‘Maybe I should come back when your head’s clearer?’
‘My head’s fine,’ the woman snorted.
Sussock nodded. He’d been this way before, Mrs Manning’s information would probably be accurate but she would also have little or no recollection of giving it to him when she came out of the ‘bender’ in one day’s time. ‘So, Mary?’ he said.
‘She disappeared. Can’t say I was sorry. Me and her just didn’t get on. I heard she left to walk the streets in Glasgow. She left about a year after I moved in with her dad. Her dad died two years ago but I kept the house, had it put in my name.’
‘Any other relatives?’
The woman shook her head. ‘Her mum died when she was young, her dad’s away these two years. They were both alone in life. She was too. I mind the day she left right enough. Her dad took a good drink, so he did, and that day he came back from the pub and sat in his chair talking to all his old army pals who’d come out the skirting-board to say hello to him. Mary left that minute. It was a dark night, heavy rain, she just put on her coat and walked out of the door and we never saw her again. Her dad reported her missing, though.’
‘I’m afraid you never will,’ said Sussock. ‘See her again.’
‘Oh.’ The woman slumped against the door frame.
‘I’m sorry, but we have discovered a body.’
‘A body?’
‘A skeleton, in fact. We have made a positive identification and it is that of your stepdaughter, Mary Manning.’
‘All these years. What has she been doing with herself?’
‘I regret that the indications are that she died not long after leaving the house.’
‘Not long…but she’s been gone over twenty years now…she’d be a middle-aged woman, married, I thought with a family. She couldn’t have stayed on the streets for ever…’ The woman seemed to sober rapidly. Upstairs a toilet flushed and the semi-naked man padded back across the landing, still over-concentrating, still not apparently aware of the open door and the stranger on the threshold.
‘Where did she go?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘How…’
‘Murdered,’ said Sussock. ‘She was murdered. Maybe on the very night she left the house, leaving her dad talking to his army mates.’
‘…Abernethy,’ said Abernethy. ‘Or the duty CID officer. Thanks.’ He replaced the phone. It rang instantly. ‘Abernethy,’ he said, snatching it up.
‘Switchboard, sir. An optician phoned. They didn’t want to hold until your line cleared. They left their number if you’d like to phone them back.’
Abernethy phoned them back. Listened. He replaced the phone and stared at his notepad.
He had been given a name, and a date of birth.
He had been given an address.
He knew, he knew, he just knew that this was it.
Slowly he picked up the phone and dialled a two-figure internal number. ‘Collator?’ he asked softly when the call was answered.
There was an agitated nervous tap on Donoghue’s door. He looked up. Abernethy stood on the threshold holding a dusty file in his hand.
‘Come in, Abernethy.’
‘I think we’ve got something here, sir.’ He handed Donoghue the file.’
‘Oh. Take a seat.’ He opened the file. ‘Sara Gallagher of Lansdowne Circus—’
‘That’s—?’
‘Just off Great Western Road, sir, opposite Park Road.’
‘Got it, yes…date of birth…that would make her sixty-four…’ Donoghue looked at the thickness of the file. ‘Have you read this?’
‘Enough to get the gist of it, sir.’
‘Which is?’
‘She has a psychiatric history.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘She was in the state hospital for some time, a considerable time.’
‘Criminally insane.’
‘She murdered her two children.’ Abernethy shuffled nervously in the chair. ‘It makes gruesome reading.’
‘Tell me.’
‘She smothered them.’
‘But it was more than just post-natal depression?’
‘Oh yes. They were six and eight years old. There was some evidence of premeditation in that she cancelled the eight-year-old’s dancing classes—permanently cancelled them—a few days before she murdered her.’
Donoghue turned a page of the file and glanced up at Abernethy. ‘Heavens,’ he said.
‘The bit that I found hard to stomach is that the forensic evidence indicated that there was a time lapse of about a day between the deaths of the children. The eight-year-old was smothered first, and she and the six-year-old lived in the same house as the dead child for twenty-four hours, then she smothered the younger one. She walked into the police station—this station in fact—and told them what she had done. They found one child recently deceased, but the other stiffened with rigor.’
‘My heavens.’
‘No evidence that the corpse of the elder child was hidden from the younger during that time.’
‘Oh…’
‘She went to Carstairs, then to Leverndale. Locked ward, of course.’
‘I should hope so.’
‘She was committed at Her Majesty’s pleasure when she was only twenty-four.’
‘So she had her first child at sixteen?’
‘Yes. Her second at eighteen, to two different fathers according to the file. Her own family were well off. She murdered her children in her parents’ house—’
‘The Lansdowne Circus address?’
‘Yes, sir. She continued to live with them. It was when they were away for a holiday that she murdered her children. She was deemed sane when she was about forty-three or forty-four and discharged. She went back to the Lansdowne Circus address which by then was hers, having inherited it. Her parents died when she was in hospital.’
‘I see. She was then discharged at about forty-five years of age.’
‘Yes, sir, but has been admitted and discharged a number of times since then.’
‘And if she did murder Mary Manning…’
‘Who?’
‘The skeleton has been identified. Ray Sussock’s on his way back from Airdrie where her relatives live.’
‘I see.’
‘If she did murder her, she did so within a few weeks of being discharged.’
‘So much for the medical assessment, sir.’
‘Well, judge not lest ye be judged, Abernethy. It’s the same in every profession. We only hear about the ones they get wrong, not the hundreds of times they get it right. The police are no exception. But if Sara Gallagher is our person we’ve no idea how many people she has been quietly murdering over the last quarter of a century. How did you get on to her?’
‘She suffers double vision and made an appointment to see her optician, having lost her spectacles. The optician in question phoned us in response to an earlier request I’d made of him and other opticians to alert us if someone with that condition presented, especially if they needed a replacement pair of spectacles.’
‘Good man. This was her discharge address twenty-five years ago?’
‘It still is. I checked the voters’ roll. She’s the only resident.’
‘She’s not, you know. With a bit of luck Tim Moore is there with her. Who’s in the building? Who else besides we two?’
‘None in CID, sir.’
‘Any female officers?’
‘WPC Willems.’
‘Right. Good. A sergeant and three men, plus WPC Willems, to meet us in the muster room in five minutes.’
‘Very good, sir.’
There was a second reverent tap on his door. Ray Sussock stepped over the threshold.
‘Don’t take your coat off, Ray,’ said Donoghue, rising from his seat.
Lansdowne Circus is an enclave of once prestigious houses built in the final years of the nineteenth century for the prosperous middle classes. Now, in the late twentieth century, the homes had for the m
ost part been divided into bedsitters for students, for vulnerable people, the mildly mentally handicapped, the unemployed, the unemployable, the drying out, the coyly termed ‘night people’. There were shrubs set in concrete tubs, but the concrete on the buildings was cracked, windows were boarded up and the cars in the street were wrecks.
No. 27 Lansdowne Circus had to Donoghue’s eyes what he often termed a shabby-genteel appearance. He noted a solid oak door, sun-bleached and winter-worn. It had a single metal knocker and only one name on the door— Gallagher. Neighbouring doors had up to eight different bells, eight different names on the door, often written on paper and Sellotaped in place. Donoghue’s interest in the architecture of his native city allowed him the passing indulgence that once the likely business had been concluded he might, he thought, might be able to view an unmodernized nineteenth-century town house.
Abernethy went up to the door and rapped the knocker, twice, authoritatively. Two uniformed officers stood close behind him. Across the street a woman walking her dog stopped and stared, brazenly.
It was in the event a remarkable capitulation. Sudden. Complete. Unconditional. The door was flung open by a tall and well-built woman with an eye patch, indignant that her door had been knocked on. She had a strong jaw, short hair, masculine features, heavy winter clothes, tweed jacket and skirt, despite the heat. She stood in her doorway in a defensive, questioning posture and then she noticed the uniforms and seemed to Donoghue to absorb the implication. Her posture changed, it seemed to soften, he thought, slacken; her arm fell from the door, her shoulders relaxed, and Donoghue thought she uttered a sound, an ‘oh’, perhaps. But he thought he might have been mistaken. He was not certain.
The woman continued to stand in the doorway.
‘Sara Gallagher?’ Abernethy asked, clearly, loudly. The woman did not reply. She stood staring at Abernethy and the policemen behind him and at the police officers behind them, then she looked straight ahead of her but no longer seemed to Donoghue to be seeing anything, as if moving to another world. She turned and walked with small steps back into the gloom of her flat, leaving the door open. Abernethy turned and looked at Donoghue.
‘Go in,’ Donoghue said to Abernethy and the uniformed sergeant. ‘Search the place. There’s a little boy in there. Look in every room. If he’s not in any of the rooms look in the cupboards and wardrobes. If he’s not there, tear up the floorboards.’
The cops entered, bursting into rooms.
Donoghue and Sussock followed the woman, they found her standing in the living-room, vaulted roof and crenellated ceiling, heavy furniture, large velvet curtains only partly opened. She stood facing away from Donoghue and Sussock, facing the fireplace, but still not seeming to see anything.
Donoghue walked up to her. She was as tall as he was, probably taller, probably heavier. He looked into her eyes. They were cold, distant and empty. ‘Miss Gallagher?’
No reply.
‘She’s not with us, Ray.’ Donoghue turned to Sussock. ‘Don’t know where she is, but she’s not with us.’
‘Sir!’ An urgent voice from the hallway.
Donoghue and Sussock went into the hallway. A constable stepped from a walk-in cupboard. A boy in his arms.
‘Alive?’ Donoghue asked, and then he saw Tim Moore’s eyes open. ‘Take him to the Children’s Hospital, quickly, advise them that whatever else they may find we believe him to have been deprived of food and fluid for up to five days.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘WPC Willems.’
‘Sir?’
‘Perhaps you’d like to advise the parents that they can attend at the Sick Kids as soon as they like.’
‘Love to, sir.’ She smiled and turned.
Donoghue and Sussock returned to the living-room. Sara Gallagher had not moved. ‘Sergeant,’ Donoghue called softly. There was no longer any urgency.
‘Sir?’ The sergeant and the constable entered the room.
Donoghue touched Sara Gallagher’s arm and turned her gently. She was compliant.
‘Take this lady to the station, please, Sergeant. When you get there, ask the police surgeon to attend. Tell him the story and request that she be referred to a psychiatric facility as soon as possible. Don’t leave her unattended for a second.’
The sergeant took one arm, the constable the other, and Sara Gallagher was led gently away.
‘Well, Ray,’ said Donoghue, ‘let’s see what we’ve got.’
What they found was a bathtub three-quarters full of water and a packet of salt on the floor beside it. It was just a bathtub full of water, but its intended purpose made it offensive to both men. Donoghue stooped and pulled the plug chain and as he did so his fingers touched the surface of the water. It was still warm. He said so.
Sussock caught his breath. ‘If we had been ten minutes later…’
‘Doesn’t bear thinking about.’
What they found was a pile of carpet off-cuts, each large enough to conceal a body.
What they found was a bunch of car keys. Perhaps thirty in all.
What they found was Abernethy, pale, drawn, leafing through a photograph album.
‘It was on the bedside cabinet,’ he said disbelievingly, handing the album to Donoghue. ‘Like it was bedtime reading.’
There were twenty-two prints from a Polaroid camera, pictures of eight women, and one of Tim Moore.
‘That’s Sandra Shapiro.’ Donoghue handed the print to Sussock. ‘In fact, there are three of her.’
‘That’s Mary Manning,’ said Sussock.
The women were all bound hand and foot with rope. Their expressions ranged from sheer terror to placid resignation.
‘They all seem slightly built,’ Donoghue noted. ‘She would have had no trouble overpowering any of them.’
‘Six women to be identified,’ said Sussock. ‘I dare say six missing persons files can be closed, and six families’ worst fears realized.’
‘A neat way for you to round off, Ray.’ Donoghue closed the album. ‘In at the beginning and twenty-five years on you’re in at the end. Not many officers can say that.’
The woman stepped out of the house and into the sun. She carried a bag of clothing, and a handbag containing documents and what cash she had been able to find when she had reached the decision. She walked across the yard, up the track, out of the hollow. She had plenty of time, all the time in the world. He’d told her that he would want his supper late that night, so he did, that meant he’d be coming home with a good drink in him, so he would.
Again.
No more. No, no, no more.
The policemen had treated her differently. Treated her with respect. They had pointed the way forward for her.
She walked, and she felt a weight sliding off her shoulders.
She walked, and she began to smile.
She walked, she noticed the green of the trees and the blue of the sky.
She walked, and she felt a delicious flush of freedom warming her, enveloping her.
Linda McWilliams was leaving her husband.
Linda McWilliams was returning to the city.
Long Day Monday Page 17