Free The Good Son by Russel D McLean

“That woman was a tramp. A bloody whore. No question about it. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but you could see it all over her. She didn’t love my brother. No matter how much she tried to tell me otherwise. All the same, she didn’t deserve to die.”
    I noticed for the first time how tired he looked.
    Robertson turned away from me, looked out at the Rail Bridge. A train was passing over, away from the city. Robertson watched it leave.
    â€œNobody,” he said, “deserves to die.”

    I offered to accompany Robertson back home, but he refused. Saying he’d deal with this on his own. Stillangry with me. He wrote out a cheque to cover the work I’d already completed.
    I watched him closely as he signed his name, this fat farmer with his bunnet and his scowl.
    I’d treated him as cordially as possible. Maybe even felt sympathy. But none of that detracted from the fact he was a prick.
    His brother’s life as a gangster only worried him because of the way it made him look. In his mind, the worst case scenario was: what kind of shame can Daniel bring to my name and to my family?
    And his reaction to Kat: shame. This was not a woman Robertson could ever have approved of. His brother’s whore.
    Even his attitude towards his son was old fashioned and disappointed; one sentence away from calling the boy a hippie, saying he should get his hair cut.
    I should have been happy to get rid of him.
    Except there were still unanswered questions.
    One of the most important was why Daniel killed himself.
    There was no adequate explanation. If I believed Kat, he just didn’t have it in him.
    Besides, a suicide didn’t fit the image of the unrepentant hard man, and it seemed strange that his actions had taken his lover so completely by surprise.
    His lover, who was now dead.
    Murdered. No question, there.
    After I left Robertson, I took the long route back to the office. Hoping the walk might clear my mind.
    I tried thinking about other cases. Insurance jobs. Internet traces.
    The Robertson case was at a dead end. It was a police matter, now.
    Except I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

    Rachel had called. Asked me to meet her at Mickey Coyle’s on the Old Hawkhill, round the back of the university campus. An old brick building that was in danger of being swallowed up as the university expanded.
    We sat in a nook near the window, ordered lunch and drinks. She drank soda water and lime.
    Elaine’s drink.
    We sipped slowly. Over the stereo, Rod Stewart and the Faces played at a low volume.
    I tried to think of something to say. An opening gambit that would dispel the awkwardness we both felt.
    She sat on the inside, underneath the window. If I looked past her I could see the outside world between the slats of the blinds. The skies were grey and the city illuminated by a dull light.
    Finally, I asked: “How is he?”
    She took a moment to respond. “Harry? He’s good. All things considered.” There was some accusation in her voice. But I couldn’t pick up the specifics.
    Some fucking investigator I was.
    â€œHe’s a changed man, you know.”
    I didn’t know what to say. I nodded, as though I believed her.
    â€œHe grew up in a tough place. And he got out. He became someone else. He paid the price for what he did when he was young. And he got over it. Even if some people never believed that.”
    When Rachel had lost her baby, I’d believed that Harry was responsible. I’d known about his chequered past. He’d spent a few years in prison for assault. And I held it against him.
    I remembered seeing him in the hospital, looking at her with such love and adoration and feeling myself burn inside when I realised what I’d thought him capable of.
    Because I knew when I saw that look on his face that I’d been wrong. I saw the way she looked at him and realised that she had been telling the truth. It was no one’s