Bitter Water (28 page)

Sam cranked her own accent up in retaliation. ‘Why, Charlie, I’ve been busy, you know. Criminals to defend. Juries to convince. You know how it is.’ Sam put on her most innocent smile and turned to the seated man.

‘Colin, so good to see you.’ Sam was bending forward and touching the old man’s hand. His eyes focused and a smile touched his face.

‘And you, my dear.’ It was a breathy, weak voice, struggling to be heard above the babble. ‘And is this your husband, Samantha?’

Sam smiled and shook her head. ‘No, Colin. Just a friend of mine. My escort for this evening. Major Douglas Brodie. Douglas, this is Sir Colin and Charlie Maxwell.’

We all shook hands and smiled at each other in a stilted fashion, waiting for someone to provide a conversational hook. I took the measure of the younger Maxwell. His eyes had just grazed my medals. The corner of his thin mouth lifted in amusement. Sam had described him as a pompous ass. I was more than prepared to take her word for it. I mistrust anyone who claims to be Scots but sounds like a BBC announcer. The sort of accent that only the best English public schools provide. With one lift of the corner of his mouth, with the languid dismissal of his eyes, I knew him.

Supercilious, certainly; a thin mouth with a built-in sneer as a result of holding the rest of the world in contempt since he learned he had money. He embodied every slight, every disdainful glance, every social cut that put a straitjacket of inhibition on my time at secondary school and then university. I don’t normally want to punch someone at introduction, but with Charlie boy I was prepared to make an exception.

It was loathe at first sight.

THIRTY-SIX

C
harlie was the first to break. Grudgingly he asked, ‘Still serving, Major?’

‘Late of the Seaforths.’

‘And now?’

‘I’m a writer.’

‘Really? Novels?
Military
history?’

I smiled. ‘Nothing so grand. Newspapers. I’m with the
Gazette
.’

I wish there had been a photographer. Charlie’s face seemed to swell.

He asked, ‘What was the name again?’ He hadn’t bothered to listen to Sam’s introduction. I hadn’t been important enough.

‘Brodie. Douglas Brodie.’ I watched his brain working it out.

‘Is this some kind of bloody trick?’ Charlie’s face slid from disdain to vicious. His father looked worried and anxious at the raised voice.

Sam interjected. ‘Goodness me, Charlie. Is that a bad conscience we’ve poked? Major Brodie is indeed a reporter, but he’s off duty tonight. Aren’t you, darling?’

Darling? I patted the flat panels of my dinner jacket. ‘No room for my notebook. We can speak freely.’ I smiled encouragingly.

There was no answering smile. Instead, Charlie got behind the wheelchair and hustled the old man away.

‘I think you’ve just got me struck me off his dance card, Douglas.’

‘But I think he’s just added me to his
get-even
card. I wonder how much Curly and Fitz told him about me? And how they got hired?’

I shouldn’t have said it. Her face clouded, but then she smiled again. ‘Come on, Douglas. Let’s get drunk on Rankin’s fizz.’

For the rest of the evening we waltzed round the room, greeting and glad-handing Sam’s old pals, in a fever of drink-inspired denial. Denial that we’d just seen ghouls from our past in the pay of a man who seemed to threaten our future. Denial that we might have glimpsed the deep vein of corruption predicted on by McAllister. Maxwell junior knew my name. He knew where I worked and that the
Gazette
was picking away at the edges of a tapestry of sleaze. The former Slattery henchmen may well have told them what I’d done to their bosses. The look I’d got from Charlie Maxwell was as close to murderous as makes no difference.

We didn’t run into the third member of the crooked cabal, Tom Fowler, but learned he’d scuttled off to his hammock in the Bahamas. A tactical withdrawal, possibly, following Wullie’s probing articles.

In our febrile state of mind, Sam and I egged each other on to be sparkling and witty, as though we were trying to impress everyone we met. I found the social gears in my brain being lubricated by the booze, like old machinery coming to life. Or so it seemed. Wit can only be objectively assessed by the recipient. As Burns said:

Maybe we just looked drunk.

For Sam, this was a re-engagement with old friends and acquaintances, from school days and university days, from the time of her parents. She was a bright goldfish back in a gilded tank with her kind. Whereas my first thought was that I’d rather be facing the 7
^th
Panzer Division. Then I remembered that I
had
, and none of
this
, none of
them,
had a hold on me any more. The crowns on my shoulder had finally replaced the chips. Beneath their Bearsden accents and their Hyndland airs and graces were a bunch of people with prejudices and opinions, intellects and personalities, no more valid or weighty than any to be found in the Horseshoe Bar on a Saturday night. And a lot less fun.

Burns also summed it up:
‘
A man’s a man for a’ that.’ I’d fought alongside men from every class for six years, and the only hallmark of worth was how you dealt with being shot at – either literally or figuratively. I thought of Hugh Donovan in his final days: resigned, philosophical almost, concerned more for the woman he was leaving behind. I wasn’t there as they pulled the suffocating bag over his head. I didn’t stand alongside him as they pulled the lever. But I was pretty sure that Hugh had gone to his maker without lamenting the unfairness of it all. I hoped his maker budged up and gave him a prominent seat on his right.

At some stage in the short ride home Sam and I grew silent. The champagne highs tipped into champagne melancholy. I steered a now wobbly Samantha Campbell up the stairs to her house. We stumbled through the door and I kicked an envelope which had been thrust through the letter box. It skidded down the polished parquet hall. Clutching the handrail, Sam flowed down to the kitchen to put a kettle on. I stooped, picked up the envelope and checked the address. It was for me. I recognised the hand. I opened it.

I stuffed the letter into my breast pocket just as Sam bounced up to the hall from the kitchen and headed for the drawing room. There was no sign of a sobering teapot. She was holding a fresh bottle. I went after her.

I joined her in a glass of Scotch but made sure hers was as well watered as possible. Sam wound up the gramophone. We smiled and she hummed along with Peggy Lee confessing ‘I don’t know enough about you’ as we tried to recapture the mood we’d left behind at the start of the evening.

Sam began to sway and twirl. I caught her on one of the twirls and we danced together as if we meant it. But when I bent to kiss her again and continue where we left off, she pushed me back. Her eyes were full of tears.

‘I can’t take any more, Douglas. It’s too much.’

‘Sam, we’re fine. Trust me. I won’t let them near you.’

The music ground to a halt and I stood holding her as she sobbed in my arms.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ve drunk too much. This is pathetic.’

‘Wheesht, Sam, wheesht. It’s all right.’ I stroked her head and her back like a pony to calm her down. Finally she pushed herself back from me, sniffed, pressed her gloved finger to my lips and wished me a good night.

I stood staring after her, cursing myself for raising my hopes again. I never seemed to learn. I knew I was being unfair. It was one helluva shock for Sam to run into Curly and Fitz. Not to mention charming Charlie. He seemed to hold particularly repellent memories for her. But I was the good guy! Wasn’t this when she needed me most? My drunken, maudlin thoughts turned to Morag.
She
wouldn’t spurn me. We might have been revelling in bed by now. So why was I here? Why was I making life hard for myself? The choice was surely easy enough: an ageing ice-queen hamstrung by her past, versus the open arms of an eager young woman? Sam would always be hard work. Morag would always be adoring and pliant.

I unpicked my medals one by one and set them down on the mantelpiece. I hefted the cross. Was this it? The high point of my life stamped in bronze and silver? Downhill from here. Maybe I should have gone back to London. Maybe I still should? I picked up the note from the Marshals. More a summons. Why should I respond? Why was it always me?

I filled my glass and walked round the room touching the soft furnishings. I pulled back the curtains and looked out at the night wondering what or who was out there, and what they were doing. Morag asleep, warm and snug in her wee bed, her red hair curling on her soft cheek. Maxwell and his hoodlums planning what? Against whom? McAllister dreaming of one last set of front-page headlines. And the Marshals, sneaking around bombed-out factories, breaking out from time to time to dispense their arbitrary justice to the sinners of this sleeping city.

I wondered about this meeting Ishmael had called. If he was coming alone to a public park, he’d hardly be wearing a balaclava. What was he up to? And how did it tie into the murders of three homosexuals? And what were we going to do about this new front that had been opened by McAllister against the great and the not-so-good? Defend or attack?

I finished my drink and my sentimental mulling. It was one in the morning. I was tired and drunk. The air had turned muggy and close. There was a storm in the offing, presaging another welcome break in the long sapping drouth.

I started the long climb up to the second floor, pausing on her landing to see that her light was out. I climbed the next flight and pushed into my bedroom hoping stupidly – was there no end to my self-delusion? – to find a warm female body in my bed.

Empty.

But sometime later, as I lay smoking in the dark and listening to the distant rumble of thunder echoing through the deserted streets, my door opened. She came in, dropped her dressing gown, and slid into bed. I stubbed out my fag.

‘Can you just hold me, Douglas? Just hold me, please.’ She spooned against me and I wrapped her in my arms. She was shivering. I continued where I’d left off in the drawing room, gentling her, until she quietened, and fell asleep.

THIRTY-SEVEN

I
n the morning I woke alone but to the sound of a melodic humming from down in the kitchen. I checked my watch. It was seven thirty. Outside, the city was quiet on this soft Sunday morning apart from a distant chapel bell summoning the guilty to mass. Still the weather hadn’t broken. My sheets were crumpled at the foot of the bed and my body was hot and perspiring. When would it rain?

I turned over and sank my face into her pillow. It smelled sweetly of her. Had we made love? I remembered her body against mine and knew I’d cradled her. But where had we stopped? Dream or reality?

I lay back, wondering if we’d turned a corner last night or if it had just been a champagne interlude. A cry for help in the night? Sister to brother? Or the first stage in a thaw? There was only one way to find out. I shaved, washed and dressed and went downstairs.

She was at the sink, her hands in the water. She wore a favoured blouse and skirt. She turned and dried her soapy hands. Her face was scrubbed and without make-up. Her hair damp and pulled back with Kirby grips. Her eyes were red but bright.

‘Good morning, Douglas. I hope I didn’t disturb you too much.’

‘Any time, Sam. Any time. You’re blushing.’

‘Of course I am, you big oaf. I made a fool of myself last night.’

‘Did you? At which particular point? Telling the Provost’s wife you knew a good hairdresser that would sort out her mad blue rinse?’

She put her hand to her mouth. ‘God! Did I say that?’

‘She took it well. She’ll be there first thing Monday. Or maybe it was telling Justice Bailey that his closing argument in some fraud case last year had missed the point. And then telling him what he should have said.’

She pulled her hand down. ‘Well, it’s true. Pompous old fart. Anything else?’

‘No, my dear. You were funny and bright, and said nothing you should be sorry about. I enjoyed it. So why were you blushing?’

She took a deep breath. ‘For crying on your shoulder. For sneaking into your bed like a wee lassie after a bad dream. Sorry.’

‘Well, I’m not. Just so’s you know. You’re welcome to visit any time you like.’

She blushed again and nodded firmly, twice. ‘Right. Do you want some porridge?’

While she busied herself over the pot I told her about the letter waiting on the mat when we got in last night.

‘You’re not going, are you?’

‘It’s in broad daylight. A public place. What could he do?’

‘Shoot you? You said they were bristling with guns at this place they took you to. And it’s not as if they’re averse to violence.’