by P. R. Black
‘Isn’t that the truth,’ Harvie said, pointedly. ‘You know who I’ve diddled, all right.’
There was a terrible silence for a moment. ‘I could do it, you know,’ Galvin said, quietly. ‘End you with one pull of the trigger, here. I’m fully licensed, in case you’re wondering. If I did both of you, know what would happen? Know what action would be taken?’ He moved a step towards Harvie. To his credit, the latter held his ground. ‘Fuck all,’ Galvin said, at last. He aimed the shotgun at Harvie’s neck. Freya hardly dared move.
‘Murder, Bernard? That what you’re all about, here?’ Mick Harvie appeared to be losing control of his voice; it fluctuated between high and absurdly high. ‘Thought you were one of the good guys.’
‘I don’t know about one of the good guys. I just know I’m not a prize bastard like you, son.’ Nonetheless, Galvin lowered the weapon.
‘Second question,’ Freya asked. ‘Carol Ramirez. Why is she difficult to find?’
‘There’s a reason for that,’ Galvin said. ‘She’s mentally ill. She’s got various diagnoses from various psychiatrists. None of them can agree with each other, but I can give you a pointer: fucking gaga, is how I’d put it. She’s a ’nana. Always was.’
‘Did she have an affair with my father?’
‘I dunno. Ask him.’
‘I think you know that she did have an affair with him. I think you know that she could have cleared him. But she was prevented from giving evidence in court. It might have cleared my dad. Everyone knows this. Can you admit it’s possible that she was his alibi?’
‘His slave, is what she was. Your dad, he wasn’t lacking in charisma. I’ll say that. You know how they reckon a sailor can have a girl in every port? He had a woman in every town he passed through. The gift of the gab. I guess you’re proof of that. Somehow he managed to chat up a serving police officer, who didn’t know any better because she was, as I might have mentioned, fucking crazy.’
‘I see the winning manner hasn’t changed,’ Harvie said. He laughed at his own joke, until Galvin said: ‘Don’t open your mouth again until I tell you to.’
Freya said: ‘When did it become obvious Carol Ramirez was “crazy”, as you put it – before you knew she was involved with my dad, or after?’
Galvin stood up straight, and said soberly: ‘Carol Ramirez had undergone a psychiatric assessment long before she is understood to have met your father. She made a lot of things up about him. She was quoted as saying that it was written in the stars that they should be together. She heard a prophecy through the radio and television. Read special messages in the newspapers, she claimed. Cryptic clues, voices. The spookies, aliens, whatever. By the time we arrested him, she had been signed off sick – severely ill, alarming everyone she worked with. That’s the truth, and that’s the official line. She would have struggled to tell the difference between day and night. That’s how badly affected she was. And that’s all I’m saying about Carol Ramirez. As for the alibi… it’s one he put in her head. It was all awfully convenient, the way it seemed to counter every point the witness said.’
‘I would say the witness was convenient. The one who saw my dad in the van.’
Galvin’s face flushed. ‘Your dad is a maniac. I don’t know who you’ve been speaking to, what they’ve told you… He’s a nutter. He tortured animals when he was a kid. Probably abused six ways from Sunday. He pissed the bed. He was a voyeur. Watched women get undressed. He had a fascination for military things, being a commando. When the army kept rejecting him, he got into a fantasy life. His fantasy was to hunt down and kill people.
‘He fits the profile in every way. He had a history of violence, and manipulative behaviour. He picked up women, used them and flung them away like they were shit-rags. No offence, but it’s true. He ticked every single box, and then we had a witness place him at the scene. The only bit of evidence that might have cleared him came from a headcase who told us that he was related to Jesus and was in contact with alien beings. That’s not me having a laugh – that’s what she told me, to my face. Quote unquote. He fucking did it, he’s the Woodcutter, and that’s that!’
‘So you didn’t fit him up?’
Galvin chewed the side of his mouth for a moment or two. ‘All right, that’ll do it. Get out. It should go without saying, but I don’t want to see either of you around here again.’
Freya waited for Harvie to catch up with her on the garden path. Galvin followed them, the shotgun pointing towards the ground. Freya didn’t want to turn her back on him; his face was flushed, and a fleck of spittle dangled from his lower lip like bad awning.
‘Nice garden you’ve got here,’ Harvie said. ‘Not as good as the one in your last house, mind, but you’ve done a bang-up job.’
‘Word of advice for you, Mick,’ Galvin said. ‘Just before you go.’
Harvie half-turned – and that’s when the shotgun barrel smashed him across the face.
There was a dull sound of metal on flesh. Harvie barely cried out; he fell to the ground.
Galvin was on him like a cat spearing a starling. The shotgun was laid aside; his knees on Harvie’s chest, he punched him once, twice, three times in the face. He drew back after the third blow, hissing breath through his teeth.
Freya ran forward, shrieking; then Galvin was off his knees and on his feet in one bizarrely fluid move, the shotgun back in his hands and pointed straight at her.
Bernard Galvin was laughing, yelping strangely in between gulping breaths. ‘You know you think about doing something for years, then finally get the chance? You ever done that? I just have.’
‘You’re a fucking animal,’ Freya said. She crouched and took Harvie by the shoulders. It wasn’t clear if he was fully conscious; his eyes rolled alarmingly in his head, reminding Freya of eggs cracked into a cup. Blood dripped from his nose, mouth, and a long gash in his face, right where his beard met his cheekbone. This latter wound was already swollen.
‘Bastard,’ Harvie wheezed.
Then Galvin stole forward again, as Harvie sat up, planting a kick right in the apex of his splayed legs. Harvie screamed, then.
‘Don’t forget it!’ Galvin said, savagely.
‘For Christ’s sake, he’s had enough!’ Freya said – shielding Harvie with an upraised hand. ‘Leave him alone!’
‘It’s all right, I’m done. That’s out of my system.’ Galvin straightened up, his back cracking. ‘Now – off you jolly well fuck.’
31
Blood dripped onto the pristine white bodywork of the MG. Mick Harvie tutted, then wiped it off with the edge of his sleeve. She noticed his hand was shaking uncontrollably.
Freya kept her distance from him. Caught between pain and humiliation, he had stalked off once they’d gotten out of Bernard Galvin’s back gate, muttering to himself. She gave him a little bit of space, after making sure she had everything safely recorded on the device in her pocket. At the car, she noticed his face was still bleeding quite heavily, staining the salt and pepper beard and dipping onto the collars of his green military jacket. Freya thought of raindrops pattering the fronds of a plant in the jungle.
Galvin had come out to leer, bathing in curtain-twitching attention of his neighbours on the narrow little avenue. He had, perhaps wisely, ditched the shotgun somewhere.
‘Lovely to see you again, Michael. Do come back and we’ll take tea sometime.’ He gave the thumbs-up sign, and grinned dementedly. From a distance his wide grey eyes seemed to glow. ‘You don’t even have to knock! It’ll be a pleasure to see you.’
‘Bastard,’ Harvie snarled. ‘I will make it my mission… I swear to God…’
They reached the car. Harvie’s limp having grown progressively worse.
‘Mick?’ Freya said. ‘Turn around… Please. It’s all right. I just want to check you out.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said. He actually smiled; his front teeth were smeared with blood. He ran a tongue over his teeth, frowned, then dabbed a finger against the enamel. Seeing his
bloody fingertips, he spat onto the pavement. ‘I’ve had worse. Not for a while, but… I’ve had worse.’
‘I’m not sure I believe you. Look, you’re hurt. We’ve got to go to the police…’
She didn’t stop herself in time. Harvie laughed. ‘If you want to give a statement, head on up the drive. He seems to enjoy company.’
‘We should get you to casualty. It was a head injury… did you hit your head on the ground when you fell?’
‘I hit my head on a few things, at high speed.’ He fiddled for his keys, face pinched tight, whether in concentration or in pain, it was hard to say. At this point he looked old – properly old, the bent old man he would surely become. An inch or two shorter than he thought he was.
‘Are you going to be all right to drive?’
‘Don’t insult me. You going back to the smoke?’
She nodded. ‘Look, I think I’ve got a first aid kit in my bag… No offence, but I don’t want you to bleed on me.’
He sighed. ‘All right. I’ll indulge you. Let’s get in the car.’
Inside, she cleaned the cut with wipes and passed him a dab of antiseptic. He applied it the way a nun might apply blusher, then accepted a further offering of cotton wool and a sticking plaster over the top. The other side of his face was already swollen, and at closer quarters she could see his mashed lips had swollen. ‘He blindsided you, Mick. Nasty move.’
‘An arse-kicking is an arse-kicking. You get them in life, love. Not saying they’re pleasant, but they’re inevitable. Key thing is to learn from them.’
Freya screwed the cap back on the antiseptic. ‘Don’t go all stoic. That guy’s an ex-police officer, acting like a thug. He should be in prison for that.’
‘Nah, I don’t grass, love. That’s the law of the jungle, section one, sub-section A. Plus, we were trespassing. What he said about shooting us was true. He wouldn’t even have been charged.’ He stole a look in the mirror underneath his sun visor, and he winced. ‘Great chance to pop him one, all the same. I’ll regret that.’
‘Pop him one? What are you, Bruce Lee? He had a gun, Mick.’
‘Forget about it. It’s done. We got what we came for. In a manner of speaking.’
‘Question one, though. The way you spoke about him up till now, you’d think you were friends. You defended him when I suggested he’d gotten it wrong about my dad. You didn’t look like you were friends.’
Harvie sighed. ‘What I told you was true. I left out the part about me and his wife.’
‘You’re kidding… I mean, I picked up on that from what you said, about diddling and what have you. But I thought you were… Well, just kidding.’
‘I’m afraid not. It just sort of happened. She worked with the police, too. Wasn’t in uniform – liaison officer of some kind. Named adult, they called it. Nice. Everyone liked her. Marian, her name was. Marriage had been on the rocks for years. And Bernie had worked his way through a lot of women. Been a bit naughty about it – wives and girlfriends he’d met on the job. The big consoling tough guy. Could have been sacked a dozen times over, but they turned a blind eye. And that was just the ones I heard about. I’m surprised he holds a grudge, in fact.’
‘You’d be surprised how far people will go to get someone back.’
‘That’s the truth. You know, he has no idea if it’s true? I met her out on a job one day. Rough one. Child abuse case at a home. We both needed a drink, got talking…’ He gestured with his hands. ‘Both of us married. It got out, of course. These things do. But Bernie could never prove anything.’
‘Let me guess, he deduced what you were doing? Or he followed a string of clues?’
‘Or maybe his missus told him. Either way, I don’t care. It happened. I don’t regret it. You’re young – you’ll know all about it. And Marian’s dead, anyway. Cancer. Quick. You’ll know all about that, too.’ After a moment, he added: ‘Sorry.’
‘S’all right. I forget, myself, every now and again.’
‘Now I’ve got a question for you. What’s this about body number two?’
Freya told him – or at least, the version of events she’d told the police only that morning. Harvie lunged forward in his seat, gripping the steering wheel. Had the car been in motion, Freya fancied that he might have swerved them off the road. ‘This happened last night! And you didn’t think to tell me?’ He began to scan his phone. ‘Nothing on the wires or any of the digital channels… Christ almighty!’
‘It was a scoop, Mick.’ She shrugged. ‘Sometimes we have to play our cards close to our chest, in this game. You’ll know all about that. You know, after you took a liberty with me before?’
He glared at her, then relaxed into a smile that almost dislodged his plaster. ‘You’ve got the cheek, I’ll say that for you. Got the patter, too. You’re young and pretty enough that it won’t get you into trouble. Not just yet, anyway. So that’s two bodies, turned up. We’re up to three. And they reckon it was Ceulemans?’
‘The Dutch girl?’
‘The gypsy.’
‘The backpacker, I think might be the term. The girl on her gap year. Or having an adventure during the holidays.’
‘Whatever. Let’s deal with the facts. You can get sentimental in your one-thousand-word think piece.’
Freya bristled. ‘And the facts are, if you’d let me finish, that no – they didn’t find Florence Ceulemans. They think the new body was Coleen Arden’s. The girl from Edinburgh.’
‘So that’s just two to go? And you’ve found ’em both?’
‘Not just me. Me and Glenn.’
‘Oh, the Red Ink geek. Yeah. Royal pain in the arse, that boy.’
‘Good reporter. You must admit.’
‘He’s not in the trade. He’s a pretender. Sitting at the computer with a sock on his dick. That’s not a reporter.’
‘He’s scooped everyone on this one,’ Freya mused, interested in how agitated Harvie had become at this development, considering someone had wrecked his face minutes beforehand.
‘Anyway. You get more scoops… Come to me. Don’t listen to him. I’ll get you the money.’
‘It’s not about the money, Mick. I keep telling you.’
‘Whatever.’ He started the car, and then pulled away from the street. They both gazed in their side mirrors, perhaps both seized by the same conviction that Galvin might appear in them, aiming both barrels at the departing car. ‘Anyway – no joke. Any tips you get, share them. I’ll make sure you get paid.’
‘What do you reckon to the other stuff he was talking about? That was kind of cryptic. Was he talking about the inquiry being opened? And did he mention a copycat?’
‘That did intrigue me,’ Harvie said, flicking on the indicator as they approached a roundabout.
‘Is it something you know about?’
‘Could be.’ He smiled, as if to himself.
‘Spill it, then. I’ll share my scoops with you, if you tell me what you know about the inquiry.’
‘I just heard one or two things. Haven’t had anything confirmed, upon pain of death. And as you’ve had demonstrated this afternoon, that’s not a one hundred per cent uncertain outcome if I cross some of my snitches.’
‘Come on. What do you know?’
‘There is a rumour that another body has turned up.’
‘One of the other two?’
‘No, not one of the Woodcutter’s victims. This is another body. A new one. There are similarities in the case. But it happened quite recently. So it couldn’t have been your dad. Young lass, out doing triathlon training out on a lakeside. North of the border. Vanished. What was left of her was found near an abandoned fat-processing plant in North Yorkshire. About a week or so ago.’
‘What’s left of her…?’
‘Chopped up. With an axe.’
‘Christ. This is… I had no idea.’
‘No one does, yet. Not the very gory detail. So, your hotshot friend’s contacts aren’t quite as good as mine. Interesting, that. Although
I’ll need to have a word with them about the second body being found. Never mind, though, we’ll have that online within a couple of hours.’
‘Yeah. Don’t mention it.’ Freya watched the hillsides scrolling past her for a while. ‘So they reckon it’s the Woodcutter, then? The same guy who did the others?’
‘Doubt it. The Woodcutter’s your dad. I know it. But I admit it’s a remote possibility that he isn’t. The other possibility is: we’ve got a copycat. I don’t know what scares me the most.’
32
Freya swirled her chopsticks around the noodles. Perfectly sliced chicken squares, sesame oil, soy sauce, pak choi, spring onion and a good belt of ginger. It was perfect. She ate quickly, unselfconsciously.
‘Sorry,’ she said, to Glenn, dabbing her mouth with a napkin, ‘I realised I hadn’t eaten much today. Think the last half-decent dinner I had was nachos or something. At that pub.’
‘You’ve missed a bit on your…’ He gestured at the side of her mouth.
‘Ah. The downside of soy sauce – but there are many upsides.’
Glenn hadn’t particularly dressed up for this meeting in her favourite noodle bar. He wore a polo shirt he might have worn in the gym, ancient corduroy trousers and what appeared to be the type of old man’s boat shoes you might have noted with some bemusement in the centre aisle of the cheapest supermarket out there. Seeing its chance, Freya’s embarrassment slipped into the seat beside her and introduced itself. It was like a kind of sonar, a constant pinging through the whole evening.
Not a date, then, she’d thought.
‘Look,’ he said at last, after he’d fought with a hot ’n’ sour soup for so long that the waiter indicated it was fine to leave it alone. ‘I just thought we should talk about the other night. Before we go on.’
‘What part of the other night? The murder bit, or…?’
‘You know what bit I mean.’