His wife’s special friend nearly fell off the bed when Andy appeared in the doorway with the bread knife hanging loosely by his side. The PC was a tough bastard, but what he saw in Holden’s eyes told him that he’d be lucky just to lose his career. He was already on a final warning with the police, having been shown a yellow card for getting too close to the married ladies of the community he was supposed to serve and protect.
‘You seem to enjoy the serve bit, son, but as far as public confidence goes you’re fucking useless,’ his inspector had told him, adding that the next scandal would be his last. This one looked like it was shaping up to have bells on.
Holden had the rage – he needed to hurt someone, and the PC was lucky only to get a shallow twelve-inch slash across his left buttock as he scrambled through the window onto the kitchen roof. He’d yelped like an injured dog (or pig in his case) as the warm blood trailed down the back of his leg, then dropped from the kitchen roof onto the damp grass, swivelling his head through 180 degrees as he looked for witnesses to his awful humiliation. He’d made that natural but futile gesture to cover his embarrassment – as if it would have made any difference. The cut on his arse hurt like a bitch, but his first priority had been to put some distance between the bread knife and his right buttock, just in case Andy wanted to carve a matching pair. As for protecting the woman he’d just been in bed with and promised that what they had was special . . . well he’d forgotten her already.
The local police were alerted by some terrified housewives reporting a naked man prowling about in the gardens. The last one was an old woman who’d said that the madman had stolen one of her nightdresses from the washing line. She was even more horrified when the pervert squeezed into the thing. Fortunately for him it had been made with larger ladies in mind.
‘I’ve been wearin’ that goonie for years and the bastard’s away wi’ it. My Henry, God bless him, bought it for our last anniversary and it always got him goin’ if you know what I mean. What’s wrong wi’ the world?’ She’d said it in all innocence to the police telephone operator, who knew a beauty of a quote when he heard one and had already filed it for the next piss-up with his mates.
When the patrol cars responded and the bleeding victim was discovered hiding behind a garden shed wearing the stolen goonie and blubbing like an infant, the officers had stared at each other in disbelief. Meanwhile the man’s uniform was still in the same house where Holden was at that moment stabbing his wife to death. By the time the errant, and soon to be ex, PC had given the story to his grinning colleagues, she had twitched for the last time, and Holden had watched the light drain from her eyes.
‘Cheery bye then, hen,’ he’d said before he got back to his feet, breathing deeply after the effort of stabbing her seventeen times. It was harder work than he could ever have imagined but job done. The last one had gone deep into the soft flesh between her neck and shoulder. He’d struggled to pull the knife out again and decided that was enough for one murder.
He’d known it would be a long time before he would manage a wee drink again so he’d left the knife beside his wife and washed the blood from his hands, not to avoid detection, just to enjoy the short time he had left at home. He’d then gone back to the kitchen, poured a ridiculous measure of whisky into his favourite glass, opened a beer to chase it, lit a cigarette and settled into the old leather chair that he’d rested his arse on for so many years. ‘Well shit happens, Andy,’ he’d muttered to himself with a shrug, marvelling that whisky and a smoke had never tasted better. ‘Funny that!’ Then he’d closed his eyes and felt relaxed for the first time in years.
When the police stampeded through the door he’d asked them if the PC was alright.
‘You’ve made him a fuckin’ legend, pal, and put it this way: he’s unlikely to make Chief Constable. Is your wife okay?’
Holden had grinned. ‘Never better, officer. Why don’t you go up and ask her?’
When he’d heard the sound of one of the uniforms spewing upstairs he’d thrown back the last of the whisky and stuck his hands out for the handcuffs.
‘It was a moment of madness,’ he used to tell Tommy and always seemed slightly amused by the whole thing.
Tommy never saw bitterness in his co-pilot and found it hard to believe that the wise old friend he’d shared a cell with over the years was a killer, but then he’d never been married.
Seven Years Later
8
Grace Macallan stared at the clock again; it had become part of her daily ritual as the minute hand struggled to reach 4 p.m. and her official finishing time. She could have started at any time of the day but liked to get in by 8 a.m. so she could escape by 4 p.m. without anyone thinking she was taking the piss. That last hour of the day had become a daily trial with the agony of watching the wall clock refuse to move any faster. It was an endless Groundhog Day, and the office was beginning to feel more like a room in the pokey. She sighed, realising that she was even arranging her pens into straight lines in her desk tidy. Her in tray was nearly empty, and what reports there were had been read and then stacked neatly with the edges in line. She shook her head at the bare, lifeless office they’d given her in Fettes; it seemed a reflection of her dull, meaningless job. ‘Jesus, what’s happening to me?’ She said the same thing every day at about 3.45 p.m.
For the first time in her life she was suffering the trials of endless routine, but it was what she’d elected in an attempt to get a normal life. She’d been on the point of giving up her career until she and her fiancé Jack Fraser had talked it over and decided it would be too much like a junkie going cold turkey – too much room for failure. The result was that she’d sat down for a discussion with her bosses and opted for a uniform after years of taking on terrorists and criminals who were worse than the stuff of nightmares. It seemed to be a suitable compromise as she struggled to contemplate life without the job that had nearly driven her crazy and scarred her faith in human nature but which was where she felt she had to be. She was still trying and failing to answer those questions that had no answers.
When she’d been told that her boss would be Chief Superintendent Elaine Tenant she’d felt like doing a runner, but they’d surprised each other by finding a way to get along, despite their previous problems. Tenant was, and always would be, a minor politician who would live for the next rank up, retire unfulfilled, buy a cat then stare into the quiet spaces of a perfect house that had never felt like a home and wonder what it had all been about.
In fact, having quickly come to recognise each other’s strengths and failings, Macallan and Tenant decided they could forgive, or at least make the situation work to their mutual benefit. There was a time when Macallan would have found it hard to believe that Tenant had any strengths at all, but she’d come to realise that although her former adversary was a bureaucrat, she was a very good one. In a force hamstrung with bureaucracy she was as well to have one of the best onside. Macallan was the first to admit that administration had never been her strong point, so they found a way to survive with each other. It was a strange alliance, and a grudging respect was forming on both sides.
Instead of putting Macallan out to a division, or ‘the land of dog shit and broken windows’ as it was affectionately known by the troops, they’d handed her a project to improve intelligence development with other forces and agencies. Her background in covert operations made it appear like the job from heaven and so she’d poured herself into it for the first few weeks until she’d realised that in actual fact no one was really interested.
The project had been the result of criticism by the Inspectorate after a review of the service had shown up weaknesses that hadn’t been addressed in the early development of Police Scotland. As happens so often, it was set up to be quietly forgotten among all the problems that bombarded the police from politicians and a public who expected them to perform miracles and never ever get it wrong – in other words to achieve the impossible. When Macallan started to gripe she was met by genuin
e surprise that she could take issue with a nice cushy number where she could hide for months then write a report that would go straight in the basket marked ‘who gives a shit?’. In fact, she was told more than once that she could carve out a nice career producing reports that were hardly worth the paper they were written on. She could churn them out almost stress free and probably get a promotion out of it. It was at that point that she started to watch the clock, and it was like a slow-growing form of madness.
On the domestic front, it had worked perfectly at first, and she was home every night on time, which was something that had never happened earlier in her career. Jack had given up law to write full-time, and the books were selling to a public who wanted more. It meant they could live in Edinburgh and keep their beloved cottage on the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland where they’d spent the happiest times of their lives with their two young children.
She’d surprised herself initially by enjoying a break from the strain of hunting the savages who were always there, lying in wait. It looked like they could have a normal life, and she could hang on to the job that meant so much to her. She might be away from the action but was still involved enough in ways that might just help the men and women who risked it all in the shadows of covert policing.
Jack had seen the warning signs quite early on in the project but had tried to act as if it wasn’t happening. They’d kept it going till their time together had become a strained act, at which point it broke and she’d poured all her frustration out to him.
‘I’m so sorry, Jack, I just can’t pretend. This job is shutting my brain down bit by bit. You’ve no idea what it’s like.’ That was the wrong choice of words, and she realised it as soon as she’d uttered them.
‘I don’t know what it’s like? You should hear yourself – sometimes you just get it so wrong. I watched you lying in a hospital bed after nearly dying in that fucking bomb blast with our baby inside you. You slept with your demons, Grace. Christ, you know that better than I do. And on how many nights have I had to calm you down from nightmares? Think, for God’s sake, about the other people who might, just might, actually be affected as well.’ He’d hit the tabletop a little too hard with the wine glass, prompting her to sit back and acknowledge she was acting like a spoilt brat.
‘You’re right. Sorry. I just needed to unload, and you’re the one that gets it. It’s going to be in the contract, remember: for better or for worse, or words to that effect.’ She’d smiled and gripped his big hand over the table. ‘I’m a twat, will that do it for you?’
‘Okay, admitting you’re a twat will do. By the way, it’s a humanist wedding we’re having, so no for better or for worse stuff. That’s what we agreed, right?’ He’d walked round the table, pulled her up and held her close enough to show her that he was there and cared. She needed that every so often, and he always read the signs exceptionally well.
‘So what does the famous writer and barrister think?’ She’d pulled back and stared up at the face covered in at least three days’ growth, which had become the norm since he’d given up court work.
‘I think you were asked to do something that someone thought had meaning. You seemed to believe it had meaning . . . So if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then the answer is obvious.’
‘Sorry, can you explain the duck thing? I’m a simple cop.’
‘Do the job you were asked to do and do it well. Make a noise. And for someone trained in Northern Ireland you should know about subterfuge. We’re in the age of terrorist threats; if they ignore your recommendations, get your friends in the press to quote sources inside the police. They’ll know it was you, but if your work is on the money they’ll have to grin and bear it. What’s new?’
‘I always said you lawyers are a devious bunch, but nice one, and I’ve just stopped feeling sorry for myself.’ She’d kissed him and hadn’t wanted to be with anyone else that night.
9
Sometimes he couldn’t quite work out how he’d got to where he was, weeks before his sixty-third birthday. He’d never stopped to think before, having always rolled on or over whatever was in his path. In most ways his life could be described as a success, at least up until his downfall. Maybe not in marriage, but in his professional life he was a ruthless bastard who could cut through the opposition like an acetylene burner. He’d never bothered to stop long enough to gloat – there was always another obstacle in the way that had to be challenged or dealt with. He couldn’t remember what he would have called pleasure from his days in the sun, just a few hours’ satisfaction before it was time to steam ahead again. An awareness that most of the people he’d worked with hated the ground he walked on never really troubled him. As far as he was concerned they were right to feel that way, and the sycophants who told him what he wanted to hear fed him all the fake respect he could deal with. They were necessary only in the respect that they could act as Judas where there was dissent. He always knew that the day would come when that life would end and the scavengers who fed in his wake would disappear in the direction of the next big beast who might influence their stupid lives.
His personal life was another matter. When he was young he’d made the mistake of believing that he needed the social decoration of an attractive wife with breeding to provide the right image in his professional world and that this was simply something that had to be tolerated on the way up. People told him she was a beauty, and although that was partly why he’d married her, he’d felt little in the way of affection. He was, however, blessed as an actor and gave her enough evidence to believe that he cared. At least initially. Although it didn’t take her long to see the glaring truth.
Soon she was carrying their first child. Sex was what they did to prove how much they detested each other. The pregnancy was a surprise to him but not to his wife, who’d decided that conception was a nice form of revenge for what she had come to realise had always been a loveless marriage on his part. The birth of his son meant that two people could hate him instead of his wife doing it on her own. The birth of their second child, a daughter, brought that number up to three, but sterilisation prevented more of the same. They were in agreement that two unhappy children would be enough for one lifetime, even if they never actually discussed the matter.
That his marriage had gone cold became pretty obvious to the rest of the family when his daughter was born and he opted for a conference in London as being more deserving of his presence – or (in truth) more stimulating – than the arrival of their offspring. The standard of escort service he could use in London was always worth the trip, and he knew a night or two in such company would bring a smile to his face, whereas childbirth would be met with indifference.
By that time, he’d realised he didn’t need decorations or a trophy wife to enhance his professional life. He was up there with the best, and there was no further need to impress anyone. Increasingly, being on his own at social occasions was the preferred option, although, to be fair, when they needed to put on a show his wife was there by his side and they lived out the lie. That was where her breeding, her ability to suffer for appearance’s sake, proved its worth. If he needed a woman for anything else then he could pay for the best and get rid of them without pretending he cared. There was the odd brief relationship with colleagues or clients, but they rarely lasted beyond exposure to the morning light.
None of it mattered, and even after his downfall he accepted what was left of his life and decided that he could get all the comfort he needed from a bottle. His son was a dribbling idiot, locked away for life, but as there had never been anything but contempt between them he rarely lost any sleep over what had happened to the young man. He’d hardly seen or talked to his daughter in years because she’d moved away from home as soon as she could put distance between her and the cold war that had existed between her parents ever since she could remember. She’d kept in touch with her mother, who despite her faults had never deserved her father. The redeeming feature as far as she was concerned was
that her mother had seen it as a duty to keep the house together, foolish as that might have been.
The news came as he slumped half-drunk into his chair after a day quietly trying to forget in the drab boozer that had become his local. One minute he was fumbling with the remote control to watch a programme that he wouldn’t be able to remember in the morning, the next he was taking the call: his daughter dead by her own hand . . . Or was it his? She had been all that seemed to have survived the collapse of their lives and now she was dead. Far from home, the shame and horror of what her brother and father had done was still too much. He wondered if she’d believed she was tainted by the same poison that ran through all their veins. An inexplicable feeling of loss almost overwhelmed him as he tried to come to terms with his complete failure to care for someone who might have had a happy life despite her roots. He’d never blamed anyone but himself, but now he felt nothing but rage and a need to release what gripped him. How strange was that?
10
Holden had looked after Tommy as best he could, sometimes talked to him all night, particularly on those days when he came back from the showers hardly able to walk. He would sit quietly as Tommy curled up in a ball and ground his teeth in rage and pain. He was the boy’s only real friend inside. Holden was one of those rare men who seemed to be able to get things and favours that were unavailable to others. He’d supplied Tommy with the prescription drugs he craved, realising too late that they did nothing for the boy but make his life even more miserable. When he tried to get him off the tabs Tommy pleaded like a child till the old boy gave in, against his better judgement.
Holden tried his best to talk to the hard men whose word counted inside and get the attacks on Tommy stopped. A couple did it for Holden, but the rest told him there was no deal, that Tommy was fair game and they didn’t want a crisis with the Gilroys, who were doing eight each. The attacks on Tommy had tailed off, but every so often bams like the Gilroys would get bored and rerun them just for laughs.
Where No Shadows Fall Page 4