Paperboy E-Book

Callum McSorley

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 455

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The dark, rawly comic follow-up to the winner of the McIlvanney Prize for best Scottish crime book of the year. 'A serious talent' Kevin Bridges 'Inventive and witty, with a nerve-shredding finale' Chris Brookmyre 'An outstanding new writer who is destined to become a very big name' Peter James DCI Alison McCoist is back: newly promoted and even less popular. Chuck Gardner is the proud owner of both a confidential paper-shredding business and a serious betting habit. When Chuck finds some scandalous paperwork and McCoist investigates a rat-nibbled corpse under a flyover, they are both sucked into a deadly stramash of gangland wars and police corruption. Can Chuck solve his gambling and gangster problems before some head-banger feeds him into his own shredder? And can McCoist claw herself out of this latest shitemire without her own shady dealings coming to light? It might depend on how far she's prepared to go...

Leseprobe

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PRAISE FOR

Winner of the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year

The Times Crime Book of the Month

‘An astonishingly good debut. Wonderfully rounded characters, misfits all, who we really care about, in a compelling story laced with humour and humanity. Callum McSorley is an outstanding new writer who is destined to become a very big name in the genre’

Peter James

‘A manic tale of blood and suds told with laconic humour and warmly engaging characterisation. McSorley is definitely a talent to watch. I knew within a page that I was in good hands’

Chris Brookmyre

‘An absolute knockout of a debut! Pitch-dark and yet dripping with warmth. Packed with brilliantly drawn characters, laugh-out-loud humour, and lots of blood’

Caz Frear, author of Sweet Little Lies

‘Formidable… The mayhem in Squeaky Clean is tempered by the mean-eyed humor of its underdog protagonist, and by the rapid-fire dialogue delivered through the burr of Scots dialect… With its wit, terror, guts and gumption, Mr. McSorley’s first novel is a smash’

Wall Street Journal2

‘Shattered from staying up until the daft hours finishing this. Loved it… A serious talent’

Kevin Bridges, author of The Black Dog

‘An uproarious, sardonic noir thriller from the Glasgow depths… Brutal, wonderfully humorous and a great addition to Tartan Noir, this novel unveils a terrific new talent’

Crime Time

‘McSorley writes with a wonderfully light touch… There is humour on every page, too – this really is a very funny book despite the dark material. Both main characters are works of genius, and I very much hope there will be a sequel’

Scotsman

‘A fast-paced thriller with a dark sense of humour, a grisly crime caper in the vein of Breaking Bad and Guilt’

Sunday Mail

‘An absolute blast… reads like a brilliant mash-up of Irvine Welsh and Alan Parks… I can’t recommend this one highly enough’

Raven Crime Reads

‘Gritty, bloody and oozing with the menace of the underworld… McSorley has crafted an accomplished novel that is already being hailed as a classic of the Tartan Noir genre… The sort of page-turner which ensures that once you’ve started, you’ll keep going until the final, gripping denouement’

Scottish Field

‘As gritty as a winter pavement and as dangerous as the ice before the grit goes down. I love its two brave but burnt-out heroes, and McSorley’s mixture of wit, tenderness and brutality’

Sofia Slater, author of Auld Acquaintance

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To my Mumber one fan

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Contents

Title PageDedicationPrologue123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172EpilogueAcknowledgementsAlso Available from Pushkin VertigoCopyright

7

Prologue

8

9

The king is dead.

Paul McGuinn, Paulo to his friends and enemies, his slave girls and lieutenants and errand boys. Fraudster, drug runner, people smuggler, murderer. His wife stood at the head of the stone in an expensive black dress, holding her daughters’ hands. The crowd around them was thick with black suits and Rangers scarves.

Two polis in high-vis hovered near the cemetery gate, tense, as welcome as a fart in a sleeping bag. A woman in office drabs turned her nose up at the hearse parked at the kerb, appraising the floral tributes in the back which spelt out PAUL on one side and DAD on the other. “Tasteful,” she said, as she passed the uniforms into the stone-lined path. One of them recognised her and murmured “Ma’am” with a slight bow of the head.

McCoist was attending because it was her duty—she was the DCI investigating the gangster’s murder, and she was the one who’d put the cunt in the ground.

She could still feel the moment, the screaming rush, then the shocking silence following the thunderclap of the gunshot. Dead ears—a dentist-drill whine and a waterfall of white noise. Squeeze of the trigger, flash of the explosion, so fast it seemed to precede the movement, like it wasn’t even her who did it. Inevitable. A slap in the face with warm blood spray. A black 10hole in the head, punching through hair gel, skin, bone and brain. In and out the other side. The Clyde Tunnel.

Case closed.

Not that McCoist could let anyone know it was that simple.

She watched from a distance as the Rolls-Royce of a coffin was lowered into the earth. The reverend was saying something but she couldn’t hear him. What do you say when you believe the deceased is going straight to hell? Buryhimdeep,boays, save him the taxi fare.

The wife threw something into the hole. Folded paper. A letter, maybe. The daughters, both of them taller than their mother in bigger heels, did the same. Surrounding them, a who’s who of Glesga’s criminal underworld bowed their heads and clasped their hands like schoolchildren. The impression wasn’t of praying though. It looked more like they were waiting for something. A sign.

Long live the king.

She had only been able to think of two words to write to her husband:

Fuck You

And she’d written them over and over and over again until the page was full. Lottie was never much of a writer. Not her chosen method of expressing herself.

The letters had been Gemma’s idea, and she was so sincere when she came out with it that Lottie had to go along with her. Her elder daughter, Ari, had agreed it was a “wonderful” thought, but her eyes betrayed something, maybe envy, like she wished she’d come up with it. The floral letter tributes had 11been her suggestion—her little sister’s paper letters were both more heartfelt and cheaper. Paulo would have appreciated that. Rich men are cheap. Never spend when you can steal. Lottie had a fleet of Mulberry handbags in her wardrobe she’d always known better than to ask the provenance of. A lot of lorries turning carelessly.

Ari stepped forward and dropped hers in—God knew what she’d written—then returned to squeeze between her mother and sister, taking one of their hands in each of hers. Gemma had read her letter out to them in the morning, tears in her eyes. Beautiful in that moment, though if Lottie was honest her youngest had too many of her father’s genes to ever be considered so in the conventional way. Ari, however, was her mother’s spit. An unsettling double.

The reverend was droning and the dirt was sprinkled in—a handful at a time at first, later to be finished by the excavator, reversing its earlier work.

The men didn’t know what to say. Not yet. They’d find the words later on, down at the pub after a good scoop. Pints and whiskies, drinking the money she put behind the bar although she didn’t plan on attending. Hoovering up something stronger off the toilet cisterns. Paulo wouldn’t have minded. It’s not disrespectful, it’s what he would have wanted. A night out in his honour. Maybe even a club later. Or the casino. Girls. Violence.

She wondered if talk would turn to revenge. There was no way any of them believed her eejit nephew Colin had killed him as the polis claimed—put a bullet through his uncle’s head after being caught making deals behind his back in a brass-bawed attempt at taking over the firm. No, the only coup young Colin could ever 12conceive of ate grass and said “Moo”. Though maybe it would be easier for them if they pretended to believe it. Less trouble. She could understand that. She’d had to ask her own sister not to come to the funeral. Appearances needed to be kept up.

For now.

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Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You

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The best part of a year later…

15

1

“TRNSMT?! I wonder what else gets transmitted there that isn’t just music.”

“Gads, Alison. She’s only—”

“She’s a teenager. You’ll have to accept that soon.”

“She’s our daughter. We can trust her to be sensible.”

“I can’t trust her to do her own washing or bring the mugs down from her room. Who are you talking about?”

“She’s not silly, when it comes to the big things—”

“Like her exams?”

“Here we go…” McCoist was on the phone to her ex, arguing about the twins again. Not the twins, really, just Tess. Her Nat 5 results had been unexpected. Unexpectedly shite. A good slip down from the prelim results. A sign of trouble, they both knew, but what to do about it they couldn’t agree on. And now she was whingeing about going to TRNSMT Festival with her pals next week and the tickets cost a lung and a pair of kidneys, so McCoist wanted to say no, but Mark questioned if that would seem like they were punishing her and could risk further alienating… and so on and on. Soft touch.

“And you know what else there is at music festivals to go with the sex and rock ’n’ roll?”

“Don’t say it.”

“Drugs.”

“Stop.”16

“Mountains of the stuff. There are more dodgy pills floating round a music festival than fucking bucket hats. Plus the dodgy geezers who sell them.”

“Hats or drugs?”

“Shut up.”

“Could you switch off your polis-brain for a minute?”

“That’s not polis-brain, it’s parent-brain, you should get one.”

“Nice. Very clever. Very grown up.”

The sight of the corpse stopped McCoist from saying something she might have regretted. “I have to go,” she said instead, hanging up although she could still hear Mark speaking. He was used to it. One of the reasons for the divorce, probably.

The body was on its back, lying in a gulch between the wall of a motorway slip road and the overgrown embankment beside it. A strip of torn fencing separated the two. Beyond a flapping hole in the fence, a path had been trod up the embankment over time.

She almost whistled. “Rats?”

The photographer nodded. The thing that had once been a person had no eyes or face left. The cheeks were hollow in the literal sense, not the sickly avant-garde film-star sense. The sinews had been chewed through, clean to the bone in some places. Stripped of everything else, the former face’s main feature was its lipless teeth. Large, yellow and animal-like in black, receding gums. Quite the smile. Wriggling things were living in it.

“I heard on this podcast—”

“Every time you start a sentence with that it costs me a thousand brain cells,” McCoist said.

The DC tagging along as her gofer, Gaz Travis, grinned, undeterred by the practised weariness in his boss’s voice. “I 17heard on this podcast, right, that there’s so much coke floating about down there in the sewers in Glasgow—in people’s pish and getting flushed down or poured out and that—that the rats are more geared up than Maradona. Makes them super aggressive.”

The photographer was staring at DC Travis now, eyes narrowed. “Rats on gak…” he murmured, cogs visibly turning in his brain.

“And polis on acid, apparently,” McCoist snapped. “Can I speak to someone sensible about this?” She motioned to the decaying, feasted-upon body. It was in a suit, as if ready for the funeral. Long overdue for it, actually. The suit too—past its fashion sell-by at some point in the eighties.

It reeked and she had to try hard not to pinch her nose. More than just disrespectful, it was amateur, and McCoist would not allow herself to be seen that way. There were enough rumours around her promotion to DCI already. Plenty of sniping and whispered accusations of affirmative action. A leaked WhatsApp chat had recently embarrassed Police Scotland and led to a good number of polis—bicycle bobby and senior detective alike—getting the boot or made to take early retirement, including her former boss, DCI Robson. She wasn’t surprised that fat, baldy shitehawk had been involved—his contributions to the group chat had been racist, sexist and poorly spelt—and she wasn’t sad to see him go, but the truth of her ascension was more complicated than convenient optics. The cost to her had been great too.

A SOCO detached herself from a group of paper-suited colleagues scouring the surrounds—the graffitied concrete temple under the slip road littered with broken bottles, empty baggies, 18cigarette butts, needles, crisp packets, clues—and pulled her mask down to speak, a glove off to shake. “Amy Caruso.”

“DCI Alison McCoist.” She held out her warrant card.

“I’ve heard of you…” Caruso’s eyes went scary wide, a smile pulling her face apart.

McCoist gave the woman a look that said the next words out her mouth better not include a reference to a particular ex-Rangers striker.

“…You worked the Car Wash Case!”

Caruso was impressed, as if this other McCoist in front of her was also a legend.

“What little work there was to do. The lad was found at the scene of the crime.”

Three dead bodies, including his uncle Paulo McGuinn, in bits on the floor of a grotty wee car wash in the east end. Poor, thick Colin, just in the right place and time to take the fall. McCoist had railroaded the boy straight to Barlinnie. Her guts knotted at the thought. She’d been bouncing between Imodium and lactulose ever since it happened. Fear, guilt and anxiety were hellish on the bowels. The Car Wash Case. Car Wash Catastrophe, more like. McCoist had really cunted it this time, worse than all her previous mistakes combined, and there were a lot of those.

“I know, but scary people to deal with, eh?” Caruso’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial stage whisper.

“None as scary as DCI McCoist,” Travis chipped in with a grin, fully expecting the withering look McCoist slapped him with. It had no effect; nothing did with him, he was fully assured his puppyish charm would let him get away with it. After all, the gaffer was a dog person.19

“Speaking of scary, your man here with his Hallowe’en mask on too early.” McCoist shifted the subject. “What can you tell us?”

You could almost hear the switch as Caruso went from star-struck to professional. “He’s been here about twenty-four hours. Strangled, from what I can see insitu. Reckon he was dumped off the side of the ramp. Bit of blood pooling behind the head there. Impact.”

“Not dragged through the hole in the fence?”

“Not likely—no obvious evidence of that but we’ll take a closer look. The PM will confirm if he was dropped down but we’re searching the road above anyway.”

“Good.” A couple of uniforms and a van were waiting to bag him up once the photographer was finished with him. “Is that a footprint?” McCoist pointed to a small patch of criss-crossing lines stamped in what was probably blood near the corpse’s head, flagged by the SOCOs.

“Partial—sure we can work out the size and brand from it.”

“Why drop him over, then come down?”

“Forgotten something maybe? Wallet, phone, birth certificate? Or it might not be the killer’s. I’ll let you work that out.”

“Fair enough. Anything interesting around here?”

“Not unless you’re keen on outsider art.” Caruso jabbed a thumb at Travis, who was taking in the graffitied pillars as if he were in a gallery. “This is a dumpsite. He was killed somewhere else.”

“All yours.” The photographer stepped away from his subject and the two uniforms sucked foetid air in through their teeth before approaching with the black bag, neither one of them thrilled to be het for this task. “Rigor’s still in effect, and he’s nice and flat for you, shouldn’t be too bad.”20

“That right, aye? Ye offerin a hawn then?” one of the constables said.

“Sorry, pal, bad back.” The photographer smiled.

They took up a position at each end. “Wan, two, three—” They lifted. “—Fuck!” Congealed blood, stained fluids and rotted brain matter slopped out a hole in the back of the corpse’s head and splattered onto the constable’s shoes.

Caruso nodded in approval. “Definitely dropped.”

21

2

Everybody called him Chuck though his name wasn’t Charles. He had curly ginger hair and wore corrective NHS specs throughout his school years, and his pals were wee pricks. Despite him now having a shaved, balding dome and favouring contacts, the nickname had stuck. He didn’t hate it any more though. He was nearly thirty now. He was at peace with it. It was a fact of life. It was his name. Secretly, he liked it better than “Stuart” and its attendant nicknames: Stu, Stewie, Stu Pot, Stupac Shakur. When anyone asked his name he said, “Evrybdy caws me Chuck.”

“Because that’s your name?” replied the old boy with a quizzical eyebrow tick.

“Because ae Rugrats. Ye mind that? Chuckie wae the glesses, ginger hair?”

The man shook his grey head and let Chuck into the house—not a place where children had ever lived judging by the furniture and decoration and complete lack of photographs, so it’s no wonder he’d never heard of the kids’ cartoon. They went through the kitchen—Chuck had been asked to come to the back door—and into the hall. “The stairs shouldn’t be a problem for a strapping lad like you,” the man said, creaking his way up the staircase, a brown, threadbare carpet runner covering chipped, white-glossed steps.

“Depends how many trips it takes.” Five years of hauling towers of confidential waste papers and the shredded hay bales 22his machines turned them into had taken its toll on Chuck’s knees and back.

“Just a few boxes for you. Having a clear-out.” They entered a bedroom which smelt of Eau de Auld Geezer and astringent bar soap. The room was spartan: a wicker chair coming to bits in one corner; a night table at the side of the yellowing bed with a few well-read paperbacks and the Bible; net curtains which gave the place a sepia filter, as if glimpsed through a brown medicine bottle.

A fitted wardrobe the length of one side of the room was open. The clothes hanging on the rail were divided in the middle into black vestments and civvies. The large, cardboard boxes were on the floor of the wardrobe. There were five, each one marked with a decade, sixties to noughties. “Just these, cheers,” the minister said. “Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?”

“Nae thanks, pal, this willnae take lang.”

The first box was heavier than expected. Bad things twitched in the small of his back as he huffed it up to his chest. The stairs were precarious. He couldn’t see over the box, had to come down sideways to watch his steps, caught his knuckles against the wall—bastart!—as he turned at the bottom to head back out through the kitchen.

His van was parked at the garden gate, the decal on the side reading:

SIMPLY SHRED

secure document destruction mobile on-site shredding

He opened the side door and fired up the machine inside. The rolling blades at the bottom of the hopper churned together 23with relentless force, a gnawing, savage hunger. Chuck often thought of himself as a zookeeper, and it was feeding time. He hefted the box up and tipped it in.

Fifty pounds of glossy pornography tumbled into the hopper. Naked women being stuffed from all angles were chewed and swallowed by the shredder, its appetite as apparently insatiable as their own. Among the churning, ripping flesh were disembodied organs: shining nipples, a probing tongue, a cock as big as a baguette with rippling veins, dripping at the tip.

Chuck looked again at the writing on the box: ’60s. Vintage. Lifting his jaw back into place, he went back upstairs. Seventies next. He almost wanted to lift the flap a little, take a keek at what a fifty-year-old scud book was like, but resisted. Confidentiality was the name of the game after all. Discretion. Legally binding discretion. And would he really want to touch any of these stiff, old jazz mags which had been kept by the minister for half a century? Shouldproblygeethemachineagoodrinseooteftir, he thought.

A few more jaunts up and down the stairs and he’d caught up to the contemporary filth. Job done.

Almost.

“These too, son.” The minster held two laptops. One old, based on how thick it was, one a bit newer.

Chuck felt something cold trickle in his stomach, his world shift a little off kilter. He had a special hard-drive shredder in the van, it was part of his services, but it was usually only businesses that asked for it. One-off Joe Public punters like this were rarely in need of it. It was the smart thing to do, considering all the things Chuck had learnt about identity theft 24since getting into the shredding game, but most people just left their old laptops in a cupboard to gather dust. Chuck had a healthy prejudice against the holy professions to start with. Throw in the dirty-book archive and the question of shredding the computers, along with whatever was on them, raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

He almost asked why. But he didn’t. Because not asking was part of his job, and reliability was everything. He knew another guy in the game once—Harvey MacNeil, a small business solo operator like himself—who let slip a few quiet words about a customer he thought might be a nonce. And this boy, this wrong yin, found himself strung up by a vigilante mob, who battered his maw’s door down and dragged him into the street in the middle of the night, kicked every Dulux sample of shite out him and put him in a coma before the polis could show up. Justice done, maybe, but Harvey was out of business by the end of the year. Nobody could trust him any more. He ran a leaky ship and everybody knew it now, even if they felt he’d done the right thing.

Chuck was running enough risks as it was through his deal with Mr Jamieson, so he took the laptops without comment.

“Cheers, son.”

He held his phone under the wheel and flicked to refresh over and over, quick look up as he joined the expressway back towards town, then a glance back down. Moan tae fuck, moantaefuck. Three minutes of stoppage time coming to an end.Fucksake.Fuckinbastarts. He prayed for a miracle. Please. Final whistle.

“Fuck!”25

He slammed the wheel, causing the horn to blare and the driver in front to swerve slightly. Showeraeuselesspricks!Fucking nil–nil. Hundred quid down the Tommy Crapper. He threw his phone into the stack of paperwork on the passenger seat, causing an avalanche on Mt Admin. Heart pounding, he crushed his teeth together and made growling animal noises, dredged up from his queasy stomach. Punched the horn again. The driver in front flashed their hazards and pulled onto the hard shoulder. A wee face in Chuck’s passenger-side wing mirror screamed, “Wit the fuck?!”

Chuck signalled left and the wee face shat itself, thinking he was stopping to have a word. Instead, he pulled back off the expressway at the upcoming exit, headed to the petrol station at the nearby retail park.

He filled up and stomped inside to pay. It wasn’t much because the tank was three-quarters full. He also bought a ten-quid scratch card. He had a green penny which lived in the dookit of the dashboard which had once proved itself lucky.

Not today.

The scratch card was tossed on the pile of paperwork. The silver rubbings lay dead in his lap. The coin went back to its home. He took slow breaths, feeling calmer. What was ten quid anyway? Coupleaepints.Didnaeneedthoseanyway,badfirye. There were other bets ready to pay out anyway. Ones that would eclipse the ton he just dropped. (Plus the ten spot.) And if all else failed, there was the Great Accumulator. A pension pot. A take-the-wife-and-fuck-off-to-Cancún pot. He had thefeelingabout this one, bubbling away in the background.

A horn peeped from behind. “Awright, awright.” He raised his hand, saluting with every finger rather than just two. Back 26in control. He’d need it to get through his last appointment of the day.

“Ye winnin, Chuck?” Not a greeting, and not meant as a joke. Jamieson was flatly serious. Always was. He was the only man Chuck had ever met who didn’t consider himself to be funny. Easily mistaken for a lack of ego, but it certainly wasn’t that. No, it was something else that was missing, something more vital.

“No yet, Mr Jamieson, but there’s always hope.” Chuck licked dry lips, forced a smile which was not returned. Jamieson’s face was a slowly rotting tumshie lantern carved with a blunt knife.

Jamieson’s secretary, a Michelangelo’s Davidwith the added bulk of a stab-proof vest under his suit, pushed Chuck down into a seat across a busy desk from the boss man, who gave a hint of a sigh. “Useful as ye can be, Chuck, av come tae hate seein ye here.”

Chuck didn’t know what to say to that, so he adjusted and readjusted himself in the chair, making the leather squeak like a sneaky fart, comfort impossible. Marble loomed over his shoulder, apparently with no seat or desk of his own to do his admin on.

“Ye goat somethin fir me?”

“Aye, slipped some bits an pieces fae that new rehab place oot Bearsden way—thoat ye might find somethin interestin, a hear they’ve goat politicians’ weans an fitbaw players’ wives an aw sorts bein banged up there.” Chuck held out the paperwork to Jamieson but it was intercepted by Marble, who then passed it on. Checking for paper-cut potential, maybe.27

Jamieson leafed through, nothing to read on his face. As ever. Chuck had only managed to scrounge some random papers while the bloke who was supposed to be supervising the shredding fiddled around with his fags and lighter, so likely it was all useless shite, nothing to further Jamieson’s cause of acquiring information about everyone and everything which made Glesga turn. “Security & Investigations” was printed on Jamieson’s business cards. Rumour said before he became the business-card-carrying type he was in import and export: drugs, guns, women, anything to turn a profit. Now he dealt purely in information. His taxes were on the legal side of creative. He had an office with a listed address in the Merchant City where Chuck sat sweating.

He found himself speaking without meaning to. “There wis also this auld boay…” Desperate to break the silence, to give Jamieson something of worth. Because that was Chuck’s end of the bargain. Jamieson’s end—well, that hundred quid Chuck had lost on the fitbaw was just a scrap, arse-wiping money really, to what he owed to the various jackals Jamieson kept in line for him.

Jamieson was Chuck’s customer when they met—investigations created heaps of confidential material that needed to be disposed of properly—then he saw the opportunity to do Chuck a wee favour. A favour to be returned. Not a favour. A deal. One that could not be reneged upon unless Chuck won big soon or decided he didn’t really need thumbs any more.

So despite Harvey MacNeil crying a warning in his head, Chuck told them about the minister, the boxes of smut and the laptops.

“So?” Jamieson said.28

“Wit if he’s a paedo? Wit if the Church know awready? Could be somethin.” Chuck was warming up to it now that he’d started. Fuck the old man. Pervybastart. He deserved whatever he got. And Chuck deserved to have thumbs. “Maybe they’re makin him get rid ae it. The big heed yins wantin tae cover it up.”

“Maybe he’s just auld an depressed,” Jamieson suggested.

“How?”

“Ye know wit they say.”

Marble answered for his boss: “Tired ae wankin, tired ae life.”

Chuck had never heard anyone say this and looked, puzzled, between the two men: Marble as sure and solid as his nickname, Jamieson nodding sagely in agreement.

“Wit?”

“Did ye save the laptoaps?”

Chuck felt his cheeks getting hot, taking a beamer, his pale ginger’s skin so easily flushed. “Naw. He wis right there next tae me.”

Another sigh from Jamieson. “Al huv a hink aboot it. If that’s aw?…”

Chuck made to stand up. Marble halted him at first, then let him go. He was just into the waiting room when Jamieson called: “Best ae luck.” He wasn’t joking.

29

3

Apparently, the food in the prison cafeteria was shite, but Colin certainly wasn’t wasting away. He wore his jail joggies as well as any of his designer tracksuits. Helping himself to some other poor sod’s lunch, Lottie guessed. Trading on his notoriety, no doubt, though he was a big unit too, and handy, which probably made life behind bars easier. That and being a moron. Hard to lose your mind from being caged up when your idea of entertainment was seeing how high you could pish up a wall anyway. Still, Colin looked noticeably older, sitting across the table in the visitors’ room. He’d always been a daft wee boy to his Auntie Charlotte, but there was a childishness missing from his face now.

“An are ye gettin oan wae everywan?” his maw, Ginny, asked. She sounded as if her son was at a summer camp. A pretence needed to keep the last of her sanity, Lottie thought. It was more painful to look at her sister than her nephew. Of the two, she looked like the one who’d been locked up this past year. Her skin hung loose on its frame, her hair a grey nest, eyes dry from not blinking enough. No tears left. She was the one being tortured.

“Aye, fine. Gettin a new room-mate soon.”

“How? Wit happened tae the other boay, wit wis his name again?”

“Graham.”

“Aye, Graham, he sounded nice.”30

“He tried tae cut his ain ear aff wae a bit ae broken mirror so thuv moved him away, stuck him in wae the mongs an mentalists.”

Ginny’s mouth dropped and she covered it with her hand as if stifling a yawn. Her breathing came in trembling wheezes and she had to look away, her “So how was school today?” chat derailed.

“Said he wis hungry, wis gonnae cut it aff an eat it.”

Ginny’s shoulders shook and she folded in on herself. Lottie gave Colin a hard look that said, “Enough.” She wanted to come back and have a word with the wee fanny alone—“See wit yer daein tae ma sister?!”—but getting angry wouldn’t help anyone. And it was Lottie who convinced her husband to give Colin a job in the first place. At her sister’s insistence, but still, without Lottie’s wheedling, Paulo wouldn’t have taken him on (“Away an shite, he’s a useless, lazy eejit—an a mean that wae aw the love in the wurrold”) and the boy wouldn’t now be sitting in the jail, blamed for killing Paulo himself in a shoot-out over an arms deal gone sour. Fucksake, anybody who knew Colin well—scratch that, anybody who spent about five minutes in Colin’s company—would know how ridiculous that sounded, how obviously he’d been scapegoated. If Forrest Gump was the butter knife in the block then Colin was a misplaced spoon.

“Needin any fags, son?” Lottie asked, an abrupt change of subject requiring no subtlety.

He shook his head. “Am vapin noo, Auntie Charlotte. They gee ye these kits an that. Could dae wae some better flavours though if yer offerin.”

She wasn’t but she said, “Aye, awright. Wit’s yer favourite?”31

“Bubblegum. A hink ye can get, like, Bucky flavour too…” Big, glaikit smile which faded. “Wit’s that green flavour?”

“Green? Ye mean lime?”

“Aye, lime is green, int it? A hink maybe some ae the lads in here would like that, if a could get them some greenlime flavour.” His eyes widened in a desperate attempt at telepathic communication.

He opened his mouth to speak again but Lottie twitched her head, sucked her lips in, miming silence. She’d be surprised if she and Ginny didn’t get pulled up on the way out for Colin’s bit of expert spy craft there. “Al try,” she whispered.

Ginny was oblivious though, still tucked into herself. “This cannae go oan,” she mumbled. “Cannae go oan.”

By the time the car crunched up the driveway outside Castle McGuinn, Lottie had shaken off the oppressive blue-roll-and-bleach atmosphere of HMP Barlinnie and could feel the warmth of the sun again. The three storeys of centuries-old, renovated sandstone hidden among a shroud of guardian oaks off Nitshill Road never failed to lift her mood. Ten years she’d been there now and it hadn’t worn off—not just the sense of pride the house gave her, but the feeling of having something solidly her own, bedrock to lie down on, a centre to the universe. She needed it now more than ever.

The place had been run down and they bought it in cash for less than it should have been worth. She’d had it stripped from the foundations to the attic and refurbed in her own personal style. “Yer like Kirstie Allsopp oan crack,” Paulo complained during those first years when the house was constantly bustling with tradies. He loved it though, really, an endless parade of 32lads to force his patter on and wee apprentice boys to scare. Bartering to do, deals to make, hands to shake, the crumbs of stories to leave out which hinted at his reputation. His voice and accent had to be louder and rougher than any of the guys on the tools, his laugh heard in every corner of the house. Lottie had to work hard to make sure he didn’t fill the place completely, take it over, as he seemed to do instinctively. This house was hers too. Now it was hers alone.

Her heels gave a rich clack on the herringbone parquet in the hall. The original panelling on the walls had been melted, scraped and sanded back to the wood, the warped and tool-marked spars mended and recoated in slate eggshell. A chandelier that would be ostentatious hanging in the Taj Mahal draped down from the double-height ceiling, the original ceiling rose and mouldings sharpened and thrown into relief by a pattern of similar-but-not-quite-the-same shades of white and grey. Clean, tasteful, and a total ball-ache for the decorators. To juxtapose, Paulo’s contribution to the ambience of the main hall sat in the crook of the curling staircase: a white baby grand piano with a brushed-gold statue of a puma leaping from its lid. “Why no just get a sculpture ae yersel wae a foot-lang stawner made?” Lottie had said upon its installation.

She looked at it now and part of her thought of getting rid of it again. There was nothing to stop her, was there? “Stay,” she said to the puma, and threw her coat over its head. Needed a cuppa.

“Where’ve you been?”

Lottie jumped. “Fuck!” Ari was in the kitchen, already ahead of her with a steaming mug in one hand. “A didnae know ye were stoappin by. Ye didnae text.”33

“Clothes to wash. Do I have to ask permission to come home?”

Lottie didn’t answer that, it was a big arrow pointing to “Argument”. “Mhari isnae in the day, huv ye goat enough clean stuff tae last ye till Thursday?”

“Can you not do it?”

“A could ask ye the same hing.”

Big huff, eye roll. The classics. Infuriating when coupled with the west-end accent she’d grown.

“Try askin wae a ‘please’ oan the end.”

“Could you do my washing, Mum? Please?”

“Could you make me a cup ae tea an aw, please?”

A smile broke and Ari got another cup down. “So where were you then?”

“Visitin yer cousin.”

Ari froze with a teabag dangling over the cup. Her jaw tightened and her voice came out low and clenched: “Why would you be visiting him?”

“Am no gettin intae this again wae ye.”

“You really think Aunt Ginny knows better than the police—”

“Ari, it’s no just her. Av known that boay aw his life an, God bless him, he’s dumb as dug shite. There’s nae way in hell he widdae bin plottin against yer da.”

“But—”

“An he loved him like he wis his ain faither. His Uncle Paul wis mare ae a da tae him than that useless sod who walked oot oan him an Ginny when he wis knee-high. No chance it wis him. Colin has his faults, plenty ae them, but he’s loyal tae his faimly, and so ye should be an aw.”

Ari huffed again and finally dropped the teabag in the mug. The chance of hot water being added now was nil, but.34

The doorbell rang. “That’ll be Ross. Why don’t ye go an meet yer sister oot ae school.” Lottie took some money from her purse. “Go fir a coffee or somethin. Al get the machine oan fir ye.”

Ari left and the agent came in.

“Coffee, Ross?”

“Would a man lost in the desert drink a glass of pish? Please, Lottie, hen.” He took off his glasses, mopped his brow and the top of his head with a handkerchief. Ross Brownlee was a man who had stressed himself bald and skinny. Both a lawyer and a money man, he did the books for the McGuinns, among lots of other things (work the whole spectrum of grey), including sorting out the buying of the house. It was hard to ascertain where he sat in the hierarchy of Paulo’s firm or whether he was perched outside it altogether. Certainly, he hadn’t fucked off as soon as it all went tits-up at that car wash last year and Paulo found himself with an air hole through his skull. Most of the other associates of her husband had stopped coming round, finding employment with other firms vying for the throne. Several sources of income had dried up and Ross had helpfully spent a lot of his time in Paulo’s home office untangling all sorts of interesting forms of insurance. He was no stranger to the castle.

They took their mugs up to the second floor and into the office. Lottie slid up a sash window so Ross could smoke—the only person she made this allowance for. He almost went to sit down in the Big Man’s chair, comfortable as he was in it, but stopped himself and motioned for Lottie to sit there instead. He pulled up a smaller seat a fitbaw pitch away at the other side of the massive desk which had been lifted in through the 35window by crane—another of Paulo’s few furniture choices. Lottie had at least convinced him the tarnished silver gorilla to sit on it was unnecessary.

Ross lit up using a Zippo lighter the size of a deck of cards. Not just a hip affectation: arthritis in his hands had left his knuckles gnarled and limited his dexterity. (He also wore an elastic tie and slip-on shoes, although these accessories were admittedly less cool.) He chopped the lid open and turned the flint with the heel of his hand, sooked in a breath of life. “What can I do you for, hen?”

“Howsit goin wae the appeal?” Lottie had summoned him as soon as she’d dropped Ginny off at her gaff. Ginny had spent a lot of time trying to get Colin to move out to his own place but now that he had, in a manner of speaking, she was rattling about in there like a lost pea at the bottom of the freezer drawer.

Ross took a long drag. “All they can really do is rehash the arguments that were laid out before, hope a different judge takes a different view of things. Nothing new has come up.”

“Wit aboot the car-wash goons?” Sean Prentice—the owner of the car wash where Paulo was killed—and his employee Davey Burnet had vanished into the ether following the hit. Colin swore blind they were both involved but the polis couldn’t track them down. “Are they even still lookin fir them?”

“Nothing but dead ends. Still no sightings, no pings from phones or bank cards… Like I said, there’s nothing new to add.”

“Then we need tae find somethin new.”

“We’re pushing for further investigation but—”

“Fae the polis? Naw, they awready fuckt it. We need somedy who’s oanside.”

“Like who? You wanting Netflix to do a season about it?”36

Lottie scrunched up a sheet of paper that was lying on the desk and launched it at Ross, who batted it away with a laugh. “Hinks he’s a funny fucker so he does. A wis hinkin mare ae the likes ae Billy Jamieson.”

The name paused Ross’s mug on the way to his mouth—held in two hands like he was polishing off a bowl of soup. He managed a sip before he spoke. “Billy Jamieson? Lottie, hen…”

“That’s wit he does noo. Investigations an that. Paulo knew him fairly well. He sent a cerd eftir, ye know.”

“Paulo would have known him. Do you?”

“A know his reputation, if that’s wit yer meanin. But he’s a straight arrow noo.”

Ross made a noise between a snort and a laugh. Smoke came out his nose. “Aye, and the Pope never misses confession. A man like that…”

“Goat tae dae somethin, Ross. Cannae just keep goin alang hopin it’ll aw work oot. Will ye set somethin up?”

“He’s a legitimate businessman, as you say, you can call the number on his website. I’m going on record as counselling you against this though.” He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray shaped like an upturned hand. “Strongly.”

“Feel free tae say ye telt me so later oan doon the road then.”

“I wouldn’t, hen… Well, I might, but I really do hope I won’t have to.”

“Me an aw.”

37

4

DS Slater popped a mug down on her desk next to a framed photo of a gangly, glaikit-looking dog with brindle tiger stripes along its back. There was an old one of the twins somewhere behind the stacks of paperwork too—blonde, blue-eyed VillageoftheDamnedweans who shared their mother’s general turned-up expression of flat contempt for everything but hadn’t yet earned the forehead creases and grey roots that complemented it.

“Dark-roasted arabica beans crushed under the bare feet of virgins, served with the froth of the milk of the sacred red doe of Ben Lomond.” Slater dropped the James Earl Jones voiceover and smiled. “Only kidding. Tesco’s Shitest, as requested.”

McCoist lifted the mug in salute and took a mouthful, grimaced. Must have had at least three spoonfuls of instant coffee in it and as many sugars. “That could give a lesser mortal organ failure. Good work, Sergeant.”

“I’ll take that as a win. As good as we’ll get today, I think.”

Progress on the Super Rats victim had quickly ground to a halt after early success and now they were stuck waiting on an orthodontologist to take a look at the hideous smile—he had no wallet on him, no phone, no record on the PNC, no misper report that fit the description of what was left of him, so for now had no name.

The PM confirmed Caruso’s theory that he’d been strangled elsewhere and then dropped, after death, from a height. 38Then the CCTV trawl had spotted a van stopping on the hard shoulder of the slip road during the wee hours a day before the discovery. The driver—gloved, hooded—got out, went round the back and did something, likely dodgy, for a while, out of site of the camera, hidden by the open rear door and the side of the van. Then he closed up and drove off. They had their killer on tape. Exciting. Further along the road the cameras got a nice view of the van’s reg plate. Very exciting. A quick check showed the van had been reported stolen the morning after Super Rats’s estimated time of death. Shite. The owner was clean as a bean, the report appearing legit, so they were back to waiting again. Waiting for the van to show up, dumped somewhere, maybe torched or at least cleaned. The CCTV dredge continued.

“Gaz, get on the phone and find out how many stiffs are in the queue for the dentist, will you?” McCoist said. The lad didn’t look up from his desk. “Gaz?” Still nothing. “Gaz!” Oblivious.

“I can do it, ma’am,” DC Suffia Khan, the fourth member of their team offered.

“Ask if anyone can do something and it’s always a woman who does it,” McCoist said, skewering Slater with a look because Gaz was still absorbed in whatever was on his desk.

Slater conceded the point without complaint. He was a little older than McCoist—grey wings in his military haircut, burst blood vessels on the fat tip of his nose, handsome crow’s feet giving his mud-coloured eyes some liveliness—but couldn’t be described as “old-school” as far as detectives were concerned. While occasionally gruff with the underlings when he needed to be, he was far from the blowhard bullies McCoist had encountered throughout her career, and he certainly 39didn’t mind taking orders from a woman who was a few years his junior. There was no awkwardness in going from informal banter to serious discussion to carrying out orders. It was rare. “DC TRAVIS!” he bellowed, and Gaz jumped, hitting his knees on the underside of his desk.

“Sorry?”

“Lost in space?”

“Huh?” He looked dazzled by the high beams Slater was blasting him with.

“Use your words, Gaz.”

“Sorry, sir, it’s just I’ve been looking at these again…”—he held up some partial prints that had been taken from Super Rats’s suit jacket which hadn’t been usable—“…the thumbprint that appears, it’s all scuffed.” This had been noted. There was a repeated thumbprint, right hand, which was cracked all over, the pad of the thumb damaged. “Look.” He gave them a thumbs up, beckoned them closer.

The skin on Gaz’s thumb was broken up with myriad cracks and nicks and islands of shiny hard, dry skin, most of the whorls of his thumbprint lost underneath the wreck. Just like the print. “Skater’s thumb!” he grinned.

“Sorry?”

“Skateboarding. You get it from the griptape on the top of the board. It’s like sandpaper, takes the top layers off the skin.” He rubbed his index finger against the callus of his thumb proudly. “And look.” He pulled out the crime-scene photos and flicked through them: “The classic diamond pattern. Our bloody footprint’s a Converse All Star, out of favour but some older guys still like to skate em… the graffiti on the pillars… patches of fresh cement on the concrete to cover potholes… 40ingress and egress through the hole in the fence… and look here, where it slopes up towards the underside of the motorway, that’s a natural flat bank right there, ready to go. These usually have, like, Tetris bricks sticking out of them to stop homeless folk sleeping there, but not here. Dynamite.”

The three of them were looking at him as if he were sitting there bollock naked.

“It’s a skate spot! Some skater must have found the body—it was called in anonymously, right? But not before they bumped the wallet and phone. If I go back down there, check a few other spots, lean on the locals, maybe I could find something to ID our man.” His excitement was not contagious.

“Skate spot?” Slater said, as if it were from another language. “How d’you know all this?”

“Well…” Gaz’s puppy smile started to fade as he counted six raised eyebrows around him. “Well, I do a bit of skating myself, actually.”

“Skateboarding?”

“We call it skating.”

“You call it skating… Aren’t you a grown man? With a house? Job? Hair on your testicles?”

Suffia stifled a giggle and McCoist had to cover her own smirk by taking a mouthful of coffee.

Gaz laughed it off. “‘You don’t stop skating because you get old, man, you get old because you stop skating!’—Jay Adams,” he paraphrased, slapping a huge grin back onto his face and jumping to his feet.

“Who?”

“Legendary OG skater. Dogtown and Z-Boys.”

“What?”41

“Never mind. But it’s a lead, right? And it’s better than sitting around here waiting for the tooth fairy!”

“Fair-y enough,” McCoist agreed. “See what you can do. Suffia, go along with DC Sk8er Boi, make sure he’s not just sneaking off to play.”

McCoist had clocked off—metaphorically, as there was no real break when working a case, she just moved her physical self away from the office—and was taking Bruce for a walk around the neighbourhood (lamp posts to be sniffed, territory to be reclaimed, cats to be bullied) when the call came from DC Travis. He was every bit as excited as Bruce, who had discovered a turd that was a vintage to his liking. McCoist wrestled the lead with one hand, phone in the other:

“Got the wallet!”

“Really?!”

“You sound shocked.”

“Because I am.”

“So little faith.” He tutted but McCoist could hear his smile bouncing off the satellites and into her ear. She was going to have to let him have his moment. “Me and Suffy questioned a few skaters we found at the scene—got a nice wee chase off them too—and got passed around a few different crews. The story had got out. We were looking for someone who was probably older, still skated Cons, likely had some problems with addiction or money.”

“How so?”

“You saw the body, gaffer. The face. Imagine seeing a zombie like that and going through its pockets? You’d have to be at Desperation Station.”42

“Watch what you say, Gaz, or at least how you say it.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“He maybe came across it earlier, before the critters.” A flush of excitement kicked her heart up a gear. She tried to step outside her body and scan for stupidity, something she might have missed, before speaking. “This druggy old skate dinosaur of yours didn’t see it get dropped there, did he?”

Rustling hiss of a sigh. “Sorry, unfortunately not. We did ask, and we’re bringing him in now for a proper interview, but I think he’s telling the truth. He was pretty mellow when we caught up with him—the money went on something of decent quality by the looks of it.”

“You were right about the addiction?”

“Aye.” The smile was back. “When we asked around, he came up a few times. A guy they call Shags. Bit of an outcast from the scene but always hanging around. Drink, drugs, homeless on and off. Scares the younger ones, annoys the other old heads. He was trying to sell the driving licence to underagers at the skatepark but even the kids are too savvy to try and pass themselves off as a balding fifty-six-year-old… So?”

“So what?”

“How did I do?”

“If you want constant positive affirmation, Gaz, get a dog.” (Bruce was still straining to get his chocolate lolly.) But truthfully, McCoist was impressed, and happy to be so. Her team were proving good. Slater, Khan and Travis. She’d wanted a DC who she’d worked with before called Findlay because his head seemed screwed on, or at least the threads were lined up straight, but he’d handed in his notice and fucked off around the time of the WhatsApp scandal. Jumped before getting 43pushed, probably. Stupid boy. The disappointment had worn off though and McCoist had landed with a half-competent squad. Wholly competent, she would admit, when feeling generous, which she was. “Kidding. Good work, Detective Constable Travis. Seriously. So how do you celebrate when you do one of your skateboard tricks?”

“You do it again, ma’am. ‘Two to make it true’ is the saying.”

“You’re going for the phone?”

“Shags says he lost it but we’ll see if we can jog his memory when he comes down.”