Fire in the Blood Read online

  Fire in the Blood

  George McCartney

  Copyright © 2014 George McCartney

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

  any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

  publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

  the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries

  concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  Matador®

  9 Priory Business Park

  Kibworth Beauchamp

  Leicestershire LE8 0RX, UK

  Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299

  Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

  ISBN 978 1784626 846

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

  Contents

  Cover

  Disclaimer

  Acknowledgement

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Acknowledgement

  A big thank you to Moira. For being my muse, confidante and all round good egg.

  Chapter 1

  Slumped in his office chair, Jack Davidson, the owner and sole employee of JD Investigations, was starting another working day in the company of his new best friend, a nagging fearworm, which had recently taken to skulking around inside his brain, insisting that he was losing the plot. Reluctantly, he had to concede that the worm did have a point. Business has slowed to a crawl and his experience and skills, acquired over a lifetime, no longer seemed to count for very much with prospective clients. And as for making long-term plans and taking sensible decisions, well you can forget that kind of nonsense, Jack. Lately the only decision that still seemed to come easily was deciding when to have another drink and, after checking his watch, he decided that since it was well after nine-thirty in the morning, it was perfectly reasonable, sensible even, to reach under his desk and pop a can of Belhaven Best beer, his preferred morning bracer.

  He took a long pull from the can and as the foaming brew slid gently down his throat, the fearworm began to slither away and his mood improved further when he discovered an unopened bag of crisps at the back of a desk drawer.

  He smiled as he lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and raised a toast. ‘Here’s to beer, cigarettes and cheese and onion crisps … the Glasgow breakfast of champions.’

  A desultory look at the contents of his in-tray revealed several overdue bills, the remains of a fish supper and an A4 pad with a scribbled list on the top sheet. In the course of his former professional life, as a detective sergeant with Glasgow CID, Jack had always found it useful to write down the key elements of any problem on a single sheet of paper, in order to get his head quickly round the task in hand. The second essential element of his problem solving routine was to have country music playing in the background and, on switching on his old cassette player, Webb Pierce began to sing “There Stands the Glass”.

  The header on his A4 pad on this occasion was clear and unambiguous, Action Plan to stop my business going down the pan. Jack wasn’t fooling himself. He knew that his life, never mind his business, was in big trouble. But what he wasn’t sure about anymore, the thing that really scared him as he lay awake, sweating and staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, was whether he still cared enough to do something about it.

  Divorced, living alone and due to the nature of his job also spending most of his waking hours alone … well, that’s a lot of alone. Living like that for any length of time does work for some people, but not many. And it certainly wasn’t working for Jack Davidson.

  He’d also recently experienced a moment that comes to all men in their mid-fifties, when he woke up and suddenly realised that he was no longer a mature silver fox. Someone who could, at least from a distance, in poor light, be a passable body double for George Clooney in one of those annoying coffee machine ads. It dawned that the world had now officially passed him by. It had gone, accelerating fast into the distance and was now a distant, mocking speck on the horizon.

  What happened? Well, that’s easy … what happened buddy, is you got old. This painful truth had come sharply into focus at the last pub quiz Jack had attended. After almost twenty minutes of questions, he had experienced an extended panic attack realising that he didn’t know the answers to any of the questions being asked about the current crop of A-list celebs, television talent shows or soaps, boy bands, blockbuster movies or basically anything else of any significance in popular culture, that had occurred in the last twenty years. The fact that he was the only person in the pub, maybe the world, capable of answering a vital tiebreak question, regarding the year Johnny Cash had performed his famous free concert for the inmates of Folsom Prison, had provided scant comfort. In fact, a youthful member of his own team had even sarcastically asked Jack if he’d been in the audience himself, when the Man in Black rocked the joint way back in 1968.

  But, in truth, the signs of creeping isolation shouldn’t have been that hard to spot, if he’d been paying attention. His phone didn’t seem to ring quite as often as it used to, either for work or socially. He had gradually, imperceptibly drifted out of the loop and was no longer invited to nights out with former work colleagues, and he definitely went to more funerals than parties. Being ignored in shops had become the norm and even the relentless city centre charity collectors stepped smartly out of the way as he approached, because he was c
learly now bracketed in a completely different demographic group, for their pitch to be worthwhile. Too old, too stupid looking and probably skint.

  And, that very morning, he’d experienced the final indignity when a young woman, with a kindly pitying look, had stood up and offered to give Jack her seat on the bus into work. Okay, he was battling a bad hangover, fair enough, and probably wasn’t looking his absolute best. But still, not a good sign.

  But the hardest part of coming to terms with this new reality, was forcing himself to take a cold hard look in the mirror and accept that becoming old and out of touch was not something to rail against. Because there’s no point. It’s just the way of the world, the natural order of things. This is how it’s all meant to work. The last of the Mohicans has to gracefully step aside, to allow the young guns to come on through and take their shot at making an arse of things.

  So Jack did it. He got up and, for the first time in years, stared objectively at himself in a small mirror, above the wash hand basin in his office toilet. He took in the grey skin pallor and the slightly sagging jowls, the thinning grey hair and the substantial bags under the eyes of the man who was staring back. Nothing good, so far. Two small pieces of blood-stained toilet paper, one on either side of his chin, where he’d nicked himself shaving that morning, combined with a wrinkled shirt collar and several mysterious stains on his tie, accentuated the faded, distressed look.

  Turning away from the mirror, he muttered, ‘Get real pal, when people take a look at your coupon, they’re not thinking George fucking Clooney. They’re really not. They’re more likely to be thinking to themselves, is this the crazy old guy with the dog and the blanket, from outside Marks and Spencer, who keeps asking if I have any spare change?’

  He freshened his face with cold water and returned to the A4 pad, where he contemplated a short list of options, which he had drafted a week before, in the hope of resurrecting his business. He winced and concluded, rightly, that he must have been completely bladdered at the time of writing. The unconventional business plan read:

  1 Buy more lottery tickets, start going to church and pray every night for forgiveness

  2 Try to be nice to people, stop drinking and work harder. Tellingly, this line had been double scored through and was now barely legible.

  3 Grow tits, get a big hairy jumper and wear tight jeans like the hot Scandi-Noir dames on the television, who make being a top detective look completely effortless and damned sexy at the same time

  Definitely no silver bullets here, so far, Jack. Then the final item on the list, which he had circled with a felt tip pen and then added a prophetic side note, which read “last throw of the dice?”

  4 Find an assistant. An apprentice but not like those obnoxious, self-obsessed twats on the television, who all look as if they would cheerfully murder their parents for a tenner. No, what I need is somebody with plenty of energy, who is smart, street-savvy and willing to do all the hard work for not much money. Someone with really good IT skills, who can help drag my business screaming and kicking into the twenty-first century

  Jack grunted in approval, feeling sure that Sir Alan Sugar, another grumpy old sod, would heartily applaud his bold initiative. He had placed a job ad in one of the local free advertising papers.

  A Summer Internship is available with JD Investigations. Can you think outside the box, push the envelope and step up to the plate in a fast-paced, challenging, customer-facing role? Driving licence and own safety footwear essential. When it’s gone … it’s gone.

  He felt that the wording of the ad struck just the right note of modernity and dynamism, and he was particularly pleased that he’d described the vacancy as an Internship, which implied that this was much more than a shit, entry-level job, although he could only afford to pay shit, entry-level wages. He then sat back and waited, ready to be overwhelmed by job applications from the ranks of the desperate, highly qualified unemployed living in the city of Glasgow.

  Unfortunately, although a late night drinking session had provided the inspiration for the content of Jack’s ad, it had also resulted in him forgetting to include a contact phone number. On the face of it this should not have been an insurmountable problem for any aspiring private detective in the Greater Glasgow area, who was capable of switching on a computer and carrying out a simple Google search. However, disappointingly, there had been only five responses to date, requesting an interview. So far, three had failed to turn up at the agreed time and the fourth, a smartly dressed twenty-six year old man who had turned up on time and who, initially, had appeared to be exactly the type of assistant Jack had in mind. Until towards the end of the interview, when Jack had asked the guy if he had any questions about the job, the young man had enquired if it would be okay if he brought his mum along to work with him, for the first week. Just until he settled in, like.

  Chapter 2

  As Jack was checking his watch and considering, in the event of a no-show by the fifth and last applicant, whether to crack open another beer, a slim young woman with spiky, short blonde hair, who was wearing a black leather jacket, with skin tight blue jeans and shiny black Doc Marten boots, was chaining her bicycle to railings outside the entrance to his run-down Glasgow city centre office building, in clear defiance of a prominent No Bikes sign.

  Just as the she finished securing her bicycle, a black taxi screeched to a halt at the kerbside and the bug-eyed, red faced driver lowered the passenger window and leaned across towards her, clearly intent on a full and frank exchange of views regarding cycling etiquette in the city centre.

  ‘Hey you, aye you, ya cheeky cow. Whit’s your fuckin’ game, bangin’ oan the roof of ma taxi back there?’

  Apparently unfazed, the young woman immediately took out her iPhone from a jacket pocket, and pointed its camera towards the taxi driver.

  ‘Don’t say another word, knobhead, because I’m recording this and, trust me, I’ve got the Glasgow cab office on speed dial just for idiots like you. You’re obviously don’t know that, two minutes ago, you did a U-turn right in front of me, without looking or signalling, and I nearly got plastered right across the bonnet of a Transit van. Fortunately, unlike you, I was paying attention to other road users around me, otherwise you would be talking to the police right now. So, in the absence of an apology, what you need to do right now is fuck off like a nice little taxi driver and, when you get the chance, have a read at the Highway Code.’

  The altercation had quickly attracted a small gathering of passers-by, who were hugely enjoying the young woman’s heart felt rant, and maybe secretly hoping that the two protagonists would resort to violence at some point. In order to fan the flames of conflict, an elderly woman then chipped in.

  ‘You tell him hen, these black taxi drivers are a right bunch of arseholes. And they’re always taking me the long way roond tae get back tae ma hoose.’

  As some of the passers-by nodded in agreement, and others began swapping war stories about their own dealings with the taxi trade, the driver of the black cab sat silently in his vehicle, gripping the top of the steering wheel with a full set of white knuckles showing. Fuming and humiliated, he was torn between a burning desire to get out and punch this smart mouthed bitch in the face and the realisation that, if he did, that moment of instant gratification would be swiftly followed by an appearance in court and the loss of his taxi licence. In the end he resorted to a classic taxi driver retreat under fire manoeuvre, which involved revving his engine furiously, before taking off in a thick black cloud of exhaust smoke with a squeal of tyres. When safely out of range of any thrown objects, he wafted a languid one finger salute above the cab roof.

  However, this pathetic attempt at bravado cut no ice with a tough Glasgow audience, and the small crowd on the pavement responded with a ragged chorus of boos, whistles and V-signs.

  With the drama over as quickly as it had begun, the young woman shook her head and then started looking at the nameplates of the dozen or so small businesses located within the
office building. She was clearly puzzled and took a piece of paper from her bag, apparently checking the address. Frustrated, she then made a call on her mobile and a moment later was buzzed through the entrance door. She then quickly climbed the stairs up to the fourth floor, knocked loudly on the door of JD Investigations and waited.

  Inside the office, Jack Davidson’s first thought was that the forceful knocking meant the bloody sheriff officers were back again, about the rent arrears. He stood up and shook his tie free of crisp fragments, before unwrapping a breath-freshening mint, which he tucked away in a corner of his mouth. After remembering to stash the beer can under his desk, he took a moment to regain his composure and then opened the door, smiled and introduced himself.

  ‘Ah, you must be Ms James, exactly on time. Please, come in and have a seat. By the way, do you know what that racket down in the street was all about? I heard a lot of shouting followed by the squealing of tyres. It sounded like there was a right rammy going on.’

  ‘Oh, it was no biggie, honestly,’ said the young woman dismissively. ‘It was just some taxi driver being a complete arse. I think he had to rush away to his anger management class.’

  The striking looking young woman then made herself comfortable on the opposite side of the desk and they eyed each other up and down for a few moments without speaking, like boxers before a major title fight. She appeared familiar and confident with the interview experience and coolly held Jack’s gaze without flinching. However, to break the awkward silence, and move things along, she spoke first.

  ‘You can call me Annie; here’s a copy of my CV.’ Jack took the slim folder, but left it unopened on his desk. ‘By the way, you don’t make it easy for people to find you. I had to phone because I couldn’t see your nameplate downstairs.’

  ‘That’s because I don’t have one any longer. Solid brass it was, but some thieving bastard stole it a couple of years ago.’

  Clearly unimpressed, Annie continued, ‘And you don’t have a website either, just a boring two line entry in Yellow Pages. That’s crazy, I mean even the Pope and MI5 have websites.’