DS Hutton Box Set

by Douglas Lindsay

  'Everyone, everyone of any importance in this town, obviously the Catholic community notwithstanding, attends the church on a Sunday morning, is a member of the session, is involved in some way. Everyone is on my back about this. You know how many phone calls I've had this morning? You know how hard this is for me?'

  Ah, there's the rub. He gets quickly down to what's really important to him.

  'Four churches are involved, with a combined congregation, before the merger, of nearly fifteen hundred.'

  'Most of them never actually attended, sir,' says Taylor dryly.

  Connor removes his hands from his pockets and makes a hopeless gesture.

  'So that means we exclude them from the investigation?'

  'Probably not, but when looking for suspects, it surely makes sense to concentrate on those who we know to have been upset about the merger, rather than those who didn't even notice the merger happened because they were casting their X-Factor vote.'

  Connor emits some sort of weird snort and shakes his head again. Poor fucker. He arrived here so pompous, so self-assured, so confident that he would mould policing in this town to his own personal narrative. Then the Plague of Crows happened and now every crime is a potential debacle, and the QPM he envisioned pinned to his jacket for his happy retirement days in fucking Braemar is drifting slowly off into the sunset.

  That's just the way it goes. Life overtaken by events. Typical of the man, however, that he has to be a dick about it.

  'Yes,' says Taylor, trying to be the grown-up in the room, something even I could manage in the face of Connor's hangdog catastrophizing, 'there are over a thousand suspects. But all we can do is speak to as many people as possible as quickly as possible, investigate any leads that present themselves, follow those paths that need to be followed. In short, do a good job as quickly as we can. It looks entirely likely that we're dealing with a triple murder. Accordingly we need to give the investigation the resources it deserves, and get on with it. If we need to speak to the kind of people who usually wouldn't consider themselves relevant to such an investigation, then those people are just going to have to... suck it up, sir.'

  Bold.

  Connor would have been chewing Taylor's testicles for that eight months ago, but now he knows he has ceded authority to the better police officer.

  'What do we do, then?' he says.

  'We give the investigation the appropriate level of manpower,' says Taylor. 'So far, the sergeant and I, along with DC Morrow, have been speaking to a few people, piecing things together. We need to throw manpower at it. We need more information. We need to start eliminating people from the investigation. We need to know who we should be pursuing.'

  'Of course, of course,' he says. He waves a slight hand in the direction of the door. 'Get on with it. As many men as you need.' Women would probably be helpful too. You know you're in trouble when it's me picking someone up on his implicit sexism. 'If you're going to speak to... if there's anyone you need to interview who you think... let me know if you speak to anyone on the council. Or our service.'

  'There's one more thing, sir,' says Taylor.

  Connor strokes his chin.

  'We got DNA from Mrs Christie's clothes that belongs to neither her nor Mr Christie. The killer was rushed, and possibly wasn't as careful this time.'

  Connor asks his incredulous question with something of an eyebrow. Don't even fucking ask, his face says. Taylor asks anyway. Or, at least, he tries.

  'If we could DNA test members of the—'

  'Out of the question.'

  'Sir, it's—'

  'Out of the question. Go.'

  And that's that. Taylor gets up, walks quickly from the room. Silently I follow, Sancho fucking Panza to the last. Close the door behind me.

  Taylor stops, turns. The expletive is on his lips. He smiles and shakes his head instead.

  'That guy used to be such a pompous dick...'

  'Now he's just a dick.'

  'Yep. Right, Sergeant, let's get to it. Give me half an hour to put some ideas together about how we're doing this, and then get everyone you can in Room B. We're looking for at least fifteen. Make sure DCI Dorritt's there, Stephanie, Sgt Harrison, Sgt McGovern, Jones. Get as many of them as you can.'

  'Yes, boss.'

  On my heels and off we go. At last we can start a proper murder investigation.

  TAYLOR'S QUICK AND to the point. No bullshit, no artifice, no ego. A good officer doing good work. Everyone gets their tasks, and is sent on their way. Time to stop pussying around the investigation. We need to establish who else knew about Maureen and her thriving internet business. We need to find out who hated whom and who fell out the most over the merger. We need to narrow down the list of potential suspects to something less than a thousand. One of these fuckers is guilty and it's time to start treating people as though it might be them.

  At some point in the talk I come to realise that he's not including me in the list of instructions. I presume I'm staying with him, his loyal Chewbacca, to make the appropriate noises at all the right moments.

  'Here's the rub,' he's saying, tasks divvied up, heading into the wrap-up. 'Victims one and three were vocal opponents of the merger, but we've yet to find anything about the kid in that context. You know the score. Was the kid against the merger, or is the opposition of the other two nothing to do with it? Everything on the table. Everything. Get out there, ask questions, bring the slightest suspicion to me, no matter how irrelevant it might seem.'

  He nods. The collective realise he's finished, and off they go, heading out into the station. There's a much better feeling about this one than we've had with these things in the past. It feels like this person, whoever they are, is killing with some sort of purpose. Whatever it is, it feels easier to confront than the couple of psychopaths we've had around here the last couple of years.

  Yes, all right, now that it comes to it I'd rather be in MissMarpleland than Psychoville.

  'You'll have noticed the elephant in the room,' says Taylor, when all the others have gone.

  'Eh...?'

  'The Book of Daniel,' he says.

  I'm not sure that's quite elephant-in-the-room status, although I can see that Taylor might think it relevant but didn't want to mention it because it's one aspect of this thing that's removed from the prosaic world of revenge and small-town politics.

  'I'm hoping,' he says, 'that whoever is doing this Daniel thing, with the wings and the ribs and the God knows what else, is just doing it for a bit of extra flourish. Let's just not imagine that it's any weirder than that. I'd like you to find out about the book. All that Old Testament stuff is so damned fucked up, there are so many interpretations. What does it mean, all that stuff about wings and heads and ribs? Speak to someone. Have your own personal forty-five-minute BBC documentary on the subject. In fact, do the usual routine. Speak to a couple of people. Bible scholars. What we really need to find is some way to identify who's next because if we know one thing, it's that this ain't finished yet.'

  Stand up. Suddenly think of the girl standing in my room in the middle of the night telling me to hurry up. Hurry up. I'd forgotten about her. That's strange. The girl who gave me the book in the first place, who was standing at the bedroom window looking out at the night. It wasn't my bedroom, though. Whose bedroom was it?

  'What?' he says.

  Shake my head. 'Nothing. I'm on it.' Check the watch. 'I'll try to be back by five.'

  'You all right, Tom?' he throws at me as I'm on my way out.

  Stop, take a moment, turn round.

  'Sure,' I say.

  'I doubt it, as you've not been all right since you came back to work. Two days ago you took a day off for... why?'

  'I have my days,' I say. 'I just need to get through it. Day at a time. Today... today, I'm all right.'

  'What about tomorrow?'

  No answer for that. I never know about tomorrow. He rubs his hand across his chin. Clean-shaven, unlike his fellow officer.

 
'I'm good,' I say, and then turn and leave before he can respond.

  I'm not good, of course, and he knows I'm not good. We're only a day or two away from me sitting in his office and him telling me that I'm being placed on sick leave, or at the very least, he's showing me to the door of the nearest psychiatrist.

  It would probably be better if, when that happens, the psychiatrist were a man.

  27

  Fuck.

  How many people in Glasgow are there that I could speak to about the Book of Daniel? Seriously, there have got to be, like, I don't know, a thousand. More than that. They do a theology course at Glasgow University. Find the guys who teach that, take it from there. Some of the students even. Ministers, priests, rabbis; Jesus, there will be guys down the fucking pub who can tell me the hidden context of the Book of Daniel.

  As a concession to what I ought to be doing, I arrange to go and speak to a lecturer in Theology at the university. Any time this afternoon, he said. Sounds like he'll do me the Book of Daniel without all the shit attached. What we really need, of course, is the blend of scholarly and theological, because we don't know where the person who's using this is coming from. The practical side of me wants to talk to someone who doesn't think the Bible is anything to do with God, that it was all about politics and storytelling to perpetuate myths. However, who knows what our killer is thinking? So I have to get both views. From talking briefly to the guy on the phone, I decided that I'd get both sides from him. Sounded young, switched on.

  First, however, I'm standing once again at the doorstep at the top end of Glenvale Road, the big house with the bedroom view (I'm presuming) down over the town and this half of Glasgow, waiting to speak to my current infatuation. The woman I can't stop thinking about. The woman with whom I hold imaginary conversations while walking to work, while eating breakfast, while standing in the shower. The woman who I tried not to think about while making love to someone else last night.

  Taylor didn't say that I shouldn't speak to anyone from the four churches, but, of course, he didn't say it because it went without saying. It's obvious, and he trusts me to not do something that obviously shouldn't be done.

  I ring the bell and I hate myself standing here. It's not about sex. It's not about how she looks in a V-neck sweater, it's not about imagining drawing the covers around us and pressing my erection against her. It's because I've fallen for her. I need to speak to someone who knows the Bible, and she runs a Bible study group, so it's like, huzzah! I actually have an excuse to speak to her, I'm not just turning up and saying, oh, can I get your fucking flapjack recipe, I can't stop thinking about them?

  Shouldn't be here. Don't even know if she'll be in, or if the husband will be in. There's no immediate answer, so I ring the bell again and turn round. Nervousness beginning to ebb at the possibility that there's no one here. Look past the houses over the road at what I can see beyond. The old steelworks. The Campsie Fells in the far distance.

  Used to think of them as the Misty Mountains, and would imagine going on a great trek across country to get there. If I'd ever done it, it would probably have been easier to catch a bus.

  Think I hear footsteps and turn. Frosted glass in the door, but don't see any movement in the house. Aware that I'm holding my hands behind my back. Subconsciously trying to be casual? Fucking hell.

  I go on waiting.

  'IT'S A BOX OF FROGS, man.'

  I laugh. I mean, he was being flippantly modern in his description of the Book of Daniel rather than trying to be funny, but I can't help laughing all the same. This guy is one of the new millennium crowd, about to answer all my questions as if he's trying to get a bunch of children excited about it. I suppose that's what he does for a living.

  'Box of frogs,' I say, nodding.

  'I mean, it's like they took this whole bunch of biblical stuff, I mean, like the distilled essence of the Bible, and tossed it into one book. It's bonkers. Split into halves. First one is stories about Daniel, told by, you know, like some unseen narrator we don't know. So, for example, you get the whole Daniel in the lion's den bag.'

  'Sure.'

  I read that this morning, had a bit of a face plant moment when I realised that that was the Daniel we were talking about. Up until that point I'd been thinking more of him as being the chap from the Elton John song.

  'So, that's your chapters one through six.' No, he's not an American, he's just been watching too much TV. 'Then suddenly, out of nowhere, chapter seven switches to prophecy and is narrated by Daniel. And that's where you get the prophecy of the four beasts emerging from the sea.'

  'So who was Daniel?'

  He puts his hand on a mug of tea or coffee and takes a glug. Must be cold. You can see he's one of these weird guys who has his hot drink sitting on his desk for like three hours, only remembering to take a drink once every twenty minutes or so. He shrugs.

  'There was no single Daniel. I mean, not in terms of writing the book. The whole thing wasn't even written in the same language. So, the first half you've got what are generally considered to be a collection of Aramaic folk tales that have just been, you know, assembled into one neat volume and ascribed to the same characters. Then you've got your regular biblical prophesies in the second half. Wars and monsters, the rise and fall of empires, God smiting the crap outta the bad guys, the Second Coming, et cetera, et cetera.'

  You know, I'd read all that the previous morning, but it's so much easier to get it explained to you by someone speaking everyday, simple, American English.

  'So, the variety of writers explains the smorgasbord?'

  'Smorgasbord,' he says, nodding. 'Bang on.'

  'OK, so the symbolism behind the four beasts?'

  'Daniel 7?'

  'Daniel 7.'

  'They're meant to indicate the rise of four empires, the fourth crushing the first three. There's then all sorts of weird shit happens with the fourth and there are ten horns, and then a little horn comes up and flattens three of the other horns, and ultimately God, you know, et cetera, et cetera. That kind of thing.'

  'And we know who the four empires were? Are?'

  'Depends how much of a prophecy you want it to be? Each generation has their own interpretation. If we assume the guy who wrote it had someone particular in mind, generally they're considered to be Babylon, Persia, Media and the Seleucids.'

  I nod, then say, 'You know, you started off talking about history there, but by the end it felt like you'd veered off into an episode of Star Trek.'

  'Iraq, Iran, northern Iran, and then, you know, the Seleucids took over half of Alexander's territory, then expanded it, so they had some of Greece, the Levant, Turkey, Afghanistan, some of northwest India. Shedloads.'

  'So, there's some modern day correlation?'

  He makes a maybe-maybe not gesture.

  'Sure, if you want there to be. Or else it can just be a bunch of messed-up weirdness from the second century BC.'

  OK. Not really helping so far, so decide to go for one of those off-the-cuff judgement calls.

  'We've got a case at the moment,' I say.

  He smiles. 'Sure you have,' he says. 'Why else would you be here?'

  'Fair point. We've had a couple of deaths... you watch the news?'

  'Never,' he says.

  'You never watch the news?'

  Shake of the head. 'The trouble with watching the news is that you find out what's happening, and it's never good. Ever. I mean, do they ever start the bulletin with, And here's a bunch of great stuff that happened today...? No, it's not for me.'

  'OK. So we've had a couple of murders out our way.'

  'I heard about that.'

  'I thought you just said you never watch the news.'

  'Jeez, man, I talk to people. Holy crap.'

  'OK, OK. So, the first victim, she had wings placed on her back. Two wings. The second victim had three ribs down his—'

  'Ah, nice,' he says. 'I see where you're going. That explains the police's sudden interest in Daniel.'

>   'Quite.'

  He nods, sits back in a slightly affected way. There's something of the young Robert De Niro about him when he does that. I wonder if he realises.

  'There was a third, right?' he asks.

  'Yep, but the killer was interrupted. However, we found a turkey feather in the vicinity...'

  'Wings of a foul.'

  'Yes. Presumably he legged it with them, because he didn't have time to do whatever he was intending.'

  'Which means he might kill another third victim.'

  'Don't know. Depends if he has a specific number of victims in mind, as well as specific people, or if he's trying to make some biblically related point or other.'

  'What might that be?' he asks.

  I give him the benefit of an eyebrow from across the desk and he smiles and nods.

  'Ah, that's why you're here,' he says. I nod. 'Makes sense. Right.'

  He stares at his desk. His face goes through a variety of minor contortions to indicate a variety of minor thought processes, then he smiles and kind of laughs and finally looks up.

  'I'm not really getting anything other than what is kind of obvious, you know, that it's representative of some sort of power struggle. '

  All those minor facial contortions must have been him connecting remotely with the internet.

  'These people are all related to the local church, is that how it's going?' he asks.

  'Yes, which is where the Bible comes in.'

  'People, you know, they like to bring everything down in scale, to bring it down to a very human level. These visions, they tend to speak on a grand political scale, empires and wars. This could be someone attempting to recreate that vision at the basic, you know, church level.'

  I don't say so, but that's the obvious first thought to have. Nevertheless, you don't get anywhere by putting the interviewee's gas at a peep.

  'Hmm, like the sound of that...'