psychological damage you could have done to our daughter?’
Brennan tutted into the phone, it came out as a more guttural noise than he intended, but he wasn’t entirely dissatisfied with the effect. ‘Jesus Christ, woman… Will you listen to yourself? I took my daughter for coffee, one coffee and I delivered her to the door.’ He paused, ‘And, I have to say, she was in fine form when I left her…’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means what it means.’
Joyce’s voice broke bluntly, ‘I see…’ She at once seemed to sense the futility of her situation. ‘Well I called to tell you I will not tolerate anything like that in future… If you want access to my daughter you can apply through the courts.’
‘Sophie is our daughter, Joyce.’ A cat ran from a shaded wynd as Brennan waited for his wife’s reply; none came. ‘Joyce?…’
She had hung up.
The memory of the night he had met Joyce had grown opaque now. There had been a party, one of the weekly crop of them that had sprung up that long summer of his early twenties. At some point they had got chatting — he seemed to think it was in the kitchen, but that might have been maturity rearranging memory for conveni-ence sake; hadn’t all his party appearances convened in the kitchen? She wore her hair up and had a beautiful, slender neck that he had longed to kiss, that much was credible fact. He stored the image of her like a daguerreotype and brought it out when he had mourned its passing. Joyce was no longer the clubbable, girly party- goer, was no longer smooth skinned or supple necked. He wasn’t so superficial a man as to be swayed by her physical diminution — what plagued Brennan was the boy who had once been stripped of all reason, all sense, by the sight of a pretty girl. What he saw now was the vision of Joyce laid bare — the subcutaneous woman — and that was something he had failed to notice on their early encounters.
There was a harshness in Joyce, not a meanness of spirit exactly but a nagging, dispiriting malaise at the singular unfairness of life. He had wondered — had it always been there, his wife’s bitterness? Or, had it been a late surfacing — perhaps even brought about by a sense of lack at their own station in life, or, indeed, her own reassessment of her poor early judgement. But he dismissed this. That was Brennan the detective doing his due diligence; Joyce’s underlying angst, her enmity, had always been there. The markers were not hard to find. He could recall cutting, carping comments directed at their social circle that had irritated him at first. They sprouted in sparse patches like paving weeds — unsightly, certainly unwelcome, but always overlooked. As her opinions became entrenched, became a dogma she preached, the weeds proliferated. There was no point in him passing his own remarks — lobbing rejoinders — he had admitted early on he couldn’t compete. His spleen wasn’t strong enough for the counter-attack, and when attacked — when faced with her insensitivity — the issue itself became an irrelevance, bawled out by the censure of a caterwauling harpy. The weed-skirted edges of their existence had soon been supplanted by rainforests of animosity — dark and impenetrable lands that swallowed up even the strongest of constitutions.
When he thought about it, about Joyce and the choice he had made to marry her, Brennan was perplexed now. He had seen the signs — even as an inexperienced, naive young man — and yet he’d avowed himself to her. He had willingly signed up for a life of misery and discontent, wilfully ignorant of the roaring sirens warning him to get out of the way. Should he regret it now? Should he regret any of his erroneous, hasty, foolhardy decisions taken in his youth? Yes, he thought — but also — no. He could mourn the lost lives he may have lived. The happy, fulfilled, sun-lit, soft-focused days that played on the screen of his mind like ruddy-cheeked children were phantoms. They no more existed in reality than wishes. He was where he was and nothing could change that. Not now. Decoupling from Joyce had been the rational thing to do but — he knew in retrospect — rational thought was not the proclivity of a young man.
Brennan looked out to the grey-purple wash of the sky, and sighed. He reached for the door handle, opened the car and stepped out; some fragments of red tail-light glass crushed under his shoes as he walked to the edge of the road and lit a cigarette. A loud motorbike roared past, dragging his attention back to the present.
He cursed out, ‘Fucking hell.’
Brennan inhaled deep on the cigarette; at first his breathing felt constricted but then the anodyne rush of nicotine worked its way into his lungs. He exhaled slowly through his nostrils, looked towards the burning tip of the cigarette. He knew his mind was cartwheeling; was it the job? His life? He ran a hand through his hair and sighed as he stubbed out the remainder of the cigarette and returned to the car. Inside he sat with the door open for a bit, his head leaning back. He knew he needed to refocus, he needed to get his mind on the job, the case; he had let far too many infinitesimal distractions take him from his aim lately. He sat forward, rested his brow on the rim of the steering wheel for a moment; a damp patch stared back at him as he withdrew it. What was going on? What was happening to him? Brennan had never questioned his career choice before, he had never felt the weariness that now settled on him. He wondered where this uncertainty, this questioning of his lot had come from, and, where was it leading? The answer to the last part of the question scalded him; he knew there was no place on the force for someone who was conflicted like him, the job required more. But how could he give it his full attention when his life was imploding?
A chill wind blew down the wide sweep of the street. Brennan watched it carry an empty take-away carton with it and closed the car door. A sneer rose on his face as he reached for his mobile phone and brought up the contacts. He scanned the names, found what he was looking for and hoped might be a solution of sorts: Wullie Stuart — he pressed ‘call’.
Ringing.
Brennan cleared his throat.
Wullie answered on the fourth ring, ‘Hello.’
‘Hello, auld fella,’ said Rob; his voice sounded lyrical.
‘Rob Brennan… Haven’t heard from you for donkey’s.’
His conscience pricked, ‘Well, sorry about that… How are you keeping?’
Wullie’s voice dropped. ‘Aye not bad. And you? How’s the job?’
Brennan steered the conversation back to where he wanted it to be, ‘Well, there’s time enough to get round to that, I was wondering if I could take you for a pint?’
‘A pint… Christ Almighty, Rob… you must be in some bother if you’re after a pint with me!’
Chapter 33
Brennan drew up outside the Sloans’ house, stilled the car’s engine. He sat for a brief moment, then yanked on the handbrake and reached for the door handle. His thoughts were whirring as he stepped onto the road. The long straight street was silent, save for occasional stirrings of dulcet birdsong in the chill air. He looked up to the whitewashed sky, caught no sight of the culprits and headed for the kerb. Brennan felt conscious of himself, his role, and what he was there to do as he paced forward, heavy-footing the soles of his shoes on the tarmac. He didn’t want to bring any more grief to the household, he knew there was already plenty there. He remembered his last visit and the way Mrs Sloan had looked: she was wrecked with loss. How could she be anything else? She had mentioned Sophie when she came into the station and Brennan felt her deep hurt at the sounding of his daughter’s name; she had lost her own daughter and the thought burned him. He didn’t know how any mother or father moved on from the loss of a child. To see people destroyed by the actions of others was the hardest part of his job; he had seen too much of it and felt the past visions were accumulating inside him like a cancer. Where was the good in this world? he wondered. Where was the happiness? Where was his happiness? He knew it had been there once, when he was a boy — when he was growing up, with Andy — but it all seemed so long ago now, another world away. Did life have to be like this? he thought. Did moments of happiness have to be stored away, brought out and imbibed like a drug in times of grim despair? He didn’t want to think his best days were already behind him, but the distance between him and his solid memories of happiness seemed to be growing every day and the job only added to the mileage.
The Sloans’ gate was secured with an iron hasp; Brennan released it and moved onto the garden path. His steps felt heavy on the paving stones; made too much noise. The home looked well kept, tidy: the windows had been washed recently and the path swept. The grass could have taken another cut — blades overhung the lawn’s
