A Winter Grave

Chapter Nineteen

From the moment Tiny told me about Jardine’s release, I had this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Just the thought that he was out there, walking the streets again, made my blood run cold. I couldn’t get that old Scots aphorism out of my head: ye’re a lang time deid. That woman he killed, and her two children. They were still dead. They would never walk the streets again. And here he was, out, with half a life still ahead of him.

I should have known better, but I did everything I could to try and keep the news of his release from Mel. I was scared how she might react. Even after all these years, and the life we’d made together, I was still afraid of the hold he had on her. The hold he might still have on her.

We moved in different social circles then. We lived in Pollokshields. Addie had gone to a good school. And she’d just started university. It was inconceivable to me that Mel would hear about Jardine’s release by chance. Or that we would bump into him on some night out in town. We were regulars at the Theatre Royal now, and the bars and restaurants round about, which were not establishments that a guy like Jardine was likely to frequent.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of it, but of course I should have known that he would seek her out. And, I mean, she wouldn’t be that hard to find.

I said nothing about Jardine, and life went on like before. At first I thought it was all going to be okay. But gradually, I became aware that Mel was changing. It was so subtle at first that I didn’t notice. I can’t even remember now how long it was before I did.

There was an increasing lethargy about her. She became tense and irritable. I saw that she was drinking more in the evenings, even when I wasn’t there. She hardly ever laughed, and I had become so accustomed over the years to the peel of her laughter ringing out around the house. And, even then, it didn’t occur to me why. I’m so bloody stupid! Maybe if I’d cottoned on sooner...

It was pure chance in the end that I stumbled on the truth. She’d left her phone on the kitchen table. I don’t know where she was. Somewhere else in the house. But it chimed. You know, that sound it makes when there’s an incoming text. The notification appeared briefly on her welcome screen, and I had time to read it before it vanished, lost behind a passcode that she’d always kept from me.

I didn’t twig initially. She’d told me she was meeting a girlfriend for drinks on Friday. Leonardo? Had to be some kind of pub in town. Then it occurred to me that the girlfriend’s name was Sarah. So who was L? And then it dawned on me with an awful clarity. Lee. It was Lee! He was meeting her at seven on Friday at somewhere called Leonardo. I went online and googled it. The only thing I could find was the Leonardo Inn. I knew the place. Out west on the Great Western Road. It had been there for donkeys. In the old days it had been known as the Pond Hotel.

I could scarcely believe it. Until I ran my mind back over the previous few weeks. The number of times she’d been meeting this girlfriend or that. And it felt then like my life had just ended.

I didn’t even notice her coming back into the kitchen. Didn’t hear her when she spoke to me. At least, not the first time. Then I heard her saying, ‘Cam, Cam, are you with us?’

I looked up, and she had her phone in her hand. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was away in a dwam.’ But she was the one not listening now, as she read her text, and suddenly slipped her phone in the back pocket of her jeans like it was burning her fingers. I knew then that I had lost her.

She thought I was on duty Friday night. But I swapped shifts, and I was sitting in my car at the back of the parking lot at the Leonardo Inn for a good half hour before the seven o’clock rendezvous.

I saw Jardine arrive first in a beat-up old Tesla. So they’d given him his licence back, in spite of everything. Either that, or he was driving illegally. But long gone was the flash, expensive sports car. Which no doubt was something he could no longer afford.

He got out of his banger and propped his arse on the bonnet to light a cigarette and wait. She was nearly ten minutes late, finally arriving in one of the new generation of black e-cabs. Dressed to the nines and all made up for the big date. Lipstick, eye shadow, the lot. As if she needed somehow to impress him. Thirty-six years old, and she was still a fine-looking woman. But I loved her in her baggy old jog pants and T-shirt, without a trace of make-up.

I sat there behind the wheel of my car with tears filling my eyes. It was loss I felt more than anger. I could never be angry with Mel. She was so innocent. Even in her betrayal.

Jardine threw away his cigarette and when she ran to him, they kissed. Not just a casual, ‘hi there’ sort of kiss. It was longer than that, lips that lingered, turning the knife in me. As if I wasn’t hurting enough. Then they laughed, and he held her hand as they ran lightly up the steps to push open glass doors into reception.

I sat for what must have been ten minutes or more, knuckles turning white as I gripped the wheel in front of me. What was I going to do? Turn around and drive away? Accept that life with Mel as I’d known it was over? It would have been impossible for me to pretend that I didn’t know about her and Jardine. If I wanted to keep her, I was going to have to fight for her.

The girl at reception was flustered when I thrust my warrant card in her face and demanded to know the room number of the couple who had just checked in. She wasn’t to know that I didn’t have that authority. And she didn’t need to check her records. She remembered it. Room 347.

I took the elevator up to the third floor, trying to not even think about what I was doing, holding every emotion in check. I was like some kind of container under pressure, ready to explode. I walked along a carpeted hallway and stopped in front of Room 347 to rap on the door. There was no magic eye in it, so he wouldn’t be able to see me.

‘What is it?’ his voice barked from somewhere inside the room. A gravelly, smoker’s voice grated raw by years of alcohol abuse. I wondered how he’d managed inside, but prison security was like Swiss cheese in those days.

I put on a posh voice. ‘Richard from reception, sir. There’s a problem with your electrics.’

‘What the fuck?’

‘The management’s apologies, sir, but we’ll have to move you to another room.’

I heard banging about behind the door before it flew open, and a semi-dressed Jardine filled the frame of it. There was no time even for surprise to register on his coupon before I put my shoulder in his chest, and we both went barrelling backwards into the room.

I heard Mel scream as I landed on top of him, and his foul breath exploded in my face. Just as all my pent-up fury exploded in the fists I slammed into his. I reckon I broke his nose and took out a couple of teeth with the first three blows. Then I punched him in the throat and he couldn’t breathe. He was bucking beneath me like a demented horse, and I kept hitting him till I couldn’t see his face for blood.

I was barely aware of Mel screaming at me, trying to pull me off, before finally the veil of madness lifted and I got to my feet with bruised and bleeding knuckles. Jardine lay on the floor gasping for breath, blood bubbling from between split lips.

I pulled myself free of Mel’s grasp, and my eyes must have been on fire, because she recoiled from me as if I might hit her. As if I would. As if I ever would. Her blouse was open and I could see the black lacy bra against the white of her skin beneath it. Everything I didn’t want to see. I grabbed her jacket from the bed and told her to put it on. She was coming with me.

It was only later, I guess, that I realised I had no right. That by removing her choice, I wasn’t treating her any better than Jardine. I’m ashamed now of what I did. But when I look back on it, I’m not sure I would have done anything different. If only I could have spared Mel the hurt and humiliation.

She snatched her bag from the dresser as I dragged her from the room. Jardine had pulled himself up on to one elbow by now. And I could see only murder in the eyes that blinked away blood. ‘I’ll fucking get you, Brodie. Count on it. You’ll fucking regret this, both of you.’

I pulled the door shut on him and hurried Mel away down the hall to the elevator.

The girl at reception stared at us, wide-eyed, as we ran across the lobby and out into the dying light of the day. I no longer had to drag Mel behind me. She came without resistance. That passive acceptance she always had of everything that life threw at her.

We sat for a long time in the car without saying a word. Staring sightlessly out of the windscreen, breathing hard, filling the air with our spent oxygen and all our regrets. When I finally turned to look at her, silent tears ran freely down her face. She said, in a voice so brittle it damn near broke my heart, ‘I’m so sorry, Cam. He... he threatened Addie if I didn’t see him.’ And I thought there didn’t seem anything threatening in the kiss I’d seen them exchange just fifteen minutes earlier. Maybe she read my mind, because she said, ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

And I closed my eyes to shut out the pain, because I knew it meant everything.

‘I can’t even explain it...’ Her words came staccato through her sobs. ‘He... he just has this hold on me.’

I dropped my head on to bloody hands clutching the steering wheel. I whispered, ‘Tell me you won’t see him again.’

‘I swear, Cammie, I swear it.’

But I knew she would.