The Blood That Stains Your Hands (5 page)

'She'd had sex in the previous twenty-four hours,' he says.

Morrow looks vaguely disturbed by the thought of octogenarian sex. I can't help laughing.

'Good on her,' I say. 'At least she was still getting some.'

He gives me the look.

'It wasn't me,' I add quickly.

'Funny,' he says. 'Something else to think about as you go through her correspondence. I'll go and speak to the daughter, now that she's had a day to think about it. She might have remembered something, might have some idea who her mother was...' and he lets the sentence go, as he can't bring himself to mention any sort of word for sex in relation to a dead eighty-one-year-old.

Morrow and I return to our desks. They're usually laden with shit on any given day, but today, what with the sum total of Maureen's life added to them, they look even more of a disaster zone.

'That's just gross,' says Morrow, sitting down.

'What d'you expect people to do? Forget that sex exists? A couple of old folk getting it on, Jesus man, good on them. As long as, you know, they don't post pictures online.'

Morrow barks out a laugh, and I join him. A couple of schoolboys.

'But how do they even do it?'

'Fuck, I don't know,' I say. 'Viagra and lube, I suppose.'

'Jesus,' says Morrow, making some sort of low, distasteful sound, as though he's bitten into the old persons' sex equivalent of junk food.

Taylor emerges from his office on his way to interview the grieving, guilt-ridden daughter, probably passing Superintendent Connor's office on the way to deliver the good news about the potential investigation upgrade.

'And you might want to factor in,' he says, slowing as he passes our desk, 'that Balingol says the quality of the sperm they found in her vagina suggests her lover was in his early twenties, possibly even a teenager.'

He delivers this alarming added detail with a complete lack of inflection, and then heads on his way. Morrow and I stare at each other across the divide of Maureen Henderson's personal files and correspondence, and slowly his look of distaste transfers itself.

There's something about old people having sex. You know, it's, I don't know, like pandas having sex or something. It's kind of cute, as long as you don't think about the actuality of it. But the old person/teenager combo... That there is all bad. On every level.

'What were you saying?' he says eventually. My face is blank. 'That,' he continues, 'is gross, and don't try to imply otherwise.'

I wasn't going to.

'Sure beans,' I find myself saying.

––––––––

D
I Dorritt comes to speak to me at some point in the late afternoon. Already beyond regular home time. Not that I ever leave when I should. It's not that I'm wedded to my work, but seriously, what the fuck have I got to go home to?

'Going to need you tomorrow morning, Tom,' he says.

Dorritt and I are getting on better now. It's weird. It's as though he felt sorry for me after I nearly died in the spring. Why would he do that? I guess I still lack empathy. I don't give a shit about him – nor, indeed, about myself – so why should he?

Morrow is already gone, having reduced the immeasurable list of those against whom Maureen held a grudge to something in the region of twenty. He has a B list of another forty-one names. I'm compiling similar lists, then we'll crosscheck.

'Working on the suicide slash murder up at the Old Kirk,' I say. 'I'll need to check with Taylor. What's up?'

'Need a few hands for the paper storage bust in Halfway.'

'Sure,' I say. 'I'll speak to Taylor.'

'Cool,' he says. 'Thanks. I'm just looking for feet on the ground. We've got the paperwork covered, just need bodies. Shouldn't be more than an hour and a half.'

I nod. He pauses as if there's something else he wants to say, then turns back into his office. Maybe he's been told to include me in his team as often as possible to aid my recovery. It's reasonable that they probably think I need to recover.

Taylor emerges from his office and snaps his fingers at me. Snaps his fingers. I jump up like the obedient little poodle.

'Connor's office,' he says. 'He wants to speak to us about Maureen.'

We walk quickly down the short corridor. The door to Connor's office is no more than twenty yards away, although fortunately he rarely emerges, so we don't see too much of him.

'DI Dorritt ask you about the raid tomorrow morning?' Taylor says as he knocks on the door. A sharp 'enter' comes from within.

'Yep.'

'It's fine,' he says. 'They need the bodies. I'll take care of this for the morning.'

'Thank you, sir.'

We go in and sit down. Connor lifts his head from whatever paperwork he's studying. Financing, probably. He's your classic, modern-day superintendent. His days will be filled with paperwork, finagling budgets and moving people around to fill holes and questioning whether we can get away with using cheaper toilet paper. The management of doing more with less. Crime will cross his desk in the same way as a report on vehicular repair expenditure.

'Update,' he says, by way of introduction. God, he's so warm. Touching really. I just want to reach out and hug him.

Taylor and I haven't spoken for a few hours, and I immediately start wondering whether or not I want to pass on everything I was going to tell him in front of the superintendent.

'Balingol has completed the autopsy,' says Taylor. 'He now believes there are possible signs of Mrs Henderson having been restrained, which could tie in with her potentially being forced to take the sleeping tablets. However, he does concede that it's also possible it occurred during coitus.'

I do wonder if he could have said that without actually saying it.

'I spoke to the daughter and she seemed genuinely surprised at the notion that her mother might have been having sexual relations. I wondered about not mentioning the age of the lover, but of course there was always the possibility of her having some young guy that hung around, that the daughter presumed helped her with the shopping or some such. Anyway, she claimed not to know of any young men in her mother's life, and I think was appalled enough at the suggestion that she'll strike it from her mind as most definitely untrue.'

As soon as Taylor finishes talking, Connor slides his chin over in my direction and nods it by way of instructing me that it's my turn. He seems to be able to move his chin without moving the rest of his head. I wonder if he's ever considered going on
Britain's Got Talent.

Picking up on his demeanour while Taylor was talking, I decide that the superintendent has us in here so that he can do the talking, not the other way round. He has an instruction to pass on to us, and has no interest in what we're bringing to him.

'Nothing,' I say.

I get a side-glance from Taylor, but I'm pretty sure he'll have the measure of the boss.

'Fine,' says Connor, then he leans forward on his elbows. 'I've been speaking to one or two of the members of the congregation.'

As soon as he says that he raises his hands to silence any objection that might be coming. Obviously wary of stepping on his investigating officers' toes. 'Listen,' he continues, 'I've been attending the church for the past year now, since we came down from Aberdeen.'

'You knew this woman?' asks Taylor. His tone is a bit snippy, perhaps because Connor never mentioned this when Taylor spoke to him earlier.

'There are several hundred members of the congregation,' says Connor. 'I don't know everyone.'

'She appears to have put herself about a bit,' I say.

They both give me a look for the interjection, Connor more so because of my implied disbelief.

'Obviously, I mean,' I say, 'she wrote to a lot of people, had plenty to say. Not, you know, that she had sex... with... you know, a lot of them.'

'Are you finished?' snaps Connor.

Another glance at Taylor, then I turn back to the superintendent and lower my eyes. Time to acknowledge the authority of the supposed alpha male.

'I wasn't aware of Mrs Henderson, nor of her proclivity for writing letters of complaint as I was never in receipt of such. It would appear from my friends that those who did receive them tended not to discuss the matter as so many found the letters, and Mrs Henderson herself, so utterly distasteful.'

'You would've thought she might've found you a worthwhile recipient of one of her angry missives,' I chip in. Don't know what's got into me today. I usually sit before Connor in depressed and oppressed silence. Perhaps today I'm seeing him as disingenuous, whereas usually I just see him as dull and jobsworthy.

There's something about disingenuousness. Barefaced lying and thuggery and crack dealing and murder, the kind of things we come across in this job, you get used to. You understand it. But the artifice of disingenuousness pisses me off. And it's always a guy in a suit.

'I can assure you, Sergeant Hutton, that I had no contact with that woman.'

Hmm. The Bill Clinton defence. That usually works.

I hold his eye for a moment, then once again lower my gaze to the desk. It's a reasonable point, of course, since we've already found the folder of all Maureen's outgoing correspondence on the church business, and there were no letters to Connor.

'Gentlemen, the church has been through enough trouble in the past year without this getting out. There's been a horrible amount of infighting, and the congregation has just melted away. The last thing we need is an implication that one of our Christian family has murdered another.'

'You want us to brush it under the carpet?' says Taylor. Nice edge to the voice. I approve.

'Of course not,' he snaps back. 'If this is a murder investigation, then it's a murder investigation, and that's how it's going to be. The last thing we need, however, is a scandal around the town and around the church if all we're dealing with is a suicide of a mentally deranged old woman. It's the firm opinion of many of the people to whom I've spoken that she was showing clear signs of senility. Perhaps no one suspected she might commit suicide, but how can any of us even begin to understand what a woman in her condition might do? She was clearly unbalanced, and I wouldn't even be surprised if what we discover in the end is that she was doing this to implicate someone else. All part of her mischief-making.'

Taylor has gradually eased himself back in his seat, the tension leaving him.

'What do you want us to do?' he asks, his voice now having lost its edge. Disappointing.

'I want you to hold onto your hats,' says Connor. Fuck's sake. 'I want you to not get carried away and think this is your new big case, something to help salvage the reputations you've both flushed down the toilet in the last two years. Until such times as you have absolute proof that Mrs Henderson was murdered, you will deal with this case as a suicide. You will ask questions as though it was a suicide, you will treat it as a suicide, you will go to bed tonight believing it was a suicide, and if the press come asking, you will tell them you are dealing with a suicide. Do I make myself clear, gentlemen?'

Oh yes, you make yourself clear.

You're a wanker.

––––––––

A
nother night in the pub. This time, at least, Taylor has joined me for a while. I have my vodka tonic, he has his pint. Two miserable old middle-aged sad sacks chewing the fat and grumbling about the world.

'We could do with finding the lover,' he says. 'Maybe he's not involved, but there might've been some pillow talk.'

'You ever go to church?' I ask.

'When I was a kid,' he says. 'Sunday school, all of that.'

'When'd you stop?'

'Don't remember. Teenage years some time. When they stopped making me. You?'

'Not really,' I say. 'I mean, I've been in the odd church, but never did Sunday school or any of that shit.'

'You're going this Sunday,' he says.

'To church?'

'Indeed.'

'Oh, good. You coming? Will we sit incongruously together at the back? If we wear work clothes, they'll probably think we're Jehovah's come to steal their congregation.'

He smiles after taking a long drink from his pint. I've already got the feeling that he's only staying for one. I can't believe that he's got much more to go home to than I do, but he seems more at peace with it.

I wish I could be at peace. There's probably some nineteenth century German philosophical shit about achieving that when you're dead. Or maybe that's biblical shit.

'One of us is going to St Mungo's, the other to St Stephen's. We're going to blend in.'

'Undercover?'

'Not necessarily. If you get talking, I'm not looking for you to pretend that you're someone you're not.'

'Well that's my Sunday morning sorted,' I say.

'Like you were doing something else.'

'Sleeping off the night before. Three hours, is it, something like that?'

'The service? An hour. It's all very civilised, the Church of Scotland. They don't expect much for your membership, although murdering a fellow congregational member is probably off limits.'

I drain my glass and mutter, 'Fuck,' just because I can. Glance over at the bar. Taylor looks at his watch.

'Got a lot of interviewing to do tomorrow,' he says. 'You, me and Morrow, splitting it up. Need to get around as many of the parishioners as possible from all four of the original churches.'

'You're saying I should go home, have a cup of tea and a biscuit, watch some crappy TV documentary and get an early night?'

He downs his pint and sets the empty glass on the table, then smiles in his paternal way.

'Maybe you should do an Open University course or something. Study philosophy, some shit like that. It'd be good for you.'

What the fuck?

'Really, no,' I say. 'Fair enough if you don't want me turning up at work in the morning, breathing fumes of fire all over these whiter than white church-going bastards, but don't go... Jesus... philosophy? Seriously? It's a fucking shit world, full of sadness and loneliness and melancholy. Then you die. Period.'

Getting a bit annoyed, which is stupid. He means well.