4

5th July 1982
12.34 am

DI Charlie Lawson had elected to visit Senga Dale alone. His boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Don McAllister had suggested taking a young female copper, but Charlie figured that she’d just get in the way. The wee lassies at the Kilmarnock Cop Shop were useful at these types of difficult home visits, there was no doubt about that, but since Don McAllister specifically wanted this situation kept tight – and since it was after midnight anyway – Charlie didn’t want this dragged out by a Juliet Bravo offering to make soothing cups of tea.

He rapped at the green door. Try though he always did to conceal or vary it, Charlie Lawson’s door-knocking technique could only be polis. As he waited for the occupants of the house to stir, he mused on how often a police knock during the night prompted responses from adjacent houses more quickly than the one being knocked up. You could set your watch by it. Both of Senga Dale’s terraced neighbours had illuminated their houses before hers. Net curtains on both sides twitched. The watchers would have instinctively known a police call was under way even though Charlie Lawson was unmarked both in clothing and in transport.

He didn’t want to chap the door again, but just when he thought he would have to, an upper-bedroom light came on. He heard footsteps on the internal stairs, and then the door opened. No locks or chains, Charlie noted.

‘Aw’right, son,’ said Charlie, to the dishevelled teenager staring bleary-eyed into the gloom outside. ‘Yer mam in? Ah need a word.’

‘Eh … it’s fuckin’ three in the mornin’, for fuck’s sake! Can it no’ wait?’ croaked Grant Dale.

‘Naw, it cannae … and naw, it isnae.’ Grant looked puzzled, or more puzzled. ‘Three in the mornin’.’ Charlie Lawson moved up a step. ‘Can ah come in? It’s important. Go an’ get yer mam.’

‘Ah’m right here.’ An unseen voice rattled down the stairs. ‘Let him in, son.’ Grant Dale stood to one side. He looked out into the street after Charlie Lawson had brushed past him.

‘Fuck off, ya nosy aul’ cunt!’ he hissed at Mrs Trodden, the old woman who lived immediately to their right, and who was now out on her own doorstep for a better view.

All three moved from the small hall into the living room. No one sat. In and out, basic details … condolences. Charlie Lawson recalled his boss’s instructions.

‘Mrs Dale, ah’m very sorry to have to inform you that we’ve been investigatin’ a fire in the town centre. A body was found in the building, an’ we believe it to be that of yer husband, Robert Dale.’ Senga’s lip quivered a bit but she controlled it. Show nothin’ of yer feelings tae naebody. Her son’s eyes widened and he swallowed hard, but then his expression also returned to stoney-faced. They both remained standing. Charlie was relieved. Night shift was a bastard, particularly when you had to do house calls like this one, but it was beginning to look certain that he’d be back at his desk in less than half an hour. ‘There are currently nae suspicious circumstances. It looks like a tragic accident,’ Charlie concluded.

‘Aye … fuckin’ tragic,’ said Senga, sarcastically.

‘Do ye have any information relating to this incident that ye want tae tell me?’ enquired Charlie.

‘Naw,’ said Senga. ‘Boab an’ me were … separated.’

‘Separated?’ said a surprised Grant. He thought his father had just nipped out ‘for a message’. That was universal code in Onthank for a tactical fortnight-long withdrawal from public gaze. He sat down in his father’s armchair.

‘Aye. We’d split up,’ said Senga, looking daggers at Grant. He got the message.

Charlie looked at both of them, back and forth and again. He suspected something was going on, but since there was a higher plan and he had already been informed of his role in carrying it out, he let a potential line of intuitive questioning drop.

‘We’ll need ye tae come tae the hospital for a formal identification. But, since this has clearly come as a massive shock tae ye…’ It was now Charlie’s turn to be sarcastic, ‘…we’ll leave that until mornin’. That okay? Ah can send a car up tae get ye.’

‘Ah suppose so. Whit time?’ said Senga.

‘Aboot nine?’

‘Fine.’

‘Ah’m sorry for yer loss, Mrs Dale,’ said Charlie, heading for the front door. ‘And you, son. Ah take it he wis yer Dad?’

‘Aye. He wis.’ Charlie hadn’t been expecting a grief-stricken display of emotional histrionics but, nevertheless, the reaction of Bob Dale’s wife and son had been pretty callous. Charlie thought about his own wife, and their two teenage children. He’d often considered how they would react upon receiving the terrible news that some young prick with a blade and out of his head on smack, had killed him. Certainly a lot more affected than this, he acknowledged. Fuckin’ Onthank jakeys … nae heart at all.

‘Whit the fuck wis that aw aboot, Mam?’ Grant was angry. He had never connected with his father, but he never ever wished him dead. His mother’s apparently calm, laissez-faire attitude shocked him though.

‘Look, there’s stuff ah need tae tell ye,’ said Senga. ‘But better waitin’ until the mornin’. Ah threw yer dad oot, a few nights ago. He wis pretty abusive. An’ really doon aboot everythin’. Ah couldnae be livin’ wi’ aw his shite anymore.’ Senga sat down. ‘Ah’m no that surprised he’s topped himself.’ Grant hadn’t made that connection yet.

‘Suicide?’ Grant said. ‘For fuck sake! Fuckin’ coward.’

‘Let’s talk in the mornin’, eh? There’s somethin’ else, but it can wait,’ said Senga.

Grant sighed. His mother had got up and it was clear that he wasn’t going to get any more clarity until Senga was ready to offer it. He knew only too well how impenetrably stubborn she could be. Grant sat in the living room with the lights out for an hour or so. As he passed his mother’s bedroom on the way to his own, he could hear her sobbing.

6th July 1982

‘Will there be time tae get the Revels? The pictures are shite without the Revels.’ Rocco Quinn had moaned incessantly since meeting Maggie Abernethy at the bus-stop on the Ayr Road. It usually didn’t bother her, but tonight it was particularly grating. It was her birthday, and she wanted to see An Officer and a Gentleman. Her boyfriend had made his objections clear, loudly and often. Daft fuckin’ lassie’s film or Richard Gere’s a bent shot being his most often repeated observations. Maggie was now wishing she’d gone on her own. She was almost wishing she was on her own again. In the thirty minutes spent waiting for him to turn up on his motorbike, Maggie Abernethy had decided that the effort and commitment required to maintain a relationship with someone like Rocco Quinn wasn’t worth it. This was her birthday, and he hadn’t even acknowledged it. She wasn’t the type of girl to expect diamonds and flowers, but a card would’ve been nice.

They had first encountered each other six months previously. Rocco had been driving his family’s horse and cart, Steptoe-like, along Shortlees Avenue. The gypsies did the rag-and-bone routes around Shortlees once a week, but Maggie had never noticed the good-looking son of Nobby Quinn before. It was usually toothless, baccy-chewing old men who did the collections. Maggie had taken some of her mum’s old clothes and shoes out to the cart and Rocco had given her a cheap, golden ‘princess’ ring in return. The tiny stone had fallen out of it that same evening but Maggie treasured the gift from the dark-haired, sallow-skinned, handsome young man and wore it still.

Rocco saw Maggie again the following week. He explained that his father had forced him onto the carts for a week as a punishment for losing a car in a poker game, but that this time, he was hoping he’d see her again. He was charming and polite in those early days. Maggie wasn’t used to the close attention of young men. She had spent the majority of her twenty-three years in foster care. There were many boys sniffing around her through her school years. Her mixed-race background and her undoubted beauty guaranteed their attention, but she didn’t court it, preferring her own company. She spent most of her non-curriculum time in the Music Department, battering seven shades of shit out of the school’s only drum kit. Her favourite teacher, Mr Gamble, a hippyish muso, had gifted them to her when she left. He staged a break-in and testified that the drum kit had been stolen. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for Maggie.

The boys didn’t really feature; they didn’t have the attention span or the long-term commitment needed to break through her suspicious defences. She slept with a few of them, and once with Mr Gamble, but purely on her terms, of course.

As they walked from John Finnie Street, where Rocco had parked his motorbike, Maggie’s mood was darkening. His humourless jokes, his constant moaning and those stupid fucking Revels. Being with Rocco was tiresome now. He took her for granted. They rarely laughed or joked or carried on anymore. They had sex like a middle-aged, unhappily married couple; sporadically, with repetitive, conventional positions and unsatisfied, bitter arguments afterwards. In only six months, their relationship had started to feel like an extended Youth Opportunities Scheme, only without the £23.50 a week to salve the pointless tedium and the lack of direction. She was going through the motions. It had to stop.

The reached the front doors of the ABC Cinema in Titchfield Street. A long queue had formed to the right of the narrow Art Deco frontage. The building had a face like a beautiful old Wurlitzer Jukebox and Maggie loved going there. She first experienced the thrill of celluloid by going to the Minors as a child on Saturday mornings. She especially loved The Time Machine. It ran for weeks on end and Maggie was there every time. The dark-skinned women in it had long blonde hair, just like her. There was a curious magic about the ABC Cinema in Titchfield Street. It was like a portal to another world, and on this balmy evening, Maggie would escape to a world of crew-cuts, white-suited Marines and desperately optimistic factory girls looking to escape the humdrum existence that seemed to be their pre-determined destiny.

Rocco had insisted on getting the tickets. It was her birthday after all, he’d said. She had been despatched to get the Revels. The smaller hall, number two, to the left of the confectionary counter at the front was only a quarter full, with a higher percentage of men than a Richard Gere film might have been expected to attract. The lights dimmed. Rocco Quinn slumped down in his seat, his legs now drapped over the seats in front. There were no flashy Pearl & Dean advertisements, no encouraging message from Kia-Ora. Maggie Abernethy suddenly knew why. The British Board of Film Censors had certified Flesh Gordon as an ‘X’.

‘You fuckin’ selfish prick!’ shouted Maggie.

‘Whit?’ he pleaded, half-heartedly. Maggie stood up abruptly. She could hear male voices grumbling in the darkness behind her. She pushed past Rocco, knocking his legs to one side and his man-size bag of chocolate-covered surprises all over the cinema floor.

‘Fuck off,’ hissed Maggie.