Page 8 of Better the Devil

Inside the car, Hamza Khaled nodded. The movements were sharp and hurried, and the big smile that he plastered on really over-egged the pudding.

Technically, Hamza was Dave’s boss, if you adhered to that sort of way of thinking, which Dave generally didn’t.

‘Eh, aye. Aye, I’m good, aye,’ Hamza said, his voice muted by the window between them.

‘Right. It’s just, you’ve been sat on your arse in that car for about ten minutes,’ Dave pointed out. ‘Which suggests to me that things aren’t exactly peachy.’

Hamza’s window slid down before stopping halfway. His light brown skin seemed several shades paler than usual. Or greyer, maybe.

‘No, no, I’m fine, honest,’ he insisted. There was a shake muddled in with his Aberdonian accent. ‘I’m just… Well, I was running a bit late, and it’s… I’m just taking a wee minute to get my head in the right place. You know, prep a bit. It’s all just a bit… I mean, notnew, obviously, not that. But, I don’t know. It’s… different. Than normal. Than before.’

‘Oh, believe me, I get it,’ Dave told him. ‘I was the same myself when I first got this gig. Full-on impostor syndrome. Who the hell was I to be a detective?’

‘No, that’s bollocks,’ Hamza told him. ‘You’re great. You’re nailing it.’

‘Aye, well, cheers for that. Back at you. There’s nothing wrong with feeling like that, though. You ask me, the only people who don’t get impostor syndrome are A, psychopaths, and B, impostors. For everyone else, it’s just the way things are. You just put the head down and muscle through it, best you can.’

Hamza swallowed and looked ahead through the windscreen. There were dozens of Uniforms dotted around. Constables, sergeants, civilian support teams, the works. All out there. All waiting.

‘Or you could just sit in there all night like an absolute fanny,’ Dave ventured.

Hamza laughed at that. Not a lot, but it was something.

Dave rolled back a few feet, making room for the door to open. Hamza stepped out, adjusted his tie, and smoothed down the front of his dark grey suit.

‘Thanks for the pep talk, Detective Constable,’ he said, giving Dave a nod.

‘No bother, Detective Inspector.’ Dave winked. ‘Now, go show them how it’s done.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Seriously, dude? Again?’

Taggart gave Olivia a sheepish look as she stooped with the poo bag and snatched the steaming pile from the pavement. It was the third in the space of ten minutes, and if the volume and consistency of it were anything to go by, it wouldn’t be the last.

The one saving grace was that tomorrow was bin day for this area, so there were plenty of places to dispose of the offending items. She flipped open the lid of the first bin she came across, and deposited the bag on top of the rubbish rammed down inside.

For some reason, this seemed to make Taggart inordinately happy, and he bounced around on the lead, tail wagging, tongue flapping all about the place, as they set off in the direction of home.

They made it all of four steps before a raspy voice called out to them.

‘Here! What was that?’

A large, balding man stood in a kitchen doorway, one hand on the door handle, the other stabbing a finger at the bin Olivia had just used. He wore a pair of saggy grey jogging bottoms thathung around his hips, and a T-shirt so stretched across his belly that Olivia couldn’t make out what the writing on the front said.

Something tedious and unfunny, she assumed, given the general vibe of him.

‘Sorry, what?’ she asked, strolling back.

‘What was that? In there? What did you put in my bin?’

Olivia’s gaze darted to the wheelie bin, then back to the man at the other end of the path. ‘Dog shit.’

The man’s voice rose an octave, then rose again. ‘Dog shit?Dog shit?’ He choked, like a ball of pure rage was stuck at the back of his throat. ‘No! Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare put that in my bloody bin!’

‘I already have,’ Olivia pointed out.

This did the man’s temperament no favours. ‘Well you shouldn’t have!’