'I could be in Sunderland in six hours. Five.'

'They're already in briefings down there. Look, you've done a hell of a job. Lexington asked me to . . .'

Angelique stopped listening when he slipped into autopatronise, then went about winding down the conversation as quickly as she could. It was at times like these that she despised cellular phones. All there was to do at the end was press a minuscule plastic button, when the occasion called for slamming an ancient bakelite handset into a brass-lined cradle with a force that would shake the building.

'You okay?' asked a passing PC.

'Fuck off.'

'Ooh, sounds like somebody's got PMT.'

'Listen, sheep-shagger, if I had PMT, they'd be scrapin' your sack off the ceilin' with a spatula right now, okay?'

This time he didn't tarry to argue the point.

Angelique took a walk to the bathroom and allowed 334.

herself a few moments to calm down. She gave her face a splash with cold water before heading back to the interview room where she'd left Ash, someone she knew she'd do well to remember had put up with a lot more shit than even her this week. With that thought, she diverted via the drinks machine and grabbed a couple of cans. The guy had looked like he could seriously use something a little stronger, but it was better than a boot in the balls, as Maclaren would say.

'Cheers,' Ash acknowledged, with genuine warmth. Mock executions didn't half make you grateful for the little things, she thought. 'So what's the story?'

'Oh, an everyday tale of politics, egos and bullshit,' she replied.

'Eh?'

'Never mind, feeling sorry for myself. Pathetic. You came up trumps, that's the story. They found something very useful at the farmhouse, as well as corroborating evidence of your account.'

'What about the kids?'

'Nothing. Unrelated, would be my guess.'

'Could you tell the papers that? I'd quite like to go home without running the risk of being castrated.'

'We'll try.'

'But I take it these guys are still on the loose.'

'Not for much longer, thanks to you.'

'How so?'

'I'm sorry, it's classified.'

He sighed. 'Any danger you can tell me what it all has to do with Simon Darcourt? Because, you know, anythin' that gave me a Scooby what the fuck's been goin' on would be much appreciated.'

'That's classified too,' she informed him. 'But to be 335.

honest, I'm not feeling particularly loyal or dutiful right now.'It's not every day you discover your late ex-flatmate is one of the world's most wanted terrorists, responsible for the murders of literally hundreds of people. Ash had been wrestling for a few days with the part about Darcourt also not being quite as late as was erringly suggested by events such as his funeral, so it could have been that he was all out of astonishment. Fatigue admittedly may have played a part in reining in any histrionics, but either way, he took it very calmly, something Angelique felt moved to remark upon.

'I'm all out of astonishment. And I'm very tired,' he explained, confirming her seldom-doubted vocational suitability.

She had started him off with the calling card, laying it down on the interview-room table. 'I know you're familiar with this individual,' she told him.

'Rank Bajin,' he had identified. 'Nefarious villain and good father to four sons. Fond of oratund loquacity and toasted cheese. Is he the latest suspect for the missing schoolboys?' he asked with weary sarcasm. 'Because frankly, that's not his style. As far as I remember, he even helped return Fairy Nuff's children when Big Chief Toffee Teeth kidnapped them.'

'I think you should be taking this a little more seriously,' Angelique warned.

'You're showin' me cartoon characters and you're accusin' me of takin' the piss?'

'Touche,' she acknowledged. 'Allow me to get to the point. Was Simon Darcourt familiar with this image, to your knowledge?'

336.

'Aye. I pinned it on his bedroom door when we were flatmates. His nickname was Dark Man. You know, Darcourt, Dark Man. It seemed appropriate. He thought so too. Why?'

Which was when she told him the whole bloody story. He sat and listened, calmly, nodding every so often, as though at his own thoughts rather than her revelations. At one point, tears began welling up in his eyes, but there was no protest, no incredulity. No resistance.

'On any other week, that would have fair knocked me oot my stride,' he offered, supplementary to his previous explanation for seeming markedly underwhelmed. 'I think if I got a shower, a hot meal and a decent night's kip, I'd probably wake up in the morning and freak out about it. Right now, the scary thing is it makes perfect sense. Well, you know, in an appropriately fucked-up and twisted kind of way.'

'How's that?'

'Simon's got what he always wanted. Renown, power, money, kudos-'

'Kudos?' Angelique queried with open disgust.

'It's a post-rock'n'roll world, Detective Inspector. No points for being good when everybody wants to be bad. And it doesnae get much badder than mass murder, especially if you can pull it off with a bit of stagecraft. He's world-famous. No, he's got something more than fame: he's got world notoriety. Garth Brooks is world-famous, but who'd want to be Garth Brooks if you could be Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Marilyn Manson rolled into one?'

'Sounds more like Charles Manson.'

'My point exactly. Charles Manson, David Koresh would be another example. Guys who wanted the power, the adulation, the iconic status of rock stars, but couldn't get 337.

it the way their idols did. They got it somehow, though, didn't they? And now Simon's got it. Feared on one side of the law, respected on the other. Subordinates jumpin' to his command, women hangin' off him no doubt, money, international jet-set lifestyle, and the power of life and death in his hands. He gets to walk taller upon the earth than us mere mortals. The reason it makes sense is that in a way he always did.'

'What do you mean?' Angelique asked.

So Ash told her, recounting all he knew about Darcourt, from their first meeting as students to what he'd learned from Alison McRae earlier that same day. If there had been any lingering doubts about whether this was the man they were looking for, Ash's story blew them away. Loath as she was to admit it, the person he described was even a ringer for the one in that much maligned psych profile.

'His accomplices will be regarded as mere bit-part players in the greater drama that is his life . . .'

It was all there. Raging egotism, sociopathic lack of empathy, a previously respectable figure with no criminal background (student pranks notwithstanding, and that merely underlined his desire for notoriety at any cost). 'His sin is not anger, but pride . . .'There was even the death of a mentor/authority figure; in practice this seemed to have been two figures, the impact possibly even more ferocious through the death of the second unleashing something repressed since the death of the first.

'I once heard of a psychological condition called alixothymia,' Ash said, as a silence grew amid their contemplation of each other's unsettlingly complementary tales. 'It describes people - killers, I suppose - who do hideous things, and they keep doing these hideous things, apparently never 338.

sated. But for whatever reason they first started, the reason they keep doing it is because if they stopped, they'd have to turn around and look at what was behind them. They keep going because it's the only way of outrunning the horror of their crimes.'

Angelique nodded, understanding what he was trying to say. He was searching for some kind of mitigating explanation, possibly out of a surrogate guilt.

'I've been following the Black Spirit's trail of devastation for years now,' she said, 'and in that time I've developed a wee psychological theory of my own. Want to hear it?'

Ash nodded. He was beginning to look a little crushed. Cold - if, as he put it, fucked-up - logic had made him calmly receptive to the evening's devastating truth, but only now were its bloody implications beginning to thaw and seep into his conscience.

'He's a wanker,' she told him. "That's my theory.'

Ash smiled sheepishly. 'I'd have to concur.'

"That's what it all boils down to in the end. Everything else is just hair-splitting definitions of precisely what kind of wanker he is. And I've got a theory on that too. Care to take a guess?'

'A total wanker?'

'Close enough. The exact answer was "a fucking wanker". And that's why he arsed up. Wankers never change. Do you know how the Partick polis found out who broke into the university museum?'

'Yeah. That fucker told them.'

'How do you know that?'

'Same source. Pretty much my last conversation with him, for obvious reasons.'

'He couldn't take it that people didn't know what he'd pulled off, could he?'

339.

'What I'd pulled off, in the main, but yeah, you're right.' 'Fast-forward to him as the ingenious and audacious terrorist. He leaves these Rank Bajin calling cards as part of his ego trip, so that the authorities make no mistake in apportioning blame; or credit, looking at it from his point of view. None of the foreign cops are likely to recognise a 1950s Glasgow newspaper cartoon character, so he's not giving anything away immediately, but he's still trying to offer a clue, isn't he?'

'Well at least he's graduated from phoning up the investigating officer.'

'But it's got to be gnawing away the whole time that once again, nobody knows it's him, same as after the museum.'

'What good is fame if you no longer have an identity?' 'Exactly, so when he comes back home, it's gaunny gnaw all the harder because this is where he used to be just another nobody. Then by coincidence, he sees you at the airport. It's the kind of thing that should put him on his guard, remind him that this is a small place and there's people here who remember his face, whether or not they think he's dead. But he's a wanker, so he just cannae resist goin' after you, 'cause he wants you to know who he is now, wants you on your knees before him.'

'Prior to puttin' a bullet in my brain, no doubt, once he's had his fun.'

'Well, yeah, afraid so. He's a wanker, not an idiot. But he took an unnecessary risk just so that he could play headgames with you, and it backfired because you escaped and led us right to his wee temporary HQ.'

'So now you're gaunny slap the cuffs on him, and then everybody can find out who he is. You're probably doin' him the biggest favour of his life.'

340.

'Not me personally, but I know what you mean.'

'Not you personally?'

Angelique paused, feeling the anger start to well up again. Murray was right, she knew. They were all on the same team. It just felt a bit like she had beaten four defenders and rounded the goalkeeper then rolled the ball across the six-yard box for someone else to sidefoot it home.

'It's out of my hands,' she said. "The big boys have taken over, so I just have to run along like a good girl. Anyway, it's jurisdictionally out of range; geographically too, seeing as I'm up here in the northern wasteland.'

'Does that mean you'll be headin' home?'

'You anglin' for a lift?'

'Well, seeing as you impounded that nice car, and mine's in Perthshire.'

'More like in pieces, I'm afraid. They torched it.'

'Every cloud has a silver lining.'

'Not your pride and joy, then?'

'Not quite.'

'I can give you a lift, but I wasnae plannin' to leave until the morning. It's well after twelve and it's been a long day. I was gaunny grab some kip for a few hours.'

'That sounds pretty good. Can I call my wife?'

'Sure. You can use my mobile. I'll go and sort us out with some rooms at the section house.'

'If there's none spare, right now I could sleep in the cells.'

'There'll definitely be none of those spare on a Friday night. The section house will be more comfortable marginally. You could get that shower too, though I'd reckon you're on to plums with the hot meal.'

'Doesnae matter. Food I can get any time. Sleep, on the other hand . . .'

341.

what great oafs from little arseholes grow .Simon checked out of his hotel in Glasgow at exactly 20:30 hours, after a light meal and a hot shower. There were some who advocated the most spartan and ascetic living conditions at times like this, in order to stay lean and sharp, but Simon considered it psychologically important to remain well acquainted with what he'd be missing if he or anyone in his charge fucked up.

Taylor collected him out front in one of the Espaces. May had the other one, having dropped him off the night before. After they'd finished at the bridge, they'd waited for Lydon and Matlock to arrive at Glen Crom with the tour truck, then gave them a lift back down the road once they had planked it. It was almost six by the time he got to bed, which was according to schedule: sleeping by day would keep him frosty for the long nightshift ahead. Aware that the phrase 'Do Not Disturb' was interpreted by housekeeping staff the world over as a dare, Simon had bolted the door and moved the dresser in front of it to reinforce the point.

Taylor and he were the vanguard in what began building into a small convoy as they got nearer to Dubh Ardrain, with vehicles pulling out from laybys at their back, prompted by confirmatory flashes of the Espace's headlights. May was first, then Simonon and Deacon, each towing a speedboat, then finally Headon and Cook in the vans. All but the lead Espace diverted up the reservoir 342.

approach road, where the tour truck had been concealed, half a mile past the rigged pontoon. There they would tool up and await the go-ahead.

Upon Simon's instruction, Taylor pulled into the final layby before the entrance to the complex and watched the cars drive inside, one by one. He looked at his watch. It was almost midnight, almost time for the shift changeover. He was waiting for the backshift workers to be clear and well on their way home before making a move. There'd be another changeover at eight, but nobody would be leaving from that one. The nightshift's other halves would get a phone call soon after, apologising and informing them that their partners were being required to work a double shift to sort out a major technical problem, for which they'd be getting plenty of lovely OT. Because let's face it, that's all they really gave a fuck about, wasn't it?

Taylor looked ahead at the steel gate and the crappy Sixties low-rise office building just inside it, then across to the pine-built visitor centre a couple of hundred yards along on the other side of the road, nearer the water. Simon could tell what he was thinking.

'Not much to look at, is it, Roger?'

'Oh, I don't know. It looks like money in the bank, to me. That's always a pretty sight.'

'A mine is just a hole in the ground until you walk out with the gold. Remember that.'

'Roger.'

Simon rolled his eyes. They both laughed.

Dubh Ardrain. Gaelic for Black Ridge, Black Promontory, Black Mesa, something like that anyway. And it really wasn't much to look at, not from the road. You could drive past it and not know it was there. Even a visitor centre and several large signposts probably weren't enough to tip off 343.

many of the passing tourists as to what lay concealed. It would be easy for them to think the pine building was a lochside aquatic wildlife centre, just another take-it-or- leave-it, scones-and-souvenirs drop-off point on the road through the glens.