have to live with that for the rest of my days. I’ve never been on a helicopter in my life; I just said that so I could be with you.’
‘Okay, love, that’s okay. It’s done with, and you were.’
‘The worst of it is, or maybe the best . . . I’m as confused as fuck and I don’t know . . . Stevie knew it perfectly well, and he still went along with it. Because that’s the sort of bloke he was.’
Sixty-three
‘How does he look?’ Her voice was flat, emotionless. ‘Tell me, Bob, I need to know, and his parents will too. Will I be able to look at him in his coffin, or will the lid have to be closed?’
McGuire replied to her question: ‘He’ll look asleep, Maggie.’
‘No, he won’t,’ she shot back sharply. ‘He’ll look dead.’
‘Yes, he will,’ Skinner conceded, intervening, ‘but unmarked, and that’s what you want to know. The grenade fragments that killed him went into his brain above the hairline; his protective jacket stopped the rest. Once an experienced undertaker’s been to work on him, you won’t see any wounds.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘for I’ll have to look at him regardless, and I wouldn’t want ever to remember him disfigured. He was such a lovely guy, in every respect.’
‘He was that,’ Paula Viareggio murmured. She looked as pale and shocked as Maggie.
‘Ray Wilding called from London,’ Maggie carried on, ‘after you two left. Neil took the call, but I spoke to him. The poor guy was practically hysterical. He kept saying that he should have been with him, but that Stevie had let him stay down there.’ Her face split into a strange, twisted smile. ‘If I know him, he’ll have pulled somebody, and Stevie’s left him to get on with it.’
‘He’s on his way back up,’ Neil McIlhenney told Skinner. ‘He was still with their Met liaison officer when Singh found him. He told me later that she’d got him on to the last plane out of Stansted and that she was taking him there.’
‘That’s good. He’ll need to do a report on what happened down there. I’ll speak to him in the morning: Mario and I will need as much information as we can get for the press briefing.’
‘Stevie saved my life,’ said Maggie, from the couch.
‘I remember,’ McGuire told her, ‘the time that low-life attacked you with a blade, and he took him apart.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I was talking about much more than that, when I was on the road to dying, only nobody knew. The job might have been going all right, on the surface at least, but away from it, I was lower than I’d ever been.’ Her eyes darted to Paula. ‘I’m not getting at Mario, or at you. That was meant to be, and I know it. But things happened to me.’ She looked at McGuire and McIlhenney. ‘You guys know what I mean.
‘For a while I thought I’d never get over them. I’d go home, and some nights I’d drink myself to sleep, then be up next day as if everything was hunky-dory, only it wasn’t. I began to develop a vision of getting in one night, turning on the gas and forgetting to light it.
‘That would have happened too, sooner or later, but for Stevie. He was kind to me; he made me start to care about myself again. He was always a friend, before he was anything else. When he became more than that, it wasn’t him that made the running, it was me, but when we did get together, completely, my life just lit up in a way it never had before. Even though he’s dead, that’ll never change,’ she glanced down, at her lap, ‘thanks to this wee one in here.’
Bob Skinner gazed at her and, inside, felt himself begin to buckle. ‘Maggie,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose you’re going to sleep, but you do need to rest. Mario and Paula are going to stay with you tonight.’
‘That’s okay, really. I’ll manage.’
‘Sure, but you don’t have to,’ Paula told her. ‘A team of Clydesdales wouldn’t drag me out of here.’
‘That’s settled,’ Skinner went on. ‘I’ll be back in the morning, and I’ll make arrangements with my opposite number in Northumbria for Stevie to be brought up here. When you speak to his family again, let them know that. The chief plans to visit them tomorrow, and you too.’
‘That’s good of him. Stevie’s dad will be pleased. You know he was a police officer?’
‘Superintendent Steele, Fife Constabulary? Of course I knew; I met him, years ago. See you in the morning, love.’ He nodded his farewell to the two men and to Paula and was leaving when Maggie pushed herself to her feet and walked with him, through the unlit hall to the front door.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she told him quietly. ‘Everything will be all right . . . or as all right as it can be.’
He was glad that it was dark, and that she could not see his eyes.
He left the big, handsome house, and slid into his car, oddly grateful for its familiarity, and comforted by it. Finally, he switched on the engine, and drove out of Gordon Terrace, towards the centre of the city, and its Saturday-night bustle. He headed through Newington, across the bridges, past the Balmoral and the King James, then along the length of York Place and Queen Street, until finally he found the rear entrance to Bute House, the official residence of the First Minister.
As always, the door was guarded by armed officers. They saluted and let him in without a word; he could tell by their grim faces that word of the tragedy had spread through the ranks. For a moment he thought of calling Alex, who had known Stevie well, but decided against it. If Griff Montell broke the news, that was okay by him.
He climbed the back stairway, up to the private quarters; on the way he heard voices from the dining room, but carried on, in no way tempted to make a late entrance. Instead he went into the small kitchen and took a beer from the fridge, part of a private stock that he had put there.
He had almost finished his third, in the dark, staring through the window at the gloaming in the north, when the door opened behind him and Aileen de Marco slipped into the sitting room. ‘How was it?’ she asked him quietly.
‘Awful, my love, awful,’ he replied. ‘It always is.’
Sixty-four
‘You were right,’ Maggie told him, as she handed him a mug of coffee, in the big kitchen. ‘I didn’t get any sleep. I did all I could to rest, but I spent most of the night padding about down here, with that line from Shakespeare running through my head, that voice crying, “Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep.” It’s weird, you know; I know that from now on every time I think of that man, that bastard, that Ballester, I’ll think of William fucking Shakespeare. And I’ve always hated that bloody play.’
She had given him the coffee automatically, without asking whether he wanted it or not, from a filter machine. Skinner accepted it, though, and took a swig; it tasted as if it had been standing on the warming plate for hours. She caught his expression. ‘Is that crap?’ she asked. ‘I made it for Paula and Mario. I’ll do a fresh lot.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ he lied. ‘When did they leave?’
She glanced up at the kitchen clock; it showed ten minutes to eleven. ‘About an hour ago. I made them go home. They must have had precious little sleep either. He looked like a zombie and I heard Paula crying well into the night. She went out with Stevie, remember, when we were all younger and I was married to Mario? Life’s just so fucking random, isn’t it?’ She paused. ‘Listen to me, Bob, swearing like a trooper. I must cut it out before Stevie’s parents get here. His mum’s very churchy and his dad can be a bit straight-backed too.’
‘When are they due?’
‘Mr Steele said they’d be here for lunch. He was going to bring it, but I told him not to: I’ve been cooking for hours, to pass the time. They’re going to stay tonight.’
‘Good,’ said Skinner. ‘When they arrive, you’ll be able to tell them that I’ve spoken to Les Cairns. Stevie’s body will be released tomorrow morning. You can countermand this if you like, but there’s an undertaker we use on occasions like this; I’ve instructed them to go and collect him, early as they can, and to take him to their premises in Fountainbridge. When you’re ready, their funeral director will come to you, and you can begin arrangements.’
‘I’ll go to them,’ she declared. ‘I want to see him.’
‘In that case, I’ll have a car collect you whenever you’re ready: it’ll wait for you and bring you home.’
