The Blood That Stains Your Hands (2 page)

Sure, he's a bit lippy, but he's got a point.

'It's the equivalent of you catching a criminal and then the jury letting him off, allowing him to go and commit more crime. And doing it week after week.'

'That's pretty much how it works.'

'I bet it is. Perhaps we can work together to at least catch and prosecute the toilet vandals.'

'It's a fair cop,' I say. 'But why now?'

'Just had enough,' he says. 'A build up. Would be nice if you lot could do something.'

'So, you're the repair guy as well as the cleaner?'

'It's not exactly in my job description.'

'Why d'you do it then?'

'I don't know,' he says, but there's a wistfulness in his voice, rather than bitterness, or blind stupidity. There's something about this guy. You know, it's like that show,
Undercover Bosses
, or whatever, one of those shows where the chief executive goes and makes burgers. Or cleans the toilets. You form an impression of some guy who cleans toilets for a living and this guy isn't it. 'You clean the toilets. They look pretty good. You create a clean environment for people to use. I mean, is it world peace or a cure for cancer or scoring the goal that gets Scotland to the World Cup Finals? No. But day-to-day, you know, people's lives, it's nice to create somewhere where they can go to the toilet and not think, Jesus, this is a shit tip, I'm getting out of here as fast as I can. People have expectations of pubic toilets and I want them to be surprised when they come in. Like to do a good job. Then some bell-end defaces them, and I report it to the office and they stick it at number eight hundred on the list of eight hundred things that need to get done. No one gives a shit about the toilets. So I do. Just get on and take care of things myself.'

'Fuck,' I find myself letting slip. There's something incredibly impressive about this guy.

'What?'

'Nothing. So, do you report the repairs, get them to pay you for the work and materials, that kind of thing?'

'Nope.'

'Must cost you.'

'Not so much. Money's not that big a deal. I just go home nights. Small place. Doing my Masters in English Lit.'

'Couldn't get a job after uni?'

'Worked for HSBC for a while. Split time between Hong Kong and London. Didn't like the travelling. All that corporate shit. Lunches and guys talking out the corporate end of their corporate arse, working until three in the morning on deals of absolutely no importance whatsoever to anyone. All that world, it's just emperor's new clothes. Wanted something simpler.'

'You're not serious.'

'That's what everyone says. You should hear my dad. But look, I provide a service. I make a small difference to a small number of people. I don't have to think about my work. Can let my mind wander. And yes, I know, there's some sort of OCD going on. If I walk into somewhere that's looking a bit dirty, I need to clean it. Don't know where that comes from, but I've got it. So I do it for a living. Albeit,' he adds, shaking his head, 'I don't actually need the living. Long term I'll probably end up in academia.'

He finishes his little justification, although there wasn't an ounce of self-satisfaction or affectedness in the tone, then glances at his watch.

'Look, Sergeant, I know there's not a lot you can do, short of setting up a massive surveillance operation, and I doubt the public are going to be happy about CCTV inside the toilet.' He laughs, I join him. 'Even then, if you caught them, they're probably twelve years old and all you can do is report them to their parents, who themselves likely don't care. But if you could give it some thought and try to come up with something, I'd appreciate it.'

We shake hands. I turn and look around at the area. Cold and grey. How can you live here and not be depressed? I mean, fundamentally depressed, right down to the soles of your shoes.

'That house over there,' he says. 'The one standing on its own. Used to be the public toilet. Not many people know that.'

'They converted a public toilet into a house?'

'Yep. Weird, isn't it?'

'Not really a selling point,' I say. 'Converted public toilet.'

'No, but I'll tell you what's weirder. Estate agents will use "converted barn" as a selling point. Quite posh sounding, isn't it, in its way? Converted barn. Now, maybe the barn just had hay in it, but chances are it also had cows. Those cows would have been shitting up a storm. No matter how gross a public toilet can be, it's never going to be as bad as a barn. Yet, converted barn sounds pretty cool, converted public toilet... not so much.'

'Hmm. It's probably related to space, rather than hygiene. Barn suggests spaciousness, public toilet suggests dark and dingy squalor.'

'Suppose,' he says.

We both look at the converted public toilet for a while, and with a shrug he turns and heads off to the next toilet on his route. I stand at the bottom end of Main Street and look up at the sky. Tut-tut, looks like rain.

Jesus, where did that come from?

*

I
pass DCI Taylor as I walk back into the office. He gives me the eyebrow as I slump back behind my desk. Look across at DI Morrow, who doesn't lift his head at my arrival.

The various files and photographs and reports that litter the desk are pretty much as they were an hour ago, just before I went out for my life-changing chat with the toilet cleaner. To my right I'm aware of DCI Taylor folding his arms. I look at the phone, knowing that I have several calls to make. Indeed, the act of interviewing the toilet guy was mostly one of phone-call avoidance. I'm back now and the phone is still there, looking at me, waiting for me to pick it up.

Sitting in silent judgement, it reminds me of my first wife.

Glance over at the recently installed coffee machine, something which they've done in an attempt to stop us all constantly trooping across the road to Costa. That, and I expect they're hoping it brings in some income which they can use to fund policing in this area, what with the government much closer to bankruptcy than anyone cares to admit.

From the coffee machine, I turn my glance round to Taylor as I'm aware he's still staring at me.

'You have a look about you,' he says.

'Just had an epiphany.'

Morrow looks up. Sure, you can ignore a guy when he sits down opposite you, but much tougher to disregard an epiphany announcement.

'Jesus,' mutters Taylor.

I shake my head, and stare off across the room, trying to capture what it is that talking to the toilet guy has made me realise. Though, was it even a realisation? There was just something about him. The simplicity of it. The ease with which he discussed his life. I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone who seemed so much at peace with how he lived. And he cleans toilets.

'Bored now,' says Taylor, when I take more than ten seconds to find the right words. 'Suicide, with a hint of potential murder, up in the public park. You might as well come along. If you can conjure up the right amount of poetry and drama, you can tell me about your dumb-ass epiphany on the way. We're walking, by the way. Nice day. Autumnal.'

Morrow watches us go and then once more bows his head to the paperwork.

––––––––

W
e're at the bottom of the public park. Down by the large pond with three separate streams running into it. Came here a lot over the summer when I was off work. Sitting in amongst the trees. Getting used to things again. Thinking. Above us and behind us, through the trees, is the Old Kirk, the spire visible between the bare branches of the oaks.

Down here, set in the grass, is a plaque commemorating the Cambuslang Wark, a time when the local minister rallied the troops behind God. God, and all that. 1742, it says. Apparently thirty thousand people would gather in this place to listen. I used to sit on the bench here and try to imagine what that looked like.

We've come to get some perspective. There is a woman hanging by the neck from the footbridge at the top of the dip, where the footpath is taken high across the stream that runs through the gully.

There are a few of our lot around, including the pathologist, Balingol, waiting for the body to be cut down, something which is imminent. The area has been cordoned off, and already every inch photographed and examined. There are a few spectators at the edge of the cordon, and a couple of officers nearby trying to make sure that no cynical bastard is uploading the investigation and the cutting down of the poor deceased directly onto YouTube.

The woman is dressed in a light brown coat. The whole scene, horribly melancholic and grim, a sight to depress the crap out of even the most upbeat toilet cleaner, has the edge taken from it by the bizarre sight of the woman having a pair of large, feathered wings attached to the back of her coat. Clumsily attached, too, barely holding on.

We'd stood on the bridge looking down at the woman for a while, and now we've been down below, looking back up at her for some ten minutes.

'You ever come here?' asks Taylor, breaking a long silence.

'Yep. Nice walk, up the gully, round the top, back down to the football fields. Not long, but on a sunny day, it's all right.'

'A lot of people around?'

'The usual array of dog walkers and runners. You?'

He thinks about it for a while, eventually says, 'There was a mugging a few years ago, was up here for that. Guy was in a coma for a while. Haven't been since.'

'Hmm,' I say.

The water cooler chat of your average police officers. A guy in a coma is no more interesting than a guy buying a new pair of socks.

'The wings give the scene a peculiar quality,' I say.

'Know what you mean.'

He gives a quick wave of the hand to signal that it's time to bring in the body.

The stream beneath the bridge is swollen and unusually fast-flowing, so there will be no letting her down. They've decided to manoeuvre her to the side of the bridge, rather than haul her clumsily over the railing.

A police constable unties the knot around the top of the railing, while another grips the rope, taking the weight of the body. As it swings free, the first polis reaches down and the two of them start to move her along to their right. There are another two coppers on the bank at the end of the bridge, waiting to receive the body.

As it gets there, they reach out to grab it and haul it in, all the time aware that the pathologist, and the principal investigating officer – Taylor – are watching them, wanting as little impact on the corpse and her clothing as possible.

Unfortunately, the two guys at the side used to be lesser well-known members of the Marx Brothers. As they reach out to receive the body, one of them slips a little. He regains his footing, but in doing so knocks the other guy, who then falls down the bank, grabbing at grass and roots on his way, before ending up in the mass of branches and litter that is collected in the burn beneath the bridge. In trying to quickly recover from the slip, he puts his foot through the makeshift dam and plunges, waist deep, into the water.

A couple of our lot laugh. The distant audience are howling. Taylor and I glance at each other. We're a much tougher audience.

'Fucking idiots,' is all he says.

The body is safely brought to the side of the bridge and laid down on a prepared mat on the path. PC Gummo crawls to the side of the stream, and starts to scramble up the bank.

'Get them out the way,' says Taylor. 'Stay with Balingol while he takes his initial look. See if there's anything on her person. A note, or some ID. I'm going to go and speak to the crowd, then I'll probably head back.'

*

B
ack at the ranch with Taylor, flicking through notes.

'Balingol thinks she's been there since late last night, early this morning. On the face of it, it looks like suicide. Funny it wasn't spotted earlier, but it was dark until eight, I suppose. Must have been folk walked across the bridge and didn't notice.'

'It was misty,' says Taylor. 'Hangs in the basin some days. Look on Tumblr or Facebook or whatever, and you'll likely find people were posting pictures of it two hours before anyone reported it to us.'

Hey, he's not kidding. That shit happens.

'You've got a name?' he says.

'Maureen Henderson. Eighty-one years old. Three kids, widowed.'

'Recently?'

'Seems to have been a while.' Quick notebook check. 'One of the kids is in Hamilton, one in Canada, one in the US. And obviously, when I say kids... they're our age.'

He checks his computer, looks back at me. We have the telepathic, who's-going-to-deliver-the-bad-news conversation.

'No problem,' I say. 'I'll go now.'

'Take Constable Grant,' he says.

'Yep.'

Always better to have a female presence when delivering shit news. That's not official policy, mind. Just common sense. Most male police officers join up so they can legally hit people; as a result, when they're delivering bad news, it's not completely unknown for it to come out as something along the lines of, '
Your mum's dead. I'm going for a sandwich
.'

And it's always nice to spend some time alone in a car with Constable Grant. As time goes by, she's slowly recovering from the night she mistakenly ended up in bed with me. Not that I viewed it as a mistake, but you can see her point.

––––––––

T
he daughter, Margaret Johnstone, has held it together pretty well. Under the circumstances. That your mother hung herself – or was murdered, which is just as shit – is a pretty brutal thing to hear out of the blue. Constable Grant has gone into the kitchen to make tea, leaving me in the high-ceilinged front room of the old Victorian house to talk about the deceased.

'Three weeks,' she says. 'That's terrible. It's just down the road. I was going to be seeing her this Sunday. We were going to church, then back to her place for lunch. John's away sailing. They're bringing the boat in this week.'

'Your husband?'

She nods. John Johnstone? Seriously? Perhaps his first name is Quentin or Ffarquhar and he prefers an abbreviation of his surname.

'Oh God.'