Blood Tears

by Michael J Malone

  Approval had been gained when Allesandra married Roberto. He was from a good Scots-Italian family and he was something in banking. Approval was then lost when after five years of marriage there was no offspring.

  A round of laughter barrels in the door. Allessandra is instantly reminded of her father. If he was here he would have been the cause of it. A man who had to stoop at every doorway, he was equally large in character. His quick wit always provided him with a humorous retort and his meaty hand was always ready to heat someone’s shoulder with comfort.

  Strange to think he had died more than half of her life ago, just before her sixteenth birthday. A hit and run, they were told. The driver and the car were never found.

  How Allessandra misses him. Even now she hears his profound bass in the warning bark of a dog, glimpses his face in a crowd and at odd moments smells the cheap Avon aftershave she and Sheila gave him each Christmas.

  ‘My favourite,’ he would boom and scoop both giggling girls up in the air on one arm.

  The police did everything they could to find the driver. Well, they would, for one of their own. Every man at the funeral swore to Allessandra’s mother that they would find the bastard who did this, even if it took until they retired.

  Her mother only nodded her head and offered a weak smile to every threat of retribution. She had known this would happen. She expected the knock at the door every night of her eighteen-year marriage and when it finally came it was almost a relief. Now, she could relax.

  Dad used to tease her mother into smiling; each curve of her lips his trophy in a hard-fought campaign. He used to say she worried too much because she loved too much. Allessandra worked it out at age thirteen: her mother just didn’t know how to be happy.

  He is the reason Allessandra is here and she will do everything she can to make him proud of her. It had been a secret source of worry as she grew up that she knew her future was in the police force, but she knew Mother would go book herself into the nearest sanatorium at the mere mention of it.

  Finally she found the courage. She wasted enough time behind the counter at Frasers, building up the strength to defy her mother. Now that she is in the job, she plans to prove her wrong and work her way up the career ladder. It doesn’t matter that she is a woman in what is still mostly a man’s world; she is going places. She simply won’t allow the glass ceiling or the innuendo to hold her back.

  Allessandra dares to dry her hands on the nearly white and blue towel hanging from the plastic box on the wall and considers her workmates. By and large they are a good crew. There are a couple she could learn a lot from, Daryl Drain and Jim Peters maybe. DI McBain, certainly, but she will have to keep a distance from him.

  The resemblance wasn’t immediately apparent. It was only after watching him talk for an hour at her first briefing session that the height, the girth and the voice wove their spell. It was like looking at her father.

  Chapter 3

  Theresa’s house is on the other side of Glasgow, in Newton Mearns. The house is in darkness when I get there. It’s only just gone eleven o’clock. Fuck it. I’ll take the risk. I give the taxi driver the amount that bleeds into the cabin from his meter. And a little extra for keeping his mouth shut, following my blunt request. Sometimes I can keep up with the most verbose taxi driver. Tonight I just want to sit in silence and savour the flavour of another successful case.

  Some sicko murdered a prostitute, but not before he had smashed her face so badly even her own mother wouldn’t have recognised her.

  The killer was a respectable pillar of the community. A city councillor, no less. We were ordered by the brass to get the job done. But do it quietly. The City Fathers didn’t want a scandal in the papers.

  The problem was the wife gave him an alibi. Presumably she didn’t want to lose out on the comfortable lifestyle. Apart from his position on the Council, he was a senior lecturer at Glasgow University, a sizeable income to be lost there then.

  But then a suspect from another case fingered him. A suspect I knew would come up with the goods. A suspect I leaned on until…

  Then we accidentally let the wife see a photograph of the murdered prostitute and she quietly and calmly rescinded her alibi. Said she must have been mistaken. She was at a friend’s that night, had too much to drink and slept in the spare room.

  For as long as I work in this job I don’t think I’ll ever get used to human nature and the way we respond to things. We had just proved to her that her husband was a vicious killer. She didn’t shout. She didn’t cry. She simply changed her mind; a knot of muscle working away in her jaw the only outward sign of emotion. As we led him away in the squad car she stared impassively from the large bay window of their Victorian townhouse. One arm tight round her waist like a belt, the other seesawing a cigarette back and forth to her mouth.

  I throw a stone at Theresa’s bedroom window. Moments later, her head pops out. Her voice a harsh whisper.

  ‘McBain! You trying to get me a divorce? I’ll be right down. Don’t make a sound.’

  I hear the sound of bare feet pad down the stairs. The door opens.

  ‘In.’

  ‘I have often walked down this street before,’ I sing, willing my voice to sound like Nat King Cole. I step in the doorway.

  ‘Ray, shut up.’

  ‘But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.’ I can barely sing for laughing. So much for Mr Cole.

  ‘Ray!’

  ‘All at once am I twenty storeys high, ’cos I’m here on the street where you live.’

  She closes the door behind me and stops me the way she knows will be most effective. Her lips are hard on my mouth, her tongue a slow slip against mine. She pulls away.

  ‘Needed that,’ she grins, looking beautiful in that tousled, just awake way.

  ‘Billy will be gone for some time, I take it?’

  ‘What day’s this… Wednesday?’ She lifts some hair back from her face and smiles. ‘He’ll be back Friday.’ Her smile promises and I feel my heartbeat quicken.

  I take her hand and move towards the stairs, ‘Excellent!’

  In the bedroom, I make to throw off my clothes.

  ‘Shoes only, for now,’ orders Theresa.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You know what we do first.’

  ‘Right,’ I spot the incense already burning on the bedside cabinet. Theresa converted me to the art of meditation, by the simple expedient of proving that sex was outstanding afterwards.

  Mr Pecker at attention, I sit cross-legged, leaning against the headboard. I’ve been practising this on my own, so my body recognizes the position and relaxes almost immediately. Well, apart from a certain part of my anatomy. It takes a little longer to curl back into its wiry nest.

  After what feels like moments, but will have been at least fifteen minutes, Theresa’s hand touches mine and I hear her voice sing my name.

  But just before this, a fragment of a recurring dream blooms in my mind. All I can see is a white feather. All I can hear is my panicked breath. Then it begins to snow feathers. My excitement dims. Then it’s rekindled by Theresa’s voice.

  ‘Okay, convent boy, let’s be having you.’ Theresa is one of the few people who know about my childhood. She loves to bring up my former status as she takes me to bed. From the grin on her face as she says it, she enjoys a slightly perverse thrill at the idea of sleeping with someone whose formative years were spent under the watchful eye of a group of nuns.

  Afterwards, I’m lying in post-coital bliss. If someone were to hold a gun to my head, I doubt if I could move.

  ‘Hey, mister,’ says Theresa, ‘don’t even think about falling asleep. You’re out of here before the neighbours start to stir.’

  ‘But, Theresa…’

  ‘Don’t “But Theresa” me, sunshine. I don’t want Billy to get even a whisper of what’s going on.’

  ‘So why let me in, in the first place?’

  ‘You know why.’ She pokes me in the belly for emp
hasis. ‘I can’t resist your masculine charms, you sexy big hunk of blubber.’

  ‘Gee, ta.’ The thought of Billy finding out fills me with dread too. Not because I’m afraid of the guy. I’m more afraid of this relationship having a clearer definition. An illicit affair suits me quite nicely, thank you. For now.

  ‘So, you got your guy,’ Theresa slides her hand across my chest and squeezes, ‘Well done, big man,’ moving the subject on to safer ground.

  ‘Yeah… pleased to get that sick fucker.’ This is an understatement. ‘How’s your life?’

  ‘Oh you know… great, wonderful and amazing,’ a deep sigh, ‘if you want to live in Groundhog Central.’ When Billy proposed to Theresa, he promised to set her up in a beautiful house in a posh part of the city. He also promised that she’d never work again. Theresa loved the idea of being a kept woman. Doing lunch and shopping were her ideal. The reality turned out not to be so enjoyable.

  ‘So get a job.’ I suggest.

  ‘Billy won’t hear of it. He says no woman of his should go out to work.’

  ‘How delightfully unreconstructed of him.’

  ‘And meantime, he’s working all the hours to keep me in the style he’s accustomed to… and I’m miserable. Bored out of my tits.’

  ‘And lovely tits they are too,’ I give one a squeeze.

  ‘But what can I do? All I’m trained for is teaching… no way I’m going back to that.’

  ‘Why not? You were a good teacher.’ That was the impression she gave anyway.

  ‘Why not? The wee shites made my life a misery. That’s why not.’

  ‘So what’re you going to do?’ I ask, not really looking for an answer. I just want to sleep.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘So think of something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know, you’re the one who’s bored.’

  ‘Yeah and I’m bored with this conversation.’ Her hand slides down my chest and rests a millimetre from my groin. Heat jumps into my penis. I’m awake again.

  ‘Right, sleepy,’ an elbow in my ribs, ‘Time you made a decent woman of me.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘Ray McBain, will you move it!’

  ‘Oh Tess, can I not have another five minutes?’ I mumble into the pillow. I save this moniker for special occasions. Like this one, when I want to melt her heart, so she‘ll let me sleep.

  ‘Another five minutes and my foot will have to be surgically removed from your arse.’

  My phone rings. Shrill and insistent. Saves me from an embarrassing medical procedure.

  ‘Uh?’ I manage.

  ‘McBain.’ The voice on the other end of the phone is a bucket of ice down my shorts.

  I wake up instantly.

  ‘Yessir?’ It’s the high heidyin. My boss, David Campbell.

  ‘We’ve a dead body for you. See if you can leave your lovely ladyboy and get your backside over here pronto.’

  Chapter 4

  The body is safely in its bag by the time I arrive. Briefly sanitized, before the next part of the detection process can begin. There’s enough blood in the vicinity to hint that the deceased did not die of natural causes. We are in a small ex-local authority house. The attention lavished on this house and its neighbours hint at a pleasant, quiet place to live. A place where the inhabitants take pride in their ability to own their own home and make the best use of the excess funds they manage to borrow from their bank. I walk past the constable on point duty and through the front door.

  Jim Peters is here and talking to the boss. And he looks as if he’s slept like the proverbial log. Bastard doesn’t even have the decency to suffer a hangover.

  ‘Right, Jim. What have we got so far?’ I give him a brief smile of acknowledgement. He looks at his watch before answering; a non-verbal comment on my apparent tardiness. I don’t say anything; I match his stare until his eyes drop from mine and I log it away for future reference. Don’t you just love office politics?

  ‘Elderly male, sir. Caucasian. Name of Patrick Connelly. Victim appears to have sustained multiple wounds. Wrists and feet pierced with sharp object. Stab wound on the right side of deceased’s chest. Ligature marks on his neck…’

  ‘And strange scratch marks around his forehead.’ I speak without realizing.

  ‘How the fuck did you know that?’

  ‘It’s the stigmata. You mentioned the wrists, feet and wound on the side. The next item on the list was the wounds on the forehead.’

  ‘Looks like we’ve a religious nutter on our hands,’ says the boss. ‘Let’s find this guy before he goes for a full crucifixion.’

  A moan sounds from behind us. I turn and see a head of white hair just before I hear feet drum up the stairs.

  I leave the room and follow the woman I expect to be the deceased’s wife. The stairs end at what appears to be the bathroom, judging by the tasteful sign on the door. Then a passage stretches along to my left, with another two doors off it. Loud sobbing allows me to open the correct door.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ A young WPC is sitting on the edge of the bed, one arm around a small woman.

  ‘Mrs Connelly, I’m sorry you had to hear that.’ I glare at the WPC. She shouldn’t have let the woman come down the stairs.

  ‘It’s not Mrs, it’s Miss,’ comes from the small frame.

  ‘Miss Connelly is the deceased’s sister, sir,’ offers the WPC.

  ‘I can speak for myself, hen.’ She forces herself to sit up and visibly steels herself against any further displays of emotion.

  ‘Can we get you a cup of tea?’ I motion with my head for the constable to leave the tiny room. With three of us in it, I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.

  ‘If anybody else asks me that, I think I’ll scream.’ Her hair is pulled tight across her head and tied at the back. This has the effect of sharpening a nose that already looks as if it could be used to crochet. Her lips are almost non-existent, but what is there is painted bright red. Lipstick leaks from the straight line of her lips into the cracks radiating around her mouth, like rust. A bit early to be putting the war paint on, I think. She’s cradling a brown pipe in her hand. I don’t think it’s hers.

  ‘DI McBain. Mind if I sit down?’ I ask, aware that my size might intimidate her.

  ‘It’s a free country,’ is the sharp reply. So much for intimidation. I sit as far away from her on the bed as I can.

  ‘I won’t bite, you know.’ Tears are no longer in evidence. Miss Connelly has made a remarkable recovery.

  ‘How old was Patrick?’

  ‘Seventy-two. I was his big sister, by two years.’ She is staunchly in the camp of being proud of her age then.

  ‘Do you know of anyone who might want to kill your brother, Miss Connelly?’

  ‘Kill Paddy? I don’t know who would do such a thing. He might have been a miserable old bugger, but I didn’t think anyone would be driven to that extreme. Unless modelling yourself on Victor Meldrew has become a capital offence.’ I think again of how composed the woman before me has become. Then I notice the small hanky poking out from a tight fist. Blue veins and brown liver spots stand out in stark contrast to the tight, white knuckles. She is mourning, just in her own particular fashion.

  I spot the crucifix above the bed and the statue of Our Lady, arms outstretched, on the dressing table.

  ‘You a Catholic, son?’

  ‘Once upon a time,’ I answered.

  ‘Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.’

  ‘Was Paddy a regular church-goer?’ I ignore her pointed comment.

  ‘Never missed it.’

  ‘Did he have many friends?’

  ‘Are your ears painted on? He was the spit of Victor Meldrew. People avoided the daft sod. He had… acquaintances.’

  ‘Acquaintances?’

  ‘Your ears are painted on, son. Acquaintances as in folk he bumped into now and again. Folk would normally speak to him only when cornered. They ran a mile when they saw him coming.’
r />   ‘Do you know of anyone who would want to do your brother harm?’

  ‘Jim Phillips at number 23. Our Patrick had his garden fork for well over a year. That’s about the only person I can think of that might be annoyed with him.’

  ‘A garden fork?’ People say some weird things when they are trying to find a frame of reference in their mind for an event as vast as this.

  ‘Aye, but you don’t know Jim Phillips. Treats that garden like it was his bairn.’ She paused and looked out of the small window. The view was a sky of concrete grey. Defiance, or whatever was keeping her in the conversation, fell away and before me I saw a small, frightened woman.

  ‘Miss Connelly, do you have somewhere you can go?’

  ‘They’re no’ putting me out of my home, son.’ Steel returned to her spine, but fear and fatigue pulled at the muscles of her face.

  ‘I’m not suggesting that it’s permanent, just until you can get someone in to clean the place. It’ll be some while until we’re finished examining your home. You don’t want to have to face that every day and it would help us find the killer faster if we have a free rein in the house.’ I don’t have to ask, but it feels like the right thing to do.

  ‘Aye, you’re right, son. I wasn’t thinking. Our Agnes has a house down in Ayr. I’ll give her a phone and ask if I can sleep in her spare room for a wee while.’

  ‘Be sure to give the female constable a note of where Agnes stays, so we can keep in touch with you.’

  ‘Aye.’ She looked deep into my eyes. ‘You’ll find him, son. Won’t you? Patrick was a miserable old git, but he didn’t deserve this. You’ll get him won’t you?’ Her hand gripped at my sleeve.

  Back at the station, the shift has gathered to hear the news. I’m standing waiting for the din to die down. Everyone’s talking about last night. A good time was had by all, if the noise of the chatter is anything to go by.