The day manager gives me a nod, and leaves.
I wander back over towards reception and await the verdict. There’s always the possibility that Leia Fisher tells them she doesn’t want to see me, in which case I then have the call to make. How far do I risk pushing it?
The receptionist puts down the phone, smiling at me like we’re old friends.
‘Miss Fisher is happy for you to see her in her suite. She’s in the east wing, ground floor. If you go through the door here to your right, along the corridor, first right, and then three doors along. She and Miss Champlain are in the Murray Suite.’
I nod, no other words required, and then I’m heading out of reception, mind back in neutral.
The Murray Suite. Named after Sir Andy, d’you suppose, or perhaps just after some old fart, an eighteenth century gentleman farmer, who sold his soul to Westminster for a pocketful of land, Sir Bufton Tufton Murray of Auchterarder, who left seventeen bastard children and died of rampaging gout on his forty-sixth birthday.
Eyes down, stepping on the lines in the carpet, the corridor wide and bright, lined with picture-perfect paintings of Perthshire, cattle and deer, mountains and lochs, babbling brooks and waterfalls, salmon fishing in the Tay.
Knock on the door, step back. Stare at the carpet.
The door is answered. Not Fisher, the other one. The lover. Champlain. The one who posted an innocent photograph of herself and Fisher eating lunch in the fifteen-star Michelin bistro. Smiling, wearing a long white shirt, and nothing beneath, I’d say.
Just what I need.
‘Sergeant Hutton,’ she says, smiling. ‘You can take off the mask, unless you insist.’
I hesitate, she continues to smile, says, ‘Really, we’re OK. Young and foolish. Come in, be free!’ and she laughs, and I, easy prey, take off the mask and thrust it into my pocket.
She stands holding the door, while I file past. This really is a suite. It has a corridor. I have literally never been in a hotel room that had its own corridor. What age are these women? Neither of them can be over thirty, and they can afford to stay in a place like this?
I decide, with an old-fashioned closed mind, that Miss Champlain must have one of those fathers who owns several diamond mines in Africa, as well as half of America’s national debt, and he happily provides his daughter with anything she requires, and she closes the door, leads me down the short corridor into the sitting room, and now there’s three of us in a large, bright, tastefully, tartanly Scottish lounge, and everyone’s smiling and dressed to relax, except me.
There are two sofas, a low, elegant coffee table in the middle of the room. There are doors off either side, and straight ahead, double French doors, leading out onto a small patio, looking out over the hotel grounds, out across the golf course, to the Perthshire hills, shrouded in mist and rain, beyond. To the right of where I’m standing, the blank screen of a large television, and a bar. Behind the sofa on which Fisher is currently sitting, beneath another large window, a writing desk with a leather top.
Fisher is wearing light cotton pyjamas, drinking a vodka and tonic, or a gin and tonic, or a Bacardi and lemonade. Impossible to tell. I just know it’s not lemonade, it’s not sparkling water. Champlain slumps into the sofa beside her, and, since she’s wearing a shirt and nothing else, I get the glimpse of pubic hair she intended me to get just before she crosses her legs.
‘It is you,’ says Fisher. ‘I wondered if it might be.’
I mean, really... All I wanted... I just wanted to come up here and sit in a café, or on a bench somewhere outside, looking at a distant mountain, ask a few questions, get a few answers, maybe find out something useful I could pass back to Kallas, try to finagle my way back into her good books, although her good books are not what I’ve been ejected from, and then get the fuck out of Dodge. It sounded so straightforward.
Instead, I walk into the sweetest of traps. Alcohol and gorgeous lesbians.
Ha!
‘What does that mean?’
‘I was telling Georgia about your sex video,’ she says, smiling. ‘The talk of all Glasgow.’ She takes a drink, the ice tinkling beautifully in the glass.
I feel the weight of my jacket and tie, my collar tight against my neck, I feel the weight of non-responsibility, something in my head keen to point out that I’m currently suspended, so why not throw off the shackles and go along with the vibe.
‘Now here you are in person,’ she says. ‘How exciting. A police officer who’s not afraid to drink and fuck while on duty.’
‘Can I get you anything?’ says Champlain, springing to her feet, then downing the rest of her glass in one.
She holds the pose for a moment, her raised arm lifting the shirt slightly, allowing a more generous view of her thighs, then she lowers the glass and says, ‘Vodka, that’s what you drink, right?’
Vodka. Jesus.
I stand there like a fucking lemon, trapped between lust and the last vestiges of common sense and self-respect.
You know, you can only hate yourself so much, then finally you just give the fuck into it and accept you’re a useless, pathetic piece of shit, who belongs in the waste bin of history.
Perhaps when Kallas comes by tonight I should go all out to be as drunk as possible. I can come on to her. Try to get her into bed. Be a colossally massive dick to her, and it really wouldn’t be too much of a step for me to be that much of a dick. Drive her away. She is, after all, far too good for me. What’s in it for her, all these tortured silences, this fucking chemistry with which we’ve been blighted? What possible good could come of it for Kadri Kallas?
‘You know why I’m here?’ I say to Fisher, and she takes a moment, finishes off her glass of vodka or gin or whatever, kind of smacks her lips as she lowers the glass, then leans forward with a smile.
‘I wrote a piece about the connections between Cambuslang and His Grey Return. I mentioned four people in that piece, and three of them are dead.’ A pause, and then, ‘Or is it now four?’
She stands and walks over beside Champlain, lays the glass down, nods, mouths thanks, then returns to the sofa. Thought for a moment she would do that thing where they kissed lustfully for my benefit, but they didn’t. I would have loved it and scorned it in equal measure.
‘Of course,’ she says, having enjoyed me watching her move from the sofa to the bar, back to the sofa, ‘I can’t be the only one who made the connection. But I get that you might be curious enough to need to talk to me.’
‘You never published the article yourself?’
‘Nah. I gave it to the Chronicle, and even they didn’t bother running it in the end. There must’ve been too much interesting shit going on in Rutherglen and Cambuslang that week, eh?’
Champlain holds a glass in front of me, and then it’s in my hand, ice cold on my fingers.
This is monumentally stupid. I have, at the very least, to drive back down the road. I’d be an even bigger fucking idiot to add drink driving to the list.
Maybe I could kill myself in the car, that might work.
Too liable to take another driver out with me.
Just the one drink.
Just the one.
‘Who runs the blog that published it?’
‘Derek, a guy at the Chronicle. He’s sweet. He felt bad for me that no one would take it, so he said he’d put it up on his thing. Maybe he thought he’d get to sleep with me out of it, but sadly for Derek... Anyway, I was so pissed about the whole experience by then, I just thought, fuck it, you know? That was a decent script. Better than decent. Those fuckers just shat it out, straight into the sewer.’
‘You must’ve been annoyed?’ I say, sounding like, I don’t know, a deadbeat, average, every-word-is-written-by-a-hack detective, with barely an original thought in my head.
‘Sure,’ she says, and she and Champlain exchange a glance that stops just short of an eye roll, and she adds, ‘so pissed off I decided to kill everyone involved. But just those who live, or lived, in Cambuslang. I
mean, personally I’ve never even been to Cambuslang, but I can see that coming from there, you kind of deserve to die just for that.’
‘You missed one, by the way,’ I say glibly, in response to her glibness, and she smiles in a way to say that she really, really, doesn’t care.
So, there’s a drink in your hand. My lips and my tongue and my throat are saying, There’s a drink in your hand. What are you waiting for?
‘Do you have sex with everyone you interview?’ asks Champlain.
I stand with my drink, holding it before me as meagre protection. Like looking out of the window while standing beside Kallas, it is an activity.
‘Would Derek be able to tell who’d read his blog?’ I say, ignoring the sex question, trying to maintain the tenuous hold I have on the interview.
Champlain crosses her legs. Fisher smiles, then takes a slow drink.
‘Not if someone just stumbled across it,’ she says eventually. ‘You know this already, sergeant, you know how it works. He does, however, have a small list of subscribers, so perhaps that might help. If he’s willing to hand it over, which...’ and she finishes the sentence with a small shrug and a doubtful look.
‘Would you ask him for me? In fact, could you just ask him, don’t say it’s for me? Make up some shit.’
‘Interesting. Why would I do that?’
‘Because if I ask him, it’s possible I get the full-on, infringement of society, anti-police crap, and there’s no way I’ll get anywhere near it without a court order, and even then, with him working for a newspaper, regardless of which one and how small, he’ll come at me, come at the police, and the mainstream press will be his willing accomplices, and then suddenly it’s some shitshow or other.’ A pause so that I calm the fuck down, because just the thought of Derek being a dick about it – even though he’d be absolutely right to be a dick about it – gets my back up, and the two of them are sitting there smiling throughout, and then I say, ‘But if you ask him, and if I can gauge Derek, you don’t even have to promise him anything, just leave it dangling there, the idea there might be something in return, you’ll have it off him within five minutes.’
‘That doesn’t really answer my question, Sergeant,’ she says, and she stands, and as if following the actions of her leader, Champlain stands with her, and they approach me across the short distance to the middle of the room. ‘I get why you want me to do it. But why should I do it? Why should I lead poor Derek on like that?’
They stand either side of me. Champlain in her white shirt, top three buttons undone. Fisher in the light cotton pyjamas, calf length, thin top, her nipples pressing against the material.
‘Because three people have been murdered,’ I say.
I hold her gaze. Do my best. Can feel my hand shaking, the ice in the glass starting to rattle. Fuck, fuck, fuck, get a fucking grip.
‘A fourth could be in danger, and then, who knows?’ I force from my lips. ‘Who knows how many more? Who knows who?’ Swallow. Can feel my cock getting hard, know that it will be obvious soon enough. Jesus, I’m so easy, so sad. ‘Could be you next.’
‘Ooh, that’s exciting,’ she says, with the thrilling assuredness of someone who thinks they’re untouchable.
‘It’s really not.’
She moves closer. They both do. A hand settles on my stiffening cock. I close my eyes. Now my resolve crumbles, and as ever, I’m swallowed by the moment, taken by the impulse, self-control set determinedly at absolute, hopeless zero.
I lift the glass to my lips, take a long drink. Vodka. Cold and sharp and smooth and wonderful, fuck it feels so good going down, delivering an instant kick of relaxation, and my cock twitches at the touch, and I moan softly, then the glass is taken out of my hand by one of them, then there are lips on mine, and I give in to it completely, a face pressed against me, the cool, moist lips, the tongue edging its way into my mouth, the hand pressed against my cock, and then the other one is back, having placed the glasses to the side, and she presses her hand against the hand that’s on my cock, grabbing my buttocks at the same time, and her tongue is on my neck, and it feels glorious, and then the tongue is running down my neck, and she’s ripping my shirt buttons open, down to my waist, belt undone, zipper down, and then my trousers lowered, boxers pulled down, and my erect, already damp cock springs free, and straight away there’s a tongue on it, and then lips around it, and I slide it into her mouth, and Jesus fucking Christ it’s so good, and I kick the trousers and underwear off my feet, and hurriedly remove the shirt and tie, and it’s Champlain who’s still kissing me, and I whisk her white shirt up and off, and then I’m taking her breasts into my mouth, and as I lick the nipples, I notice she has bite marks all over her breasts, and I feel those same teeth against my cock, and I jerk, and I slide wonderfully, deliciously, happily, with total abandon into the moment.
41
Some time after the sex was over I thought to look around to see if there was a phone set up to film the event. Sometime after the three of us had fucked on the couch. Sometime during the third vodka and tonic. Sometime before we had sex again. As I’m the most transparent fucking moron that ever walked the earth, they knew what I was doing, and they told me to relax. I said that’s exactly what they would say, regardless of the situation, and Champlain said her father was paying for the whole thing, which was fine, but he thought she was here with a guy called Tyler, so really, there was no way she or Fisher were filming anything, fun though it would be, and I said well why did you post a picture of you and your buddy here in the restaurant, and she pointed out that she’d also posted a lot more pictures of her and the guy they’d roped into having sex three days previously, so that her dad would think he was the aforementioned Tyler, and I said that more than likely her dad wasn’t stupid, that he would know exactly what she was doing, and that, for about the only time during the two and a half hours I was there, managed to put a dent in that knowing, smug air they had about them, and I felt bad about puncturing the hedonistic feeling of invincibility, and I apologised, I actually fucking apologised, and soon enough everyone was laughing again, and they were kissing, and teasing me, and there was fanciful talk of me going again, but somehow I got the feeling that maybe, despite the sybaritic atmosphere, and the alcohol and the orgasms, I wasn’t the only one haunted by melancholy and self-loathing, and when I departed, as the afternoon was beginning to grow dim and finally concede to the inevitable sweeping rain from the north, the only thing I really left behind, was a miserable sliver of my sadness.
And now, here I am, back in position. Boo-yah for Hutton. Me, my jigsaw and my vodka. Good to be home.
And what point was there in my trip to the Perthshire countryside? Utterly moronic of me to go up there in the first place. The sex was just about all I got from it.
So now I’m sitting here, waiting for my phone to ping, a list of names from Leia Fisher. Time, like the spider that sits in the corner of the room, never, ever moves. Time as still life. Time as a non-existent entity. Time as an illusion.
Feeling drunk. Also waiting for the doorbell to ring. Kallas. Dark outside, gone seven-thirty. She usually doesn’t work too late. Hoping she calls, hoping she doesn’t. Don’t want her to see me like this. Not sure I’ll be able to speak at all coherently. But, despite the sex and the whatever, I can’t think of anything I want to happen more than seeing Kallas this evening.
I can’t do what she asks, I can’t change my behaviour to accommodate my feelings for her. Nevertheless, I want her here. I don’t know what I would do in her presence, and I can’t even dream of an outcome that goes well, but I want to see her, just as much as I know I don’t deserve to see her, and she really, really ought not to come anywhere near me ever again.
Drain another glass, let the ice cubes rest against my lips, look down at the jigsaw, which probably also thinks I’m a useless waste of space, so little productivity do I have for the amount of time I sit here.
The doorbell goes.
I don’t deserve this wom
an. Look, Inspector, I know I’m drinking and you asked me not to, not to mention those women this afternoon, but that was just a little trifling thing we can ignore, because I’ve really fallen for you...
‘Hey,’ I say into the intercom, head leaning against the wall.
‘Sergeant Hutton,’ says the crisp, business-like voice from downstairs, a slap across the face, a sharp rap on the cheek, a poke in the eye with the mercurial sharp stick, the vicious kick to the balls.
Hawkins. The Chief.
I don’t speak. I buzz the downstairs door open, open my front door, and then turn my back on it and return to the table. Tempted to pour myself another drink, but I just sit there, shoulders rounded, a shadow of the intrepid stud-like figure who heroically bedded two women this afternoon, awaiting my fate.
I listen to the distant call of her footsteps on the stairs, gradually growing louder, then the brief hesitation on the landing outside, and then the door being pushed further open, then the door closing, then the gentle pad of footsteps across the wooden floor and the rug, and then she’s standing to the side of me, a couple of yards away, the way we’ve all been standing away from people since the spring.
She waits for me to turn to look at her, but I can’t. Head stuck, staring straight forward, and down. Jupiter, on average 691 million km from earth, temperature -145°C, a year lasting 4332.6 earth days.
‘Give me your identification card,’ she says.
I don’t have far to go. I reach into my pocket, take out the card, keep it in my hand for a moment, turning it over. End over end over end, slowly, end over end. I stop, holding the card upright, looking at my three year-old picture. Detective Sergeant Thomas Hutton, Cambuslang Station. Number L1983007.
‘There was never a time when I was fit for this,’ I say. ‘If I could look at all the ID cards I’ve held over the years, there wouldn’t be a single one of them I could look at and think, it was good back then. I was good. I was struggling from the first day.’ A beat. ‘Until the last,’ I add after a few moments.
In My Time Of Dying: DS Hutton Book 5 Page 23