Hour Of Darkness

Forty-Four

Maggie was as good as her word. A parcel was waiting for me when I arrived home from Glasgow, dropped off, Trish, the children’s carer, told me, by a police motorcyclist. I imagined that the guy had been grateful for the run down to Gullane.

I left it unopened. In the aftermath of Aileen’s departure I had made an absolute rule. When I was at home, my time belonged to my three kids, and most of all to Seonaid, my youngest. It had been brought home to me earlier in the year that my second daughter didn’t know me nearly as well as she should, and since then I’ve been making up for lost time with her. She’s five and newly started primary school. Her day had thrown up lots to talk about, including a new app for her iPad Mini that one of her classmates had insisted she couldn’t live without.

I did supper, pasta with a fish sauce, followed by a fresh berry dessert, and we all ate together. Trish cooks for the brood when she has to, but not for me, or for Sarah when she’s at her place; our rule, not hers. She’s been with us for a while now and we value her.

Once that was done, and Seonaid couldn’t blag any further extension to her bedtime, I read her a story. We’d started The Hobbit the night before. . a little advanced you might think, but she has mature tastes for her age. . and she wouldn’t let me stop until Gandalf had seen off the trolls.

Almost as soon as they’d been turned to stone, her eyelids grew as heavy as theirs would have been and within a couple of minutes she was asleep. I sat by her bedside for a few minutes more, just looking at her, and holding on to the thought that nothing that happened during any of my working days came close to being as important as that which happened at home.

After that, I couldn’t bring myself to let David Mackenzie intrude into my evening in any shape or form. Instead I called Sarah and asked her if she fancied breakfast with me and the kids. Happily, she did.

Because of all that, Maggie’s package didn’t get opened until next morning in Glasgow, once my briefing with my assistants was over.

There was a covering note inside. ‘This is the file you wanted,’ Maggie had written. ‘I think you’ll find it lives up to your expectations.’ That puzzled me for a second or two, until I remembered that I’d told her what those expectations were. She hadn’t understood quite what I’d meant.

I opened the folder and flicked through the papers, looking for anything that was not on an official form, but seeing nothing, at first glance. I nodded in provisional satisfaction and began to go through it.

The file had been maintained meticulously, by personnel departments in both Glasgow and Edinburgh. Some of the documents I knew I would find, for I had sent them there myself. It was arranged in descending chronological order; the first item was a note of Mackenzie’s transfer from uniform back into CID, setting out his duties as coordinator of the Edinburgh divisions, and signed by Mario McGuire.

‘I wouldn’t have done that,’ I murmured to my empty room, although on reflection I might have, on a kill or cure basis, if the guy had pestered me enough. I don’t think so, though. I’d suspected the Bandit of being a closet homophobe, and I’d have thought three or four times before putting him in a direct reporting line with Mary Chambers, who is gay.

I turned the entry over and came to a performance review for the previous calendar year, compiled by Maggie Steele, then an ACC. She’d given him a good score, in every category, and yet her summary was slightly at odds with that, suggesting that his overall effectiveness was marred by what she described as ‘an inability to demonstrate anything resembling humility’. In other words, ‘He’s good, but he’s arrogant.’

The previous year’s appraisal had been completed by Brian Mackie, and ended in much the same way. ‘His outwardly respectful manner fails to hide the impression that sometimes he feels he is suffering fools, and not particularly gladly.’

The next document was a note of his promotion to superintendent, and after that, a report by Kevin O’Malley, the Edinburgh force’s favourite shrink. It had landed on my desk when I was deputy chief, and I confess that I’d skimmed it, focusing only on the conclusion, that David Mackenzie had recovered from an episode of post-traumatic stress exacerbated by alcohol abuse and was fit to return to duty, albeit in a less stressful role.

If I’d read it more carefully I might have given more weight to Kevin’s note that the subject had refused to discuss any aspects of his early life or his domestic situation and that he had ‘reacted with rude aggression when pressed’.

There it was. I’d been told and I’d ignored it: the Bandit was a man with a secret past and he did not want it revealed.

You’re a fool, Skinner, I thought. You’re more arrogant than Mackenzie.

I swung round in my chair and looked out of the window, westward across the evolving skyline of a city that I’d never been able to like, and thought about what had brought me into my lofty office.

The more I considered it, the more I concluded that I was too like the man we were trying to find, far too like him for comfort. His faults were my faults and they had clouded my judgement.

If that old priest was wrong, and the man I’d brought into my team had killed his wife because of the pressure of a job he should never have been in, I knew that it would weigh heavily on me for the rest of my life.

I took a bottle of water from my fridge, then returned to the file, picking my way backwards through David Mackenzie’s career, through years of appraisals, by different officers, yet with remarkably similar observations, through several commendations, through successive and rapid promotions.

Finally, there was only one document left: his application to join the police service. It was free-standing, unsupported by any other papers. The memorandum that Father Donnelly had described was missing from the folder. I was fairly certain that it had never been there.

I looked at the form. It was neat, each entry printed in firm capital letters: date and place of birth, parents’ names, both deceased, schools attended, educational achievements, and work experience. It was supported by two referees: Father Thomas Donnelly, parish priest, and Magnus Austin, engineer. Each had signed beneath his name, and before David had signed and dated the form himself.

Every section had been completed, save one: that which requires applicants to list any court appearances, even those where an absolute discharge was granted, and any involvement with a police investigation. I had looked at hundreds of these forms during my police career. A minority had disclosed offences and charges, but in every other that I could remember the applicant had written ‘None’. On Mackenzie’s form that section was blank.

A long time ago, at a CID dinner that took place just after I’d made a particularly high-profile arrest, my colleagues presented me with a magnifying glass. The gift was a joke, but it actually worked, so I kept it. When I’d emptied my desk in Edinburgh, I’d brought it with me. I took it out and held it over the empty section, studying it for as long as it took for me to be certain.

There was no other sign of erasure, but the paper within the rectangular box was lighter than the rest of the sheet, than the rest of the document. A very effective chemical must have been used to dissolve the ink that had been there, for the surface was absolutely smooth, but it had been doctored, for sure.

I closed the folder; the prediction I’d offered Maggie and Mario had come to pass. I’d been confident that it would and so I’d known what I was going to do before I started. I reached for the notepad that I keep on my desk, scrawled out a note and ripped it off, then walked the few yards to my exec’s office.

I handed her the sheet of lined paper, and the folder. ‘Sandra,’ I said, ‘take this to Arthur Dorward in the Forensic Service, please, give him my compliments and ask him to do what I ask in that note. Beg the so-and-so if you have to, but get him to make it his top priority and tell him I need his findings on my desk first thing tomorrow morning.

‘If he wants to know what it’s about, give him my compliments again and tell him to mind his own bloody business.’