When Sorry Is Not Enough (11 page)

‘Did you? That was good of you,’ Luke answered, but he was thinking the only reason that Drew, an apology for a detective, pinned the brownie points on to Phil was because there were things that didn’t quite add up! Obviously, corners had been cut. Correct procedures were not followed to the letter. This meant that if all that came to light and a miscarriage of justice was found in Irish’s favour, it wouldn’t be Drew’s career that would come to an abrupt end but Phil’s. Luke also accepted that it was amazing the lengths some officers would go to when their pensions were just about to come to fruition.

Nancy calling to Luke to come over to the bar was just what Luke required. He had discovered more in the meeting with Holmes and Watson than he had hoped. Luke hoped they still considered he was wet behind the ears. He smiled when he accepted how often his being underestimated had worked to his advantage.

‘Another drink calling,’ Luke said, rising to leave.

‘Aye, run along, son,’ Drew said slowly before quickly adding, ‘but before you go, do you know that Phil here, his sister, gorgeous Barbara, is on the force now?’ For some reason Luke didn’t catch the meaning Drew was implying even when he added, ‘The star of ‘B’ Division at Gayfield she is.’

He was still trying to figure out why Drew had to tell him about Phil’s sister when he arrived back at the bar. Another surprise awaited him. Nancy had her coat on.

‘This is Duncan, Luke,’ Nancy announced, grinning. ‘He’s my right-hand man here. Going to hold the fort, aren’t you Duncan while you, Luke, drive me over to Sally’s.’

Nancy was about to get into Luke’s car when she huffed, ‘Ridiculous this is. Would you believe I have been trying for a week now to get Sally to have a chat with me? Has the cheek to say she’s always too busy.’

‘Aye, it’s time she got some help in at the Four Marys now it appears Josie is not coming back.’

‘She’s not?’

Luke shook his head. He didn’t want to discuss Josie with anyone right now. Here was another problem that was not quite adding up. Starting up the car he recalled how last week he had got the shock of his life.

Getting things sorted out between his two sisters had become Luke’s priority. So without telling anybody he had taken himself up to Alfredo’s restaurant last Friday at lunchtime.

He had just entered the bistro when Josie, dressed in a knee-length dress protected by a gingham red and white Dutch apron, came forward. ‘Luke,’ she squealed, throwing her arms around his neck. ‘Oh, it’s just great to see you. Want a table?’

‘Aye, and a chat with you.’

‘Chat with me? You see it all. So what is there to talk about?’ Josie gestured with her hands for Luke to look about the room. ‘Don’t suppose you believe that I’m one of the family here, but I am. This is my life now, Luke. Can you believe it? I have to keep pinching myself because I’m sure I’m going to wake up and find it has all just been a lovely dream.’ Josie looked about the salon and hunching her shoulders she sighed. ‘I know Sally has sent you here to beg me to come back but don’t waste your time, Luke.’ Taking out her order pad she smiled broadly before saying, ‘Now could I recommend the lasagne?’

Luke’s car had just drawn up in front of Sally’s guest house when Nancy jumped out and raced up the stairs. After ringing the bell, she hopped from one foot to the other waiting for Sally to open the door to her. To her disgust when her summons was answered it was Maggie and not Sally who ushered her in.

‘Where’s Sally?’ Nancy demanded rudely, pushing past Maggie.

‘As she is just about to leave for the Four Marys she’s getting her coat on,’ retorted Maggie.

Advancing into the hall, Nancy called out, ‘Sally, it’s me. I just have to speak to you.’

When Sally emerged from her downstairs bedroom she already had her coat on and her handbag was slung over her left wrist. ‘Oh, Nancy,’ she gasped. ‘How bad this has been of me. I knew you wanted to talk and I just kept putting it off. Tell you what, let’s you and I jump in the back of Luke’s car and we can natter all the way along to the Shore.’

Nancy looked a bit reticent and eyed Luke suspiciously.

‘Oh, you don’t need to worry about my brother here, he’s the soul of discretion. Believe me, he is so involved in his own worries just now he won’t hear a word of what we discuss.’

Nancy was still looking somewhat nervous but Sally grabbed her by the right elbow and steered her out of the door.

The car had just left Seaview Terrace when Sally turned to face Nancy. ‘Now what is it that’s worrying you?’

Nancy bowed her head and sniffed. ‘Sally, I’ve met someone,’ she blurted.

‘Good. Nobody should spend all their time on their own if there’s an alternative.’

Hesitating and blowing out through her mouth, Nancy began to resemble a fish out of water.

Sally started to laugh. ‘Nancy,’ she chuckled, ‘with the life you’ve led surely you can tell me what’s bugging you.’

‘It’s. It’s. It’s … Oh, Sally, it’s just that he wants to marry me.’

‘Well that’s not a problem,’ Sally chortled.

‘But it is. You see,’ Nancy continued in a whisper, ‘I don’t know where he got the idea but he thinks I don’t want to say
yes
because I’m afraid.’

‘Of what exactly?’

‘Sleeping with a man,’ was Nancy’s quick retort.

Luke who had not wished to eavesdrop was so astounded by Nancy’s revelation that he lost control of the car. Quickly it swerved and crossed over the road and just managed to miss colliding with the Seafield Sewage Works wall.

‘For goodness sake,’ Sally roared. ‘Have a care, Luke! I mean if you want to kill us would it not be better to steer on to the other side of the road and land us in the crematorium?’

Without uttering a word, Luke straightened the car up, crossed back over the road and brought it to an abrupt halt just outside the cemetery gates.

Sally let out a long sigh and waited until everybody had recovered from the fright before she spoke. ‘Now, Luke, just get out and have a wee walk. See on the corner,’ she said, pointing back to the road leading up to the Eastern General Hospital, ‘there’s a wee café. So away and get yourself a tea or coffee … or anything you like but get lost for fifteen minutes.’

Luke had just left the car when Sally turned again to face Nancy. ‘Now what exactly are you trying to tell me? What did you tell this man?’

‘I didn’t say anything about my past to him. That pig of a Detective Inspector, Drew Washington, egged Benny on when he knew that he fancied me. Told him I was a virgin and at one time I’d taken holy orders.’

‘He what?’

‘Aye, laughed he did and spluttered, “Oh aye, she likes none of this and none of that.” ’

Sally was angry. She looked at Nancy and she could see she was distressed. Taking Nancy’s hand in hers she quietly whispered, ‘Nancy, how do you feel about this man?’

Tears were now cascading down Nancy’s cheeks. ‘Sure, since he came into the pub a year ago,’ she sobbed through her tears, ‘life has just been so wonderful. Sally, he’s such a nice guy – a real gent. Even brings me roses and pats my cheeks.’

Sally allowed time to pass while Nancy composed herself. ‘He really wants to marry me, Sally. Set me up in a wee house. Just him and I together but …’

Glancing through the back window of the car Sally could see Luke was returning. ‘That blasted café just had to be shut, didn’t it?’ she mumbled as she indicated to Luke to take another stroll. Facing Nancy again she softly said, ‘You have to tell him, Nancy. If you don’t, all your life you will be wondering who is going to tell him that you … made your living … to hell … tell him the truth of how your bastard of a father put you and your sister out to sell … yourselves to keep him …’ Sally gulped and gasped before uttering, ‘in booze and fags.’

Nancy shook her head, mopped her brow and continued to weep. Luke returning to the car broke the unbearable silence between the two women. ‘Look,’ he began gently, ‘it’s time we were on our way to open up the Four Marys. You two can continue your conversation there while I serve the drouthie punters.’

It was as if Sally and Nancy were unaware that Luke had got back in the car. ‘Sally,’ Nancy began, ‘how could any decent man like Benny want to set up home with an old bun like me?’

‘You’re belittling yourself. You are not an old bun,’ Sally protested vehemently. ‘Putting your past behind you is what you have to do. The only way of doing that is to tell this Benny what you were but add what you are now.’

The car had drawn up in front of the pub. All alighted and Nancy’s cynical laughter echoed down the Shore.

‘You can cackle all you like Nancy but I haven’t put in all the work I have into making you respectable to let you throw it away. There has to be a way for it to work out for you and I promise you I will find that way.’

‘Good, Sally,’ remarked Luke, ‘but in the meantime do you think you could get back to making a living?’

It was nearly midnight when Sally got home and she was surprised that Luke’s car was parked on the front street. Earlier in the evening he had elected to drive Nancy from the Four Marys back up to the Royal Stuart. From there, he said, he was going up town to attend to some of his own business.

He did go up town but he decided to park the car in Seaview Terrace first then jump on a Princes-Street-bound bus.

Striding over the east end of Princes Street towards Wellington Statue, Luke was surprised when he heard someone call his name. Glancing towards the Register Clock House he was pleased to acknowledge his half-brother, John Thomson.

Both men slapped each other’s backs. ‘Good to see you, mate,’ Luke exclaimed. ‘Meant to get down to visit you but it has been like a merry-go-round since I set foot in Sally’s door.’

‘Aye, and since the powers that be decided that I was too friendly with the pub staff in Leith …’

Luke laughed before butting in with, ‘Did you no tell them Sally was your sister?’

John shrugged. ‘Think they knew that and that was another reason for putting me up to Box Seventeen in Rose Street to finish my thirty.’

‘Rose Street. So what are you doing here?’

‘Just strolled along because the young guys here at Box Twelve just need a wee bit of support when they have a capture.’ John shook his head. ‘You see, Luke, the recruits the day are mair academic than we were. Believe me, they nearly shit themselves when they have to lock up an angry man.’

Luke laughed. ‘So they wouldn’t make the grade in Leith?’

‘Nae chance. But come on, I have to get back to my beat so why don’t you walk with me?’

They were just passing Marks & Spencer’s when Luke blurted, ‘Sorry about your old man.’

‘Your old man too if we believe his story that your mother and him had an affair that lasted a lifetime.’

Luke squinted over to John. He would never be able to explain the fact that from his first day as a raw recruit in Leith, he had taken to John – the two of them had bonded. It was uncanny the way they always looked out for each other. It was as if they had known before Sally, Josie and himself that they were related by blood. That day in the Four Marys when old Jock had confessed he had fathered them all, Luke, although stunned, felt a warm glow grow inside him – he was delighted that John who was eighteen years his senior and whom he had always looked on as a much older brother really was related to him by blood. Right then Luke took a vow to get more involved in John’s life. Give him what he longed for: a younger brother.

Both men had now stopped and were facing each other. ‘Makes no difference now,’ Luke said with a sigh. ‘We’re all his bairns. He was a good cop. Bloody rotten father but then you cannae win them all. And at least the girls, Sally and Josie, were able to say they at last knew who their father was.’

‘Talking of the girls,’ John blurted. ‘What’s the story with Josie?’

‘Have you come across her up this way?’

‘Aye. Somebody told me she wasn’t in the Four Marys now and know what, I was surprised when I saw her dishing out ice cream in …’ Before John could go on, his radio sounded and he answered it. ‘Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Going back there right now but would it not make mair sense to put someone with experience with thae young lads?’ He signalled with a hunch of his shoulders to Luke before saying into his mouthpiece, ‘Aye, well we aw ken our inspector couldnae organise a piss up in a brewery.’ John switched off his radio, grimaced, then immediately began to run back along Princes Street while he hollered back to Luke, ‘Sorry, mate. Seems Box Twelve is under siege and the only cavalry man in the area is me.’ Luckily Luke was not quite out of earshot when John shouted, ‘Catch up with you tomorrow. Have something to tell you about Josie that I think you should do something about.’

* * *

Luke watched John’s retreating figure until it was lost in the crowds meandering in Princes Street. It had been his intention to do a pub crawl in the hope he would bump into one or two of the mates he had socialised with before he had left for Hong Kong.

He had just entered Robertsons Bar, a popular pub on Rose Street that he had enjoyed frequenting, when John’s parting words rang in his ears again.

The barmaid, Lorna, who remembered Luke, smiled. ‘Well are you not a sight for sore eyes?’ she enthused. ‘And what’s your pleasure tonight?’

Luke didn’t respond. He had not heard a word Lorna had uttered. The only sound he was aware of was the echo of John saying, ‘Have to tell you something about Josie that I think you should do something about.’
What on earth was John going on about
, he wondered, before about-turning and exiting from the bar.

Once outside he knew he had to revisit Alfredo’s restaurant. He just had to confront Josie again. Okay, she had said she had made her decision and now she wanted to be left in peace to enjoy her new life and bond with her new family. Again Luke’s mind was racing ahead.

Before he had left for Hong Kong he had been a good, very good, cop – a community man who had seen the best in everybody and tried to help out wherever he could. Three years experience in the CID in Hong Kong had changed his outlook. No longer could he just accept anything at face value. He was always looking for other reasons, other solutions, wondering if people’s relationships were really as secure and as wonderful as was being presented to the outside world. Yes, he still loved his fellow man and wanted to see the best in him but he was now aware, especially since what had happened to Irish, those things and relationships were not always what they appeared to be.