Stone Cold (27 page)

For a moment Sheila thought that rescue might finally have arrived, that she was finally to be liberated from this living hell. She sensed the person move close to her and she tensed her body ready to drive the hairpin deep into their eyes.

Suddenly the ear plugs were yanked from her ears and a voice, a woman’s voice, whispered in her ear.

‘It’s okay, don’t move, I’m here to rescue you.’

Sheila closed her hand a little tighter around the pin in her hand as she felt the blindfold that had denied her vision for so long being loosened around her head. Suddenly it was pulled free and Sheila squinted against even the dull light that flooded into her world.

The recliner was in the centre of a storage unit, no more than twenty by eight by six feet, all cold metal walls and a thin rubber carpet that both helped to insulate the unit a little and deadened all footfalls. An old chair leaned near one wall to her right, and to her left was a pile of old paper bags from a supermarket or convenience store.

Outside the unit it was raining, the torrential downfall glowing in the brilliant headlamps of a vehicle parked nearby. The harsh white beams scythed through the rain and into the storage unit, illuminating the face of a woman in her thirties, long brown hair and business suit, a concerned expression etched into her features.

‘We have to leave, right now.’

Sheila stared at the woman in disbelief. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ the woman replied. ‘Your husband is going to kill you in return for your life insurance. We need to go, now.’

Sheila was about to scream and plunge the pin into the woman’s eyes when she caught a waft of a scent that she had recognised and a shadow passed in front of the car’s headlamps to fill the storage unit. Both Sheila and the woman looked up to see a man standing silhouetted in the entrance to the storage unit, rain dripping from his hair and gleaming on a pistol he held close to his thigh. Sheila blinked in surprise as she recognised the man watching them.

‘Dale?’

***

37

Griffin sat in his car and waited.

It was an odd thing about police work that you got so used to sitting around waiting for something to happen. In many ways, it had been the same in the military.
Hurry up and wait.
Griffin was bored and a little anxious, but he shut his mind down and waited in stoic silence.

She appeared out of the drizzle, the streetlights reflecting off the damp pavements like glittering galaxies as she hurried across to the car and opened the door. Griffin watched as she climbed in and shook out her umbrella.

‘Thanks for coming,’ Griffin said.

Angela looked at him as though to snap a retort, but then her expression changed as she took him in. She started to say something, hesitated, then tried again.

‘Something happened,’ she said clairvoyantly.

‘Yeah,’ he replied, ‘it did.’

Angela watched him for a moment. ‘You look, better.’

‘You look amazing.’

Griffin wasn’t just saying it. Angela’s strawberry blonde hair was hanging in curls to her shoulders, and he could see that she was wearing a jet–black dress cut just above the knee on one side and cut low to her ankle on the other. Black shoes to match. Earrings and a slim gold necklace that he’d bought her when he left the military sparkled in the light. She looked perfect.

‘You look amazed,’ she smiled back. ‘When was the last time I dolled up for you?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Griffin said as he started the car. ‘You’re here now.’

Angela yanked the mirror down to check her look.

‘Damn it,’ she muttered. ‘I had my hair done.’

‘What made you change your mind?’ Griffin asked. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come out.’

Angela fluffed her hair as she replied. ‘I’m your wife. You asked nicely. What the hell else was I supposed to do?’

He drove her to the restaurant that Kathryn had recommended, which was only a few minutes away, and they walked in together. A wide reception area greeted them, all glossy black with electric blue lighting. A glass panel on one wall was filled with photographs taken inside the restaurant. The waitress took their jackets and guided them to their table, opposite a vast mirror down which flowed torrents of water through rainbow hues. Menus appeared, along with glasses of sparkling complimentary champagne.

Griffin, his collar feeling tight and his jacket scratchy, took a sip of the champagne as Angela arranged her handbag, checked her look in a little folding mirror, checked her cell phone and then her look one more time. Such things used to annoy the hell out of Griffin, but suddenly they had become endearing again, tiny little habits that he’d forgotten he liked so much.

‘You’re staring,’ Angela said.

Griffin blinked. ‘You blame me?’ He looked around at the restaurant. ‘Great place.’

‘It was a good choice,’ Angela agreed. ‘Somewhere nice but neutral so we can talk.’

Griffin felt himself tense a little, but she raised a hand to forestall him.

‘No arguments,’ she said. ‘No rows, no accusations, no blame. Just talking.’

Griffin relaxed a little and picked up his champagne again. ‘Okay, I can deal with that.’

‘Good,’ Angela said. ‘So, you’ve been a world class asshole lately.’

Griffin coughed on his champagne and shot Angela a look, only to see her grinning behind her glass. Griffin’s face split into a smile that hurt.

‘That your idea of no accusations?’

‘I didn’t say we couldn’t state facts,’ she replied. ‘For the record I’m willing to state that, on occasion, I may also have acted without due consideration for your feelings.’

‘Is that a confession?’

‘It’s another fact. I think that the problem here, and the one that’s never come up between us, is that we’re both suffering in our own ways but haven’t been able to
share
that suffering.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ Griffin said. ‘I don’t mean that in a bad way, okay? I’m just not following.’

Angela set her glass down. ‘You ever hear about that study, something to do with ordinary people in extraordinary situations, how they relate to others?’

‘Yeah, there have been loads of them, we used to hear about them in the army,’ Griffin replied. ‘Everybody thinks that they’re carrying the can while everybody else is doing less than them and… Ah, I’m with you.’

‘We’ve been so wrapped up in ourselves that we haven’t been able to share the load,’ Angela said. ‘We’re always focusing internally on our own struggles and not talking about them like we should, not clearing the air enough.’

Griffin nodded, shrugged his shoulders. ‘I guess I’m guilty of that.’

‘Me too,’ Angela admitted. ‘Things get to the point where neither of us thinks the other is listening any more, or is even capable of listening or understanding any more, and before you know it,
zip – ping
and we’re breaking up.’

‘I don’t want that,’ Griffin said.

‘Nor do I,’ Angela agreed. ‘I’ve never wanted that. I want my husband, I want our life together.’

‘You want me to leave the force?’ Griffin asked. ‘I can do it, if you need me to.’

‘Like hell,’ Angela said. ‘I want you out there catching bad–guys because that’s what you do. It’s what you’ve always done.’

Griffin looked at his champagne for what felt like a long time. ‘I kept going back,’ he said.

He sensed rather than saw his wife tense, as though she instinctively knew that something was coming that she had not heard before.

‘Going back where?’

Griffin felt some of the tight knot in his chest tremble and loosen as he spoke through lips that seemed suddenly numb.

‘Back to where I shot the kid,’ he managed.

Angela waited a few moments before she replied. ‘Why?’

‘To try and figure out what went wrong. What I could have done differently. Why it was that the bullet just had to hit her instead of the asshole with the gun. Just two eighths of an inch to the right, Angie. Two eighths. I measured it myself. If that bullet had gone out of my gun a fraction of an inch to the right we’d have been celebrating the death of the abductor and the safety of that little girl.’

‘But it didn’t,’ Angela said. ‘There’s nothing that you could have done about that.’

‘I know.’

Angela chose her words with care. ‘Is that what’s really been bothering you?’

‘I didn’t know it until now,’ Griffin said. ‘I know I didn’t kill her, and I know that the guilt over what happened is natural but misplaced. I know it wasn’t my fault. But why, Angie? If there’s any justice in the universe, why would an innocent little girl die and a drug–addled, murdering biker live?’

Angela sighed. ‘Because the only justice we have is what we make for ourselves. This world can be both heaven and hell – it’s how we make it that determines how it turns out. You’re one of the people trying to make it closer to heaven than to hell and you’re heavily outnumbered by the opposition.’

Griffin nodded but his expression was fixed into a grimace of disbelief.

‘It makes me wonder if it’s worthwhile, you know?’

Angela reached across to hold Griffin’s hand.

‘The reason you, and all people like you, do what you do is because if you didn’t then we wouldn’t be sitting here. This restaurant wouldn’t exist. We’d be living in countries like Afghanistan or Sierra Leone, where you can die for just going to school or having money or believing in somebody else’s wrong god. Without people like you, we’d all be unlucky.’

Griffin, his head bowed as he listened, looked up at his wife. ‘This is why I love you.’

Angela smiled and squeezed back. ‘And I you. I want this life, even with its tragedies, because it’s so much better than the alternative. I want to be married to you, a cop, in a safe country where our child can grow up and have a future.’

Griffin nodded, squeezed Angela’s hand back, and then his train of thought ground to a halt.

‘Child?’ Griffin echoed.

Angela said nothing as she smiled across the table at him. Griffin felt his heart skip a beat, felt a hot flush tingle across his face and down his spine.

‘Oh, Angie,’ was all he could say, his lips numb. ‘Why didn’t you…?’

‘I’ve been too afraid to say anything,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t known if we have a future together, Scott.’

Griffin closed his eyes and shook his head, cursed himself. He looked back up at Angela.

‘We’ve always got a future together,’ he said. ‘I may be a world class asshole but I’m not going to run away from you. I just need some time, is all.’

‘I know,’ Angela said. ‘That’s why I went to my sister’s, to give you some space. It was all I could think of to do.’

Griffin felt pain sting the corners of his eyes as he fought to keep his face from collapsing.

‘How long?’ he asked.

‘Ten weeks,’ Angela replied. ‘I had to tell you because I’ll be having a scan again in a few weeks. We can decide if we want to know whether it’s a boy or a girl later.’

Griffin felt something escape from his lips that was somewhere between a cough and a cry. His eyes flooded and he felt like an asshole yet again but this time it was for all the right reasons as he covered his face with his hand.

Angela was beside him in an instant and he threw his arms around her and pulled her close to him.

‘It’s up to you,’ he managed to mumble into her shoulder. ‘You decide. You’re carrying the load.’

Angela laughed as she held him. ‘Always the poet, Scott.’

A waitress hurried up beside them. ‘Are you guys okay?’

Griffin nodded, the smile still plastered over his face. ‘Sorry, I get real emotional about champagne.’

Griffin took his seat opposite his wife as every muscle and fibre in his body seemed to unwind and the poison infecting him leaked away with his tears.

***

38

Kathryn froze as she saw Stephen standing behind her.

The rain tumbling from the darkening sky glistened in his hair. His shirt was drenched, raindrops falling from the tips of his fingers in one hand and from the barrel of a .38 pistol held tightly in the other.

Kathryn jumped behind Sheila’s recliner and pointed at him. ‘I knew it,’ she snapped. ‘I followed him here yesterday.’

‘Dale!’ Sheila yelped. ‘What the hell is going on?!’

Kathryn felt a lump clench her throat. Her legs felt as though they had taken root in the concrete floor of the storage unit beneath her, her brain clouded in a dense fog of fear as she found herself transfixed by the pistol in Stephen’s hand. Suddenly, and with a terrible clarity, she realised how Scott Griffin must have felt when facing down armed gunmen in the line of duty. She still had not moved. Neither had Stephen.

‘Dale!’ Sheila shrieked.

Stephen remained silent and still, but he blinked his gaze away from Kathryn and seemed to notice Sheila for the first time. A grim, almost rueful smile spread across the clean line of his jaw as though a dangerous thought had flickered through his mind and was trying to escape from his lips. He took a pace forward into the storage unit.

‘Stephen,’ Kathryn whispered.

The name had fallen from her lips as though of its own accord. She didn’t even realise that she had spoken until she heard her own voice in her ears. Stephen looked at her, a fearsome gaze touched with a maniacal glint of humour, as though somehow he was both enraged and delighted at the same time. He shook his head.

‘My name is Dale McKenzie.’

His voice was low, charged with a live current of menace. The index finger of his right hand stroked the cold, wet metal of the pistol as he loomed in the entrance.

Sheila glared at her husband. ‘What are you doing?’

Kathryn swallowed, her throat dry and painful as she managed to force more words out past her lips.

‘Who is Stephen?’ she asked the man standing before them.

Dale stared at her for a moment longer, the smile still fixed to his face as rainwater streamed down his black hair.

‘My brother,’ he replied, sounding distant, suddenly hollow as words tumbled from his lips. ‘He died when he was six. We were both orphans, Kathryn. They handed his papers to me after he died. I kept them to remember him by. They’ve come in most helpful for many, many years.’