‘You can say that again.’
‘At my age the alternative’s just as bad though. I don’t fancy a night watchman’s number on some building site, getting my skull stoved in for a stack of breeze blocks. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’
‘Wonder what?’
‘What it’s all for, if it’s been worthwhile?’
Valentine looked into the desk sergeant’s face; he’d done the job for more years than Valentine and he was a good desk sergeant. He had some room for bitterness, having sat all the inspector’s exams and never got the break to leave uniform. It was unfair, but so was life, thought Valentine. He didn’t want to ever be in Jim Prentice’s position, holding on to the job for the wrong reasons. Holding out for the pension and the gold watch. That wasn’t what the DI was about – the plaudits were never part of the reward for him. The politics of the station meant less than nothing to Valentine. But he knew the workings of the place and how the machinations in the ranks could interfere with the real work. He wondered if he had the heart for any more of it.
‘Look, I have to go and see how the squad’s getting on, break the news to them too, Jim. Can I ask you to give me a nod if you hear anything about this new media-relations woman arriving?’
‘Sure. What’s her name? I’ll ask for the SP with the Embra lads. Some of them are all right, don’t play the old school-tie trick.’
‘Stubbs – Charlotte, I think.’
‘Sounds powsh.’
‘It’s Edinburgh, isn’t it?’
‘Come with a pan-loaf accent as well, I’ll bet. Mind you, beats a fur coat and nae nickers, I suppose.’
Valentine grinned. ‘Don’t let DS McCormack hear you saying that. Very passionate about the Dear Green Place, so she is.’
Prentice turned. ‘I’ll catch you later, Bob.’
Valentine nodded, dismissing the offer of a cup of tea from the vending machine as the desk sergeant made a show of tipping the grey liquid into the nearest waste bin.
The incident room thrummed with activity as the DI entered. Fewer heads rose above keyboards and desktops now; the squad was too busy with the minutiae of the case. Valentine tried to clear his thoughts, to forget the conversation he’d just had with the chief super and the chief constable. He pushed away Jim Prentice’s comments and analysis too, because it would only lead to distraction from the job at hand.
The DI approached the centre of the long wall that dissected the room from the rest of the floor. At the whiteboard, Donnelly had been busy posting photographs from the crime scene and further along, on an office desk shoved against the wall, the main exhibits from the bagged evidence sat out.
The detective scanned the photographs as he passed, but his attention was on the items in clear plastic bags. The boys’ boots and shoes. Items of clothing, some of them filthy, muddied, but others with bright patches that stuck out like obscure, inexplicable highlights.
Valentine reached down for the smallest of the bags, a tiny item, sealed with a white sticker that looked outsized by comparison. In the bag, the detective saw the small silver St Christopher that had been retrieved from inside the oil drum where the boys had been buried.
It was a dull, unpolished item, the markings on its reverse – the initials C. B. S. – visible by the blackness of their centres. He removed the label and tipped out the contents into the palm of his hand. He held the pendant up to the light, between thumb and forefinger, and proceeded to turn it from front to back in slow succession. C. B. S. Were they one of the boys’ initials? They must have meant something for someone to inscribe them on the back.
‘C. B. S.,’ said Valentine. He looked at the St Christopher, small, slightly misshapen, and battle-scarred with scratches and dirt. He could see nothing that spoke to him, but he felt something.
It was a strange sensation, almost a direct communication without words. As he gripped the little piece of silver in the palm of his hand the DI felt calm – far calmer than he had all morning, perhaps in days.
He knew someone would have something to say about it – it was theft after all – but he didn’t care as he slipped the small silver St Christopher into his jacket pocket and tapped the outside seam to make sure it was in there.
The doubts he held about the job didn’t seem to matter any more. What mattered was those boys – those nameless children that he had sworn to find some kind of justice for. After what they had seen, and what they’d been through, Valentine knew there was no justice to be found that could possibly mean anything to them. They’d lived and inhabited a world that had forsaken them and one that he was growing to despise, but finding justice and letting them rest in peace was all he could do for them. And he would do it.
18
September 1982
I don’t know how it happened, it just did.