The Blood is Still

by Douglas Skelton

  ‘I’m talkin’ to you,’ said the young man. ‘You no hear me, eh?’

  Nolan still didn’t turn. ‘Look, mate, I’m just here for a quiet drink, okay?’

  ‘She your burd?’

  Nolan’s eyes darted down to Rebecca and she saw a smile there that didn’t reach his lips. ‘She’s a friend.’

  ‘So she’s no your burd then? I could take her for a wee spin, then, eh?’

  Rebecca knew this wasn’t really about her, that the guy was merely using her to needle Nolan, but she didn’t like being spoken about as if she was a car. She gave the young man a look that hopefully told him he had about as much chance of taking her anywhere as this pub had of winning Nightspot of the Year. ‘He just told you. A friend. Now, why don’t you just go back to the bar with your pals?’

  He held up a hand as if she had physically attacked him. ‘Nae offence, darlin’. Just thought, you know, if Nolan here wasnae your boyfriend, if you and him were just pals like he said, we could maybe go oot, you know? Maybe a wee bit of danceen.’

  Nolan grew tired of the exchange. He pushed his chair back forcefully, the legs scraping on the floor like a gunshot. He was on his feet and facing the young man with such speed that the latter stepped back so quickly he almost tripped over himself.

  ‘Look, mate. You’ve got a problem with me, is that it?’

  The young man, now face to face with Nolan, was not so sure of himself. However, he screwed up his courage again. ‘Aye, maybe I have. Maybe you and me have a problem.’

  Nolan took a step closer. The man backed away. Rebecca felt he didn’t even know he was doing it. ‘Maybe?’ Nolan said. ‘So you’re no sure?’

  The guy looked over his shoulder to his mates, who showed no sign of backing him up. The barman, meanwhile, was making a second career out of the art of not noticing. The young man turned to face Nolan again, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a spirit level on a bumpy ride. Rebecca sensed he was beginning to regret his bravado, that perhaps things weren’t going the way he had planned, if he had planned them at all, which was unlikely. He had recognised Nolan and decided he was tough enough, or drunk enough, or stupid enough, to wind him up. But now that he was actually involved it didn’t seem to be such a good idea.

  A slight movement made her look at the man with the dog. He had eased his chair back and was swinging his legs out from under the table. She had the feeling he was ready to move if he had to.

  ‘Mate, I’m here for a quiet drink with my friend. We’ve got things to talk about, okay? You don’t want this, no really.’ Rebecca realised Nolan’s accent had changed. When talking to her he had been well spoken, his accent Scottish but cultured, every letter that needed to be pronounced given the attention it deserved. But when speaking to this young man it had become coarser. The letter ‘t’ was dropped, his voice seemed to come from somewhere at the back of his throat. The word ‘to’ became ‘tae’, ‘about’ became ‘aboot’. He took another half step forward. The young man did the same in reverse. ‘So, here’s your chance, right? You go back to your friends, you watch the game, have a drink on me. But the main thing is, and I need you to listen carefully to me here.’ He leaned closer to the young man. ‘I mean, really carefully, man.’ Nolan’s face was only a few inches from him now. If anything was going to happen, it would happen soon. Nolan’s voice was still conversational, though. ‘The main thing is you get the fuck out of my face right now.’

  There was silence then, as the young man struggled with the need to take his testosterone for a workout and the obvious desire to back away from the situation that self-same testosterone had got him into. Rebecca could see the turmoil on his face, rippling his chin and quivering his lips, as he attempted to match Nolan’s unwavering stare. He tried to maintain a defiant pose but something else had dripped into his muscles. That something else was fear.

  Finally, he broke the spell and looked away, taking a full step back as he did so, his need to get out of potential harm’s way paramount. He thought about saying something more but realised the moment had passed, so he slumped back to his bar stool.

  Nolan watched him go.

  ‘I think we’d better leave,’ Rebecca said.

  He didn’t reply at first – he was still giving the young man’s back a hard stare – but then he nodded and he turned to face her. ‘I’ll set him up with a drink first. You want to wait outside?’

  She finished her wine – she could have done with another, but now was not the time and this was not the place – and left. The middle-aged couple still hadn’t moved. Maybe they were stuffed and left there to make the place look busy. Perhaps they weren’t there at all, were merely visual echoes of past patrons. Dear God, that wine has affected me more than I thought, she told herself on her way through the door.

  The air in the alley gently slapped her over-heated face with cool fingers and she considered heading straight to the station for a taxi. That would be the wise thing to do. Get a taxi, leave Nolan Burke here. However, something stopped her. She didn’t know what. So she leaned against the wall beside the door, letting the sounds of the night keep her company. Footsteps on the High Street. Music from a pub in the other direction. The bell of the High Kirk tolling. Eight o’clock. She hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime. No wonder that glass of wine had hit her so hard.

  The door opened behind her and the man from the corner table emerged, his dog at his side without a tether. He paused to pull on his coat, giving her the chance to study him in profile. He was of average height and looked to be in his mid to late fifties. His hair had once been very black but the grey suited him. There were lines around his eyes but the face was still firm enough to tell her that he had probably been a good-looking guy. As he buttoned the dark coat his face turned in her direction.

  She turned away quickly, feeling ashamed of having been caught staring at him.

  ‘You work for the paper, right?’ His accent was Glasgow, not broad but the cadence still there.

  She looked back at him. Brazen it out, girl. Blue eyes, she saw. His eyes were very blue. And they missed very little. She’d felt that in the bar. She had known from his poised look that if anything had erupted he would have weighed in. And somebody would have regretted it. ‘That’s right. How did you know?’

  ‘Saw your photo.’

  He’d been reading the Chronicle, probably the most recent edition. She had been in a photograph, presenting a cheque to a charity from the paper. It should have been Barry but he was notoriously camera-shy and insisted it was better the reporters’ faces were known rather than his. They were in the front line and he was little more than a machine operator, he’d said.

  She opened her mouth in a silent Ah and turned away again. The sound of traffic hissing on tarmac slick with yet another shower of rain reached her. The damp air had cooled her fevered skin down and she pulled her own coat tighter to ward it off. The man had not moved and she sensed he was still facing her. She willed herself not to turn around. She didn’t feel anything threatening in his manner or his scrutiny; it was as if he was building up the courage to say something further.

  ‘He’s not for you,’ he said, finally.

  She faced him once more. ‘I’m sorry?’

  He jerked his head towards the bar door. ‘Your friend, back there. He’s not for you.’

  ‘He’s not a friend, not really.’ She didn’t know why she was explaining herself, but there was a sincerity in those blue eyes that had disarmed her.

  He pulled the collar of his coat up. ‘Keep it that way. Guys like him cause nothing but hurt.’

  She should have told him it was none of his business, she should have told him she had no interest in Nolan Burke in that way. But she didn’t and again she didn’t know why. Instead, she asked, ‘Why do you say that?’

  His face was blank as he looked at her, but something else crept into his eyes. It was as if he was reliving a memory. A painful one. ‘Because I’ve seen it before.’

  And then
he was gone, walking past her, the dog at his heels, his coat flapping around his legs as he headed deeper into the Old Town. He did not look back and Rebecca watched as he turned the corner.

  Nolan came out of the pub and stood beside her. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, jerking his head towards the pub door.

  ‘Does that happen often?’

  He adopted a sad little smile. ‘Occupational hazard. Always someone who wants to start something he doesn’t really want to start. That’s why Maw doesn’t like us going out alone. You never know who you’ll meet up with. Sometimes it’s someone who really does want to start something.’

  So Mo Burke didn’t know her son was with her. That didn’t help her nerves any. She was still staring at the corner of the street. ‘That man, sitting at the table. The one with the dog. Have you seen him before?’

  Nolan tried to place him. ‘No, don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t know. Why?’

  ‘Just curious.’

  They stood for a moment in silence. He was hesitating, seemingly debating with himself. Once again she saw something other than what she had seen in court. He blinked a few times, his mouth tightened as if he was trying to keep something in but couldn’t. That made two men in the space of ten minutes standing on that same spot steeling themselves to say something to her.

  ‘Walter Lancaster,’ he said, eventually.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The name you wanted. Walter Lancaster. You’ll find him in your records or on the internet. He was convicted in Aberdeen, he’s in the Sneck now.’

  The paedophile. The man they wanted to rehome in the Ferry. ‘Why are you telling me?’

  He breathed deeply, stared at the night sky. ‘I really don’t know,’ he said, eventually.

  23

  Rebecca didn’t click the light on when she got home but stood in the living room for a few seconds, welcoming the darkness and the silence. Then she stepped to the window and looked out at the street. Nothing moved. No strange cars in the parking areas outside. Her stomach still broiled and she didn’t know why – even though the attention of a criminal with a propensity for violence was bound to have unsettled her. That was why all the way home in the taxi she had continually twisted round to search the traffic behind for a glimpse of a black Mercedes.

  The problem was that she had warmed to him. He was attractive, there was no doubt about it, and if things had been different she would have been happy to go out with him. She might even have made the first move, just as she had with Simon. She had seen him in court and then, when she’d had to talk to him about a story, up close. She had liked what she saw. He was a nice guy. She’d asked him out.

  Don’t wait for a man to make the first move because the cows will be home before he does. If you like him, you ask him. This is the twenty-first century. There’s no reason to be backward. Her mother’s words.

  It turned out that her mum had made the approach to her father, which was relatively unusual in the 1990s, despite the rise of feminism. So Rebecca had followed her example and one day she asked Simon. Certainly, it took her two weeks to pluck up the courage, but she did it. Simon seemed unfazed by the overture and said yes. The rest, as they say, was history. And not all of it good.

  She clicked on the lamp, fired up her laptop, threw a ready meal in the microwave and poured herself that longed-for drink from the gin bottle. The wine she had drunk so quickly in Barney’s was cavorting in her bloodstream. She was careful to take small sips as she waited for the lasagne to ding.

  Back in the sitting room, she arranged some cushions on the floor, then sat with her back against the two-seater settee, the computer on her lap. She liked to sit on the floor. It reminded her of home, where she would sit or lie watching TV while her mother worked at the small desk against the back window of their home in Milngavie. Her father seldom brought his work home with him, but her mother was a teacher and there was always marking or paperwork. Her father would often mock whatever Rebecca was watching. Glee was a favourite and he had a field day with that, the problems of American teens who suddenly burst into song providing plenty of fodder, even though she suspected he secretly enjoyed it. Occasionally she’d be watching MTV and he would gently poke fun at the music she loved, especially Robbie Williams. That would annoy her until she realised that was the whole point.

  She missed her father. She missed just talking about her day. She missed how he would laugh at her when she was being girlie. Sometimes she heard that laugh in her head when she caught herself indulging in diva-like tantrums at work. She’d heard it a couple of times when talking to Barry, as she vaulted onto the highest steed she could find to sally forth to fight the good fight for quality journalism. Hearing her father telling her to calm down more often than not succeeded in pulling her from the saddle and back to earth.

  And sometimes, when she was stressed, she would wake to see him sitting in the shadows of her room. It didn’t scare her. It comforted her. He was gone but he was still there, in her mind.

  No one dies when memories of them live, he used to say. He would live on with her, then. Because she would never forget him or what he’d taught her.

  She stared for a moment at the computer screen, blinked away a tear and resolved to phone her mother later. She hadn’t spoken to her for over a week. She glanced at the clock. Nine-thirty. Not too late. She would call after she had run these checks.

  She sipped her gin, forked a mouthful of beef and cheese into her mouth and punched up Google, then entered Walter Lancaster+Sex Offender. A list of choices pinged up, all of them news sites. She clicked on The Herald. She subscribed to it, might as well use it.

  Walter Lancaster was forty when he was convicted of indecency. Basically he’d been caught exposing himself at the gates of an Aberdeen primary school. His defence that he had been merely relieving himself at the side of a bin shelter carried little weight, even though he’d provided a medical certificate that proved he had a urinary tract infection. What didn’t help were the hidden files on his PC, what the courts described as ‘material of an obscene nature depicting children’. That convinced the jury that he was not merely a man with an infection who had been caught short but was, in fact, a predator. He was duly sentenced and his name added to the Sex Offender Register.

  She studied the photograph that accompanied the report. It was perhaps a bad shot, snatched outside the court room prior to sentencing, but it was not a pretty picture. The word that came to Rebecca’s mind was fleshy. Everything about him seemed to be flabby. His body was shapeless, his face full but the skin loose, his eyes burrowing back into his skull as if they wanted to observe without being seen. Even the bald pate fringed by a circle of lank, greying hair seemed slack. Had he not been kept in a prison which was almost wholly comprised of people like him, he would not have had a good time inside.

  Although his offence was committed in Aberdeen, he was originally from Inverness. A return to his flat in Aberdeen’s Torry district was not possible, primarily because it had been rented to someone else while he was in jail but also because it was not safe for him to do so. His acts had put him in the public eye – a public that viewed him as a sick bastard who should not be allowed anywhere near decent folk. However, the authorities still owed him a duty of care. So, if Nolan’s information was correct, it seemed a return to his home town had been called for.

  Her computer pinged, telling her she had a Skype call. She accepted and saw Chaz and Alan staring back at her.

  ‘Where you been, girlfriend?’ Alan was adopting an American accent. A bad American accent.

  She thought about not telling them she had been with Nolan because she knew Alan would make a meal of it, however she knew she had to tell someone. Chaz listened, his face straight, but predictably Alan loved the whole notion.

  ‘Rebecca and Nolan, sitting in a tree,’ he chanted as he danced away from the screen.

  ‘Alan, behave,’ Chaz warned.

  ‘K-I-S-S-I-N-G.’

  ‘Alan, please,’
Rebecca pleaded.

  Alan came back into view. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, why so glum about this? So you had a gentleman caller. You’ve been asked out before.’

  ‘Yes, but not by someone who can take a power drill to my knees.’

  Alan dismissed that thought. ‘That was Scott, not Nolan.’

  Chaz gave him a surprised look. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘People talk, I listen. Honestly, darling, sometimes I don’t think you know me at all.’

  Rebecca watched as Chaz shook his head at Alan, mortally offended. ‘So, what am I going to do?’ she asked.

  ‘What can you do?’ Chaz was facing the screen again. ‘Just leave it alone. You went out for a drink and made it clear that it was purely business. Hopefully he’ll take the hint.’

  Rebecca wasn’t so sure. ‘Hopefully.’ Then another thought hit her. ‘Oh, hell . . .’

  Chaz hunched forward, concern puckering his brow. ‘What?’

  ‘All this talk about him asking me out. I feel like I’m starring in Made in Chelsea.’

  The laugh that erupted from Alan was just what she needed.

  24

  The desk lamp created a little island of light in the darkness of John Donahue’s office but he didn’t need it to see the photograph on his phone. It glowed with an intensity that seemed to bring the face to life. But it didn’t, not really. Nothing could do that now. No amount of expensive technology could do that.

  Outside all was silent in the compound, apart from the occasional rustle of a guard walking by on the grass. Donahue’s Portakabin was set a little away from the main cluster of temporary buildings. It wasn’t much, but he liked the idea of privacy, even if in practice there wasn’t much of it. A glass of whisky sat untouched on the desk. His focus was on the image on the screen. One finger traced the curve of her jaw and her blonde hair as it fell over her forehead, as if he could push it back, just as he’d used to.