2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel (2 page)

She nods, swallows. Okay, yeah, this was always a possibility. Probably why she wanted the case, if she was being honest. It still feels pretty heavy, takes a second or two. “Sure.”

“You knew him?”

“Not for a long time, but we were at school together. What about the other one?”

“Not quite so generous with their clues this time, but they
left
him all his jewellery. He’s got the initials ‘JT’ on a ring. Could be the missus, of course, but—”

“Johnny Turner,” says another of the local plods. Spiers, this one is called.

“What’s that?”

“We found his motor all burnt oot, up the dams yesterday. Rang up to tell him but naebody was home.”

“Johnny Turner,” she repeats. “Rings a bell.”

“Bampot,” says the plod. “Hard man turned drug dealer. Runs things around Braeside for the bigger boys over in Paisley. Sons are bampots, too. Auldest yin’s inside for murder. Next wan doon won’t be long behind him, if somebody doesnae murder him first.”

“And what can you tell me about Colin Temple?”

“No much. Runs a hotel in Paisley and owns some lodges by the fishing loch a couple of miles the other side of the hills. Never in bother wi us is the bottom line, and if he was linked tae Johnny Turner, it’s news tae me.”

“And Johnny Turner? Age, height, build, anything that can help give us a quick positive?”

“Mid-sixties, medium height, stocky build,” says Spiers.

Alex nods, but shrugs to convey that it’s hardly distinguishing. “Anything else?”

Spiers looks to Alex. “Big chunk oot his skull where some bastart hit him wi a hatchet way back when?”

Alex barely suppresses a grin as he nods affirmation.

Spiers gets a call on his radio and takes a couple of steps away to hear the message better. There are a few long, garbled volleys on the remote end of a one-sided conversation, with Spiers’ contributions limited to ‘okay’s and ‘really?”s. Alex shakes his head in mild amusement.

“What?” she asks him.

“Good job he said that. Saves me trying to work out where that particular wound fits into the bigger picture.”

“No, that’ll be my treat,” she tells him.

Spiers has turned back around and is looking impatiently at her. He’s got news. He waited deferentially for her to finish speaking but the inverted commas were already coming through his lips.

“DS Gillespie, maam, it’s the oleum pair. Constable McGowan called the station and they sent some officers out. They’ve got one in custody, but the other is…Well, they’ve got him, but he’s been stabbed umpteen times and has apparently got a six-inch blade through his skull. Ambulance is taking him direct to the Southern.”

The Southern General. Major neurosurgical centre. Not good.

“Did you get the names?”

“Yes, ma’am. Both members of Braeside Nick’s Frequent Flyer programme. Sergeant Reilly at the station suggested you’d know them better yourself as Noodsy and Turbo.”

“Noodsy and…Christ. Which one’s in the ambulance?”

“Turbo.”

“More Friends Reunited?” Alex asks.

“Yeah. They were both in mine and Colin Temple’s class at school. But that’s the lesser of the connections here.”

“What’s the biggie?”

She nods to Spiers for him to break it to the pathologist.

“Turbo is Johnny Turner’s youngest son.”

61 Ursae Majoris

T
here is a smell of apples. Not fresh, not the smell when you have one in your hand, which disappears when you bite into it and the taste takes over inside your nose. It’s something more fusty and a wee bit yuck: apples that have been left too long somewhere dark, maybe one of the desks with the lids that open. The smell itself isn’t bad, but Martin is a wee bit uneasy when he smells it, so he thinks it’s the smell he doesn’t like, when in fact it’s how the smell makes him feel. It reminds him of Gran’s pantry, where she keeps her carrots and sometimes cooking apples, which are huge but don’t taste as good as normal apples. He took a bite of one once when he was in there looking for biscuits. You’re allowed as much fruit as you like because it’s good for you and doesn’t rot your teeth or make you fat, but you get a row if you start eating something you don’t finish. Gran says your eyes are bigger than your belly when you don’t finish something you asked for, and she laughs, but Mum gets angry ‘because it’s a waste and there’s black babies who are starvinafrica’. The cooking apple was sour and Martin knew he couldn’t eat another bite of it, but it was the biggest apple he’d ever seen, the size of Florence’s head on
The Magic Roundabout
, and he knew Mum would give him into huge trouble for not finishing it, so he put it back under some other apples and turned it so that the bite was facing the other way. You got worms in apples, so maybe when Gran found it she’d think that was what had taken the bite. But he’d worried about it because he knew it was naughty, and you got into even bigger trouble if you were caught later than at the time, because Mum said being sleekit was worse than the naughty nurse itself. So every time he was at Gran’s house after that, he went to the pantry hoping to find that the apple was gone, but it wasn’t, and that was when the pantry started to smell of it. Even once the bitten apple was finally away, the pantry still smelt of it, and it always made him feel funny inside.

Today, however, is the last time the smell will remind him of anything else. From now on, though it will always make him feel the same, it will remind him only of this place.

He squats on the floor, along the wall beneath the windows, facing the door on the other side of the room. The wooden desks are arranged in several rows, all facing the front, but nobody is sitting at any of them. The majority of the children are lined up alongside him, but some are still standing around the door, not letting go of their mummies. Most of these are crying, and those who are not soon begin to once their mummies unclasp their hands and wave bye-bye. Quite a few of the boys and girls along the wall are crying too, which makes Martin think that he ought to, like it is the correct response under the circumstances. He didn’t cry when his mummy went away, though strangely he thought for a moment that
she
might. She left him at the gates and wished him luck, then went back to her car and drove off before she was late for work. He didn’t cry because he didn’t feel sad and nothing was sore. He used to cry sometimes when Mummy left him at playgroup, but that was when he was really totey. Now, though, he’s starting to wonder if it’s expected of him, as his gran advised him yesterday to watch the other boys and girls and do as they do if you’re ever a bit confused.

He is about to join in bubbling when the boy next to him begins speaking. He doesn’t know the boy; doesn’t know anyone in the class, in fact. All the children he knew at nursery are starting at Braeside Primary instead. He doesn’t know why he has been sent to a different school, but didn’t really think about it until today. The only boy he knows who is supposed to be starting at St Elizabeth’s is Dominic Reilly, whose mummy is friends with Martin’s mummy so they sometimes play at each other’s house. Martin prefers it when they play at Dominic’s, because he has a Matchbox Motorway and Dominic’s mum lets them have orange ice-lollies made in Tupperware from the freezer. But Dominic isn’t in this class, and he didn’t see him outside, so maybe Dominic’s mum changed her mind and sent him to Braeside Primary with the others.

“Hullo,” says the boy. He looks friendly. “What’s your name?” he asks.

“Martin,” Martin replies.

“I’m Scot. I’m not greetin. My da says I hadnae tae greet. How are you no greetin? Did your da tell you no tae as well?”

Martin thinks about this, can’t remember his dad giving any advice for school other than to work hard and not get the belt. Mummy told him off for saying this, but in a happy way, so Martin knew Daddy was making a joke.

Martin likes the look of Scot. He is smiley and seems unperturbed by his new surroundings. Martin wants them to be friends and decides this would be helped along if they have something in common, so he fibs and says, “Yes.” Then he adds: “And not to get the belt.” Martin doesn’t actually know what this belt is that his daddy was talking about, but thinks it will make Scot like him if he sounds as though he already knows something about school.

“Aye,” Scot agrees. “Tsh, tsh, aiyah,” he says, giggling and doing some sort of action with his hands that Martin doesn’t follow, though he grasps that pain is involved.

A little later, the mummies have all finally gone and all the crying seems to have stopped. The teacher announces that her name is Mrs Murphy and gets them all to say, “Good morning, Mrs Murphy.” Then she reads out everyone’s name from a sheet of paper, to which they each have to say, “Present, miss,” and put up their hands. Martin understands that ‘present’ is another word for ‘here’, so knows the teacher won’t be giving them parcels. He is not sure all the other children know this, however, as some of them looked very happy when they heard the word.

There is a girl nearby who is rocking from side to side as she sits cross-legged. Martin noticed her because she wasn’t one of the ones who was crying. He suspects that maybe she needs the toilet.

The teacher reads out the name ‘Helen Dunn’ and the rocking girl shoots her hand up, saying, “Present, miss,” with gleeful enthusiasm. Martin notices that there is another girl further along the wall who also has her hand up. She seems like she wants to say something but is too shy. The teacher looks at her and she starts to appear very worried, probably about to cry.

“What is it, dear?” the teacher asks in a soft voice. The girl’s eyes fill up and she starts to bubble. “Come on, you can tell me, pet. There’s nothing to worry about. We’re just all getting to know each other’s names. What’s yours?”

The girl sniffs, trying to get her words out through the greeting, which Martin knows is hard, especially when you’re a bit feart. “Helen Dunn,” she says.

The teacher turns to the other girl, who still has her hand up, still looks very happy, like she really did get a present.

“And you’re called Helen Dunn, too?” Mrs Murphy asks, looking at her sheet of paper.

The girl now looks a bit worried. “No,” she says. “I’m called Karen.”

“Why did you put your hand up when I said Helen’s name, Karen?”

The girl’s cheeks go red. “I couldn’t wait, miss,” she says.

The teacher smiles and covers her mouth. Martin suspects she’s laughing. The ladies at playgroup sometimes did that. Mummy said this was because it was rude to laugh at people when they make mistakes. None of the children laugh. Martin doesn’t know if this is because they are being polite or because they don’t realise Karen has made a mistake. He hopes it’s the first one, because then he won’t have to worry that they’ll laugh at him if he does something daft, too.

The teacher goes through all the names, then starts over again, but this time when your name is called, you have to go and sit at the desk she tells you. Martin jumps to his feet when his turn comes, and climbs quickly on to the seat, which is connected to the desk by big metal pipes. He lifts the heavy wooden lid and looks inside. It is empty apart from a few wisps of pencil-shavings underneath a round hole at the very front. Martin looks at the desk next to him to make sure it is the same and that the hole is supposed to be there. He doesn’t want the teacher thinking he broke it, in case he gets the belt. Daddy was joking about this, which meant he didn’t think it was very likely, but that meant he’d be all the more angry if it actually happened.

Martin watches the others take their places one by one, seeing the next row fill up. To his right is a girl called Alison, who was crying when her mummy left and still looks very feart. He had been hoping to end up next to Scot, but he is two rows away on the left, his name having been among the first ones called.

Once they have all been given a desk, the teacher talks for a very long time, and Martin has to try hard to keep listening, like at Mass. Mummy says to listen because the priest
is
telling a story, but it never sounds like a story to Martin, just boring talk, talk, talk. The teacher’s voice is nicer than any of the priests’, though. They all talk in a kind of half-singing voice, which Martin thinks must be because they are talking to God, as nobody talks to normal people like that, not even on telly.

When she is finished, she opens a cupboard and produces a pile of blue books which she calls ‘jotters’. Then she asks the girl in the front row, nearest the teacher’s table, to go round and give one to everybody. The girl is called Joanne. She is bigger than Martin and a bit plump, and wasn’t crying before, so Martin thinks she must be five already. He won’t be five until November. He watches her hand out the jotters, eagerly taking hold of his. There is writing on the back, blank white pages inside, and on the front a box with three rows of dotted lines.

While Joanne is doing her rounds, there is a knock on the classroom door, and a man in blue overalls enters, carrying a big orange plastic crate.

“Good morning, Mr Johnston,” says Mrs Murphy. “Children, this is Mr Johnston, our janitor, and he’s got something special for us. Say: “Good Morning, Mr Johnston.””

They all say it, that Karen girl really shouting it out. Joanne stops where she is, like she’s forgotten what she’s doing, and has to be told by the teacher to return to her task. Everyone is trying to see what is in the crate. It looks like white triangles.

“And what special thing do you have for us, Mr Johnston?” the teacher asks him.

“School milk, Mrs Murphy,” he says. He smiles.

Martin has never heard of a janitor before, but he knows there are sometimes two names for the same job: a normal one and a fancy one, like joiner and carpenter. He has now worked out that janitor is the fancy name for a milkman, and looks forward to telling his daddy this tonight when he gets home from work.

Once the janitor has gone away again, the teacher sits at her table and once again begins calling out everybody’s name. This time it takes ages, because when it’s your turn you have to bring your new jotter to her and get your name written on it. Then you are allowed to pick up a carton of milk and a blue straw and take it back to your desk to drink it. Martin’s name is called, and as before he immediately follows a boy named Gary Hawkins. Gary passes him on his way back from the crate, clutching his triangular carton and already eagerly stabbing at it with his blue straw. Martin notices varying levels of success in extracting the milk as he progresses towards the front: some contentedly sipping away; others comparing with their neighbours for clues as to piercing the container; while a girl called Zoe is tugging at the edges as her straw lies in wait upon her desk.