Blood Tears (21 page)

‘No, Theresa. I
love
you.’

She stops and turns around to face me, her eyes searching mine. She puts a hand on either side of my face and kisses me. ‘One night when she was drunk, my mother gave me a great piece of advice. She said don’t believe a man who tells you they love you when they’ve got a hard-on.’ She reaches down, wraps her fingers round it and gives it a hard squeeze.

‘But I do.’

‘No you don’t, Ray. You don’t
do
love.’ She sits up and pulls the sheet around her, uncomfortable with this turn of events. ‘You… you’re mistaking gratitude for love. You’re thinking, “The daft bitch believes me, I’ll fall in love with her”.’ A tear gathers size on her lower lashes and escapes to glide down her cheek. ‘Don’t do this to me, Ray,’ she whispers.

‘Theresa. I’m not making this up.’ I’m up on my knees. ‘Last night when I was in my cell, to comfort me, to help me sleep, I thought of you. Now when we made love… I’ve never felt anything like that. It was like I’d connected.’

Her eyes full and moist, her lips thin and cupped in a shape that spells NO.  As in, no, don’t love me.

‘We’re not about love, Ray. We have fun. Have a laugh. You go off and do your thing and I go back to my husband.’

‘Tell me you don’t love me too.’

‘I do love you. I’ve always loved you. But I clocked you straight away. Mr Terrified of Commitment. Mr Married to the Job. Don’t you see? I put you in a box marked S.E.X. I know how to cope with you when you’re in that box.’ She wipes a tear from her eyes with the corner of the sheet, ‘Don’t tell me you love me, Ray. ’Cos that would give me hope and “never” is much easier to deal with.’

She jumps from the bed and pulls her clothes on. Numb, I watch her dress.

‘Can I call you?’ I ask as she leaves the room.

‘I don’t know,’ she wails as she runs for the front door.

As I listen to her feet drum out of the flat and the slam of the door, I feel like I’ve found something new and amazing. And then flushed it down the drain. Why did I open my big mouth? Couldn’t I just have savoured the feeling, tasted it for a while longer before opening her up to the possibilities? I turn around, kneel on the floor and push my face into the pillow where her head had rested. Her scent rises from the fabric. The corner of the top sheet is still moist with her tears. 

Allessandra’s right arm is aching. She has been on the phone to her mother for thirty minutes, doing the dutiful daughter thing and wondering how a light item like a mobile phone can be such hard work to hold to the side of her head.

‘Are you even listening to me, Allessandra?’

‘Of course, Mum.’ Allessandra lies and prays that her mother isn’t going to test her.

‘What was I talking about then?’

Allessandra quickly reviews a list of her mother’s favourite topics, can’t decide which and opts for a piece of passive aggression.

‘You were saying that I don’t see enough of my husband and therefore it’s no surprise I don’t get pregnant and then how you much prefer talking to your other daughter ’cos at least she knows the difference between a crochet hook and a knitting needle.’

‘Darling, how can you say that? I would never question the hours you keep at work and I love both my daughters equally.’

Her mother sounds stung and Allessandra feels a charge of guilt.

‘Of course you do, Mother.’ No you don’t. You leech life equally from both daughters. But you prefer the one that isn’t up to her armpits in human scum.

While her mother continues her monologue Allessandra looks out of the car window at the red stone of Bethlehem House and wonders yet again at the kind of childhood that Ray would have had within its walls. She really shouldn’t complain about her own mother. At least she knew she was loved.

It had been suggested that, as she had initially come here with Ray, she should visit again. She told no-one about her second visit.

‘Try and find out what kind of boy McBain was,’ Campbell asked her. ‘Background details could be important in this case.’

So here she is again and not looking forward to it. Mother Mary is so small, how can she be so damn scary? If I could put up with my own mother for life I can speak to the wee nun again for five minutes, she thinks.

‘Very good, Mum,’ she says. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, but I am working.’

‘Right, okay. No need to be so rude. Where did you young girls learn to be so abrupt?’

‘Bye Mum. I’ll call you later. Okay?’ But Allessandra is talking to herself by now. Fair enough, she thinks, I deserved that.

In the convent, with Mother Superior, Allessandra wonders at the title. Aren’t nuns supposed to be about servitude and humility? What’s so humble about the word “superior” being in your job title?

The older woman is sitting at a table across from her, hands clasped as if in prayer on the table before her. A set of glass rosary beads tumbles from her hands like spilled and frozen holy water.

‘What can we do for you today, DC Rossi?’ Her expression is certain in its serenity.

‘Tell me again about Ray McBain while he was under your care.’

‘There have been more deaths, I hear?’ Mother asks, her short fingers working at the beads. She is looking for information, but Allessandra isn’t about to give her any. Stick to asking the questions, she reminds herself.

‘From what you know of Ray, is he capable of such terrible acts?’

‘He was eleven going on twelve when he left here. A lot of time for society to warp the mind of a weak young boy.’

‘Didn’t the Jesuits say that if you gave them the boy until the age of seven, they would give you the man?’ Allessandra isn’t about to let this old woman get the better of her, but she still wishes that she had managed to edit her tone before that left her mouth.

A wry smile is the only response Mother allows herself to show. ‘Even the Jesuits would have struggled with a boy like Ray.’

‘How so?’ asks Allessandra, wondering why this woman makes her feel so uncomfortable. Sure, she has a strong personality, but she has devoted her life to her beliefs and has tried to make a difference to countless children’s lives. So what is it about her that makes Allessandra want to go straight to a voodoo shop, buy a doll, some large pins and a nun’s outfit?

‘I’ve had a lot of children in my care over the years. I remember each and every one.’ She smiles, and in that smile Allessandra reads of a woman who wanted to be a mother to her own children, but to whom this joy had been refused. That she had to look after the children other women had produced was a cross she had to bear. Allessandra guesses that it’s a look she has perfected over the years. ‘Most were troubled. All were in pain. And with the help of the good Lord I did my very best.’ Only the crucifix is showing from her rosary, the beads are all bundled tightly in her hands. ‘Ray was more troubled than most. I told you about the stalking. There was also the sleepwalking.’ Her eyes are fixed on Allessandra’s but her gaze is years in the past. ‘Gave me a fright, the little monkey. He was standing over me one night. Just standing there like a zombie. And me in my pyjamas. Holy Mother of God, I’d never heard of such a thing, a child in the nuns’ quarters. He got a good clout and dragged off to his bed. Took a month for my poor heart to recover.

‘And there was the bed-wetting. A sure sign of a soul in torture, if you ask me. We’d have made him kneel in prayer till his knees bled if it would have made any difference.’

A wee cuddle might have worked better, thinks Allessandra.

‘This stigmata thing in the papers… what do you fine police people make of that, I wonder?’

‘I can’t say too much, Mother. The investigation is still in its infancy.’ Allessandra answers while being taken aback at the abrupt change in direction.

‘I caught Ray with a red pen one day. Fashioning a wound on the palm of each hand.’

Allessandra sat forward.

Mother holds her hands to her heart while her mind continues with the connection.

One of the tabloid nicknames for Ray was “The Stigmata Killer”.  Shock enlarges her features.

‘What could I have done? If I had taken more time with him, could lives have been saved?’

Allessandra shakes her head. She isn’t going to give this room in her mind. Ray isn’t a killer. He had been a broken boy who has turned his life around and become an effective member of society.

‘When I pulled the pen out of his hand, he just looked at me. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the little blasphemer couldn’t understand what he had done wrong. Blasphemy, I warned him, will see you at the gates of Hell. But I want to help people too, he said. Can you believe it? I want the same pain as Jesus and the saints, he cried. You’ll get bread and butter for tea, you little heathen, I told him.’ She pauses. ‘The same pain as Jesus. I ask you.’ She shakes her head, her sadness a tangible thing, tinged with regret. She opens her mouth to say something else. Thoughts linger in the screen of her eyes but remain unexpressed. Thoughts that made her eyes widen in remembered shock. She pauses, gives a small shake of her head as if she has just stopped herself from saying something. ‘The boy was deeply flawed, Miss Rossi. It’s no surprise that the man has turned out this way.’ 

I’ve been in Kenny’s flat for a month now. A month in which two more dead bodies have been found. Two more dead bodies that have been mutilated in the same manner as Connelly. The killer did well to wait until I was at large again before he got busy. And in typical McBain fashion I have alibis that would struggle to stand up in court: a career criminal and his minder.

It’s been a long month for other reasons. A month of daytime TV, tinned tuna and grilled chicken. A month of talking to no-one but Calum, the walking wall. A month of excruciating boredom. A month of change. When I look in the mirror I barely recognise myself. I feel like a candle that’s been held too close to the flame: the weight has melted off me. Add the bleached, cropped hair and a trim wee goatee beard and you have a new man.

Sanity has arrived in the form of exercise. Me, Ray McBain, a born again jogger. Who would have thought it? I did a bit of jogging when I was a young copper. Really enjoyed it. You kind of get indoctrinated into it when you go to the police training college at Tulliallan. They have a real hard-on for the physical benefits of exercise and in particular the pastime of running. While you are at the college they get you out in your jogging shoes every day. They made a real point of only bringing in fit young men and women, when I joined. Kind of a waste of time when you see how many develop Fat Bastarditis later in their careers.

Calum is a bit of a fitness freak and he has me pumping iron and pushing press-ups for a couple of hours every day. If I gain muscle, he keeps telling me, I’ll burn off more fat. I get him back by going running. He joined me the first few times, but the more I ran and the bigger distances I completed, the less inclined he was to repeat the experience. He has the finely honed physique of a sprinter, he tells me. He prefers his skeleton to be less visible and sheathed in muscle.

Suits me. I’m getting to enjoy running again. It’s amazing how the drum of my feet and an expanded ribcage bring a calm to my life. I’ve developed a good circuit. Up the Saltmarket, along the High Street and up that bastard hill to St Mungo’s Religious Museum. The first few times I ran this route I would take a well-earned breather at the museum. Even went in a couple of times. There are exhibits showing all of the world’s religions, but the depiction of Christianity is enough to have you reaching for some saffron robes and a set of hair clippers. I can only take so much death and mutilation before I need a break. Basically Christ’s artists show you that we are put on this earth to suffer in a myriad of painful ways before we are allowed the peace of an afterlife. Focus on the idea of heaven, they are saying, ’cos the here and now sucks big time.

Once I make it past the museum, I run behind it and over the romantically titled Bridge of Sighs into the Necropolis. This was modelled on the
Père Lachaise
cemetery in Paris and must have been amazing in its time. Now the grass is kept trim, but other than that it has a dual existence of being a tourist attraction in the daylight hours and a hangout for bored kids, vandals, glue-sniffers, alcoholics and addicts when the sun takes its daily rest.

It’s quite a challenge running up the path that takes you to the top of that hill. The view is worth it though. I stand under the gigantic gaze of John Knox, look over the city and allow my pulse and breathing to slow.

‘Is that you, Ray?’ Daryl Drain is waiting for me as arranged and is wearing an expression of full on amazement, which I answer with the heat of irritation.

‘Fuck you.’ Was he that amazed that I could run up a hill?

‘It is you? Isn’t it?’ He is stretching his neck forward as if trying to improve his vision. Right. I forgot about the change in my appearance. He’s only ever known me as a fatso.

‘Nae offence, Ray, but you look like a different man.’ He smiles widely and rubs his hands. ‘You look fucking fantastic. The bastards are never going to find you.’

‘Good eh?’ It’s weird, but as he looks me over I feel like a teenager who is wearing a dinner suit for the first time, and in the mirror of his parents’ eyes sees how good he actually looks. Apart from Kenny, Daryl is the first person from my former life that has seen the new me. I kick a stone and put my hands behind my back.

‘Wow. The hair…’

‘Yeah.’ I kick another stone.

‘The beard…’

‘Yeah.’ Kick.

‘The weight-loss…’

‘For fuckssake. Enough.’ I grin and motion Daryl to the side where I sit down on the grass. He copies me.

‘Right. What’s happening?’

‘All sorts of people are getting their arses kicked. Campbell, Hackett. This is a major embarrassment to the force. High-ranking officer suspected with murder escapes. The politicians are having a field day. They’re questioning our ability to police ourselves. As for the press…’

‘I do read the newspapers.’

‘They fucking love it.’

Actually, I’ve stopped reading the papers. It’s not comfortable seeing your life story in bold headlines three inches tall. Convent Boy Killer, Psycho Trainee Priest, are just two of them. Then when the other two bodies were found, they went into a frenzy of detail about my life. It was all there. The orphanage, the delinquent parents, the seminary, the — until now — distinguished career.