A Taste for Malice (18 page)

Aye right.

‘Bugger me,’ I say and then look at Maggie. ‘These rolls are just what the doctor ordered.’

Maggie is chewing and nodding her agreement. We eat in silence. I finish one roll and pick up another. Maggie satisfies herself with one.

‘I thought you were hungry? Did you sleep OK? I slept like a log. The best sleep I’ve had in ages.’

‘Ray, we need to talk.’

My heart lurches. I know I’m doing the male thing of ignoring the elephant in the room and hoping that it goes away. Equally I know we should talk about what happened last night and what it means to our relationship.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You’re an easy man to fall in love with, Ray McBain,’ she lifts her head up and meets my gaze. I see a tear shine, trapped in the web of her lower lashes.

‘And that’s a bad thing because?’

‘What would you have done last night if I hadn’t been here?’

‘I would have got drunk.’ I lean back in my chair and try to work out what to say. Which is difficult when I don’t know what I want.

‘And the next time you feel like going on a bender will I be expected to turn up again?’

‘So last night was a sympathy shag? Poor McBain is going off the rails. Some pussy is what’s needed to keep him on the straight and narrow.’

‘Don’t be crude, Ray. And last night had nothing to do with sympathy. I came over here to talk sense into you. Not to fuck sense into you. The … stuff just happened.’

'Who’s being crude now?’ I stare at the dregs of my coffee, a dribble of brown liquid is drying to form a dark circle at the bottom of the mug.

‘Do you even love me?’ she asks.

I pause searching for the right words. Do I love her? Before last night I would have said that I was very fond of her. What’s more she is very attractive and highly desirable. But, do I love her?

‘Enough said.’ I barely hear her words.

‘I didn’t even say anything,’ I defend myself knowing that it is a waste of time. Maggie is wearing the expression of someone who has a firm idea of what she wants.

‘Your pause was too long. Your answer should have been instant,’ her smile is weak. A smile of commiseration. We could have had something, it said, but the time has past. ‘Last night was a mistake. A lovely mistake…’ she says. ‘But I deserve better, Ray. You deserve better. I don’t want to fill the gap in your life until somebody who is not me comes along.’

‘But…’ I interrupt. It’s not like that, I want to say. We are good pals. We could have something. Arranged marriages are built on less. We could work at it. Instead I say nothing, my vocal cords as redundant as a black and white TV.

‘Next, please?’

Jim was on the front till of the bookshop serving the few customers that were about on a Monday afternoon. He should have been in the office checking through last week’s orders but he had a staff shortage due to illness. Half of the staff were no doubt sick of working.

The middle-aged woman approaching the counter was wearing an uncertain smile and her hands were empty. Not a good sign. This meant she was looking for something. Often with customers it was like a game of charades. “It has a bright cover.” “The title has the word Red in it.” “It’s by that guy that wrote the other one.” Usually Jim enjoyed the challenge, but today he was tired. Tired of work, tired of home, tired of everything.

The woman opened her mouth to begin. Then closed it, looked away, then back. ‘If I want to buy a book,’ she said. ‘Do I just bring it to you?’

A thousand witticisms crowded into Jim’s head. After a long pause of disbelief, he settled for, ‘Yes.’

He was watching the woman walk away when Moira approached the counter.

‘Can we talk, Jim?’ she said while pulling a strand of her hair behind an ear. Jim took a step to the side, trying to ignore the flare of worry in his stomach.

‘I’m worried about your Angela,’ she said, all but wringing her hands.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘Today. This morning. I met Angela, just like we arranged…and we went for a walk. I thought it would be a great idea. I mean what could go wrong with a simple walk?’

‘And …’ Jim read the very real worry in Moira’s face and began to feel his resistance to her crumble a little more.

‘What is wrong with her, Jim? What has this head injury thing done to her?’

‘Well … lots of different things,’ he answered while thinking what the hell happened?

‘She stepped out in front of a car. Just like that. The driver just managed to stop in time. I nearly messed my pants.’

‘She stepped out in front of a car?’ said Jim needlessly.

‘Why would she step in front of a car?’ He was doing all he could to help, wasn’t he? Jim leaned both elbows on the counter top. He wasn’t hearing this. Surely she wasn’t feeling suicidal?

‘She said that she keeps forgetting to look. She steps down from the pavement and forgets to look for the cars.’

‘Eh?’

‘What would have happened if Ben was with us? What would happen if a car …’ Her face was stretched tight with the horror of it. The rest of the sentence was too terrible for her to finish.

‘That won’t happen, Moira. Angela doesn’t feel strong enough to take Ben out on her own yet.’

She sagged into herself and pressed a hand to her chest as if giving permission to her heart to slow down its beat. ‘Oh.’ She thought some more. ‘Poor woman. Imagine being too frightened to take your child out for a walk.’

Holy shit, thought Jim. She forgot to look for any cars before she crossed the road. But that was elementary. What part of her brain has switched off to make her forget that?

Jim was a mental inch from giving in. He wasn’t an expert. He didn’t know how to handle people with all these kinds of problems. He could barely look after himself, for chrissake.

‘Sorry, Jim.’ Moira placed a small, warm hand over his. ‘Work must be the place where you get a break from all that stuff.’ She realised that she had overstepped some sort of social boundary and removed her hand. ‘I …It was just such a shock.’ Moira bent forward and lowered her voice as if aware for the first time that there were other people about. ‘I knew she was forgetful and that, but you don’t really stop and think of the consequences …’ her speech tailed off as she did so. ‘What else does she struggle with?’

‘Lots of stuff.’ Jim really didn’t want to do this. Talk.

He didn’t have the energy; a nice soft bed would have come in handy. He could lie on his side, draw his knees up to his chin and sleep for a decade or however long it took to sort this all out.

‘Oh, Jim,’ said Moira. ‘Poor you.’

Simultaneously Jim mentally thanked Moira for voicing this — and hated her for it.

He needed to get away from his own thoughts. This was new to him, having to worry. Worry was something he viewed in the same way as masturbation. It was a solitary pursuit to be done late at night when there was nothing on the TV.

Daryl is worried about me, although that is not what he says. What he does say is, get your arse out of bed and answer your phone when we ring you. Alessandra is worried about me and wonders if I can get her camera back to her. Kenny drove by the other morning and spotted Maggie leaving my flat. Did you shag her, was his polite enquiry.

Me and Maggie.

Maggie and me.

What should happen next? I’ve never had sex with a mate before. Have I in some way let her down?

She appears to have dealt with it more easily than me. And anyway, who says that men have a more practical view of sex?

It’s been two days since I walked out on Hamilton. Ha! Told him. However, wondering about whether I had a job or not wasn’t even on my radar. Eating and sleeping was performed on automatic pilot. As was interaction with anyone who came into my orbit. There’s an old Scottish word for this kind of dream state … a dwam, and for most people it will last seconds while they perhaps wonder what they might do if they won the lottery. Yet it enveloped my mind like a semi-permanent fog.

Why did my mind produce such a state? Perhaps it was to remove the temptation of slipping back to the booze. Up until my last and only slip, I had an aversion to drink that made some of my fellow officers question my sexuality to my face. Can’t be a real man and not take a drink. Unless you were a recovering alcoholic, of course. Then you’d earned your scars and your reticence was completely understandable, if not totally regrettable.

I also found myself continually rubbing at my real scars. The ones cut into my wrists by Scullion. There’s no way that was him in McDonald’s. Who would be so brazen?

Kenny left a message. Can’t be arsed answering the phone to anyone. Instead I drive across the city and visit the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. The newspapers said it was the most visited attraction in the whole of Scotland that summer. With my fog as companion I thought I should go along.

The museum is a massive building of red sandstone and the guide says that it has been constructed in various styles. Like a new parent it struggles to come up with a name; the best they can come up with is Spanish Baroque style. It houses an amazing variety of objects from stuffed animals to the remains of a dinosaur, from Rembrandt to Picasso and it’s just what I need in this mood.

A place of wonder and the everyday; bustle and quiet; old and new. Somewhere I can be part of the machine and not be affected.

I’m standing reading an information board in the Natural History section. Here we have a number of animals that have achieved record-breaker status. I’m reading up about this swordfish. It’s the fastest creature in the ocean. Moves in a stream-lined, liquid blur. I become aware of two little boys standing at my side. One is open-mouthed. The other is less impressed and tries to climb on to the exhibit. A mother’s voice warns the boy down. She sounds familiar. I speak to the boy on behalf of this familiarity in a tone I hope is friendly. As I do so part of my mind is asking, how do you speak to a stranger’s kids nowadays, without them rushing off to phone Childline? I hear the woman’s voice again, but it’s not the boy she’s talking to, it’s me. I turn to face her. There’s no-one in my immediate line of sight. Then I look down to the woman seated on an electric wheelchair.

‘DI McBain?’ She’s saying. Her face pale and livid at the same time. It’s the attitude I recognise first.

‘Mrs Browning. Nice day isn’t it?’

‘It might be if I knew my children were safe.’

I turn back to the fish. Doesn’t she ever let it go? I take a deep breath and speak to one of the boys.

‘Cool, innit?’

He nods, his button-nose wrinkled in delight.

‘Pete,’ her tone is one of warning, her voice too loud in this space. ‘Come here.’ I sense a shift in atmosphere around me as a number of adults turn to stare, while reaching out to grab their own children.

Pete ignores his mother, something tells him he is safe in such a place and with me. He tugs at my trouser leg and points to another creature of stuffed flesh and glassy eye.

‘Whassat?’

His brother is more heedful of his mum and goes to stand beside her chair.

‘Pete, c’mere,’ the older boy warns, but Pete is too interested. I look down at his wide eyes, the small smudge of dirt on his cheek. A cheek that looks as fresh as if the boy slept in a fairy world at night only to come out and dazzle the humans during the day. My fog lifts as quickly as if someone had pulled a blanket from over my head. I look at his mother and then back at the boy. Her worry. His surety that the world holds nothing in it for him but wonder. The older boy has a strained expression on his face and it suddenly shames me that after all he had been through with Ms Hepburn that I should be the cause of further concern.

‘Pete,’ I nod over at his mother. ‘Maybe you should go and see your mummy.’ He shrugs an okay and does as I ask.

‘Sorry to trouble you,’ I say to Mrs Browning and turn away.

I need space. I need to be on my own. I need to process all of this. Seconds later I am in the toilet. The door bangs with the resonance of a gunshot. I lock it and sit on the seat.

Where has my head been the last few days? Chief Superintendent Hamilton has a go at me and I lose it? Time to grow a pair, McBain. The woman who harmed those kids is still out there and you’re acting like a child yourself.

A picture enters my mind. Pete’s little face turned up to me, curiosity a bright light in his eyes. A strange feeling had come over me as he tugged at my leg. One that I had never felt before. I had won his attention easily, but as he held my trouser at the knee I wanted to keep it. I wanted to make him laugh, show him the meaning of fun. I wanted to engage him in the give and take of a conversation. I wanted to do something that made him laugh. I wanted him to like me.

And now I want to make sure what happened to him and his brother doesn’t happen to anyone else.

I open the cubicle door and at the sink throw some water over my face. Time to figuratively and literally grow up, McBain, I tell my reflection. He grimaces back at me, his face older than I remember.

Where will the kids want to go? Natural History? They’ve already been there. I make for the Egyptian section. Children love mummies don’t they? A quick scan in that room reveals nothing. Next.

I try the polar pears. A small room has been set aside to show the environment such an animal might live in, complete with fake snow. Nope. The Brownings aren’t here either.

I take a lightning quick tour of the massive building and can’t find them. Perhaps they were at the end of their tour and decided to go home. I make a quick decision. If I leave now and make my way over to their home, it might freak them out. I wouldn’t put it past Mrs Browning to phone the police and complain about me while I was standing at her door. No, I need to let her calm down a little and then she might be prepared to listen.

Downstairs now in the café, I order an Americano, with a little jug of milk on the side. A row of home-baking winks at me. Mentally I stick my tongue out at it and decide the coffee will do.

My watch tells me it’s two-thirty. If I wait for an hour, they should be home and relaxed by then. A voice distracts me.