Chapter 16
EDINBURGH
Brodie stood at the window of his living room and drank some of the whisky in his glass, feeling the warmth course down into his gut.
The lights were on over in Fife, even though it wasn’t fully dark yet.
Night-time was slowly coming. It had been a long day, and a tiring one, and now the wee dram was helping him relax.
Ruth came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. ‘Don’t let him get under your skin,’ she said.
‘I can’t help it. It’s like some macabre puzzle; he’s either taking the piss, or he genuinely thought that was Marianne Taylor.
I can’t decide what it is.’ He turned away from the window to look at her.
‘He was a psychiatrist. He knows how to play head games. I thought being a detective had taught me how to play head games with people, but Kane takes it to a whole new level.’
‘Let’s sit and watch some TV.’
‘We can. Let me call Eric first.’
‘Okay. I can go to the bedroom, give you some privacy,’ Ruth said.
‘Don’t be daft.’ He walked over to the small desk in one corner of the living room, where a MacBook Pro sat, closed and turned off. A small printer sat off to one side, waiting for Brodie to start writing the great Scottish crime novel, that he may or may not have inside him.
He sat on the office chair as Ruth put on the TV, keeping the volume low.
‘Eric? It’s Dad.’
‘Hey, Dad. How’s things?’
‘Could be better. Could be worse.’
‘Is Ruth there?’
‘She is.’
‘Tell her I said hi,’ Eric said.
‘Eric says hi.’
Ruth looked around from her show. ‘Tell him and Chrissie I said hi.’
‘She says hi to you both.’
They chatted, Brodie asking how his gran was. Fiona’s mother. The old woman was getting along fine. Still having a wee nightly nip of whisky, purely for ‘medicinal purposes’.
‘I’m having some medicine now as well,’ Brodie said, laughing. ‘How’s your MS?’
‘I had a flare-up last weekend. It was pretty bad. My walking isn’t getting any better.’
‘You should have called me.’
‘I’m not going to call you every time I have a wee flare-up, Dad. I have Chrissie to look after me.’
‘I know that. And she’s an angel. But I still want to know. Or I’ll come across to Kelty and skelp your bloody arse.’
‘I’m twenty-seven, Dad. I could take you any time I wanted.’
‘Keep telling yourself that, ya wee brat.’ They both laughed.
‘How’s work?’ Eric asked. ‘I saw that reporter on the TV talking with Kane. That’s a new slant on things. Kane didn’t give an interview last year.’
‘Or the year before,’ Brodie said.
‘I don’t know how you can be in the same company as him and not put your hands round his neck.’
‘That’s why I’m the copper and you’re not.’
‘That’s true.’
‘How’s business doing, son?’
‘The usual bread-and-butter stuff. Chrissie is so much better with all the physical stuff than I am,’ Eric said, with just a hint of bitterness in his voice.
‘You’re partners. She doesn’t mind doing that stuff. She relishes it, you told me.’
‘Ach, don’t mind me. I’m just feeling sorry for myself. This flare-up is making me tired and narky.’
‘Nobody’s blaming you for being that way. Chrissie’s a saint.’
‘You don’t have to tell me twice,’ Eric said. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without her.’
‘Do you have any interesting jobs on the go?’ Brodie asked.
‘Nah. Cheating husbands. Three of them just now. A job for a lawyer, following somebody. It pays the bills.’
‘That’s the main thing, Eric.’
‘Are you coming over to see Gran soon? She was asking for you the other day.’
‘I will. Soon, I promise.’ Brodie felt guilty for not seeing the old woman.
He loved her, as she was the remaining family that Brodie still kept in touch with.
Fiona’s brother hated his guts and they never communicated.
They had a falling-out at Fiona’s funeral, George blaming Brodie for his sister’s death.
No matter it was cancer that took her, it was Brodie’s fault.
Somehow, he had told Brodie that if she hadn’t been with him, then she would still be alive.
He hadn’t spoken to George since.
‘Tell Gran I’ll bring in one of her favourite cakes.’
‘I will, Dad. But she didn’t tell me to bug you about visiting. She knows how busy you are. It’s just that she loves seeing you.’
‘I know she does. And I love seeing her too.’ He loved seeing photos of Fiona sitting on her dresser in the living room.
He and Ruth both went now. He had felt awkward, telling the old woman he was seeing somebody else now, but she had laughed and told him not to be daft.
He was a police officer, not a monk. Fiona wouldn’t have wanted him to live a solitary life.
Ruth was welcome anytime, and God bless Ruth, she had spoken to Gran like she had known her for years.
Plus Gran was happy that Eric was still a part of his life. Eric’s biological father was nowhere to be found, and Brodie was all the father Eric had ever known.
They chatted about cars for a little while, Eric’s favourite subject. He drove a Honda CR-V now, as it was easy to get in and out of, but better health and a pot of money would see him in some imported Japanese Honda sports car.
‘I’d best be off, son,’ Brodie said, looking over at the TV and seeing that Ruth was watching a DVD.
‘Okay, big guy. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’
After he disconnected, he sat on the couch beside Ruth.
‘How’s our boy?’ she asked. She always called him their boy now, having immediately connected with him and Chrissie after meeting them for the first time.
‘He’s having a flare-up. He feels tired and, when this happens, his walking usually gets worse.’
‘Poor love.’
‘What are you watching?’ Brodie said, nodding to the TV. Ruth had stopped playing what she had been watching.
‘It’s the bookshop again.’
Brodie nodded and sat down beside her, watching the freeze-frame of the interior of the bookshop, like she had been watching a sitcom and there was some funny moment coming up. But there was nothing funny about what was on the screen: Gabriel Kane looking up at the security camera.
Kane’s face was frozen, his eyes sharp, a slight smile playing on his lips.
There was a book in his hands. The title couldn’t be made out at this angle, the camera looking down from the ceiling, half of the frame taken up by a bookcase, the other half by the till and the woman who owned the place, standing in front of the till and behind the counter.
‘Run the tape, honey,’ he said, sitting back and watching as all the players started moving, as if a director was behind the scenes and had shouted, ‘Action!’
Watching the DVD of the CCTV footage was something they did after Kane had taken them to reveal where his victims were.
It was taken from the camera in the bookshop, not long before Kane was caught.
Going over the footage, dissecting every minute.
This was the third time they had watched the film at home, Brodie looking for something that he might have missed the first hundred times he’d watched it in the station.
Kane looked away from the camera as another customer walked by him.
A slender woman, blonde, wearing a long raincoat.
She approached the counter with her book and put it on the counter.
They couldn’t make out the title. She had a large bag slung over her right arm, and reached into it, pulling out her purse to pay for the purchase in cash.
She lifted the book and put it in her bag before taking her change.
Then she walked away to the right, to the exit.
A man, dark-haired, average build. Average height. They could just make out the top of his head as he walked up to the counter, paid for his book and exited stage right as had the woman in front of him.
Kane ignored them and looked at the book, flipping through the pages. They had never traced the woman in the bookshop, despite a request in the newspaper for her to come forward.
Then the title of the book could be made out as Kane held it in one hand while he widened the gap between two other books that had moved closer to each other when Kane had pulled the book out.
Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman. The same book he had requested earlier that day, his reward for being a good boy and taking them to where he had buried a corpse.
Why hadn’t he bought that book? Did he already have a copy? Maybe it was lost after his arrest and he merely wanted another one. No. Brodie knew better. Everything that Kane did was calculated. He left nothing to chance.
They watched the footage again. There had always been something that nagged away in the back of Brodie’s brain after he had watched it over and over.
He had asked for a copy after the trial and had been given one. Kane in the bookshop. The owner behind the counter. Two customers as well as Kane. A man and a woman. Nobody came forward. It was a simple scenario, yet Brodie knew he was missing something.
‘I think I’ll have a cold beer,’ he said. ‘You want one?’
‘No thanks, love,’ Ruth said.
Brodie got up and went through to the kitchen and took a bottle of Stella from the fridge and sat back down.
‘You look tired,’ Ruth said to him.
‘I am. It’s been a long, stressful day.’
‘I know. I was there.’ She smiled at him and gave his hand a squeeze.
Then they switched the DVD player off and watched some regular TV.
Brodie fell asleep after the beer. He woke later, when it was dark outside and the lights in Fife were more noticeable now.
Somewhere over there was Eric. He missed his son living at home, but knew he was in good hands.
Brodie went to bed thinking about a woman who had taken the place of another woman called Marianne Taylor.