Hour Of Darkness

Sixty-Five

Trepidation is one of those words that has never really figured in my vocabulary, nor even in my adult life.

If I’m honest, it was a big part of my childhood, although I couldn’t have put that name to it at the time. It was what I felt whenever my bedroom door opened at home. If my mother came into the room, or less frequently, my dad, that was all right. If it was my brother, Michael, that agitation turned into fear, or even terror, depending simply on the expression on his face.

It has occurred to me on occasion that maybe I should have sought him out while I had the chance, not to give him some more of his own back, but to thank him. Reason being, having survived him, I’ve never really been afraid of anything else that might happen to me.

More than that, he left me with an acceptance of some of the things I’ve encountered as a police officer that few other cops have. The notion, ‘surely he couldn’t have done that to another human being’, has never held me back. Thanks, brother.

Yet I might have gone the other way. It was clear to me that David Mackenzie hadn’t survived his abuse. I understood the boy who had thrown that superhot oil over his uncle. Part of me even admired him. He did something about his awful treatment; I didn’t.

My revenge could have been a lot simpler than his. I could have told my father, but I was too scared by Michael’s promise of the consequences, specifically, the amputation of my thumbs with garden shears, ever to do that. Instead I bore it and waited for my growth, turning myself gradually into someone far more formidable than he had ever been, making myself the one to be feared.

I went on to become, I reckon, a properly functioning adult. I learned how to love, rather than despise. I don’t believe that David Mackenzie ever did the same. He’s been accused by many of being in love with himself, but when I talked to Lennie about him, afterwards, he was convinced that the opposite was true, and that ultimately the man had been consumed by self-loathing.

But I wasn’t thinking of David as I dialled Mia’s number, from a lay-by on the outskirts of Edinburgh. As those bedroom door butterflies returned to my stomach, I was thinking of Michael.

‘Hello, Bob,’ she said, before I had a chance to utter a word.

‘Hello, Mia,’ I replied. ‘How did you know it was me?’

‘Nobody else has this number. It’s a throwaway, bought with cash and a false identity.’

I surprised myself by laughing. ‘How many have you got, for fuck’s sake?’

‘Three. I still have the paper version of my Mia Watson UK driving licence, and a Tunisian passport in another name, the one I showed when I bought the phone. The Spanish need an ID for all phones these days. Officially, though, I’m known as Maria Centelleos. But I suspect you know that by now.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ I told her truthfully. ‘I haven’t been part of the investigation into your mother’s murder. I know none of the details, none at all, but I knew your name had come up. You should contact the police in Edinburgh, not me. I’m not part of that force now.’

‘I know you’re not,’ she told me. ‘I know most of what there is to know about you, Bob. You have a very high profile on the internet; key in “Robert Morgan Skinner” and all sorts of stuff comes out.

‘For a start, your wives, including the most recent one dropping her knickers for that actor Joey Morroco. Then there’s Alex’s progress. . I thought that kid would go far; she could play you like a Stradivarius. Stories about your big cases, your rise to the top, to the very top.’ She paused, for breath I thought, but no, for effect. ‘Which I could have halted with one phone call, at any time.’

Trepidation? Yes, it was back well and truly, but I cuffed it round the ear and sent it scurrying.

‘You reckon? How would that work out?’ I asked.

‘It would work out because the only thing that you can’t Google is you and me, and what happened between us when you were investigating my brother’s killing.’

‘One night, lady, that was all. One night of admittedly pretty good sex, and then you brushed me off in the morning.’

‘I didn’t brush you off,’ she claimed indignantly. ‘You went psycho on me when you woke up.’

‘I had a bad dream, Mia,’ I protested, suddenly aware that we were having an argument that had been postponed from one century into the next. ‘I’d been at a crime scene in Newcastle the night before,’ I went on, agitated by the memory. ‘Christ, I’d seen a guy with his tripes out on his own kitchen table! Of course I was fucking jumpy!’

‘It wasn’t just that,’ she said. ‘All your dreams weren’t bad. You kept calling me “Alison” when you were talking in your sleep.’

If I’d been standing, that might have cut the feet from under me, but she wasn’t to know that.

‘Are you sure it wasn’t “Myra”?’ I snapped. ‘Or maybe “Madonna”. I fancied her at one point. Either way, this is not “career ending with one phone call” kind of stuff.’

‘Maybe not, but tipping me off that I’d become a suspect in my brother’s murder and warning me to get out of town, that might cut some ice.’ She had a point there, I must concede. . but it wasn’t conclusive.

‘The way I read the press,’ she continued, ‘that First Minister guy doesn’t like you much.’

‘Then read again. Clive Graham and I get on okay.’

‘If you do, it’s out of necessity on his part. This new single force he’s setting up: with you in the top job you’d be as powerful as him. No politician wants that. Yes, he’d be very interested in what I have to say.’

‘Then go ahead,’ I challenged.

‘No, because there’s more than that, something that you could not possibly survive professionally. You help me and it will stay a secret. I’ll tell you what it is, but it has to be face to face.’

Her intensity got to me. What the hell, there would be no harm done, and maybe even a little good.

‘Suppose I agree to meet you. Where? Starbuck’s in George Street. The Sheraton Hotel lobby, where we met once? Your old place in Davidson’s Mains, so we can go over old times?’

‘Nowhere as convenient for you, but not completely inconvenient. Your favourite family restaurant, you called it, so you’ll know the place I mean. I’ll meet you there.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow. Eight thirty, dinner. You’re paying; I got the lunch in the Sheraton, remember.’

‘You’re kidding me,’ I gasped. ‘It’s in another country.’

‘I’m not kidding in the slightest. I’ve checked, and you can do it. Hell, you’re Bob Skinner, you can do anything.’ She gave a small laugh and then her voice seemed to be younger, that of the Mia I’d known. ‘Apart from remembering the name of the woman you’re sleeping with, that is.’