Free Stealing God by James Green

started and Bridie’s window slid down.
    â€˜What the fuck are you standing there for, Jimmy Costello? If you came to see me get in unless you’re thinking of running alongside.’ Jimmy opened the back door and got in. ‘I’ll take you back to your hotel and you can tell me what this is about on the way.’
    â€˜We could talk here, Bridie. I don’t need a lift and it won’t take long.’
    â€˜You’re getting a lift and it had better not take long. Where to?’ Jimmy gave the name and address of a B&B. The car slid away across the car park and out onto the road.
    â€˜Know the way, Norah?’
    â€˜Where’s it near?’ The question was for Jimmy. She looked at him in the mirror.
    â€˜The station.’
    â€˜Which one?’
    â€˜Is there more than one?’
    Bridie turned round.
    â€˜Stop fucking about. Which station?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I just got somewhere near the station when I came in from Edinburgh.’ Norah nodded and Bridie turned away. Jimmy had felt uncomfortable about this meeting ever since he’d decided to arrange it. Now, with Bridie at close range, he knew he was right to be uncomfortable, in fact he was right to be bloody shit scared. Norah looked at him in the mirror again.
    â€˜I’ll take you to Queen Street station and drop you there.’
    â€˜Queen Street. Fine.’
    The car turned onto another, busier road and headed towards the city centre.
    â€˜OK, Jimmy Costello, what do you want?’
    Bridie didn’t turn round when she spoke so Jimmy talked to the back of her head.
    â€˜A factory out at Cumbernauld got a petrol bomb thrown through the window recently. It was an ice-cream factory owned by …’
    â€˜Johnny Fabrizzi. I heard about it, a bunch of young hooligans pissing about. It was nothing.’
    â€˜Maybe, maybe not, and if not I need to know where the idea originated.’
    â€˜That’s a fucking queer way of putting it. Why not just say you want to know who did it?’
    â€˜Because I don’t want to know who did it?’
    â€˜No?’
    â€˜No. I don’t care who did it.’
    Bridie paused for a moment.
    â€˜OK, so now I know what you don’t care about. What is it you do care about?’
    â€˜Who wanted it done?’
    â€˜Why do you care, are you trying to get whoever it is off Johnny Fabrizzi’s back? Is that it?’
    â€˜No. If Johnny Fabrizzi does business in this town he takes the chances that go with it same as everybody else. He’ll have to look after himself as best he can. If somebody’s putting the arm on him, let them get on with it. It’s nothing to do with me.’
    â€˜So what is to do with you?’
    â€˜That’s something new since my time, Bridie, something for nothing, free information. I didn’t know the Freedom of Information Act applied to your kind of business.’
    The driver looked in the mirror and Jimmy gave her his best smile. She looked away and would never know what that casual-looking smile had cost him in effort. Thank God he’d practised.
    â€˜Still a smart fucker. No one knocked that out of you yet?’
    â€˜Not yet. Look, I’m just calling in a favour. When I gave you Jamie to take home you told me to ask when I wanted something. Now I want something so I’m asking. Why I want it is my business.’
    â€˜Like fuck I told you to ask.’
    â€˜OK, a man in a pub said the actual words. But it was the same pub I used to let you know I’d got Jamie’s body and it was the same pub that set up this meeting. As far as I’m concerned the words came from you. If I’m wrong stop the car and I’ll get out and you won’t see me again.’
    â€˜I can make fucking sure I don’t see you again any time I like.’
    She wasn’t joking and she wasn’t boasting, she was stating the simple truth. Jimmy felt the knot of tension tighten