Page 25 of Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop

She tutted, a wry curl at her lips. All the time her eyes stayed fixed on the pavement. She upped her pace. He matched her.

Jamie would have to take a punt if he was going to make progress. ‘Whoever did this to you,’ he indicated the tear at her coat, but just as easily could have pointed to her eye, ‘can’t be worth protecting all that much, can he?’

Silence. She made a sharp turn down a side street.

There was no road sign to help orientate him.

They passed a small playpark with two swings swaying ghost-like in the breeze, and a set of monkey bars over a rubbery red surface.

At the end of the park she made another sharp left.

She wasn’t going to lead him to wherever she’d been going.

She was trying to lose him. Both of them knew he wasn’t giving up.

Edwyn’s voice rang in his ears. He should call for assistance. But how? If he did, she’d start running again, then he’d have to apprehend her.

‘All I need is a name, and I’ll leave you alone, I promise.’

She jolted to a standstill. Now she looked straight at him he saw how blue her eyes were. They were shot with weary sadness. At first he’d guessed she was in her mid-forties. Now, though, he wondered if she were much younger.

‘You’ve nae idea what you’re asking,’ she said. ‘Even talking to you in the street could get us in big trouble. Gonnae just leave me alone, for both our sakes?’

Hers was a familiar accent. Maybe not Edinburgh, but near enough.

‘What part of Mid Lothian are you from? Or is it East Lothian?’ he tried.

She laughed, exasperated. ‘None of your business.’ She walked on for a moment before turning sharply up a path between two front gardens, then passing deeper between the terraces, coming to a stop in a dark dead end flanked by unlit back yards on either side, both overgrown with tall shrubs and weeds.

Even in the low light her eyes were strikingly baby blue.

Aware she’d brought him up here so they couldn’t be seen or heard, he whispered. ‘Just a name.’

‘You know I cannae dae that.’

‘He’d be in the back of a van within the hour. He’d never know it was you. I’d make sure of that.’

‘Would you?’ she hissed back, incredulity in her voice.

‘The Chief would. I can absolutely guarantee it.’ Before she could waver he added, ‘It’s a whole gang, isn’t it?

Not just your fella, but there’s a network, right?

Just tell me the ringleader. A name, or the HQ, and I’ll let you walk away.

Or if you like, before we’re even knocking their doors down, we’d have you in a safe house miles from here. ’

‘I cannae leave the area.’ She said it so quickly, Jamie drew his chin in.

‘Because you’ve someone keeping you here?’

He knew the MO of groups like the one he suspected had this woman in their thrall; he’d seen it repeatedly in training.

Overwhelm a vulnerable woman with gifts and goodies, whatever she wanted, just enough to reel her in.

Then ask her for help storing something for a mate.

Then before she knows it there’s a package needs picking up, or some man needing a place to sleep for a while, keeping a low profile.

If she objects, she’s reminded that they know all about the one thing more precious to her than anything else.

‘My lassie,’ the woman admitted with a dejected sigh. ‘She’s at her granny’s for now. Things have been chaos at my place. She cannae be missing school.’

‘We can keep her safe too.’

She didn’t believe him. She pulled a vape from her pocket and its little light shone blue as she inhaled then blew out a bloom of foul-smelling vapour.

Jamie stayed close. He’d grab her if she decided to run now.

His phone was in the pocket of his jacket.

He willed it not to ring before remembering he’d switched it to silent around the same time he was running out of Cairn Dhu, having given no one any indication of where he was going.

He didn’t even know the name of this village, but all he had to do was dial the central line and they’d pinpoint his location and send an unmarked car for this woman.

‘I’m Jamie,’ he said.

The lights from the only vehicle to pass by briefly lit the night and were gone again. She’d stepped back further against the bushes, the light on her vape going out. If she was this jumpy, the guy she was involved with had to be nearby.

‘Where were you going tonight? Are you on another job for them?’

‘No, I was not,’ she said, like this was somehow offensive. She unrolled the bag she was holding. Jamie took the opportunity to slip the phone from his pocket. Bringing the lock screen to life with a tap, there was enough light coming from it to illuminate the contents of the bag. He peered in.

‘A… music box?’ It was pink, decorated with ballet slippers and with a small gold latch and hinges.

‘A jewellery box, for Shell.’

‘My sister had one just like that when we were wee. It had a ballerina inside, on a little spring.’

The woman rolled the bag closed again. After a beat, during which she pulled at the slipping shoulder of her coat, she said, ‘I haven’t done anything for that bastard since he did this.’ She turned her face to him as though he somehow might not have noticed the bruising.

‘Did you get it seen to, in hospital?’

‘As if.’

He let the silence fall, not wanting to risk saying anything more about how escape was possible if only she’d give him something to go on.

Probably let down at every turn, she had no reason to trust anyone, least of all him, a sweat-drenched off-duty volunteer.

He didn’t even trust himself at this point.

Edwyn would be furious that he still hadn’t let the station know what he was up to right now.

His prevaricating would not look good on the incident report.

The cool was getting into his damp clothes. He tried not to shiver but she noticed anyway.

‘You’re frozen,’ she remarked.

‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.’

He let her think, could see the turmoil written across her face. She held the bag tighter in her fist.

‘Just one name?’ she said.

Jamie nodded. He opened his palm, showing her his phone, now dark and in locked mode again. ‘Say the word and I’ll get things started. You’ll be with Shell and her granny in a hotel miles away before he knows what’s hit him and his pals.’

Her eyes were wild with the possibility.

Her irises burned into his as she got closer to agreeing.

He daren’t say another word in case he blew the fragile trust between them.

Maybe he was good at this after all? Sympathy, kindness, the things you needed to be a good officer, things he’d got in spades from his mum and dad and his big sister.

He knew instinctively how to do this stuff because the thought of this woman living in fear for her little girl moved him more strongly than any desire to stop a bunch of violent thieves operating.

‘I…’ she began, fear on her face, but she was cut off by her phone ringing loudly inside her coat. Flinching, she rushed to pull it free.

Jamie saw on the screen the name ‘Franc.’

‘It’s him,’ she said, staring at it. ‘I have to answer in three rings.’

‘Do it then,’ Jamie urged. ‘Be calm.’

She had the button pressed and the phone to her ear as soon as his words were out.

She said nothing, only listening for a moment. Jamie could make out a man’s gruff voice, sharp and splintered. She held the phone a little away from her ear as he spoke louder. He wanted to know where the fuck she was.

‘I’m visiting the bairn,’ she said. ‘I told you I was.’

She held her voice so firm, Jamie actually felt proud for her. She glanced at him for reassurance and he nodded back.

‘Twenty minutes, I promise,’ she said, taking the phone right from her ear and letting Jamie hear.

‘You’d better be, Livvie Cooper.’ He was driving. Jamie could make out the engine sounds. ‘I’ve some pals coming round, wanting a look at you. An’ you’d better come in smilin’ this time.’

Jamie was definitely out of his depth here. What kind of situation was this woman, Livvie, in if she was expected to extend her hospitality to a bunch of strange men she didn’t know in her own home? She was in dire need of refuge.

‘I’ll be there in a wee bit,’ she was saying shakily, pressing the phone to her ear again, turning away. Jamie read it as her not wanting him to hear any more of the man’s instructions. She was ashamed.

The voice on the line said something else that Jamie couldn’t catch and the call ended.

She checked and double checked it was hung up before she said anything else.

‘His name’s Francie Beaumont, and he’s just down the road there… in my flat. I don’t know how many others there are.’

Jamie stopped himself asking if there were often others. How many men were being brought in to ‘have a look at her’?

‘What’s the address?’ Jamie said, opening his phone up.

She hesitated, gulping hard.

‘It’s all right. We’re going to help you, tonight. I’m calling a car. We’ll pick up Shell and your mum on the way, and we’ll get you out of here before anything else goes down. OK?’

She was nodding, her eyes huge circles, her mouth set in a grimace.

‘He’s bigger than you think,’ she said, and Jamie knew she wasn’t talking about his stature.

‘Can’t be bigger than the police, no matter the network. We’ll sort it.’

Another car was rolling by. Jamie heard it pass along the next street down, the one with the playpark. Something uneasy and urgent was stirring in him, some instinct that something wasn’t right.

The car was turning at the end of the row and doubling back on itself, only on this street now.

He only had to look at Livvie to see she was making the same connections. She turned her phone in her hand, looking at it like it was a ticking bomb.

‘Livvie? Does Franc have a location app linking your phones?’

The car lights grew brighter, the slow roll of tyres telling them the driver was crawling the streets looking for her.

Jamie took her phone from her hand and tossed it as hard as he could over the hedges and shrubs of the row of back gardens to his right.

He heard it land with a knock against something hard about four gardens down.

He pushed Livvie right into the bushes behind them, but it was too late.

A black car blocked the footpath they’d turned up.

Jamie pressed the direct line number on his phone. It clicked through.

‘Ops,’ the woman said.

‘One officer, one civilian woman, this is a Zero Zero,’ he had time to say; the request for GPS tracking, immediate assistance, and comms silence, before he clamped his mouth closed and whipped his phone out of sight.

The car door opened and a wall of man, all in black, ascended from the driver’s seat.

‘It’s him,’ Livvie hissed.

Jamie had one second where he was still shrouded in the darkness, undiscovered, during which he could shove his phone, still connected to the muted call handler somewhere in Glasgow, into Livvie’s coat pocket, in the desperate hope that they were already working away at their computers, locating him on their maps, alerting the nearest units to attend an undisclosed, multi-service emergency.

He’d need unbroken signal on his phone for them to find him.

All he could do was pray for five bars of connectivity as the man lumbered towards them.

‘Who’s this wee gnaff?’ said Francie Beaumont, before deciding he didn’t really care who Jamie was, he was going to thump him anyway, and as he brought down a thick fist hard onto the top of his skull in a brutal caveman swipe, Jamie heard Livvie beg, ‘No! Franc!’ just before he felt the impact that compressed his neck painfully down between his collarbones.

Feeling, rather than thinking, how weird it was that the ground was coming up towards him, Jamie’s brain conjured an image of a woman with red hair standing in the glow of pink neon light. Then the tarmac flattened him and the night turned pitch black and deathly silent.