Country of the Blind (45 page)

"Yeah, but it'll be hard telling them about me with no head."

"Don't kid yourself, mate, I know you're not going to shoot me."

Parlabane gave a quiet but unmistakably derisive snort. The bullet hit the man in the shoulder, spinning him back and away from Nicole, who rolled herself clear.

Parlabane walked over to where the man lay, kicking the discarded knife towards the door, where Jenny and Sarah soon emerged. Sarah helped Nicole to her feet, hugging her and wrapping her jacket around her.

"Please allow me to introduce myself," Parlabane said to his new captive.

"I'm a man of stealth and haste. My name's Jack Parlabane and this is Dr Sarah Slaughter. An associate of yours tried to kill us both tonight. He's now residing in the boot of Dr Slaughter's car. And your other monkey is. . . "

"In the boot of the Mondeo." Jenny explained.

"In the boot of
your
car," he continued. He knelt beside the man, patting him down and removing some keys that were attached to a belt-loop. He threw them to Jenny, who uncuffed Nicole. "DS Dalziel, would you do your thing, read him his rights, etcetera?"

Parlabane stood up and walked over to Nicole as Jenny handcuffed the bleeding prisoner. "You have the right to a quality kicking from Ms Carrow here, when she feels up to it," she told him. "You have the right to some extremely slipshod surgery on that wound. You have the right to have Dr Slaughter supervise your anaesthetic management. And afterwards, you have the right to remain in jail for a
very
long time."

Nicole put her arms around Parlabane, sobbing, sniffing, squeezing.

"Thank you," she said throatily. "Thank you."

"De nada," he said.

"I thought you were dead, both of you."

"So did he," Parlabane said with a nod. "You can call for backup now if you like, Jen."

"Well I'd disappear that gun before they get here, Scoop."

He bent down and picked up the two spent shells from the carpet, sliding them into a pocket in his jeans. Then he retrieved the automatic that was lying by the wall and ejected two slugs from it, pocketing them as well. He tucked the Beretta into the back of his jeans, under his polo-neck, and placed the other gun on the desk.

"What gun?" he said. "I don't have a gun. I shot him with his own weapon, but I don't know where the shell-casings have gone, so I'm afraid you won't be able to get a match."

257

"Aw, that's gonna be too bad," Jenny said, smiling at the man on the floor.

"See, we can do conspiracy too."

"Guns," Nicole mumbled, now seated on the bed, Sarah tending to the cut on her thigh with some bandaging she had found in the bathroom, Parlabane leaning on the desk and Jenny frogmarching her arrest down the stairs.

"Huh?"

She jiggled her head briefly, as if shaking herself out of a small trance.

"It's what I heard in the car," she explained. "They've got big problems -

well obviously - but. . . hang on." She took a few breaths, relaxing herself and ordering her thoughts. "We weren't the only targets tonight. They had two men up north who were supposed to kill Thomas McInnes and the other fugitives. When they were driving me here, the guy you shot kept guard on me in the back seat. Morgan, his name was. The other one drove. Morgan called him Adds, which could be short for something. The guy who was sent to kill you was called Harcourt. Anyway, it looked like Morgan was in charge. He made a phone call to someone - his boss, presumably,"

"Knight," said Parlabane.

"That was it, Knight. Telling him they had me, mission accomplished sort of thing. After that he didn't say much. Knight was doing the talking. When he hung up, Morgan told Adds to pack his bags as he and Harcourt would be going up to Strathgair right away. He said. . . I think 'Paddy and Bowes'. . . had fucked it up. They'd got themselves arrested, which seemed to astonish everyone concerned. In Morgan's words, 'the targets kicked their fucking heads in and left them for the local plods'."

"So it
was
a public execution," said Parlabane. "Staged man-hunt and death penalty while the nation wanks, sorry watches. But their hitmen were almost as good as the losers down here."

"Evidently. Adds asked if the targets had taken their guns, but Morgan said no, they'd left those for the plods as well, which meant word would be getting out that the fugitives were no longer armed. Adds said it wouldn't matter, they could still plant something, make out leaving the guns had been a double bluff. But what Morgan said the fugitives
had
taken was their field-phone, as he called it."

Parlabane's eyes widened. He reached behind and picked up the state-ofthe-art mobile that had been lying on the desk, flipping the cover open.

"Don't suppose Morgan or his buddies would give us the number if we asked politely. Maybe if I stood on his bullet-wound. Have you seen
Dirty Harry
?"

"You won't need it," Nicole said. "Morgan only pressed about two buttons to call Knight. A shortcode. If they're operating as a team, then all their portables might be programmed in."

258

"Very clever, young lady," he said. "And if so, it would constitute hard, electronic proof that they're all working together. Knight and these guys here tonight, Knight and the two goons in Strathgair. . . Let's see." He pressed the memory dial button on the sleek but weighty plastic device, then hit the number 1. The LCD read "1?" Parlabane cancelled, hit M again, then 01. A sequence of numbers arrayed across the LCD panel and a ringing tone purred from the earpiece. It rang once more.

"Yeah, Knight, who is it?" said a voice, irritated, a low, white-noise buzz in the background suggesting he was in a car, and moving. Parlabane arched his eyebrows, looking across at Sarah and Nicole, then hung up. "Exhibit A, your honour," he said, holding the phone aloft. He pressed M again, then dialled 02. A few seconds later they heard an electronic chime from somewhere downstairs in the house. He hung up again. M. 03.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Ri. . . "Hello?" said an uncertain, quiet voice, youthful, Scottish.

"Yes, hello, sorry to disturb you," said Parlabane, "but could I speak to Mr Thomas McInnes, please?"

Parlabane heard what sounded rather bizarrely like splashing noises, then an older voice spoke, defensive, accusatory.

"This is Tam McInnes. Who are you?"

"My name is Jack Parlabane, Mr McInnes. We've got representatives in your area just now and I was wondering if you were interested in any double glazing."

"
Whit?
"

"Knock it off, Jack."

"Perhaps you'd prefer to speak to my associate, Nicole Carrow. I believe you know her."

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

"Hello? Who's this?"

"It's Jack."

"Fuck's sake, Jack, it's the middle of the night. What is it?"

"Where's the fuckin' story Fraz? Nobody's read it, nobody's heard it, nobody's even seen it. What's the fuckin' score, here at all?"

"Oh, sorry, Jack, didn't tell you. We ran a decoy first edition so we'd be the only paper with it. Make sure the opposition didn't see it until it's too late."

259

"A
decoy
? Too late? It was almost too late for
me
, ya fuckin' idiot. Three men who didn't know we were on to them broke into my flat a couple of hours ago and tried to kill me, Sarah and Nicole Carrow. This was kind of the scenario I was trying to avoid when I gave you the fuckin' tale in the first place, ya stupit Jambo moron."

"Christ, I'm sorry Jack, I'd no idea. I would never have done it if. . . "

"I should fuckin' well hope you would never have done it
if
. But you fuckin'

well
did
."

"I'm so sorry, Jack, believe me. Really, really sorry. But you must understand I had to make the most of it. It was the scoop of the decade."

"No, Fraz. What I've got
now
is the scoop of the decade. Names and evidence of who killed Voss. Name and a motive for who needed him dead. And exclusive access to Tam McInnes, Paul McInnes and Cameron Scott."

Parlabane could hear Fraz swallow.

"I said sorry
before
you told me that, Jack, remember? I
was
sorry already. I'll give you whatever you want. You can name your price, within reason. In fact you can be reasonably unreasonable. Fuck it, you can have anything you ask for."

"I thought you'd say that. Well, you can get me a helicopter for a start."

"A helicopter?"

"That's what I said. Six-seater or bigger, ready to leave from Ingliston in one hour, or the story goes elsewhere."

"Two hours. I'll need at least two hours."

"Ninety minutes."

"It'll be there."

The helicopter swooped into the wide glen, banking around a truncated spur and down between the hills. Parlabane was leaning into the cockpit talking to the navigator, gesticulating at the map he had brought, and pointing out of the windows. They had received a stern police warning over the radio about twenty minutes earlier, telling them to change course and generally fuck off out of what was - temporarily - restricted airspace, i.e. the areas they were flying their own choppers around in search of the fugitives. Tam McInnes had told them the cops had hitherto agreed to look in the wrong places, but with the widespread realisation this morning that the game was a bogey, such cooperation had clearly been withdrawn as they endeavoured to bring the fugitives in and wash their hands of any complicity ASAP. It was like lunchtime in the Serengeti, there were so many birds hovering around, scanning the surface terrain for pickings. But happily, even with the security forces trying to look in the
right
places, they were still way off-target, and the restricted airspace did not include Parlabane's destination. 260

He glanced back, looking at Nicole as she stared through the glass at the landscape below. Her reddened eyes had the full Samsonite set under each, and her top lids had slid down a few times on the flight north, but she was wide awake now. Parlabane needed her to be there so that McInnes knew who they were and thar it wasn't a trap, but even if this hadn't been the case, there'd still have been nothing could have stopped her getting on that helicopter.

The same went for Fraz. Parlabane had asked just how much of heaven and earth he had needed to move to get the 'copter at such short notice, to which he replied that he had merely phoned Angus Gilmore, who was very happy to assist. Gilmore had a lot of connections in the heaven-and earth-moving businesses. The bird was in the air shortly after dawn. Its proprietor would, Gilmore took open delight in saying, shit blood if he knew how many laws they would be using it to break, and its two crew were happy to hear no more than directions, allowing them to bail out on a "we didnae know" ticket if there were any future consequences, or even just future awkward questions. Fraz sat at the back, next to the large ghetto-blaster he had insisted on bringing aboard, only to be told once airborne that he couldn't listen to it as it buggered up the flight instruments. Parlabane wormed it out of the navigator that this was actually a bit of a fib intended to protect him and the pilot from potentially dreadful music - "that beard, he looks a bit of a folkie; this is a strictly No-Runrig flight" - and got the go-ahead for Fraz to tune into Radio Four, which he jacked up loud to compensate for the noise of the engine and the blades.

"You know, you can actually
die
of smugness," Parlabane warned, watching Fraz lap up the broadcasts.

". . . stunned reactions to this morning's revelations in
The Saltire
which detail an attempt on the life of the lawyer representing the Voss Four, and draw a connection to the death of Finlay Campbell, also of Manson & Boyd - as well as claiming the four accused couldn't have carried out the murders of Roland Voss's two bodyguards. . . "

". . . has since emerged that three men are in custody following a further attempt on Nicole Carrow's life in the early hours of today, as well as attempts to murder John Lapsley, the journalist who wrote this morning's stories, and his fiancee, Dr Sarah Slaughter, at their Edinburgh home. . . "

". . . arrest of two men outside Strathgair late last night. Sergeant John Shearer has made a statement in the past hour that one of the men's fingerprints matches some of those found on the bus which crashed en route to Peterhead Prison on Tuesday night. However, police have no record of a fifth prisoner being on board. . . "

"Know what that sound is, Nicole?" Parlabane asked, with the most misan261

thropic smile she had seen this side of Jack Nicholson. She shook her head, not sure she even knew what sound he was talking about.

"It's the sound of the shit hitting the fan."

". . . who has been coordinating the search has said that these developments do not change his mission to apprehend the three remaining fugitives. 'Their guilt or innocence has to be decided in a court of law and it remains my job to make sure they appear in one'. . . "

". . . for Scotland, Alastair Dalgleish, told journalists that there was a real danger of media hysteria obstructing the investigation. 'We must wait for the full facts to emerge before jumping to conclusions.'"

"That would be a fucking first," Parlabane muttered.

"'The high profile of the late Mr Voss and the understandable level of public interest in these developments over the past few days has made everyone hungry for further sensation; and as the manhunt has not yet delivered a satisfactory conclusion, people are therefore likely to over-react to any fresh angle or apparently related event. The public - and the media - should remember that the only proven facts we have right now are that these men were apprehended at the scene of Roland Voss's murder, and that they subsequently absconded from a prison bus, leaving three more bodies at their backs.'"

"Prick," said Fraz.

"Well, we've made some impact on the pompous tit," said Parlabane. "He's started referring to them as men rather than animals. Wonder if he'll call Michael Swan one when we prove he did it?"