The Blood That Stains Your Hands (28 page)

If this was Shakespeare – you know, one of those Shakespearean police procedurals you get in school – I'd find out who killed her and then drink poison. At the moment I'm shaping up to do neither, although I'm trying to distract myself from doomed love by thinking about the former, and can never rule out the latter.

What I should be distracting myself with is the small domestic matter with which I'm currently dealing. A neighbourhood dispute in the new houses beyond the park. You're not usually going to get a detective sergeant packed off to one of these – not even a washed-up bum of a detective sergeant – but this one has been escalating.

Started off with the age-old
she's parking her car in front of my house
complaint. We get fifty of them a day. They don't usually get as far as the shit through the letterbox, anonymous death threats and a whole host of other tit-for-tat, petty-tending-to-serious shit that I get bored thinking about.

'Are you not embarrassed that I'm here?' I say. She wasn't expecting that. Big woman. I mean, round big, as opposed to tall big. Rough. I don't mind saying it. She's rough. Probably used to getting her own way around here. That appears to have changed when her physical and intellectual equal moved in next door.

'Wha'?'

She looks as if she's about to lamp me. I can handle her. Or, at least, I'd be able to run faster than her, and PC Wallace, who's standing by the door, can deal with her.

'We're pretty stretched at the moment,' I say. 'There's a quadruple murder investigation in town. We currently have four missing persons on our books, as well as the usual dreadful crimes of child abuse and child pornography and child neglect. You're keeping me from helping those children, all because you can't speak to your neighbour. You can't compromise. You can't be bothered making the effort to come to some accommodation. Instead, you need an adult in uniform to sort it out for you.'

'Are you finished?' she says, not picking up on the fact that I'm not in uniform.

We all have to be so nice to people these days. Jesus, it sucks. Why can't you just tell people how it is, without having some do-gooding dickhead of a police lawyer up your arse?

Obviously, this morning, I'm not in the mood to care.

'As police we can't really do anything, and I mean, something in the region of nicking one of you and thus separating you—'

'You're no' fuckin' nickin' me!'

'—until one of you commits a serious crime. So, either one of you is going to have to kill or seriously kick fuck out of the other one, or burn the other's house down, or whatever. Then the one doing the kicking'll get nicked, and the other one's in hospital. If that's what you want... However, if you want to be pragmatic, then you're just going to have to tuck your balls back in and compromise. You're going to have to ignore the occasional car parking, she's going to have to try to park there less frequently, and you're both going to have to ignore the shitstorm of trivial revenge you've been cooking up for the last two months.'

'Are you for real?'

'Yes,' I say, getting to my feet. 'I'm going to go next door and say the same thing to Mrs Walker, at the end of which I'm telling her that you've invited her in for a cup of tea. So get the kettle on...'

'She's no' fuckin' comin' in here!'

'Up to you.'

I pause for a moment before walking out. She stares at me like I'm some new species of arsehole. Time for a last few words of candour.

'Mrs McLean, I'll be honest. You people, you know,' and I cast a hand around to indicate her type who live in this small housing estate, and it's just as well I don't sound like I went to Eton or Fettes, because then there would be absolutely no doubt that I mean what it sounds like, although at the moment she might just have enough confusion to let me out the door without swinging for me, 'you can't just forfeit personal responsibility and community responsibility, so that every time a problem comes along you ask someone else to solve it for you.'

'Can I no'? You think I give a fuck what some polis says?'

'You think, just because of my badge, I give a fuck about you and your neighbour squabbling like kids? Sort it out between yourselves, or come back to me when one of you's in hospital. I'm going next door.'

Look at Wallace, nod in the direction of the door.

She throws a 'fuck off!' at our backs as we walk out.

Down the short path, through the gate. Stand on the pavement, looking across at the trees of the park. Hands in pockets. Don't really feel like going next door and delivering the same pointless message, but pretty much have to now.

'What'd you think?' I ask.

'Sir?'

'What'd you think? Of me telling her she had to take responsibility for her own actions?'

'Thought it was well-judged,' says Wallace.

'Did you really?'

'Yes, sir. If it was obvious one-way harassment then it would have been inappropriate, but since it's apparent that both sides are as bad as each other...'

'Hmm.'

I'll take that. A bit of brown-nosing from a constable. As if that's going to get him anywhere.

I look at the next house, the frames of the door and the windows peeling blue paint, a tricycle lying forlornly on its side by the front path.

'Word of warning, sir,' says Wallace, as I open the gate.

'Go on.'

'Mrs Walker makes Mrs McLean look like Donkey from
Shrek
.'

––––––––

I
let Wallace drive back to the station on his own, while I walk through the park.

I wonder how long I can keep that up. Moving from complaint to complaint, telling people they need to sort out their own problems. Chances are that by the time I get back to the station either Mrs Walker or Mrs McLean will be dead, and whichever one is still alive will be able to say that I more or less encouraged her.

Cold, damp day, bit of a chill wind. Not a good one for walking. Cut down to the path at the lower end of the football pitches rather than taking the longer high road, the path round the top end of the gully. I know where I'm going. Back to the church. Not part of the investigation any more, so what exactly is it that I'm doing?

I need the peace, that's all. Like sitting looking at the waves in Golspie.

I need to work it out. It doesn't matter that I've been kicked off the investigation, doesn't matter whether I get booted out the police. I need to focus for a day, or a week, or however long it takes, and work out what's going on here.

There is surprise that it's happening now and not two or three years ago. Perhaps it's as a result of lingering resentment over the merger, but if that's the case, then I need to leave it to Taylor. He's thinking about that, and trying to collect evidence in the case against Cartwright.

I need to cast aside thoughts of the old enmities and decide what else there could be. A group of five. The architect, the doctor's mum, the pupil, the granny porn star, the ex-war zone Bible study teacher. What could possibly bind them, and could it be that Cartwright is due to be the next victim rather than the one who killed the first four?

I emerge up the hill from the park back onto the road and walk round to the church. The gate is open, and once again there is one of our lot on duty beside the new grave of Maureen Henderson. Constable Webb.

I walk over, glancing casually at headstones as I pass.

'Marcie,' I say. 'Quiet morning.'

'Dead quiet, sir,' she says.

I stop beside her and look around.

'Anyone coming or going?'

'There's a woman in the church. She had the keys.'

'OK, thanks.'

I stand there for another moment or two, and then move away. The graveyard is not too large, sloping away at the back down to a fence, the railway line beyond. I walk further in amongst the graves. A low, grey light, and somewhere a crow cries mournfully against the cold morning.

I look at the names on the headstones, worn and battered by time and the weather, many of them difficult to read. Simple messages in memory of the departed. Nothing elaborate or mawkish or maudlin, just Victorian austerity of language.

Hey, Sergeant, what the fuck do you know about the Victorians and their language?

Yes, good point, whoever that is in my brain. The language is simple, unassuming, sometimes biblical. That's all.

Get a shiver as I pass a grave near the far end of the cemetery. I shake it off, stand for a moment. Look down at the headstone.

In loving memory

Charles McMann

Born 14
^th
January 1821

Died 27
^th
October 1897

And they that be wise shall shine

as the brightness of the firmament

Fuck. I recognise that quote, which means it can be from only one place. I'm not so well read up on the Bible that I can tell one quote from another. The fact that this rings a bell can only be because I read it a few days ago. The Book of Daniel. Fuck, fuckity-fuck.

Keeps cropping up, and this one gave me a shiver before I'd even looked at it.

I stand over the gravestone reading the lines a few more times. Memorizing it, as I know where I'm going next.

I finally lift my head and look around the graveyard. Constable Webb is still in position. I don't see the girl, hadn't expected to, yet I get the feeling that she was watching. The gate is slightly open, the way I left it, yet looking at it from across the other side of the graveyard, it feels almost as though there's something missing. Something that was there a moment ago is gone, and has left a part of itself behind. An invisible part.

I walk back up the slope towards Webb. 'Did anyone come in?' I ask, as I come alongside.

'The graveyard?' she says.

'Yes.'

'No. No, I don't think so. There was someone, a young girl maybe. I saw her standing at the gate, just outside, but she never came in.'

I don't need to ask what she was wearing.

'OK, thanks.'

I turn. Stand and look around. I've learned that there's no point in sprinting out after her. She talks to me when she needs to.

She talks to me?

Why is there always so much to think about? Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

'Sir?'

I turn back, having started to walk away.

'The girl,' says Webb. 'There was something weird. I mean... I can't... can't put my finger on it.'

'I know.'

What else am I going to say?
Hey, don't worry Constable, the kid's fine. She turns up every now and again in my apartment and gives me a kick up the arse
.

I want to say more, but there's nothing else. I attempt to give Constable Webb some sort of reassuring smile, but I probably just look like Gordon Brown during that absurd five minutes of the 2010 election campaign when someone suggested he tried grinning, then I turn and walk towards the church. Glance at the gate as I come to the church doors, but the feeling is gone.

*

B
ack in my position. Fifth pew from the front, right hand aisle, sitting at the end of the centre pew. Looking up at Jesus in blue. Perfect stillness.

I need to leave, that's all. The police. This town.

I feel a bit of a mess today, yet strangely it's not the mess I'm usually in. A different mess, but not the same intrinsic, black, cancerous mess that usually exists in the pit of my stomach. Philo cured me of that. Snap of the fingers, pretty much, that was all it took. She crept inside my head and sorted me out.

Today's mess is because the woman I'd fallen for is dead. That's all. Jesus, that's the kind of mess that thousands of people, millions of people, are dealing with every day around the world. Right now, this second, there are millions of people grieving. And I'm one of them.

At least it's normal.

I'm alone. The door to the church was open. Constable Webb said that Mrs Buttler had come in here, but I haven't seen her. In the vestry perhaps. I haven't gone looking for her.

Jesus isn't saying much up there in his window. Doesn't speak to me. Thank God.

Ha!

Dylan said that he started writing all those religious albums after experiencing a vision of Jesus in a hotel bedroom in Tucson, Arizona.

Yeah, I know.

I was glad when Jesus turned back up in Bob's hotel room in Glasgow one night and told him to go back to writing about women making him miserable.

The wooden door at the end of the aisle opens and Mrs Buttler emerges. She smiles when she sees me, then comes and sits in her usual spot on the other side of the aisle.

'Here to interrogate me about the burial?' she asks. Light in her voice. I suspect what we have here is a woman who's quite happy that Paul Cartwright has been arrested for murder. If happy's the word.

'Off the case,' I say.

'Didn't expect that,' she says.

'Reassigned,' is all I say. No requirement for details.

'Just here for the peace, then?'

'Yes.'

'You'll need to start coming on Sunday mornings,' she says, smiling again.

'I'd have to listen to people talking about God,' I say, and then stop myself getting more flippantly profane. 'Anyway, there aren't any services here at the moment, are there?'

'We'll see about that.'

'What does that mean?'

'Well, I'm just saying, that's all. With that man in jail for those murders, the lot down the road are going to be on the back foot. Now would be as good a time as any to strike.'

'You think he did it?'

She seems surprised by the question, which is fair enough, given that I'm part of the organisation that arrested him in the first place.

'You surely didn't just arrest him because he's an odious creature, did you?'

'I didn't arrest him at all. I was off the case before the arrest was made.'

'Did you speak to him?'

'Yes.'

'What did you think?'

Look away from her and back to the front before I answer. I'm not one for sophistry and obfuscation. Might as well get it out there.

'After hearing so much about him, I was expecting not to like him, but you know, there was something there. Pompous, yes. But he was clinical and focussed. He had a plan, and he executed it perfectly.'