Debs had left a note stating she’d gone to stay with her friend Susan.
‘Just… great.’
Susan would not be talking me up — we shared a mutual antipathy. The note was brief, said she’d taken the dog because he needed looking after and ‘You have enough to do mending yourself, Gus.’
Debs claimed she wanted to give me some space, that I needed to think.
‘Fuck that!’
Thinking was the last thing I needed more of right now. I knew why Debs had left, couldn’t fault her for it, but it still felled me. I just couldn’t expect her to stick around while I delved into my brother’s murder. Way things were shaping up, she was safer out if it.
I stormed to the bathroom and kicked off the cistern. It flew in the air, made a one-eighty then clattered off the sink, splitting in two. I fired into the speed wraps and took myself back to the living room. As my heart rate increased I immediately felt panic settle on me. The flat was silent and cold, empty. I paced to the bedroom. Debs had cleaned out her make-up and styling products. A small wheeled suitcase that usually sat on top of the wardrobe had been taken and her dressing gown no longer hung on the back of the door. The room seemed to have changed very little, but what had altered was seismic. I loped back to the living room in a daze, sat on the couch. I looked through to the space we’d cleared under the kitchenette counter for Usual’s basket. It was gone.
A throbbing started in my temples. I put my fingers around my skull and squeezed.
‘This isn’t happening,’ I told myself; but I knew it was.
I picked up Debs’s note and read it through again. She’d left the number for Susan’s house. It seemed such a strange thing to do when we all had mobiles nowadays. As I thought it through I sussed she was trying to say I could still contact her, she’d still speak to me. At least I hoped that’s what she meant; maybe I was being optimistic.
I got up and made myself a coffee, tried to buy off my shrieking brain with caffeine. Didn’t work. I found myself back on the couch looking through Debs’s Cranberries CDs and wondering what the hell I should do next. Nothing I’d tried so far seemed the right move. I was sure the shrink had made me feel worse, raked up old hurts. I wondered if there would ever be a future for Debs and me. It just seemed like the world was against it. We’d tried so many times to make it work but it always ended the same way — with me hurting her. I felt ashamed at the realisation.
I held my head in my hands once again, then my phone rang. The noise broke through the desolation of the flat.
I dived up to grab it from the mantel.
‘Hello…’
‘Ah, Dury, ’tis yer bold self.’
‘Fitz.’
‘Ye sound disappointed… Who were ye expecting, Angelina Jolie?’ He laughed at himself. I wondered if he had a drink in him.
‘What do you want?’
A harrumph. ‘I was, er, thinking we might have a little, whatsit they say these days?… A catch-up.’
I remembered our last one: ‘Do I need a brief this time?’
He roared laughing. ‘Ah, Dury… yer some joker.’
I was deadly serious. ‘I’m not laughing.’
‘Okay, so… Look, I’m after clearing my desk of one or two items relating to your late brother’s unfortunate demise, and I was needing to return some of it. I thought I could let you have them, save disturbing others.’
I got the picture, said, ‘Yeah, fine. You want to meet the same place?’
‘Caff on the Mile… Can you be there in an hour?’
‘I’ll be there.’
Clicked off.
The auld wifey from number three was coming up the stairs as I walked out.
‘Hello, there,’ she said.
I nodded, had passed her with little recognition when she spoke up again. ‘Your wife told me about the poor dog.’
I stopped still, turned. ‘She’s not my wife.’ The words came out too harshly. ‘I mean, we’re not married.’
The wifey creased her mouth into a thin smile. ‘Well, the pair of you look made for each other… I’m sure there’ll be a big day soon.’
I didn’t know what to say, stumbled on the step.
She went on, ‘She’d make a beautiful bride. A bonnie-looking girl she is.’
I found my feet, managed, ‘I don’t deserve her.’
The truth, I knew, was that she didn’t deserve me.
The street looked as if it had just been dusted with icing sugar; another light snowfall had settled over the city. Footprints had started to erode the white covering on the pavement but the wider view was so bright it burned my eyes. I schlepped over the road at the Arc building and turned under the railway bridge. I bent into a chill wind that cut into my face and froze my jaw. I longed for winter to be over, for the temperature to rise and the sun to make an appearance again. Even the weak Scottish one that shows too rarely, and when it does, not for long enough.
At the foot of the Mile a tartan shop had taken a break from blasting the street with teuchter music and had turned to Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’ instead. I took a sketch in the window: the jolly kilted mannequin that spent his days drinking pretend whisky from a plastic tumbler had been strangled with a tinsel noose. He didn’t seem fazed — laughing it up same as ever — but he did stare out at the new parliament, which was a joke the year round.
In the caff some student bell-end in a Cossack’s hat danced before me in the queue. If he stood on my toe one more time he’d get a taste of my own footwork in his coal-hole. I was in no mood to indulge some Tarquin who was slumming it with the proles because mammy and daddy had cut back on his gin money during the economic crisis.
I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me.’
He turned round, a dramatic flourish of the arms as he went all Bronski Beat on me. ‘Yes?’
I pointed to my boot. ‘Do you see that?’
He eyeballed me.
Bad idea.
‘A foot, for standing, perhaps walking,’ he said. Sniggers from his shitkicker friends.
I edged closer, went nose to nose with him. ‘Would you like me to introduce you to another of its uses?’
He backed away. If he’d went any faster he’d have given himself whiplash.
A gap appeared in the queue.
Ordered, ‘A coffee, please, and a pot of tea. Can you hold the tea till my friend arrives?’
‘I’m here… I’m here.’ Fitz appeared ruddy-faced, cheeks on him like the fire station doors. He carried a bag over his left shoulder — the look was way too metrosexual for him.
We took a table. Fitz loosened his collar.
‘Did you run here?’ I said.
‘Feck off, man. ’Tis that hill: damn near has me buggered.’
The tea and coffee came, got placed down before us.
I thought to ask him how the case was going, but knew if he had anything that he was prepared to divulge it would be dished up soon enough. He leaned back on his chair, reached for the bag. He took out a padded envelope. ‘This is, erm, well… It’s your brother’s possessions.’
I imagined what would be inside. Little see-through plastic bags containing Michael’s watch and wedding ring. Whatever else there was, I didn’t want to see it. I took the package — it seemed very light.
Fitz said, ‘There’s a computer and some stuff we took from his office; I gave that to uniform to drop off at the factory.’
‘Have you been into the computer?’ I knew I was being optimistic.
‘Oh yes, the boffins have been all through it. Nothing for us, I’m afraid.’
I expected no more.
I held the envelope in my hands as though it was made of the most delicate porcelain. It seemed to take my attention from Fitz. My thoughts wandered all over the place; I was no more than emotional carrion now. I broke out of my daydream, placed the package on the table. Fitz started to stir his tea.
I said, ‘Thank you.’
‘I thought, y’know, you might be better taking the bits and pieces to his wife… Might come better from you.’
I was grateful for the compassion. ‘It was a generous thought.’
He flicked up an eyebrow, pointed with his spoon. ‘I wanted to say… after our last chat…’
‘Yeah?’
‘I wanted to reassure you that, all we can, we’re doing for you.’
I tutted. I knew what doing for me meant to most of the force. I swung from gratitude to anger: I knew I was the only one moving this investigation forward. ‘Is that so?’ I said. I leaned in, placed my elbows on the table. ‘I’ve been doing a bit more myself since I saw you last, Fitz, and let me tell you, I’m not convinced your lot are doing enough.’
He raised his cup, slurped. ‘Is that so?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I slumped back in my seat, ‘I don’t see you all over the papers announcing you’ve made any progress, like you’ve found the gun or have a suspect for Michael’s murder… or Andy’s, or Ian Kerr’s either.’
That got him fired up. ‘Fucking papers.’
‘You’d be happy enough to have the press splash any good news about.’
He slammed his cup on the saucer. The spoon jumped. ‘There is progress, but I can’t tell you everything.’
I lurched for him. ‘Why the fuck not?’
‘Look at you… because you’re away with it, man! You’d go haring in like some mad heller and get yerself and Lord alone knows who else killed if I gave you a sniff of what I’m on to.’
I wasn’t wearing that, lamped in: ‘Why haven’t you busted the Czechs?’
‘For what? I can’t go around throwing just anyone in jail, especially foreign nationals. You want me with an international incident on my hands?’
I got up. I’d heard enough. I knew Fitz hadn’t moved the case on an inch since our last meeting: he was still sitting around waiting for the Undertaker to fuck up and get his next glamour collar. ‘I’m sure it’ll all fall in your lap.’
As I bent down to pick up the envelope he grabbed my arm. ‘C’mon, sit back down, Gus.’
I didn’t trust him when he called me by my first name. ‘Why?’
He nodded to the package. ‘That wasn’t the only reason I called you out.’
‘No?’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
I sat back down. ‘Go on, then.’
Fitz put a fat finger above his tie, stretched the loop wider, ‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but… We had your niece down the station the other night.’
‘Alice?’ I wondered what she’d been up to now. Did I want to hear?
‘Nothing heavy: she’d had a jug of something with a group of the local young crew… The uniforms printed her, took her down the cells, but I drove her home.’
I panicked — how had Jayne taken it? ‘Her mother?’
Fitz shook his head. ‘No. No. I never told the mother, woman has enough on her plate, I’m sure… Very bad time of year for, y’know, this type of thing.’
I scratched the top of my head, let out a long sigh. ‘Thanks again.’
‘No bother. I’d keep an eye on the lass, though. She was a bit… emotional.’
‘Emotional?’
Fitz drew a deep breath, exhaled. ‘About her father… I’d say she’s struggling to get to grips. It’s a bad age for her; I know, I’ve got daughters myself.’
I thanked him again, nodded. Said, ‘I’ll have a word.’
‘Mind your family, Gus. Leave the investigation to us.’
I stood up, said nothing. Anything I thought to mention would only make him flare up.
He grabbed my arm. His eyes burned into me. ‘I mean it: think how they’d take another loss so close to home.’