And Did Murder Him

by Turnbull, Peter

  Sussock sat in the chair in front of Donoghue’s desk. Donoghue smiled warmly at Sussock but thought privately that the Detective-Sergeant looked too old for the job, certainly too old for the street. He was coming up sixty, he’d won extended service, he had a thin, craggy face and a permanently tired look in his eyes.

  ‘I had a glance at the file on the Eddie Wroe murder before I went to lunch.’ Donoghue lit his pipe. ‘I can’t pretend that I’m happy, Ray; the first impressions weren’t good. I mulled it over in my mind over lunch—over my plaice and chips—and I came back and read it again, very carefully and I’m now even less happy.’

  ‘Oh?’ Sussock was genuinely disappointed. ‘I thought it was very neat.’ He coughed as the smoke from Donoghue’s pipe reached his chest.

  ‘That’s just it, Ray. You’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s too neat, it clicks along like a game of snooker until the black ball rolls smoothly into the pocket.’

  ‘But it’s all there, sir.’ Sussock grasped at straws. He needed an achievement, if only for his own self-respect, let alone his professional credibility. ‘Murder weapon with Dodemaide’s dabs all over it, a relationship within which will be the motive…It seems to me, sir, that all the questions have been answered, all i’s dotted and t’s crossed.’

  ‘Well, not quite, Ray, not quite. Let me share my doubts with you.’ Donoghue drew deeply on his briar and blew the smoke out of his mouth and noted the look of resignation which fell across the face of the older man. ‘I’m sorry to shove a spoke in your wheel, Ray, but the sooner we get it right, the less we fall, the less stupid we look. Well, in the first instance, we have an impression that the murder was impulsive, frenzied, that the locus was the location where the body was found, and that the murderer, having stabbed Eddie Wroe a number of times, ran away in a panic and threw the weapon away as he did so. Is that a fair summation, Ray?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Now, for me...’ Donoghue sat back in his chair and Sussock, paraphrasing Conan Doyle, began to feel a suspicion that this meeting was going to develop into a three-pipe kick-about. ‘For me,’ repeated Donoghue, ‘it doesn’t gel. It doesn’t gel at all. You see, we have evidence that the murder took place elsewhere and that is the key; at least I would respectfully submit that that is the key. Rigor had set in while the body was prostrate face upwards, that is clear from the pathologist’s report. Clear from the Forensic report is that the body had lain where the denim clothing had become impregnated with oil, grease, metal filings, etcetera, etcetera. Dr Kay suggests the floor of a garage. So we have to assume that Eddie Wroe was slain in a garage and that he lay where he was slain for up to twelve hours before being moved to the place where he was subsequently found by PC Hamilton. Is that a fair assumption, do you feel?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Sussock shuffled in his seat and waited with educated and accustomed patience while his senior lovingly played the flame of his lighter over the bowl of his pipe.

  ‘So...’ Donoghue snapped the chunky goldplated lighter shut and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket. ‘A dead weight, literally a dead weight, was moved. Now we’ll come on to that in a moment, but for the time being, we have a body that was dumped in a place different from the place at which it became life extinct and the apparent murder weapon was found a few feet away from where the body lay.’

  Sussock nodded. ‘I see what you are driving at, sir.’

  ‘Good. It is a rather obvious flaw, isn’t it? You move a murder victim only to conceal your own foul hand in the deed. You do not also move the murder weapon and leave it placed conveniently next to the body, especially not when it is covered with your fingerprints.’

  ‘The only reason why anybody would want to do that,’ said Sussock, embarrassed at his own lack of insight, ‘would be to point the finger of suspicion at another person. In this case, Shane Dodemaide.’

  ‘That,’ said Donoghue, nodding with approval, ‘is my view entirely.’ He drew on his pipe. The sweet-smelling tobacco filled the room and continued a relentless attack on Sussock’s crusted lungs. It was the end of March, soon it would be May, the merry month, soon he would have three or even four months of a pain-free chest until the thin winter air began to swirl about Glasgow again, usually around October. ‘I am glad we are agreed, but just to emphasize the point, I have here the postmortem report on Eddie Wroe. He stood five ten and weighed eleven stone. Not a small man. In fact, he was quite large by West of Scotland standards. Now you have had the opportunity to interview Shane Dodemaide?’

  ‘Ratty, as the Drug Squad call him. Yes, sir. Well, no, I haven’t interviewed him, but I saw him when he was taken from the cells to the Sheriff Court this morning.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Small, spindly, puny in a word.’

  ‘Is he capable of carrying a corpse like the corpse of Eddie Wroe would have been—large and heavy?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Sussock conceded. ‘Not without an accomplice or a motor vehicle.’

  ‘Do you know if he can drive?’

  ‘I don’t, sir.’

  ‘Or if he has access to a vehicle?’

  ‘Again, sir, I don’t know.’

  ‘So can you imagine the sort of mince and tatties that even a half-baked defence would make of the prosecution case of Shane Dodemaide as it stands at present?’

  ‘As it stands at present, sir, the Fiscal will lob it out of the window—it won’t even get to court.’

  ‘I’m glad we are agreed.’ Donoghue settled back in his chair. He pulled on his pipe and then took it from his mouth and examined the bowl with a look of annoyance. Then, to Sussock’s immense relief and surprise, laid the thing in the huge glass ashtray that stood on the right-hand side of his desk. ‘So where do we go from here? I have the feeling not of being robbed of something but of having just escaped the deepest of public humiliations. We have succeeded in weeding the garden. What are we left with?’

  ‘A body, sir.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Well, evidence that he was probably killed in a garage and moved—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Donoghue said testily. ‘Think people, Ray, people. The weeds have hidden a few fruit-bearing plants. What I mean is, if Shane Dodemaide was deliberately placed under suspicion by the murderer, then it is not unreasonable to assume that the murderer must have been known to both Eddie Wroe and Shane Dodemaide in some capacity.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sussock nodded.

  ‘So there is a link between them and it ain’t that one murdered t’other, ‘tis something a wee bitty more tenuous, but it’s a link. Eddie Wroe was not a small man—he wasn’t a powerfully built man either—so it’s reasonable to assume that his assailant had some beef about him.’

  ‘And access to a garage.’

  ‘Yes, and the means to take or to lure Eddie Wroe to his place of most unlawful execution.’

  ‘A large man or men, with a vehicle?’

  ‘Motive?’

  ‘As yet unknown, sir. But once we have established the link between Eddie Wroe and Shane Dodemaide—’

  ‘A link more than the fact that they shared the same damp squat and hypodermic syringes.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but as soon as we establish that link, I think we’ll also find a motive.’

  ‘So what’s to be done, Ray?’

  ‘Well, sir, I think that we should pursue the only lead that we have, we should have a chat with Shane Dodemaide and visit their place of abode.’

  Donoghue glanced at the clock on his office wall. ‘Sixteen-thirty hours. We’ll do that tomorrow, I think, Ray.’ He picked up his pipe, tapped the burnt ash into the ashtray and began to refill. ‘I don’t think that it will do Mr Dodemaide any harm to spend a few days in youth custody. It’ll focus his mind on the issue of the direction that his life is taking. It’ll bring him down to earth. I know he’s been in the can before, but it’s never comfortable. We’ll visit him tomorrow morning. He should be well strung out by then. Who’s drawn what shifts this week?
’

  ‘I’m on day shift, as you see. King is on the back shift, starting in thirty minutes in fact, and Montgomerie’s drawn the graveyard shift.’

  ‘Good. Have King see me as soon as he comes in. Thank you, Ray. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Donoghue lit his pipe.

  Sussock left the office, sparing his tortured lungs any more unnecessary suffering.

  ‘Aye, son, you know he’s done a few daft things in his life but he’d never kill anyone.’ The woman sat in the chair in a near-catatonic state. Only her mouth seemed to move, her eyes stared straight ahead and her body and her hands and her feet never moved even a fraction of an inch, not at least that Richard King was able to detect. He had arrived for the back shift at 17.00, sat at his desk, his phone had rung. Sergeant Sussock informing him that DI Donoghue wished to speak with him.

  ‘It’s the murder case, Richard,’ Donoghue had said as he fastened his light-coloured raincoat and reached for his homburg. ‘It’s not as clear-cut as Ray Sussock and you first thought, so I think we need a little background information on who appeared to be our prime suspect, Shane Dodemaide—visit his home, Richard, visit his squat.’

  ‘I’ll have to clear that with the Drug Squad, sir. The visit to the squat, I mean.’

  ‘All taken care of, Richard.’ Donoghue screwed his hat on to his head. ‘I pointed out to them that a murder inquiry rather takes priority over most everything else.’

  ‘They couldn’t argue with that, sir.’

  ‘They couldn’t and they didn’t.’ Donoghue had smiled. ‘It was all very amicable, though. If you could record anything of interest or relevance—a handwritten report will suffice for the time being. If you could crack on to that on this shift.’

  King had driven out to the Saracen, to the address that Shane Dodemaide had given as his home address when charged. He left the car on the main drag and walked up Killearn Street, a wide street of lowrise inter-war housing, dark and forbidding. A group of neds stood and watched him from the shadows—only one in three street lamps were working. He missed his car, but felt that it was better left on the main street. Once the word got round that there was an unattended police motor sitting in the shadows, then there wouldn’t be a great deal left for him to return to. Nothing that was driveable anyway. He climbed the concrete steps up to the door of the fifth close. The newly installed controlled entry system had already been vandalized and broken. He opened the door, the stair was dull, maroon paint up to shoulder height, cream thereafter, heavily covered with graffiti, mostly on the cream. The door with ‘Dodemaide’ embossed in gold on tartan nameplate was first floor left. King had pressed the buzzer. It didn’t work. He rapped on the door. It was opened almost immediately by a young woman.

  ‘Aye,’ she had said.

  ‘Police,’ King had said and watched the young woman’s eyes harden.

  ‘I’d like to talk to Shane Dodemaide’s parents or family.’

  ‘Well, I’m his wee sister, his ma’s in the room.’ The young woman was thinly built, about seventeen years old. King thought. She had dark, closely cropped hair, wore denims and pink stiletto shoes. She had cheap tattoos on her forearm. The hallway behind her was dark and smelled heavily of damp. ‘You’d better come in.’

  She led King down the corridor to the living-room of the house. The living-room had a wall to wall carpet that was sticky to walk on; a naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling; in the grate old bits of furniture burned, flame licked at the varnish of an old chair leg. It was a flame, but it gave little heat. In the corner of the room was a bed and lying on the bed, under dirty blankets, was an old woman with long straggly silver hair and a craggy, bearded face. In an upright dining chair by the fire was a woman, younger than the woman in the bed but older than the woman who had answered the door; she had the same worn and wasted features as the older woman. The woman in the chair didn’t glance up as King entered the room. King looked at the curtainless windows. It was now dark, night had fallen and rain was beginning to fall.

  ‘The polis, Ma,’ said the girl. She turned to King. ‘That’s my ma in the chair. On the bed, that’s my gran. She’s got cancer, so she has.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said King, surprised at the girl’s lack of sensitivity.

  ‘She can’t hear,’ the girl said, by means of explanation. She left the room, closing the door behind her.

  King had addressed the woman in the chair, who seemed to be mesmerized by the blue-yellow flame licking hungrily at the varnish of the old chair leg, a small flame which seemed to King to be clinging to life just like the old deaf woman in the bed in the corner.

  ‘It’s about Shane.’ His breath hung in the air as he spoke.

  ‘Aye,’ the woman said slowly. ‘When I had the polis at my door in the middle of the night wanting to know if he stayed here, I knew there was more trouble. I told them he didn’t stay here, but it was his home, if you ken. He normally stays in a flat in the West End.’

  ‘It’s a squat,’ said King, shivering as the insidious cold of the room began to reach his bones. ‘We can’t accept it as an address. That’s why you got knocked up in the night. You know that he’s been charged with murder?’

  ‘Aye.’ The woman continued to stare into the fire. ‘Aye, son, he’s done a few daft things in his time but he’d never kill anyone. See, my eldest boy died in a stabbing; my man—he died in an accident in the house and that was by a knife as well—bled all over this carpet and I haven’t been able to get all the blood up yet; that was ten years ago. Now Shane, he’s in gaol for stabbing someone. See, knives, son, they kill me, so they do.’

  ‘When did Shane move out?’

  ‘When he turned sixteen, just as soon as he could. He didn’t get on with me and I didn’t get one with him. He was bad, he was my son, but he was bad. But he’s not so bad that he’d kill anybody, so he isn’t.’

  ‘Bad?’ King remained standing. The tacky carpet was sufficient warning against sitting on the settee.

  ‘Bad, aye, bad. He got into the glue, got into the lighter fluid, got into the hairspray; went into a List D for housebreaking and he was still only thirteen. Never got out. He just used his leave to sniff glue, turn people’s windows, screw cars and steal from shops.’ Mrs Dodemaide continued to stare into the fire, only her mouth moved and even then she spoke in a monotone. On the bed, the old woman who had so far remained silent began to wheeze and cough and splutter. Then she fell silent again. ‘So he came home at sixteen, stayed for a day and then went into a flat in the West End. Not the same one he’s in now, but that was him, just moved from flat to flat, never knew what he did with his time. That was about four years ago. Have you been where he stays now?’

  ‘Aye,’ King said. ‘Did Shane ever mention a guy called Eddie Wroe?’

  Mrs Dodemaide shook her head. ‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Just another guy who lives at the same squat as Shane, at least he did until he was stabbed to death.’

  ‘So he’s the guy that Shane was supposed to have killed.’ The woman shook her head. ‘No, he never mentioned that name to me. He left at sixteen, but he never really stayed here since he was thirteen. Not like his other brother. His other brother stuck by his ma until he was stabbed in the town one night. Aye, Tommy—he was a good boy, so he was. Worked at the Casino as a doorman in a smart red uniform. Done really well for himself, so he did. See, the trouble with Shane is that he never had a father.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Not to speak of The woman continued to stare at the thin flame as it curled around the chair leg. ‘See, to let you understand, his dad was a rat. That’s when all my troubles started, twenty years ago when I married a rat. You know what happened to him right here in this room?’

  ‘He died in an accident,’ said King. ‘You said so.’

  ‘He walked out on me when Shane was five and Tracy couldn’t even walk, but he kept popping back. It was when he called back, full of the drink, Shane was about ten, he came into the room car
rying a knife, tripped on the carpet and fell on it—went right through his heart, so it did— blood everywhere. After that I was on my own. I was shot of the rat, but I never met another man so I brought the kids up alone, by myself on the social security. We never had a lot of spare pennies, so we didn’t.’ The woman fell silent as if recalling old memories. Then she continued in the same dull monotone. ‘Mind, son, I learned from it and I told my kids how to carry a knife if they were walking with it—hold it by the handle with the blade pointing upwards and beside or behind you. I dinned it into them till they did it automatically, polite as well as safe. It meant that if they ever handed a knife to someone, they hadn’t to turn it the proper way, handle first.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ said King. ‘You don’t say.’

  Chapter 5

  Monday, 18.00–23.30 hours

  Sussock sat in the armchair and considered the room; his home. It was small, with a single window which looked out on to an elevated lawn. In one corner was his bed, a divan with a fitted sheet and duvet. He had a second sheet and duvet cover and interchanged them weekly, or as near weekly as he could manage. There was a small table and a chest of drawers on the other wall and a chair in front of the table. He sat in the one armchair in the room. He found it preferable to lying on the bed staring at the ceiling.

  There were times that the bedsit seemed like a cell, where he would wake up and feel the walls closing, crushing in on him with all his life’s failures. It was a cell that he could leave in order to use the toilet which he shared with others on the landing and he could leave it to use the kitchen.

  It was a cell which he shared; in a sense. Once-large rooms had been divided by paper-thin panelling into two or more bedsitting-rooms which sound polluted badly. Consequently, Sussock was obliged to share his room with the two office juniors who had the room above his and whose hi-fi boom-boom-boomed down through his ceiling. The two boys lived together, they had thin faces with piercing eyes and earrings dangling and wore jerseys tucked into their tight jeans, and their grunts and gasps when they coupled were more distasteful to Sussock’s ears than the screams and sighs of sexual activity of the more mainstream kind which polluted from the opposite wall. The couple who lived through the opposite wall always seemed to be screaming; it seemed to Sussock as he lay alone in bed or sat in his chair, that either they screamed in sexual ecstasy or screamed in uncontrolled anger. It was one of those relationships.