‘Sorry?’
‘I know all about this kind of thing, Wendy Cuthbertson’s mum and dad split up in, like, third year… And Claire’s split up last year. I was beginning to wonder what was taking you so long.’
Brennan removed his spoon from the cup, looked for a saucer to place it in but found he didn’t have one. ‘I don’t know why, but I expected you to be a bit more…’
‘Broken up?… No.’ She spooned a layer of foam from the top of her latte, smiled, ‘It’s no biggie.’
Brennan constantly found himself blindsided by his daughter; Wullie had once remarked that he thought each generation he’d seen had got softer; as Brennan listened to his daughter’s assessment of his marriage break-up he wondered if the opposite wasn’t true. She seemed unmoved by the event.
‘I’m not sure that’s how your mum and I feel…’
Sophie rolled eyes, ‘Mum’s neurotic at the best of times.’
Brennan made sure to keep his expression clear, he was not getting into an exchange of insults with his daughter behind his wife’s back, even if she was right. Joyce did indeed live on her nerves.
‘But anyway, when I saw you at the school, do you know what I thought?’
Brennan shook his head, ‘No, what?’
‘I thought you were here about that girl that got murdered.’
‘Lindsey Sloan.’
‘Yes, that’s her… Everyone’s talking about it at school.’
The DI felt himself shift uncomfortably on his chair, he was uneasy about discussing the case with his daughter; it didn’t seem right. He did, however, feel a pull towards the possibility that there might be something to be gained from her. All information, even gossip, had to be weighed up on a murder investigation. ‘And what are they saying?’
Sophie rolled her eyes again, she had her mother’s eyes, large and round. ‘Oh, just stuff… I don’t think anybody knew her, except the teachers, she was years older.’
The DI felt some relief that Sophie was distanced from the case, ‘I see.’
‘Yeah, but, everybody’s getting lifts to school and picked up… They’ll think that’s why you were there.’
Brennan knew the facts of the case and knew that parents, and the public in general, were liable to become irrational when a crime touched their lives. None of them seemed to comprehend that it is out there all the time — every single minute of every single day. ‘I think that’s a bit of an over-reaction, she wasn’t killed at school.’
Sophie had exhausted her attention span. ‘I’ve finished my coffee.’
‘Well, would you like another?’
She looked across to the counter, ‘No, I don’t think so.’
Brennan put his hands around his cup, swirled the remains of his coffee. ‘Look, Sophie, the reason I came here was to tell you that everything’s going to be OK.’ She looked nonplussed. ‘What I mean is, just because your mum and I are splitting, doesn’t mean we won’t both be around for you.’
Her eyes darted from counter to window, then back to her cup. She lifted it, started to pour out the last dregs of liquid onto a paper napkin.
‘Sophie, do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. It’s important to me… And your mum.’
‘Can I go home now?’
Brennan put down his cup, waved to the door. ‘After you.’
Chapter 21
As DI Rob Brennan pulled into the Corstorphine street he once shared with his family he felt his emotions eddying inside him. At his side, his daughter stared wearily out the car window, barely covering her desire to be free of him and return to the lone sanctuary of her bedroom. She went there to block out reality, drowned out the world with music. He knew Joyce would be waiting for her to return, they hadn’t been long — just one quick coffee — but it would be enough to set her off. His wife had made her position clear, the trench had been dug at their daughter and Brennan had encroached on her territory. He watched as Sophie gnawed on her scalloped nails, she was oblivious to the coming changes in her life; perhaps it was for the best. Brennan envied her insouciance.
The DI brought the car to a halt, said, ‘Right, you’re home.’
Sophie smiled, ‘So we are.’ She leant forward to retrieve her bag from the floor. ‘Bye then.’
‘Look, love, if you need anything, even just to talk, then give me a call.’
She nodded, gripped her bag. ‘Mum’s waiting.’
Joyce stood at the doorway with arms akimbo; Brennan knew it was a stance reserved for him. He made to wave, got as far as raising his hand from the steering wheel as his wife turned away, moved inside the house.
‘Remember, call anytime. OK?’
‘Bye, Dad.’
He engaged the clutch, found first gear and pulled out. At Shandwick Place the city streets filled with a slow, somnambulant trail of office drones. They slopped down the pavement in silent procession towards home and freedom from the workaday world. Brennan knew life was toil — endless hours given over to mundanity and minutiae. He knew his life was; the job wasn’t all high-speed car chases and adrenaline rushes like Hollywood portrayed.
From an early age the importance of work — the concept, the philosophy — and the consequences of going without work had been drilled into Brennan like a Calvinist dirge. His father had known no better — he had lived all his days to slave away, save the pennies and stay in work. There was no greater achievement on Earth to him. He had longed for Brennan to go into the family firm, but his eldest son had resisted, left that honour to his brother. Andy had resented him for it and he wondered if he had made another choice how different things would have been between them.
As he thought of his father, he knew he was lost now in retirement. Leisure time was wasted on him; the subtle joys of art, music, literature, of a film or even sport didn’t interest him. Work, toil had been his all and any suggestion of an alternative to that assumption was treated with scorn, contempt. Brennan knew there was more to life. There was a whole other world out there that had been denied to him and that he wanted to explore. He had adopted his father’s values at an early stage and — despite his antipathy to them — made them his values. He’d simply assumed so many of those formative influences that it was only now with age and experience that he could see where he went wrong.
Brennan now wondered if he really wanted to continue in life as a policeman. Had it only been a subconscious act of rebellion? A move to disturb his father, and yet at once conform to his code of ethics? It was his age, and awareness, that made him think these thoughts. He knew at its root was his unhappiness: he was seeking an explanation for it. Was there one? Were there many? Brennan knew the cards were stacked against him — there was no alternative really. Had he rejected his father’s doctrine and taken another path, surely he would have arrived at the same point. For people like him, life was thrown at you in clumps; it was about taking the small knocks in the hope of avoiding the bigger ones. Lassitude and draining of the soul as though it were a weeping sore were the trade off his father taught him you paid against penury and ignominy. You took the repetition day after day, faced it like a man, because it’s what you are conditioned to do. When your senses, your intellect rebelled, you quashed them with alcohol, drugs, sugary foods or created distractions with football, boxing or car-crash television. In time, it became a routine, a coping mechanism. He knew the urges and wants remained, but the fight for them was lost so long ago that they were conceded without struggle.
Brennan knew he wasn’t alone in feeling this way. It was the human condition — a malady specific to this point in the evolution of the race. We were nothing more than a brooding, amorphous mass of discontent. The streets ran to overflowing with evidence of it and that was why Brennan knew he had no alternative but to carry on, day in and day out. Much as he despised his station, it had grown to define him; perhaps there was nothing else to him now.
The DI had toyed with the idea of dropping into the office to check on the progress of the squad but dismissed the notion outright; if there had been any developments they would have called. He knew he headed back
