Jackie Charles leaned against his handmade desk and picked a piece of dark fluff from his coral pink Pringle sweater. Then he looked up at Skinner and said, quietly and with the same assurance as before, ‘If that’s your principal theory, Bob, then you’d better get another. Because I had absolutely nothing to do with this man’s death.’
The DCC shook his head. ‘No, no, Jackie, we’re not letting you off the hook.’ He looked out of the window once more. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said, over his shoulder, ‘although you may have worked it out already.
‘I’ve got a reputation for being a bit volatile: short-fused, you know. But Andy here knows me better than anyone, and he’ll tell you that I’m the most patient man in the world. When it comes to crime, I think long-term. I see criminals as my mortal enemies, and in pursuing them I never get discouraged, and I never give up.’
He turned and he smiled: a hangman’s smile. He raised a hand, palm upward, fingers curling. ‘I have this guiding principle, you see. I believe that if I’m patient, and if I wait long enough, then one day, God will deliver the balls of my enemy into my strong right hand.
‘Be in no doubt: when that happens, I don’t even try to resist the temptation to squeeze as hard as I can!’ As he closed his powerful fist, tight, Jackie Charles, in spite of himself, winced.
He walked towards the door, Martin beside him. ‘Your turn’s coming, Jackie. It’s coming soon. And when it does, I’ll be using both hands.’
The two policemen hurried down the stairs and out of the house, to Skinner’s car which was parked at the head of the driveway.
‘Sir,’ said Martin, formally, and with a touch of caution. ‘You’ve had Charles in your sights for a long time now. We’ll get him eventually, but as far as you’re concerned, don’t you think you’re becoming a bit . . .’
‘Obsessional, you were going to say.’ The DCC shook his head and laughed. ‘Christ, everyone’s accusing me of that these days.
‘This time, you might be right though. I’d forgotten how much I hate that wee bastard. I have done, I think, from the first moment I ever saw him, and I’m quite certain that I always will. In fact the cold-hearted way that he’s accepted his wife’s death has made it worse.
‘I’ve got half a mind to take him down to the mortuary, and make him look at her body. Only I’m pretty certain that it wouldn’t faze him one bit.
‘Maybe you should keep me at arm’s length from this investigation from now on, Andy, for everyone’s sake, mine included. Keep me informed, but through Pamela, not directly. I’ll try my best to steer clear of you.’
He switched on the engine and put the car in gear. ‘Starting now. Time’s getting on. I have something to pick up from headquarters, then I want to look in to say goodnight to my son.
‘Last of all, I have a date with my daughter.’
26
It was another fine evening. The lights of Edinburgh shone brightly across the dark waters of the Forth Estuary as Bob gazed out of the dining-room window of the Green Craigs Hotel. Across the table, his daughter sat quietly, her coffee cooling in its cup.
‘So that’s the story, Alexis.
‘That’s why I’m out here, and that’s why Sarah and your wee brother are in Edinburgh. Irreconcilable differences, you lawyers call it.’
Alex looked at him anxiously. ‘Come on, Pops. Not irreconcilable, surely? You can work things out between you. Look, I know you think that what Sarah did was wrong, and if you force me to it, I agree with you.
‘But you have to ask yourself why she did it. Surely it was for you, because she was worried about you and because she loves you.’
He looked back from the window. ‘I wish it was as easy as that, sweetheart, I really do. You think I didn’t ask myself why she did it? I did, and I asked her, and I saw the same answer both times.
‘Sarah didn’t manipulate your Uncle Jimmy for me, she did it for her, to stop me from doing something she didn’t want me to do. Because that something involves your mother.
‘I can’t reconcile that with the Sarah I fell in love with and married. It’s a part of her I didn’t know was there. She looks at me now and she sees a different man, and that’s true too. But . . .’
He paused and looked across at her and she could see the depth of his hurt. ‘Alex, am I a selfish man?’ he asked, quietly.
She looked at him and shook her flowing, wavy locks. ‘Pops, you . . . and my fiancé . . . are the two least selfish men I know.’
‘Well that’s not how Sarah sees it. By her way of it I am selfish in my determination to investigate your mother’s death. Yet when I try to explain to her that this is something that I have to do, she won’t see it that way. She sees it as my own selfish mission.
‘“Myra is dead. Let her stay dead.” That’s what she demands. As if I could bring her back to life!’ He said it suddenly and bitterly.
He reached across the table and squeezed his daughter’s hand. ‘Come on. Let’s go back to Gullane. There’s something I want to show you.’
He paid the bill and they drove home, up the mile-long straight and through Aberlady. They sat in gathering silence. As Bob steered smoothly round the curve where Myra had died, it became unbearable.
‘I miss her too, Pops,’ said Alex at last, her faced framed in the amber glow of the dashboard. ‘Every day of my life I think of her. All those years, when you were being father and mother rolled into one I still couldn’t help missing Mum.’ Her voice faltered.
‘I never expected you to stop missing her, my darling,’ Bob whispered. ‘It’s just that I did my best not to, myself. But now the dam has burst.’
The Goose Green was quiet as usual, as he parked in front of the cottage, beside Alex’s Metro, and led her indoors.
The projector was set up on the dining-room table, a reel of film loaded and ready to run. He sat Alex down on a straight-backed dining chair and turned off the lights. ‘I want you to see this,’ he said.
The film flickered white at first then into life. Alex stared at the beautiful young woman in her strikingly effective bikini. As the camera shot widened and panned out she recognised Gullane beach, thronged with day trippers on a bright summer’s day. The tide was almost full.
Her hand went to her mouth as she saw the toddler. The little girl, wearing nothing but a sun-hat and a smile, as she lurched and staggered in the sand, falling backwards, laughing, at her mother’s feet.
The film rolled on. When it finished and Bob switched on the light, she was in tears. ‘Oh Pops,’ she said, quietly as he stilled the spinning reel. ‘How beautiful she was. The photos don’t do her any sort of justice.’
‘No,’ said Bob, quietly. ‘They don’t, do they. She was alive, your mother, in a way that very few people are. She was bright, funny, wanton and loving. She lit the place up. We had only lived here for a few years, but the whole village turned out for her funeral. Everybody.’ He smiled. ‘Even a certain wee man that your fiancé is currently trying very hard to lock up. I remember how touched I was by the turnout, and I remember noticing how shocked everyone was.’
He began to rewind the film. ‘There are more movies of the two of you together,’ he said, ‘and others as well. I’ll have them all transferred to video, save one. That’ll come to you after I’m dead.
‘Meantime - and it’ll be a long meantime, mind - there’s something else I want you to have. It’s under the table, out of the way.’
Alex looked down, and saw the trunk. ‘That? It’s the old box from the attic. The one you told me not to touch. You were so serious about it that I never dared.