She paused. ‘You shouldn’t have got me started on this,’ she warned. ‘You thought you had this nice new family unit, with wild, unpredictable Sarah three thousand miles away, and the kids loved and looked after by new step-mommy. Well, do you know what? None of our children have ever mentioned the woman to me, not once. The only mother figure they ever talk about is Trish. With the boys, that might just be sensitivity, but not with Seonaid. She prattles on about everything that happens around her in Gullane, and she only ever mentions you, her carer and occasionally, Alex. . although I reckon she thinks she’s her aunt. That’s what I resent most about Aileen, Bob, not the fact that she lured you away from me with smooth talk, sympathy and some probably indifferent sex; none of that matters alongside the fact that she’s my children’s stepmother and she doesn’t care about them! She doesn’t fucking care!’
She was glaring at me, a tear tracking down each cheek. ‘Shit,’ she shouted. ‘Get me a proper glass and give me some of that fucking wine, will you.’
I fetched another goblet from the kitchen cabinet from which I’d seen her take mine. ‘You sure about this?’ I asked, holding the bottle poised.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I’m very sure.’ I poured a large measure of the robust red from Oregon that I’d spotted in Waitrose and bought because I like West Coast American wines, preferably from north of California. I made to set it in front of her but she shook her head. ‘Not here; living room. There I can turn the lights down. . for no other reason,’ she added, ‘than because I look a mess.’
Actually she didn’t. Sarah doesn’t cry very often but when she lets go, it makes her look angry, and gives her eyes a light that’s anything but weak. I followed her through to her living room, carrying my glass and hers, with the bottle jammed under my arm. She’d given up on the Vichy Catalan. We didn’t need to turn on any lights, far less turn them down; there was still enough outside to give us all we needed. She flopped down on to a big brown suede couch and motioned me to join her. I handed her the plonk and she killed half of it in a single swallow. She held the glass at arm’s length, peered at it, and nodded approval. Then she picked up the bottle and poured us each some more.
‘You and I were having bother long before Aileen came along,’ I pointed out, quietly.
‘Sure,’ she agreed. ‘Mutually inflicted, I think you’ll agree.’ I couldn’t argue otherwise.
‘And pretty obvious to all and sundry,’ she continued, ‘most of all her. You were a sucker for those doe eyes and that gentle but firm demeanour. And so was I for the equivalent, I’ll grant you.’ She looked at me, sideways. The tears had gone. ‘We were pretty fucked up then, weren’t we?’
I sank back into the soft upholstery and gazed at the ceiling. ‘Sarah, I’ve been fucked up for years,’ I admitted. ‘I had all sorts of things inside me, but I kept them all bottled up; you know that.’
‘Yeah,’ she whispered. ‘And I wasn’t there for you when it got too much, but she was. So I have nobody to blame but me, have I?’
‘Blame,’ I repeated her word. ‘Blame, blame, blame. Why are we so concerned about blame, all of us? Why don’t we allow ourselves our faults, our imperfections? We’ve all got them.’
I didn’t see her smile, but I sensed it in her voice. ‘That you should say so. You’ve spent your life fighting against yours.’
‘Oh yes? And what are they?’
‘All the things that make you strong,’ she replied, cryptically.
I drained my glass and shared the rest of the bottle between us. ‘What am I going to do, Sarah?’ I asked, as night fell in her living room.
‘About being a lousy dad? Nothing, ’cos you ain’t one. About fighting for what you believe in? Same as you always have done. March forward into the shell-fire and go down in a blaze of glory, if that’s what it comes to. About your marriage? That’s not for me to say, but you must stop feeling fucked up, because you aren’t, not any more. The way I see it, your confidence has been undermined, but you could never admit that, not even to yourself. You used to have nice long thick hair, Samson, even if it was grey, but you’ve been shorn. You can still see what’s happening around you though, and those locks will grow in again.’
‘That’s very biblical,’ I murmured. ‘Need I ask who you’ve cast as Delilah?’
‘No, you need not. Can I ask you something?’
‘And if I said no?’
‘Indeed,’ she chuckled. ‘Bob, you always fought against the idea of being chief constable even when Jimmy Proud tried to talk you into it. You were afraid it would sideline you as a cop. What made you change your mind? Or was it a who?’
‘It was a few people, a few things said; but finally,’ I conceded, ‘it came down to one person.’
‘But it hasn’t sidelined you, has it? Not like it was supposed to.’
‘No.’ I stopped her before she got to where she was headed. ‘It’s a mess, Sarah, isn’t it?’
‘You’re an expert in those, honey. You’ll get by.’ She turned to look at me and her eyes were bright. ‘I’ll promise you one thing. Before, when you needed me, I wasn’t there for you. Well, I’m here right now.’
I leaned towards her and kissed her, and that’s when I knew I was in real trouble.
Mario McGuire
I’d known my weekend wasn’t going to be one of leisure, so I’d been quite happy to give the nod to Paula going to the Glasgow concert with Aileen. She wasn’t so close to her due date that I was afraid to let her out of my sight, although I knew that would happen soon.
I rose early and caught up on the morning news headlines on Sky, then shaved and showered. Paula was stirring by the time I was ready, so I fixed her breakfast to order, muesli with cubed beetroot all mixed with pouring yoghurt. . don’t say it, I know. . and with a Berocca drink on the side. I had coffee and a couple of poached eggs on toast; conservative, that’s me.
These days I don’t like going into the office on a Saturday. I’m pretty much on call twenty-four seven, so I value my free time even more than I did when I was other ranks. Indeed I’d been grabbing as much as I could, well aware that when Junior arrived I wasn’t going to have any.
It had to be done, though. The chief was steamed up about Varley, and wanted the investigation wrapped up as quickly as possible, so I’d told Mackenzie that I wanted a progress report, ten thirty that morning, from him and Bob Skinner’s ex-brother-in-law or whatever the hell he is. There was also the consideration that Payne didn’t come for free. In the old days, the command at Pitt Street would have lent him to us for as long as we needed him, simple as that, but that type of inter-force courtesy had been swept away by its new broom, so we were hiring him by the day with expenses, invoiced by Strathclyde, plus VAT.
It was just short of ten when I got there; that gave me enough time to shift some paperwork, the kind I like the least, overtime analyses, division by division, and senior CID officers’ expenses claims. And it let me do something else. On a whim I took out my mobile and made a call.
‘How’s tricks?’ Neil McIlhenney asked, as he picked it up. I could hear road noise in the background, so I assumed he was on Bluetooth.
‘Tricky,’ I replied. ‘How’s London?’
‘Exciting. It’s like a language school. My people are chasing Russians, Mexicans; God, you name it we’re after them. I can understand most of them; it’s the cockneys that could be speaking Greek as far as I’m concerned. Lou’s had to interpret for me. But I’m loving it, and so are the kids. You know, Mario, I never dreamed for a moment that I’d ever leave Edinburgh. I was nervous as hell when I started here, but not any more.’
‘Different atmosphere?’
‘And then some,’ he laughed. ‘The organisation’s huge. I’m surrounded by Very Important People. Some of them actually are, the others act the part regardless. I’m a chief super, and I’m only halfway up the ladder. I’ll probably be a commander in a year’s time, but you aren’t really somebody here until you can call yourself Commissioner, even if it’s only Deputy Assistant.’ He paused. ‘The talk down here is that’s what they’re going to call the new super-chief in Scotland: Commissioner.’