Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel (2 page)

We all have our limits . . . even me, for all that I’ve tried to deny it. I tried my hardest to chase the memories of the couple, incinerated in their kitchen, and of the men in the isolated barn, tortured relentlessly before they were killed. I followed my ritual: we were low on wine, so I drank countless Corona beers, until I fell asleep in my armchair. I woke just after six, and ran fifteen miles, sticking to the roads because it was dark when I set out. I assumed that I would be fine after that, but . . . wrong.

That evening, I sat silently through dinner, drinking water rather than alcohol, then watched television, a replay of
Lewis
on a nostalgia channel, not caring that I’d seen it before. As I looked at the screen, gradually the images began to fade, and were replaced by others, from that house, from that barn, from other places, a first-hand documentary of the evil that I had witnessed and known, all the way back to my childhood and Michael, my own true scream movie, all of it put together from my own life, suffering seen, suffering inflicted, suffering endured. I squeezed my eyes closed, as tightly as I could manage, but I couldn’t kill the images. I shoved my knuckles into the sockets until they hurt, but it made no difference.

And then Aileen slid on to my lap, tugging at my wrists. I resisted, but she kept on pulling, until my forearms were resting on the arms of the chair, and she was kissing my closed, moist eyelids, until gradually I relaxed and I could open them and the daymare was over and I could look into her face, and take in her distress.

‘What is it, love?’ she whispered.

‘Everything,’ I said, hoarsely. ‘All the . . . all . . . everything. My life. It’s caught up with me.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Tell you what, love?’

‘Everything. Everything that you’ve got bottled up inside you. Talk to me, Bob. You don’t, you know.’

‘I do,’ I protested. ‘I talk to you all the time.’

‘Sure you do, but you set your limits. There’s a part of you that’s locked up, that’s closed to me.’

I tried to fob her off. ‘You wouldn’t want to know what’s in there.’

It didn’t work. ‘I need to know,’ she insisted. ‘I’m sitting here watching you have a breakdown, before my eyes. I’ve seen it coming for the last couple of days, and it’s just about the scariest thing I’ve ever known. You think the kids haven’t sensed that there’s something wrong? Mark’s noticed too, and so has James Andrew. “Is Dad okay?” he asked me last night. I want to help, Bob, but I can’t as long as I’m on the outside. Tell me, love. Tell me everything about you that I don’t know already. You have to. I’m not moving from here until you do.’

And so I did. I began from my earliest days, with Michael’s reign of terror. I tried to downplay that as much as I could, but Aileen didn’t buy it. She made me set out every detail of his torture, and of his violations. When I told her the worst of it, we were both in tears. ‘You’re a very special person,’ she said.

‘Me?’ I gasped. ‘How do you work that out? How does being buggered by your brother when you were seven make you special?’

‘You survived it, and you didn’t kill him.’

‘Ah, but I thought about it. I knew where he was, afterwards, and there were times when I thought about finding him and finishing him. I could have done it, being what I am, without ever being found out. I could simply have made him disappear. The very fact that I didn’t became part of my guilt. I have no idea whether he ever preyed on other kids. I should have thought of that, and removed the possibility, even if it was only by discussing my own experiences with another officer, in another force. But I didn’t, I kept it to myself.’

‘There’s no evidence that he ever did that, is there?’

‘None that I know of. I like to think that he redeemed himself, that his banishment made him a better person.’

‘Then stop beating yourself up. It happened, it’s long in the past, and now you’ve shared it with me, it makes me love and admire you all the more.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘So move on; go on. Tell me the rest of it. Open yourself to me.’

And I did. I set out for her all my secrets, shared with her all of the evil memories I had gathered and stored through my career, those things that I’ve seen because of the job, those deeds that I’ve done because someone had to, told her where all the bodies were buried . . . in a couple of cases, literally so. I talked, and she listened, for two hours. When I was done, I was spent . . . and so was Aileen, exhausted and shaken.

‘Do you feel the better for that?’ I asked her.

‘No. But that wasn’t the idea.’ She paused. ‘That man you shot,’ she whispered. ‘In your cottage. Did you have any other option?’

I thought about her question carefully. ‘Probably,’ I told her, when I was ready, ‘but the guy had gone rogue, he’d already killed a couple of people . . . not to mention the fact that he’d already shot me.’ I added, ‘If he’d walked out of there, it would have been embarrassing for those who sent him. I made the call, and to be frank, it’s been a long time since I even thought about him. In the same situation, I’d do the same thing. To be even more frank, I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done to someone else . . . apart from that unfortunate kid in the boxing ring in Motherwell all those years ago. It’s the cruelty that I’ve seen human beings inflict on each other; that’s what tears me up. Now you’ve made me share it with you, but I’m not sure that it will help. A burden shared might be a burden halved, but now you’re stuck with one you never had before.’

‘Then write it down. And don’t worry about me; I’m tougher than I look.’

‘You’re not serious,’ I exclaimed. ‘There’s things I can’t ever write down, can’t ever mention outside this room.’

‘Then stick to the stories you can tell. They don’t need to be for publication, but maybe as you examine each one at length, you’ll be able to put them in a better perspective.’

And so, that is what I’m going to do. They won’t be chronological, these . . . memoirs, I called them earlier, and that’s as good a word as any. They’ll be stories that my wife reckons need telling, for therapeutic reasons, before I become a psychological basket case.

But where to begin? Basket cases? Why not? Let’s start with the man in the wheelchair, the Stephen Hawking of crime, as a chum of mine once called him.

One

‘W
hy were we created to suffer and die?’

‘Why the hell not?’

I stared at her, fork halfway to my half-open mouth. I’m closer to my older daughter, my first child, than anyone else in the world, even Aileen . . . that’s how it is, in truth . . . yet she’s always had the capacity to surprise me. I gasped, not just at the bluntness of her reply, but because she’d nailed down the answer to my metaphysical question, one hundred per cent.

‘You . . .’ I began, and then the phone rang. ‘Bugger,’ I grunted. She frowned. ‘Not you,’ I added, quickly.

When? It must have been fifteen years ago that I read a spoof sci-fi story about a space wanderer who travelled the universe, looking for its Maker, so that he could put to Him/Her the Primal Question.

Yes, that’s right, it was fifteen years ago, for Alexis Skinner was at that unmercifully awkward stage, not quite a woman, I thought, but on the other hand definitely not Pops’ wee girl any more. The attitude that’s characterised her ever since was in its formative stage, with all of the sharp edges that time would smooth away, still, then, at their most abrasive.

We were having our evening meal, she and I, the two-person family unit that we’d been for almost a decade, since Myra had died in a tangle of metal. Daisy Mears had gone home for the night. She’d been a part of our lives for the previous eight of those years. More than a part: in truth, she’d been the saviour of mine, professionally.

Daisy lived in Gullane, in a cottage, as we did; hers was on the other side of the main street from Goose Green, in Templar Lane. She was five years older than me, just past forty, divorced, childless, and with no intention of ever getting involved with another man in any way, other than business. She was an artist, and a pretty good one at that; her landscapes, and stormy, brooding seascapes, sold for upwards of a grand a time through an Edinburgh gallery, and for not quite as much to collectors who approached her directly. She hadn’t always done that well, though. When she’d become Alex’s day-carer . . . my daughter did not care for the term ‘childminder’ and corrected anyone who was foolish enough to use it . . . the money had come in handy, in the wake of her acrimonious split from the heavy-handed skinflint she’d made the mistake of marrying.

She’d joined us after a succession of short-term failures. At first Myra’s mother insisted on helping me out, but after only a year she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and went back to Lanarkshire to die. After her came a series of women who’d promised that my unpredictable working hours would be no problem, only to discover that they were. At that time, I was still in my twenties, widowed, with a five-year-old kid who was the centre of my world. It might not always have been apparent . . . indeed, today I have an ex-wife who’d take issue with the assertion . . . but through my life my career has come second to my family.

With the resignation of the most recent ‘carer’, I had a problem, but I had an option open to me, one which I almost took up. When Daisy answered the ad that I’d placed, in desperation rather than hope, in the
East Lothian Courier
, I was probably within three months of leaving the police force and moving back to Motherwell, to add a law qualification to my arts degree and join my father’s firm.

She was made for us. Her creative hours were completely flexible, and could be shaped to meet our needs. She’d come in every morning, to get Alex ready and take her to school, then pick her up at the end of the day and bring her home, or if I was working late, take her to her place until I called for her. On the odd occasion when an investigation turned into a crisis, she’d look after her overnight, always at Templar Lane, for Daisy and I agreed early on that she would never sleep over at Goose Green. Villages are villages, even the nicest of them; we knew there would be talk as it was, without our feeding it.

I thought about letting the answer-machine handle the incoming call, but only for a fraction of a second. I’ve never been able to do that. If the phone rings more than three times, in my home or in my office, it means that I’m not there, unless I’m sound asleep or locked away taking care of private matters. Even then, I once ruined a perfectly good mobile by answering it while taking a piss and letting it slip from my grasp. I stood up from the table, and snatched the handset from its cradle on the sideboard.

‘Three two nine one,’ I answered. My phone number. That’s my way. I never give my name when taking a call at home. My life is about having an edge; I’ve always liked to know who’s calling before giving anything of myself away.

‘DCI Skinner?’ Male voice, deep, young, just on the confident side of arrogant.

‘Who’s this?’

‘PC McGuire, St Leonards.’

I frowned. The name meant nothing to me. ‘This is Skinner,’ I conceded. ‘It’s quarter past seven, and I finished a ten-hour working day just over an hour ago. So why are you interrupting my dinner, Constable?’

‘Because my boss told me to, sir.’

‘And who would that be?’

‘Detective Superintendent Jay.’

Greg Jay; arrogant prick. I didn’t like him, and I wasn’t alone. ‘I thought you said you were a PC,’ I snapped. ‘Why are you gophering for a CID officer?’

‘I was nearest the door; got seconded.’

‘And Jay gave you my ex-directory number, just like that?’

‘I didn’t know it was X-D, sir. He just told me to call it.’

‘And?’

‘And to ask you to meet him at Infirmary Street Baths, as soon as possible.’

‘That’s how he put it?’

The PC hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘Actually, sir, he said, “Tell him to get his arse along to Infirmary Street Baths, now.” Those were his exact words.’

I cut off my retort, just before it left my mouth. Alex was watching me, with a frown on her face. ‘In that case, Constable McGuire,’ I replied instead, ‘. . . what’s your first name?’

‘Mario, sir.’

‘Now there’s an odd mixture.’

‘Father Irish, mother Italian.’

‘Indeed? Well, Mario, please give Detective Superintendent Jay my compliments and tell him that my arse is going nowhere until he calls me himself and gives me a good reason why it should.’

‘Will do, sir.’ Something in the lad’s tone hinted that he would enjoy it too.

‘And one other thing,’ I added.

‘I know, sir. Forget the number I just called.’

My daughter looked at me, a little anxiously, as I came back to my seat. ‘Can you do that?’ she asked. ‘He’s a superintendent and you’re only a chief inspector.’

‘Nobody’s “only” a chief inspector, love,’ I told her. ‘Nobody’s “only” anything. “Only” isn’t a word I like to tag on to people.’ That said, I could have added that if you made chief inspector at thirty-three . . . I’d held the rank for three years by that time . . . then somebody who’d taken twelve years longer to make super would know that at some point down the road he’d be calling you ‘sir’, and thus wouldn’t be taking too many liberties.

I didn’t say it, though; instead I concentrated on finishing my lasagne before the phone rang again. I felt myself grin as I wondered whether that young constable had the stones to deliver my message verbatim, suspecting that he did.

It didn’t take Jay too long. I was in the kitchen when he called; Alex picked up in the dining room, before I could stop her. She answered in the same way I did, number only, as I’d taught her.

‘Yes, my father is at home,’ I heard her say. ‘Who’s calling, please?’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry,’ she continued, switching into young woman mode and sounding frighteningly like her mother. ‘Either you tell me who you are or I hang up. That’s what my father says I should do with anonymous callers.’ She waited, taking the phone away from her ear slightly, as if she was getting ready to put it down. ‘Thank you,’ she said, eventually, then turned to look at me. ‘Dad, it’s Detective Superintendent Jay.’