The Good Son (8 page)

The photographer finished his work and stepped back, letting two other men in surgical gear approach. They unrolled a stretcher, lifted her body.
She looked unreal. Oddly artificial.

When they took her out of the room, acid churned in my stomach. My mind flashed on a similar scene. Feelings that had left me hollowed out and empty.

Lindsay said, “So you were the one introduced her to the brother?”

I nodded. Told him about their meeting the night before.

“You were with them when they met?”

“No. I offered my services, but this was something he had to do on his own.”

“Did he say where they were going to meet?”

“Mennies. On the Perth Road.”

Lindsay knew the pub, nodded. Seemed to wait on me saying something more.

I locked eyes with him. “Something else you want?”

Lindsay shook his head. “You're free to go.” I made to walk past him, but he grabbed me roughly by the elbow. “Stay available. We're done talking for now. But I have a feeling we'll talk again soon enough.”

I shook off his grip. “It's a date,” I said and resisted the urge to give him the finger on my way out the door.

On the street, I walked round the corner and leaned against the brick wall of a building for support. My leg had caught fire and I felt close to tears.

I was leaning against the stone dyke that ran along the banks of the Tay. I looked left, down the length of the road bridge that spanned the water. On the far banks of the river, small towns nestled peacefully in the Fife countryside. Newport, Tayport, others.

The air that came in off the river carried a gentle tang; an unobtrusive scent skimming from the surface of the water. I breathed it in.

Gulls flew above the water, cackling like lunatics.

I turned my gaze to the rail bridge which stood further west, down the meandering path of the river.

The original bridge had collapsed in 1879, barely a year after construction had finished. A storm shook the bridge's foundation and a passenger train had plunged into the darkness of the water below.

The train itself was later dredged from the river and, amazingly, returned to active service. Its passengers were not so lucky. Sometimes, when I walked by the river at night and the moon was just right, I saw the victims of the disaster shifting below the
surface of the water, reaching up towards the surface, their fingers clawed and their faces stretched in terror.

Today was a beautiful day, however, and the waters were calm. Any ghosts lurking below the surface were quiet. Maybe they were even content down there in the peaceful deep. It would have been easy to join them. Simply close my eyes and go to sleep as the water gently flowed around me.

I pushed such thoughts away, pulled out my mobile and dialled through to the daytime number Robertson had given me.

“Aye?” he said.

“It's me.”

“I'm not paying a penny till I see that report, McNee.”

“Have the police contacted you?”

“No. Why?”

I took a deep breath. “We need to talk. Are you at home?”

“I'm in town.”

“Where are you now?” I asked. When he told me, I said, “I'll meet you at the café in Tesco by the Riverside. Five minutes.”

When I hung up, my mind flashed on Kat's corpse. Closed in on details I could never have seen.

Fist against flesh.

A knife slicked with blood.

Her eyes wide with fear.

The muzzle of a gun pressed hard against her forehead, whitening the surrounding skin.

My muscles tightened. My breathing became harsh.

It was a familiar sensation, one I thought I had left behind long ago. The world drifted away. My muscles
contracted. Leaving me with fingers and toes curled into tight fists that refused to open again.

Pins and needles ran up and down my legs. Although I was leaning on the stone wall for support, it felt flimsy. Ready to collapse, send me hurtling over and into the water.

I concentrated on the ice in my lungs. Forced myself to take each breath slowly and carefully. Ignoring the signals that my brain was sending, forcing me to take in shallow gulps of oxygen.

I focused on the cold stone beneath my hands. Made that sensation my anchor to reality. One thing to keep me conscious of where I was and what was happening.

Slowly, my senses came back. The bubbles in my head popped. My breathing, still ragged, slowed and the ice in my lungs melted. The pain left me. My hands and feet tingled as though alive with electricity.

How long since I had felt like this?

Hard to recall. Since I was teenager? Later?

I remembered the doctor calling it “growing pains” and when I reached my twenties, it was easy to believe he'd been right. So why, if that was true, had it come back now?

As if I needed to look hard for the answer to that.

I moved the weight off my left leg.

I bit my lower lip. The wind grew cold.

My imagination?

Robertson bit into the bacon roll. Flour exploded. Tomato sauce oozed. Teeth clamped hard. I thought of a knife-edge tearing through Kat's skin. Around us, families relaxed in the middle of their weekly shop. High windows on three sides of the café let natural light into the building. The coffee machine kept up a constant background noise.

I sipped at my coffee: boiled water. No bite.

Robertson chewed and swallowed. “So tell me,” he said. As his lips moved I saw flecks of sauce and meat on his teeth. “Why do the police want to talk to me?”

“Tell me what happened the other night.”

His eyes narrowed. “Told you everything you needed to know over the phone.”

“She told you about the man your brother became,” I said. “A criminal. A brawler, a drug dealer, maybe worse.”

“I'm not a violent man. But keep talking that way about Daniel and maybe that'll be put to the test.”

Two tables away, a baby started to cry. Its mother,
a young woman with peroxide-blonde hair and giant, gold-hooped earrings, tried to quiet it by forcing a bottle against the child's lips. Its screams pierced my ears. I wanted to get up, shake the little bastard, get him to shut his face.

I concentrated on what my client had to tell me.

Professionalism.

I leaned across the table.

“Tell me what happened.”

Robertson put down his roll. “What's this about?”

“Tell me.”

He looked ready to protest again, but his expression softened.

And he told me.

He didn't give much away.

I wasn't there, of course. All I had to go on was his version of events. And even if he told me something of how he felt, he stuck rigidly to the facts. No meandering. No asides.

Had he rehearsed this tale?

The Speedwell Bar on the Perth Road is more popularly known to the locals as Mennies after the family who owned the pub from the early 20s through to 1995 when it was finally sold on to a private owner. Robertson had chosen it as a meeting place. Because he didn't want to be alone with this woman. And because he knew he'd need a stiff drink.

Real beer. Proper whisky.

The kind of drinks Mennies had built its reputation on.

Robertson had a photograph of himself and his brother as teenagers, before all the trouble had
broken out with their father; back when they had been inseparable. He hadn't looked at it in decades. It had been kept in a box, packed away like other remembrances.

He had brought it with him to the pub. Laid it on the table in one of the quieter side rooms while he supped at his pint and waited for Kat to arrive.

So she'd recognise him?

Or for his own comfort?

The bar was hoaching, he said. The crowd made him feel more at ease.

Maybe I understood something of that, how it was easier to disappear into a crowd. You could let them distract you from yourself so easily.

Finally a woman's hand placed itself across the photograph. The index finger touched against his brother's right cheek; a caress.

Robertson looked up and saw Kat standing at the table.

“You look like him,” she said, sitting across from him. “I mean, you're bigger, and I think maybe life's been a little kinder to you, but still, you can see it.”

“You were his girlfriend?”

She giggled and then placed her hand over her mouth. “I'm sorry. It's all a little much sometimes, yeah?” She composed herself. “I was his girlfriend, his lover, however you want to say it.”

“He never mentioned you in his letters.” He shrugged. “Well, never mentioned much in his letters.” Then, standing up: “You want a drink?”

“Yeah,” she said. “That'd be nice. Vodka and Coke, love, if you'd be so kind.”

When he got back to the table Kat was holding the photo, studying it with a dedicated intensity.

He set down her drink in front of her. She reacted
like his arrival had shocked her out of sleep.

“I was just thinking about him. How much he meant to me.” She forced a smile. “That photo, you were both very handsome boys.”

“How long were you and my brother…?”

“Two years. On and off. Our lives didn't make things easy.”

Looking at her, Robertson tried to see some sign that she hadn't loved Daniel. And the more he looked in her eyes, the more he saw a deep sadness. He paused in his story and stared at me. The more he looked in her eyes, he said, the more he found he hated her.

I nodded. I sort of understood.

He continued: “He never told me much about what he did,” he'd said to Kat.

“Yeah?” she said. “Not surprising, I guess. You do what you can to get by.”

Robertson was worried by this; a sick feeling in his gut like she was about to finally destroy any hope he had for his brother.

“And what did he do?”

Kat put the photo face down on the wooden table, took a deep breath and then told him about the life of Daniel Robertson.

Robertson looked like he couldn't go on. Just remembering what she had said was enough to upset him.

“What did she tell you?”

He started to say something, but stumbled.

“What did she tell you?”

“She told me about how he worked for this man in London. How he broke people's arms when they
didn't pay debts. How he killed men because they interfered with his boss's business. She told me about his jail time.”

“I'm sorry…” The words my mantra of the past few days. Everyone's life going to shite, and all I could do was repeat two meaningless little sounds.

“Aye, like hell, you parasitic bastard. How much money were you going to bleed before you finally told me the truth?”

“These things take time. I needed to verify—”

“Save it. Bloody leech!”

“That was all you talked about? Your brother, his life?”

“Aye. Now would you tell me…”

There was no way to break it gently: “Last night, someone killed her. Her body was discovered in a dingy wee flat in the east end. She'd been assaulted and murdered.”

Blood drained — as best it could — from his face.

“She was stabbed. And finally, a bullet through the head. The police know about your meeting.”

“You told them?”

“At the scene, they found one of my business cards. It had been left there. Deliberately, I'd say.”

“…who…?”

“I don't know.”

“Did you tell the bloody police I killed her?”

I shook my head. “If you say you're innocent, then I believe you. But you have to be prepared. You were in the right place at the right time. You have a credible motive in the eyes of the police. You—”

“I'm not a killer.” Spitting the words.

“They'll want to talk to you,” I said. “To know everything that happened. It's not going to be easy on you. They make sure it never is.”

“I'd have no reason to…”

“I need you to be honest with me. When she told you about Daniel… did you…?”