When The Devil Drives (8 page)

Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod didn’t think her husband would have made much of a criminal, or a card player for that matter. All it had taken was for her to make her overture – not even to broach the subject – and he was already wearing his ‘Oh God, do we have to?’ face.

It was generally one of the things she loved about him: that what you saw was what you got. He had the emotional honesty of a Labrador puppy and a reluctance to put on masks out of deference or decorum. It once amused her to observe that the only thing that could be more out of place than Drew in a Merchant Ivory movie or a Henry James novel would be a spaceship. On the downside, this boyish openness could make him seem terribly vulnerable and cause Catherine to feel every one of the nine years between them, and a good few more besides.

The look he wore now suggested he was afraid of being scolded. She already knew that she would get her way, but also that the outcome was not the most important aspect of the discussion. Actually having it would be more of a result.

She had chosen her moment carefully: not just bringing it up when he was trying to watch the Wimbledon highlights earlier, or the moment she was in the door from work, but during a late dinner, with both the boys long since tucked up in bed.

‘I need to talk to you about something,’ she had said.

That wasn’t when he made the face, but it had probably put him on alert.

‘It’s about Duncan, and that money we gave him for his report card.’

Duncan was the older of their two sons, his brother Fraser two years his junior. Duncan’s interim report back in November had indicated he was falling behind in maths; his teacher suggested he wasn’t paying as much attention as he should, perhaps because he was finding the subject a struggle. Mindful of this becoming a vicious circle, Duncan had been encouraged by his parents to do a little extra maths at home until he was more comfortable with the day-to-day classwork and therefore better able to keep pace. It had been a grind at first, for child and parents alike, but all three of them had stuck it out. It had borne results, with his teacher singling out his improvement for special comment ahead of parents’ evening.

In order to reward this they had given Duncan money to spend on ‘something for the summer holidays’, having listened to him prattle on with promiscuously fickle enthusiasm about everything from goalie gloves to NERF guns.

(Fraser got money for his report too, following a philosophical discussion around the breakfast table over whether his consistent high standards should merit any less recognition than Duncan’s fall and recovery. No firm consensus was agreed, but Duncan was privately given twenty pounds more than Fraser on the understanding that he kept the information to himself.)

‘Has he blown it all on hookers and ice-lollies?’ Drew asked, trying, and perhaps just hoping, to keep the tone light.

‘He wants to buy a new game for his Xbox.’

Drew had rolled his eyes, but that wasn’t when he got the look. He laughed a little.

‘I’ll have a word,’ he said. ‘Remind him about all the stuff he was planning to do when he couldn’t get outside for the rain. Mind you, this does mean I’ve officially turned into my mum. I remember her wanting to shunt me outdoors all the time during the summer holidays when all I wanted was to watch videos and play computer games. I could never understand why she did it, but now I’m a parent I’m exactly the same.’

‘I’ve already tried. He said he would still be outdoors plenty, but reminded me that we had said he could spend the money on whatever he liked.’

‘Apart from hookers, obviously. It’s true, though. We did say it was his money, and choosing what to spend it on was part of the reward.
We can’t really go back on that. To be fair, it’ll probably rain all summer anyway.’

‘I agree. It’s not buying another computer game that’s the issue. The problem is, the game he wants is
Trail of the Sniper
. It’s got a fifteen certificate, but he says all his friends have got it.’

That was when Drew made the face.

Drew worked for a games development firm, so was several times bitten and consequently very shy of finding himself being held accountable for the evils and excesses of the entire industry, but this was only part of the reason for his wincing expression.

‘He’s starting Primary Five,’ she added. ‘He’s ten, and as far as I can ascertain this game revolves entirely around shooting people in the head with graphically realistic consequences.’

Drew let out a very quiet sigh, one he was perhaps hoping she wouldn’t hear.

‘If it’s a fifteen, then he can’t have it,’ he said. ‘He’ll just have to accept that. His pals are probably lying anyway.’

‘So you’ll tell him?’ she asked. ‘It’s just, you let him have that wrestling game that’s a fifteen.’

‘Yeah, but on those WWE games the certificate is actually an upper limit on who should be playing it,’ he replied with a smile. Catherine wasn’t in the mood for joking.

‘I’m just saying, he’s got his heart set on this and I don’t want it to always be me that gets painted as the killjoy.’

‘That’s fair enough,’ he said. ‘It should come from me. He’ll not be happy, but the fact that I did let him play the wrestling game should mean he understands this isn’t capricious. I’ll explain to him that there’s content that’s inappropriate. It’s a fifteen and he’s ten.’

And there it was, the moment Catherine had predicted. Drew was ostensibly agreeing with her, but in reality he was merely acquiescing. She could tell from his choice of words: he sounded like he was quoting rather than thinking out loud, and his rationale that ‘it’s a fifteen and he’s ten’ was in complete contrast to his previously stated opinions about each child’s comprehension and maturity being too complex and individual to categorise by age bands. He was agreeing with her to keep the peace, in the short term possibly because it
might improve his chances of the evening ending with a shag, and in the long term because … well, that was complex.

For one thing, Drew was sensitive about ever being considered irresponsible as a father, primarily because he was a lot younger than her, but partly also because he worked in an industry largely built on exploiting the more emotionally retarded aspects of the male psyche.

Catherine, in turn, was sensitive about being the one who always said no, who was risk-averse, disapproving, a killjoy.

The bad cop.

She didn’t like to admit it to herself, but sometimes Catherine suspected Drew was a little scared of her. It could allow her to get her own way, as in this case, but prevailing because her husband was too cowed to stand up to her was a long way from what she wanted.

She knew she was on shaky ground complaining that Drew didn’t want to discuss how he really felt about something, as he had frequent cause to lament how there was so much that his wife wouldn’t reveal about herself. Partly it was derived from determination not to bring the job home; her resolve that her family should not live under a shadow of gloom cast by a wife and mother who often spent her working hours mired in the detritus of the worst things that human beings could do to one another. But Drew’s complaint was not born of ingratitude at being spared regular, vivid and graphic insights into her caseload. It was something more, something other, something she wouldn’t, couldn’t share.

‘There’s this dark place you go,’ he once put it. ‘You’re angry on the road to that place and you’re unreachable when you get there. But what’s hardest is you’re numb for days afterwards.’

Drew refilled her wine glass and topped up his own. She could tell he was trying to think of something else to talk about: something light, that would indicate the previous matter was closed and there were no lingering issues about it, which only served to underline how the opposite was true.

They had to be adults about this. She wanted to know how he really felt, and why.

‘You disagree, though, don’t you,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to
pretend, Drew. In fact, you can’t, not to me. There’s very few can lie to me across a short table and get away with it. If it was up to you, you’d let him play it, wouldn’t you?’

Drew looked flustered and defensive, and not a little put-upon, like he was resentful at receiving precisely the scolding he had feared.

‘I haven’t seen the game in question, so I couldn’t say.’

‘Yes, but in general you don’t think playing these games is inappropriate for Duncan. You just go along with me because you know I don’t like them.’

‘That’s not fair,’ he replied. ‘There are plenty of games I wouldn’t want the boys seeing, let alone playing. I’ve never shown them anything from our
Hostile
series, despite the added curiosity of them being the games Daddy makes.’

‘But you let them play other violent games, not just the wrestling one. Even Fraser gets to play that
Serious Sam
thing.’

Fraser was the factor that upped the stakes for Catherine on this issue, because she knew that any game Duncan got, he would be watching over his shoulder and asking for a shot. She knew it was not fair on Duncan that everything he played or watched should be acceptable for his wee brother, at an age when two years of maturity was practically a generation. But equally she didn’t want Fraser growing up too fast, and certainly didn’t want him exposed to anything so disturbing that it had been given a fifteen certificate.

‘It’s set so that the monsters spray flowers instead of blood when you shoot them. It’s the equivalent of shooting wooden ducks at the fairground.’

‘But don’t you think the violence itself is the issue?’

Drew sighed more loudly this time, looking all the more like he didn’t want to get into this, because he was aware it was a fight he couldn’t win.

‘I just think that clicking on a cursor is a long way distant from pulling a trigger. Nobody’s worried about
Gran Turismo
making people go out and drive their cars at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, or
SimCity
making people want to be town planners.’

‘But those are representations of racing, or managing resources and designing landscapes. This
Trail of the Sniper
game is about
shooting people in the head, Drew. All these games are about shooting people. I don’t want my sons getting desensitised to the idea of that.’

‘That’s your prerogative as their mother, and that’s why I’m content to back you up all the way. I’ll tell Duncan he’s not on, and I’ll make it plain that it’s my judgment, not yours. I’m not arguing with you about this.’

‘But you don’t agree,’ she re-stated, not quite sure why this bothered her so much.

For some reason, Catherine had always assumed she’d have girls. There was no rationale behind this, just the vision she had always enjoyed of being a mother. Instead, she had got two boys, and was frequently dismayed by the insights they provided into their gender.

She had nonetheless been of the opinion that boys didn’t have to turn out to be feral, hyper-masculine monsters obsessed with the brutal and the disgusting. To that end, theirs was a house that didn’t tolerate violence, raised voices or displays of excessive temper. Duncan and Fraser’s gender role models were progressive, enlightened and far from conventional. Their dad was home more than their mum and did more than his share of the cooking, shopping and other domestic chores; their mum was a police officer, out fighting crime and catching bad guys. Yet none of this had prevented them becoming, well, feral, hyper-masculine monsters obsessed with the brutal and the disgusting. Something in them sought out the horrible, no matter how much you tried to guide them otherwise. They really were made of frogs and snails and puppy-dog tails, and Catherine worried constantly about what was in their heads, and about what might
get
in their heads.

‘I agree partly. I just don’t feel so strongly about it. It clearly means more to you that the boys shouldn’t play certain games than it does to me, so I’m happy to go along with that. It’s no biggy.’

‘But I don’t want you just to go along with it. I want you to see what I see here. I want you to understand what’s wrong with the idea of our children learning to kill via a simulator.’

Drew reeled a little at this, and she thought for a moment she had really struck a telling blow, one that truly altered his perspective. He took a moment then sighed again, which informed her that this was not in fact the case.

‘With respect, Cath,’ he began, then paused, considering and perhaps carefully revising what he was going to say. ‘You’re a long way off your patch here. I don’t want to fight about this, but what I will say is that, in my experience, people who disapprove of violent video games have usually never played one.’

Catherine felt the surge of quite disproportionate anger that came whenever she sensed somebody was trying to put her in her place. So when her mobile rang, interrupting a post-prandial conversation for the several hundredth time in their marriage, it was probably a mercy upon both of them.

‘I have to take this,’ she said, given the name that was flashing on her screen.

Drew gave a resigned and slightly huffy shrug.

He was generally very tolerant and understanding of these interruptions, acknowledging that he had long since accepted they were part of the package that came with Catherine, but on occasion the timing could test his patience to the limit. This was one of those times, largely because she could tell he was already a little pissed off at her for the evening not going how he’d hoped.

Catherine, for her part, was usually just as frustrated and resentful when the calls came out of hours, but in this instance some spiteful part of her welcomed it, perhaps because she didn’t have a come-back for Drew’s last gambit.

It was Sunderland, the Almighty: calling when she was, nominally at least, off duty. This usually meant he was handing her a whole bundle of grief, the true extent and ungodly nature of which would only reveal itself over time.

‘There’s been a shooting in Cragruthes, up near Alnabruich,’ Sunderland told her, his voice weary with portent. She could tell there was a fire starting to catch and he wanted her to douse it before somebody got very badly burned. ‘I need you up there first thing in the morning to take charge.’