Vertigo Alley: Text K For Killer: A DCI Finnegan Yorkshire Crime Thriller - Book 3 by Ely North

Author:Ely North [North, Ely]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Handed Print
Published: 2023-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

24

Zac opens his door and peers up and down the hotel corridor.

‘All clear,’ he whispers to himself. He walks past three rooms, then gently raps on Beale’s door.

‘Sorry, but whatever it is you’re selling, I’m not interested. Fuck off!’

‘Stop pissing about and open the door,’ Zac replies in a forced whisper.

The door clicks open. ‘Oh, Grizzly Adams, it’s you. I do beg your pardon,’ Beale guffaws, a butt of a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. ‘Come in and shut the door. You’re late, by the way—by an hour.’

‘You said nine o’clock.’

‘I said eight,’ Beale insists, stubbing his ciggy into an overflowing saucer of tab ends.

‘Nine.’

‘No… I said eight. Nine is my self-abuse in the shower time and I’m a creature of habit.’

Zac wanders into the room and notices sheets of paper and photographs strewn around haphazardly.

‘What’s all this?’ he asks.

‘What?’

‘The mess.’

‘No mess here, sunshine,’ Beale replies as he pours a small shot of whisky into a glass. ‘That, my Edinburgh born, lowland, turncoat, English loving bastard, is what we in the highlands call research.’

Zac sniffs. ‘If you knew your Scottish history, Edinburgh isn’t the lowlands, and neither is Glasgow the highlands.’

Beale slugs the whisky down in one hit and lights a fresh smoke. ‘Ah, the old arguments never die, do they? That’s the only problem with us Scots; we spend so much time fighting with each other, we overlook the real enemy—the Sassenach bastards. Friday morning cannot come around fast enough for me. This place is getting me down—which is not like me—I’m usually fun, frivolous, carefree.’

‘Can we get down to business?’ Zac snaps, impatient.

‘Don’t get your knickers all bunched up.’ He waggles the bottle of whisky in front of him. ‘A wee dram?’

‘No, thanks.’

Beale frowns. ‘I’m beginning to question your heritage. Are you sure your mother and father weren’t Welsh?’

Zac ignores him and slumps into the armchair. ‘Right, let’s go through this step by step and take in every possible scenario.’

Beale puffs smoke into the air. ‘No need for all that upper management, risk mitigation shite. It’s quite simple. At ten-thirty you leave here and head towards Mr Bojangles. It’s a ten minute walk—I’ve timed it. Go into the club and make yourself at home. Try to appear relaxed—the opposite of what you look like now. And don’t get hammered,’ he says as he pours himself another generous shot of whisky. ‘I need you to be on your game. This has to run like a digital clock. At exactly ten-fifty, give or take ten, possibly fifteen minutes, I’ll enter and sit at the opposite end of the bar to you. You’ll be playing the character of the good-looking, randy young git on the pull—after all, it is ladies’ night, and it attracts sex pests; I’ll be playing the sad old loser drunk whose wife has left him and taken the kids, and is massively in debt to the bank and is now living in a hovel of a bedsit in student land where they play that god awful fucking duff-duff music, or worse, Abba, until the wee hours of the morning.

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