Read Online Eye of the Raven by Ken McClure - Free Book Online Page B

hate loose ends,’ said Steven.
    McClintock nodded and paused before saying, ‘It’s as well to know that a lot of people up here are . . . a bit sensitive about the Julie Summers case.’
    ‘ That sounded like a warning,’ said Steven.
    ‘ I’m just telling you how it is,’ said McClintock, ‘and asking you to consider just for a moment that you might be playing Hector Combe’s game for him.’
    ‘ I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Steven. ‘In the meantime, how do I find the forensics lab?’
    ‘ Come to Fettes around nine in the morning, I’ll run you over.’
    As they stepped outside and started walking back to the car, McClintock asked, ‘Do you know your way around Edinburgh?’
    ‘ Well enough,’ replied Steven.
    ‘ There are plenty of small hotels in Ferry Road if you’re looking for a place to stay.’
    ‘ I’ll be fine,’ replied Steven.
    They drove back over to police headquarters and Steven picked up his own car, saying that he’d see McClintock in the morning. He declined his suggestion that they go out on the town together and have a few more beers, saying that he had some paperwork to catch up on and fancied an early night. Neither was strictly true; he just wanted to be on his own to think over the happenings of the day.
    Almost on autopilot, he drove over to the south of the city with the intention of booking in at the Grange Hotel. He’d stayed there twice before when in Edinburgh, the first time with Lisa on an overnight stay after attending a concert during the Edinburgh Festival, the second after Lisa’s death when he’d been on an assignment in West Lothian. On that occasion he had chosen to stay there as part of a personal rehabilitation programme – a sort of test to see if he had got over Lisa’s death and could revisit places they had known together without the overwhelming sense of grief that usually accompanied such attempts. The Grange was the first of these places to assure him that he had. He could now think about Lisa with fondness and without the awful knife in the guts feeling of raw grief.
    It was during the course of the West Lothian assignment that he had met a girl named Eve Ferguson who had convinced him that life had to go on and he had to move on with it. She had done her bit to exorcise the feelings of guilt he’d been prone to when faced with the possibility of an association with any woman other than Lisa.
    Eve had been a beautiful, intelligent and down to earth girl who had been quite frank about her career ambitions and whom he might easily have fallen in love with had they had more time together. As it was, she had not seen herself settling down with Steven, acting as Jenny’s stepmother and wandering aimlessly around supermarkets - as she’d suspected such a future might hold. It wasn’t just children that women pushed round shopping centres in buggies, she had maintained; it was broken dreams and abandoned careers. Eve had been an MSc student at university at the time and wanted to give life her best shot. They had parted on friendly terms.
    There had been one other woman in Steven’s life since that time and their time together had also been brief. Caroline had been a doctor, a public health consultant in Manchester at a time when a viral epidemic was sweeping the city. She had fallen victim to the virus while working as a volunteer nurse and had died in his arms.
    For a while after Caroline’s death Steven had found it difficult to believe that he wasn’t jinxed when it came to women. The experience of having lost both Lisa and Caroline to disease had profoundly affected him. The old adage that life was what happened to you while you were planning for the future had never seemed more apt. He embraced a new philosophy that demanded he live more in the present and think less of what tomorrow might bring. Making ambitious plans for the future was best left to the young and to those as yet unharmed by the slings and arrows of outrageous