My fifth cup of weak coffee. My third hour in a small room with only my reflection for company.
The door opened. Susan came in. I stood up, not sure how to greet her. She did the hard work. Wrapped her arms round me and pressed her head against my chest.
When she pulled back, she looked at me with her head cocked to one side and said, ‘Do you think it’s us?’
‘What?’
‘Every time our paths cross, things get messed up.’
‘That’s depressing.’
‘Guess so.’
We stood in silence for a moment.
She said, ‘Or maybe it’s just me.’
‘No. Really. It’s not.’
She smiled. We sat down, pulling the chairs out from the table so that there was nothing between us. She said, ‘I can’t help feeling this is my fault. I’m the one got you into this.’
‘One way or another, Griggs would have got what he wanted.’
‘I’m an idiot.’
‘No. He promised you the one thing you wanted.’
She nodded. ‘He lied to me. Told me that Burns had been responsible for my father’s death, that none of this would have happened if the old man hadn’t got into his stupid feud with a crooked cop. That was wrong. Burns wasn’t responsible. Not really. He wasn’t the one who forced my dad into the position of working undercover.’
I had to wonder what magic Griggs had worked on Ernie. Or whether Ernie had simply allowed himself to become a stooge. Wherever Griggs’s obsession came from, Ernie’s had to have been greater. After all, the DCI had been trying to pin down Burns for years. Had been forced into a situation where Burns was the devil he knew back in the nineties. And then, when the truce was cancelled by brass, he watched time and again as the law failed to crack down on a man who flouted it so easily.
Maybe all Griggs had to do was ask Ernie. Maybe that had been enough.
But I didn’t say any of this. Not to Susan. She had to have the same thoughts. But we all lie to ourselves about the people we love. Assign them higher motivations than they deserve. Jump through hoops to excuse behaviour from them that we might deplore in others.
Susan and I sat in silence for a while.
Comfortable.
She was the only person in the world could make me feel that way.
Something to count against what she had noted earlier: that whenever we were together, things tended to go to shite.