Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
He closed his eyes and remembered how it had been, that brief sojourn together at university in Glasgow. Sharing a flat. How badly he had treated her, incapable of dealing with his own pain, and taking it out on Marsaili. How often is it, he thought, that it’s the people closest to us that we hurt the most?
“It was like looking at a stranger. The Fin Macleod you must have been all these years when I didn’t know you. Married to someone else, raising a kid, being a policeman.”
He was almost startled by the sudden touch of her hand on his face.
“I’m not sure I know you at all. Not any more.”
And those few moments of passion they had shared that afternoon, pencil-thin lines of sunlight zigzagging across their frantic lovemaking, already seemed like a lifetime ago.
Thirty-three
Thirty-three
Paul Kelly lived in a detached yellow sandstone house built on three levels, with gables and dormers, an elaborate entrance porch, and a conservatory at the rear that extended right out into a mature, well-maintained garden.
A semicircular drive led up to the front door from Tipperlinn Road, with wrought-iron electronic gates at each end of it. Sunlight tipped down over azaleas in bloom, green-dappled by young beech leaves.
Their taxi dropped Fin and Marsaili at the south gate, and Fin asked the driver to wait. But he shook his head. “Naw. You’ll pay me now. I’m no hanging around.” It seemed that he knew the address and was anxious not to linger. They stood and watched as he drove off and swung into Morningside Place.
Fin turned to the intercom set in the stone gatepost and pressed the buzzer. After a moment a voice said, “What d’ye want?”
“My name’s Fin Macleod. I used to be a cop. I’d like to speak to Paul Kelly.”
“Mr. Kelly disnae speak tae anyone without an appointment.”
“Tell him it’s about something that happened on the Dean Bridge fifty-odd years ago.”
“He’ll no see you.”
“Just tell him.” There was an imperative quality to Fin’s voice. A tone that brooked no argument.
The speaker went dead and Fin glanced self-consciously at Marsaili. He was again being that Fin Macleod she didn’t know. And he had no idea how to bridge the gap between the two.
They seemed to wait an inordinately long time before the speaker crackled again and the voice returned. “Okay,” was all it said, and the gates immediately began to swing open.