The Stone Gallows (12 page)

I won't lie to you; it didn't quite work out the way we hoped. Derek McConnell died in a McDonalds toilet with a needle in his vein and a Quarterpounder in his cold dead fingers. Gerry is currently doing a four year stretch for breaking and entering. But while they didn't exactly straighten up and fly right, neither of them went on to commit the sort of crimes that we thought they might.

One thing does bother me. I read somewhere that America didn't have a serious heroin problem until after Vietnam, but the common use of the drug as a painkiller, coupled with ignorance about it's addictive nature, contributed to thousands of soldiers being discharged with a monkey on their backs. The supply was created to meet the sudden demand, and a world-wide heroin culture was born. My point is this: if we hadn't hurt Derek as badly as we did, he might not have become addicted. But then, maybe he would have carried on doing what he did to Louise Brennan. So I guess the end justifies the means.

At least, that's what I believe. Most of the time.

5.1.

Sophie gave me a quick, nervous smile as I placed a mug of coffee on the desk in front of her. Before I could settle back into my chair, the phone rang again. Not wanting to disturb them, I went back through to the reception area and took it at my own desk. It turned out to be a current client who wanted to know why Joe's expenses included twenty pounds for admission to a notorious Glasgow strip club called Cleopatra's Zoo. I explained that it was because that was where Joe had followed her husband – as she would know if she had bothered to read the weekly report we sent her.

Next question: why did Joe have to go inside?

Answer: because the Clatty Panda (as it was known by the locals, possibly due to the prescense of some amazingly tacky neon that showed a panda doing a hula dance with a girl in a bikini) was a wee bit more than a strip club. It was a knocking shop.

Again: why did Joe have to go inside?

Answer: you hired us to find out whether or not your husband was being unfaithful. Just because it's bought and paid for doesn't mean it's not infidelity.

After huffing and puffing and threatening to blow our office down, the woman told us to carry on with what we were doing.

I didn't want to disturb Joe again, so I noodled away at a bit of routine paperwork. After ten minutes, the door to his office opened, and the two of them headed to the front door. Joe was smiling.

‘Cameron, we're taking Mrs Sloan as a client as of now.'

‘Of course.' I nodded at her. ‘If there's anything we can do, don't hesitate to give us a wee call.'

She looked at me again, and again I was struck by just how attractive she was.

‘I can't help but feel I've seen you somewhere before.'

She probably had. Ten months ago, my face had been on the front page of almost every newspaper in the land. Of course, for most of that time, I was in a morphine-induced coma, so I pretty much slept through my fifteen minutes of fame.

‘I really don't think so,' I lied.

Joe said his goodbyes and showed her out the front door. Then he turned to me. ‘Who was that on the phone?'

‘Betsy Hegarty. She wanted to query your expenses.'

He made a face. ‘Again?'

‘She's disappointed that three weeks of evening surveillance hasn't discovered anything more exciting than the occasional trip to a strip club.'

‘That's because it's hardly grounds for divorce.'

Stephen Hegarty was the chief exec for one of Scotland's top law firms, and two years ago he divorced his wife in favour of his twenty-six year old secretary. So far, so boring. Things got interesting six months ago, when the secretary (who had recently been promoted to wife status) hired us to find out whether or not he was playing away from home. Joe and I suspected that she'd got bored and wanted out, but needed it to be his fault instead of hers, so that she could benefit from a no-doubt favourable pre-nuptial agreement.

Joe asked, ‘What did she want us to do?'

‘Proceed as normal.'

‘I'm fed up with her. I don't often do this, but I think I'll tell Mrs Hegarty that we'll not ‘proceed as normal' until we receive payment for the work we've already done. As soon as her cheque clears, I'll tell her to take a hike. We don't need the work and I definitely don't need the hassle.'

Joe took the seat opposite my desk, dragging the Blackberry out of his pocket. I watched him, trying to stop myself from grinning. He noticed. ‘Stop it. I'll have to learn to use it sometime.' He poked at the screen with a finger like a surgeon's scalpel – a blind, drunk surgeon, that was. ‘How the bloody hell do I do this again?'

It took me three minutes of patient explaining before we managed to find the right telephone number for Mrs Hegarty. As Joe was connected to our soon-to-be-ex client, the door to the office opened.

It was Sophie Sloan. She pointed at the door to Joe's office. ‘I forgot my bag.'

I moved to stand up. ‘Let me help you.'

Joe's voice was sharp. ‘Mrs Hegarty, I don't appreciate having my methods questioned.' He covered the mouthpiece of the phone and waved at me, then the computer. ‘Cam, pull up a copy of the last report we sent her. We'll see if we can make this stupid bitch see sense.'

Sophie's mouth fell open. I harrumphed as loudly as I could, but Joe was too wrapped up in defending his investigative techniques to notice. I gave Sophie an embarrassed smile and waved a hand in the general direction of Joe's office. She got the message and went to collect her bag. I tapped away at the computer keyboard and swung the monitor around to face Joe. He prodded at it with a stubby finger.

‘No, Mrs Hegarty, that's not correct. We round our hours
up
, not
down
. We're like plumbers in that respect.'

I stood up and walked round my desk. Sophie opened the door to Joe's office as I got to it, the expensive-looking bag in her hand. ‘Does he speak like that to all his clients?'

‘No, not at all. He's really quite patient.' I ushered her to the door.

Joe slammed the phone down. ‘Goddam silly cunt.'

He turned to see both Sophie and myself looking at him. The man didn't even have the grace to blush. ‘Well, she is.'

5.2.

Sophie Sloan had written a cheque for nearly two thousand pounds, and Joe wasted no time in sending me to the bank with it, telling me to take the rest of the afternoon off and to meet him back at the office at six. With some unexpected free time, I found myself at a loose end. I bought an overpriced sandwich and ate it while I wandered around a shopping mall. There was a sale on in HMV, so I ended up buying a couple of CD's I would probably never listen to, and an autobiography of Bob Dylan I would probably never read.

Four PM found me parking the Golf outside Audrey's house. She answered the door with a smile which disappeared the second she realised who it was.

‘What do you want?'

‘I was hoping to see Mark.'

‘He's not here. My sister's got him.'

I loved the way she said that, as if Mark was a possession instead of a child. ‘I thought I was taking him out on Saturday.'

She shrugged. ‘I forgot.'

There was no offer of apology, but then, apologies weren't Audrey's style. I knew it was bullshit, but let it go, mainly because if I confronted her on it, if I called her to task over all the shitty things she had done, I might not be able to put a lid on it. Custody's an ugly thing, requiring both sets of parents to walk on eggshells. If I let Audrey provoke me into a public screaming match, she would have more justification than ever to prevent me from seeing my son.

I said, ‘When's he coming back? Maybe I could take him out tonight.' Even as Audrey shook her head, I remembered that I had promised Joe to meet him. ‘I forgot. I can't.'

‘You can take him out on Saturday.'

‘You'll forget again.'

‘I won't.' She went to close the door. ‘Pick him up at eleven.'

‘Audrey. . . '

The door hesitated. ‘What?'

‘It's not. . . ' I was going to say fair, but managed to stop myself.

There's nothing worse than an adult whining like a child. ‘It's not right to use Mark to get at me.'

‘I'm not.'

‘You are. You forget when we make arrangements. . . ' I only just stopped myself from surrounding the word forget with air quotes.

‘. . .or you say that he's not feeling well, or that you promised to take him to the Zoo. Apart from the other day, it's been over a month since I saw him.'

She peered over my shoulder, as if gauging how many of her neighbours were watching. The door opened a little. ‘Look, why don't you come in and talk? I'll make you a cup of coffee.'

‘Thank you.'

She lead me through the house and abandoned me in a conservatory that looked like the “after” in an episode of Changing Rooms. Lace curtains, whicker furniture, a plasma TV the size of a football field. A couple of minutes later she bought two mugs of coffee through. I took a sip; too sweet. I don't take sugar, and I was pretty sure that Audrey hadn't forgotten.

She sat down on one of the whicker chairs and crossed one denim-clad leg over the other. I didn't have to see the label to know that her jeans hadn't been bought at a supermarket. ‘So? How're things going?'

‘Fine.'

‘Still taking the anti-depressants?'

‘I've stopped. They made me feel thirsty all the time.'

Fake concern crossed her face. ‘Are you sure that's wise?'

‘I don't want to be on them for the rest of my life.'

‘That's great. That's wonderful. I'm so proud of the way you've managed to put your life back together.'

With absolutely no fucking help from you, I nearly said. ‘I'm doing alright. One day at a time and all that.'

‘Wonderful.'

‘How's Archie?'

She wasn't the only one that could pretend to forget something.

‘Arnold, you mean?' She waved a hand. ‘He's away. A medical conference in London. Some new way of replacing heart valves or something. Bo-oooring.'

‘I would imagine it would be quite a thrill if you were one of the people who needed a new heart valve.'

‘I'd forgotten what a sarky bugger you are.'

‘How's Mark?'

‘He's alright. He misses his. . . misses Arnold.'

That hurt. Right down to the core. ‘I miss him too. Mark, I mean.'

I smiled to make her think I was joking. ‘I'm not so keen on Arnold.'

‘I know. And I promise you'll get to see him.'

‘When?'

‘Saturday. Oh. . . wait. . . can we make it Saturday afternoon? It's just that Arnold's flight lands at eleven. I need to go to the airport and pick him up.'

‘And what if his flight's late?' As I rather suspected that it would be.

I would roll up and spend my afternoon sitting in front of an empty house. Again. Once bitten, twice shy.

‘It won't be.' She said. ‘You think I don't want you to see Mark, don't you?'

‘It's crossed my mind.'

‘That's not true. It's. . . '

‘It's what?'

‘It's Arnold. He's asked me to marry him, and he thinks it might be better if he adopted Mark.'

I had to stop myself from jumping to my feet. ‘That's not going to happen. I won't allow it.'

‘Cameron, we have to think of what's best for our son.'

‘That's the thing. Mark's our son. He's nothing to do with Arnold.

If you hadn't decided to walk out on me we wouldn't even be having this conversation.' I didn't want to go over old ground. ‘Audrey, I will never allow Arnold to adopt Mark. Never. I'm his dad, and I have rights.'

Christ, I sounded like a character in a soap opera. I half-expected the theme music to Eastenders to start playing.

‘Look, Cameron, I agree with you. You're his dad. I'm just telling you what Arnold feels.'

‘Well, you just tell Arnold to get that idea out of his head.'

‘I will, I promise.'

I counted to five. No way would I allow anything like that to happen. No way. When I could speak normally, I said, ‘Maybe I could go and pick Mark up from Lynne's.'

Lynne was the sister, and an even bigger slapper than Audrey. She liked me about as much as she liked a full blown case of gonorrhoea, although, to be fair, she probably didn't see me as frequently.

‘She still with that guy Andy?' I asked.

‘No. And they're out. They've gone to see
Get Fish
.' Audrey put her coffee cup to one side and crossed her legs. ‘I've got the place to myself for the rest of the afternoon.'

‘Lucky you.' I stood up. ‘Look, I'll come back Saturday morning.'

‘Leaving so soon?'

‘I can't think of a reason to stick around.'

‘I can.' She stood up and walked over, pressing herself against me.

‘I can think of a damn good reason to stay.'

I could smell perfume in her hair, sweet but with something spicy in it. ‘You really are a twisted bitch.'

She put her hands on my sides. ‘Come on. For old times sake.

Arnold's good at the whole providing thing, but he's definitely lacking in certain. . . key. . . areas.'

Even as my brain recoiled in shock, I could feel my body responding. She put a finger on my lips before standing up on her tip-toes and kissing me. ‘Come on. Can't you remember how good it was between us?'

It had been something, that was for sure. Occasionally great. But it wasn't what you would call good. Even when we were a couple, the physical side of our relationship had never been mutual. We never gave the other anything, just took. I couldn't describe it as making love, or even fucking. It was just one intensely pleasurable fight with winners on both sides.