19

We’re in the car, shaking drops of rain from our heads.

‘Jeez,’ I say. ‘It was glorious sunshine when we went in to that place.’

‘Aye,’ agrees Ale. ‘Typical west of Scotland. Give it five minutes and it will be snowing.’

Ale and I rarely indulge in such mundane chatter. It’s a clear sign that there’s something we need to air, but the thing is, I’m not in the mood to get talking. I fire up the engine, check the traffic in my mirrors, indicate and then enter the flow just before a double-decker bus.

Silence.

And I’m stewing in it. If you were to ask me what I’m annoyed about, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’m just fucking angry. Aware that my hands are trembling, I hold the steering wheel tighter.

Ale is first to break the quiet.

‘Karen Gardner and Matt Davis. Wonder what’s going on with them.’

‘You sure it was Matt Davis?’

‘We don’t have a firm ID on him, but there is a strong resemblance to that boy we talked to in the hospital.’

I take a moment to think about which lane I need to be driving in. Realise I need to change, do so and earn a loud note of warning from the horn of the car I narrowly miss. Looking in the car mirror I can see a red face mouthing a few obscenities. I shout a few of my own.

Ale shifts in her seat. Looks out of her window.

‘What?’ I ask. And flinch at the aggression in my tone. Ignore it. I’m not the one in the wrong here.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

Ale ignores me. Crosses her arms. Looks straight ahead.

‘What?’

‘Nothing, Ray. Just drive.’

‘Jeez, it’s like being fucking married.’ I have a moment where I recognise I need to take a deep breath. The traffic feels too busy, the buildings are crowding in on either side and Ale is doing that judging thing.

‘Christ, who’d want to marry a crabbit git like you.’

‘Now we’re getting personal. You on the rag or something?’ As soon as the words are out of my mouth I regret them.

Ale looks at me. I risk a glance. Her lips are a tight, narrow line. Her jaw clenched. She looks away as if considering her response.

‘You know, a certain amount of sexist shit comes with this job. All that banter with the boys crap. Fine. I can take it. I’ve got broad shoulders. But that … rag comment, I don’t expect from you, Ray. You’re better than that.’

I exhale. Screw my eyes shut for a moment. Force my shoulders down.

‘Sorry.’ It’s a mumble.

‘Can’t hear you. Did you say something?’

She’s not for letting me off.

‘Sorry.’ Louder.

‘For what?’

‘For being a sexist prick.’ I actually manage a half-smile.

Ale grins back. ‘Knob.’

I relax a little. Throw her a grin of relief. We’re good. I owe Alessandra a lot. She was one of the few people who stood by me when I was on the run, suspected of being the so-called Stigmata Killer. It almost cost her career. She deserves more from me.

‘Did you just call me a knob? A gendered insult could be construed as sexism, Detective Constable Rossi.’

‘I could have called you a cunt, but that is a powerful, beautiful thing. And from me could be construed as a compliment.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ Ale thrusts her chin out. ‘I’m reclaiming the word “cunt” as a thing of beauty and declaiming the insult it has become through a male-dominated Christian religion that is terrified of the power of the female.’

‘Good for you,’ I say.

Ale smiles, pulls out her mobile. Gets thumb-busy. I feel relieved that there is no bad feeling and recognise that my earlier irritation has receded somewhat. I know I should delve, try and get to the source of my earlier mind-set, but my courage is lacking.

‘Excellent,’ says Ale, studying her phone.

‘What?’

‘I sent a friend request on Facebook to the two guys we met in The Horseshoe, and they’ve both accepted.’

‘Really? Won’t they recognise you?’

‘I set up a fake account a while ago for this kind of thing. My name is Sandra Ross, and I used a photo from a young, American actress. So, I’m all pretty and everything.’

‘Ah. Alessandra Rossi becomes Sandra Ross. I see what you did there.’

‘And our friends are already busy.’ She reads. ‘Jack is saying that he better not meet Davis when he’s out at the weekend. Can’t trust that his actions will be entirely sane.’ She looks at me. ‘I’m paraphrasing. He says he’ll slice his balls off.’

‘Do you think he’s just blowing off steam? Trying to look tough to his home boys?’

Ale giggles. ‘Did you really just say home boys?’

‘What, is that not how these guys talk?’

‘Yeah. If they’re in the ‘hood. And I’m not sure that the Merchant City comes into that category.’ She laughs again. ‘Home boys.’

She reads some more. ‘His comment has over a hundred likes and a whole string of comments encouraging him to teach Davis a lesson.’ She makes a face. ‘I’m worried, Ray.’

‘Forgive me if I’m wrong, unsocial networking newbie speaking here, but my reading of this malarkey is that people like to sound off, be seen to be strong and active. It’s all about having the image of being a certain way rather than actually doing something about the stuff you say you are concerned about.’

‘Yeah, and normally I would agree with you, Ray. But there’s a tone here. Just not sure about it. And what if Jack does actually meet Simon Davis when he’s on a night out? You saw how he was when we were talking to him in the pub. That was not a normal reaction.’

‘True.’ I say. Ale does have good instincts. ‘Keep an eye on it, will you?’

We’ve reached the office. I spot a free parking space and manoeuvre into it. I apply the handbrake and pull the keys out of the ignition. Instead of stepping out of the car, Ale remains in her seat.

‘I’m going to ask you a question, Ray, and I don’t want to hear the words “fine” or “nothing” in the answer.’

I slowly release my seat-belt. ‘Right…’

‘What is going on with you?’

I open my mouth to speak.

‘You’re not allowed to say “nothing”.’

‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ I reply. She gives me a look. ‘OK. I’m OK. Honest.’

‘Pants on fire.’

I feel my face heat and the earlier irritation return.

‘DD…’ she means Daryl Drain. ‘…tells me you were at a funeral the other day.’

‘Drain has a big gub.’

‘And shiny blue contact lenses, but let’s leave that for another day. The funeral?’

She stares. My eyes move away first. Cursing the confessional of the car, I tell her everything, and as I speak, her chin drops lower and lower.

Ten minutes later and I’m still talking.

‘Fuck,’ she says. Giving the syllable good length. ‘So, Joe was never Stigmata. You knew, told no one and allowed that poor guy to go take on several life sentences?’

‘We think he did murder his carer, Carol,’ I say and cringe at my weak attempt at mitigation.

Ale stares ahead as if trying to assimilate all this new information.

‘Fuck,’ she repeats.

I cross my arms. Hold myself tight, tucking my hands into my underarms until I feel them go numb with the lack of circulation. Ale looks at me and reads my expression.

‘Ray,’ she says. ‘Jesus.’ And I can read her compassion and lack of judgement and feel my eyes spark with tears. I exhale in an attempt to quell my emotions. Then cough. Now I’m clenching my teeth.

‘And Leonard? He’s the bogeyman?’

I can only nod. Her question sums him up perfectly, and I acknowledge this, feeling weak and ridiculous.

‘Why does he have such a strong hold over you, Ray?’

As children, Jim Leonard and I shared the same space in a convent orphanage. He and his twin brother lived in each other’s shadow. There was something uncanny in their communication with each other which, combined with their joyless demeanour, freaked out all of us other kids. Then his brother died from pneumonia, and Jim became so distant from reality that he was removed to another form of care. One that the other kids were sure consisted of padded cells.

Just before he was taken away, he had taken to following me. I would often wake up in the morning to find him standing over my bed. Each time he would be chanting, “We’re going to kill them all.”

The other kids just laughed at him, but there was a fixed look to his eye as he said this that I couldn’t shake from my dreams.

It doesn’t take much digging into any man’s psyche to reach the tender child, and it’s only now that I can see that the boy I was never recovered.

The last time I encountered Leonard, he drugged me, murdered an aged nun before my eyes and then sliced my wrists to the bone. In his twisted mind, he thought he could stage the murder to show that I killed the nun and then, torn with guilt, turned the knife on myself.

If we were standing face to face, I know I could take him no problem. I have height on him and weight. And yet.

‘We? You said we, Ray?’ Ale asks when I stopped talking.

‘Sorry?’

‘Why would Leonard chant “We’re going to kill them all”? Was he including you in this somehow, Ray?’

‘Ale. Leave it.’

‘I’m just trying to make sense of it all, Ray.’

I silence her with a look. We aren’t going there. Enough with the sharing. But Ale is no longer easily cowed.

‘And what about Joseph McCall?’

I’m holding my right arm by the wrist and rubbing the scar with a thumb. Realise what I’m doing and go back to the cross-armed position, hiding my scars in the damp dark of my armpits.

Looking out of the window, I offer nothing but silence to Alessandra’s question. In the distance I see a stretch of blue sky, skirted by another weather front rolling in on Glasgow. A mass of cloud stretches across the horizon. Dark and heavy, like a conscience gravid with guilt.