The tiled floor beneath his bare feet began to feel cold after a few moments, so DI Bob Valentine started to move his toes. A tingling sensation – like low-wattage electricity – worked its way along the arch of his foot and buried itself into the thick of the heel. Had he missed something? The debates about his fitness to return to active policing seemed to have been instantly swept aside. For so long now he had held the quandary in the back of his mind, removed it to the front once in a while to examine the finer points of both sides of the argument; it had become a practised undertaking. The neural path was a deep one.
‘Never . . .’
He said the word, but it didn’t sound like his voice. For a moment he stared at the cold feet below him, they were getting colder now. That meant something: he needed to move.
Valentine raised himself from the bench. He was still holding his mobile and he placed it on the brim of the locker shelf in front of him. As he turned, he noticed the crumpled mass of his sports coat and grimaced; it was then that he caught sight of his reflection in the tall, floor-to-ceiling mirror. He saw his face first, the dark hair above his temples – still thick, that was something to hold on to – and the smooth but clean-lined block of forehead. The tight grimace of his mouth subsided as he dropped his gaze onto, first, his neck and then to the expanse of white that sat between his shoulders. He had a broad chest, a barrel some would have called it; the covering of skin was almost hairless, save one or two stray insect-legs that sprouted around his nipples and at prominent points along the line his clavicle: his chest had always looked that way, except for the thick red-brown line that ran vertically through the centre of the sternum with an undoubted surgical precision; this was a recent addition.
Valentine let the lids of his eyes hang heavy as he tipped back his head slightly. It was a look some would have reserved for staring into the middle distance, or further yet, but the DI’s focus was squarely on the ridge of unwelcome flesh that sat as thick as his index finger. The geometric line was more than a scar; the thinner white markings where the stitching had tightened the invasive hole could be called a scar. This was something more. A scar suggested an injury, a trauma perhaps, but the object of Valentine’s gaze – and its location – proclaimed here was the point of a violent incursion, a beacon blazing the message that this was a man who was lucky to be alive.
A clamour of voices broke from the shower cubicles and a group of recruits, white towels circling their waists, burst into view. Valentine drew back his shoulders and stood before them for a moment.
‘Sir . . .’ said the first to see him.
He nodded back.
‘Sir,’ the others followed.
The DI reached for his grey sports coat and started to shake it out; he had creased it when he sat down, but the call had taken him by surprise. He was still in a state of disbelief, his thoughts swaying between his readiness to return to the station and the particulars of the murder that Marion Martin had relayed to him.
He smirked to himself. They called her Dino, after her namesake, but also because it was a dog’s name, and she was of the ilk that station smart-arses loved to ridicule by appointing them a derogatory moniker. As he amused himself, he glanced at the mirror – one of the recruits was nudging the other, drawing a line down the centre of his chest with the tip of his finger. Valentine didn’t need to second-guess what was passing between them.
‘Want a better view, lads?’ He turned and put his hand on his hips.
The recruits looked away; as the DI eyed them fully now he saw they were only young lads. Two big shots – chancers – and an ‘aye man’ – the type that’s there to nod and gravely intone ‘aye, aye’ while the others boasted and prattled about themselves.
‘No, I was just . . .’ said the nudging recruit.
‘I saw you.’ Valentine stepped forward. ‘You were drawing attention to this . . .’ he pointed at the thick line of darkened flesh in the centre of his chest.
The recruits looked away. The air in the changing rooms seemed to have altered. If there had been a pitch of bravado, it had been flattened by the steamroller Valentine was now driving over their egos.
‘Don’t for a second think this is some badge of honour.’
‘No, sir.’ The voices were weak, meek. The three lads stared at the water dripping from them as it fell to the tiled floor beneath their bare feet.
Valentine raised his voice. ‘Look at this . . .’ – he tapped his chest – ‘I’m not proud of it.’ He raised his voice, flitted looks between the three. When he felt sure he had their full attention, he spoke up again. ‘When I was first in uniform, an old sergeant of mine said your tongue’s more useful than your baton . . . Just you remember that.’
The DI kept a firm stare on them for a moment longer and then returned to his locker and began the slow ritual of dressing himself. He never felt comfortable bawling out those beneath him in rank, but he was an experienced enough police officer to know when a mind was receptive to a lesson that might make the job a little easier.
On his way out, the ‘aye man’ turned his head away but the two chancers painted thin smiles on their faces and nodded like they had somehow all now become friends. Valentine looked through them and continued to the door as if he had never spoken a word.
In the car park the sun was high in the sky, painting a hazy red wash over the day. The DI’s cheeks flushed as he walked into the heat, and then he cut his stride as the unusually clear and bright light silhouetted the frame of a black dog. The animal stood statue-still, its ears pinned up with angular precision, obviously perfected for the earnest task it had currently set itself. Valentine was gripped by the beast – he had never seen a stray hereabouts – and then suddenly it bolted. The dog crossed the grass at speed, slowed only by the paving flags it had to cross before jinxing round the wall and out of sight. Valentine wondered what strange secret of nature the animal had been privy to. He found himself looking around, trying to discern a clue as to what the dog knew, and then he shook himself and headed for the car. He had been thinking far too much about that sort of thing lately, he told himself. ‘Pack it in, Bob,’ he muttered as he pointed the key in the direction of the Vectra.
As he started the engine his old preoccupation returned, and he tried to douse it with logic: he was entering into a murder investigation. He needed his attention to be on that, not the events of these last few months, not his self-doubts.
‘Dogs in the street . . .’ he told himself. ‘What next?’
As he engaged the clutch and started out of the car park, he turned his attention to the words the chief super had uttered: ‘You’re back in business.’
There was no denying the fact that he felt good about that. He needed to get back to what he was best at. He was a murder-squad detective and nothing that had happened changed that.
‘No Bryce, McVeigh or Collins, eh . . .’ He let his thoughts turn to words as he drove back to Ayr. ‘King Street must be like the bloody Mary Celeste.’
The steering wheel was still warm after sitting in the glare of the sun; he gripped lightly as he spun the wheel through his palms. It was good to be driving back to the station, to be back on the proper force – not messing around with wet-behind-the-ears recruits and has-beens. The likes of Bryce would be falling over themselves to get a murder case like this, so why was he filled with apprehension? He was going back to the place he knew best – the sharp end. The thought made his throat constrict slightly, but he brushed it aside; there really was no place for doubts now.