by Chris Dolan
At the hospital no one could shine much light either on how Mr Crichton fell or what his chances of recovery were. Coulter and Dalgarno had to wait in the corridor like worried relations. Clare Crichton was being seen by another doctor, her blood pressure apparently plummeting, having fainted when she reached the hospital with her husband in the ambulance.
Coulter had done this countless times, waited outside intensive care and other wards. Thankfully, so far, mostly in the line of duty. And yet he fretted, worrying about the state of whoever was being treated, no matter what they had done or how much the inspector had been hunting them down. He wasn’t, he thought, too afraid of his own death, more the circumstances in which it might occur. One day it would be him in there. Martha, or the kids, the whole family sitting in these seats as his life ebbed away. Or perhaps it wouldn’t be like that. Maybe it would be a backstreet at night, alone in the gutter. His heart suddenly exploding, or a bullet from nowhere, from out of the sodden night. Or long and wasting, slobbering in a home somewhere. Sitting here you were attending on Death and no matter who the victim was you shared something with him; you were dying too. Your turn next. Dalgarno and he barely spoke and avoided each others’ eyes.
Eventually the consultant came to see them. Coulter had met him before. Every inch the professional: groomed, soft-spoken, detached but not uncaring. Gavin Hood was highly respected, well liked. But that practised demeanour put a shiver down Coulter’s spine every time. “My best estimate at the moment – spinal fracture, fractured skull, one leg and one arm broken. Probably a collapsed lung. In short, Inspector, multiple wounds to the head and back, organ damage. Possibly brain damage too.”
“What are his chances?” Such a limp question. Coulter was as practised as Hood. Did his voice put the fear of death into people too? Of course it did – he was a policeman.
“Hard to say. He needs a lot of work. We’ll start on him now. It’s possible that each of his injuries will heal. At best it will take a long time. He’ll be a very lucky man if one or more of his injuries isn’t life-changing at least.”
“Falling from a third-storey window. Bad I know. But those seem like very severe injuries for, what, thirty, forty feet?”
“I agree. He must have fallen with some force.”
“More than just tumbling off a ledge?”
“You’re the detective, Inspector. If you’re asking me if his injuries are consistent with being pushed, well I couldn’t possibly say. Throwing himself down would increase the impact. But so too might tripping, falling headlong.”
Clare Crichton was given the all-clear to talk to them. Though once they had found them a room in the hospital and she sat down, Coulter wondered if it had been the right decision. She moved a little too slowly, apprehensively. Her face pale, eyes blank, seeing and not seeing, like an ancient Greek statue. Dalgarno, Coulter noticed, was very good with her, guiding her into her seat, talking quietly, soothingly, all the while.
“This is very difficult for you, Mrs Crichton.” Coulter tried to mimic Amy’s murmur.
“Clare,” she said, automatically.
“Do you have an idea, Clare, what might have happened?”
“He fell from a window.”
“Do you know how he might have fallen?”
“I’d warned him about it before. He kept cigarettes up there. Had one every now and then. When he was feeling anxious.”
“About Julian Miller, this time?”
“Well of course. What else?” Then those blank eyes began to moisten, and she turned her head towards Dalgarno. “It was me. I killed him.”
“What do you mean, Mrs Crichton?” Coulter asked.
“We’d just argued. A terrible, terrible argument. I suppose you all know, but apparently my husband was having an affair with Marion.”
Coulter waited a beat, then: “What made you think that?”
Clare Crichton paused for a second too. “She told me.”
“Marion Miller? When?”
“An hour, less, before Bill got in.”
“How did she tell you, Clare?” Dalgarno asked quietly.
“She phoned me. Just like that. And just … said it. Then hung up. What kind of woman does that?”
“So when he came in, you rowed.”
“That’s putting it mildly. After everything I’ve done for him. Standing by him. And he’s screwing her over his office desk, or whatever, while little wifey’s home making dinner.”
Although her words were bitter, they were spoken flatly. Rehearsed, Coulter wondered?
“And he went upstairs?”
“I presume so.”
“Did you see him going upstairs?”
“I was cooking in the kitchen. He stormed out. The next thing I know your officers are shouting into their phones.”
“A terrible accident,” Dalgarno said tenderly, though Coulter knew she was fishing.
“Yes it was. It couldn’t have been anything else.”
“Like what, Clare?”
“Well it was either that or he jumped out, but that can’t be right.”
“Why not?”
“Well, first of all, if he’d wanted to kill himself, he isn’t stupid. He’d be more likely to be badly injured than dead. It’s not that high.”
WPC Morrison had said that she showed no emotion looking at her husband’s body lying in a pool of blood. She spoke now, too, matter-of-fact.
“Bill isn’t the suicide kind. He’s scared of blood. Cries like a baby when he cuts his finger. It takes courage to kill yourself. Bill isn’t a courageous man.” She stopped and stared at the blank wall behind Coulter. Then, an afterthought: “And he certainly wouldn’t kill himself on my account.”
Hearing the news, Maddy got in her car and, heading for the hospital, took a last-minute decision, veered off the motorway to pass by the Crichtons’ house. They lived in a mews cottage in one of the lanes off Cleveden – the kind of house Maddy had often dreamed about. Perfectly secluded, but still a few minutes’ walk from the pubs and cafés of Byres Road.
A policeman and woman, standing close together, talking animatedly to one another were at the gate. They looked like a young couple excited on their first date.
“Hullo. Maddalena Shannon. Procurator. I was passing, thought I’d take a look at the exterior.”
They knew who she was, and not asking to be let inside made it easier for her to pass without questions or checking with their superiors. “Whereabouts did Mr Crichton fall?”
They pointed to the side of the house. This wasn’t a mews at all, but an old stables, at the back of a house that could serve as a small castle. It had been beautifully restored. If this was the Crichtons’ doing they had good taste, and deep pockets. The area Bill had fallen into had been cordoned off – like it were a murder scene. As she’d hoped, nobody else was there yet. Clare Crichton would still be at the hospital, and so would Alan and his team.
Bill Crichton’s blood was congealing on the driveway paving, black and crusted like a giant skint knee on the path. He’d lost a considerable amount of blood. Looking up, the window he had fallen from was still open, a saltire of police tape across it. These old structures had high ceilings. The first floor in particular, where the horses had probably once been stabled. Maddy winced at the thought of falling from such a height. And those paving slates looked unforgiving.
Standing back and straining her neck she could just about see inside the window. White walls, what looked like the top of a desk, a phone on it. No drapes but a blind, rolled up closed at the top of the window. There was a little ledge. It might even have a window seat on the inside. Could Crichton have been sitting there? It wasn’t raining, or particularly cold, but it was still Glasgow and February – unlikely he’d want to sit outside. Could he have been smoking? She looked around for a cigarette butt or ash but couldn’t see any. He might have been leaning out to get a signal – depending on your provider you often had to get near a window or a door in the West End to use your phone.
No sign of a mobile on the ground, and he’d hardly have put it back in his pocket when he was falling.
Returning to the officers she tried to get some information out of them. It confused them. They knew the procurator was important but equally didn’t want to get into trouble for saying something they shouldn’t. You learn early in the police to keep information on the inside. The only thing she hadn’t known, from the message DI Coulter had left for her, was that Crichton had returned home only ten minutes or so before he came tumbling out the window. What had brought him back?
Retracing her route along the motorway Maddy thought about desperate men. What bothered her was how well, in her experience, they hid that desperation. Crichton, the night he had come to see her. His world was falling apart. Boss and mentor murdered in cold blood. Which meant his affair with the boss’s wife would come out. He’d seemed genuinely concerned about what his wife might do when that happened. Professionally and personally everything had turned to shit. Yet he still sought to be in control, manipulate the situation. How many others were doing the same? Was Julian Miller a desperate man before he was shot? Lawyers, builders, businessmen – all known for living on the edge. Pushing to the limit.
She texted Coulter from the car. Five minutes later they were standing on the High Street outside the old gates of the infirmary. He told her about the argument between Clare and Bill moments before he fell. How Clare looked to Coulter to be in deep shock. Perhaps had been since Miller was killed.
“So all bets are on?” She said. “She elbowed him out the window.”
“Possible.”
“Did you ask her?”
“No. But I will.”
“Or he threw himself out.” They must look like a couple of smokers, standing outside the hospital. She patted her pockets but had left the nearly empty packet at home. Just as well.
“He’d had to have really dived, judging by the wounds he sustained. Forensics will have an idea about that.”
“Or he fell, badly.”
“That’s my feeling. For the moment.” Coulter didn’t look convinced by his own words.
“Spectacular timing. Just as his company’s in a mess and his wife’s caught him playing away.”
They stood for a while lost in their own thoughts. Around the door stood a clutch of patients, some of them in pyjamas and dressing gowns. One of them, an elderly lady leaning on a Zimmer frame, sucking deeply on a cigarette. Behind her was a woman with a young boy. Not unlike the lad she’d seen with his father outside Morag Boyd’s flat. The mum looked exhausted, shoulders slumped, staring down at him. As she looked up and their eyes were about to meet, Maddy quickly turned her head away.
A couple of hundred yards down the road was the old Glasgow Cathedral, and beside that the Museum of Religion. She’d seen Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross in there a few years ago. A painting she loved, though she’d been told by people who knew about such things that she wasn’t supposed to. It was kitsch, Dali looking for another headline, nothing more. But for Maddy it had solemnity and anguish in equal measure. Christ crucified filled the evening sky; below, a tiny fisherman not looking up at Him, not even aware of Him. It seemed an appropriate image, here at the edge of Glasgow’s East End on a smudged winter night, sick kids and worried mums, talking about a man who was fighting for a life he maybe didn’t even want.
“No point standing here,” Coulter said, turning up his collar. “My head’s just going round in circles. Might as well do that on a comfy pillow.”
“Accident, murder, suicide. Whichever it turns out to be, it complicates the situation.”
Coulter closed his eyes and sighed. “Doesn’t it just.”
Alan Coulter eventually got home. He sat and poured himself a whisky. What a way to live. Dead men, near-dead men. Suspecting everyone of everything. Hospitals, doctors, gory details about fractures, punctured organs, brain matter. His neighbours did ordinary jobs. Taught kids, sold cars, operated cameras. None of them, though, would escape the blood and guts. In the end it would touch them all.
Policing wasn’t such a bad way to live, he decided. Or convinced himself. It was honest. It looked life – and death – in the face and dealt with them even-handedly. Every day he saw how bad, or frightened, or vengeful people can be. What they are capable of. Most folk turn away from all that. Concern themselves with the latest Vauxhall, debate diesel versus petrol, play golf and ride carbon-frame bikes, go shopping. The charade that saves them from thinking about the bits of themselves and others they don’t want to see. It was Coulter’s job to think about little else.
Over the river Maddy sat and looked at the copse of trees outside her window. Chiaroscuro. Branches picked out by the orange street lights against a shining black sky. Like a painting. Tiny lives being played underneath it. She thought of contacting Louis but decided she’d be too distracted. She should call her mum, but wouldn’t be able to deal with the chatter and cleverly concealed criticism. She tried to picture Dali’s crucifixion in that blackest of skies, but couldn’t quite.
The fag packet was lying on the coffee table, within reach. She smoked one, instead of having a drink. She’d make up for it by going to the gym tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Sucking the sour smoke deeply she checked Facebook. Dad had answered. “Hey Flutterby. What do you think? Your old fellow on social media. When you coming over to the Oul’ Country?”
Flutterby. What he’d called here when she was little. When he was big and loud and funny and threw her up into the sky and could do no wrong. She couldn’t think how to reply to his message.
Southside, Coulter’s reverie was brought to an abrupt end, his mobile making him jump. There was something he had to see. Russell picked him up half an hour later.
The two uniforms positioned outside the Crichton house, older than the rookies who’d found Bill Crichton earlier, should have known better.
“We just sat in the car for ten minutes.”
“To get out of the cold.”
It wasn’t cold. It was boredom. Coulter knew that, could remember. Sitting in the car you could put on the radio. He had some idea there was a match being played tonight. A Scotland friendly? They took him round the side of the house to the spot where Crichton had landed. There, in the middle of the stain of dried blood, lit up by the officers’ torches, was a gun. A Glock G19. The same model that had killed Julian Miller.
“And look. There, sir.”
Beside it lay a single bullet.
II
It’s all about relief. Mine and theirs. The trigger is pulled and two people are put out of their misery. Though one of them only temporarily. The deed is done, duty fulfilled, and the body relaxes. You can stop holding your breath. The duty discharged: both bullet and barrel.
A body lies lifeless, and you would think it would be earth-shattering. But it’s not. It has, when it’s done, about the same weight as turning out the bedside light, or turning off a car engine.
What is most striking is the silence. The big bang of the gun and then a hush. A peaceful hush.
There are worse ways to kill a human being. Grind them down, over years and years. Send them the wrong way, perhaps with a smile, towards their certain demise. Bury them alive, slowly. Make them kill themselves. Betray them, sometimes with a kiss.
A trigger, a barrel, a bullet – it’s clean, quick, easy. Very easy. The mechanism does it all for you. So well designed, simple to use. It knows what it’s for even if, for a nanosecond, the hand holding it does not, or suddenly questions the logic.
And then you leave. Just walk away. Put on the old mask. No need to think through any plan, just go about your business as usual. If, one day, the gun decides to change direction and point itself at you, well you know now how it works, and how simple and clean and quiet it is.
Who knows where the blaming begins and when it ends. If ever.
The job is done. You feel, not elated, not agitated. Just relieved.
Until the next one.
A s
ignature killer. What does that tell you? Maddy pedalled like crazy on the exercise bike, adrenaline surging. That they want to be caught. They want the world to know that this is their work. She’d never come across it before in her own career, but she’d read about it. Didn’t Jack the Ripper leave some clue behind? She couldn’t remember what. Then there was some lunatic in the sixties, somewhere in the States, who posted clues, zodiac signs or something, to the newspapers. Must ask Louis about that.
He was the reason she was doing an extra spin class: shed a few pounds, and quickly. He’d be here in a week or so. She told herself it wasn’t actually for his sake she was doing it. Fuck that. She is who she is and he can like it or lump it. The lumps were the problem. For her, not him. She just wanted to feel good. She was going to have to get naked, and playing Hide the Sausage was more fun if you weren’t trying to cover up the splodgy bits, turning off the light.
Maxwell Binnie had spoken to her like the Miller case was definitely hers and it was live. Probably he was just keeping her happy – she had too many connections to prepare a case. But just in case, she had to start moving on it. Even if it was just to hand it over to Dan or Izzy. It was a fiscal’s fate anyway. Do all the hard work then the rights of audience were handed over to an advocate depute who got all the glory in court and more money for it than she’d see in the months of preparation.
It was her job to think it through, be ready to build a case for Learned Counsel. Let the police do the investigating of course, but good practice to keep up with events and think independently.
She turned the resistance up a notch higher.
They might just be taunting the police, society. But, in the long run, didn’t the taunters want to be caught too? She could picture it in her head. Some sicko, proud of the death he’d brought, the pain and chaos he’d caused. Standing self-righteously in court, a knowing smile on thin lips, believing he was privy to some great plan, some profound understanding the rest of us aren’t. This was turning out to be a high-profile case – the newspapers were obsessed with it, carrying crazier theories every day – lots of dosh sploshing around, the cream of the legal profession would be fighting each other to defend the bastard. It was down to Maddy di Rio Shannon to put the fucker away, forever.