‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said.

‘You do?’

Valentine pulled his hand away from the window. ‘You think I’m hiding something, like I did on the Janie Cooper case.’

Some cases were repeated in conversation among officers and others were stoppered in the past. The missing schoolgirl was one of those cases that no one mentioned. Until now, the DI and the DS had never even tried to talk about it.

‘Oh, we’re back there are we?’ said McCormack.

‘I’d sooner not be.’

‘Am I to assume that you’re there whether you want to be or not?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘OK. That tells me all I need to know. How long have you felt like this?’

‘I never said I felt like anything, Sylvia.’

‘You didn’t need to. It’s burning out of you, and yes, like it was on the Cooper case.’

Valentine reached for the window button, let some air in. ‘It’s hot in here.’

‘I know what that case did to you, Bob. I saw it, you let it get out of hand and I told you that at the time. If you’re in the same place again, you need to do something about it.’

The detective nearly laughed, but produced a guttural throat clearing. ‘Right …’

It had started with nightmares on the Cooper case. Sweat-soaked nights when he would wake trembling and vaguely terrified from the sight of something he couldn’t explain. It didn’t feel like a dream, more a glimpse of a time or place that existed elsewhere. He had put it down to his temperament – this was his first case after the stabbing – he didn’t know how to adjust to life again. He was weakened, in body and spirit, unsure of who he was. But the nightmares were just his resting mind playing this out, surely. And then they started to appear in the waking world.

‘And what would you recommend I do, ask the chief super to reinstate my visits to the shrink?’ said Valentine.

‘No. I don’t think a police psychologist is remotely qualified to deal with your problem, sir.’

Now he did laugh, though he found nothing she said funny. ‘It would be the psychologist with the heart problems by the end of it.’

Valentine hadn’t told DS McCormack that the nightmares and visions from the Cooper case had never ended. He tried to get used to them, let them become a part of his new reality in the hope that they would stop. But they never did. He learnt to live with the occasional unease that he wasn’t quite as firmly settled in the real world as others but his heightened senses made this difficult.

‘What happened back there at the hospital?’ said McCormack.

Even though he knew the question was coming it still jolted him. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh, come on. I saw your face.’

There was no point in misleading the DS, she had experience of dealing with people in Valentine’s situation from past cases. Any of the others on the squad, or even Clare, wouldn’t know what to say and would judge him accordingly. But McCormack was different.

‘OK. I saw a man,’ said Valentine.

‘What? In the room?’

‘In the room with us. A little old man, in a brown tweed suit.’

‘And you didn’t think that was strange?’

‘I thought it was Mrs Gilchrist’s husband at first.’

‘At first?’

‘Yes. I saw him sitting there, he got up, nodded to me and then when I looked again he was gone.’

DS McCormack held the wheel straight as the car crossed yellow chevrons leading up to the roundabout. She passed an open junction and accelerated beyond a grey saloon before speaking again. ‘I knew it.’

‘Knew what?’

‘When we had the parapsychologist in Glasgow, that time I told you about with the missing persons, I got quite taken with the whole subject, kind of immersed myself in it.’

‘You said.’

‘Well, the psychic told me that when people are dying, or about to die, preparing to die, that’s when the passed souls gather. The spirits of those they once knew surround them.’

The suggestion unsettled Valentine; it wasn’t an explanation he wanted to believe in. ‘You see, this is just the kind of thing I have trouble with, Sylvia.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No. Neither do I. That’s exactly it. I don’t buy into it because this is precisely the kind of thing that any old crank can make up.’

She pinched her cheeks, her reply came with a flat delivery. ‘You mean because it’s not taken from a textbook or a manual it’s irrelevant. I know what you mean, I had that problem too but you need to realise this isn’t car maintenance or police procedure, all you know goes right out the door. It’s what you feel that matters.’ She glanced sideways. ‘What do you feel, Bob?’

‘Honestly? I feel like I’m being messed with.’

‘Well, welcome to my world. We all feel like that.’

‘Not in this way. I need to be on my game, this is a murder hunt, Sylvia. I can’t collate the facts surrounding the taking of a life when I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.’

They’d reached the turn-off for Ayr. The blinkers flashed on the wet tarmac as the car decelerated. ‘I think I know a way to help. If you’ll let me.’

The offer was made once before and Valentine rejected it. This time, however, he knew there may not be another offer. The Cooper case still lingered in memory too, he couldn’t go through another bout like that. If it was happening again, he needed to do something. There was no running away, ignoring it wasn’t possible and the clumsy approach he’d adopted the last time nearly killed him. So was he scared? Yes, but not to face it, only to accept it because that meant it was real.

‘I don’t know, Sylvia. I have to think about this.’

‘OK, but don’t take too long. Thinking’s rarely the answer, Bob. Someone once told me that.’

9

DI Bob Valentine sat in his car on the edge of Barns Street and watched DS McCormack begin a three-point turn in the road. It was a wide street, one of Ayr’s more expansive Georgian terraces that had once been filled with comfortable family homes, but was now replaced by dentist surgeries, lawyers’ offices and the occasional surveyors. The DS struggled with the simple manoeuvre and eventually stopped with the car blocking one side of the road. Was she all right? For a moment Valentine contemplated going over, then he noticed her lips moving and knew she must have taken a call. It was brief, and when she was finished the reverse lights lit up.

The DI was lowering his window as she drew up next to him. ‘What’s up, Sylvia?’

‘That was Ally, the station just took a call from Crosshouse.’

Before she relayed the news Valentine already guessed what it must be. ‘Agnes Gilchrist?’

‘She just passed away.’

He hit the heel of his hand off the steering wheel. ‘Damn it.’

‘I’m sure her family’s less than pleased, too.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.’

‘I know.’ McCormack put her car in gear; it was late, time to be home. ‘She’s in safe hands now, Bob.’

Valentine lifted his gaze in time to see the knowing frown on the DS’s face as she drove off. ‘Passed souls gather round a deathbed, eh, Sylvia.’ He was sure McCormack would have more to say on the matter. She would only mention the subject again when he was ready, though. It was up to him if he wanted to accept her offer of help. That he needed help was hardly under question, but accepting there was even an issue would have to be surmounted first.

On the way to Masonhill the detective’s thoughts turned to his arrival in the family home. The knowledge that he had missed his daughter’s stage debut coincided with an irritation in the lining of his gut. Too much vending-machine coffee? The pre-packaged sandwiches? It might have been either but he suspected the reflux was psychosomatic.

It was late, the girls would be in bed. Clare was likely to be in her bed too, but she wouldn’t be asleep. She didn’t sleep when he was working late. She propped herself up on cushions, a book on show but not being read, and rehearsed her recriminations.