‘See, Tuesday, a child’s toy fits in. I don’t know where it fits in but it fits in. A cuddly toy. A rabbit.’
‘A rabbit.’ Tuesday Noon smiled. It was one of the few times Montgomerie had seen him smile.
‘A blue one.’ Montgomerie looked at Tuesday Noon with an expression of serious intent. He wasn’t going to let flippancy creep in. Look, Tuesday, I’m as serious as a heart attack. The furry toy fits in with the girl’s murder. We don’t know much about the missing child, the missing boy, we have nothing to go on there. Help us with either, Tuesday, and we’ll continue to forget about all those outstanding warrants and we might even let you have Friday afternoon off. This is serious, Tuesday. Heavy Duty.’
Tuesday Noon pushed the empty whisky glass closer to Montgomerie.
Montgomerie stood. ‘Counting on you, Tuesday.’
It was the explosion inside his head that woke Sussock. Or so it seemed. It may equally have been that he awoke to an endlessly exploding brain. He groaned and opened his eyes and looked across a green expanse towards an off-white cliff topped with a lip of silver. Just to one side of him was a tall thin black stem. He shut his eyes and the explosion subsided and was replaced by an intense pain which ran round the front of his forehead. He let out a second, longer, louder groan and opened his eyes once again. He took stock of his position. He was clothed. There was a pillow under his head and a blanket had been draped over him.
He was lying underneath Elka Willems’s kitchen table.
He levered himself up and sat at the table and in a well-practised manoeuvre he placed his right hand to his head, his thumb above his ear, the fingers of the right hand to the centre of his forehead. It was, he had once been shown, and subsequently had always found, a near-mystical way of making the pain of a hangover disappear. It was also a lot safer and healthier than painkillers. Sussock laboured under a Calvinistic streak in that he had brought this upon himself, he believed, therefore he had to endure it until it ran its course. Painkillers were in consequence forbidden but the magical use of finger and thumb on cranial pressure points was permitted. Using his left hand, he filled the kettle and made himself a mug of coffee from the jar of instant and the mug of milk obviously and thoughtfully left beside the clean mug by Elka Willems for him.
Carrying the coffee back to the table, he saw the note left for him by Elka Willems propped prominently up against the bottle of HP Sauce. In a round generous hand she told him how she had knocked up a neighbour to help her drag him into her flat. As he read the note Sussock uncurled his long bony fingers from the mug and put his left hand up to his head, to join his right and shut his eyes. It was another incident to be filed away in the recesses of his mind, which like so many other similar incidents would leap suddenly to the forefront of his mind, and do so when least expected, and would continue to do so, so long as he retained his mental faculties. In this way he was haunted by endless sins of social ineptitude which stemmed back to his teenage years. Elka Willems’s note continued, inviting him to help himself to coffee and food. The hot water had been left on if he wanted to shower, but whether he showered or not could he please turn it off before he left the flat. There was a change of clothing in ‘your drawer’. She had gone on to explain that she didn’t know if he had any plans for the day but Fabian had all but cancelled leave and was coming in himself that day.
Oh, Saturday. Sussock suddenly realized that it was Saturday. He had a free weekend once every six weeks, and this was his free weekend. He glanced at the clock on the wall, a white face, Roman numerals within a pine frame. It was midday. He’d go in. He’d shower off, eat something, drink more coffee, change into clean clothing and go in. It was her way of telling him to do so, to score a point in his own favour.
‘It’s the not knowing.’ The man spoke as much to himself as to the women who were also present in the room. He was tall, bespectacled, bearded, balding. ‘You hope for the best, you can only hope for the best, and you try to shut the worst out of your mind but it’s not so easy. It’s always the worst that floods into your mind.’
The man’s wife sat beside him and she reached out her hand for his. Elka Willems knew that she was barely preventing herself from bursting into floods of tears.
‘You keep reproaching yourself.’ The man squeezed his wife’s hand as he talked it out of himself ‘You ask yourself if there was anything that you could have done, anything that you could have done but didn’t. We warned him strongly about strange men.’
‘I keep going up to his room.’ Edwina Moore breathed deeply. ‘Stupid, I know, but I do it, I just want to put my head round the door to see if he’s sneaked back into the house and gone up to his room. Each time I open the door I think this time, this time, just let him be there to turn round and smile at me as I knock and enter, and each time I build up a little hope and each time there is a little disappointment.’
‘Came back from North America yesterday,’ said the man. ‘Cut the lecture tour short, it was no big deal in the circumstances, the Yanks were full of concern, they’re really into the concept of family in a big way. Couldn’t have been more helpful and more pleasant about it. Haven’t slept properly, it’s Saturday today?’
Elka Willems nodded. She had been in the house for perhaps fifteen minutes, had stepped into the hallway and had circumvented unpacked suitcases and a baseball bat, still with the price tag on the handle, and had upon invitation turned into the cool of the Moores’ north-facing living-room. She had taken a seat and was again pleased to see books on the bookshelves. It had become her recent and frequent experience that in many homes bookshelf space had been given over to prerecorded videos usually with titles like Exterminator 27. It was, it seemed to her, the way of things in late twentieth-century Glasgow. But the Moores were academics, they had use, need, and respect for books. Elka Willems had relaxed easily in the room, she found the books warm and softening.
‘That’s quite understandable,’ she said, leaning forward in a concerned manner. She could only imagine the endless torture of having a child abducted or go missing for a period now measured in days. ‘We are doing all we can, we’ve searched the areas in the locality where he is most likely to be, we’ve used dogs to do that, far more efficient than humans.’
‘So I understand.’
‘We’ve done house-to-house, it’s rather a pity that it’s not term-time, we can reach more children that way. Reach them for more information, reach them to warn them.’
‘Of course…’ Edwina Moore nodded. She wore loose-fitting clothes and had tangled hair. Elka Willems thought that she could look very fetching if dressed, but the woman clearly had a bohemian contempt for superficial appearances, so common, Elka Willems had found, in families similar to the Moores: brainy and bookish. She also had had, it appeared, her son, her only child abducted. Pride in appearance was not going to be high on her list of priorities.
‘It never occurred to me that another child had been snatched.’
‘One hasn’t,’ Elka Willems quickly reassured her. ‘But it’s a possibility that we must bear in mind. Another possibility is that he may be being held for ransom. I suppose you would have told us if you had received a ransom demand?’
‘Yes.’ Edwina Moore spoke with a solemn finality. ‘And if we receive such a demand you will be the first to know.’
‘Thank you.’ Elka Willems stood. ‘And for our part, we will of course let you know as soon as we have any news at all. Pleasant or otherwise.’
‘We appreciate it.’ Edwina Moore forced a smile.
Elka Willems said she’d see herself out.
Daniel Galley picked up a damp cloth and wiped the brow of the head which he was painstakingly building up. He was slowly, layer by layer, building up the modelling clay to the top of the pegs he had inserted at strategic places into the alginate base. Already the face was human and female, a little Neanderthal at the moment and still lacking hair, but with his skilled, experienced eye Galley could tell that the young woman who
had been buried in a Lanarkshire field some twenty-five years earlier would, when he had finished, reveal herself to have been attractive; very attractive indeed. He glanced at his watch, 12.30, and then out of the window: a pleasant day. He had come to the end of a phase in the reconstruction of the face, a natural break in the process. Time for lunch, time for a stroll to Byres Road, and a meal in the vegetarian restaurant in the arcade. That would be good. He peeled off his smock and hung it neatly on the peg on the door. He slid into his light summer jacket and thought with pleasant anticipation of the vegetarian restaurant in the arcade.
‘Bought them from the cash and carry,’ said the man, smart in a jacket of a loud checkered pattern, pushy careerist, self-serving, as well as being far too young to be the manager of a city centre toy shop. Or so thought Abernethy.
And for his part, Troy Floyd thought that the gawky, awkward, nervous man, ludicrously holding a huge toy rabbit, was too young to be a cop and he had insisted on scrutinizing Abernethy’s ID before turning his attention to the rabbit. ‘We still have a few left.’ Floyd wondered if Abernethy knew how ridiculous he looked walking along Argyle Street on a Saturday, holding a big furry rabbit. ‘They were fashionable,’ he added, ‘and competitive, many shops sold them, Mr Abernethy, they were the flavour of the month a month or two ago. That’s how the retail trade works with respect to toys, a few steady sellers, the hardy perennials as you might say, train sets for the boys and dolls for the girls, and then along comes something that grabs the mass fascination of childhood, their collective fascination if you like, like the rabbits which were a minor success, went like snow off a dyke for a few weeks and then stopped selling. You look disappointed,’ said Troy Floyd with a smile and Listerine-laden breath.
‘I am,’ Abernethy replied coldly. ‘Strange, but I was hoping that you could identify the person who bought this particular toy, provide name and address and everything. We’d like to speak to him.’
Troy Floyd smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Who is the wholesaler?’
‘Sihan Brothers.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Over the bridge and turn right, Kingston-upon-Clyde. Where else would you find wholesalers in Glasgow?’
‘All gone now, sir,’ said Ali Sihan. ‘I’ll inquire of my brothers but they are now discontinued from Hong Kong.’
‘Your brothers?’
‘The rabbits, sir. The rabbits were sold, many, many thousands of them from many different retailers.’
‘Many different retailers,’ echoed Abernethy, rapidly coming to terms with a cul-de-sac.
‘Large and small, sir.’
‘Large and small.’
‘Would you like a plastic bag with which to carry away your rabbit, sir?’
It was Saturday, 13.10 hours.
Saturday, 13.10 hours
Fabian Donoghue sat at his desk. He had taken off his jacket and had sat back in his chair reading the handwritten submission on the child abduction/disappearance and the double murder, prior to the reports being sent for typing. In his free hand he toyed with the lens, apparently from a pair of spectacles, which was wrapped in a self-sealing Cellophane sachet and which had been sent up by Elliot Bothwell in accompaniment with his report.
Donoghue had left his home in Edinburgh at nine that morning amid deeply felt but muted protest from his wife and somewhat louder protests from his children at his having, once again, to work on Saturdays. He had kept his voice calm and his manner firm, quite simply insisting that he was going: end of story. In his car on the mid-morning weekend empty motorway he was not at all concerned about the protests his family had made: their voices rang not in his ears. He slipped the Rover into overdrive and settled back to enjoy the ride as the car took him to Glasgow at a modest sixty miles an hour with the engine doing little more than idling. He thought that there was a young boy somewhere, maybe dead, maybe captive, who wasn’t able to protest. In the coming years Donoghue envisaged political discussions with his grown children and he would doubtless be arguing along the lines of: ‘Well may you protest, but at least you can protest!’ In a similar way, his wife turning her back on him and sighing and reaching for a coffee-stained mug to wash did not concern him. There were two women who died when they were young, whose bodies had been taken from shallow graves in stony Lanarkshire fields, who would never have a husband or a family. But Mrs Fabian Donoghue, like her children, could at least complain.
He had reached P Division at Charing Cross at 10.00 a.m. and had sat at his desk, filled and lit his pipe, had begun to read the handwritten submissions and he had also sat back and pondered. Once that morning he had risen from his desk and walked across the carpet and stood looking out of his window at the square and angular buildings on either side of Sauchiehall Street. Somewhere, he thought, somewhere out there was a man abducting women, holding them captive for up to a week before drowning them in a bath of saline solution. After which he drove the corpses to Lanarkshire and buried them in a shallow grave…or driving them to Lanarkshire and then drowning them and burying them local to the locus of the murder. And also, somewhere out there among the weekend humanity T-shirted and sun-creamed, was a man or a woman or both who had abducted a child, or who had abducted and murdered a child and had hidden his still to be discovered body; or else the man or woman or both did not exist at all and Tim Moore’s decomposing body would rise, grotesque, to the surface when the first rains of autumn flushed the reedbeds in the Forth and Clyde canal.
He felt the sunlight burn his face and stepped back into the shade and pipe-smoker’s fog, and was amused that he feared the harm the depleted ozone layer might allow the sun to do to his skin yet was blissfully dismissive of the damage the Dutch tobacco with the twist of dark shag was doing to his heart and lungs and throat and blood pressure.
A little after midday he left the office for some lunch and took a short stroll to clear his head. At 13.30 he was back at his desk, body and mind refreshed, re-reading the submissions and toying with the lens encased in Cellophane.
There was a reverent tap on his door. Donoghue paused and then said crisply. ‘Come in.’ Only then did he look up.
Abernethy stood in the doorway. He looked nervous and exhausted, as though he had been undertaking hard physical labour under a hot sun. He held a plastic bag in one hand.
‘Yes, Abernethy. Come in.’
Abernethy approached Donoghue’s desk. ‘Drawn a blank on the rabbit, I’m afraid, sir.’ He held up the plastic bag and lowered it again.
‘Didn’t think we’d get anywhere with it. But it was worth a try.’ Donoghue took his pipe and pointed to a vacant chair in front of the desk. ‘Leave it there, please. Have you had your lunch?’
‘Not yet, sir.
‘Well, grab something and then take this along to the Eye Infirmary.’ Donoghue put the lens on the edge of his desk. ‘See an eye specialist, or an optician, anyone who can tell you something about that lens.’
‘Very good, sir,’ Abernethy stammered. ‘In fact I’m not so hungry. I don’t eat much during the day in the summer. I’ll get right on to it now.’
‘Good man.’ Donoghue returned his attention to Bothwell’s report.
Abernethy turned and left Donoghue’s office and then Donoghue heard him grunt and say, ‘Sorry, Sarge.’ Donoghue looked up to see Abernethy and Sussock sorry-sorry their way past each other in the doorway of his office.
‘Ray.’ Donoghue beamed as the elderly detective-sergeant entered his office. Donoghue thought he looked frail.
‘Sir.’ Sussock closed Donoghue’s door and sank into one of the vacant chairs without waiting to be invited: it was a privilege of age and a working relationship of mutual respect.
‘It’s your free weekend, Ray. You know you are not supposed to be working.’
Sussock squeezed his eyes. ‘Aye.’
‘I mention it only, Ray, because it is not unknown for officers, and people in other walks of life as well, to go on the batter an
d get themselves up for work the next morning, and go in. It’s as though an automatic pilot sets in…they forget it’s their day off…’
‘It shows?’
‘It shows.’ Donoghue nodded. ‘The bloodshot eyes, the breath overladen with coffee and strong mints…’ He reached for the phone on his desk and dialled a two-figure internal number. ‘Hello, Donoghue…I’d like a pot of coffee and two cups in my room…yes, sir, now, sir.’ He replaced the phone. ‘So what brings you in if not your automatic pilot?’
‘I heard the jungle drums, sir, they spoke long and they spoke forceful, and they spoke of major inquiries, of all hands to the pump, of the possibility of leave being cancelled…’
‘Good man, I can certainly use you. I’ll sort out a couple of days in lieu…Lord knows when.’
Sussock shrugged. ‘What’s the state of play, sir?’
‘Pretty well static, I’m afraid. We’re still turning over stones, no definite line of inquiry in either case. We’ll get a lead in time, of that I’m certain, in one inquiry or the other. No leads on the little boy, the house-to-house in Broomhill and Jordanhill areas hasn’t turned anything up, but often a house-to-house will prompt a delayed reaction.’
‘I didn’t remember when the officer called, but the next day I suddenly remembered…’
‘Exactly, Ray, exactly. We can still hope for that response.’ Donoghue lit his pipe. ‘So he’s either been abducted or he hasn’t. If he has, he’s either still alive or he isn’t. If he hasn’t been abducted he’s dead.’
Sussock took his hand from his eyes.
‘Dead, Ray. After this time he’s dead. Either murder or fatal accident, body still to be discovered.’
Sussock nodded with a certain air of resignation. ‘So we hope that he’s been abducted.’
‘We hope he’s been abducted.’ Donoghue sucked and blew on his pipe. ‘Of the double murder, we now have the identity of the first to be discovered and the most recent victim. Richard King has dug up a shady, shadowy world of alcohol abuse and part-time prostitution, quite the other side of the coin from a twee existence in Egypt. The second victim, rather the second to be found but the earlier by about twenty-five years—’
Long Day Monday Page 13