A Winter Grave

Chapter Fifteen

I suppose you might call it an obsession. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. She was in my thoughts all day, in my dreams at night. I’m sure that even then, Tiny must have guessed I was smitten. I mean, I never said anything to him, but he knew me well enough to know that I wasn’t right. Couldn’t concentrate on anything.

I would go home after my shift and watch some streaming movie, and see her face in every actress with long hair. And when I woke up in the morning, I would find myself wondering if she was awake yet, and if he’d hit her the night before. It drove me mad. Until I couldn’t stick it any longer.

I had a couple of days off at the end of that week, and I drove across the city to Cranhill on the first afternoon. From a parking spot next to the Cranhill Community Centre on the edge of the park, I could see up Soutra Place to the tower block where she lived with Jardine. I knew which was his car, because I’d checked it out on the police computer earlier in the week. A pillar-box red Mazda MX-5 two-seater roadster. He liked his cars, did Jardine. Worked at a bookie’s in town, so he couldn’t have been earning that much. But the Mazda was brand new, just a couple of months old, so it was well seen where his financial priorities lay. The year before, he had lost his licence for twelve months for drink driving, so I figured he was being careful not to get into the Mazda if he’d a drink in him. Which must have been hard for an alkie. Because I’d no doubt that’s what he was. Just shows what you can do when you’ve a mind to.

Anyway, it was sitting there in the parking slots for the tower, and I settled down to wait. It was after two when I saw him walking to his car from the entrance, wearing a duffle coat and jeans, and white sneakers. His face was pasty-white beneath that black hair of his, and he’d probably have described the unshaven state of his face as designer stubble. But to me, he looked like he’d just got out of bed.

I heard him pump the accelerator to make the engine growl. I figured he liked that sound, cos he did it several times before putting her into gear and reversing out into Soutra Place at speed. Into first then, and he accelerated hard to the give-way lines at Bellrock Street, barely pausing to look before turning right and powering away up the hill. I almost ducked, afraid he would see me, but he never gave my motor a second glance, and I sat for a good ten minutes after that before turning the key in my ignition and cruising slowly up Soutra Place to park a few slots away from where Jardine left his Mazda.

The lift was working again, and I rode it up to the fifteenth floor accompanied by the smell of urine. I saw the shock in Mel’s face when she opened the door to me. And then panic, as she leaned past me to squint down the hall.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Just checking that you’re okay.’

‘Come in,’ she said quickly, and took another glance along the hall to make sure nobody had seen me. She shut the door and pressed herself back against it. She was wearing a towelling robe, and her hair hung in wet ropes over her shoulders. I reckoned she was just out the shower and naked under that robe. My mouth was dry and I was as nervous as she was. ‘He’ll kill you if he comes back and finds you here.’

‘He’d not get away with assaulting a police officer a second time.’

She looked me up and down. ‘You here officially, then?’

The absence of the uniform kind of gave the game away. ‘No.’ Wasn’t any point in lying about it. ‘Anyway, he’s gone to work, hasn’t he? Won’t be back for hours.’

‘No guarantee of that.’ She pushed past me into the sitting room. It was a good deal tidier than when I’d last seen it. I followed her in and saw her face clearly then in the light from the window. The bruising was mostly gone, just the faintest hint of a scab where he had split her lip. She ran both hands through her wet hair to draw it back from her face. Then stood defiantly, hands on hips, glaring at me. ‘Why are you really here?’

‘I told you.’

‘Why would you even care?’

I hesitated. To tell her would be to make myself hopelessly vulnerable. But I wanted her. Had known it from that first time I set eyes on her. ‘You’ve been on my mind,’ I said. ‘Every waking minute of every day. When I think about what he did to you, what he might do to you again.’

For a moment, I don’t believe she knew quite how to react. But I saw the colour rise on her cheeks, and I wasn’t sure whether it was from pleasure or embarrassment. ‘He hasn’t touched me since that night.’

‘Good.’

‘So...’

‘So, what?’

‘So, there’s no reason for you to worry.’

I reached out to touch her face. I know I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t have the words, really, to express how I was feeling. She didn’t flinch, or move away, her eyes still fixed on me. ‘I want to see you, Mel.’

There was something strangely intimate about using her name, as if we knew each other well. I think she felt it too. But she reached up and took my hand away from her face. ‘That would be dangerous.’

‘I can deal with Jardine.’

‘For me,’ she said.

And I knew she was right. If Jardine found out I was here, if I were to see her again, it would be Mel he’d take it out on. I said, ‘If you tell me you don’t want me to come, I’ll walk out that door and you’ll never see me again.’ Which was wrong of me. I was putting it all on her. Removing any of the responsibility from me.

Still her stare was unwavering. And eventually she said, in a wee small voice, ‘He works Tuesday to Saturday, three till ten.’

So every day off, every night shift, I went up in the afternoon. We didn’t do anything except talk. She made coffee, and we would sit on the settee together, just blethering. It was funny, I mean we barely knew each other, but within a short time, it’s like we had known each other all our lives. Talk was easy, laughter easier. She told me how she’d never known her dad. She figured her mum never really knew who he was.

There’d been a procession of men who’d come and gone at their two-bedroom tenement flat in Tantallon Road. Sometimes they brought Mel presents. Just to shut her up, she thought, to get her out of the way. There had never been any affection. Except from her mum. ‘You know when someone loves you,’ Mel said. ‘They don’t even have to tell you. It’s just how they are with you. You feel it.’ And she glanced at me, a funny little sideways look that made me blush.

And then I went and spoiled the moment by saying, ‘Do you feel that with him?’ I couldn’t even bring myself to use Jardine’s name, and she turned her head away quickly, rising then from the settee to head for the kitchen.

‘Another coffee?’

I could have bitten my tongue out.

The turning point in our relationship, I guess, came one Tuesday afternoon. I could see immediately that there’d been violence over the weekend. She’d always said that he stayed off the booze during the week, but made up for it Friday and Saturday nights. She’d tried to cover the bruises with make-up, but the damage was still plain to see.

As soon as I got in, I turned her face to the light. ‘He fucking hit you again.’

She tried to laugh it off. ‘Witch hazel’s not working, then?’

It made me so mad. I was physically shaking. If Jardine had been within striking distance in that moment, I’d have fucking killed him. ‘Mel, this can’t go on.’

She pointed at her face. ‘You mean this?’ And hesitated. ‘Or us?’

I knew there was no us. Not really. I mean, we hadn’t even kissed, for God’s sake. Not that it would have made the slightest difference to Jardine if he knew I’d been coming to the flat. I took her by the shoulders and said, ‘I can’t let him go on hitting you.’

But she pulled away. ‘I can take care of myself, Cammie. I can. I wouldn’t have survived this long if I couldn’t.’

‘Leave him.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know why.’

I didn’t, not really. Couldn’t understand for the life of me why she would stay with a man who beat her. It made no sense. I’d have taken her away from all that shit in a heartbeat. I’m sure she knew that. But he had some kind of hold on her. Something I can’t even begin to explain.

She had walked away to the window, and was staring out into the wet afternoon. And suddenly she gasped. ‘Oh, my God! He’s back! Oh, my God, Cammie, you’ve got to go.’ She turned to face me with real fear in her eyes.

I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay there and have it out with him, but she was very nearly hysterical. In the end I just walked out. Slammed the door behind me. By the time I got to the end of the hall, I could hear the elevator coming. I hesitated for a very long moment. I knew I could take him. But I knew, too, that it could only end badly for me. An off-duty cop beating up the abusive boyfriend of the woman he was in love with. It didn’t matter how platonic my relationship with Mel had been so far, it would not play out well.

Reluctantly I slipped into the stairwell as the lift doors slid open. I stood there listening as he went down the hall. The door of the flat opening. Then silence, before I heard raised voices. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. It took a major effort of will to stop myself from going after him, banging on that door, and beating the crap out of him when he opened it. In the end, I just turned away and began the long descent down the stairs from the fifteenth floor.

I didn’t go back for a whole week. I don’t know who I was punishing more — me or her. The only winner was Jardine. I felt Tiny’s eyes on me when we were on shift together. You know, kind of... appraising. We’d never talked about Mel or Jardine since that first encounter. But somehow he knew. Finally, he said, ‘Are you seeing that girl?’

‘What girl?’

He made a face. ‘Don’t come it, Cammie. It’s me you’re talking to, and you know who I mean.’

I refused to meet his eye. ‘No,’ I said, and because I wasn’t seeing her right then, it didn’t feel like a lie.

He gave a little snort of exasperation and turned away, and he never mentioned her again. Until that day in the locker room.

I went back at the end of the week. Absolutely crapping it, in case she told me to sling my hook. I’d watched Jardine roar away in his fucking Mazda, and after riding the pissy elevator to the fifteenth floor, I almost didn’t have the courage to knock on her door.

My heart was in my mouth when she opened it. She stood staring at me for a long minute before she nodded towards the open sitting-room door and I went through. I heard the front door shut behind me, and as I turned, she threw her arms around me and buried her face in my chest. I didn’t know what to do straight away, I was so taken aback. Then I put my arms around her, too, and felt her whole body quivering. We’d never been this close before. I’d never felt her body against mine. It was electric.

‘I thought you’d given up on me,’ she said.

I made her stand back from me, and took her head in my hands, smearing away her tears with my thumbs. ‘I’ll never give up on you, Mel. Never.’ And I never did.

She tried to control her breathing between sobs. ‘You can’t come back here, though. You can’t. I’m sure he suspects. I’ll meet you somewhere. Somewhere in town where he’s never likely to see us together.’

Which is when we started meeting at the Cafe21 in Merchant City. It was one of those cafés that was all wood and brick and steel on the inside, and glass and marble outside. Typical Glasgow, they put cane tables and chairs out on the pavement, more in hope that it wouldn’t rain than in any expectation of sunshine. You could try all you like to pretend it was Paris, but in Glasgow that never really washed.

The Merchant City was one of the oldest parts of the town. It’s where all the wealthy merchants from the days of empire had their warehouses, shipping tobacco and sugar and tea. Then later it was home to the city’s fruit and vegetable and cheese markets. By the time me and Mel were meeting at the Cafe21, it had become the in-place for posh folk who didn’t mind spending a bit of cash in the boutiques and gourmet restaurants. Not a place Jardine or any of his cohorts would ever be seen dead in.

We always took a table up on the mezzanine. Mostly we just had cappuccinos, but sometimes we would get stuff off the menu if we were hungry, or they were busy and we wanted to keep our table. They had wraps, and toasties, and nachos, as well as pizzas and stuff. It was okay, but it wasn’t cheap.

I didn’t care, though. I was with Mel, and we weren’t worrying every minute of our time together if Jardine was going to come back unexpectedly and catch us.

I remember those days with such an aching fondness. Away from that flat in Soutra Place, she was a different person. Relaxed, so quick to laugh, interested in every little thing about me.

I told her how my mum died when I was young, and really it was my dad who brought me up, in a single end in Clydebank. He’d been an apprentice welder in the shipyards when he was young. Though, even then, there weren’t that many shipbuilders left on the Clyde, and when the yard where he worked closed down, it had been almost impossible for him to find another job.

‘There was a time,’ I said, ‘when he really thought about us emigrating to Australia.’

Quite impulsively, she reached across the table to grab my hand. ‘Oh, I’m glad you didn’t.’ And the touch of her hand on mine suffused me with such warmth, I find it hard to describe. I put my other hand over hers and hoped, somehow, that everything I was feeling would be transmitted from my heart to hers through our touching hands.

I laughed. ‘Well, he’d never have taken me hillwalking if we had. I don’t know if there are any mountains in Australia, but I’d have missed bagging all those Munros.’

She frowned. ‘Munros?’

And I explained to her what a Munro was, and that they were named after some toff called Munro who’d made a list of them all.

‘I’ll take you with me some time,’ I said. ‘When you get up there among the peaks, it’s like you’re on top of the world. Puts everything into perspective, and you realise how small your problems are by comparison.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said, then laughed. ‘But I’d probably have to go into training for six months first.’

I’d been meeting her at the Cafe21 for maybe six months. Sometimes there was bruising. Sometimes there wasn’t. I never mentioned it when there was. And she never once talked about her life with Jardine. It was like, you know, a cat that hides its head beneath a cushion and thinks if it can’t see you, you can’t see it. We were just pretending we had a life together. If we didn’t talk about the rest of it, then it didn’t exist.

It was one early spring day when we met in the late afternoon and she told me she wouldn’t have to be home till late that night. Jardine thought she was going on a girls’ night out, and wasn’t expecting her to be there when he got in from work.

I remember thinking I could take her to a movie, or out for a meal somewhere. Maybe even take in a show in town. I made a couple of suggestions, and she sat there looking at her hands folded in her lap. Then she raised her eyes to mine and said, ‘Maybe we could just go to your place.’

My heart kind of thundered around in my chest for a minute before pushing up into my throat and damn near choking me. I knew this was what they called a watershed moment. The direction of our relationship was about to change course. And if we went with the flow, there would be no way back.

We took a taxi to my place at Maryhill. Sitting in the back saying nothing. But we held hands for the first time. I mean, it was really no big deal. But it kind of was. I was so nervous. It wasn’t like I’d never slept with a girl before. There’d been a few. But this was different. I wanted it to be amazing. The best ever. And I was scared it wouldn’t be.

I thought maybe she felt that way, too. But when we got back to the flat, she was all over me the minute the door was closed. Hungry for me, like she hadn’t eaten in a month. And all my fears fell away, like the trail of clothes we left on the floor on the way to the bedroom. Jesus! And it was amazing. Better than I could ever have hoped. Better than I could ever have imagined. I was so lost in her, so blind to the future, that I couldn’t see how impossible it all would become.

Addie was conceived that night, though I didn’t know that till much later. But I told Mel for the first time that I loved her. First time, actually, that I ever told anyone that. I’d never had the faintest idea what love was, or how it was supposed to feel. But I did now, even if I couldn’t put it into words.

We lay together afterwards, till it got dark and street lamps sent their orange light through the window in long boxes deformed by the tangle of quilt on the bed. We said nothing in all that time, till finally it was Mel who broke the silence. And she said, quite simply, ‘Cammie, I’m scared.’

It was strange how our meetings at the Cafe21 were never quite the same after that. Like they weren’t enough now. We both wanted more and better, but the opportunity simply wasn’t there. I’d never had any control over when, or for how long, we could meet. And before the night at Maryhill, I’d been able to thole that. Just. Now, I couldn’t. And while everything had changed for us, really nothing had, and I was just about demented.

Then fate intervened, in a way that neither of us could have foreseen. I’d met Mel briefly at Merchant City that Saturday afternoon. She’d been depressed. The weekend always did that to her. Jardine had been drinking the night before, and he’d be drinking again tonight. She always faced it with a kind of stoic endurance, but I was finding it harder and harder to take. I tried again to persuade her to leave him, and the shutters came down, just as they always did. She wouldn’t even discuss it. We had words. I gave her an ultimatum. As I had done several times before. But she knew they were just empty words. That I’d never give up on her. Because I’d told her that, hadn’t I? I didn’t ever want to lose her. And she knew it.

So we parted on bad terms that night, and I was feeling particularly low when I started on the early shift Sunday morning. I was getting changed in the locker room when Tiny came in and sat down beside me on the bench. He looked grim. ‘Got some news for you, pal.’

I couldn’t conceive of news, good or bad, being of any interest at all to me right then. I just grunted and said, ‘That right?’ and bent over to tie my laces.

Tiny said, ‘I know you’ve been seeing that girl.’ And when I straightened up to deny it, he put a hand on my arm and said, ‘I know you have, mate. And I’m figuring the only reason you’re not an item is cos she won’t leave him. Am I right?’

I tried to stare him down, but I couldn’t, and finally went back to tying my shoelaces.

‘He’s in the slammer.’

And I straightened up again so fast I almost slid off the bench. ‘Who?’

‘Jardine.’

Now I was alarmed. ‘What did he do to her?’

‘Nothing. He was out in that flash red sports car last night with a bucketload of booze in him. Over on the south side. Mosspark Boulevard. Doing upwards of ninety by all accounts. Lost control and slammed into an oncoming vehicle. A family SUV with a mother and two kids in it.’ He paused and pressed his lips together in a grim line. ‘All dead.’

‘And Jardine?’

‘A few bumps and bruises. Always the way of it, isn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘Fucking horrible thing to happen. But, mate, he’s going down for a long time.’

To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything other than that poor woman and her two kids being dead, and that cunt still walking this earth. Maybe if I’d taken him on. Maybe if I’d given him the hiding he deserved and taken Mel away, things would have turned out different.

I put my elbows on my thighs and buried my face in my hands.

Tiny was concerned. ‘You alright, Cammie?’

I sat up and shook my head. ‘No. I should have fucking killed him when I had the chance.’

‘Then you’d be the one getting sent down.’ He put an arm around my shoulder. ‘Mate, things just happen. Some of them you can control, most of them you can’t. I don’t know how things’ll be for you and that lassie now. And I have to admit I’ve never really understood what it is you see in her. Only you know that. But one thing’s for sure — Jardine’ll no’ be an issue now.’

Jardine’s case wasn’t in the system for as long as you might have expected. He pleaded guilty at his first appearance, when it is usual to make no plea or declaration. Maybe his lawyers told him that he’d get a lighter sentence if he didn’t put the court to the trouble and cost of a trial. The Scottish Government had just passed a law increasing the sentence for causing death by careless driving under the influence of drink or drugs to life imprisonment. Or maybe Jardine just wanted it over and done with. At any rate, I was in the courtroom the day he was sentenced, just to show support for Mel. Even though we sat well apart. There were some unsavoury relatives of Jardine’s on the public benches, too. A hard-faced sister. An aunt and a couple of sketchy cousins. As well as what I would have described as several acquaintances of dubious character. Other than that, the public benches were largely empty. Nobody was much interested in the fate of Lee Alexander Jardine.

He stood in the dock flanked by a couple of uniformed officers. He seemed unrepentant, and I figured that the social work reports that the judge had received probably made pretty grim reading. When asked if he had anything to say, he just shook his head.

‘Speak up for the record,’ the judge told him.

‘No comment, Your Honour.’

Twenty years was the decision. Some in the court might have thought that harsh. Personally, I thought life would have been too fucking short.

Jardine himself showed no emotion. Just before they led him down to the cells, he turned and scanned the benches behind him. His gaze fell on me, and lingered there for a moment. I had no idea how much he knew about me and Mel, if anything, but for those brief seconds I felt bathed in his hatred, before he glanced at Mel, and a sick, sad smile washed momentarily across his face.

I was parked on the other side of the river, and sat waiting there for Mel for nearly half an hour after the sentencing was over. I was beginning to think she’d stood me up when I saw her trauchling across the Albert Bridge. She looked like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, and there was something infinitely sad about the way she held herself.

I’d seen her only a couple of times, and briefly, since the crash. I had no idea what she’d had to deal with, what kind of relationship she had with Jardine’s relatives, or the friends who had probably come to Soutra Place to offer comfort and who knew what else. I was sure she must have been to visit Jardine in the remand wing at Barlinnie. All of which meant I had no real idea where we stood now. And, in all likelihood, no say in where we went from here.

She slipped into the passenger seat and sat gazing out the windscreen, back across the river towards the High Court. I couldn’t even bring myself to speak. Afraid that, whatever I said, it would be the wrong thing. I saw a single tear track its way slowly down her cheek. She said, ‘My mother had a weakness for the horses. Had an account with the local bookie. Sometimes she’d place her bet by phone. But more often than not, she went to the bookie’s in person. They always made a fuss of her there. And quite often she’d take me. Showing me off. She was still a good-looking woman then and liked folk to think we were sisters. I was probably only fifteen when I first met Lee there.’

She glanced at me. She knew I didn’t like her to talk about him, so this was the first time I’d heard how they met.

‘He had a sort of wide-boy charm, you know. My mum was a good bit older than him, of course, but I think he quite fancied her. He could make her laugh, and he worked hard at it.’ She paused, lost in wordless recollection. ‘I was eighteen when my mum OD’d. The guys from the bookie’s all came to the funeral, and it was Lee who took me home after.’ She shrugged. ‘That was the start of it, I suppose.’

And I had the first inkling of what it was that drew her to him like a moth to the flame. He was more than a lover. He was the father figure she’d never known. No matter how abusive he got, he was some kind of anchor. Gave her life shape and stability, even if the only predictability in it was that he would get drunk every weekend and raise his fists to her. I remembered her telling me that first time we met how he’d bring her flowers and chocolates, and take her out to nice restaurants after the violence. His way of showing penitence for the way he was when he drank.

I said, ‘It’s over, Mel. You’re free of him.’

She turned and looked at me. ‘Free?’

‘To start a new life. Build a future that doesn’t include violence and abuse.’

She nodded and wiped away that single tear. ‘I’m pregnant, Cam.’

I was so shocked, at first I couldn’t even speak. I was scared to ask, but I had to know. ‘Is it... mine?’

She nodded.

‘How can you be sure?’

And she raised her voice, just a little, to lend it certainty. ‘Because I am.’ She looked at me so directly then that I very nearly had to look away. ‘That new future you see for me, Cam: it won’t be anything if it doesn’t include the father of my child.’ As if she thought for one moment that I would let her go. Either of them.

It took her less than a month to settle affairs at Soutra Place and move in with me at Maryhill. Free of Jardine, she seemed like a different person, and there was no impediment to our relationship being whatever we wanted it to be.

Some nights we sat up in bed watching TV, eating ice cream from a local deli and drinking port. Well, I drank the port. Mel wouldn’t touch alcohol till after the birth. We made love at any time of the day or night. Whenever the notion took us.

She wasn’t much of a cook, so we lived mostly on carry-out pizza, or Indian or Chinese. We ate out a lot, and she made me take her to the ballet at the Theatre Royal. She’d always wanted to go, she said. I suppose all little girls are drawn to the ballet for some reason. We sat in the front seats. Close enough to hear the thumping and grunting, and smell the elephant odour of straining bodies sweating in nylon. She loved it. I hated it. And we laughed about it long and hard in the pub afterwards.

Mel was presenting quite a bump when we got married six months into her pregnancy. It was a dead simple affair at the registry office in Martha Street. Tiny was my best man. His Sheila was Mel’s best maid. They met for the first time on the street outside. Witnesses, the registrar called them. And they were, indeed, the only folk to witness the short ceremony. We had an awkward biryani afterwards at their favourite Indian in Shawlands, and me and Mel were just happy to get home and carefully consummate our new-found status as man and wife. God, how I loved that girl!

Three months later, Addie came into our lives and we moved to a semi in a south-side suburb with a wee pocket-handkerchief square of garden at the back. I built Addie a swing, and a see-saw. I taught her to ride a bike, how to swim. I adored that wee girl, and she loved her daddy.

In the years that followed, Tiny and I sat and passed all our exams and moved up the ladder. CID, plain clothes, working now out of the new HQ at Pacific Quay. Tiny and I were still pals, though me and Mel hardly ever saw him and Sheila as a couple. Sheila still didn’t like me much, and the feeling was still mutual. And I’m sure she disapproved of Mel.

Where do the years go? I mean, it seemed like no time since me and Mel were meeting secretly at the Cafe21. And now Addie was in her teens, all hormonal and awkward and doing her best to piss me off at every turn. I think, maybe, she was closer to her mum in those years. But we were a family, even if Mel never did get pregnant again, and there was a lot of love there. We’d moved into a red sandstone semi in Pollokshields by then, and Addie had not long turned seventeen the day I logged in at Pacific Quay to find Tiny sitting at my desk in the detectives’ office. He was swivelling back and forth in my chair, legs akimbo, sucking on the rim of a disposable coffee cup.

In my usual polite way, I told him to fuck off out of my chair. But he didn’t budge, just sat there staring at me thoughtfully. Then he said, ‘You heard?’

‘Heard what?’

He hesitated for just a moment. ‘Lee Alexander Jardine is out on licence.’