We finished our coffee, took a walk through the town centre. Stopped in the City Square, shadowed by the Caird Hall. Someone once told me how the square had been used as a double for St Petersberg when the British film industry was in full swing. Was it true? Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish local rumour from actual history. But a brief glance at the austere architecture and you might believe it.
The weather had turned fair but brisk and people seemed in a hurry to get where they were going. Some walked cautiously along the cobbled pedestrian area outside the eastern doors of the Overgate shopping centre. The ice on the ground was invisible; one of nature’s more frivolous little jokes.
Wickes walked to one of the fountains in the square, passed his large hands through a jet of water. Shivered. “Should have bloody known, eh? But maybe you can’t help people like Deborah. I mean, not really help them,” he said. “The people with scars that’ll never heal.”
I watched him as he passed his hands back and forth through the water. His eyes were in shadow, as though he was trying to hide something from me. He hunched his shoulders; defeated.
I still couldn’t figure his sudden mood swings. Upbeat and laughing one moment, the weight of the world pressing down on him the next.
I figured: stress. Worry. Fear.
Things I could relate to.
He felt responsibility for what had happened to Mary Furst, even if he wasn’t to blame.
Susan had made similar accusations to me before. Tearing her hair out as she tried to tell me how I couldn’t solve the world’s problems. How I wasn’t the single catalyst for all the bad shit that happened in people’s lives.
Things look different from the outside.
He said, “You know what I’m asking, don’t you?”
“I’ve done what I can on this case,” I said. “I don’t have a client. Only reason I came anywhere near it was a favour to a friend.”
He nodded. Hunched further, shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “You’re going to make me ask?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I don’t know the city. I’ve not worked a case in years. And I know I’m too close to Deborah to get the kind of distance…”
“I told you –”
“The cost doesn’t matter.”
I sighed. “There are reasons I can’t –”
“I don’t think she wants to hurt the girl,” Wickes said. “But I can’t take responsibility for what she might –”
“Go to the police.”
He swung round. “You know I can’t. I want this to end quietly. I want it all to go away. I know I can’t pretend it never happened, but I…maybe I can make it right.”
I tried to turn away.
Thinking about the dead dog.
About the look in Wickes’s eyes when he talked about Deborah.
What else did I have going on?
Why was I so reluctant?
Because I knew how badly this could end?
Because I’d promised Susan I’d play things straight these days, wouldn’t throw myself into hopeless and suicidal cases?
Wickes reached inside his jacket, pulled out his wallet. Peeled notes from inside.
Two hundred quid in twenties.
He held them out. In broad daylight.
“Whatever else you need,” he said. “I have to fix this. Can’t help feeling like it’s all somehow my fault.”
I looked at the outstretched hand.
I nodded.
“But we play by my rules,” I said. “It gets out of hand, we take what we know to the police.” I licked my lips. “Okay?”
He smiled.
I took the cash. Said, “So we go to the office, do this right.”
He stepped forward. For a moment, I thought he was going to hug me. The idea was terrifying. His build, he could crush me.
But he didn’t. He just said, “We’ll find her.” And then he turned away from me, and the brisk wind stole something mumbled from his mouth. And if I didn’t know better, I might have thought the words were, “We’ll find the bitch.”