Fallen Gods

Sixty

"How'd you like to stay in Buffalo and be my chief of detectives?" asked Bradford Dekker.

"No offence, sheriff," Skinner replied, 'but if I stayed here, I'd be after your job. Elected people trying to manage policemen are the bane of my life back home; if I lived here the only way I could handle it would be to become one myself."

"If the voters of Erie County knew all that's happened over the last couple of days you could run as the Taleban candidate and still get elected."

Bob pulled over a kitchen stool and sat on it, glancing out of the window. With the phone to his ear, he could see Jazz playing in the garden, with Trish watching over him. "So it's over, is it?" he asked.

"Yes. Poor old Candy Brew is downstairs right now in conference with his attorney, that's if the woman can get him to stop sobbing for long enough to listen to what she's got to tell him. When Madigan and I walked into his office he looked at us and burst into tears, and he's been like that most of the time since."

Dekker sounded elated, understandably. "The hair and skin samples matched his," he continued, 'like you said they would, but we didn't need to throw that at him. We didn't need to throw anything at him, in fact. He told us the whole story as soon as we sat him down in the interview room. Hero worship can be a deadly thing, Bob, when it goes to extremes. Mr. Brew had more than a crush on Ron Neidholm; he was downright in love with him. His house is like a shrine, an absolute shrine. He's from Chicago, originally, but he volunteered to us that he took a job in Buffalo because it was Ron's home town. His obsession was no secret either. It was a standing joke among the staff in Waterside Library, and among some of the borrowers as well. We've re-interviewed the Bierhoff woman; she admitted that she didn't just happen to mention Sarah and Ron to him, she did it to wind him up."

"Bitch," Skinner snarled.

"And how. She drove Brew right off the rails; he admitted to us that he went to Neidholm's house to ask him if it was true and if it meant that he wouldn't play football any more. The victim invited him in and took him through to the kitchen, because he said he was about to start fixing a salad. He said that he was expecting company. Candy's story is that when he confronted him, asked him straight out, Ron was evasive at first, suggested very politely that it was none of his damn business. But he persisted, and finally the big guy lost his cool. He told him that he had had a lifetime of guys like him, who thought that football was the only thing in the world, and that finally he had had enough. He wanted a normal life, among real people with a wife and kids, and no more freaks like Brew' Dekker was excited, now, in full flow; at last he paused for breath.

"While he was yelling this, according to Candy, he reached out and grabbed him by the hair with his left hand. That ties in with the samples that were found on the sticking plaster. The guy thought he was going to slug him with the other one, and he got terrified. The knife was lying on the counter beside him. He says he doesn't remember picking it up…"

"None of them ever remember," said Skinner, quietly.

"I'll bow to your experience on that. Anyway, he says there was this blank moment, and next thing he knew, Ron was on the floor at his feet with the knife in his chest. He just ran for it then, out of the house, got in his car and drove home. He sat there for two days, doing nothing, waiting for us to come for him, only we didn't. After a while he plucked up the courage to switch on television, and he saw a report.

It said that we had a prime suspect, a woman, and that charges were expected imminently. He knew they must have meant Sarah and he began to relax."

"He was going to let her take the blame?"

"Without a second thought; he believed, in fact he still does, that she deserved it. In his mind, if it hadn't been for her throwing herself at Neidholm, as he put it, life would just have gone on as it was.

That's why he approached him in the restaurant. He'd never had the nerve to do that before, or to write to him, or anything else; he only worshipped him from as close as he could get. Neidholm never had a public relationship, you see. Half of America thought he was gay; as for Candy, he just assumed it. So when he saw him there with Sarah, he experienced a flash of pure terror. He could tell how easy they were with each other, and he had this sense that everything was going to change, that all his fantasies were going to be taken from him, by this woman, whoever she was.

"He fretted about it from that point on, until Alice Bierhoff told him her story, and the poor guy just went nuts."

"Will he go for an insanity plea?"

"I don't know yet. The DA's offered him a plea deal to second degree homicide; that's what his attorney's trying to talk to him about. If he takes it, then Sarah won't have to testify. If he doesn't, I'm not so sure."

"You might try telling him from me that if he puts my wife on the witness stand and makes her admit to an affair in public he really will be fucking crazy."

"He's never met you," Dekker chuckled, 'so he wouldn't understand, but

I'll do what I can to keep that from happening."

"So what's our position now?" asked Skinner.

"Sarah has her passport back. She can leave Buffalo any time she likes."

"When's this going to hit the fan?"

"Brew's attorney won't go public while we're still negotiating, but I can't hold it beyond tomorrow midday. If he hasn't accepted the DA's deal by then he'll be arraigned on a charge of first degree murder."

"Punishable by?"

"In theory, death, but we won't go for that."

"If you did, Bierhoff should be on a table alongside him."

"I agree, but there's nothing she can be charged with. I've already made sure that she'll live from now on with the knowledge that her tongue got a man killed. If this does go to trial the whole of America will know it."

He heard Dekker draw a breath. "Bob, I want to thank you again for this."

"Don't, please. In a way, I'm to blame for it all; if I hadn't gone charging back to Scotland it would never have happened. Neidholm and

Sarah, I mean; sure, Brew might have gone off the rails eventually, but probably not."

"Can you say that for certain?"

Skinner blinked at Dekker's quiet question, then thought about it. "Can I say that my wife wouldn't have had a fling with the guy even if I had been here?" he murmured into the phone. "Maybe I don't want to know the answer to that, Brad."

"No. Maybe you don't." He paused. "So what are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to shuffle out of fucking Buffalo, that's what I'm going to do. If I can I'll get us on a plane to New York tonight, then back home tomorrow. I'll call Clyde Oakdale and ask his office to put everything in place."

"Good luck to you then, sir. Should Sarah be required to testify, I'll contact you directly."

"You may not have to. See you, Brad. Gook luck in the elections … not that you'll need it now."

He hung up, then called Oakdale at his law firm, and gave him brief, terse instructions. When he was finished, he walked upstairs. Sarah was in the nursery, playing with Seonaid. She looked at him over her shoulder as he came into the room. She tried to read his expression, but failed. "Well?" she asked. "Who was that?"

"The county sheriff," he told her. "You're in the clear."

She turned and handed their daughter to him, then gave a huge sigh of unfettered relief. "Thank you," she whispered, her eyes moistening.

"Thank you so much."

"Maybe you should thank her," he said, kissing Seonaid on the forehead, 'and the boys."

"No. I'll thank you; no one else could have done it."

"Eddie Brady should have done it," he replied.

Sarah rubbed a tear from her cheek. "So that little man actually killed Ron."

"Stone fucking dead, honey. You know what they say; the harder they come, the bigger they fall, or something like that." He looked her in the eye. "But it's not over. Now you have something else to face. I'm taking the kids back to Scotland; we're leaving as soon as Clyde can get us on a flight. I won't have them here to be filmed and photographed when this thing breaks in the media."

"And what about me?" she asked, quietly.

"That's your choice, love. I've told Oakdale to book a seat for you too; it's up to you whether you're in it when the plane takes off."

"What do you want?"

He laid the wriggling Seonaid on the floor and let her crawl towards a toy. "If I was going to kick you out I'd hardly have got you that seat, would I? Listen, Sarah; when I went back home to defend my job, I rejected you, and not for the first time, either. When you coupled with Neidholm, you were rejecting me. All I have to say to you is that

I regret what I did now. I didn't consider what effect it might have had on you, and I apologise for that. As for what you did, I'm not going to ask whether you regret that, and I'm not going to make it a precondition of coming home. It's your life, and your decision, but when you make it, be in no doubt that I want you to come." He reached out a hand and touched her face, for the first time since his return.

"I've taken you for granted; I'm sorry for it." He smiled, faintly. "I can't promise that it won't happen again, but if it does, I'll be sorry then too."

Sarah took hold of his fingers, and held them to her cheek for a second or two, then twined her own with them. "Whether you believe this is up to you, but when I went to see Ron at his place, when I found him, I went there to tell him that I was turning him down and going back to you. I'd made my choice then, and it's the same one I make now. I'm coming home."

"Good," he murmured. He looked at her solemnly. "There's something I know I'll ask you sooner or later, so it might as well be now. If the Bierhoff creature hadn't seen you with your tits out, if Candy Brew had never existed, and Neidholm was still alive, would you have told me about what happened?"

Sarah looked back at him, unblinking. "I don't know, and that's the truth. As for regret, I don't know about that yet either. I'll always feel guilt that what happened between us led to his death, but not too much, because if it hadn't been me, it could just as well have been someone else. But regret? Ron was here, you had rejected me, like you said. He was kind, he was good, he was gentle, he was old familiar ground, and I found myself wanting him. So I can't work out whether there's anything there to regret. As for things not happening again, if you can't promise, I won't either, not if the same circumstances arose, but I certainly don't plan on it."

He nodded. "Fair enough. Let's pack, and get the kids ready. With luck we can pick up Mark from school and head straight for the airport."

He turned to leave, but she caught his arm. "Hey, I almost forgot something. When you were out, Alex called, to see how things were. We talked for a while, and during our conversation she said something really weird, about your brother." A puzzled look crossed her face.

"What brother?"

"It's a long story; I'll tell you all about it over the Atlantic. How was Alex with you, incidentally?" he asked her.

"She's been friendlier, I have to say, but at least she didn't call me a two-timing tart, or any other choice descriptions."

"She wouldn't. She told me some truths about me, though."

For a moment all his hurt showed in his face, and she felt his pain within her. "Bob," she said, breaking the silence. "So we're not the golden couple the world thinks we are… and when this comes out in court the world's going to know it too… but we're still pretty formidable, and we've still got more going for us than at least eight out of another ten. Remember that, and remember this too. There's one thing more than anything other… more than the kids, even… that's taking me back to Scotland, and that's the fact that I love you."

He looked at her, and gave a long slow smile, one that she had not seen, she realised, since the day that Seonaid had been born. "And for the avoidance of doubt, honey," he told her, "I love you too."

"I never had any doubt," Sarah whispered. "Come on, let's get ready."

"Yes." He bent to scoop up the baby in his arms. "By the way, do you want to phone friend Babs before we leave?"

Sarah looked at him and snorted. "Like hell I do!"