the office.
‘Shit.’
He would have to call back, but decided on a quick shower before he did so. As he walked to the en suite he could still hear Joyce and Sophie rowing in the kitchen below. His daughter should have been at school by now, there was no way she would be anything but late. He could already hear Joyce telling him in that hard, demanding tone to ‘speak to your daughter’. He had done too much of that already. She needed something, but it wasn’t speaking to.
In the bathroom Brennan started the shower. He looked at himself in the mirror and contemplated running a razor over his stubbled chin but the thought was enough to discourage him. He stuck out his tongue — a grey-white layer of velvet sat on the surface. As he stared he could smell the malt whisky seeping through his pores. Did it matter? It did if Galloway thought to call him on it. She never had, but after recent run-ins with the Chief Super nothing would surprise him. He replayed yesterday’s words with her, and then the encounter with Lauder in the toilets. It felt like there was a storm coming. He didn’t know which direction it was going to arrive from but it was imminent. He let the thought trail off; he did this on purpose. Brennan knew that his main focus was the job. When he was working a case like this — no matter what else was going on in his life — if he left his thoughts to run their own course they always came back to the case. Even in the bad times, the worst times, when he was low and lost, he had always been sure of that one irrefutable fact. The job was his life and everything else was a distraction.
Brennan showered and dressed. He chose a navy blazer to match the grey chino-style slacks he still wore. He knew they were no longer fashionable, but he didn’t care. He was carrying a little more weight than he had in the past and the wider leg and pleats were comfortable. There had been a time when he had been a keen follower of the latest styles, but the older he got, the less it had meant to him. Fashion was an irrelevance, for trivial minds. Brennan occupied his thoughts with serious issues — the width of a trouser leg was something for other people to worry about.
In the kitchen Sophie ignored her father, as she always did these days. She was eating a piece of toast and watching the moronic presenters on breakfast television dissecting the weekend’s X Factor talent contest. Brennan hugged her. She pulled away, rolling her eyes.
‘You might try speaking to your daughter,’ Joyce greeted him in her usual way.
‘Good morning, Sophie darling.’ He knew he was using the girl as some form of emotional ammunition.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ snapped Joyce. Her face had set hard already. The dew was still on the grass and Joyce was moaning, thought Brennan.
‘What would you like me to say to her?’
‘Well, how about why are you not going to school?’
Brennan mimicked her: ‘Why are you not going to school?’ He paused, added, ‘Sophie darling.’
The girl kept her eyes focused on the television screen, said, ‘I don’t feel well.’
Brennan turned towards his wife, repeating, ‘She doesn’t feel well.’ It was their first exchange of the day and already he knew that the next one would be no improvement.
Joyce turned away, went to the kitchen sink and turned the tap on to fill an empty pot. When the water was tipping over the brim, she turned the tap the other way. She dropped cutlery and other household items on top of the pot. Each one clanged loudly, each one echoed her mood.
Brennan started to fasten his tie, to pocket his keys and coins from the counter. Joyce turned. ‘If she’s going to stay off school, allegedly sick, then she can at least tidy her room… Have you seen the state of her room?’
Brennan wasn’t given an opportunity to answer: Sophie stood up, glowered at her mother and stated, ‘Why should I tidy my room when the whole world’s a mess?’
Joyce put her hands on her hips, turned to her husband. ‘Are you going to let her talk to me like that?’
Brennan shrugged. ‘She has a point.’ He walked out the door.
In the car he contemplated calling in to the office but figured he would be there soon enough anyway. If there were any important developments he would find out when he got in.
The roads were heavy with traffic again. Cyclists weaved in and out of the bus lanes and made gestures at drivers when they thought they were being denied ample road space. The commute to the station always seemed like a worthless task to Brennan. All time spent travelling was like intellectual and emotional stasis for the detective. He had never been able to adhere to the adage that it was better to travel than to arrive. Travel was dead time; arrival was all about the commencement of action, and Brennan was all about the action. By Ravelston Dykes he had started to drum his fingers on the wheel. He had tried to go over things in his mind that he had to do, but he knew the landscape shifted so quickly that any assessment he made of the current situation could have changed by the time he reached the office. He still felt the girl was local; his instinct was to question the teenager, Trish Brown, and see what she really knew. He hoped McGuire had got onto that like he had told him.
At Fettes station, Brennan put the car into second gear and rolled the VW Passat into the nearest parking space. As he got out of the driver’s door he reminded himself that he was going into the bear pit. He needed to have his wits about him and he needed to be aware of the potential dangers. There was more than one person in the station who would be cheering his downfall. The thought of thwarting their attempts was enough to make him grin at the challenge.
At the front door Charlie looked up over the News.
‘Hey, Rob, come here.’
Brennan walked over to the counter as Charlie lowered the paper. ‘Morning, Charl.’
‘Aye, fuck that. You seen this rag?’
The DI glanced at the paper’s front page: they had splashed on the murder. The headline read: ANOTHER BRUTAL MURDER. The picture was of the alleyway,
artfully strapped off with blue-and-white crime scene tape. In the subheading the newspaper claimed: POLICE BAFFLED BY GIRL’S KILLING.
Brennan sighed, threw down the paper.
‘She’s seen this, I take it?’
Charlie furrowed his brow. ‘What do you think?’ He pointed at the paper. ‘She’s after the Chief Constable’s job, y’know… She’s not going to like this kind of thing blotting her CV.’
Brennan turned back to the paper, clocking the reporter’s byline: Aylish Dunn. He stored it away then took to the stairs, thought: Will the day get any better?
At the top of the steps he unbuttoned his jacket and loosened his tie. The temperature in the building was always too high but he imagined it had gone up a couple of notches this morning. As he walked through CID there was little of the usual chatter. He could see ahead into the door of Incident Room One. There were a few people standing around chatting but he couldn’t see DC Stephen McGuire. Brennan managed a few steps closer to the incident room when he heard the door of the Chief Super’s office open. As he turned he caught sight of Galloway. ‘Rob, a moment.’
He thought she looked stressed, hair pulled back tight — it wasn’t a look he had seen on her before and it worried him. As he got closer to her office he could see McGuire in there, sitting down. The DC looked even worse than Galloway did.
As Brennan entered the office, the Chief Super closed the door behind him. The blinds had already been shut. He looked down to where McGuire was sitting but the DC kept his gaze front. There was a copy of the News on the desk in front of him.
‘Right, Rob, glad you’re here.’
He wondered if this was sarcasm.
‘Oh, yes.’ He pulled out the chair next to McGuire, sat. ‘Morning, Stevie.’
‘Sir.’
The Chief Super walked round to the other side of the desk, smoothing her hair as she went. ‘There’s been some developments…’ She sat down and opened a blue folder on her desk.
‘There has?’
She looked up; her eyes widened. ‘We tried to contact you. Was your phone off?’
‘No, I, erm…’ Brennan knew he was squirming, ‘I missed a call.’
‘Never heard of calling back?’
‘I was on the way to the office.’
