From bitter experience Duff knew a junkie told more lies than the truth, especially if that way they could finance their next shot. But, as a rule, a junkie preferred easier and quicker ways of tricking you than ringing HQ and insisting on talking to one of the unit heads, then waiting an hour in the rain, and all of that without a guaranteed payment.
‘And you know that, do you?’ Duff asked. ‘Who this person is?’
‘I’ve seen him before, yes.’
Duff took out his wallet. Produced a wad, counted, passed the banknotes to the boy.
‘I was thinking of calling Macbeth himself,’ the boy said as he recounted. ‘But then I realised he would probably refuse to believe me when I told him who it was.’
‘Personal?’
‘That Malcolm was talking to Macbeth’s sidekick,’ the boy said. ‘Old guy, white hair.’
Duff gasped involuntarily. ‘Banquo?’
‘I dunno what his name is, but I’ve seen him with Macbeth at the station.’
‘And what were Banquo and Malcolm talking about?’
‘They were too far away for me to hear.’
‘What erm... did it seem as if they were talking about? Were they laughing? Or were there loud, angry voices?’
‘Impossible to say. The rain was hammering down on the containers and mostly they had their backs to me. They might have been arguing. The old boy was waving his shooter for a while. But then things quietened down, they got into a Volvo and drove off. The old boy was driving.’
Duff scratched his head. Banquo and Malcolm in cahoots?
‘This is too much,’ the boy said, holding up a note.
Duff looked down at him. A junkie giving him change? He took the note. ‘You didn’t tell me this just for the money for another shot, did you?’
‘Eh?’
‘You said you’d read the papers and knew this was heavy stuff. And it is. So heavy that if you’d rung a journalist with this story you’d have got ten times more than from a policeman. So either it’s Hecate who sent you to spread false info or you’ve got another agenda.’
‘Go to hell, Mr Narco Boss.’
Duff grabbed the junkie’s collar and pulled him off the bollard. The boy weighed almost nothing.
‘Listen to me,’ Duff said, trying to avoid inhaling the boy’s stinking breath. ‘I can put you behind bars, and let’s see then what you think when you hit cold turkey and you know you’ve got two days in the wilderness in front of you. Or you tell me now why you came to me. You’ve got five seconds. Four...’
The boy glared back at Duff.
‘Three...’
‘You piece of cop shit, you’re fuckin’...’
‘Two...’
‘My eye.’
‘One...’
‘My eye, I said!’
‘What about it?’
‘I only wanted to help you catch the man that took my eye.’
‘Who was it?’
The boy snorted. ‘The same guy that’s busting your arse. Don’t you know who’s behind all this shit? There’s only one person in this town who can kill a chief commissioner and get away with it, and that’s the Invisible Hand.’
Hecate?
Macbeth drove along the dirty road between the old factories. The cloud hung so low and Monday-grey over the chimneys that it was difficult to see which were smoking, but some of the gates had CLOSED signs or chains secured across them like ironic bow ties.
The press conference had passed painlessly. Painlessly because he had been too high to feel anything. He had concentrated on sitting back in a relaxed manner with his arms crossed and leaving the questions to Lennox and Caithness. Apart from those directed at him personally, which he had answered with, ‘We cannot comment on that at the present time,’ delivered with an expression that said they had much too much information and were in full control. Calm and assured. That was the impression he hoped he had given. An acting chief commissioner who did not allow himself to be affected by the hysteria around him, who answered journalists’ shrill questions — ‘Doesn’t the public have the right to know?’ — with a somewhat resigned, tolerant smile.
Although then Kite, the reporter with the rolled ‘r’s, had said in his radio programme right after the press conference that the acting chief commissioner had yawned a lot, seemed uninvolved and looked at his watch a lot. But to hell with Kite. In the Patrols Section they definitely thought the new chief commissioner was involved enough as he had personally dropped in and redirected the patrols from District 2 West to District 1 East. He explained it was time the neighbourhoods of normal people were also patrolled. It was an important signal to send: the police didn’t prioritise districts with money and influence. And if Kite had been annoyed, Banquo had at least been happy to receive a dinner invitation with instructions to bring along Fleance.
‘Good for the lad to get used to mixing with the big boys,’ Macbeth had said. ‘And then I think you should decide what you’d like to do. Take over SWAT, Organised Crime or become the deputy chief commissioner.’
‘Me?’
‘Don’t get stressed now, Banquo. Just give it some thought, OK?’
