Quintin Jardine - Pray for the Dying

She handed him her mug. ‘Quick one. I’ve got to be out again. I’ve had crime scene people workin’ all night up at the hall and in Killermont Street. I’ve set up a temporary murder room, I have to get up there to pull everything together. Killermont Street’s still closed to traffic and there’s another event due in the hall tonight. Some golden oldie rocker; it’s a sell-out and they’re desperate not to cancel, so time is, as they say, of the essence.’

Her husband stared at her. ‘Can they do that? Just open the place the night as if nothin’s happened?’

‘As long as they put a patch in the carpet,’ she said. ‘They won’t get the blood and the brain tissue out with bloody Vanish, that’s for sure. And they’ll have to get joiners in to fix the boards in front of the stage. They had to dig a couple of flattened bullets out of there. They’ll maybe keep the lights low all the time, that’ll help.’

His eyes widened. ‘Imagine. Somebody’s goin’ to be occupying a seat tonight, and last night a woman was. . Wow.’

‘Ah know,’ she agreed. ‘It’s a bit ghoulish. Listen, Scott, if I could, I would close the hall tonight as a mark of respect. Any polis would. But the hall manager says that people will be coming from all over Scotland to hear this guy. Some’ll have left already.’

‘Not any polis,’ he said.

She looked at him, surprised. ‘Come again?’

‘Ah still have pals in the job,’ he replied, ‘even though I’ve been out for five years. From what they tell me, Antonia Field won’t be missed by too many people. A lot of people, me included in my time, liked Angus Theakston, the deputy chief, and I know you did too. It’s an open secret that she more or less sacked him. A guy Ah know worked in his office. He says they had a screamin’ match one day that folk in Pitt Street could have heard, and that Mr Theakston put his papers in next morning, and was never seen in the office again. She treated old Max Allan like shit too, my pal said. The only one she had any time for was Michael Thomas.’

‘He’s a fucking weasel,’ Lottie muttered. She sipped her tea. ‘You never told me any of this before.’

‘Ah was told on the QT. You’re a senior officer; Ah didn’t want to get my pal intae bother.’

‘Eh?’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you actually think that I would come down on a guy because of something you told me?’

‘Come on, hen,’ he protested, ‘you’re a stickler and you know it. We used tae work thegither, Ah’ve seen you in action, remember; been on the receiving end too.’

‘Aye,’ she retorted, ‘and had your own back too. Let’s not go there, Scott. Just don’t keep anything else from me. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Good, now I’ve got to go.’

‘When’ll you be back?’

‘Soon as I can.’

‘You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?’

‘Forgotten what?’

‘We promised Jakey we’d take him to Largs.’

‘Bugger!’ she swore. ‘I’m sorry, Scott.’

‘Don’t say sorry tae me. Save it for the wee man.’

‘Aw, don’t be like that. You know what it’s like. Look, when I say as soon as I can, I mean it. But I will have to put a report on Skinner’s desk first thing tomorrow, ready to go to the fiscal. And I will have to work out where the hell we go from here, given that our new acting chief’s gone and killed the only possible bloody witness.’

His expression softened. ‘Ah know, love, Ah know.’

She picked up her purse from the work surface and extracted three ten-pound notes. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take him wherever he wants to go with that.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re takin’ a chance, aren’t you?’

She frowned. ‘I’d better not be.’ She headed for the door. ‘Have fun, the pair of you. See you.’

The bedroom door creaked as she opened it, jerking him from a dream that he was happy to leave. ‘Are the kids awake yet?’ Bob mumbled, into the pillow.

‘Are you joking?’ Sarah laughed. ‘It’s five past nine.’

Their reconciliation, which had come after a burst of truth-talking only a day and a half before, had taken them both by surprise, but the next morning neither of them had felt any guilt, only pleasure, and possibly even relief.

Their separation and divorce had not been acrimonious. No, it had been down to a lack of communication and each one of them had concluded, independently, that if they had sat down in the right place at the right time and had talked their problems through in the right spirit, it might not have happened at all.

‘You what?’ Bob rolled over and sat up in a single movement. He was about to swing a leg out of bed, but she sat on the edge, blocking him off.

‘Easy does it,’ she said. ‘They don’t know you’re here.’

‘They’ll see my car.’

‘No they won’t. You parked it a little way along the road, remember.’

‘Alex and Andy?’

‘They left after you crashed. That was quite an entrance; five minutes to midnight. Your first words, “Gimme a drink,” then you polished off six beers inside half an hour.’ She paused, then murmured, ‘I can always tell, Bob, the more you drink, the worse it’s been.’

‘I know,’ he admitted. ‘And the bugger is, the older I get, the less the bevvy helps.’

‘So I gather. You did some shouting through the night. It’s just as well this house is stone, with thick walls. How do you feel now?’

‘My love, I do not know.’ He reached out and tugged at the cord of her dressing gown. She slipped out of it, and eased herself alongside him.

She held his wrist, with two fingers pressed below the base of his thumb. ‘Your heart rate is a little fast.’

‘Probably the dream. It was a bastard.’

‘Are you ready to tell me what happened?’

He slipped his right arm around her shoulders. ‘I told you last night. Toni Field is dead, and somehow I let Clive Graham talk me into taking her place for three months. Three months only, mind, even though Aileen and Andy both say once I’m there they’ll never get me out.’

‘Hey,’ Sarah murmured. ‘Maybe the witch knows you better than I thought.’

‘You think so too?’ He shook his head, and a slight grin turned up the corners of his mouth. ‘And here was me thinking you and I were making a new start.’

‘Then let me put it another way. Sometimes you don’t know where your duty lies until it’s brought home to you. You’ve been frustrated since you became chief in Edinburgh; I can see that. You were never really keen on the job, without really knowing why. When you were talked into taking it, you found out. It was more or less what you’d been doing before, but it made you more remote from your people and more authoritarian.

‘But Strathclyde’s different. You’ve always known why you didn’t want that job; you grew up there in a different time and you feel that force is too big, and as such too impersonal. Now that you’ve been forced into the hot seat by circumstances in which, in all conscience, you couldn’t decline, you might find the challenge you’ve been needing is to change that. You get what I’m saying?’

‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘But I’m a crime-fighter.’

‘I know,’ she agreed, ‘but even Strathclyde CID’s remote, isn’t it? If you can bring that closer to the people in every one of the hundreds of communities within the force’s area, then won’t they feel safer as a result, and won’t that be an achievement?’

‘Okay,’ he nodded, ‘I can see your argument. Maybe you’re right. . and maybe if this new unified force does happen it’ll be even more important to have someone in charge who thinks like I do. But probably you’re wrong. The chances are I’ll be back in Edinburgh by November. The chances are also that the unification will happen and I’ll walk away from it.’ He hesitated, and his forehead twisted into a frown. ‘That’s the way I feel right now.’