The Blood That Stains Your Hands (14 page)

'What? That's shit! I mean, seriously, that's just shit.'

'Yes, it is, Sergeant. But what do we have? Beyond the fact that everyone on earth hated Maureen, we have no suspects and no motive. There's no specific connection to the sleeping pills used, we've no witnesses to either crime.'

'But they were still murdered!'

Getting annoyed, although of course, my annoyance is at Connor, not Taylor.

'Yes. More than likely they were. Which is why we're going to continue the investigation. For the moment, however, we have to be seen to play along with the politics. The superintendent wants to let the church mourn, so we'll let it mourn. It doesn't mean we throw in the towel, but we need to take a step back and, at least, let the corpses go. We know he's a politician, not a policeman, and he's thinking about the politics.'

'Fuck.'

Taylor gives me a look for that, but he's probably standing there thinking
fuck
himself. Morrow, for his part, is not yet at a pay grade which requires him to think
fuck
or otherwise.

'Gentlemen, if there's nothing else, I'm going to give the release order on the stiffs. We cool?'

Nods from Morrow and me, and off goes Taylor to let the bodies of the deceased out into the world to meet their fate, burned or buried.

*

I
nevitable then, that once the bodies were gone, there'd be some more information come to light. But then, it's a fair bet that Balingol had managed to extract everything he was going to, and it wasn't as though we could ask either of them further questions.

Morrow is off out to investigate the third break-in at a newsagents on Rutherglen Main Street in a week. I am, no word of a lie, still trying to file the report that I was trying to file four hours earlier. Four fucking hours. I'm determined to see this thing through to the end, and when I'm done, I'm going to detail everything about this excruciating experience, then e-mail the Chief Constable, the Superintendent, the First Minister, the Prime Minister, the Justice Secretary in both Holyrood and Westminster, and every other bastard I can think of, just to let them know how shitty a piece of utter shittiness this shitty computer system is.

That should get me the promotion I've been after for so long.

Sgt Harrison sits opposite me, lays a neatly folded copy of the local paper down on the desk.

'Sergeant,' she says.

'Sergeant,' I reply, nodding.

'Might have something for you,' she says.

I lay down my computer angst and smile.

'You've realised you're not a lesbian?'

'Fuck you, Sergeant,' she says, showing me the middle finger.

'I just like to check every now and again.'

'Just in case I've been cured?'

Smiles all round. It's almost flirtatious, but it's obviously not going anywhere. If we actually spent any time together, she'd be my gay friend and I'd be her straight friend. As it is, our paths cross only occasionally in the office.

'I was looking through the small ads in the local rag.'

'Looking for love?' I ask.

'Well, since we have a blunt conversation going on here, Sergeant, yes I was. Looking, in fact, to have sex.'

I hold up my hand at getting too close to the truth through glibness, and stop myself asking if she manages to get a lot of sex via the
Rutherglen Reformer
.

'Anyway, I saw this.'

She tosses the paper over, folded open at the personal ads section. One of them has been circled.

Octopussy. Specialises in instruction for teen boys.

Good rates. Octopussy will make you into a man.

Suite 437, G72 etc etc

I read it several times. Once would have been enough. Too much, in fact. Once read, it can't be unread. Finally I look up.

'You think... I mean, this has nothing to do with James Bond?'

'I think this has nothing to do with James Bond,' she says. 'And there are all sorts of things that it could actually refer to, but you know, it's just a thought. The 'octo' part of it could be short for octogenarian, that's all. Seems weird that around here you'd have a woman in her 80s offering teenagers sexual instruction, but I think it'd be weirder to have a James Bond-level of villainy.'

Long, exhaled breath. Rub of the eyes. Can I allow myself to be distracted from my mission to file one stupid fucking report on this stupid fucking computer system?

'I don't know where it gets you,' she says. 'Maybe that ad was placed by your suicide/murder victim, maybe the kid answered it, maybe they had sex. It just supplies the method by which they met, not a lot else.'

'You're right, but it's more than we've been working on the last few days. Thanks.'

I tap the paper. Harrison starts to get up.

'D'you need this back?' I ask.

'Slim pickings,' she says, with a shake of the head.

'Well, if you're ever desperate,' I say, and she rolls her eyes and off she goes.

That's probably sexual harassment these days. In fact, no probably about it. It is sexual harassment. She's cool with it, though, all part of the game. The politically correct brigade would be as annoyed at her as they are at me.

Shit, must go on that diversity course. Keep forgetting. It's part of my objectives.

*

G
et the necessary paperwork, make my way along to Mail Boxes Etc. in Rutherglen. The girl on the counter is naturally suspicious, which is really the appropriate attitude with the police. Can't blame anyone who regards us with suspicion.

I look in the box. It's empty. That was kind of what I'd been expecting. If it was weird that Tommy Kane had answered the ad, it was going to be double weird to find he wasn't alone, and this end of Glasgow just isn't a double weird kind of a place.

The necessary paperwork, which I have in my hand, also happens to allow me access to information on the owner of Box 437. Suite 437 as it had been rather grandiosely referred to in the advert.

The girl on the counter hands over the necessary documentation without a word. She's looking at her hands. There's a stiffness about her, an awkwardness about the whole exchange, that we find quite often in this job. People don't like speaking to the police, so they cover their discomfiture with rudeness.

Whatever.

The name Maureen Henderson leaps off the page.

'I'll need a copy of that,' I say.

She lifts her eyes, only briefly engages mine, and then turns away to the photocopy machine.

Hmm. Another reason people are awkward with the police is when they're hiding something. She's probably got drugs in her handbag. That'd be the usual kind of thing.

She hands over the paperwork. I smile.

'Thanks for your help.'

She looks through me as if I am an agent of Sauron. I leave.

––––––––

'O
ctopussy?'

Taylor slowly lifts his head. Morrow and I are standing in his office. Morrow has been smiling since I filled him in on the details. Obviously, for the younger police officer, this kind of thing is the equivalent of working in A&E when someone comes in with a Barbie doll inserted in their penis.

'It's definitely her. Seems logical to assume this was how he found her.'

He stares at me, then at Morrow.

'Stop smiling,' he says.

'Yes, boss,' says Morrow, although he doesn't.

'I mean,' says Taylor, 'apart from the James Bond thing, it's a pretty vulgar name, isn't it? Is it obvious from just the name that it's an eighty-year-old offering sex? Really?'

'True enough,' I say. 'I just put the word into the urban dictionary. It has a variety of meanings, none of which relate to old people sex.'

'I don't want to know what those definitions are. But it does beg the question, how would anyone replying to the advert know that this was an eighty-year-old offering sex, rather than one of those other definitions you're talking about?'

Morrow laughs.

'I'm loving this,' he says.

It's refreshing not to be the immature one in the room.

'Don't know. Maybe it's just one of those things that are known around here. In the way that people know stuff. Communities know stuff. They know where to go dogging, they know when pampas grass in a garden means the owners are swingers, rather than that there just happens to be pampas grass growing in the garden.'

'Yeah,
maybe
doesn't really cut it. You,' he says, pointing at Morrow, 'stop grinning, and I mean, really, stop grinning, you're pissing me off.'

He nails the tone. Morrow quits grinning.

'Thank you. Now that you've sorted your face out, go and do the usual internet search. It's what we invariably end up doing these days.' Internet and alcohol, the two main drivers of crime. 'See if Maureen had an online presence of some sort.'

'She didn't have a computer,' says Morrow.

'True enough,' I say. 'Her house was like going back to the 1950s.'

'Did she have a library card?'

Glance at Morrow. Morrow nods.

'There you have it,' says Taylor.

'You think she ran some kind of porn school from the library?' I say.

'Funny. There's that internet café down in Rutherglen, isn't there? Or she could've taken the train into the city. Constable, try and find her online; Sergeant, identify places she could have used the internet, go to those places and see if anyone knows anything about her.'

'Yes, boss.'

'Yes, boss.'

And out the door we go.

*

J
ust after four in the afternoon. Feel like I might work late tonight. Nothing to go home to. No fucking surprise there. Starting to feel like I need to visit a drinking establishment, but that's unlikely to end well. Then there's drinking at home, and by drinking at home, I don't mean having a bottle of wine as part of a Tesco £10 meal for two. So, maybe if I work late, the drinking is less likely to happen.

Drew a blank at the library. Old Maureen hadn't been in there, or at least, hadn't used her card, in over three years. It always seemed a stretch to think she'd be running some sort of online porn operation from a public library. I asked out of interest, and they said it wouldn't be possible. They have filters.

Now I have every internet café in south Lanarkshire and Glasgow to check out, which isn't so many. It's not like the centre of London here. If I have to go into the city it might take me into tomorrow, but there's one small place at the back end of Rutherglen Main Street to check out first.

Park the car outside Iceland, and take the short walk along. Almost dark, a few people around. It may be early November, but Christmas is in the air. Decorations in the shop windows, adverts for boxes of chocolates and turkeys and perfect roast potatoes that take five minutes in the microwave.

Beneath a tree across the road there's a guy standing on a box. A box that may, I suppose, be an actual soap box. I hear him first, the sound drifting across the road, intermingled with the passing cars. Don't particularly pay attention, but then, as I'm directly over the road from him, there's no traffic on Rutherglen Main Street, and everything is quiet. His voice drifts across, the words clear.

'After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it....'

An articulated lorry passes by, travelling slowly. Tesco.
Every little helps
. I stare at it, my eyes focussed beyond the lorry on the space where the guy is. My heart starts pounding, and I think, Jesus, when this lorry passes he's going to be gone. That guy, who was standing there a second ago spouting some biblical shit, is going to be gone.

And then there goes the lorry, and the bloke across the road is still standing on his box, staring wildly into space, not looking at me at all, and now his words are lost as a wave of cars follow in the lorry's wake, the lights at the far end having changed. I watch him for a moment, as if expecting him to point in my direction, and then I turn and walk the short distance to the café.

The door pings as I enter, stop for a second, take a quick look around. There are a few tables down one side. Signs saying free Wi-Fi on the wall. There are a couple of teenagers sitting at one table. They're both on their phones, neither of them talking. The other side has six small booths with a computer in each. None of them are currently occupied. The kid behind the counter is reading a newspaper. The
Evening Times
more than likely. He glances up at the sound of the door, then looks back to his paper.

I approach the counter.

'You know that guy across the road, the Bible guy? Is he usually there?'

'Every day, man,' says the kid. I'm saying kid. He's like eighteen or something. 'He stands there and recites books from the Old Testament off the top of his head. Every fucking day, man. It's a bit fucked up.'

'I've never seen him before.'

'Can't have been looking.'

I flick open my ID and the guy gives me a glance to indicate his disquiet at me for luring him into conversation without letting him know I'm a police officer.

'DS Hutton,' I say.

'Yeah?'

He glances over at the table, but these teenagers aren't interested. Too cool to care that the Feds have just entered the building.

I place a picture of Maureen on the counter.

'You recognise this woman? She ever come in here?'

He looks at me for a while before looking at the photograph. He glances down, a smirk automatically coming to his lips. Well, at least now there'd be no point in saying he'd never seen her before. The opposite of poker face.

'Sure,' he says. 'Maureen. Comes here all the time. Haven't seen her in a few days, mind.'

'She uses the computers?'

'Sure. That's why she comes. Never has anyone with her or nothing.'

'You know what she does online?'

'What the fuck, man? Course I fucking don't.'

'You know her name, maybe she talks to you.'

'Aye, she does talk to me. You know why? 'Cause she's a lovely wee woman. Not a nosy prick, like some people.'