Thursday legends

13

'Calling Andy! Calling Andy! Where are you?'

He blinked and looked up, across the dinner table. 'I'm sorry, Rhian,' he said, sincerely. 'You're right, I was off somewhere… although I couldn't say for sure where it was. This has been an absolutely surreal weekend, in all sorts of ways. What a mixture; I've seen pure bloody horror… yet in the midst of it all there's been you. An island of beauty in a sea of ugliness, you might say.'

She grinned, dispersing the gloom which had begun to gather around him. 'I might indeed,' she murmured, 'but I prefer it when you say it.' She angled her head looking through the glass wall of Daniel's Bistro at the big modern Scottish Office building.

'My mum works in there,' she said, idly. 'She's quite important; a Grade-something-or-other… Damn! I always forget the number… they used to call it Assistant Secretary. Her division has something to do with Home Affairs… a family speciality, you might say.'

A smile flicked his mouth in acknowledgement of her small joke. 'Everyone's important, Rhian. From the foot-soldiers through to the field officers like me to the generals on horseback like Big Bob and Proud Jimmy, we've all got our part to play in the service we give the public. If one link breaks the chain's goosed, and it doesn't matter where it happens.

'That's true of every organisation… including the Health Service. You'll be a better doctor if you remember it.'

'I'll be a better doctor for watching Sarah do that postmortem this afternoon. She's terrific. Thanks for fixing it for me. Talking to her afterwards, listening to her talk about the way her career developed, has given me a different perspective on medicine.'

'Think long and carefully before making any decisions,' he warned her. 'There aren't many Sarahs about. You have to play to your own strengths, not those you see in others.'

'Andy: about that chain of yours. What do you do if you find a weak link?'

'You mean me? Personally?'

'Yes.'

'I cut it out.'

'Isn't that a bit brutal?'

His vivid green eyes fixed on her. 'It's necessary. I'll do anything that's necessary. I learned that from Bob.'

'What's he like, that man Skinner?' she asked him.

'Different. Inspiring, intimidating when he has to be. He has a tremendous analytical mind. Sum it all up, he's a great detective and a great leader.'

'But wasn't he all over the Sundays a while back?'

'I don't like to talk about that. It's true, but that's all behind him now, behind both him and Sarah. He's got over his obsessive period, now he's focused equally on his job and his family, as he should be. There's nothing he likes more than taking his kids for a walk of a Sunday afternoon; that's his greatest pleasure in life these days.'

A silence hung over the table as Rhian sipped her coffee. 'So what about this talk that we were going to have tonight?' she murmured, eventually.

'Let's make it tomorrow, honey. My head's wasted right now. How about if we just went home to bed?'

'I'll settle for that.' She smiled again, a big gloom-brightening grin which lifted his spirits in an instant. 'As long as it doesn't become a habit. I'm a lively young thing, you know.'

Two hours later, they lay entwined in each other's arms, in the dying light from the open bedroom window. The duvet was on the floor and they were slicked with sweat.

'Hey,' she whispered in his ear. 'Remember what I said earlier about not making a habit of this?'

'Mmhh.' His tongue flicked out, licking her neck gently, making her shudder.

'In case you were in any doubt, I was joking.'

'That's good. Handling rejection's never been my strong suit.'

'What do you mean?' 'I mean I don't like being chucked.' 'What happened with your fiancee? Who really chucked whom?'

'Let's say that we agreed it wouldn't work.'

'Sure you did. And that's why you have her photograph on the sideboard downstairs. All these girlfriends of yours, yet she's the only person on display, other than your mother. Something big happened. What was it?'

'Don't push it.'

'Ah, you did catch her, then.'

Sharp, way too sharp. 'Actually, she got pregnant, then had our child aborted without telling me about it.' 'So you broke off the engagement?' 'Yes. Immature, eh?'

'No. Principled, I'd say. I can tell how much it hurt you to finish with her, yet you had to.'

'Oh yeah? And why did I have to? Why couldn't I have gone along with it?'

'Because if you had, you'd never have been your own man again, not completely. And someone like you has to be, doesn't he?'

He looked at her, so close that it was an effort to focus his eyes on her. She was right; he had searched for months for an answer to the riddle of himself. Now Rhian had come up with it, on "their second night together. And of course, Alex, her father's daughter, was exactly the same; she had his no compromise gene. That was why it could never work again, because neither of them was physically capable of doing the thing that would make it so; yielding to the other's will.

'So what about you?' he asked. 'What would you do in Alex's shoes?'

'I'd have the baby… but I'm not Alex. I mean, I'm not knocking her or condemning what she did. It was her right. But families are a two-way commitment, aren't they? Could you handle a family, properly, and your job at the same time?'

He rolled on to his back and stared at the ceiling. 'You were at that post-mortem this afternoon. Did it affect you?'

'I'm a doctor, or I'm going to be. I'm being trained not to form emotional attachments with live patients. Dead ones on a slab should be no problem for me.'

'Don't give me theory, give me fact.'

She thought about it for a few seconds. 'It wasn't the dissection,' she said finally. 'It was the commentary; the way Sarah described, for the tape, the things that had been done to that man. Did you know that he actually drowned in his own blood?'

'No, but it doesn't surprise me. I looked into the guy's face, or where his face should have been, as soon as we took him out of the water. I saw his hands and feet, his legs, his chest, everything that was done to him.

'I saw worse on Friday night; yes, worse than that. And you know what? Afterwards, I went home with Karen, my sergeant; she was there, she saw it too. We've got a history together, and right then we needed to help each other get over that hellish thing. We spent the night together because neither of us could face going home alone. I'm sorry if that hurts you, but it's the truth.' He looked into her eyes, and saw her flinch.

'Now, to bring it all back to your original question, could I handle family life? The fact is, Rhian, I don't know for how much longer I can live as I do, and carry on doing my job. I'm really envious of Bob, in that respect. I need stability, I need the normal home life that Alex and I had for a while. I suppose I've been looking for it since we split.

'Otherwise, things like Alec Smith's murder, or like looking at that bloke last night and realising that there's a fair chance we'll never even find out who he was… I have this fear that the job will either break me, or take me over to the point that there will be no room in me' — he tapped his chest — 'here, inside me, for anything else. When I can look at an ex-colleague with his-' He stopped himself. 'When I can look at that then go home as if it's just another day at the office, as a man, I'll be done.'

She gripped his fingers in hers, squeezed them and held them between her breasts. 'Then let's just make sure, that there's always someone there for you.'

She rubbed her forehead on his shoulder. 'Maybe I've been looking for something too,' she whispered. 'And maybe, just maybe, the first time I saw you, I knew I'd found it.'