Absolution

by Caro Ramsay

  He made his way back to the bedroom, carefully stepping across a Bri-Nylon rug, and lay down on the single divan, the green candlewick rumpled under him. He tried to ignore the pain in his face, the pain in his shoulder, the sensation that his mouth was filling slowly with blood. The taste of fresh blood was everywhere. He lowered his head gently on to a single pillow, turning on his side to relieve the pressure on his shoulder. The small gold face of his Cartier watch smiled back at him – ten to nine.

  He could smell bluebells, could smell the sea, again felt hands reaching to him, slender fingers holding him back as they freed his arm, loving fingers picking the glass from his face …

  She had been there, slight and blonde and winged like an angel. She had come to save him. Of course.

  When he woke again, somebody had been in to see him. His makeshift compress had been folded and put on a radiator, and the curtains and window had been opened, dissipating the smell. He got up, moving carefully as his shoulder crunched and grated. If he moved it too far from his side, it hurt – it hurt like hell even when he took a deep breath.

  He painfully straightened the bedspread, put on his shoes and pulled his jacket from the peg on the back of the door. He reached into the inner pocket for his mobile, but it was empty. His brain clouded over again. Had he dropped it at the hotel? No, he had put it in his pocket. The stupid cow had turned it off, but he had put it in his jacket. Hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember. But he remembered the flames in the car, the whoosh as it ignited, the sudden flash of flame as he walked away, supported by two … two arms, one either side. Two people? He tried to slip his arm into the sleeve – Christ! – and waited for the gritty agony to pass.

  He folded the jacket, swinging it over his shoulder, trying to appear casual as he went down the stairs. Careful not to make any creaking noises, he moved slowly when placing his weight on the next step of the narrow winding staircase.

  She was in the kitchen, a spry old woman, thin, her grey short-cropped hair held back with an uncompromising kirby grip. She stood at the sink, tartan slippers on grey lino, cutting vegetables with deft, deadly movements, her hands guiding the knife as it cut with force and precision. McAlpine found he could not take his eyes off the blade as it rose and fell. Efficient and confident use of a knife.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, trying to sound as casual as he could.

  ‘Do you want the phone?’ she asked, gathering the vegetables together with thin blue fingers and putting them in a colander. She seemed to have chopped a lot of vegetables for a single person, but then she looked like the sort of person who would eat a lot of vegetables and keep a diary of associated bowel movements.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking around the clinically white kitchen, so like Elizabeth Jane’s. ‘That would be great.’ He looked at the draining board – two cups, one teaspoon.

  ‘In the front room.’ She gestured to the hall, the front of the house. She turned, wiping her hands on her pinny. She looked old but up close her skin was smooth except for a huge mole on her top lip. Behind steel-rimmed glasses, the eyes were clear and intelligent.

  He walked through to the front room, her slippers scuffing the carpet behind him. All the windows were open at the front of the cottage, the glass running the full length of the room for a magnificent view of the sea. On a clear day like this you could see Ireland lying low on the horizon, Arran snaking down from Goat Fell. Cotton wool clouds in the sky. The brightness of the sun shimmering in through the window made his headache a hundred times worse.

  The woman pointed a bony finger at an old cream dial phone on a wooden sideboard. She pursed her lips in disapproval as she passed him on her way out of the door.

  He asked, ‘My car?’

  ‘Well, it went up in flames. Nobody noticed, they never do. It’ll be exactly where you left it. You’ll find it up there in the top field. It’s a bad bend. He’ll be wanting you to shift it.’

  McAlpine didn’t bother to inquire who ‘he’ was.

  She left the room, and he dialled the station, requesting to be connected to the murder room, asking for Costello, Anderson, the only two he could trust to keep their mouths shut.

  Somebody picked up the phone but was too busy continuing another conversation. He could hear papers being shuffled about, distant voices, then one close by saying, ‘Hello. Can I help you?’

  He asked again for Anderson. The voice at the other end shouted, ‘Has anybody seen Anderson?’ Then, ‘No, sorry, he’s out.’

  ‘Can you give me his mobile?’

  ‘We don’t give out …’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, it’s DCI McAlpine! Give me his bloody number!’

  The voice at the other end hesitated. ‘Can you identify yourself, sir?’

  ‘Yes, now give me his fucking phone number!’

  ‘Aye, OK.’

  Was that all it took?

  He dialled the number, moving the phone to his left hand, the shoulder feeling better for being up and about. He ran his fingers through his hair as he waited, wincing at the reek of vomit, petrol and unwashed scalp.

  As the number clicked to be connected, he moved to one side to get out of the glare of the sun and looked round the room. On the floor beside an old sideboard, the sort that usually housed an old record player, was a pile of LPs: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Hits for the Swinging Sixties. She looked sixty at least, but he bet it was a long time since she’d swung. He smiled, and his mouth cracked.

  A package was leaning against the wall next to the tiled fireplace. Something about it struck him as odd. It had been torn at the top to reveal bare strips of carved wood obviously forming part of a frame. There were a few of them. She must be an artist, this old biddy. He recognized them easily enough; Christ knew, Helena’s studio was littered with them. But they were incongruous here. It took a while for the reason why to penetrate. No smell of turps, no paintings drying, no paper stretching, no canvases being sized, no mess. No pictures on the wall. He could read the plain white label on the front, if he angled his head enough and held on to his neck. Nan McDougall, Shiprids Cottage, Shiprids Lane, Heads of Ayr Road, Croy, Ayrshire. He scratched at the cut above his eye, committing the name and address to memory.

  ‘Get a bloody move on,’ he muttered down the phone.

  The phone was answered; there was a clattering of cups.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, Colin, McAlpine here. Do me a favour?’

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’

  McAlpine went back into the kitchen, then remembered his manners. He searched through his pockets for a pound coin. She was passing the colander under the running tap.

  ‘Did you get a lift?’ she asked without turning round.

  ‘Yeah, fine, thanks.’

  ‘Your wallet is on the table in the hall.’

  ‘Oh … right.’ He hadn’t even registered it was missing. She wiped the spots of water off the sink with a folded J-cloth. The two cups had been put away. She still had not looked up.

  ‘Thank you for all … well, everything.’

  ‘No problem. You were not the first, you won’t be the last. I’ve told the council.’ She said this as though she had spoken to God.

  ‘How did you get me from the car?’

  ‘You could walk. If you can walk and you call an ambulance, they expect you to pay a fortune. A good sleep, and you’d be fine. Like I said, you weren’t the first.’

  ‘Well, thanks anyway. There was someone else there, though? Helping you? I would like to thank them.’ He scratched his head, searching for a vision of the monkey-like creature on the bonnet, breaking the glass. He had a sense of someone younger, smaller, agile, angelic.

  For the first time, she looked at him, her eyes reptilian behind the glass. He sensed the lie before it left her lips. ‘No. There was only me.’

  Arlene lay on the stainless-steel table, her head on a pillow carved from marble, waiting for her meeting with Chief Forensic Pathologist John O’Hare and his assistant Dr Je
ssica Gibson. She looked cold. There was a constant draught from the air filter, but the air stayed cold, chilled to the point of biting. A sudden rush of water from the sluice interrupted the silence.

  The dead do not always look at peace. Arlene’s blonde hair framed her face unflatteringly, dark roots showing through in a thin scar along the parting. The cheekbone and jaw sat an inch lower on the left side than the right. Her lips had been cut, forcing her mouth to a charmless grimace that looked like a remnant of life. Death did not suit her; like a flower that needs the sun to show its colour, she was ugly now.

  Costello looked exhausted, her eyes shadowed in grey. Dressed in scrubs, she was walking up and down the far side of the table, every so often inclining her head, bobbing as if inspecting a dodgy second-hand car, concentrating hard on the wounds. Arlene did not seem to care, her sightless eyes staring at the ceiling from her wrecked face.

  She was still wearing the black plastic waistcoat and red leather miniskirt she had worn at the disco. The obscene stain covering her abdomen and the top of her thighs had darkened to the colour of junkyard rust. The jelly mess of her intestines had also dried out, wrapped now like prime butcher’s tripe. Chunky white legs stuck out from the skirt, one foot covered by a green plastic ankle boot with a four-inch stiletto, the other bare and bloodstained, red varnish scraped from her toes, one nail missing. Both feet, both hands, were wrapped in polythene bags that Costello pulled slightly, flattening out the surface for a better view. She was peering at the label, then at the nail-less toe.

  ‘Formal ID yet?’ Mulholland asked, resting on a stool at the wall, crossing one tailored trouser leg over the other.

  Costello nodded. ‘Her friend Tracey. We’ll have to press harder, get another word with her. She’s a right – ’ She stopped abruptly as Davidson, the younger assistant, came in. He nodded, his gloved hand moving quickly over the paper on the clipboard. ‘Arlene Haggerty?’ He flicked the tag on the toe.

  ‘DI Mulholland, DS Costello,’ Costello said formally, feeling that the presence of the dead merited some small show of manners.

  ‘Cheers! Nice when they make the first incision for us.’

  ‘Spare us,’ she muttered.

  Costello walked slowly towards Mulholland on the pretext of moving around to keep her feet warm.

  Davidson misinterpreted it. ‘Squeamish?’

  ‘No, not at all. It’s never the dead that hurt you; those with a pulse are always that tad trickier.’ She looked directly at Davidson, who pulled a face and left, the door closing behind him, with a hiss of something that Costello presumed was negative air pressure.

  Mulholland shuddered. They could all be being microscopically murdered while standing here, some bullet-shaped virus making its way into their lungs to infect them with a deadly, as yet unknown disease. He coughed, holding his handkerchief to his nose, using the linen as a filter against whatever might be flying around, and looked longingly at the door.

  On cue, it swung open and O’Hare came in. ‘Just have to wait for Dr Gibson. Any nearer to a result?’ He leaned on the slab, scrupulously looking Arlene up and down.

  We’re waiting to see what Dr Batten says.’

  ‘So, no nearer.’

  Costello shook her head.

  ‘I would rather not have yet another victim on my slab,’ said O’Hare.

  ‘I would rather like to get something nice, something solid, forensic,’ countered Mulholland, keeping his distance.

  The door hissed open. ‘Good morning, Dr O’Hare.’

  ‘Good morning, Dr Gibson. Do you mind if we get started?’

  ‘No, please, carry on.’ Jessica Gibson leaned against the wall. Her hair was sticking out at odd angles, waiting to be introduced to a brush. ‘The law only states I have to be here.’

  ‘Here and involved,’ corrected O’Hare.

  ‘Here,’ muttered Gibson. ‘I don’t have to get involved. I only have to agree to everything you say. Hello, DS Costello, how’s tricks?’

  Costello shrugged at the body on the slab. ‘Just another day at the office.’

  O’Hare walked round the table, pulling on a pair of gloves. He pushed the overhead microphone to one side, leaning over the body on outstretched arms, his head low over the table. ‘Well, the same MO as before, but as you can see this one is much more violent.’ He pointed to her face. ‘The tell-tale burning of the chloroform round her upper lip. This piece of flesh here used to be the lower part of her nose. We may be able to get a shoe print from the face. There are some slight marks here, on the upper arms, which would have developed to contusions if she had lived long enough.’

  ‘Bruises, then,’ translated Costello, who was leaning in, her blonde hair now covered by a blue cap.

  Gibson looked at the upper part of the arm as O’Hare said, ‘Suggestive of being held around the upper arm, squeezed bodily. I think that she was gripped forcibly by the arms, which would suggest the assailant came up behind her and bear-hugged her to give her the chloroform. That gives us some indication of his height. She’s a wee bit overweight round the hips and thighs, but she’s slim across the rib cage, so the knife might have hit bone.’

  ‘Could you ID the weapon from that?’ asked Costello.

  ‘Maybe.’ O’Hare was on a roll. ‘It’s the first indication of the depth of cut this knife is capable of making, which reduces the search a bit. We’ll excise the tissue at the edge of the wound; it might tell us if the blade was serrated. There are also signs of her being dragged, so it’s probable she was knocked out, stabbed, then died where you found her. Her heart was pumping long enough for the cuts and grazes on her toes to bleed. But examination of the site shows most blood at the start of the drag, not where it stopped.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I’ll demonstrate. What height are you, Costello?’ O’Hare crooked his finger at her.

  ‘Five five.’

  ‘Stand here.’ O’Hare stood behind her, encircled her in his arms, lifting his left hand to her mouth. ‘Collapse forward now.’

  As she did, she slumped on to his right fist, which pressed into her stomach.

  ‘And if I had a knife in my right hand – the knife going up, your body weight going down’ – he pointed at Arlene, as Costello straightened – ‘that’s what you’d get.’ He stepped back to the table. ‘What would be really helpful is something that would tell us a bit more about the knife. Jess, could you shine that in here?’

  Gibson angled the overhead light, and a bright fluorescent glow illuminated the intestine, every fold and convolution of the mesentery. ‘Fingers crossed,’ Mulholland said, looking away. ‘Sooner or later our luck must turn.’

  ‘Well, going through a haystack is easier when you know you’re looking for a needle. I’ll be ready as soon as I can.’

  The two detectives walked towards the door, Costello subconsciously rubbing her stomach, as O’Hare started his dictation. ‘The body is that of a young white female …’

  Helena peered into the back of the larder fridge, looking for a quick bite of lunch before she headed off to work. She rummaged among the remnants in the salad tray, bits of lettuce tinged brown, celery that had given up its fight for life.

  She stood up, fingers drumming along the door of the fridge. There was nothing here worth eating; Alan had scoffed the lot in one of his midnight feasts. A half-bottle of whisky, two fried eggs, square sausage and potato scones. No wonder he found it difficult to sleep. She pulled down the notepad, making another list. She would soon need an index for her lists.

  She heard the front door open and shut, very quietly. She braced herself. It took a while for her husband to get from the front door to the kitchen. Helena was staring at the carpet, her arms folded, ready. She could imagine him checking the study, the sitting room, pausing at the bottom of the stairs to listen. His next stop would be the kitchen.

  His face was bloodied and bruised, but his expression was impassive as he appeared at the door, looking at her as if she had no rig
ht to be there. He bit the side of his lip, holding his hand to the side of his face. She knew he was trying to draw attention to the pain he was in, non-verbally changing the subject before she had started.

  It wasn’t going to work.

  ‘You look as though you’ve been in a fight.’ She refolded her arms. ‘You’re about to walk into another.’

  He tried for levity. ‘At your worst, when you had PMT and had stopped smoking, you weren’t as dangerous as a BMW with a mind of its own.’

  ‘Drove itself, did it?’ she snorted. ‘Don’t blame the monkey, blame the organ grinder.’ Helena looked him up and down, then the smell hit her. He had got drunk and had been lying all night in a gutter somewhere, throwing up on himself. She saw his bloodshot eye and the deep angry cut on the side of his face, a bloodied gap in his lower jaw. She resisted the thought that he might be badly hurt.

  ‘Do you mind having a shower? You smell,’ she said calmly, keeping her eyes from his face.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you for asking.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t think I have any broken bones, but your car is lying in a field somewhere. I managed to get out before it exploded into a million pieces.’ He went to lean on the worktop, but the pain ricocheted through him and he shot back upright. ‘I’ve dislocated my shoulder, though,’ he said.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Yes, I’m in agony.’

  ‘Good. We all have our crosses to bear. You chose yours; some of us aren’t so lucky.’ She raised her chin, a sign that she was going on the attack. ‘You were the one out shagging some brainless bimbo. In the throes of passion, you forgot your mobile. She phoned. She phoned here!’ Helena walked past him. ‘You owe me an explanation as well as a new car, but it can wait. I’m busy right now. And you stink.’