by William Paul
‘My old friend Bobby,’ he said.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Saturday, 00.42
The Victorian towers and spires of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary pierced the sky like some Gothic house of horror. A light fog draped itself round the walls and windows of the sprawling hospital complex. The street-lights on Lauriston Place had beautiful multi-coloured haloes. Beneath them faceless people moved to and fro. Drunks staggered and sang. Couples clung together and walked in step through an erratic drizzle of rain. In the distance, the sound of a motor bike with a broken silencer seemed to make the air vibrate.
Fyfe parked his car opposite the gates that led to the casualty department. Jill replaced him in the driver’s seat and watched him go down the slope. He had driven in to the hospital as fast as he could after the phone call from Illingworth. It had ended with a policewoman taking the phone from him and explaining the situation: Norma, close to death from an overdose, and little brother Eddie acting erratically and illogically after returning from a heavy drinking bout to find her lying on the floor. The incident was reported by neighbours who heard screaming and saw a woman running away from the flat. Eddie’s pick-up apparently. He was found sitting cross-legged beside his sister thinking she was dead. But they found a faint pulse and rushed her to casualty. They knew about the warrant for Norma. Should she contact anyone else? No, Fyfe replied. He would organize all that and meet them at the hospital.
Fyfe’s hair was still damp as he went through the heavy, scuffed-plastic swing-doors. He had not yet told anyone else. The car phone had rung once as he approached the outskirts of the city but he had ignored it. He briefly considered going to the flat to rouse Moya and let her in on the hunt for Bobby, their missing link. But in the end he didn’t because he couldn’t face the emotional hassle.
The waiting-area was strewn with bodies and old magazines. A group of six men drank coffee from the machine and conversed in conspiratorial whispers. A tattooed skinhead lay across three chairs snoring noisily. Two teenage girls, as thin as the cigarettes in their mouths, sat under a No Smoking sign and quietly wept for the evening’s latest victim. A middle-aged woman with a small child holding the hem of her coat argued with a nurse behind the wire mesh security screen at the reception desk. Illingworth was in a corner, chairs gathered round him like a defensive wall. The policewoman was holding his hand, talking to him soothingly. She was tall and wide-shouldered with a pleasant round face. He knew her as Sandra but couldn’t recall her second name. She saw him approach and stood up. He felt obliged to say the bruising round his eyes was the result of an accident and didn’t matter although it was throbbing painfully. Illingworth stayed where he was, looking up but showing no signs of recognition.
‘The woman’s out of danger, sir,’ Sandra said.
‘And how’s her little brother?’
‘Not making much sense, I’m afraid. I don’t know if he’s in shock or just plain pissed out of his head. He smells like a brewery. He had your card, and I knew about the murder inquiry and all that, so I phoned you and put him on.’
‘That was good thinking.’
‘So was it the woman, then, sir? It was an overdose. Guilt got to her?’
‘Looks that way doesn’t it, Sandra. Take a break while I have a chat with our pal here. Give us five minutes and see if you can contact DS Matthewson or DI McBain and get them over here.’
Sandra moved out of the picture and Fyfe sat down beside Illingworth. Recognition had dawned but he still wasn’t making any sense. Fyfe listened carefully as he muttered something about boatmen on lochs and distant islands but then he rambled on to the subject of girls on swings. He was reminiscing about his childhood. His breath smelled rotten.
‘Had a good night Eddie?’ Fyfe said. ‘Bit of a nasty surprise at the end of it.’
Halfway through the sentence he realized he could be talking about himself in another context. Illingworth looked at Fyfe as if seeing him for the first time. ‘I love her. We were very close, you know,’ he said, crossing index and forefingers on both hands. ‘We were like that, me and Norma.’
‘She’s going to be fine.’
‘No she’s not. She’s going to die.’
‘The doctors say she’s out of danger.’
‘What do doctors know? She knows she’s going to die. She told me.’
Fyfe didn’t argue. Somebody from the group of six kicked the coffee machine when it failed to deliver a cup down its stainless steel chute. They all turned their backs as the coffee dribbled out uselessly and a pair of uniformed security guards strolled past. They turned back to abuse the machine as a pair of differently uniformed nurses followed the guards. The woman at the reception desk ended her one-sided dialogue and sat down. The child climbed into her lap and started sucking its thumb.
‘Why did you call her Bobby?’ Fyfe asked.
‘Why? I never did. She hated me using that name.’
‘You used it to me over the phone.’
‘Did I?’
‘It’s a nickname, is it? A private nickname?’
‘Yeah. She got it at school. Her favourite teacher called her Bobby and it stuck. Miss Ralston always treated her like the teacher’s pet. She died in a hill-walking accident when we were in fourth year. Norma’s never let anyone call her it since then.’
Fyfe didn’t flinch as a blast of beery breath caught him full in the face. Illingworth described Miss Ralston’s death in detail. She was leading a school party up Ben Ledi when a bouncing rock caught her on the side of the head. A one in a million chance. The children carried her body down.
‘Was there a reason?’ Fyfe asked.
‘For the death?’
‘For the name? Why Bobby?’
‘What do you call an old shilling? A bob.’
‘How does . . .’
‘Illingworth. Shillingworth. Bob. Bobby.’
‘Obvious really,’ Fyfe agreed. ‘Once you know.’
Chapter Fifty-Five
Saturday, 00.45
Wright was talking spontaneously now. Moya didn’t need to prompt him at all after establishing Bobby’s real identity and experiencing a deep sense of satisfaction that they were now making significant headway. A large measure of that satisfaction was in doing it without Fyfe’s help.
There was an interruption, a knock at the door. Moya impatiently waved away the offer of a message from Fyfe. Let him wait, she thought angrily, wherever he is. I don’t need his help to get to the truth here. I’m in charge.
‘Me and my old friend Bobby, sorry Norma, weren’t an item, you understand,’ Wright was saying. ‘She didn’t like men at all. Well, not much. I slept with her once. I don’t know why. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was how we went into business together but I called her Bobby because it really annoyed her. I don’t know why. She wouldn’t tell me. I can be a bad bastard like that. Ultimately though ours was purely a business relationship and it would have been good business too if it had worked as we planned. We were going to bump her off and collect the insurance money but we were biding our time. In the end it was too hurried. We fucked it basically.’
He stared up at the ceiling, momentarily lost in a private dream world. Then he looked across at Moya and the dumb smile returned. He scratched the top of his head to imitate the comedian Stan Laurel.
‘Another fine mess they got me into too,’ he said. ‘Both of them. Janet rats on me in this life and Laura dumps on me from beyond the grave. Women. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.’
‘You were telling me about Norma and Tuesday night.’
‘Sure. Bobby phones me, all excitable and panicky. “Laura’s dead,” she says. “What are we going to do?” She answered her own question. We would do as we had planned, complete with convenient scapegoat and the crazy magazine columns that Bobby had been planting over the months to point you police folk in the desired direction. The only difference was that we weren’t talking about it any longer, we were in the middle
of doing it and it needed doing quickly because she was already dead. Too quickly as it turned out. Too many mistakes, not enough composure. I was to brass neck the insurance, make a virtue of it, because you would inevitably find out anyway. I’m a lawyer. I know these things. We had it all planned but things just moved too fast for me. I lost control. I shouldn’t have hassled poor Janet. I should have left her alone. But I couldn’t. It’s the difference between theory and practice. You can’t plan for it. I never trusted Norma anyway. I always thought she had her own death wish. I should have known she would let me down.’
Wright laughed weakly. His stupid grin was fading into something more like a frightened scowl. He put his hands back into his lap and watched them carefully. Moya could see he was fraying at the edges, about to hit the drug-induced wall he was headed straight towards. He hiccuped, stiffened and looked round the room as though seeing it for the first time.
‘This scapegoat? Was it Ron Gilchrist?’ Moya asked.
‘Who else? Good old Ron. Randy Ron. Dirty old man that he was. Laura sucked him in and blew him out in bubbles with Norma’s encouragement. They toyed with him, took him up north to the cottage for clandestine visits. Teased him unmercifully.
Laura thought it was all being done so they could blackmail him. She was game for that. You know, pour a few drinks down his throat and get him in a compromising position, then threaten to go to his wife with the pictures. She didn’t realise me and Norma were doing it to make him ripe for the part of jealous lover. The plan was Norma’s brainchild, by the way. Circles within circles eh? Old guy with a bad heart. A decent shag would probably have killed him. Instead somebody else did. He didn’t have the option of dying with a smile on his face. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?’
He laughed again and hiccuped. His face was chalk-white. He retched silently, swallowing air, his entire body convulsing for a few moments before settling back into the chair.
‘So you didn’t kill him?’
Wright feigned surprise. He shook his head primly.
‘Is it such a stupid question?’ Moya asked, determined to stay in control of the interview. ‘Either you or Norma surely?’
He kept shaking his head.
‘Norma kills Laura and you help string good old Ron up? Do I have that right?’
Wright held his head in his hands and shook it forcefully. A scatter of braying laughs sprayed out from between his fingers. ‘No, no Inspector. You haven’t got it right at all. Norma, my old friend Bobby, didn’t kill anyone. Norma came to see me on Tuesday night. She was all flustered and anxious. She said Laura was dead and I should now help her take the body up to the loch like we had planned.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I bottled it. I told her to leave me alone. It was nothing to do with me.’
‘Not very gallant.’
‘Smart though. Norma’s a nutter. I should never have listened to her. I think back and I don’t understand how we managed to even consider her daft plan.’
‘So what did she do when you failed to live up to expectations?’
‘Do? I didn’t do anything. She fixed me with this stare that would have curdled milk and then she went away.’
‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not, not if it’s true.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I went home and put a pillow over my head. I tried to pretend none of it was happening.’
‘So Norma’s the killer, is she?’
‘No. That was why we fucked up. Haven’t you been listening to me? We weren’t in control.’
Moya frowned. She thought she had followed the plot perfectly. She was annoyed with herself for missing some vital thread of the argument.
‘Then who?’ she asked, realizing that she sounded pathetic and indecisive and feminine and wishing she didn’t.
Wright belched. The grin had been restored but now it contained a sinister edge. The eyes were glazed and totally vacant. Moya watched helplessly as he hit the wall. His head slumped down onto the table, bouncing a little like a hard ball. Matthewson reached over and shook him roughly by the shoulder but there was no response.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Saturday, 01.03
The room contained a bed, a saline drip, a bulky electronic heart monitor with a tiny screen, and a locker on wheels. The monitor screen glowed in the dim grey light. A lamp on top of the locker had its bright white light directed down and away to pool uselessly in a corner. There was a jug of orange juice too with a glass covered over by a skin of clingfilm to keep the dust out. Norma lay on the bed wrapped tightly in the white open-weave blankets. One tube went up her nose, another into her wrist. Wires from the monitor went under the covers to her chest. A nurse stood by her with two fingers on the pulse in her neck, checking it against the watch on her lapel. It seemed right to speak in whispers.
‘I’m told she’s out of danger,’ Fyfe said.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ the doctor replied.
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s true to say she’s out of immediate danger but in the longer term I would have my doubts.’
The doctor held out his hand and waggled it from side to side. Then he turned it into a fist and gave the thumbs down signal. He was a youngster with a baby face and a shirt collar at least two sizes too big for him. His white coat was grubby and the left hand pocket was missing completely. His name badge said he was Ken McInnes. The poor light made the downy hair on his upper lip glow strangely. He looked impossibly young, like a boy playing the part of a doctor in a school play. Fyfe rubbed his stubbly chin and just managed to stop himself fingertip-touching the bruising round his eyes.
‘Tell me the worst that will happen?’
McInnes pouted and narrowed his eyes. ‘Four days I reckon,’ he said.
‘She’ll die in four days?’
‘You see she’s swallowed about one hundred coproxomal tablets. They’re powerful painkillers, a combination of paracetamol and distalgesic. The opiate component is what has flattened her while the rest has fairly comprehensively wrecked her liver. It will pack up soon and then they’ll pack her up.’
‘In four days?’
McInnes waggled his hand again. ‘Give or take.’
‘That’s it? Nothing to be done?’
‘We’ve put her on the national computerized transplant list but don’t expect much.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s got a rare blood group. The chances of a donor being matched to her in the next few days are a good deal less than my chances of getting a decent night’s sleep tonight.’
Fyfe decided he liked McInnes attitude. He would have liked to have bought him a drink and continued the irreverent conversation. ‘You come straight to the point, don’t you doc?’
‘If you were a relative I would waffle and sympathize. But you’re not, Chief Inspector. You’re the filth so you get the dirty, unvarnished truth.’
‘Thanks very much.’
‘Any time. Just remember life’s a female dog.’
‘And then you die.’
‘That’s my best medical advice.’ He nodded at the bed. ‘In her case in about four days’ time. In your case I would recommend a couple of pounds of the best steak on those eyes. Drape it over like a wet cloth.’
‘I’ll do that. Can I speak to her?’
‘She’s lapsing in and out of consciousness but you can try.’ He beckoned to the nurse to come away from the bed. ‘At least it won’t hurt her.’
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Saturday, 01.10
Outside the interview room Matthewson arranged for a doctor to be called to check on Wright. They had laid him out on the floor in the recovery position. He kept smiling. Moya, frustrated by Wright’s obtuse replies to her questions, read the note that had been left with Fyfe’s message on it. At least it offered something positive.
‘We’ve found Norma,’ she announced
.
‘Where?’
‘In the royal infirmary. Some kind of overdose.’
‘Alive?’
‘Yes but she’s probably unconscious too.’
‘How did she get there?’
‘Little brother Eddie found her at her flat apparently.’
‘Did he now?’
They both had the same idea at the same time. They didn’t have to articulate it into words to instantly understand what each was thinking. Little brother Eddie, playing the part of the poor innocent, unaware of everything that was going on around him. Maybe he wasn’t so innocent after all. Maybe it was all an act to deflect suspicion. Maybe he was the puppet-master pulling the strings, and cutting them when it suited him.
‘Everybody in that office was screwing somebody else,’ Moya said. ‘Now we know it was all to do with blackmail and insurance fraud. Is it possible Illingworth was simply the odd man out?’
‘Anything’s possible.’
‘We don’t want to jump to conclusions.’ Moya restrained her enthusiasm, remembering how she had jumped in with both feet when Robert Ross presented himself as the prime suspect. ‘Wright might be trying to pass the buck onto him or trying to drag him down as well?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Anything’s possible you’ve just told me.’
The doctor arrived, blinking rapidly to fight off sleep. He was a middle-aged man with thin flyaway hair, a petulant mouth and the kind of resigned attitude that showed he had done this kind of thing a thousand times before. Matthewson knew him and introduced him by name to Moya. She didn’t catch the name but didn’t let on. They stood over him as he examined Wright on the floor, feeling for a pulse and then tut-tutting as he shone a thin torch beam into his eyeballs. Wright kept smiling.
‘Any idea what knocked him out?’ the doctor asked.
‘Police brutality,’ Matthewson said.
‘Not enough bruises for that. I suppose we’d better get him down the road to hospital and waste some more taxpayer’s money bringing him round.’