘they should have put him on a CHIS. I don’t care how important he is to you, we’ve got him now, and one way or another he’s going to talk to us.’

‘That’s the thing,’ replied Lavius sweetly. ‘You’ve not. Who you have here is his big sister Stacey.’

Kelly could not resist a smile as she watched Harvey’s jaw drop.

‘What?’ spluttered Harvey. ‘How? Where’s your proof? He had no ID on him.’

Lavius raised an eyebrow at Kelly, who stood up and dropped her trousers.

‘Ain’t nothing going on down there, copper,’ she declared.

‘Right that’s it,’ said Payne as he stood up. ‘Release my client now, thank you inspector.’

Payne seemed delighted at the prospect at getting back to his bed or wherever he had been roused from and was the first out of the door.

Corum also stood up and patted Harvey on the shoulder as he passed, who was sat with his head in his hands making a noise like a dying beast.

***

‘Gimme a lift to school, copper,’ said Kelly to Lavius as they crossed the carpark. She hoped in to the passenger seat and let out a great sigh as Corum turned the ignition and started the car.

‘You were very lucky Kelly,’ he chided her as they drove out of the car park. ‘Harvey was rushing it. He’d not fingerprinted you yet because they still hadn’t figured out how old you were. Your file, if you can call it that for someone who doesn’t exist, has you down as 12 years old. Harvey thought he could get away with talking to you before you were properly processed, and they needed a parent or guardian for that.’

‘Niles?’

‘He’s not the guardian of Gavin Newgate, though is he? You can’t foster a phantom. Don’t worry, I’ll throw a few smoke bombs down when I get back to my nick. Hopefully we’ll have got Price and Reggie before they pick it back up again.’

Kelly looked out if the window for a moment or two, then snorted. ‘Stacey? Really?’

‘It was the first name that came into my head,’ laughed Lavius.

‘I was going to do that anyway, pretend to be someone else.’

‘Sure you were.’

‘Would have chosen a better name,’ she grumbled. When Lavius made no reply, she went on. ‘So how did they make me then?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lavius with a shrug. ‘Yoyo’s paperwork maybe. Not from me if that’s what you’re wondering. The first I knew was when I got a call from my Inspector telling me Harvey had lifted one of my snitches – his words – and I need to get down to St Leonards. When I got here, Harvey was so happy with himself for picking up the legendary Gavin Newgate he was buzzing. What a shame we had to burst his bubble.’

‘And why did you?’ asked Kelly with genuine curiosity. ‘Burst his bubble I mean?’

‘Even now, I’m asking myself that question,’ mused Lavius.

‘Wait,’ gasped Kelly as something occurred to her. ‘Did she know my real name too?’

‘Yoyo? Yes, she did.’

‘So, am I safe?’

‘As safe as you can be,’ he replied.

‘How can you know,’ she went on, twisted with worry, ‘I mean, maybe she wrote that down somewhere too?’

‘She didn’t,’ said Lavius icily.

‘But how can you be sure?’

‘Because an hour after we figured out who you were, she was dead, OK?’ snapped Corum.

Kelly turned away and looked out the window in silence. Not long after that they arrived at her flat and Lavius waited in the car while she went in to get changed.

As she got back in, she said, ‘I’m sorry Corum. I’m sorry about your partner. I’m just so strung out right now. I’ve not slept properly in weeks.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he replied with a thin smile. ‘Neither have I.’

Corum drove her on to the school in silence, both of them lost in their own thoughts.

 

***

When she’d finished school for the day, she saw Corum again, leaning against the side of his car, his coat collar pulled up against the chill wind.

‘Easier to pretend we are together, if we are going to keep meeting,’ he said as he leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.

‘Fuck’s sake!’ she squeaked in alarm.

‘Jesus lady, it was you that messaged me!’

‘All right, all right,’ she shooed him into the car. ‘Let’s not make a spectacle of ourselves in front of the entire school. Come on.’

‘Where too?’ he asked her as they turned into the main road.

‘Your place?’ she suggested, as she was unable to think of anywhere better.

‘Tut tut, Miss Kane, tongues will wag,’ joked Lavius.

Once they had arrived at his flat, he opened the door and ushered her in. ‘I’d show you around, but of course, you’ve been here before.’

She gave him a filthy look as she sat down on his sofa and eased off her heels. ‘Put the kettle, on you twat.’

‘What did you want to talk about anyway?’ he asked as he went through to the kitchen.

‘Well,’ she started. She’d had all afternoon to think about it, and had eventually decided it was in her best interest to admit she’d been in his father’s house again. ‘When I was lifted, I’d just got back from spying on Reggie. I followed him to your father’s house. I was there when he called you.’

Corum stood and looked at her, his jaw moved, but no sound came out. He was holding a teaspoon in his hand which he looked at in confusion before carefully putting it down on the kitchen counter.

‘Who else was there?’ he asked when his brain finally started working again.

‘Trajan,’ she replied. ‘Reggie was there to meet Trajan.’

Corum went back to making the tea, perhaps the familiar routine of the process helping him to think.

When he’d finished, he sat down across from her and put the cups down on the low table between them. She took a sip and noted that he had remembered how she took it.

‘Trajan was at my father’s house,’ said Corum, as if still in a state of disbelief. He then looked up from his tea. ‘You broke into my father’s house again?’

‘Are you kidding?’ she scolded him. ‘What are you doing to catch Price anyway? Seems like I’m doing all the work here.’

‘My job these days seems to be mainly keeping you out of prison,’ he muttered in reply.

‘Cry me a river,’ grunted Kelly and lay back, trying to get comfortable on Corum’s saggy old sofa.

‘I don’t even care about how mean you are to me anymore,’ he sighed in return. ‘The Chief was all over me this afternoon, trying to get me to bring you in. I tried to tell her that the best place for you to be right now was running free, bringing in intel. She bought it this time, but I don’t think she’s going to swallow it all much longer.’

‘Just tell them you only ever talk to me on the phone,’ she advised. ‘Tell them I’m too clever for you.’

‘No, that won’t work,’ he replied. ‘The only thing that is keeping them from compelling me by law to bring you in is that I am getting regular information from you.’

‘Have you even told them about Reggie yet?’ Kelly asked.

Corum was silent, looking down at his mug.

‘Fuck you Corum!’ she hissed, putting her hands to her eyes. ‘What sort of game are you playing here?’

‘I’m trying to keep those that I lo… care about… out of prison,’ he sighed.

Kelly kissed her teeth by way of reply.

‘What?’ he demanded and stood up, then went to the window, ‘How much more do I have to do before you trust me?’

Kelly just sat and looked up at him blankly from the sofa.

‘Look,’ he said soothingly. ‘Thank you for telling me this, truly. I need to ask around a few other places and try and find out what the hell Reggie is doing with Trajan. And then I’ll deal with him, all right? And soon, but even without my complications I still need solid evidence to go to the Chief with. Not just the word of one very troublesome informant. Just lay low for a couple of days ok? I’ll flush him out into the open.’

‘OK,’ sighed Kelly, feeling suddenly deflated. ‘You saved me today, and I don’t doubt you mean well, but I don’t see how you can keep both me and your old man out of jail. At some point you’ll have to burn one of us, and I wouldn’t even blame you if you threw me under the bus to save your old man. Blood is thicker than water after all. And Harvey is going to figure it all out sooner or later, and then I’m toast. I can’t just sit around twiddling my thumbs. You see that don’t you?’

‘Just let me handle it, then we’ll see,’ said Corum, who drained the last of his tea and strode over to the kitchen. He turned to see Kelly shaking her head.

‘I realise I’m wasting my breath of course,’ he sighed. ‘You are clearly planning something.’

She stood up and slipped her shoes back on. She’d never taken her coat off although the central heating in the flat was keeping the place snug.

She straightened her coat collar and looked up at him before heading for the front door. ‘What I’m planning is none of your business. Call me if you ever get around to arresting Reggie Cunningham.’

 

***

Once again Kelly felt bad for how she had treated Corum. He had really saved her skin and she’d behaved like a sulky teenager. Blame it on the anxiety and lack of sleep.

He was certainly right that she had a plan, and it revolved around the fact that tomorrow night was Halloween. She took a bus into town to shop for a costume.

As the double decker chugged up onto Princes Street, she thought about what it could be that Reggie was up to. She suspected he was planning the same trick Price had tried, to try and flee the country with the help of criminals. Trajan had once told her that he didn’t do the people smuggling thing though, so she wasn’t entirely sure. But, then again, how could you trust anything a gangster said? It wasn’t hard to find the costume she wanted and on her return home, the first thing she did was slip into the bath and doze off for fifteen minutes.

She cursed herself as she woke with a start in tepid water. If tonight was anything like last night that was probably the only sleep she’d get until morning.

She dressed and went to the kitchen to eat. The clock on the wall told her it was ten o’clock at night. She ate, she watched TV and eventually, at about four in the morning, she slept.

When the alarm went off, she felt like she’d only closed her eyes for a few moments. She was barely awake until she got to the café by the school and ordered a double expresso.

Kelly got through the day somehow and after work she started getting everything ready for her break-in attempt at Almond House.

Her plan wasn’t complicated, she’d try and slip in with the guests, who would all also be in costume she could safely assume, and get to Reggie. Once she had him, she’d beat the shite out of him until he gave up Price. She was sick of Corum’s pussy-footing about and was more than prepared to wade through a horde of Nazis and Vampires to get to him if she had to.

It would be best to wait until last thing at night, once everyone was drunk. This would also give her time to scout out all the valuable things she had seen in the interior pictures of the Castle and possibly pilfer them if the situation allowed it. Some of the pictures she had seen were of rooms that were literally treasure troves. The wine cellar was worth a cool million alone, if what she had read was true.

Is seemed unlikely she’d get down there, but if she did manage to ger her hands on anything at least that way, if she didn’t get the reward for Price, she’d get something.

Angry and determined as she was, she was nervous and felt that there was a good chance that she’d fail. She’d never been into a place that was so well guarded before and didn’t fully know what to expect, but after weeks of mayhem and violence she was almost at the point of not caring. One last burglary and either way at least it would all be over.

With the possibility of failure in mind, she set up a contingency plan with Niles before she got an Uber out to Linlithgow.

‘There is a phone in the dresser in my room, dad,’ she told Niles after he had picked up. ‘It only has one number on it, this is what I want you to do…’

 

***

‘Oh, you didn’t dress up!’ scolded Bella Cunningham as she met Lavius at the door.

She was right, he hadn’t put on a costume, but here he was at Almond Castle anyway, hoping that one last appeal to Reggie would have an effect.

Bella was dressed as a rather stylish Bride of Frankenstein, her make-up looked like a considerable amount of time had been spent on it and, not that he was an expert of course, but her costume looked like it had been made to measure. A long flowing white gown with silver arm wraps hung seductively off her body and the whole ensemble was topped off by the obligatory black beehive hairdo with white streeks.

‘You are very late too,’ she went on as she ushered him inside. ‘Everyone is half gone already! Especially Reggie. He’s plastered!’

Lavius climbed the steps at the front door, leaning on his crutch slightly. He didn’t really need it, but it felt comfortable now, and the fact that things might turn violent tonight and that it would make a handy weapon in a pinch, had not escaped him.

Corum had gone to the party with the vague notion of playing it cool, mingling with the guests, catching up with any old friends he happened to meet and when the time was right, get Reggie alone and convince him to come clean. If he didn’t, then Corum would take everything he knew to his Chief and let the chips fall as they may. Because of his family involvement he would probably be then taken off the case and be forced to hand over Gavin Newgate – or rather Kelly Kane. If it came to that, he’d try and think of something. He’d become strangely loyal to this oddball little woman and didn’t want to see any harm befalling her, despite the fact she was, basically, a master criminal. He pushed his distracting thoughts of Miss Kane to one side and concentrated on mingling. He didn’t meet anyone he remembered from the old days, but he did see plenty of Nazis. Bella and her friends were keeping to the black marble floored library, a core crew of about twenty women a were getting drunk around the fire on long tartan sofas, while their children played at their feet or sat in corners chatting on their phones. Reggie’s goons roamed the rest of the house, dressed as SS Stormtroopers and the like. They maybe thought they looked roguish and dashing, but to Corum’s eyes they looked like idiotic extras from ‘Allo ‘Allo.

Fuck mingling, thought Corum, as he got more and more angry. How dare Reggie bring Trajan to his father’s house? And look at how he is now, with all these limp-wristed Nazi cos-players running around the place. Poor Auntie Bella, how could she put up with it?

He found Reggie in the kitchen, sulking by himself, dressed in a costume that at first Corum found beyond description, nursing a glass of red wine.

‘You came,’ he said dully, the worse for drink. ‘You shouldn’t have.’

‘What the fuck are you? Vampire Hitler? Nazi Dracula?’ said Lavius, standing in the middle of the kitchen, scowling angrily. ‘You’re in deep trouble Reggie. You need to stop whatever madness you are planning right now!’

‘Oh?’ snapped back Cunningham. ‘And what would that be?’

‘Whatever you are up to, it won’t work,’ Corum insisted. ‘This is your last chance before I lay everything before my boss. It would be better for you to hand yourself in before I do that.’

‘And keep your father out of it, I suppose?’ growled Cunningham scornfully.

Corum was happy to let Reggie think that when the truth was, he didn’t have much in the way of hard evidence. He knew only what Kelly had told him, a comment made by Price when he was shot and the rest was a whole load of conjecture.

‘It’s gone beyond that Reggie,’ he insisted. ‘People are dying. People are getting hurt. You can’t get out of this.’

Reggie drained his glass, then went to the wine rack beside the fridge and searched through it.

‘I feel like something special,’ he said with a slight burp. ‘Follow me young man.’

Reggie lead him to a door, which lead down a set of stone stairs to a deep cellar. Corum manoeuvred gingerly down the steps, grunting and snarling.

Corum was trying to speak, but Reggie strode on, and opened another door at the bottom that lead into a long low room that was filled with row upon row of wine racks.

‘Jesus, Reggie, slow down!’ cried Corum trying to keep up on his crutch while thinking, how much wine can one man drink? There must be a thousand bottles here.

‘I suppose, in a way, it’s good that you came tonight,’ said Cunningham over his shoulder. ‘I can kill two birds with one stone… or three birds… with two stones? How does it work? One stone, three birds I suppose. This way.’

‘What are you talking about?’ growled Corum.

‘This castle has a nuclear bunker you know,’ went on Reggie. ‘It was built in the sixties I’m led to believe. Did you know that back then all the houses in Switzerland were built with bunkers under them? Not just rich people’s houses. Come on, I keep the best stuff there. Let me open a bottle of Rothschild and I’ll turn myself in, how about that, young copper?’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ grumbled Corum as he followed Reggie through a thick steel door then down some more stone steps to a narrow corridor lit by flickering electric wall lamps. The corridor split, and Reggie turned left into a small chamber that contained a table and chairs with two men dressed in vague sort of black uniforms. There was a thick looking metal door in the far wall. As Reggie entered the men stood and gave Heil Hitler style salutes. Corum groaned and rolled his eyes.

‘What would you say, my boy,’ asked Cunningham as he pointed drunkenly at the bunker door, ‘if I told you that in there, I had Clarence Price?’

‘I’d say – please stop fucking about Reggie.’

Cunningham stepped back and reached into his cape. He drew out a pistol and pointed it at Corum.

‘You are fucking kidding me Reggie.’

‘It will be sad for Sir Horace, of course,’ said Reggie almost regretfully. ‘But the way I see it I can bung the Vampires another million and be shot of the whole lot of you.’

Reggie nodded to his goons who span the wheel on the door and swung it open. It was nearly a foot thick.

‘Now fucking get in there!’ yelled Cunningham, his face turning bright red.

A guard went to take Corum’s crutch, but he made a show of stumbling, enough to confuse them into letting him almost fall through the door. He found himself in a small dimly lit room. It was no more than four metres wide on each side, with two sets of bunks on the far wall. The only light was coming from a candle on an old table that was pushed up against the left-hand wall. A man was sat at the table and when he looked up Corum saw that it was indeed Price.

‘Jeez…’ sighed Corum and turned, just in time to see the door being closed behind him. He then heard the sound of bolts grinding back into place.

‘Fucking hell,’ was all he could think of to say as he faced back into the room. He stepped forward and looked down at Price. He had a black eye and split lip. Good. ‘What are you doing here, you fucker?’

‘Not just me,’ grunted Price in reply and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

Corum squinted into the gloomy area where the bunks were and saw another dark figure sat cross-legged on one of the upper bunks.

‘Is that… Batman?’ asked Lavius.

Batman slipped down from the bunk and stepped out of the shadows. It was a very short Batman, a child? No, of course not. It was Kelly Kane.

He looked down at her expressionless face, or what he could see of it under the mask.

‘Oh God help us,’ he groaned. ‘Come on then. This is going to be good.’

Miss Take - Chapter 14 (4459)

 

Chapter 14 (4459)

It was Monday morning and Kelly was taking her first-year class. Last week at school had been hell, but at least it had only been three days. The half term holidays were over now and it was noses back to the grind stone for her and her pupils. She had considered calling the agency before she’d gone back to work, to get someone in to replace her, but really, what was the point? She was as safe here as anywhere else and if something else awful happened to her then the school wondering where she was would be the least of her worries.

Everything that had happened at the weekend was buzzing around in her head and the lessons so far today had lacked focus, to say the least. One good thing had happened during the holidays though, Paul Bevy had switched school. Kelly wished that she could be so easily removed from her problems. The school was putting everything behind it, there seemed to be a general agreement among the staff not to discuss anything to do with Paul. It was done and it was time to move on, Paul leaving had draw a line under it.

 

After she’d finished with the first-years she had a free period and went to get a cup of coffee in the staff room. Things had moved on from the excitement of last term, but there was no shortage of other things to talk about and there were always members of the faculty in here swapping gossip and ill-founded opinions.

She did not mean to listen in, but the room was small and the others in the room could not be accused of being whisperers. The conversation had drifted onto the topic of the manhunt for Clarence Price. She’d noticed that among the teachers, and everyone else that she’d talked to in the last few days, that the people of Edinburgh seemed to be perversely proud of Price. Despite everything he had done, he was seen as a “local lad” who had fallen foul of sinister elements of the police or the Edinburgh underworld or both. Kelly had been astounded at first, hearing these theories discussed on the bus, or given forth by taxi drivers, but had now grown use to it, reasoning there was no depth to peoples’ stupidity.

‘He’s going after the gangs isn’t he?’ insisted Mr Ivy, the Geography and RE teacher and well known idiot. ‘He’s taking down those bloody Dundonian gypsies and now he’s after those Romanian people smugglers. If you ask me, Price is a hero. ‘Bout time something was done.’

‘What about that policewoman he killed?’ asked Miss Pringle, who was not much brighter.

‘Fake news,’ replied Ivy with a knowing smile. ‘I read in the paper that there had been shots fired two hours before the cops even showed up. The gangs had gone to take him out, don’t you see? Then the cops got caught in the crossfire.’

‘Why do they not say that then?’ pondered Miss Pringle.

‘They want to make out Price is a villain, it’s obvious!’ opined Ivy. ‘They don’t want the public on his side. He’s making them out to be fools and they hate that. He’s done more to clean up the streets in a week than they’ve done in years.’

Kelly rolled her eyes as she went over to re-fill her coffee cup. She had a momentary daydream where she told them the truth about everything, all the gory details of what had happened to her and what Price’s motivations actually were, but realised they would never believe her if she did. Price was very far away indeed from being Edinburgh’s answer to Batman. If he was anything, he was nothing more than a tool. A tool used by rich and unscrupulous men to carry out their dirty deeds, an easily manipulated psychopath.

Kelly walked down to the sandwich shop for lunch and had a cup of tea in it’s small seating area. By then she had moved her thoughts on to thinking about Corum, deciding that like it or not, she’d burned her bridges and was on her own.

How long she had, she didn’t know, but what she had to do now, it seemed to her, was find Price and turn him in. The reward was up to a quarter million. At first, she dismissed the entire notion as stupid and dangerous – better to cosy up to Lavius and let him and the rest of the dibble do their job. She half convinced herself to do exactly that by the time she’d finished her lunch, but on her walk back she felt her anger rising. She couldn’t just throw in the towel now. If she put herself in Lavius’s hands entirely, she would eventually end up in prison – and most likely five minutes after she was no longer of any use to him. Secondly, Price was dangerous, but he was also a fool. She could bring him in if she got the drop on him, she was sure of it. And if she did, it was far from certain she would get the reward money, but she’d definitely not get any of it if she didn’t at least try. And if she did - oh if she did! Thinking about it made her smile. With all that money she’d just get a false passport and jet off to somewhere without an extradition treaty with the UK. She’d fly her mum out and then it would be margaritas by the pool every day for life. She laughed at herself at that one, she didn’t even know what went into a margarita, she’d never had one before.

By the time her work day was ending a plan was forming in her head, and the more she thought about it, the more she liked it. How much Sir Horace was involved, she had no way of knowing, but one thing was for certain, Price had been calling Cunningham, they were connected by more than just their days in the army.

There was a possibility, she supposed, that Corum had made the whole thing up about his visit to Cunningham and her calling the number when he had signalled her too was all just part of some crazy plan to keep her focused on the wrong person. This seemed pretty far-fetched though, even to the most paranoid parts of her thinking.

There was one way to be sure if everything Lavius was telling her was true though and that was to go and check out Cunningham for herself. If she could get a hold of him and lay it on heavy, then she’d learn that either Lavius was lying about the whole thing, or Cunningham was her man. And if he was, then another bit of arm twisting would surely persuade him to contact Price and arrange a meeting. If she managed to get that far, she’d think about the best way to deal with Price at that point. Whatever happened, she wouldn’t involve Lavius in it. From now on, she was working alone.

 

After school, as she crossed the carpark to get to the bus-stop, Mrs Hunter bumped into her. Kelly nodded a greeting, but it looked like the old busybody had something on her mind.

‘Oh Miss Kane! Guess what? My Agnes saw you on a night out,’ she burbled. ‘On a Sunday night as well you rascal! She said you were with a young man no less.’

Mrs Hunter leaned in close, an old friend sharing a conspiratorial joke. She wasn’t much taller than Kelly.

‘Just a… friend,’ attempted Kelly, trying to pull free.

‘Oh, I don’t mean to pry!’ said Mrs Hunter as she pried. ‘But it wasn’t that young policeman was it? What was his name…? Laurence… Lambert? No, no, he had an unusual name didn’t he.’

Kelly knew that Mrs Hunter knew fine well what Corum’s name was and that she was fishing to see how quickly it tripped off of Kelly’s tongue.

‘I’m late for my bus,’ lied Kelly.

‘Of course, dear,’ said Hunter with a knowing smile. ‘I know I’m nosey, sorry dear. If you were stuck in a loveless marriage for twenty years you would be too…’

‘I’m sorry…’ began Kelly, at a total loss.

‘Never mind dear,’ sighed Mrs Hunter wistfully. ‘To be young again… Well off you go then, see you tomorrow Miss Kane!’

Kelly turned and headed off to the bus-stop as fast as her heals would carry her. This is too much, she thought as she lurked into the shadows of the bus shelter. Her phone made a notification sound and she checked her messages. It was Corum asking for a meet up. She put her phone back in her coat pocket and groaned. How much longer could this go on? It felt like each day she was being pushed closer and closer to a precipice.

***

By Tuesday night Kelly was climbing the walls. The news was still reporting the manhunt for Clarence Price, but other than a few obviously false sightings in places like Paris and Madrid there was nothing new.

After school and her dinner, she couldn’t face another restless night of inaction in her flat. She’d not slept a wink the night before. She’d even gotten her gear ready for a trip to Linlithgow, but in the end fear and paranoia had kept her indoors. She couldn’t face another night like that though, so after listening to the news for an hour, she went to her bedroom to get ready.

She would walk into town, then take the last commuter bus into Linlithgow. According to Google maps it was a three kilometre walk to the castle after that. There was no harm in it that she could think of, there was a footpath used by walkers that ran right past the castle. It would be late, but if she was dressed in a woolly hat and her camouflaged Parker jacket, she could pass herself off as someone out for an evening stroll or something.

It would just be a perimeter check, she told herself, just a scouting mission to take in the lay of the land. She’d already found out all she could about the place on the internet and was itching to take a closer look. Then, perhaps, she could think about what to do about Cunningham.

 

After alighting from the bus and with her new coat, hat and a light backpack, she set off into the late October gloom, following a well-kept path west towards the Castle. A signpost also told her that the Kelpies were in this direction, but she had no idea what they were. Her first port of call was a low hill that overlooked the castle, a good vantage point she had already identified from looking at Google maps. She took out her binoculars and surveyed the area. Scanning left from Almond Castle she was stunned to suddenly see two gigantic horses’ heads glowing blue on the dark horizon. She dropped the glasses and rubbed her eyes and looked again. It wasn’t a power station or anything like that, they were definitely horses.

She checked her phone, and learned that these were the Kelpies, a sculpture put up in 2014, by an artist called Andy Scott. How had she not known that? And her a teacher too.

She returned her attention the house, and sitting down to rest her elbows on her knees watched it for an hour or so through her binoculars. There was plenty to see, it was well lit up and positively bustling with activity.

There were guards, literally guards patrolling the grounds, like they were extras in an action movie, just waiting for James Bond to come and karate chop them from behind. They were wearing sunglasses in the dark and every so often speaking into earpieces or up their sleeves. Where these guys for real? Two reasons for whatever the heck was going on came to mind in quick succession, one was that these were some of Cunningham’s Nazi pals, basically cosplaying at being a security detail, or Cunningham was really spooked by everything that was going on with Price and had brought all these men in to keep himself safe.

She watched them come and go with a practiced eye. She knew a well-trained security guard when she saw one, and these goons were not that. They were not even competent enough to be called badly trained security guards. Her first thought had been correct – these were formless, weak chinned idiots. They were play acting, paying much more attention to how they looked in front of each other than they were on threat detection in the surrounding woods. A yappy dog would have done a better job of keeping the Castle secure.

One or two of them looked like tough ex-military guys, she identified them by their general sneering demeanour towards the others as they passed through the main doors on errands of their own. The bulk of them, though, looked like angry incels, wannabe tough guys that she knew she would go through like a fox in a henhouse if she had to.

Almond Castle was surrounded by forest on three sides, which made sneaking up to the main entrance easy. There were two guards, if you could call them that, at the door, but they had grown bored and were giggling over videos on a shared phone.

She lurked behind a tree and watched. Not much happened for a while, then another man came out and walked towards the stable block. She recognised him as Cunningham when one of the security lights illuminated him. He went into the building then exited five minutes later with another man. Cunningham went back to the main house while the other man drove a four door Austin Martin out of the block and up to the house. He then went back to where he had come from.

Cunningham appeared again and headed towards the car, now wearing a black leather jacket that was a size too small for his belly. As he walked to the car a well-dressed woman in her fifties followed after him.

‘Where are you going, you old bastard?’ she shouted at him.

He turned and shouted back at her.

The guards looked away in embarrassment and on a sudden impulse Kelly raced across the drive and hid behind the rear wheel of the car.

As the fight between Mr and Mrs Cunningham raged on, she opened the rear passenger door and crept in behind the driver’s seat. Two minutes later Reggie cursed at his wife one more time, jumped into the car and tore off down the drive and out onto the main road.

Five minutes into the drive he snarled ‘fucking bitch’ and thumped the steering wheel. After that he just muttered to himself for a few minutes, then put the radio on.

Kelly didn’t dare to look out the window or even switch on her phone to check where they were going, but she had the sensation that they were going back east. Street lighting lit up the backseat in flashes as the car sped on through the motorway junctions. After a long looping turn, she was pretty sure they had passed through Hermiston Gait and were onto the by-pass. This surely meant that Cunningham was heading for Gosford Hall. The rush hour traffic had gone, so it did not take long to drive east of Edinburgh, then up along the windswept coast towards Longniddry. Cunningham drove off the motorway, then onto the back roads, then finally onto a driveway. The car stopped, he sighed and went to get out of the car.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ he yelled as the door was blown back into his face by the fierce North Sea wind outside. He tried again and by the time he’d managed to get out, so had Kelly on the leeward side of the car.

Sir Horace was already at the door, an old grey dog at his side.

‘I told you not to come Reggie!’ shouted Sir Horace over the wind.

‘Jesus, just let me in out of this gale at least, Lavius,’ yelled Cunningham as he barged past Sir Horace and into the hall.

Once they were out of sight Kelly snuck in past them. The dog was still in the hall when she passed through, so she gave it a strip of bacon from her pocket and received a lick on the nose in return.

She could hear their voices in the library and snuck into her familiar position behind the table piled with books. The dog laid its head on her lap and looked up at her and she fondled its ears as she eavesdropped on the conversation. For a moment, she felt strangely calm. The wind outside raged, but in here it was warm and quiet. What a place this would have been to have been raised in, she wondered, and could she even begin to imagine what Corum’s childhood had been like? While she was living in a one bedroom flat with her grandmother, huddled round a one bar heater together in the winter and sometimes only eating one meal a day, here was the Lavius clan, in their stately home, waited on hand and foot, wanting for nothing. How the other half lived. She snapped herself out of her unhappy nostalgia and listened in to the conversation.

‘You can’t keep using me house for your nefarious deals,’ Sir Horace was saying with no real conviction.

‘Well, I can hardly do it at my house can I?’ replied Cunningham. ‘One of your fucking kids was around there the other day harassing me. Can you believe it? As far as I’m concerned until you call him off, I’m here to stay.’

‘This really is the limit.’

‘Fine, fine,’ said Reggie. ‘Just this one last meeting then. Once this is done, it’s all done and one way or the other I won’t be back again. Get me a drink will you old man, he’ll be here soon.’

‘Who?’ asked Sir Horace as he went over to the drinks’ cabinet. ‘It better not be a Nazi.’

‘Not a Nazi, don’t worry.’

‘Hmm, well,’ fussed Lavius. ‘Well, you can meet whoever it is in Red Room. You’ll not kick me out of my own library at least, not on a night like this.’

‘Fine, fine,’ repeated Reggie.

When his drink was handed to him, he took a swig and sighed. After a while he took a deep breath and said, ‘it’s nice to get a bit of peace. Bella is having a massive Halloween party and it doesn’t matter where I am in the house, I can hear her banging about and shouting at the staff. You can come if you want, by the way, she’s invited absolutely everyone so you’ll see some of the old faces.’

Sir Horace murmured something non-committal.

After that they sat in a sort of comfortable silence for ten minutes or so until another car did indeed roll up on the drive and pulled up beside the Aston.

‘The Red Room?’ asked Cunningham, then got up and went to meet his guest at the door.

Kelly stuck her head out of her hiding place a little and tried to see who it was. As the tall figure stepped out of the shadows, she saw a thin-lipped face with busy eyebrows and curly tonsured hair. She stifled a gasp as she realised it was Trajan, chief of the Vampires.

She’d taken her eyes off Sir Horace and had not noticed him approach the door and slam it shut, cutting off her view. He turned towards her hiding place.

‘What are you doing down there?’ he asked.

She froze and could think of nothing to say.

‘Come on Max, you daft dog,’ said Sir Horace with a resigned sigh. ‘Come on boy, we’ll just sit by the fire and let those bad men do whatever it is they are doing.’

The dog whined and left its place in the dark beside Kelly and followed its master to the back of the library. Kelly let out the breath she had been holding.

What was Trajan doing here? was her first thought once she had regained the capacity to think. Cunningham was apparently a lowlife, and it sure looked like he knew how to get hold of other lowlifes if he needed to. She dearly wanted to go and listen in on their conversation, find out what plot was being hatched in the Red Room, but Sir Horace had shut the door and she’d give herself away by leaving in that direction.

After a minute she was seriously considering it though, hoping that Lavius would put it down to the wind or ghosts or something, but her plans were cut short when Sir Horace sighed, stood up and went over to the phone on his desk.

‘Hello, it’s your dad again,’ he said once it was answered. ‘Guess who’s here.’

‘I know,’ he went on after the person at the other end had spoken at length. ‘Some sort of Nazi I expect. Bella probably didn’t let him in the house. This is the last time though, it’s the absolute limit.’

The other end spoke briefly.

‘If I had to guess, I’d say it was a Russian,’ replied Sir Horace. ‘Face like Bella Lagosi on a Toby Jug. What are you not telling me son? Right... Right... I suppose you’re right. What should I do?’

Sir Horace listened for a minute or so then hung up. He waited for Trajan to leave. Cunningham entered the library, said thank you and farewell, then left, leaving Sir Horace and Max alone with their thoughts.

It wasn’t long before the old man and his dog were asleep by the fire, and quietly closing the door behind her, Kelly left the Hall. As she walked through the wind and rain towards Longniddry to get a taxi, she turned everything she’d just witnessed over in her head. If Sir Horace wasn’t just a bumbling patsy in all of this then he certainly did a very good impression of one. If Cunningham was the sort of person that kept company with eastern European gangsters then he was definitely capable of having prostitutes and drug dealers murdered.

She couldn’t deny that Corum’s version of what was going was checking out and by the time she was sat in a warm taxi on her way back to Edinburgh in the dark rain-lashed night, she was convinced enough to call him up to arrange a meeting.

He started to suggest a pub in town, but she stopped him.

‘No more pubs, I can’t be bothered dressing up again. And someone saw us last time, you know? The daughter of some busybody at school saw us at the Grassmarket.’

‘Where then?’ he asked.

‘Not my place,’ said Kelly, realising that not wanting your suspicious business carried out at your own home was something that her and Cunningham had in common.

She checked the time.

‘It’s past ten now. Connor will be in bed. Meet me at Nile’s house.’

 

The taxi dropped her off two streets away from Craigs Park and she walked the rest of the way. She pulled her hoodie up and kept her head down as she went up to the door.

‘Corum not here yet?’ she asked when Niles opened the door.

‘Is he meant to be?’ he replied as he ushered her into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

Five minutes later there was a loud knock at the front door. Kelly sat up straight – no one but the cops knocked like that. Anyone else would have used the doorbell.

The knocking went on, getting louder, as Niles got up. Kelly was already heading for the back door. In two heartbeats she was out and into the close. She could see blue flashing lights at either end so she jumped into the opposite garden and hid in a bush.

She’d been spotted though, and she heard voices and footsteps coming up the close. Torches were shone into the garden where she was hiding and two uniformed officers rushed through the gate towards her. She bolted and went straight for the wall of the house and was up onto the roof in a few bounds, the police down below shouting up at her impotently.

Down the other side and onto the more open Buglin Park Road. There were no cops here, but she could hear them, multiple cars screeching around from the other street. Where to now? She’d not had to escape from Nile’s house since she had been a teenager and she’d usually either gone to the big Co-op nearby or the school. The amount of cops that she suspected were behind her would have no problem flushing her out of a supermarket, but a dark closed up school might puzzle them for a while.

She could hear sirens everywhere, but so far she was giving them the slip. She pelted through an underpass and past a couple of office buildings and into the school carpark. The sirens were more distant, but to her dismay she could hear the sound of a helicopter and saw searchlights hunting along the streets she had just run down. There was an old grate behind the janitor’s shed that she used to break into the school through and she headed for that. Again, her luck failed her, as to her horror, as she rounded the corner to the playing fields, she saw that everything had changed. Not only was the grate not there, but the shed had gone too. Everything was different. She turned, looking desperately for another escape route, just as the helicopter’s search light found her. The grass around her was suddenly brightly lit up. She could hear the cars racing around from the carpark, shouts and footsteps. She spent her last few seconds of freedom looking desperately for a stone or brick to break a window with. If she could just get inside, then maybe, just maybe she would be able to find a hiding spot.

Spotting a stone, she stooped to pick it up and three uniformed police officers slammed into the back of her.

‘Gavin Newgate!’ yelled one of them in her ear as he wrestled her arms behind her back. ‘You are under arrest, ya wee bawbag. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence…’

‘All right, all right!’ Kelly yelled back. ‘I ain’t resisting.’

Kelly was fuming as the handcuffs went on. After everything, Lavius had sold her out after all.