by William Paul
On the eighteenth fairway, Fyfe tapped the shafts of a few clubs and picked out his favourite seven iron. The day had grown sunnier and more pleasant. He had dispensed with his jacket at the sixth when he had lost his first ball, his jersey at the twelfth when another one went into trees never to be seen again.
He watched Bradley take a big swing and chew out a sheaf of grass. But the ball shot out of the rough, a daisy cutter never getting more than a foot above the ground. It bounced and rolled, missed the edge of a bunker by inches and trickled into the centre of the green.
‘Ya beauty,’ Bradley shouted after it.
‘Shit,’ Fyfe murmured, raising a hand to acknowledge a good shot even if it was down more to luck than judgement.
The pressure was on Fyfe. He had to get on the green to have a chance of winning now. He lined up, taking his time, rocking from foot to foot while he settled, flexing his wrists. Don’t fuck up, he thought. Don’t fuck up now.
He noticed Hilary’s name and number written on the inside of his forearm. The sweat was making it fade rapidly. He had all but forgotten about her in the heat of head-to-head competition, but not quite. He had to win if he was going to phone her and get to see her in that little black dress again.
He swung the club. It moved smoothly, scooping the ball high into the air and dropping it perfectly on the green. It bounced three times and seemed to roll right up against the flagstick.
‘Ya beauty,’ Fyfe shouted after it, smiling over at Bradley as he raised a hand in acknowledgement.
They walked up to the green side by side. The foreshortening effect had fooled them. Fyfe’s ball was at least twenty feet from the hole, and Bradley’s only slightly closer. Fyfe sized up his putt, stalking round it and crouching down without really knowing what he was looking for. He decided to aim a few feet to the left, took a few practice swings and then set it on its way. It was right on line but not hard enough. It stopped eight inches from the hole. Fyfe picked it up and marked it, anticipating sinking it to confirm victory.
‘This for the hole and to half the match,’ Bradley said.
He putted. The ball rolled up the edge, hesitated, deliberated, sat back, changed its mind and dropped in. Fyfe sighed and shook hands magnanimously. He hadn’t lost, so he reckoned that meant he could still phone Hilary if he wanted to. It was to be his decision.
They collected their bags from the fringe of the green and walked back to the club house discussing the what-might-have-beens and working out what was owed in cash and drink. Fyfe, it turned out, was in deficit in both. He thought back to a few flying divots, a bad shank at the Sleekit Howe tenth when his seven iron had let him down, and a couple of missed putts. If any one hadn’t happened he would have won comfortably. But they had happened and he had neither won nor lost. A maroon-blazered steward met them at the door of the changing rooms and said that Sir Duncan wanted to see him as soon as possible. Fyfe changed his shirt and his socks and went up to the players’ bar.
‘How did you get on?’ Sir Duncan asked.
‘An honourable half,’ Fyfe replied. ‘And you?’
‘I took the cocky bastard two and one. Were you planning to play again this afternoon?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t.’
Fyfe knew it wasn’t so much a polite request as a subtle order. He couldn’t refuse the chief. Well, he could, but he wouldn’t. Not yet anyway, even though he had his own independent wealth stored away to compensate for any sudden loss of earnings. Sir Duncan, after rescuing Fyfe’s career when he could have cut him off at the knees, liked to refer to him as his personal troubleshooter. More like his personal lackey, Fyfe thought regretfully.
‘What’s the problem?’
‘I need you to go back to Edinburgh. I’d get Les to do it but his handicap is lower than yours and he’s played really well this morning.’
From the bar Detective Superintendent Les Cooper smiled weakly across at Fyfe and lifted his glass of gin and tonic in a conciliatory wave.
‘What’s happened?’ Fyfe asked.
‘There’s been a murder. We’ve only got Sapalski available to put on it. He’s a bit inexperienced. I need you to mother hen him.’
‘What’s the story?’
‘It’s a nasty one, likely to attract a lot of media attention. Wealthy widow by the name of McElhose, pillar of the community, I’m told, lots of work for charity and that kind of thing. She was found dead in her kitchen this morning with her head bashed in.’
‘Any suspects?’
‘Bloke in combat gear lying unconscious in the front porch.’
‘Alive?’
‘Not dead. Unconscious.’
‘And you’re worried Sapalski won’t ask him the obvious question?’
‘The simplest cases often turn out to be the real bastards. You know that as well as anyone.’ Sir Duncan packed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and shook his head. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this one. If this guy did it, who flattened him? I’d be happier if I knew you were on the case, Dave.’
Fyfe consulted his own sixth sense. An open and shut murder case that the greenest detective could solve without breaking sweat hardly seemed a good reason to abandon an annual afternoon on the luxurious fairways of Gleneagles. Sapalski, known as the pedantic Pole, was a good professional. He wasn’t likely to screw up badly in the space of a few hours. He would do the groundwork adequately. And yet there was a definite hint of a tremor there. Something not quite right.
‘Combat gear, you say?’
‘Overalls, balaclava and surgical gloves.’
‘She disturbed him at it and suffered the consequences?’
‘Maybe. I’d just feel happier if there was someone like you watching over the situation, Dave. I don’t want this one to run out of control.’
‘What was her name?’
‘McElhose.’ Sir Duncan consulted a scrap of paper torn from a notebook. ‘Zena McElhose.’
‘Zena?’
‘Yes. It’s not that uncommon a name.’
‘Fairly unusual.’
‘All right. It’s fairly uncommon.’
The name clinched it for Fyfe. His sixth sense trembled like a pointer dog in front of a hidden grouse. Last night while he was eyeing up Hilary at the party it had been Zeno’s paradox and here he was confronted out of the blue with the feminine version, Zena’s paradox. Gleneagles’ attractions paled. Somebody was trying to tell him something. He had to go.
Fyfe took his leave of the outing as the main body settled down to lunch in the restaurant. He consoled himself with the prospect that he would have probably had a much worse round in the afternoon, and hopefully that fate would now befall Super Cooper. As it was, the what-might-have-beens from it would never now be translated into more lost balls and missed putts because they would never happen.
He climbed into his car and drove out of the hotel grounds. A squeal of the tyres as he rounded the bend on to the main road emphasised his urgency. First he phoned Sapalski and got a rundown on the details as he negotiated the narrow twisting road north of Dunfermline. From what he was told it sounded pretty straightforward. Not much of a paradox at all. Of course, as Sir Duncan had already pointed out, that often turned out to be the worst kind of case. The mystery man was in hospital and the balaclava and the rest of his gear were in plastic evidence bags. That was as good a place to start as any. He rolled up his sleeve and reminded himself of Hilary’s number. He punched it into the handset. It rang for a long time before it was answered. He was just going up the slope of the slip road on to the motorway.
‘Hi there,’ he said. ‘Met any strange men at parties recently?’
‘I can’t talk now. I’ll phone you back.’
It was short and didn’t sound very sweet. Then she hung up. Fyfe didn’t know if he should be aggrieved at her abrupt manner. He must have caught her at a bad moment. How was she going to phone him back? She didn’t know his number, did she? The phone started
to ring within minutes. Another paradox for him to work out, he thought. Hilary did know the number.
He left it for a few moments lest he appear too eager then unhooked the phone and put it to his ear. His tentative plan was to briefly babysit Sapalski, unmask Zena McElhose’s murderer, accept the plaudits of a grateful public and still have time to take Hilary out on the town.
‘Hello there, stranger,’ a woman said. ‘Remember me?’
A cavalry charge of memories galloped through Fyfe’s mind at the sound of the familiar husky voice. Dead bodies, fresh blood, the crunch of glass underfoot, sackfuls of banknotes, warm flesh, wet lips, hot breath, scratching fingernails, fond farewells. Everything else was overwhelmed by the sudden drama of his past catching up with him.
He steered his car into a lay-by where lorries waited if the wind was too strong to cross the bridge. He didn’t move from behind the wheel and he didn’t say anything into the phone. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to say anything that would antagonise her. He especially didn’t want to do that. Nor did he want his silence to antagonise her either. Angela could be a dangerous lady to know, a very dangerous lady.
‘Well, I asked a simple question,’ Angela said. ‘Do you remember me?’
Fyfe took a deep, slow breath.
‘How could I forget?’ he replied.
Chapter Eleven
Sunday, 12.45
The slice of fruit cake was half-way to her mouth when Maureen Gilliland heard the news item on the radio. The significance didn’t register until her teeth were closing on the cake. A woman found dead. Not yet named. Police treating the death as suspicious. Large detached house. Wardie Avenue. Somebody else taken from the house by ambulance. Not named. Condition unknown. Door-to-door inquiries. Frightened neighbours. Confusion. Consternation. Appeal for witnesses.
Zena McElhose lived in Wardie Avenue. There were only three or four big houses in Wardie Avenue, each in its own grounds overlooking the sea. Gilliland coughed, spraying cake crumbs into her lap. Neither Zena nor Val Randolph had been at church. He could be the other person taken away in the ambulance. Suppose they had been together, spent the night together, and there had been some kind of tremendous row. Supposing he had killed her in a fit of madness, and then tried to kill himself in a fit of remorse. Gilliland’s whole body began to shiver, as though the temperature in the room had suddenly plummeted. It should have been her, she thought unwillingly. It should have been her. She had to get up and hurry to the bathroom to empty her bladder.
Her mother barely looked up from behind her barrier of newspapers when she shouted that she was going out to visit a friend. She was so nervous she had to hold her wrist with her free hand to control its shaking to be able to insert the key in the ignition of the car. The traffic was sparse, the city quiet. There were few people about as she drove to the north side, gripping the steering wheel far too tightly, braking far too heavily then accelerating awkwardly. The only station she could find on the radio that wasn’t just music was a phone-in programme run by a presenter with an annoyingly superior tone in his voice and a stupid made-up name, Tam Spurious. But she was glad of something to occupy her mind. A fast-moving succession of people offering their opinions was ridiculed and insulted by him. An occasional catchy jingle said the show was live and not subject to any time delay. That was its gimmick. Callers were put straight on the air. Anything could happen.
‘I just think it’s terrible, so I do, the way this government’s ruining this country,’ said one earnest caller.
‘Well, that will have them quaking in their brown suede shoes and Italian suits inside the Mother of Parliaments tonight,’ answered Spurious facetiously. ‘People like you always complain but you never do anything about it. Stop whining and start acting. Next caller, please.’
‘I want to talk about the state of the health service.’
‘No chance, but if they ever introduce euthanasia I’m sure they’ll call on you to bore the bastards to death. Next caller.’
‘I think you’re very rude, Mr Spurious.’
‘Don’t let me disappoint you then. Piss off. Next caller, please.’
‘Fucking brainless –’
The torrent of expletives was cut off after only two words by a blast of loud rock music.
‘My, my,’ said Spurious. ‘Engineer Rodney’s on the ball to protect my delicate ears today. Keep the calls coming, folks, but keep them clean. I’m here this afternoon and evening. We never close. Anything you want to tell me. Anything you want to get off your chest. Let’s share it with everybody out there. Remember we’re not alone. And now a message from our sponsors so you poor suckers can waste your cash.’
The advertisements began as Gilliland turned the car into Wardie Avenue. She reached down without looking and put off the radio. The big houses were all behind high walls overhung by huge trees. Clumps of wet leaves clogged the pavements. There was nothing to be seen as she approached the entrance to Zena McElhose’s house. A strange sensation of disappointment settled over her. It was a childish thing, like when she was young and opening a present to find something she didn’t really want inside, and having to pretend that it didn’t matter.
Then she saw the policeman. The black coat, silver markings on the epaulettes, white shirt collar, the cap with black and white squared strip. He was standing by the gate, half hidden, looking down intently at his feet as he tried to scrape a leaf from the surface of the ground with the toe of his shoe. And behind him in the driveway was one orange and white police car, with another less colourful car beyond it. And there was a caravan with the police coat of arms on it and a shutter propped open at the window as though it should be selling tea and hot dogs. Another man in plain clothes was walking to the door of the lodge where the curtains were closed.
Gilliland drove past, suddenly excited, sitting erect. The policeman at the gate lifted his head and glanced at her but without any particular interest. He began to punch one black-gloved fist into the palm of the other hand.
It was Zena then, Gilliland was thinking. Did that mean it was Val too? The buzz of vicarious excitement, fear and envy all entwined made her vision blur slightly. She gripped the steering wheel even tighter and turned the corner at the end of the avenue. A row of terraced houses stood back on one side while on the other the land fell away abruptly, giving an uninterrupted view out over a spread of low rooftops to the broad estuary. The tide was in. The water was high. Gilliland’s bladder was full again. She needed to go to the bathroom.
She almost collided with the little white car, parked in isolation on the opposite side of the street to every other vehicle. She slammed on the brakes at the last moment. The seat belt tightened across her chest, squeezing her ribs uncomfortably. Her head snapped forward. Her car slid on the greasy roadway but stopped with room to spare. She breathed deeply and composed herself. She took off her glasses and rubbed them clean. When she replaced them the white car sprang into sudden focus. She read the number plate and recoiled from the familiarity. It was Val’s car, the runabout he used when his big red Mercedes was being serviced or the weather was particularly bad. Here it was, parked beside Zena McElhose’s house where the police were investigating a murder. She had been right. All this time it had been the two of them. There was something she expected inside the invisible present after all. She had expected it but she didn’t want it. She started to cry.
Gilliland manoeuvred round Val’s little car, looking anxiously in the mirror to check that the police weren’t following her. It was only once she had driven several hundred yards away that she became aware of the warmth round her thighs gradually turning cold. She had wet herself.
Chapter Twelve
Sunday, 13.04
John Sapalski could not take his eyes off the little girl curled in her mother’s lap. She was staring out at him with huge brown eyes. Her skin was chalk white. She looked incredibly delicate, as if capable of shattering in pieces at the slightest touch, but there was life shining
inside her like the burning filament inside an opaque electric bulb. The plastic apparatus attached to the little girl’s discoloured forearm hung like a parasite sucking the blood and the energy and the life from her.
‘It took us a long time to come to terms with Lorna’s condition,’ Marianne Dunne was saying. ‘She’s had one bone marrow transplant and it didn’t take. She’s had every conceivable drug treatment. Nothing worked and she was in a lot of pain. Eventually, we decided enough was enough and brought her home. At least she’s not in much pain any more as long as we keep her topped up. And she looks better now that her hair has grown back. Now it’s just like it was when she was a baby.’
Marianne gently stroked her daughter’s fine hair. Sapalski didn’t say anything. She looked like a baby to him. He was frightened he would be too emotional to make any sense. He was thinking about the complex biological process forming his own baby inside his wife’s womb, wondering if something might have already gone wrong that they wouldn’t know for years.
‘Sandy took it harder than me. It was a male thing, I suppose, being unable to protect his daughter against the invisible enemy inside. He drank for a while, but then he got over that. He’s all right even though it still hurts. He’s accepted it now, thank God. He’s much calmer.’
Sapalski wondered how he could steer the conversation round to the subject of a very dead Zena McElhose. What did he say; that he didn’t care about the girl, that he wasn’t interested in whether she lived or died, that he only wanted to talk about death? His child might be a daughter. He had seen the blurred image on the screen of the ultrasound machine at the clinic. If it was a girl, she might be born and then die just as this little girl was going to. How would he handle those circumstances? How would he feel if his own child stared at him with big questioning eyes and innocently asked what was happening to her and why didn’t he do something to help her?