Hour Of Darkness

Sixty-Six

Maggie Steele believed that she would not have survived as a person, far less a chief police officer, without her daughter. She had been in the middle of her pregnancy when she had been hit by two piledrivers, the sudden and unexpected death of her husband Stevie, and her own cancer diagnosis.

At one point she had been given a likely choice between her own life and that of her child, but she had delayed the surgery until Stephanie Rose Steele had been safely delivered, and they had both pulled through, mother and daughter together.

It had been a fecund couple of years in her force, she had observed one evening to her sister, who lived with her and did much of the daytime child caring. ‘First Stevie and me, then Mario and Paula; now Ray Wilding’s gone and got Becky Stallings up the duff.’

Bet had reacted with a smile ‘That’s nice, though, isn’t it? That you all have something at home to take your mind off your jobs, especially the detectives.’

‘That’s easy for you to say, sis, but you don’t have to manage a team around maternity and paternity leave. Bloody nightmare!’

‘You set the example,’ Bet had pointed out.

‘Maybe, but I never thought then that I’d wind up as chief. Mind you, there were lots of things I never thought.’

Stephanie was playing happily at her feet as she faced Mario McGuire across her round kitchen table, the one that Stevie had built in when he had moved into the place, before they had been as much as a lustful gleam in each other’s eye. Her mug of green tea was warm within the circle of her hands. She had asked Mario to phone her after the interview of Cheryl Mackenzie was over, but he had called on her in person.

‘Were there any glitches at all?’ she asked.

‘No. She gave us it all without any pressure. They had a fight, over the way he’d reacted to an argument he and I had, and he hit her. He went crazy, she said. She thought he was insane, and maybe he was.

‘However, she may not be too attached to reality herself, because she’s decided it was a mercy killing. She talked us all the way through it, repeating for the tape all of the stuff that Bob uncovered in the first interview.’

‘Her lawyer was happy?’

‘As happy as you can be when your client’s confessing to murder, but yes; he didn’t raise any objections.’

‘I’m glad about that, for I was worried,’ Maggie confessed. ‘I thought Bob might have gone too far with her earlier.’

‘Me too,’ Mario murmured, ‘and that’s interesting. In all the years we worked under Bob, you and I never questioned the way he did things, never doubted his judgement. Yet now, even though he’s barely out the door, here we are second-guessing him.’

‘Welcome to command rank,’ she told him. ‘We are him, now. Back then he was responsible for everybody else’s mistakes, along with his own. Now we’re in that position, carrying the can for everything that’s done in our territory, by everyone. . including him when he goes on one of his solo missions.’

McGuire laughed. ‘He’ll never stop doing that; doesn’t matter which office he’s in. That reminds me, is everything done and dusted on his patch?’

‘Yes, they’ve begun recovering Mackenzie’s body, and Max Allan’s been taken into custody. He’s being held in Pitt Street over the weekend, for court on Monday.’

‘Will they be tried jointly or separately, him and Cheryl? What do you think?’

‘That,’ Maggie said, ‘is the Lord Advocate’s problem, not mine or Bob’s. I’d guess they’ll be in court together, but the way things are just now, a trial looks unlikely. Max has a separate charge to answer, though, if the fiscal in Glasgow decides to go ahead with it.’

‘Poor old bastard. He’ll spend the first part of his retirement under lock and key.’

‘Maybe not,’ she suggested. ‘He wasn’t a party to the killing, only the concealment, and from what Bob said, Cheryl was like a daughter to him. With a good advocate, and a sympathetic judge, maybe one of the ladies on the Bench, he could get a suspended sentence.’

‘Yes, sure.’ Mario’s voice was smeared with sarcasm. ‘And maybe I’ll apply for the top job in Police Scotland and you’ll all be working for me in a few weeks. There’s no chance of any of that happening. He was a cop, Mags. I can’t think of a single judge who’d brave the media storm that not jailing him would cause.’

She was about to concede his point when she noticed Stephanie’s face going red, and rushed to pick her up. ‘Steph,’ she cried out, ‘you’re supposed to tell me when you need to poo. Get used to this, Mario, it’s coming your way.’

‘News for you, it’s here already.’

As he spoke, the door chime sounded. ‘Get that, please,’ Maggie asked. ‘I’ve no idea who it might be.’

‘Sure.’ He went down the few steps from the hall, wondering what casual caller would choose an early Saturday evening, and threw the door open.

A red-haired man stood on the threshold, confusion stamped on his face.

‘Arthur?’ McGuire exclaimed.

‘Mario?’ Dorward countered.

‘I’m here on business,’ the ACC said quickly, ‘before you get any ideas.’

‘Me too, before you do. But it’s maybe as well you are.’

‘You’d better come in, then. Maggie’s attending to some paperwork, you might say.’

He led the way up and across to the sitting room. ‘It’s Arthur Dorward,’ he called, ‘and I don’t think he’s come to sell you tickets for the Forensic Service dance.’

‘Minute,’ a voice replied from the nursery.

One stretched into two before Maggie appeared, carrying her refreshed child on her hip. ‘Mr Dorward,’ she said, ‘to what do we owe?’ Then she looked at his expression and her smile vanished.

‘Something’s come up in our analysis of the samples from one forty-two Caledonian Crescent,’ he began. ‘You’ll recall we found a trace of grandfamilial DNA, and established that it wasn’t from the lad you thought it was. Well, to try to identify it more clearly, we followed standard practice and ran it through the entire male database looking for a match.’

He stopped, and took a brown manila envelope from under his arm. ‘Most things I do over the phone. Some I send by email. But this one, this has to be done in person; it’s for your eyes only, and it’s bloody dynamite.’