A Brush With Death

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘It wasn’t enough, though. You know she took him to court?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, I’m aware of that. I have to ask, was it prompted by your relationship with Leo?’

  ‘Hell, no! She doesn’t know about that.’

  ‘How long were you and he together, Sandra?’

  She looked him in the eye and smiled softly, revealing a side of herself that he had never seen. ‘It only started seriously about nine months ago. I didn’t actually see much of him until then. He flitted in and out of Faye’s life, and I was in a long-term relationship of my own.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I saw your vetting report before you came to work for me in Pitt Street. Your other half was called Craig Goram, and he was an English teacher in a secondary school in Clydebank. You lived together in a flat in North Kelvinside.’

  ‘Mmm. Did it also say that he was having it off with one of his pupils? A pretty young thing; she was sixteen when it started, and he left me for her as soon as she started uni.’

  ‘No, that detail wasn’t there. If it had been, I would have remembered it; I’d probably have done something about it as well.’

  ‘Too bad it wasn’t,’ she retorted, ‘for I bear Craig nothing but ill will. We were a couple for seven years, and for almost half of that time he was shagging someone else on the side. Don’t be thinking, though, that I went to Leo on the rebound. I was single for a few months after Craig went off. I joined a dating website pretty much straight away, and got him well and truly out of my hair. I was quite happy, then one Saturday, early January last year, Faye left the kids with me early doors because she was flying off to the fucking Canaries, as she did whenever she felt like it, and asked me to run them down to Ayr, ’cos Leo was having them until she got back. I did that; he asked me to stay for lunch, and I did. In the afternoon, he was taking Leonard and Jolene to a play park, and he asked me if I’d like to come with them, so I did. I went home after that.

  ‘Three days later, when Faye was back, he called me and asked me if I’d like to have dinner with him. He picked me up in his Bentley and took me to Beedham’s. I’d never heard of it, so I had no idea it was his. Okay, the staff were deferential, but he was Leo Speight, so of course they were bloody deferential. It was only when I asked him whether it was part of a hotel group that he smiled and said, “You could call it that,” and explained. I told him that Faye had never mentioned it, and he said, “No, she wouldn’t have, because she doesn’t know about it.” I asked him if he was hiding assets from her because of the court case, but he said no, that nothing was hidden from anyone with the brains to look for it, which clearly he said her lawyer didn’t have, because it had never been mentioned in any of the legal papers. Then I asked him if it was all a big pissing contest between them, and whether he’d give her what she wanted if she just said “please”, and gave up all the legal crap, and he said, “No way”, and he explained that he’d known from the start she’d got pregnant to trap him, and that she’d seen Jolene as extra leverage, nothing more, but it wasn’t going to work because he would never give her precedence over Trudi or Rae.

  ‘We were really getting down to it by then. I’d had a few bubbles too many; I asked him flat out what he was all about, whether he was a closet Muslim, with a stable of concubines. He smiled at me and said he’d once scared the shite out of a Sun reporter who’d done some digging and had the nerve to ask him that same question. I thought I’d gone too far, but he took my hand and he said, “Sandra, I don’t know what the fuck I am yet.” I remember the rest of it word for word. He said, “With Trudi I was careless with my dick as young people are, but we both knew that getting married would just have been plain stupid. With your sister, we both know I was set up, but I should have seen that coming. It was never on the cards that I would marry her, but I gave her a comfortable lifestyle that she’s taken completely for granted and always wanted more. Then I met Rae, and she’s just lovely, the antithesis of Faye in that she’s good to me and asks nothing of me, nothing at all. She is absolutely the best friend I have, and will ever have, and I am the same to her. She understands, we both understand, that if we ever married it would change that perfect dynamic between us, and we’re happy that it will never happen. We have a beautiful child, and I will be around to raise her to adulthood, as I will be for Leonard and Jolene and as I was and still am for Gordon, from the time I was able to take on that role. Trudi I treat with respect and give what she wants, which has always been to feel good about herself, something that ape of a father of hers denied her. Faye? Materially I would give her anything she asked for apart from the thing she’s demanding, my name. So yes, I suppose that’s what I am right enough,” he told me “a wealthy man in circumstances that were completely unplanned, but which do not define me in any way. I’m not that potentate, I’m a man who’s still looking for his perfect partner, that one person that makes me burn inside with a flame I never want to put out. Faye? Frankly she was never more to me than a light from a book of matches, so there’s no way back for her, which,” he said, “is probably just as well in the circumstances,” and we looked each other in the eye and I realised, without the thought ever having crossed my mind for a second before, that all I wanted to do was go somewhere very private with him and eat him alive.

  ‘So I told him, “Leo, what the hell is the point of owning a place like this if you can’t get a room?” And that is what we did, the best suite in the place overlooking Loch Lomond, and I knew right then that he was where I wanted to be. I didn’t tell him, though, not then, not until a while later, at the end of January, back in that suite in Beedham’s after he’d gone to train for Fonsecco and come back and beaten him, back there when he promised me that he was finished with fighting for good, and spoke my own thoughts out loud. “You’re the one,” he said. “You really are the one. We’ll probably never have kids, for we will never need them, but Sandra, will you have me and me alone?” And I said to him “Are you crazy? Of course I will.” We were in no rush to tell anyone; we enjoyed having our secret so much that we wanted to keep it for as long as we could. We agreed that I wouldn’t go to his retirement party, because people, my sister most of all, would wonder about my presence there, and it would be a distraction from the main business of the night: so I stayed at home, my home, alone. Our plan was that on Monday morning, last Monday, I was going to see the chief to hand in my resignation and take accrued leave – I have enough – in lieu of notice. Then we were going to fly to the Bahamas, get married, and not come back until we were good and bloody ready, whenever that was. We had all the rest of our lives in front of us; it was just perfection. I’d never imagined being so happy and I don’t believe Leo had either.

  ‘And then on Saturday morning, while I’m packing my bloody suitcase would you believe, I get a call from a uniformed inspector, a man I will hate forever through no fault of his own, telling me po-faced – if you can fucking sound po-faced, he managed it – that there’s a major incident in a house at Ayr and protocol says I’m needed there, and he gives me the address and it’s Leo’s. I wet myself, literally. I was terrified, shaking. It took me ten minutes to get myself together and to get dressed, but I did and I drove down there. All the way I was telling myself, “It’s all right, Sandra, it’s all right; there’s been a burglary and that stupid cunt’s overreacted because of whose house it is.” Then I got there and I saw the ambulance, and I saw Arthur bloody Dorward looking like an undertaker in a paper suit. I got out of my car and he handed me a tunic like his and said, “Through there” – that was all. I was shaking like a leaf but I behaved like a professional should; I put it on and walked in there still hoping that all I would find would be a housebreaker with a broken jaw, but of course I didn’t. Instead I found Leo sitting in his chair, and he was . . . dead!’

  As she spoke the last word, she stiffened in her chair, grasping its sides, her jaw clenched, her face chalk white even under the make-up.

  Ha
d Skinner been more self-aware, he would have known that his own face was contorted, twisted into a mask of tension. For several seconds he stared at her, then he blinked, shook himself and murmured, ‘Let it go, kid. You need to let it out.’

  She did, in great ripping sobs; the tears flowed uncontrollably; she folded in on herself, her arms clutching as if she was trying to make herself disappear. He wanted to go to her, to hold her, but he knew that would have been the wrong thing to do. Instead, he stood, walked across to a table in the corner of the room, switched on a kettle that sat there and made two mugs of tea from Mario McGuire’s private stash of Scottish Blend.

  By the time they were infused, Sandra Bulloch had begun to regain control. He pressed a mug into her hands; she accepted it with a nod of thanks. She took a sip, then dabbed at her face, smearing her fingers with a mix of Revlon and black mascara. He went back to where the kettle was, picked up a kitchen roll and handed it to her, looking away as she ripped off half a dozen sheets and went to work on the wreckage, not stopping until all of it was gone, and there was nothing to hide the hollowness of her cheeks and the redness of her eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I lost it, but . . . I’ve been holding all that inside me since Saturday. I haven’t been able to cry, not even at home. Once I started to talk, I just couldn’t stop. I think I was finally conceding that it wasn’t all just a bad dream, that he really is dead.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ Skinner insisted. ‘I should apologise. I should have been much more sensitive.’

  ‘No,’ she insisted, ‘you were fine. I’m glad it was you that talked to me. I know you, I’ve worked for you. I barely know the DCC and I don’t know the chief at all.’

  ‘We can stop this if you like, Sandra,’ he offered. ‘I’ve still got clout with those two. If I say that we resume tomorrow somewhere else, that’s what will happen.’

  ‘Thanks, sir, but I’m ready to continue; I need to continue.’

  He nodded and sat down once more. ‘If you’re sure; finish your tea first, though. I’m sorry there’s no milk; Mario thinks that’s for wimps. Christ, I’m surprised he’s even got tea. His wife’s family business sells the best coffee in Edinburgh.’

  ‘She’s a Starbuck, is she?’ Bulloch said with a noise that was a mix of chuckle and hiccup.

  Skinner shook his head, smiling. ‘No, Paula’s a Viareggio, all the way.’

  He took a mouthful of his tea, winced at its blandness, then put his mug on a corner of McGuire’s desk.

  ‘When I was half the age I am now,’ he said quietly, ‘Myra, my first wife, died in an accident, a crash. She always drove too fast, but still, it was a road she used every day and it should never have happened. I was at the scene; I saw the wreckage of her car, barely recognisable it was, then I had to identify her at the mortuary, after they’d cleaned her up as best they could. I blanked out part of it for years after that, stuff I’d seen and refused to admit was true. Going through her things, I found that all her life she’d kept a diary, a secret diary that I never saw and never knew about. I was too fucking busy to notice or even be interested, truth be told. She did though: I found them all in a suitcase in the loft, along with a dress and a pair of shoes that I didn’t remember ever seeing before.

  ‘I closed it again, locked it tight. It took me years to read them; I reasoned – I know this now – that her life was in that case, and subconsciously I feared that if I let it out, I would extinguish it altogether. Eventually, though, I did, and in there, I found a woman I’d never known at all. Maybe she was bipolar, a word that wasn’t in common use then; maybe she was, but I doubt it. I liked to believe she was always a single entity but chose only to share a part of herself with me, the good, chaste, wifely side, and express the rest of herself elsewhere. But I knew I was overthinking that; I know damn well I just bored her rigid from the start.

  ‘Myra nearly had two funerals. I came very close to cremating her other life, those diaries, in the garden incinerator, but I held myself back from that because I decided that I didn’t have the right. Instead I made the worst decision of my life. Alex, our daughter, had grown up with only vague infant memories of her mother, backed up by the Christmas tree fairy images I’d described for her. I decided that she had the right to know all of it, so I gave her the suitcase. It fucked her up for years; I’m not sure she’s over it yet, not a hundred per cent. The dress fitted her, and the shoes. She told me, not that long ago, that she used to put them on and go out on the pull; she insisted that she never went all the way, but if she did, that’s not the sort of thing a girl would tell her old man, is it? I do believe, though, that Myra was the reason she and Andy Martin broke up the first time, because looking at him through her mother’s eyes, she found him as boring as Myra must have found me.’

  He stopped, realising that he was staring at the ceiling, and that Sandra Bulloch was staring at him. He shook his head, quickly, vigorously. ‘Why am I telling you this?’ he asked himself aloud, then turned his face towards her.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ he said, ‘because from my own life I understand completely why you didn’t tell Lottie and Dan, or Mario, when you had the chance last Saturday, about your relationship with Leo, and I can even see why you called him your brother-in-law, as they told me you did. It was your secret, yours alone, and it was precious to you, so in your grief you made an instant decision to protect it, to shut it away like Myra’s other life was hidden in that suitcase. It wasn’t relevant to the investigation, so why should it ever have happened? That’s what you did, Sandra, and I am here to tell you that I will defend your right to do it before any tribunal, or any court. As far as this interview’s concerned, you can go home right now, on a couple of weeks’ compassionate leave – use up some of that accrued leave if you need longer; the chief constable will allow that, I promise you. She’s had her own tragedies; she’ll understand yours.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Bulloch replied, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, her hands shredding a sheet of kitchen paper. ‘In that case, please, can Leo and me stay secret? Not because it would make my sister my enemy for ever; I’ve always been prepared to accept that. Just for my sake and his?’

  Skinner frowned. ‘Sandra, if it was just a matter of keeping some irrelevant forensic findings out of the report that goes to the fiscal, that would not be a problem. As for your story of your relationship with Leo, I’ve no doubt that could be corroborated by the staff at Beedham’s, and anywhere else you went together. But it isn’t as simple as that.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘What is the problem?’

  ‘Leo is,’ he replied. ‘Thanks to him, your secret won’t be a secret for much longer. As soon as his solicitor reveals the content of Leo’s will to all the beneficiaries, it’ll be out of the bag. When she lodges it with the Sheriff Court – although God alone knows how long that’ll take given the property valuations and tax calculations that are needed – it’ll become public knowledge.’

  He reached inside his jacket, produced an envelope and handed it over. ‘This is a copy of an amendment to his existing will that Leo made last week. It’s properly drawn up and meets the requirements of Scots Law. You’ll find that he’s left you a lot more than a memory.’

  Her hands trembled slightly as she picked at the adhesive seal of the envelope, before abandoning any attempt at neatness and ripping it open. She extracted the copy and began to read. As she progressed, her eyebrows rose and her eyes widened, then became misty. ‘He did that . . .’ she whispered.

  She stared at the document, blinking hard. ‘Faye will contest this,’ she declared.

  ‘She’ll be wasting her time,’ Skinner told her. ‘That’s not just my opinion, it’s my lawyer daughter’s; I asked her about it, hypothetically. She was quite clear in her opinion, that the Moss Lee action is bound to fail. She’d have to prove they lived together as man and wife, and from
everything I’ve been told, they never did. Faye’s best course of action is to be nice to you.’

  ‘That’ll stick in her throat.’ She took a deep breath, then blew it out. ‘Leo, my love,’ she murmured, then glanced across at her companion. ‘He did that for me. Given the timing, it’s almost as if he knew he was doing to die.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘That takes us into an area that’s properly for Lottie and Dan, but I’ll go there anyway. Did Leo ever say anything to suggest he might have felt threatened?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘But would he have? Being threatened was part of his professional life. He went up against people who were out to do him serious physical harm. In the build-up to the biggest fights, the promotional stages where they were selling tickets and TV pay-per-view buys, the part that he did but never liked, most of them were very specific about what they were going to do to him. He never rose to it, he kept silent, then on the night, he showed them the error of their ways. That was a line he used a few times in interviews after fights. If anyone had threatened him outside of boxing, he’d have acted in the same way: ignored it until the time was right, then switched on his other brain and dealt with it.’

  ‘His other brain?’

  ‘Yes, he said he had two. The normal one, the one he walked around with, and the one he switched on when he did his business. He was like you in that respect.’

  ‘Me?’ Skinner exclaimed.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, you. There are two sides to you, and I’ve seen them both. There’s the sympathetic personality, a big soft nelly at times, and there’s the guy who shot that terrorist in Glasgow without batting an eyelid, and probably without losing any sleep over it.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he grunted. ‘You might be right about the eyelid, but not about the sleep. How did Leo feel about the other side of the boxing business,’ he asked, moving on, ‘and about some of the people in it?’