by William Paul
There was a ripple of restrained laughter at Sir Duncan’s little joke. Fyfe laughed louder than most. Runciman had been with the Chief Constable in the canteen the day before, so blended into the background that Fyfe couldn’t put a face to the name. He would have eventually got round to questioning him, he supposed, but had never contemplated the possibility of Runciman’s involvement in old Zena’s murder. Perhaps he just hadn’t had time. Now a photograph of Runciman was being passed round. It was a happy snap of some kind of office night out. Runciman and Randolph, red-eyed in the blast of flash, were wearing conical party hats and holding colourful drinks with straws and cocktail umbrellas sticking up out of them. Runciman was a stooping hatchet-faced man with sinister bundles of laugh-lines at the corner of his eyes. He looked faintly ridiculous and completely harmless, the kind of respectable establishment type you would expect to find at a Chief Constable’s dinner party. How wrong can you get?
Fyfe handed on the photograph. He should have been checking on all Randolph’s close friends and business contacts. But he hadn’t bothered. Instead, he had gone to lunch with Angela while singling out Ramensky for the full treatment and uncovering enough circumstantial evidence to have him hung from the nearest lamppost. Only Fyfe had just about intended to take it upon himself to conceal Ramensky’s guilt on the grounds that the balance of his mind had been disturbed by the fact that his daughter had a terminal illness. His role as protector, however, had proved illusory. He had actually been a false accuser, acting with the righteous zeal of a Witchfinder General even if it was with the best of intentions. There was a real paradox. Fyfe couldn’t help laughing out loud.
‘They worked as a team,’ Sir Duncan explained, squirting the words out from behind a hugely self-satisfied grin. ‘The overalls and balaclavas were part of the ritual. According to Runciman, he was trying to wind the whole thing up and Randolph had agreed to stop once they had worked their way through the church congregation where they were both members. Then they picked Zena McElhose as a victim, stole her keys at a coffee morning in the church hall, and broke in on Saturday night. She had told them she was going away for the weekend but she must have changed her mind because she disturbed them in the kitchen. Runciman panicked, grabbed the first weapon that came to hand, the meat tenderiser, and lashed out. The shock and stress of the situation caused Randolph to go into cardiac arrest. He collapsed and Runciman didn’t have the strength to get him out of the house, so he left him there to take all the blame. Runciman thought Randolph was dead and it was only once the bodies were found that he realised he was still alive and almost certain to implicate him when he regained consciousness, so he came to me, as he had come to dinner in my house, to confess this morning. When he did so he was not aware that Randolph had died in hospital and he was, effectively, in the clear, ironic or what?’
Fyfe nodded in mute agreement. Irony was the pervasive background colour to this episode. It meant that Sandy Ramensky’s homicidal fantasies were always just that despite Fyfe’s assumption that there was no smoke without fire. It meant that Maureen Gilliland, the suicide driver in the blood red Mercedes, had invented her love affair with Randolph on the spur of the moment to create a fantasy life for herself that others might envy as she died in a blaze of passionate glory. Sapalski’s death was an unfortunate consequence of a head-on collision between fantasy and reality. Fyfe had been a victim of that kind of collision as well, but all that had happened to him was a rather pleasant lunch in a posh hotel and some lipstick on his cheek as a going-away present.
Sir Duncan rambled on. He stuffed his pipe with tobacco but didn’t light it because the incident room was designated ‘No Smoking’. He answered questions from the floor, enjoyed being in the spotlight and being seen to be leading from the front by bringing in his own prisoners. The confession was signed. Charges had been laid and the report would be with the fiscal within the next few hours. He tidied away all the irritating loose ends and tied a lovely bow round the whole investigation. Eventually, with responsibility for the paperwork delegated, the session broke up and the gaggle of detectives settled back to the more mundane tasks allocated to them by a disintegrating society. Sir Duncan came over to Fyfe.
‘I hear that McElhose’s handyman chap Ramensky is in custody.’
‘That’s right,’ Fyfe answered.
‘He has a sickly child, I believe.’
‘Poor bastard went on a drinking binge. He was terrified we were going to pin Zena’s murder on him. I tried to persuade him otherwise but he wouldn’t listen. He’s banged up for conduct liable.’
Sir Duncan sighed. ‘Irrational, but I suppose with his family circumstances entirely understandable. A degree of mercy is in order. Can you see to it he’s all right?’
Fyfe had to swallow hard to be able to speak. ‘I can manage that.’
‘Reassure him. Take him home.’
‘No problem, sir.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I’ll see to it straight away.’
Chapter Forty-Four
Monday, 17.11
Ramensky was enveloped in a hug from Marianne as soon as he entered the living-room. She had Lorna balanced by her left arm on one hip and she threw her other arm round his neck, standing on her toes and pressing her face into the side of his neck. Neither said anything. Lorna surveyed the scene solemnly through her large eyes like a third, partially formed head that had grown on the edge of the strange biological beast that was made up by the entwined bodies of her two parents. She was part of them, yet somehow detached. Her deathly pale skin was translucent, her thin hair so fine compared to their rude health. She had her own independent existence, albeit one that was withering away fast in front of Fyfe’s eyes. It was a pity Ramensky’s crazy theory of stealing life from other people to save the little girl didn’t seem to work. Old Zena was dead and it looked as if young Lorna would shortly follow her, so it was just as well that he hadn’t turned murderer. At least, Ramensky would not be behind bars when the time came. He could watch her die and suffer the grief and loss at first hand. Fyfe would have guaranteed him that fate even if Ramensky had killed Zena. Fyfe wouldn’t have cared if nobody thanked him.
He had collected his dented Volvo from the mechanics and driven away while the celebration party was still under way at headquarters. Big Chief Constable, ignoring the no-smoking rule, was leading his detective braves in a triumphal dance round the force’s totem pole. Good luck to him, Fyfe thought grudgingly. He deserved the credit. Fyfe was just pleased that his magnanimous attempt to protect Ramensky from the law had included a selfish aversion to sharing his carefully constructed alternative solution to the murder mystery with anyone else.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Fyfe?’ Marianne asked.
‘No. No thank you. I really must be going.’
Ramensky and Marianne had drawn apart. He knew they didn’t want him there. They wanted to be alone with their child. That was what he wanted for them too. But politeness dictated that he had to be offered hospitality, and the rituals, like short courses of drug treatments, had to be observed. This time, though, he wasn’t going to make the mistake of asking how Lorna was. He tried to make stupid mistakes like that only once. Life was a long, drawn-out learning process. He held out a hand to the girl and she clutched his index finger. There seemed to be hardly any strength in her grip. When he pulled his finger away there was no resistance.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely certain. I’m still on duty.’
‘Something a little stronger?’
‘No. Honestly.’
‘Thank you anyway for bringing him home to me.’
‘Don’t mention it. Don’t be too hard on him.’
‘I’ll try not to be.’
‘Just keep him out of trouble.’
‘I will.’
She smiled benignly, a powerful matriarchal figure accepting the aberrant male back into her home. Fyfe didn’t know if she was aware of Ramensky’s abortive attempt to hire a contract
killer on behalf of little Lorna. He had a feeling that maybe she was the real decision-maker in the household who had told him not to be so stupid when he outlined the extent of his dabbling in the dubious pseudo-science of metempsychosis. She must have been worried that he had ignored her when she found Zena’s body in the kitchen at the end of the driveway, more so when he vanished on a drinking binge. But it had all come good. Fyfe had given a rudimentary explanation of Runciman’s unexpected confession over the phone. Now Marianne and Ramensky could return to what passed for normal for them. They could turn their backs on the world, hold hands and wait for Lorna to die.
Ramensky took his child and sat in the armchair with her held close in against his chest. Fyfe had pulled rank to retrieve him from the holding cells in plenty of time to prevent the fiscal becoming involved. Ramensky was as withdrawn and uncooperative as he had been during Fyfe’s previous visit until he began to appreciate that he had been exonerated by events elsewhere. At first, he seemed to think Fyfe was springing him despite an overwhelming prosecution case. It was only then Fyfe realised that Ramensky himself was not totally convinced of his own innocence. He laced his shoes and snatched up his poured-out belongings for the second time that day with a haste that underlined his eagerness to take advantage of the situation before somebody somewhere changed his mind again.
‘You mean I didn’t do it?’ he asked earnestly in the car.
‘So you kept telling me, didn’t you?’ Fyfe replied.
‘But you said you knew I had done it.’
‘Not quite. Not quite.’
Fyfe skirted round the awkward fact that he had until approximately one hour before firmly believed that Ramensky was guilty. Fortunately, he had tried to convey his message to Ramensky in coded language so that they could keep it secret between themselves. He had even, thinking he was being incredibly clever, indulged in a pantomime display of washing his hands to suggest absolution. If it hadn’t gone over Ramensky’s head it had obviously gone shooting off at a tangent. That, and Ramensky being pretty pissed at the time, allowed Fyfe to reasonably pretend a misunderstanding had occurred and Fyfe didn’t have to admit publicly to being a complete fool.
‘What I meant was I knew how far you had gone, but I also knew you hadn’t gone the final step to cold-blooded murder. Nobody else needs to know. Especially now.’
‘Oh.’
‘So, you see, Sandy, everything’s worked out for the best in the end.’
‘Yes. It has, hasn’t it?’
And there Ramensky was, safely delivered as Fyfe had promised to the armchair by the fireside with his child on his lap and his devoted wife kneeling in front of him. It was a still-life cameo of perfect domestic bliss, spoiled only by Lorna’s big eyes, their luminosity flickering uncertainly like wind-disturbed candle flames, staring after Fyfe as he closed the door. A suffocating sense of sadness draped itself round him. He leaned against the wall until the terrible tightness had passed and he was able to breathe easily.
Outside on the doorstep, Fyfe looked up at the darkening sky and felt the wetness of the tiny drops burst over the skin of his face. He opened his mouth to drink the miniature capsules of stinging rain. He thought of Zena McElhose, and Maureen Gilliland, and John Sapalski, and little Lorna’s approaching death, and his own. Where do human souls go when the bodies die, he wondered?
Chapter Forty-Five
Monday, 17.56
Fyfe parked his car on the opposite side of the street to Hilary’s flat and settled down to watch. The lights were on and the curtains open. He could see the top of the table lamp and the mirror above the sofa where they had lain together. Once he thought he caught a glimpse of somebody moving on the edge of the framed scene, momentarily breaking its symmetry like ripples radiating out from a small stone thrown into calm water that quickly settles again. He remembered seeing his own reflection in the mirror, arm round Hilary, the rest of the room distorted by the bevelled edge as though they had been dropped into an exact centre, creating the disturbance. It had been scary.
From the car Fyfe stared upwards, not really concentrating. There were thousands of other rooms in the city, millions all over the country, where strange things were going on, inexplicable to anyone not involved or associated with them and sometimes impossible to understand even then. Feelings of depression made the pale darkness outside grow blacker. Fyfe scratched his head and cupped the back of his neck in a supporting hand. Lives were played out in a wilderness of broken mirrors, a fractured world of coincidence and cross purpose that produced the interlinking chains of circumstance that eventually resulted in death and tragedy, or less intimidating outcomes such as him sitting outside the home of a prospective lover. But that wasn’t the end of it surely? The chain might, almost certainly would, run on. What next? Which way would new reflections bounce? What would the final picture show?
The heater was running, pouring warm air round him. He stretched one leg out over the passenger seat to make himself comfortable. He willed Hilary to phone him and waited patiently as the car’s air-conditioning system fought a losing battle against his breathing and all around him the glass steamed up. Warmth and weariness made his eyes heavy and his brain slow. The sharp edges of Hilary’s clearly defined first-floor location blurred. When the phone rang he jerked in surprise and hit his knee on the dashboard in his haste to answer it.
‘Bill Matthewson here.’
‘Good to hear from you, Bill.’ Fyfe excised the disappointment from his voice. ‘Missing me already, are you?’
‘John’s wife Wilma went into premature labour. She was rushed to hospital.’
Fyfe had to think before he knew who John and Wilma were. It produced the contrast of Sapalski’s crushed and flattened body laid out on the lawn and his wife Wilma’s hugely pregnant form upright in the chair. It should not have been funny and Fyfe was ashamed of himself when he was unable to suppress a sardonic smile.
‘I thought you would appreciate knowing,’ Matthewson was saying. ‘She’s had the baby. By all accounts it’s fine. Small but perfectly formed. We’ve had a whip round for a bunch of flowers and a card. I put in a couple of quid for you.’
‘Thanks. I’ll pay you back.’
‘It’s just good to be able to pass on some good news for a change.’
‘I know what you mean.’
Matthewson hung up. Through wet opaqueness on the glass, Fyfe noticed movement at Hilary’s window. He scrambled to drag his leg back and be able to reach over to wipe a hole in the condensation. By then the curtains were closed, shutting him off. He punched Hilary’s number into the handset and watched the window as the ringing echoed in his ear.
‘Hi,’ he said when he heard her voice. ‘This is a voice from your recent past.’
‘So it is. How are you?’
Fyfe had an image of Hilary’s lips shaping the words. ‘I’m fine. Can you talk?’
‘Yes, of course. Are you on or off duty?’
‘Off. Case closed. The fabric of society has been stitched back together.’
‘That’s good to know. Where are you?’
‘Not far away. I was wondering if I might make you an offer?’
‘Do you think that is wise?’
‘Probably not. You could be a dangerous woman to know.’
‘How dangerous?’
‘Very dangerous.’
‘But you’re still going to ask me?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Go on then.’ Hilary laughed and the sound seemed to provoke a sudden flurry of snow that obscured her window and enveloped the entire street in a white-out. ‘Don’t be afraid. I can only say no.’
Chapter Forty-Six
Monday, 18.30
What was he doing here? Fyfe wasn’t exactly sure. It had been a spur of the moment decision to come to the hospital, buy a bunch of red carnations at the shop, and go looking for Wilma Sapalski in the maternity wing that smelled of disinfectant and cleanliness. He had time to spare, provided he didn�
�t take too long. It was only about an hour’s drive north over the Forth Bridge and on to Gleneagles so that he could organise the hotel room in advance of his promised visitor. He had plenty of time.
Wilma was at the end of a labyrinth of long green corridors that dwindled to a converging point in the distance like railway lines. She was sound asleep and Fyfe was grateful because now that he was there he had no idea what he would have said to her. The ward sister was a plump middle-aged woman with a kindly face and a smoker’s deep-throated voice. She asked him if he was the husband and nodded sagely when he said he was just a friend. She showed him to the bed with a finger pressed to her lips. She took the flowers, said she would put them in water and cradled them, probably from force of habit, as if they were a new-born baby.
‘Would you like to see the baby?’ she asked. ‘He’s in the special care nursery. He’s a bit early, you see. Under three pounds. He didn’t wait for a formal invitation. Oh well, boys will be boys.’
Fyfe followed her towards the lights at the end of another long corridor. There, a room was full of incubators with tiny scraps of babies in them, arms and legs punching the air as though they were wrestling with invisible enemies in the desperate fight to stay alive. Nurses moved among the plastic boxes responding to a series of cries and whimpers. Wilma’s baby was barely the size of Fyfe’s hand, its limbs thinner than his fingers, its skin all wrinkled and red. It had wires taped to it and a tube up its nose. Its legs were curled up to its stomach where the cut cord still protruded and was held by some kind of clamp. Its head, covered in an old-fashioned woollen bonnet, seemed disproportionately large. Its eyes were puffy and tightly closed, its eyelids pink and almost transparent. The expression on its face changed with every flex and twitch of its arms as though it was mentally concentrating on silent music that dictated a private dance.