Gallagher.
Ringing.
‘Hello, DI Gallagher.’
‘It’s Rob.’
There was a stalled breath’s silence on the other end of the line, ‘Hello, Rob.’
Brennan toyed with the idea of demanding a sir, let it pass. ‘I’m going over your file on Fiona Gow here…’
Gallagher cut in, ‘Oh aye, definite links I’d say.’
‘You would, if you were angling to take the case off me, Jim.’ Brennan let his remark sting. ‘And you are, aren’t you?’
Gallagher wheezed, ‘Look, it’s nothing personal, Rob…’
‘ Sir.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll have the proper honorific, since I am leading this investigation.’
‘Yes, sir…’
Brennan knew he’d made it clear that he had Gallagher’s number, felt content to change direction. ‘Anyway, this file… a bit light isn’t it?’
‘Well, the lab reports are with the Chief Super… And there’s a profiler’s report on my desk but, truth is, we never really dug up that much.’
‘You’re not kidding, Jim.’
The line fizzed, then, ‘Well there would be a reason for that, which I think you know.’
‘Enlighten me.’
‘I think we have a serial killer on our hands, and they don’t get that tag because they’re easy to find, sir…’
A car revved on the street outside, Brennan put the phone to his other ear, ‘Nothing in this life comes easy, Jim. We’d have a damn sight more serial killers if it wasn’t for the likes of us. But let’s not get carried away with the terminology — Pettigrew’s meeting us at the morgue tomorrow at 7 a.m.; get yourself down there and let’s see what he turns up.’
Chapter 13
DI Rob Brennan had reached the stage where it no longer mattered what life threw at him. It couldn’t affect who he was any more. There was a time, he still remembered it, when life’s defeats and disappointments — the hurts and the devastations — felled him. It all seemed strange now — why? He was still here, after all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. None of his woes had killed him; killed a part of him, yes. He had lost the ability to feel wounded, hurt; they seemed like futile emotions to him now — like something children went through, not grown men. Not, for certain, police officers; men like him.
So what did that make Rob Brennan — insensitive? He didn’t think so, that part of him hadn’t changed. He still loved his daughter, nurtured fond memories of the brother he had lost. It was another part of him that had changed — the part that he showed to the outside world. His carapace had hardened. He knew this made him look insensitive, loutish to some, but there was nothing he could do about it. The act, the process itself, was instinctual. When he thought about it, he wondered if there was any real point to it. He could no longer feel, he could no longer be hurt, so why put up the shell? He surmised, after careful thought, and having assessed the trait in others, that it wasn’t for his benefit; it was for the rest of the world. Brennan’s outward subfusc was a warning flag, a marker for those who thought to seek the sympathies of a fellow traveller on life’s road: not here, it yelled. Move away, try someone else. If that was the case, so be it, he thought; we all wore masks anyway, at least his honestly reflected reality, as he saw it.
Brennan lay in the sagging bed, staring at the nicotine-stained ceiling of his bedsit. It was a high ceiling, hinted at an opulent past life before subdivision and the looting of architraves and ornate, wrought-iron fireplaces. He pitched himself on his elbow, glanced towards the billowing curtains, blowing in what appeared to be a breeze but could only be a draught because he hadn’t opened the window. He stared at the waves and folds in the fabric for a moment, surmised a fierce wind blowing across Leith Walk was to blame.
He sighed, a long deep sigh that seemed to come from the core of him; it caught him unawares. Was he so surprised to be here? There had been many times when he had thought of leaving Joyce, if he was honest with himself he had only stayed because of Sophie. Their lives had become separated — as much as any two lives could be whilst living under the same roof. It didn’t faze him to say goodbye to all of that. The house, the car, the family holidays; they all meant nothing to him. He didn’t need anything. Even as he looked around the dingy bedsit he could only regale himself with the complete lack of comfort. Why did he need any of it?
Brennan felt like he had jumped from a slowly-moving train and he was now lying at the side of the tracks watching the carriages snake past. He recognised all the carriages, they were the accoutrements of success and fulfilment and yet, to him, they were all empty. He was happy to watch them fade into the distance, pass over the horizon towards a destination he would never reach. He wondered why he had ever chosen to get on the train at all, but he dismissed the thought at once. He wasn’t the man who had made those decisions; when he looked back at the Rob Brennan of the past, he hardly recognised him. Who was he? Really? Who was this man who had joined the police force? Because he had decided the fate of both of them — the young and the old Rob Brennan — and now one questioned the other’s motives.
Brennan rose quickly, ran water in the tiny stainless-steel sink and splashed it on his face. He straightened himself, ran the splayed fingers of his hands through his hair. For a moment he stood in front of the tiny cracked mirror and stared at himself.
‘Thinking like that, now that would never do, Rob…’
He was being pulled down by his own thoughts. He knew the mind loved to show you your flaws, to take you back to past mistakes and flash snapshots of more to come in future. It had to be halted, distracted.
Brennan pulled his trousers from the arm of the chair and fitted himself into them. The suitcases were still closed, he reached for the nearest one and raised it onto the table, opened up. Inside the clothes sat in a jumble.
‘Fucking hell…’
He shook his head. As he rummaged for a shirt he realised how ridiculous he had been. What did he expect? Joyce to have freshly laundered, neatly ironed and folded his clothes? It was laughable. He had been thrown out by his wife and the sooner he came to that realisation, and what it meant, the better. There was no point going over it, trying to locate the triggers. They were unhappy. He had strayed and she had found out. That was it. Delving any further into the matter was a worthless exercise. He had to move on.
Brennan was smacked awake by the brewery fumes on Montgomery Street as he left the stairwell. He had heard there was only one brewery left in Edinburgh and longed for it to go the way of the others. When he was a child, his brother had hated trips to Edinburgh because of the brewery stench. The smell always made Brennan think of the past, of Andy, and he resented the incursion bitterly.
The car started first time and Brennan engaged the clutch, pulled out. The streets were surprisingly empty; he was not used to getting anywhere in the city easily, least of all by car. At the end of Montgomery Street he turned onto the Walk and was in second gear by the roundabout; there was no need to stop and he progressed past the John Lewis store, checking out a billboard for a new movie as he went.
The morgue was located in the Old Town, the hotchpotch of pends and wynds that huddled around the foot of the castle. Brennan felt out of place in this part of town, it felt too touristy, too synthetic. It was where out-of- towners came to sample whisky and take photographs of themselves in See-You-Jimmy wigs. He didn’t think anybody lived there, there were flats and there were new apartments, but they were rentals surely. There was certainly no local pub, no community spirit. It was an empty, vapid place; the perfect location for the morgue.
Brennan rounded the High Street, swung into the chicane that sat between the Parliament and the palace of Holyrood; on the next bend he spotted the granite massif of Arthur’s Seat, swathed in a morning mist.
DS Stevie McGuire was already sitting out front when Brennan pulled up. He rolled up his window and got out
