DI Bob Valentine woke from cautious sleep with aching bones and the scent of whisky on his breath. He removed his hand from the duvet and collected up the alarm clock – the exposed flesh of his arm told him at once that there was colder weather in store. He took time to focus on the burn of the digital clock’s message, but when it registered he let out a sigh and padded towards the bathroom. Clare had risen early; her side of the bed was empty. There was a nip in the air already, he hoped it wasn’t time to put on the central heating: the tired old boiler wouldn’t last another year. Surely it was just that period of adjustment when the body gets used to a drop in temperature from the sun of summer to the smirr and wind of an approaching winter. As he ran the taps, Valentine let the sink fill up and then slowly splashed at his face cautiously with the warm water. He saw himself in the mirror: the tired eyes and sunken jowls of a man racing through middle age struck like a lash, but their impact was lessened by the sudden alteration in the appearance of his chest. The scar, the long, invasive mark that signalled like a beacon to him every morning, had gone from its usual pinkish-red to an altogether less harmonious hue. The scar’s colour was now a pale purple: there was still a hint of red at its edges, but the predominant pigment now seemed blue. He touched it: the thick ridge of flesh felt the same and Valentine at once was compelled to ask himself what he was doing.
‘Christ, man, get a grip . . .’ He leaned over the sink again and splashed more water on his face and neck. It was all an effort to shake him from introspection, from the concerns of the overactive mind towards the here and now.
When he was dressed the DI took himself downstairs, collected a cup of coffee from the pot and greeted his wife with a cordial, ‘Good morning.’ There was a package waiting for him on the kitchen counter and the outside of the brown envelope indicated the contents at once.
‘What have you been getting now?’ said Clare. It seemed a surreal remark, as if he was the one who was continually running up the credit card bills.
‘It’s something for my dad . . .’ Valentine opened the package from Amazon and removed the worn copy of McIlvanney’s Strange Loyalties. ‘He’s been reading detective novels, can you believe it?’
Clare collected the book from the counter and creased her nose. ‘Couldn’t you have got him a new one?’
‘It’s been out of print, I had to shop around for this.’
‘I’m surprised you had the time.’ It was a calculated remark, and one that Valentine had no reply for.
He sipped his coffee and watched his wife return to the morning newspaper and her glass of orange juice. ‘Could you drop it off later today, Clare . . . ? He’s just sitting about up there on his own, I think he’d appreciate it.’
She turned and put widened eyes on him. ‘Well, you’d think he’d appreciate a visit from his son, then.’
Valentine put down his coffee cup and raised his briefcase; he wasn’t prepared to pick up where he had left off the night before. ‘I’m off to work.’
Clare had returned to reading the newspaper as he closed the kitchen door and headed towards the car in his shirtsleeves. The air outside was too sharp to be out without a jacket, he realised as he opened the door and flung his grey sports coat on the backseat; it covered the dark patch he still winced to see and still couldn’t quite believe existed. As he pulled out, the sky was an infinite grey smear and the road still glistened from the recent downpour; the contrast struck Valentine as the natural bedfellows of the Ayrshire setting – bleak and bleaker. The Vectra’s engine grunted all the way to the first tailback, which stretched from the junction all the way down Beresford Terrace. When he depressed the clutch the car steadied and he became aware of the fetch and miss of his breath. He gripped the gearstick as the lights changed and drove on to Burns Statue Square, taking a slow glance towards the High Street as he turned left at the Ayrshire and Galloway.
The town was a huddled hoard of bodies, all bared elbows and blunt shoulders. It was as if either the order ‘eyes down’ had been given or to a one they feared a glance to the grey skies would strike them blind. The traffic soon slowed to a stop once again outside the old market and Valentine found himself staring aimlessly as a torn poster waved to passers-by each time the breeze picked up. There were children on their way to school wailing with siren-like voices as he took off again, glad to be moving forward. The hotel where DS Sylvia McCormack stayed was in front of a roundabout. He knew it as the Caledonian Hotel: it had changed its name several times since then, but to Valentine it would always be the Caly. He pulled up outside and waited for his colleague to appear.
Valentine realised that he liked DS McCormack because she thought for herself – she utilised some form of judgement, not just in the job but in life too. Most people, most of the time, were just trying to fit in. They were trying to make themselves more like everyone else at the expense of any of their own uniqueness. Being different, even in a small way, made the majority uneasy. Difference was something to be hidden, locked away and secretly challenged: ‘Why am I not like everyone else?’ was the modern preoccupation. It took guts, beyond confidence or any self-assurance, to stand out from the pack and say, ‘No, I’m doing this my way.’ Valentine admired that in DS McCormack: she acquiesced her own self to no one. If it set her aside from the others, so be it.
He imagined what the DS’s school days must have been like – that cauldron of conformity where every transgression from the norm was an offence worthy of public hostility. Did she spend those days alone? Annexed from the others in the playground, in the dining hall . . . He caught a vision of a young Sylvia McCormack and smiled to himself.
‘I’m sure it wouldn’t have bothered her one jot!’ he said.
Many years ago, someone had called Clare ‘contrary’, he remembered. It had been intended as an insult, a youthful dig, but at the time he thought it was the greatest compliment. To be the opposite, to be blindly accepting, was the true insult. She had been contrary because she’d had a mind of her own and guile enough to use it. He wondered now what had happened to all that: did the world really break us all? He certainly didn’t see too much evidence of it making us stronger.
The car door opened. ‘Hello, boss . . .’
Valentine reached for the gearstick and nodded towards DS McCormack. ‘Right . . . Glasgow, here we come.’
She beamed back at him, and what he thought had been a cruel, unsmiling mouth gave way to an otherwise pretty face.
‘It’s dreich enough out.’
‘Aye, well, that’ll be the summer by with.’ He indicated on his way through the roundabout and onto Barns Street. He could already see the Sandgate clogged with cars. ‘The traffic’s a nightmare . . . When are they expecting us?’
DS McCormack was shimmying out of her raincoat. ‘Any time after ten.’ Her voice trailed off, fell into a deep well. ‘That’s what Mrs Cooper said . . . when I called.’
Valentine noticed how tense her face had become. ‘How did she seem . . . Mrs Cooper?’
The officer sat in silence for a moment and appeared to be considering her response. She said: ‘Empty.’
Valentine repeated the word. ‘Empty.’
She turned to face him. ‘It’s the best I can come up with to describe the woman . . . It was like talking to a shadow on the phone when I mentioned Janie.’
Valentine stored the response away; he didn’t want to give too much importance to the DS’s observation, though he knew it was likely to be accurate. He felt somehow his own perceptions would overrule anyone else’s. ‘What did you tell the Coopers?’
She started to cough on the back of her hand. ‘Hope that’s not me coming down with the cold . . .’ The coughing fit passed and she got back on track. ‘I told them that we were investigating a murder.’
‘Did you mention Knox?’
‘No, I didn’t think that would serve any particular purpose at this point.’
‘Good. If we bring the Knox angle into play, I’d like to see the reaction.’
DS McCormack squinted. ‘What are you hoping to gain from this meeting, sir?’
Valentine was pulling onto the main arterial road to Glasgow; the stretch of single carriageway was busy but allowed him to reach 50 mph. ‘If I knew that, Sylvia, I’d send you and save myself the bother . . . Trust me, if there’s a link to Knox and Urquhart, I’ll find it. Of that I’ve no bloody doubt.’
‘You seem very sure of this lead.’
‘Knox was questioned at the time Janie Cooper went missing and the bank’s confirmed that Urquhart was living and working in Glasgow at the same time. Call me an optimist, but I’m betting this is our link.’
The Ayrshire countryside stretched out on either side of the road, green fields washed in buckets of rain. A few cows, Friesians, made mud-splattered tracks towards a copse of trees. A grey half-moon still sat in the morning sky; there was no sign of the sun.
‘You think they knew each other, Knox and Urquhart, don’t you?’ said DS McCormack.
Valentine tipped on the blinkers and made to overtake a Nissan Micra. ‘Think . . . ? I know.’
‘But how can you know?’
At once the detective realised the pomposity of his statement. He had never dealt in what ifs or casuistry; he reasoned and made use of the facts – at best, he interpreted. ‘Do you doubt me?’
McCormack smiled again. ‘That’s not an answer, that’s a question.’
‘OK, then ask me once we’ve seen the Coopers . . . You’ll have your answer then. Knox knew Urquhart and they both ended up dead because of that association. I don’t know how they came to know each other yet, or how they came to know Janie Cooper, but I know someone else on the force took a similar line of reasoning twelve years ago when that wee girl went missing. Knox was in the frame then and I doubt he’s blameless now. Urquhart might have slipped under the radar at the time, but whatever went on has well and truly caught up with them.’