Read Online Candles and Roses by Alex Walters - Free Book Online Page B

Have they finally sacked you?’
    Lovely to see you too, dear, he thought. ‘They’ve still not found me out. But I’ll need to work late tonight. So I thought I’d pop in on my way past.’
    She took it better than he’d expected. ‘I saw the latest on the lunchtime news,’ she said. ‘Sounds like another one?’
    ‘Looks that way,’ he said. ‘Which isn’t good news for anyone.’
    ‘Least of all us,’ Chrissie said. She looked at the casserole dish into which she had been carefully dicing vegetables. ‘I’m just doing a stew,’ she said. ‘It’ll keep till you get back. Whenever that is.’ She allowed just the faintest edge of bitterness to creep into her tone.
    ‘Aye, I know, Chrissie. Look, I’m sorry—’
    ‘I know you’re sorry, Alec. You’re always sorry. It doesn’t help.’
    ‘I know—’
    She held up a hand as if stopping traffic. ‘Don’t, Alec. We’ve been through it. It doesn’t go anywhere. There’s no point in having another argument.’
    As if I’d been the one trying to provoke it, he thought. He could feel his irritation rising. The anger and despair he’d felt when speaking to that bastard up in Culbokie came back into his throat like bile. This was how it always seemed to be these days. As if she wanted to needle him just enough and then stamp the lid firmly back if he tried to respond. In his more rational moments, he knew he did the same. It was like probing a loose tooth. You could never stop yourself until the damn thing dropped out.
    ‘No,’ he said, finally, ‘you’re right. There’s no point. Everything’s been said. It doesn’t help us to keep saying it.’
    She looked, for a moment, as if she were about to argue after all. ‘No, you’re right. It doesn’t.’
    ‘I’ll give you a call when I’m on my way back. I hope it won’t be too late.’
    ‘No, well. I know it’s important. Those poor wee lassies. It’s frightening just to think about it.’
    ‘Whoever’s doing this is a mad bastard, right enough.’
    ‘Look, Alec, I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m a cantankerous old bitch, just like you’re a miserable old bastard. But at the end of the day we’re on the same side. We’re having to deal with the same things. We’re both suffering. We need to help each other.’
    ‘Aye, you’re right,’ he said, finally. ‘I’ve had a bad time today. Went up to see the parents of the first victim—we’ve managed to ID her now. God-bothering old bugger up in Culbokie. Cared more about his precious Bible than he did about his murdered daughter.’
    ‘Alec—’
    ‘Aye, I know. Get a bit of perspective. But bastards like that don’t deserve any perspective.’ He paused. ‘And then we got the call about the second body. They found her in this bloody cave just up from Rosemarkie. I watched as they carried her body away. She was just a poor wee slip of a thing—’ He could feel, embarrassingly, the tears welling behind his eyes.
    Chrissie took his hand in hers. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d made a gesture like that. She was still the same woman he’d married, he thought, the fiery redhead who used to drag him on to the dance-floor and made damn sure he had a good time, whether he wanted to or not. But she looked shrunken now, her shoulders stooped, streaks of grey in that copper hair. ‘Alec. I know . I understand,’ she said. ‘Nobody else does. Nobody else can. But I do. I’m there as well, you know?’
    He wanted to say it wasn’t a fucking competition. But he knew that hadn’t been what she’d meant. She meant, he thought, that they were both burning in the same hell. But at least they were there together. For what that was worth.
    ‘Aye, pet, I know,’ he said. ‘We struggle on, eh? That’s all we can do.’
    ‘That’s all we can do.’
    He released her hand and, giving her a kiss on the lips that felt more perfunctory than he’d intended, he turned and left her standing in the kitchen. He felt as if he