DI Bob Valentine came to the conclusion that the only option left to him was to resign from the force immediately. As he kept his gaze on the rain-battered windowpane, the view beyond became a blur of indistinct shapes and fragmented iridescent light. He thought about the situation he now found himself in, and the move he knew he must make increasingly seemed like the only honourable course of action. He had failed to find a coherent way through the morass of his thoughts, and the investigation, he was absolutely sure, had suffered for it. His focus was gone, had completely deserted him; he was spending too much time going over irrelevancies in his mind. When he looked coldly at the situation and was honest with himself, the largest share of his attention was on finding a solution to the Janie Cooper case. All his attention, not just some diffuse part of it, should have been on solving the murders; he felt a deepening guilt for a justice that the victims and wider society deserved but which he hadn’t seen fit to deliver. No wonder Adrian Urquhart and his mother had been so offhand with him; they knew full well he was letting them down. Valentine turned away from the window. The burn inside him felt like his innards were in meltdown.
He couldn’t recall another time in his career when he had felt this way or acted like he had. He could only alight on the arrogance of youth for a parallel, but this was different. In youth you could be forgiven for not knowing any better – what was his excuse now? Valentine’s heart settled down to a low, pulsing beat that he no longer felt in his left arm like hot pins pressing insistently from inside his veins. He was calmed by the idea of relinquishing the case and his job, and he wondered if that was because he knew it was the right thing to do. Was his survival instinct kicking in? Telling him that if he went on like this then the solution he sought would be final, and fatal? He couldn’t bear to put Clare and the girls through hospitals and him clinging to life once again. He could take a million more hurts, but not that. He knew now that Clare and the girls had suffered more than he’d thought – had he ever really considered how much? He knew the girls, and Chloe especially, would need time to get over it, but they were young and had so much of life still to come, which would distract them. Clare was more of a worry: she was older and far wiser, and yet she’d been felled. He knew his wife had never gotten over the initial shock of him being so close to death; he tried to put himself in her place and for the first time Valentine realised just how much Clare meant to him. She was as much a part of him as the sand in the sea; if he’d been damaged when his life was endangered, then so had she, because he was sure they shared that much. The way she had been lately – was it merely her way of protecting herself from the damage she knew he was inflicting on both of them?
There would be an assessment, a test of his psychological fitness that would likely find him wanting. Did he care? He could only focus on his family – he cared for them. He no longer felt anything for himself, because he no longer recognised himself. Who was he? Who had he become? If he was losing his mind then the man he thought he once was had surely gone. A vague moment of self-pity entered his thoughts: a ‘why me?’ moment. But he brushed it aside. Why anyone? What did he know? The answer was nothing – it was like DS McCormack had said:
‘More things in heaven and earth . . .’ The words came out flat, empty of all their true substance.
What mattered was his family and that they would be kept safe. If he came clean, admitted his physical and mental failings, then he would be granted a medical discharge. There might even be compensation, a lump sum to add to his pension that would help ease the transition into a more straitened way of life. Clare would be ashamed, and Chloe wouldn’t like having her father around all day, but Fiona was too young to understand. The sudden image of the rows and recriminations to come flooded his mind. He felt a failure, not just as an officer, but as a father and as a man too. How could he ever look his own father in the eye again?
As Valentine walked towards to door he knew this was an ending. He had tried to return to active policing after the incident of his stabbing, but he had failed. For whatever reason, his own physical and mental frailty or something else that he didn’t understand, it was an irrelevance now. He thought of the call from the chief super when he was at Tulliallan and the spark of ambition it had ignited. He knew that flame was still there, still burning – if weakly – and he wanted to apply the bellows to it, but didn’t know how. His resolve hadn’t altered any; he just wasn’t able to do it.
Valentine walked through the incident room in a daze. He tried to maintain his usual posture, he kept his hands in his pockets and gave the odd, slouching nod to those who crossed his path, but he wasn’t present. His mind was already in with the chief super, delivering his resignation. It seemed to be a long walk; his legs ached and the fronts of his thighs grew heavy as he dragged his feet over the grim, corporate-looking carpet tiles. By the time he reached the brassy nameplate that bore the name CS Marion Martin, his heart was pounding again, and a dry, acrid taste was sitting in his mouth.
He knocked once and reached for the handle. As he stepped inside he felt a flash of heat in his forehead and then he saw the chief super lowering the telephone in the most careful manner. Her eyes were wide, her skin pale and shiny, and her mouth a thin point that threatened to reveal a recent hurt. She sat down and slowly pushed herself away from the edge of her desk. The window behind her was a luminous white band that cut the shape of her shoulders and head into stark relief.
Valentine was first to speak. ‘Something wrong?’
She remained still. A slow trail of words seemed to be coming from somewhere else. ‘We have another one: a young girl out in Mossblown. Running club just about trampled over her . . .’ She looked up, stared into the DI’s eyes. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
He nodded. ‘Is it the same MO?’
She shook her head. ‘No . . . No spike. Uniform say the scene looks like it was abandoned in a hurry.’
Valentine found a juggernaut of thoughts driving over his earlier intentions. As he looked at CS Martin, felled in her own office by yet another murder, he knew there was no one else who could carry the load. Resignation seemed his most insane thought now – how could he have conceded the investigation to such an incompetent? He might not solve the case in quick time, but he was confident enough in his abilities to see that Dino would fare far worse. The idea that he would lie down before her became another one of his bad moves. He was lurching from pillar to post, he knew that, but there was another victim to consider now and perhaps it would reveal some secrets that had so far remained hidden from the investigation.
‘Mossblown? The others were in Ayr. That’s worrying, a widening spread.’
‘Probably thought the town centre was too hot now.’
‘No. If it’s a different MO then the intention will be different – Urquhart and Knox were impaled on spikes to attract attention; taking a body into the countryside says concealment to me.’
The chief super nodded. ‘Why show off with the others and not this one?’
Valentine shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We don’t even know that they’re linked.’
‘Oh come on, we treble our annual murder count in a matter of weeks and it’s not the same perp?’ She gripped the arms of her chair and the shape of her face changed.
‘Maybe the motivation’s different . . .’ He leaned forward and balanced his body weight on his palm. ‘Maybe this girl was done over because our killer wanted her out the way.’
‘It’s possible.’
Valentine felt his energy levels increasing. He pushed himself away from the desk and turned for the door. ‘Running club?’
‘Bloody Ayrshire Harriers . . . Twenty-six names taken by uniform.’
‘Crime scene will be a mess.’
Martin shook her head. ‘I’m more worried about the potential for press leaks . . . Won’t take long to seep out with twenty-six tongues wagging.’
The DI dipped his brows. As he gripped the door handle he felt like he was entering a different station to the one he had crossed a few moments ago to offer his resignation. ‘Look, I’ll get out there and see what’s what.’
She didn’t reply. Valentine knew this was virgin territory for the chief super, and if there had been a clock ticking on his efforts before it had just sprung into the red zone. He returned to the incident room and took a brief pause once inside the door. If his mind had been awash with thoughts before, it had stilled now: he grasped his newfound focus and stepped forward.
‘Right, everyone, can I have your attention?’
The room seemed to go into slow motion and then freeze. A cup clattered onto a desktop like the last bell in a town-centre pub and then the only sound was that of the photocopier. A uniform reached out to remove the paper tray and then silence fell on the place like it was its natural state of being.
‘Thank you,’ said Valentine. ‘I’ve just been in with the boss and have to report we have another body on our patch . . .’
DS McAlister called out, ‘Another one . . . Where this time?’
‘Mossblown, Ally . . . The details are still sketchy, but we’ll know more when we get out there.’
‘Right, then,’ said McAlister. ‘We should get going.’
The room’s volume was suddenly turned up a notch; some shuffling and animated facial gestures spread through the enclosed space.
Valentine walked to the coat rack and retrieved his grey dog-tooth sports coat. ‘Right, Ally and Phil, you can follow me out . . . Sylvia, you’re with me.’ He pointed to the DS and then he curled up his index finger as if reeling her towards him.
‘Yes, sir.’
The sound of the squad’s feet on the stairs came like a stampede. Jim Prentice looked up from the front desk and a woman struggled to hold onto what looked like a lost dog; it started barking as Valentine rushed past.
‘What’s all this?’ said Jim. ‘It’s never another one . . .’
The detective held the door for DS McCormack and the others and managed to sneer over their backs towards the desk sergeant. ‘Jim, try and keep it zipped, eh!’
In the car, Valentine depressed the clutch and pulled out before McCormack had a chance to put her seatbelt on. A red light illuminated on the dashboard and then a chime started to ping.
‘It won’t go off till you’ve got the belt on,’ said the DI.
‘I haven’t sat down, yet . . .’ McCormack turned towards the door and reached out for the seatbelt. Cars halted on the approach to King Street roundabout as the trail of police vehicles accelerated. They were halfway to the Tesco superstore before the conversation began again.
‘What do we know about this one, sir?’
Valentine dropped a gear and changed lanes. ‘Female and not the same MO.’
‘How far out’s this town?’
‘About ten or fifteen depending on the road . . . There’s nothing to the place. A few council houses and a couple of pubs. Farms all around and, if I remember right, a nursing home.’
‘Sounds beyond glamorous.’
‘It’s beyond the beyonds . . . Nobody goes to Mossblown unless they have to, and even then you’d try to avoid it if you could.’
The traffic lights turned to green and the left lane cleared enough for Valentine to put the foot down. They’d passed Tesco and were well on their way to the bypass before the weather turned again. He put on the wipers and wound up the inch or so of window he had left open to the elements.
As they reached the Whitletts roundabout the traffic started to slow again; it seemed as good a time as any for Valentine to broach the subject on his mind.
‘Sylvia, about that little chat we had earlier . . .’
She turned her head towards him. ‘What about it?’
‘I know you think you saw something, and I know you think you’re helping me, but . . .’
She interrupted his flow of words. ‘There’s always one of them, isn’t there?’
He glanced towards her. The expression she wore was the one he expected, a mix of disappointment and sadness tinged with no little hurt. ‘I’m grateful to you for your concern, obviously . . .’
‘Oh, obviously.’ The tone lapsed into polished sarcasm; the change didn’t suit her.
The lights on the roundabout were red; he came off the accelerator and pressed the brake. As the car slowed to a halt the tension inside was building to the level of nuclear fallout. ‘All I want to say is, let me deal with this in my own way.’
She poked her jaw out and looked towards the wet fields in the distance. ‘And you’d like me to mind my own business, I suppose.’
‘Sylvia . . .’ He didn’t think he had said anything to merit this reaction; were they talking at cross purposes, he wondered?
She turned to face him as the car came to a halt. ‘It’s OK, boss, I know when to bite my tongue.’ She looked away again. ‘You’ve no need to worry about that . . . Consider your wee secret safe with me.’