All characters are the property of Glenn Chandler, ITV and SMG Productions. No copyright infringement intended. Title is courtesy of Don Henley and the lyrics are by Tom Lehrer. Archive anywhere; just drop me a line first. Please send feedback or visit the website. For Karen, because they don’t even have breakfast together.

The End of the Innocence

Isabelle Kennedy

Take your cigarette from its holder

And burn your initials in my shoulder

Fracture your spine and swear that you’re mine

As we dance to the masochism tango

She signs the decree nisi, fingers pressed hard against the nib of the pen, her signature a dramatic swirl of blue ink. The paper feels smooth and flat and overwhelmingly legal under the curve of her palm. Letters, words and phrases distorted. She wonders if this is it, if all it comes down to in the end is her name on a form. And she thinks that she should feel worse about it, about the imminent dissolution of her doomed marriage, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t feel much anymore.

Brian didn’t contest the divorce. She didn’t think he would; he isn’t like that, wouldn’t try to make her stay when she didn’t want to, wouldn’t drag her through the courts just to hurt her. He simply signed the decree, sent it back to his solicitor and that stung more than if he’d fought her. That he didn’t love her enough to hate her. She isn’t sure why, isn’t sure she loved him enough either. But, by the end, she hated him enough, probably because she hated herself more. She wanted to hurt him when she told him she was leaving, but he just nodded as if he already knew. As if he always knew it would come to this.

She wonders whether she should have married at all, married him or anyone else. Maybe she had been scared of being alone or perhaps she had been frightened of growing old in an empty house. Now she isn’t sure if it’s better to be alone than to be unhappy together. Because, she thinks, you die alone whether you’re married or not.

It’s the years before that count.

*

She stoops under the police tape and follows Burke across the towpath. The sun is sharp, but not warm and it stings her eyes. It’s too early for this; it’s always too early for this.

“Morning, sir,” Stuart says. His hands are in the pockets of his suit and his voice is cool. “Tommy Lennox, aged nineteen. He was found earlier this morning by a man walking his dog.”

She watches him check his notebook carefully; he won’t leave himself open to any criticism these days. “The man’s name is Peter Donachie. He says that he’s a trainee solicitor.”

She looks down at the body. The boy is young and his limbs are twisted at an unnatural angle in the dirt. Robbie is standing behind her; she can feel his eyes on her neck, the intensity startling. She wants to tell him that she’s seen worse, much worse than this, but she doesn’t.

“Where is Mr Donachie?” she asks instead. It’s not what she wants to say, but it’s all that she can.

Stuart inclines his head towards the police cordon. “He’s pretty shell-shocked.”

“Keep an eye on him,” Burke says sharply. He turns to Robbie. “What do we know about this kid?”

Robbie raises his head; their eyes meet for a moment and she can see too much. He looks away first. “I nicked him once. Impressive juvenile record: shoplifting, burglary, possession...”

Burke’s tone is abrupt, caustic. “Shoplifters don’t end up dead, Robbie. What else?”

“He got in with a bad crowd; smackheads that hang around Argyle Street.”

“Do you think this was drug-related?” she asks him.

“Doesn’t look like your average OD, does it?”

He takes his frustration out on her. He always does. But he is probably right; Tommy Lennox’s throat has been cut and his hands are severed just above the wrists. As she looks closer, she can see track marks on the soft skin of his inner arms. There is no blood on the ground and it looks as though someone has just dumped his body in a deserted area of the park.

The pathologist interrupts them. She doesn’t know him, but he is in his late sixties, with a sagging jaw and grey hair. Unfamiliar and entirely familiar.

“What have you got?” Burke asks him.

“A rough estimate about the time of death – between ten yesterday and one this morning. Rigor’s set in, but it was exceptionally cold last night.”

She raises an eyebrow. “What about his hands?”

“They were probably severed post-mortem. There’s less trauma to the tissues than I would have otherwise expected.”

“Did he bleed to death?” Robbie asks, without raising his head.

“I’d have to do the PM to be certain,” he replies, although he sounds sure already. “It’s likely though, the body is almost completely exsanguinated. From the looks of it, both the jugular vein and carotid artery were sliced through. There’s no evidence of blood clots, so I would imagine he died relatively quickly.”

She watches him retreat across the field, his walk unsteady and wonders why anyone would choose to do his job. Wonders why anyone would choose to do hers.

Burke turns to them, his voice clipped. “Stuart and Jackie, go back to the station and see if there are any similarities to other cases, any victims with severed hands. Robbie, you’re with me.”

She stares at the computer, at the words on the screen and taps her pen against the glass. Rubs her eyes when she realises she’s been reading the same line for five minutes. She is tired and wonders when the last time she slept properly was, thinks it has been weeks or, more likely, months. When the last time was that she didn’t wake up in the dark, alone, her heart racing and her back slick with sweat. She doesn’t remember.

Her coffee is cold, tastes stale on her tongue, but she doesn’t make another. This search is futile; she knew it would be, knew that she would find nothing useful, but that she would spend the day looking anyway. She glances at Stuart, quickly and wonders if he’s been sleeping either. Thinks not; the circles under his eyes are deep and it’s like looking in a mirror. Six months ago, she would’ve asked him what was wrong. Six months ago, he would’ve answered. Now, she hesitates, isn’t sure what to say. He has become harder, less trusting since Pamela Gardner was murdered, since he was suspended. She knows that he hasn’t forgiven Burke for that, despite his words. She doesn’t blame him, thinks that she might have acted the same way. Yet it still feels as though she’s losing the one person she can rely upon.

The pen falls from her fingers, hits the table with a hollow thud, but the ink doesn’t spill. She isn’t sure what to say to him – the atmosphere here is too uneasy, too volatile for any words. It’s like it was eighteen months ago, when Burke first arrived and they had resented his presence, his intrusion. But then they had been different, bound together by grief and loyalty. She thinks that maybe this tension will disappear and knows that’s a lie. It will take more than words or luck or time to make things right again. They have been fractured, split wide open like atoms.

They are all falling apart and she doesn’t know how to stop it.

Later, she watches the sun set, all muted colours bleeding into each other. And, not for the first time, she wishes that she could be anywhere but here. Anywhere but here in this office, with this job and these people.

“Have you found anything?” Burke asks her, his back to the whiteboard.

She looks at her computer screen and pretends to consult her notes, knows that she’s stalling.

“Nothing on the injuries. I don’t think it’s a pattern or a signature; just another murder.”

“I see.”

And she wonders if he does or if, in some way, he is testing her, evaluating her, finding her wanting.

“We thought that maybe the mutilation to his hands was some form of punishment,” she continues, despite this. “Maybe gangs or drugs, a warning about something.”

Robbie rests on the corner of her desk and she falters, hates herself for doing so. She should be past the time when his presence or the touch of his hand affects her. They’ve destroyed enough of whatever is between them already.

“At a certain point, some religious leaders believe in separating the body from its antisocial tendencies,” Stuart says, looking up. She is grateful for the interruption. “For example, in Islamic law, the punishment for stealing is to have a hand cut off.”

“Well, we’re not in Saudi bloody Arabia, are we?”

“I just thought it might be worth considering.”

“That he’s a sodding Muslim?”

Burke’s voice is incredulous and she can sense Stuart’s frustration.

“No, sir,” he replies, his voice sharp and controlled. “That it’s a punishment, like Jackie said.”

“Aye, you might be right.”

And it’s not much, but at least it’s a concession.

“From the track marks on his arms, he must’ve been a user for a while,” Robbie says, standing up. “Yet his mates down by Central Station were surprisingly unwilling to cooperate with us. Didn’t want to name names, seemed more frightened than usual.”

He pauses. “They did, however, let slip that Tommy used to hang around a squat in Cleveden Street.”

“Over in Kelvinside?” she asks, even though she already knows.

Burke nods, picks up a file. “We’ll check it out tomorrow.”

She can’t face another night alone, so she finds herself in a bar with Stuart because there’s less danger in that, or at least danger of a different kind.

“I’m tired, Jackie,” he says eventually.

She traces her finger across the rim of her glass, misunderstands him deliberately. “I know. So am I.”

“No, I meant that I’m tired of this. I’m tired of working, tired of getting nowhere, tired of everything.”

She doesn’t know what to say. They aren’t maudlin enough for this; she is exactly fifteen years and five drinks shy of being able to put the world to rights.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he says, looking down at the table.

“You’re not going to...?”

He understands her.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

She nods and wonders what he would think if he knew the truth, if he knew about Robbie. He’d probably tell her what she should do. He probably wouldn’t care.

“I’m tired of being the only one who feels like this.”

She looks at him. “You’re not the only who does.”

Because he truly isn’t; if he was, then she wouldn’t have slept with Robbie at all, never mind several times. Acts of desperation, maybe and even passion. Mistakes, certainly, although she isn’t sure whether it’s a mistake if she repeats it. She would like to say that it never happened when she was with Brian, but then she’d be lying. The first time was just after Michael died, predictable enough to be a cliché. The last time was three months ago, when Stuart was suspended and she had finally left her husband. And she hates herself for doing it.

It is breathtaking in its futility; she knows that nothing will ever come from it. She isn’t going to fall in love with him and he will never fall in love with anyone. It’s an act of masochism, an attempt to destroy any self-respect she might still possess. But that isn’t the entire truth. She lets him hurt her and he lets her do the same because, at times, the line between pleasure and pain is very slight indeed.

*

The squat is dark, even in the morning light and she can see blankets tacked over the windows. Robbie kicks in the lock with his heel and the door swings open; even now it makes her feel inferior, this ostentatious display of masculinity, as if she doesn’t really belong here.

She can hear Stuart’s voice from another room, hears him say that he’s found a stash of heroin. Before he finishes his sentence, though, the living room door opens and she is pushed against the wall. The boy runs for the door, but Robbie muscles him into the wall, pressing his cheek against the peeling wallpaper.

“What’s your name?” he asks, wrenching the boy’s arm up his back.

“You can’t just break in here and...”

He is young, with a strong guttural accent. Robbie jerks his arm further towards his shoulders.

“Fuck you,” the boy spits, wincing.

“Not even in your dreams.”

Burke walks over. “Name?”

He is silent and Burke’s hand presses hard into his neck. “What’s your name?”

“Jamie,” the boy says sullenly. “Jamie Garvey.”

“Is the smack yours?”

“Fuck that. I don’t have to answer anything.”

Robbie releases his arm. “You might feel differently in a couple of hours.”

They withheld his methadone and kept him in the cells until the next morning. It’s cruel, she thinks, but probably necessary. He’s young, but he knows enough not to talk until he’s desperate. Until his hands are shaking so badly that he can’t think and his skin feels too tight across his face and his bones are aching.

Now it’s morning and she watches Burke and Robbie sitting at an interview table. Calculated, an intimidating sight. She understands, mostly, why they didn’t want her there, that she doesn’t have the same physical presence, the same brutal authority. But that doesn’t mean she thinks it’s fair.

Robbie leans forward, elbows resting on the table. “We know he was a junkie, Jamie. It doesn’t take much to figure that out from the tracks on his arms. So I’m asking you again, who did he buy the smack from?”

“They’ll fucking kill me,” he says quickly. The first words he’s spoken.

“You won’t get the methadone until you tell us. You’ll fucking kill yourself before that.”

Jamie sets his face and suddenly he looks much older than eighteen. Then they get more aggressive, pushing him, needling him. Less good cop, bad cop, she thinks, but bad cop, bad cop.

“Tommy used to take the stuff around the city,” he says eventually, the sweat beading on his forehead. “You know, like a courier, except he didn’t use a bike. But he’d been keeping some of it back, pocketing some of the cash.”

“How did you know?” Burke asks.

“Found the money, didn’t I? And I asked him and he says it wasn’t his, but I knew. Then he said he won it in a card game – he’s too fucking stupid for that.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.” He holds his palms up. “What was I gonna do? Especially after I got the shit kicked out of me.”

Robbie looks up. “By who?”

“I don’t know. Big guys, they wanted to know where Tommy was.”

“You think they knew about Tommy’s little enterprise then?”

Jamie looks confused for a second and then shrugs. “Yeah, I reckon so.”

But when they push him for the name of the dealer, his eyes widen and he shakes his head.

“No way. I don’t want to end up with a fucking knife in my back.”

Burke pushes the methadone closer.

“Come on, all we need is a name. one name and you can go home. If it’s good, we might even throw in a little extra.”

He shakes his head again, but his eyes are focused on the bottle.

Fifteen minutes pass and they don’t say a word. She has watched them do this before, watches Jamie become more agitated, his skin grey and clammy.

“It was Billy Peters, alright?” His words hang in the air. “Billy fucking Peters.”

She sees the look that passes between the two men before they give Jamie the methadone. He drinks it greedily, his hands shaking, slipping on the cap.

When they return to the office, Stuart is waiting and she wonders why he didn’t watch the interview. Six months ago, she would’ve asked him. Six months ago, she wouldn’t have needed to ask him.

“We’ve got to liaise with the SDA first,” Burke says, shooting a look at Robbie. “They’ll have your balls if you don’t, especially after last time.”

But she can’t imagine it will that simple; that Peters would be this stupid, that he would risk being caught so easily or that the word of a junkie will stand up at trial, particularly one with the DTs.

“Fuck that. Peters is a slimy shit and I want to see the look on his face when we arrest him.”

“Watch it, Robbie.”

Sometimes she wonders how he ever made it to DI with his ability to piss off the hierarchy.

“The SDA won’t do anything,” he says sharply. “They don’t want to endanger their case, don’t want to hand it over to us.”

“We still have to contact them,” she says.

“So they can take all the credit?”

“No, because it’s procedure. We can’t just ignore them; they have jurisdiction.”

“That’s bollocks. You don’t know anything about this, Jackie.”

And it doesn’t matter what he says. All that matters is the hatred in his eyes, the venom in his voice and the way his mouth curves around his words.

She looks at him coldly. “Don’t talk to me like I’m other people.”

They argue because it’s just as easy to wound each other and themselves with words.

*

She isn’t surprised to open her door that evening and find him standing there.

“It’s late, Robbie.”

Her voice cracks slightly and she thinks that it’s probably too late.

“I wanted to apologise for earlier,” he says, looking straight at her.

“You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that.”

She exhales quickly. “I meant now.”

Because he isn’t here to apologise, that isn’t what they do. No matter how much they hurt each other, they never say sorry. Never feel the guilt. Or if they do, they never say anything because that isn’t what they’re supposed to do.

She doesn’t know who reaches out for whom, but it doesn’t really matter. He tastes of coffee and nicotine and sex, like he always does. She bites his lip hard enough to draw blood, the metallic tang sharp on her tongue. His fingers press painfully into her ribcage and his mouth is slick against her throat, teeth scraping her skin.

When he pushes her against the wall, his hands leave raised welts across her shoulders, like he has branded her. Her fingers dig sharply into his upper arms, their imprints visible on his skin. It’s violent and brutal and incredible. He makes her feel, he makes her want to scream, he makes her want to weep. He makes her want to die. She thinks that she might be a masochist.

Because it’s not enough that she’s falling apart; she wants to destroy herself.

When she wakes up the next morning, he isn’t there. He never is. She is glad, because she wouldn’t know what to say if he was, wouldn’t know how to act. She thinks that, in the cold light of day, they might look rather pathetic. Wounded, beaten and utterly wretched. Two people who hurt each other to punish themselves. Two people who deserve each other.

It makes her hate herself, fucking him makes her feel disgusted with herself. Only that self-loathing is a part of the whole; two people who hurt themselves as much as others hurt them. It is their own private world, their own private hell. It is an exercise in futility, an exercise in self-destruction of the purest kind. And she wonders if she’s enough of a masochist to stop the pain, stop hurting herself, stop this.

She wonders if she can.

*

It is days, although it feels longer, before anything happens with the case. But when Burke returns from meeting with the DCS, she doesn’t need to be told what has happened. It isn’t like it has never happened before.

He paces the room, stops and lifts a hand to his forehead. “The Fiscal said that we don’t have enough evidence to proceed.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s any easier.

“We’ve got Jamie’s testimony; he told us that Peters was a major dealer,” she says, knowing that it’s futile.

“No, we’ve got the testimony of a strung-out junkie. Peters is under surveillance by the SDA; it would be too risky to pull him in for something we have no chance of prosecuting him for.”

“We knew that already,” Robbie states. He doesn’t look at her. “Is it the Fiscal’s office or the SDA that really thinks we don’t have enough evidence?”

“It has nothing to do with them. I just don’t want us to look like sodding idiots, which we will if we pull in Peters with the evidence we have.”

Stuart stands up. “So this is it? We have the evidence that he’s a major drug dealer and that he had Tommy Lennox killed and we aren’t going to do anything about it.”

“What evidence?” His voice is aggressive, intimidating. “All we have is the Garvey boy telling us anything that will get him his fucking methadone. Peters’ lawyers will slaughter us.”

“You know that it’s wrong. It’s worse that you know it’s wrong but that you accept it anyway.”

“You don’t understand this, Stuart. It’s more complicated than you can imagine.”

“It doesn’t look that way from here. It looks like you’re doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.”

“Would it be better if I did the wrong thing for the right reasons?”

He turns away, but Stuart persists. “What if we had proof that Peters had Tommy Lennox killed?”

“From where? Anyway, the Fiscal’s office doesn’t care about him. They want the best chance of putting Peters away, which is the evidence from the SDA, not a tenuous link to a murdered junkie.”

“Is that all he is?”

“I’m sure his mother misses him.”

“What if I found some evidence that Peters was responsible?” Stuart asks.

Burke’s voice is hard. “Then I might consider it to be your resignation.”

She still knows Stuart well enough to read the expression on his face. So she isn’t surprised when, without a word, he walks out.

She finds him outside, later, because this is what she does. She’s so busy trying to hold others together that she forgets to do the same for herself.

“What’s the point, Jackie?”

She leans back against the wall. “What do you mean?”

“Why do we bother when bastards like Peters will never get caught?”

She pauses for a moment.

“Because it’s our job.”

He looks at her. “Why aren’t you angrier?”

“Like you?”

He shrugs.

“Because I never expected anything else. I never expected the SDA to actually hand him over; they like having him around, like knowing where the heroin is.”

“Even if people die?”

There is a silence and she feels as though she is destroying his illusions, his idealism, with her cynicism.

“I don’t know why I keep letting him do this, again and again,” he says bitterly. “I thought that, after the last time, I’d learnt my lesson. Don’t trust him, just do the job and that’s it.”

She understands him, more than she wants to admit.

“You do your job, Stuart. You do your job well and you care; that’s worth it.”

“Is it?” he asks and she doesn’t know how to reply. “This job isn’t worth it. Nothing is worth this amount of frustration and pain.”

It resonates.

She is still outside when he finds her, of course. They couldn’t do this inside. Stuart has left, maybe for good and she is just standing in the car park. It surprises her to realise that she doesn’t care what anyone thinks, whether they are wondering where she is. It is liberating, in a way.

And he tries to seduce her, all comforting words and warm hands. Sometimes she isn’t sure that he knows he’s doing it. If she needed any proof that this thing is quickly becoming more than mutual annihilation, then this is it.

“Come home with me,” he says, his voice soft. Too soft.

She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t raise her head. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. This is the way it ends.

“Come home with me, Jackie,” he repeats. And if she could, if she believes that they could function normally after this, then she might be tempted.

But she doesn’t.

“No.”

It is the last thing he expected her to say. Instead, she looks at him, his hands on her shoulders and smiles for the first time in months.

“Stuart was right. Nothing is worth this amount of frustration and pain.”

No matter how much she enjoys it, the exquisite agony of being hurt by him, nothing is worth the contempt it makes her feel for herself.

*

She signs the decree absolute.

Maybe she had been scared of being alone or perhaps she’d been frightened of growing old in an empty house. Maybe letting someone hurt her was better than feeling nothing. Maybe she had thought that it would stop her from falling apart, if she could let them hurt her more than she could hurt herself. Now she knows that it’s better to be alone than to be unhappy.

Because these are the years that count.

Finis.