Autographs In The Rain Part 50

when her farm was done.'

Pringle gave a soft hum. 'Aye, now there's interesting right enough.'

'Especially,' said Martin, 'since I seem to recall the lady saying to me

that she didn't know the other farms that had been robbed. Dan, maybe

Anders is bang in the frame for this girl's murder, but we know for sure he

216.didn't act alone. There's the footprints, and more. There were two tanker trucks so that means at least two people.

'No,' he said sharply. 'At least three. On the tape, after the girl was killed, both trucks drove up at once.

'Dan, don't get too pleased with yourselves, you and McGurk, for nailingAnders.

'I understand why you let Geoff Lesser talk you into charging him at that point, and leaving him with him. I'm not as patient as you, though; not on this. I don't just want this guy; I want them all.

'The two of you, get back in there with your prisoner, take the gloves off and lean on him; I want names out of him.

'You tell him from me that the Crown Office will press for every day he holds out on us to become another year added on to the judge's recommendation on the minimum sentence he serves before parole. If he wants to be out of jail before he's fifty, he'd better talk to you.'

'All right, sir,' murmured Pringle, with a sigh. 'Can it really not wait till tomorrow, though? The boy's locked up, and Jack's just about to go on up the road. He's having problems at home,' he added. 'Mary's no' happy about the move.'

'Tonight, Dan. I sympathise with McGurk, but unless you can find someone else experienced to sit in with you, it's down to him. If he likes, I'll ask Karen to talk to his wife, and you and I can see what we can do.

'But I want Anders leaned on, and I want it done now.'

The Head of CID paused. 'Oh, and just in case you think I'm copping out, I'm about to delight Mrs Martin by spending the rest of my Sunday night digging up insurance company managers. I intend to find out the total insurance loss on all three farms.''What's wrong?' she asked. 'Have I been too pushy? Or have I just made a total fool of myself?' She looked at his profile in the faint green light of the car's instrument panel; smiling as he gave a small involuntary shudder, as if he had just switched off his auto pilot.

'I'm sorry, Lou,' he said. 'I was miles away there.'

'I asked you whether I had upset you, back there on the moor. Will I find myself with a new minder tomorrow?'

'Christ, no,' he exclaimed. 'You've stunned me, that's all. You took my breath away. I mean, what brought it on?'

'I don't know for sure,' she answered, laughing softly to herself. 'But thinking back, I remember wondering whether, maybe, for all my adult life, the man I've been looking for is the sort who puts Irn Bru in a hip flask.'

'Shh for a minute,' he said. 'Let's pull in somewhere for a bite, and d.a.m.n the punters. We can't talk about this in the car.'

After they had climbed down from the moor their circular route had taken them through Kelso, Duns and on to the Al at Grantshouse. Neil looked at the road signs and saw that East Linton was only half a mile ahead. He turned off the single carriageway trunk road, into the half-hidden village, drove across the Tyne bridge and pulled up close to the Drovers'

Inn.

Happily, the roadhouse was quiet and they were shown straight to a table for two in the dining room upstairs. They ordered a gla.s.s of white wine for Louise, a bottle of sparkling mineral water and two seafood platters with side salad, then sat silently as the wine was poured and the bottle opened.

She smiled at him, mischievously, as he took his first sip. 'Like I said,' he began, Tm stunned. Gob-smacked. I don't know what to think, and I sure don't know what to say . ..

'Other than this. I find you very attractive; but I'm not talking about the

218.

AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.publicity photo or the face up on the big screen. You're beautiful on the inside, Lou, and that's where it counts.

'But what I don't understand is what the h.e.l.l you can see in a big dumb polisman like me, given the world you live in, with all these b.l.o.o.d.y superstars and everything.'

She ran the tip of her right index finger round the rim of her gla.s.s, which lay untouched on the table. 'Much the same thing. I haven't felt the faintest flicker of attraction for a man in the last three years, although . . .' she smiled again, '. . . my line of work being what it is, I have had a few propositions put to me.

'You're not like anyone I've met, not in a while; not for as long as I want to remember. You're a warm, open-hearted, caring man, and you are not in the slightest affected by who I am ... or by the person I'm supposed to be.

Nor by any other of those b.l.o.o.d.y superstars, if it comes to it.

'You see through all that; when you look at me, I can tell you're just looking at Louise Bankier from Bearsden, and that's all I am.'

He shook his head. 'Not all. It's who you are, and it's enough. Maybe I'm afraid to look at the face up on the big screen. Maybe she would overwhelm me.'

'No. You look through her to get to me; you just strip her away.'

'So what are you saying? What are you asking? Are you asking anything?'

'I don't know. I'm afraid to say any more than I have. And I don't know what to ask of you. I do know this, though; I mustn't trifle with you. You don't deserve any more hurt in your life, and I certainly won't be the one to inflict it.'

'You couldn't,' he told her. 'Not you; it's not in you to hurt me or anyone else. Anyway, I'm beyond hurt now, beyond any hurt I can imagine, at least. I've found my truth, my certainty, and that's my s.h.i.+eld.'

'But what about the loneliness? Does your s.h.i.+eld protect against that?'

He looked at her for a while, without replying, spinning his gla.s.s in his fingers, watching the bubbles in the water, as if he was considering something. Finally, he laid it down. 'Let me tell you a story; a true story, true as I'm sitting here.

In the days and weeks after Olive died, I experienced certain physical things, signs you'd call them, of her presence around me, on another plane.

The very d;iy after, in fact, I lay down on the sofa, alone, and closed my eyes for the first time in over twenty-four hours. As I lay there, I felt a line of pressure above my eyes, firm yet not painful, not like a headache.'I knew that it was her; I knew instinctively that part of her essential being ... we use the word soul, and it's as good as any other . . . was merging with mine, binding us together.

'A few weeks after that, I had a dream. I was drawn towards, and eventually came to a bridge. I could see her on the other side, but I couldn't cross; she knew I was there. She wasn't smiling, but she was content that I could see. I knew then that she had brought me there.

'The bridge was grey, and so was everything around, but I knew also that, when I can cross, I'll see colours the like of which I've never imagined.'

She made as if to speak, but he held up a hand to stop her. 'No,' he said softly. That's not the story.

'A few months later, the Big Man insisted that I take the kids and go off to his place in Spain for a couple of weeks. So we went out there, and lay beside the pool, and went to the beach, and all the time, I felt this great s.p.a.ce around me, empty, yet not empty.

'Then, one night I was lying in bed in Bob and Sarah's guest room, asleep, and dreaming about Olive. All of a sudden, I woke up.' He snapped his fingers suddenly, making her jump. 'Abruptly; just like that.

'There was someone there, lying beside me. It was her; she was there, in my arms. We couldn't speak, either of us. We just hugged, and we cried.

Then after I'm not sure how long... more than a couple of seconds, anyway ... she just faded, melted away, leaving me alone, but with a huge feeling of relief.

'I lay there for a while, until eventually, I went back to sleep, back into the dream from which I'd awakened. But next morning, it was all still there, as clear as it had been at the time.

'Now I know, Lou, that inevitably, you're sitting there thinking, "The poor man," or some such, and that it was all part of the same dream. Yet what I've told you is as pure a truth as I can give you. Just like you, I've had many dreams; bad ones, good ones, dark ones, bright ones . . . aye, even wet ones when I was a teenager.

'But I've never, ever, had a dream that I could touch. I've never, before or since, had a dream that cried on my shoulder . . . and neither, I'll bet, have you.'

She looked at him, unaware of the tears in the corners of her eyes and shook her head.

'Olive told me many things in that wordless encounter,' he continued.

'Most of all, though, she told me to be patient, that it would take as long as