Long Day Monday

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘No.’ McWilliams didn’t look at Sussock, but kept his eyes on his property, his spade presently being tied up with fancy blue and white ribbon. ‘When do I get my spade back?’

  ‘When we’ve finished with it, sir. All in good time.’

  ‘I wish I’d never reported the car. I’m losing a good working afternoon.’

  ‘We’d have spoken to you anyway. I assume this is your field?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, in that case we’d certainly have been taking up some of your time anyway,’ Sussock growled. He was feeling happier now. Things were more under control, his control. ‘Where is your house?’

  McWilliams tossed his head contemptuously over his shoulder in the direction of the drive, but Sussock could only see a deeply rutted path driving low between two elevated fields towards a wood on the skyline, breaking the line between the fields and the hills. He was uncertain whether McWilliams’s evident contempt was towards the police for invading his time and property or for his house, still unseen.

  ‘Between the trees,’ said McWilliams, by means of explanation. Sussock noted a ruddy complexion and the breath of a serious drinker. ‘We don’t see much of night and nobody sees much of us. I like it that way.’

  ‘Whose “we”?’

  ‘Me and the wife. She’s not a bad woman, she does her duty most of the time.’

  ‘We’ll need to talk to her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In case she saw something.’

  ‘She didn’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She didn’t see anything. Take it from me, Jim. She saw nothing. And I mean nothing.’

  A swallow swooped low overhead, a zephyr rustled the branches of the limes and then they were still once again. A canary-yellow car, mud-caked, drove along the road, slowed at the presence of police activity but didn’t stop. McWilliams raised his hand in greeting and the driver nodded in response.

  ‘My neighbour,’ explained McWilliams, ‘Henry Abbott. He has the next farm. He’s an owner. I’m a tenant. It’d make some difference if I owned my farm. I make a good income and then send a fair portion of it twice a year to a company in Perth. The wife, she saw nothing.’

  ‘She’ll have to tell us that.’

  ‘I’ll need to be there.’

  ‘No, you won’t.’

  McWilliams stiffened, controlling himself He clenched his hands into two huge fists and then relaxed.

  ‘Just you and Mrs McWilliams at home, then?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just a question.’

  ‘Aye,’ McWilliams replied after a pause.

  Sussock glanced at his watch. 13.58. Two minutes to knocking-off time.

  Some hope. Some wild hope, old Sussock. This is the real world and you live in it, here and nowhere else. He turned and glanced at the tape suspended over the grass. He glanced at the mound of freshly turned soil. But at least he lived.

  He wanted the light to go out.

  The naked bulb hurt his eyes.

  He didn’t like rabbits, soft fluffy toys. Girls’ toys. He lay down and used one as a pillow.

  He didn’t like the woman, she smiled below cold eyes.

  Her mouth smiled but her eye devoured him. He could only see one eye: she held her hand over the other. He had only ever seen one eye, even on the first day she had worn a patch. He found himself referring to her as One-Eye.

  CHAPTER 2

  Thursday, 14.00-15.00 hours

  Dr Reynolds ran his silver Volvo estate up on to the high, grassed bank, the wide tyres, high ground clearance and stiff suspension making easy work of the manoeuvre, a manoeuvre which would be beyond the capacity of many makes of motorcar. He would open the sun roof to allow the interior of the car to ‘breathe’ in his absence. It was, he felt, a wise precaution on a day like this, hot and still.

  He left the vehicle and walked towards Sergeant Sussock and surveyed the scene as he walked: a lane bounded by trees, thus forming an avenue, a low meadow to his left and to the left of the road, beyond which the smooth clear, clean waters of the Clyde glinted in the sun, willows overhanging, a kingfisher darting. To his right and to the right of the red lane were the police vehicles. Sergeant Sussock’s car, a second car and a Land-Rover at the end of a track which thrust into the field. A man slouched against the Land-Rover. One corner of the field seemed to have been cordoned off by a police tape—white and blue—which for the most part hung limp and then occasionally, for a second, would flutter as it was tugged gently by a breeze. Beyond the tape was the green of the pasture and standing on the pasture were police officers, white shirts and black trousers, about ten, thought Reynolds, all walking in a line across the pasture, searching the ground, forcing the cattle to inch away in front of them. Beyond the line of police officers was the blue of the distant hills and beyond that the lighter blue of the canopy of the sky with just a wisp of white cloud high and to westward.

  Sussock stepped towards Reynolds and tugged the brim of an imaginary hat. ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

  The tall, silver-haired pathologist smiled and mumbled an excuse for his late arrival. The directions he had been given were excellent, but he had taken the wrong turning after Carluke. So sorry.

  ‘No problem, sir.’ Sussock smiled. ‘It’s over here, sir.’ He noted again, as often he had noticed in the past, how Reynolds’s hair matched perfectly the silver of his car. But Sussock did not think it was vanity on the part of Reynolds; the pathologist was not a man to be vain; it would be coincidence and nothing more. Dr Reynolds, in Sussock’s view, would probably not have noticed the colour match.

  Reynolds followed Sussock as the police officer led him between the stolen car and the police minibus to the edge of the field and he immediately saw the grave half opened.

  ‘All right,’ he said, more to himself than to anyone else, ‘can we start digging, please?’ He clambered over the wire at the edge of the field as Sussock motioned to two constables, who stood by with spades in their hands, to commence digging. A third officer stood by with a screen, made up of poles and an orange plastic sheet.

  ‘Just uncover the corpse, please,’ Reynolds addressed the constables as they began to remove the soil in as near vertical layers as possible, and then, turning to Sussock, ‘I dare say you’d like to have the body photographed before it is removed. Sergeant?’

  ‘Certainly would, sir. We have a scene of crime officer present.’

  ‘Right, then, let’s be methodical. If nothing else, let’s be methodical, above all let’s be methodical. I had expected your senior to be present. Sergeant, not that I have less than absolute faith in you as a professional, but it has always seemed to me that Fabian Donoghue tends to take a keen interest in this sort of thing; he always struck me as wanting to be present at the locus.’

  ‘Day off, sir,’ said Sussock, patiently waiting for Reynolds to finish his question. ‘I mean he’s taken a day’s leave; a family wedding, I believe.’

  ‘Good.’ Reynolds nodded. ‘A good day for it.’ A pause: held. A different tone. ‘Good man is Donoghue, a good chap.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sussock.

  The two police officers stopped digging and stepped back, but their gaze was fixed downwards. Sussock saw that they were both shaken, the older man, all of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, looked as though he had been that way before, but the younger one, barely twenty, thought Sussock, had evidently come across a milestone in his career. Sussock saw his chest heave as he dropped the spade and walked away towards the centre of the field.

  ‘Turn round. Constable,’ Sussock called to him. ‘Don’t panic, hold it in your mouth till you get to the end of the field. And take your time, you’ve got all the time in the world. Breathe through your nose.’

  The younger constable turned and walked to the edge of the field; over-controlled, over-concentrating, he climbed the fence and stepped on to the track behind McWilliams’s Land-Rover. He leaned forward and vomited.

 
‘Good man,’ Sussock called, as the constable wiped his mouth.

  McWilliams watched the spectacle with a detached smile, then turned and spat on the ground.

  Reynolds and Sussock approached the grave and stood in silence as they looked downwards. Youth and beauty in a foetal position in ten inches of soil. Eyes open. Mouth open. A heavy rope ligature round the neck and stout stick to tighten it.

  ‘We’ll photograph it now,’ said Sussock, turning.

  ‘Her.’ Reynolds held a respect for the dead. ‘Photograph her.’

  ‘I meant “it” as in the scene of the crime.’ Sussock spoke coldly. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘We’ll photograph the scene and then erect the screen, sir.’ Reynolds turned and walked with Sussock away from the grave, and as they did so they noticed the young constable spitting to clean his throat and then saw that his eyes seemed caught by something, an object on the ground, not visible to Reynolds and Sussock. He stooped to pick it up.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ Sussock yelled. He was still stung by Reynolds’s rebuke which might well have been born out of a simple misunderstanding but had more or less created a tension between the two men. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said and walked across the field, climbed the fence and stood next to the young constable.

  A rabbit. A small furry toy. A child’s toy, light blue. It lay in the long grass which ran up the centre of the track, a meridian of grass with deep ruts at either side which ran from the lane to the farm house. The toy rabbit would have been easily missed.

  ‘It’s out of place,’ said the constable. ‘I mean, there’s nothing sinister about it, Sergeant, it just seems foreign to the locus.’

  Sussock nodded, impressed. The young man clearly had the makings of a very good policeman.

  ‘It hasn’t been here long. It’s not weathered. A young child’s toy, here in the middle of nowhere, and next to a murder scene. It just doesn’t add up and deliver.’

  ‘Any children about here?’ Sussock raised his voice sufficiently for it to carry to McWilliams who stood some twenty feet distant.

  ‘No.’ Said finally, after a long authority-testing pause.

  ‘Bag it and tag it, please,’ said Sussock. The constable turned and walked to the police minibus. Sussock remained as if rooted to the spot. Something gnawed away at him. Deep, deep in the recesses of his memory, like a smell remembered but which could not be placed; a word which had a significance which couldn’t be recalled; a sound which awakened misty, hazy memories. He was certain that here, half on its side in the parched grass, the blue toy, less than twelve inches long, had a real, strong positive significance.

  To his left a camera bulb flashed. Sussock was surprised that a flash was needed on a day like this, but the scene of crime officer knew his job and knew it well. The flash brought Sussock’s attention back to the matter in hand. He left the track and walked towards the grave. The scene of crime officer took five more photographs and then withdrew. The screen was erected around the grave and Dr Reynolds, bag in hand, stepped inside the screen.

  Elka Willems caught her breath. She hoped that the woman did not hear her.

  ‘And he’s not with any friends, they’d have phoned to tell us that he was with them, or they would have allowed him to use the phone. And we have no relatives he could be with; as I told you before, we’re not Glaswegians, neither of us. We have relations in Stirling, they’re the nearest— the nearest in terms of geography—but pretty distant in terms of kinship. Tom’s family are Aberdonians. I am from the Western Isles, so no, Miss Willems, he hasn’t gone to a friend or a relative.’

  She was a brave woman. Elka Willems thought that she was a brave woman. A woman of less calibre would have been reduced to histrionics or worked herself up into a panic and gone running about the streets, but not Edwina Moore. She was bravely containing a flood of emotion while answering the policewoman’s questions as lucidly and laconically as she could. Elka Willems thought her to be a woman of steel. Then she said it again: ‘… and how often, how often we have told him, drummed it into him, that he’s not to go with a strange man. We’ve said to him, “If a strange man approaches you, then run away, and if he’s in the car run in the opposite direction to the direction of the car.”

  This time Elka Willems made no sound. She nodded sympathetically but said to herself, ‘Why men, why only men?’ but hindsight with all its wisdom was, she thought, the last thing that Edwina Moore needed in the present situation. It would have been better to say ‘strangers’, Mrs Moore, Elka Willems’s thoughts ran on as she allowed her gaze to sweep once again around the room. It was solidly and, she thought, tastefully decorated; not aggressive, not opulent, not of low-taste conspicuous consumption, but quiet, high quality, the room of people here to stay, of putting down roots and bringing up a family. It was the home of two successful professionals. Her gaze swept further, through the huge panes of glass which framed the front bay window and out on to the tree-lined suburban road; palatial terraced, and wide enough for Mercedes and Saabs to park nose in to the kerb and still leave a passage for cars in the centre.

  ‘So what can we do?’ Edwina Moore appealed to Elka Willems.

  ‘Nothing much more. In fact, nothing more.’ Elka Willems spoke softly. Her job now was to retain contact with the family, to offer emotional support, to call on the family, to reassure them that the police had not forgotten Tim Moore; that all that could be done was still being done; and this is what we did today, and tomorrow we will be doing this. Elka Willems might have told Mrs Moore that she would continue to call alone, even hopefully bring good news alone, but if she was seen approaching the house in the company of another officer, if ever it was apparent that the visit has been deemed a ‘two-hander’…

  ‘The photograph of Tim is being duplicated and missing persons posters are being run off. They’ll be posted in police stations, bus and railway stations in the Glasgow area over the next few days. If necessary, we’ll extend it to national coverage. The taxi-drivers have their eyes peeled. They’ve come up with the goods in the past. A search…’

  ‘A search?’ There was a note of alarm in Edwina Moore’s voice.

  ‘We have to prepare for every eventuality. Even the worst.’

  ‘I suppose. It’s just that you don’t like to entertain the thought that he’s out there somewhere. At least the weather’s good. He’ll not get cold if the weather holds, it’s hot enough to survive without a top coat…’ She paused, collected her emotions, restrained them, breathing in deeply, breathing out slowly. ‘You never think that it could happen to you,’ she said, looking up at the ceiling. ‘You read of tragedies, children dying, being run down, and you think: How awful for the parents, and then you get on with your own rich, untraumatized, cup-runneth-over, rewarding life. I mean, everything on your plate, a good and a successful husband, a lovely house, fabulous neighbours, lovely healthy little boy who went out to play for half an hour before lunch…and then an hour or so later your world has crashed…and you take a walk, go to the shops on the corner and you see people going about their business, cars and buses plying back and forth, and you think: “How dare they?” You think: “My little boy is missing and they’re just carrying on as though nothing matters, as though nothing has happened…” it’s like the world, life, is going on without us.’

  ‘Is your husband coming back tomorrow?’ Elka Willems asked after a respectful pause.

  Edwina Moore nodded. ‘He’s cut short his lecture tour. He did so as soon as he heard the news. He’s getting the first flight back. He’s trying for a flight to Glasgow or Prestwick, but he’ll take the first flight back to the UK.’

  ‘It’ll be good to have him home.’

  ‘It will, it will. I wonder how we’ll be in bed?’

  Elka Willems’s look hardened.

  Edwina Moore saw the look of disapproval in Elka Willems’s eyes and she managed a brief yet healthy smile. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not lamenting any loss of
our sex life, I’m not bothered about that. What I mean is, that when things go well with us we lie close, in each other’s arms. We might well disentangle during the night but we go to sleep like that. If things have been stressed, as when we have had a row, we lie apart, or one of us sleeps in the spare room. I wonder how we’ll be tomorrow night, or the night after when Murdoch’s back? We’ve never been this way before, we might cling to each other, we might be happier alone, carrying our own fears. I wonder how he’ll feel…He’ll not blame me?’ A rush of panic.

  ‘There’s no blame that can be attached to you.’ Elka Willems shook her head. She was severely dressed in white blouse and serge trousers, yet none the less, to Edwina Moore’s eyes, stunningly attractive: high cheekbones and the blonde hair of her Nordic ancestors. She wore her hair in a bun, and about her slender neck a blue and white chequered cravat which fastened at the rear with Velcro and which would come away in the hands of any thug who might try to garotte her with it.

  ‘I can’t help but blame myself.’ She looked down at the wall-to-wall Axminster which to Elka Willems seemed more worn than the rest of the decor and not quite gelling with the room, as if it had been left by the previous owner and ‘lived with’ by the present owners because the cost of its replacement was beyond their present means. But it was an Axminster, plenty of life in it yet.

  ‘I want Murdoch’s presence,’ said Edwina Moore. ‘I want my husband here, but I don’t think that I could bear his touch.’

  ‘He might feel the same.’

  ‘I think he will. He’s very strong. He’s not cloying or weak, he’ll keep his worries and his fears from me, he’ll carry those himself…’

  Elka Willems glanced at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, a white face in a gold frame with three balls spinning round beneath the face, first clockwise, then anticlockwise. It was 02.30 p.m. She didn’t mind working on in a situation like this. In a situation like this the last thing any cop would be thinking of was the end of his or her shift. This was human need, raw and desperate, the sharp end of the business: tragedy.