“Was it something I said, do you think?” Moira asked.
“I’m sure it’s just coincidence,” Ben told her.
“It absolutely is not!” Moira insisted. She looked annoyed by the suggestion, and Ben got the impression she was quite pleased with the effect her arrival had on the PC.
She took a seat at the table for two, then tapped the back cover of the magazine. “Now hurry up with that tea, so we can look at this.”
Ben’s eyes went to the publication on the table. “Haven’t you already read it?”
“Of course I haven’t read it! Why would I have read it?” Moira asked, her nostrils flaring in disgust, outrage, or possibly both. She sniffed loudly. “No bloody point reading it on my own, is there?” she asked. “It’s our thing.”
Ben paused with the kettle halfway to the first cup. “Do you know, I’ve never thought of it like that before,” he said, then he looked back over his shoulder and smiled. “But aye, I suppose it is.”
When Tyler had moved out of Uniform and into plain clothes, he’d been led to believe that there was a lot less running involved. This, in his experience, had not turned out to be the case.
He seemed to spend a lot of his time running. He ran after things—fleeing suspects, stray sheep, that sort of thing. He ran away from things, too—dogs, mostly, although also that steam train that one time.
It was getting to the stage that he thought he should probably just wear trainers to work. Ideally quite a cheap pair, too, given that much of his running took place through mud and wet bracken.
He’d hoped that after his big operation, running duties might be passed on to someone else. Hamza, maybe. He was a handful of years older, but he still had a turn of speed about him when he wanted to.
But no. Sergeants didn’t run, apparently. Not unless it was absolutely necessary, and even then, not without complaining about it.
No, Tyler knew his place. He was the youngest, he was the fittest, and he was at the bottom of the ladder. If there was running to be done, and he was anywhere in the vicinity, he was the bugger that was going to end up doing it.
Like here. Now. Today.
Running was not in any way unusual. Running while dressed as Dinny the Drink-Driving Squirrel, on the other hand, was not something he had ever expected to be called on to do.
In a way, he was grateful for the outfit. The trees would otherwise have been unforgiving as he huffed and puffed his way between them. Their spindly branches were like tiny claws, pricking and scratching at him, but failing to do any damage through the thick padding of the suit.
The midges were more of a problem. They gathered in clouds, shimmering in the air with the anticipation of his arrival, then swarming his head as he crashed through them. He swiped and swatted at them like King Kong battling the bi-planes, but the hungry wee bastards weren’t taking the hint, and he could feel lumps and bumps forming on his face and neck as he closed in on the surprisingly sprightly old geezer up ahead.
Even without the suit slowing him down, Tyler would’ve said that Ally Bally was fast. Much faster than his frame suggested should be possible. He seemed to have some sort of sixth sense, too, that steered him through the gaps in the trees and let him avoid the branches.
They hit a clearing for a moment, and Ally Bally almost tripped when he looked back to find the costumed Tyler lumbering furiously up the hillside behind him.
“No’ this again!” the old man cried. He waved a hand, like his pursuer was a stain he could just wipe out of existence. “Fuck off, you big squirrel!”
From somewhere behind—though not nearly far enough behind for Tyler’s liking—came the sound of a big dog barking. The same big dog that had tried to tear Logan’s throat out a few minutes earlier. The same big dog that had taken a bite at Tyler’s arse some months before then.
He could hear it racing through the trees, bounding through the bracken, closing in fast.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Tyler found some untapped reserve of speed and hurried on. “Are you chasing him or are you chasing me?” he called back over his shoulder. “Are you chasing him or me?!”
The dog, perhaps unsurprisingly, didn’t offer any sort of clarification, and Tyler found himself caught up in a personal first, both running after and away from something at the same time.
“Bloody dogs!” he sobbed. Then, he choked on a cloud of midges, hissed as a thin branch sprung back and whipped him across the cheek, and threw himself into the chase.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Dinky’s house was, not to put too fine a point on it, an absolute fucking state. A large, moth-eaten, sideways-slumping couch had been converted into some sort of makeshift paperwork storage unit, and was teetering with glossy magazines, old newspapers, and stacks of paper covered in notes both printed and handwritten.
The couch also held several empty cans of Special Brew lager, half a sandwich, and a banana that had presumably been purchased with the best intentions some weeks previously, but never consumed.
The rest of the living room was not much better. In many ways, it was actually worse. At least the mess on the couch had some sense of organisation to it. Ignoring the beer cans and the rotting food, the couch was more of a clutter than a mess. The items there at least appeared to serve some purpose, even if that purpose was only to see who could build the biggest tower.
Everywhere else, though, was mess. Proper mess. Discarded clothes lay strewn on the floor. Several small shoes—none of them matching—were scattered around like they were part of a footwear-based scavenger hunt that no one would ever want to win.
There was a dog bed in the corner with what looked like a king-sized duvet lining the inside. The corner of the duvet had been chewed to pieces, and long white fibres of stuffing had drifted across the room like the first snow of winter, only significantly more flammable.
Posters of statuesque supermodels adorned the walls, alongside a picture of a red Ferrari that had been printed on a box canvas just a little smaller than the living room window. The window itself was hidden behind a pair of thick red curtains. They looked like heavy big buggers, and Logan couldn’t imagine they’d be easy for a man of Dinky’s diminutive stature to open and shut.
And then, there was the smell. Or rather, the smells. The room was a symphony of them—wet dog, rotting fruit, old paper, and damp walls, all accompanied by a marijuana top note and a throbbing bass of cheap booze.
“Sit down. You’re making the place look untidy,” Dinky instructed, hopping up onto an armchair so large he was in danger of being lost down the back of the cushions.
“I’m pretty sure it’s the place that’s making the place look untidy, son. No’ me,” Logan replied. “You had a party recently?”
“Always,” Dinky said. “It’s party central, this place, like I told your pal last time he was here.”