‘So what are you doing this evening, Alex?’ Mia Sparkles asked.
‘What?’ I exclaimed.
‘Right now?’ my daughter said, her voice slightly distorted by the phone but still recognisable. ‘Finishing some Spanish homework and waiting for my dad to get home. After that, helping him make dinner, then some French homework. Usual stuff, Mia, you know how it is.’
‘Yes, I know. My dad was a single parent too, when I was around your age. He was a better cook than me, though. How about yours?’
‘My dad’s a very good cook,’ she replied, making me feel as proud as she sounded.
‘What’s he best at?’
‘He makes amazing spaghetti sauces. There’s one he does with fish.’
‘Oooh,’ Mia murmured. ‘He can make me some of that any time he likes. Nice talking to you, Alex. And now all you Airburst kids… are you ready for… Oasis?’
I wasn’t; can’t stand them. I switched the radio off.
‘Finished your Spanish?’ I asked, as she jumped into the car outside Daisy’s.
‘You heard me?’ she squealed.
‘Obviously so. How did that happen?’
‘Mia asked me on Saturday if I’d like to be on a phone-in.’
‘But you didn’t think to tell me?’
‘I thought you might be sniffy about it,’ she confessed.
‘The only thing I’m sniffy about is you keeping it to yourself,’ I told her. ‘I’m sure that Mia’s got more sense than to let slip any clues about where you live or to say that you’re a cop’s daughter. If I’d known you were on, I’d have heard the whole thing, instead of coming in halfway through it.’
‘Sorry, Pops.’
I reached out and ruffled her hair, as we drew to a halt at home. ‘G’roff,’ she said, grinning and batting my hand away.
‘I’ve got another treat for you,’ I told her as we went indoors. ‘Or Alison has, to be accurate. Fancy being a cabin girl? We’re going sailing.’
Her mouth gaped open. ‘We are? When?’
As she spoke, I saw the message indicator on the phone, flashing red. ‘Tell you in a minute,’ I said, as she headed for the stairs, and her sanctum, and I pressed the play button. It was a female voice, familiar; Jean, my sister-in-law.
‘Bob, phone me please.’ That was all she said; I had the feeling it was all she could say. A spasm of dread ran through me.
I snatched the handset from the cradle and pressed in her number. Normally she was quick on the draw, but I counted half a dozen rings before she answered. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
‘It’s Dad,’ she replied. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ I repeated.
‘He’s dead, Bob.’
I had not expected that. A turn for the worse, perhaps, an admission to hospital ahead of schedule, but no, not that, not Thornie, not so quickly. I was struck dumb. I’d spent part of my afternoon looking at death, in its most graphic state, but I was unprepared for its invasion of my own home. ‘Jean,’ I whispered. ‘It can’t be. He was here only yesterday.’
‘And he told you about his illness, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, but he was still active,’ I protested, ‘still on his feet.’
‘But very slowly, you must have noticed that, Bob.’
‘Yes,’ I conceded, ‘but still…’
‘I know,’ she said, gently. ‘I didn’t expect it so quickly either. But his consultant did warn me, privately, that things could come to crisis point unpredictably, in a number of ways.’
‘How did it happen? How did he…’
‘I had a call from him on my mobile, around three forty-five, in the office.’ Jean was a hospital manager, in Wishaw. ‘His number showed on my phone but he couldn’t speak. I called his doctor and headed for his house. He got there just before me. He was ringing the bell and getting no answer. I used my key, and we found Dad dead on the kitchen floor.’
‘Oh shit,’ I sighed. ‘What a way to go.’
‘I know. I can’t get my head round it either, someone so loved, dying alone.’
‘Your sister did,’ I reminded her, tactlessly, but I wasn’t thinking straight. ‘You never get your head round it. What did the GP say?’
‘There was some blood,’ she told me, and then had to pause.
I tried to soothe her. ‘It’s okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘No, it’s all right. It won’t be undone by not talking about it. The doctor says that he coughed it up, after he had a massive pulmonary haemorrhage. It would all have been over very quickly. He would almost certainly have died wherever he was, at home or in a hospital ward.’ She gave a strange sound; it might have been a snort. ‘You know what? I’m cursing myself for not insisting on driving him through to yours yesterday. This could have happened when he was at the wheel. He could have taken people out with him.’
‘But he didn’t,’ I said, ‘so don’t dwell on it. He did what he came to do, and he left contented. Just you focus on that. Now, what do you want me to do? Can I help in any way? Do you want me to come through?’
‘No, Bob. There’s nothing to do. He’s been taken to the mortuary, and I’ll see the undertaker in the morning. I’ll let you know when the funeral will be. Are there any dates you’d like me to avoid?’
‘That’s thoughtful of you,’ I told her, ‘but don’t you bother about us. We’ll be there, whenever. Are you really sure you’re going to be okay?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, firmly. ‘I won’t be alone, Bob. I have a friend, a man friend that you don’t know about; he’ll be with me.’ So my prophecy to Alex had been right, I mused. ‘Anyway, you’ve got something to do at home. You concentrate on my niece. This will be very hard on Alexis.’
‘Indeed,’ I sighed. ‘Keep me informed. So long for now, and again, I am so sorry.’
I hung up, and turned, slowly, towards the stairs. Alex was sitting on the third step from the bottom, but she stood and came down into the hall. Her face was solemn and, the strangest thing, she seemed a little taller than she’d been before.
‘It’s Grandpa, isn’t it?’ she said, and all I could do was nod. I made to hug her, but she turned away and walked into the living room. I followed her, watching her, ready for her to break down. But she didn’t. She turned and looked at me, frowning and waiting for me to find the words I was after. That was the moment when I knew, beyond doubt, that I didn’t have a child any longer.
‘He died this afternoon, love,’ I told her, feeling my chin wobble. ‘Very suddenly, at home.’
‘He was ill, though,’ she murmured, ‘wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, my darling, he was. It was only a matter of time, but I never imagined it would be so soon.’
‘He told you yesterday, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t tell me.’
‘He didn’t want me to. In fact he insisted that I didn’t. But I was going to anyway; this evening, in fact. I’m sorry, love.’
She took my hand. ‘It’s all right, Pops,’ she whispered. ‘You didn’t have to tell me anything. I could see that he was ill. And I knew as soon as he said he hadn’t brought his golf clubs that it must be serious. I didn’t believe any of that stuff about the mystery tour.’
‘Maybe not, Alex, but that’s where he’s gone, on the greatest mystery tour of them all.’
She smiled, and her expression said that if I wanted to believe that, it was all right with her.
‘You can cry, you know, kid,’ I whispered.
‘I might,’ she replied, ‘but not just now. I’ve been crying since I was five, Pops. I’m only just learning not to. Besides, Grandpa wouldn’t want me to, and if I did, it would only upset you more.’
I let myself slump on to the couch and she joined me there, nestling against me as she always had done. ‘Are you sure you’re only thirteen?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Alison says I’m going on twenty-five. And speaking of Alison,’ she add
ed, ‘what did you mean about us going sailing?’
I told her about our invitation for the weekend.
‘Can we go?’ she asked.
‘Do you want to, given what’s happened?’
She pushed herself upright and stared at me. ‘Are you kidding? What would Grandpa tell us to do?’
I couldn’t argue with that thinking. ‘Okay,’ I promised, ‘unless his funeral is on Saturday, we will join Alison’s brother’s crew.’
‘Where will we be going?’
‘That’ll be up to the captain.’ I nudged her side. ‘See, kid? Mystery tour.’
‘Maybe we’ll meet Grandpa at the end.’
‘In this world, love, who knows? Hey,’ I went on, ‘fancy going out to eat? That’s all there is on offer unless you’re cooking, for frankly, after the day I’ve had, I cannot be arsed.’
Twelve
Neither could she, but the options on a Monday weren’t that great so we settled for fish suppers from Aberlady. A bad move on my part; the batter was heavy and I ate too many chips, a recipe for indigestion and a restless night. Not that I’d have slept much anyway; my mind was in danger of overload, a whirlpool of thoughts, each of them a crisis of sorts: the two murder investigations that I was heading up, and the two women with whom my life had become entangled. As I struggled with the intricacies and implications of them all, I kept coming back to Thornton. Myra’s death had been as great a bereavement for him as for me, yet he’d been my rock in the aftermath, my wise counsellor in the dark hours when I thought I wouldn’t be able to cope…
Jesus, I hate that word now. Cope. All those well-meaning people, who looked at me anxiously and asked, ‘Are you coping?’ I found myself hating them for their pity. I hoped they would choke on their own kindness. I wanted to rage at them, to shout, ‘What fucking choice do I have?’
It was Thornie who got me through, for all that his own heart must have been breaking. I might not have made it without him. My own father was no help to me at all; I didn’t know it then, but he was in the last couple of years of his life. He was working too hard, and the diabetes that he hadn’t bothered to tell me about, and was neglecting, was about to lead to irreversible heart difficulty. My dad had always been a remote figure to me. Now I’m inclined to blame him for a lot of things, but in those days he was someone I barely saw, and as I found out after he died, and I learned just a little of the truth about his war, someone I barely knew.
How I wish now that I hadn’t been so self-obsessed in my youth, and so angry over Michael, that I let him maintain that distance between us. If I had known of the war service that had earned him one of his nation’s highest honours, and had taken the time to ask him about it, to ask him what it was he had done or seen that, I realise now, haunted him forever afterwards, then today I might feel a lot differently about him.
I never loved my father; yes, that’s the sad truth, and I doubt that he ever loved me either. There’s nothing I can do to change history, but maybe I can find out a bit more about it. I’ve made myself a private promise, that one day, when I’m a man of leisure, I will seek out his past, and find out what it was that he did on his country’s behalf that marked him so badly. He left Alex and me comfortably off when he died, but that meant little to me, for he had left me nothing of himself, nor given me anything when he was alive.
Thornie was my real dad, and it was him I cried for in the small hours of that night, something that I never did for William Skinner, GC. But no, it wasn’t just for Thornie, but for everything that he had given me as well, for she who had been taken away. My daughter was learning not to cry; I still had a way to go.
I felt grim in the morning, and in a state of turmoil so deep that I did what I had decided against the afternoon before. I told Alex that I’d be very late that night, and I fixed it for her to sleep over with Daisy. Before I left, I packed an overnight bag and slung it in the car. I was flying on autopilot, but the damn thing was faulty and I was heading for a mountaintop.
I didn’t go straight to my desk; it wouldn’t have been fair to my team. Instead I told Fred that I’d had a family bereavement and wanted some space. I went to the gym and lifted some weights, then put on my running shoes and spent an hour and more taking out my anger on the streets. I must have covered about ten miles around the city centre. By the time I’d cooled out and showered, I felt more human, and more able to face my colleagues without the near certainty of turning into Mark McManus.
I did a quick catch-up. There was no news from Newcastle; Milburn and Shackleton were off the radar completely. Our Northumbrian colleagues had run out of ideas, and places to look for them. However there was a message from Alison, asking me to call her when I could.
I did, there and then. I took care to keep my tone professional. I reckoned that if I did I wouldn’t be overcome with guilt about where I was headed that evening. And anyway, Skinner, why should you feel guilty? No strings, no commitment, careers first and foremost, remember.
‘What have you got?’ I asked her, briskly.
‘A name for McCann’s mate: Charles Redpath. Steele managed to have a chat with him over the phone, but all he could do was confirm the barman’s story.’
‘Description?’
‘The clothes match what the man from the mews house told us, but we’ve got nothing more to go on. Redpath isn’t a fighting man from the sound of things. Stevie reckons he didn’t look too closely at the guy, just in case he took an interest in him as well as McCann.’
‘Any other leads?’
‘No,’ she said, candidly. ‘We’ve got names for a few of the other people who were in the bar, some from Redpath and some from the bar staff. Steele and Mackie are going round talking to them all, in the hope that somebody might have seen the killer and known him.’
‘Aye, maybe,’ I murmured sceptically.
She read my mind. ‘I know, anybody who could might think twice about it.’
‘So where do you go now?’
‘Back to Wyllie, as you suggested,’ she replied. ‘I’ve read his statement again. It’s one of the vaguest things I’ve ever seen. I do not believe that it’s a straightforward account of what happened, so I am going to give him another chance to get it right.’
‘That’s good,’ I told her, ‘but don’t you go to him. Have the bugger lifted; have him brought to Torphichen and tell the uniforms who pick him up to have their serious faces on. Let’s get him as jumpy as we can.’
‘That was what I was planning. But I thought we should give him the full treatment. So, how are you placed?’
I frowned. ‘Ali, I told you this was your gig.’
‘I know, but I want your help.’
She didn’t sound desperate, or indeed anxious in any way. What she was asking was logical: the more weight we could put on Wyllie, the more we would squeeze out. ‘Yeah, fine,’ I agreed. ‘Tell you what. Let’s bring him here. Do you know where he works?’
‘Same place as Weir did. B amp;Q at the Jewel.’
‘Right, I’ll send my boys Andy and Mario to lift him there. Those two would scare cheese. Speaking of which, come for lunch at one, and we’ll see him at two, two thirty, once he’s had a wee sweat in our smelliest interview room.’
‘When you say lunch, do you mean senior officers’ dining room?’ she asked, with the smile in her voice that always managed to put one on my face, even then.
My promotion had opened its door to me, although I hadn’t had time to take advantage of the privilege. ‘If that’s what you’d like,’ I replied. ‘But if you’d prefer it, I could get a takeaway from Pizza Hut.’
‘You’d be wearing it as a hat, my dear.’
I’d done it again. I’d begun my conversation with Alison fighting off guilt about my date with Mia, and ended it by inviting her to lunch. But the fact was, she’d lifted my spirits in those few minutes; she’d taken the last of my anger away. Instead of replacing the receiver, I pressed the button in the cradle to get the dial tone. I tried t
o dial Mia’s mobile number from memory so that I could call her to cancel, but I lost my way after half a dozen digits, so finally I did hang up and reached for my mobile, where it was in the memory. I was scrolling through my directory when the thing sounded; ‘Jean’, it told me.
‘How are you doing?’ I asked, before she could speak.
‘How did you know… oh, these bloody clever mobiles. I’m doing all right, thanks, Bob. I stop for a cry every now and again, but there are things to be done after a death. You just have to get on with them. The undertaker’s been to see me. The funeral’s arranged for Friday afternoon, two o’clock at Daldowie Crematorium.’
That’s good, I thought, instantly. We’ll still be able to go sailing. My face flushed as quickly as my reaction, at its selfishness.
‘You know how to get there?’ she continued.
‘My God, Jean, I haven’t lived in the east for that long,’ I reminded her. ‘My parents were sent off from there, remember, and your mother.’
‘Of course, I’m sorry, Bob. Will you be bringing Alexis?’ My sister-in-law never shortened her niece’s forename.
‘Of course, to that question as well.’
‘It won’t be too much for her?’
‘You’ve got some catching up to do, Auntie. She would drive cocktail sticks under your fingernails if you asked her that question. At her age, a day’s a week in maturity terms.’
‘Mmm,’ she sighed. ‘I keep forgetting. You’re right, I should see more of her, Bob, I know.’
‘I hope you will now that she’s your closest blood relative.’
‘God, you’re right there too,’ she exclaimed. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘Come and visit us,’ I said, ‘when we’re past all this. Bring the new man too.’
‘I’m not sure if he’s ready to meet you,’ she replied, cagily.
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