‘I won’t count on it,’ he said. ‘You know what they’re like when the days are long, like now, especially the wee one.’
‘True. All the more reason to scoot, then.’
‘Yeah.’ He slid off his stool, drew me to him and kissed me. ‘Thanks,’ he whispered.
‘For what?’
He smiled. ‘Dinner,’ he said, ‘and everything that came after it; not least the straight talking. It’s been a while since I let anyone in.’ He paused. ‘And maybe last time I did, I gave away too many secrets.’
I frowned as I looked up at him. ‘Do you have any I don’t know about?’ I asked.
‘One,’ he replied, and a shadow crossed his face. ‘For now I’m keeping it, but I promise I will tell you what it is next time we’re. . like this.’
‘You’re assuming.’
‘I know. . if we’re ever, I should have said.’
I squeezed his butt. ‘That’s all right; you can come back. I’ve never been a mistress before; I think I like it.’
‘Then I really have got some serious thinking to do, but thanks to you, I’m ready for it. Any more heartfelt advice before I go?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and this is medical. Give up the coffee; it’s the last thing that a man in your emotional state needs. Once you get through withdrawal, you’ll feel a hell of a lot better for it. Do that for us?’
‘Us?’
‘Me and the kids. They don’t need any sort of a junkie dad, and I prefer you straight too.’
‘I’ll try. Promise.’
I watched him from the doorway as he slid into his car, then drove away, with a last wave through the open window.
And then I folded; without warning my legs turned to jelly. I eased myself back to the kitchen and up on to the stool that Bob had been using, then poured the last of the orange juice into his glass. What the hell have I done? I asked myself.
Then I answered. ‘I’ve enjoyed the best sex I’ve had since before the two of us split up. I’ve made no promises and no commitments. And on top of that, I feel better about myself than I have in years.’
So why can’t I smile about it?
‘Because I’m worried about my man. He’s on the edge and I don’t know what he’s going to be like when he comes through it.’
I took the OJ upstairs and had the warm bath I’d promised myself. I put in some crystals, and wallowed for a while, pleased to find that although I was out of practice and had been holding nothing back, I wasn’t sore or even tender. When I’d had enough, I dressed, and began the rest of my day, as I’d described it to Bob. I use a cleaning service, but the kids’ bedrooms needed attention. I’ve never expected Trish to be a domestic as well as a carer.
I put a little less concentration than usual into the tidying of bedrooms and the changing of linen, for my mind was still full and running over. I’d described Bob as a man on the edge, but what the hell was I? I’d been lying to myself, I realised. I hadn’t come back for the job and the kids, not for those considerations alone. I hadn’t planned the night before, and I repeat, I hadn’t invited him for more than dinner, but maybe I’d been waiting for my opportunity all along.
Lecture preparation was out of the question. I owe my students my one hundred per cent attention and they weren’t getting it that day. A little girlfriend time might be a better alternative, I decided, but it was a short list, reduced to one, really, by the obvious truth that I couldn’t call Alex. So I rang Paula Viareggio; she and I have always got on well from the time that Mario and she came out of the closet, when Bob and I helped them along by inviting them to dinner parties as a couple.
‘You busy?’ I asked her once we’d got past the opening exchanges. ‘Or are you just too pregnant to come out and play?’
‘I’d love to, Sarah,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got a social event tonight and I’d better rest up for it. Would you like to drop in here instead, for coffee and a chat? Mario’s out. There’s some stuff going on at work that needs his weekend attention.’
‘Fine by me. I’ll look forward to it. I’ll do some essentials shopping, then come to you. Around eleven thirty suit?’
‘Perfect.’ I thought she’d hang up, but she didn’t. ‘What’s put the bounce in your boobs?’ Paula doesn’t do subtle.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You sound sparkly. Have you got a new man?’
‘Me?’ I laughed. ‘Honestly, no.’ It was the truth; nothing new about him.
I got out of my work clothes and made a list of the things I needed for the house and for the kids when Trish brought them back on the following Monday. I was in the act of reaching for my car keys when the phone rang. ‘Dammit!’ I muttered. Then my heart jumped a little mouthwards. I wasn’t on call, so who. .
I could only imagine one thing: Bob, full of guilt and contrition, and maybe anger, calling to blame me for the mistake he’d made and threatening me with everything short of deportation if I ever breathed a word.
I was half right. ‘Hi,’ he said, quietly. I heard a seagull in the background and guessed he was in the garden on his mobile. ‘I think I’m calling to apologise. I was way out of order last night, moaning to you about my life, and then taking advantage of you.’
‘I see,’ I murmured. ‘There was a point this morning when I told you I still love you, if I remember right. Or didn’t you hear that?’
‘Yes, I heard. The bugger is, it’s mutual.’
‘Then don’t go apologising. I also said I won’t go back to where we were, and I meant that too. As for. . all that sweaty stuff, you were a man in great need of getting his ashes properly hauled. If you’d gone anywhere else for that, then I would have been seriously pissed off. Now chill out. What are you doing anyway?’
‘I’m playing with our daughter, as it happens. That’s it, Seonaid,’ he called out, ‘pass me the ball. You know what, Sarah? She’s gorgeous.’ I had a melting moment, but I wasn’t about to let him in on it.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘And she knows it too. Enjoy yourselves. I’m going out.’ I hung up and grabbed my keys, but I hadn’t reached the door before the phone rang again. I smiled and picked it up. ‘Yes,’ I chuckled, ‘I still love you in the morning.’
‘That may be too much information, Sarah,’ Joe Hutchison said, solemnly.
‘Then forget you ever heard it,’ I replied cheerfully.
‘I will, although I’m curious about who you thought I might be. I wonder, my dear,’ he continued. I knew it was favour time, ‘My dear’ told me so, ‘I know that you’re not on duty this weekend, but something’s come up.’
My switch to work mode is automatic. ‘Crime scene or major accident?’
‘Crime scene. Thing is, Sarah, our Roshan is fine for run-of-the-mill stuff, but this isn’t something we can ask him to handle alone. It’s multiple and it’s messy. I’d go myself, but my dear wife has plans and besides. .’
You’re the prof, and you’re not getting any younger, I thought, but didn’t say it. ‘Where is it?’ I asked.
‘Leith, near Ocean Terminal. DI Pye is the officer in charge. I’ll let him know you’re coming.’
‘It’s all right, Joe; I have Sammy’s mobile number. I’ll call him myself. As it happens, I was heading for Leith anyway. I’ll tell my chum I’ll be a little late.’
Cameron ‘Cheeky’ McCullough
I know there are cops who don’t approve of Sauce and me, big Jack McGurk for a start; and I can understand why.
My grandfather has been a very bad man in his time; people like Jack, people who don’t know him, think he still is, and that he always will be. People who do. .
No. I can’t say that. The truth is that people who do know my grandpa would never talk to me about him, so I don’t have anyone else’s educated view to go on, other than my mum’s and my aunt’s, and you wouldn’t hang a rat on the word of either of them.
My aunt, Goldie (her real name’s Daphne, but she hates it and nobody ever dares call her by it), is as
hard as nails and every bit as dense. My mother, Inez? Grandpa says that Cadburys named a chocolate bar after her. You know, the crumbly one. Dear mother is doing time at the moment for a series of robberies. She even got me involved in the last one, by persuading me to drive for her to pick up a load of gear that she said she’d bought cash from a shop, to be collected out of hours. When we were arrested, Grandpa hired a good lawyer who got me out from under, but to this day nobody in the world, apart from Sauce, believes that I took her at her word and didn’t know what was going on. I did, though, I really did; I persuaded myself that she was telling the truth, because what mother would be stupid enough to involve her own daughter in a scam that could put her in jail?
I tell you all this to explain the closeness between Grandpa and me. He’s always been the major figure in my life, the one who’s raised me and influenced me. He’s very young to have a 23-year-old granddaughter. That’s because my mother got herself knocked up when she was still under sixteen, and didn’t tell anyone until it was too late to have an abortion. . although Grandpa says he wouldn’t have allowed it anyway; he really is a moral maze, that man.
I have no idea who my father is. His name doesn’t appear on my birth certificate. My mum’s always refused to discuss him, and all Grandpa ever said when I asked him was, ‘Doesn’t matter, kid. You are you.’ When I was eleven, I plucked up the courage to ask Auntie Goldie; she’s always scared me, for as long as I can remember. She glared at me with those cold eyes and said, ‘Eff you.’ It took me another two years to tell Grandpa about that conversation. When I did, he explained that she’d meant, ‘Father Unknown.’
It’s hard being the light of somebody’s life. You have a lot to live up to. When that person is said to be one of the major figures in the country’s criminal underworld, you have a lot to live down as well.
He always kept me isolated from that side of his life: I use the past tense because he’s promised me that it’s over. The closest he’s ever come to opening up completely was on my eighteenth birthday. He had a party for me at Black Shield Lodge, his country house hotel up in Perthshire; before it got started he took me into his office. He gave me a glass of Buck’s Fizz, and then he started to talk, not in his Grandpa voice but in one I’d never heard before.
‘Cameron,’ he began; he always uses the given name that we share, not my nickname, ‘there’s a market in everything: houses, horses, whores, herbs, you name it. For every human need, whether it’s as fundamental as a roof over their heads, for entertainment, like a bet every now and again, or just for pure self-gratification, there is commerce and there are merchants, suppliers, providers. Government’s attitude to those varied enterprises is inconsistent, to the point of being illogical. It approves of some, and it attaches itself to them like a giant leech. . that bloodsucker going by the name of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. . drawing its funds from them through taxation. Others it deems to be improper, and it passes laws against them then spends millions on enforcement that’s usually futile, because the big G assumes that it’s smarter than those it classes as criminals, when at the level that really matters the opposite is usually the case. There’s no logic in its demarcation. Government approves of alcohol and tobacco, and taxes both to the hilt. It declares other drugs to be unacceptable and drives them underground, where they’re subject to no regulation or quality control whatsoever. Government decrees that prostitution is illegal, yet prostitutes are subject to income tax just like the rest of us.’ He paused. ‘You with me so far?’
I nodded, wondering what was coming.
‘Government has the power to do all that stuff, but there’s one thing it can’t do, and that’s change the basic nature of mankind. Whether they’re legal or not, human needs will always exist, and people will always satisfy themselves one way or another. If there were no women selling sex, there would be more rapes, there would be more domestic violence. If there were no distilleries, people would make their own hooch, and for sure it would blind and kill them in their thousands. And so on, and so on.’
He looked right into my eyes. ‘Now you’re an adult,’ he said, ‘you’re going to start hearing things about me, maybe not to your face, but one way or another, you will. So it’s best you hear my side of the story. I have businesses that are regarded as legitimate; this hotel where we are right now, it’s one of them. These are very successful, and HMRC does very nicely from them thank you. I should be on the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Christmas card list. You’d think they’d be grateful,’ he smiled, ‘but that cuts me no slack with them. They say that I have other interests, that I operate on both sides of the fence. Okay, let them try and prove it. I’ll always deny it to them, and I’ll never admit it to anyone else, especially not you, kid, so there’s no chance of you being affected by it or infected by it for that matter.
‘You’re my future, Cameron. My businesses, the CamMac group, the holding company that contains all my interests in housebuilding, commercial property, hotels and pubs, is mine and mine alone. When I die, which I hope will be a long time off since I’m still only mid-fifties, it’s going to be yours. Forget Goldie, forget your mum, they’ll have no involvement in it; your aunt’s an evil woman, and as for Inez, well, I don’t want to speak badly of your grandma, God rest her, but my daughter’s brains come from her mother’s side.’
He took my hand. ‘My will’s made already and in it, you’re my sole heir. You’ll become a director of CamMac, when you’re twenty-one. When you’re done with university, and have a few years’ experience in the wider business world, you’ll come and help me run it. In the meantime, I have quite a lot of property and I plan to transfer some of it into your name. I’m not saying, mind, that it’ll be yours to do with as you wish, but it’s a sensible move, as you’ll appreciate once you’re a qualified accountant.’
‘Grandpa,’ I murmured, but he put a finger to my lips.
‘Shhh, now. Say nothing. It’s your birthright, and it’ll be always be ring-fenced for you against anything that might happen to me, whatever those people in government, those people with flexible morality, might try to pin on me in the future.’
They did try, a few years later. He was charged with murder, and with drug trafficking. He sent me a message, telling me he’d be home soon, and asking me to ignore any crap about him I might read in the press. He walked on both charges; no evidence was ever laid. I doubt if the prosecution ever had any.
Now, just in case you think I’m an idiot, I know full well that my grandfather is not whiter than white. The Crown may have wasted money trying to lock him up, but it didn’t spend it without reason. He has never once flat out admitted it to me, for the reasons he explained in that birthday chat, but I grew up in the city of Dundee, where you would have to be a chromium-plated bammer not to be aware that Cameron McCullough is the most powerful man in town, that there isn’t a door that’s closed to him, and that some of those you would not want to knock.
There’s only once that he’s ever given me a glimpse of that other side and that was last year. I’d gone up to visit him one day, as I try to do at least once a month, because he’s a lonely man, when he surprised me with a question. ‘You’ve got a circle of friends in Edinburgh by now, Cameron, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘of course. Loads.’ That might have been an exaggeration; I had a couple of girl chums from my university days, and I’d had a few boyfriends by then too, but none of them had been keepers. Fact: I’d had to leave Dundee to get laid for the first time. No boy there ever tried it on with me.
‘Are any of them cops?’ he asked, failing to sound casual.
I frowned at him. ‘Why?’
‘Ah nothing,’ he said. ‘Forget it.’
‘Like hell I will,’ I laughed. ‘You wouldn’t ask me that without a reason, Grandpa. Come on.’
‘Ach,’ he was still hesitant, ‘I’ve got a bit of a situation. There’s a guy I’m involved in business with, indirectly. Not part of the CamMac group
,’ he added quickly. ‘Nothing you’ve got an interest in. He might have been a bit naughty. If he was involved with the police, it would be useful to know it.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Zaliukas, but you’d never have heard of him. He owns pubs and clubs. There’s one called Indigo. I believe that’s quite well known.’
It was known to me as well. I’d been there a couple of times with a guy I’d met through work. He’d promised me it was drug free because a lot of cops drank there. He’d even pointed a couple of them out, a great tall bloke and his mate, nice, younger and with significant ears.
‘Yes,’ I lied to my grandfather, ‘I know cops. I’ll see if the name comes up in conversation.’
‘Careful now,’ he warned. ‘It mustn’t get back to me.’
I went to Indigo that same night. The same two guys were at the bar, but they were in a threesome; Lofty had a woman with him. I moved in on his tasty mate. . and that’s how I met Sauce.
I told him my name was Davis, not McCullough; it belonged to my mum’s even worse half, so I borrowed it. I hadn’t planned anything beyond chatting to him, so what came later was completely spontaneous. I certainly hadn’t planned on falling for him. If I’d known that was going to happen, I’d have told him everything about myself from the off, but by the time I realised that, it was too late, and I was compromised.
The thing got messy after that, very, very messy, in fact. Grandpa wasn’t involved, thank God, but Sauce was, and when he found out that I’d been less than honest with him, I reckoned we were finished. He’s a lovely guy though. I cried on his shoulder, literally and for real, and he took me back. He laid down the rules, though. One of them is that he never meets my grandfather. Grandpa can live with that so I can too.
I’ll admit to being a bit worried when Grandpa gave me a message for him. I wasn’t keen on doing it at the time, but he told me to trust him, that he had his reasons, so I went along with it, then forgot all about it. I’d never heard of the man that he mentioned, and I didn’t expect any progress reports from Sauce, so when he asked me to pass on a few supplementary questions in return, I was surprised to say the least.
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