The Swedish Girl

by Alex Gray

  ‘Mr McCubbin!’ he exclaimed. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages. Everything all right?’ he asked politely, straightening up to his full height, towering over the old man who stood uncertainly in his own doorway.

  The old man’s eyes slid past him to the closed door. ‘All gone away, then?’ he asked, his voice rasping in the chill night air.

  Roger nodded. Then, seeing that the old man had made no attempt to return to his flat, he stepped forward hesitantly. ‘You do know what happened here, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye.’ Derek McCubbin nodded then looked down at his feet. ‘Bad business, bad,’ he muttered.

  ‘Are you spending Christmas alone here?’ Roger ventured, feeling a sudden pity for the figure before him, bent with age, a stick clutched in one hand.

  ‘Nobody’s business where I spend it, is it?’ Derek growled, his chin jutting out as he glared at the young man.

  ‘Well, have a nice time, wherever you get to, eh?’ Roger said, forcing a smile. Then, shouldering his rucksack, he headed on down the stone staircase, glancing back once or twice, aware that the old man was watching him from the landing above.

  ‘Dad! What on earth are you doing out there? Come on in before you catch your death of cold,’ Corinne scolded, bustling to the front door and drawing her father back into the warmth of the hallway. ‘Right, that’s nearly everything packed. You shouldn’t need anything else for a good while, eh?’ she told him, patting his arm.

  Derek McCubbin gave a grunt and allowed himself to be led back into the flat. Corinne had become bolder of late, ordering him to do this and that, arranging for the estate agent to come, even beginning to thrust brochures into his gnarled hands to see what sort of home they would purchase once the big flat in Merryfield Avenue was sold. The old man felt the creak of leather beneath him as he sank into his fireside chair. It was for the best, he supposed, though whether he could ever be happy in a new place was a moot point.

  ‘Better off out of here, eh, Dad?’ Corinne said, her hands full of the linen that she had been folding. ‘Away from all that dreadful business next door,’ she insisted.

  But Derek McCubbin did not deign to reply, staring instead at the empty grate and the cold ashes within.

  CHAPTER 27

  T

  he church officer switched off the lights and pulled the security door closed before locking the main door to the church. ‘All is calm, all is bright…’ The words of the carol resonated in his head, making him smile as he pocketed the bunch of keys and headed towards the car park behind the building. Tom stopped for a moment and looked up. Through the naked branches of the trees he could see the myriad stars scattered across the night sky, Jupiter twinkling as brightly as that first Christmas star must have done so long ago. His breath of satisfaction was a plume of mist before his face, evaporating into the darkness. It was a perfect night for Christmas Eve, one where a little child could almost believe in the sound of sleigh bells coming over the clear night air.

  Everyone had gone home now after wishing one another a ‘Merry Christmas’, the spirit of goodwill that the midnight service had engendered lingering on. Only Tom was left now and he was glad of the peace and quiet. Christmas week was a frantic round of Sunday School parties and events, culminating with the midnight service. Now he would have a bit of a rest, Tom decided; at least until next Sunday morning when he would rise early to prepare for the day.

  A movement in the shrubbery and a swishing noise made him look to his right. But there was nothing to see. A fox, maybe, out hunting for some small night creatures.

  Tom opened the door of the car and slipped inside, already thinking about the bottle of Glayva that awaited him back home; his wee nightcap would be well deserved after the work he had put in tonight. He switched on the engine and the car headlights then looked over his shoulder, preparing to turn the car around to face the exit.

  Tom frowned. Had a sudden wind blown up? Or was there some large animal thrashing about in the undergrowth next to the car park? Though situated not far from the city centre, theirs was almost like a rural parish, the church surrounded by woodland. The man bit his lip as a sense of anxiety grew in him. Another high wind might well cause more damage to the roof, an expense that he didn’t relish after the recent December gales. But the trees above him were still, and the stars still shone through the tracery of twigs, assuring him that all was well.

  Tom had just changed gear to drive off when a figure crashed out of the darkness, arms flailing, white hair streaming behind her. He braked suddenly, a scream dying in his opened mouth at the horror of her bloodied face before her body fell across the bonnet with a sickening thump.

  ‘It’s always the same on Christmas Eve,’ the police officer assured his younger colleague. ‘You’d imagine peace and goodwill to all men? Nah, for loads of folk it’s just another excuse for a piss up. Then we get to clear up the mess when a drunken party gets out of hand.’

  ‘D’you reckon that’s what happened?’ PC Gregor McLafferty whispered, hunkered down next to the woman lying where they had wrapped her in blankets.

  ‘Och, who knows? Can you not smell the sick off her? Too much of the sauce, I’d say. But that’s not what caused this,’ he said, pointing to the injuries on the woman’s face. ‘Someone’s given her a right doing.’

  ‘Where’s that church officer?’ PC Graham continued. ‘Thought he was going to open up so we could get her inside out of the cold?’ He shivered suddenly.

  ‘Here he is,’ PC McLafferty replied, seeing the man emerging from a side door of the church.

  ‘Okay, pal?’ PC Graham asked as the older man approached them.

  The younger policeman rose to his feet, ready to help lift the injured woman from the car park and into the relative warmth of the church.

  Just then the faint rise and fall of a siren could be heard and all three men turned to see the flashing blue lights as an ambulance appeared round the bend in the road.

  ‘Once they’ve taken her to A&E we’ll need you to give us a statement, sir. Okay?’ PC Graham said, looking hard at the man who stood before him, his face blanched white in the glare of two sets of headlights.

  Tom nodded. He still couldn’t believe what had happened, the image of that woman coming at him out of the darkness a thing that he knew would haunt his dreams for many nights to come.

  ‘She’s still unconscious, I’m afraid,’ the doctor said, nodding to the two police officers who were standing outside the curtained cubicle. ‘There are signs of internal bleeding and once we have some results from downstairs we will decide if she requires immediate surgery.’

  ‘Will she live?’ PC McLafferty asked, concern clouding his young eyes.

  The doctor shook his head. ‘Too soon to tell. If she hadn’t happened upon that man outside the church…’ His shrug made the young policeman shiver. He’d only been in the force for five months and was yet to be inured to the terrible things that human beings did to one another. It would come, his ex-cop father had told him gruffly. After a while the whole thing became routine.

  PC McLafferty turned away from the woman’s cubicle and walked smartly along the brightly lit hospital corridor after his colleague, unsure if he wanted to rid himself of the horror he had seen this Christmas Eve or to have his senses numbed by such things for ever.

  Maggie slipped out of bed, glancing at the form of her husband hunched beneath the duvet to make sure he was asleep. It was still the middle of the night, still Christmas Eve, as far as she was concerned, though the clock on her bedside cabinet registered three a.m.

  Silly, aren’t we, she told herself, sneaking next door to the upstairs lounge where their Christmas tree sat robed in darkness. Two old woollen stockings that were normally tucked into stout climbing boots hung limply across the arms of two squashy armchairs, waiting for someone to do the business of filling them with tiny gifts. It was still a tradition between them both to put an apple, a tangerine and a coin into the toe then stuff as many wee presents
as they could manage into the rest of the sock. Maggie couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t managed to wake up first. But her early morning task was always rewarded, much later, by Bill telling her to stay in bed while he took his turn to fill her own stocking. Did other childless couples go through all this rigmarole? Maggie wondered, stretching along the floor to switch on the tree lights. Or did they jet off to warmer climes, quaffing champagne for breakfast in some luxury hotel, far from the cold of a Scottish winter?

  Maggie Lorimer grinned as she retrieved the big bag of parcels from behind the sofa. It wasn’t easy to find time to do Christmas shopping but with Bill working such long hours she had allowed herself the luxury of trawling the internet for bits and pieces that she knew her husband would like. She picked up a small square parcel, recognising the chocolate orange: that would go down after the fruit and the two-pound coin that she’d laid aside, then some music collections and a slim, but expensive, bottle of aftershave, followed by some sweets, a new velvet bow tie for formal occasions, and a couple of books. Last of all she picked up a bulky parcel that had been the very devil to wrap because of its awkward shape. The high-definition binoculars from the RSPB were simply wonderful and Maggie felt a slight pang of conscience as she pulled the neck of the stocking to make space for the present, not just at the price, but because she would enjoy using them on their bird-watching trips too and it felt a bit like self-indulgence. Och well, they were great and he’d love them.

  There. She sat back on her heels, a warm glow inside her at the sight of the bulging stocking. Was this how it felt for parents creeping around in the middle of the night, playing Santa Claus to their wee ones? For a moment there was the familiar pang of regret for all the poor babies who had left her struggling body far too soon, rendering them childless. But there was also a little bit of sadness that Abigail, Rosie and Solly were away from Glasgow and that they would not be sharing their godchild’s Christmas this year. It was a reminder that the little girl was not always part of their family circle.

  Yet, in that same moment, Maggie’s mind flew to a different thought entirely. That poor young boy who had been Kirsty Wilson’s flatmate. Was he really guilty of the crime? Jo Grant seemed to believe it, but she had seen lately that Bill had his doubts. What, she wondered, shivering, would Christmas be like for Colin Young?

  He was awake long before the door clanged open at the usual unlocking time. It was something that seemed to have happened to his body clock since he had come here, as if the precious hours of the night when sleep would have been most welcome had deserted him, leaving him tired and listless by early evening. This should have been a special day but Colin doubted that it would be much different from every other day in Barlinnie. Dad and Thomas were not allowed to visit but they would be here tomorrow and Thomas had joked that he had been in training to get to that vending machine first this time. It was bitter for them too, Colin knew, and sometimes he wondered if he was the luckier one being in here away from all the catcalling and snide remarks that Thomas told him about. How people could be so cruel to a man who had lived a blameless life was simply wrong and it wracked Colin with guilt to think how much suffering he had caused his father.

  But there would be time later to escape from it all, wouldn’t there? Colin’s mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile as he thought about how he had found his get-out-of-jail card and now every day the student looked forward to a bit of time spent writing in his notebook. Professor Brightman had said to describe Eva and at first he had found himself shying away from attempting that, his guts churning with a real pain whenever he thought about the dead girl. But making up a story about her was different and already he had formed the structure for an opening chapter that he had entitled ‘I Meet Eve Magnusson’.

  It was her father who impressed me most, Colin had begun. A giant of a man, like some Norse god stepping straight out of a myth.

  Henrik had such authority and bearing that I was expecting some tall queen-like creature to be his daughter. Perhaps I had been thinking about the Valkyrie? Anyway when I did finally meet her I was surprised at how demure she was. Yes, demure is the word I am using here and that was just how she seemed; quiet, polite and friendly but not overly so, more as though she was hosting some event and we were her special guests for the night. Except of course we weren’t. Kirsty had arrived before me so we spent a while together chatting in the kitchen before the lads came up. Eva was nice, but a bit reserved as though politely brought up Swedish girls didn’t fraternise too closely with their tenants. I was a bit disappointed, to tell the truth. But, oh, dear God, that didn’t last long, did it?

  Colin felt his face burn as he reread the passage that followed. That would have to go, he thought, scoring out several lines where his prose had begun to gush. He could rewrite it, couldn’t he? Then a spasm of anger surged through him as he thought of the laptop back in his home in Armadale. Or had it been taken by the police? Oh, how he could do with the ability to delete stuff or cut and paste to his heart’s content! Instead he had to make do with this reporter’s notebook, line after line telling his story about Eva to Professor Brightman.

  He was a long way from writing about the night of the party, and Colin half dreaded, half yearned to get to that chapter. Instead he was at the part where he first knew about his own feelings for the slim blonde creature who had so beguiled him.

  She took us all for granted, especially Kirsty. But did any of us mind? Not a bit! It was as if she had cast a spell over us, like some fairy creature from a different world. And, yes, there was a kind of other-worldliness about her at times. Fey, that’s the word I used to think about as I watched her face in the candlelight at night.

  Colin stopped and thought again about the first moment that he had longed to hold her. They had been at the pub around the corner and he had picked up her cardigan. Had she said thanks? He couldn’t remember. But the way she had turned, smiling, had given him a jolt, as if some surge of electricity had been shot through his body. It was as simple as that. She was suddenly the centre of my universe, Colin had written, then scored that out too as being so flaming clichéd. He wasn’t going to sacrifice good prose even though the exercise was supposed to be about the professor seeing into Eva’s character and the psychologist probably couldn’t care less about how the facts were written down.

  A stirring in the bunk above his made Colin close the notebook and slide it beneath the mattress, out of sight.

  ‘You awake, pal?’ There was a creak as the other prisoner rolled towards the edge of his bunk then Joseph’s thin arm shot down towards Colin.

  ‘Merry Christmas!’

  Colin grasped the other prisoner’s hand, feeling it warm and slightly moist.

  ‘Aye. Merry Christmas to you too,’ he replied, shaking his cellmate’s hand then letting it go before wriggling back under his own covers. Joseph was in the habit of relating snippets from what he had done outside in those precious minutes before they needed to get up and dressed and Colin did not expect that today would prove any different.

  He waited for the stories to begin within the darkness, stories of a different kind that made his own life seem burgeoning with privilege, stories that made him feel somehow ashamed that so many things were outside his own experience.

  And, as he listened to Joseph’s rambling accounts of his life, punctuated by the vibrations made as the man’s anxious hands bumped against the side of his bunk – the obsessive compulsive disorder a feature that Colin had seen in several of the inmates here – he found himself wondering which stories were real and which were imagined. Yet he made no comment nor offered any reciprocating insights into his own past, simply waiting until the lights went on and the doors to the cells were unlocked on what he expected to be this bleakest of Christmas mornings.

  DI Jo Grant unwound the thick scarf and tossed it to the back of her chair. God! What a cold morning to have to come into work at Stewart Street. Despite the decorations everywhere, the division seemed c
heerless now that Christmas was actually here. Or, Jo reflected, perhaps it was her? That assault to severe injury last night had come her way and already there was a small team of forensic scientists examining the injured woman’s clothes. Christmas Day might be a day off for the majority of the population but there were plenty who simply had to be at work, Jo grumbled inwardly, folk like herself, seeing to the messes that human beings made of their world.

  She switched on her laptop and waited for the machine to go through its preliminary routine, rubbing her hands together to warm them up.

  ‘Coffee,’ she muttered. The usual coffee shop en route to work was closed, natch, and so she would have to make do with the machine along the corridor for today. With a sigh, Jo watched the screen, trying to decide whether she could be bothered to go along and get a cup or simply wait for one of the other officers to do it for her.

  ‘Merry Christmas, ma’am.’ DS Alistair Wilson appeared in the room as if by magic.

  ‘I bring you tidings of goodwill from the woman back home and a wee something to go with our breakfast,’ he grinned, shoving a plastic box onto Jo’s desk.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked, hardly waiting as Jo nodded, her face splitting into a grin as she opened the box to find a large pile of Christmas pies, still warm from Betty Wilson’s oven in West Kilbride.

  ‘How did you find an angel like that?’ Jo asked. ‘And where does she find the time to bake at this ungodly hour…?’ But Wilson had disappeared out of the room, whistling something that was meant to sound like ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’.

  Half an hour later, six on-duty officers were gathered around Jo’s desk, their coffee cups binned and the plastic Tupperware box empty except for a few pastry crumbs and a festive serviette.