Pamela stirred and looked at the bedside alarm. Its red digits told her that it was 1.34 a.m. as Skinner slid into her bed.
'Sorry, pet,' he whispered. 'I didn't mean to wake you.'
She kissed him, feeling the harsh stubble on his chin. 'That's all right. I wasn't sure whether you'd come here.'
'I almost didn't. I thought of going to Fairyhouse Avenue. I even thought of crashing out in the office. But then I thought of you. and I realised that I needed to be with you.'
In the dark, she stroked his cheek. 'Was it bad? In the house, I mean.'
She felt him shiver, although the summer night was hot. 'I've never been good at a murder scene,' he muttered. 'But this one – someone I knew; someone I admired; someone who's had enough tragedy in her life.' She felt the touch of his forehead on hers, and his arm slip around her.
'I tell you, lover. When we catch this guy, I hope I'm there, and I hope he resists arrest. Because I want the privilege of personally tearing out his heart.'
'Shh! Shh!' she whispered, quickly. 'Don't say that. I hope you never get near him, in that case. You're too good a man to have anyone's blood on your hands, even his.'
She was shocked, even a touch frightened, by his sudden ironic laugh in the darkness. 'You think that, do you, Pammy? God, lass, but you don't know me as well as you think!
'Andy, now. He's shot someone dead, and it's broken his heart.
Brian Mackie: he's had to do it, and never given an emotional twitch.
But me, now: I've had to kil in the course of my career, more than once. And each time, when I've looked at the body at my feet, this person inside me, this voice, has said clear as you like, "Quite fucking right too!"
'Believe this, if you've ever believed anything. Whoever killed poor wee Leona had better never give me a clear shot and legal justification, or I'l shoot him like a dog and say "Got you, you bastard".'
She leaned away from him, trying to see his face in the faint light which crept into her bedroom from the city outside. 'Bob,' she said, 22 with surprise in her voice. 'I'd never have put you down for a supporter of capital punishment.'
She saw the gleam of his white teeth as he smiled. 'That's the thing,' he muttered, more gently now. 'I'm not, in the judicial sense.
I couldn't hurt a fly in cold blood. But in the heat of action, there's something in me that takes over. Between you and me, it scares me shitless. I'm just glad I'm on the right side of the fence.'
He drew her to him once more. 'But enough of this black talk. Let me feel the warmth of your body, and let's both get some sleep. For at six thirty, we're both off out again, in the vain hope of finding wee Mark.
'I saved his life once before, you know. I pray that I or one of Skinner's finest gets the chance to do so again.'