The Storm Without by Tony Black Read Free Book Online

chance. Doug, we were too young to know any better. '
    I looked down at our hands, entwined. Every instinct I had wailed at me to get up and walk. Back through the door. Back to the guest house. Back to my life. My life, not the one I thought I was living.
    ' Lyn, this isn ' t about us, ' I said.
    She firmed her grip. I was close enough to see the flecks of grey in her dark brown eyes. ' We never gave us a chance, Doug. Not a chance. '

Chapter 10
     

    What Veitchy had told me about Jonny Gilmour could have filled the back of a postage stamp. A particularly small postage stamp. By contrast he ' d been voluminous in his praise of him, and that, coupled with my sighting of Gilmour at the King Street police station was enough to set my antennae twitching. Once he was warmed up, Veitchy had played to type — his type being the tin-pot hard man that the west of Scotland pushed out like paving weeds. He liked to be known as a player in the Auld Toun but he was just another bottom feeder. A scrote. His status was garnered from close alignment to bigger fish: those like Gilmour.
    The pair had started out as football casuals but that was just a front, a vent for Gilmour ' s psychopathic tendencies; Veitchy went along to soak in the testosterone-filled air and hope some kind of rep ' brushed off on him. In a way it did: Mason and myself certainly got to know him. He was what we called a ferret back then, the type of contact that was so easy to lean on, to manipulate, that you could flush names out of him. A ferret like that has a short shelf-life though; scrotes soon know to keep their traps shut around them.
    Veitchy had been of some use to me though. He ' d let slip that Gilmour liked to hold court at the Davis Snooker Club over at Tam ' s Brig. I knew the place; in my day it had been the antidote to The Bobby ' s snooker hall. I remembered The Bobby ' s fondly; the broad, dark hall had something that seemed in the process of being scrubbed from the new Ayr: atmosphere. It was a place for patter, for passing the night somewhere other than the pub. It was a bloke-ish domain. A million miles from the trendy coffee houses and super pubs that filled the place now. As I fell into reverie, I saw how far the town had come, but wondered about the direction.
    I checked my watch; I ' d been in place for the best part of an hour. This was the low-glamour end of detective work. The American TV cops called it stakeout — a surprisingly sprightly name for freezing your backside off in a car park at night. Jonny Gilmour ' s silver Lexus sat to the far left of the car park. I had the private reg ' — surprisingly not one containing Ayr — in sight. On the driver ' s seat I had a camera with a telephoto lens; I doubted there was enough light to take decent shots, but I ' d get a good view of Gilmour when he showed and that might tell me something. I knew if I had to rely on Veitchy, or Mason for that matter, that I ' d be waiting a long time.
    I lit a Regal, rolled down the window. It was the first of a new pack that I ' d bought from a shop down the shore and it tasted a little funny.
    ' What the? ' I looked at the tip of the cigarette; it was burning quickly, the paper turning brown half-way up the underside of the cig. I took another quick drag. If this was a Regal, I was Ruud Gullit. I flicked the filter tip into the night. A hail of amber sparks showered the tarmac.
    I removed the pack from my pocket, checked the side. The Government health warning was there, but it looked smaller than I remembered. ' Out of date? ' I was murmuring to myself, going stir crazy in the cold of the car, when suddenly the sound of footfalls alerted me to raise the camera.
    It was Gilmour. There was a smaller man with him, grey suit and a navy-blue tie that was loosened round his neck. He looked corporate and quite well-to-do. He wasn ' t on the lower rungs of the ladder that was for sure. The pair seemed to be relaxed in each others company, though, starting off