‘Margaret, go to bed,’ Bet urged her.
‘I’m okay, really. I seem to be getting used to the stuff they’re pumping into my belly. I haven’t been sick this time, nor even felt like it. Mr Ronald my consultant’s chuffed with me, you know. I saw him today and he gave me a rave review.’ She said it casually, but a tremor in her voice betrayed her.
‘You didn’t tell me that. What did he say?’
‘He showed me the pictures they took at my scan the other day. The cancer’s completely gone. They’re going to complete the chemo, but he told me that my prognosis is entirely positive.’ She reached out and touched baby Stephanie’s wispy red hair. ‘I’ve got this wee one to thank for it. If I hadn’t been carrying her, the disease wouldn’t have presented … his word. . until it was much more advanced, and I’d have. . I’d have had much less chance of survival.’ She hesitated. ‘He said something else too. I’ve been working up to telling you about it; that’s why I didn’t mention it earlier.’
‘What?’
‘He asked about you, what age you were and so on, whether you were married, had children, et cetera.’
‘What the hell has that got to do with him?’
‘Apparently we’ve always been high risk, Bet, you and me. It runs in the family.’
‘So?’
‘So he’d like you to go and see him. His inclination, that’s how he put it, no stronger than that, is that you should maybe have your womb and ovaries removed as well, as a precaution.’
‘Jesus, would they do that?’
‘It’s not uncommon, so he said.’
‘Bloody hell. That would mean I couldn’t have kids, Margaret.’
‘Since when did you want kids? You don’t even have a partner.’
‘I’d be hollowed out inside.’ She blurted out the words thoughtlessly, then bit her lip as she saw the look on her sister’s face. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. Me and my bloody mouth.’
‘It’s all right.’ Maggie grinned, quickly, to put her at her ease. ‘It doesn’t feel like that, honest. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not as if they stitch your fanny up. You can’t have kids, but you can still have sex, as normal.’
‘Best of both worlds, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘No, maybe not,’ said Bet, quietly. ‘Do you think you will again?’
‘What?’
‘Have sex.’
Maggie wrinkled her nose. ‘It won’t bother me if I don’t. I was never any good at it, apart from with Stevie. I did it because. . well, we just did, didn’t we?’
‘I know what you mean. I had this bloke once, not so long ago, a real Aussie charmer. He told me I was the worst shag he’d ever had.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Yeah, he surely was. He said I was a walking advert for necrophilia.’
‘Did you shoot him, stab him, or rip his balls off with red-hot pincers?’
‘No, I told him that word had three more syllables than I’d ever heard him use before; then I told him to go and fuck himself, since I wasn’t up to the job.’
Maggie began to laugh, then cut it off short as the baby stirred in Bet’s arms. ‘Good for you, Sis. But it just takes the right man, you know, even for ladies with our repressed background.’
‘I can’t imagine how much you must miss Stevie.’
‘I hope you never know the feeling. But it’s not for that I miss him most. It’s for everything else. The companionship, the laughs, the. . I don’t even know how to say it. The way he made me feel. The peace he brought to me when we were alone together.’ Her face set hard. ‘And that’s all gone; even in my dreams I can only see him dead. You know my big ambition, now that it looks as if I still have a life? I want to find the man who killed him. Oh, I know that Bob Skinner and Mario feel the same way, and they’re in a far better position to do it than I am, but I want the personal satisfaction of finding him.’
‘And what will you do when you have him?’
‘Hand him over. Let him take what’s coming, a life sentence with a high tariff. Then I’ll think of him, every morning for the next thirty years, waking up in a locked room, with someone else holding the key. I’ll think of him, a rich and powerful man, banged up like an animal. I’ll think of him, growing old in there, waiting for the day when the gate is finally opened. And then, only then, when he steps back into the outside world, aged about sixty, free again to enjoy all the stuff that his wealth brings him. . then I’ll kill him.’
Five
‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ Lord Archibald asked.
‘New to Edinburgh, sir, yes,’ DI Stallings replied. ‘Until recently I was with the Met.’
‘I thought so. I’d be surprised if there’s a senior officer in this city that I don’t know.’ He smiled, and his eyes twinkled. ‘You chose to come here? You weren’t banished to the north for some unspeakable offence?’
‘My choice, sir.’
‘Cherchez l’homme?’
‘Partly,’ she admitted, returning his smile, ‘but if I hadn’t liked the place when I got here, he’d have had to transfer south.’
‘Does that imply that he is also a serving police officer?’
‘Yes, it does. His name’s Ray Wilding, detective sergeant. I expect you know him too.’
‘Yes indeed,’ the silver-haired judge replied. ‘He’s not one to forget. Last time I saw him in the witness box he was a detective constable. A very confident chap; in fact you’ll forgive me if I call him a cocky beggar. He gave defence counsel such a ripping that I considered holding him in contempt.’
‘That sounds like Ray.’
Stallings had found Lord Archibald in the clubhouse, seated in an upstairs lounge with a view of the first and eighteenth fairways. From what she had heard of Scottish Supreme Court judges, she had expected an austere firebrand; instead she had been greeted by a friendly man of middle age, who might have been an early-retired banker or businessman.
‘I bet you’re wondering how a duffer like me could hit the ball so far off the tee, even if it wasn’t exactly straight. It’s this modern equipment,’ he continued, forestalling her reply that the question had not crossed her mind, as she had never been on a golf course in her life before that morning. ‘Metal drivers with great big bouncy heads. They’ve transformed the game with the extra distance they give you. Unfortunately, they also magnify your errors. We never used to bother about those damned trees, but that’s the third time I’ve been in them this year.’
He paused, as the club steward arrived at their table with a coffee for Stallings. ‘I almost carried on, you know, after I found my ball. I noticed the smell right away, of course; you couldn’t miss it.’
‘I know,’ said the inspector. ‘I’ve been up there.’
‘Of course you have. My first reaction was the normal one: that it was an animal, that a dog or a cat had died in there. I was going to play on, and report it to the first green-keeper I saw. . not that it’s the club’s responsibility: that land isn’t ours. . until it occurred to me that to smell that bad it had to be a pretty large creature, maybe something that had slipped out of the zoo over the hill. Then I remembered going to an exhumation once, when I was Lord Advocate, a body that had to be dug up for DNA testing. So I went in for a look.’ He shuddered at the memory. ‘Wish I hadn’t. When I saw that it was indeed human, I confess that I bolted. A photograph in an evidence book, that’s one thing; up close is another matter. What was it? Male or female?’
‘It’s the body of a woman.’
‘Dead for how long?’
‘More than a week; the autopsy will give us a more accurate time.’
‘Post-mortem examination, Inspector,’ he said, gently. ‘We’re traditionalists in Scotland. . at least I am. The influence of Patricia Cornwell has not yet reached my court.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir. Do you often see people on the path at the edge of the woods, Lord Archibald?’
‘Not often. Used to be never, but since all this right-to-roam stuff came in, we get a few. I argued against it, you know, lobbied my successor in the Crown Office, but Aileen de Marco was handling the Bill and she won the day.’ The eyes twinkled again. ‘You won’t report me to Bob Skinner, will you? I imagine that criticism of the First Minister is off limits now.’