Thursday legends

29

'Yes, my name is still Bridget Smith, Sergeant. Alec and I were never divorced.' The widow was not dressed for the part; she wore light blue cotton slacks and a diaphanous, flowery top which showed more than a suggestion of a white Broderie Anglais bra. She was tall, with only a slight thickening at the waist, only a slight hint of a pot below, a strong firm chin and blonde hair, cut short; well cut too.

Edging thirty himself, Steele always found it difficult to assess the age of an older woman, but he guessed, from Alec Smith's age and from her reported twenty-something offspring, that she could not be far short of the fifty mark. Well-preserved fifty, though. Working at it; proud of it. Looking at her, he wondered what the late DCI Smith could have done to drive her away.

He glanced around the living room of the little house, a Wimpey semi-detached, 1970s vintage. It felt comfortable, lived-in, and looked as if she had made only a token effort to tidy up for his visit.

Mrs Smith laid a mug of coffee on a small table, one of a set, beside his chair. It was well used but looked like solid teak; she did not use a coaster, he noticed.

'I'm glad you could see me so quickly,' he began, as an icebreaker.

'Not a problem,' she replied, in a light, cultured Edinburgh accent, not a cut-glass Morningside job. 'I work from home. I run a little market-research business, working for advertising agencies mainly, but retail groups too, and sometimes public bodies; I have a project for LEEL at the moment. Occasionally we do face-to-face interviews, but mostly it's telephone work.

'Have you heard of LEEL?' she asked suddenly.

'Vaguely'

She laughed. 'That's what most respondents say. Maybe I can interview you after you've interviewed me. Ahh, but you're not a small businessman, are you?'

'No,' Steele grinned, put at ease by her style, 'I'm a large policeman.'

'And you're here to talk to me about another one. I thought the Chief Constable's visit was purely of the condolence variety; so I've been half-expecting someone else. What do you want to ask me? Whether I killed him or not?'

'I was assuming that you didn't; according to the Chief you and your partner were out with friends last Friday evening. We've checked that already.'

Bridget Smith raised her eyebrows. 'Did he indeed? His interview technique must be better than I thought. I don't even remember him asking me that, far less telling him.'

'That's how he got to be Chief Constable.' Steele took a sip from his mug. 'There are a few things about your husband, Mrs Smith, that we're still trying to get a grip of. Although he was a police officer for over thirty years, there's still a lot about him that we don't know. He was a very private man in the office — an asset, maybe, given the job he did…'

'He was a very private man at home too, Sergeant. What job did he do?'

'You mean he never talked to you about it?'

'Never. I knew what rank he was, that he was a detective and where he worked, but he never talked about his work. I was never allowed to phone him at the office either. When his father died, nine years ago, I had to go through the main switchboard to find him, and they had him call me back.'

Her voice lowered, and suddenly she seemed less vibrant, more vulnerable. 'Alec never talked to me at all, Mr Steele… well, hardly ever. It wasn't so bad in the early years, when we were going out together, when the kids were young, but as his career progressed he became more and more remote. He didn't speak about the house; to me, or John, or Susan even… and if he had a favourite, it was her. He didn't want to do things; for five years before I left we did not do a single thing together, go out for dinner, go to the theatre, go to parties. I used to get invitations; Alec always turned them down. As for him… I've heard that policemen do have balls, but I never heard about them from Alec. Never once did he offer to take me to a police social function; we were at a formal event once, but that was all.' She looked down quickly into her lap, her voice faltering for the first time. 'For the last six years of our marriage we didn't have sex: not at all.

'The only thing he ever did that wasn't work-related was his Thursday night football thing… a group of ageing men having a kick-about. He said that that man Skinner invited him along. Alec probably interpreted that as an order. He did that for a while, then stopped. When I asked him why, he told me that he had knee trouble.'

'Wasn't he interested in photography, Mrs Smith?'

The woman frowned in surprise. 'Not that I was aware of. Of the few family snapshots I have, Alec is in every one. I don't remember him ever taking a single picture himself

'Oh he did,' said Steele, 'he did. We found a pile of photographs among his effects, and we believe there may be more; possibly records too, that we haven't found. We found some keys that we can't account for. I don't suppose you know if he had anywhere he might have kept stuff… a small office maybe?'

'Not a clue. There was nothing extraordinary around the house, that's for sure, or I'd have found it. I do clean occasionally. As for an office, I never knew of one, but then there was so much I didn't know.'

'Did you know about the secret drawer in his desk?

'What secret drawer? In that big old desk of his, you mean? No, I didn't know — and Alec, being Alec, never mentioned it.'

'He never mentioned people, did he? For example did he ever let slip any hint that he might have been afraid of someone?'

'Alec was afraid of no-one…' She frowned. '… except. I remember once, about ten years ago. The television news was on, and Bob Skinner appeared, being interviewed about some crime or other. He wasn't as high-ranking then obviously, or as well known, but I remember Alec saying, not to me, really, more a whisper to himself, "There's something about that man that scares me shitless." That was all; it surprised me at the time, but I'd forgotten about it until now. But Bob Skinner hardly killed him, did he?'

'Hardly,' Steele agreed. 'What made you leave him, finally?'

'I just couldn't take being a non-person any more. After John died

…' She stopped as she saw the Sergeant's reaction. 'You didn't know?'

'No. Not at all.'

'Our son, John,' she continued, her voice very small at that moment, 'died five years ago. I never really needed Alec before, but I needed him then, only he withdrew completely into himself. He wouldn't talk to me at all after it happened. I just couldn't go on like that; I started to go out with girlfriends, and with a couple of the women who work for me.

'One night I met Stan Greenwood: he was fun, he was friendly, he was free, and he fancied me. He didn't give a damn that I'm ten years older than him, or posh, as he calls me. He didn't give a damn that my son died of AIDS. He asked me to come and live with him, and I said, "Yes." I didn't even think about it.'

The young sergeant took a deep breath; he felt his pulse hammering. The extent to which Alec Smith, even as a serving policeman, had guarded his privacy, had kept his two lives from touching each other… it was astounding.

'Your son died of AIDS,' he repeated, slowly.

'Yes. John was gay, Sergeant. He knew it from an early age. He had sexual partners when he was still at school. Eventually as a student he formed a solid relationship — with a nice man, a lawyer, a few years older than him, but still in his twenties. Some might have said that John was promiscuous until then, but I prefer to see it as experimentation.

'Unfortunately, somewhere along the line one of those experiments went wrong. When my son was twenty-one, he found that he was HIV positive. Three years later, in spite of being on viro-suppressant drugs, he developed full-blown AIDS. It attacked his brain directly and he died very quickly.'

'When did Alec learn about him?'

'I told him when John was twenty.'

'And how did he react? Was he supportive?'

Bridget Smith let out a short, snorting, bitter laugh.

'Supportive? He never spoke to John again; literally. When he was dying, I told Alec. Yet even in that very short time he had left, he refused to see him. He didn't even go to his son's funeral. I almost left him there and then.'

'What about your daughter? How did he feel about her?'

'She cut Alec off because of his behaviour towards John. By condemning one of his children he lost both.'

'He still sent her money, though.'

'Did he? I wonder if she spent it. I didn't detect any tears when I told her he was dead. She didn't even ask when the funeral was. When will it be, by the way? Since Alec and I were still married… There'll be no-one else to organise it, will there?' She paused. 'You haven't found a girlfriend, have you?'

'No. No girlfriends. If you're prepared to make those arrangements. I'll have the Fiscal's office contact you as soon as they're ready to release the body. They may specify burial only, but I don't imagine that they'll take too long now.'

She sighed. 'I don't suppose that there'll be many people there, other than colleagues. Will there be many of them, do you think?'

'I shouldn't think so, Mrs Smith,' he answered, honestly, 'not many.'

'Surprise.' She glanced across at the young Sergeant. 'What job did he do anyway?'

Steele grimaced. 'One that I'm not supposed to talk about.'

'Oh my! He must have been really good at it, then. Even his wife didn't know.'

The detective smiled at the humour in her tone. 'There is something you can confirm for me,' he said. 'Your husband made an annual payment to a solicitor of twelve hundred pounds. He told his bank manager it was money for you. Is that correct?'

'No. I never asked him for a penny after I left. He gave me my share of the house in Pencaitland when he sold it, and I was happy with that.' She laughed again. 'That's typical Alec, I suppose, to leave you with one last mystery.'

Steele rose to go. 'More than one,' he answered. 'More than one.'

She walked him to the door. 'That's everything then?'

'Yes. Except…' he stopped, remembering. 'There was one more thing I was told to ask. Do you know where Alec walked his dog?'

'That's a good one. You'd be better asking the dog.' She opened the front door… and stopped halfway. 'Wait a minute,' she murmured. 'There was one time: I had made up my mind to leave, and I insisted on talking to him. But he wouldn't sit down with me. Instead he said, 'You'd better come with me, then.' I got in the car with him, and the dog, and he drove us to Yellowcraigs, just past Dirleton.

'He told me to sit on the beach while he walked the dog. He was away for a while, but he came back eventually and sat down beside me. I told him about Stan, and why it had come about. D'you know all he said? He just looked at me, after more than a quarter of a bloody century and he said, "Aye, right then."

'Nothing else, just that. Then he stood up, called to the dog, and we all drove back to Pencaitland. Do you know, that was the last time I ever spoke to my husband.'