Against the Clock by John Carson (best mobile ebook reader TXT) 📕

‘On a scale of one to ten on my talking-pish-o-meter, I have to say that one is nine and a half. It would have been ten if you hadn’t taken a beamer.’ Stewart then settled back with another piece of chicken and gnawed away at it.

‘Christ, I wish I’d got some coleslaw with this. Maybe a wee biscuit and some fries. You like KFC, Lily?’

Harry looked sideways at Lillian to see how she’d react to Stewart shortening her name, and to her credit she took it on the chin.

‘I do. Especially the legs. The biscuits are good. My favourite is the chicken breast, though.’

Stewart swallowed what he had in his mouth. ‘You can keep your filthy mitts off this bucket. My doctor says to eat small meals, not share them. This is going to tide me over until dinnertime.’

‘Is that when your heart’s going to explode?’ she asked.

Stewart laughed. ‘I’ll be burning the calories off later, young lady. I might be big, but I’m not fat.’

Harry had to agree. ‘I don’t know how you do it, sir. I just look at a doughnut and put on half a stone.’

‘I have the metabolism of a furnace,’ Stewart said. ‘That’s what my doc said. As long as I keep exercising, I’ll be fine.’

He slurped and chewed all the way across the Queensferry Crossing, the second time that day he and Harry had been on the bridge.

‘You from around here, Harry?’ Stewart asked as they left the bridge. He looked around for somewhere to put the bucket, now empty apart from the bones, and he found the perfect spot for it. The floor. ‘As far as anybody knows, that was there when we got in.’

Lillian took a packet of tissues from her pocket and handed them back to Stewart.

‘You just might have earned a gold star on that report I’ll be writing,’ he told her. ‘Percy Purcell will get to hear about this and no mistake. Bright young detective like you will go far, I’m sure.’

He wiped his face and fingers, and filed the tissues in the same place he’d filed the bucket.

‘I was born and brought up in Inverness,’ Harry replied, and Stewart looked puzzled for a second, as if he’d forgotten he’d asked Harry a question in the first place.

‘Not quite like that wee teuchter arsehole. He came from the back of beyond. Although I think he said he did a spell in Inverness. No offence.’

‘None taken.’

‘I don’t think he’ll last long in Govan. He’ll be out on his arse before long. One thing I do not like at all is some lippy wee bastard. Like that wee tosser at the bouncy castle today. I was about to bounce him. Fucking wee midget.’

They drove along to Dalgety Bay. Lillian had called ahead, and Dougal Dixon had told them he would be nipping out to Asda for some messages but would be back in time for a wee chat, making it sound like it was a social event.

‘With any luck, the wee bastard will get some Tunnock’s Tea Cakes in since he knows we’re coming,’ Stewart had said, but he didn’t hold out much hope. ‘Probably fucking digestives, knowing my luck.’

As luck would have it, coffee was on offer when they got to Dixon’s house, but the plate of biscuits Stewart had been expecting never appeared. They sat down on the settee while Lillian took a chair. The furniture was leather, or maybe vinyl, but it didn’t creak like vinyl.

‘He needs to read a book on fucking etiquette,’ Stewart informed Harry when Dixon went back to the kitchen for the sugar. ‘I mean, coffee without biscuits. Are we living in the Dark Ages or something?’

Dixon came back in with a bowl of sugar and an attitude. ‘Bloody Mike Morton. Did he start telling you things about me? Making up shite about me?’ He sat on a dining chair he’d pulled out from the small table in the corner. Only two chairs, Harry noticed. Maybe one for him, one for the prossie he’d had round, in case she fancied a cup of Earl Grey before moving on to the next customer. There were no signs anywhere that Dixon had a wife, or a husband, or any significant other.

Stewart held up a hand. ‘We’re just here for a wee chat, son.’

‘He didn’t say anything derogatory when I talked to him,’ Harry confirmed. ‘He just wasn’t happy that you’d left halfway through your shift.’

Dixon made a face. ‘Did he tell you he called me up, giving me a rake of abuse until I told him where to shove his bus?’

‘No, that seemed to have been left out of the conversation.’

‘Oh aye, he started in on me, and I just gave him it back. Told him the truth about what the other drivers think of him. And I told him I wanted a reference for a new job. He laughed and told me to go fu…’ He looked at Lillian. ‘Fiddle. So I calmly told him I would call Edinburgh Council and speak to the bloke who deals with the bus contracts and tell him about the perv he has working for him.’

All three detectives perked up at that.

‘What perv?’ Stewart asked, all thoughts of a tea cake now gone.

‘That young guy – what’s his name again? Marshall Mann.’

‘Why do you say he’s a perv?’ Lillian asked.

‘Well, most of the buses come into the yard by eight o’clock at night. There’s only one back-shift bus doing the Ratho to Edinburgh run and it comes in at midnight. Anyway, we have to sweep the bus out and mop the floor. Like Morton couldn’t afford to hire a bloody bus cleaner, but no, he’s such a tight wad. But anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I’d been running behind and got back to the yard about twenty minutes late. It had got dark by then, and I’d just put the bus into the garage and parked up for the night when I heard