Since the incident of his stabbing, Valentine had become aware of a distant, almost imperceptible, ticking. There was a clock on him now. He had never thought of it before, even at forty, which may have been the logical time to detect its presence. At forty you may safely look back, then count the years forward to assume – bearing in mind some luck of genetics – you have lived longer than you have left to go. Valentine’s father would not see out his sixties, his grandfather had gone in his fifties; how long did he have left?
When he pondered the prospect of the diminishing count of years, he took pause. His previous decade – his thirties – had passed in a blur. He could remember turning thirty clearly, as it was the time of the millennium celebrations, but had it really been so long ago? He couldn’t believe all those years – all that time – had really passed. What had he done with it? The incidents of memory were few: his daughters’ birthdays, a couple of holidays, the surgery. In the main, it had been a period of drudge: of paying his way in the world, playing to a set of rules he had nothing to do with establishing. It seemed a waste.
His twenties, though further away in time, conversely seemed closer in memory. He could remember them with more clarity and with more affection. On turning twenty, he’d seemed charged with a burning sense of excitement. He’d thought the world held something special for him, but of course he had been dispossessed of that notion now. Youth was a ruse that lulled you into maturity, aided and abetted by the self-serving ego. There was no special people, at least, precious few – enough only to be the exceptions that proved the rule or to act like a spur in your back, a reminder of your posting in the chain gang.
When he thought about the days of his distant youth, Valentine always alighted on his own children. They seemed so naïve. Had he ever been so naked in the world? At no time had he felt it. The detective smirked to himself – there was that egomania again – two decades on and he could still fool himself that what went on inside his head was different to everyone else’s. It was pathetic: we were all no more than meat and bones controlled by urges and impulses we knew little or nothing about. If indeed there was more – a heart, a soul, a sentient mind – it mattered nothing. Our fate remained the same: the rotting meat on the decaying bone dictated that.
There had been a time, once, that shook him from the slumber of so-called waking life and made him question his perceptions of the world he inhabited. Was it really as cut and dried as he supposed? Who was he to assume anything? He was just a man, a speck of dust on the great plain of the Earth. Surely he was fallible. When he had taken the call from David, a friend of many years standing with whom he had attended Tulliallan as a cadet, with whom he had spent time in uniform, and who he knew better than anyone else alive, he had known at once it was the last time he would speak to him.
‘I’m coming back to the old town for a few days,’ David had said, his voice high, full of spirit.
‘Great, I’ll tell Clare. She’ll be over the moon . . . You’ll stay with us, of course.’
David had said he would stay, since he’d moved to the north of Ireland he’d become a man of note, a VIP no less; it was almost an honour to have him stop by. They’d kept in contact, but David’s visits had become sparser than his own hair now. Yet they were something to look forward to.
‘Grand, I have a couple of days spare. We could go up the coast, see the countryside,’ he said. ‘I just feel like I need a dose of it, being away from the auld country gets you that way.’
‘I’ll pick you up at Prestwick Airport . . .’
As Valentine said it, he’d known it was a lie. He’d welcomed the idea of playing host to his old friend, but as he’d prepared the house, planned day trips to Culzean Castle and Burns’ Cottage he found himself in deep reminiscence of days long gone. He’d known, in the recesses of his mind, that he would not be doing any of those things he wrote down on paper, because he knew David would not be coming. He didn’t know why or how he knew – and this is what he examined now – but for some reason he’d felt – no, he knew for sure – that he would never see his friend again. When the call came from the RUC to say that David had died, it had not shocked Valentine; he felt as if he’d known all along. The first ring of the telephone confirmed it. As he replayed the surreal time of David’s passing once again, he couldn’t shake the thought that he’d been in touch with some otherworldly messenger. He found the assumption absurd, but there it was.
The living room door eased open and Clare appeared with a glass of wine in her hand. ‘You look deep in thought . . . Penny for them.’
Valentine looked at his own glass; the ice was melting over the Grouse. ‘Yeah, you could say that.’
She sat down in front of him, balancing her elbows on her knees. ‘Well, do I have to shake it out of you?’
Valentine took a sip of whisky and the ice clattered. ‘I was thinking about David.’
Clare’s face creased and her voice became lyrical. ‘David Patterson that you trained with?’
‘Yeah . . . Don’t know why, just thinking of him.’
His wife reclined, crossed her legs and balanced the wine glass on the arm of the chair. ‘You always said you knew it was coming . . . David’s death.’
He could still taste the whisky on his lips; his breath was warm. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ The words seemed to come out sharply; he noticed their barbs register on Clare’s face and tried to retract them. ‘I just mean, you know, I’d sooner not rake over it.’
‘What’s wrong, Bob?’ She seemed calm, wearing her concerned face. There were no neuroses on show, none of the nervy gestures of late, like tucking hair behind her ear over and over again. It was late, too late to be getting into a metaphysical conversation with his wife. He pressed his back deeper into the chair and tapped a fingertip off the glass he held. Yet before he realised it, he’d removed a photograph from his shirt pocket and passed it to Clare.
‘Who’s this?’ She turned the picture over as if hoping to find the answer to her question written on the back.
‘Her name’s Janie Cooper.’
‘She’s a pretty wee thing.’
‘Was . . .’
Clare’s eyes widened. He thought she might throw the picture at him and storm out of the room; she didn’t like hearing about his cases. ‘This wee one’s dead?’ She seemed saddened. ‘This is an old picture, must be a few years ago now.’
‘Twelve years.’
‘That long? Then why are you carrying her picture around?’ She placed the photograph on the arm of her chair where the wineglass had been resting a moment ago.
Valentine sighed. He didn’t think he had the right words to explain what he was doing with a photograph of a murder victim who may not even be related to the ongoing investigation that he was involved in. The idea was absurd; even to those he knew who relied on their gut instincts, it would still be regarded as such.
‘Do you remember a few nights ago I woke you, wanting to talk?’ He touched the edges of his mouth. ‘You said I was sweating . . .’
Clare glanced at the photograph on the arm of the chair. ‘Yes, I remember . . . you’d had a turn.’
‘It was a dream . . . or something.’
‘Hang on, you said you’d had a dream about a girl with hair like . . .’ She retrieved the picture. ‘You said she had hair like Chloe and Fiona at that age.’
‘She does remind me of the girls at that age . . . They were like wee angels.’ Valentine caught himself smiling into the past.
‘Bob, what is going on with your job?’
The reverie was broken. ‘What do you mean?’
She put down the photograph and sighed, sitting forward in her chair once again. ‘Something is wrong. You’re under too much stress if you’re having nightmares about children that have been dead for twelve years.’
‘No, you don’t understand . . .’
Clare put down her wine glass and held her face in her hands; she depressed her temples with the tips of her nails. ‘Is this about you feeling different, about having changed once again?’ She dropped her hands and stood up; the empty wine glass fell over. ‘No, don’t answer, I don’t want to know . . .’
‘Clare, please . . .’
His wife left the room before Valentine had any further chance to explain himself. He raised the whisky glass to his lips and drained it. What he had wanted to tell her, to make her understand, was that he hadn’t seen the photograph of Janie Cooper until today. The fact that he already had seen her in a dream was as much a mystery to him as anyone else; he couldn’t explain it. But there she was, or had been, laying flowers on the dead corpse of James Urquhart, dancing round him at the scene of his murder. The image caused a shiver to pass across his shoulders and he tensed as if caught in a shrill breeze. It was like something you read about in cheap magazines or found on late-night television when flicking through the channels. None of it made a modicum of sense, it was all alien to him, to his reasoning and sense of self. The detective wondered what had become of his life, of his perceptions; he questioned his sanity. He knew he should relieve himself of his duties, tell Chief Superintendent Marion Martin that he was not fit for purpose, because surely this wasn’t normal, but something told him that wasn’t an option. The picture of the young Janie Cooper and the image of the girl in his dream had fused now, and his sense of purpose had crystallised with it. If anyone was going to find James Urquhart’s murderer, or that of Duncan Knox or Janie Cooper, then it was going to be him. He believed it, no matter what he had to base his judgement on. He steeled himself for the moment when what he had seen and felt would be understood with some form of clarity – because wasn’t that the way it always was? Afterwards, everything made sense. After the case was closed. After the evidence gathered, the clues followed. He told himself that. He longed to believe it, but there was an ache in the pit of his stomach that asked if he would ever really know anything ever again.
He rose from his chair and placed the empty tumbler on the coffee table. The ice had melted into a smear on the bottom of the glass. He walked towards the door, put out the lights and carried on to the staircase. As he ascended the stairs to bed there was a lightness in his head that he put down to the whisky but hoped was a thaw in his thinking. When Valentine reached his bedroom the door was closed. He depressed the handle and walked in – the room was in darkness and only a few stray glints of light emanated from the edges of the heavy curtains. He had enough vision to see his wife lying in the bed, her back to him.
‘Clare, look, you need to bear with me on this one.’
She remained silent for a moment, then turned to face him. ‘This one? They’re all the same: every time you go out that door you become a basket case with the stress and strain . . . For God’s sake, Bob, have you forgotten just a short time ago you took a knife in the chest?’
He reached up to massage his eyes. ‘You don’t sound overly bothered about that.’
‘Maybe it’s because you don’t sound overly bothered about me, or the girls. We need some of you too, but there never seems to be enough to go around.’
‘Clare, just let me get this investigation out of the way and then we’ll take a holiday, you and the girls and me . . . All together.’
She sat up in the bed and brought her knees towards her chest. ‘A holiday? You think that’s going to cut it, Bob?’
‘What do you mean?’
She shook her head. ‘This isn’t working . . . We’re dysfunctional.’
The word sounded ridiculous to him, like a term from a self-help manual. He let a laugh emerge that, at once, he knew he should have suppressed. ‘Oh, come on . . .’
She looked at him, and the whites of her round eyes shone in the darkness of the enclosed space. There was no mistaking her ferocity when she replied.
‘Go to hell, Bob, just bloody well go to hell.’