It was like there was a scale inside of him, a see-sawing balance of weights and measures that divided the good and the bad from each other. At normal times, when all was well and as it should be, the scale registered an equanimity that was imperceptible to Valentine. But when his world was at odds, his children unsettled, his work life tiresome or over-challenging, then the balance tipped. He found himself stacking columns of pros and cons on each side of the fulcrum. It was a demonstrably divisive enterprise, or game, if you preferred, because there was little tangible benefit, save amusing himself. The silver plates he weighted with the good and the bad formed a snapshot of his existence, but sometimes it was lopsided. A positive representation of his wife, for example, with due credit given to her dogged support over the years of their marriage may be pitted to the negative, the diametric opposite, of her own selfish indulgences at scent counters and homeware stores. At times of true passivity, when he had given over to life’s buffeting like a leaf on a breeze, he became a mere spectator – watching one side of the scales afflicted by an avoirdupois he was incapable of controlling. At such times, Valentine lost faith in the future and became submerged under the grim burden of an unsympathetic fate.
It was the gloom, the black dog, the Scots’ bleak penchant for predestination. It didn’t matter what you called it, or if you even subscribed to its existence, because the entity – and it felt like a separateness, a spectre – was no respecter of opinions. The black dog roamed wild, brought misery to bear wherever it touched and left the same in its wake, like messy paw prints that served as warnings of an imminent return. But why was there no white dog – an antithetical beast that brought some levity to the world? He smirked at the thought. It was not in the Scots’ make-up to invent an antidote; and why would they? Surely that would merely deprive them of the very real aspect the black dog bestowed: identity. We wanted to be miserable, we wanted to watch the black dog bay at the moon because it was who and what we were. We found our definition in the dreich skies and desolate landscapes; we lived for the light touch of smirr blown from the sea; the jagged, rocky outcrops glimpsed through the gloaming sang to us – they were the ghosts of our souls and we would no more part with them than an arm or a leg because they were such an integral part of who we were. And, he knew, it was certainly who he was.
Valentine tried to comprehend what his wife was saying, but the words wouldn’t go in. He stood in the hallway with his grey dog-tooth sports coat still on and his briefcase in hand, with Clare resembling a harpy before him, castigating and caterwauling.
‘He’s your father. How?’ She shook her head and brought hands to her brow in a dramatic flourish of pique. ‘Tell me how you managed to forget that?’
He didn’t reply, because, although it was a question – posed in her own singular language – he didn’t feel an answer was required. When Clare became rhetorical it was for effect, for show. She liked to repose in movie-star-style indulgence of her whims at every opportunity. And missing his father’s return from hospital was an opportunity not to be passed up, even though he suspected her ire had more to do with the neighbour’s new extension. Valentine took his wife’s castigating blows because they had little impact on him now; he shook them off in the same way he brushed raindrops from his shoulders and with just as much care. He could let her go on all night, talk herself hoarse, as it barely penetrated the epidermis he would doubtless slough off in the next downpour. He wondered why his expression wasn’t a giveaway to her. Why didn’t she see her words were falling into a black hole of disinterest? He assumed it was because she didn’t really care: he was just the target, it was the releasing of barbs she was concerned with. If it helped her deal with being Clare Valentine then he could stand there and take them all night.
‘Clare, I’m sorry . . . I intended to be home earlier, but I’ve had a very busy day.’
She brushed her fringe from her eyes. ‘It’s not me you should be apologising to.’
Valentine sensed an unscripted break in proceedings; he lowered his briefcase and started to unbutton his coat. ‘I’ll go up now.’
‘No. He’s sound asleep, they gave him tranquilisers.’
‘Is he OK?’ He hung his sports coat on the banister.
Her fingertips flew from her fringe to the coat on the banister. ‘The scan was clear. It doesn’t look like a stroke, but he’s not a well man.’ She picked up the sports coat in thumb and forefinger like it was the discards of a leper colony. ‘And this is ready for the bucket!’
Valentine snatched back his coat. ‘Leave it, Clare.’
Chloe appeared in the hallway wearing her pink polka-dot dressing gown and pyjamas. Her Bart Simpson slippers looked like she had stuck her feet into a pair of cuddly toys. Valentine smiled at the sight of his daughter.
‘Hello, Princess . . .’
She grimaced, turned to the side and made a wave across the glass of milk she held in her hand. ‘Oh, please . . .’
He had an urge to scoop his daughter in his arms, but her teenage diffidence to the approaching adult world flashed like a warning light from her. ‘How’s school, love?’
She closed her eyes, let the lids hang in exaggerated fashion for a moment and then put a crick in her jaw. ‘I’m going to bed.’
His daughter squeezed past them, sullen and disconsolate, and took to the stairs with heavy steps. Valentine saw his wife drawing a bead on him; he knew at once he had said the wrong thing, but his mind was so tired it required a back-up generator to keep body and soul together at this hour.
‘I take it my dinner’s in the dog?’ he said.
Clare waited for Chloe to close the bedroom door. ‘Why did you say that to her? You know she’s not having the best of times at school, and you know why . . .’
He was re-hanging his coat on the banister as he replied. ‘I wasn’t thinking . . .’
‘Well, perhaps you should start, Bob!’ His wife pushed him aside and followed Chloe up the stairs.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To see if our daughter’s all right.’
Valentine touched the edge of his jaw and felt the emery wheel of his unshaven chin. He opened his mouth just enough to call to Clare again, but something stopped him, an instinct perhaps, the thought that he could more than likely increase his trouble. He collected his briefcase, removed the blue file with the transcripts from the Knox interviews that DS McCormack had delivered, and headed for the kitchen. The down lights beneath the kitchen cabinets were burning, lighting the worktops but little else. He turned to the light switch and pressed it with his shoulder. As the room was illuminated, Valentine lowered his paperwork and started to make coffee. There was a plate sitting out, with what looked like a dinner of mince and potatoes blurred beyond recognition by its cling covering. He wasn’t hungry now anyway. He had passed the point where food was something that would sustain him, it would merely bring dyspepsia at this hour. He took his coffee, retrieved the blue folder and made for the dining-room table.
As he read the notes, the detective was nostalgic for the time when he would have filled out the same forms. The paper case files had lingered in a few of the smaller stations for longer than they should have. Everything was committed directly to computer now, but the touch of paper felt more personal, reminded him of a time when the world itself seemed to care a little bit more. As he read on, however, Valentine realised his mind was just playing tricks on him: the world was a brutal place and always had been. The investigating officers were not the best communicators, few police were, with most resenting the task of note-taking as no more than a necessary evil at best, a bureaucratic time-suck at worst. He had learnt early on to take his time over the files, because they had a way of coming back to bite you if alternative meanings could be construed from the wording. He smiled as he recalled the incident his late colleague David Patterson had recounted after coming across a cow in the road.
‘She’d been hit by a car or a truck.’ He heard David’s voice now, the rich inflection of his tones, the crooning cadence of his Ayrshire accent that had never left him. ‘I swear the beast was half dead . . .’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t half alive?’ he’d tested.
‘OK, smart-arse, three-quarters dead . . . There was nothing for it but to put the poor beast out of its misery.’
‘That’s not something they teach you in the Boy Scouts.’
David laughed. He had been a man who liked to laugh. He’d had a buttoned-up side too, but he didn’t like to overexpose that part of his nature for fear of being taken too seriously. ‘Well if they had a cow-shooting badge, I didn’t get it.’
‘Hang on, you shot it?’
He nodded rapidly, like an excited child. ‘Two bloody rounds and it was still moaning . . . I swear you have no idea of the paperwork required for the discharge of two rounds of ammunition in the RUC.’
He was still laughing, shoulders rocking above his broad belly as he pointed his fingers into an imaginary gun and took aim at an invisible cow. Valentine found himself mouthing his old friend’s name, and for the first time in years he felt the warmth of a friendship that could never die.
‘Oh, Davie . . . We had some times.’
His friend was gone, and many more besides, but he didn’t want to become morose thinking about his loss. As quickly as he had chided himself, his mind was wiped clear by the sound of his mobile phone. He reached into his shirt pocket and answered. ‘Hello . . .’
It was DS McCormack. ‘Are you reading the files?’
‘Er, no . . . Just about to.’ He looked at the clock; it was nearly midnight. ‘I presume you’re calling because you’ve found something.’
Her voice rose in pitch, put on running shoes. ‘Go to page nine, second interaction from DI Fitzsimmons . . . Have you got it?’
‘Hang on . . .’ Valentine turned over the file and thumbed his way to page nine. ‘Right, what am I looking for?’
McCormack’s impatience poured from every word. ‘Skip the top paragraph . . . Read the next one, how it starts . . .’
The detective ran his gaze down the page to the point she had indicated. ‘OK, here we are . . .’
‘He’s addressing Knox, by the way.’
‘Yes, got that . . .’ He read the DI’s words: ‘Who are you working with, Duncan? You might as well tell us, because if they’re on our books we’ll be talking to them and they might not extend you the same favour . . .’ Valentine brought his knuckles of his right hand to tap on his chin; he was drinking in the significance of the statement when DS McCormack spoke again.
‘Sir, are you there?’
‘Yes, yes . . .’
‘Then you got that . . . You see what he’s saying?’
Valentine rubbed his knuckle into his tired eyes and felt a change in the rhythm of his thinking. ‘Fitzsimmons thought he had an accomplice.’
‘Yes, but he was looking for someone like Knox, a sex offender.’
He clamped his teeth, when words came they trawled the room in a soporific drawl that indicated an overburdened mind. ‘They had no chance of finding Urquhart in that case.’
‘They were looking in the wrong direction, that’s why.’
He pushed the folder away. If there were more gems worth unearthing they could wait another day – he had the Cullinan Diamond already. ‘How much of this have you read?’
‘I’m well on with it: there’s a few things we need to look at, boss . . .’
‘It’s midnight, Sylvia, and I have a wife who thinks I’m a part-timer in this marriage as it is.’
‘Oh, of course. I’m sorry to call so late, I just thought . . .’
He cut her off. ‘You did the right thing, I needed to know. I’m glad you called, but tomorrow’s another day.’
‘I’m going to stick with it. I’m not tired and I’m all pumped up for this now.’
He admired her enthusiasm and envied her youth. ‘Goodnight, Sylvia, I’ll see you at the station tomorrow.’
‘I’ll keep notes . . . But at least we’ve something else to add to the board!’
‘We have that.’
A faint gleam of optimism entered his weary eyes as he rose from the table and closed the blue folder.