by William Paul
‘Is he likely to wake up soon, doc?’ Moya said.
‘I doubt it. I’ve seen them sleep a week away when they’re in a state like this. It depends on the tolerance they’ve built up. This guy I would say at first glance is a light to medium user. No injection marks so it’s just for recreation. Cannabis definitely, probably a bit of cocaine. He’s just gone over the score and pigged out. He’ll survive.’
‘Good,’ Matthewson said. ‘Then we can charge him.’
‘The condemned man had a hearty blow-out,’ the doctor said, snapping his bag shut and standing up. ‘Can you get somebody to organize an ambulance?’
‘We’ll do better than that,’ Moya said. ‘We’ll run him along ourselves. We’ve got unfinished business at the hospital anyway.’
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Saturday, 01.12
‘Why did you do it, Norma?’ Fyfe asked.
She watched him through cloudy, half-open eyes. Her skin was a deathly yellow, seemingly tissue-paper thin, tinged with pink around the eyelids and at the corners of her mouth. He didn’t know if she could hear him, if she was even aware of him, but it looked as if she was struggling to say something. He leaned across the bed to get closer to her. He was so close to her mouth he could feel tiny exhalations of warm air on his cheek. He was looking down her body. The touches of air synchronized with the faint rising and falling of her chest. When she spoke her voice was weak but surprisingly clear through the wheeziness. It was like she was whispering inside his head.
‘Why is an impossible question. It has a multitude of answers.’
‘I’m Chief Inspector Fyfe, Norma. I’m a policeman. I need to know what happened.’
Fyfe raised his head. Her eyes were still half-closed. Only the shallow breathing indicated that she was alive. The signal of the heart monitor passed continually across the small screen. It reminded Fyfe of the dancing CD display lights in the cottage by the loch when they found Gilchrist’s dangling body. Norma could not have had the strength to hang him up there. She had to have an accomplice. He leaned close to her again.
‘Who made you do it Norma?’
‘Nobody made me do it because it was always going to happen.’
‘Who did it with you then? Who killed Laura?’
‘He will die too. Very soon.’
‘You still think you can see into the future, don’t you Norma?’
‘But I can.’
‘Then why are you lying here like this?’
‘I can see into the future. I can’t change what I see.’
Fyfe felt the hairs on the nape of his neck bristle coldly. Norma’s index finger was touching his forearm, hooking into it, pulling him closer. He couldn’t lift his head. He could see her breathing getting faster and shallower. The monitor was speeding up.
‘That’s why I wrote those things in the magazine,’ she whispered urgently. ‘It was all true. All of it. All of it.’
‘Only because you made it true, Norma. You put Laura on that rock after she was dead. You fulfilled your own prophecy, didn’t you?’
‘If you like.’
‘And then you left the note because you wanted to be caught.’
‘If you like.’
‘You loved her, didn’t you?’
‘But I couldn’t save her.’
The nurse touched his shoulder and motioned that he should leave. Fyfe pleaded for a few extra minutes, realizing that Norma was fading fast. The next time she lost consciousness she might never wake up again. He needed to find out as much as he could now. The nurse drew back reluctantly. Fyfe bent over Norma again.
‘Who killed Laura? Was it Ron Gilchrist?’
‘No. He was an irrelevance really.’
‘Simon then? Simon Wright. Laura’s ex-husband?’
‘No. He didn’t have the guts for it.’
‘Then who? Not Eddie, your brother Eddie?’
‘No. Not him.’
‘There’s nobody left. You’re not going to tell me it was the bogey man, are you? That I won’t believe.’
‘There is somebody left. Think about it.’
Fyfe thought. He counted off the names. Process of elimination brought him to Douglas Lambert, Laura’s father. He straightened up and shook his head, looking down on Norma. There was no indication that she was able to see him through her half-open eyes. Only when he leaned close once more and the rasping voice sounded inside his head was communication made.
‘Laura always blamed him for the death of her little brother,’ Norma whispered loudly. ‘He was driving the car when it crashed. She humiliated him at every opportunity, reminded him as often as she could. It was an obsession with her. Her affair with me was only to annoy him. She didn’t love me. She didn’t love anyone.’
‘Why did he allow her to stay in his house?’
‘He was her father.’
‘And he blamed himself anyway?’
‘Something like that. I think he regarded Laura as some kind of divine retribution. Bit of a martyr, he was.’
‘Why did he kill her?’
‘She finally went too far. Told him she was pregnant and that Ron Gilchrist was the father. It was all lies but he wasn’t to know. He had his suspicions and Ron was a prime suspect because he didn’t exactly hide his infatuation. I backed Laura up. God knows, she had gone too far with me as well. I had my own plans for revenge but Doug got in first. I think I cheered when he flipped and hit her on the side of the head. I was bouncing on the bed while he strangled her. It was hugely exciting I remember.’
Fyfe could feel the tiny movements of Norma’s lips, like something nibbling at his ear. Her voice was losing what little strength it had. She was slipping away fast.
‘I tried to get Simon to help me but he froze. That had always been my plan, you see, me and Simon. He thought it was a blackmail plot. I let him think that. But it was too early for him. He wasn’t ready. He didn’t have the courage to go through with it. I went back to Doug. He had come to his senses, sort of. We worked out a rational plan. I would entice Ron to the cottage and we would kill him there. I knew about Doug and Pat Gilchrist, you see. With Ron out of the way that would leave him free to marry her, to be respectable again. That’s all he wanted.’
‘You must have known that scenario would never stand up.’
‘I knew. Doug wanted to believe it was a way out for him. I convinced him he should believe it. It never was, of course.’
The nurse was pulling at Fyfe’s arm. The heart monitor was pulsing fast. He resisted, staying close to Norma. Her index finger fell away from his forearm. Her voice became even more distant.
‘It had to be done. The prophecy. It had to be done.’
‘And that’s why you left the note?’ Fyfe said.
‘To give you a little help.’
‘We needed it. Otherwise you might have got away with it.’
‘I’ll tell you something else, Chief Inspector. You will fulfil the rest of the prophecy.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘You will do it, Chief Inspector. You’ll do it. Believe me.’
‘I believe you,’ Fyfe lied.
‘Good.’ Her voice dwindled to the tiniest of sounds. ‘See you on the other side.’
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Saturday, 01.56
Moya and Matthewson arrived at the Casualty Department as the human debris from a pub brawl was being swept up and put back together again. The waiting area was in uproar with friends and enemies staking out territory and forming protective circles round their injured. Insults were shouted across a narrow no-go space patrolled by the two uneasy security men. The threat of violence filled the atmosphere like electrical static. Police reinforcements had been called to stop things getting totally out of hand.
It had not been such a clever idea driving an unconscious Simon Wright to the hospital in their car. The doctor had rung up and then left them to it. Moya had sat in the back holding him up like some overgrown sleepy child. Now they
couldn’t get near the door because of a cluster of ambulances with blue lights flashing silently and causing a headache to build up in Moya’s head. Matthewson went to find somebody who would listen to him, leaving Moya to look after Wright in the car. While she waited two police patrol cars, sirens braying, came hurtling down the slope from the main road and just managed to stop before colliding with the ambulances. The sirens were switched off but not the car-top warning panels, their patterns merging with intensified the silently screaming cacophony of flashing lights that were bouncing off every reflective surface and seemed to be visible even when Moya screwed her eyes tightly shut and clenched her teeth in impotent impatience.
It was more than fifteen minutes before Matthewson reappeared with a nurse and a porter pushing a wheelchair. Wright was quickly extracted from the car and taken inside to join the queue of bleeding, argumentative drunks.
Moya saw Eddie Illingworth through the crowd of people milling about in the waiting area. He was on his own, flat on his back and spread across three chairs. His mouth was wide open and he was snoring loudly. Moya walked determinedly through the crowd towards him. She restrained herself from kicking him but shook him roughly. The rhythm of his snoring was momentarily disturbed but she didn’t succeed in waking him up. Instead he rolled off the chairs onto a carpet scarred by hundreds of cigarette burns and lay there face-down, snoring just as loudly and just as unaware of his surroundings. Moya felt herself pulled back by an arm and turned to be confronted by a small policewoman.
‘No need for that,’ the policewoman said. ‘He’s nothing to do with this. Leave him alone.’
‘I know who he is, constable,’ she shouted. ‘I know exactly who he is.’
‘And who are you?’
Moya paused to think more rationally for a second. Matthewson had completed the paperwork necessary to admit Wright and was making his way through the scattered bodies towards her. She searched in her bag for her identity card and showed it to the policewoman with an apologetic smile.
‘You’ll not get much out of Eddie for the time being, Inspector McBain,’ she said. ‘He’s drunk as a skunk.’
‘What about Norma? What kind of state is she in?’
‘Much the same, according to the doctors. DCI Fyfe managed a few words with her before she went under. Only a few.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He left before this rammy started.’
‘Wise decision,’ Matthewson said.
The hostile crowd was jostling and shoving. A fight broke out in one corner and a policeman’s hat was knocked off. More uniforms arrived at the run. Truncheons were drawn. One man was wrestled to the floor and his nose slammed into it to quieten him as his hands were handcuffed behind his back. Beside him, Illingworth snored unconcernedly.
‘Where did DCI Fyfe go?’
‘He said he would meet you at the undertakers.’
‘The undertakers? Lambert’s place? Why? When?’
‘He said to tell you when you arrived that he would be at the undertakers. That’s all.’
‘We’d better go then,’ Moya said. ‘There’s nothing for us here. Watch Illingworth. Don’t let him out of your sight.’
The policewoman looked down at Illingworth’s prone body. ‘That won’t be too difficult,’ she said.
Chapter Sixty
Saturday, 02.48
Fyfe sat in his car opposite the blank windows of Lambert’s the undertakers. The smeared colours of the constantly changing posters on the electronic hoarding above were reflected in the windscreen and the glossy wetness of the empty street. Jill sat in the passenger seat alongside him, staring straight ahead. Number Five lay on the rear seat, sound asleep. In the glove compartment was a sealed polystyrene tray containing a large slice of steak he had bought in an all-night shop on his way over.
He had seen a movement as he arrived, a twitch of the curtains at the first-floor window of Lambert’s living-room. It had been no more than that, a flicker, hardly anything at all, but it was enough to convince Fyfe that Lambert was expecting him. Fyfe went over to what was probably Lambert’s car, parked in the street. He examined the tyres one by one and found a shallow but distinctive s-shaped cut across the rear offside. He went back to his own car and waited. There was no hurry, he told himself. He reached over absent-mindedly and stroked the back of Jill’s neck. No hurry at all.
Fyfe tried to think himself into Lambert’s mind, tried to understand the feelings of guilt and shame that must have wracked him with the death of his young son. And how it must have been intensified a thousandfold every time his unforgiving daughter took delight in reminding him. A daughter who spurned his ambition for respectability, who wallowed in decadence and amorality and brought a lesbian lover to live under his own roof. And then, just for fun, she told him she was pregnant by an old family friend and laughed in his face.
Fyfe could imagine how the shame and the repressed anger must have been converted into a murderous blind fury that made him hit out, then seize her by the throat and squeeze until he had snuffed out her own life and the threatening seed of new life inside her. And then, insulated by a protective skin of unreality, how he had made one last desperate attempt to achieve the respectability he craved. He would exonerate himself by putting the blame on his friend Ron Gilchrist, who had made Laura pregnant anyway. And by doing so he would clear the way to marry the eminently respectable Pat, whose only excuse for refusing him was that she didn’t want to hurt her husband.
It was all so simple and perfect. With Norma’s encouragement, he put his plan into action. How was he to know that Norma had a warped death-wish and always intended that they should be found out? All she wanted to do was to act out the details of her own strange fantasy of Laura’s death and then die herself as soon as she knew it was fully appreciated.
A sprinkling of raindrops landed on the windscreen, splitting the changing colours into a hundred separate pieces of chameleon light. Jill curled up in the seat and lay down, her tail under her chin. What would he do if it was him, Fyfe wondered? What would he do if things had unfolded differently and he had woken that morning in the flat to find Moya’s cold dead body next to his?
He looked up at the window. Nothing moved but there was a light on behind the curtains. Lambert was in there alone. The skin of unreality would be flaking off. The inescapable realization of what he had done would be eating into him. He had no excuse and no justification. He was backed into a corner with nowhere to run. Retribution was parked outside. What would he do if he found himself in such a position, Fyfe wondered? He would want to be alone for a while. Fyfe could surely grant him that final request. There was no hurry. No hurry at all.
What would he have done, he kept thinking, if he had woken beside a dead Moya? Suppose her fancy man Dalglish had sneaked into the flat in the middle of the night and strangled her as Fyfe lay snoring. What would he have done? He would have panicked, tried to cover it up, packed her in the boot of the car and tried to find somewhere to hide the body. DI McBain? I dropped her off at the flat in the evening. Last I saw of her. And once begun, the lies would have continued until her body was discovered and the truth sprang up like a jack-in-the-box.
Weariness affected Fyfe. It had been a very long day. He rubbed his eyes carefully because of the tender bruising, then ran the palms of his hands more firmly over the rough stubble on his jaw. In front of him there were extra coloured lights among the raindrops on the windscreen. Beyond them the road and pavement seemed to slowly transform from flat to undulating. The shop fronts bulged outwards and the buildings leaned over until there was only a very narrow strip of sky above him.
Fyfe blinked and shook his head hard. The scene returned to normal, except that Moya’s face was at the window beside him. She was tapping on the glass, mouthing something he could not hear. He pressed the switch and the window slid open. A moment’s direct eye contact was enough to re-establish the professional boundaries. This was a murder inquiry. She was in charge. The
evening’s romantic diversion had not happened.
‘Long time no see,’ Fyfe said.
‘Long enough for you to damage your other eye, I see. Why are we here?’
‘Norma’s the Bobby of recent legend. She’s pointed the accusing finger.’
Moya turned and looked up at the first-floor window. ‘What a bastard. His own daughter.’
‘He had his reasons I suppose.’
‘Is he in there?’
‘I believe so. I was just waiting for reinforcements.’
Fyfe closed the window and got out of the car before Jill and Number Five had a chance to wake up properly. The dogs sat up and watched him and Moya and Matthewson cross the road and go to the side entrance that led up to the flat. Fyfe explained events as he understood them as they stood outside the door. It was locked and there was no answer to the bell.
‘Are you sure he’s there?’ Moya demanded.
Fyfe nodded. ‘I saw him at the window.’
They debated whether they should go through the rigmarole of contacting the duty manager before Matthewson put his shoulder to the door. Three hefty thumps and a straight-leg kick were enough to break the lock. Fyfe was first in, leading the way upstairs and into the living-room, Moya right behind him.
Lambert was lying on the floor. His legs were pulled up tight against his chest and there was an expression of such exquisite pain on his face that Fyfe’s first thought was that he was lying there helpless with silent laughter. But he wasn’t moving at all and the expression was fixed too, unchanging as though it was modelled out of wax. Moya shoved past him and knelt down beside Lambert, searching for a pulse in the neck.
‘He’s still alive,’ she shouted. ‘Call an ambulance.’
Matthewson went for the phone. Fyfe stood where he was, looking down on Moya. He was fascinated to see for the first time a tiny strawberry birthmark on the back of her left hand. He was thinking they should have waited outside just a little bit longer. If it had been him, that was how he would have wanted it to end.