And Did Murder Him

by Turnbull, Peter

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Just after Christmas.’ The voice faltered. ‘Wait a minute. I have her file here. Yes, we reported her as missing on the twenty-first of January. She hadn’t been seen for three days prior to that. She is still missing so far as we know.’

  ‘I see.’ Abernethy continued to scribble. ‘What’s her home address?’

  The Faculty Administrator gave an address in Balfron.

  ‘Married, then?’ said Abernethy.

  ‘Well, her father is David Bentley, well established solicitor in the city of Glasgow.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Abernethy. ‘Thank you very much indeed.’ He replaced the receiver and dialled a two-figure internal number.

  ‘Collator,’ said a voice on the other end of the fine.

  ‘DC Abernethy here,’ said Abernethy. ‘Enquiring in respect of one Veronica Bentley, twenty years of age. Is she still listed as an m.p.?’

  ‘One moment, please.’

  Abernethy waited. In the background he heard the soft and rapid tapping of a computer keyboard.

  ‘Yes, she is,’ said the collator. ‘Have there been developments?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Abernethy. ‘That’s all I can say at present. But thanks anyway.’ He replaced the phone and dialled another two-figure internal number.

  ‘DI Donoghue,’ said a crisp voice in Abernethy’s ear.

  ‘Abernethy, sir. The girl in question seems to be one Veronica Bentley, address in Balfron, daughter of David Bentley, solicitor.’

  ‘Not only that, but one of the city’s foremost solicitors. I know him, or rather know of him. If a felon engages the services of David Bentley, then the Fiscal’s Office knows that it’s in for a battle if they’re going to secure a conviction. He does a lot of Legal Aid work for the humble and the lowly. He is on record as saying that it helps to keep him versatile.’

  ‘I see, sir. Veronica Bentley was reported as missing on the twenty-first of January and is still on the m.p. list.’

  ‘I see. Well, another bit of the jigsaw slots into place, or does it muddy the waters even more?’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘Never mind. Write that information up, will you, and place it in the file on Eddie Wroe. The file’s here on my desk.’

  The soil in Lanarkshire is notoriously stony. Before the advent of fertilizers, the farmers of the county used to divide their land into parallel strips of three. The topsoil from the two outside strips was placed on the centre strip, thus providing sufficient soil with which to cultivate crops. Such strips of land were known as Long Riggs. At the site of the end of one such Long Rigg, long since disappeared, the Scottish Office built a Junior Remand Centre. On a Wednesday in early April, Detective-Inspector Donoghue and Detective-Sergeant Sussock drove out to Longriggend Remand Centre to interview Shane Dodemaide, remanded by the Glasgow Sheriff, having been charged with the murder of Eddie Wroe.

  ‘It wasnae me,’ said Dodemaide.

  ‘Thought you might say that.’ Donoghue relaxed in his chair. Beside him, Sussock shuffled uncomfortably. Shane Dodemaide sat shivering, huddled against the radiator that was built into the wall of the ‘agent’s room’. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead, he clutched his arms about his chest, the blue-striped, heavy gauge cotton shirt fitted him badly; it was baggy and outsize.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t.’ Dodemaide ran the back of his hand under his nose. ‘They say it’s no worse than a dose of ‘flu, but how would they know. They say it’s in my head, but I didn’t know my head was in my belly and in my arms and legs.’

  ‘So who stabbed Eddie Wroe?’ Donoghue said, quietly. ‘Who stabbed him half a dozen times, if not your goodself, and how come your prints are on the knife that we found by the body?’

  Shane Dodemaide shook his head as he clenched his teeth.

  ‘Shane, you’re not helping yourself You’ve been in here for less than three days, enough to give you a taste of what’s in store. Mind you, you’ve done a wee stretch before, but this time it’s not the ninety days that you can do on your back, this time you’re looking at a ten-year stretch. Institutionalization will set in after eight years, so when you come out you’ll be a Salvation Army hostel case.’ Donoghue paused. ‘I suppose you’re not too far from the bottom of the pecking order; you’re not a big guy, you’re not a tobacco baron, you’re not big enough in the drug trade to have it smuggled in to you—am I right?’

  Dodemaide nodded, a frightened man.

  ‘So how does a ten-year stretch in the slammer sound?’

  Dodemaide looked at Donoghue and then at the older, craggier-faced cop who sat behind the smartly dressed one and seemed to say nothing. Then he looked up at the thick, opaque glass set high in the wall and then he turned his head at the sound of the clanging gates echoing in the hall outside the agent’s room.

  ‘Doesn’t sound so good, does it?’ Donoghue said.

  Dodemaide shook his head.

  ‘If you don’t help us, then we can’t help you and we’ll let you go the whole road. We’ll let a jury decide whether you’re guilty or not and we can build a very impressive case.’

  ‘How can I help you?’ Dodemaide pleaded in exasperation. ‘I know nothing.’

  ‘Tell us about your girlfriend.’

  ‘I don’t have a girl. Not right now anyway.’

  ‘Well, in that case tell us about a girl called Veronica Bentley.’

  ‘Oh, Veronica.’

  ‘Yes, Veronica. Tall girl. Dark hair. Left the squat on Belmont Street a few weeks ago.’

  ‘She moved in one dark night and moved out again one dark night. Stayed for a few weeks. Didn’t go out at all in that time, stayed in, shot up, lived on cake and buns and tea. Me and Eddie, we kept her supplied with enough to keep her satisfied.’

  ‘And I understand that she kept you satisfied in other ways.’

  ‘That’s just the way of it.’

  ‘How did she know about the squat?’

  ‘Eddie met her. I think it was Eddie who started her off, gave her some smack to try, pretty soon she was buying it from him.’

  ‘I see.’ Donoghue sighed. ‘And that, too, I suppose is just the way of it?’

  Dodemaide shrugged. ‘So I think they met up a few times in a bar in Byres Road and eventually she moved in with him. She moved in with us really, but Eddie mainly.’

  ‘Do you know how long Eddie and Veronica were seeing each other before she moved into the squat?’

  ‘A few weeks; just before Christmas it was. I remember him telling me about this classy chick that he’d met and who was nipping him for smack. Then at the end of January or the beginning of February the self-same classy chick walks in off the street, wet, soaked, one plastic carrier bag with all her possessions inside. She took the top room but spent most of her time in Eddie’s room.’

  ‘So when did you and Eddie start sharing her?’

  ‘When I had smack and he hadn’t. First time was about two weeks after she moved in.’

  ‘And when he had smack and you hadn’t?’

  ‘She went back to his room.’

  ‘You and Eddie didn’t come to blows over this?’

  Dodemaide smiled. ‘Well, there was always this understanding that she was Eddie’s girl, not mine. But it really wasn’t important. It’s not important how you get it or where or who you get it from, it’s just important that you get it. I understand it, Eddie understood it, and Veronica understood it. Me and Eddie, we got money by screwing people’s cars and turning their windows and knocking over old ladies and pinching their handbags.’

  Donoghue looked at Dodemaide and saw a steely gleam in the young man’s eyes. He saw a ruthlessness and an uncompromising viciousness and he momentarily didn’t mind if this particular ned went down for a ten-year stretch.

  ‘Knocking over old ladies,’ Donoghue repeated.

  ‘Look, I’m helping you to help me, like you said. I’m laying it on the line, I’m telling you how it is. See, the only rule is that there
is no rule.’

  ‘That’s a contradiction.’

  ‘Put it simply,’ said Dodemaide, forcing a smile, getting cocky despite the cramps, ‘we would do anything, anything at all for smack. I still would.’

  ‘Anything else you can tell us about Veronica Bentley?’

  ‘Law student drop-out. Her father is a big shot.’

  ‘We know.’

  ‘He was defending Eddie on a charge, theft by OLP, I think.’

  Donoghue sat forward. ‘Say that again.’

  ‘Veronica’s father was defending Eddie on a charge of theft by opening lockfast premises.’

  ‘Well, well.’ Donoghue sat back in his chair. ‘Well, well, well.’

  ‘Is that important?’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps it’s just an amazing coincidence, though I confess that I do find this big rambling city to be quite a small town at times. Did Veronica know that Eddie Wroe was being represented by her father?’

  Dodemaide shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, then smiled an unpleasant smile, another unpleasant, thin-lipped smile. ‘See, Eddie told me, told me not to tell Veronica. He told me that he kept pestering Bentley for appointments because it gave him a kick. He’d sit in Bentley’s office knowing that the man was sneering at him and all the while Eddie was thinking: See, you, you can smile all you like, but it’s your daughter that’s on my mattress and it’s my smack that’s in her veins. He got a real kick out of it.’

  ‘Nice bloke, the late Eddie Wroe.’

  ‘Sometimes he’d go to Bentley’s office without an appointment and just wait in the waiting-room, just wanting to catch a glimpse of Bentley, refusing to be seen by one of Bentley’s junior solicitors; he wanted to see Bentley and then go to the squat and give Veronica a freebie and Veronica would snatch it from him and shoot up. Like I said, it gave him a kick. He said I should use him too and I did. I got the same kick.’

  ‘I dare say you would if you were twisted enough,’ said Donoghue, ‘and it sounds as though you are.’

  ‘We had to hide all the letters that came from Bentley and Co. in case Veronica saw them. There wasn’t much chance of her seeing them, she stayed upstairs all the time, just looking out of the window, shooting up, eating sticky buns that me and Eddie or Karen or Nick McQueen brought in.’

  ‘Then one day Veronica left.’

  ‘Left twice, in fact.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, she went away for a day, not an overnight, just a day. She came back, but it was a big thing that she went away at all. That was a big, big thing for her.’

  ‘Did she say where she went?’

  ‘No.’ Shane Dodemaide shook his head. ‘But I think that she saw her father.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Didn’t make the connection at first, but later I worked out that it must be him; she just muttered something about being controlled by him.’

  ‘Him? Could she mean Eddie Wroe?’

  ‘I didn’t think so. Still don’t.’ Dodemaide clutched his stomach. ‘See, Eddie had no more control over her than I did and I had none. OK, she was nipping us for smack, but there was a hundred other guys in the city that she could nip just as easily.’

  ‘Can you remember her words, exactly?’

  ‘She said, ”I can’t escape. He controls me.” She was speaking to herself and sort of shaking her head at the time, and then one day she wasn’t there any more either.’

  Donoghue and Sussock drove back to Glasgow, gazing out across the wild windswept hills of Lanarkshire. Donoghue said, ‘What do you think, Ray?’

  ‘I think it stinks, sir,’ replied Sussock.

  ‘I think it does, too. I think we will have to pay a call on Mr Bentley, respected solicitor of this fair town.’

  Richard King glanced at his watch and drew breath between his teeth. He gently disentangled himself from Iain and inched gradually away from the tower of brightly coloured plastic bricks that they had spent the last five minutes building. He stood and Iain gave a wail of protest. King stooped and picked up his son and walked with him into the kitchen where Rosemary stood, slender and graceful in a pastel-coloured skirt. She was a committed Quaker, of Quaker parents, never wore trousers or loud colours and never spoke in harsh tones or a raised voice. She practised a high-minded aspect of Christianity which he, while fully respecting it, found impossible to embrace. He was a cop. Cops are cynical. Not only are they cynical but they are cynical before their time.

  ‘Do you have time for a coffee or tea before you leave, Richard?’

  King shook his head and handed Iain to Rosemary. ‘Fraid not.’ Standing up against the wall, behind and to the side of Rosemary, he noticed wood that he had bought the previous November, promising sincerely to put up shelves for her. The wood stood against the wall in exactly the place where he had laid it as he staggered in out of the rain, muttering something about a quick cup of coffee, and then he’d make an immediate start. She had not mentioned the shelves to him once and he knew that she never would, but she would, as many a Quaker would and as was her Quakerly way, occasionally glance at them when he was in the kitchen and she knew that he was looking at her.

  ‘I’ve got a few days’ leave to-take,’ he said, reaching for his jacket. ‘If all goes well, I’ll put the shelves up for you then.’

  ‘That would be nice, Richard.’ She smiled a warm smile from lips that had never known lipstick and from a pleasantly balanced face that had never known make-up, above and beside which hung straight, shoulder-length hair which was washed only in herbal shampoo.

  ‘Well, it’s been long enough,’ he said, but privately doubted that he’d get round to putting them up; Iain always proved too delightful a diversion to resist.

  She kissed him and asked him to take care. She stood at the doorway until he had driven from her sight.

  Abernethy was at his desk, tidying the surface, putting pens in drawers. He had evidently noticed that a clean desk makes a better impression than a good arrest rate. He nodded and smiled as King entered the room.

  ‘Anything doing?’ King unbuttoned his jacket.

  Abernethy shook his head. ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘Don’t like the calm before the storm.’ King hung his jacket on the peg by the radiator.

  ‘Still as wet as ever out there?’ Abernethy glanced at the window.

  ‘Well, as you see…’

  ‘I was living in hope that this was highly localized.’ Abernethy stood. ‘Localized to about three streets in either direction, beyond which the sun shines down lovingly on old Scotia.’

  ‘We may all live in hope, my son.’ King reached for an early edition of the Evening Times which lay crumpled in his in-tray.

  Abernethy drove home. He walked up a dark stair where rainwater dripped and plopped into a bucket, a stair which smelled of damp. At top right was a heavily stained door with ‘Abernethy’ embossed on a highly polished brass plate. He unlocked the door and let himself in and turned left into a dim bedroom.

  ‘That you, son?’ said a voice from the gloom.

  ‘Yes, Dad. Did the nurse come?’

  ‘Yes. What time is it?’

  ‘Little after five-thirty.’

  ‘In the evening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That you, son?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘You home, son?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Five-thirty, just gone.’

  ‘Are you staying in?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘Time, please?’

  ‘Five-thirty in the evening.’

  ‘Thank you, son.’

  Abernethy shut the door. He walked to the living-room still with the original fireplace range and a bed in the recess, the room in which he had grown up, the only son of elderly parents. ‘A little gift late in life you were for us, son,’ they had used to say, and his peers would say that th
ey saw him in the park with his grandparents. He sank into the armchair by the fire and bent down to tug at his shoelaces. He pondered the report that he had written about the suicide that he had attended, the report that he had placed in Fabian Donoghue’s in-tray, the report about the man who had taped wires to either hand and plugged himself not into the mains but into a timer switch. Then he had calmly sat and waited until 2.0 p.m. when the timing device had switched itself on.

  It was clearly suicide. There was no evidence of foul play and the man was not restrained in any way. He could easily have torn off the wires at the last second, just one wire would have been enough to break the circuit, but he had gone through with it, one wire from the timing device taped to each hand and the timing device plugged into the mains, just ticking on towards 2.0 p.m. Abernethy wondered what had gone through the man’s mind during those last minutes, or was it hours, for how long had he sat waiting for the charge to jolt his body into lifelessness? He could have set the device to switch on up to twenty-four hours beforehand, or had he allowed himself just minutes to live? The man had been active and in good health, a keen hill walker and summertime mountaineer. He lived life to the full and then, in his fortieth year, when fortunately still single and with no dependants, he was struck down with a wasting disease. He had nobody to live for and he did not want to experience the poor and degenerating quality of life that was ahead of him. The elaborate planning, the settling of debts, the recent will, the steps taken to ensure he was not discovered, the calm, reasoning, logical suicide note, the general lack of exhibitionism, meant that this was a suicide of the least suspicious kind. It was the man’s life to take if he wished. He was of sound mind and he did what he wanted to do. Abernethy was pleased for him, in the kindest possible way, but none the less the man’s last act in life had upset him. He was still inexperienced enough to be shocked by the actions of his fellow men.

  Donoghue drove up to the house, a solid four-square, confident-looking building with tall windows and an impressive doorway, painted white, surrounded by green lawns and greener shrubs, dark blue mountains behind with just a trace of snow on the upper reaches, blue-grey sky above. There was a respite from the rain and he could see the distance clearly. He had dropped Ray Sussock in the city centre and had begun the drive home to Edinburgh when, on an impulse, he had driven northwards, out towards Balfron, to the home of David Bentley, solicitor; home address of Veronica Bentley, missing person.