She laid a hand on my chest and kissed me. ‘Calm down, big boy,’ she whispered. ‘If wishes were horses we’d all get a ride.’
‘But we can. Maybe we have to, Ali. You talk about going mad; there’s a far greater chance of that happening if I stay in the job than if I leave it. I began this week looking at dead people, some left where they had been killed. I saw a man who’d been disembowelled, in his own home, his own fucking castle. On Thursday I interviewed a kid who’d been systematically crippled with a baseball bat, for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear to me. Later on that same day I had a confrontation with a guy who tried to pull a gun on me. I dealt with all that, love. I switched off from all the blood and the suffering, and I met the violence with greater violence. Then I went home to my daughter, and we had fish for tea. That is my life, and it’s yours; it’s how I live, it’s how you live. This weekend I’ve been shown a way of changing it, and you’re trying to talk me out of it?’
She stroked my cheek, my forehead, my hair. ‘No, lover, I’m not. If that’s how you feel and if that’s what you want, then I want it for you. But will you still want it on Monday morning? And what’s this “we” all of a sudden?’
‘Surely you can’t believe that I’d save my own life and leave you lost in the deep, dark jungle.’ I kissed her. ‘Besides, I’ll need someone to teach me how to sail the thing. Come away with me.’
‘Ask me again, when you’re really ready to do it.’
‘What will you say when I do?’
‘Surely you can’t believe that I’d let you head off into the sunset without a bloody clue how to set the sails?’
But I never did buy that damn boat. I never did ask her. If I had, I’d have saved her life. Ultimately she was someone else I betrayed.
My last great romantic vision endured through that night and into the morning. It stayed with me well into the afternoon, all through the cruise up the windward coast of Arran, and until we were within sight of Inverkip. For all that time, my mind was still set on sailing boats and sunsets.
And then my mobile sounded. I was in the cabin at the time, packing my bag. I retrieved it from the jacket I’d worn at the funeral, where it had spent the last two days. It was at the limit of its battery life, but there was just enough juice left for me to answer.
‘Bob, is that you?’
The voice threw me for a second or two, until I realised that it was Sergeant Payne. ‘Yes, Lowell, what’s up?’
‘I’ve done that checking up for you, on the McGrew family. It’s pretty much as reported in the Tizer. They lived in a house up Wellhall Road, past the Philips factory, a nice big place; a detached villa. The mother’s name was Violet, but there was never any dad around from when they moved in, and that was, oh, about fifteen years ago, when Alafair was at primary school. I had a chat with the neighbours, a Mr and Mrs Shearer; they say that she was a widow, left comfortably off by her late husband. She told them he had been “in business”, that was all. Violet died four years ago, when Alafair was about twenty, from cancer. The house was sold a couple of years later. The son kept it on for a while, then he left.’
‘She’s got a brother?’
‘Yes. He’s seven years older than she is. The Shearers had a lot of time for him.’
‘Did they give you his name?’
‘Yes, Peter.’
‘Anything else about him?’ I asked. ‘Do they know what he did for a living?’
‘Mr Shearer said that he joined the army after he left school. He came back home when his mother fell ill, but they hadn’t a real clue what he did when he lived there after that. Mrs Shearer did ask him once. He told her he was a company director, but no more than that. Their impression was that whatever it was, he worked from home, because he didn’t keep regular hours.’
Just as he finished, my battery gave out, so I couldn’t thank him for his help. But had he helped me? My gut told me that he had, but I couldn’t work out how. Alafair McGrew, the battered Alafair McGrew, had an ex-soldier brother. So was it possible that I’d been wrong about big Lennie? Had she turned to brother Peter, not Manson? Could Tony’s mumble about sending a message have been bullshit, to make me think that he was in charge of the situation? Men like him hate to lose face.
In my mind’s eye, a couple of bricks had moved, and begun to arrange themselves into a pattern. They were a long way from building anything solid, but it was a start, a move in the only direction I cared about, forward.
I didn’t admit it to myself then, but that’s when I knew that I wouldn’t buy that schooner, that I was what I was for a reason, and that I couldn’t run, walk, or sail away from myself.
I turned and saw Alison in the doorway. ‘Who was that?’ she asked.
‘Alex’s future uncle, with the result of a check I asked him to do for me. At the moment, it’s raised no more than a question, but it could turn into an answer to one of my puzzles.’
‘Mine too?’ she asked.
‘Sorry, no.’
She smiled. ‘That’s a pity. I’m not looking forward to that helicopter trip on Tuesday any more than you are.’
We went back into the marina under engine power and tied up. We all helped to make the schooner secure; once it was, I thanked Eden for the experience. ‘We’ll go further next time,’ he promised, ‘and maybe in more normal weather conditions. You’re not a real sailor until you’ve done a whole cruise in waterproofs.’
I made it back to Gullane just inside two hours from Inverkip. I asked Alison if she wanted to stay, but she’d run out of clothes, and also, she didn’t fancy another early start, so she headed back to Edinburgh. Before she left, I asked her to call Shell the next morning, and postpone the oil platform visit by a couple of days. Telfer would keep, and I had some digging to do. I started that evening. At the same course at the police college that John Govan had addressed, I’d met a little man who’d been introduced as Lieutenant Adam Arrow. He was there to talk to us about counter-terrorism; he’d been frank and some of the stories that he’d told had given us all a different slant on Northern Ireland, as well as opening our eyes to coming threats. He and I had bonded, after a fashion, and he’d given me a couple of numbers, office and mobile. As soon as Alex, as bushed after her weekend as I was, had gone to bed, I called him on the latter.
He took a few seconds to answer, time I guessed he was spending identifying my landline number. ‘Bob,’ he exclaimed when he did pick up. ‘How the fook are you?’ His Derbyshire accent tended to come and go, but it was genuine. ‘Who have you killed and what do you want us to clean up?’
‘It’s nice to know my phone isn’t tapped,’ I said.
‘Not by us, it isn’t. I can’t speak for other services, mind you.’
‘I don’t mind them hearing this. I’m looking for some background on a former army man. His name’s Peter McGrew, he’s Scottish, home town Hamilton, and I’m told his service began in the first half of the eighties and ended early nineties. That’s all I know about him.’
‘That should be enough, unless there are two of them. What’s he done?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, I hope. But his sister suffered a bit of domestic violence on my patch and now someone’s reshaped her husband’s legs. You might have read about it, since the guy’s a Scotland international footballer.’
‘That hit and run? Lad wi’ funny name?’
‘That’s the one,’ I confirmed. ‘No vehicle involved.’
‘A punishment beating? I wonder if the guy’s ever served in Ireland,’ he mused. ‘It wouldn’t look good if it came out that one of ours was copying the Provos.’
‘Don’t get too excited. There’s another strong suspect. Anyway, it won’t come out. The victim’s not going to change his story. I want to know the truth, that’s all, out of old-fashioned curiosity. It’s an itch that needs scratching.’