The Attic was a bar in Ashton Lane off Byres Road, reached by a cold staircase that crept up the corner of the building. Windows on the sloped ceiling were covered by a cloth of sorts, and Gilchrist wondered why anyone would want to dull the natural light in a dull city.
They sat at a high table like a short plank of wood wide enough for only one glass. The window behind them was faced with a metal fence more suited to a garden than a pub.
‘To prevent the drunks from toppling out?’ he asked.
‘To stop them from taking a flying runner. Apparently some nutter downed four doubles at the bar then did a header through the window.’
‘How could he have run from there to here without wriggling past this table?’
‘You’ve been a detective too long, Andy.’
Gilchrist frowned.
‘Lighten up, Andy. Hey, what’re you having? My treat.’
Gilchrist tried a smile. ‘Well, in that case I’ll have a Corona.’
Jack frowned. ‘Off the hard stuff?’
Gilchrist shook his head. ‘Don’t want to turn up at Mum’s reeking of beer.’ Chloe’s look saddened, and Gilchrist realized that although visiting Gail was the purpose of his visit, no one had mentioned her until now.
Jack returned with a Corona, a piece of lime jutting from the neck. Gilchrist poked it in with his finger, and watched the beer froth in response. Chloe took delivery of a tall glass of something that looked like watery milk, and Gilchrist made a decision not to ask. Jack had a pint of real ale that looked dark and flat, and a whisky with ice that looked like a double at the minimum.
They raised their glasses, or bottle in Gilchrist’s case, and chinked. ‘Cheers,’ said Jack, and took a slug of his pint.
Gilchrist pressed the neck of his Corona to his lips and watched Chloe take a sip from her glass. For some odd reason, he found himself thinking of Beth and wondering if she could ever put up with Jack and his careless lifestyle and punk-Bohemian mistresses. Maybe Chloe was different. Maybe she was the one. She had at least managed to put some colour into Jack’s life.
‘Can you spot it?’ said Jack, and smiled at Chloe.
‘Spot what?’
‘The mural.’
‘Oh, right.’ Gilchrist searched the bar, looking for something concrete and grey, stuck to a wall like unpainted plaster. But the walls were mostly bare. ‘I give up,’ he said. ‘Which one?’
Jack looked up at the ceiling.
Gilchrist followed his gaze, but all he saw were covered windows and wooden rafters. ‘I don’t see it.’
‘The skylight windows,’ Jack said. ‘The coverings.’ He sat back. ‘Cool, don’t you think?’
Gilchrist took a sip of beer. ‘I thought mural meant it went on a wall.’
Jack laughed and reached for Chloe’s hand. ‘Andy’s never going to like my stuff. But that’s what’s great about living in a democratic society. Freedom of speech. Freedom of expression. No one’s going to drag me outside and shoot me because they don’t like how I’m trying to express myself.’
‘Not yet, they haven’t,’ said Gilchrist, and chuckled when Chloe burst out laughing.
By the time Gilchrist took a taxi to Gail’s, he’d been persuaded by Jack to have one too many. Mum’ll understand, Jack had told him. But from past experience, Gilchrist knew not to be convinced.
He stood alone on the front step and rang the doorbell. In the garden, he recognized plants that had been groomed to perfection in their front garden in St Andrews. Gail had not lost her green fingers. The lawn sported stripes from its last cut, and aeration holes dotted its surface in straight lines.
The door opened.
Gail had lost weight. As much as a stone, he thought. Maybe more. Her eyes looked tired and sunken, her hair light and short.
‘Jack told me to expect you,’ she said.
‘Well, here I am.’ He held a bunch of flowers out to her. ‘Freesias. Your favourite.’
She took them from him. ‘You’ve been drinking.’
‘Liquid lunch with Jack and Chloe. It’s been a while.’
‘With who?’ she snapped. ‘With Jack and who?’
‘Chloe.’
‘Never heard of her. What’s she like? If she’s anything like the last one, the sooner he gets rid of her the better.’ She turned away and retreated inside. ‘Harry is in, so be nice,’ then added over her shoulder, ‘If you can.’
Although he had never set foot in Gail’s house before, he was struck with an odd sense of familiarity. A framed photo at the end of the hall, Gail with the kids, pre-divorce, in a beach-front café in Marbella. Pre-Harry, too, he thought. Or was it? Had Gail been having her affair then?
In the lounge, he recognized his old mahogany television stand. And the maple coffee table, which still stood on his prized Persian rug. And his grandmother’s crystal vase. It had always been full of flowers whose names he could never remember, although he did know that the white and burgundy arrangement now sprouting from it was carnations.
But no freesias. Maybe Gail had gone off them.
And Harry seemed strangely familiar, too, but smaller, as if being married to Gail had reduced him inch by inch, year by year. He eyed Gilchrist from behind the sofa, then left the room without a word.
Gail took a single chair by an ugly stone fireplace, and Gilchrist sat on the sofa without being asked. He felt regret at having succumbed to Jack’s persistence, and thought he saw signs of Gail’s illness. The corners of her mouth downturned more than he remembered, and gave her scowl a permanence it never used to have.
‘Chloe’s nice,’ he ventured.
‘What a ridiculous name. Chloe.’
‘It suits her.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That once you meet her you’ll—’
‘God forbid.’ She slapped invisible crumbs from her skirt.
Gilchrist gripped the arm of the sofa. ‘You always said you would never have leather furniture. But this feels nice.’
‘It grows on you.’
He nodded. ‘I see you still love the garden.’
‘It’s a mess.’
Gilchrist pressed on. ‘I don’t hear too much from Jack and Maureen.’
‘The phone works both ways.’
It doesn’t where you and I are concerned, he wanted to say, but instead said, ‘So, how is Maureen? I spoke with her last week,’ he lied. ‘She was going to call back.’
‘As well as can be expected.’
‘Jack phoned yesterday.’
‘I know. He told me.’
‘I had no idea,’ he said, and lifted a hand, ‘about ...’
‘No.’
He stared at his hands and realized he was twisting his fingers. Why did he always feel tense around Gail? Why would she never let him through to her? He flattened a hand on each knee and tried to keep his voice level. ‘Are you being well looked after?’
‘I have Harry.’
Hearing Harry’s name uttered by Gail in that way stabbed at his gut. He struggled to contain his frustration. ‘What I meant was – is there anything I can do for you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, if you think of anything, anything at all, I’d—’
‘I’m dying, Andy. Does that make you feel better?’
Her comment stunned him, and he struggled with the urge just to get up and leave. He bit his tongue for a few seconds to make sure he was in control, then said, ‘Jack said you didn’t want me to come.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why?’
‘What’s the point?’ she clipped.
Gilchrist wondered if Harry could hear their discussion, and if so, was he proud of the way his wife was managing to diminish the feelings of her ex-husband? ‘I still care for you, Gail.’
‘Well, don’t. I have Harry.’
Gilchrist felt his face colour. Gail had succeeded in doing what she always could. Smother any remnant of whatever feelings he had for her. All the support and sympathy he had wanted to offer her, all the kindness he had felt toward her, all of it vanished like steam in fog. Even his frustration at her coldness evaporated. He watched a frown creep across her forehead, and a tiny crease pucker her lips.
He stood. ‘I’m sorry for troubling you. I thought, I thought ...’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what I thought. I’m sorry. I’ll let myself out.’
‘In six months I’ll be nothing but a memory to you and the children.’
He refused to rise to the bait, did not have it in his heart to be cruel at that moment. ‘We were happy once,’ he said to her. ‘That’s how I would prefer to remember us. Not like this.’ He thought he caught the glint of tears in her eyes and wanted to reach out to her and give her a hug.
As if sensing that possibility, she flapped a hand. ‘Go away, Andy. Please, will you do that for me? Just go away.’
Gilchrist shifted his stance as Harry stepped from the kitchen, a cup of tea in one hand, a plate of biscuits in the other. But Gilchrist ignored him and let himself out into air as damp and heavy as his heart.
He strode down the garden path, telling himself he would not look back. He knew she would not stand at the window to give a parting wave. So when he closed the gate and glanced back, he was not surprised. Gail had thrown him out of her life. Why could he not discard her from his?
By the time he reached the road junction, despite all he had seen in his career – the decapitated bodies, the crushed skulls, the gruesome autopsies, the drug overdoses – despite seeing walls and ceilings and floorboards splattered with blood, and flesh slashed and sliced and gouged and rotting, despite having witnessed the cruellest and most evil of human depravity and becoming inured to it all, despite all of that, he found to his surprise that he could still cry.