‘The pathologist believes that he was allowed to lie where he was murdered and then moved some hours later. There is apparently evidence that the rigor has been ”broken”, as he said.’
‘I know what he means, and in point of fact that would fit in entirely with the degree of impregnation of the oil. The body lay on a dirty, oily surface long enough for the jacket and jeans and shirt to soak up oil and become extensively impregnated. As I said, he seems to have lain face up because there is no indication of oil impregnation on the front of his clothing.’
‘Again,’ said Sussock, ‘Dr Reynolds said that the body lay face up for some time, because what blood remained in the body settled on the shoulder blades and the lumbar regions.’
‘Ties in nicely,’ said Dr Kay. Ties in very neatly indeed. Do you know who he is?’
‘Well, that,’ said Sussock, ‘is the next difficult task.’
‘Mrs Wroe?’ Elka Willems glanced at the woman, ashen-faced, matted hair, who blinked empty-headedly at her. Elka Willems thought that the woman didn’t seem at all surprised that a female police officer should be knocking at her door. ‘Mrs Wroe!’ said Elka Willems with a little more insistence.
This time the woman nodded between blinks.
‘Perhaps I can come inside?’ Elka Willems pressed. The close was a public place, she was aware of two people, perhaps three, standing above her beyond the turn of the stair. The wind blew off the Clyde whose wide, choppy waters lay behind her as she approached the drab 1930’s low-rise tenement development. The smell of Greenock filled her nostrils. Not being a native of Glasgow or its environs, she had long thought that the musty smell of Greenock emanated from the shipyards and it was not until recently that she had found that the smell which hung heavy in the air over the town was in fact coming from the glue factory where the carcases of animals were being boiled down into fluid. As she climbed the chipped, cracked concrete steps with long, litter-strewn grass at either side of her, she noticed the face at the first-floor landing turn excitedly at the sight of her uniform and then retreat into the gloom. She entered the close, littered with sweet wrappers, the walls filled with sectarian graffiti. The first door, bottom left, had Wroe written on the green paint with a black dry-marker pen. Elka Willems rapped the door knocker and heard the studied silence of two or three people waiting beyond the turn of the stair, curious as to the reason for her calling. When at last the door opened and the small woman blinked at her out of a darkened, damp-smelling hallway, Elka Willems said, ‘Mrs Wroe, perhaps I can come inside?’
The woman kept on blinking; Elka Willems looked into dark, small, tortured eyes. Then the woman turned and walked down a dim narrow corridor with gift shop decorations nailed to the wall. Elka Willems interpreted the woman’s act as in invitation to enter.
The front room of the house was untidy and cluttered, making a small space seem even smaller. A dog jumped up at Elka Willems as she entered, jumping up excitedly, running round her, tail wagging, but to her surprise it made no attempt to bark.
‘He’s my only companion.’ The woman spoke for the first time. She had a tired, exhausted voice, the voice of someone who had been beaten by life. A person who is ‘hope extinct’. ‘He just doesn’t bark. Never has. Jodie, that’s his name.’
Elka Willems looked about her. The room seemed to be decorated with Christian ornaments and prints. A television sat in the corner. The curtains were drawn shut, yet it was still only late afternoon. The electric light shone and the gas fire was full on.
‘I’m in the army,’ said the woman in a flat voice, but Elka Willems thought that she detected just a hint of pride.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’m in the army.’ She nodded to an engraving of Christ with birds flocking about him. It hung above the small mantelpiece. ‘The Salvation Army.’
‘I see,’ said Elka Willems. ‘Very good. Well, I’m afraid that I may have some bad news for you, Mrs Wroe.’
‘I’m paying five pounds a week towards my uniform.’ Mrs Wroe sank into an armchair which was overfull with cushions of ill-matching colours. ‘Money’s tight. I’m on social security. Last week I had three pounds left at the end of the week and this week I’ve just got a pound to do me until Tuesday when I cash my order book. I’ve got some tins on the shelf, though.’
‘You have a son, Eddie? Edward, I presume?’
‘I haven’t seen Eddie for a year.’
‘Mrs Wroe, Eddie…I’m afraid Eddie was killed this morning.’
No reaction.
‘We believe that it may be Eddie.’ Elka Willems found her voice hardening with impatience at the woman’s lack of perceptible personality. ‘He had a wallet…we found a wallet, a small plastic holder in the back pocket of his jeans. There was no money but he did have the good sense to keep a note of his next of kin in case of an accident. The address given was your address, Mrs Wroe, and a social security card in the wallet gave the name “Eddie Wroe”.’
‘What? Eddie?’ She looked into the flames of the gas fire for a second, for two, for ten, as if becoming mesmerized.
‘Mrs Wroe! Mrs Wroe, I’ll need to ask you to accompany me. We have to visit the mortuary in Glasgow.’
‘In Glasgow! I’m to be at the Chapel for six p.m. I’ve to do the flowers this month.’
‘I’ll get you back on time. Where’s your coat? It’s windy outside.’
Throughout the journey to Glasgow, Mrs Wroe sat in the front seat of the car, smelling strongly of damp, with a cheap plastic handbag perched on her lap, like a timid child. She stared blankly at the road ahead of her, saying nothing and, thought Elka Willems, probably noticing or seeing nothing either.
In the basement of the Royal Infirmary, Dr Reynolds, who had remained to write up his report of the postmortem on the man believed to be Edward Wroe, transcribing from his taped commentary, embellishing as he did so, escorted Elka Willems and the fragile, short-stepping, right-hand-handbag-clutching Mrs Wroe into the chilled and chilling room where banks of steel drawers lined the wall. With a sobriety and seriousness of manner and with a gentle yet purposeful movement, he slid open one of the drawers and parted the sheet to reveal the finely made features of the young person believed to be Edward Wroe.
Elka Willems noted with an experienced eye that the deceased had facial features known as ‘pixie features’, smaller than normal, pointed nose, sunken eyes, slightly elongated ears. The features would have been more marked in childhood and were symptomatic of foetal alcohol syndrome. If this timid, shuffling woman was the deceased’s mother, reflected Elka Willems, then twenty years ago she wouldn’t have been timid and shuffling. She would have been a serious bevvy merchant, heavily into the super lagers and cigarettes and doing both to excess from the beginning to the end of pregnancy, and so would attest to the quality of the childhood of the occupant of the drawer.
The frightened and fragile Mrs Wroe nodded and said, ‘Aye, that is him, that’s our Eddie.’
Dr Reynolds re-covered the face with the sheet and slid the body of Edward Wroe back into the wall with a solid clunk.
‘We have some personal effects, but we have to retain them, for the time being at least,’ said Elka Willems solemnly. ‘We’ll release them as soon as we can. I take it that you are the next of kin, as Eddie indicated?’
‘Aye.’ Uninterestedly.
The woman shuffled behind Elka Willems as they made their way out of the Glasgow Royal, following the tall WPC with the striking Nordic looks at a snail’s pace as they left the bowels of the hospital, making their way by corridor and stair to the blustery, darkening Glasgow late March Sunday evening.
‘It’s not a stupid question,’ said Elka Willems, attempting to provoke some reaction from the woman who had just seen her son in a mortuary drawer and who was anxious to get back to Greenock to arrange the flowers in the Chapel. ‘The note giving your name and address could have been in his wallet for some time, during which time he might have married, in which case…’
&
nbsp; ‘He didn’t marry,’ said Mrs Wroe, with a sharpness, curtness, which surprised Elka Willems and made her think, somewhat cynically, she conceded, that there might be life after death after all. Elka Willems wondered what had happened to Mrs Wroe in the last twenty years that the spirit of a heavy drinker had been battered out of her, leaving just an empty shell with the occasional propensity towards curtness, and then only if pushed far enough.
‘What,’ she asked, ‘was Eddie doing for the last twelve months?’
‘Living in the city,’ she said. ‘He didn’t tell me much. He never asked me for money, he didn’t send me any either, even when he knew I was in the Army and paying five pounds a week for my uniform, and that had to come out of my benefit.’
‘What about Eddie’s father, would he know?’
‘I never knew which one was Eddie’s father,’ she said with disarming honesty.
‘I see.’
‘Do you think I’ll be back for six o’clock?’
Elka Willems glanced at her watch. 17.10. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I should think so.’
Chapter 3
Sunday, 18.00–Monday, 02.30 hours
Richard King thought that Ray Sussock looked pleased with himself. As well he might, he added as an afterthought. King had to concede that it was neat, very neat. Victim identified, murder weapon found, prints lifted, which in the event proved to be those of a known felon, one Shane Dodemaide. Not only was Dodemaide a known felon but he was a known felon with convictions for violence, and not only that, but he was a known felon who was known to the deceased.
They shared a common address.
King, chubby, bearded, twenty-five years of age, sat in front of Sussock’s desk and nodded appreciatively. Yes, he had to concede that it was very, very neat.
‘Murders are always grubby.’ Sussock spoke with an air of self-satisfied authority. Outside rain fell, splattering on the office window; if either man looked sideways towards the window he would see his reflection and beyond that the lights of the city in the early evening darkness. ‘I dare say you’ve found that out for yourself by now, Richard. Far more often than not, they are usually wrapped up in a matter of hours, days at the outside. As in this case.’
‘Certainly seems clear-cut.’ King glanced over Sussock’s notes still in legible longhand awaiting typing. ‘What’s the next step?’
‘Go and bring in Mr Dodemaide.’ Sussock leaned back in his chair, causing it to creak. ‘Fondle his collar, ask him what he knows about the murder of Mr Eddie Wroe.’
‘Has the deceased been positively identified?’ King asked, sensing Sussock to be savouring every moment of his success.
‘Waiting for Elka Willems to come back to me. Ought not to be too long now.’ He glanced at the black telephone on his desk. ‘We’ll wait for her to return or phone in with the result and then we’ll go and lift Mr Dodemaide.’
‘I presume that we’d still pick him up anyway, Sarge? I mean, his prints being on the murder weapon.’
‘Oh yes, certainly, I’d just like to make sure that we are charging him with the murder of Eddie Wroe and not the murder of another as yet unidentified person. But it has to be Wroe—just look at the list of p.c.‘s we got from Scottish Criminal Records at Pitt Street and the addresses thereon. Both live at the same address in Belmont Street in Kelvinbridge, both have p.c.‘s for robbery, and Dodemaide went down for a wee stretch for assault to severe injury. Eddie Wroe was twenty years of age, Dodemaide is twenty-one, both have convictions going back to when they were fifteen, all petty stuff, opening lockfast premises right through to possession of narcotics, given a modest fine for that.’
‘Says a lot,’ said King. ‘I mean, if they were given a modest fine for possession, it means that they’re addicts and the amount in question was minute. Any larger an amount and the slightest suggestion of dealing and they would both have gone down for a few years.’ King looked sideways at his reflection and thought that his beard needed trimming. ‘Just as you said, Sarge. What do you think happened—one smackhead knifes another in a petty argument?’
‘I’m thinking along those lines. I know what their address is going to be like; young wasted bodies lying about, bucket full of vomit in the centre of the room, a streak of blood up the wall where one smackhead has punctured an artery. Tread carefully, Richard.’
‘Am I doing it?’ King smiled.
‘Well, you are the back shift for your sins and I am handing over a neat “package”.’ Sussock raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ll hang on until WPC Willems feeds back, just to satisfy myself that the victim has been properly identified, and I’ll leave it from then on in your most capable hands. Obviously, I’d like to stay to see it to the end, but it appears to be straightforward enough.’
‘Well, he’s certainly got some explaining to do,’ King conceded, closing the file and placing it on Sussock’s desk.
‘He hasn’t half,’ said Sussock. ‘He hasn’t half.’
It was a large room, a darkly stained, large, heavy door at one end, and, at the other, a bay window of tall sheets of glass. The floor was covered in an Axminster carpet. At either side of the room shelves of books reached from floor to ceiling. A large rectangular table stood in the centre. There was a bowl of flowers on the table. A man sat at the table. He was powerfully built, broadchested, thick muscular arms, a bald head with a band of silver hair running from above each ear round the back of his head. He was cleaning the barrel of a revolver. A woman stood beside him. She was short of stature, short hair, plainly cut, like a girl from an orphanage; she wore a floral patterned skirt, a white lace blouse. She wrung her hands and closed her eyes as if close to weeping. ‘Please!’ she said.
‘No.’ The man didn’t look at her as he pulled the cloth through the barrel of the revolver.
‘You haven’t seen her, you don’t know how bad she is, a doctor…’
‘There’ll be no doctors.’ The man spoke slowly, quietly, softly, menacingly. There was no hint of compromise. ‘We’ve been through this before. I’m not prepared to go through it again.’
‘You can’t say that when you haven’t seen her…or heard her, the noise she makes…she’s like a woman possessed.’
‘It’ll pass. In a few days it will have passed. It’s hysteria and nothing more.’
‘Hysteria! She’s doubled up, writhing on the floor. She’s making sounds from deep inside her throat and that’s only because she keeps her teeth gritted so she won’t scream with the agony.’
The man laid the gun down on the velvet cloth which covered the old table and looked up at the woman. He thought her pathetic. He remembered her twenty years ago when they were still newly lovers, then she had had some spark, some vitality, some personality. But not now, now she was a wimpish timid creature, without any backbone, now she would cower when he looked at her. She was a great disappointment to him. It was too late to divorce now and it would look bad; he would keep her at home out of harm’s way. Thank the Lord, he thought, thank the Lord that they had had but the one child. A mother like this creature was not a thing any man could wish on any child. One child to resent him was enough, to resent him for providing it with such a weak mother. Heavens, she was more like a little sister to Veronica than she was like a mother. Even from the earliest days, she would give in to the child.
‘Don’t look at me like that, David,’ she whimpered, interrupting his thoughts. ‘I don’t like it when you look at me like that. Your eyes are so steely cold, it upsets me. I never know what you are thinking, but it doesn’t look pleasant. Can’t you have good thoughts about me and Veronica? I try; I put some fresh flowers on your table…’
‘I noticed,’ the man growled as he laid the gun down and picked up another identical weapon.
‘Veronica…’
‘No.’
‘David…’
‘There’ll be no doctors. I want no outside help. We don’t need it. She doesn’t need it. That is final. It’ll do her good, it’s called cold caring. If a man
comes home drunk and falls flat on his face, you leave him there so he wakes up confronted by his own drink problem; you don’t clean him up and put him to bed so he wakes up in clean sheets. That just helps him to avoid the problem. Veronica got herself into this mess. She’ll have to get herself out of it. She’ll think twice before doing it again.’
‘I’ll need to stay with her tonight and tomorrow, and as long as it takes.’
‘No.’
‘I must.’
‘No, it’ll make her worse! She’ll just play up to your attention. What you are seeing is just hysterical nonsense.’
‘It isn’t, sir…’
The man’s jaw dropped. My God, that just took the cake…that just took the cake. Now she was calling him, her husband, ‘sir’. No wonder Veronica was so hysterical. If this was his weak-willed mother, he’d be hysterical as well.
‘It’s no worse than ‘flu.’
‘Are you a doctor now?’
A bit of fight—not bad—if he pushed her enough, she might even stamp her foot.
‘No, I’m not, and you know fine well that I’m not. I’m a lawyer and a damn good one and you’ve done well out of my success, not that you’re the slightest bit grateful. Perhaps you ought to have married a primary school teacher and had a new secondhand car once every five years and a foreign holiday every ten years. Maybe then…’
The woman began to weep.
Just get out. Go back to your snivelling daughter…but I want you in the house tonight, beside me, in my bed, between me and the wall, where you belong.’
The woman nodded her head vigorously and then scurried out of the room with quick, apologetic little steps.
Elka Willems drove into the rear car park of P Division police station. She entered the building and went upstairs to the CID corridor. She tapped on Sussock’s door and entered his office. Sussock sat at his desk, Richard King sat in front of it.
‘Just handing over the Eddie Wroe case,’ said Sussock, ‘among a few other things.’ He smiled at her. ‘I presume it is Edward Wroe?’
And Did Murder Him Page 4