In a parallel universe, only marginally askew from Parlabane’s present reality, this might be an evening to cherish. In both worlds it was Saturday night and he was meeting a woman for a drink: sitting in his favourite pub, nervousness gnawing away at him as he awaited her arrival; the sense of flattery that she had sought him out also feeding into an anxiety that he might fail to meet her expectations.
One of those realities was full of openings and possibilities. In one of those realities, the evening might end in laughter, in kisses.
He felt a low dread at the prospect of the encounter, recalling her crushed countenance when she doorstepped him only a few days ago. She had picked up since then, but the anticipation of what he might reveal could have been a factor: something positive for her to focus on, a distraction from her turmoil. He reflected that, under the circumstances, perhaps the only thing worse than disappointing her was giving her what she wanted.
He checked his watch: he was early. He distracted himself by trying Catherine McLeod on his mobile. He had called her earlier, hoping to get the Glaswegian Detective Superintendent’s take on Sam Finnegan. It had gone to voicemail and he hung up, intending to phone again later, but it had slipped his mind until now when he had a moment to kill.
It went to voicemail again. This time he left a short message, clicking off as Lucy strode into the Barony in a flowing black coat, her gaze searching the tables. To his surprise, he felt a rush of brightness, of pleasure, at the sight of her walking through the door. Maybe it was mere instinct: in any reality, there were worse ways to spend a Saturday night than meeting an attractive woman for a drink. And he did find her attractive, he realised. She smiled when she spotted him. That always helped. She wasn’t exactly beaming, but she was no longer looking post-tearful and exhausted by shock and hurt.
She batted away his offer to go to the bar and returned with drinks for both of them. She was taller than he remembered: she had seemed hunched before, shrinking from the world in her grief. No longer reeling, she carried herself with what he couldn’t exactly call grace – it was too straight-backed and formal for that – but certainly a confidence often instilled in the high-born.
She folded the coat and placed it on the chair opposite Parlabane, but sat down next to him on the bench against the wall. It felt unsettlingly intimate until he realised that she didn’t want anyone eavesdropping on this conversation.
She wore a patterned silk blouse with a high collar and frilly cuffs. It wouldn’t work on everyone, but somehow it did on her. She had her own style, consistent with his first impression: prim and yet fetishistic. Now that he was presented with her in this context, he realised he had seen her in the Barony over the years: someone he had taken notice of, occasionally wondered about, but never had occasion to speak to.
Such an occasion was here now, but it wasn’t the one he’d have chosen or envisaged.
She was hungry for details, eager and anxious for answers that he couldn’t give her. He told her everything he had learned over the past few days, after first appealing to her to stop addressing him as Mr Parlabane.
‘Please call me Jack. Whenever I get called Mr Parlabane it’s usually because I’m in trouble.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t realise I was doing it. I think because I’ve asked for your help, subconsciously I was trying to be respectful. But it sounds terribly formal, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose it does keep a professional distance,’ he admitted.
‘It feels wrong, though. What you’ve done for me seems more like the kindness of a friend. Kinder than that, since you agreed to it without knowing me at all.’
‘I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think there might be a story in it. Believe me, Lucy, I’m nobody’s white knight.’
She looked at him with a wistful sincerity.
‘You’re the closest thing to that I’ve had in a long time.’
They held each other’s gaze for a moment longer than Parlabane was comfortable with. He needed to get things back on surer footing, so he turned the conversation to the matter at hand.
He laid out the details soberly, keen that she should not infer anything dramatic in his findings.
‘You’re right that it wasn’t the perfect marriage as reported in the tabloids, but it wasn’t anything that surprising either, considering we’re talking about two people who perhaps married in haste. I get the impression it’s like you suggested: she was a bit obsessive about trying to knock Peter into shape, making him conform to the ideal she thought she was marrying. But I think that simply explains why she said Peter had changed and you said his problem was he never did.’
‘Did you speak to Diana personally?’
‘Only briefly. She was as forthcoming as I’d expect of someone in her circumstances.’
‘But did you find out anything about her from anyone else?’
‘Not much that wasn’t already public knowledge. One person I spoke to mentioned a personal tragedy in her past. Do you know anything about that?’
She nodded, a slightly strained look of frustration in her expression: of the question she never asked when she had the chance.
‘I remember Peter alluding to that once. He didn’t mention what it was about and at the time I wasn’t interested enough to ask. Something that happened when she was a student, I think. Did you speak to my father?’
‘I spoke to Cecily.’
Parlabane figured this reply would require no elaboration.
‘In that case I wouldn’t be on tenterhooks waiting for him to ring back.’
‘An iron fist inside a velvet glove if ever there was one.’
‘And soon to be my wicked stepmother.’
‘They’re engaged?’
‘Yes. And you don’t know the half of it. She’s my age.’
‘I see. That sounds . . . awkward.’
‘Creepier still, she used to visit with her family when we were kids. She was always a bit aloof, acting more grown-up than us. Peter had a real crush on her when we were teens. I think there might even have been something going on between them behind the scenes at one point. And now she’s marrying my father. They’ll be parents together within a year of the nuptials, mark my words. She’ll be shagging him every which way until she’s provided a fresh new heir, and she’ll see the sprog gets a sweeter deal than we did.’
‘How so?’
‘People assume Peter and I must be loaded, but our father gave us bugger-all. Said it would be the making of us, the hypocritical bastard. That was why Peter was giving everything to make his software idea come good. Peter made out he was done with our father and wanted nothing from him, but I don’t think that was ever true. In fact I always suspected he had this naively optimistic notion that if he somehow proved himself, he’d be back in the good books. And by good books ultimately I mean the will. Of course, the reason it took him so long to even come close was that it’s hard to believe in yourself when your father has been telling you you’re worthless and undermining your confidence your whole life.’
‘Certainly a hell of a catch-22. Did you believe it was possible? That your father would change his position?’
‘Not enough for me to go chasing after his approval, but occasionally I did wonder . . . That was before Cecily came into the picture, though. I’m sure she’ll be, ahem, stiffening his resolve with regard to the finances. And once they have a child, she won’t stand for what our mother did.’
‘Are you saying she’s a gold-digger? I thought she was from quite a rich background herself.’
Lucy looked at him as though pitying his naivety.
‘Just because you come from money doesn’t mean you’re not a gold-digger. In fact, wouldn’t appearing to be uninterested in money be the perfect cover for a gold-digger?’
‘Are you talking about Cecily now, or does that go for Diana too?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve thought about it, I confess, but I don’t see how it would work.’
‘Take it from somebody who was married to a doctor for fifteen years: they don’t put themselves through all that shit because they’re driven by avarice.’
Lucy seemed surprised, even a little concerned.
‘Fifteen years. That had to hurt. How long have you been divorced?’
Parlabane gave her a wry smile.
‘Papers came through the morning you rang my doorbell.’
‘Sorry. It must feel like such a loss, regardless how you felt about each other in the end.’
Her words were warm, the balm of feeling that someone else understood.
‘It was a slow demise, eventually irreparable, but yes. I lost something – we both did – something that was more than each other, if you know what I mean.’
‘I think I do. I’ve always thought a relationship should be about creating something greater than the sum of its parts. I think that’s why I was always protective towards Peter in that regard: wanting to know what the other half is bringing to the table. I was rightly suspicious in the past: he was bitten more than once by women who buggered off once they found out there was no fortune.’
‘But from what I’ve found, that’s not Diana. If she believed Peter was secretly rich, she wouldn’t have encouraged him to stake so much of his time and energy on this project, would she?’
‘You’re right.’
Lucy took a slow sip from her glass of white wine.
‘But that brings us back to how hard he was working and that message he left this Harper guy about being in over his head. He said he’d done something he couldn’t take back. Surely that suggests . . .’
She sighed, holding up her hands in a gesture of frustration. She couldn’t define what that suggests, which was the very nub of this.
Parlabane spoke calmly.
‘We don’t know what it suggests. Yes, Peter was apparently under pressure: whether from his work or his marriage or a combination of both, we simply don’t know. It doesn’t mean anybody was to blame. It doesn’t mean that the accident wasn’t what it looks like.’
He chose his words delicately, not overtly including the possibility of suicide, but not excluding it either.
Lucy’s face looked strained: like part of her felt obliged to keep fighting but the other half didn’t believe in the cause any more.
‘But what about her telling me he almost lost control of the car at the same place? Doesn’t that sound suspicious?’
He reached out his hand and placed it gently around her forearm.
Lucy looked back at him, fragile and yet somehow grateful, craving his reassurance that it was going to be okay. A hint of a tear glistened in one eye.
‘If you look long enough into any sudden death, any accident, you’ll start seeing strange coincidences, and there’s a temptation to start joining dots. It’s like seeing faces in the clouds. Unless, that is, there’s something you’re not telling me.’
She gazed away for a moment then shook her head sadly. She seemed shrunken again, crestfallen. He had to show her that she was seeing it wrong.
‘We both know I could start looking deeper: start pulling at the frayed edges of what I’ve found, but I’d only end up ascribing imaginary significance to incidents or remarks. I know you came to me because I’ve got this reputation for finding hidden conspiracies, but I’ve learned the hard way about looking too hard for things that aren’t there. Sometimes you’ve got to take comfort in the anthropic principle.’
‘Which is what?’
‘It is what it is.’
She gave him a half smile. She understood. The tear spilled and she wiped it. She moved her arm and he thought she was pulling it from his grasp, but instead she took his hand in hers, gripping it tightly.
‘Lucy, when you came to see me the other day, you said your preferred outcome was that I would come back and tell you there’s nothing to this. Well, that’s what I’m offering you here.’
She gripped tighter, squeezing, her fingers stroking the back of his hand. Then just as he thought she was going to let go, once again they held each other’s gaze a moment too long.
She leaned forward and kissed him.
The parallel realities crossed over.
Two seconds ago, he’d never have seen this happening, but a moment can change everything. Even as she began to lean towards him, he knew what he wanted to happen, and miraculously it did.
He felt himself fade from the room, fade from the physical. The sounds of conversation, music, clinking glasses and laughter all muted. He hadn’t kissed another woman like that in fifteen years. She smelled like cinnamon and lemon grass: natural and warm.
And then when she pulled back, the spell was broken.
What was he thinking? This was all wrong, in so many ways. She was grieving and vulnerable. There was also a professional relationship in play here. She wasn’t in any formal way his client, but nonetheless, there were huge implications for his judgement.
She must have clocked the look of regret on his face and misread it. She sat back further from him along the bench, looking flustered.
‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. That was inappropriate.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, but evidently she would not be reassured.
‘No, you’ve done so much for me, and . . . Well, maybe that’s just it. I’m a wreck at the moment and at times like that I can get overcome by somebody being nice to me.’
She gathered up her coat and got to her feet. She glanced at his pint glass, still more than half full.
‘I’ll leave you to your drink. Thanks for all you’ve done, but I’d better go.’
* * *
He could have stopped her, he realised, as he walked home from the pub in the rain roughly a pint and a half later. He could have persuaded her to stay, told her she wasn’t the only one feeling overcome. Told her how much he had wanted her to kiss him.
Why didn’t he?
Because he was terrified, was the answer.
He hadn’t been in a relationship of any kind since it all fell apart between him and Sarah. The nearest he had come was with Mairi, his late friend’s younger sister, who he had known as a teenager then not seen in two decades. They had become close when the singer of a band she managed went missing and he helped find out what had happened.
He had come up with so many crappy reasons not to pursue that, many of which were sounding familiar: she was in a vulnerable place; they had a sort of professional relationship; they were confusing stressful emotions for something else. But the main one had been that he was kidding himself it wasn’t over with Sarah.
He had spoken to Mairi online but she had barely been in the country for months. It was only once she was gone that he realised how right she was for him; how daft, how cowardly he’d been not to pursue it. Maybe it wasn’t too late, though. He and Mairi had left the door open before she went travelling with the band, so perhaps that had been a factor in letting Lucy walk out of the pub.
He recalled the taste of her, the smell of spices, the touch of her hand. Then he pictured her lifting her coat in flushed embarrassment. That was when he realised what he had just done. He had held back from Mairi because he was telling himself Sarah was still possible. Now he was holding back from Lucy because he was telling himself Mairi was still possible.
The rain was turning to sleet as he trudged along Maybury Lane, making it seem all the more dark and narrow. It hit his face in big wet blotches, like airborne slush. Sometimes cold water to the face was exactly what he needed.
Get real, he chided himself. As if he could possibly end up with some aristo offspring whose full name was Petronella Lucille, for God’s sake. As if.
But as he came in sight of the square, he realised he was trying to make himself feel better because he was worried he’d blown it.
He was starting to have feelings for her and that scared him. How long was he going to stay damaged by what happened with Sarah? And at what point was loneliness going to scare him more?
His close came into sight and he fished in his pocket for his keys. As he pulled them out he heard a scurry of movement at his back and then suddenly all was black. A thick sack was yanked down over his head and arms from behind, while at the same time a fist drove into his gut. The blow wasn’t particularly powerful, but the surprise of it was enough to double him over. He felt a draw-cord tighten at the mouth of the sack, tethering his wrists to his sides as hands drove him forward along the pavement. His knees rapped against something solid and he pitched forward, off-balance, then he hit what felt like chipboard: the floor of a van. He was dragged inside then heard the doors slam closed.
He couldn’t see and he could barely breathe from the blow and from sheer panic. He felt the pressure of human weight pinning him to the deck. Someone was kneeling on his back, hands gripping one of his legs, holding it in place. Other hands were tugging at the bottom of his jeans, then he felt the tiny cold sharpness of a needle in his calf.
The rear doors opened and closed again. A few moments later he heard the sound of someone climbing into the cab at the front, then of a diesel engine ticking into life. The last thing he was aware of was a swaying sensation as the van began to move.