Aftershock

Fifty-three

Mario McGuire looked at what had been a bottle of Budweiser. ‘If I have another one of these,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have to get a taxi home.’

‘Go ahead,’ McIlhenney told him. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

The head of CID tugged his fridge door open and took out a replacement. ‘You want another Irn Bru?’

‘Hell, no. If I have another of those I’ll start to rust.’ The detective smiled. ‘Who’d have thought it a few years back? I never turned down a pint. Now here I am even saying no to the fizzy stuff.’

‘And looking a hell of a lot better for it,’ McGuire pointed out.

‘Maybe. Feeling better, that’s for sure.’

‘How’s my godson?’

‘Louis is absolutely ace, top notch; three months old and growing as fast as a briar rose.’

‘And his mum?’

‘She’s magic too. I don’t think anyone could look any happier than she does.’

‘What about her career? When’s she planning to revive it?’

‘I don’t think she is, not the way it was. When we got married, the idea was that she’d take a few years off to try for a family. Well, we’ve managed that, and she says she’s still not feeling any itches. Someone rang her last week and asked if she’d be interested in joining the board of the Scottish National Theatre. She’s thinking about that, and she’s also mentioned the possibility of directing, on the stage again, in Scotland, but that’s it. She says she doesn’t want to be Judi Dench, graduating into playing Queen Victoria in her dotage.’

‘Jesus, she’s nowhere near that.’

‘She’s over forty, the point at which most of the lead roles start to dry up for a woman. I think I’d like to see her direct. I have a feeling she’d be brilliant at it. Even watching a play on telly with her is an experience, the way she analyses the whole thing afterwards. . sometimes before it’s finished, if she doesn’t fancy it.’

‘Tell me about it.’ McGuire chuckled. ‘Paula talks her way through most of the stuff we watch.’

‘And you love it.’

‘I sure do. Living together’s something we should have done a long time ago.’

‘Come on, now, you can’t write off your marriage to Maggie just like that.’

‘I can, you know. At the end of the day neither of us got anything out of it. The sex wasn’t much good either.’

‘That’s too much information, mate.’

‘It’s true, though. You and I both know why that was: that bastard of a father of hers and everything. I wasn’t the right man to help her over it, and that’s all there is to it. I’m really happy she found Stevie, even if it wasn’t for long.’

‘Yeah.’ McIlhenney sighed. ‘Poor lad. He died by mistake, but the effect’s the same. The bloody affair won’t go away either.’

‘What?’

‘Dead artists. Copycats. I’ve got a bad feeling about this latest one, out in Spain.’

‘Why? If the big man hadn’t tripped over the corpse, we’d never have heard about it. The woman was robbed, remember; it was probably a mugging gone wrong. Have you any idea what the crime rate’s like in Spain? They have all those fucking police forces and none of them knows what the others are up to.’

‘A bit like us, eh?’

‘Not at all. We don’t overlap jurisdiction.’

‘Side issue. Like I said, I’m not happy; you can’t brush off the consistencies between the Spanish killing and ours.’

‘Neil, we’re getting excited about young Colledge, but is Weekes in the clear for the Sugar Dean job? No. Becky’s meeting Gregor in the morning. He may well decide to do him for that, and he may well get a result. That man Broughton could get Mary fucking Poppins convicted for flying without a pilot’s licence.’

‘And Frankie Bristles could get her off on appeal. No, I have a bad feeling, and it doesn’t involve either Colledge or Weekes.’ He glanced at the wall clock: it showed almost seven. ‘Now drink up; it’s time I took you home.’