Out of Bounds by Val McDermid Page B

thought he was going to take offence. His shoulders tensed and his hands gripped his knees. Then he relaxed. ‘Be my guest. I doubt any of them are still in the job, mind you. I’ve been to more retirement do’s in the past five years than I can count. That and funerals. I’ve said cheerio to half a dozen men this past few years that wereyounger than me. Kevin Sinclair, he was exhibits officer on Tina McDonald, he had bowel cancer. Jim Brown, he ran the actions desk on nearly all my murders, he died out hill walking in the Cairngorms. Heart attack. Tam Smart, the statement collator, his liver packed up. Kenny MacGregor, the dog handler. All of them, gone to the great bar in the sky.’ His eyes hardened, he heaved a sigh and rubbed his hands over the side of his head. Karen imagined it must feel like teddy bear plush.
    ‘The job takes its toll, right enough. We lost a colleague not so long ago,’ Jason said. Karen gave him a look of disbelief. ‘It’s hard. It’s like you lose wee bits of yourself. The conversations you had that nobody else shared. The gags you laughed at together. Now it’s like they’re wee splinters of your history lost in space.’
    ‘Exactly,’ Diuguid said, favouring him with a smile, the wintry edge to his stare gone again. ‘But anybody else that’s still kicking about – ask HR, they’ll have contact details, if it’s only where to pay the pension.’
    There was nothing more to be had here, she could tell. Karen made polite noises of thanks and disengaged from the interview. She got to her feet, taking Jason by surprise. He’d only just started on his third scone. He scrambled to the door behind her, scattering crumbs and mumbled farewells as he trailed in her wake. Karen stomped ahead of him, head down, saying nothing till they were in the car. Then she rounded on him.
    ‘What was that about?’ she snapped.
    Jason’s expression was a mixture of wariness and uncertainty. ‘What?’ he grunted through the home baking.
    ‘All that about Phil? What did you think you were doing, talking about him like that?’
    Jason swallowed. ‘What he said, all those dead guys. It made me think about Phil. I knew he’d get it.’
    Inthe grip of strong emotion, Karen struggled to express what she needed to say. ‘We don’t talk about Phil to outsiders. It’s nothing to do with them.’ She wanted to howl at him that Phil was hers and nobody else’s, but she knew that would make her sound deranged so she held back. ‘We don’t talk about him to strangers,’ she said instead, forcing her voice level.
    Jason’s face was wounded. ‘We don’t talk about him to each other,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘You won’t talk about him to me and I don’t have anybody else to talk to about him. It was just the three of us on the old team and you won’t share. It’s really hard, boss.’ His lower lip trembled.
    She didn’t want to hear this. He was right, she wouldn’t share. She shouldn’t have to. Phil had been hers, the only one who had ever been hers. Talking to Jimmy Hutton was one thing. He had a degree of emotional intelligence the Mint didn’t even know he should aspire to.
    She wanted to punch Jason for his presumption, his daring to think he was entitled to a part of her grief. She wanted to punch him hard and keep on punching him till he promised never to speak of Phil again.
    Instead, she said nothing. She got out of the car, slammed the door and marched off towards the town centre, angry tears stinging her eyes.
    Sod Jason, sod Diuguid and sod the lot of them.

15
    K arenmade it about half a mile along the road before she had her emotions back on the leash. She cast a quick look over her shoulder and spotted Jason in the car about a hundred yards back, creeping along like a punter in search of a working girl. The pair of them must look absurd, she thought. Like something out of a Coen brothers film.
    She stopped and turned to face him, beckoning with a small jerk of her