The crowd went mental, stamping, clapping and whooping as the band emerged behind the DJ and onto the stage. Every eye in the place was on them, every head turned in their direction. Except his. Heart thumping, he turned and apologetically pushed his way past people who were paying him no attention. After just a few yards, he was beyond the crowd and standing in the open, but he didn’t hesitate, his legs taking him forward to the dark recess that led to the toilets. The voice in his head that was telling him to turn around was being ignored.
There they were in front of him. Gents’ to the left and ladies’ to the right. He took a deep breath and went right. The door had another door a few feet behind it and he pushed through that, too, emerging into the light of the toilet. She was standing there, her back against a cubicle and an approving smile on her face. She beckoned with a curl of a single finger and he strode towards her, his will gone and a deeper, more basic force making all the decisions now. As he got within a couple of feet, she took a half-step forward and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, turning to lead him into the cubicle and shut the door behind him.
His mouth was on hers in seconds, hungrily exploring her, hands all over each other, grabbing, squeezing and stroking. He turned her — or she turned him, he wasn’t sure which — until her back was against the cubicle wall and one of her legs was wrapped round his waist. Her legs were soft and slick, hot to the touch under the hem of her miniskirt. Her mouth was hot and wet and eager, her tongue greedily wrestling with his. Her hands were through his hair and his through hers, pulling at each other.
Her hands pulled off his jacket, then grabbed at his shirt, feverishly undoing buttons, and he followed her lead by taking hold of her halter-neck top and pulling it over her head, exposing firm breasts underneath a flimsy white bra. He pulled her close, singed by the heat of her flesh against his, their bodies sticky, one against the other. As he reached under her red miniskirt, she began to fumble with his belt, seizing the leather and pulling it back until the clasp was free and she tackled the buttons of his trousers, her fingers tripping over each other in their desperation to free him. As she did so, he stroked her between her legs, feeling her warm and moist and waiting for him. She clutched the waistband of his trousers and underpants together, pulling them both down and releasing his hardness. She grasped it and he jumped at the heat of her hand on him, his own hand pulling her panties to the side. She looked him in the eye, her mouth open and panting hard, as she pulled him towards her, making it clear that she was in charge.
The voice in his head made one final, hopeless plea, but he was too far gone. He pushed his way inside her and the deal was sealed.
They moved together just as they had done on the dance floor, she setting the rhythm and he urgently following. The tempo was fast, pressing on and on, racing against the likelihood of getting caught. He thrust against her madly, their mouths eating each other, both her legs round his waist now, he deep and fast inside her, lost completely.
They danced on and on, pushing desperately against each other, the thumping base of the Sweet reverberating through the cubicle and setting a pulse for them to rock against. They were animals, no thought other than the mutual satisfaction of their lust.
When they came together, they forced back the screams they wanted to let loose, forcing the noise back through gritted teeth and swallowing it back down where it came from. Instead, they shook, breathing heavily, their mouths attacking each other and his hand caressing her cheek. She finally pushed him off, a lascivious smile spread wide across her pale features, perspiration dappling her brow.
She picked up her top and handed him his shirt as he pulled up his trousers from his ankles. He took it from her and slipped his arms through the sleeves, only then realising that his back was soaking with sweat, feeling the polyester of the shirt immediately drenched by the results of his labours.
They hadn’t spoken since she’d walked off the dance floor and still not a word passed between them as they pulled their clothes back into some kind of order. He knew that his silence was borne out of guilt, a spectre that appeared immediately after he’d emptied himself inside her, a hair shirt that he wore under the damp polyester one that clung to his back. She sensed it, he could see that, and she resented it.
They gathered themselves in the awkward hush of strangers and she opened the cubicle door, peering out to make sure there was no one there, then beckoning him to follow. She strode purposefully across the tiled toilet floor and through the double doors back into the disco itself. No one saw them leave the toilets and no one paid them any attention as they re-joined the crowd on the edge of the dance floor, all entranced by the Sweet as they finished their set. She looked at him, opened her mouth as if to say something, then stalled, instead leaning in and kissing him damply on the cheek. He went to kiss her back but she’d already gone, heading to where her friends were waiting.
He felt as if someone had switched a light on in the room ten minutes before and he’d only just become aware of it. He scanned the dance floor urgently, wondering what he’d missed and who’d missed him. His eyes almost immediately fell upon Alice McCutcheon, who was staring at him oddly, confusion and disapproval on her face. Had she seen the kiss on his cheek?
He was still looking at her looking at him when the scream broke the silence and he was aware of movement behind him near the front door. The bouncers were on the move, hustling quickly and barrelling people out of the way. He instinctively followed them, unceremoniously shoving his way through the crowd and dumping two customers on their backsides as he did so. He forced his way to the door at the top of the stairs, seeing Brian Webster standing there, the detective constable having managed to get there before them. Webster was looking at him ashen-faced, his mouth hanging open. Danny pushed by him and half ran, half stumbled down the stairs towards West Nile Street, his anxiety nearly sending him crashing but just managing to keep his footing. ‘Police!’ he roared, any sense of being undercover having gone. He crashed to a stop on the bottom landing and followed the crowd to the alley that ran behind the building where he saw two people, one of them one of the Klass bouncers, crouched over a body. As Danny approached, they leaned back to give him a view of the stricken form.
The girl’s neck was snapped to one side and her eyes stared at the wall, her neck violently red and her maxidress wrapped round her waist. The side of her skull bled slowly down her cheek and was matched by a dark patch on the wall.
Lying beside her, just inches from her head, was a red silk handkerchief.
Chapter 49
Saturday afternoon
It had been years since Danny remembered being as down as he was after the discovery of the third victim, the poor lassie’s body found battered against the monument in the Western Necropolis. Perhaps it hadn’t happened on his watch but it might as well have done. He was torn between anger and despair but knowing that he was as likely to fall victim to guilt as anything else. With all that in mind, there were probably better places for him to be on a damp Saturday lunchtime than walking through another graveyard, but that was where he found himself.
The text message from Chloe that morning was the only thing — apart from the arrest of the killer and Atto’s complete confession — that could have put a smile on Danny’s face. Once he had deciphered the text-speak, he was elated to see that she wanted to meet that day. He wasn’t so happy that she wanted to meet at Jean’s grave, but he was hardly in a position to say no. He texted back immediately and agreed to her suggestion of meeting at noon.
Sighthill Cemetery was a muddy green oasis that had survived the surrounding war of architectural death and regeneration. On its northern boundary the red sandstone tenements of Keppochill Road were fading to a washed-out pink and, to the east, Springburn Road had seen buildings come and go to make room for the expressway. The graveyard’s eastern edge, Fountainwell Road and its rundown offshoots, had seen many of its ugly high-rises fall, but there were plenty more still standing close by, s
taining the skyline in shades of grey and grime.
Danny didn’t visit his wife’s grave maybe as much as others thought he should but it was nothing to do with a lack of thought or love. He carried his memories and hurt with him wherever he went, much as if they, and she, were tattooed on his heart. Every time he went through the front door of the home that they’d shared for so many years, he still found himself saying hello out loud. Hi, it’s me. I’m home.
The cemetery was just a different place to say hello. He didn’t think of Jean as being there, not the living, laughing, loving Jean he remembered. He wanted her place to be well tended and he liked to take down flowers when he visited. To show others, he supposed, that here was a woman who was still loved. The rest of the time, the love was just buried inside him.
Jean shared her headstone with her parents, Bill and Nancy Mitchell. Beloved daughter, sister, wife, mother. She’d died before Chloe was born, so grandmother had never been added to the list. How many roles was one person supposed to fill in one brief lifetime?
Danny crouched in front of the stone, his weight causing half an inch of water to ooze from the grass and make an island of his shoes. He looked at Jean’s name carved in granite and still found it odd, shocking even, to see it there. Being in denial, even after twenty-five years, was so much harder with a physical statement in front of you. It was probably the real reason he ventured so rarely to Sighthill. Without sight of that reminder, a part of him could always be convinced that she was in another room or visiting friends.
He shook himself, feeling the cold all of a sudden. An angry roll of clouds had gathered across the rooftops on Keppochill Road and the wind had picked up, whistling low across the cemetery, making the grass sing a dirge. Between that and the softness of the turf, he didn’t hear the footsteps approaching until they were almost upon him.
‘You managed to find your way here, then?’
He knew the voice instantly. Not Chloe: her mother. He turned his head and saw her glaring down at him, tired eyes under knotted brows.
‘Barbara. I was—’
‘Expecting my daughter. I know.’
It had been fully four years since he’d seen her. A cousin’s wedding and a grudging acceptance of being in the same room as he was had not extended to anything more than a few words of overly polite conversation. Now, with her coat buttoned to the neck and her arms folded tightly across her chest, she didn’t seem any keener to see him than before.
Danny pushed his hands onto the grass, feeling his fingers sink into the wet, and forced himself to his feet.
‘Don’t bother. I’m not staying. I’m only here to tell you that Chloe’s not coming.’
‘What? Is she okay?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘Then why…? You told her not to come?’
‘Of course I did,’ Barbara spat, pulling her arms even tighter around herself. ‘What do you expect? Meeting her behind my back.’
‘Barbara, I’m her grandfather for God’s sake.’
‘In name only.’
The bitterness in her voice cut him to ribbons, slicing into his conscience like a stiletto. Three little words, slashing left, right and centre.
‘That’s not fair. Look, you’re here now. Let’s talk. How have you been?’
Barbara laughed, an incredulous snort of derision that broke free from her mouth.
‘How have I been? You have the cheek to stand in front of my mother’s grave and ask me that?’
‘I’m asking because I care.’
‘Aye? Well I’ve been just great, thanks for asking. Bringing up Chloe on my own thanks to a cheating shit of an ex-husband who buggered off with a younger model. Slaving away at a job I hate. And now my daughter is lying to me too by meeting you.’
It was her eyes as much as her words. What a person says isn’t always what they mean, but their eyes — that’s where the truth is. Barbara’s eyes burned rage.
Danny exhaled hard, wondering not for the first time how the hell it had come to this. She had been his world from the first moment she’d been placed in his arms screaming her little lungs out. He knew right there and then that he would do anything for her; yet forty years later, all she wanted him to do was drop dead.
It was her mother dying, he knew that. Deathbed confessions are dangerous things, dropping bombshells on people when their mind is least able to deal with it. Deathbed accusations aren’t much better and Barbara had absorbed the one that was foisted upon her, locked it in her heart and promised herself she’d never forget. So it had stayed there and, naturally, it festered.
They stared at each other, a stand-off above the grave of the person who both united and separated them. His baby girl, her mouth tight and contorted with resentment at the world and all its components. One in particular.
‘Look, it’s been a long time,’ he began again.
She released her arms long enough to thrust away strands of the strawberry-blonde hair that had been blown across her face. ‘Not long enough.’
‘Oh come on, Barbara, it’s been nineteen years since your mum died. She forgave me. Why can’t you?’
‘Forgave you? Maybe, but she never forgot. Anyway, I’m not here to get drawn into this. You know how I feel about it. All I’m saying is that I don’t want you to see Chloe and I expect you to respect that. Forgiveness? Is that what you want?’
Danny felt the first drops of rain as he shook his head slowly in response.
‘No. I just want to talk to my daughter and get to know my granddaughter. Forgiveness is for fools. Believe me, anyone else’s forgiveness isn’t much use to me if I can’t forgive myself. I want to move on. Put all that behind us.’
‘Jesus Christ!’
The acrimony made Barbara look older than she was. Not long turned forty, but when her face screwed up, the corner of her eyes twisted tight and her mouth locked like a vault, she wore the acid features of an embittered widow.
‘How can we put it behind us?’ she snapped, pointing at the headstone at his back. ‘You cheated on my mother and now you’re skulking around meeting my daughter. You obviously can’t be trusted an inch.’
Danny collapsed inside; some things just couldn’t be argued against, mainly the truth. She continued the assault, all the time her finger pointing at her mother’s name carved in guilt behind him.
‘How do you think it made me feel? My mum dying of lung cancer, using her last breaths to tell me that? She barely had a breath in her, yet that was what she chose to use it on. To tell me what you’d done. Not to tell me that she loved me or that I’d be fine after she’d gone. To tell me that you’d cheated on her. To tell me that the man I’d always thought was the greatest guy on earth was actually a cheating piece of shit.’
It was raining more heavily now, large drops slapping against their faces, mixing with and disguising the tears of anger that had begun to run down his daughter’s face. Her voice was rising, giving vent to the frustration of not being able to tell him this in so long. He took it.
Danny knew that Jean had been on heavy doses of morphine in her last hours, a vain attempt to keep the insufferable pain at bay. The drug messed with her mind a bit, not to the extent that she’d said anything that wasn’t true, but Danny doubted that, without it, she’d have inflicted that parting piece of knowledge on Barbara. It would have served no purpose, particularly as they’d worked so hard to keep it from her for so many years.
They had got past it, his one sordid, never-repeated infidelity. They’d got on with their lives and become a family and loved each other. Clearly, Jean had never forgotten, though, seeing that writ large and ugly as her life passed before her. Nor had he or ever would he, the guilt at his unfaithfulness being multiplied by the consequences of his negligence. The death of a young woman and the broken heart of the woman he loved was the burden he deserved to carry with him for the rest of his life.
‘You’re right,’ he told Barbara, his right hand pushing the rain out of his eyes. ‘I am
a piece of shit. Or at least I was. I’m trying to make amends.’
‘Amends?’ Her laugh had no humour in it. ‘How are you going to do that, then? Go back in time and not shag that slapper? Bring Mum back to life? Oh, I know: you’re going to spend all hours standing out in the rain at night making sure wee lassies get safely into taxis so that another one doesn’t get killed and it would be your fault.’
The trouble with being slaughtered by someone who knows you as well as a daughter does is that they know exactly where to stick the knife. She’d also have been as well cutting off his tongue because he had nothing to say.
Barbara took his silence for defeat and pushed past him dismissively, all but knocking Danny out of the way as she crouched down and took her place in front of her mother’s headstone. Ignoring the ever-increasing rain, she began pulling at the weeds that grew at the base of the stone, manically ripping them from the dirt and throwing them aside. Her knees quickly became dark, wet circles of neglect, her hands reddening as she worked.
‘Come away from there, Barbara,’ he urged her. ‘You’re getting soaked.’
She ignored him and continued to tear at the weeds, seemingly seeing some that weren’t there. Danny pushed his hands through his hair in frustration before rubbing his palms violently against his forehead and finally finding words to come back at her with.
‘I made one mistake over twenty years of marriage. I’ve had to live with it ever since and I always will. I’m not asking for forgiveness for that. Yeah, you’re right, I work the taxi rank because I feel guilty. Because I’m trying to make something right in whatever small way I can. Is that so terrible? And now I want to see my granddaughter. My own flesh and blood. I want to see her grow up and get to know her. And you know what, Barbara? She wants that too.’
Barbara’s hands, which had continued to scrabble at the earth as he spoke, stopped moving and her head snapped round towards him.
Witness the Dead Page 32
