Long Day Monday

by Peter Turnbull

  Privately she thought how Tim Moore would be found. He’d be found smashed, a bag of fractured bones at the bottom of a mineshaft that no one knew had existed; or miles away, discovered by a farm hand engaged in hedging and ditching, naked, bruised massively about the neck, torn and blood-caked anus, blood in his mouth, eyes open; or he’d be found by a council refuse collector nonchalantly tossing black bin liners into the rear of the wagon, slowly uncovering the beaten and bloody remains of Tim Moore with a battered skull and semen traces in mouth and anus, from how many secretors? One, four, more than four? Or perhaps his body would never be found; such things happened. People just disappear as if into thin air. That possibility, the possibility that Edwina and Murdoch Moore would never find out what happened to Tim, their first and so far only child, was in Elka Willems’s view far, far worse than knowing the full extent of the tragedy, especially as the days melted into weeks, and months into years. Elka Willems reached for her cap and caught Edwina Moore’s mixed look of disappointment and acceptance of her leaving. She could not stay forever and now all useful purpose of her visit had been exhausted. There was no new information to relay, no more emotional stroking to be done. The police were there to provide a public service, maybe to lean on for a while, but not endlessly. At some point every victim, every bereaved person, has to pick themselves up and carry on. Nobody said it was an easy ride, and nobody gets out alive.

  ‘I’ll call tomorrow.’ Elka Willems stood. Edwina Moore stood also. She was shorter than Elka Willems but had yet again given Elka Willems the impression of a tall woman, a woman whose legs were proportionately longer than normal, who had talked for an hour hunched in a gangly heap surrounded by discarded Kleenex and had given the impression that she would straighten up into a tall woman. But no, no more than five-five, thought Elka Willems, maybe five-six. Maybe the tall walls of the well-set Broomhill terrace had the effect of elongating her rather than diminishing her, just as well-built people appear small when inside the modern dolls’ houses that for some reason, inexplicable to Elka Willems, always find eager buyers.

  ‘I’m on day shift again, I’ll try to give you progress reports every twenty-four hours.’

  The women shook hands. For an instant it wasn’t member of the public and police officer; for an instant, brief, profound and pregnant, it was woman on woman.

  They were still there. He left home by the back door, he returned home by the back door.

  Each time he entered the house they were there, each time he left they were there, leaning where he had leaned them the previous November upon his return from the Do-it-Yourself store. She never complained, never even mentioned them. He had bought them for her, carried them home, over a mile because he couldn’t fit them into his small car, and left them in the kitchen, leaning against the wall. He had mumbled something about sorting them tomorrow and Rosemary, her hair in a bun, wearing blouse and skirt of pastel shades, had smiled warmly as he had peeled off his coat, hung it in the cupboard under the stairs and had knelt on the floor with Iain and they had built a tower with brightly coloured plastic bricks. Still the lengths of wood for Rosemary’s kitchen shelves stood where he had propped them, and still Rosemary had not got the much requested shelves in her kitchen, and still she never complained. That afternoon, after a hurried but deeply nutritious lunch, he had put on his light summer jacket, kissed her goodbye and had walked out of the back door, past the lengths of wood, down the back garden path and as he did so she had called out, ‘Take care, Richard.’

  And on the journey to work the image of the wood stayed with him, and guilt gnawed at him. It struck him as odd that it seemed the longer he delayed starting on Rosemary’s shelves, the harder it was to start. There was a word for that: ‘inertia’, he thought the word for it was ‘inertia’. He drove into the car park of P Division police station and entered by the ‘staff only’ door and signed in. He checked the pigeonhole marked DC King and plucked out two departmental circulars, the first requesting that both sides of one piece of paper be used rather than one side only of two sheets, and the second requesting that if possible phone calls be made after 13.00 hours or at weekends when British Telecom charges were at the standard rate. He went up to the CID corridor and tapped on the door of Ray Sussock’s office. No answer. King pushed the door open; Sussock’s office was empty. He walked down the corridor to the room he shared with Montgomery and Abernethy. He saw a pile of case files on his desk, on top of which was a hastily scribbled note:

  Richard,

  Can’t hand over. Out on a 21. Everything self-explanatory. Attention drawn to Tim Moore file.

  Ray Sussock

  King laid the note on one side and walked to the corner of the office, hung his jacket on a peg on the hatstand and made a cup of instant coffee. He returned to his desk and picked up the file on Tim Moore which Ray Sussock had left on the top of the pile, and put it on the right of his desktop. He read the rest of the day shift’s work, ‘digesting the dross’ as he called it, and then picked up the Moore file. There was little to read. He read what there was and said, ‘Blimey.’ He saw what Sussock meant. Tim Moore was not the sort of boy to go walkabout or to be with one of a multitude of relatives all of whom might live within the same square mile of the city. He closed the file, walked over to a map of the city of Glasgow which was pinned to the wall by the door. It was a newly printed map in easy to read, eye-catching colour, greens and yellows and greys. He located the street on which the Moore household stood.

  He was not familiar with that part of the city, Rowallan Gardens in Broomhill, though he knew of it, a small quiet enclave, a few tree-lined streets which had a ‘village feel’ about them, despite being in easy walking distance of the city centre. He had rarely had occasion to go there: if people in Broomhill are known to the police at all they are known in their capacity of victims of crime, usually burglaries, or as Justices of the Peace, to be reverentially disturbed in the middle of the night with the request that urgently needed warrants be signed.

  Looking at the map, he noted a small park at the end of Rowallan Gardens. He dismissed it. It would be the first place that a frantic parent would look. Furthermore, it would be well supervised by park keepers and populated by children and parents. Tim Moore wouldn’t be there. Down the hill from Broomhill were Partick and Whiteinch, both tougher neighbourhoods than the genteel tranquillity of Broomhill, but safe as houses for children, any child in distress would not want for assistance. Victoria Park? He pondered Victoria Park and then dismissed it; again, it was well policed and well populated. His eye moved back to the Broomhill area. He noticed a bowling club with spacious grounds and beyond that an area of allotments. He considered that they too would be well supervised and probably well fenced off.

  He saw the track of a disused railway line running underneath Clarence Drive, overgrown, complete with tunnel. He saw the grounds of the psychiatric hospital. Beyond that he saw the waste ground adjacent to the ‘Butney’ in Maryhill, so called because in the old days convicts were loaded on to lighters there, and taken down the canal to the river from where transports took them to Botany Bay.

  King glanced at his watch: 14.30. There was still a lot of daylight left. Far, far better to do something than nothing. He returned to his desk and picked up the phone and dialled 9 for an outside line; and then, after a solid ‘click’ on the line, a seven-figure number.

  ‘Strathclyde Police, dog branch.’ The voice was crisp, clipped, business-like.

  ‘DC King, P Division.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We have a missing child, a boy, ten years old. I’d like to arrange a search with the dogs of three areas near his home, please.’

  ‘We can’t provide men for a full sweep, we have committed most of our resources to a murder inquiry.’

  ‘I see,’ King replied. ‘It’s really just to eliminate these areas. There are three areas near his home where I think he may be likely to be if some misfortune has befallen him, if he’s lying injured o
r is a victim of foul play. If he hasn’t turned up by tomorrow we’ll have to go over the areas with a tooth comb, all likely areas in fact, but for this afternoon we’ll just see if he’s in one of the open areas I think he may be in.’

  ‘If he’s there the dogs will find him.’

  ‘Good. Can you attend immediately?’

  ‘Yes, sir, we’re training at the moment. I can offer six dogs with handlers. Not a lot but it’s all that’s available at the present.’

  ‘Excellent. Do you need an item of clothing for his scent?’

  ‘It’s not necessary, sir. The dogs will investigate only human scent, even from shallowly buried bodies. What areas would you like searched?’

  King told him, adding that he’d put a courtesy call through to the hospital administrator to advise him about the reason for the dogs and handlers in the grounds of the hospital. He replaced the phone with a comforting, reassuring feeling that something was being done, something was happening; he had a sense that things were moving and that he was in control. Jobs are like that, he thought: either you are on top of them or they are on top of you.

  He made himself a fresh mug of coffee, sipped it while he added his contribution to the Moore file and then re-read the ‘dross’ from the day shift. All for information only: no action required.

  There was a tap at the door. He glanced up. Elka Willems stood on the threshold. She asked, ‘Do you know where Sergeant Sussock is?’

  ‘He’s got a murder.’ King smiled. ‘Dare say he’s up to his oxters in bags and tags and confessions and denials and distraught relatives. Coffee?’

  ‘He would have. No, no, thanks. Have you got the Tim Moore file?’

  King patted it.

  Elka Willems advanced towards King’s desk and picked up the file. ‘I’ve just come from the house, I’m the “interested police officer” for the family.’

  ‘So I noted.’

  ‘It’s not a clever one, Richard. It’s not clever at all.’

  ‘Again, so I noted, and so Ray Sussock said in his note. I’ve just been on to the dog branch who are going to search three likely areas near his home. Just to do something really, as much as anything.’

  ‘Good.’ Elka Willems took the file and sat at Abernethy’s desk, half on and half off it, one foot firmly on the ground, the other dangling in the air. ‘It’ll be good to tell Mrs Moore that we are doing something.’

  ‘Any parent’s nightmare.’ King shook his head.

  ‘I can only imagine.’ Elka Willems glanced over King’s recording and then swivelled off the desk and sat in Abernethy’s chair. ‘Mind if I add my bit in here?’ she said. ‘It won’t take long.’

  King said, ‘Not at all.’

  Elka Willems took a ballpoint pen from a mug on Abernethy’s desk which seemed to her to serve as a receptacle for pens, rulers, pencils and bulldog clips on the rim. She tried two ballpoints before she found one that worked. ‘Any idea how long Sergeant Sussock is going to be?’ King thought the note of disinterest in her voice was a little overdone, she was trawling for important personal information but trying to sound as though she was making idle conversation.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ King replied, with an equal note of disinterest. He wondered, as so often he had wondered before, why she and Sussock bothered to conceal their involvement; especially from colleagues who were trained to observe, deduce, deduct. It seemed to him to be a futile exercise, it seemed to him that they would be happier and more relaxed if it was out in the open. But they played the game the way they wanted to play it.

  It nagged him. Sussock leaned against the dried wooden fencepost, his back to the field where, behind an orange screen, Dr Reynolds would be kneeling over the curled-up corpse of a young woman, barely twenty years old, murdered apparently by strangulation. Dr Reynolds would be taking soil samples and insect life from around the body to assist him in the attempt to determine how long she had lain there in the stony Lanarkshire soil. But Sussock knew she had not lain there long: she was too fresh.

  It nagged him.

  The rabbit.

  The rabbit nagged him.

  The little blue rabbit. A child’s toy.

  Of all the things in this scene of morbidity and murder and fife cut short on the threshold of adulthood, it was a rabbit, a damn silly child’s toy that preoccupied his mind, occupying the foremost position of his mind to the exclusion of all else.

  A child had come this way recently while out on a summer’s afternoon picnic with her family, had lost it, and now wept for it, or perhaps had been bought a replacement by way of compensation. It was nothing more sinister than that.

  No, no, it was very sinister. Very significantly sinister. Sussock jolted himself away from the past with a stiffening of his legs and a kick with his lumbar region and stepped over the uneven grass to where McWilliams stood. The sun was high, it was he guessed about 2.30 p.m., going on 3.00 p.m. The day would start to cool from this point.

  ‘Where’s your house, sir?’ Sussock stopped ten feet from McWilliams. He knew that country people like a large amount of personal space.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Follow the track.’ McWilliams nodded in the direction of the farm, ribbons of white cut deep into the parched green. The track led up to a wood and then seemed to turn right. A large earth-mover had been abandoned and was sitting derelict at the corner where the road turned to the right. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ll need to talk with your wife.’

  ‘I’ll take you up.’ McWilliams turned and opened the door of the Land-Rover.

  ‘No need,’ said Sussock, ‘I’ll walk.’

  ‘I don’t like people talking to my wife when I’m not there.’

  ‘I’m not people,’ said Sussock coldly, ‘I’m the police.’

  ‘I still don’t like it.’

  ‘So go talk with the chaplain.’ Sussock turned and began to walk up the track. He heard the door of the Land-Rover being slammed shut behind him. He peeled off his jacket and began to enjoy the stroll up the track to the McWilliams’s house.

  He was there it seemed, both eventually and suddenly, after a stroll which, while not in itself unenjoyable, he despaired would ever end, the track being a full three-quarters of a mile in length, winding between raised fields and copses. He turned yet another corner and saw a roof, and then another roof, four in all, three corrugated roofs forming a letter ‘E’ with the middle stroke missing, and the fourth roof of tile set back and parallel with the vertical stroke of the ‘E’ so that the buildings formed a square with a narrow entrance at the top and bottom corners. Sussock stopped at the corner, at a point where the track assumed a steep decline. The farmhouse and outbuildings were not just set back three-quarters of a mile from the road, but they occupied a natural hollow in the landscape concealing them from view unless one was standing above them. The nearest neighbour was probably two miles distant.

  Sussock walked down the decline and entered the square formed by the house and corrugated roofed buildings. It was a square of hard concrete, swept meticulously clean, and as such seeming out of place with the overall image of the struggling tenant farmer, his searing whisky breath and ancient Land-Rover.

  And no dogs. A farm with no dogs. That too surprised Sussock. It was peaceful in the courtyard, a canopy of trees beyond the buildings, blue sky, and no sound, no sound at all.

  He stepped across the square and knocked on the door of the house. A sharp, respectful, yet authoritative knock.

  He waited.

  Silence.

  A bird sang, a blackbird he guessed, richly musical. The sun beat down, the square baked. Cows lowed in the distance. He was about to knock again when the door opened with a click which seemed to Sussock to have a distinctly apologetic quality.

  A frightened-looking waif stood on the threshold and blinked questioningly, submissively, at Sussock, granting the initiative and the situation immediately and unquestioningly to the stra
nger who had called unannounced. Sussock saw a frail woman, younger, he guessed, than she appeared to be, with darkness about her eyes which might have been mascara and a redness about her cheeks which might be blusher. But he didn’t think so. He saw a frightened, hunted look in her eyes, he saw arms and legs covered, yet she occupied a hot airless house on a hot summer’s day.

  The woman looked at the man who had called at her house, her home, three-quarters of a mile from the lane, which was off a road, which in turn was off the main road out of Carluke, which in turn was a town whose existence was known only by its residents. She saw a tall man, a gaunt, lean face, craggy with a life which seemed to her to have been beyond fair wear and tear. She saw a weariness in his eyes, yet those eyes had an essential warmth about them. She saw the threadbare clothing of a man who cares little for himself, of a man who lives alone. She felt an affinity with the man, as if meeting a fellow traveller. She had seen before that those who have been tortured can always recognize each other, nor can they ever hide from each other.

  The man spoke. He said, ‘DS Sussock.’ He showed her an ID card. ‘I’d like to ask you some questions, if I may?’

  The woman glanced over his shoulder nervously and hung on to the door at shoulder height with two sparrow-thin hands. ‘My man…’

  ‘He’s at the end of the lane.’

  ‘He’ll tell you everything.’

  ‘We’ve already spoken to him.’

  ‘You from the city?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘What’s it like there now? You’ve been in Garthamlock?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Oh…’ Said with a deep-felt tone, a sigh, a moan of a deeply seated need.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s where I come from. Do you know Tattershall Road?’