Skinner paused, then read on silently, actually finishing the page for the first time. The night before he had stopped halfway, numbed with shock.
All of a sudden, while he was doing it, a strange thing happened. It was as if there, in the dark, I was up in a corner of the cloakroom, looking down at myself and at the sweaty little pervert. Out of my body, I thought of Bob and I thought of my wee Alexis, and I realised what I’ve always known, that they are what I love more than anything in life. Yet here I was again, doing my level, wicked best to lose them both. For sure, I value them more than me. I detest the woman I can become, with her urges and her need to dominate men. I think I understand now, that all of that has been a reaction to the power which Bob, without even trying, holds over me. But why should he not, because I, the real me, love him more than life itself?
And so I pushed the gasping, shrivelling, little wretch aside, stepped back into my high heels, and walked out of the cloakroom, out of the party and back home, to my lovely little daughter, and to pine for my man while he’s away. The glad rags are in the wardrobe now, and that’s where they’ll stay.
His stomach came up into his throat as he read Myra’s confession, knowing that it was what Alex had wanted him to see most of all. Then he saw Jackie Charles staring up at him, terrified, and his grief fuelled his anger.
‘You screwed my wife, you little bastard,’ he snarled. ‘Or rather she screwed you, for you wouldn’t have been up to it on your own. A real party animal, aren’t you. But it backfired on you, didn’t it.’
He held up the second sheet of paper.
March 23. Gullane.
Jackie phoned me at school today, in the interval. How could he do something so stupid! I told him that he’d better accept it, that there’s no doubt that I’m pregnant. I told him that I’d been to the clinic and that they can’t do anything for me. To get a termination I have to see my own doctor first, and that just is not an option.
I can tell that the wretch is shitting himself stiff about what Bob will do when he finds out that I’m expecting and figures out eventually, as he must, that he was away at the time. I have to say, diary, that I’m more than a little nervous myself on that score. But Jackie, dear Jackie, he keeps saying, not to worry, not to worry, that he knows what to do to sort the problem out, and that everything will be all right.
Why should I believe a word he says? What am I going to do?
On a happier note, Alexis won a prize for singing at playgroup today. I called Mum and told her, she was dead chuffed. Bob came home late, and said he wants the Triumph tomorrow. George the mechanic is going to service it for him in his lunch-hour. That means I get to drive the flying machine. I wish I could drive it straight at Jackie Bloody Charles.
Skinner shoved the pages into his pocket. ‘Jackie will sort the problem out,’ he said, in a cold, hard, razor-edged voice.
‘You bastard! You broke into the garage that I rented then, behind Hopetoun Terrace, didn’t you. You took a hacksaw, and you cut the brake pipe of my Mini Cooper. You were in the motor trade. You must have known what happened to those things in an accident. That was your solution, wasn’t it? Only I didn’t drive the Mini next day, did I?
‘You didn’t care about Myra’s problem, not at all. But you were terrified of me, so you decided to kill me. You murdered my wife instead, but that didn’t really matter did it? Either way, your problem was solved.’
Towering over the man, Skinner’s fury turned into a cold, hard, killing rage. If Proud Jimmy had been in the room and had seen him, he would have been as terrified as Charles. He reached down to pick him up.
‘No,’ his victim howled. ‘It wasn’t me!’
His voice, given a lisp by the twisted bridge, was so pathetic, and his twisted face was so terrified that together they seemed to break the spell that had engulfed Skinner. He straightened up.
‘It was Carole,’ Jackie Charles moaned. ‘She did it. And she wasn’t trying to kill you.
‘It was Myra she meant to get, all along.’ He paused and looked up at Skinner as if he was pleading for his life, as indeed he might have been. The policeman glared down at him, his disbelief showing.
‘Honestly, Bob,’ the broken man cried. ‘It was Carole!
‘The night before the accident, I told Carole that I had had a fling with someone and that she was pregnant. She knew someone who could fix these things, a bent doctor, I think. I tried not to tell her who it was that was expecting, but she made me. She said she wouldn’t give me the abortionist’s name otherwise.
‘When I told her it was Myra, she just went quiet. Then she gave me the doctor’s name.’
He paused to wipe a trickle of blood from his mouth. ‘Next evening, I heard that Myra had been killed.
‘Remember the funeral, Bob? The whole village was there, just about everyone. I was there, though probably you didn’t see me. But Carole wasn’t. I asked her to come with me but she just glared at me and said no.’
He wiped his mouth again. ‘When I got back from the cemetery, she told me about it. She was out with the dog that morning, very early, around six. She saw you drive away in the Triumph. She knew that Myra would have to take your Cooper S. She had seen her drive it before, and she knew that she always went too fast.
‘Carole knew all about cars. We used to rally together, but she was far better than me. She went home and got a chisel and broke into your garage. Getting into the car and opening the bonnet was easy for her. She was a good mechanic; she knew which pipe to cut, and how far to cut it.’
He paused and looked up at Skinner, as if pleading for his life. ‘She was infertile, Bob, you see, but wouldn’t ever accept it. She always blamed me for us not having kids. When she heard that I had made Myra pregnant, she just snapped.’
The detective stared down at Charles for long, tense silent minutes. Then he stooped down and seized the man’s head in his powerful hands, digging his thumbs under his chin, gripping him like a vice as he gazed into his eyes.
‘You’re telling the truth, Jackie, aren’t you,’ he said, dispassionately. ‘Yes, I guess you are. I knew Carole too. She was capable, even more so than you, and I saw that in her from the off. Maybe I should have guessed.
‘Mind you, you little shit, you still more than earned that burst mouth.’
He gave a great sigh, and looked down at the man who had been his quarry for more than twenty years. ‘I could have killed you tonight, Jackie. Or I could have sat back and left it to someone else.
‘I guess you’ve figured out by now who murdered Carole, and Medina, and Dougie Terry. I guess you were pretty sure too - despite that precautionary gun - that, since Carole’s ledger is buried deep, so deep that not even you know where it is, there was nothing to link you and the murderer, and that you were both safe from each other. You wouldn’t shop the killer, so doing you in would be an unnecessary risk.’