And Did Murder Him

by Turnbull, Peter

  The same voice also told King that the mysterious Veronica might well be a stone worth turning over. She seemed a puzzling figure, coming in from nowhere in the deep mid-winter and leaving equally silently, just slipping away as the rain fell in springtime. She was apparently not involved in the murder of Eddie Wroe, having left the miserable squat before the murder had taken place, but she was known to both victim and accused, she had lived with both in every sense, probably was stolen by one from the other. No, he thought, no, probably she wasn’t, probably she lived with both quite openly and Eddie Wroe and Shane Dodemaide both equally openly enjoyed the mysterious high-born Veronica, as she enjoyed their heroin in return. It was the way King had learned that smack-heads live: smack is the only currency.

  He rose from his desk and went to the corner of the room and switched on the electric kettle. He made himself a mug of coffee and returned to his desk to write a full report, as full and well-rounded as possible and offering observations, with respect.

  Montgomerie awoke. He awoke with a thick head, a head which in fact felt like a lump of lead and a throat which felt like the bottom of a birdcage. He turned to one side, towards the window of his bedroom. Outside it was dark and the rain streamed down the window-pane. Street lamps shimmered below his window and a bus hissed over the wet surface of the road. He glanced at the luminous dial of the clock on his bedside cabinet: 10.0 p.m. He had to be at work, on duty, in one hour’s time. He still wore his shirt, he had fallen asleep in the shirt that he had worn throughout the day. The rest of his clothing was strewn about the floor of his bedroom. He felt like a slob. He told himself that he was a slob, a slob who never ever seemed to learn from his own mistakes. You know the rules, Montgomerie, he said to himself, turning once again to look at the ceiling, you know them fine well. Lay off the alcohol when you are on night duty. It’s a golden rule, pure solid gold. You come off duty at 7.0 a.m., don’t hang around, straight home, straight into your pit, you know the routine, you can do it by numbers. Grab six hours of good nourishing alcohol-free sleep, wake up to enjoy the afternoon and evening, plenty to do, plenty to catch up on; if you’ve time on your hands you can always take in a film in the evening, but whatever you do, you start work refreshed and alert and sober at 11.0 p.m. Seven days in a row. Apart from anything else, think of the money you save and of the benefit to your liver.

  Yet you do this. You fancy a pint and so you have one and then you get the taste and you keep drinking until you’re legless and it’s costing you money, it’s costing you performance at work, it’s costing you health, it’s costing your self-esteem because here you are dragging yourself out of your pit when it’s dark outside and it’s wet outside and everybody else in the city is about to retire for the night and you are hung-over, at 10.0 p.m., staggering to the bathroom to brush your teeth, to make your mouth taste fresh and to hide your sour, stale breath; you are staggering to the kitchen to sink some coffee and groping open the fridge door to see if there’s anything cold and quick to eat, because you can’t face a big meal but you don’t know what your body will be asked to do in the next eight hours so it must have fuel of some sort. Not that you have left yourself time to prepare a meal anyway, you’ve even left it too late to make up a packed meal for your little orange-coloured plastic lunch-box, a meal that you can eat with your feet up on the desk, killing time on the graveyard shift by reading someone else’s newspaper or tackling the crossword that they couldn’t finish.

  You’re a mess, Montgomerie. You’re a pure mess.

  He washed and pulled on a clean shirt, not his favourite shirt by any means, but it was the first one that came to hand. In the kitchen he was confronted by two days of washing-up. There was, though, a clean mug and an inch of coffee left in the jar. No milk, so he fell back on the powdered stuff. The result was a steamy mess with an interesting taste; not a bit like coffee but an interesting taste none the less. In the fridge he found some chicken pieces, some bread and some butter. The shopping that he had done that morning lay unpacked in two plastic bags leaning against the wall. At least he hadn’t left them in the pub. He put the chicken pieces between two slices of buttered bread and began to eat. He pretended he was starving to death. It went down easier that way.

  He returned to the bathroom and brushed his teeth again. Just to make sure his stale breath was killed outright. He combed his hair and slung on his jacket, checked that his wallet with his ID was still in the inside pocket, and glanced in the mirror. Well, he was still there, chiselled features, downturned moustache, dark thick head of hair, but he felt older than his twenty-seven years and his normal walk of long, effortless strides was on this occasion replaced by shaky, timid steps as he made his way down the common stair, into the close mouth, into the rain to where he had parked his car.

  He drove cautiously, still feeling the residual effects of the day’s intake of alcohol, chewing extra strong mints as he went. All that money just to dig a hole for yourself, it wasn’t even an enjoyable drink, it was a good bucket right enough, but not enjoyable because you were by yourself, talking to yourself, inside your head, talking to yourself No, there was the merchant seaman. He remembered the merchant seaman; for a while they had talked to each other.

  Malcolm, Malcolm.

  Sitting in his car in a side street in Rutherglen listening to the rain pitter-patter on the roof, feeling the damp in his socks where his shoes had let in water and watching the light from the bungalow shimmering through the drizzle, Detective-Sergeant Raymond Sussock, aged almost sixty years, having recently been granted an extension of service, gripped the steering-wheel and told himself that there was no road round it. No road at all.

  He pulled on his gloves and twisted his trilby down tight around his lean skull and stepped out of the car. The rain fell vertically on his shoulders. He thrust his hands in his coat pockets, hunched up against the rain and walked towards the house lights that had once in his life been a welcome sight. He walked to the side door of the bungalow. He heard a television playing inside the house, the volume turned up much too loud. He knocked on the door and upon his knock the volume was turned down. A mellow male voice came to the door, too mellow in Sussock’s opinion for the tender years of its owner. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me,’ growled Sussock.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ The voice behind the door rose to a near-hysterical scream. ‘It’s him. Daddy!’

  Sussock heard a high-pitched scream from within the house. He hammered on the door.

  ‘It’s still him,’ yelled Sussock, utterly unconcerned about the neighbours hearing the altercation. ‘If he doesn’t come through the door he can just as easily come through the window. You hear?!’

  A bolt was drawn from behind the door and a chain fell away. The door opened. Samuel stood there, tall, slim, with rings in the lobes of each ear, a black pullover tucked into the waistband of his trousers, smooth hands rendered hairless by the use of the lotions on Mrs Sussock’s dressing-table. ‘Hello, Daddy,’ he said, smiling.

  Sussock pushed past him and was confronted by his wife. She was a small woman with a pinched face and glaring eyes.

  She enjoyed hating. Sussock had realized that a long time ago.

  He glared back at her.

  ‘What do you want?’ She spat the words at him.

  He remained silent. Holding her stare, allowing her hostility to wash over him, like a wave breaking around a rock. It was easy now, after all these years.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Sussock advanced on her.

  ‘What do you want, what do you want, what do you want? Why come back here, why aren’t you catching robbers? Never was any good, was he, Sammy?’

  ‘Never, Mummy,’ said Samuel, smiling as he looked on at the spectacle unfolding in the kitchen.

  ‘Always out, out with his mates. Never here, not ever, was he, Sammy?’

  ‘Never, Mummy.’

  The shrew began to back up as Sussock advanced. She backed out of the kitchen, spitting words, l
ike a cornered cat. She backed up the threshold of the living-room where she stood her ground. ‘Not getting in here. Nothing of yours in here.’

  Sussock walked past her down the hall and opened the door of a small box-room. He switched on the light and began to rummage through some cardboard boxes, collecting items of clothing as he did so, lighter summer clothing, a white raincoat which he enjoyed wearing. Then he walked back down the corridor, back to the kitchen, back towards the side door of the bungalow. Samuel sneered at him as he went past.

  Sussock turned. ‘Not be long now, son.’

  ‘Not be long until what. Daddy, eh?’

  ‘Till the divorce comes through, then I’ll raise an action for Division and Sale and sell the property. Then you’re on the street.’

  ‘We’ll survive, me and Mother,’ said Samuel. ‘Don’t worry about us.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Sussock. ‘Not any more. I wonder now why I ever did.’

  The door was slammed shut behind him.

  ‘Soon,’ said the whimpering woman, ‘soon, you can come into the house, maybe tomorrow. I spoke to Daddy. He’s not a bad man. He says it’s just like having ‘flu. I brought you an extra blanket. He doesn’t know that you’ve got it. He wouldn’t want you to have it, but I know how cold it can get during the night.’

  And the sweating, shivering young woman nodded as she clutched her stomach, accepting what was said to her, but complained that it wasn’t like ‘flu, not like having ‘flu at all, she couldn’t say what it was like but it was ten times worse than anything you could imagine, and if it was hysterical why were the cramps so intense and why did the bones ache so much, and if it was hysterical why were her clothes and her sheets damp with sweat? That wasn’t hysteria.

  ‘But Daddy says it is.’ The woman wrapped her arms around her daughter. ‘Grit your teeth. If you scream and shout again you’ll have to stay here. You’ll never get back in the house. I’m going now. I’ll turn the light off. Good night.’

  Elka Willems signed off at 11.00 p.m. She drove home to Langside, to her home, just a room and kitchen which she had decorated in pastel shades and a Van Gogh print on the wall adjacent to the bed. She parked her car and entered the close and walked up the common stair and enjoyed the smell of disinfectant which assailed her. There was nothing more pleasing than a clean stair. She turned the stair and saw her landing and saw him standing there, dripping, a parcel of clothing in his arms. His thin, craggy face cracked into a smile. She paused and returned the smile and then walked up the stair and stood in front of him. She kissed him. ‘Been here long?’

  ‘About half an hour,’ he said. Nearer two was more accurate.

  ‘Poor old Sussock,’ she said. ‘Dear poor old Sussock.’ She turned the key in the lock of the door of her flat.

  Chapter 6

  Tuesday, 21.10–Wednesday, 13.00 hours

  Even then it was a dog of a shift: a real bitch.

  He found Richard King waiting in the CID room, hat and coat on, ready to depart. King looked disapprovingly at him as he entered the room.

  ‘So I’m late.’ Montgomerie peeled off his yellow and blue ski jacket. ‘Ten minutes. I mean, what’s ten minutes?’

  ‘Nothing compared to your breath, my son.’ King rose from his seat. ‘Been on the batter, have we?’

  ‘Yes, “we” have. Is it that bad?’

  ‘It’s like a flame-thrower.’

  ‘And I’ve been chewing strong mints like there’s no tomorrow.’

  ‘And that’s also what I can smell, even from here. There’s only one reason why a guy would eat mints in that quantity. I mean, you may as well let them smell the hot breath of the really crucial bevvy merchant without adulterating it with mint.’

  Montgomerie sank into the chair in front of his desk with clumsy uncoordinated movements.

  ‘Talk about bleary-eyed!’ said King. ‘Bloodshot, more like!’

  ‘Give it a rest, will you?’ Montgomerie laid his head in his hands. ‘It’s just one of those things. Make me a cup of coffee, will you?’

  ‘No.’ King buttoned his coat.

  ‘Cup of coffee for a dying soldier?’

  ‘No. I’m going home.’

  ‘You’re all heart, you know that?’

  ‘Yes, and it belongs at home with wife and child, my son, and it’s not to be used for propping up derelicts like you. You’ll be pleased to know that there’s nothing to hand over.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Not a thing, nothing lying in anticipation of your individual attention. The city sleeps. You might be able to do the same with a bit of luck.’

  Richard King left the room and Montgomerie sat in silence.

  The city was sleeping. ‘Hush! Whisper who dares,’ said Montgomerie to himself as he rose from his seat and cautiously made himself a mug of coffee. He knew this city, this red-haired Irish bitch of a city, with her two long legs straddling the Clyde and meeting at the intimacy of the grid system at her centre; this bitch didn’t really sleep, she slumbered perhaps, but slumbered with one eye open ready to rise up. Snarling.

  And she did just that at 23.41 according to the CID log, just as Montgomerie had started on his third mug of coffee.

  The phone on his desk rang. He glared at it for a second and then reluctantly took his feet off the desktop, reached for his notebook and pen, picked up the receiver and said, ‘CID.’

  ‘Uniform bar, sir,’ said the voice on the phone. ‘CID attendance requested by Tango Delta Foxtrot. They’re at the GRI Casualty. Involves a mugging.’

  ‘On my way.’ Montgomerie put the phone down, grabbed his coat, slid another mint between his teeth and chomped it in two, despite King’s opinion on the matter. He drove across Glasgow. Street lights shimmered in the rain and glistened on the wet road surface. The streets were heavy with late night traffic, but the pavements were empty, mostly. Just a group of women on heels and under umbrellas, talking on a corner; a few men, collars turned against the rain; a few drunks too legless even to notice the rain.

  At the Casualty Department of the GRI a young-looking doctor with a university tie and a white coat said, ‘Two old ladies. One has been sent to theatre, she has multiple fractures, the other is in here. She has shock.’

  ‘Are the injuries serious?’

  ‘At their time of life they are potentially fatal; even the lady who is just in a state of shock.’ The doctor thrust his hands deep into the pocket of his coat.

  A scream suddenly pierced the Casualty ward. Montgomerie glanced up.

  ‘Fellow ran into a plate glass window,’ said the doctor. ‘Ran, or was pushed. Anyway, he’s lucky to be alive, no major organs or arteries penetrated, but he’s a shrapnel job from top to toe and it’s all got to be pulled out, sliver by sliver, and some of them are four or five inches long.’

  ‘Painful.’

  ‘Very—and slow. Can’t snap the glass when extracting it, and it’s got to be a meticulous square inch by square inch search of his flesh because glass will not show up on X-ray. I put two experienced nurses on the job. It will probably take them most of the night.’

  ‘I’ll need to be careful where I step.’

  ‘Just another Tuesday, going into Wednesday,’ said the doctor, and Montgomerie realized that the man’s apparent youth belied the hard-bitten cynicism of a veteran.

  ‘Well, the old ladies. One, as I said, is in theatre. The other lady is fit to be discharged, but she’s in such a state of shock that she can’t go home because I’m pretty certain that more shock will set in soon and at a deeper level. I’ve given her a mild sedative but she’s not strong enough to be fully sedated; that could kill her. I’ve contacted the Welfare Services and they are going to admit her to an aged persons’ home for a few nights. That way she’ll be supervised and somebody will be on hand if she does go into shock again.’

  ‘Can I speak to her?’

  ‘Behind the curtain.’ The doctor nodded to a cubicle behind and to the left of him.

  �
�Miss,’ said the silver-haired lady, correcting Montgomerie and speaking in the soft lilting accent of a native of Skye. ‘We are both “Miss”, me and my sister. We never married.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  The elderly lady smiled. She had a glazed look in her eyes. She seemed to know where she was but Montgomerie detected a sense of dreamlike detachment about her perception of the present. Montgomerie recognized shock. He’d been there himself a couple of times, once in uniform and once in plain clothes.

  ‘How’s my sister?’

  ‘She has broken bones.’

  ‘That could be dangerous. I am eighty. She is seventy-seven. At our age, bones are brittle.’

  ‘I know. Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘We were hit from behind and knocked to the ground. We were walking home from the prayer meeting. We are members of the Free Presbyterian Church, you see. We were walking home across the bridge—you know, the footbridge at Charing Cross—and we were hit from behind. Sarah was knocked to the ground and her handbag was snatched. I was pushed to the railings and then I fell, but I hung on to my bag and they ran away.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘There were two, two of them.’