The Endings Man (20 page)

I’m a lucky man, Curle thought, as he sat on the edge of the bed with tears streaming down his face. That morning he had destroyed every note and memento he possessed of Ali Fleming. It had been a cleansing, not just for his sake but hers. He had burned away everything in her which she might have outgrown if she had lived. Let all that remained to memory be the best of her. Out of weakness, he had saved her photograph until last. This image from her past she had given him as a gift. It had been taken looking down on her, so that her face was a triangle and her eyes seemed enormous. ‘I don’t know why you like it so much,’ she had said. ‘I seem so needy and desperate.’

When Liz came into the bedroom, he was startled. He had thought he was alone in the house.

‘My God,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

He held out the photograph.

She looked at it, then sat beside him.

‘Where has this been?’ she asked.

‘I hid it away. I hid it away with all the others.’

‘You told me you’d burned them.’

‘I think I was mad. I’ve been sitting here looking at it and wondering why you didn’t leave me.’

‘You had them all the time.’

‘I couldn’t bear to burn them. I started to – but then I couldn’t.’

They sat looking at the photograph of their daughter, who was dead. Liz traced the outline of the child’s cheek with her finger.

‘Do you know how much I’ve wanted to look at them? How could you do this?’

‘I don’t know any more. That’s the truth. And once I’d lied about burning them, I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know how.’ When she didn’t answer, he laid his hand on hers, which lay on the child’s cheek. ‘And yet you didn’t leave me.’

She wrenched her hand away from under his.

‘Understand this. I’m only going to say it once. For Kerr’s sake, I won’t break up our marriage. I’ll never break up our marriage. If that gives you a weapon against me, I can’t help it.’

They became calmer as the day passed.

In the late afternoon, Kerr was sitting with his mother in the front room doing homework, when Curle brought the photograph downstairs. He sat it on top of the glass-fronted bookcase. When he turned round, they were both watching him.

‘This is your sister Mae,’ he said. ‘When she died, your mother and I were very sad. But then you came along, and that made us happy.’ That should have made us happy. ‘I’m going to leave this photograph here to remind us of her. She’ll always be part of our family.’

That night he returned from exile in the study. As he lay beside his wife, he felt more at peace than he had done for years. As he was dozing off to sleep, the phone rang.

‘Is that you, Curle?’

A man’s voice. He didn’t recognise it.

Cautiously, he said, ‘Yes?’

‘This is Joe Tilman. I wanted you to know my wife is dead. One of the nurses found her hanging an hour ago. I’ve just been told.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Curle said. His lips felt stiff.

‘She couldn’t stand being in that place and you were the one who put her there. You killed her, you bastard. I wanted you to be the first to know.’

The phone went down and left an echoing silence.

Two hours later, they were both still awake. Curle felt as if he might never sleep again. They had been so separated that he had to explain it all to her, tell her who Martha Tilman had been.

‘I can’t see that it was your fault,’ she said for the tenth time. ‘I don’t even know why he phoned. He’s just trying to make you feel guilty.’

Tilman the negotiator, Curle thought, negotiating another deal.

Later she said, ‘He’s the one who put her in there. Whatever was wrong, it hadn’t much to do with you.’

Somewhere in the small hours, she said, ‘You’re not a bad man. Whatever you think.’

Wearied to the edge of sleep, he swore, ‘I’ll never hurt you again.’

He thought she wasn’t going to answer, and then thought he heard her say, ‘I know you mean that,’ which in the last moment of wakefulness he felt as a judgement and that it was deserved.

The day Robert Haskell was given a sentence that meant that he might be back out on the streets in eight years, Curle felt enormously alive and cheerful. Coming out of court, he saw Meldrum standing on his own. Perhaps because of his height, he made an oddly isolated figure.

Going up to him, Curle asked, ‘Well, was it worth it?’

‘McGuigan doesn’t think so. He’s gone off in a rage.’

‘Sometimes you have to settle for things as they are.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry about your shoulder. Is it all right?’

‘I’m a quick healer. Did you know she’d left the door open? I don’t mean unlocked. She’d left it slightly open.’

‘I thought she’d be at the trial.’

‘She wrote to me.’ The big man paused, and it was clear he’d decided to say no more. ‘Just as well.’

On impulse, Curle asked, ‘Would you care to come for a drink?’

To his surprise, Meldrum accepted the offer.

They walked down the Royal Mile, Meldrum having suggested a tourist pub, as one not likely to be frequented by policemen.

‘Where do you usually drink?’ Curle asked.

‘Wherever I’m not likely to encounter someone I’ve put away.’

‘Are there many of those?’

‘A fair number over the years,’ Meldrum said misunderstanding.

‘I meant pubs. Morningside ones, eh?’ Meldrum laughed at that. ‘And stay away from the ones in Leith.’

‘I’ve got a flat off Leith Walk,’ Meldrum said.

Even when you weren’t a suspect, Curle reflected, the man had a gift for putting you in the wrong.

After they’d found a pub Meldrum approved of, Curle brought the drinks over to the corner table where he’d settled.

‘You’ve heard about Brian Todd?’ Meldrum asked.

‘No.’

‘It was on the news. He was found on Calton Hill beaten half to death. At first they thought it was a mugging. He’s a homosexual – you knew that?’

‘I knew.’

‘Now there’s a suspicion it may have been a warning to keep his mouth shut. He got himself involved with some serious people, not just white-collar crime.’

‘He is a bastard.’

‘Likely enough. Just not a murderer.’

They sipped in silence.

Curle asked, ‘When did you suspect Haskell?’

‘More or less from the off. He was the obvious suspect. In real life, they’re the ones you go for.’

‘I didn’t believe Linda Fleming.’

‘You’re not a detective.’

‘No,’ Curle said. ‘In a crime book, I wouldn’t get away with it being the obvious one.’

‘I’ll tell you the strangest thing about it,’ Meldrum said. ‘Them all living on the same stair. It was like a domestic.’

‘I know what you mean. There was that kind of intimacy. People dying in the place where they feel safe.’
He shook his head. ‘Even after being in court, I don’t understand why he killed Eva Johanson.’

‘Nobody does.’

‘I suppose,’ Curle couldn’t help speculating, ‘he might have turned the anger he felt against Linda Fleming on her. Maybe, with me knowing about the diary, he was afraid to attack Linda. But he had to hurt somebody. There is such a thing as blood lust.’ He looked to the detective for a response. ‘Does that make sense?’

Meldrum stared down at his glass, turning it on the table. ‘There was a lassie in Glasgow two years ago. A prostitute. She was killed the same way, beaten and strangled.’

‘And you think Haskell might have done it?’

‘If he did, there’s no way of proving it. Believe me, I tried.’ He made a little chopping gesture of frustration. ‘But Eva Johanson should have been enough. That’s the one that should have put him away for a long time. It means he’ll do it again when he gets out.’

‘At least you got him.’

‘Might not be so lucky next time. He might have learned not to take souvenirs from the victims. Want another one?’

‘If you’ve time.’

When Meldrum came back, he set the drinks down and said as he took his seat again, ‘Day like this, it’s all you can do. McGuigan’ll learn.’

‘I’d a nasty thought while you were away,’ Curle said. ‘Thinking about that prostitute in Glasgow, in my novels the serial killer, Jack’s Friend, beats women to death and strangles them.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’

Faintly irritated by the dismissal, Curle said, ‘Haskell worked in a bookshop.’

‘I’ll tell you something about Haskell that didn’t come out in the trial,’ Meldrum said.

‘What was that?’ Curle leaned forward.

Meldrum gave one of his rare smiles. ‘Nothing important. That’s why the lawyers weren’t interested.’ He took out a notepad and pen and, after writing on it, passed it across. ‘Haskell had that hidden behind a cupboard door in his bedroom.’ He had printed in capital letters: THE ENEMY OF LOVE IS DEATH. THE ENEMY OF DEATH IS KNOWLEDGE.

‘The lawyers are wrong,’ Curle said. ‘Can I keep it?’

‘Of course. It’s only a bit of paper. He probably stole it from a condom advert. Believe me, murderers aren’t interesting.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘They’re the rest of us with something missing. It’s the people who are able to stop themselves from being murderers who are interesting.’

‘Like detectives, you mean?’

‘If you like.’

At that point, relaxed as he’d never thought he would be in the detective’s presence, Curle made a mistake.

‘Do you remember,’ he asked, ‘that note I gave you about Ali Fleming and her Classics Professor?’ Meldrum grunted. ‘Would it be possible to get it back?’

‘Why?’

Asked that, Curle found himself embarrassed to explain that he wanted to burn it as he had burned everything else. He was too afraid of seeming pretentious to tell the truth: that he wanted to protect her from the world’s ill opinion.

Instead he heard himself muttering, ‘It might come in useful.’

His heart sank as he saw the look on the detective’s face.

‘That isn’t right,’ Meldrum said.

‘I’m a writer,’ Curle explained, trying for a smile and losing control of it as he felt it slip into a smirk.

The big man contemplated him, rubbing a finger slowly down his jaw.

‘You think that’s an excuse?’ Meldrum asked.

FREDERIC LINDSAY was born in Glasgow in 1933 and worked as a library assistant, a teacher and a lecturer before becoming a full-time writer in 1979. He served on the Literature Committee of the Scottish Arts Council, and was actively involved with PEN and the Society of Authors. He passed away in 2013.

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