asked to make a diagnosis, I would describe you as clinically depressed.’
‘You’re kidding!’ I protested. ‘I might be a grumpy sod from time to time, but depressed, no, I don’t buy that. What makes you say it?’
‘You have no barriers,’ she replied. ‘You have a job in which you see some terrible things and have tough decisions to make, some of them literally life and death. There was a time when you could put all that stuff into perspective and stow it away when you came home. When I left, you weren’t able to do that any more, you carried your whole burden everywhere, and I don’t see that you’ve gotten any better in the time I was away.’
I frowned. ‘No?’
‘No,’ she repeated. ‘Trust me, you haven’t. Bob, when your people experience extreme stress, they’re offered counselling. These days it’s automatic. Now tell me something. Have you ever had a formal counselling session?’
‘Come on,’ I chuckled. ‘You know the answer to that one. I’m not having strangers rummage about inside my head.’
‘And what a goddamn state your head’s in as a result,’ she countered.
‘What about you?’ I challenged. ‘I’m not the only one with a stressful job. You’re a bloody pathologist . . . the perfect choice of adjective, by the way. You spend your day rummaging through dead people’s once-vital organs, for fuck’s sake.’
‘I know,’ she admitted, ‘and that has got to me too, in the past. That’s one reason why I gave it up and went back to America to practise real medicine.’ She tossed her head back, clearing her thick glossy hair from her eyeline, then she smiled. ‘How was I to know that there are more horrors in the living than the dead?’
‘I’ve known that all my career,’ I retorted, casually. ‘Bad people are a damn sight easier to manage when they’re dead.’ I tapped my forehead with my middle finger. ‘One round there and they go all floppy.’
‘Yes,’ she murmured, ‘and your predecessor as Chief of Strathclyde Police had three, right through the back of her head. I’ll bet that when you stood in that concert hall in Glasgow looking down at her, you weren’t flippant then.’
She had me there. ‘So what do you want me to do about it?’ I asked.
‘Not just you: us. We should talk to each other, just us, at least once a week, about our work and the parts of it that have upset us. We should be our own counsellors. There’s nobody knows me better than you.’
‘Nor than you know me,’ I conceded. ‘Okay, if you’re really serious, let’s give it a try.’
We did, and we still do. Since I chucked the job I’ve had less to contribute, but on the day of Fort Kinnaird I had plenty, and so, once I was back in my Saltire office, and after I’d rung Mario McGuire to blag a copy of the report on the theft of the Princess Alison, I called Sarah.
‘You got a couple of minutes?’ I asked. ‘Or are you up to your elbows in mid-rummage?’
‘I’m prepping for a lecture,’ she told me, ‘but I’ve got a few minutes. What’s up? Something is, I can tell.’
‘I want to tell you how your lemon drizzle cake got smashed.’ As I spoke, the scene rushed back into my mind, and all I could see was that wee girl. My eyes moistened once more, and I had to take a moment before I could continue. Since Sarah and I started our mutual support sessions, I find that I’m much more emotional. For example, Michael Clarke’s eulogy at the Phillip Hughes funeral just tore me apart.
When I could, I talked her through the story.
‘She was just like our daughter, Sarah,’ I whispered as I finished. ‘Apart from the brown eyes, it could have been Seonaid.’
‘But it wasn’t,’ she countered. ‘It was somebody else’s baby, not ours, and although we can feel for them in their grief, if we’re honest, we have to admit to relief.’ I heard a small, stifled gasp. ‘Of course,’ she murmured.
‘What?’ I said.
She replied with a question of her own. ‘Who attended the scene from CID?’
‘The Menu,’ I answered. ‘Pye and Haddock. That’s their nickname,’ I explained. ‘Someone told them they sounded like a fish and chip shop menu, and it stuck. They hate it.’
‘I can imagine,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ve been wondering why I wasn’t called out myself. The thing is, Joe Hutchinson and I had agreed that he would drop out of CID work. He’s close to