Crime (20 page)

— Everybody’s got an accent, Lennox says evenly, easing off the grip, enjoying the incremental receding of the pain. — You got the keys?

— C’mere. The obese clerk rises and wheezes round the other side of the counter. Lennox and Tianna follow him across the harsh brown carpet tiles, some bone-breakingly loose, that cover the concrete floor. The frosted-glass door, set in a fake-walnut partition, is grimy and caked with scum at the handle. Lennox is loath to touch it; he senses that doing so would be like removing Pye’s dick from his trousers and pointing it at porcelain half a dozen times a day.

They go down a corridor, through two sets of wedged-open fire doors, out to the lot. On their way, Lennox sees it on the wall, listing returned cars: another whiteboard institutionalising idiocy, pornographically displaying the predictable meanderings of thought. He wants to rip it down.

From a distance, the board snaking round the walls of the Serious Crimes Unit office resembled a nursery-school representation of the Mardi Gras. It had become festooned with data to the point that it almost assumed sovereign sentience. The fluorescent highlighter pens and markers, the photos and Post-it notes, produced a garish effect inconsonant with the grim tale: the death of Britney Hamil. There was a manifold, slightly offensive quality
in
the way Drummond and Notman kept it so meticulously attractive.

Then the whiteboard at Robyn’s; wiped clean. Despite all the coke, they’d been together enough to remove everything, every contact name and number.
Only Dearing, only a cop, could have been so meticulous and premeditated. Only a cop, or a villain
.

And now here he is, driving away from a weirdo at the car hire, with a young girl, a kid he doesn’t even know.
But I’m fleeing from the nonces and they’re in pursuit. That stoat at the car hire, could he know Dearing? Perhaps it’s a network. Nonces everywhere: a freemasonry of paedophiles. Nonce-craft
.

It’s ridiculous. His judgement is shot to pieces. He is in over his head.

But kids need protection. Sex offenders: they have to be stopped
. It’s why he’s a cop, the unambiguous, unerring certainty of that particular crusade. Nonces made being a cop real: a workable and justifiable life. This time it isn’t about enforcing ruinous, antiquated laws, or protecting the property of the rich. It really does become the straightforward battle between good and evil, as opposed to that mundane norm of trying to stem the consequences of poverty, boredom, stupidity and greed.

Now they are in the hired Volkswagen, Lennox cagily driving along a wide boulevard in steady traffic. The girl silent next to him, smouldering, chewing on her bottom lip. Stuck in a side lane, they are siphoned on to a freeway. Realising he doesn’t know where he’s going, Lennox comes off at the next exit. — So how far is this Bologna place?

Tianna’s head is in the copy of
Perfect Bride
, the bride’s dress rendered grubby by his prints. — It’s a long drive.

— How many hours?

— I dunno, maybe two or three. Maybe longer.

Fuck
. He had to find a garage. A gas station. Buy a map.

Eminem’s ‘Like Toy Soldiers’ plays on the radio. The chorus sets a shuddering wave of emotion coursing through Lennox. His hands whiten on the wheel. The right one stings again. That cunt is a fucking genius, he thinks, almost choking with emotion. Tears well in his eyes.
We all fall down
.

Britney’s body, cold and lifeless. Bruises all over it; especially the throat. Bulging eyes, frozen in her last moment of pain and terror. To wrench the soul from a child in that gruesome manner was the most foul, evil transgression he could think of.
Mr Confectioner. So cold
.

He thinks about Britney in the morgue, looks at Tianna in the car seat. Wonders what Johnnie – and, for all he knows, Lance and Starry – had planned for her. Not the same as Mr Confectioner with Britney, surely. But he’s a foreigner in a hired car with a child who was all but a stranger to him. Shedding light on his actions to a cop if he’s pulled over will be as hard as explaining them to Trudi.

Tianna evaluates the man driving her. Both of them outlaws, on the run from Dearing. Chet would never let Lance put her away though, that was for sure. Neither would Scots Bobby, she thinks. She wonders what would happen if he tried to touch her. Recalls Vince, his doughy-faced kindness, the slowness of his caresses, those reassuring words as she stifled the urge to cry, endlessly welling and dying in his soft, ladylike hands. That’s the sort of monster this one would be, transformed by a black venom seeping through his veins to make his eyes glassy and deafen his ears; not like Clemson, always an inimical force, with that crinkled smile suggesting a swarm of torment, and whose stare could bring a pack of wild dogs to heel. She closes her eyes to see Scots Bobby clearer.
Heard around the world
. She flicks them open and asks, — So we really gonna go to Chet’s?

— At Bologna? Yeah, I suppose we are.

— Awesome, she says, surprised at her unexpected sparky enthusiasm.

— I’m gaunny find a petrol station, a
gas
station, get a map of the area.

Tianna chews her bottom lip thoughtfully. — A petrol station, she parrots, finding this amusing.

— Do you know his house number? Your mum gave me this address, but there was no number, he places Trudi’s notebook, with his scribblings, on her lap.

She studies it and shakes her head. — He kinda stays on a boat. It’s pretty awesome.

Lennox looks at the address again. A low clunk of belated recognition in his upper body; there was no house number because it was a boat. It’s there in his own accusing scrawl:
marina
. For some reason, he’d imagined that term would signify nothing here: just real-estate jargon for a housing development that was at least a few miles from water. Despondency settles on his shoulders; he’s a bad cop, still ignoring the obvious, prone to daft flights of fancy. The ‘getting results’ myth was exactly that, and his distant promotions had been gained through playing organisational politics, choosing the right master to serve at the right time. The sides of his face start to colour. — I also need to find an Internet café, soas I can get the Jambos result for the Scottish Cup, he explains, meeting her blank look. — Hearts. It’s a football team: what you call soccer. Do you like soccer?

— I guess. I used to play.

— Why did you stop?

— I dunno. It’s kinda lame. I don’t get it, all that offside stuff.

— It never fails to amaze me how lassies never get the offside rule. It’s so straightforward; the principal attacking player has to be at least level with the last defender when the ball is played through, otherwise you’re offside. However, if the most forward attacker is deemed by the official not to be interfering with play, as in the case of, say –

— Whoah! My brain’s kinda crumbling!

Lennox laughs and considers American sports. Baseball is the big one. He’s never been to a game. He recalls a drunken conversation in Vegas with an earnest American frat boy and an old Irishman, a GAA stalwart. The Yank kid had proclaimed that the hardest thing in sport was to hit a fast-moving ball with that bat. The old GAA boy had gurgled like a choked drain in dismissal, telling them that in Irish hurling, they had to catch the ball with a stick, control it and run at speed with it while a bunch of nutters tried to chop them down. Lennox thought of the version of the game they played in Scotland, with bigger sticks. Kingussie and Newtonmore battling it out for the Shinty World Series. — What about baseball? The Merlins. Called so because they’re magical, no doubt.

— It’s the Marlins.

— Like Marilyn Monroe?

— M-A-R-L-I-N-S, she spells out, screwing up her face, but she’s smiling a little. — They’re fish, you know, like … swordfish, I guess.

Lennox nods, suddenly aware of his need to concentrate on the strange roads, the traffic and caffeine jangling his nerves. He’s far from comfy changing lanes; trucks clank along, convertibles dart past with an arrogant flourish and SUVs rumble by with slow menace, the unstable nightclub bouncers of the automobile world.

Tianna is thinking of when she played T-ball in the park. Those polyester tops and pants they wore always smelling so good. How she was going to make the softball team. Momma sat in the bleachers, hair pulled through the back of the baseball cap, shirt and jeans tighter than the other moms, busy eyes flirting under the visor. Then one day another face appeared beside her; Vince, with his big easy smile. Then they were in Jacksonville, then Surfside, then down here, heading south all the time, like they’d be driven into the ocean. Pushed into soccer with the enthusiastic Latina girls, the game taking place around her. Momma watching on, hair shorter, face puffier, as she tried to control the ball while looking out for the next other by her lone parent’s side.

On the radio Lennox listens to a recording of Elvis saying how much he loved army life. He recalls hearing this entire speech at a Graceland exhibit; in its respectful antipathy it sounded nothing like this crudely edited propaganda broadcast to motivate today’s impoverished young Americans into joining up for military service. But for the current crop of GIs, there would be no private apartment in Germany or a fourteen-year-old Priscilla. Like the army, her parents cast a blind eye at the King’s noncing of their daughter. He was a gentleman, they said.

Lennox pulls into a gas station. The stench of petrol fumes blends with the deep-fried chemicals from the adjacent McDonald’s. In this heat they are probably more intoxicating than the weak beer a blue neon sign makes him dream of sucking on. The attached shop is a scruffy enduring variety store that sells
fridge
magnets of several states, various newspapers, convenience food like chips, which mean crisps to him and scary-looking stuff called ‘beef jerky’. Packaged like a bastard child of meat and cheap confectionery, it could never be health food. Pigeon-sized chickens roast on a spit inside a glass case. A bank of cigarettes in vending drawers stack up on the wall behind the counter and smutty mags on high shelving are indicated by uniform, blacked-out covers.

Tianna looks at the magnets of the different states. Her momma collected them in a half-assed way; two of Illinois graced their fridge.
It was crazy to collect stuff like that, shit always got lost, you never got no full set
.

Lennox buys a map book, covering the Miami–Dade County area, and a fold-out showing the main roads and towns across the state of Florida. — Any Internet cafés around here? he asks the clerk.

— No, I know of nothing like that. Where are you from?

— Scotland.

— Sean Connery!

— Aye. I just wanted to get a football result.

The clerk looks around to ensure the place is empty, then beckons Lennox through into a small room marked
STAFF ONLY
. He fires up a computer and goes online. — I am from Mexico. Scotland will not be in the World Cup, no? He shakes his head in sad acknowledgement and logs on to the official Hearts website. It was two–one against Kilmarnock.
That’ll do nicely, safely into the draw for the next round
. He quickly glances over at Kickback, the fans forum. Maroon Mayhem has posted again.

That cunt is criticising, nay, abusing Craig Gordon for one fucking mistake. He won’t let it go
.

Lennox posts as Ray of Light.

What is it with some radges? The best goalie Scotland’s produced in decades and he’s somehow not good enough for Hearts, he’s only here to be slagged off by bams like Maroon Mayhem?

He thanks the garage attendant, wishing Mexico all the best in the World Cup, before remembering that they play in Hibernian
green
. Outside, squinting in the sun, Lennox studies the Miami–Dade County street plan, finding nothing to approximate this Chet guy’s living or mooring location of Bologna. Then he searches the Florida map. Bologna is on the state’s other coast, on the Gulf of Mexico. The table at the back of the book tells him the kid was right. The drive is likely to take at least three hours. — You go back to the car. I’ve a phone call to make.

— You callin Momma?

— You know her cell number?

Tianna shakes her head.

— Why not?

— Just don’t, she frowns. — Look, she ain’t got no credit on it, and she changes it too much for me to be rememberin it.

— Okay, we can call her when we get to Chet’s. He’ll probably know it and she might have things sorted out by then.

— Maybe, the kid says wearily. — I gotta use the restroom.

As Tianna departs to the toilets that adjoin the shop, Lennox heads across the gas station concourse to the mounted phone. A deep breath prepares him to call the room at the Colonial Hotel.

— Hello! comes the sharp cry.

— Trudi, it’s me.

— Ray! Where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick! I was going to call the local police, go round the hospitals; I was even going to phone your mother and Bob Toal, she wails. Guilt hits her like a train and she’s glad that he can’t see her face. — Are you okay?

— Aye, I’m fine. Lennox has to mentally punch back another wave of fatigue. — Don’t get in touch with the police.

— Have you taken anything? she interrogates in sharp, urgent panic. — Any cocaine?

He hesitates. Decides to come as clean as he feels he can. — I had a couple of small lines at this party. He pauses, wanting to spit out all the deceit. The pop psychology, the self-analytical tones that chime with her. He’s glad she can’t see his face. — But I was okay. I suppose that I just wanted to know I could walk away. It was a one-off, his tones are grave, — and I know it sounds strange,
but
I felt I just had to be sure it wisnae for me any more. Be sure I could walk away.

— And that was you
walking away
, Ray? Staying out all night? Where
were
you, Ray?

— I know … I’m sorry … I just needed time to think … It was a mistake.

— Time to think? You’ve had time to think, Ray. It’s
time to think
that’s caused all these fucking problems! Then she desists for a moment. — What’s going on, Ray? Are you in trouble? Where
were
you, Ray? Where
are
you? Are you in trouble?
Are
you?