11
Stil, sleep failed them. They made love again, but again, the usual drowsiness did not fol ow. There was something there stil, something unsaid, a question begging to be asked. And so, eventually, Mario did.
'When was the last time you saw him?'
'I told you. When I grabbed Eilidh's hand and hauled her out of that kitchen. The last time I saw my father was twenty-three years ago, and he was battering blood and snot out of my mother.'
'Never since then?'
'Never.'
'Have you ever felt the need to find him?'
'Never. Why in God's name would I want to do that? The man was a beast.'
'How does Eilidh feel?'
'I don't know, because I've never talked to her about what happened.
She was very young; to this very day, she might not have realised what happened to her.'
'What if he does turn up, out of the blue?'
'Then you deal with him. Okay? I real y mean it; if I confronted him I don't know what would happen.'
'Okay'
She jumped out of bed and went into the en-suite bathroom. Returning, she slid in beside him once more, face down, propped on her elbows, looking at him in the dim crystal light of their beside alarm. 'There's guilt there, Mario; so much of it. I feel guilt over what happened to my mother. If I'd kept quiet it would have saved her al that pain. On the other hand, I feel guilt about not waking up sooner to what was happening, to the fact that there was something terribly wrong about our
'wee secret', my dad's and mine. If I had, maybe I could have prevented it from happening to Eilidh.
'And even now, when you ask me whether I want to trace him, I feel guilt because I don't. What if he found another woman? What if he had more daughters? What if he stil has? By doing nothing, I'm shutting my eyes to that possibility. The truth behind it al is that I don't think I've got the guts to face him.
'I just hoped he was dead, Mario. And now I find out that he isn't.'
'What's his first name?' he asked, quietly.
'Jorge,' she answered, pronouncing the name in the Iberian fashion.
'Jorge Xavier Rose: my grandmother was Portuguese, and he lived in Lisbon for the first few years of his life. His father decided to see out the war there. That's where the Christian names came from.' She guessed the reason for his question. 'Listen, if you're planning to do anything about this, I don't want to know,' she whispered.
'Okay'
She leaned across and kissed him. 'Now can we get some sleep?'
'Unlikely, I'd have thought,' he murmured, cupping her right breast in his big hand. 'Not without tiring ourselves out a bit more.'
They did, until final y, the drowsiness overtook them.
12
DC Alice Cowan was in the office when Mcllhenney stepped into the small Special Branch suite. 'Morning, sir,' she said, with just a shade of caution in her voice.
'And a good morning to you. Constable,' he greeted her. 'If you haven't heard, I'm the new broom.'
'Yes, I had heard, sir. Mr McGuire told me yesterday afternoon.'
'Told you, but has he asked you yet?'
'What do you mean?' she asked, stil in a cagey tone.
'You know damn fine. Has he asked you whether you'l go to the Borders with him? I know he rates you.'
Her cheeks turned a delicate pink. 'Yes. He's asked me.'
'So?'
'So I told him that I'd like to stay here. That's if you want me,' she added. 'I know that Special Branch commanders sometimes like to bring in their own people.'
'Their cronies, you mean? Their yes-men, like the guy you replaced, Tommy Gavigan? Relax, Alice; that's not my style. If my friend McGuire rates you, that's all the more reason for me to want to keep you.'
He nodded towards the door of the inner office, which would soon be his. 'Is he in yet?'
She shook her head. 'No. He's a bit late; it's not like him.'
'Ah, he and Maggie'l have been out on the razzle last night.'
Bang on cue, the door swung open, and a slightly bleary-eyed Mario McGuire strode into the room. 'Sorry, Alice. Sorry, Neil,' he boomed.
'Traffic.'
'Traffic, my bottom,' Mcl henney grunted. His marriage to Louise had resulted in a moderation of his language that had surprised his friends, male and female alike. 'If you can't make it to Fettes on time, how are you going to manage the commute down to the Borders?'
'Mags and I were talking about that over breakfast,' he said. 'We might move further out; maybe to somewhere near the city bypass.'
'As long as you don't actually have to go on the thing!' In common with most Edinburgh car-owners, the big inspector regarded the constantly overcrowded ring road round the capital as a bad joke.
'How much time have you got?' McGuire asked him.
'The rest of the day, more or less. I've gone through the Boss's mail and there was nothing spectacular. Plus, he's up in the sky somewhere over the north Pacific, so I won't be getting any surprise phone cal s.'
'Any progress on that, by the way? Have the Americans caught the guy who did it?'
'Not that I've heard. They'd better get their acts together, though.
They'l be under scrutiny in a few hours.'
'I just hope they're taking it as seriously as he thinks they should.'
'I'm sure they are; Sarah's old man was quite a local heavyweight.
Anyhow, apart from that, I'm clear. If anything unexpected crops up, Ruthie knows where I am.'
'Fine. This isn't going to be a short hand-over. The mysteries of Special Branch are many and complex; I've got to teach you al the secret handshakes and code words, and of course the safe combinations
… which you'll have to change once I'm gone, so I don't know them any more.'
He led the way through to the inner office. 'So what's it really like, this Special Branch?' Mcllhenney asked.
His friend looked him in the eye. 'The truth, as between buddies?'
'Of course.'
'It's a rucking anachronism, most of it; a hold-over from the Cold War days. In some ways it's a wonder we're stil here, because you would not believe how amateur this place used to be back in the fifties and sixties.
Tommy Gavigan told me a story about a guy back then, name of McGinley, the bloke he fol owed into the job, who actual y used to go around local newspaper offices offering to pay journalists for private reports on Communist Party meetings… who was there, who said what and so on.
'Some of the stuff he got's still on file, and it's rubbish; it's obvious to a blind man that the joumos just took the piss out of him, and took the money as well. Mind you, a couple of the informants are interesting.
Back then they were juniors on local papers, but now they're senior guys, one in newspapers, the other in telly.'
