by Tony Black
‘No.’
Diane shook herself. She eased her elbows out from beneath her and pushed herself from the grimy, cold floor. It was dark now, completely in blackness, save the glow of a dim and distant moon that shone with weak luminescence over the back yard and was reflected through the window.
She wondered how long she’d lain there, like a rag wrung out. Her arms were cold, the white flesh horripilating. She rubbed the forearms and shook her head again. The kitchen table seemed like a great distance away, but she knew she had to get off the floor. She didn’t want Billy to see her this way; he would have his own worries. He tried to brush things aside, tried to make light, to look on the bright side, but she knew he was full of hurts. He played the big man, but he was as broken as she was; he just didn’t show it. He didn’t dare reveal it, because he still needed to be strong so that she could be weak.
The sound of a key in the lock startled Diane.
‘Hello, love.’
He was home.
She wiped her face with the back of her hands; her knuckles were raw, rough. How had her skin become so coarse, she wondered? She hadn’t been looking after herself.
Billy’s heavy boots trailed the corridor, then a light went on. The brightness burned her retinas, and she raised her arm to shield her eyes.
‘Love . . . What are you doing on the floor?’ His voice was calm; it was always calm.
‘I–I . . .’
‘It’s OK, no need to speak.’ He knelt down beside her, placed an arm around her shoulder and slowly began to raise her from the floor. ‘Come on, love, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea. How would that be?’
Billy set about filling the kettle in the darkness. He seemed used to it, like it was the room’s normal state.
‘You can put the light on . . .’ said Diane.
‘Are you sure? Your eyes look red raw.’
‘It’s OK . . . I don’t want you burning yourself making me a cuppa.’
Billy grinned, and his broad face gleamed. She wondered why he hadn’t asked her what was wrong. Did it mean he didn’t want to know? Or did it mean that there was so often something wrong that he didn’t feel the need to ask?
‘Billy . . .’
‘Yes, love.’ The kettle started to whistle, he had the teabag and the spoon in his hands.
‘I want you to come and sit down.’
He turned to face her, and for the first time since he’d arrived she noticed a look of concern on his face. He put down the teabag and the spoon, then crossed the floor towards her. ‘What is it?’
‘Will you sit down, please.’
His broad brow became furrowed, and the thin lines beneath his eyes, darkened by the dirt of the building site, deepened. ‘Diane . . .’
She raised a hand to his lips and bid him quiet.
‘I had a call today, when you were at work . . .’
‘Oh, aye.’
‘It was the police.’
Billy’s mouth widened. ‘The police?’
She could feel her lower lip start to tremble as the words passed. ‘There’s a police officer, he’s investigating a murder.’
Her husband seemed to sense how difficult it was for her, he reached over and grabbed her hands in his. ‘Hey, look, whatever’s happened, it’s OK.’
Diane looked towards the window, which reflected the interior of the room. She looked back to Billy. ‘He’s called Valentine and he wants to come and see us . . . about Janie.’
Billy gripped his wife’s hands tighter. ‘Why? Why now? After all this time?’
‘I don’t know, he just . . . asked.’
‘Do they have someone?’
‘No . . . I mean, I don’t think so.’
‘Then why?’ He rose from the chair, he seemed agitated. Diane knew he liked to lock things away, keep them inside. If he didn’t look there, they didn’t exist, not really: at least that’s what he could pretend.
Diane turned in her chair. ‘I said he could come . . . I said we would speak to him.’
Billy walked towards the kettle; its whistle was piercing the air as he picked up a spoon and clattered it into a cup.
29
Since the incident of his stabbing, Valentine had become aware of a distant, almost imperceptible, ticking. There was a clock on him now. He had never thought of it before, even at forty, which may have been the logical time to detect its presence. At forty you may safely look back, then count the years forward to assume – bearing in mind some luck of genetics – you have lived longer than you have left to go. Valentine’s father would not see out his sixties, his grandfather had gone in his fifties; how long did he have left?
When he pondered the prospect of the diminishing count of years, he took pause. His previous decade – his thirties – had passed in a blur. He could remember turning thirty clearly, as it was the time of the millennium celebrations, but had it really been so long ago? He couldn’t believe all those years – all that time – had really passed. What had he done with it? The incidents of memory were few: his daughters’ birthdays, a couple of holidays, the surgery. In the main, it had been a period of drudge: of paying his way in the world, playing to a set of rules he had nothing to do with establishing. It seemed a waste.
His twenties, though further away in time, conversely seemed closer in memory. He could remember them with more clarity and with more affection. On turning twenty, he’d seemed charged with a burning sense of excitement. He’d thought the world held something special for him, but of course he had been dispossessed of that notion now. Youth was a ruse that lulled you into maturity, aided and abetted by the self-serving ego. There was no special people, at least, precious few – enough only to be the exceptions that proved the rule or to act like a spur in your back, a reminder of your posting in the chain gang.
When he thought about the days of his distant youth, Valentine always alighted on his own children. They seemed so naïve. Had he ever been so naked in the world? At no time had he felt it. The detective smirked to himself – there was that egomania again – two decades on and he could still fool himself that what went on inside his head was different to everyone else’s. It was pathetic: we were all no more than meat and bones controlled by urges and impulses we knew little or nothing about. If indeed there was more – a heart, a soul, a sentient mind – it mattered nothing. Our fate remained the same: the rotting meat on the decaying bone dictated that.
There had been a time, once, that shook him from the slumber of so-called waking life and made him question his perceptions of the world he inhabited. Was it really as cut and dried as he supposed? Who was he to assume anything? He was just a man, a speck of dust on the great plain of the Earth. Surely he was fallible. When he had taken the call from David, a friend of many years standing with whom he had attended Tulliallan as a cadet, with whom he had spent time in uniform, and who he knew better than anyone else alive, he had known at once it was the last time he would speak to him.
‘I’m coming back to the old town for a few days,’ David had said, his voice high, full of spirit.
‘Great, I’ll tell Clare. She’ll be over the moon . . . You’ll stay with us, of course.’
David had said he would stay, since he’d moved to the north of Ireland he’d become a man of note, a VIP no less; it was almost an honour to have him stop by. They’d kept in contact, but David’s visits had become sparser than his own hair now. Yet they were something to look forward to.
‘Grand, I have a couple of days spare. We could go up the coast, see the countryside,’ he said. ‘I just feel like I need a dose of it, being away from the auld country gets you that way.’
‘I’ll pick you up at Prestwick Airport . . .’
As Valentine said it, he’d known it was a lie. He’d welcomed the idea of playing host to his old friend, but as he’d prepared the house, planned day trips to Culzean Castle and Burns’ Cottage he found himself in deep reminiscence of days long gone. He’d known, in the recesses of his mind, that he wo
uld not be doing any of those things he wrote down on paper, because he knew David would not be coming. He didn’t know why or how he knew – and this is what he examined now – but for some reason he’d felt – no, he knew for sure – that he would never see his friend again. When the call came from the RUC to say that David had died, it had not shocked Valentine; he felt as if he’d known all along. The first ring of the telephone confirmed it. As he replayed the surreal time of David’s passing once again, he couldn’t shake the thought that he’d been in touch with some otherworldly messenger. He found the assumption absurd, but there it was.
The living room door eased open and Clare appeared with a glass of wine in her hand. ‘You look deep in thought . . . Penny for them.’
Valentine looked at his own glass; the ice was melting over the Grouse. ‘Yeah, you could say that.’
She sat down in front of him, balancing her elbows on her knees. ‘Well, do I have to shake it out of you?’
Valentine took a sip of whisky and the ice clattered. ‘I was thinking about David.’
Clare’s face creased and her voice became lyrical. ‘David Patterson that you trained with?’
‘Yeah . . . Don’t know why, just thinking of him.’
His wife reclined, crossed her legs and balanced the wine glass on the arm of the chair. ‘You always said you knew it was coming . . . David’s death.’
He could still taste the whisky on his lips; his breath was warm. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ The words seemed to come out sharply; he noticed their barbs register on Clare’s face and tried to retract them. ‘I just mean, you know, I’d sooner not rake over it.’
‘What’s wrong, Bob?’ She seemed calm, wearing her concerned face. There were no neuroses on show, none of the nervy gestures of late, like tucking hair behind her ear over and over again. It was late, too late to be getting into a metaphysical conversation with his wife. He pressed his back deeper into the chair and tapped a fingertip off the glass he held. Yet before he realised it, he’d removed a photograph from his shirt pocket and passed it to Clare.
‘Who’s this?’ She turned the picture over as if hoping to find the answer to her question written on the back.
‘Her name’s Janie Cooper.’
‘She’s a pretty wee thing.’
‘Was . . .’
Clare’s eyes widened. He thought she might throw the picture at him and storm out of the room; she didn’t like hearing about his cases. ‘This wee one’s dead?’ She seemed saddened. ‘This is an old picture, must be a few years ago now.’
‘Twelve years.’
‘That long? Then why are you carrying her picture around?’ She placed the photograph on the arm of her chair where the wineglass had been resting a moment ago.
Valentine sighed. He didn’t think he had the right words to explain what he was doing with a photograph of a murder victim who may not even be related to the ongoing investigation that he was involved in. The idea was absurd; even to those he knew who relied on their gut instincts, it would still be regarded as such.
‘Do you remember a few nights ago I woke you, wanting to talk?’ He touched the edges of his mouth. ‘You said I was sweating . . .’
Clare glanced at the photograph on the arm of the chair. ‘Yes, I remember . . . you’d had a turn.’
‘It was a dream . . . or something.’
‘Hang on, you said you’d had a dream about a girl with hair like . . .’ She retrieved the picture. ‘You said she had hair like Chloe and Fiona at that age.’
‘She does remind me of the girls at that age . . . They were like wee angels.’ Valentine caught himself smiling into the past.
‘Bob, what is going on with your job?’
The reverie was broken. ‘What do you mean?’
She put down the photograph and sighed, sitting forward in her chair once again. ‘Something is wrong. You’re under too much stress if you’re having nightmares about children that have been dead for twelve years.’
‘No, you don’t understand . . .’
Clare put down her wine glass and held her face in her hands; she depressed her temples with the tips of her nails. ‘Is this about you feeling different, about having changed once again?’ She dropped her hands and stood up; the empty wine glass fell over. ‘No, don’t answer, I don’t want to know . . .’
‘Clare, please . . .’
His wife left the room before Valentine had any further chance to explain himself. He raised the whisky glass to his lips and drained it. What he had wanted to tell her, to make her understand, was that he hadn’t seen the photograph of Janie Cooper until today. The fact that he already had seen her in a dream was as much a mystery to him as anyone else; he couldn’t explain it. But there she was, or had been, laying flowers on the dead corpse of James Urquhart, dancing round him at the scene of his murder. The image caused a shiver to pass across his shoulders and he tensed as if caught in a shrill breeze. It was like something you read about in cheap magazines or found on late-night television when flicking through the channels. None of it made a modicum of sense, it was all alien to him, to his reasoning and sense of self. The detective wondered what had become of his life, of his perceptions; he questioned his sanity. He knew he should relieve himself of his duties, tell Chief Superintendent Marion Martin that he was not fit for purpose, because surely this wasn’t normal, but something told him that wasn’t an option. The picture of the young Janie Cooper and the image of the girl in his dream had fused now, and his sense of purpose had crystallised with it. If anyone was going to find James Urquhart’s murderer, or that of Duncan Knox or Janie Cooper, then it was going to be him. He believed it, no matter what he had to base his judgement on. He steeled himself for the moment when what he had seen and felt would be understood with some form of clarity – because wasn’t that the way it always was? Afterwards, everything made sense. After the case was closed. After the evidence gathered, the clues followed. He told himself that. He longed to believe it, but there was an ache in the pit of his stomach that asked if he would ever really know anything ever again.
He rose from his chair and placed the empty tumbler on the coffee table. The ice had melted into a smear on the bottom of the glass. He walked towards the door, put out the lights and carried on to the staircase. As he ascended the stairs to bed there was a lightness in his head that he put down to the whisky but hoped was a thaw in his thinking. When Valentine reached his bedroom the door was closed. He depressed the handle and walked in – the room was in darkness and only a few stray glints of light emanated from the edges of the heavy curtains. He had enough vision to see his wife lying in the bed, her back to him.
‘Clare, look, you need to bear with me on this one.’
She remained silent for a moment, then turned to face him. ‘This one? They’re all the same: every time you go out that door you become a basket case with the stress and strain . . . For God’s sake, Bob, have you forgotten just a short time ago you took a knife in the chest?’
He reached up to massage his eyes. ‘You don’t sound overly bothered about that.’
‘Maybe it’s because you don’t sound overly bothered about me, or the girls. We need some of you too, but there never seems to be enough to go around.’
‘Clare, just let me get this investigation out of the way and then we’ll take a holiday, you and the girls and me . . . All together.’
She sat up in the bed and brought her knees towards her chest. ‘A holiday? You think that’s going to cut it, Bob?’
‘What do you mean?’
She shook her head. ‘This isn’t working . . . We’re dysfunctional.’
The word sounded ridiculous to him, like a term from a self-help manual. He let a laugh emerge that, at once, he knew he should have suppressed. ‘Oh, come on . . .’
She looked at him, and the whites of her round eyes shone in the darkness of the enclosed space. There was no mistaking her ferocity when she replied.
‘Go to hell, Bob, just
bloody well go to hell.’
30
DI Bob Valentine woke from cautious sleep with aching bones and the scent of whisky on his breath. He removed his hand from the duvet and collected up the alarm clock – the exposed flesh of his arm told him at once that there was colder weather in store. He took time to focus on the burn of the digital clock’s message, but when it registered he let out a sigh and padded towards the bathroom. Clare had risen early; her side of the bed was empty. There was a nip in the air already, he hoped it wasn’t time to put on the central heating: the tired old boiler wouldn’t last another year. Surely it was just that period of adjustment when the body gets used to a drop in temperature from the sun of summer to the smirr and wind of an approaching winter. As he ran the taps, Valentine let the sink fill up and then slowly splashed at his face cautiously with the warm water. He saw himself in the mirror: the tired eyes and sunken jowls of a man racing through middle age struck like a lash, but their impact was lessened by the sudden alteration in the appearance of his chest. The scar, the long, invasive mark that signalled like a beacon to him every morning, had gone from its usual pinkish-red to an altogether less harmonious hue. The scar’s colour was now a pale purple: there was still a hint of red at its edges, but the predominant pigment now seemed blue. He touched it: the thick ridge of flesh felt the same and Valentine at once was compelled to ask himself what he was doing.
‘Christ, man, get a grip . . .’ He leaned over the sink again and splashed more water on his face and neck. It was all an effort to shake him from introspection, from the concerns of the overactive mind towards the here and now.
When he was dressed the DI took himself downstairs, collected a cup of coffee from the pot and greeted his wife with a cordial, ‘Good morning.’ There was a package waiting for him on the kitchen counter and the outside of the brown envelope indicated the contents at once.
‘What have you been getting now?’ said Clare. It seemed a surreal remark, as if he was the one who was continually running up the credit card bills.
