A cruel smile twisted Keira’s face, and just like that, the trembling, shy little girl vanished, replaced by a much harder version. ‘Either youdoone, or I tell the nice policemen here all about what you’ve got hidden in the bottom of your locker.’
Bruno’s head snapped up at that. Eyes widening as he saw Rennie and Tufty, standing there in the full Police Scotland getup. He scrambled to his feet. ‘All right, all right! Jesus. You’re such a beeeee-atch!’
She clicked her fingers at him. ‘Give us a fag, too. Don’t be a stingy prick.’
He slumped and flumped, then tapped a cigarette from his pack and handed it over. Glowering as he lit the thing. ‘Can Igonow?’ Bruno stuck out his weedy little chest, nose in the air as he squeezed past Logan. ‘I ain’t got nothing in no locker. She’s just being a biatch.’ Then off he scurried, no doubt keen to get rid of whatever it was he definitelydidn’thave planked in his locker.
‘He’sthe bitch.’ Keira took a long slow draw on the cigarette she’d bullied out of the kitchen’s pot washer. She whoomphed a lungful of smoke in Logan’s direction. And her transformation from a polite little girl into an arrogant wee shite was complete.
Her chin came up. ‘What? You never see a Nubian goddess before?’
OK...
31
Logan wrinkled his nose against the triple stinks of cigarette smoke, festering bins, and old chip fat. ‘Have you got a last name, Keira? Or are you more like Adele and Madonna?’
She blinked back at him, head tilted, cool as a bitter sorbet. Then shrugged. ‘Longmore. Fourteen F, Allenvale Court, Gairn Terrace, Aberdeen, AB Ten, Six EW.’
Logan checked to see if anyone was writing that down – Rennie and Tufty both had their notebooks ready, biros already scribbling.
Keira stuck her chin out. ‘I look after my grandad.’
Not according to Jericho McQueen.
‘Thought you shared a flat with a bunch of vegans?’
‘Nah. That’s what I tell theThirstyBoys: Jericho, Spencer, Wallace, and the rest. Think they can get it on withthisfine ass?’ Patting herself on the bottom. ‘No way I’m telling them where I live!’
Fair enough.
‘What about Charles MacGarioch.’
There was a tiny pause, then: ‘Never heard of him.’
‘Really?’ Logan called up the photo from MacGarioch’s bedroom. ‘Because I heard you two were an item.’
Her mouth pinched as she considered the picture. ‘Maybe. Why? What you think he’s done?’ Keira flicked a cylinder ofash onto Bruno’s vacated perch. ‘Not that it’s anything to do withme. Whatever it is.’
‘Where is he?’
‘How would I know?’ Throwing it back, hard and fast.
‘Because you’re his girlfriend.’
‘You’re the ones chased him into the river.’ She leaned back against the wall, wearing that cruel smile again. ‘What, you cops think we can’t read the papers? I hear he’s a proper hero for saving those kids and those oldies.’ Another long inhale. ‘Anyway: haven’t seen him in ages. His bitch grandma’sscaredof people like me. Says I’m a black whore, trying to corrupt her poor little darling.’ A snarl. ‘Racist cow.’
Logan nodded. ‘Yeah...That waskind ofthe impression I got too.’ Maybe try appealing to old affections? ‘We need to talk to Charles, Keira. And it’s inhisbest interests to talk tous. You want to help him, don’t you?’
She sent another cloud of smoke Logan’s way. ‘How’d you find me?’
‘Keira, it’s important, OK? After the crash yesterday: he could be hurt. What if he’s got...internal bleeding, or a concussion?’
‘And whose fault wouldthatbe?’
One more go: ‘He could bedying,right now, and not even know it. You want that to happen?’
She smoked and smoked and smoked, burning through her extorted cigarette, making ithissssss. Looking off into the middle distance, towards the centre of town. Forehead creased between the concealer-plastered zits. ‘Charlie always said he wanted to go to Ireland. The south bit, where all the Guinness and leprechauns is.’ A smile broke free – a genuine one this time, nothing malicious about it. ‘Had this great-big dream of getting his own B-and-B. I’d do the meals and he’d look after the rooms. We’d both get fat and pop-out a whole heap ofkids...’ She dropped the spent butt, grinding it out against the concrete. ‘Course, we’d need to wait for his granny to snuff it – Charlie won’t abandon the old cow, and no way she’s moving to Ireland. Surrounded by all them foreigners? Living in the EU? She’d rather claw her cobwebbed fanny out with a carving fork.’
