Farrell couldn’t settle. Usually able to subdue his inner turbulence, he felt agitated beyond endurance. He’d tried to pray but it felt like nobody was home. Music often provided solace, but he felt more like AC/DC than Gregorian chants tonight and that would only ramp up his mood further. A run? Too risky. He’d done his usual five miles before going in to work. Didn’t want to pull a hamstring. A copper was no use if he couldn’t chase criminals. What then? He felt the walls were closing in on him. Glancing out of the round window looking on to the estuary, he noticed the tide was in. He had it. Grabbing a few extra layers and his heavy duty woollen coat, he went downstairs to the kitchen to make a flask of coffee and headed for the car. On nights like this, he wished he had something with a bit more revs than his dumpy Citroen. Resisting the urge to spin his wheels on the gravel like a boy racer, he drove up the lane and turned left, towards the coast.
With the car heater fighting valiantly against the frosty fingers on his windows, he skirted the town to take the Dalbeattie Road. Half an hour later he reached the quiet beach of Powillimont. As he’d expected, his was the only car. Pulling onto the grass at the end of the bay, he turned off the ignition and left the relative warmth. The waves crashing ferociously against the rocks calmed him, along with the salty tang of the sea and the fishy smell of seaweed. He clambered down until he could walk along the shoreline, his way lit by the silvery gleam of a full moon.
He recognized now what had been bugging him. It was the feeling that his friends were all heading into danger and into outcomes that he couldn’t control. It was one thing putting himself in jeopardy, that was something he got a buzz out of, if he was honest. It was quite another watching junior officers walking into hazardous situations. The death of Poppy Black had really rattled him. It smacked of cold, predatory ruthlessness. Someone who didn’t operate inside the norms of human behaviour. He could understand impulsive crimes, fuelled by anger, a momentary rush of blood to the head. But both Monro Stevenson and Poppy Black had been killed in cold blood. It made the murderer that much more unpredictable. He hoped that Lind wouldn’t be too distracted by what was going on with Laura. The thought of Mhairi having to insinuate herself into the company of that degenerate artist, Patrick Rafferty, made him clench his fists in impotent rage. She talked a good game, but he knew she wasn’t half as tough as she liked to make out. She could be drugged, raped, or anything behind those walls, and he would be sitting tight while she ran the gauntlet of all that risk.
He was worried about Dave Thomson as well. Not that he wasn’t shaping up nicely. More that he was a bit too keen. Might make him push a bit hard and take excessive risks. Hopefully, being paired with Stirling, who was the most risk-averse copper Farrell had come across, would rein him in a bit.
According to the not so subtle hints that Mhairi had been dropping, Kate seemed to be drawn to that art critic, Lionel Forbes. Normally she was even more reserved than he was. However, Forbes might well be slowly and inexorably creeping under her guard. He felt a tinge of something unaccustomed pierce him. He couldn’t be jealous, could he? Since when did he have those kinds of feelings for Kate? Shocked at the direction his thoughts were taking him, he sat down on a flat rock and poured a cup of steaming coffee. Now that he had stopped, the cold stole over him like anaesthetic. He wished it could numb his mind as well as his body. The water looked dark and deadly as it spit foam at the rocks. He shivered despite his warm coat.
Before Monro’s murder, he had felt himself drifting away from his earthly ties again, like a ship that had slipped its mooring. Whether it was simply a reaction to all that had gone on last year or not, he didn’t know. Since then, though, he had felt himself being drawn back reluctantly into the temporal world and its very concrete problems. He would not be able to decide where his future lay until the three murder cases had been solved. The family of the victims deserved answers.