The Meating Room (25 page)

‘Naw. Got tae go.’

Gilchrist opened the lounge door and led Jakie along the hallway.

Jakie pushed past him and skipped across the threshold, then slunk away without a word of thanks, or goodbye, or even a backward glance.

Back in the kitchen, Gilchrist peeled open the brown paper to reveal two steaks that glistened with blood. He laid the package on the draining board and separated them. Then he wrapped each individually in cling film, and placed them in the fridge.

Next, he called Stan. ‘Are we good to go?’

‘I’ve got the body armour and torches. And I’ve just had it confirmed that the Ford Focus you mentioned was captured on Tentsmuir Forest’s CCTV on Thursday night.’

‘When?’

‘Entered at nineteen-fifty,’ Stan said, ‘left at twenty-forty. It fits, boss.’

The times certainly did fit, which opened up another nest of possibilities. But he said, ‘I’ll pick up Jessie and we’ll meet in the Office in an hour,’ and killed the call. It would take about thirty minutes to collect Jessie then drive to the Office, which gave him time to make a phone call.

He dialled Cooper’s new number.

She answered on the fourth ring.

‘I got your messages,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Are you okay?’

A heavy sigh, then, ‘My marriage has been on the rocks for a long time, Andy. It’s been coming to a head, and we . . .
I
. . . need time apart, to think things through, work out what I want to do.’

Gilchrist let a healthy five seconds pass before saying, ‘And do you know what you want to do?’

‘You’re doing it again. Talking in questions.’

He tried to find some other way to keep the conversation going, but questions were just about all he had. How could he learn what she meant by
I think you have the right to know
if he was not allowed to ask?

‘I can’t meet you tonight,’ he tried. ‘I’m working on a case.’

‘That’s a bit presumptuous, don’t you think?’

He gritted his teeth. ‘Well, trying to avoid asking requires presumption.’

‘You sound smarmy.’

‘It’s not intentional.’

‘Really?’

He almost snapped a nippy response, but bit his tongue. Cooper was still emotionally raw. The break-up of any marriage – particularly one as strong as hers had been – was always painful. Instead, he said, ‘Maxwell is leaving.’

‘Yes.’

His mind was full of questions. When? Is there any likelihood he’ll return? Is it over for good? What exactly do you think I have the right to know? Instead, he tried, ‘When Gail left, and took Maureen and Jack to Glasgow, I felt lost for a while.’ He paused for a response, but she seemed happy to let him go it alone. ‘The strangeness of an empty bed,’ he went on, ‘an empty house, and quiet weekends that felt all wrong, with no one to talk to during the week, I thought I would never get used to it. It took months before I was able to accept the loneliness.’

Still nothing.

‘But it gave me time to reflect on my relationship, the failings and successes of our marriage, and that helped me understand that we really were doomed from the start—’

‘Are you suggesting my marriage was—’

‘All I’m saying is that time apart, time you can use to think things through, is often worthwhile.’

‘Even if it brings Max and me back together?’

‘If the end result is that you manage to save your marriage, and that is what you want, what you
truly
want,’ he added, just to ensure he was not planting seeds that could cultivate against him, ‘then, yes, even if it brings you and Max back together.’

‘And if I felt that you and I needed time apart, too?’

Well, there he had it. He had walked straight into it, with no way out but to wade in deeper. ‘If that’s what you feel you need to do, to help you understand what you want—’

‘It is.’

Silent, he held on to the phone. During their relationship, he had enjoyed their bantering back and forth, the nip and tuck, the thrust and parry, the spice it added. He had always seen Cooper as his intellectual equal. But he was no match for her now.

‘Are you still there?’ she asked.

‘I’m still here.’

A pause, then, ‘I think I do need some time by myself.’

For a moment he was tempted to challenge her, his pedantry telling him that if she only
thought
she needed some time alone, then she was not sure. Instead, he said, ‘Take as long as you want.’

‘I intend to.’

He was about to ask what she had meant by
I think you have the right to know
when the call ended with an abruptness that left him wondering if she had expected more from him. Should he have offered a shoulder to cry on? Should he have said he would call in a day or two to check she was okay? Instead he had done none of that, and shown no compassion for or understanding of the pain she was suffering.

He thought of calling her back, but a glance at the clock confirmed he really had run out of time. Cooper with her marital problems would have to take a back seat. Meanwhile, he needed a quick shower and a change of clothing before driving to Jessie’s.

I think you have the right to know.

He laid his mobile on the table and walked to the bathroom.

Jessie place a hand on Robert’s cheek and mouthed,
I love you
.

Robert shrugged a nod, then turned back to his computer.

‘Come on, Robert,’ she said. ‘I said I’ll take you to the pictures next week. I promise.’

Although he could not hear a word, it felt good just speaking to him. She stared at the back of his head, at his dishevelled dirtyblond hair – morning bed-head, she would call it, although night had already arrived. Even seated, Robert looked tall and lanky. Not like his father, for all she could remember of him. She’d been drunk when he’d shagged her on the floor, with the lights off. She wondered if Robert’s physique had come from her own father’s side. She had never met him, or even knew his name. She had asked her mother once, but she refused to tell her, which prompted Jessie to accuse her of not knowing which of the hundreds of drunks she’d shagged was her father. There was no love lost between Jessie and her mother.

She had left home shortly after that, and joined Strathclyde Police as a secretary at seventeen, after giving birth to Robert. Through a combination of hard work and a favour or two, she worked her way up to detective constable. Her career seemed to be going well, until she met Chief Superintendent Lachlan McKellar. She had dropped her knickers for him just once – too much drink was involved again – but since then Jabba had been obsessed with getting back into them. So Jessie had applied for a transfer to Fife Constabulary.

But moving from Glasgow to St Andrews was not just about getting Jabba out of her life. Robert was a teenager now, and it would be increasingly difficult to keep her family’s criminal past a secret if they remained in Strathclyde.

She kissed the top of Robert’s head, but he never even flinched.

In her bedroom, she opened the wardrobe and pulled out a pair of black jeans and a black turtle neck.
Dress appropriately. Black everything
, Andy had said. Did that extend to bra and knickers? She imagined him thinking of her. But she knew she was not his type. Still, it was a nice thought, even if for only a fleeting moment.

Her smile died as her thoughts flashed to the Rottweilers, and a shiver of ice ran through her veins. Ever since she’d seen that wee girl’s savaged body, she’d had recurring nightmares. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, tried to steady her nerves. Christ, just the memory of their demented growls had her hands trembling.

She opened her bedside cabinet, and removed a hair-dryer, three hairbrushes, a pile of magazines and, to her pleasant surprise, a silk scarf and a pair of tan leather gloves – so they hadn’t been stolen at that party after all – to uncover a polished wooden box. She opened the lid to reveal a Beretta 950B 22 Short.

She had never used the gun, never registered it. How could she, when she had stolen it from her brother, Terry, who had probably stolen it from someone else? It was small, fitting neatly into her hand, and sleek. It was Italian, after all.

She could lose her job if she took it with her. But only if somebody found out.

Ah, shit, she thought.

And closed the lid.

Jessie slipped into the Merc’s passenger seat, dressed all in black – boots, jeans, sweater, anorak, scarf and gloves, to fight off the bitter cold of a Fife March night. Perfect for carrying out night-time surveillance work.

‘How’s Robert?’ Gilchrist asked.

‘On his computer,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I wonder if he even knows I’m his mum.’

‘I’m sure he loves you.’

‘But does he know I’m his mum, and not someone who just turns up every now and again and makes his dinner?’

‘Is Angie sitting for you?’

‘Don’t know what I’d do without her.’

Stan was already waiting when Gilchrist drove into the car park at the East Sands. Without fuss, he parked the Merc and slipped into the passenger seat of Stan’s Audi. Jessie jumped in the back.

‘Right,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Let’s go.’

Stan slowed the Audi to forty as they approached Jason Purvis’s cottage.

‘Lights are on,’ Gilchrist said.

‘Doesn’t mean he’s in,’ Jessie countered.

Stan kept the speed steady as they drove past. A Ford Focus was parked in the driveway at the side of the house. Purvis was home.

‘You think he might go out later?’ Stan asked.

‘That would be too simple,’ Jessie said.

Gilchrist weighed it up. ‘We’ll enter round the back, from the adjacent field, as close to the barn as we can. But Jessie, you need to get close enough to the cottage to report any activity the instant it happens.’

They decided to park well off the road and out of sight of the cottage. From there, Gilchrist and Stan would walk across the fields while Jessie worked her way along the back of the hedgerow that lined the road until she found a spot from where she could monitor the cottage, and remain hidden from the headlights of passing cars.

About a hundred yards along the road, the open entrance to a field was too good to pass up. Stan reversed into it and switched off the lights. The sky was clear, and Gilchrist worried out loud that the half-moon might throw too much light on the surrounding fields.

‘Where’s the Scottish weather when you need it?’ Jessie asked.

‘We’ll be all right as long as we keep low,’ Stan said.

‘What if the dogs hear you and start barking?’

‘That’s a chance I’m prepared to take,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Remember, they kept quiet when we approached them this morning.’

‘That was in daylight. In the dark it might be different.’

‘If they start barking and it’s obvious they’re going to alert Purvis, then we’ll abandon it and try something else later.’

‘Like handcuff and lock him up?’ Jessie suggested. ‘That would simplify things.’

They each checked their mobile phones were switched to vibrate. Although the phones’ screens would still light up when they received a call, as long as they kept their backs to the cottage, Purvis would be unlikely to see them. And once inside the barn, they could talk freely.

Outside, the crisp night air stung. Stan clapped his gloved hands. ‘Bloody hell, boss, I’d almost forgotten how cold it can be in March.’

‘A brisk walk across the fields will heat us up,’ Gilchrist said.

They set off, Jessie beside the hedgerow, Gilchrist and Stan into the heart of the open fields. The approach to the barn proved more difficult than Gilchrist expected. Hollows and ridges small enough to avoid in daylight were large enough to jar bones and jerk the breath from their lungs in the darkness. Bands of cloud doused the moon, which helped keep them hidden, but made their trek more troublesome.

Keeping the lights of Cauldwood Cottage to their right, they tried to guess the position of the barn. But with nothing in front of them except blackness, they were left with no option but to continue to plod on as if blind.

Gilchrist cursed as he felt his boots sink into softer ground.

Stan whispered, ‘I think we’re coming to a burn, boss.’

They agreed to change course, heading farther away from the cottage, and Gilchrist was relieved to feel the ground firming up. His vision was becoming attuned to the dark, too, and he thought he could just make out the silhouette of the high row of pine trees that lined Purvis’s boundary close to the barn.

‘This way,’ he said, and changed course again. At that moment his mobile vibrated. He turned his back to the cottage and took the call.

‘That’s me,’ Jessie said. ‘I’m about fifty yards from the back door. The car’s still in the driveway. I think he’s watching the telly.’

‘Can you see him?’

‘No. But there’s a wee gap in the curtains, and I can see a light flickering. Maybe he’s watching
Songs of Praise
.’

Gilchrist smiled. ‘Keep out of sight. And don’t use your mobile unless you see movement.’

‘Can’t I call my wee boy?’

‘For crying out loud—’

‘Only joking. Jesus, Andy, where’s your sense of humour?’

‘Freezing itself to death, along with my balls,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want any heroics if Purvis sticks his head outside. All you have to do is alert us. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

Gilchrist killed the connection.

‘Everything all right, boss?’

‘Except for her tongue.’ He slipped the mobile into his pocket and set off in the direction of the pine trees.

Within three minutes the fence appeared. Gilchrist peered into the darkness beyond, straining every sense for any sign of the dogs. But other than the dark shadow of the barn itself, he could see nothing. ‘What do you think?’ he whispered.

Stan cocked his head and lifted his face to the breeze. ‘Not a squeak, boss.’

‘Let me get the meat ready,’ Gilchrist said, ‘just in case.’

He removed the steaks from his jacket pocket. Still wrapped in cling film, they were cool now, rather than cold. He was pleased to see they were positioned downwind of the barn. He did not want the dogs to catch the scent of raw meat.