Quintin Jardine - Hour Of Darkness

‘Not personally, but someone did.’

‘My God!’ she gasped. ‘He’s supposed to be Scotland’s Mr Clean. It wasn’t rent boys, I hope.’

‘No, it was heterosexual, and the footage wasn’t graphic, no bouncing buttocks or any of that stuff, but it was enough to have finished him.’

‘Wow! You’ll be telling me next that he was having it off with the leader of the Scottish Opposition herself.’

I turned my head slightly, and gazed out across the marina, so that I could admire the outline of the mountains against the deep pink sunset. ‘No comment,’ I murmured.

My partner stared at me. ‘Clive Graham and Aileen de Marco? He was bonking your ex-wife?’ Our near neighbours twitched again at her raised voice. Fortunately by that time I’d gathered from their conversation and his cigarettes that they were French, and so would have no idea who either the bonker or bonkee were.

‘Just the once,’ I replied, ‘if I’m to believe what Aileen told me. . and I think I do. There was drink involved, on both sides. I couldn’t bring the man down over a booze-driven and probably unsatisfactory shag. Besides, he wasn’t her only one; everyone knows that.’

‘Then it’s as well,’ Sarah said, severely, ‘that she’s gone from Scottish politics, and that you’ve cut all ties with her.’

‘Let’s just call her my mid-life crisis,’ I suggested, ‘and never talk of her again. Agreed?’

‘Happily. We didn’t come here to do that. Remind me, why have we come here?’

My eyes went back to her. ‘We’ve come here for a new start, you and me. We’ve come here because L’Escala was good for us in the beginning. We’ve come here because I’ve been neglecting the Spanish house for more than a year. If Alex hadn’t used it, it would have lain empty all that time. We’ve come here because we need a holiday, both of us.’

‘Do you feel guilty about not bringing the kids?’ she asked, quietly. ‘I do, just a little.’

‘Then don’t,’ I insisted. ‘I’d feel guiltier if we’d taken them out of school. Besides, they have a full-time carer and their grown-up sister is going to spend time with them on the two weekends we’re away, while Andy has his kids with him. He might even take his two out to Gullane, and they can all have a party.’

‘Yes, Alex said that. How will their mother feel about it, do you think?’

I shrugged. ‘From what I’m told, Karen will be fine about it. Everything’s fallen into place in her life. Her move from Perth was brought forward, and Danielle and Robert are into nursery school. She’s been able to rejoin the force, as she wanted, and at her old rank too.

‘Because Andy has the kids at weekends, she’s trying to work as many of those as she can, so she can be free for some of the week. It’s okay; unconventional but okay, pretty much like you and me keeping our separate houses during the week.’

‘Are you really not going to consider moving closer to Glasgow?’ she asked.

‘Not an effing chance: this job, assuming the bookies are right, will change my life quite enough. I won’t let it uproot me from my home. I left Gullane once, when you and I moved to Edinburgh. Neither of us was happy there.’

‘True.’ She paused for a second. ‘How do you see it changing your life?’

‘For a start, I’ll no longer be the type of cop I’ve always been, or tried to be,’ I told her, instantly. ‘Instead I’ll be a desk jockey. My life will become a struggle against the bureaucrats and bean counters in the supervising authority that the legislation has set up. The bloody thing is even going to have its own chief executive, would you believe.’

‘Does that mean you’ll have to report to that person?’

‘Over his dead body. . or hers; but Alex says that’s a battle I may well have to fight. She calls it the smoking gun in the legislation. Oh, worry not, love, I’ll have my way, and I will make sure that the new force is as efficient on the ground as it can possibly be.

‘But. . my days of crime-fighting are over, to my great regret. The terrible truth is, they were the moment I accepted the Strathclyde job.’

As I finished I had the strangest sensation, as if my words were hanging in the air, then drifting off into the sultry Spanish night like smoke rings. I think Sarah caught it too, for almost a minute went by before she spoke.

‘If that’s true,’ she said, ‘I can’t say that I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter what rank you’ve reached, you’ve always put yourself on the line for the job, emotionally and physically. That had to end sometime, before it ended you. You must know that, Bob.’

‘Sometime,’ I agreed, ‘but of my choosing. This isn’t the way I thought it would finish.’

‘But it has, and your kids will thank you for it, like I thank you now. They’re going to want you around to see them through school and university and on into their adult life.

‘Me too,’ she added. ‘I don’t just want you around; I need you. I’ve tried living without you and it didn’t work very well. I hate to remind you, but you’re over fifty years old and you have a heart pacemaker.’

‘Am I? Have I?’ I murmured. ‘Goddammit I’d forgotten!’ That was almost literally true. I’ve had the pacemaker for a few years, to make sure that my heart rate doesn’t drop too low, as in down to zero. It doesn’t affect my day-to-day life, and if it wasn’t for a small lump on my chest just below my left collar bone, nobody but me would know it was there.

‘Well, I haven’t,’ Sarah murmured, with a small grimace. ‘That day you fell over, I almost died with you. As a pathologist I know all too well there is such a thing as unexplained sudden death syndrome. I’ve seen it, too often, in young fit men. There they are on the autopsy table and there is no discernible reason why, other than the fact that their heart isn’t beating any more. You may have forgotten about it, my darling, but I never will.’

I sensed a hovering presence near us. Not John, the proprietor of La Clota, where we had eaten, as I always have on my L’Escala visits, since the earliest days. . John wouldn’t have hovered; he’d have crash-landed at our table. . but the tall young waiter who had served us. His face was new to me, but that wasn’t surprising since I hadn’t been in Spain for a couple of years.

I glanced in his direction, and he moved in, his order pad in his left hand, which had a large sticking plaster across the back. ‘Coffee, senores?’ he asked. ‘Or would you like liqueurs?’ His English was confident, but heavily accented.

I glanced at Sarah. ‘Coffee will be fine,’ she said.

‘Me too,’ I told the kid, once Sarah, my coffee monitor, had given me the nod. ‘But let’s have a couple of sambucas as well.’

‘Certainly. What type of coffee, senores?’

‘Americano, please,’ Sarah told him.

‘And I’ll have a tailat ,’ I added. There’s no single word in English for what I wanted, espresso with a little milk, so I used the Catalan.

He frowned at me. ‘I’m sorry?’

I switched to Castillian Spanish. ‘ Un cortado, por favor. ’

His eyebrows rose, and he flushed a little beneath the tan. ‘Of course. Perdon , senor.’

I’d embarrassed the lad. ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s my fault. I shouldn’t be flashing my crap Catalan. So you’re not from these parts?’

‘No, senor, I am from the south of Spain. There’s more work on the Costa Brava than where I live; I’m here for the rest of the summer.’

‘Good for you, son. What will you do when it’s over?’

‘I go back to Cordoba, to start university.’

‘To study what?’ Sarah asked.

‘I will study chemistry, senora.’