18 - Aftershock

by Quintin Jardine

  As she looked closer, she could see stab wounds and slashes everywhere: on his back, arms, abdomen, side, face, and across his neck where, she suspected, the jugular had been severed. His mouth hung open. He had been stabbed in the cheek and through the left eye. She reached with her right hand and touched his left hip, one of the few parts of the body neither marked by a wound nor stained with blood. It was colder to the touch than the door-jamb had been.

  Stallings pulled herself upright, and stepped back into the living room. She realised that she was trembling, and that her stomach was starting to churn. She went quickly to the exit, and stepped, with as much dignity as she could muster, back into the street.

  Mae Grey was standing beside McGurk, leaning against her car as if for support, drawing heavily on a cigarette and staring ahead, at nothing at all. The inspector looked her up and down, from head to foot, and saw that her flat canvas shoes, which had been pale blue, now sported dark blotches.

  ‘Calls made?’ she asked the sergeant.

  ‘She didn’t,’ he replied. ‘I did. There’s a full uniform team on its way, plus scene-of-crime. I rang the boss too.’

  ‘McIlhenney?’

  ‘Yes. He’s coming too. I suspect we may see a few more big chiefs. Weekes was still on the payroll, after all, even if he was more than a wee bit tarnished.’

  She turned to the woman. ‘Are you ready to talk about it, Mae?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘But I never will be, so . . .’

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘I’d left some stuff: a few CDs, some clothes. Plus, I wanted to shove his engagement ring up his arse.’

  ‘Maybe we should stop there,’ said Stallings, quietly.

  ‘It’s all right, ma’am, I didn’t.’ Her face twisted savagely. ‘If there is anything up there, it wasn’t me that put it there.’

  ‘I thought you told us you didn’t have a key?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘So how did you get in?’

  ‘Back door: there’s a path three doors up that takes you there. When I got no reply to the bell, I thought he might be sitting out in the back garden. We did that sometimes. But he wasn’t. The kitchen door was open. I went inside and I found him . . . like that.’

  ‘Did you touch anything?’

  ‘No. I stepped into the hall, though; just in case he was still alive. But then I felt the carpet all sticky with his blood and I realised he couldn’t be. I lost it a bit and I just ran straight out the front door. I nearly peed myself. I couldn’t go back inside, so I squatted down between the two cars and did it there.’ McGurk glanced to his right and saw a damp line leading from the driveway across the pavement to a roadside drain. ‘When I could get my breath back properly, I found your card and rang you on my mobile.’

  ‘He’s been dead for quite some time,’ Stallings told her. ‘I’m going to ask you this informally; one way or the other I have to. Have you been here before in the last twenty-four hours?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly what I’ve just asked you.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ Grey protested.

  ‘If you have . . . We’ve had cars doing regular drive-bys of this place. If you have, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll have been seen by one of them, if not by some of the neighbours.’

  ‘Ma’am, you can ask me informally, formally, any way you like. You can give me a fucking lie detector. I’ll tell you the same thing every time. I haven’t been here since last weekend. That was the last time I saw Theo.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the inspector. ‘Let’s leave it for now, but you’ll need to give us it formally for the record.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the constable, beginning to recover her self-control. ‘Can I do it soon? I’m on night shift.’

  McGurk smiled. ‘We can get you the night off, Mae.’

  ‘So I can spend it staring at the ceiling and thinking about that in there? Thanks, Sarge, but I’d rather work.’

  ‘Okay. Look, you know what to do. Give us a statement: type it up, print it and sign it. If we need to interview you after we’ve seen that, we’ll get in touch. On that basis, you can go for now. You’ll need to leave us your shoes, though.’

  ‘But I told you exactly what happened. Do you still not believe me?’

  ‘It’s not that. They might have picked up something other than Theo’s blood, a trace left by whoever did for him.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ She opened her car door, sat in the passenger seat and removed her shoes, then handed them to McGurk, who took them carefully from her, suspending them from a single finger on each hand.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘On your way.’

  The detectives watched her as she reversed out into South Bughtlin Road and drove off, slowly and carefully, past an ever-growing number of neighbours who had emerged from their homes, realising that something was happening beyond the Sunday norm.

  ‘I hope I was right to do that,’ McGurk murmured.

  ‘It was my decision as much as yours. I’d have said if I disagreed. She’s given us her story, now she’s best off out of it. She’s not on my list of suspects.’

  ‘So who is?’

  ‘Who isn’t? Anybody who ever met that charmer in there. Realistically, John Dean’s got to be at the top, though.’

  ‘Agreed, because he and Weekes had a fight yesterday.’

  ‘And because he told me that he wanted to see him dead, when I spoke to him afterwards.’

  ‘He said that?’

  Stallings nodded.

  ‘And then came right back and did it?’ McGurk queried. ‘How likely is that?’

  ‘Confession first, crime second? I wouldn’t rule it out. Maybe he felt it was something he had to do.’

  ‘And maybe not. If that was the case, wouldn’t he have called us as soon as he did it?’

  ‘If it’s not him, we have to move on to Lisanne.’

  ‘Lisanne didn’t do it.’

  ‘I’d expect you to say that; you’re seeing her socially. You realise that means you can’t have anything to do with any part of the investigation that involves her?’

  ‘Sure, boss, but how long’s he been dead?’

  ‘He’s cold and he’s stiff. Several hours. Maybe since yesterday.’

  ‘Then I repeat, Lisanne didn’t do it. I didn’t just drop her off on Friday: I stayed the night, and I was there all morning. About midday, she drove me to my place. I changed clothes and we went to the Botanics for the afternoon, then did an early movie and back to mine. We were there until this afternoon, when I came into the office to meet you and she went home.’

  ‘Lucky for her you were available and horny.’

  McGurk shot her an uncharacteristically hostile look. ‘If you doubt me, you can send a SOCO to my place to go over the sheets.’

  ‘Hey, calm down, Jack. That’ll only happen if they find her DNA in the house.’

  ‘They probably will: she’s been there a couple of times, remember. If they find her prints in blood on the handle of a knife, that’s another matter, but they won’t.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Stallings declared. ‘Whatever, I’m the one who breaks the news to her, once we’re set up here. Is the mobile police station on its way?’

  ‘Yes. I’m beginning to think we should put bunks in it.’ As he spoke, a blue people-carrier swung into South Bughtlin Road and headed towards them. ‘That looks like DI Dorward and his team.’

  ‘Good. I was beginning to feel lonely. We should get organised ourselves. Door-to-door interviews first.’ She looked at the houses on either side of the one in which the body lay. ‘Unless things have changed since yesterday, these are unoccupied.’

  ‘I’d guessed as much,’ McGurk agreed. ‘Since we’ve been here there hasn’t been as much as a twitching curtain either side. I don’t imagine that Weekes died quietly. If they’d been occupied, somebody would have been bound to hear something.’ He looked along the street. ‘It’s a shame this neighb
ourhood’s so quiet. It would have made life easier if there was a closed-circuit camera here.’

  ‘It would. Mind you, the closed-circuit coverage is quite extensive in Edinburgh. Find out where the nearest cameras are and arrange to review their footage for the last couple of days. See if anything or anyone jumps out at you.’ Stallings broke off as a red-haired man approached in a crime-scene tunic. ‘DI Dorward,’ she said. ‘Sorry about your Sunday.’

  The newcomer shrugged. ‘What’s new? Weekends are our busy time.’ He took Mae Grey’s shoes from McGurk’s extended fingers and passed them to an assistant. ‘Thanks, big man. Whose are these?’

  ‘The woman who found the body.’

  ‘Have you been inside?’

  ‘I only stood in the doorway. DI Stallings has, though.’

  Dorward turned back to her. ‘Yours too, please. There are some disposables in our van that you can have.’ He watched as the inspector slipped her shoes off. ‘Now there’s a shapely ankle,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Right,’ he called to his team. ‘You know what to do. I want the house taped off, front and back. Any sign of the doc?’

  ‘Just coming, Arthur,’ a female voice called from the roadway. Beyond her, Stallings saw DC Haddock emerging from a Mini.

  ‘Jack,’ she announced, ‘I’m going to take young Sauce and call on Lisanne. It’s best she hears about it sooner than later. You get things under way here when the HQ van arrives.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ McGurk replied. ‘But, Becky . . .’

  ‘Sure.’ She grinned. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell her that you’d have come but I wouldn’t let you.’

  Sixty-eight

  The tide was on its way out, and so Bob knew where he would find her. He walked down towards the beach, but rather than follow the main path from the car park, he took another track, one that headed westward and had been cut to allow a gentler descent for the horses which were exercised there.

  Once, when Alex was a child, eight, as he recalled, she had broken a house rule, and she and her father had argued. Since she had inherited much of his nature it had ended with her stalking through the front door, declaring that she was running away from home. He had followed her at a distance as she had headed up Goose Green, through the narrow alley that divided the villas along Marine Parade, then across the bents and down to the sand. He had followed, never letting her out of his sight, and she had marched on, never once looking back.

  When he had caught up with her, she had been sitting on a low flat red rock, a few yards below the high-water mark. ‘Is this it, then?’ he had asked. ‘The place you’ve run away to?’

  She had looked up at him, and wrinkled her nose. ‘Yes,’ she had announced, with the kind of dignity that only a child can affect. ‘This is my huffy rock.’

  She was there again. She said nothing as he sat down beside her, as he had done almost twenty years before, and slid his arm around her. ‘Andy thinks I set the two of you up,’ he told her, ‘but, honest, baby, I didn’t. The dishwasher was full and just finishing its cycle, so we did the lunch things by hand, then we emptied it, stacked everything away and tidied up the kitchen.’

  ‘Whatever,’ she murmured, ‘it had its effect. Did he tell you? Everything I said, everything I yelled at him?’

  ‘All of it. I have to say,’ Bob chuckled, ‘you chose your moment. When we were outside, Andy and I, he was beating himself up about the two of you, and the way he acted back then. No wonder he thinks I turned you loose on him.’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry, Pops.’

  ‘Don’t be. It needed to happen, for your sake, and maybe even for his. I’m to blame too.’

  ‘What do you mean? How can you be?’

  ‘For not getting involved at the time, for not being a proper dad and letting you soak my shoulder. You and Andy did nothing but shout at each other when you should have been talking. But he wasn’t rational, and I don’t suppose you were either. You should have been able to talk to me, but I wasn’t around for you.’

  ‘Yes, you were, and so was Sarah. I chose not to talk to you, that’s all.’

  ‘You chose to bottle all that up inside you, and get on with your life?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For how long now, going on four years?’

  ‘Yes, and you want to know why? Because the more I thought about it, the more ashamed of myself I became. Pops, I came off the pill for one month because Andy kept going on about having kids, and in that time I got pregnant.’

  ‘And you took a decision for good and valid reasons. It’s all right, love.’ He gave her a one-armed hug.

  ‘But it’s not,’ she cried, with a desperation that cut into him. ‘It was expedient, it was cowardly, and I’m ashamed of being the kind of person who could do something like that.’

  Bob took his arm from around her waist and clasped his hands together, his elbows on his knees. ‘Your mother had two miscarriages,’ he said. ‘One when we were engaged, just before we were married, and another a year after you were born. It happened while she was at work, and she was whipped into hospital for an emergency D and C. Except that wasn’t true: she never went to work that day. She went straight to Roodlands and had an abortion.’

  Alex stared at him. ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I’m a detective, kid. I took her head teacher a box of chocolates to thank her for her help. She was in on it; she said, “Don’t mention it,” and thanked me for the chocs, but there was something in her eye, and I read it. I made some personal enquiries and found out the truth. Scared the crap out of a gynaecologist in the process.’

  ‘God, Pops. How did she justify it to you?’

  ‘She didn’t, because I said nothing about it. The gynae bloke was shitless because I told him what I’d do to him if she ever found out from him that I knew. I loved your mum, Alexis; if she felt that’s what she had to do, it was all right with me, even if it hurt me like a broken bone. I’m sure she pined for that kid, though, and so did I, for a long while, even after Myra was dead.’

  ‘How did you get over it? God, did you get over it?’

  ‘I told your Granddad Skinner. He said, “That’s too bad, son, but it’s history. Now treat the child like all the others that are gone and get on with your life.” And that’s what I did. I put it in my mental box of cherished things and got on with my life.’

  She squeezed his arm. ‘Your what?’

  ‘My mental box of cherished things. Your past selves are in there, as a baby, then as a kid. So’s your mum, and your grandparents. Sarah, from the early days when things were okay with us: she’s there too. And even a couple of others that I’ve never told you about, and won’t, for now at any rate. You, they, are all in there, and every so often, when I’m alone, I open the lid and put myself inside for a while. Then I close it again. That’s what you have to do. Define that box in your head and put the kid you never had in there. Then go forward. You can do that because essentially you’re me, even if I can’t read you all the time.’

  ‘If you have that box, what do you do with the demons?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re in another one. It’s locked up tight, and I’ve hidden the key, even from myself.’ He stood and held out his hand for her to pull herself to her feet.

  They walked back up the bridle path and across the bents, the rough, rising ground beyond the shore, until they reached the garden gate. Andy and Aileen were waiting for them in the garden. ‘Sorry, Andy,’ said Alex, awkwardly, as she approached him.

  He shrugged and smiled. ‘All the better for the telling,’ he replied. He looked at Bob. ‘I believe you now. Aileen told me what kept you.’

  ‘Don’t make disbelieving me a habit, for Christ’s sake,’ said his friend, heavily.

  ‘There was a phone call,’ Aileen told him. ‘Neil. He asked if you’d call him back on his mobile as soon as you got in.’

  ‘Sounds like the sort of call you don’t want on a Sunday . . . but Neil wouldn’t do it if he didn’t have to.’ He took out his pho
ne and strolled across to the corner of the garden, calling up McIlhenney’s number as he went. ‘What’s up?’ he asked, as they were connected.

  ‘Somebody’s put paid to Theo Weekes. In his house. With what looks like a very big, very sharp knife, only Arthur’s people can’t find it at the scene.’

  ‘Which of his surviving women did that?’

  ‘Neither. PC Grey found the body. When he was killed, about six last night, the pathologist reckons, his ex-wife was with Jack McGurk. And please, don’t give me the witness-protection joke again: I’ve heard it four times so far this afternoon.’

  Skinner beckoned to Martin. ‘I won’t,’ he promised McIlhenney. ‘I won’t give you anything. I want you to tell all this to Andy. He’ll be looking into something beyond the leak inquiry, and this is too close to it to be treated separately.’ He handed the phone to his friend and walked away, back to Aileen and Alex.

  Sixty-nine

  ‘This thing you’re doing, Andy,’ said Neil McIlhenney, standing outside Theo Weekes’s house, in the evening sunshine that baked South Bughtlin Road. ‘It makes my flesh creep. I can’t lose the thought that if it was anyone else we’d have had him in for serious questioning, or the Spanish would have if they’d known all the facts about the Dean murder, and especially about the picture connection to the second one.’

  ‘That’s why he wants me involved.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He knows me, and he knows that if the evidence becomes overwhelming, I might have to lock him up. He’d rather it was me than anybody else.’

  ‘Come on, you’re not seriously suggesting that Bob’s in the frame for these killings, are you?’