Looking at her, especially her eyes, I was reminded slightly of her father.

She was, of course, far more beautiful than he. He was fifty-odd years old, lines deep in his face, eyes sunken slightly with too many late nights and possibly far too much booze than was good for a body. Hell, like I should talk.

She, in contrast to her father, was smooth-skinned, her cheeks blushing just enough to make you think of her as innocent, and when she smiled you realised that maybe angels did exist after all.

‘Sam Bryson.’ I handed her my card. When she read it, the smile vanished and she gave me a dead-eye look. ‘Your father hired me.’

‘Ah, no way,’ she said. Her accent made me wince slightly. It was too rough around the edges for such a pretty face. But then, that’s always the way with Scots girls. Might as well face it, none of our accents could really be described as “beautiful”.

She looked nervous, and glanced back the kitchen. I followed her gaze and saw the manager – a big fat man with egg grease down his apron – looking back at us.

‘How about you ask the big man for time off, join me for a coffee and we can talk.’ She did not look at me, but I knew what she was thinking. In a way I could not blame her. I was still young enough to understand youthful rebellion. ‘Come on. All I’m asking for is a wee chat. That’s all, okay?’

‘You want to take me back.’

‘How old are you, Helen?’

‘Seventeen.’ But she realised I knew the truth, hung her head down further.

‘Fifteen,’ I said. ‘A young woman, sure, but in the eyes of a law, you’re still a minor.’

‘I just couldn’t take it, you know. Couldn’t stand living wi’ that bastard. Anyway, what does it matter, eyh? Anither few months and I could be livin’ on ma own anyway.’

‘I know the feeling,’ I said. ‘When you’re young, seems like everyone’s against you. I move out for a while when I turned sixteen. I was back in two months. Couldn’t pay my way.’ I started to reach to my inside breast pocket for the pack of fags in there, but my eyes skimmed over the no-smoking sign and I simply let my fingers brush against the outline of the packet. If nothing else, you and I are going to have a wee talk, okay? Or I could explain things to your boss myself.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Not here, then.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere. Just no in front of the boss.’

I gulped down some of my coffee. It was getting a little cold. I said, ‘Fine. We’ll for a walk or something. Grab a coffee elsewhere.’ If the truth were known, I was glad. The cafe was one of those places where the dead people go. It was filled with old people who could not quite remember the better days, young people who would never know better days. The smell of fried eggs hung sick and heavy in the air. Someone like Helen deserved better.

***

We went for a stroll out to Sauchton Park, where my dad used to take me to play when I was a child. The play-area was designed like a wooden fort, the kind you used to see on old cowboy movies. The fences were kiddie-height. There were a few in there, climbing the monkey-bars and whooping and hollering the way they always have done.

We sat near the road, a good distance from the play area. The bench had a plaque on it, dedicating its construction to the memory of some woman’s dead husband. We could hear kids whooping and hollering. I looked at her, and saw she was watching the kids on the climbing frame. I wondered if it was perhaps because she could remember the carefree days of childhood better than I.

‘Do you want children?’ I asked.

She looked at me, and shook her head. ‘No now.’

‘I don’t mean now, but in the future.’

‘Mebbe.’ She seemed noncommittal.

I took out my cigarette packet, said, ‘Do you mind?’

‘Nah. Long as I can have one.’

‘You’re too young,’ I said, but offered her one anyway. She took it, placed it between her lips with the air of a professional. I took out my lighter – the one Ros had given me before she went back home across the waters to San Francisco – lit Helen’s first, then mine. I said, ‘I never wanted kids. My ex did.’

She asked, ‘Ex-wife?’

‘Ex-partner. We never got round to the whole marriage thing. Her dad was furious. He came from Alabama, in the states.’

‘I know where Alabama is. I did two years of Mister Webster’s geography class at school. I think that wis about all I did learn.’

‘They’re pretty religious there. He was a wee bit like that Pat Robertson fellow. He saw Scotland as a country of sin.’

She didn’t reply, but blew out smoke.

‘Your dad cares for you,’ I said.

‘He’s a shite dad.’ She said it with real venom. She did not look at me. Her eyes were still fixed firmly on those kids monkeying about on the monkey bars. ‘You don’t know him.’

‘I’ve met him a few times. He misses you.’

‘He misses having a wee slave about the place.’

I laughed. ‘You’ll feel like that most of your life,’ I said. ‘It seems to be a kid thing.’ I regretted instantly saying, “kid”. Although, to be honest, I don’t know that she noticed.

‘You don’t understand,’ she said. She was no longer just holding the cigarette and letting it burn. Her hand was trembling. She had – without noticing – allowed the coffee-cup to drop, spilling the brown liquid over the dying grass. ‘Its no the usual shite you see on tee-vee. He’s no the usual ones that go around doing stuff they think is best.’ She chucked the cigarette, and it arced through the air before hitting the side of the plastic bin, sparking off, dropping down to the ground.

I took a breath, took another puff of my own. It tasted rank, suddenly. ‘What do you mean?’

She held up her right hand for inspection. Her middle finger, long and slender like the rest, seemed malformed from just below the fingernail.

I said, ‘Nasty,’ and prayed to God this wasn’t going where I thought it was.

‘Bread knife,’ she said. ‘I was thirteen, he held down my hand on the kitchen worktop, hacked away.’ She was beginning to shiver visibly. Those eyes that had reminded me of her father were beginning to moisten. However, she seemed to me remarkably strong, all things taken into consideration. ‘I had burnt his toast. Does that sound like a good parent to you?’

I said, ‘No.’ Then: ‘You should have gone to the police, Helen. Something, anything.’

‘Why? They’d no have believed me.’

‘I have friends there, back in Dundee. We can go back together. I assure you, I can get this seen to, I can do something for you.’

‘Why can you no just leave me alone?’

It was a good question, enough of one to make me wish that I had not come out here. It had seemed easy enough at first. Come out to Edinburgh, track down the missing daughter, convince her of the error of her ways and get her home again. Classic case. Sam Spade would have done it with style.

‘Ask you something?’ she said.

I nodded. ‘Sure?’

‘You asked me earlier how old I was. How old are you?’

‘Thirty.’

‘You look good for thirty.’ She was avoiding the issue now, I knew that. She was trying to find some other point of connection, get her away from the bad memories, the bad times. ‘You got a girlfriend?’

‘I did.’

‘Yeah, you said. What happened?’

‘She left me. My work… it means a lot to me. I guess it got in the way, y’know?.’

She smiled at that. ‘Aye, y’look like the type. The type that would let work get in the way. Y’can see it in the eyes.’

I looked down at my shoes. The grass down there was dying.

She wanted to deflect the conversation to me. I couldn’t blame her. If what she told me was true.

Part of me wanted to leave her here in Edinburgh. She was a minor, stuck in a dead end job, but she had friends here and a life away from a man who would try to cut off her fingers for burning his toast. As she herself said, she was only a few months shy of sixteen when she could legally leave home.

‘You remind me of Marc. My boyfriend. He’s like you, thirty. But he looks like he’s in his early twenties. I sometimes think that he’s going to age real fast suddenly. I know he will. He gets too involved in what he does. He’s a computer programmer, designs games.’

‘Does he know how old you are?’

‘He thinks I’m eighteen.’

‘When were you going to tell him?’

Silence.

‘Because he’d find out sooner or later, Helen, you do know that?’

I got a sullen nod. It was around then that I saw the child. Helen thought she knew it all, and could talk the talk and walk the walk, but when it came down to it, she was a scared fifteen year old girl.

I said, ‘Come back with me. I won’t take you home, but maybe we can find a better way to sort out this shit.’

She did not say a word, which I took as a good sign. As I watched her sitting there, hunched forward, I noticed she was picking at the deformed finger. Her concentration on the task at hand was absolute and intense.

***

Harry Davenport came from somewhere down south. I think he told me Yorkshire. His accent still showed through, although he had lived in Dundee since his parents moved up here when he was fifteen, same age as his daughter.

His eyes were the same off-blue as his daughters, but where she was slim, he was a butterball with dead grey hair. His nose looked as though it had been flattened into the centre of his face like someone had hit him with a hammer when he was a baby.

I called him from my office the day after I had brought Helen back to the city. Helen had stayed the night at my secretary’s house. Babs had been glad of the company as her husband was away in Glasgow visiting relatives.

The phone rang three times before he picked up.

Click ‘Yes?’

‘Mister Davenport? Its Samuel Bryson here.’

‘Three days, Mister Bryson, and what have you got to show me?’

‘I found her.’

‘Did you bring her back.’

‘I’d rather discuss it in person.’

That hit a wall of suspicious silence. Then: ‘Why can we not talk now, Mister Bryson?’

‘I’d just feel more comfortable if we could meet in person.’

‘Did you bring her back? That’s what I’m paying you the flat fee and expenses for.’

It was getting tough now, the man sticking by his guns; a little more resilient than I had played him for. I gave him the name of a bar across from the university campus – it was within easy walking distance for us both – and a time. Then I hung up before he could argue.

Before he could ring back I made another call to DI Sandy Griggs. He was at the station, then, but I assumed that he would be, as usual, filling out paperwork and wishing he could get on with real policing.

Indeed, when he answered my call, he said, ‘I hope you’ve got something tae brighten my life.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Meet me in an hour?’

‘I think I could get away wi’ stretching my legs.’

***

Sandy met me by the Howff graveyard, opposite the Courier building. We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries for a moment before he said, ‘What do you want?’

Direct and to the point. I smiled. ‘Some shit I’ve gotten myself into, Sandy.’ I told him about the Davenports, and he listened without saying a word.

‘I can’t take this man in without proof.’ I knew he was sympathetic. That had been why I called him. Cases like this; domestic abuse to spouses or children, they were his raison d’être. He had his reasons.

‘I know, but there has to be something you can do. He mutilated his little girl.’ I felt guilty for saying it. Sandy’s face tightened, his jaw setting itself square, his glare hardening. He seemed to swallow hard.

‘You wanker,’ he said. Then, he told me to get the hell out of there. I did so, knowing that I had hurt him bad. I couldn’t shake the guilt all afternoon that comes with hurting a friend.

***

I have known Sandy since we were both twelve years old. He had been a skinny little runt of a kid. He always wore full uniform to school and all that was ever missing was the glasses. Lack of glasses did not stop the arsewipes picking on him, however.

‘Hey, Griggsy!’ they would yell, and he would get that look about him. The one that said, please, not now.

They would come over to us (I didn’t care if he was a geek; he was a mate) in gangs of four of five. They were always bigger than we were, and that, I suppose, was what gave them their courage. They would beat the crap out of us routinely, and Sandy would always take it silently, never once crying. I didn’t cry much either, but there was something different about Sandy, the way he seemed to so damn locked away when the beating started, almost as though his brain was trained to switch off. He didn’t even fight back, which I always found unusual.

We were fourteen when Sandy came round my house, his shirt and hands bloody. My first reaction was that some bully had gotten the drop on him again and all he needed was some medical attention. The thing was that the blood wasn’t his. My mother, who had been in the kitchen and saw Sandy coming round to the back door, just about fainted at the sight, but thought rationally enough to go next door and call on Jimmy Rooney. Jimmy Rooney was the local bobby, the policeman. He came round, and right away I was ushered upstairs by my mother. Officer Rooney wanted to talk to Sandy alone.

I never knew what had happened that day until about a year later. Sandy disappeared for a month and when he came back he didn’t want to talk about where he’d been. I did know that whatever had gone down that day, his father was dead and his mother had simply disappeared to no-one-knows-where. He didn’t talk about it. I wanted to press him, to find out, but I was mature enough to know that he would tell me if and when he wanted to. I noticed the way adults treated him was different somehow, like they were privy to information I could never know. I tried listening to my parents at night when they thought I was asleep, but they talked in coded phrases and hushed whispers as though there were eavesdroppers behind every door, window and curtain.

I knew that whatever happened had changed Sandy, made him even harder than he had been. The kids at school stayed away from him, and not just because their parents had told them so. Three days after he restarted he beat Johnny Gilmartin – general arsehole and, as my Gran said when she were alive, built like a brick privy – until the bigger boy was whimpering, crying for Sandy to please, please stop.

I still hung with Sandy because he was my friend and because, despite the hardness, I knew he was still the same runt beneath it. His grades dropped and he got regular expulsions. About two months before his sixteenth he started wearing contacts instead of glasses.

That was the same day I went round to his new house, where he lived with his aunt, and he started crying.

It happened suddenly, unexpectedly, as he was trouncing me at Space Invaders. He just dropped the joystick and I looked at him to see his eyes were wet, bloodshot-red.

‘What is it?’

And he told me. He told me about his Dad, how he had lived in terror of the man for so many years, how he had beat Sandy’s mother, sometimes sending her to the hospital and that every time he did it she came back and she did it because of Sandy. But that soon enough, even Sandy wasn’t reason enough to come back. And when she didn’t come back his Dad, who spent so many evenings down the pub roughing up anyone who took his fancy, turned more of his anger to his son. He came at Sandy with a fence-post ripped from their suburban garden, and Sandy did all that he could. He ran at first, but it wasn’t enough and he couldn’t escape. And somewhere along the line something inside Sandy snapped, and he grabbed a kitchen knife – thinking at the time that it was sharp enough to cut the air – and used his small frame to duck his Dad’s attack. He stabbed his Dad through the chest; the knife slipping between the man’s ribs right into his heart. But Sandy didn’t know he’d killed his Dad. He just kept stabbing, even when the man – the monster – was lying on the floor. And the blood didn’t matter. He didn’t even notice it, didn’t feel it splashing against him, didn’t see it stain the kitchen.

He told me all this, and the tears stayed back right till the end. That was when he cried and I realised it was the first time I had ever seen him that way. It was also to be the last.

We never stopped being friends. We never stopped talking, but we never talked about that summer again. As far as I’m aware, his dad survived, but he was sent to jail for an indefinite period. Sandy, to the best knowledge, has never talked to him again. What I do know was that when he eventually joined the force, he developed a hard-on for wife-beaters, domestic abuse cases and so on. They were the ones he rushed headlong into. Some guys saw him as a hardcase, but they didn’t understand where his passion came from.

***

After Sandy walked away from me at the Howff, I stayed awhile among the gravestones, just walking among the dead. It seems odd to say it, but I appreciated their company. They didn’t try to interfere as the living would. They were simply there, a presence, but one that had no impact upon me or my thoughts.

I stopped beside a slab laid in the earth. Much of the inscription, written in 16th century English had faded. I knelt beside it and ran my hand over the lettering. From what I could make out, the poor woman had died at sixteen.

I stayed a while, the tips of my fingers upon the date of her death, and I felt a shiver pass through my body. The Howff, so a friend of mine was led to believe, was haunted. It was an old graveyard, built on the site of a monastery around 1564. I’m not a history expert, you understand, but there’s a sign at one of the main gates.

I stopped going to church at twelve. My mother gave me the choice. She said she didn’t want anyone, even her, to choose my path for me. But I still spend many of my evenings in church, just sitting in the pews, alone with my thoughts. Most of the local clergy know me, and they know that I just want to be alone. They’re fine with it, for the most part. As I said to one of them – a vicar with the most impossibly rosy cheeks you’ve ever seen – if I wasn’t in church, I’d be down the pub, pissed out my skull.

***

Harry Davenport was on time.

He was obviously irritated at my own tardiness. I was not late, of course, but standing outside the pub watching as he ordered himself a drink from the bar. Straight up, a pint of Guinness. He looked around, but did not see me.

Where I stood, on the street, the wind was cold. Across the way, the tower building of the University Campus loomed tall and grey. It was not an ugly building, but it was hardly a triumph of architecture. I suppose you could call it functional, same as most other sixties architecture.

Helen was across on the grass outside the tower. She was pacing, her head snapping towards me every so often. A few university students walked past her. They regarded her with mild interest before going about their business.

Through the window, I noted the way Harry Davenport talked to the barman, open body language, expressive. Maybe they knew each other, but to me it looked almost like a chat-up. Closet homosexual? Or was I reading far too much into things?

I entered the bar as Davenport was about to sit down. He noticed me, stood up and came over to me. His grip on the pint was a little shaky. His podgy pig-fist gripped the glass tight. He said, without hesitation, ‘Where’s Helen?

‘Close by,’ I said. ‘But I need to talk to you.’

‘Concerning?’

‘You didn’t tell me about her hand.’

I noted the way his grip on the glass tightened, almost spasmodic. His face remained calm, however. He was a good liar. He was a practised liar. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘For identification purposes. It would have made your job easier. Can’t see why I didn’t mention at the time.’

‘Aye,’ I said. I grinned. A put-at-ease special, which was too wide, too insincere. ‘It would have.’

‘So why can’t I see her?’ His eyes seemed to dart past me and out the window. ‘What has she been telling you?’

‘I…’

His attention was focused right out the window, so I turned to see what it was that had distracted him.

He said, pretty much under his breath, ‘Little bitch!’

Helen had crossed the street and was walking up and down outside clearly trying to keep the cold of the night out. I almost cursed her myself. I had told her to stay across the road, to stay out of sight until I came to get her.

Harry Davenport stormed right out the door. I could hear the thunderstorm in his head, feel his anger. I never thought of anger as a physical force, but it felt as though, if you got too close to him, his anger would you knock you flat down to the floor.

Up until that moment, there had been a seed of doubt in my head, which was what this little meeting had been all about. I had understood the possibility that Helen had been lying to me, that she had made all the shit about the breadknife up in order to convince me not to take her back. Harry Davenport could have simply been a decent man concerned for the safety of his daughter who had undergone that most typical of teenage rebellions.

The way he threw open the bar doors, stormed into the cool night air like a man possessed by demons convinced me otherwise.

I ran out after him, too slow, however. He caught up with his daughter, caught her upper arm with a thick sweaty hand. She turned around, her face somewhere between fear and pain.

‘What have you been saying? What have you been telling them about me?’

‘Don’t hurt me!’ Her voice was small; a frightened little girl.
‘I’ll do more than hurt you!’ He seemed to have forgotten me, which was a piece of good fortune. I ran up behind him, kicked his legs just below the knee. He let go of her, as his legs gave way, and he stumbled, almost crashing to the ground.

He staggered round to face me, his jowls flapping, fat tomato-face red with anger. ‘This is family!’ he said. ‘Stay out of this!’

‘You can’t hit her, Mister Davenport,’ I said. ‘Hardly the act of a good father, now, is it?

‘Don’t tell me how to raise my child! I’ve been good to her, I’ve given her so damn much, and look at how she repays me! Little tart! Did she tell you she plays with boys?’ Then, accusation in his eyes. ‘Did she give you a little piece? Is that it, Mister Bryson? Did she give you a little piece like she does all the boys?’

There was no reasoning with him. I didn’t want to hit him, but maybe I had to. No, I knew that I had to.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw people crossing the road, keeping one eye on the scene, but none of them wanting to get involved.

Davenport made to hit me, took me by surprise. I sidestepped, but the wild punch caught me in the chest. For a blubber of a man, he hit hard. He was, deceptively, more muscle than fat.

I staggered, the wind knocked out of me, falling against a wall for support. Davenport turned to find his daughter. Instead, he found six-foot two of anger right behind him.

Sandy could have said something, I suppose. But he didn’t. When it came to situations like this, he preferred the direct approach.

Davenport dropped to the ground as Sandy’s fist crunched his nose inwards. I did not hear anything, but I could imagine a crunch.

Sandy stepped over Davenport and came to me. He said, ‘You play the guilt card one more time, its you I’ll hit.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

There were two uniformed policemen comforting Helen down the road apiece, outside of the University buildings. I looked at her, and she looked at me.

I walked over to her and she told the policemen she knew me and that it was allright. I said, ‘What the hell were you doing? I told you to wait for me.’

She grinned and said, ‘Sandy said it was okay.’ She hugged me, squeezing tight, and kissing me softly on the cheek. Then she walked with the two uniforms.

Sandy was standing beside me now. I said to him, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘He was a prick,’ said Sandy, nodding to Davenport, who was on his knees, cradling his face with both hands. ‘Child batterer, wife batterer, all the same. All pricks.’ The disgust – the personal disgust – was clear in his voice.

Blue lights washed over my vision. A police car pulled up, two Constables – one male, one female – climbing out, escorting Davenport into the back of his car. I could have sworn he was crying.

‘What about Helen?’ I said to Sandy.

‘Right now, we’ll be questioning her. After that, we’ll see. Maybe she has relatives somewhere.’

‘Check them out,’ I said.

‘Aye,’ said Sandy. ‘Do you think I wouldn’t?’

I smiled and nodded. My chest was burning less now. I stood up straight, and looked at the jam sandwich, saw Davenport in the back. His head was bowed; the anger gone replaced by what appeared in the half-light to be embarrassment.

I knew a little of what Sandy felt towards pricks like Davenport. With him, it was a personal vendetta, one he didn’t want to talk about but could not deny. I felt a little bad using it to get his back up, using it for my own ends. But I knew that, in a way, he would thank me for it. I felt no regret. Davenport, the son of a bitch would not hurt his daughter again. Perhaps now, Helen had a chance for a normal life.

I walked back to my apartment alone. Halfway back I stopped outside a pub, thinking I deserved a stiff drink. I stopped myself at the last moment. There was a Catholic Church across the road. What was it they promised? Absolution? Whatever it was, I suppose I needed some more than I needed a whiskey.