‘Then ye’ll see me there. The chief’s told me to shut down the Pitt Street room. He says the investigation’s went as far as it can, and there’s no point in our bein’ there any longer.’
‘Why?’ she asked, surprised. ‘Have we run out of leads?’
‘Worse than that. Everywhere we’ve gone, some bugger’s been there before us. See ye the morra.’
As Lottie hung the wall phone back on its cradle in the hallway, her eye was caught by a movement. She looked at the front door and saw a figure; it was unrecognisable, its shape distorted by the obscure glass, but she knew who it was. She felt a strange fluttering in her stomach, and realised that she was a little afraid. She thought of calling Dan back. She thought of going back into the living room and listening to loud music through her headphones.
But she did neither of those things. Instead her anger overcame her nervousness, and she marched to the door and threw it open.
Her husband stood on the step, with a key in his hand, wavering towards the Yale lock that was no longer within reach. She snatched it from him.
‘Gimme,’ he protested.
‘No danger. You’ll not be needing it any longer.’ She grabbed him by one of the lapels of his sports jacket and pulled him indoors.
‘Aw thanks, love,’ he sighed, misunderstanding her.
‘Thanks for nothing,’ she replied. ‘You won’t be staying. You’re as drunk as a monkey and I’m not putting on a show for the neighbours, that’s all.’
‘Ach Lottie, gie’s a break. I’m goin’ tae the fucking jail, is that not enough for you?’
‘That’s the last thing I want, you pathetic twat,’ she hissed. ‘What do you think that’s going to do for your son at the school? Every kid in the place will be pointing fingers at him and calling him names. The only thing that’ll save him from being bullied is that all of them know me. As for your slapper, though, that McGlashan, they can stick her in Cornton Vale for as long as they like.’
‘Leave Christine out of this,’ Scott snarled, lurching towards her.
‘I’d leave her out of the human race,’ she retorted, her voice filled with scorn. ‘And you take one more step towards me,’ she added, ‘and it won’t be a police car that’ll come for you, it’ll be an ambulance. It was you that brought her into it. I hope you’re happy that you’ve ruined her life as well as your own. If I didn’t feel the contempt for her that any woman would feel, and that any good police officer would feel five times over, I could actually find it in my heart to be sorry for the poor cow. Do you have the faintest idea how cruel you’ve been in even asking her to do what she did, far less in talking her into it?
‘I know you and she were at it before we met, and I suspect that you always have been, behind my big stupid plodding back. That can only mean that the daft bitch actually feels something for you. And that you’ve let her down just as badly as you’ve betrayed and shamed Jakey and me.’
She took him by the arm, as if she was arresting him and began to push him towards the door. ‘Now go,’ she ordered, ‘and don’t you ever come back here.’
‘Lottie,’ he pleaded, ‘gie’s a break.’
‘Certainly. Which arm would you prefer?’
‘Ah’ve got nowhere else tae go!’
‘No? Why don’t you just go to her place?’
‘Aye, that’ll be right. Her husband’s lookin’ for me as it is.’
‘Her what? Well, I’ll tell you what, you go down to the riverside and find yourself a nice bench to sleep on, so that if he comes here, I can tell him where to find you.’ She opened the front door and thrust him outside. ‘As soon as I get inside,’ she warned him, ‘I’m going to phone the station. If you’re seen within a mile of this house for the rest of the night, you’ll be lifted. But I won’t tell them to arrest you. Oh no, I’ll have them drive you to Christine McGlashan’s house, drop you there and ring the doorbell. You think I wouldn’t do that, you snivelling bastard?’ she challenged.
He shook his head.
‘Aye, damn right I would. You know, Scott, what I feel right now, looking at you? I feel ashamed that I let you father my son. Well, I tell you this. There is no way that I will let you pass your weakness on to him. It might hurt him for a bit, but you’re never going to see him again.’
With that, Charlotte Mann slammed the door on her husband, walked quietly into her living room, slumped into an armchair, and wept as she had never wept before.
Fifty-Five
‘It’s bloody warm in this city,’ Lowell Payne remarked, as they stood on the pavement outside Thames House.
‘It can be in the summer,’ Skinner conceded. ‘I have this theory that all big cities generate their own heat. Mind you, it can be cold here too. I remember, oh, must be twenty years ago now, standing here on Millbank one evening in February, with a wind whistling up the Thames that felt as if it had come all the way from Siberia. That’s still the coldest I’ve ever been in my life.’
‘Are we going to get a chilly reception in here, d’ you think?’
‘No, I don’t, but things may cool down quite a bit once we get going.’
‘Who are we meeting?’
‘I’m not absolutely certain. As things stand, our appointment is with Amanda Dennis, the deputy director of the service. Whether she has anyone with her, that may depend on whether she guesses why we’re here.’
‘What’s my role?’
‘You’re a witness,’ Skinner told him. ‘Did you do what I suggested?’
‘Tell Jean, you mean?’ Payne frowned. ‘No, I didn’t, I’m sorry. You’ve known her for longer than I have, so I shouldn’t have to tell you that if I just happened to mention casually that you and I were off to a top-level meeting with MI5 but I couldn’t tell her what it was about, she’d have gone into full worry mode, and not slept a wink. Did you tell Sarah?’
‘Of course. Sarah gave up worrying about me years ago.’
‘Did you tell her what the meeting’s about?’
‘No, and she didn’t ask. She’s used to me moving in mysterious ways. She calls me God, sometimes.’
The DCI grinned and shook his head. ‘What is it with you two?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Honestly?’
‘Always. I’d expect nothing else.’
‘I think that Aileen getting caught out with Joey Morocco came in very handy for both of you.’
‘What does Jean think?’ Bob asked.
‘There’s nothing for her to think about,’ Lowell told him, ‘as far as you and Sarah are concerned, not yet, but she’ll be fine. They didn’t know it at the time, but I heard her and Alex compare notes one day. Neither of them were too keen on Aileen.’
‘I know that now.’
‘I’ve got nothing against her, mind, but on the two occasions that I’ve met Sarah, I thought that she was a sensational woman and that the two of you together just filled the whole room.’
‘Maybe we did at that, Lowell. We lost our way for a while, that was all. I hope we’ve found it again.’
‘What’s made the difference?’
‘I’ve stopped living in the past. Recently, somebody very close to me told me that for the last twenty and a bit years, since Myra was killed in that bloody car, I’ve been in denial, that I’ve never accepted it, never moved on. I’ve come to accept that’s true. It drove Sarah and me apart, and with Aileen. . I made myself see Myra in her, when in fact they couldn’t be more different. Myra was wild, self-indulgent and she lived her life on the spur of the moment. She was also promiscuous, as Jean may have told you, more than I ever was, even when I was single.
‘Aileen, on the other hand, is one of the most calculating people I have ever known. I don’t mean that unkindly, not any more, but everything she does is to a plan, and everyone around her must conform to it, even me.
‘She supports police unification for two reasons. One, she does believe in it, but two, she thought that it would make me leave the force and help her achieve her real ambitions, which don’t lie in Scotland, but down here, in Westminster.