It’s strange, that people can come back into your life when you believe that you’ve consigned them entirely to your past. When Andy and I split and he married Karen, I didn’t see him for a few years, even though he’s my old man’s closest pal, and I never expected to have anything to do with him, ever again. Same with Sarah and Dad; when they divorced and she went back to the US, I assumed that it was for good. Her latest comeback was as unlikely as
I shouldn’t have said what I did to Aileen about her, in the midst of the only major row we ever had. I knew that Sarah detested her, but I was just as sure that Aileen had no thoughts about her at all, that she saw her as being as distant a figure in my dad’s past as my mother is. And there she’s wrong on two counts.
Sarah is in the present and she’s alive; so is my mother, in my father’s heart. Sarah found that out and stopped trying to compete. Aileen? She didn’t even know she was in a contest. She lived in a world that she’d created in which her husband is settled and content, domestically, and in the job about which he was always ambivalent, but which she manoeuvred him into accepting.
Great, until she tried to push him that one step too far and it all went up in smoke. She came to me in the hope that I could put out the fire, and I threw petrol on it by telling her that her predecessor still loved her husband. I’d told her she’d screwed things up, but what had I done myself?
I was by the bin, recycling my sandwich wrapper, when my phone rang again. ‘Yes, Dad,’ I said.
‘You had a call from Aileen?’
‘Yeah,’ I admitted. ‘I’m sorry. I lost it.’
‘You and me both,’ he sighed, ‘last night. We should be ashamed of ourselves, shouldn’t we?’
‘That depends. Were we right on the principle?’
‘Of being against police unification? I believe so, absolutely. Trouble is, Aileen believes the opposite.’
‘And she wants you to subordinate your view to hers, and me too, by implication?’ I put the question to him as if I was leading him, in court. ‘That’s what she expects, yes?’
‘Yes, that’s how it seems. But it works both ways; I recognise that. It’s an impasse.’
‘Will it happen, Pops?’ I asked. ‘The unified force.’
‘It’s shaping up that way,’ he admitted. ‘You only need to look at the numbers. If the Nationalists and Aileen’s crew both back it, then it’ll walk through the parliament. She and Clive Graham probably think I’ll keep quiet if ACPOS support it, but I won’t. Any journo who asks me a straight question will get a straight answer, and I’ll bloody well make sure that I am asked. It won’t make any difference, though, for all the friends I have in the media, and in the parliament itself, because when it comes to it, there won’t be a free vote.’
‘Will you really quit over it?’
‘That’s my intention, although Aileen imagined that I could be bought off with the top job. No chance of that,’ he said emphatically. ‘What would make me reconsider? If you asked me not to, I might not.’
‘If I asked you to betray your principles?’ I exclaimed. ‘Why would I ever do that?’
‘Look, kid, if I go balls out over this I could make myself pretty unpopular with some people with a lot of power. There could be backwash, you know.’
The waves would have to be high, I reckoned, to reach a fifth-floor office in the biggest commercial law firm in Scotland. But they could be as high as the castle that I could see through my window and they wouldn’t make any difference to me.
‘Remember that song,’ I said, ‘the one you used to sing to me when I was wee, in the years after Mum died, whenever I got sad and started to cry because really she wasn’t coming back?’
I could see him smile, as if we were on Skype. ‘Yeah. The one by Paul Williams: wee guy, glasses, dodgy hair; “You and me against the world”. I’ve still got it, you know, that record. It was your mum’s favourite.’
‘Then dig it out and play it, because it was never more true.’
Nobody really understands about my dad and me; there’s a bond that ties us together, one that will never break, although she who formed it has been dead for twenty-five years.
‘Sauce’ Haddock
Satnav guided me all the way into the heart of an old-established residential area called Newton Mearns, to the south of Glasgow. What it didn’t tell me was that I’d been there before, not on police business, but for an away tie in a national foursomes competition against a pair from Whitecraigs Golf Club. I have very warm memories of that place; my partner and I handed the opposition a dog licence, in other words we beat them seven and six.
Solomon’s restaurant was situated only a few streets away from the clubhouse where we’d eaten after the match. That was a friendlier snack than it might have been, given what we’d just done to the locals. I’ve been to golf clubs where I haven’t even been offered a drink in those circumstances.
Solomon himself, a cheery, dark-haired wee guy. . think of Ben Elton with a refined Glasgow accent. . just short of forty, first name Jeffrey, ‘but call me Solly; everyone else does’, kept up the local standard of hospitality. He took me into his small office, and gave me sparkling mineral water, then produced a plate of buns that he called rugelach. I tried one, then another, then another. ‘Cream cheese cookies,’ he explained. ‘Kosher, of course. Go on, have another.’
I did; I hadn’t realised how hungry I was.
‘So,’ he said, once we had cleared the plate, ‘this guy you asked me about. What’s the story?’
‘I have a photograph,’ I told him, ‘but I have to warn you, it’s not the nicest.’
‘I have a strong stomach, Mr Haddock.’ He grinned. ‘Unsullied by pork, that’s why. You know the story about the rabbi and the priest?’
I did, but I let him tell it anyway, and I laughed when he was done. Then I took the mugshot from my pocket, slipped it from the evidence bag that held it and showed it to him.
It wiped the smile off his face, but it didn’t take the colour from his cheeks. He shrugged. ‘So he’s dead. I’ve seen worse: I did some kibbutz time when I was a kid, and we had trouble once. Rocket attack. What happened to him?’ He paused, and his eyes widened slightly. ‘You’re not going to tell me it was food poisoning, are you?’
‘No,’ I replied, smiling vaguely for a second or two, as I tried to work out whether his concern was real or just part of his shtick. ‘He had a brain haemorrhage, no warning. Pretty much instant cheerio. If it’s any consolation, he seems to have enjoyed his last meal. He ate plenty of it and he didn’t have time to digest it. That’s how we linked him to you.’
‘So what can I tell you about him?’
‘His name would be nice. Was he a regular?’
Solly shook his head. ‘Never seen him before. I have lots of regulars, and I know them all, but equally, because this is the only kosher restaurant in a long day’s march, I have a lot of occasional trade.’
‘How about his bill?’ I asked. ‘Can you identify that? I might be able to trace him through his credit card slip.’
‘I can find his bill, no problem,’ he told me, ‘but there ain’t no transaction slip, because he paid in cash. That’s why I remember him so clearly. You have any idea how few cash customers pass through here, or through any retail business these days? I love those guys. When someone offers me real money rather than plastic I knock the bill down to the nearest fiver, out of pure sentiment.’ He winked at me. ‘And when I do, the tip is always bigger. Works every time, and it did with him. I’ve still got the notes, by the way.’
‘You have?’
My tone must have rung a warning bell. ‘All above board,’ he insisted. ‘It all gets declared, honest. It’s just that I have so little currency that I don’t bank it very often; I tend to keep it as a float.’
‘Solly,’ I told him, ‘when I showed you my warrant card, it didn’t have HMRC on it. I don’t care about that. Anyway, I don’t imagine there’s any way you can tell which are the notes he gave you.’
‘Hell yes,’ he laughed. ‘I know exactly which ones they were. The only two Bank of England fifties I’ve taken in here since I opened.’ Just as I was thinking that his prices must be sky-high if it took two fifties to cover chicken broth with matzohs and stuffed fish, he added, ‘He didn’t give me them, though. It was one of his mates.’
‘He wasn’t alone?’
‘No. Party of three.’
