The Death Of Ronnie Sweets Part 10

"I'm just asking for five minutes of your time, Mr Sanderson."

"You've got two," he said, opening the door. "And if you haven't convinced me by then, I'm throwing you out on your a.r.s.e!"

He opened the door and I finally got to see him at his full height of six feet. He looked down at my five six with suspicion; I'm sure he still thought I was here to sell him something.

Inside, the main hallway was decorated spa.r.s.ely. A few paintings mostly landscapes and country scenes-hung from the walls. A staircase jogged up to the second level of the house. At the base of the stairs sat an antique telephone table.

I followed Sanderson through to the living room. Again, it was decorated spa.r.s.ely with a soft, brown carpet, a comfortably lived-in sofa, and a small TV tucked in a corner. A foldaway table lay tucked against one wall and a portable tape player perched on the windowsill, playing Celtic folk music at a soft volume.

I pulled out the 1 975 photo from my breast pocket and showed it to Sanderson. He tried to hide his surprise, but was too taken aback to be convincing. "Where'd you get this? he asked, his voice trembling, his face set hard.

"You were Mr. George Darren?"

"Where did you get this?"

"Sir I ask you again . . ."

He let the photo drop to the floor. He raised his hand to his forehead as though he felt faint. What little colour he had drained from his face. "Oh G.o.d," he said, his voice little more than a strangled whisper.

"I was hired to find you," I said. "By a Mrs Elizabeth Archer."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't . . ."

"In 1975 she would have been Elizabeth Cooke?"

"Jesus," he said. "You don't half know how to punch a man when he's down." He stumbled over to the sofa and threw himself into its limp embrace. "She told you ...? I mean, why did she hire you to find me? You here to give me the once-over, son?" He sat up straight, offered out his wrists. "Kill me, maybe?"

His reaction took me by surprise. I raised my own hands in protest. "No," I said. "You were engaged to marry her. When you left, she says her world fell apart because she couldn't work out why you'd run off It took her a long time to love anyone again and now that her husband's dead, she wants answers. She needs to know why you..."

"Engaged?" said Sanderson. He laughed, a short bark with no humour. "We went out a few times. She was a prude, son. She wouldn't let me touch her, kiss her, even."

I thought about Mrs. Archer in the office, how she'd made out like they'd had this grand love affair; "Like a whirlwind," she'd said.

"I don't understand," I said to Sanderson.

"I'm an old man," he said. "When you're young you don't think you'll ever grow old, but it happens. When I was young I thought I'd be young forever or I'd die one day before I got old, before any- thing I did could catch up with me." He hunched forward in the sofa, his head bowed. "Do you know something, son, no matter what you do the past always catches up with you. These last few years, I've been paying the piper, son. There's one last payment before I'm finished."

"One last payment?"

He looked up at me. "Elizabeth," he said. "What I did to her was inexcusable. And is it an excuse to say I was sick? Because that's what they told me when I was in prison, you know. That I was sick, mentally unbalanced, that I had something wrong with me chemically."

"I don't understand," I said. I took a step closer to him. He still didn't look up. "She told me you were engaged to be married, that you were in love, that you ran out on her."

He shook his head. "In love? At the time I would have said I was. But she wasn't in love with me. And that thing I called love, it turned to hate. She kept ignoring me, leading me on, and then ignoring my advances at that last vital second!" Finally, he looked up at me, and his sunken eyes seemed to have fallen deeper into his skull. "I raped her," he said, his voice choking, the words barely audible. "I don't care what she told you, son. I raped her, and then, like a coward, I ran away. I thought I could escape responsibility for what I had done. But like I told you, you can't escape that kind of responsibility. The piper collects on his debts."

He told me everything. And at first it all added up to Mrs. Archer's account. They met in a Dundee pub one evening. She was so stunning, so beautiful, that he knew the moment he set eyes on her he just had to have her. So he talked to her, asked her out, and was charming enough that she said yes. The first time they went out together, they took in a movie, Jaws, he remembered, and then they went for a drink. They both enjoyed the movie, although she complained it was a bit more frightening than the films she liked to watch. At the end of the evening, when he'd tried to kiss her, she'd moved away and said she didn't think it would work.

All the same, when he called her again, she said she'd come out with him, but she also said nothing was going to happen. This time they had dinner. And again he tried to kiss her. When she moved away again, he said, something in him snapped. Maybe it was something that had always been in him, he didn't know. But when it snapped, he lost sight of what was right and wrong. No woman had turned him down before. He was loveable, he was charming, he was s.e.xy. And she was turning him down! He shout- ed at her, said things that would haunt him later in life. But the words wouldn't b.u.m into his mind as clearly as the sensation of grabbing her, throwing her against a wall, and punching her so she'd shut up. She'd tried to protest, but she was stunned into paralysis by the sudden violence of his actions. The next morning, when he woke up, he realized what he had done and felt the weight of it in his chest, like it was going crush his heart and leave him dead. He didn't know what to do, how to deal with it. He knew that Sooner or later the police would come looking for him. Elizabeth Cooke was a smart, intelligent girl. He knew she would go the police, that she would tell someone what he had done. He packed his bags and sneaked of the boarding house where he'd been staying.

He'd heard from a friend of his that it was easy to disappear. All you needed to do was get your hands on someone else's birth certificate. He went to the Balgay graveyard and searched for a man who had been born the same year as he had. He found Charles Sanderson, a man who had died two years earlier in a car accident.

At the Registrar's office he had got his hands on Sanderson's birth certificate, and then he took the first train out of Dundee. With a bit of work, he managed to build up a new ident.i.ty for himself in the Borders, taking several odd jobs here and there. After a while he even began to believe that he had escaped the consequences of his actions. He began to believe that he was a free man, free from the guilt and free from the terrible events of I 975.

But as he told me, the past always catches up with you. That beast inside of him, the one that had unleashed itself so suddenly in 1975, had not died after that night. There were others, other women, and with every one, the guilt lessened. He became less afraid of the consequences, more certain of himself, convinced that what he was doing wasn't wrong.

The piper came to collect, which Sanderson later realized was inevitable. Sanderson attacked a girl, and she fought back. She hurt him, she humiliated him, and then she reported him to the police. He was an old man then, and it took that defeat to bring it home. He was old, he was frail, he was pathetic. His time in prison was spent feeling sorry for himself, beating himself up over everything he'd done. He'd sunk into a state of clinical depression, and it was only good grace and the watchful eye of the prison wardens that prevented him from ending his own life. He underwent a course of rehabilitation and when he came out, he tried to resume some kind of life. He started work again as a salesman, but after a few years he knew his time had come. He retired, and now he spent his days watching the television and drinking to try and forget everything he'd done.

I had to ask myself why Mrs. Archer wanted to find him, now. After all these years, what was it that finally convinced her she needed to confront this man who had become something less than anyone could have imagined.

I knew the answer and I knew that I wouldn't be able to live with the consequences if I told her where he was. He'd paid for his crime, I thought, just by living so long. Looking in his eyes you saw the pain and the regret and the self-pity that consumed his life.

I thought that was punishment enough and I thought that it would do Mrs. Archer no good to confront him after so long. If she was willing to lie to me so completely to track down this man, then G.o.d only knew what she planned to do when she finally found him.

I wasn't worried for Sanderson. I was worried for Mrs Archer.

I left Sanderson's house at midnight. I drove out past the small railway station on the outskirts of the village, and pulled onto the motorway. I noticed my phone-still in the hands-free holder- showed several missed calls, all from Jamie. I punched redial and waited.

When he answered, he sounded bleary.

"Sorry to wake you," I said, "but you called several times, so I guess it's important."

"Aye," he said. "Sam, I just thought you'd like to know that Mrs Archer's on her way down."

"What?"

"Aye, look, I didn't see the harm. She came round and she was so desperate to know if there was any progress, and..."

I swore violently.

"Okay, I messed up," said Jamie.

"Aye," I said. "You really did that. He wasn't her fiance, Jamie. He raped her."

"'What?"

'And now, for whatever reason, she's decided she wants revenge. It's all I can think of, the only reason she'd want to track this w.a.n.ker down!"

"Jesus!" said Jamie. "I knew it was a mistake, but she just looked so..

"Don't apologize," I said. "Doesn't b.l.o.o.d.y do anything. How is she getting down?"

"By train."

I was already on the motorway. I started looking for an off ramp. I thought I could get back and maybe try to clean some of the mess up before it got even worse.

"Do you know when she was leaving? What train she got?"

"No," said Jamie. "s.h.i.+te, hold on!"

I waited. After a few seconds, he spoke again: "Sam, I'm getting on the Internet, getting the train times. I'd guess she would have got the next one down after we spoke."

"Aye," I said. "Seems likely." My hands began to sweat and slip about the steering wheel. My body tensed, and I had to concentrate to keep driving straight.

"got it'" he said a few seconds later. "Going tae arrive at Burnton Station in . . . five minutes ago!"

"That's the first one she could have got?

"Aye."

"We're going to have a talk when I get back," I told him, and hung up. There was an off ramp up ahead. I took it and swung round the road to the other side of the motorway. Luckily for me it was late at night and traffic was quiet.

I scooted back onto the motorway again and hit ninety. By the time I arrived back on the main road in Burnton, it was twenty to one. I slowed in the quiet village streets. Pulling up outside Sanderson's house, I watched for signs of life. The living room light shone a dull yellow through the curtains.

I got out and walked to the front of the house. I didn't try the front door straight away, instead nipping round to the living room window, trying to peek through a gap in the curtains. Through a sliver of s.p.a.ce in the centre I saw someone walking around in there and I heard Mrs Archer's voice. I tried to make out what she was saying, but she was m.u.f.fled and incomprehensible.

I moved back to the front door and tried the handle. It turned smoothly and easily. I walked inside. As I did so, I heard a crash, something smas.h.i.+ng, the dull thud of a table overturning on the floor.

I burst into the living room. Mrs Archer was sprawled on the floor in the middle of the room. Sanderson was bent over her, his hands round her throat. He looked up as I entered the room, and I saw in his eyes not the anger I expected but rather a deep and painful sadness.

I rushed forward and tackled the old man, knocking him off Mrs Archer. He went down easily, cracking the back of his head off the floor. I stood up, ready for him to move again, but he raised his hands in defeat. Tears rolled down the folds of his face.

I turned to Mrs. Archer and offered her my hand. She lay there on the floor, looking up at me. Her bloodshot eyes flooded, and she blinked out the tears. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said to me. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

The pretty constable shook her head as she came out of the interview room. "It's a mess, Mr. Bryson," she said. "Both of them, c.o.c.ked up beyond repair."

I nodded and pulled a packet of cigarettes out from my coat. She shook her head. I put them away again. "She wanted him to kill her," I said.

"Yes," said the constable. She folded her arms across her chest and exhaled loudly. "I don't know which of them's worse off He's shut down completely, keeps saying how pathetic he is. She won't say anything. She just sits there, her eyes staring straight ahead. I don't know that she's even seeing anything. It's all I can do to stop myself checking that she's still breathing."

I shook my head. "She's carried this with her for decades," I said. "When she came to me, she said she had been in love with him. I believed her. Maybe I had my doubts, but that's part of my job, you know. Never trust anything no matter what your gut says. But she was so convincing; you could see it in her eyes."

"Stockholm," said the constable. She took the seat beside me. "Like with abductees who form relations.h.i.+ps with their abductors. She decided at some point maybe she loved him because it became difficult to tell the difference between love and hate." She shrugged. "I'm no psychologist."

"Neither am I."

We sat there for a moment in silence. Finally, she said, "You want a smoke, we could go outside. I'm dying for a cigarette myself"

"Sure," I said.

"I should tell you, I'm in love with someone."

"So am I."

She laughed. "I'm no psychologist," she said. "But sometimes a cigarette is just a cigarette."

I spent the night in a Travel Inn just off the motorway. I didn't sleep well, just lay beneath the covers, staring at the ceiling and listening to the traffic pa.s.s outside the window.

In the dark, I thought about Mrs Archer and about the damage that had been done to her. It was more than, physical, and the psychological scars went deeper than anyone suspected. Even Mr Sanderson-Mr Darren-had been affected and changed by those events. He was right; he had become a pathetic specimen. He said he thought he'd been in love with her, but he'd been driven by something darker than love, something I guess we all fear might be lurking inside of us.

As dawn came around and light spilled into my room, I rose, barely rested, and padded through to the bathroom. As I stood under the shower, letting the tiny fists of water pound my skin, I tried to remember what love was.

I thought of Ros.

LIKE A MATTER OF HONOUR.

(Thrilling Detective Magazine, Summer 2006) "Aw, c'moan, man," said Jimmy. He pushed the package across the desk, back towards me. "Just for a wee while."

I looked at the package a nondescript square box wrapped with brown paper and then I looked at Jimmy. On anyone else, the moustache might have had the air of a twenties sophisticate. On Jimmy it looked as if he'd forgotten to wash his upper lip. His greasy black hair was combed forward in a horrendous parody of a Beatles mop-top. His skin was flared up. He was twenty-five years old. On the inside he was probably going on sixty.

"I think you have to tell me what's in the box," I said.

"C'moan! After all the s.h.i.+te I've done for you. Goin' places you can't go. Chattin' up people won't even look at you. I'm like Fozzie Bear."

"You mean Huggy Bear." The same conversation we always had. Jimmy on repeat like a messed up Dictaphone.

"What?"

Except Jimmy's neither black nor cool, nor down with the ho's. At least none as gorgeous as Huggy's.

"Just tell me what's in the package." I could feel the sun coming through the window, toasting the bare skin just above my s.h.i.+rt collar. It was a heatwave outside, a Scottish heatwave at any rate.

Jimmy leaned back in his chair. His eyes screwed up against the sunlight coming in behind me. "It's personal. Just need someplace tae hold it fer a while."

"What's wrong with your place?"

He laughed. "You ever seen ma place?"

I shook my head. I hadn't thought about where Jimmy lived, whether he had friends or family. Hard for a man like him to have anything but a.s.sociates. Like me.

"Fine," I said. I pulled the package over. It was light. But I could feel the shape. A lockable box, same kind as you could pick up in any stationery store. "Just tell me there's nothing illegal in here."

He held up three fingers on his right hand. "Scout's honour. Dib dib dib and aw that c.r.a.p." He smiled at me lopsidedly. He'd never been in the scouts. They'd have thrown him straight out on his a.r.s.e.