‘Pleasant couple of guys, weren’t you?’
Shane Dodemaide shrugged. ‘I had a deprived childhood.’
‘So did I, but I grew up to sit on this side of the table—I was one of six kids in a single end in the Gorbals and I mean the Gorbals. Anyway, so at one point you were both visiting Mr Bentley?’
‘Yes.’
‘So when did Veronica disappear?’
‘Towards the middle of March. About two weeks ago.’
‘I understand she went out for the day on one occasion?’
‘Yes, a few days before she left for good she went out and stayed out all day.’
‘Did she say where she had been?’
A shake of the head.
‘And a few days later she disappeared?’
A nod of the head.
‘So what happened between the time she went out for the day and came back and the time she went out for good?’
‘Not a lot. We sat in and watched the rain. Karen went down the town in the evening and earned money that way. Me and Eddie did a bit of ducking and diving, a bit of bobbing and weaving, you know, just to keep the dosh rolling in and just keeping one step ahead of the polis, you guys, sat in a bit more, shot up three, four times a day, traded in old needles for clean works at the needle exchange.’
‘That all?’
A shrug of the shoulders.
‘Come on, think! Sit up and think.’
Shane Dodemaide shifted in his chair. ‘I went to see Mr Bentley.’
‘You made an appointment to see him so you could sneer at him?’
‘No. He called me in.’
Sussock looked up. ‘He called you in?’
‘Yes. About two days after Veronica disappeared for the day, he called me in. I got a letter asking me to attend at his office the next afternoon.’
‘What did he want to see you about?’
‘Nothing, so far as I could tell. Just went over the same ground.’
‘All right. What else happened?’
‘Well, two days went by. Sat watching the rain and shooting up. Eddie said he was going to see Bentley.’
‘Did Mr Bentley invite him for an appointment?’
‘No. Eddie just fancied going to see him. Just a glimpse of him was all he wanted before he went back to the squat to roll his daughter. Well, that was last Friday. Eddie came back and said that he was to see Bentley again the next morning. Bentley wanted to see him.’
‘He works on Saturdays?’
‘Apparently. In the mornings anyway. He, Eddie, he went out at about ten a.m. that morning.’
‘And that was the last you saw of him?’
‘That was the last I saw of him.’
‘His body was found less than twenty-four hours later. So what happened to him in the interim?’
‘It’s your job to find that out.’
‘Not really that frightened of the slopman, are you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I would have thought that a few days in here might have taught you something, but you’ve got a serious attitude problem, Shane. If you get off with this it’ll only be a matter of months before you’re back inside on another charge. Just think about that tonight after you’ve finished bunny-hopping between the bunks.’
‘You’re not taking me out now?’
‘No. Maybe not for a few days.’
Colour drained from Dodemaide’s face.
‘I can’t go back to the cell.’
‘You’re going back. You’re still the prime suspect.’
‘I didn’t kill him. He was my pal.’
‘So help us a bit more. Let’s go back to your interview with Mr Bentley, the one you had shortly after Veronica went out for the day; the one he asked you in for at short notice, the one where he didn’t seem to want much from you?’
‘Just to go over my statements. Seeing as I was pleading guilty on all counts, I didn’t see what there was to be anxious about.’
‘How long were you in there with him?’
‘Twenty minutes.’
‘Anything happen while you were in there?’
‘No. I sat in front of his desk, answered the same questions that I’d answered before. I thought he was just asking me in to fill up his time for his Legal Aid money.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘Anything else you did?’ Sussock didn’t know how to proceed. He was mindful of Donoghue’s advice, not to feed the youth the answer that was required.
Dodemaide looked at Sussock.
Sussock looked at Dodemaide. How to proceed?
‘Anything happen that hadn’t happened in the previous interviews?’
‘No,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘No, it was just like the others.
Sussock paused. He didn’t want to feed the answer, but he couldn’t proceed without a suggestion of it. ‘Did you touch anything?’
‘A knife,’ said Shane Dodemaide slowly, as if the significance was dawning on him as he spoke. ‘He had an envelope on his desk. He wanted to cut it open. He asked me to pass a knife to him. There was a knife on the shelf behind me.’
‘So you did?’
‘Aye.’
‘How did you hold the knife—by the blade?’
‘No, by the handle, sort of backwards. I was all along taught by my old mother to hold a knife like that; see, her, if she ever taught us anything worth knowing, it was how to hold a knife if you’re walking with it. My old man, he died in the house when he fell on a knife he was carrying. He was carrying it in front of him and pointed up the way. He fell on it as he tripped and it pierced his heart. So my mother said. So she said we had to hold the knife sort of behind and beside us. Also said that when we handed a knife to someone, it had to be handle first. So for two reasons when I took the knife off the shelf, I held it sort of backwards so I could walk across his office floor with it, safe like, and so I could hand it to him, handle first.’
‘Did he take it from you?’
‘No.’ Shane Dodemaide shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t. He told me to put it on his desk, said he’d use it later. So I did. Then he said I could go; said he’d be in touch.’
‘What sort of knife was it?’
‘Wooden handle, short thin blade. Just a regular kitchen knife.’
They glanced at Tuesday Noon once and then forgot him. An old wino, sitting in a world of his own, one big glass and one little glass in front of him, pathetically almost empty of liquid. Tuesday Noon stared ahead of him at the darkly stained wood of the gantry and the frosted glass behind it. He didn’t normally use this bar and had half, more than half, expected to be refused service; it often happened. The bar was empty when he entered and the young woman behind the bar eyed him with a pitying eye and allowed the old derelict to buy a beer and a whisky. He took the drinks to a table in the corner by the door. Not a lot was happening here, he thought; perhaps he’d spin out the drinks for half an hour and then move on to the next bar. There were plenty of bars in Woodlands, plenty of opportunity to catch sight or sound of something. Then they came in, a boy and girl, old enough to buy alcohol but only just, no money, denim, torn training shoes, dripping wet from the rain. They bought a drink and sat near him; they glanced at him once. Tuesday Noon looked straight ahead of him but strained his ears. He struck gold immediately.
‘Easier,’ said the girl. ‘It’s easier than the street.’
‘Less dangerous.’
‘Less money, though.’
‘You never know. Some of these old birds carry their life savings around with them.’
‘You didn’t hit them so hard, no?’
Just a tap, Sadie, just a tap.’
‘Not a lot of money. Four pounds.’
‘Like I said, it’ll be better tonight.’
Tuesday Noon started to sing: ‘As the sun goes down on Galway Bay…’ The girl behind the bar smiled at him and put a finger to her lips. Tuesday Noon nodded. He liked her. He drained his gla
ss and left the bar; he crossed Woodlands Road and sheltered from the rain on the bank under the lime trees, the same bank that during the summer he would use to lie down in the afternoon and sleep. It was about 4.00 p.m., he thought. He stood, turned his collar up against the rain and waited.
Presently the young man and his girl, Sadie, came out of the bar and turned right, walking side by side. Tuesday Noon followed them, keeping on the far side of the road. The couple turned right and walked up the dark narrow canyon of Park Street and left on to Great Western Road. Tuesday Noon followed them, about one hundred feet behind.
The couple crossed Great Western Road.
Tuesday Noon didn’t, but increased his pace until he drew level with them.
They turned right into Belmont Street.
Tuesday Noon stood on the far side of Great Western Road and watched them enter a semi-derelict house on Belmont Street, close to the junction of Great Western Road.
‘Reckon that’s worth a drink, Mr Montgomerie,’ he said.
Chapter 9
Thursday, 18.00–Friday, 11.30 hours
‘Sorry, I get emotional,’ said Veronica Bentley. ‘I don’t know why, I’m not fond of them, but perhaps it’s other things as well. A lot of things coming to a head all at once.’
‘No problem.’ Donoghue took his pipe from his pocket. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘Not at all.’ Veronica Bentley glanced round the interview room: an orange hard-wearing carpet, a table, black metal legs, polished veneer surface, on which stood a machine for tape-recording interviews; a large red Scottish Police Federation calendar pinned to the wall, and below and to one side a smaller blue calendar issued by the Police Mutual Insurance Company; a window, tall and narrow, which opened only an inch or two and looked out on to the car park at the rear of the police station. ‘I imagine that the walls in this room have heard a few stories,’ she said.
‘Oh, they have.’ Donoghue played the flame of his lighter over the tobacco in his pipe. ‘I hope that they are going to hear another.’
‘Of course. I’ll tell you what I can, but I really don’t know much about Shane and Eddie. It’s difficult to describe, but, well to be perfectly frank, it wasn’t really me that was in there, it was my body. But not me. You really have to be an addict to know what I mean.’
‘Perhaps. But I think I can understand.’
‘It’s—they say, what we say—it’s our body that’s doing it, not ourselves; you got to reach that level of detachment. Whether you’re breaking into people’s homes if you’re a guy, or if you’re letting strange men do strange things to you if you’re a woman, it’s the same attitude, anything for money to buy smack with. So I met Eddie in a cafe in Byres Road, I scored from him. Just experimenting at first. I met him again, I scored again. He became a pusher, it was just after Christmas, January it started, right at the beginning of term. Pretty soon I had used up my allowance and I needed heroin so he suggested how I could get more.’
‘By moving in with him?’
‘Basically, yes.’ She drew breath and shuddered. ‘I guess it’s something that I shall have to learn to live with, just another incident in a catalogue of incidents which will make me squirm with embarrassment in the years to come. Or maybe it will make me flush with anger.’
‘That would be healthier. I think that you could feel angry and I don’t see why you should feel embarrassed. You can’t be seen as anything but a victim.’
‘I don’t want to be patronized, Mr Donoghue. So I moved in to their damp and dingy squat. Eddie gave me heroin and when he hadn’t any, I got it from Shane and did the same with Shane that I did with Eddie. It didn’t really matter which one was squashing me on the mattress so long as I got a fix. I think I’ll take an Aids test.’
‘Might be a good idea. If you’ve got it you’ve got it, but at least you’ll know.’
‘It was my gutter. You know, alcoholics talk about their gutter, everyone reaches his own personal gutter. We live in tenements mostly, in this town, and it may well be that your floor is another man’s ceiling, but your gutter is your gutter, no matter what or where it is. But ceilings and floors aside, I don’t think I could have sunk much lower in real terms. What I came from, you’ve seen the house, a private education at a day school, a place at University in the Law Faculty, a glittering future; from that to skipping in the nude from one mattress to another in a crumbling, rat-infested squat which was also overrun with mice.’ She paused and glanced out of the window as a police vehicle drew into the car park. ‘You know, I didn’t even like Eddie or Shane; basically they were both neds; they didn’t even look good, reminded me of a pair of sparrows, so thin and pale. If you bled them, they couldn’t get any whiter. Talk about the Possilpark tan! You know, there was another girl in the building, an Irish lassie called Sadie Kelly, really petite. You could put her in a school uniform and send her off to the third year and nobody would question her. She used to go up to the town and work the street. The only difference between me and Sadie was that I knew the identity of the “clients” and she didn’t. She took money and I was paid in kind. They really controlled me; they didn’t give me the powder, they used to give me a full syringe, but the longer I stayed, the fix got weaker, so I had to work harder to get what I needed. They kept me strung out and would give me just enough to stop me crawling up the wall.’
Donoghue sucked and blew on his pipe—let the person talk, there’s plenty of time to get the vital information—but in his mind he was already drawing up the charge of murder against David Bentley, father of Veronica. There was no need to browbeat, no need to force the pace, just sit back and listen. The blank spaces were being filled in neatly and evenly. There was all the time in the world.
‘They were a bit cruel. A lot cruel, really. Eddie told me that my father was his solicitor. I didn’t like that. I don’t like my father, but he’s the only one I’ve got and I didn’t like people laughing at him and me. Far less do I like people laughing at both of us.’
‘Shane told us that they kept that information from you.’
Veronica shook her head slowly.
‘Well, as the lady once said, he would, wouldn’t he? You see, Shane’s in the pokey, he’s trying to ingratiate himself with you. Eddie sniggered at me pretty well openly, waved letters from my father’s firm in front of my eyes; me sitting huddled in a corner waiting for my next fix, and him saying, “Guess who I’ve just been to see?” Shane did the same, went to my father and came home to me. Eddie told him to do it. Believe me, Mr Donoghue, they were a couple of sickos; they enjoyed going to see my father on any pretext and went home to bounce his daughter. Sometimes they went together and came back together, if you see what I mean.’
Donoghue was silent for a moment, then said. ‘Eventually you left the squat?’
She nodded. ‘You can remain detached for only so long. I went to see my father. Ironic, really, that I should have gone to see him, but he controls me, he has this “pull”, this influence which is not just fatherly, it’s more than that. I can’t describe it, but he was still controlling me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He’s weird. He controls people, he controls my mother, he controls me; when he’s not controlling people, he tramples all over them. I thought it was normal. I didn’t grow up any other way; only one set of parents in a remote house. I thought all fathers were like that, a bit like God, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-controlling. He certainly controlled my mother.’
‘Violently?’
‘Sometimes. But it’s really on an abstract level that he operates. He just has a way of drawing people to him and controlling them—that is, the people in his private life. Apparently he was always like that, even as a little boy in Northern Ireland. I seemed to wake up when I started university. It was as though I had been parcelled up with string and sealing wax with a label which said, “I’ve got her this far, you take her the rest of the way and send her back when you’ve finished.” He assumed I was goi
ng to join him in the practice. I don’t think it occurred to him that I’d leave him.’
‘But people do leave him?’ Donoghue settled back in his chair, his pipe was burning to his satisfaction.
‘All the time in his professional life. Secretaries walk out in tears within hours of starting with him; trainees wishing to serve articles leave as soon as they can. A short time spent with Bentley and Co. is no black mark on anybody’s C.V.’
‘You paint a damning picture, Miss Bentley.’
‘It’s probably apposite. I think my father is an evil man, Mr Donoghue. Sometimes, if you see him in the right way, I mean the correct way, well, there’s a sort of look in his eyes. The gleam, but they are as impenetrable as steel. They make me go cold.’
Donoghue shuffled in his chair.
‘And when I look back on the systematic destruction of my mother…When I was a wee girl, I remember her as being a lot stronger than she is now. I think she wanted more children, but my father wouldn’t allow it.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Well, she’s out of it now. We both are. It’s going to be tough for the first few months. I know what Homeless Persons’ accommodation is like. Eventually she’ll get a divorce and a financial settlement but not for a long time. She’s got no skills or training. I’ve got nothing, so it’s welfare payments and council land for us.’
‘So she’s going for a divorce?’
‘That’s what we were talking about before you came in and asked her to wait outside. That’s what gutters are like, so easy to step into, comfortable to stay in, but getting out is one day at a time. When you fall, you fall at terminal velocity and inch your way out.’
‘Not everybody makes it at the first attempt, either.’
‘Don’t say that!’ The young woman smiled. She was pale and drawn but Donoghue could see a beautiful woman waiting to blossom from what, at the moment, was a physical wreck. A better diet, a little more flesh on her bones, a sparkle instead of a dullness of the eye…that’s all that was needed.
And Did Murder Him Page 15