Kiss Her Goodbye (15 page)

"Don't blame yourself, Dotty. How were you to know?"

Dotty yelled at him. "I was there." She clenched her jaw and squeezed the words out for a second time. "I was there. I should have realized what she'd done.."

"It's not your fault."

"I couldn't even read her diary, Adam. I couldn't even do that!"

Adam picked the book off his pillowcase. "You know what's in here?"

"Gemma wanted her father to know something." Dotty lowered her head. "But she couldn't tell him. That's why she wrote it down." She looked up at him. "I told her to give it to you. Said you'd do the right thing." She took a step towards the door. "I'll pack now. I can't stay here any longer. I'll leave in the morning." Another step. And another. Her fingers closed on the handle.

Adam said, "Did you know about her father?"

"That he was the one human being she truly loved?"

"She loved him? But she couldn't have done. The diary…"

"That's what she told me. Not only did she love him, but she liked him, too. She loved her mother, she said. Sort of. But she didn't
like
her. Not in the slightest. That was the difference." Dotty's eyes were wet with tears.

Adam looked away. He opened the diary.

"You know I could have saved her," she said.

"And what about me?" He didn't look up. "I promised her father I'd take care of her." He flicked through the pages, searching for those passages about Joe.

"We both screwed up, then," Dotty said. "I'll go pack."

"Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?" His heart hammered against his ribcage. "Just the two of us?"

"I don't know, Adam."

"In Edinburgh?"

TWENTY-ONE

"It's good to be out," Joe said, looking out the car window. Approaching the Odeon cinema, traffic was dense. Getting home was taking forever, but he didn't care. Life was sweet. The petitionary hearing had been cancelled. His ribs hadn't hurt when he'd climbed into Ronald Brewer's car. He had his shoes back. He'd even had the bag he'd taken with him to Orkney returned. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and he was out of jail. The world was getting better all the time.

The lawyer said, "Let's hope we can keep you out."

Nothing like a bit of realism to keep you grounded. Joe turned and stared at the young man. He didn't look old enough to drive. "You think the police don't believe Tina?"

Brewer's face scrunched up and he tilted his head. "It's not just that."

"Mr. and Mrs. Harvey?" Joe's neighbors, an elderly couple, hadn't been prepared to swear it was his voice they'd heard arguing with Ruth. A man's voice, they'd claimed. Of that there was no doubt. And it wasn't the TV. They were sure, absolutely, you see, because the sound had come from the kitchen and, unless she'd installed one recently, Mrs. Hope didn't have a TV in the kitchen. They thought it was Mr. Hope's voice they'd heard, but when asked if there was any possible doubt (all this Brewer had narrated to Joe less than twenty minutes ago) they'd conceded that it might have been another man they'd heard. Unlikely. But possible. Their uncertainty, together with Joe's alibi, had been sufficient to substantially reduce the weight of circumstantial evidence otherwise incriminating him.

Ronald Brewer shook his head as he drove slowly along the Bridges. He bit his bottom lip as a maroon and white Lothian bus pulled into a stop just ahead. "Despite Tina's statement and the equivocal testimony of the old folks, you're still the prime suspect." The street was too narrow to overtake the bus. He put on the handbrake. "There's still a lot of evidence against you. Look at it." Enumerating each item by tapping the successive fingers of his left hand with the index finger of his right, he said, "Your baseball bat. Your car. Your rapid escape to Orkney." The bus indicated and pulled out. He released the handbrake. "The police still think it was you. They just can't prove it." He tucked in behind the bus. "Yet."

"After all this," Joe said, "you still have doubts about my innocence."

"Your alibi is false." The lawyer took his eyes off the road and glanced at Joe. "I know that. The police know that." His hand beat against the steering wheel. "They'll keep questioning Tina until she cracks and then you'll be, excuse my language, fucked."

Joe ran his hand slowly over his face. When he spoke, his voice was unusually quiet. "It buys me time."

"To do what?"

"Whatever I can't do locked in a jail cell."

Brewer said, "So you weren't at Tina's when your wife was getting killed?"

Joe leaned his head against the windowpane and said nothing.

"Off the record, Mr. Hope. You're still my client. Everything you say to me is confidential. Where were you?"

"Maybe I was sleeping off a hangover in a friend's spare room."

"Why invent this elaborate cock and bull story, then? What's wrong with the truth?"

Joe took a deep breath. Faced the lawyer. "The police might not believe my friend."

"They're more likely to believe a prostitute?"

"Tina has no reason to lie."

"And your friend does?" A smile spread across Ronald Brewer's mouth. "You were at Cooper's." He nodded when Joe didn't reply. "And Cooper's your best friend. A man who'd lie for you without thinking twice about it. A man with a well-documented disrespect for the law. You might have a point. Maybe the police wouldn't believe him." He tapped the steering wheel with alternate hands. "Nobody else see you there?"

"Sally. His girlfriend."

"And she'd lie too, would she?"

"If Cooper asked her to."

"You fabricated an alibi because your real alibi sounds fabricated?"

"That's about the height of it. At least, I think so. I won't know until I talk to Cooper. It was his idea. I knew nothing about it till you passed on the message from him."

"Maybe he just doesn't want to get involved."

Joe leaned his head back. "That's a shocking thing to say, Ronald. I should smack you quite hard for saying that."

"I don't hear you denying it."

"Off the record," Joe said. He shook his head. "Never mind." What he didn't say was that the same thing had occurred to him. The lights turned red as they approached the High Street and the car trundled to a stop. "People have a habit of dying around me, Ronald." Joe placed his hand on the lawyer's leg. Gave it a gentle squeeze. "Breathe a word of this — to anyone — and you'll be joining them."

The lawyer surprised Joe by placing his left hand on Joe's leg and gently tightening his grip. "You don't have to be so melodramatic, Joe."

"What're you calling me Joe for?"

"You called me Ronald, Joe."

"You really think I'm being melodramatic?" Joe removed his hand from the lawyer's leg and noticed the cut he'd sustained from Cooper's whisky glass. Seemed like it happened weeks ago. The cut had almost healed. When he pressed his thumb against it, it didn't hurt. He pressed harder. Nothing much. If he wanted pain he could always pay Tina to take a baseball bat to his ribs.

The lights changed and Ronald Brewer started to drive off. "I'll forgive you," he said. "You have a lot to be melodramatic about."

"Let me out," Joe said.

"Here? If that's what you want."

"It is what I want."

"Okay. Sorry if I offended you."

"Nothing to do with you."

"You don't want to go home?"

"Not such an attractive proposition."

"Must be difficult, Joe."

"Save the sympathy. I don't need it. What I need is to see Cooper and find out what was so important he couldn't come pick me up at the station. I want to know why he paid Tina for an alibi. I want to know why he doesn't want to admit I was at his house that night. And I don't think I can wait to find out. The more I think about it, the more I want answers right now."

"You want to phone him, see if he's in?"

"Don't have a phone."

"Use mine." Ronald wriggled in his seat. After a series of painful-looking contortions, he handed his phone to Joe.

Joe dialed Cooper's number. After a couple of rings Sally answered, sounding pleased to hear Joe's voice. Joe asked after the baby. Hairy ears, poor little bastard. She started to chuckle when he referred to it as Cheetah. He let her laugh for a while, then asked to speak to Cooper.

She told him to hang on a minute.

Joe hung up. "He's home," he said to the lawyer.

"Tell me where he lives. I'll take you there."

"Don't you have anything better to do?"

"Better than this?" Ronald said. "You must be joking."

TWENTY-TWO

Joe had never mentioned her infidelity. Or should that be infidelities? He suspected she'd been unfaithful more than once, but he had no proof. He'd caught her only on that one occasion at university. Standing outside the door, listening, as an ache spread through his bones. He could knock on the door. It probably wasn't locked. He could walk right in and say, "Hello, baby, who's this you're fucking?" But the thought of a confrontation made him feel old and tired.

Shortly afterwards he sought out Cooper. Asked him if he had any jobs going.

Cooper had just quit his half-arsed attempt at studying law and was making enough on the side now to have decided he didn't want to be a lawyer, anyway. Too easy to get disbarred, he said. "You any good with a baseball bat?" he asked Joe.

Joe thought, well there's an easy way to handle confrontation.

Part of the reason Ruth's infidelity had hurt so much was that she'd persevered with him. At the outset it took a couple of weeks of her coaxing him before he managed to keep it up long enough to do anything with it. It wasn't physical. Fair enough, the problem manifested itself as a limp dick. But his problem was centred in the notion that the sex act itself was going to be painful for her. He was convinced of that. Not that she was special. He imagined it would be painful for any woman. What she coaxed out of him was the idea that he was going to hurt her. The thought had been with him for a couple of years. Having a stiff cock inside you has got be painful. He didn't know where the notion came from. He didn't like to think about it. When they finally fucked, when he finally came, it was a relief. And maybe that was the greatest pleasure of all. He tried to be caring, considerate, always asking her if she was comfortable, if she was wet enough, if he was too heavy, if he was going too fast, too slow, too deep, not deep enough. Surprising, retrospectively, that his regard for her comfort hadn't annoyed the tits off her. Maybe it did, eventually. Something did. Maybe that's why she fucked somebody else.

Pity she wasn't around to ask. Now that it was too late, he wanted to find out. He was ready to cope with her reply, whatever it was.

"Why did you have to fuck somebody else?"

"He was better than you."

"In bed?"

"And out."

Or:

"Why did you have to fuck somebody else?"

"I never liked you. You were a project."

Or, most likely:

"Why did you have to fuck somebody else?"

"I always wanted to fuck somebody else. You were my second choice."

Well, fuck that. It was over. He had to stop thinking about it.

The car was turning into Cooper's street. "Black door two along," Joe said to Ronald Brewer.

The lawyer pulled into the curb.

"Thanks for the lift," Joe said.

Ronald turned off the engine. "I'll come in with you if you want."

"Don't know if that's a good idea."

"Make sure you don't do something you'll regret, Joe. You're in enough trouble."

"Jesus Christ," Joe said. "I never really knew my mum. But if she was anything like you, I'm glad."

"I'll wait here for you."

Joe opened the door and stepped onto the pavement. He really didn't need all this shit bubbling up from the past. He walked along the path towards the block of flats where Cooper lived. Not now. Fuck. Once it started, it didn't bloody stop. His hand was shaking. You turned on the tap and it stuck and the tank emptied. He tried to hold his finger steady on the buzzer.

After a moment, Cooper said, "That you, Joe?"

Joe felt like he'd spent a week at the bookies, filling his lungs with second-hand smoke, shouting encouragement for horse after horse, yelling, yelling above the rage of other voices. He closed his eyes, rubbed his forehead. "No sir, it's your pussy snorkel delivery man." Not a trace of humor.

After Cooper finished laughing, he buzzed Joe into the building.

It was dark, the air colder than outside. The soles of Joe's shoes scraped against the stone floor. In one of the flats, someone was preparing dinner and the smell of frying sausages mixed with the antiseptic odor of stair cleaner. Maybe with a hint of lemon.

The silver nameplate on Cooper's door was the size of a laptop. Joe made a fist, ready to knock. He brought his arm back just as the door opened.