Sitting in a strange little cafe in the middle of Hamilton. Food ordered, cups of tea in front of us. Taylor didn't open his mouth on the way over here; just drove too fast. Listened to Bob the whole way. When we started Sad Eyed Lady was playing, and it hadn't finished by the time we got here.
Both ordered chicken pie and chips; presume he's as pessimistic as I am about the possibilities of getting a good result on the food front.
'So how come Bloonsbury showed up?' I say eventually. Can't sit here all day holding each other's dicks, not talking about anything.
Taylor drinks his tea, staring at the floor. Thinking.
'Maybe the bastard is Jesus after all,' he says.
Gets a disapproving glance from the waitress who places our pie and chips in front of us.
'Risen from the grave,' he adds. 'That's what fucking Jesus does after all.'
Dig into the pie, delighted to find it's not too offensive. Chips are soggy though; not hot enough. A limp tomato hogs the side of the plate.
'So what's with the anger then?' I ask.
He grimaces as he tastes the chips.
'You hear about Edwards?' he says.
'Aye.'
'Think the same thing I did?'
'Crow.'
'Exactly,' he says. 'Fucking Crow.'
Crams his mouth full of chicken pie and sits chewing morosely. Washes it down eventually with some tea.
Waits until he's got more pie in his mouth before he starts up again.
'I decided I might as well raise the thing with Miller. So I said, 'Heard a rumour about the Addison case.' She looks at me funny. 'I heard that rumour too,' she says. 'Don't believe everything you hear.' So I says, 'Well how do you explain the murder of three of the officers involved inside five days?' 'Coincidence,' she says, 'it does happen.' You know the tone. I mention that Crow has vanished, and that we'd found a connection between him and Healy. She says she knows, which of course she does because you blundered into Montague's office like some sort of fucking cowboy.'
Thanks.
'Bitch couldn't give a toss. Jonah just sat there like… fuck, I don't know. A sack of fucking shit, that's what. I told her I thought we should be checking it out, she says there are better things for us to spend our time on. 'Jesus has some better ideas,' she says.'
'Jesus?'
'Fuck's sake, I'm going with a resurrection metaphor here, it's not hard… Jonah apparently used his day off to sober up and think brilliantly.'
'Ah. And what exactly might those ideas be?'
'Aw, Christ, you know. The usual pish. Doppelgangers and photographs and disinformation. But you know, and they used to know 'n all, that that's not what cracks it. It's gut instinct. Jonah used to have it and so did she. Even if it was just the instinct for who the best person to shag was.'
She's certainly lost that.
'So why won't she let you get into the Crow thing?'
Continues to wolf down his chicken pie, leaving the chips where they belong. Points an angry fork.
'Why d'you think? Doesn't want to open up old wounds. If it gets out, she's going to look bad, and we can't have that.'
Stab at the food. Chips are chips, and I'm not about to leave them, no matter how awful.
'She knows the score then?' I ask. 'The whole thing? Crow the murderer, Bloonsbury the conspirator.'
He shakes his head.
'Don't know. It would be unbelievable if she did. Even she couldn't take protecting the force's image to those lengths, could she? Fucking hell.' Shakes his head again; finishes off the chicken pie. 'No, I don't think so. Wanting to make her station look good, fine. But the Addison thing was about Bloonsbury and Crow getting a pension.'
'What if she'd only found out in the last few days?' I say. 'She might not want to bring it all out into the open. Not at a time like this.'
'How's she going to have found out in the last few days?' he asks.
'Bathurst.'
He finishes off his tea and starts looking around for something else to eat.
'You going to eat the rest of that pie?' he says.
'Aye.'
'So we're back to Miller having been Bathurst's lover the night she died,' he says. 'I'm just not sure about that.'
It's time. I've been putting it off long enough, although I'll still have to skirt around the stuff about Eileen Harrison. It's up to her to bring that particular nugget to the table.
'Well, I don't think they… they didn't fuck or anything, but she went to see her. Bathurst went to see Miller.'
'How the fuck d'you know that?' Looks annoyed already. Course, he's been annoyed since we left the station.
'I went down to see Charlotte on Friday night. Forsyth's car was parked outside.'
'In the name of fuck? What…? What…? Why the fuck were you going to see Charlotte?'
I sort of shrug. Don't know how I'm going to say this without it sounding like a complete load of shite. He picks up on the hesitation, however. Makes it easier for me.
'You're not shagging her, are you, Hutton? Don't tell me you are actually shagging her?'
Just sort of nod my head. He looks at me with slightly gaping mouth. Still got a bit of chicken pie on his tongue, a couple of bits in his teeth.
'I do not believe it,' he says, and there's no doubt that's the truth. 'Am I the only bloke in that entire station who hasn't slept with that bloody woman?' The man looks incredulous. I've managed to impress him. 'How long's this been going on?'
'About a week.'
'Every night? Just the once? What?'
'Christmas Eve, Saturday, Monday.'
'Fuck.' Lets the word drift off into nothing. He lifts my cup of tea and drains it. When his mouth drops open again, the pieces of chicken have gone. 'That's where you've been all these mornings. Christ. What's she want with someone like you?'
'There's just been something between us since I accidentally saw her tits a few months ago. It's been an elephant in the room kind of thing. An itch needing to be scratched.'
He's peering at me, as if I'm some kind of weird exhibit in the zoo.
'How, in the name of all fuck, did you accidentally see the superintendent's tits?'
'It just sort of… happened… But, I'm telling you, they were great tits, and I've been thinking about them ever since then, and every time I looked at her, she knew I was thinking about her tits, and weird though it sounds, obviously she was thinking, the sergeant's thinking about my tits, and it was getting her excited — or at least curious — and she just had to give it a try.'
'Or three.'
He lets out a long sigh. I hide behind my mug, with raised eyebrows, even though it's empty. Even now, as we're having this conversation, I'm thinking about her tits again, despite having seen plenty more of her than that.
'All right,' he says. 'You've been fucking the superintendent. Not actually relevant to the investigation. So Bathurst went to see the superintendent on Friday night, she also had lesbian sex on Friday night, but not with the superintendent…?'
'Yes.'
'So she spoke to Miller, presumably about the Addison case, although we don't know, and then she went off somewhere else to some lover.'
'Yes.'
'And do you know who this lover was?'
I stare across the table, lowering the mug. I'm really not going to answer that, but then I don't have to. Eileen Harrison: the only known lesbian at the station, the two days off work, coming back after the visit from the other sergeant… it all plays out in his eyes as he looks at me, and then he nods. His face goes blank, he leans on his hands, then rubs his face.
'So we've had officers running about for the past five days trying to find out who Bathurst slept with just before she died…'
'It's just the way it's worked out,' I say.
He looks unimpressed with that. Unimpressed with me and Eileen Harrison.
'You could've told me, at least, that you knew Bathurst had been to see Miller. Why didn't you say?'
I really don't have an answer for that.
'You wanted it to be your own little secret? Was that it? Is it more than sex, Hutton? What are you saying?' I'm not saying anything, you're saying it all for me. 'You think you've got some sort of chance with her? You want to be Mr Miller? Fuck's sake, Hutton, what are you thinking?'
He's hit the nail on the head. He is a detective after all. I just sit there looking like a lump of lard.
'When are you seeing her again?'
'Don't know. She was fucked off about the Montague business. Think she might have dumped me.'
Don't know how pathetic my voice sounded just then. He shakes his head, the anger leaves his face to be replaced by a smile. Starts to laugh. Wonder what he's doing, but it becomes infectious and I join him. He's right to laugh at me, after all, I deserve it.
'She just used me for sex,' I say, and we both end up pishing ourselves laughing for five minutes over the absurdity of me and Charlotte Miller.
If you can't laugh, what can you do? Bastard.
When we get ourselves back together he asks the obvious question.
'What was it like then?' he says. I would have asked him the same thing if the situation had been reversed.
Look for the right words, but it's hard to find them. How to encapsulate such beauty in mere language.
'Fucking brilliant,' is as good as I can do.
He looks appreciative. 'I expect it probably would be.'
The waitress hovers nearby, Taylor orders another piece of chicken pie; no chips. She disappears again. He smiles, shakes his head, rolls his eyes, says, 'Shit, I should have ordered more tea.' Calls over to her, raises his cup. She nods at him, and there's a fifty percent chance she understood what he meant.
Glad I've told him at last. And it takes some more of the edge off this pointless infatuation. I needed a good kick in the arse to start getting over it, and her reaction to the Montague business was a reasonable start. Taylor pishing himself laughing at me is also what I needed.
'So, you think she's dumped you because of Jonathan Montague?' he asks.
'She hasn't said as much, but that's probably about it.'
'She's probably shagging him 'n all.' He smiles. 'Three times in six days, you lucky bastard…'
We sit in silence for a moment. The second piece of chicken pie arrives, suspiciously quickly. Really, did they even have time to heat that up in the microwave?
Taylor doesn't seem bothered by the indecent haste, and tucks straight in.
'So, Charlotte's mad about you going to Montague. She knows it's because we're checking out Crow. Bathurst has told her the whole story…'
'We assume, we don't know.'
'Whatever. She doesn't think the Addison case has anything to do with this, despite the three deaths, and so she doesn't want us digging away at old wounds. Leave them be and concentrate on finding Ian Healy.'
'Or,' I say, 'she knows they're connected because she's part of it. Wants to ensure we don't discover the truth.'
'Too scary, Hutton. Crow, fine, 'cause the guy's sick. But Miller. If that's the case, why not just put herself in charge of the case when she removed Bloonsbury?'
'She tried that.'
'What do you mean?'
'She said she was doing it. I threatened to reveal the fact that Bathurst went to see her on Friday night; told her to put you in charge instead.'
He looks at me, forkful of chicken pie in hand.
'You're jerking me off?' he says.
'Nope.'
'Jesus fuck, Hutton, you're full of little secrets. Anything else you'd like to tell me?'
'Well, it was odd, because at the time that I was ordering her about — and let's be clear, I was a lot less forceful than that sounds — I assumed she'd slept with her. So, even though she hadn't, she still thought the fact that they'd seen each other the night Bathurst was murdered was enough of a reason to withdraw from leading the investigation.'
Taylor nods away as he continues to wolf down the pie.
'Yep, that might be significant. Anything else?'
'Don't think so.'
'Good. I think I've heard enough secrets.'
I gesture to the waitress that I'd like some more tea.
'So what are we going to do?' I ask.
He spears another piece of pie.
'We're going to ignore her and go after Crow. Go back down to Arrochar later this afternoon. Speak to a few people, do a more thorough search of that horrible little house of his, and we're going to work out where he went.'
The tea arrives.
'Magic,' I say.