Hour Of Darkness

Book 24: BOB SKINNER

by Quintin Jardine

Genres: General Fiction; City Life; Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

The body of a murdered woman is found washed up on Cramond Island near the mouth of the River Forth. Days later detectives are called to a flat in Edinburgh; the kitchen is covered in blood, and the occupier is missing.

When the name of the woman from Cramond Island is revealed, it stirs unwelcome memories for those who knew her, Chief Constable Bob Skinner most of all. Now based in Glasgow, he has no reason to become involved in the linked cases. Yet he does, unwittingly setting in motion a course that will lead him into a personal nightmare and the toughest choice of his life....

Release date: May 8, 2014

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 384

Sample

Lately I’ve been contemplating the Old Testament, rather a lot.

‘That’s not surprising in a cop, Mr Skinner,’ I hear you say, but it’s not as simple as that; it goes back to something my father told me.

We think of pre-Christian values as simple, but I don’t see it that way. Even Exodus and Deuteronomy are a shade contradictory. Take the sins of the fathers as an example. It’s not quite clear how many generations should take the rap for Dad’s transgressions. And as for that cruel trick God played on Abraham, when He let him come within an angel’s whisper of cutting young Isaac’s throat . . .

My Biblical tendencies come from my old man, although as far as I know, he never sinned. I saw no evidence of it when I was growing up, although he was always very tightly wrapped. He was a quiet man, never much of a smiler, never much of a joker, but kind nevertheless. I don’t recall him ever raising his voice to me, or to anyone else for that matter. He was generous, no question; within reason, anything that I wanted came my way, sooner or later . . . other than him, that is. He never gave of himself, not on a personal level.

He did most of the things that fathers are supposed to do, like taking me to football matches until I was old enough to go on my own, and getting me started on golf, but we had very little interaction at home. That territory belonged to my mother, and to my beast of an older brother.

Dad spent most of his home time working in his study, next to our dining room, while Mum lived on Planet Gordon’s or Planet Beefeater or wherever else her gin brand of the moment took her. As for Michael, the less I say about him the better; he’s in his grave now, and he can fucking stay there. He was a Grade A sinner, that is for sure.

My father shared his wealth, much of it self-created, but he never shared what was in his heart. I’m pretty sure, no, I’m certain, that I know why. I believe it was down to his war and to the things he had to do, but always, he refused to talk about that time, refused point-blank, until I stopped asking him, until I gave up trying to penetrate the force field of privacy that he kept around him.

While no one ever really saw the man inside him, that was the way that life had made him, and I stopped resenting it long, long ago. Which, given the circumstances, was pretty big of me, for it caused me a lot of grief.

The problem for me was that Dad’s introspection affected his vision; it was so profound that he couldn’t see the things that were happening closest to him. He had no idea of the tortures that Michael inflicted on me, during my childhood years. He never even realised that my mother was alcoholic, not until he saw it as an underlying cause on her death certificate.

He died without ever telling me, or anyone else that I know of, about his war and the experiences that I now realise had scarred him. He left me his medal, one of those that you only won for exceptional service, and that was all. He kept no diary, and he must have destroyed any papers related to those years, for I found none afterwards.

It wasn’t until I reached chief officer rank in the police force that I made any effort to fill in that gaping hole in his life story, using channels that had become open to me. Even now, much of the secrecy remains. I know that he was operational, in the Balkan region, the area that became Yugoslavia in the austere peacetime, but I don’t know what he did. Those files are still closed. All I know is what he was trained to do, and that did not involve escorting prisoners to the holding area.

So what did he do, that silent man, to give me the old prophet values that have lingered in me ever since?

It happened on the day on which he was destined to die. The disease that was claiming him was in its final stages, beyond therapy and at the point where ‘palliative care’ meant giving him enough dope to keep him out of the pain that consciousness brought.

I expected him to go that afternoon. His nursing team had told me that it was a matter of hours. They did so to prepare me, I imagine, but in truth I’d been ready for a while. I suspect that he had, too; I hadn’t seen him smile in years, not a real face-cracker, at any rate, not even when he saw his newborn granddaughter for the first time.

I sat by his bedside in his room at the hospice. There was music playing, softly: Ella Fitzgerald was singing him on his way . . . my choice, not his; he was beyond comfort, but I wasn’t.

Myra had been willing to come with me, but I had talked her out of it. That hadn’t been too difficult; she’d been there the previous day and it had been horrific. I had no idea what ‘projectile’ really meant, not until Dad sat bolt upright in bed, without warning, and fired an eruption of vomit that splatted against a wall more than six feet away from him. My poor, doomed, first wife had caught some in her hair.

There was no chance of a recurrence as I sat beside him, hunched forward and helpless. There was nothing left in him by then; he’d been a big man in his time, almost as big as me, but the thing that was killing him had reduced him to a skin-covered skeleton, with no organs functioning other than the heart that was still pumping, and the lungs, from which the stentorious breathing of approaching death sounded in the room, contrasting harshly with the velvet voice coming from the cassette recorder.

I didn’t expect him to waken again, ever, but he did. His eyes flickered, then opened. They weren’t seeing me, though. They were looking at a scene far away and they told me that whatever it was, Dad wasn’t enjoying the view. I found myself hoping that he was seeing his past and not his future. I’ve suspected since childhood that any afterlife might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Suddenly the claw that had been his left hand grabbed my arm, and tugged at me. I was startled, but I eased myself off my seat and leaned over him, getting as close as I could to his corpse breath.

‘Robert,’ he whispered, with an urgency that scared me.

‘Yes, Dad,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

‘Be careful, son,’ he croaked. ‘Blood will out, always.’

And then his grip on me loosened, and his eyes closed, for what did prove to be the last time. I sat down again, and listened as the rasp of his breathing quietened, and as it slowed. Ten minutes later, it stopped, and he was gone.

I pressed the bedside buzzer; his nurses responded within a few seconds. They made comforting noises, and the older one asked if I was okay. I told her the truth, that I was, and that I was happy he was out of it. She nodded; I was sure that in her job as a door warden for the dying she’d heard the same response a hundred times and more.

As they did what they had to do, disconnecting the tubes that led into and out of his newly vacated body, a doctor joined us. He made a quick examination, shone a torch in the old man’s eyes, then closed them again. ‘Will there be a cremation?’ he asked, the first words he had spoken. ‘If so you’ll need a second certificate, signed by a second doctor.’

I sensed impatience in him; I was tempted to put him to as much trouble as I could, but that would have been at the expense of the living, so I shook my head. He completed a form and handed it to me; I glanced at it, noting the words ‘heart failure’, ‘pneumonia’ and ‘carcinoma’, in the usual medical scrawl, then pocketed it. When I looked up to thank him, he had gone.

I picked up my dad’s belongings, his wallet, watch, spectacles, and his driving licence . . . I found myself smiling at the thought of him going into a hospice thinking he’d be driving home . . . then thanked the nurses for all they’d done to make his last days as easy as they could be.

‘Don’t you want his Bible?’ the younger one asked, indicating the black book on the bedside cabinet.

I stared at her. ‘It’s his?’

‘He brought it in with him,’ she replied. ‘He read it all the time, when you weren’t here.’

And then I was back with him, by his side in South Dalziel Parish Church when I was five or six years old, listening to him belt out the hymns, accepting the white King’s Imperials that he slipped to me, then surreptitiously pocketing them because I didn’t like to tell him that I hated mints.

I cried for my father then, the only time I ever did, and that’s when I put him into context: an Old Testament guy at heart. I took the holy book with me, and I have it to this day. I hadn’t read much from it until recently, but I’m pretty familiar with most of it now.

Later on, once I was home and ready to talk, Myra asked me how it had been. I told her, moment by moment, scene by scene, and finally word for word.

‘What did he mean?’ she asked, curious.

‘I haven’t a fucking clue,’ I told her, frankly.

I do now.



One

‘What’s up, Sauce?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied, a little too quickly, and with an edge to his voice.

‘Hey,’ she protested. ‘Don’t bite my head off.’

‘I didn’t. At least, I didn’t mean to. Why should anything be up?’

‘Because you’ve been home for three hours, we’re on to our second bottle of red, and you haven’t cracked a smile all evening. This is our first week of living together. You’re supposed to be overjoyed, happy, bubbly. Or is this the real Sauce Haddock I’m seeing? Is this what you’re usually like at home?’

‘Aargh!!!’ he shouted, suddenly, then rolled sideways along the sofa, burying his face in her lap and rubbing his head from side to side against her tight-fitting woollen onesie.

‘Stop it,’ she giggled. ‘We’ve only just had supper; you can’t still be hungry.’ She grabbed a handful of his hair and tugged him upwards until he was left with no choice but to look directly at her.

‘Who says I can’t?’ he whispered.

‘Well, that’s not on the menu, ’cos I’ve got my period. Go and get another Magnum out the freezer; that’ll cool you down.’

‘No it won’t,’ he said, firmly. ‘You may trust me on that, Ms Cheeky McCullough.’

She let him go, and he swung himself round to sit beside her, wrapping an arm around her and drawing her to him.

She laid her head on his shoulder. ‘Well, are you gonna tell me? What gave you the faraway eyes? Did you have to bollock somebody at work? Or did you get on the wrong side of your new DI?’

‘Neither of those: I’m still easing myself in as a detective sergeant, not ruffling feathers, and Sammy Pye isn’t the bollocking type. Yes, I’ve had better days, but don’t worry about it. We have our deal, remember? I’m not going to bring work home.’

‘But you will, love,’ she countered, gently. ‘You have tonight, whether you wanted to or not. You can’t help it.’ She squeezed his arm. ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘When we were out with the McGurks on Sunday night, after they helped us move in, Lisanne and I had a heart-to-heart when you and Jack were up at the bar. She marked my card about living with a cop. And she should know; her first husband was a plod as well. “Faraway eyes,” that was how she put it. “When you see those, you know that what’s going on behind them isn’t very nice, and shouldn’t be allowed to fester. A CID cop’s wife’s job,” she told me, “involves a lot of therapy. It involves knowing when something’s hurting in there,” she tapped his forehead, “and getting it out and blowing it away.” So, lover boy, I might not be Mrs Cop officially, but I’m still taking the job seriously.’

‘It was a call-out,’ he admitted, almost before she had finished. ‘Luke and me.’

‘Luke?’

‘The DI; it’s his nickname. They call him Luke Skywalker . . . I’m not quite sure why, probably something about the Force being with him, like in Star Wars.’ He frowned. ‘Here, did you know that there are about six times as many Jedi Knights as there are atheists in this country? Official figures, from the Census, no kidding.’

Cheeky nodded. ‘Of course I know. I’m one of them. And didn’t you tell me that the wee pathologist bloke’s called Master Yoda?’

‘Aye, but never to his face. Who are you then? Princess Thingy, I suppose. Just don’t copy that bloody awful hairstyle, okay?’

She grinned. ‘That’s a promise I’ll make and keep, worry not. So . . .’ she paused, ‘. . . this call-out; why’s it getting to you?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I do. We’re a couple. We share.’

He gave up the struggle. ‘It was a woman,’ he said. ‘She’d been in the water. Her body was washed up on Cramond Island: well, most of it was. She was missing her head, her right arm and shoulder, and part of her left arm from just below the elbow down. Dr Grace said . . .’

‘Who’s he?’

‘She,’ he corrected her. ‘Sarah Grace; she’s the other top pathologist. She’ll take over from Master Yoda . . . Professor Hutchinson, to give him his proper name . . . when he retires in a few months. She’s also the chief constable’s . . . sorry, the ex-chief constable’s ex-wife, but from some whispers I’ve heard, they’re pretty friendly again.’

‘You mean Mr Skinner? Hold on, I’m getting confused here, I thought his ex-wife was that politician, Aileen de Marco, the one who got caught by the tabloids having an affair with an actor.’

‘She was Mrs Skinner number three. Sarah Grace was number two.’

‘That explains lots of things,’ she murmured. ‘Now that man, he has serious faraway eyes. I’m not sure I’d want to know what’s behind them. Right,’ she declared, coming back to the moment. ‘I’m up to speed on the Skinner marital history. So what did ex-wife number two say?’

‘That she’d been hit by a ship’s propeller; there’s a lot of marine traffic goes past the island, tankers and such bound for the oil terminal. She reckoned that she’d been in the water for at least a couple of weeks.’

‘Oh, my poor darlin’ boy,’ Cheeky murmured. ‘That must have been awful for you.’

‘One for the Chamber of Horrors, that’s for sure. And maybe the Chamber of Secrets as well.’

‘How come?’

‘Because she was naked. No clothes, no jewellery, no head, no hands, all adds up to no means of identification. We haven’t a clue who she was and we have no obvious way of finding out.’

‘What age was she? Young, old, in between?’

‘Not young, but Dr Grace won’t be able to give us an age range until she’s done the autopsy.’

‘Christ, you won’t have to go to that, will you?’

His smile was grim. ‘Oh aye, love. Part of the job. She did it this afternoon.’

She stood, topped up his glass from the bottle of Washington State Merlot that stood on the coffee table, and handed it to him. ‘Therapeutic,’ she said. ‘Once you’ve finished it, you can look at another body to take your mind off it. I was kidding about my period, by the way.’

She winked at him, then rejoined him on the sofa. ‘Hold on,’ she exclaimed, as she settled herself against him. ‘How come this is your job at all? People do decide to end it all, and quite often they do it in the river. A few of them jump off the Forth Bridge.’

‘Naked?’

‘Sure. Why not? But it needn’t have been a suicide. She could have been skinny-dipping and got into trouble. So why isn’t uniform handling this? How come it’s a CID job?’

‘Because, my love,’ he sighed, ‘the propeller might have mangled the poor dearie, but it didn’t stab her six times in the chest.’



Two

‘Sir Robert Skinner,’ she murmured. ‘Yes, it has a ring to it, a nice melodic sound.’

‘In that case, honey child,’ I couldn’t stop myself chuckling, ‘it’s as well that I’m tone deaf, because I’ve turned it down. I’m sorry if it disappoints you that you’ll never get to be a Lady, but it’s the way I feel.’

She raised an eyebrow; it’s one of her trademark gestures, and it always makes me smile. ‘I’d only have got to be Lady Skinner if we remarried, Bob, and we agreed that isn’t going to happen, remember.’

‘I remember,’ I conceded, ‘but the truth is, anything Sarah wants Sarah gets, so if I had accepted and you’d wanted to be a titled lady, us getting re-hitched would have been fine by me.’

She smiled at me, across the table. ‘I’m an American, remember? We’re an egalitarian people.’ She paused, for a second or two. ‘To tell you the truth,’ she resumed, ‘I assumed that it would be offered, now that you’ve been confirmed as Chief Constable of Strathclyde. It kinda goes with the job, doesn’t it?’

And then she hesitated again, as a frown gathered. ‘Here, you didn’t turn it down because of me, did you? To save any social awkwardness, with you having to explain why I wasn’t Her Ladyship.’

I stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’ I chuckled. ‘You’re Professor Sarah Grace, or you’re about to be; that’s much more impressive, and more significant than being Lady Skinner, any day of the week. No, I turned it down because I didn’t like the people who offered it to me, as simple as that.’

‘You mean Clive Graham, the First Minister? I thought you and he were . . .’

My nod stopped her mid-sentence. ‘We are: in spite of him railroading through the legislation to create the new single Scottish police force, Clive and I are fine. No, the knighthood nomination came from Downing Street. If that lot offered me a damn Snickers bar, I’d turn it down.’

‘You lie, Skinner! You’re addicted to those damn Snickers bars.’

‘Okay.’ I couldn’t deny it. ‘I’d take it, but I’d insist on paying for it.’

‘Aren’t you worried,’ she asked, ‘that if you’re not knighted, people will think you’ve been snubbed, and maybe even that there’s a skeleton in your cupboard?’

My laugh was so sudden and so loud that the couple two tables away, our nearest neighbours on the restaurant’s wooden terrace, turned to frown at me.

‘My cupboard’s full of bloody skeletons,’ I retorted, not caring whether they heard or not. ‘You know that, better than anyone. Put an ear to the door and you’ll hear the dry bones rattling around in there. Yours, on the other hand,’ I raised my voice for the benefit of the eavesdropping frowners, ‘yours is full of fresh corpses, still with some flesh on them, like the one you had to finish your day on Friday, before we left.’

She winced at the memory; that was unusual for Sarah. ‘Hey,’ she murmured, ‘I’m on holiday. I don’t want to be reminded about her, poor creature.’

I took her hand. ‘You know, life isn’t fair. You deserve to be Lady Grace in your own right. You could be too. They have honorary awards. Isn’t Steven Spielberg a knight?’

‘Is he? I don’t know. Anyway, I’m only interested in you. Couldn’t you take another honour instead of a knighthood? A CBE maybe?’

‘I don’t think you can negotiate with the Honours system,’ I told her. ‘Besides, if I did that, took something less than a K, it really would be seen as a snub by a lot of people, and hell, I couldn’t have that; my great big ego wouldn’t allow it.

‘Nah, Sarah love, the fact is, I don’t really approve of gongs being handed out to people simply because of the job they do, whether they’re good at it or not. I believe they should be earned. It took Jimmy Proud’ (my predecessor as chief in Edinburgh), ‘more than a decade in post before he got his. I’m hardly through the chief’s office door; I haven’t done my time.

‘And,’ I pointed out, ‘I won’t get to do it in Strathclyde either, seeing as my new post will disappear in a few months, when the new unified Police Scotland service comes in.’

‘A service which you will head,’ Sarah countered. ‘I checked before we came away,’ she told me. ‘The bookies aren’t taking bets on the appointment, not now that it’s out officially that you’re a candidate.’

‘They know something I don’t, do they?’

‘The bookies always know things the rest of us don’t.’

‘Not quite. The job’s open for applications from across the UK. There are some serious candidates in for it.’

‘Name one,’ she challenged.

‘Andy Martin.’

She didn’t expect that one. Her wine glass almost slipped from her grasp and into the dregs of her Crema Catalana dessert. ‘Andy’s applying?’ she gasped.

I nodded.

‘But why, in heaven’s name? What’s he doing that for? The whole world knows that Andy’s your protégé, but it also knows that his feet aren’t big enough to fill your boots, not yet.’

‘Then the whole world is underrating him,’ I insisted. ‘If I wasn’t in the running, let’s say I was the guy filling the post rather than pursuing it, Andy’s the person I’d appoint. He’s the Director of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency and that more than qualifies him.

‘Sure, he’s been my sidekick for much of his career, so I know him better than most. However I also know the other likely runners, as members of the Chief Constables’ Association, and through having worked with some of them. Being as objective as I can, I rate him ahead of any of them.’

She frowned. ‘He’s also your daughter’s partner. Your acting son-in-law, they call him.’

‘So what? That shouldn’t bar him from applying for a job he could do, and I told him so.’

‘You did?’

‘Of course I did. I told him that he had to apply. I insisted that he did. I told him that if I dropped dead the day before the interviews, and he wasn’t on the candidates’ list, he’d be doing himself . . . and the whole bloody nation . . . a disservice.’

‘How does Alex feel about it?’

‘My daughter agrees with me.’ My smile was involuntary; for a second I was somewhere else. ‘She actually said that in some ways Andy would be a better choice than me.’

Sarah’s mouth fell open; she closed it again firmly. ‘Now I know you’re kidding me.’

‘I’m not. She did. She’s read the enabling Act for the new force; so have I, but it took her, as a lawyer, to point out that they’ve made a Horlicks of it, that there’s an organisational clash between the new chief constable and the new Police Authority, just waiting to happen. Diplomacy not being my strong suit, she thinks that . . .’ I didn’t have to spell it out.

‘Yes, I see those storm clouds,’ she agreed. ‘And what do you think?’

‘I think that should I wind up in the job, as soon as my arse is in that chair, I’ll write my own ticket. No fucking quango’s going to cross me. If I have to, I’ll get Clive Graham to amend the legislation.’

‘Will he do that?’

‘If I ask him nicely. If that doesn’t work, I’ll ask him again.’ My smile may have looked a little evil.

‘Meaning you’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse?’ she grinned.

‘Something like that,’ I murmured.

Sarah’s good at reading me. ‘Are you suggesting that you’ve got something on our First Minister?’

‘Not any more; I did have, but I destroyed it. The very fact that I did that means he owes me one. Shit,’ I chuckled, ‘he owes me half a dozen and counting.’

‘Sounds mysterious. You didn’t catch him with his kilt lifted, did you?’

‘Not personally, but someone did.’

‘My God!’ she gasped. ‘He’s supposed to be Scotland’s Mr Clean. It wasn’t rent boys, I hope.’

‘No, it was heterosexual, and the footage wasn’t graphic, no bouncing buttocks or any of that stuff, but it was enough to have finished him.’

‘Wow! You’ll be telling me next that he was having it off with the leader of the Scottish Opposition herself.’

I turned my head slightly, and gazed out across the marina, so that I could admire the outline of the mountains against the deep pink sunset. ‘No comment,’ I murmured.

My partner stared at me. ‘Clive Graham and Aileen de Marco? He was bonking your ex-wife?’ Our near neighbours twitched again at her raised voice. Fortunately by that time I’d gathered from their conversation and his cigarettes that they were French, and so would have no idea who either the bonker or bonkee were.

‘Just the once,’ I replied, ‘if I’m to believe what Aileen told me . . . and I think I do. There was drink involved, on both sides. I couldn’t bring the man down over a booze-driven and probably unsatisfactory shag. Besides, he wasn’t her only one; everyone knows that.’

‘Then it’s as well,’ Sarah said, severely, ‘that she’s gone from Scottish politics, and that you’ve cut all ties with her.’

‘Let’s just call her my mid-life crisis,’ I suggested, ‘and never talk of her again. Agreed?’

‘Happily. We didn’t come here to do that. Remind me, why have we come here?’

My eyes went back to her. ‘We’ve come here for a new start, you and me. We’ve come here because L’Escala was good for us in the beginning. We’ve come here because I’ve been neglecting the Spanish house for more than a year. If Alex hadn’t used it, it would have lain empty all that time. We’ve come here because we need a holiday, both of us.’

‘Do you feel guilty about not bringing the kids?’ she asked, quietly. ‘I do, just a little.’

‘Then don’t,’ I insisted. ‘I’d feel guiltier if we’d taken them out of school. Besides, they have a full-time carer and their grown-up sister is going to spend time with them on the two weekends we’re away, while Andy has his kids with him. He might even take his two out to Gullane, and they can all have a party.’

‘Yes, Alex said that. How will their mother feel about it, do you think?’

I shrugged. ‘From what I’m told, Karen will be fine about it. Everything’s fallen into place in her life. Her move from Perth was brought forward, and Danielle and Robert are into nursery school. She’s been able to rejoin the force, as she wanted, and at her old rank too.

‘Because Andy has the kids at weekends, she’s trying to work as many of those as she can, so she can be free for some of the week. It’s okay; unconventional but okay, pretty much like you and me keeping our separate houses during the week.’

‘Are you really not going to consider moving closer to Glasgow?’ she asked.

‘Not an effing chance: this job, assuming the bookies are right, will change my life quite enough. I won’t let it uproot me from my home. I left Gullane once, when you and I moved to Edinburgh. Neither of us was happy there.’

‘True.’ She paused for a second. ‘How do you see it changing your life?’

‘For a start, I’ll no longer be the type of cop I’ve always been, or tried to be,’ I told her, instantly. ‘Instead I’ll be a desk jockey. My life will become a struggle against the bureaucrats and bean counters in the supervising authority that the legislation has set up. The bloody thing is even going to have its own chief executive, would you believe.’

‘Does that mean you’ll have to report to that person?’

‘Over his dead body . . . or hers; but Alex says that’s a battle I may well have to fight. She calls it the smoking gun in the legislation. Oh, worry not, love, I’ll have my way, and I will make sure that the new force is as efficient on the ground as it can possibly be.

‘But . . . my days of crime-fighting are over, to my great regret. The terrible truth is, they were the moment I accepted the Strathclyde job.’

As I finished I had the strangest sensation, as if my words were hanging in the air, then drifting off into the sultry Spanish night like smoke rings. I think Sarah caught it too, for almost a minute went by before she spoke.

‘If that’s true,’ she said, ‘I can’t say that I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter what rank you’ve reached, you’ve always put yourself on the line for the job, emotionally and physically. That had to end sometime, before it ended you. You must know that, Bob.’

‘Sometime,’ I agreed, ‘but of my choosing. This isn’t the way I thought it would finish.’

‘But it has, and your kids will thank you for it, like I thank you now. They’re going to want you around to see them through school and university and on into their adult life.

‘Me too,’ she added. ‘I don’t just want you around; I need you. I’ve tried living without you and it didn’t work very well. I hate to remind you, but you’re over fifty years old and you have a heart pacemaker.’

‘Am I? Have I?’ I murmured. ‘Goddammit I’d forgotten!’ That was almost literally true. I’ve had the pacemaker for a few years, to make sure that my heart rate doesn’t drop too low, as in down to zero. It doesn’t affect my day-to-day life, and if it wasn’t for a small lump on my chest just below my left collar bone, nobody but me would know it was there.

‘Well, I haven’t,’ Sarah murmured, with a small grimace. ‘That day you fell over, I almost died with you. As a pathologist I know all too well there is such a thing as unexplained sudden death syndrome. I’ve seen it, too often, in young fit men. There they are on the autopsy table and there is no discernible reason why, other than the fact that their heart isn’t beating any more. You may have forgotten about it, my darling, but I never will.’

I sensed a hovering presence near us. Not John, the proprietor of La Clota, where we had eaten, as I always have on my L’Escala visits, since the earliest days . . . John wouldn’t have hovered; he’d have crash-landed at our table . . . but the tall young waiter