In Loving Memory

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘No significant damage. One of the chassis members took most of the impact. It’ll be out of dock long before you are.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Her voice sank to a mumble. She relaxed and seemed to doze for a few seconds. When she roused again, she frowned. ‘I’m beginning to ache,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t they give you an “on demand” painkiller?’

  ‘Somebody said something but I wasn’t taking it in.’

  Sandy traced a line from a catheter in her wrist to a dangling bag of clear liquid and found what he could only think of as a high-tech bell push. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘I had one of these when I was hospitalized in the States. Try not to overuse it.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Listen,’ she said. ‘Keep me posted. I still want first crack at interrogating him. I think I know how to get him going.’

  Sandy felt his eyebrows going up of their own accord. ‘I don’t know what the bosses will say about that.’

  ‘Point out to them that Walsh and I have something in common,’ Honey said. ‘We shot each other. That forms a bond.’

  Sandy tried not to let her see his amusement. ‘Try not to form any more bonds that way,’ he said. ‘I’ve been worried sick. I thought I was going to lose you and I couldn’t have faced that.’

  She reached out and touched his hand. ‘Don’t blow your nose on the curtains,’ she said. That was her usual and unanswerable response to being told not to do something that she had no intention of doing.

  The approach of a skein of medical staff interrupted their feast of reason. Sandy was forced to depart but he took with him a list of essentials that Honey wanted to have with her. These included several books that she had acquired but never got around to reading, prints of all the photographs on the digital memory card, her laptop computer and a complete selection of her make-up. Back at the office, Sandy set about a revision of all the documents in the case. Honey, whose recall was generally acknowledged to be phenomenal verging on total, was doing much the same, from memory, as her alertness made a return.

  *

  In the days that followed, things moved forward on a dozen fronts. Honey’s shoulder began to mend and she came off high dependency and was moved into a private room, by courtesy of BUPA, but at the insistence of several very senior policemen. Answers to the enquiries, few of them significant in themselves but each contributing some fragment to the overall picture, began to trickle back.

  And Dougal Walsh was said to be out of danger. He was, said the consultant, strong enough to withstand questioning but unlikely to be very talkative. Honey’s demand that she should have the first go at him had been considered and accepted. She made it clear that her interrogation of him would be in several stages.

  Honey had been allowed out of bed for an hour at a time for the past two days and felt quite able to walk, slowly, as far as the lifts; but medical staff use wheelchairs as a sort of tagging system. A patient in a wheelchair can be tracked whereas a pedestrian could be anywhere. So into a wheelchair she went despite her protests.

  A porter with a brown coat and a misplaced belief in his own wit trundled her along seemingly endless corridors until she had to agree that the wheelchair was after all a necessity.

  Dougal Walsh was still in a high dependency room. He had it to himself for security as much as for any medical reason. A very young-looking uniformed constable with gold-rimmed glasses and a loose mackintosh was in attendance but immersed in a thick book.

  The porter parked the wheelchair, advised Honey to speak to a nurse as soon as she wished to be wheeled back to her own ward, and left. The constable had evidently been advised of his duties because he had already produced his notebook and a ballpoint pen. Honey nodded to him. He triggered a small tape recorder in his top pocket and dangled the microphone beside the bed.

  Walsh, it seemed, no longer needed constant medical supervision, but he was surrounded by all the paraphernalia of electronic support and monitoring. His face had not regained its colour and would have looked white except for the contrast with the white sheets and pillows. A bag on a stand dripped something into a vein and most of his bodily functions were being recorded. His heartbeat was producing a regular beep from a monitor. The bedclothes over his right leg were raised over a cage that she thought was probably there to protect the exhaust burn. He looked, Honey thought, distinctly second-hand. She had managed to dress her hair with the help of one of the nurses and she had applied a little make-up on the assumption that any gesture in the direction of femininity might help to intimidate him. Her own face, she knew, had wasted and she had not been to a hairdresser for a fortnight, but Sandy had assured her that she would pass.

  Walsh raised his head on her arrival. She wheeled the wheelchair closer to the head of the bed so that they could make eye contact without strain. For immediate support she depended on the young constable. The tape would be listened to and agonised over by her seniors but that would be at a later date, too late to offer immediate advice.

  Later, she might have to play the bully, but for the moment a friendly approach was worth trying. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

  ‘Bloody sore,’ he said, without malice. ‘What d’you think?’ Then he brought his eyes into focus. ‘Are you part of my occupational therapy?’

  She pretended to laugh. ‘You should be so lucky.’

  She saw recognition dawn. ‘Hey! You’re the bitch that shot me.’

  ‘You shot me too.’

  ‘You fired first.’

  ‘At your front wheel. You hit me first.’

  ‘You don’t look much hurt.’

  ‘Is it my fault that I’m a better shot than you are?’ She decided to terminate the childish exchange. It was time to stir him up. ‘Shooting at a police officer is a serious offence. Even possessing a handgun usually merits what they call a custodial sentence. The jail, to you.’

  ‘I meant to shoot past you. I hit you accidentally.’ He was lying and she could see it but a jury might believe him.

  ‘How are your thumbs?’ she asked.

  With an effort he raised his left hand. The thumb was bandaged. ‘Bloody sore,’ he said.

  ‘That’s just one of the things I have against a semi-auto.’ She was feeling her way, hoping that a common interest in the technology of death might open a window. But there was not the least flicker of interest. It looked as though he might relapse again into torpor. She decided to stir him up again. ‘How could you bring yourself to kill the girl while you were making love to her?’ she asked sharply. ‘Are you that kind of a pervert?’

  Dougal Walsh jerked in his bed and then groaned. ‘For Christ’s sake, no,’ he said shrilly. ‘There was nane o’ that in it at all. If things had been different we’d have set up together. Maybe even wanes . . .’

  She produced a scornful laugh. ‘Come off it,’ she said. ‘What kind of love shows itself by killing?’

  ‘You dinnae understand,’ he said. For the first time, she could hear desperation and misery in his voice. ‘There wis nae future fer us. I kent that. I tried to steer her off frae falling for me. What she kent wis only a wee bit o’ the game, but it would hae been enough to start them going along roads tae lead them deeper and deeper. I was telt tae take her away an keep her safe while they asked fer orders. I could see fer myself what the choices were. Either she was bought off or she was killed. I hoped like hell that they’d decide to buy her off. I think a’ could have kept her in line.’

  ‘But they decided that the girl had to die? And you were to do the deed?’

  ‘Yes.’ His voice sank to a whisper. ‘She had to die. You dinnae say no them buggers, the bosses.’

  ‘What buggers?’

  ‘The men. The top brass. I thought we might run away together, but how could we hide wi oor faces marked the way they are?’

  ‘Did you tell her that you were going to kill her?’

  ‘No. But I think she kent. She just didnae want me to put ma heid on the block for her. And – kin you n
o understaund this? – I wanted her to die at her happiest ever. She was worth that. Loving and giving.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Honey said. ‘I may as well tell you that she guessed that her life was in danger, even from you, so she left two letters. And yes, she bears you out. She didn’t want you to sacrifice yourself – her self-esteem wasn’t strong enough for that. She was prepared to accept whatever came. What on earth induced you to photograph her body and then drop the memory card into a postbox?’

  His mouth opened in surprise. ‘Is that what became of it? I photoed her so they could see I’d done the job. But I wisna gaun tae hump the camera around wi’ me wi’ that in it, nor the rude stuff either.’ He flushed. Honey was amused to see such modesty in a Glasgow hard man.

  ‘How did it get into the post?’ she asked.

  ‘I got the wee camera as part o’ a deal wi’ Duggie Briar and I fancied it so I kept it until I got word that it was really hot. I bought a new card for it. I had a mate o’ mine who kens aboot cameras tae show me how tae swap the cards. When I got home I found I didn’t hae the card. I must a left it or dropped it in the pub. Jem Tanar had lifted the camera first and when he kent I was desperate aboot the card he tried to put the black on me, makin out he kent mair than he did, so I stuck him. I’d been back tae look fer it in the pub but there wis nae sign. Some bugger must a found it, seen the postcode on it and drapped it into the postbox. Is that how you tracked me to Haddington?’

  ‘I have the same postcode so it came to me. I must say that I’m surprised at a man like you, knuckling down to a few Glasgow hoodlums.’

  The result was all that she’d hoped for. ‘A few Glasgow hoodlums, did you say?’ He tried to sit up but the effort was too much. All the same, there was a spark in his eye. ‘I’ll tell you something, Mrs Fancy-Pants. The auld days are coming back. What they call organized crime. It’s like it used to be. The gangs are being organized. There’s somebody planning what’s going down and drawing the skills from all over and, that way, they can tackle bigger capers that ever before. They can call on all the skills they need. Muscle like me. Safe-crackers. Burglars. Forgers. Right up the ladder. That means they can afford to pay off everybody all the way up tae God.’

  ‘And who is this high hoodlum?’ she asked. ‘The big boss who’s doing the organizing?’

  He shook his head although she judged that the movement was painful. ‘No way!’ he said. ‘I’ve told you too much already.’ He pinched his mouth shut and turned his head away.

  She had got enough for the moment. He had started to talk and he would talk more once he had settled down. If she pushed him, reminded him that he had been ordered by his bosses to kill the love of his life, his change of attitude would be unpredictable. But his attitude might be improved if he had something to worry about. She looked at the young constable. ‘Stay alert,’ she said. ‘Somebody will certainly prefer him dead. Pass the word along.’

  ‘Those are the orders already, ma’am.’

  She could see a change in Walsh’s eyes. The message would sink in – if he cared whether he lived or died, which was far from certain. She decided to set him off along the path of helpfulness. ‘All right,’ she said to him. ‘Now, do me a favour. Use your bell to call a nurse. I’m ready to go back to bed.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Honey’s strength and concentration were making a slow return, but the stress entailed in a change of scene and the concentration of trying to out-think Dougal Walsh had taken it out of her. She dozed and slept and dozed again. It was mid-morning of the next day before she was dragged into full wakefulness, first by the arrival of Constable Knickers with extra chairs, then by a man who she recognized as a police technician, who swept the room for listening devices without finding any such thing, and finally by visitors. It seemed to have been decided that the next meeting of the team leaders was to take place in her hospital room, although if anybody had mentioned it to her it must have been during one of her periods of torpor and had passed her by. If she had been fully awake, she might have been alerted by the presence of somebody, who she later identified as Sandy, who tenderly, if unskilfully, raised her and brushed her hair into some sort of order before laying her down again.

  So it was that one detective inspector was caught at a serious disadvantage by two detective superintendents, one detective chief superintendent, one detective chief inspector (her husband) and a constable with notebook and tape recorder. The men seated themselves around the bed so that she was the focus of attention. This might have pleased her on some other occasion, but Honey was caught out in a thin and very short nightdress in which she was not even prepared to sit up to put on her dressing gown. She pulled the duvet up to her chin and remained prone.

  Mr Halliday was tacitly recognized as chairman by virtue of his seniority. He addressed his remarks to Honey, seeming quite unperturbed that his only view of her was straight up her nostrils. ‘We have all listened to copies and received transcripts of your interview with Dougal Walsh,’ he said. ‘You were quite right to break off when you did. Give him a day or two to consider his position and he’ll come to see that the most he can hope for is to take up the offer that you made him. You agree?’

  ‘Sir,’ Honey said, ‘I hope so.’

  ‘But you have doubts?’

  ‘I have. He doesn’t care much whether he lives or dies. On the other hand, his hatred of the men who forced him to kill his girl is such that he may decide to do them as much damage as he can.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. We’ll move on and share any progress that we’ve made.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Honey. ‘May I say something?’

  ‘Wait your turn, inspector. Mr Largs?’

  Detective Superintendent Largs stirred in his chair. ‘I have little to report on behalf of Northern. Our one small success has been to identify the man who rented the cottage on the Beauly Firth. He is a resident of Dingwall, by the name of Wyper.’ Honey opened her mouth but closed it again. ‘He maintains that he rented the cottage for his own occupation, planning a birdwatching holiday, but that family business prevented him from getting away. The man and the girl must have been squatters, he says. Until we can prove him a liar, that doesn’t get us very far.

  ‘The lady with the spaniels had been interviewed. She agrees that she posted an envelope for Cheryl Abernethy. The girl, she says, seemed relaxed and happy.’

  Mr Halliday nodded. ‘As you say, it doesn’t take us very far. Mr Blackhouse?’

  ‘Our only success to date has been the capture of Dougal Walsh,’ Mr Blackhouse said. ‘If Mrs Laird can get him to open up . . .’

  ‘We’ll come back to that subject,’ Mr Halliday said.

  Mr Blackhouse made a small gesture of acceptance. ‘Chief Inspector Laird can report.’

  Sandy leaned forward. ‘We still have no useful information from any of the planning authorities. Quite probably there have been no formal approaches yet, just concentrated lobbying of the most influential councillors and planning officials and the election of a biddable MSP.

  ‘Dougal Walsh’s prostitute girlfriend, Holly Benson, is proving quite willing to talk, but she knows very little and understands almost nothing. It’s a matter of keeping her talking and trying to fit together the little bits that emerge. From this, we are putting together a picture of his recent absences, how long he was gone for each time and by what transport. Quite useless at the moment, of course, but almost certain to slot into place before any cases come to court.

  ‘The only other area of progress concerns credit cards. Northern discovered that Walsh had paid for petrol using a credit card issued to a fictitious name at an address care of a post office. As you know, threats have been made against my family and myself. A man who was caught spying on my father-in-law’s house, where our child is staying, was searched and he was carrying an identical credit card. Strathclyde think that it may be traceable to Ravitski.’

  Mr Halliday’s face, unusually, showed expressions of pleasure
and surprise. ‘If that comes off . . .’ he began.

  A young nurse, armed with the confidence that sprang from several months of bossing patients around, came into the room and, ignoring the visitors, began to arrange the materials for the changing of Honey’s dressing on a trolley. She soon became aware of the glares of four pairs of male eyes. ‘What?’ she demanded.

  Detective Superintendent Blackhouse told her where to go and how. She flounced out of the room saying something about ‘in all her born days . . .’ Her voice faded away along the corridor.

  ‘If that comes off,’ Mr Halliday repeated, ‘it could represent a good step forward, linking a known killer with Ravitski. That side of the business is becoming urgent. Ravitski’s organization of the Glasgow underworld seems to be passing from the planning into the implementing stage. There has been a major robbery from a Carlisle jeweller and a safe-blowing in a mansion house near Newcastle. There was also an attempted bullion snatch at Glasgow Airport, only foiled by luck. Each of those events was well researched and brilliantly planned. No evidence was left behind and nobody talked; the only connection to Ravitski being that the absolute minimum of words were spoken but that any such words were in a recognizable Glasgow accent. Eventually, of course, somebody will become overconfident and we’ll have arrests and a show trial, by which time Ravitski will probably be in South America or the Seychelles, laughing at us. So I want this stopped before it gathers momentum. If anybody can suggest any lines of enquiry that we are not already pursuing . . .?’ He began to gather his few papers together.

  Honey broke the little silence that followed. ‘May I speak now?’ she enquired.

  For a second time, Mr Halliday’s face showed emotion, this time of chagrin. ‘I apologize, inspector,’ he said. ‘I promised you a chance to speak and you’ve earned it. What can you tell us?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Honey said. ‘While taking note of your embargo on outside communications, I asked my father to find out something for me. He can be very discreet.’