A Rush of Blood

Sixteen

‘The worst moment in a girl’s life,’ said Cheeky, ‘is when she’s sitting on her own in a pub, thinking that she’s been stood up. If you hadn’t sent me that text. .’

‘. . you’d have been out of here. I know,’ Sauce sighed.

She laughed, a soft tinkling sound, yet it cut through all the background noise of a bar that was not completely full, but still busy for a midweek evening. ‘No,’ she told him, ‘but I’d have been hammered by the time you arrived.’

He looked at her as he settled into his chair, setting a white wine on the table before her then pressing a wedge of lime into his Sol beer with his thumb. She was dazzling; her teeth sparkled as she smiled, her shortish blond hair was perfectly haphazard, and her make-up helped to emphasise the blueness of her eyes. ‘Come on, Cheeky,’ he replied, ‘admit it. You’ve never been stood up in your life.’

She beamed. ‘OK,’ she admitted, ‘I wasn’t speaking from personal experience. Have you? Ever been stood up, I mean?’

‘Find me a guy that hasn’t. I’ve had my share. I wasn’t even certain that you’d be here tonight.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do I strike you as a “fuck ’em and chuck ’em” girl?’

‘No, but my sad experiences with women have left me taking nothing for granted.’

‘What’s your worst one?’

He whistled. ‘Out of so many?’ He scratched his head. ‘I learned early on not to arrange to meet in places where a lot of people would see you being dissed.’

She glanced around. ‘You took a chance on this one.’

‘Maybe, but you’re not the sort of woman a guy would arrange to meet outside McDonald’s, or on the Waverley Station concourse.’

She winked. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, rather than just you trying to talk your way into my knickers. . again. Now come on, spill some beans.’

‘Well,’ he began, ‘my most publicly humiliating experience wasn’t a stand-up in the conventional sense of the word. I was at Indigo one night, with some mates, and I asked this girl up to dance. When we were done she stayed up for another, and a third: I thought I might be in there. Then she said to me, “Just you wait there,” and headed off through the crowd. I mean I thought she’d gone for her coat, so I did what I was told. I stood there for a couple of minutes, then five, then ten, right up until I saw her back out on the floor with one of my pals, putting a fucking lip lock on him, and realised that the rest of the team were stood up at the bar laughing their rocks off at me.’

‘What a slapper! What did you do?’

‘I told them that none of them would ever park safely in Edinburgh again.’

‘You abused your police powers?’ she gasped in mock condemnation.

‘Nah. I wish I could have, but the traffic wardens are separate from us. Speaking of parking-’ he added.

‘I didn’t bring my car,’ she told him, before he could finish. ‘Going by what I saw this morning, I reckoned it would be impossible to park at your place, so I caught the train.’

‘Where do you live anyway?’ he asked. ‘You never told me.’

‘You never asked. I’ve got a wee house out in South Gyle.’

‘On your own?’

‘No, with my husband and two kids! And he’s an all-in wrestler.’ She paused. ‘Yes, Sauce, I live on my own. Like I said, it’s a wee house, no bigger than your flat, and not in nearly as lively a part of the city.’

‘It’ll be new if it’s out there.’

‘Fairly. I’m only the second owner.’

‘You did well to get a mortgage. If I wasn’t a cop, I’d have been struggling.’

‘Accountants are a good risk too.’

‘You’re an accountant?’

‘Yup. I don’t have my full CA qualification yet, but I’ve got my degree.’

‘Where do you work?’

‘I’m on my second year of a training contract with a firm called Deacon and Queen.’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘Maybe not, but they’re top five. Name me half a dozen accountancy firms you have heard of.’

He smiled. ‘You have a point. So how come you didn’t have to go tearing in there this morning?’

‘I’m on an audit team, out with a client just now. I sent them a text saying that I had a domestic situation. That wasn’t exactly a lie, was it?’

‘No, I’d have bought that.’

‘So how was your day, when eventually you got there?’

Sauce shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose I could call it routine. I spent it on a sudden death investigation. You want to talk bizarre coincidence? The victim was the guy who owned Indigo. I just finished the report. That’s why I was a bit late.’

‘How sudden was it?’

‘As sudden as they get. Suicide by swallowing a sawn-off shotgun.’ He winced. ‘Shit, I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have told you that.’

She screwed up her face. ‘Yuk! OK on an empty stomach, but only just. What a mess it must have been.’

‘Happily I didn’t get to see it. All I’ve had to do is the follow-up, trying to establish why he did it.’

‘And did you?’

‘I talked to his cousin, to a nice lawyer and to a dodgy lawyer, but no, not really. The guy’s wife left him last week, and took the kids; that’s the only motive we’ve got.’

‘Maybe it was an accident,’ Cheeky suggested. ‘Maybe he was just playing with the thing and it went off.’

‘On top of Arthur’s Seat, in the ball-freezing cold? No, we’re sure that killing himself had been on his mind, because he changed his will just before he did it.’

‘To take his wife out of the picture?’

Sauce shook his head. ‘No. She and the kids get the lot, apart from some pieces of not very desirable property that he seems to have decided at the last minute to leave to his cousin’s wife.’

She frowned. ‘Things like that are awful sad,’ she murmured, sipping her wine.

‘I suppose,’ he conceded. ‘It’s best not to think about the emotional side of an investigation; the physical can be hard enough. Mind you, sometimes you can’t avoid it; if it’s a colleague, say. .’

They sat silent for a while, as if they were reflecting on their first serious discussion.

‘Those properties,’ said Cheeky, finally moving on, ‘they must be really crap.’

‘Oh, they are. Not nice at all.’

‘I wonder why he decided to leave them to that woman, then.’

‘So do we. Maybe it’s because she’s a crap person.’

‘You’ve met her?’

‘Jack and I did, this afternoon. Not very nice at all.’

She reached across and squeezed his arm. ‘Never mind, Sauce. Cheer up, you’re finished with all that, you said, so what are you doing tomorrow? What’s your working day like? Mine’s pretty predictable.’

‘That’s the attraction of CID, I suppose. We never know what’s next, unless we’re on a specialist unit. Maybe you could join us when you finish your training. There’s a dedicated fraud unit that covers the whole of Scotland. They recruit accountants for that.’

‘Show me the money, love. That would be the problem.’

‘I’m sure. Police pay’s all right, but it would be nice to climb the ladder as fast as I can. At the moment I’m right at the bottom. But you were wrong when you said that job was finished. I had a text from Jack just as I was coming through the door. We signed off on the report, sure, but the bosses have kicked it back.’

‘Why?’ Cheeky asked, casually. ‘Have they got a down on you and him?’

‘Not that I know of. No, it’s. .’ He stopped.

Cheeky held up her hands. ‘Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know.’

‘Ach,’ he chuckled, ‘it’s OK. It’s probably just that this guy was a bit of a hoodlum in his youth, so the high heid yins are being ultra thorough.’

‘They can do that on their own time,’ she declared. ‘This is ours. Let me get you another beer, then. . what do you want to do?’

‘A meal, I thought. What do you like?’

She reached to the left, to the side of her chair that he could not see, and held up a bag, an overnight bag. ‘What do I like or what do I want? I like pizza and I want. . the biggest takeaway we can get from Papa John’s, or Mamma’s, whichever’s nearest to your place. Then no more shop talk, just all that pepperoni, and you and me. Does that sound like a deal?’

‘It works for me. . and forget the second beer.’

She drained her glass and eased her long legs out of her chair. ‘Then let’s get the show on the road, for I warn you now, Sauce, I can’t call in late two days on the trot.’