by Ian Skewis
‘Sorry, boss, I don’t.’
He stopped and looked at Driscoll, who was regarding him with caution. Suddenly feeling reasonable, Colin said, ‘Of course you don’t. Why would you? You’ve only been here five minutes, but me? I’ve been here for ages. I know everything about everyone. All their dirty little secrets. And there’s one dirty little secret that I know about him. Want to know what it is?’
‘Sure,’ muttered his officer. ‘Anything for a quiet life.’
Colin smiled, ignoring the sarcasm. He strode up to Driscoll and looked him straight in the eye so that they were almost nose to nose. ‘He talks to himself.’
A blank stare from Driscoll. ‘We all do that from time to time, sir.’
Colin punched the metal surface of the nearby surgeon’s table and then self-consciously massaged his knuckles. ‘No, but have you seen him do it? It’s quite a sight to behold, believe me. Entire conversations he has.’
‘Well,’ began Driscoll, ‘I did catch him out once, but I don’t think there’s anything abnormal about it.’
‘There is when it’s actually a dead man he’s talking to.’ Colin smiled patiently, waiting for the penny to drop.
‘Sorry, sir, I don’t understand.’
‘His son, Driscoll, his dead son, he talks to him. You get it? He still talks to him.’
Part Four
Chapter Forty-Five
September 8th
Alice was sat in her white chair in the conservatory, listening to the wind moaning gently through the eaves. Her myriad of plants were trembling as the breeze found its way in through the cracks in the seams of the windows. A breath of fresh air at last, she thought, getting up and humming to herself, welcoming the coming change.
Pulling her cardigan over her shoulders, she felt as if a great burden had been lifted. She could think clearly for the first time in ages. She recalled the fact that her son was gone for good, but Alice could not recall why the news of his death had not surprised her. She felt that there was something familiar about it, nothing more, nothing less. She decided to forget about it. And I’m very good at that these days, she concluded, and walked through the house to the front door. Before she opened it, Alice turned and looked around. The house seemed truly empty. No creaking floorboards. Nothing untoward.
‘A house of Hades,’ said Alice to herself. She frowned. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Helen, smiling gently.
Alice was startled and clutched at her pearls. ‘Where did you come from?’
‘I’ve been here with you since lunchtime.’
Alice watched in fear as the woman with the long, black hair took her hands.
‘Are you all right?’ Helen asked.
Alice thought for a moment and then it dawned on her who this stranger was. ‘I was going to go outside for some air,’ she replied, sounding officious.
‘Sure,’ Helen said. ‘Let me help you.’ Alice stepped back a little as Helen opened the front door, then she let her take her by the hand. Arriving in the garden, Alice watched with interest as the sky began to rapidly darken.
‘Looks like thunder,’ commented Helen.
‘The air is different,’ replied Alice knowledgeably. She smelled the breeze as it wafted across, ruffling her dress and her wispy, white hair. ‘The autumn is here,’ she concluded, and felt Helen looking at her oddly. You know nothing, thought Alice.
Just then there was a flash of forked lightning between the clouds. Alice stood stock still, but she saw Helen jump a little and she smiled supremely. Turning to her, she said sweetly, ‘Perhaps you might want to go indoors.’
‘I’m not leaving you out here,’ retorted Helen.
Alice pressed her lips together with displeasure. ‘I don’t need you today,’ she said flatly.
Helen replied, ‘Yes, you do,’ and Alice waited impatiently whilst Helen remained by her side. Finally, Helen lost her nerve and left her to it. She called out tersely, ‘I’ll make you some tea. Don’t be long now.’
Alice ignored her and stared out across Hobbs Brae. The clouds were massing ominously above the rooftops and the birds were fleeing to their nests. The brown and red leaves were being tossed around by the wind, which was beginning to howl.
‘Just as my garden was beginning to look rather tidy for once,’ she remarked. ‘I wonder if I should just burn it down?’
Helen, who had just passed her a cup of Darjeeling, leaned against the kitchen worktop and stared at her strangely. ‘Burn what down?’
‘The garden, of course,’ replied Alice with exasperation.
‘Why on earth would you do that?’
Alice faltered and looked around her. How did I get in here? she wondered, and lowered her eyes when she felt Helen analysing her with her gaze. ‘I don’t know. I thought I saw it somewhere.’
‘What, on television?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Alice lied. ‘On television.’
Chapter Forty-Six
September 8th
Colin was standing inside his small office, watching the rain as it fell against the window, a tumbler of whisky in his hand. He sipped at it, savouring the warmth as it coursed through his body, trying not to think about his hangover, which was now thumping away at his temples.
He was resigned to fate. The bad news was out there now. There was no going back. He toasted himself in the reflection of the window and took another gulp.
‘Your wife’s worried sick about you,’ Driscoll had said. The only man I could trust, Colin thought bitterly, and now he’s stabbed me in the back, too. He told Jack. The Chief’s words came back to him. ‘And I’m sorry, Colin, but you’re stayingput’. Colin had hoped his promotion might have been expedited given that Jack was on the verge of retirement but, no, Jack had obviously picked up the baton and told the Chief everything. They’re probably lining Campbell up for the job next; Jack’s wee golden boy. Or maybe Driscoll. After all, he’s more experienced. He shook his head, knowing that none of this was really true. The Chief told me I’d get Jack’s job soon. I just need to believe him, that’s all.
He tried to cheer himself up by thinking back to the good old days, when he was younger and more dynamic, someone to be reckoned with. Not so bitter as he was now. He smarted at the whisky, which was beginning to burn his throat, and placed the glass on his desk. His tongue explored the roof of his mouth and found an ulcer. He winced at the pain. The side effects of his medication wasn’t only a sore palate. He was experiencing mild delirium and paranoia. Everyone’s out to get me, especially Jack, he had thought, but he knew it was just the drugs he had been prescribed. And the booze. He looked at his half-empty glass long and hard. Then he tipped the contents into the sink of the toilet next door. He caught sight of himself in the mirror. I look haggard, he concluded gloomily.
‘That’s the problem with being in the force for too long,’ the Chief had once said, in a rare moment of candidness. ‘It hardens you to stone. You become impervious to everything, including your nearest and dearest.’
‘How do I tell her?’ Clements had asked Driscoll in an unusually vulnerable moment. ‘I feel like finishing it all.’
His sidekick didn’t respond.
‘No. I don’t know the answer to that one either,’ Colin replied. ‘Fuck off. I want to get drunk.’
So he did. At the Crow’s Beak he had drunk all night in front of the fire until the wee small hours, until he knew for sure that his wife at home would have lost patience and gone to bed.
How much of an excuse will this give Jack to replace me once and for all? he wondered in a drunken haze. ‘Don’t come back until you’re feeling much better,’ he could hear him say, ‘or better still, don’t come back at all.’ And if I do come back, how do I introduce myself? ‘Hi, I’m Colin. And I have only one ball.’
Finally, he tired of his own self-indulgence and staggered home; after all, he knew he would live. ‘I’m not at death’s door yet,’ he muttered as he put the key into the lock of his fro
nt door again and again until he passed out underneath the letterbox. Hours later, he woke up with a crick in his neck and a blinding headache that made his ulcer seem like a birthday present. What the fuck happened?
He checked his phone. Jack had left a message. ‘Talk to me.’ That was it.
He angrily filled up his tumbler with whisky again, all the way to the brim. ‘Fuck you, Jack,’ he said to the window. ‘You come talk to me. Why should I go to you? To make you feel better about yourself? Why don’t you get your fat arse out of that gilded fucking wank-chariot you call an office and stoop down to talk to me for once, why don’t you?’ He picked up his glass. ‘What’s the point, anyway? I could never get a word in because you were always too busy talking to the dead. Weirdo.’ He took a long swig and finished his glass, grimacing once more at the burning sensation.
Just then there was a knock at the door. Startled, he hid his whisky bottle and the glass under the desk and said gruffly, ‘Come in.’
The door opened.
It was Jack.
Chapter Forty-Seven
September 8th
Alice sat in the conservatory. She contemplated her situation. My son’s girlfriend was here all that time working for me – and I didn’t even know.
She mouthed her name. Caroline Baker. A stranger who knew her son intimately. Alice tried to imagine what the girl could have meant to her if things had turned out differently. Daughter-in-law sprung to mind, but the term felt clumsy, like putting a plaster over a six-inch wound. The truth of the matter was that even with the benefit of hindsight, she still did not understand who Caroline was.
‘I need to talk to her,’ she had announced to Helen, who was making tea in the kitchen.
Helen suddenly seemed alarmed. ‘Is that a good idea?’
Alice looked at her as if she was touched. ‘Yes, it is. I want to know what she knows.’
Helen replied, ‘As far as I can tell, she knows nothing.’
‘She must know something.’
‘I think you should forget it.’
Alice confronted her. ‘I’m done forgetting,’ she snapped. Then she saw the look of hurt on Helen’s face. ‘Look, it’s just that I’m under the distinct impression that Caroline would rather have stayed here than been taken back to her family.’
She saw Helen pout as she stirred the tea, as if to say, So what?
Alice took the teaspoon out of her hand and threw it on the worktop, much to Helen’s annoyance. ‘Just before she was taken away she apologised for what she had done, said she was sorry for misleading me.’
‘Exactly, Alice. And you want to talk to her? She lied to you. She stayed here under false pretences.’ Helen then took a biscuit from the plate beside her and started munching loudly on it, steadily gazing back at her.
Alice felt like a gauntlet had just been laid down. ‘I know, Helen. I know I’m not always there. But I was there.’
Helen looked away moodily and continued crunching on her biscuit.
‘Besides,’ Alice continued, ‘I was compos mentis some of the time. And you knew what was going on. As far as I’m concerned we’re all guilty, all of us are complicit in this… secrecy. We hid that girl and everyone was worried about her. Her family. They must think I’m a right nut job, practically stealing their daughter away.’
‘Now you’re being melodramatic,’ sighed Helen, taking a slurp of tea.
Alice picked up the spoon and stirred her own cup, trying to think of another approach. ‘I need to find out about the last movements of my son,’ she announced firmly, and dropped the teaspoon into the sink with a clatter.
Helen said quietly, ‘Remember what I saw, Alice. She was with that other man.’
‘And?’ queried Alice haughtily.
Helen avoided her eyes. ‘And you might not like what you find out.’
As she sat there amongst her plants and flowers, Alice could hear the wind skirting around the house, the rain dancing on the roof. She could remember the scent of the fields and the brush of leaves on her skin. And now that rare occurrence when she could picture the garden in her mind’s eye from a summer long gone, sunlit and beautiful, every flower wide open and the bees bobbing in and out of the foliage – when she was younger and in full control of all her faculties. Was it that same summer’s day her mind kept returning to – the day they built Alfred? She could no longer tell. One memory lapsed and was replaced by another. Thoughts and images from the past were presented enticingly, all too briefly, as if marooned on the beach with little or no context, a mysterious artefact on the shore. Then swept away again by a riptide, to be submerged forever beneath the waves. But all her memories, no matter how deeply sunk they were, had one clear thing in common: her son.
And now a girl had appeared. Not a drowned memory, but solid, real. Yet just as intangible. She remembered those glacial blue eyes of hers, and she thought back to Helen’s warning. She wondered if Caroline was truly capable of being culpable. She had to know. Did she two-time my son? Did she, god forbid, murder him?
Chapter Forty-Eight
September 8th
‘How did we forget?’
Colin didn’t know how to answer his partner’s question, and instead just watched as the hedgerows flitted past. He was sat in the passenger seat with Jack, who was driving them towards Loch Ness, where William Smith was last seen.
‘Remember when you captured that crook single-handed? The one with the blowtorch? That was amazing.’
Colin attempted a smile, but in truth he didn’t feel like smiling. The entire conversation felt forced.
‘I know you’re trying to cheer me up and all,’ he said, ‘but why don’t you just do this on your own? You obviously don’t want me here stealing any of your glory.’
He watched as Jack’s smile was replaced by an intense frown, his jaw gradually clenching. Abruptly, he pulled over and stopped the car. He turned and looked right at him.
‘Listen to me. I don’t care about any of this competitive stuff that’s been going on between us. I don’t care about whether I solve this case or you do. I don’t care about what anyone else thinks, either. What I do care about is you. You’ve been my partner for almost ten years now. What happened to us? We were good together. The cases we solved. The criminals we put away. The lives we saved. Why are we throwing all that away now?’
Colin was surprised to see just how emotive Jack had suddenly become. He actually means what he’s saying, he thought, but Colin couldn’t help himself.
‘That’s a very pretty speech. You must have been practising that one in front of the mirror.’
‘Fuck you, Colin,’ snapped Jack, and he got out of the car, slamming the door shut behind him.
Colin watched po-faced as Jack strode backward and forward in the rain. The longer he did so, the more guilty Colin felt. ‘Fuck it,’ he gasped and got out of the car. ‘Are you coming back in or are you going to keep pacing up and down like a cornered chicken?’
He smirked as Jack stopped suddenly and glowered at him, the rain trickling down over his shoulders, his breath visible in the cold. ‘I’ve a good mind to punch your fucking lights out,’ he snarled.
Colin immediately retaliated with a slap across his face. Before he knew it the deed was done and he was shocked by his own reflexes. He was about to apologise when suddenly a blow struck the side of his head and he staggered back. Colin regained his balance and a brief stare was exchanged between them. Blood boiling, he marched up to Jack. A split second elapsed and they were lashing out at each other, fists flying clumsily into the air, sometimes grazing a chin, or a brow, but never quite hitting their intended mark. Back and forth, tit for tat, until Colin tried to kick him and clumsily fell over, taking Jack with him. Into the mud they landed with a grunt and a curse, waging war against each other until exhaustion led to mutual surrender.
They lay there, trying to get their breath back, then Colin heard Jack begin to laugh. He sat up, wondering what the hell he was finding so funny, and c
aught the look in his eyes. The absurdity of it all. He too began to laugh, low at first, then it rose to fever pitch, until it grew hysterical, uncontrollable, the tears blinding him. Jack got up, still giggling, and offered Colin his hand. Colin allowed himself to be pulled back up onto his feet. He saw the muck all down Jack’s front.
‘Somehow I always end up in the shit,’ Jack said, with a grin.
Colin smiled back, recalling the press reports on Jack’s state of undress. ‘Glad you got that out of your system?’ he quipped, trying to wipe the mud from his trousers.
‘My mum always used to say, “Make love not war”. But you’re such an ugly sod there was only ever one choice,’ said Jack, beaming.
Colin laughed and then looked at him. ‘Sorry,’ he said through the rain, which was incessant.
Jack smiled and looked back at him, his eyes welling up with tears. ‘No. I’m sorry.’ He held out his hand.
Colin felt his throat tighten. He took Jack’s hand and shook it. A moment passed between them and Jack was about to say something, but Colin was feeling raw and exposed.
‘Right, enough of that now,’ he said loudly, ‘or people will talk.’ He sniffed with the air of a proprietor.
They both got back in the car and listened to the rain for a bit, getting their breath back. The phone rang. Jack listened carefully.
‘Matthew White has just been sighted,’ he said, hanging up.
‘Where?’ demanded Colin, excitedly.
‘In Loch Ness.’ Jack winked at the irony.
‘Then what are we waiting for?’ replied Colin.
‘Let’s close this case,’ declared Jack. ‘Together?’
‘Aye,’ replied Colin. ‘Together.’
Chapter Forty-Nine