Shrike (Book 2): Rampant (2 page)

I make one stop before going home, climbing through a window that's not my own. I'm not surprised to see Taog's bed made and un-slept in, even at five in the morning.

We both have trouble sleeping these days.

For him, it's probably the whole getting shot bit. For me, it's the fact that I see my dead parents behind my eyes every time I close them. Makes it hard to want to spend extended hours in darkness. On the plus side, I'm well ahead of my workload. I'm even up for a promotion.

Taog is nowhere to be seen, so I climb back out his window and into mine. My own bed is less than made, and I can't make myself get into it.

Instead, I log into the email address Sergeant McLean set up for me. 

A tiny part of me wishes I could just go to sleep, knock myself out with some medication and allow oblivion to take me for a few hours. But it would take something like an elephant tranquilliser to knock me out, and I'm pretty sure anything that strong is a controlled substance I'm not allowed to have. Superhero or not, they frown a bit on drugs. I haven't even really checked. 

The shower gives a screech and turns on. Magda's awake.

Rereading the alert gives me no more information about the murder. I shoot off a quick email to Sergeant McLean asking for the case files instead of trying to pick up details using clairvoyance. I can't read minds. 

I'm so caught up in typing that I don't hear the shower shut off.

"You did not sleep again." Magda leans against the door jamb, wrapped in a towel with another on her head. A few wet blonde strands escape, falling over her forehead. 

"Nope."

"You need to sleep, Gwen." 

I ignore that, but as I have nothing else to say, all I succeed in doing is creating an awkward silence.

Thankfully, she changes the subject. "You are coming to my show tomorrow, right?"

It strikes me that one of the reasons people sleep is to have some sort of tangible break between the days of the week. Show. Her show. Right. Magda's got some of her own designs up in an art show hybrid thing starting Friday. Which means tomorrow must be Friday.

At my blank look, Magda laughs. "I put it in your mobile's calendar. You will get about three reminders."

"Aye, I'll be there. Thanks for reminding me."

She goes to get ready for work, which is something I ought to be doing as well. Just as I'm about to close my laptop, my email pings. Sergeant McLean's already sent the files to an encrypted cloud vault. Seems he sleeps about as much as I do. 

Shite. Now I won't be able to think of anything else at work. Even though McLean insists I can access the vault from anywhere, I don't trust my work network's security enough. My own laptop's been outfitted by the best Gu Bràth has to offer, which is to say hackers and folk who McLean would probably put in gaol. 

Funny. I never would have expected to turn to a pro-independence group for internet security, but then I suppose I never expected to spend my nights tromping the streets of Edinburgh bedecked in spandex, either.

Regardless, I make myself get ready for work. Spandex is all well and good for breaking the arms of pickpockets, but it'd raise a few eyebrows in accountancy. 

It's still a foreign concept for me to take the bus without dreading what awaits me on the other side. No call to de Fournay's office, no guillotine over my head every day. Just a normal job. 

When I get to the office, I get an automatic email from Ross. He's still at Hammerton, and I pity him. The company has undergone an enormous investigation for the whole, you know, CFO-funding-a-terrorist-plot thing. Makes things a wee bit tense.

I wish I could just get Ross a job at Francis Duck's company, but while the investigation is going on, the Hammerton employees are virtually unhireable. He's got that or nothing. I was sacked; never thought that'd be a silver lining in itself.

Ross tells me he's had his second interview with investigators, but not much else. I reckon he's not allowed to disclose what he said. Still, I don't like hearing that he's still being scrutinised.

The workday passes quickly, and when I finally leave just after seven o'clock, it occurs to me that I've been running Duck's accounting department for five months. Before, Hammerton did a third-party inspection report for him. I used to only see his account from the outside. Now I'm the one overseeing all of it. It's a heady feeling. I'm doing de Fournay's job, albeit without the posh title and you know, homicidal megalomania. 

As I'm locking my office to head home, I stop with the key half-turned. De Fournay is really dead. Thinking her name brings it back again, that last moment of hatred in her jade-coloured eyes.

Months later, I still can't bring myself to say I killed her. 

two

Back home, the murder file awaits. I can tell Sergeant McLean has put some effort into keeping the file to what I need to know, because he's left out the grisly pictures. I spend fifteen minutes poring over what he's sent. There's not much information there. The student's name was Seth Jones. He studied biology. He was due to graduate in the spring. I feel a pang when I read that. Potential gone with — what was it — a single stab wound to the chest. 

At least Granger's efficient.

When I go downstairs, Magda sits at the table, poring over the paper.

"
Jaka szkoda
," she murmurs by way of greeting.

My Polish is getting better, but I don't feel like trying to answer in kind. "What's a bummer?"

"Another murder. By the university."

My stomach leaps, but it can't be a second murder. The university. Over her shoulder I see that they've already released Seth Jones's name. "Aye, it's a pity."

I go to the fridge to get a snack, pulling out an orange. "Wait, another? Where was one before?"

Magda looks up, surprise widening her china blue eyes. "One other in Edinburgh, but two in Glasgow and a third in Stirling."

"What?" Granger is wanted for a string of murders, not only this last. 

Bollocks. How did I miss this? Maybe sleep is important for more than just marking when one day ends and another begins. Perhaps Rosamund Granger is so synonymous with murder for me that I didn't stop to think how it was playing out now, this week, this day.

Magda watches the realisation dawn with a patient expression. "I thought you knew."

"I should have done." I lean on the worktop, orange in one hand; the other hand pinches the bridge of my nose. I'm slipping. Of course this is connected. A death or two here and there, fine. Or not fine, but at least normal. People haven't stopped being people, after all.

But five?

"When were all the others?"

"All in the last few weeks, though I think there have been four this week."

A knock sounds on the door. "I'll get it," I say. I set my orange down. Suddenly it's less appealing, even though my stomach grumbles at me.

I open the door. It's Taog.

He looks like hell shat him into his suit. He slumps through the door, skin sallow and clothes rumpled. He's wearing all black except for a green tie, and even his wavy red-brown hair seems somehow muted. It's longer now, almost to his shoulders. 

"God, Taog. You look like you're coming from —" 

"A funeral?"

I close the door behind him, then wrap my arms around him. He smells like rain and trains. He's warm and firm against me, solid. Comfortable. For the briefest moment, he's there with me and I feel him relax, his arms tightening around my back. Then Magda rustles her paper, and we both stiffen. I move away from Taog, looking up at him. 

"Aye," I say. "You look like you've come from a funeral."

"Try three of them."

"Three?"

Taog follows me to the living room, and even with him behind me, I hear exhaustion in every shuffling step. 

He flops onto the sofa, loosening the green tie around his neck. The splash of colour stands out like a patch of grass in the middle of a drab car park, and its vibrancy is out of place, too alive for Taog's current demeanour.

"Three funerals," I prod. A mad suspicion takes root in me, and I know what he's about to say.

He looks up, pain in his red-rimmed eyes. In that one look, I know it's not just grief but the same bone-weariness I feel.

"Yeah, three. Three Gu Bràth members are dead."

His words jolt through me like an electric current. I hate being right when it matters. Usually when it matters, it's bad news.

Taog nods at the paper Magda now has clutched in her hand with enough of a grip to crumple the edge. "Make that four."

There it is, a common thread, falling into my lap with an almost audible plop. 

"Does McLean know?"

Taog shakes his head. "Barely anyone knew of their affiliation with us. They weren't active, or most of them weren't. All but one were barely involved. Mailing list members, had contributed to our crowd funding campaigns, that sort of thing."

That didn't make sense to me. I could see Britannia taking out hits on people they thought were activists in Gu Bràth, but not peripheral members. Taog was an obvious target, which is why Gu Bràth had provided him with a security detail. But a bunch of nobodies who joined an email list once upon a referendum? No way.

Gu Bràth are a grassroots organisation that supports Scotland's independence. Taog is their spokesperson. As involved as they are — and in spite of some of their members having skills that are likely less than legal, like say, hacking — they're not advocates of violence. And after the referendum, no one ought to be considering them a threat. Too many layers of this are just wrong, like peeling back an onion leaf by leaf to discover it's rotted from the inside out and not the other way round.

I want to stay here with Taog. He looks as though he'll pass out from exhaustion where he sits, but by the way he pinches his leg periodically, passing out is what it'll take to make him sleep.

And yet, I can't stay here. Taog gives me a look that says he already knows what I'm going to say.

"McLean needs to hear this."

All Taog does is nod, but I get the feeling the weight on his shoulders just grew by a barbell or two.

When I walk into the police station, the desk copper smiles at me with a nod, even though he's on the phone. As far as anyone here knows, I'm just grateful to the former-PC-now-illustrious-Sergeant McLean for helping me after a terrifying home invasion.

It feels like decades ago that I killed Mick Hamilton for breaking into my flat.

That was the first blood to stain my hands and far from the last. Every time I walk in here, I wonder if the constables will somehow be able to see it dripping from my fingers. Mick Hamilton. Edmund Frost. Annamaria de Fournay. My parents. Andrew Granger. Sure, some of them were collateral damage, but it doesn't mean I don't feel them still.

None of the constables seem to notice or care.

Instead, when I come into the station with a sack of scones and a take-away cuppa for the sergeant, no one bats an eye. Hell, I reckon they think I'm a wee bit in love with him.

They can think whatever they damn well fancy — McLean wouldn't date me if the precinct pooled all their salaries and paid him an annuity to do it.

Which is also fine. He respects me, I respect him, and I occasionally bring by scones and chat to him about dead people. Healthy.

He's yelling at someone when I approach his office. Even through the closed door, I can hear him — super hearing or no.

"—And I'm telling you to re-do the interview. All I have is a transcript and no video. This will not hold up in court. Anyone can type some words into a document. I need sound at the very least, not a printed scrap of paper."

There's a pause. He must be on the phone, and even my hearing only affords me a tinny murmur of whomever he's speaking with.

"You cannae do that."

Another pause.

"Aye, it's 'abnormal procedure.' You're trying to—"

Pause.

"It's not bloody legal."

Pause.

"No. You are mistaken if you think—"

Pause. Then a mutter I can hear. 

"Bloody...wanking...bugger."

Now's probably a horrid time to knock. I do it anyway. McLean's day's about to get worse.

There's a long delay, during which I hear three long breaths followed by a clipped, "Come in."

I open the door and close it right behind me. If I thought my presence might prove a calming respite for the sergeant, one look at his face dissuades me.

Several emotions flash across his face and just as quickly melt into a benign mask. I drop the bag of scones on his desk and place the tea next to it. "All right there, McLean?"

He opens his mouth to lie — I can't judge him for that — but apparently thinks better of it. "You heard that." It's not a question.

"Just your side."

"I can't discuss it."

"Figured as much. I need to discuss something with you, though."