Blood In The Water

by Gillian Galbraith

  ‘Can you tell us anything about Elizabeth Clarke?’ Alice cut in. ‘What sort of person was she?’

  Miss Penrose smiled, initially pleased to conjure up the company of her friend.

  ‘She was considerate. A quiet person. At first she was very reserved with me. Many times over the years, when I’ve been ill, she got my shopping for me. She worked too hard for her own good and I told her so. She was usually back home far too late. I called her Dr Finlay… our joke. She liked a joke. Pico got fond of her, always a good sign, I think. He’s a Dandie Dinmont, you know, Kennel-Club registered as “Piccolo Glorious Flute of Liberton”, to give him his full name. When my big dog, Dipper, died…’

  A single tear trickled down her powdery cheek, to be wiped away discreetly with the side of a finger that carried on in the same movement to tuck a strand of unruly hair back into its clip. Miss Penrose came of a generation reluctant to display deep emotion in front of strangers, believing that if she did so she would be guilty of ‘making an exhibition of herself’. The cost of her self-control was more difficult to disguise; a stick-thin knee had begun to shake uncontrollably until she crossed her other leg over it.

  ‘Did Dr Clarke have any family that you know of, Miss Penrose?’ Alastair interjected, leading the old lady back to the subject like a dutiful sheepdog with a confused old ewe.

  ‘Her mother’s still alive and has a house in East Lothian, Haddington, I think, or maybe Gifford. I’m sure Elizabeth was an only child, like me. She grew up in the country, like me too. Of course, we lived in Lanarkshire in a big house with lots of dogs and even horses. No Dandie Dinmonts though… only fox terriers. Daddy didn’t like little dogs, parlour dogs, as he called them. He preferred working dogs, Labradors, fox terriers… even spaniels… now, Tinker…’

  Neither sergeant had the heart to cut short Miss Penrose’s canine reminiscences too abruptly, so she carried on recalling dead Penrose dogs until, mercifully, her phone rang and they were able to depart, mouthing their gratitude and farewells as she quavered into the receiver.

  Alice cradled her coffee mug in her hands as she looked at the typed note from Inspector Manson that lay uppermost on her desk: ‘Been to Little France, saw three of Dr Clarke’s colleagues in the Obs and Gynae Department, Dr Ian Cross, Dr Robin Maxwell and Dr Kobi al-Alboudie. They say Dr Clarke was ambitious, hard-working and competent. Also “reserved”, “independent”, “self-contained” and Dr Maxwell says she was a bit “unapproachable”. None knew her well enough to know anything about her private life but they all assumed that she was unattached and probably celibate!! I couldn’t see Dr Ann Williams, the only other member of the department, she’s on annual leave at home. Lives in Drummond Place. Can you go and see her a.s.a.p? You’ll probably get more out of her anyway both being professional women, female professionals, whatever!’

  Chaos reigned in Ann Williams’ kitchen. The floor was covered with a strange assortment of bricks, jigsaw pieces, fridge magnets, crayons and paper. A dog lay chewing the plastic, severed head of a doll, and three little children, two girls and a boy, were standing on stools at the sink, dipping miniature plates and saucers into lathery water with both taps running. ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ was being belted out by a cassette player in a next door room. Dr Williams left the dicing of carrots, for a chicken stock boiling on the stove, to answer the doorbell.

  Alice sat beside her at the table as the woman resumed her chopping, and attempted to concentrate on the task in hand in amongst all the colour, noise and commotion around her. Dr Williams kept her eyes unwaveringly on the children as her knife cut through the carrots, and watching her, Alice half expected to find a severed finger in amongst the heap of prepared vegetables. She began her preamble, but Dr Williams interrupted, explaining, almost impatiently, that she was well aware of her colleague’s death as she’d already had news of it from a friend at work. She seemed to understand, without having been told, what was required of her, and began to talk about Elizabeth Clarke unbidden.

  ‘She was an excellent doctor. Not just clever, though she was that too, but compassionate and with a genuine devotion to her work and her patients, or most of them. She was also an ambitious woman… and that doesn’t always go down well.’ Ann Williams caught Alice’s eye, as if to see whether she understood the nature of the unspoken difficulty. Being met with a rueful smile, she went back to her theme: ‘She was a bit impatient sometimes, with her less able colleagues I mean, not the patients as far as I am aware. She could seem a bit cool, detached, really, but she wasn’t, just completely absorbed in her work. She hated office politics, networking, all those kind of things, even though they are the very kind of things that help on the ascent up the ladder. I think she was generally liked by her subordinates, though she may have intimidated some of them. She did have professional rivals, I suppose I’d be one, but no enemies or anything like that. What else do you need to know?’

  ‘Any boyfriends?’

  ‘Up until about a year ago she was going out with someone called Ian Melville, a painter, an artist or whatever. He lives somewhere out near Leadburn. I only met him twice and, to be frank, I didn’t take to him one bit. Arrogant creature. Wrote me off as a philistine when I admitted I’d never heard of someone called Malevich. She’s had no one since.’

  ‘Why did they break up?’

  A tremendous clattering noise followed immediately by piteous wailing brought the conversation prematurely to an end. One of the little girls had fallen from her stool and lay sprawled on the floor, face downwards and crying. Dr Williams rushed to the fallen child, kissed her injured knee and placed her back on the stool, making soothing noises as she did so. She then rolled up all the children’s sleeves before returning to the table.

  She repeated the question put to her. ‘Why did they break up… Well-’, she hesitated, plainly considering whether or not to go on, and then continued, her vegetable knife idle in her hand, ‘…I think they broke up because Liz had a termination. She didn’t tell Ian that she was pregnant until after she had undergone it. That was the end of that. The relationship, I mean. I don’t know if he could have forgiven her but she never gave him the chance anyway. The whole thing was a horrible mistake, for both of them probably. I think that she would have broken up with him even if there had been no baby. I never really understood how they got together in the first place, and I was amazed that it lasted as long as it did. Maybe she was just lonely and he was the only port in a storm. He wasn’t husband material, or certainly not for her.’

  Loud shouts had begun to come from the sink area. The ownership of one of the doll’s plates was in dispute. It was being pulled between one of the little girls and her brother. Suddenly his rival let go of the slippery plastic and the boy toppled off his stool onto the floor, clutching his prize. The impact was accompanied by a loud crack, and then full-lunged crying.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Dr Williams muttered, briefly rubbing her eyes with her hands before sighing loudly and rising to tend to the child. As she was doing so his sister coolly got off her stool and took the plate from beside him as he lay there. A new chorus of ‘Three Little Monkeys’ started up on the cassette, and Alice decided, without regret, that the time to leave the scene of controlled chaos had arrived.

  Dr Clarke’s mother had been tracked down to an address in Haddington, and the two Detective Sergeants travelled there together in a white Astra from the pool. The woman lived in the Sidegate, in a perfect little Georgian doll’s house in a terrace of such houses. Mrs Clarke, on first seeing the place over eleven years ago, had determined that this was to be her final home, a house that she would exit from feet first only. It was close to Elizabeth, close to St Mary’s, close to the River Tyne, and if she had to live on cardboard for the rest of her life to get it, then so be it. It would be worth it. The quiet little market town of Haddington suited her needs well, being big enough to host a decent choir but small enough for the locals to be recognised by the shopkeepers, even at the check-out in the
supermarket. She had never contemplated life there all on her own, without her daughter nearby. Elizabeth was never ill, had never as much as broken a bone in her body, and was over thirty years younger than her. Why should she?

  She knew the police were coming, knew as a result of the telephone call why they were coming. Somehow she had managed not to collapse on seeing her only child, Elizabeth, dead, laid out on a cold, mortuary table. She repeated the words in her head, ‘Elizabeth. Dead.’, as if by doing so she would rob them of meaning or make them untrue or, at the very least, accustom herself to their import. The jangling of her nerves as the doorbell rang reminded her, as if she needed it, of the intense emotional state she was in, although, so far, she had managed externally to conceal it. Composure mattered. If you seemed to be in control then, to all intents and purposes, you were in control and, at times like this, control was paramount. She showed the two sergeants into her drawing room, noticing, as she did so, that the poinsettia in the alcove seemed to have dried out, its red leaves tinged with brown. Her offer of tea was declined and Mrs Clarke began to speak about her child, fastidiously correcting her tenses to reflect the death of her daughter.

  ‘Elizabeth’s a very… she was a very thoughtful person. I was lucky to have her as a daughter. My husband died when she was only seven, so there were just the two of us. She always tried to make me proud of her. And I was… and I am. She was doing very well and she loves her job at the Infirmary… loved… the job. I don’t see what else I can tell you…’ Her voice began to peter out, and Alice, sensing that if the old lady stopped altogether, she might be unable to hold on to her composure, quickly tried a new topic.

  ‘I understand that Elizabeth went out with a man called Ian Melville?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Clarke nodded, ‘she was fond of Ian. So was I. I was very sorry when it all came to an end.’ An expression of acute pain suddenly transformed the woman’s previously impassive features, ‘Oh God!’ she exclaimed, tears beginning to stream down her pale cheeks, ‘…if only she’d kept the child, their child, I’d have a little of her left. Something of her. She should never have had that abortion, I never approved. Never approved. We are Catholics, so was Ian. I suppose she knew what I’d say, what he’d have said…’

  The full realisation of her double loss was too much, and she covered her face with her hands, sobbing uncontrollably, oblivious now to the strangers by her side.

  3

  Monday 5th December

  Sammy McBryde’s right hand landed, with a thud, on the top of the alarm clock, silencing it with one decisive blow. He yawned and stretched, before ruffling his tousled black curls with his fingers and scratching his scalp. In slow motion, he manoeuvred himself out of bed, trying not to disturb his still-sleeping girlfriend, and wandered into the kitchen in his T-shirt and pants to make their morning tea. By the time he returned, Shona’s eyes were open and he passed a chipped mug, silently, to her. Conversation before breakfast usually degenerated into argument, and they had both independently concluded that wordless communication was preferable to the daily bickering that had preceded it. They lay together, thighs just touching, relishing the first and best cup of the day, until Sammy, mug now drained, lit up a cigarette and passed the packet on to his companion. He took a deep drag, steeled himself to leave the comforting warmth of the bed, flung back the bedclothes and raced to their damp, unheated bathroom.

  All of yesterday’s clothing lay in a muddled heap on the floor, a black bra snaked across the woolly bathmat and a pair of laddered tights lay, in the missionary position, on rumpled blue jeans. He extracted his work clothes as quickly as possible, noticing the goose pimples on his naked arms, and dressed in haste, rejecting only a jersey stiff with mud from the previous day’s work. The jeans would last one more day, they didn’t actually smell yet. Shona’s eyes were closed when he kissed her goodbye, brushing her cheek with his lips and delighting in the warmth and smooth texture of her skin. He double-locked the front door on the way out, feeling like a sultan protecting the treasure contained within.

  The minute he stepped beyond the shelter of the porch he was assaulted by driving rain, blowing horizontally at him and turning the gutters into fast-flowing burns. He began to run, head bowed, through the downpour, splashing and soaking his trousers with every step, until he reached his battered old van. The pockets of his wet jeans stuck to his thighs, making it difficult for his cold hands to get a grip of the keys inside, never mind extract them. The van started, coughing thickly like an old smoker, and he rattled down the Medway in it towards Granton Road.

  Davie was waiting for him huddled against the cold and rain, getting whatever inadequate shelter he could beneath the flapping awning of a grocer’s shop. He stank of rum, and his thick, tobacco stained fingers were clamped around a damp little roll-up. That the old fellow continued to cling onto life was, in itself, miraculous. He worked every day, Saturdays and Sundays included, often in the cold and wet, got the cash in hand he required and immediately converted it into rum at the Tarbat Inn. Any cheques he deigned to accept had to be made out to his drinking house, as it was also his bank. The state remained blissfully unaware of his existence: he claimed no benefits, paid no taxes and elected to cast no vote. Solid food, bar the odd pork chop grilled at midnight, rarely passed his lips, and he slept only for a few hours every evening. The remainder of the night was spent sitting upright in an armchair reading, devouring anything and everything in print, feasting equally happily on cowboy novels or cookery books.

  As Davie hauled himself up into the van, Sammy noticed for the first time that the old fellow’s pale, cracked lips appeared to be tinged with blue, and his curranty eyes, largely obscured by his woolly bonnet, seemed duller than usual. Davie was the brains behind their partnership. The pair hired themselves out as jobbing gardeners, but they would turn their hands to whatever manual labour was requested by those desperate enough to employ them. Davie’s ability to work out the exact materials required for any job was prodigious, accurate to the last brick or nail, and none of their hard-earned profit was wasted on excess materials. Naturally, he paid himself an extra pound an hour out of their joint wage for his own managerial skills, and this was alright by Sammy; he wanted no responsibility anyway.

  The van entered the leafy environs of Primrose Bank as the sun began to emerge from behind black, lowering clouds, and the rain dwindled into little more than drizzle before stopping altogether. They spent the morning, in their soggy clothes, laying sand and slabs for a frosty widow who monitored their every move from behind her net curtains, and remonstrated with them when they stopped, for ten minutes, for a tea break. Not on my time, if you please.

  At twelve o’clock precisely they were paid in cash, as previously agreed, and rumbled off in the van along the glistening roads to the Tarbat for the first of Davie’s rums for the day. Sammy sat in the motor in the pub car park, eating the cheese sandwiches he’d made the night before and reading Principles of Practical Beekeeping, a good introduction to his new hobby. Tropical fish were too expensive nowadays, always dying and developing untreatable diseases. Anyway, he’d left the aquarium behind in the old flat, with his old life, and bees at least produced something, even if their stings might take a little getting used to. One day, one day soon, he and Shona would move into the country, somewhere on the Lammermuirs maybe, and she’d have her bed and breakfast and he’d keep bees.

  ‘When mating occurs, the drone not only gives the queen his passionate embrace, but also his life. The male organs are detached during coupling, the drone dying almost immediately and the queen returns to her hive with the proof of her meeting firmly implanted in her body.’

  Involuntarily his mind flashed from bees to humans, and he stopped chewing his bread, almost choking on it at the sickening image suddenly and graphically appearing before his eyes. The unpleasant picture was dispelled by the sound of Davie rapping cheerily on the driver’s side window, signalling that their lunch hour was all but over. They travelle
d back to Primrose Bank in silence, Sammy trying to focus his mind on the site of his hives in the heather at Kidlaw and Davie busily calculating the number of slabs required for the spiral finish that the widow wanted near her pond.

  The sound of the wheelbarrow tipping over, the bricks inside clattering onto the gravel path, alerted Sammy to Davie’s collapse. The old man lay on the grass, one leg trapped beneath the still half-full barrow. His eyes were closed, cap askew and he seemed to have wet himself. Sammy called his name, even slapped him lightly on the face as he’d seen done on television, but was unable to rouse his partner. He ran to the widow’s door and hammered on it. The door opened abruptly, and the woman stared at him as if he had no idea of his place and needed an immediate, unspoken reminder.

  ‘It’s ma pal, Davie, he’s collapsed. Ye’ll need tae phone fir an ambulance…’

  Despite the entreaty in his voice her reply was cold.

  ‘Have you not got a mobile telephone like everyone else?’

  For Sammy, patience was a commodity in short supply at the best of times, and the only explanation necessary had already been provided.

  ‘Fer fuck’s sake woman, jist phone the hospital will ye? I’ll need tae move him in here, oot o’ the rain. It’s pissin’ doon oan him.’ He turned round as if to go and collect the body, muttering obscenities at her under his breath.

  ‘Just a minute, if you don’t mind. I’d rather you just took him to the shed, he’ll be under shelter there. I don’t know either of you from Adam, and the box’s full of scare stories about ruses for getting into peoples houses… em… I’m not suggesting you… but all the same… I’d rather…’

  ‘Away tae fuck wi’ ye.’

  By the time Sammy returned to Davy’s prostrate body, little moans were coming from his sodden form, and saliva appeared to be bubbling out of his mouth.