Eye of the Raven (6 page)

It had just gone midnight when Steven finally admitted defeat. He had failed to find any reference to Julie Summers’ broken fingers anywhere in the press cuttings or any mention of them in the extracts of prosecution submissions made at David Little’s trial. He sent a brief e-mail to Sci-Med asking them to investigate whether or not David Little and Hector Combe could ever have crossed paths in the prison system and informing them that he would be travelling to Scotland next day on the first available shuttle flight; he’d be in touch.

This was one of the advantages of working for Sci-Med. Red tape was kept to a minimum and investigators were given a free hand to carry out their assignments as they saw fit. Sci-Med administrators were there to support front-line people, not the other way around as had become the case in so many government departments.

As he considered the prospect, Steven found he had mixed feelings about returning to Scotland. True, it was the place where he had met his wife, Lisa – who had been Scots – and where he had spent many of the happiest times of his life, discovering that particular poignancy that beautiful scenery can have when you are in love – but it held bad memories too.

In the early days of their courtship, spending time together had been difficult and largely limited to when Lisa could manage to escape the yolk of caring for an ageing and increasingly demented mother. Lisa had been a nurse at a hospital in Glasgow when he had been sent there during the course of an investigation, which for him had turned into something of a nightmare and from which he had been lucky to escape with his life.

Yet only eighty or so miles away were the rolling hills of Dumfriesshire and the romantic, lonely shores of the Solway Firth where it was so easy to lose your heart to Scotland. It was a region that so many tourists overlooked as they made their way north to the tartan theme parks of the highlands. This was where the village of Glenvane lay with its little cluster of whitewashed houses and cobbled yards born of an age when horses tilled the land and the pace of life had been slower. This was where his daughter, Jenny, lived and was happy among people who cared about each other. Steven had seen the good side of Scotland and the bad, the generosity of its people and their meanness of spirit. When they were good they were very good but by God, when they were bad, they didn’t bear thinking about.

As the aircraft banked over the Firth of Forth to begin its final descent into Edinburgh Airport it afforded the passengers sitting on the left a grandstand view of the two bridges spanning the estuary below. They were bathed in morning sunshine, the huge red cantilevers of the older rail bridge appearing particularly dramatic, standing tall as a continuing testament to Victorian engineering.

As he looked to the west, Steven wondered with some trepidation what the day would bring. He had arranged for a car to be waiting for him at the airport and his plan was to drive out to the village of Upgate in Lanarkshire to speak with the Rev Lawson about his interview with Hector Combe. He was assuming that Lawson would actually be there. There had not been time to contact him or make any more formal arrangement.

As luck would have it, they were testing the prison sirens when he reached Carstairs. At least, he assumed that it was a test sounding in the absence of any sign of any other activity. It seemed reasonable to believe that there would have been plenty had there been a real escape in progress. He still found it an eerie sound however as he looked up at the tall perimeter fence and wondered what the residents in the nearby houses must think when they heard it go off. He imagined doors and windows being double-checked on dark wet nights, fearful glances being exchanged and TV volumes being turned up.

Steven moved through the village slowly until he found the sign directing him to the B road that led over to Upgate, the one that the Rev Lawson would have used on the night of Combe’s death. Like most of the roads around here it ran over bleak moor land, making travellers wonder what it must be like to live here in winter and hoping – as they noticed their mobile phone signal disappear - that the car wouldn’t break down.

Steven’s rented Rover coped without problem and he entered Upgate, looking for a church spire as an indication of where he might find Lawson. There were no other high buildings in the village so he found it without difficulty and turned off into what he read was Mosspark Road to stop outside the less than imposing building of St John’s. He guessed that the grimy Victorian villa standing next to it would be the manse. A metal plaque confirmed this when he reached the gate.

He walked up the cracked and weedy front path to knock on a front door that hadn’t seen paint in many years. His second knock was answered by a woman in her fifties who seemed more than a little put-out to have callers. The lines on her face suggested that she hadn’t smiled much in the last thirty years. ‘Aye, what is it?’

‘
Is the Rev Lawson at home this morning?’ asked Steven.

‘
He’s no’ here,’ snapped the woman.

‘
Will he be back soon?’

‘
Depends.’

‘
On what?’ asked Steven, struggling to maintain a civil smile.

‘
Them at The Firs.’

Steven tried a blank stare instead of asking another question and the woman eventually said, ‘The meenester’s ill. He’s in The Firs. A nervous breakdoon, they say. Ah dinnae ken; a’body’s hivin them these days. A load o’ shite if ye ask me. Ah kin remember a time when folk got oan with their lives without all this brekdoon and stress nonsense.’

Steven figured that a nod might be the best way to pave the way ahead. After a moment he asked, ‘How do I go about finding the Firs, Mrs . . .?’ asked Steven.

‘
McLellan; ah’m the meenester’s cleaner, no’ that he pays me ower much. Tak a left at the end o’ the street and it’s aboot twa miles oot on the Ayr road. Gie him ma best wishes and tell him he’s oot o’ toilet roll.’

‘
Will do,’ said Steven.

Steven found The Firs without difficulty although he saw the sign a bit late, thanks to overhanging tree branches, and had to back up on the road before negotiating the narrow entrance that led to a an imposingly long drive lined with the trees that had, he presumed, lent their name to the house. He parked on the gravel outside the front door of a large red sandstone villa with an ugly concrete box extension tacked on to its left-hand side. A notice board by the side of the steps leading up to the door proclaimed the house’s credentials as a Church of Scotland Rest and Recuperation Home. Steven took encouragement from this. If the place wasn’t actually a hospital – psychiatric or otherwise - there must be a good chance that Lawson’s condition might not be as serious as he’d feared.

‘
Rev Lawson is here for complete rest,’ said the small, bespectacled figure in the charcoal suit and dog collar who introduced himself as the Rev Angus Minch, the man in charge of The Firs. He’d been summoned by the lone woman in the front office who had been having a telephone conversation about the colour of bridesmaids’ dresses when Steven had entered. He’d gathered that green was a non-starter.

‘
I promise I won’t keep him long,’ said Steven.

‘
That’s not the point,’ said Minch pompously. ‘Rev Lawson needs complete rest. Every visitor he gets just interrupts the healing process.’

Steven had no wish to enter any kind of argument about ‘the healing process’, which he regarded as an expression seldom used by health professionals but a particular favourite of quacks and those who liked to imagine they knew more about medicine than they actually did.

‘
I’m afraid it’s important that I speak with him,’ he said in a tone that suggested he had the authority to back up his request.

Minch gave a heavy sigh before saying grudgingly, ‘So be it. But if Rev Lawson should suffer a relapse over this, I’ll know exactly where to apportion blame.’

Steven guessed that Minch was a man well used to apportioning blame: he had that air about him. Moral rectitude oozed from every pore. Steven nodded acceptance and was taken by Minch to a small back room on the first floor where they found Lawson sitting, reading in an armchair by the window. He was wearing a dark plaid dressing gown and seemed calm when Minch introduced him – perhaps too calm, he thought. He guessed that he was on some kind of medication. The book he was reading was Arthur Grimble’s,
A Pattern of Islands
.

‘
I’m sorry, Joseph; this chap’s from something called the Sci-Med Inspectorate, whoever
they
are,’ snapped Minch with a sidelong glance at Steven. ‘I’m afraid he needs to ask you some questions. I told him you weren’t well but he insists,’ said Minch.

Lawson looked up at Steven over his glasses and asked, ‘About the Combe business?’

‘
I’m afraid so,’ said Steven.

‘
I have already told the police and the prison authorities everything I know about that . . . man,’ said Lawson. ‘There is absolutely nothing more I can tell you or anyone else.’

Steven wondered about the editing process that had left Lawson finally with “man”. He said, ‘I understand your frustration Rev Lawson but there are some more things I must ask you,’ he said.

‘
Would you like me to stay?’ asked Minch but Lawson said not with a resigned wave of his hand. ‘I’m fine, Angus,’ he assured him.

Steven waited until the door had closed behind Minch. ‘I understand that Combe put you through quite an ordeal?’ he said sympathetically.

A vulnerable look appeared on Lawson’s face and he paused as if choosing his words carefully. ‘I thought I understood people, Dr Dunbar: I believed I knew about the darker side of life, as people like to call it. Upgate isn’t exactly
Songs of Praise territory
. It’s an ugly rash on the landscape with a population more concerned with Orange Order marches than church socials – more social services than social diary, if you take my meaning. Continual poverty breeds its own kind of society over the years and believe me, it isn’t pretty. It’s life at the lowest common denominator. I’m telling you this because I don’t want you thinking that I’m some kind of middle class cleric who’s had an attack of the vapours because he suddenly came face to face with the real world. I was stupid enough to believe that I’d seen it all in my years at Upgate but I was wrong.’ His voice dropped to a whisper as he added, ‘Oh so wrong. Nothing prepared me for Hector Combe.’

‘
I think you can be excused for not having come across someone like Combe before,’ said Steven quietly. ‘That’s a ‘privilege’ afforded to only a very unlucky few.’

Lawson smiled wryly. ‘Do you know,’ he said. ‘I went there feeling . . .’ Lawson searched unsuccessfully for the right expression, ‘in charge, if you like. It was my role to hear the confession of a dying man. I was the one with the power to offer comfort and reassurance. He was supposed to be the one on his best behaviour, the one displaying remorse and contrition, only Combe didn’t seem to see it that way. He had some understanding of the situation but it was a perverted one, if you know what I mean? Maybe you don’t; I’m not sure I do myself. He didn’t really seem to comprehend what sinning and forgiveness was all about.’

‘
The games people play,’ said Steven softly. ‘They’re a complete mystery to psychopaths but they’re clever; they observe; they emulate as best they can, but they can never feel the underlying emotions so sometimes it doesn’t quite come off. It’s hard to appear contrite when you don’t know what the word means.’

‘
Yes, that’s it exactly,’ said Lawson, pleased that someone appeared to understand what he was saying but then a darkness came over him.

‘
He insisted on telling me every little detail about what he’d done to that poor girl. Every evil, loathsome thing that he’d made her do and what he’d done to her . . . And you know, he seemed to enjoy telling me. I could see it was giving him a thrill all over again. He was . . .’ Lawson’s voice fell to a whisper, ‘touching himself under the blankets as we spoke . . . enjoying it as if he were reliving the experience.

‘
He didn’t really do these things,’ said Steven. ‘He was making the whole lot up. He was deliberately trying to shock you.’

Lawson turned in his chair and looked at him without blinking. ‘Was he?’ he asked. ‘Was he really?’

Steven found the doubt in Lawson’s eyes so compelling that he did not reply immediately. Instead, he brought a chair over to join him at the window and sat down. ‘Psychopaths feed off other people’s fear and revulsion,’ he said. ‘It’s like a drug to them. They see it as weakness, an affirmation of their own strength and superiority.’

‘
So why ask for absolution for something he hadn’t done? Why make up something like that?’ asked Lawson.

‘
I don’t know,’ admitted Steven.

‘
It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Lawson, gazing out of the window and shaking his head.

‘
The police think he was trying to get at them by attracting press attention to the case all over again. I understand they had a lot of bad publicity over their handling of it the first time around.’

Lawson considered this in silence.

‘
I’m sorry to have to put you through this,’ said Steven, ‘but I need to ask you about the girl’s fingers.’

‘
Julie!’ Lawson suddenly insisted, as if he’d just come out of his valium haze. ‘We must stop referring to her as “the girl”. Her name was Julie, not “the girl”.’