Ava swallowed the first antibiotic capsule with a glass of orange juice and lifted her extremely sore leg up onto Callanach’s couch. It was 12.30 a.m. and the city was remarkably quiet.
‘You believe there’s any chance Mrs Hawksmith committed suicide?’ Ava asked.
‘Physically, that would have been just about possible, but it doesn’t feel real. Why stress yourself out with the cable ties around your ankles?’
‘Maybe to make sure you can’t change your mind,’ Ava said. ‘If it had just been the cable ties, I might have believed it. It was the handcuffs that did it for me. They gave the whole scene a sense that a tableau had been constructed. Someone had worked hard building that image in their mind. They’d seen how it would play out. Surely you don’t plan a suicide like that. It’s reactive, chaotic in most instances. I’m no expert, but I’d have said your natural instinct is to give yourself some sort of flexibility or an out clause. Also, an element of comfort or ease. No one wants their death to be that traumatic, no matter how depressed they are. You spoke to a witness from a suicide support group about the Stephen Berry killing, didn’t you? Do you think he’d be willing to come in and talk to me about it? I reckon we’d benefit from having an expert to give a second opinion.’
Callanach thought about it, knowing Ava was right and that Rune Maclure would probably be more than happy to help. The idea that the two of them would be ideally suited struck him again. Maclure would make Ava laugh, he thought, and put her at ease. He was the right age for her and Callanach was pretty sure he hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring. That didn’t mean he was single, of course, but if he was … Callanach stopped himself there. He had no right to limit Ava’s access to men who might be good for her, or bad for her, for that matter.
‘Yeah, his name’s Rune Maclure. I’ll talk to him tomorrow,’ he compromised. ‘You go to the postmortem and get what you can from Ailsa. We can meet back at the station and debrief the team. It’ll save time.’
‘You’ll have other things to think about tomorrow. Pax Graham’s going to have to interview you about the nursing home death and the sooner we get that over with, the better. He needs an official statement on file in case you have any relevant facts that might assist and it’ll ensure that we’ve followed proper procedure. What I still don’t know is why you were there in the first place. Seems like a long time ago now, but that is the reason I came round earlier.’
‘I’m going to need a drink for that conversation, even if you can’t join me,’ he said, walking to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of red wine.
‘Do you have any beer?’ Ava shouted after him.
‘Yes, but you can’t have it. Doctor’s orders. How did Selina seem to you?’
Ava considered how to answer that. Selina had been a number of things. Upset, angry, bereft. Jealous. That was the word Ava was avoiding. Jealous of her and Callanach’s relationship. She’d got the wrong impression, that much was clear, only how could she explain that without embarrassment. Natasha had teased her about Callanach plenty of times, but that was just ribbing. There was nothing behind it.
‘I think she’ll be okay and don’t try changing the subject. I thought you didn’t know anybody in Scotland apart from the MIT reprobates. I know the man in the nursing home wasn’t part of a case before today. His name comes up blank on the system. You’re going to have to explain it tomorrow, so you might as well have a practice run today.’
Callanach sat down next to her on the sofa, lifting her injured leg so that it rested on his thigh.
‘Bruce Jenson was my father’s boss, years ago,’ he said. ‘Back when my dad got his first real job working for a furniture company called Edinburgh Bespoke. In fact, it was before I was even born. I spent some of my holiday researching my family’s history, asking my mother about it, so when I got back, I thought I’d look him up.’
‘Bullshit.’ Ava watched as Callanach drained half a glass of wine in one mouthful. ‘Since when do you need to down that much wine to talk about historical research? What aren’t you telling me?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘No drama, no problem. Whatever happened to him today was coincidental. I’ll hand DI Graham my statement in the morning, he can interview me about the forensics and that’ll be the end of it.’
Ava stared at him. ‘Fine, I’ll play along. So Jenson was your father’s boss thirty-odd years ago. Why go and see him?’
Callanach shrugged. ‘Curiosity, I suppose. A desire to make a connection with the past.’
‘All right. But when I told you he was dead, your face was blank. There was some shock when you realised you were the last person on record as seeing him alive, but you didn’t express any sadness for him, or concern for his family.’
‘I met the man once for fifteen minutes. How do you expect me to react?’ Callanach asked, leaning his head back on the sofa and closing his eyes.
‘I expect you to write your name in the visitors’ book and not flash your badge when you have what seems like the most innocuous reason in the world for visiting an old man. Also, I hate it when you lie to me because it makes me feel like you don’t trust me and that’s kind of upsetting, it turns out.’
‘Ava, don’t do that,’ Callanach whispered.
‘I’m not doing anything,’ she said, taking his glass from his hand and helping herself to a sip of wine.
‘Yes, you are.’ He rolled his head to the side to look at her. ‘You’re making it about emotions when I want to keep it simple.’
‘You’ve already admitted to me that your DNA or fingerprints might be on Jenson’s chin. Touching someone’s face is either a loving or an angry gesture. Which was it?’
‘How about he dribbled and I held his chin to wipe it away,’ Callanach replied, reaching out to retrieve his glass.
‘Is that what you wrote in your statement?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘How did the vase get broken?’
‘I knocked it with my elbow by accident,’ he said, walking to a shelf to fetch a clean glass and fill it with wine, knowing Ava wasn’t giving his back whatever the medical advice was.
‘Funny. I’ve known you a while now and I’ve never, ever seen you be clumsy. You’re very aware of your surroundings, especially in places like hospitals. Seems out of character to me.’
‘You have to stop digging,’ he said. ‘For your sake and mine.’
‘I said the same thing to you in previous cases and you’ve kept digging until there were no secrets left between us. You did that for me. What is it you don’t want me to know? Come on, Luc. They’ll get your DNA from his face and if the only other DNA is Jenson’s, your dribble explanation isn’t going to wash.’
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought about that.’
‘About what?’
‘My DNA being compared with his to make sure there’s no contamination.’ He lurched forwards, clutching his stomach, spilling his newly poured wine and trying not to vomit.
‘I take back what I said about you not being clumsy.’ She smiled gently, taking the glass from his hand. ‘Luc, what’s going on? If you didn’t touch Jenson, whatever really did happen, you’ve got nothing to worry about.’
Ava hobbled to the kitchen to fetch a cloth. Kneeling on the floor, soaking up the worst of the spillage, she tried not to stare at her colleague. Depositing the sopping cloth in the sink, she washed her hands to give Callanach time to compose himself before returning to the sofa.
‘Listen,’ she said gently, sitting at his side, ‘last night you saved my life when I took a risk I had no business taking. I climbed that wall knowing it was foolhardy, but it didn’t occur to me that I could get really hurt, because you were there, holding me. You’re always there when I need you. Let me do the same for you. Please.’
Callanach rubbed his eyes, his shoulders suddenly drooping. He turned sideways along the couch and Ava did the same. They faced one another, legs stretched side by side, and Ava waited for him to speak.
‘When my mother came to Edinburgh last year, and you arranged for me to meet her in the hotel, she told me about a Christmas party, years earlier, at the factory where my father worked. They were young, struggling for money. Good jobs were hard to come by and she didn’t speak great English, so my father was supporting them both. He was a supervisor at Edinburgh Bespoke, popular, with a wife so beautiful – and exotic, being French in those days – that I guess there was an amount of envy at work. When a truck broke down during the Christmas party, my father was sent out to fetch it. He could drive and hadn’t been drinking as he was with my mother. He took his responsibilities as a husband very seriously. Ironically, if he’d been drinking that night, my mother would have been perfectly safe.’
Ava said nothing. She didn’t need to. Any experienced police officer could have guessed what was coming.
‘The company was run by two men. Gilroy Western and the late Bruce Jenson. While my father was out they offered my young, innocent mother a tour of the factory, including their offices, which were upstairs away from the music and rowdiness of the party.’
‘Oh God …’ Ava muttered.
‘They got her into an office, shut the door, shoved a canvas bag over her head and one of them raped her. It was obvious they’d agreed what they were going to do in advance, no question about it. She had no way of defending herself and she’d had a couple of glasses to drink at the party. They told her if she reported them, they’d say she’d offered herself to them and her husband would be sacked.’
‘And your father would have killed them. Quite literally, if he was anything like you,’ Ava added.
‘So there you go. That’s the horrible truth about why I was there. I tried for such a long time to stay away from Jenson, but when I saw my mother in Paris, I realised that the passage of years hasn’t dulled the pain they put her through. Not one bit.’
‘You can’t tell Pax Graham about this,’ Ava said, her brain already several steps ahead. ‘With that sort of motive there’s no way I could continue to keep you on active duty.’
‘Then suspend me. I didn’t do it, Ava. I wanted to. I held that bastard’s face to make him look at a photo of my parents, but he was so far gone with the dementia that I might as well have been holding a corpse’s chin. Bruce Jenson was already serving his sentence. That’s what I realised while I was there.’
‘The vase?’ Ava asked.
‘I lost my temper when I knew I wasn’t going to get any answers from him. I cleaned up straight away and explained to the nurse that there’d been an accident.’
‘What about the smashed glass in the patio door?’
‘I kicked it in frustration, just with the tip of my boot so there won’t be a print. There was a stress mark in the glass but it didn’t break. I wasn’t responsible for that,’ Callanach explained.
Ava sighed. ‘Which just leaves the issue of you having used your badge to gain access. What’s your explanation for that going to be?’
Callanach ran a hand through his hair. ‘The bigger problem might be the DNA.’ He smiled at her. ‘Depending on how carefully the lab checks the two samples, mine and his.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Ava said.
‘My mother never told my father about the rape and so that he didn’t suspect anything, she continued having intimate relations with him as normal. The following month it became clear that she was pregnant.’
Ava took a few seconds to process the relevance. Her hand flew to her mouth.
‘Oh no. Luc, I’m so sorry. He can’t be …’
‘Actually, there’s a one in three chance that he is,’ Callanach said. ‘I don’t have anything left of my father’s to check the DNA, so all I have is a process of deduction. That’s why I was there. I took a hair from his head and sent it away for testing.’
‘But if he’s your father, your DNA might look oddly similar to his when the Scenes of Crime forensics tests come back.’
‘Yeah,’ Callanach said.
‘Which would easily be motive enough to put the case before a jury, with the rest of the evidence. Fuck.’
‘Uh huh,’ Callanach agreed.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ Ava finished. ‘But that’s only a one in three chance, like you said. Even if he does turn out to be …’ – she chose not to say the actual words – ‘the lab may not put two and two together from the sets of DNA, especially if they’re already expecting to find yours on the corpse, so they won’t be doing anything more than double-checking it against the sample of yours that’s already on the database for exclusion.’
‘Ava, whatever you’re thinking, you have to stop. If we try to cover this up there’ll be a disaster. Right now I have nothing to hide.’
‘Are you kidding? Nothing to hide? You went to see a man who ended up dead, who at the very least conspired to rape your mother and who might be your father. What the hell do you think is going to happen if this goes to court? Were you angry? They’ll point at the broken vase. Were you trying to conceal your identity? They’ll say that’s why you didn’t sign the visitors’ book …’
‘I went through the front door and spoke to the nurses. Even I’m aware that I’m fairly recognisable. No one’s going to believe that I’m stupid enough to kill a man then simply walk out as if nothing had happened. There’s no way I’d have got away with it.’
‘So you lost your temper when you were in there. Didn’t plan on killing him, just got cross. It all went wrong, so you did the only thing you could do, which was to exit the same way you went in.’
‘Are you on my side or not?’ he frowned.
‘I’m being a realist. You can’t breathe a word of this. If the DNA similarities between the two of you are discovered, you’ll have to plead ignorance.’ She stopped, shutting her eyes, shaking her head. ‘Oh God, Luc, is that why your mother disappeared when you were awaiting trial on the rape allegation?’
He nodded.
‘And you’ve dealt with all this, without telling me any of it? Why? I could have helped you, just listened, something …’
‘It wasn’t that simple, Ava. It’s taken me a long time to process. I thought that maybe I could let it go and move on. Now I wish I had.’
‘Which begs the question, who actually killed Bruce Jenson and why?’ Ava asked, emptying the remnants from the wine glass.
‘I have no idea,’ Callanach said. ‘My money would be on a nurse or medical assistant who’d been looking for an opportunity to kill and saw the perfect chance. No one else came to Jenson’s room while I was in there and it was late when I left. I doubt they’d have accepted any other visitors at that time. They’d have turned me away if I hadn’t shown my police badge.’
‘Do you know where Jenson’s former partner is?’ Ava asked.
‘Western? The best information I have is that he’s living in Spain, somewhere near Malaga. I haven’t contacted him.’
‘Thank God for that, so he’ll have no reason to mention your name when he hears the news. What about Jenson’s family? Would they recognise your name?’
‘I can’t imagine why. It’s not the sort of thing you admit to your wife and child, is it – raping a young woman and then continuing to pay her husband’s pay cheque for the next two years until he became terminally ill so you let him go?’
‘You must hate them,’ Ava said. ‘I don’t think I’d blame you if you had held that pillow over Jenson’s face.’
Callanach paled.
‘I’m sorry.’ She shifted on the sofa, moving close enough to reach out for him, wrapping her arms around him and dropping her head on his shoulder. ‘I’m so glad you told me. We’re going to get through this. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise. You’ve already been through enough. The whole team knows there’s no question that you’re capable of something like this, no matter how bad it looks.’
‘Not even Sergeant Lively?’ Callanach attempted to lighten the atmosphere.
‘Actually, now that we’ve drafted in Pax Graham, you’re suddenly Lively’s favourite detective inspector,’ Ava laughed. ‘Apparently, you’re no longer the most eligible bachelor in MIT. Are you going to cope?’
‘I’ll try,’ he smiled. ‘So does that go for you as well? Has DI Graham caught your eye with the big shoulders, long hair and the Scots accent?’
‘Would it be any of your business if I said yes?’ Ava teased.
‘Only that I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be forming personal associations with officers in your command,’ he said.
‘Oh, you mean like waking up in their bed?’ she grinned. ‘Yeah, you’re right. That’s definitely not okay.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Callanach said, ‘looks like you’re staying another night after drinking wine with your antibiotics. Come on.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s half past two. You may as well stay here again. No point going home now.’
Ava considered arguing then realised how stupid that was. She’d spent one night at Callanach’s, so a second would make no difference at all. And she didn’t want to leave him now, after what he’d revealed to her. There were times when no one should have to be alone.