Shrike (Book 2): Rampant (3 page)

"The murder?"

"The murders," I say, emphasising the plural.

He sits and rustles in the bag, obviously unsurprised. "I take it you looked over the file."

"Aye, but that's not why I'm here."

"And?" McLean motions to his door. "They might think you bring me food because you fancy me, but I'm not that thick skulled."

I eye him askance. "Taog said four of the recent murders were Gu Bràth members. Inactive, but all of them save one were peripherally involved. The other I suppose had a more active role."

Some people would immediately question, but not McLean. He sits in silence for a long moment, eyes assessing my face. 

"Granger's taking out Gu Bràth members," he says finally.

"I don't think it's that simple. If she were going after Taog, sure. But no one's come near him."

"How do you know? Are you with him all the time?"

I flush. I'm not with him constantly; I can't be. "Gu Bràth allotted him a security detail. I have to trust them." I don't trust them, not really. But so far I can only be in one place at once. "Regardless, Trevor, she's not going after the top Gu Bràth people. She's hitting students and who else?"

"Librarians," McLean says wryly. "One constable in Stirling, just out of training. A teacher and a librarian in Glasgow."

"Not exactly political activists."

"Perhaps."

"Well, do you have a theory?" Annoyed, I stand up and pace without waiting for him to answer. "I don't like this." 

"Nor do I, Gwen. But I'll look into it if you'd like me to."

"Aye, I'd like you to." I shift gears. "Did you get the wallets?"

He nods. "They'll make it back to their owners."

"Cheers."

"That's the job." He takes a sip of his tea and gives me a small smile. "You're going to want the other files, aren't you?"

"Can you even get them?" Glasgow and Stirling aren't his jurisdiction.

The smile fades immediately. "I can try."

I think of poor Seth Jones, dead with one stab to the chest. And I remember before, the empty, piss-stained chair in a room that smelled all too much of bleach. Where she tortured Glyn Burns with the forced help of her son. When I meet Trevor McLean's eyes, I know he's only guessing at what I'm thinking. He only caught a glimpse of the end result. My tears left spatters on Burns's body. 

And now it's starting again. Either Granger's being erratic or she knows exactly what she's doing. I'd bet my cushy corner office that it's the latter.

three

I remember when I used to dream of spending my Thursday nights out at a club with enough louwi to buy whatever I fancy. Och, I know, it was long ago, back at uni, before I realised my degree and the credit cards I had to live on meant I'd be spending the rest of my wee life in debt, but there was a time. Now instead I dream of sleep, but fear the real dreams that will come when I do. At least my new job pays me more.

My patrol of Edinburgh is half-hearted tonight. Part of me knows that I've been able to stop bad things from happening, that the violent crime rate in my city has decreased dramatically since I stopped that bomb from going off. Shrike has become a name with which to scare criminals these days, or maybe that's just delinquent juveniles. "Dinnae pinch that iPod; Shrike'll get ye."

Maybe if Apple paid me, I'd pose for a poster.

As it is, the streets are quiet. Too quiet. I make my way up to the docks, but all there is awaiting me is the ripple of the waves in the firth and a few rowdy lads on their way home from a pub, too blootered to realise I'm perched above their heads. 

I want to climb higher, but there's nowhere for me to go right now. The desire is a stranger to me, one that's been edging closer and closer over the intervening months since the referendum. My body yearns for distance from the ground. I think of Hamish and his wee wings. One thing I didn't get. Believe me, I have Magda check my shoulder blades for feathers at least once a week.

By the time I get home, the morning commute is beginning again. I should sleep, even for an hour. 

Instead, I climb into Taog's window again. This time he's home, but sitting up in bed with his laptop. He watches me clamber over the sill, closing his computer and sliding it onto the top of his nightstand.

"Oi, you're out late."

"And you're up late." I untie my mask and kick off my boots, stuffing the mask into the left one. 

Aye, I'll put it back on my face later after it's been in my shoe. What of it?

I crawl onto Taog's bed and sit next to him, our shoulders touching.

The feeling of his arm against mine is a comfort. Both of us sit for a while like that, like a pair of hurt children. 

You might wonder that we don't kiss or shag or tango or something. Funny thing about traumatic experiences. They bring you close in some ways, drive you apart in others. You never know which is which till you're through the other side. Magda channeled her post-trauma into creating her own fashion line. About Angus, I neither ken nor care. Taog and I, well. Much as I want to kiss him — and much as I think he wants to kiss me — we never do. Yet I'll crawl into his bed at five in the morning in my superhero getup, and we'll sit like this. 

I worry about the both of us.

"All right, then?" I look at him, which is a strain on my neck because he's directly beside me.

"The usual."

"Did you know them?"

He doesn't have to ask who I'm talking about, only gives a hesitant nod. "I knew Seth. He was a good lad, excited about the future. Had a lot of prospects and a brilliant mind for putting things together. He was studying to be a geneticist, did y'ken?"

I shook my head. "I read that he was studying biology, but that was it."

"He looked at the human genome as a puzzle. He'd have loved to get his hands on your DNA."

I know Seth is dead and was an ostensibly good person, but Taog's statement reminds me all too much of Edmund Frost and his research. I shiver before I can help myself. 

Taog turns to look at me. "Sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

"I know." I give him a small smile and lean into his shoulder. This time he reaches out an arm and places it around me. 

I scoot down on the bed until I'm leaning with my head on his chest. I look up at him. His face is etched with worry lines, his eyes even redder than they were this evening. I can't imagine he's slept at all. Neither have I. 

"Are you going to Seth's funeral?"

He nods, his gaze centred on a point somewhere past his feet.

"Would you like me to go with you?"

He pauses for a moment, then nods. "I'd appreciate that."

"Then I'll go. When is it?" 

"Saturday at two o'clock."

We don't speak again for a while, but Taog's breathing slows and grows deeper, more regular under my ear. It lulls me, and the weight of my exhaustion finally pulls me under into sleep.

I wake to Taog thrashing under me. He lets out a muffled yell at the same moment his alarm goes off. I sit up, disentangling myself from his arm and reach out to touch his face. 

"Taog," I say. "It's all right, love." 

I don't know why I use that word, and I'm not sure he hears me. I pat his face lightly with my hand, and he opens his eyes. There's a tear at the corner of his left one, and his pupils dilate. I watch him focus in on my face, but nothing in his body relaxes. He swallows.

For once, I haven't dreamed. But he has. I can see it in his every movement. 

We have to find a way to get past this. 

We watch each other until I can't bear to look at him anymore. My heart feels like it's been dipped in lead over and over, sinking farther into my chest with every pass. 

"I'll make some tea."

There's no email from Ross when I arrive at work the next day, and by the time I leave there's still radio silence. I lock up my office an hour early to make sure I have enough time to get ready for Magda's show. 

I've chosen to wear a dress, and I didn't even let Magda pick it out. I arrive at the gallery fifteen minutes early, looking about as posh as the orphaned daughter of a pair of crofters can manage. The dress is knee-length and flouncy, which is a word I'll skelp anyone else square in the face for applying to me. It's got a jade green satin underskirt with a beaded mesh overlay, and it swishes and whispers when I walk. 

I now refuse to wear heels. The number of times in my life I've had to run has increased exponentially in the last year, and it has convinced me that anyone to regularly wear the tortuous contraptions has a death wish.

The gallery is a single square room on the top floor of a building, the bottom floor of which is a coffee shop and internet cafe. It's set up almost like a traditional art show, except that in place of paintings on the walls, Magda's dresses hang. The paintings themselves have been suspended from the ceiling. I wander for a bit before Magda catches my arm.

"Gwen, you came." She whispers into my ear. "I am so nervous. What if they all hate them?"

Her dresses are spectacular to me. But then again, I could barely sew myself into a burlap sack. I can hem trousers and make a wee black mask for myself, but I could never make the kind of wearable art Magda does. "They're lovely," I tell her. I point to one at random, an asymmetrical blue number with a ruched bodice and beading on the single strap. "Duchess Kate ought to be wearing that."

I'm proud of myself for remembering enough about the duchess to recall that she got a sapphire engagement ring.

I've apparently said the right thing, because Magda beams at me and hugs me again, kissing both my cheeks. 

"I have to mingle," she says. "Go eat something."

She steers me toward a buffet table of finger foods, and I carefully choose a few hors d'oeuvres, piling them onto a plate. I'm not sure it'd be appealing if I ate everything on the table. 

Someone bumps into me as I'm taking a bite of a canapé. 

"Excuse me," I say automatically.

"No, excuse me." 

I turn to see a man wiping spilled champagne from the back of his hand where it seems to have sloshed over the glass when he bumped me. I nod and am about to walk away, but he motions at me to stop.

"I'm John Abbey," he says. "I apologise; I wasn't watching where I was going."

I look over the man, putting my hand out instinctively. "Gwen Maule," I say. 

He's a couple inches taller than me, putting him just under six feet. He has silvering hair and green eyes and a face like a politician. He shakes my hand like one too, like he's been trained in the proper way to do it. 

"What brings you to the gallery?" I ask him.

"A friend of mine suggested I come. I have some interests in fashion, and she said Magda has talent."

Has talent. Such an odd phrase. He says it like he might say one has money or has a yacht, as if talent is an oddly transferable commodity. Perhaps it is. By his accent, I'd put him from Northern England, though trying to mask it to sound like a Londoner.

"She does great work." I follow his gaze to the blue dress. "That one's my favourite."

"Mine as well. It would be a splendid addition to a couture winter line."

I nod politely, utterly bored by the conversation. I know nothing about fashion and care about as much as I would about discussing his bowel movements. Wanting to dismiss myself, I hold up my now-empty plastic plate. 

"Allow me," he says, taking the plate from me and walking to throw it away in the bin across the room. He doesn't recycle it.

Unfortunately, the room's so wee there's nowhere for me to go but out, and I can't leave yet. He returns after a slap on the back from another patron, laughing off the other man with a smooth grin. Boring though he seems in conversation, there's something charismatic about the way he moves. He makes eye contact with the few people near him, and I can see the way they shift, the way their faces open up. He owns this room.

He returns to me, a smile still flitting about his face. "So what do you do, Gwen Maule?"

"I run the accountancy department at a local company," I say.

"Finance! Capital." 

"Pun intended?" I can't help but smirk, and he catches my grin, his own smile widening.

"Unintended, but serendipitous enough that I'd like to pretend I can take credit for it."

"You can have the credit," I tell him, flourishing my hand in as magnanimous a gesture as I can manage. "And you, John Abbey? What do you do?"

"I'm the CEO of a textiles company. We specialise in quality fabrics for couture design and provide some of the best lines in Paris, New York, and London."

"Not Edinburgh?"

"Unfortunately not." The amusement in his voice makes me think he considers Edinburgh too parochial a venue for high fashion. "Not yet, anyway." His eyes linger on the blue dress.

I can't think of anything else to say to him, so I refill a replacement plate with canapés and eat in silence. Small talk bores me, and I feel acutely aware of the sense that my position doesn't make me the economic equal of this man — also that he knows it just as well as I do.