I joined her, on a white cane sofa, that looked out on to the tiny enclosed garden. ‘Alex doesn’t know,’ I said.
Mia whistled, softly. ‘You can’t keep a secret like that from a girl her age.’
‘Thornton’s insistent on it. He’s told her that he’s going away on a trip,’ I smiled, ‘to far-off and exciting places. He wants to spare her from what’s going to happen.’
‘That’s well meaning of him but,’ she took my hand, intertwining our fingers, ‘he’s not going to be around to pick up the pieces, Bob. He’s going to be dead, and when Alex finds out that his illness was kept from her, she’s not going to blame him, she’s going to blame you. If you don’t tell her, she’ll be hurt worse than if you do, and so will you.’
‘I promised her granddad though, Mia.’
‘Then you have to tell him why you can’t keep that promise. I don’t want to sound like an agony aunt, but Bob, love, who’s the most important person in your life?’
I stared at her. ‘Alex, of course.’
‘And what’s the most important thing in your life?’
I didn’t have to think about that one for long either. ‘My relationship with her.’
‘Then don’t damage it. Her childhood is over… Pops. She’s come through puberty, and she’s starting to think like a woman. That’s a process that accelerates pretty fast, I can promise you, and it’s bloody difficult for any parent to keep up with it, let alone a single dad.’
I was frowning again. ‘But I don’t want to hurt her at all,’ I protested. ‘That’s why I agreed to what Thornie asked.’
She touched my chin and turned my face towards her. ‘She’s going to be hurt anyway. It comes with the territory of adulthood.’
I sighed. ‘Point taken. Thanks for that, counsellor.’
That’s when I kissed her. It wasn’t something that I’d anticipated, or ever imagined. It just happened, that’s all, a reflex response to our proximity. She responded, very gently, her lips exploring mine, her mouth opening slightly, her tongue flicking my teeth. Until then, I’d held the private belief that kissing is overrated, no more than the opening gambit of the chess game between two people that leads to mating. With Myra and me, it had been rough and tumble, like our sex. With Alison… it was something we barely did, we usually cut straight to the chase. But Mia could kiss like nobody I’d ever encountered before; it was full of subtlety, tender and modest, yet inviting, too. Have you ever noticed how strong a spider’s web is, how, once it’s woven, it can withstand a tempest? That’s the best analogy I can conjure up for Mia’s kiss, the softest thing imaginable, yet once it had drawn you in, there was no escape.
‘Is this the talk we were going to have?’ she murmured, as we surfaced.
‘What talk was that?’
‘About whether we’re going to see each other again.’
‘I guess it is. What do you reckon?’
She flicked the first button of my shirt with a fingernail. ‘How much time do you have?’ she asked. I knew what she meant, but I didn’t want a quickie; I wanted to be able to dive into her ocean and swim there at my leisure.
‘Not enough,’ I replied. ‘I have to be sharp this afternoon. If all goes well, I’ll be having a very tough conversation with a couple of guys from Newcastle. I won’t be able to make a proper impression on them if I’m thinking of you.’
She smiled. ‘Me too, I suppose. I wouldn’t want to be talking to seventy-five thousand young people and have something inappropriate slip out. So? What happens next?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Could we have dinner one night,’ she suggested, ‘and take it from there? How free are you?’
‘I can make arrangements,’ I said. ‘I have someone who looks after Alex during the day. I can arrange with Daisy for her to stay over at her place.’
‘Then call me when you can fix it.’
‘I’ll do that,’ I promised. We kissed again: just like the first time. I had to force myself to my feet.
‘Go and terrify the bad guys,’ she instructed me, as she walked me to the door.
‘And you go and bewitch a million listeners.’
‘That’s the entire listening audience. We’d have to achieve a hundred per cent penetration for that.’ She giggled, and a hand went to her mouth. ‘But that’s something we can discuss after dinner.’
For all my talk of sharpness, my mind was all over the place as I drove back to Fettes. I was attracted to Mia with a power that I hadn’t experienced since before my fifteenth birthday, and I hadn’t understood it then. I wanted her very badly, but I wanted the moment to be perfect, and the timing to be absolutely right. I began toying with the idea of booking a room, or maybe even a suite, in an upmarket hotel… Gleneagles, say, and damn the expense… for the Friday following. But… I’d left it with Alison that we’d see each other at the weekend. Alison. What about Alison? We’d been straight with each other; it was companionship and sex, nothing more expected or wanted on either side, and surely that carried the possibility that one of us might find someone we really cared about. Fine. And the incident at the Sheraton? I still hadn’t worked that one out, but the one thing I did know for certain, Alison and I had two relationships, personal and professional, and she had to be treated right, on both levels. And then there was my kid. The way I felt at that moment, I had no idea how far a relationship with Mia might go, and Alex had made her feelings pretty clear about another woman… Mia had been right; I had to start thinking of her as such… moving into our house. But looming over it all was the memory of that first, spontaneous kiss.
‘Jesus, Skinner!’ I exclaimed, out loud, as I turned into the police headquarters car park. ‘For once, will you try and think with your brain and not with your prick.’
The first person I saw when I walked into the office was Jeff Adam. Instantly, I had what my very good friend Neil McIlhenney once described, memorably, as ‘a Taggart moment’. They’re rarer these days than they used to be, but when they’re triggered, they’re unstoppable.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Sergeant?’ I shouted. ‘You’re supposed to be in fucking Newcastle picking up fucking Milburn!’
Fortunately, the rock-steady, unflappable Fred Leggat was there to intervene. ‘I told him to hold on, boss,’ he explained. ‘Newcastle CID went to pick him up at our request, but he wasn’t at home, or at work. I didn’t think there was any point in Jeff and McGuire going down there till they had him.’
I felt the hot air escaping from my balloon, fast, but did my best to keep my dignity. ‘Work? What does he do, apart from being a heavy?’
‘He’s a taxi driver. Self-employed. He has a small office in North Shields; he runs a few cabs out of there.’
‘Does he have a wife?’ I asked.
Fred nodded. ‘Yes. She wasn’t cooperative, at first, not until our Geordie colleagues threatened to arrest her for obstruction and hand her kids to social services. A bluff, but she fell for it. Eventually she admitted that he went out late on Saturday night and hasn’t been home since.’
‘Did NCIS come up with anything on him?’
‘Oh yes. Two convictions for actual bodily harm, one for GBH, several arrests but charges dropped for lack of evidence. He’s said to work for the Newcastle big boss, a man called Winston Church… no hill, just Church. His known associates locally are Barton Leonard and Warren Shackleton who works for him in the taxi firm. Leonard used to, until he was given a nice room to himself in Durham jail, for being the getaway driver in an armed robbery.’
‘I take it…’
‘Yes. The Geordies went looking for Shackleton too; he wasn’t at home either, and he’s been missing for about the same length of time as Milburn.’
‘Okay. Good shout, Fred.’ I was left feeling embarrassed by my telly’tec episode. ‘Sorry I went off at you, Jeff. There was no cause for it. Do something else for me, please. Ask NCIS to go back into their computer and ask it if there are any known links between this man Church and Tony Manson. He says that there aren’t, and I doubt if he would deny something that he knew we could confirm, but let’s check it anyway. I’m not saying he’d admit it either, but he wouldn’t let me catch him in a flat-out lie.’