The Blood That Stains Your Hands (20 page)

Ah, of course. I never think strategically like that, but it makes sense. There are two things that get superintendents in a fankle. One is heat from above, and the other is lawyers. Oh, and the press. So three things.

'Just had a meeting with the lawyer representing Paul Cartwright, the property convenor at St Mungo's. He's been hired by Mr Cartwright to represent the church.'

As he speaks, his voice seems to drift off almost, taking on a peculiar quality. He hesitates again. Neither Taylor nor I speak. Leave him to it, he'll get there in the end.

'This is like... you know, apparently the church merger business was desperately ugly, but things had begun to heal. As they do. They just needed time. Now we've got these murders, which... it's impossible to say, but two of the victims at least were against the merger, so people are, rightly or wrongly, assuming that it's someone from St Mungo's who killed them. To shut them up. And now we've got this burial, these people using the victim's body to their own ends.'

He shakes his head. Wasted words, telling us things we already know, as though we'd walked in halfway through the movie.

'It's opening it all up again, tearing the congregation apart just as they were beginning to accept the situation.' Another shake of the head. 'And now I'm stuck in the middle of it.'

Ha!

'How are you getting on with the legality of this thing?' he asks, finally turning to Taylor. 'The burial, I mean.'

'I've sent it up to legal. We can't just charge in there, dig up the grave and stick the body back in...'

'I need solutions, not problems,' snaps Connor. 'I don't think you people... you officers down in the trenches... understand what it's like in my position, how difficult it is. This is the tough end of policing, not your, whatever, your murders and your petty theft.'

Awooga! Awooga! Wanker alert!

No, really. Even if he'd been speaking to a couple of constables straight out of police school, his trenches remark would have been unbelievably condescending.

'Politics are the true crime,' he says, his voice displaying an affected weariness he must have learned from the movies.

'For the moment,' says Taylor, doing his best to get the conversation away from Connor's tortured id, 'the grave thing isn't really our business. We were called out by a complaint, but actually, someone was burying a legally declared dead body in a graveyard, with a gravedigger and a church officer, a family member and a minister. There's nothing we can do for the moment. What's more important is that we find out why three members of the congregation have been murdered.'

Connor lets Taylor finish his obviously absurd outburst of plain common sense, glances at me, and then starts walking to the door, shaking his head. He stands in the doorway and turns to give us another quick ejaculation of arrogant twattery.

'I need you to be part of the team, Dan. We all need to be on the same page. You're not dealing with a hold-up at the damned Pakis on the corner now. This is church and state. Doesn't get any bigger.'

He seems to remember I'm there and gives me a glance.

'Church and state,' he throws at the room, and leaves.

The door closes. Taylor and I stare at it for a second, then turn to each other.

'Can we be offended on behalf of the Pakistani community and get the arsehole sacked?' I ask.

'Deep breath, move on, forget what he said.' Taylor glances at his watch. 'Right, get everyone together, briefing room, fifteen minutes.'

––––––––

Y
ou don't run around in those rare investigations, when you genuinely have no idea who to suspect, necessarily hoping for the big breakthrough, the giant sign pointing at someone, screaming,
It was him! It was him!

Progress comes in inches; if you're lucky, in feet. Never in miles. All you can hope for is that one thing leads to another, until the chain leads you to the end.

So, a solid meeting in the briefing room, where lots of strands are opened up. There are so many people potentially involved in this, that the whiteboards at the head of the room are cluttered. Overrun with names and connections. Part of the early process is to eliminate as many people as possible.

For example, Morrow has discovered that young Tommy was using a Gmail account in the name of
ywilson444
. The account was empty. If it had ever been used, everything was deleted. There were no contacts listed. Nothing. The last use of the account, however, had been the day he died.

So, might be nothing, but on the other hand, why would you have a fake e-mail address? We need to get the paperwork done and get full access to the records of the account. Of course, even if he was up to something, it needn't be the church. God, he was a teenager, he could have been doing any old shit. Contacting grannies, for example.

Yet, we know. We get that feeling. There's some weird shit going on around this church. The kid was murdered, and now something else weird has come up. It's going to be related.

Lots of people are ruled out, names come and go, many names that I don't recognise. We are down to five or six favoured candidates to have killed old Maureen, through a combination of mutual anger and resentment, unable or unwilling to provide themselves with an alibi, and personal interest in the merger.

Paul Cartwright's name comes up again and again. He's everyone's favourite to have killed Maureen. No one seems to have any idea why young Tommy might have copped it. No one outside the police seems to have had any idea that Tommy and Maureen had had inappropriate sex. (Look, I think it was inappropriate.)

The names on the hate list for Agnes Christie have been similarly narrowed down, reduced to well under ten. Cross-checked with the list for old Maureen, three names appear on both. Taylor will take them forward tomorrow. Naturally, Cartwright was mentioned.

More work divvied up for the morning, everyone told to go home and get a decent night's sleep.

Where am I? Been a busy day, haven't really had time to wonder where my head is. Those are the best days. I'll work for another hour or two, then head home, grabbing some crappy food on the way. I think Thai tonight. And a bottle of wine, maybe. It's not healthy, but it's healthier than the mental implosions that forever lurk just around the corner.

A bottle of wine, maybe... Aye, some
maybe
that is.

*

I
leave the office at 9.32 p.m. Slightly concerned about Taylor. He can pretend to be ignoring Connor's bluster all he likes, but there's some serious shit going on here, and when that happens you need your boss to have your back. Taylor comes to work every day of his life at the moment knowing that he's on his own. He has a boss only too willing to pass the blame on down to the level below.

I try to get him to leave with me, but he sends me on my way, telling me he'll only be doing another twenty minutes. I consider waiting, but he orders out. Ready for it, I finally hit the road.

Leave by the front door, look up at the night. Not many clouds around, some stars in the sky. Some stars? Like, several billion. I stay looking up for a few moments having a brief Total Perspective Vortex moment, but my heart's not in it.

Hey, want to have a real-life Total Perspective Vortex moment? Go online and find a running UK National Debt clock. Goes up by £5k a second. That, my friend, is a bit of a mind fuck.

I finally look down, for some reason smiling at the thought of the UK national debt, at the sound of approaching footsteps.

My heart skips a beat.

Jesus, it does as well.

Philo Stewart. She stops in front of me.

'Sergeant, good evening.'

'Hey. You were waiting for me?'

She nods.

'Sorry, didn't feel like phoning. Just been sitting in my car listening to music.'

'What were you listening to?' I ask, which seems like a really inane question, but I feel quite discombobulated by her arrival. That's what happens with sudden meetings with objects of your infatuation.

'Oh, Bob,' she says.

'Bob?'

'Dylan.'

'You're a Dylan fan?'

She nods.

'I know, try not to hold it against me.'

'I've seen him over a hundred and fifty times,' I say.

She seems taken aback by that for a moment.

'Wow,' she says. 'Me too.'

'No way.'

She nods. Jesus. She's a Dylan fan.

'You were at the SECC in June?'

'Of course,' she says. 'You seen him since?'

Shake my head.

'I went to the States last month. Saw him in Rhode Island, a couple of dates in Massachusetts. Toronto...'

'How'd he sound?'

We both laugh at the question. The laughter goes.

'Sorry,' she says. 'I shouldn't just spring on you like this. You called round the house earlier.'

'Yes. How d'you know?'

'I was in, sorry.' She makes a slight movement of the hand. 'You know, just had a lousy day. Couldn't talk. But I've felt bad about it ever since, so, you know, if you wanted to speak now. What was it you were after?'

'Eh...' I start encouragingly, then look over my shoulder and back. 'I'm going home, get a Thai takeaway, bottle of wine. You want to join me?'

'Sure,' she says. No hesitation.

We walk to her car. I don't ask where her husband is.

*

B
ought the Thai food on the way home, now sitting at the small table in my sitting room. First time it's been used to its full capacity in forever.

This is inappropriate. I know it. Wrong in the first place to take my questions about the Book of Daniel to her rather than going straight to someone outwith the scope of the investigation, and all kinds of wrong to invite her back here after she'd turned up at the station.

But I'm getting the vibe, the inescapable vibe. She could have called, she could have gone to reception, but she waited for me to come off duty. So, effectively, that's what this is. It's off-duty time. And I shouldn't be doing it.

She's wearing a similar top to the one she had on a couple of days ago. Hair looks a little untidy but, as is often the way, it makes her even more alluring. We've hardly spoken, but we have to start some time.

'You came to see me,' she says. 'I'm not suddenly a suspect, am I?'

Shake my head. The mood seems strange, but it's borne, I presume, of mutual attraction, coupled with mutual acknowledgement that we oughtn't to be here together.

'Is that why you didn't answer the door?' I ask. 'You weren't worried, were you?'

'Just... doesn't matter, Sergeant. What was it you wanted to ask me?'

The Book of Daniel seems so irrelevant. The fact that someone somewhere is attempting to invoke it seems so mundane, so childish. If you have an out-and-out psychopath, whose actions are controlled by a complete lack of perspective and common sense, then somehow it's forgivable. But this has all the hallmarks of being carried out by a middle-aged guy in a suit, a church elder who's been watching too many Hollywood movies.

I don't immediately say anything. Trying to think of a way to pursue the reasons for her melancholy, without it looking, well, weird. Obsessive.

Obsessive is how I feel. Shouldn't have asked her back here. Should have been professional enough to tell her to come to the station in the morning.

'You've been in a war zone,' she says suddenly.

Oh, yes. I nod. She shakes her head.

'You know, sometimes...' she begins, 'sometimes you come back from these places, and the things you've seen... the things you've seen people do, the children you've seen, the burned bodies, kids with arms missing, kids who've lost their parents, parents who've lost their kids... It's all so... it's just such a mind fuck, you know? How can you live a normal life in a place like this when you've seen that, when you've lived through that, and you know the people you were trying to help are still there, still living through the same terrible shit?'

She laughs, throws a dismissive hand to the side. She's a strong woman. There are no tears coming. Hey, I know how to pick 'em.

'What can you do, Sergeant?' she says. 'What else can you do? You create a compartment in your brain, you put it in there, all the shit you saw and the people you helped and the people you couldn't help, and the things you think you should have done and didn't, you take it all and you put all that fucking shit in a compartment, then you close it and you never, ever open it. Not willingly, at any rate.'

'What happened?' I ask.

A rueful smile, another gesture of helplessness.

'What usually happens. Made the mistake of watching the news. There was a report from Syria. Was sitting at home, doing absolutely fine today, and then... fucko... hit me right in the face. Tony's away in Bishkek for a few days, and I'm sitting there on my own feeling bloody awful.'

She pauses, lifts her glass, takes a long drink. Third of a glass in one. Maybe half. I'm familiar with the need to do that.

'When you stopped by I was kneeling on the floor in tears. Bent double. It was, you know how it gets, like a physical pain. I... looked out when I heard your footsteps retreating. Almost called you back in. But... Anyway, I was feeling bad. Got myself together, thought I'd come by the station. Stuck on
Another Self Portrait
, and here I am. Right as rain!'

She laughs again. I always fall for the ones with a nice laugh. Not, on this occasion, that it's the primary attraction.

'It's nice that you stopped by,' she says.

'I...' I begin, but really, what the fuck am I going to say?
Well, sweetlips, I've been thinking about you all the time
.

'What about you?' she asks. 'You get that, or did you not see too much bad stuff? No,' she adds, shaking her head, 'I recognised it in you the other day. You saw plenty of bad stuff. You probably don't want to talk about it.'

Stare at my green chicken curry. Take a mouthful, dab at my lips, a sip of wine. Going through the motions of eating dinner.

Well, she's right there. I don't want to talk about it. But if there's anything to kick out the careless and inappropriate thoughts of infatuation from my head, it's to be reminded of that fuck-awful night in a fuck-awful forest in the middle of Bosnia.