‘That was Mae Grey,’ she told him. ‘She’s at Weekes’s place, and she sounds in a right two and eight. We need to get there straight away.’
Sixty-six
‘ They’re taking a while,’ said Andy to Alex, as they stood at the foot of the garden looking out across the Firth of Forth. ‘How long does it take to load a dishwasher?’
‘They may be doing them by hand,’ she replied. ‘Or Aileen may have opened one of her blue boxes and Dad’s helping her. Or they may be having sex. . less likely during a lunch party, I’ll grant you, but us youngsters often underestimate the middle-aged libido. If you want my best guess, though, they’ve made themselves scarce so that I can ask you how you’re getting on.’
He smiled. ‘In that case, I’m fine, thanks. You know Karen’s pregnant again?’
‘No, Pops never said. You’re good at that, eh?’
‘Nice one, Alex. I fed you that one, didn’t I?’
She winced. ‘Sorry, that just slipped out. I wasn’t chucking harpoons, honest. I am very happy for you and Karen. Your wee girl’s lovely too. My dad sent me a picture in an email. I’m really pleased it’s all come together for you.’
‘So pleased you’ve never spoken to me since the day we split up?’
‘What was there to say? Each one of us would have been expecting the word “sorry” to come up, but you wouldn’t have heard it from me.’
‘I might have said it, though.’
‘But would you have meant it?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘for expecting too much of you. I should have seen that we were rushing things.’
‘We weren’t rushing things, Andy. You were. I was happy to be just you and me, but you wanted the whole deal right away, wife and two point four kids.’
‘But you did get pregnant.’
‘Yes, silly me.’
‘Don’t be flip about it, Alex.’
‘I’m not. Do you know what hurt me the most back then? When I told you about it, that I’d had an abortion. . a word I couldn’t even say for a while afterwards. . you went berserk. For a split second I actually thought you were going to kill me. You didn’t say anything rational. You called me a murderer and said you could never forgive me.’
‘Yes,’ he began, ‘but. .’
‘But nothing, Andy. That’s what happened. Now ask yourself this. You know how I feel about my kid brother. I love him in a way I’d never imagined I could since the day he was born. How easy do you think it was for me to decide to terminate my pregnancy when all the time I was thinking about him? I hated myself for it. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I saw it as essential, not just for me, for us. And the worst of it is that every single day since it happened, I’ve regretted it,’ she prodded herself hard with her index finger, between her breasts, ‘right in here.’
She turned to face him, and he saw hot tears in her eyes. ‘You couldn’t forgive me?’ she said. ‘Well, fuck you, Andy. I had my own wee Jazz growing in me, and I was wicked enough to have him killed. The forgiveness I need, I’ll never have: and it’s not yours, sunshine, it’s my own, and most of all it’s his.’
There was a gate in the garden wall, a few feet in front of them. Alex dashed towards it, opened it and ran off down the grassy hill towards the sea.
Andy stood his ground, wanting to go after her, but fearing the consequences if he did. He watched her as she moved through the busy car park, and as she disappeared down the path that led to the sea.
‘Hi,’ said a heavy voice behind him.
‘That, Bob,’ he replied, without turning, ‘was not one of your brightest ideas.’
Sixty-seven
Theo Weekes’s car was in the driveway of his house. A second vehicle, an elderly Nissan Micra, was parked behind, its tail imposing on the pavement by a few inches. PC Mae Grey was sitting in the passenger seat, her eyes wide in her pale face, unaware of the two detectives as they approached.
McGurk crouched beside her open window, his right knee cracking as he did so. ‘Tell me,’ he murmured.
‘He’s in there,’ she replied slowly. ‘In the hall.’
Stallings led the way up the path. The front door was very slightly ajar, but even before she pushed it she could smell what lay behind: a mix of urine and something else, something slightly sweet.
A stairway ran from the hall to the upper floor of the house. Theo Weekes’s body lay in the space beside it, on its side, right arm extended, fingers pointing towards them in the doorway. The carpet beneath him, a dirty cream when the inspector had seen it twenty-four hours earlier, had turned deep, dark crimson. The walls on either side were streaked with blood. She stepped inside carefully, hearing a soft thump behind her as McGurk forgot to duck beneath the lintel. ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘go and ask her if she rang anybody else. If not, call the cavalry. And stay with her until they arrive.’
‘She didn’t do it. If she had she’d be covered in blood and there would be a trail out to her car. Besides, you can tell he’s been dead for a while.’
‘Don’t jump to conclusions, big boy. She could have been here twice.’
The detective sergeant whistled. ‘With a mind like yours, Wilding’d better behave himself.’
‘He knows that.’
As McGurk ducked back outside, Stallings stepped into the living room, on her left, then went to a second door that led to the rear of the hall and the kitchen area. It was closed. When she opened it, she saw that it, too, was splattered with Weekes’s blood. Not wanting to contaminate the scene any more than she could help, she grasped the door-frame on either side then leaned out as far as she could over the body. The man had died in the clothes he had worn when she had seen him last, but his vest was torn in many places, and his boxer shorts had been pulled down below his buttocks, perhaps, she thought, as he had tried to crawl away from his attacker.
As she looked closer, she could see stab wounds and slashes everywhere: on his back, arms, abdomen, side, face, and across his neck where, she suspected, the jugular had been severed. His mouth hung open. He had been stabbed in the cheek and through the left eye. She reached with her right hand and touched his left hip, one of the few parts of the body neither marked by a wound nor stained with blood. It was colder to the touch than the door-jamb had been.
Stallings pulled herself upright, and stepped back into the living room. She realised that she was trembling, and that her stomach was starting to churn. She went quickly to the exit, and stepped, with as much dignity as she could muster, back into the street.
Mae Grey was standing beside McGurk, leaning against her car as if for support, drawing heavily on a cigarette and staring ahead, at nothing at all. The inspector looked her up and down, from head to foot, and saw that her flat canvas shoes, which had been pale blue, now sported dark blotches.
‘Calls made?’ she asked the sergeant.
‘She didn’t,’ he replied. ‘I did. There’s a full uniform team on its way, plus scene-of-crime. I rang the boss too.’
‘McIlhenney?’
‘Yes. He’s coming too. I suspect we may see a few more big chiefs. Weekes was still on the payroll, after all, even if he was more than a wee bit tarnished.’
She turned to the woman. ‘Are you ready to talk about it, Mae?’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘But I never will be, so. .’
‘Why did you come here?’
‘I’d left some stuff: a few CDs, some clothes. Plus, I wanted to shove his engagement ring up his arse.’
‘Maybe we should stop there,’ said Stallings, quietly.
‘It’s all right, ma’am, I didn’t.’ Her face twisted savagely. ‘If there is anything up there, it wasn’t me that put it there.’
‘I thought you told us you didn’t have a key?’
‘I don’t.’