Henderson saw she was still spaced, had no clue what day of the week it was never mind anything else. How could he put her out to work in a couple of hours like that. Who’d pay for it?
He rose from the wicker chair; it seemed to stick to him as he got up and he turned on his heels and kicked out, the chair went flying across the room. ‘Right, come on, get yourself up,’ he yelled.
‘What?’
‘You fucking heard, you’re not lying in that pit any longer, get your fucking self up or I’ll get you up.’
Angela’s head dropped to the pillow. It was like incitement to Henderson. He reached over her and grabbed a handful of her dirty blonde hair. She screamed out as he yanked her to her knees in one firm jerk.
‘You not fucking hear me, or what?’
‘Hendy… Stop.’
‘Are you ignoring me, eh? That it?’
She raised her hands to his, screamed out again. ‘Stop it, that hurts!’
Henderson bunched a fist, ‘I’ll give you fucking hurts in a minute, if you’re not on those feet and walking the fucking Links.’
Angela dragged herself up; Henderson released his grip. For a moment she stood, naked, in front of him and then she crossed her hands over her breasts.
‘Oh come on for fuck’s sake, I’ve seen it before, along with half of fucking Leith.’
Angela looked away, turned for the door. She was unsteady on her feet, balancing herself on the walls with the palms of her hands as she went.
‘Where are you off to?’
‘I need the toilet.’
‘You better not have any gear in there… I want you out on the streets tonight.’
She slammed the bathroom door behind her and Henderson slumped on the mattress. As he landed he felt something pressing in his back pocket; he clasped his cigarette in his mouth and reached round to remove the little mauve-coloured diary. He was still reading it as Angela returned. She had put on a short black dress; she didn’t speak when she saw him reading.
‘I understand, you know,’ said Henderson.
‘What?’
He kept turning the pages as he spoke, ‘About what happened with this teacher guy.’
Angela looked out the window. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘Oh, but we have to.’ He removed the cigarette, pointed the tip of it at Angela, ‘We very definitely have to talk about him, Ange.’
Her shoulders rose and fell, then she looked at the nails on her hands for a moment before bunching fists. ‘I can’t… that’s why I gave you the diary. I just can’t talk about it.’
Henderson pitched himself on one elbow; he knew he was going to have to draw what he needed out of her. He had to be cautious; if he scared her, she might bolt and she had something that was valuable to him now. ‘I never told anybody this before, Ange…’ He paused, looked at the tip of his cigarette.
‘Told anybody what?’
He looked up, met her eyes. He knew his voice had started to quiver. ‘What you got me to read here… It happened to me too.’
She shook her head, ‘It couldn’t have.’
‘I mean, not the way you describe it, but…’ Henderson got off his elbow, sat upright on the mattress, leaned his back on the wall. He started to tell her about his own experience, the one he had locked away. When he had finished, Angela was staring at him with doleful eyes.
‘What happened to him?’ she said.
Henderson got up, went to the other side of the room and took out another cigarette from the packet of Club; he offered one to Angela. ‘He died.’ The words came out flat, cold.
‘How?’
Henderson shrugged, ‘Does it matter? He’s dead. And my mam’s dead as well so who’s left to fucking tell.’
Angela lit her cigarette. She inhaled the smoke deep into her lungs and then released it quickly. ‘I’m sorry about that, but what’s it got to do with me?’
Henderson moved in front of her, placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘I never got the chance to pay the bastard back… But yours you can.’
‘How?’
He pointed to his chest, ‘With me… I can sort the fucker out.’
Angela turned her gaze to the floor, ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with him. He’s as good as dead to me too…’
A huff, loud tut.
‘Ange, it’s not about you… Or me even. Remember what we saw on the telly the other night, this bastard could still be at it. You want that on your conscience, eh?’
She got up, walked over to the window and started to press the cigarette to her lips. He could see he hadn’t got through to her, she wasn’t interested. Henderson felt the desperation of his situation attach to him like a stranglehold.
‘Ange…’
‘ What?’ she snapped.
‘You hearing me?’
‘Aye…’
‘Well, what do you say?’
She turned to face him. ‘What the fuck do you want me to say, Hendy?’
He crossed the floor, placed a hand on her shoulder. There was only one thing she had to say; if she didn’t he’d have to rethink his plans. ‘Just tell me where to get hold of the bastard. That’s all. I’ll take care of the rest.’
Chapter 18
DI Rob Brennan knew his problem: he wouldn’t play the game. He would never be one of those who faded into the background, became part of the office furniture. It was easy for them — the type that had no conscience or guilt attached to playing the game. Kissing the boss’s arse or denying their true thoughts and emotions were their primary responses. To Brennan, each time he succumbed was like a death in him. A part of what made him, gave him strength, simply collapsed; imploded with the defeat. He knew he had always fought back, but he wondered: with enough attacks on him — in quick succession — could he be felled? Just fold; never come back. Life was all about the blows, about the myriad knocks and how you took them. He knew it would be easier to be a wimp — a drone — but it wasn’t in him. Brennan couldn’t deny who he was and so the fear, the worry of the time-bomb going off inside him, remained. He carried it everywhere and lived in the constant presence of its slow tick, tick, tick.
Gallagher wasn’t the first to try and put one over on him; Brennan had been on the force long enough to have outmanoeuvred more than one like him. They didn’t know what they were taking on — it was no game to him. When the job is burned so deeply into a soul, it becomes more than the sum of its parts. It was more than an occupation, a vocation even, to Brennan. It was his life. He had sacrificed so much to the job that he no longer knew where the job began or ended. It was all the job. The job was everything.
He tried to put himself in Gallagher’s mindset, imagine what being on this murder squad meant to the DI. He hadn’t once heard him voice a sympathetic word for the victim, her family. Brennan knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything — there were others on the force, younger than Gallagher, who had learned to bury their emotions deep. But somehow, he had never found himself questioning anyone else’s compassion; it was assumed. With Gallagher there was a lack, a want. It wasn’t a clinical disengagement either, like he had seen the morgue workers adopt; it was as if the emotion was absent. The thought sat like a marker in Brennan’s mind; to him the job was inseparable from his emotions, instincts, feelings — he relied on them to make his way through every case. People
