Blood Salt Water

by Denise Mina

  ‘Long Island,’ she spoke carefully, ‘is near Manhattan. Near to New York City. Do you know the Hamptons?’

  It seemed like an abrupt change of topic. ‘D’they live here?’

  Now they were both confused. Iain sensed that it wasn’t just him. The conversation had become bewildering.

  Their voices overlapped: ‘I want baccy,’ he said, and Susan said, ‘Come to my house.’

  She looked very keen.

  Iain ran back through what had been said so far. Was there a build-up to that? He didn’t think so.

  Susan was looking at him, desperation shining out of her. She really wanted him to come to her house. Was she religious? But then her smile widened and warmed. Did she want to have sex with him? Iain found that slightly frightening. The scariness didn’t make it entirely uninviting though. It kind of added to it. She wasn’t a stranger, but like a teacher from when he was young, maybe he’d imagined her naked, back then, and owed it to his old self. But maybe not, maybe not safe. His head was already messed after this morning.

  ‘Uch, I don’t—’

  ‘Come on!’ She waved an arm uphill. ‘I’m not far at all! Just up there on Sutherland Crescent.’

  Iain had never been in a Sutherland Crescent house. They were the originals, where the town plan began, the earliest of the Helensburgh houses. Plain, but something to see. He’d been hearing about them all his life.

  No. He should be careful. Something shifted inside him. Something behind his ribs, precursor to a stitch. If he was indoors, alone with a woman, he thought maybe something bad would happen.

  ‘I’s just going to buy tobacco.’ He thumbed up the seafront, resisting.

  She held his eye and stepped towards him. ‘There’s a newsagent’s on the way. We can get whatever you want.’

  Somehow, then, they were crossing from the esplanade together, heading to the far pavement, the town’s shore. They kept quite far away from each other in the empty road and she was smiling. Iain didn’t know why she was smiling. Maybe she thought Iain and Tommy were going to let her go, or she was thinking about suntans and beaches and maybe she would make it to the trees. No. He shook his head at the tarmac. No, that wasn’t Susan Grierson.

  But Susan was as passive as a heifer too. He was worried for her, worried that she trusted him.

  Turning into a quiet street, the wind dropped suddenly and they could hear each other walking, breathing, the scuff of their clothes. It was intimate without a chaperoning wind. She moved close to him, falling in step. Iain felt he could have held her hand, exchanging warmth skin to skin, and it would be all right. There was something in her. A familiar sadness, maybe a bond. She was a bit lost too.

  They walked on until she stopped at a shop window.

  Handwritten adverts behind the glass. Dogs needing homes, events, Zumba classes, buy stamps here. Iain read, looking for answers to questions he couldn’t quite formulate.

  She was staring at him. He searched her face for clues. Finally, she nodded at the shop. ‘Cigarettes?’

  He remembered then. He pushed the door open, setting off a loud ‘beep’, and stepped in.

  He’d never been in here before. It was half empty. A shelf by the door held three long-life loaves. The teabags came in small packets, the bags of sugar were mini. It was a place for forgetful shoppers, old ladies, people with no car to get to out-of-town superstores.

  Behind the counter a shopkeeper was absent-mindedly arranging jars of penny sweeties as he chatted foreign words into the mobile clamped between his shoulder and his ear.

  He raised his eyebrows in hello, letting Iain know he could still serve, even though he was talking on the phone.

  Iain walked to the back of the shop. He needed a moment. He hadn’t felt this numb in a long time. Had he just pulled? She was handsome. Nice women had often wanted to save him and she was not a mental junkie. She didn’t even seem to have weans because she made and held eye contact. The eyes of mothers flitted over your shoulder all the time. They were always watching out.

  Had he just pulled? Iain looked into an open chill cabinet, blue light flickering over milk, and caught his reflection on the steel back. He looked like a sad fisherman. Broad shoulders, thick blond hair. But dirty. His trackie top was smeared brown at the cuffs and down the front. Susan Grierson wouldn’t pull a man this dirty, but then, she’d been in America for a long time. People change. Some women were attracted to mental guys. Sheila was. If he had sex with Susan Grierson would she expect him to be rough? Iain didn’t like that sort of thing.

  He walked over to the counter, nodding at the tobacco packets behind the shopkeeper. ‘Golden Virginia. And green papers and give us one of your lighters as well.’

  The shopkeeper picked up some yellow plastic lighters and showed them to Iain. Clear yellow neon yellow sandy yellow. ‘Three for a quid?’

  Iain didn’t need three but it seemed like less effort to say yes. ‘Aye.’

  Three yellow lighters.

  Other coloured lighters in the box, green and blue, red ones, purple ones, but the guy chose all yellow for him.

  ‘Nine quid.’

  Iain looked at the tobacco pouch, glinting in a cellophane envelope. Last time he smoked was with her in Glasgow, a thin woman.

  The man smiled and said, ‘You haven’t smoked for a while, pal? Dear now, innit?’

  But Iain was with the thin woman a long time ago, in Glasgow, who asked him to hold her throat and pretend to strangle her while they were having sex. Iain was scared of her and what she might make him do. Her hair smelled stale. She had a stain on her blouse, green, washed-in, like she’d vomited bile and washed it and it hadn’t come out. He tried to get away from her but she followed him to the pub. You look like a movie star.

  ‘Pal? Nine quid.’

  Iain was staring at the counter, thinking about a bloody curlicue vessel snaking across the white of her eye. The memory brought a bubble of sadness up from deep in his gut. Why did she go with them to the boat? If she’d screamed in the house someone might have called the cops and stopped it. But then the debt wouldn’t be paid, so he didn’t know what to hope for—

  ‘Buddy?’ The shopkeeper had seen his confusion and reached out tenderly. ‘You OK?’

  Iain was ashamed. He slapped a hand over his eyes, rubbing hard. He put a tenner down on the counter and picked up the things, tucking them into different pockets, the pouch and papers and yellow yellow yellow lighters.

  Holding the change so tight that the coins dug into his palm, Iain reached for the door. Susan Grierson was still there, waiting on the pavement, hopeful as a wayward teenager outside an off-sales. She watched his face as he came out and she sighed.

  ‘Gosh, Iain,’ she said, ‘you looked so much like your mother just then.’

  He stepped heavily down into the street. He wasn’t getting his hole off her then. His mistake. He was half relieved. Too much had happened today already. His chest tightened.

  They walked up the road, she a half-step ahead, leading him.

  ‘So, Sheila died?’ She was nodding. ‘Mum told me.’

  Sheila. Sheila Sheila Sheila Sheila Sheila Sheila. Today was a wall of Sheila.

  ‘While ago, aye,’ he said. ‘Eight, maybe nine year ago?’

  ‘Gosh.’ She let off a huff of dismay, politeness. ‘I’m so sorry. It was a brain haemorrhage, of course. It was a danger she lived with every day.’ Susan was talking in a sort of churchy voice, like she was reading at Sheila’s funeral or something. ‘She was astonishingly brave, leading an independent life with that degree of brain damage. I think the doctors were amazed she could even walk.’

  Iain stopped walking. Brain damage? The words clattered around his mind. Sheila had brain damage?

  Susan Grierson was looking at him as if everyone in the world knew. Iain didn’t know. It was obvious, now he thought about it. Sheila had a home help and a social worker to manage her money for her. He always thought she got support because he was so much trouble.
He thought her respite weekends were giving her a break from him.

  He looked at Susan. ‘Sheila had brain damage?’

  She nodded. She seemed to understand that he didn’t know. ‘Didn’t they tell you?’

  Did they? Her reluctance to talk and angry-for-no-reason moods. No one ever told him. Did they tell him? He might have been told in a couched way, in a kind way, and misunderstood.

  Miss Grierson talked on about Sheila at school and what a good sailor she was and the dances they went to, in all the great houses, when they were girls.

  They were walking along by a tall hedge when she arrived at Sheila having Iain: ‘… young when she had you. I never had children.’ She gave him a glancing blow of a look, a demand for pity.

  It wasn’t a pity. She wouldn’t have thought it was if she had stayed and knew what Iain had put Sheila through. The shame and the worry. Prison visits and court dates. Little ‘hiya’ waves to her from the dock.

  He looked at Susan, saw the self-pity in her eyes and found her disgusting. He felt a scaly tail flick inside his chest wall.

  ‘Look.’ He stopped suddenly. She overshot him, had to turn back to listen. ‘Eh, Susan, I’m just going home.’

  ‘Please! No!’ Her hand flew out, reaching for his forearm. The plea was too intense. She held his eye. ‘I can’t go home alone.’

  ‘How? Is there somebody in the house?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked around the pavement, blinking hard.

  Not a boyfriend who wanted to hit her. She would have told him if it was that. What wouldn’t she tell him? The figure of her mother? A voice in her head? She couldn’t say but she was begging him not to leave her. Her need was craven. He knew that feeling. He didn’t have the strength to leave her now.

  Stepping towards her, he draped his arm over her shoulders, telling her that she wouldn’t have to beg again, that he understood. She melted towards him for a moment, grateful, and then drew away.

  ‘’S OK,’ he said softly, as if she was Sheila. ‘It’s all right. I’m coming with you.’

  Susan Grierson smiled at the pavement, nodded them uphill and they walked on together towards her house.

  7

  Morrow sat with her back against the wall, calm observer in a blizzard of clammy panic. Three of the most highly paid, powerful men in Police Scotland had been called in. Heavy personnel. As if to justify their places, each took turns monologuing about mistakes others should avoid, things they should be afraid of. A day’s wage from each of them would have paid to keep one of the rural stations they were shutting open for a week. The power differential between Morrow and the rest of the room was so steep she felt that she could be sitting in her pants and no one would notice. Most DIs would give half their pensions to be here. Morrow was astute enough to know that she barely was.

  She kept her own counsel, as she watched Deputy Chief Constable Hughes ask questions of Nolly Dent, her chief inspector. Nolly had a silly name but was a good guy, handsome, small and smart. She saw Hughes half listening to Nolly’s answers, half imagining his chief constable’s reaction. She watched him conduct the meeting calmly, lay out his jurisdictional argument for Police Scotland getting a slice of the seven million when it was found. It was a Scottish case. The investigation predated the move here but the takeover of the firm was a cut-off, a fresh start for a criminal action. It wasn’t his argument. It was the chief constable’s and it was really smart. She had thought of him as vain and petty because of PINAD, but her conviction wavered now.

  When her turn came to speak, Morrow insisted that they should not be blinded by the proceeds money but follow normal protocol in the circumstances. By far the most likely explanation was that Fuentecilla had been killed by her partner during a domestic argument. However, they could use this as an opportunity to access the firm’s files and find out more about what was going on.

  Fuentecilla was argumentative, she told them. She argued with everyone. It was unlikely that her domestic set-up was peaceful. Plus the caller seemed to be her kid. If she had run away she would have taken the children with her.

  Chief Superintendent Saunders smirked at her. ‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit soft on her? What is this, the mother’s union?’

  Morrow wished she had a Victoria sponge cake with her. She didn’t speak but her face was saying something very eloquent.

  DCC Hughes moved the meeting on. The perils of Roxanna Fuentecilla were obliterated by stats and jurisdictional issues, by suggested strategies for questioning hostile witnesses and legal issues over the proceeds. Morrow would never have noticed, normally. Their job was to police the city, not save the damsel, but she was listening like a member of the victim’s family. The more she thought about it, the more she knew that it was all about her brother. Roxanna was Danny without the shame and resentment. Her defences were down because Danny and Roxanna were so unalike: Roxanna was female, Spanish, wealthy, but she had Danny’s audacity, his same shameless sense of entitlement. Secretly, Morrow realised, she admired that.

  The pointless meeting burbled on. Even the DCC seemed to think the monologues were too long. He got up to leave before the meeting was concluded, nodding at his PA to shepherd them through that last boring bit. He didn’t need to stay because the course of action had been decided: Morrow and a hand-picked DC would attend the missing woman’s domicile, posing as everyday cops on a Missing Persons call.

  They would follow normal procedure, voice record everything for transcript. They would insist on access to the insurance firm’s offices on the pretext of hidden debts. They would get all the info on the firm that they could.

  Three of the most highly paid men in Police Scotland had gathered together to arrive at this complex strategic decision: go and see.

  The energy went out of the meeting after Hughes left. The final statement was rounded up as everyone packed away their papers. The meeting ended in jig time.

  Out on the landing, waiting for the lift down, Morrow stood with CS Saunders. He was a fat man, an important man, but she didn’t really know him. He knew he had offended her and was sorry. He stood next to her, catching her eye, nodding, smiling, seemed to want her to say something. Morrow would have said whatever he wanted her to say, but she couldn’t guess what it was. She smiled back. She nodded back. She was on the brink of giving a thumbs up when he said,

  ‘It’s been chaos out there since your brother went away.’

  Morrow dropped her smile. The lift arrived and they got in. The door shut behind them.

  ‘Yep. He kept it all quiet,’ CS Saunders told her, ‘is what I’m saying, while he was running things. These people… ’

  He smiled at her, saw it was going down badly and awkwardly turned his bared teeth to the door. Morrow felt herself go very stiff, as if a spider, too big to swat, was running across her back. Accommodation. No one in the force ever vocalised it but they all knew that the black economy was essential. Men like Danny were responsible for twenty per cent of global GDP. If justice was done and they were all imprisoned, the world economy would collapse. Civilisations would fall.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, hoping that sounding agreeable might be an end to it.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ He took that as encouragement. ‘They’re tearing each other to bits over territories now. Little more than a few streets, most of them. The stab stats for last quarter read as if a civil war has broken out.’

  The lift alighted and the doors opened. She should have let him go first, out of respect, but she slipped past him.

  ‘Been quiet for years because of your brother… ’ he called after her.

  ‘He’s my half-brother,’ said Morrow quietly. ‘Just my half-brother, sir.’ She walked away without being dismissed: an underling’s revenge.

  McGrain was waiting for her in the lobby. They walked to the car park in silence. McGrain was wary of her mood. As they got into the car, he asked what the chief was really like. He was guessing she’d been shouted at. Morrow said the chief w
as professional and climbed into the passenger seat. McGrain got in and started the car.

  Danny was carrying on his business vicariously from prison. Not much had changed for him but he had stopped power-broking between factions in the city. It meant chaos on the streets. Keeping the peace was in his interests as much as anyone else’s, but Danny wouldn’t do it any more, just to show them what they had brought on themselves. People were dying because Danny McGrath was in a huff.

  8

  Iain and Susan stepped carefully on the overgrown path to the pale green front door. The garden was wild and smelled mulchy. The house itself looked well preserved. It was a miniature villa with windows on either side. Little pillars and an open porch over shallow steps.

  Susan stepped up to the door. She turned the key in the lock but waited until Iain was flanking her before she pushed it open. The heavy old door swung into a wide hall, carpeted and papered in faded blue and yellow. Light filtered in from the far kitchen at the end of the corridor. It looked misty but Iain realised that it was a fog of dust, stirred up by the suck of the front door opening.

  Susan looking around as if she’d never been there before. She stepped in and waved Iain over the threshold, shut the front door quietly and tiptoed through an open door on the left, into what seemed to be a dining room.

  The house was incredibly fusty. A dresser just inside the door had a thick layer of dust on it, so thick it looked sticky, as if time had compressed it.

  Iain followed her in. A dirty whisky glass was sitting on the varnished dining-room table in a clear smear in the dust coating. It must have been Susan’s, from earlier, because she didn’t look at it twice. Iain noticed she was tiptoeing.

  ‘Is there someone in here, Susan?’

  She ignored him, checked the hall again and then turned to whisper to him, ‘I need to see Mark Barratt.’

  Iain looked at her mouth. Mark Barratt? How could she know about Mark Barratt? ‘Mark’s in Barcelona.’

  ‘Will you call him?’