‘Okay, that sounds like an unresolved relationship, though. You should probably do her the favour of saying it to her yourself. What do you think?’ He pulled Stephen’s mobile from his pocket.
‘Just jump already! I’m late for my shift!’ someone yelled from the viewing sidelines.
‘Ignore that,’ Maclure said quickly, reaching a hand up towards Stephen, who frowned and shook his head.
‘I’m annoying everyone,’ he muttered, shifting his leg back over the barrier so his full body was on the water’s side.
‘Listen to me, there’s always one, okay? One sick bastard who wants to see carnage. Drown him out. Let’s phone Rosa. She’ll want to hear your voice. You know that in your heart, that’s why you wanted me to talk to her for you. I’m coming up so I can hand you the mobile.’
‘You’re not wearing gloves,’ Stephen said vaguely, the ache in his own body almost overwhelming him. It took so much energy to balance. ‘Your hands will get torn to …’
Maclure was already climbing. Stephen contemplated stopping him by threatening to jump, but he really did want to hear Rosa’s voice one last time. As Maclure climbed, Stephen studied the sea of faces behind the improvised crime-scene tape barrier the police had hastily erected. One man stood, eyes glittering, hands in pockets, grinning at him. Another woman was ranting at a police officer. An older lady was in tears, and although he hadn’t thought it possible, Stephen hated himself just a little more for causing such distress.
The grinning man began to laugh, throwing the sound out so Stephen couldn’t miss it. The noise was chalkboard awful. Jamming his hands over his ears, he lurched forwards, trapping the toe of one boot between two metal bars.
He went head first, grabbing for the railings, crashing a knee into metal followed by a hip, then rolling forwards onto his stomach, head down towards the water. The laughing man laughed louder. In spite of the wind, the roar of the water and the screams from the crowd, that cackling was all he could hear.
He gripped the fence with both hands, fighting his body’s desire to pull himself back up and the voice in his head telling him to let go. It would all be over in seconds. He didn’t need to speak to Rosa one last time. That would only cause more problems than it solved. There would be a rush of air as he fell, the chance to experience free-fall flight, then perhaps a fleeting sense of cold or of impact, but not for long enough to process it or to feel pain.
Stephen let go with one hand, closing his eyes.
‘He’s going to let go!’ a woman shouted.
There were yells, the sound of boots hitting the concrete hard and an excited screech. It was the shiny-eyed man, Stephen thought. Here to see him die. Perhaps he was Death. He’d never been religious or superstitious, but maybe at the last he was seeing the world without blinkers. All those horror films, true-life experience programmes, children’s stories, were real.
A hand clamped down hard on the ankle above his trapped foot.
‘I’ve got you,’ Maclure said. ‘Talk to me, Stephen. This is no time to be making choices.’
‘Death’s here,’ Stephen said, straining his neck to turn and look up into Maclure’s calm brown eyes.
‘If he is, then he’s not here for you. Not today. Come on, grab that railing and use your stomach muscles to pull halfway up. I just need to get a grip on your belt.’
‘I’m not sure,’ Stephen said.
‘Fair enough, but I’m your side of the barrier. You pull your foot out now and you’re taking me with you.’ Maclure smiled gently.
It wasn’t a threat and it wasn’t posturing. Stephen could see the truth of it.
As Maclure extended his grip to clasp more of the denim of Stephen’s jeans, a mobile phone tumbled from his pocket and plunged towards the freezing flow beneath them, disappearing as if it had never existed at all.
‘Shit, sorry about that. I wanted to give you the chance to speak to Rosa. I’ll buy you a new one if it’ll get you back up here. How about it?’
Stephen stared after his mobile phone. He didn’t want to go like that. To simply cease to exist, wiped from the world without trace, his entire life made pointless. He tensed his core, suddenly grasping the real reason why sit-ups hadn’t been a waste of time, and took a grip of the lowest railing, for the first time seeing what the climb up the inverted suicide fence had done to his rescuer’s hands. Blood dripped in gashes from his palms and skin was flapping in the breeze as he reached out to take hold of Stephen’s belt.
‘I didn’t mean for you to get hurt,’ Stephen said. ‘Thank you.’
He managed to get his knee into a gap between the metal struts and pushed his body up high enough for Maclure to get to him.
‘Thank me later,’ Maclure said. ‘Let’s just get you a cup of coffee and away from the spectators for now.’
There were shouts as police threw ropes over the barrier for them to tie around their waists, rolling the tyres of a police car over the ends to keep them safe.
‘Why did you risk yourself?’ Stephen asked as he finally got his face level with Maclure’s and looked him straight in the eyes.
‘We all have our demons,’ Maclure said. ‘Every one of us. Anyone who says differently just learned to lie better than you and me. My way of dealing with my own is to do my best to help other people. It’s selfishness if you think about it.’
Stephen put an arm around Maclure’s neck and pulled him into a quick, hard hug.
‘I owe you my life,’ he said.
And he meant it, but all he could think about were the demons Maclure had mentioned and the man still watching from the crowd. He wasn’t laughing any more. Not so much as a glimmer of a smile.
Detective Inspector Luc Callanach stood and stared at the man in the tatty armchair, wondering about the people who professed to forgive those who’d hurt them most. Terrorists who’d bombed indiscriminately and yet parents had forgiven them for taking their children so cruelly. Drunk drivers who’d caused crashes and still those who mourned the dead would not speak ill of the perpetrator. Never in his life would Luc be able to find so much space in his heart for such a gesture.
The man looked up at him, opened his mouth as if to speak, then blew a bubble instead, slapping at it before dropping his hand back into his lap. Bruce Jenson was suffering from Alzheimer’s. It was too good for him, Luc thought, staring out of the window and across the rolling lawn of the care home as the day lost the last of the light. Any disease that let such an animal forget what he’d done was an injustice on a grand scale.
Luc took a step forwards to kneel down and stare into the watery blue eyes that saw but didn’t see.
‘Was it you who raped my mother?’ he asked. ‘Or did you just watch as your business partner violated her? Did you threaten to sack my father, if my mother told him what you did? Was it you or Gilroy Western who first came up with the idea?’
Jenson issued a strangulated groan, his shoulders juddering with the effort of making the noise.
Luc took a photo of his mother and long-dead father from his pocket and held it in front of Jenson’s face. His head drooped. Luc took him by the chin and held the photo in front of him once more. He knew what he was doing was wrong. Bruce Jenson wasn’t going to respond to anything he did. Sixty seconds after he left the room, his father’s boss of thirty-five years ago wouldn’t even