The Long Knives (The CRIME series) by Irvine Welsh

Author:Irvine Welsh [Welsh, Irvine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529193718
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2022-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

21

The basement flat in Albany Street in the New Town has its courtyard festooned with the obligatory potted plants, which give this area of Edinburgh much of its charm. Lennox rings the bell and is afforded entry by a woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, who wears a red jersey and a black-and-white-checked skirt.

When he first went to see her, on Drummond’s recommendation, after being broken up by the Mr Confectioner case, Lennox’s impression of Sally Hart was that she was strikingly good-looking. In possession of high cheekbones and expressive blue eyes, hair tinted various layers of blonde, she wore her clothes well, neither highlighting nor attempting to conceal her evident curves. Most people would open up with such a woman taking an interest, albeit professional, in them. It was a subconscious desire to please. Yet whenever they sit down opposite each other in two chairs, he invariably finds such anticipated dynamics irrelevant; Sally is just very good at her job. Open-ended questions, followed by probing ones, and an intuitive sense of what’s going on with him, make Lennox feel at ease but also that he’s being led somewhere in a strange dance.

This room normally relaxes him, with its big floor-to-ceiling windows leading onto a basement patio garden, the two plush chairs, and the lounger that he thinks of as a traditional psychiatrist’s couch. There’s a toilet and a fitted kitchen space off the lounge area. It’s replete with soft furnishings and stylish prints.

But he really wants more cocaine. That wrap in his pocket. He can feel it dance.

One line is too much.

Hollis.

These veteran cops and their dinosaur-like ways. That uncanny excitement ignited by working with them. How easily they lead him into darkness.

I wonder if they know they do this.

Alex’s ‘top-line gear’ is still Edinburgh cocaine, cut with its Vim, brick shavings and talc, scrunching at his sinuses. He must try to conceal this from Sally. — Dreich weather, he offers, sitting down in one of the chairs. — Been soaked to the skin a few times this week. Nasty cold, so don’t get too close!

Sally makes vaguely affirmative noises, pouring two glasses of water from a bottle procured from a small fridge, setting one in front of him, taking the other to the chair opposite, and settling down. — How has work been?

— Okay …

— Any more disturbing cases?

— They’re all disturbing.

— Hopefully not like the Confectioner one? That really did get under your skin.

He thinks of the images of Gulliver. That angry red wound. But he does not want to talk about this. And he can’t yet talk about Trudi.

What do you want to talk about?

Lennox is normally candid with Sally Hart in a way he hasn’t been with previous counsellors. But no, he just can’t talk about the mess with Trudi, not yet. Instead he starts to disclose more about that old disused railway tunnel that defines him. — I’m thinking about it less, definitely, he says, wondering, if that’s the case, why he is so moved to mention it now.

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