Fallen Gods

Fifty-Four

"That's the house," said Sarah. He drew the Jag to a halt and looked across the street to where she was pointing. A single deflated balloon still hung from a tree in the yard.

"Okay," he muttered. "Let's see if the lady's at home." He opened the car door and swung it open.

"Do you want me to come?" she asked.

Bob paused. "Better not," he replied, after a couple of seconds of thought. "I'm pushing my luck with Brady as it is. Let me talk to her. If there's anything I think you need to hear or see, I'll come back and get you."

He stepped out on to the road and started to walk the fifty yards towards the house. As he neared it, he looked to his right. The sheriff's department's crime scene tape was still stretched across Ron Neidholm's front door. It spoiled the look of the place. Skinner could see personality in houses; without the tape this one would have looked friendly and welcoming. Sometimes he thought he could see their history also. He looked at an upstairs window and pictured Sarah, framed in it, with a dreamy look in her eye as she dressed. He snapped his gaze away and turned in to the driveway of the house across the street.

He had always been struck by the size of the plots on which even the most modest of American houses are built. "This is a big-ass country, my man," his poor, dead friend Joe Doherty had said to him once. "We ain't stingy with our land like you Brits." He guessed that the acreage on which he stood was around the same as that of his own home in Gullane, and wondered how much less it had cost.

The front door opened before he reached it. A straw-haired woman appeared, leaning against the frame and frowning at him as he approached; she looked to be in her early thirties, around Sarah's age, and was dressed much as his wife did at home, in jeans, tee-shirt and trainers.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

Skinner smiled at her; her expression softened a little, but suspicion remained in her eyes. "I hope so," he replied. He took out his warrant card and held it up for her to see; at home or abroad, he never went anywhere without it. "I'm a police officer. I'm not from around here, but I've been working with the Erie County sheriff in the investigation of Ron Neidholm's death. There are a couple of things I'd like to ask you."

The woman gasped, involuntarily. "Oh yeah," she exclaimed. "Poor Ron; how awful! He was such a nice man, for all that he was a big sports star; he was so ordinary, and so pleasant. I just can't imagine him being killed like they said. Right in the middle of my little boy's birthday party too; why I spoke to him that very afternoon. He came across to say hello."

She paused, and gave him an appraising look; Skinner found himself reminded of Alex, when he had taken her to Edinburgh Zoo as an eight-year-old. She had peered at the pygmy hippos in exactly the same way. "You're Scottish, aren't you?" she asked.

"I am indeed," he replied. "From Lanarkshire originally, but now from Edinburgh."

"How interesting. I'm Scottish too," she tittered, 'not that you'd know it to listen to me. Actually, I'm Canadian, but my parents emigrated from Scotland to Toronto about forty years ago. They came from Bellshill. That's in Lanarkshire, isn't it?"

"It sure is. My mother was brought up there."

"Hey, small world. Won't you come in? My name's Elaine, by the way;

Elaine Aitchison. My husband's Scottish too; well, Scottish from Hamilton, Ontario. His job moved us down here."

"Nice to meet you," he replied. "My name's Bob Skinner, if you couldn't read it on my card."

She led the way into a house that would have seemed large in Scotland, but which by American standards was modest in size. He followed her through into a reception room that was furnished as traditionally as anything he had ever seen; three-piece, fabric-upholstered suite, set facing a big fireplace with a console television beside it. The room had windows to the front and back; in the yard he could see a playpen, in which a child was kicking a ball, on unsteady legs.

"That's Ally, my younger son," said Mrs. Aitchison. "He's just two. Ryan, my older boy, turned seven on Monday; it was his birthday party we were having when poor Ron was killed."

"You said you spoke to him just before he died."

"Yeah. He saw the party balloons, and once the kids had arrived he came across to wish Ryan happy birthday. He brought him a football, and he'd signed it, too."

"Did you know him very well?" asked Skinner.

"Well enough. Francis, my husband, thought it was great having a football star for a neighbour, but Ron might as well have been a shoe salesman by the way he acted."

"Did you talk to him for long on Monday?"

"Not really; I was in the middle of the party. But he stayed long enough to organise a touch football game for the boys and we spoke then. I asked him about his girlfriend. I'd seen him with her at the weekend. She was new; actually I don't recall seeing him with a girl on any of his visits before."

"What did he say about her?"

Mrs. Aitchison sighed. "He lit up like a Christmas tree, the poor man. He said she was someone he'd met up with again after a long time, someone he'd never stopped loving. He told me that she'd just split with her husband, and that he hoped she'd settle down with him, since he'd decided to quit football for good."

"Was he expecting company on Monday?"

"I think he was expecting her. He said he had to go, because he thought he'd be having a visitor that evening, and he wanted to get ready. He said he didn't know when, but he was pretty sure she'd come.

When I think about it again, it could only have been her he was talking about."

"Did you see her arrive?"

"No. I saw the police take her away, then drive her car away, that was all."

"Did you see anyone else come to the house before that?"

"No; but then I wasn't looking, I was feeding eighteen kids and getting them all to the bathroom and such."

Skinner frowned. "Elaine," he asked, 'did anyone from the sheriff's detective bureau speak to you on Monday?"

The woman shook her head. "No."

"Has anyone since then?"

"Not at all; you're the first." She looked at him. "How exactly are you involved with them, Mr. Skinner?"

"You could say I'm running a quality control check on their investigative techniques."

"How are they doing?"

"Badly," he said, grimly. "So no one's approached you at all about Monday?"

"A television reporter did, but I didn't like her so I told her I'd seen nothing, and to get her crew the hell out of my driveway."

Skinner grinned. "Good for you; I can't stand it either when they get intrusive." He paused. "Can you remember," he continued, 'whether anyone did any filming during the party?"

"Sure," she answered, at once. "I did. It wasn't what you'd call filming though; I have a digital camera that takes still shots, and very short video clips."

"Do you still have the pictures you took?"

"Sure. They're on a memory stick. Would you like to look at them?"

"Yes please."

"Come through to the kitchen, then. I'll connect the camera through my laptop, and you'll see the images bigger."

"Fine." He followed her out of the living room. The kitchen was much brighter; he could see why she kept her computer there, even though it was a Toshiba portable. He waited while she linked the camera, a small

Sony, through a port in the back of the laptop case, then booted it up.

While the machine readied itself she poured two mugs of coffee from a jug and handed one to him. He took it automatically, without even thinking about it.

"Okay," she announced as the images on the screen became fixed, 'let's go." She clicked an icon and waited for a new window to open, then clicked again. A photographic image appeared. It showed a small boy, with freckles and a gap-toothed smile, standing beside the playpen in the back yard, leaning on it. He was wearing black trousers and a Buffalo Bills replica shirt.

Elaine Aitchison stood aside. "You drive if you like," she offered.

"Just click the button below the track-pad to advance the pictures."

"Thanks." He stood in from of the Toshiba and found the button, then began to click. Another shot of Ryan appeared, and another, then one of him with his younger brother. A dozen photographs into the stick,

Bob stopped. There was a man in the image on the screen, hefting Ryan up to his shoulder; the boy held a brown football with NFL markings, and gaped wide-eyed at the camera as if he could not quite believe what was happening.

"That's Ron," his mother murmured. "And just think, a couple of hours later…" Her voice tailed off into a shiver. "Ryan's heartbroken, you know; I think every little boy in Buffalo must be. If his girlfriend did it, like they're saying, then God help her."

"She didn't do it," said Skinner, quietly.

"You know this?" asked Elaine. "For sure?"

"For sure."

He clicked his way on through the photos on the memory stick, quickly, losing count, as all of them seemed to have been taken around the barbecue in the back yard, and out of sight of Neidholm's drive. But at last, the scene changed; he reached an image of Ryan and four other boys, in the front of the house. Ryan had thrown his football, in Ron Neidholm style, and his friends were jumping to catch it. The background was wrong, though; it showed only the garden, and nothing on the other side of the street. He clicked again, and again, and again, and again, and… stopped.

He was looking at a photograph of Ryan running down the yard to retrieve the brown ball. Ron Neidholm's driveway was in the background, and in it there were two cars parked, a red sporty job, a Camaro or a Trans Am he guessed, and before it, blocking it in, a white saloon.

"Wow!" he whispered.

"You got something?" Mrs. Aitchison asked.

"I think so." He moved on to the next image. Ryan had recovered the ball and the car was still there. In the next shot, he was throwing it again. His body blocked out the white vehicle, but in the further distance, in

Neidholm's doorway, he thought that he could see a tiny figure, back to camera, either entering or leaving the house.

He glanced to the side. "Elaine," he asked, 'can you zoom in on these images? To be specific, on that doorway?"

"Sure," she replied. "Let me show you." She picked up the camera, made an adjustment and pressed a button. The figure in the doorway grew larger, but as it did it lost all clarity, and became no more than a black blur.

"Take me back to the last image, please," Skinner murmured, 'and see if you can focus in on the number plate on that white car."

She did as he requested. Together they looked at the screen as the car grew larger; as they watched, letters became clear and legible.

Bob's grin widened, until eventually it was as if it stretched from ear to ear. As he looked at the licence plate, he felt almost consumed by a huge feeling of relief. "Jesus," he laughed, 'talk about signing your name everywhere you go!"