Myra’s funeral Jean had insisted on being one of the number. There were McGuire and I, on duty at what was, for want of an alternative description, a gangland funeral, and we were being asked to bury the victim. I could have shaken my head and stepped back. Those four would have been enough, and in any event the coffin is always supported by straps held by the undertakers, just in case. But the request wasn’t made on practical grounds, or as some bizarre peace offering on Tony’s part. It was made out of respect, so that Marlon could be buried by a more or less full complement rather than a scratch team, and so that his mother would have something to remember. ‘Okay,’ I said. He handed each of us a card with a diagram and a number on it.
And that’s how two of the CID’s finest came to stand round a grave with four guys most generously described, at that time at least, as pillars of Edinburgh’s darker community, an experience which both McGuire and I have kept to ourselves until now. Well, I have, anyway; I suspect there’s nothing that Mario hasn’t told Paula by now, and that some of it I wouldn’t want to know.
The God-botherer was competent, if nowhere near as familiar with his subject as Thornie’s minister had been. The service was short and the committal of the coffin to the grave went smoothly. I had cord number two, at Marlon’s feet. Manson held number one. As the burden neared the ground, I glanced up and along its length. For an instant, his eyes met mine. I don’t know what sort of message we exchanged, but I never thought of him quite so badly after that.
There were no pleasantries afterwards. The hearse was driven away to pick up its next load, and the passengers returned to the limo. Plus one: Bella squeezed in Lulu to join them at whatever post-funeral wake Manson had laid on. I wondered whether she’d known before that afternoon that she was going to be a granny.
That left just McGuire and me, and one other, the man whose appearance had unsettled Bella so much. He was heading for the exit when I called after him. ‘Excuse me!’
He stopped and turned, patiently and a shade wearily, as if he’d been hoping to get away unchallenged but recognised that was never going to happen.
‘We’re police officers,’ I told him as we caught up, ‘investigating Marlon’s murder. Would you mind giving us your name?’
‘Not at all. It’s Watson, Clark Watson. That was my son you just helped bury.’
Once upon a time, I was in Spain, in L’Escala. Alex was in a cafe with her grandpa, and I was standing on the headland. The Tramuntana, the north wind, was blowing strong and the sea was wild all around me. I’d been looking back towards the beach; in the very instant that I turned, I was hit full on by a giant wave as it broke over the rocks. When Marlon’s father revealed himself, I had much the same feeling. I’ll swear that I swayed on my feet.
And then… this is my day for analogies, so I’ll follow one metaphor with another. Remember those imaginary bricks I mentioned earlier? Well, a whole pile of them materialised and formed themselves into a wall. It wasn’t quite solid, it was still a bit ephemeral, but it was there.
‘Forgive my surprise,’ I said. ‘Here was me thinking you were dead.’
He smiled. ‘Is that what the cow told you? I shouldn’t be surprised by that, I suppose. I might as well have been as far as my family was concerned. No, as you see, I’m still alive.’ He held out an arm. ‘Go on, have a feel; it’s solid.’
‘Where have you been?’ I asked, my mind still swirling in the aftermath of that wave.
‘These past twenty years? I’ve been sailing. I moved on from trawlers and joined the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. I’m chief officer on a support tanker, Leaf class. I live in Portsmouth now, have done for fifteen years.’
‘How did you hear about Marlon’s death?’
‘When I’m on shore,’ he replied, ‘my newsagent gets the Scotsman for me. I read about it in there. I found out about the funeral through the local authority, and came up for it. I thought I might have seen my other two children there.’
Jesus, he didn’t know. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr Watson, but your other son’s dead too. Your daughter’s estranged from her mother, and has been for twelve years. She’s…’ I was on the point of telling him where he could find Mia, but I stopped. I had unfinished business there, and I didn’t want him getting in the way. Also, I didn’t think she’d be too pleased to see him, since he was supposed to be helping Davey Jones sift through his locker.
‘I see,’ he murmured. ‘Lucky Mia.’
‘Why did you leave?’ I continued.
‘Where are my brothers-in-law?’ he asked. ‘Those fucking Spreckleys?’
I pointed, downwards.
‘Both of them? Now that is good news. Billy maybe not so much, but Gavin, yes. If I’d had the guts I’d have put him there myself. He was the reason I left.’ He looked at us. ‘I was a bit wild in my youth. Check your records and you’ll find my name there, although for nothing serious. But I had no idea when I married Bella what her family was like. She was pregnant with Mia and we did the old-fashioned thing, then we had the other two. I was away at sea a lot, so it took me a while to find out what Gavin was up to, with the drugs and everything. When I did, I went mental. I told Bella we were moving away. But she’d have none of it. She did her nut. We had a big argument. A couple of days later, I had a visit from her brothers. Gavin put a gun to my head and said that if I was still around in twenty-four hours he’d pull the trigger. He told me to disappear and not to even think about going to the police as he’d friends who would find me and put me through an industrial mincer, feet first. He scared me all right, enough for me to leave my wife and family behind, and never even think about coming back.’
So: Mia had made up the story she’d told me about her father’s departure, but she hadn’t been that far off the mark. ‘If you’d known he died twelve years ago, would you have?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I had another family by then, a wife and a daughter. Not bigamous, mind; I divorced Bella as soon as I could when the law let me.’
I wasn’t too bothered about that. I had other matters on my mind, for example that mirage-like wall. ‘Give my colleague your contact details, please, Mr Watson,’ I said. I left them to it. I walked away, across two double ranks of graves, and sat on a long, flat, mossy tombstone, giving myself time and space to think.
Mia had lied to me. She’d told me that after Ryan’s murder she’d run off to live with her father, her tragic, lost-at-sea trawlerman father, who’d given her the stability she’d needed, and let her build a proper life for herself away from the remnants of her doomed family. That was all fiction, a farrago of Mills and Boon candyfloss, but she had gone somewhere, that was for sure. It was probably likely that the degree she’d told me of was real, and her CV. She wouldn’t have expected me to check any of it, but her bio would have to stand up to the scrutiny of others as her career developed.
So where had she gone when she was barely sixteen? I ran through everything she had ever said to me, looking for a hint. Her contempt for her family had been evident, for her brother Ryan, for Gavin, her uncle. Not a psycho, she’d insisted, but what was it that she’d said about him, only a couple of hours before? I searched for her words and they came back to me. ‘Gavin had aspirations, he wanted to be Mr Big, but he was never in the same league.’ And the vehemence with which she had spoken them, as if she was speaking from…
No, come on, Skinner, stay focused. But couldn’t it be? What had she said, according to Telfer? She didn’t shag boys, only proper men. Not Gavin, surely? Not her uncle? No, even Bella would have drawn the line there, but did he take her about with him? Did she meet any of the crew he worked for? Could she ever have met… Fuck!
‘So where did she go?’ I whispered. And answered myself, intuitively.
I snatched my phone from my pocket, and searched through incoming calls until I found a number with a prefix I recognised. I knew it was a long shot, one that I hoped wouldn’t pay off, but didn’t Foinavon win the Grand National, didn’t Ali dismantle the monster Liston, then topple the invincible Foreman?
Lowell Payne was on duty when I called. He was surprised to hear from me, but sharp and efficient as usual. I asked him for a telephone number, and he found it in seconds. The lady who answered my call was posh Lanarkshire; her voice was the sort that I’d heard as a child, mostly on my occasional visits to my dad’s office, when clients arrived for appointments.
‘Mrs Shearer?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m a police officer,’ I told her. ‘My name is Skinner, and I’m a colleague of the sergeant who spoke to you the other day.’
