Hour Of Darkness

Fifty-Nine

The news from Alex was what I’d been dreading, ever since I heard that someone had finally sent Mia’s appalling mother to her long home. I was surprised that it had taken so long for her name to emerge, but I hadn’t been about to make the suggestion that they should look for her.

Nobody else could ever read me like my kid, not even her mother, and so her point about me blanking Mia Watson from my recollections struck home hard. Thinking back, she was right; from the day after I watched her drive off into the metaphorical sunset from the Radio Airburst car park, her name had never passed my lips.

But that wasn’t to say I hadn’t thought about her in all those years; oh yes, I had, and often. Mia was gone; to where I didn’t care, but it was where I’d wanted her to stay. I’d even taken steps to make sure I was warned of any reappearance.

A few weeks after her disappearance, I did a quiet check to ensure that nobody had reported her missing. To my surprise and slight consternation, I discovered that someone had; to be specific, Alafair Drysalter. She had described herself as ‘sister’ in her report and that was fair enough. From the age of fifteen, Mia had been raised alongside Perry Holmes’s daughter.

Mia had been a young lady with places to go, in her time, but she could never quite shake off her varied upbringing, and so she had never fulfilled that star potential. Instead she had got herself in what could have been a very large jam, from which she had been extricated by someone with influence.

Me.

I forced the woman from my mind as I parked in Gayfield Square. Like any good citizen, I put money in a meter, since I no longer had an ‘Edinburgh Police: on duty’ card with my signature on it, or the local clout to have a parking ticket pulled with a single phone call.

I’d made it five minutes faster than I’d told Maggie, but Ray Wilding was waiting for me nonetheless. I’d been quietly impressed as I’d watched his rise from detective constable. He was one of the younger members of the group I thought of. . I still do, in fact. . as ‘Skinner’s People’, and one of the brightest. I see him and Sammy Pye making it to command rank, but maybe not before young Haddock overtakes them both.

I had never imagined David Mackenzie making it to the top floor, though, not in his own right rather than as an exec, not even when I spotted him in North Lanarkshire and thought he might have been able to bring something new to the Edinburgh party.

He had, for a while, until the bad outweighed the good. Naturally I blamed myself. My assessment of the man hadn’t gone beyond the superficial. I should have seen through him, no matter how effectively his background and his character had been kept under wraps by dear old Uncle Max.

Tom Donnelly’s belief that violence and aggression had been beaten into him was probably correct, but all I’d learned about him and observed made me pretty sure that for all the old priest’s advice and counselling, he had never removed it. He had taught him to manage it, that was all.

‘How do we play this, sir?’ Wilding asked me as I joined him in his office.

‘It’s your territory,’ I pointed out. ‘You’re coordinating the investigation.’

‘Maybe, but I’m not taking the lead with you in the room. Also, to be honest, I’m not sure why we’re doing this in the office. I was just going to have a chat with her at home, till I was told to bring her in here.’

‘Okay, let me explain. I’ve been looking for Mackenzie from a different angle, through the man himself, and I’ve uncovered some stuff I don’t like. That stuff is potentially criminal, and while it may not involve Cheryl, it’s not appropriate for cosy fireside chats either. That’s why she’s here and that’s why we’re going to talk to her in an interview room, and video the conversation.’

That was nearly all of the truth, but I had something else on my mind that I decided not to share in case it affected Ray’s approach.

‘To answer your question,’ I continued, ‘we’re going to play it by ear. If you’re happy, I’ll lead and set the tone. You can chip in whenever you feel the need. She should be here in a minute. Meantime, I must make a phone call.’

I was ready and waiting in the interview room when Cheryl Mackenzie arrived. I asked Wilding to greet her in reception and bring her through, but without telling her I was there.

We had met before a couple of times, immediately after she and David had moved to Edinburgh, and again when I visited him after he had his breakdown. When she saw me her eyes widened and she gave a very small gasp. I smiled, in an attempt to put her at her ease, and told her that it was all right, that I wasn’t the bearer of bad news.

‘I’ve been concerned about you,’ I said, as she took a seat, in a group of three that I’d set out, away from the usual interview table, ‘and so have other people in Strathclyde.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied, then added, ‘and I’m really sorry you have been. My mum started to cry, you know, when I walked through the door this morning. It took her all her time to ask me where I’ve been.’

‘And where have you been, Cheryl?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been away, by myself. I just had to, Mr Skinner.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I just couldn’t take any more of David’s intensity and his anger. I’ve had twenty years of it and I can’t take any more. I thought he was okay, but he’s not. He’s paranoid, he thinks that life’s one big conspiracy against him. He hates everybody; he hates you, he hates Mrs Steele, and he loathes ACC McGuire especially, I think because he’s afraid of him.’

Her remark didn’t surprise me. . anyone who believed McGuire was after him would be entitled to be afraid. . but her next did.

‘You know what I think?’ she asked, rhetorically. ‘I think he associates him with his uncle.’

I made myself frown. ‘His uncle?’ I repeated, quietly.

‘Yes.’ She hunched her shoulders, leaning forward a little, in the way people sometimes do when they’re telling you a secret.

‘When David was young, he was brought up by an aunt and uncle, after his parents both died. The uncle was very cruel to him, so much so that David was taken away from them and brought up in a children’s home.’ She paused and looked at me. ‘But you must know that, Mr Skinner.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, I do, but carry on.’

She hesitated, finding the right words. ‘Well, I suspect that Mr McGuire makes him think of that uncle. . I don’t mean that he’s ever threatened him in any way, I just think he associates the two of them in his mind.’

‘Then he’s wrong,’ Wilding assured her. ‘Speaking as someone who works under ACC McGuire’s command, I promise you that he’s a very fair and considerate boss. He can be blunt, but everybody likes him.’

‘Are you afraid of David, Cheryl?’ I asked.

‘No!’ she protested. ‘We’ve been together for ever.’

‘Then what made you go off so suddenly? People don’t become paranoid overnight, and as you’ve just said, you’ve been a couple since you were in your teens. Yes,’ I added, ‘I know that too.’

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I told you, I just had enough. I needed a break from him.’

I sensed that she was trying to evade my gaze but I wouldn’t let her.

‘He thumped you, Cheryl. Didn’t he?

She shook her head, tearing her eyes from mine. ‘No,’ she whispered.

‘Look at me and say that,’ I challenged. ‘He did. Your blood was on a towel in your bathroom. Please, tell me the truth; this isn’t about a prosecution for assault. If it was I wouldn’t be here, and neither would DI Wilding. You’d be talking as a witness to DCS Chambers and ACC McGuire.’

She sighed. ‘Okay, yes he did. He had a blazing row with Mario McGuire over the telephone last Saturday morning and that set him off. It set me off as well. I told him I’d had enough of him blaming everybody but himself whenever he screwed something up and he just turned and hit me.

‘He split my lip and gave me a black eye in the making.’ She wiped some cosmetic from her face, revealing a fading bruise on her left cheek. ‘It was all over in a few seconds and he was full of remorse, but I had to get away from him.’

‘Did you ever think, even for one second,’ Wilding asked, ‘of calling the police after he thumped you?’

‘No,’ she replied without any pause for thought. ‘That would have been the cruellest thing I could possibly have done to him. The police force is all that’s been holding David together for a while now. If I’d got you involved that would have gone.’

‘So you left,’ I said, ‘to give him some cooling-off time?’

‘Yes. I packed a bag and I left.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘I just drove. I wound up in Tarbert, and booked into a bed and breakfast. I stayed there until I was ready to come back.’

‘Without calling anyone? Without calling your mother even, to let her know you were all right? Without calling into your work?’

‘I didn’t want to speak to anyone; I assumed David would look after the children. The fact of the matter is, I wasn’t sure I would ever come back.’

‘How did you pay for the trip?’

‘Cash. I pulled as much money as I could out of ATMs, about two thousand pounds. I put some of it on one of David’s credit cards, just to punish him.’ She threw me a small smile.

‘Was that the only reason you drew the cash? To piss him off?’

She sighed, and the smile went away. ‘No. I didn’t want David to be able to find me. He’s a police officer, so I knew how easy it would be for him if I used cards later on.’

That was the moment when all my thoughts and suspicions coalesced, and when I became close to certain that I knew what had happened. I considered stopping there and then, but decided to go a little further, until the legal ground was too shaky beneath my feet to continue.

‘But he didn’t, Cheryl,’ I said, ‘for the problem is, David’s disappeared too. He hasn’t been seen since last weekend either.’

She chewed her lip, nodding. ‘Yes, I know. My mum said. That was why she went so frantic when I turned up. I don’t know why he’s done that, Mr Skinner. I don’t know where he’s gone.’

‘Where do you think he might have run to?’

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured. ‘I’m afraid, though.’

‘Afraid of what?’

‘Afraid he might have harmed himself. Afraid he’s dead.’ Her face crumpled and she looked close to tears.

‘But how would he do that? You took his car, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you do that?’ Wilding asked her, staying so casual that I knew he, too, had picked up a vibe. ‘Yours was parked in front of your house. Why would you take David’s?’

‘To punish him again, I suppose.’ A moment of spite flashed across her face, and for that instant I was looking at a different woman.

‘So how did David go anywhere?’ I continued. ‘He didn’t take your car, so how did he run off?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He must have got a taxi, then a train.’

‘I’ve got a problem with that, Cheryl,’ I confessed. ‘I’m asking myself, how did he pay for it? His cards haven’t been used either, and no money’s been pulled from your accounts other than that two grand you took.’

‘I don’t know,’ she protested. ‘Maybe he stole a car. Maybe he had a card you didn’t know about. Maybe he got a fucking Wonga loan!’

‘Calm down, Cheryl, please,’ I said, quietly. ‘I’m concerned about him, just as you must be.’

She composed herself. ‘I’m sorry. I know. I’m just out of my mind with worry.’

‘I’m not surprised. Answer me something else, about David, if you will. If he was in real trouble, where do you think he would go. . or rather to whom? I’ve been wondering about that and given what I’ve found out about David’s background, I could make a guess. I’m wondering if it would be the same as yours.’

Her eyes narrowed, as if she was looking a couple of questions ahead, then she replied to the one in hand. ‘Father Donnelly,’ she murmured.

‘That’s his priest?’ I added for Wilding’s benefit. ‘The man who more or less adopted him in his teenage years?’

‘Yes, that’s him.’

‘But he hasn’t gone there,’ I told her.

‘That’s a pity,’ she said.

‘You’re right. It is. I know he didn’t because just before you got here I called Father Donnelly, and I asked him that point-blank. He told me that he hadn’t.’

I let that sink for a second or two before I went on, to what by then she knew was coming.

‘But you did, Cheryl,’ I murmured, lowering my voice, because I didn’t want to frighten her. ‘You went to see Father Donnelly on Monday, in Tighnabruaich, where he lives now. When we check with your bed and breakfast I think we’ll find that you checked in there on that same day, having taken the ferry to Tarbert from Portavadie. It’s not that far from Tighnabruaich.

‘That answers another question: why someone had been checking out ferry routes on your computer. It begs another, of course. Did that person check so many just to confuse Ray here?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she whispered.

‘I’m afraid that I think you would, that you know all too well. I’ll tell you what else I’ve worked out. You must have slept in David’s Honda on the Sunday night. If you slept at all, that is; it must have been pretty challenging in that confined space, all things considered.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she snapped.

‘Yes you do, Cheryl. Father Donnelly couldn’t tell me what you and he talked about. Couldn’t, I repeat, not wouldn’t, which can only mean that he took your confession, as a priest, and is bound to keep it secret.’

She sagged in her chair and I knew that we had gone as far as we could.

I rose from mine. ‘I’m going to stop there, Mrs Mackenzie,’ I said. ‘DI Wilding will now arrest you on suspicion of the murder of your husband, and you’ll be formally cautioned. You’ll be re-interviewed by other officers, no doubt. What you’ve told us here won’t be offered as evidence, but we will be able to use it to put together a complete picture of your movements.’

I stood, and she looked up at me, nothing much in her eyes any more other than exhaustion.

‘I have one more question, Cheryl,’ I concluded, ‘but I think I know the answer already. I expect we’ll find that you checked out of your B and B on Wednesday or on Thursday, at the latest. After that, did you visit your Uncle Max?’