‘Next is a burglary, theft and damage. You know the scene—spray-painted the walls, urinated and defecated everywhere. Quite a big team, going by the damage, and a nasty job. I’ve sent the report of the M.O. to the Collator to see if he can tie it up with any other similar burglaries or known felons who do this sort of thing. I’ve left word with Forensic, asking them to visit to dust for prints.’
‘Right,’ said Sussock, ‘We’ll leave that on one side until we get word from Forensic and the Collator.’
‘Finally, a mugging.’ Montgomerie handed the last file to Sussock and spoke from memory. ‘Two old ladies on their way back from a Bible study group; they got rolled, right outside our front door, in fact, as they were crossing the footbridge at Charing Cross.’
‘Lost much?’
‘Lost their confidence ever to go out at night again, but in terms of hard cash, just four pounds, which is more to them than it is to either you or me. One lady—they’re sisters—one lady is badly shaken and the Welfare people are looking after her. The other has broken bones, which at her advanced years could prove to be fatal.’
‘Could be murder?’
‘Be worth a try if she croaks. We got a murder conviction on those two neds who broke into the old lady’s house and so frightened her that it induced a heart attack.’
‘Yes. We also lost it when they appealed against the conviction. But, as you say, if a causal link can be established, then it’s worth it. Make them sweat for a week or two before the trial, at least. They’ll think twice before mugging a pensioner again.’
‘That’s only if we catch ‘em. Talking of old stories, it’s the one you’ve heard before—no witnesses, no identification other than that they were young and that there were two of them.’
‘Be druggies, I guess.’
‘Well, again it’s down to Forensic. We found the handbag—it was discarded after it had been rifled; if Forensic can lift any prints, we’re up and running. We get to know all the druggies sooner or later and they’re all equally careless.’
Sussock grunted.
‘Well, that’s me, Sarge.’ Montgomerie stood. ‘I’ll sign off now, if there’s nothing else.’
The girl lay on the bed. She stared out of the bolted-down window at the low grey clouds scudding over the hill, heavy with rain. Her body was racked with pain, like drills; she closed her eyes and imagined drills, not just small dentists’ drills but big masonry drills or slowly turning carpenters’ drills, grinding into the joints of her limbs, her shoulders, her elbows, her knees, her ankles, and the cramps in her stomach gripping, easing off, gripping again. She turned and buried her face in the pillow and felt the moisture of her brow as it came into contact with the pillowcase, and the moisture of the bed linen dampened with the endless perspiration which pumped out of her pores. Beside the bed was the bowl and in the bowl was vomit, her vomit. It wasn’t proper vomit, not healthy substantial vomit in which can be recognized half-digested food; it was all liquid, colourless, a little gelatinous, but almost wholly clear liquid, being the water she had consumed but couldn’t retain. She had drunk it the previous evening, two bottles of mineral water, to counteract the sweating and it had come back on her at intervals during the night. She tossed and turned, tried to keep it down, but eventually it had come up her gullet; clear water, mostly.
She turned back from the pillow and looked up at the grey sky and the dawning of another day. Her long black hair lay pushed up over the back of the pillow behind her head. She kept it there, out of the way; she didn’t want puke in it.
Another hour, maybe. The girl looked at the clock beside her bed. 07.30. Yes, about another hour and she’ll come in, opening the door with a blast of cold air. They didn’t need to lock her in, the cold air and lack of clothing kept her near the radiator. She’ll come in—an innocent flat round face which always reminded the girl of faces in mediaeval tapestries. She even had the page-boy hairstyle to set it off”, but she was too old, this woman, to make the page-boy style look fetching and she just looked prim. She was prim; that’s why she looked prim, in a cotton dress and a cardigan and flat shoes over thick tights, and concerned eyes. She probably was concerned, but if she had only stood up to him or had stepped in when she was standing up to him instead of cringing there, whimpering in the corner, wringing her hands while the words flew backwards and forwards prior to the blows flying in one direction…if only she had stood up to him, then she herself would not be lying here in this wooden torture chamber. Soon she would come in, gently peeking her head round the door as though she was visiting a patient in hospital, only she wouldn’t be carrying flowers or a bag of grapes, but a tray of food, poached egg on toast—‘Here we are, dear, your favourite; and the paper—the Woman’s Herald is good today.’
Poached eggs on toast, her favourite. The girl looked up at the wooden beams above her head and smelled the creosote as she breathed in through her nose, fighting a sudden cramp in her stomach, her stomach which would soon be in receipt of a poached egg on a slice of toast, her favourite meal, being the only meal she could keep down. And a mug of tea, don’t forget the tea.
Montgomerie didn’t feel tired, possibly because he had slept a little towards the end of the shift, possibly because he had slept late the previous day and by the time he signed off duty at 08.00, he had been awake for less than ten hours. He returned to his flat and picked up the mail; two bills and a circular. One bill from the Gas Board was red; he laid that on one side. The other, from the South of Scotland Electricity Board, was blue. He tossed it contemptuously into the waste-bin along with the circular. He washed, changed his shirt, hustled a hot breakfast, two rashers of bacon, well past their ‘sell by’ date and a can of beans.
More coffee.
The incident of the two elderly sisters mugged for four pounds had reached him. He was not often affected by incidents, but that one had reached home. He sat sipping the coffee and listened to the radio, waiting until the clock ticked round to 11.00 and opening time. At five to eleven he left his flat just off Highburgh Road and drove across the city to the Round Toll. He parked the car next to a patch of waste ground and went into a bar called the Gay Gordon.
There were not, in Montgomerie’s experience, many bars like the Gay Gordon left in the city. Just one room, standing on the junction of two roads; once there were tenements about it; the tenements had been torn down and just the bar was left, a pillbox of a building on the corner of an expanse of waste ground, all rubbish tips and marram grass, ‘awaiting development’. Inside the Gay Gordon, the horsehair had been pulled out of upholstery and the stools and tables were fastened to the floor with chains as much to prevent them from being liberated for use as household furnishings as to prevent them being used as weapons in the inevitable Friday-night rammy. The television set, fastened high up on the wall, with both the volume and colour turned up too loudly, beamed in a picture from another planet; a horse being led around a paddock in an English shire, prior to racing.
Tuesday Noon sat in the far corner of the room beneath the television set. He nodded as Montgomerie entered the bar. Montgomerie walked across the sawdust to the gantry and ordered a double whisky and a soda water with lime, heavy on the lime. He took the drink and walked across to where Tuesday Noon was sitting and sat opposite him. The older man took the whisky, drank it down neat in one go and rasped hot breath across the table at Montgomerie.
‘Christ, Tuesday! It’s not even midday yet.’
Montgomerie drank the soda and lime.
Tuesday Noon grinned, a red face of whiskies and matted silver silver hair, a black mouth with a few yellow pegs going up and down.
‘And it’s time for your annual bath, Tuesday.’ Montgomerie cradled the glass in his lap. ‘Maybe I should just take you in on all those outstanding warrants for all those unpaid fines, get you cleaned up and your clothes deloused. As it is, you’re a hazard to public health. You could do with the doctor’s needle in your backside again. When did you last get your pr
otein fix? More than a year since you’ve been in the slammer, isn’t it? I’m being too good to you, Tuesday, far too good.’
Tuesday Noon pushed the glass across the table towards Montgomerie and grinned a near-toothless grin.
‘You know the rules, Tuesday. You get a drink if and when I get a result. Mind you, you can have this soda and lime if you want. I don’t want it.’
Tuesday Noon sat back against the bench.
‘Tuesday, last night when you and all other good men and true were safe abed, two neds rolled two old ladies for the princely sum of four quid. That’s about one-tenth of what it would take to get you good and drunk. And it’s about one-tenth of what I’ll give you if you can point me in the direction of said neds. One old lady is in hospital with broken bones, the other is in a home in a state of shock. I want the men who did it.’
Tuesday Noon nodded. He said he’d keep his eyes and ears open.
‘Oh, do more than that, Tuesday. Start sniffing around, start hunting.’
‘All right, Mr Montgomerie.’
Montgomerie stood. ‘It’s not a serious crime as crimes go, but on this occasion, like I said, there’s a good drink in it for you if you come up with the goods.’
‘All right, Mr Montgomerie.’
Montgomerie turned to leave the bar.
‘Oh, Mr Montgomerie…’
‘What is it, Tuesday?’
‘Don’t suppose you’ll be interested, but I saw Mr Bentley in his Bentley on Sunday morning.’
‘So who he and what of he?’
‘He’s a solicitor. He instructed my defence counsel when I went down for that five-year stretch.’
‘No wonder you recognized him.’
‘Well, he was tearing down Bath Street in his big blue Bentley, Mr Bentley in a Bentley.’
‘So?’
‘At about six in the morning. I mean burning rubber, shooting red lights.’
Montgomerie shrugged. ‘Don’t read into things, Tuesday, such habits are dangerous. He probably just wanted to get home before his lady wife woke up to find that he’d been out on the ran-dan all night.’
Only when he was home and climbing into his bed did Montgomerie wonder that Tuesday Noon was doing in Bath Street at 6.0 a.m. on Sunday morning.
Chapter 7
Wednesday, 13.00–17.30 hours
Donoghue reached forward and picked up the tall silver coffee-pot which stood on the table in the centre of Findlater’s office. He replenished his cup and replaced the pot on the table. Donoghue longed to draw out his pipe, but Findlater was the Chief Superintendent and so the boss; Findlater didn’t approve of smoking in his office. He also said that his plants didn’t like it. He possessed two huge rubber plants, one at either side of the office window, and since the Chief Superintendent had on occasions been found chatting amicably to the said vegetables, then Donoghue reasoned the plants’ wishes as well as the Chief Superintendent’s had most certainly to be respected.
Findlater was a huge man who moved softly and easily; likewise he replenished his cup and relaxed back into the easy chair. Findlater had risen from the rank of constable in his native Elgin to Chief Superintendent in Glasgow within a respectable thirty years of unblemished and uninterrupted service. He had by then turned his office into a den; there were the plants, there was a photograph of the upper reaches of the Tay and a second photograph showing the Chief Superintendent in a felt hat, casting a fly over a Borders stream. He was a contented man, sliding gently towards retirement.
‘So it’s not so open and shut then, Fabian?’ ‘Not a bit of it, sir.’ Donoghue sipped his coffee. The young man was found murdered on Sunday morning, three mornings ago. A knife, which could have been the murder weapon and which could as easily not have been, was found near the body. Fingerprints lifted from the knife belonged to a known petty felon who was a mate of the deceased. They lived in the same miserable squat, shared a girl and probably shared each other’s works as well.’
‘Ah yes, both were heroin addicts. Up to this point, it did appear to be open and shut.’
‘So we thought at the time, sir.’
‘Then things became muddier?’
‘To say the least, sir. Dr Reynolds pointed out that the deceased, Eddie Wroe, had been murdered elsewhere. His body had lain face up until rigor had set in. The rigor was then broken and the body moved, probably to where it was found. Death was due to stabbing and the wounds could have been made by the knife found by the body, which was covered in the deceased’s blood, incidentally.’
‘Incidentally.’ Findlater glanced lovingly at his rubber plants. ‘So if the murderer dumped both the body and the knife with Shane—what’s his name…?’
‘Dodemaide,’ said Donoghue, ‘Shane Dodemaide.’
‘Yes, Dodemaide, then if the body and the knife had Dodemaide’s prints on it, then such an act could only have been done to implicate Dodemaide and throw us off the scent.
‘My reasoning exactly, sir.’
‘And I noted when reading the file that Dr Kay’s findings tie in neatly with Dr Reynolds’s.’
‘Yes, sir. Dr Kay was able to inform us that the body lay on a greasy, oily surface and suggested, for example, the floor of a garage.’
‘Anything of interest in their…er…home?’
‘Only their lady-friend, sir, present whereabouts unknown. She apparently moved in to the squat right out of the blue, stayed for a few weeks and left equally neatly. Our inquiries indicate her name to be Veronica…and her background somewhat privileged.’
‘You’re searching for her?’
‘Yes, sir. I feel that she’s a stone that will be worth turning over. In fact, I’ve got Abernethy working on it right now. Shouldn’t take him too long. Just two phone calls, in fact. We understand her to have been a law student at one of the universities. She must have “dropped out”, as I understand the term to be, from any one of four years’ intake of students at either university.’
‘Two phone calls, as you say. Are you missing a female student called Veronica?’
‘Who is tall and dark-haired,’ said Donoghue. ‘That’s the description we have been given.’
‘Shouldn’t be too difficult. What else do you intend to do?’
‘I’d like to drive out to see Shane Dodemaide. He’s been remanded on a murder charge for forty-eight hours now; should have focused his thoughts nicely. I’d like to see what he has to say about the matter.’
Abernethy read over the report and thought it satisfactory. It was full without being long-winded, he’d put himself into it, offered reasoned and qualified opinion and observation, but had made no judgement. Yes, he was not displeased with it. He signed it and left his desk and walked down the CID corridor to DI Donoghue’s office. He found the door open and the office empty. He entered and slid his report into Donoghue’s in-tray. He turned.
Donoghue stood in the doorway. ‘Yes, Abernethy?’ He had a number of files under his arm.
‘The report on the suicide, sir,’ Abernethy stammered. He was youthful, uncertain, still in his early twenties, very, very young for a plain clothes officer, but the potential was all there, at least to Donoghue’s eyes and evidently to the eyes of the promotion board as well.
‘Ah yes, I’ll glance over it, but in future, take anything for my attention downstairs and leave it in my pigeonhole. I know it’s convenient to walk along the corridor and pop it into my in-tray, but it’s a little undiplomatic. I control what goes into my in-tray. That’s the way it works.’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
Donoghue walked past Abernethy and dropped the files on his desktop. He reached hungrily for his pipe. ‘Any word from the universities on the girl?’ He played the flame of the cigarette lighter over the pipe bowl, sucking and blowing as he did so.
‘Not yet, sir, I don’t think that they’ll be too long. I emphasized that it was a murder inquiry.’
‘Good.’ Donoghue settled into his chair, enjoying the pipe. ‘If you’d let
me know as soon as you hear anything.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Abernethy walked back down the CID corridor to the detective-constables’ room. The phone on his desk was ringing. He picked it up. ‘Abernethy,’ he said.
‘Glasgow University holding for you, sir,’ said the controller’s voice.
‘Oh yes.’
‘Law Faculty, Glasgow, here,’ said an efficient female voice. ‘I hope you don’t mind us calling you back, but we had to be sure that it was the police to whom we are giving the information.’
‘Of course,’ said Abernethy, ‘we’re anxious to trace this young lady.’
‘So are we.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. We have actually reported her to the police as a missing person. The police followed up by visiting her home address and we got a flea in our ear from her irate father— we had no right to report her missing without consulting him. Actually we did both at the same time, told the police and informed him.’
‘You didn’t check that she hadn’t returned home?’
‘We did. In fact, I made the call. Spoke to Veronica’s mother. She said that Veronica wasn’t at home, by which she meant that Veronica hadn’t returned home. So on that basis, we alerted the police. The lady sounded a little timid and indecisive, but she certainly told her husband because he came on the phone a few minutes later, phoning from his place of work, roaring like a bear with a sore head. He didn’t seem so concerned about his daughter so much as he was furiously indignant that we hadn’t consulted him. But we had consulted one of the parents—that was enough for us.’
‘So who is she?’
‘Girl called Veronica Bentley.’
Abernethy held the phone between his ear and shoulder as he scribbled on his pad.
‘She was, still is, I hope, a second-year student, twenty years old. She apparently did a very good first year but then seemed to lose all interest and confidence. She lost all motivation, neglected her appearance, stopped attending lectures, tutorial attendance became worryingly infrequent, until finally she was noticeable only by her absence. We inquired of her friends but they knew nothing of her whereabouts. She had vanished.’
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