LITMIR.BIZ

       6

      A few miles away, Rory McLaren was also pondering Lindsay’s future, though not in quite the same terms as the subject of her plotting. She swigged greedily from a bottle of water and let herself slide down the wall she was leaning against until she was hunkered down level with Sandra. Sweat streaked their faces and bodies as they grinned inanely at each other in the chilling-out space in the basement of E-scape, their favourite dance club, which occupied a former warehouse where Garnethill merged into Cowcaddens.

      They’d split a tab of ecstasy earlier in the evening, they’d danced like dervishes and now they were both starting the gradual descent to the point where sleep might be possible at some time in the not too distant future. But for now they were content to let the gentle throb of the ambient track ease them down gently.

      ‘What’re you thinking?’ Sandra said after a few minutes.

      ‘How useful Lindsay’s going to be.’

      ‘That would be in a work context?’

      Rory giggled softly. ‘I was thinking about work. But you never know …’

      Sandra groaned. ‘Stick to the work. Useful how?’

      ‘Well, take Keillor. I’ve got the tip, I’ve hardened it up pretty well, but I need some solid evidence. But Keillor knows me, so I’ve got no chance of scamming him. He’s never seen Lindsay, though. Maybe between us we can figure out how to have him over and she can do the sharp end.’

      Sandra’s mouth curled up in a feline smile. ‘Oh yes, I like it. Nail the wee slug to the floor.’

      ‘I’ll talk to her about it in the morning.’

      ‘It’s already the morning.’

      ‘Only technically.’ Rory hugged herself and scrunched her face up in an expression of amused cunning. ‘A couple of real buzzes like creepy Keillor and she’ll be so hooked. Which will be nice.’

      Sandra chugged on her own bottle of mineral water. ‘Uh oh.’

      ‘I mean it’ll be nice to have somebody around to work with. I never thought I’d miss the newsroom – and I don’t, not really. But it does get lonely sometimes. Everybody in the bar is a potential source, so I can’t afford to let them be my friends. I spend most days not really talking to anybody unless you or Giles stop by. Lindsay … now, there’s somebody I can talk to. Nice woman. Very nice woman.’

      ‘She’s also a happily married woman, Rory. Tell me you’re not going to crash through her life like an express train on speed,’ she sighed.

      Rory shook her head vigorously, droplets of moisture scattering from her sweat-darkened hair. ‘Hey, she’s a grown-up. She can make her own choices. I don’t force myself on anyone.’

      Sandra snorted. ‘Little Miss Butter-wouldn’t-melt. Rory, just for once, walk away from it. You know you don’t do relationships. You’re the emotional equivalent of a hit-and-run driver. You never get hurt yourself, you just leave a trail of wreckage in your rear-view mirror.’

      Rory pulled a face. ‘Yeah, well. When the only relationship you’ve ever seen close up was as fucked as my mum and dad’s was, you’d be mental to think it was as easy as falling in love. Dive in, dive deep and then climb back out and dry off before you catch a cold, that’s what works for me. But if it makes you any happier, I promise not to make a move on Lindsay. OK?’

      Sandra put an arm round her friend and hugged her close. ‘It’s not about making me happy. It’s about you making yourself happy.’

      ‘Which I do, with lots of girlies.’ Rory’s smile was wry. ‘Only, never for very long.’

      ‘Well, remember that if Lindsay starts looking like Mount Everest.’

      ‘Eh?’

      ‘You don’t have to climb it just because it’s there. You’ll have more fun in the long run working with her.’

      ‘Sandra, are you sure you’re not Jewish?’

      Sandra gave her an affectionate punch in the ribs. ‘Fuck off, Rory. C’mon, let’s go and have a last dance and see if I can pick myself up some wee boy who wants to be initiated into the secret world of the older woman.’

      Rory chuckled as she got to her feet. ‘And you’ve got the nerve to talk about me.’

      Sandra rumpled Rory’s damp hair. ‘Difference is, I can do the serious thing just as well as I do the playing.’ She pushed past and made for the stairs leading to the main dance floor, entirely missing the momentary flash of sadness and longing that crossed Rory’s face.

      The raw cold ate into Kevin’s bones. Michael seemed oblivious to the weather, as affected by the penetrating damp as were the concrete and glass of the primary school they were watching. The school was near the Botanic Gardens, in a quiet side street lined with tall sandstone tenements, which posed something of a problem for them. There was no convenient bus shelter or phone box to use as a surveillance point. Nor was there a handy café with windows overlooking the school entrance. And in these days of paedophile paranoia, nothing would provoke a call to the police faster than two men standing on a street corner scrutinizing the children arriving at a primary school.

      If it had been up to Kevin, they would have gone back to bed after their preliminary reconnaissance at half past seven had demonstrated how apparently impossible was the task facing them. But this was the school nearest the supermarket where Bernadette Dooley had been spotted, so they had to start here, Michael decreed. And besides, he had spent long enough on the front line to have honed his improvisational skills. As they had walked up Byres Road towards the school, he’d noticed two youths by the Underground entrance handing out copies of a free newspaper to the commuters hurrying into the station. When he realized how exposed the school was from a surveillance point of view, he’d remembered the newspaper distributors.

      He’d marched Kevin back down to the station and gone into a huddle with the youths. A threatening look from his amber eyes would probably have been enough to achieve his goal, but Michael didn’t want to be fixed in anyone’s memory as a bad lad. Not just yet, anyway. So a couple of tenners were swapped for two bundles of freesheets and they walked back to the school, where they took up position at either side of the gates, handing out the paper to teachers and parents as they arrived.

      Nobody gave them a second look.

      ‘Won’t she recognize you?’ Kevin had asked as they’d walked back.

      In reply, Michael had taken a pair of glasses from his inside pocket. They had thick black frames and lenses tinted blue. He put them on and simultaneously let his shoulders slump. In that instant, the threat disappeared like the sun behind a cloud.

      ‘No, right, I see what you mean,’ Kevin muttered.

      Now, he watched how Michael scrutinized every face that approached. When the electric bell finally sounded on the dot of nine o’clock, he was satisfied that Bernadette Dooley was not among the parents who had delivered their offspring to Botanics Primary.

      ‘So what do we do now?’ Kevin asked forlornly, clutching the leftover newspapers to his chest.

      ‘We go and see if that supermarket’s got a café,’ Michael said. ‘And if it hasn’t, we find someplace to watch it from. And this afternoon we find another primary school at chucking-out time.’ He was already striding down the street.

      Two hours and

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