her mother’s seventh diary, her record of the year in which she had turned twenty-one.
The page was headed December 31. Silently Alex read the final entry of the year.
‘Afterwards, we sat up in bed and ate Spaghetti Bolognese off big white plates. Now that, Robert, is what Myra calls bringing in the New Year with a bang!’
Alex closed the diary, put it back with the rest, put out the light, walked barefoot through to her bedroom, threw off her sweatshirt and her jeans and fell into bed. And there, alone in the darkness with her mother’s ghost, she cried, as if she would never stop.
49
He leaned down to kiss her, smiling. She made to pull away, but he held her head firm between his hands and did it anyway, a big wet one in the middle of her forehead.
She stared up at him puzzled. ‘What’s put the spring into your stride?’ Sarah asked, as she stepped newly- dressed into the garden where Bob had been playing with his son. ‘Got a new woman or something, or maybe an old one?’ For a second a shadow flickered across her face at her poor joke.
‘Sorry,’ she said, quickly. ‘No more cracks about Myra, I promise. It’s just that you seem happy, and I don’t think I like that.’
His smile vanished. ‘You don’t?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Do I?’ he asked. ‘Do you mean that I’m supposed to wander around like a lost sheep, just because you and I have got a problem?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I mean that I hoped you’d still be missing me a bit, rather than coming in here looking like the cat that got the canary.’ She gazed across the back garden at Fairyhouse Avenue, where Jazz stood in a playsuit, supported by a baby walker on wheels. It was a sunny morning, but there was a chill in the air which suggested that winter might be preparing a rearguard action against the change of seasons.
He looked sideways at her. ‘Whatever happens to us, I’ll always miss the way we were. Who knows, maybe we’ll get over this. But if we don’t nothing can take away how it was between us. Or can it?’
Still staring across the garden, she shook her head, very briefly.
‘The reason I’m smiling,’ he said, carrying on, ‘is because I’ve finally got my Mission, or Crusade, whatever you want to call it, under way. Yesterday, I had a look for the people with an interest, eighteen years ago, in killing me or getting me out of the way. I’ve narrowed it down to a very short list.
‘Today, I’m off on the track of hard evidence to support what I believe I saw in the car. If it exists, I know where to find it.
‘The thing is, now that I’m finally under way, I feel more focused than I have in months. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to prove anything, or bring a prosecution. Yet knowing will be enough; it’ll have to be if, as might be the case, the man behind it is dead.’ His face grew suddenly very dark. ‘Maybe that’s why I look happy. Maybe I’d rather have a dead culprit than have to live with the knowledge that whoever did it is still walking around. Maybe I couldn’t take that.’
He looked at the ground. ‘I’ve read the post mortem report. Myra was pregnant when she died. A boy.’
There was a long silence. Sarah walked across the garden and lifted Jazz out of the baby-walker. ‘Bob, I’m sorry. I can’t talk about this. It’s not just part of your past, but of your life today that I can’t be involved in. Call it jealousy if you like, but I can’t take that. I feel just as I would if you were having an affair. So if we have to talk, let’s make it about something else.
‘I heard noise last night up in Ravelston Dykes Road. What was it? Do you know?’
He nodded. ‘Andy called me at Gullane. We had a tip that some people were coming up from the south to kill Jackie Charles. We had the place staked out, but someone beat us to it. One of the visiting team was shot, and died on the way to hospital. The other two were abducted.’
She gasped with alarm. ‘None of our people was hurt, were they?’
‘No. They were too far away to be involved.’
‘What about the two men who were kidnapped?’
‘I don’t think they were going to a dinner party in the Caley Hotel. My guess is that sometime soon we’ll find two stiffs in Birmingham, gift-wrapped as a warning.’
‘That’s horrible! How did someone manage to beat you to them?’
He smiled, grimly. ‘That’s a good question. The God of the criminal works in devious and mysterious ways.
‘But there’s good news too. While we’re no nearer tracing the fire-raiser from last Wednesday, we have learned a few interesting things about the victim. And the net’s closing in on Jackie Charles too. Maggie and young Pye are going up to Peterhead today to put the frighteners on a witness who might help us nail his gopher, Dougie Terry.
‘If we get something on him that could earn him fifteen years, I’m hoping that Terry will give up Charles.’
She walked towards him, carrying their wriggling son. ‘That’s your real world, Bob, isn’t it. That’s where your heart lies.’
He reached out and ruffled James Andrew’s hair. ‘No Sarah,’ he said, sincerely, ‘but right now it’s all I feel that I have.’
‘What about him?’
‘He used to be ours. Now he’s yours and mine . . . big difference. Soon, like Alex, he’ll be his. That’s the way it is.’
50
‘Do you know what my Boss said, Evan?’
Maggie Rose smiled calmly across the table at the Vulture. They were in another room, on their second visit. This time there were no windows. This time Mulgrew had no chair. Instead he stood shackled, a menacing officer on either side of him and another in the doorway.
‘He said, “If that bastard doesn’t make a formal statement about the Jimmy Lee assault, and if he doesn’t give us the names of the other three men in McCartney’s team, I’ll make sure he does the rest of his time on Devil’s Island, or as near to it as I can get.”
‘He also said that if you do help us, he’ll try to find you a bedroom in Saughton with a sea view.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Your choice, hard man. What’s it to be?’
Mulgrew stood stock still for a second. Finally, he nodded very briefly.
‘Very sensible. Now, you admit that you were the decoy who stopped Jimmy Lee, although you took no part in the assault.’
‘Aye.’
‘But you saw it and you can say who was there?’
‘Aye.’
‘Okay. Name all five men in the team.’
The Vulture took a deep breath as if he was about to dive into a very deep pool. ‘There wis Ricky McCartney, Barney Cogan - though he’s deid now - Willie Easson, Willie Macintosh and Willie Kirkbride.’
‘An attack of the Willies, you might say,’ muttered Sammy Pye. Rose shot him a look.
‘When McCartney asked you to act as a decoy, what did he tell you? I mean Jimmy Lee was a local hero.’
‘He told me that Dougie Terry wanted him sorted. That he owed him money, and that he’d double-crossed him in that game he was supposed to fix. He said that Terry had had to shell out a lot of money to the Malaysian