For a while after Caroline’s death Steven had found it difficult to believe that he wasn’t jinxed when it came to women. The experience of having lost both Lisa and Caroline to disease had profoundly affected him. The old adage that life was what happened to you while you were planning for the future had never seemed more apt. He embraced a new philosophy that demanded he live more in the present and think less of what tomorrow might bring. Making ambitious plans for the future was best left to the young and to those as yet unharmed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
He was not above using this as an excuse for not considering his personal circumstances in too much detail. On the odd occasion when he found himself alone in his flat, late at night, beset by thoughts of being nearly forty with little or nothing in the way of personal possessions, it was the perfect excuse for wiping such thoughts from his head. He would have another drink and go to bed. Tomorrow could take care of itself.
The only uncomfortable factor in all of this was that he had a daughter, Jenny, and therefore had a responsibility towards her. When Lisa died Sue and Peter had taken Jenny to live with them down in Glenvane. It had been his intention to have her back living with him as soon as possible if only for the selfish reason that he could see that in many ways Lisa lived on in Jenny and he needed to see that. She had Lisa’s eyes and, although she was still very young, certain mannerisms that were Lisa’s.
The practical problems however, of having Jenny live with him were quickly to defeat him. His job would simply not permit it. He had considered trying to find a more stable humdrum job that would have meant more regular hours so that he would be home every night but in reality, that was as far as it had ever gone. When push came to shove he had not been prepared to give up his job with Sci-Med. He knew that it was almost certainly selfish but he needed it: he needed the excitement, the unpredictability and even the danger of it on occasion.
As it was, Sue and Peter were more than happy to have Jenny stay as part of their family and Jenny was more than happy to be there. The downside that Steven recognised and accepted was that Jenny would probably end up regarding Sue and Peter as her real parents. He would be the man who appeared every couple of weeks, work permitting, bearing smiles and presents. He tried to be more than that, taking an interest in everything that Jenny did at home and at school but he knew that this was still a good bit short of taking on full parental responsibility. It was a compromise but then compromise was the glue on which society depended.
In the meantime, tonight was proving problematical. Steven arrived at the Grange Hotel in Whitehouse Terrace to find it no longer there. The building was there all right but it was no longer a hotel. It had been bought for private use. He looked at the darkened driveway, now stripped of its welcoming signs, and silently bade farewell to a little bit of his past. He looked up at the night sky as if imagining Lisa might be watching and murmured quietly, ‘Sorry love.’
Steven checked into The Braid Hills Hotel a couple of miles away to the west. It occupied a lofty position in the well-heeled south side of the city, which gave it an air of solid respectability and where he was lucky enough to get a room with a panoramic view to the north and west. After looking out over the lights of the city for a few moments he went downstairs and had a drink in the bar where golf club sweaters were much in evidence. He picked up that the four men standing next to him were lawyers, not his favourite profession believing as he did that in any sphere of human misery you would find a lawyer making a fat living. The ones beside him however, were discussing property prices — their own by the sound of it. ‘It’s absolutely outrageous!’ beamed one with a self-satisfied smile.
Steven exchanged small talk with the barman about the weather and agreed when asked that he was in the city on business without actually saying what that business might be. Steven wondered about that himself as he made his way back upstairs to his room.
McClintock and the local police were clearly unhappy about the prospect of his opening up old wounds where they saw no need and he had a certain sympathy for this view. As they saw it, what had happened was long in the past and the reputation of the force had suffered enough because of it — as had several of the individuals involved although Steven had less sympathy for them. By all accounts, they had fully deserved their early exit from the payroll.
On the other hand, Hector Combe had made such a good job of confessing to the murder that he had utterly convinced the Rev Lawson that he’d done it. The fact that his reason for doing this however, was still far from clear and this annoyed him. He hated loose ends. Now, to add to his unease, he had learned that a known drunk with a reputation for incompetence had been in charge of the forensic evidence against Little. If Little had been convicted by anything other than rock-solid DNA evidence he would have been seriously concerned. As it was, he just wanted to see the notes on Julie’s broken fingers and establish how Combe had come to know about them.
If they had been broken during a struggle with her assailant, as Lee had suggested, then it might well have been possible for the lab to identify her attacker from material recovered from under her fingernails. He wanted to see this information. Getting hold of it would be an acceptable alternative to trying to find out how Combe knew about the fingers in the first place. Fragments of skin and dried blood identifying David Little as Julie’s attacker would make Combe’s claims irrelevant.
It took Steven nearly forty-five minutes to cross town in the morning rush hour. He arrived at Fettes Police Headquarters at nearly a quarter past nine to find McClintock in conversation with another officer. Both men stopped talking as he came into view and McClintock adopted a wan smile. ‘Thought you’d changed your mind,’ he said, looking at his watch.
‘ Traffic,’ said Steven. ‘All ready to go?’
McClintock moved uneasily on his feet and cleared his throat unnecessarily before saying, ‘Actually, Chief Superintendent Santini would like a word with you before we go over to the lab.’
‘ Oh yes?’ said Steven, making it sound like an accusation.
‘ I had to tell him you were here and what was going on,’ said McClintock.
‘ No problem,’ said Steven. ‘Where do I find him?’
McClintock led the way to Santini’s office and affected a friendly grin as he waited for a response to his knock on the door.
‘ Come.’
‘ Dr Dunbar, sir,’ said McClintock ushering Steven inside and then leaving.
Santini, a rotund figure in his fifties with a tanned complexion and sleek silvery hair, sat back in his chair and made a steeple with his fingers. He didn’t smile or make any move to shake hands. ‘I understand you have an interest in the Julie Summers case, Doctor’ he said.
‘ I have an interest in Hector Combe’s confession to her murder,’ answered Steven. ‘But then I’m sure you know that already.’ He made a gesture towards the door behind him.
‘ Always nice to know what’s going on in one’s own backyard, Doctor, don’t you think?’
‘ Wherever possible,’ agreed Steven.
‘ I called Sci-Med. I’ve just spoken to John Macmillan. He tells me that there are no official plans to review the Summers case.’
‘ That’s my understanding too,’ agreed Steven.
This was not what Santini expected to hear. ‘So you are here in an
… unofficial capacity?’ he asked.
‘ You could say.’
‘ I do say,’ snapped Santini. ‘David Little was convicted on cast iron evidence, which no one has ever disputed. Hector Combe could not have carried out the crime. He just wanted to create trouble for the police and you — in your unofficial capacity — seem to be doing your level best to assist him in that objective.’