With a final look back over her shoulder, she fixed the MSP with a stare and a sneer.
“I’ve got better things to do with my time.”
And with that, she swept out of the room, with a starry-eyed Taggart trotting along behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Dave Davidson’s night had not been what he was hoping for. He had spent it lying on a thin mat in a stuffy tent that he shared with one other human occupant, and eight-hundred-thousand hungry midges.
He wouldn’t have minded so much if the other human occupant had been of the female persuasion, but Frank was a big lad with a loud snore and restless legs, who had come to Westerly Wellness to help get his digestive problems and chronic flatulence under control.
It had not been effective thus far.
The night had crept by slowly, with Dave made sleepless by insect bites, flailing feet, and repeated exposure to gasses he felt were either banned under the Geneva Convention, or bloody well should be.
Morning, on the other hand, had pounced suddenly the moment he’d finally managed to nod off. The light of it shone through the tent, peeling his eyes open, and then forcing them closed again.
“Fucking fuck!” he muttered. “Fucking, fucking, fuckity-fuck!”
It was shortly after this burst of swearing that Dave sensed the empty space beside him where, for several agonising hours, a lumbering great oaf of a man had been. He forced his eyes open again, raised his head to check, and discovered Frank’s rucksack not just empty, but neatly rolled and stashed in the corner. Or whatever the equivalent to a corner was in a tent as round as this one.
The yurt was a decent size—big enough for Dave to bring his wheelchair inside—which had made the other occupant’s habit of moving endlessly closer in his sleep even more infuriating.
Dave thumbed the sleep from his eyes, stretched, and yawned. It was then that he heard the music—a soft and gentle lilting tune that may well have soothed him back to sleep were it not for the fact that he was desperate for a pee.
He unzipped his sleeping bag and several dozen midges flew out, full to the gunnels after the feast of their lives. They circled around inside the tent for a few seconds, then flew straight for his face and started devouring him again, prompting a fresh outburst of swearing and some frantic scratching that finally brought their reign of terror to an end.
With some effort, he clambered back into his chair, pulled aside the tent flap, rolled himself out into a crisp, bright morning, and came eye to arsehole with a man he instinctively knew was his bunkmate.
He wasn’t sure how he knew, exactly. He had never seen Frank from this angle. He hadn’t seen many people from this angle, in fact, and none of those he had were men.
Frank lay on his back, gripping his bare feet to better spread his legs. His robe was hitched up above his waist, so that his bare backside was fully exposed to the morning sun.
And, to his dismay, to Dave himself.
“Jesus!” the constable hissed, turning away from Frank’s winking anus.
This, it transpired, was a mistake, as his gaze instantly fell on the arse of another man he had not yet been formally introduced to. This one lay parallel to Frank, but several feet away on Dave’s right, so the view—mercifully—wasn’t quite as straight-on and clinical.
However, the other fella—a man in his late fifties, was making eye contact with Dave and smiling, which somehow made the whole thing seem even more sordid. Worse still, this man sported what looked like an impressively powerful erection, although nobody but Dave seemed remotely bothered about this.
Instinctively, Dave turned away again. His gaze swept across half a dozen gaping arses—mostly men’s, but a couple of women’s, too—all aiming past him and upwards to where the sun was climbing up the sky.
“The fuck…？” Dave mumbled. It was a thought that had been building since he’d first rolled out of the tent, but which was only now finally finding its voice.
“Ah! Good morning, mon ami. Would you like to join us?”
Dave turned sharply to his left, grateful to have something to focus on that wasn’t in danger of showing him what a group of total strangers had eaten for lunch the day before. André was pacing between the rows, his hands clasped lightly in front of his body, his robe swishing across the dew-dampened grass.
“What, flashing my ringpiece to the world?” Dave asked. “Nah, you’re alright.”
“Perineum sunning is an ancient Taoist practice,” André told him. He smiled benevolently down at a middle-aged woman with stretch marks on the back of her legs. “Excellent, Sandra. Wider, if you can.”