Bad Samaritan

by Michael J Malone

  There and here.

  He looked over at Robert. It wouldn’t take much and the old man would be dead. He needed to move on, and it wouldn’t do to leave behind too many people who might recognise him in the future.

  Pinch his nose, cover his mouth and it would all be over in moments. Or, he could make it look a suicide? Wouldn’t take too much effort to get him into the bath. Slash his wrists. The police wouldn’t look too far into it all. People would say that his grief was so great he couldn’t go on. And the man would surely be grateful for an end to his misery. In fact, many would consider it a mercy.

  Now, that would be the act of a Samaritan.

  14

  Alessandra Rossi looked over the man driving the car as if he was a complete stranger, not her boss. As usual, the words were out of her mouth before she could press the edit button.

  ‘Ray, did you get your end away last night or something?’

  ‘What?’ He took his eyes from the road for a moment to quiz her with his expression.

  ‘You were actually singing there.’

  ‘Was not.’

  ‘You were. We’ve been working together for, what, two years now, and I have never ever heard you as much as hum.’

  ‘Crap. I sing all the time. And … get my end away? Did you actually use those words? You’ve been working with Drain and Harkness for too long, Ale.’ He chuckled. ‘End away.’

  ‘Well, did you?’ In for a penny, she thought.

  ‘Wonder where that comes from,’ Ray mused. ‘It’s a weird expression.’ Another chuckle.

  ‘Jeez. You did. You totally got lucky last night.’

  ‘Detective Constable Rossi, I find this line of questioning completely inappropriate, and what’s wrong with me singing?’ He looked over at her. Then back at the road, making sure he was a car length away from the vehicle in front. ‘What was I singing?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Alessandra shrugged. ‘Couldn’t make the words out.’ Pause. She let an imaginary tune run through her mind. ‘Sounded like I Kissed a Girl. You know, that Katy Perry song?’ She slapped her thigh and giggled.

  ‘No fucking way. You made that up.’

  They both laughed.

  * * *

  The hospital entrance hove into view. McBain parked the car, they climbed out and Ale followed him through the main entrance. A couple of people were standing just beyond it, wearing dressing gowns and pyjamas, taking in their fresh air along with a mouthful of cigarette smoke.

  In the lift, McBain leaned against the wall and asked Ale, ‘You ever smoked?’

  She shook her head. ‘Never saw the appeal. You?’

  The lift door opened. McBain walked out and as he did so, looked over his shoulder to answer her question.

  ‘No. But I did get my end away last night.’

  ‘Wait. What?’ Ale charged after him. She pulled at his sleeve. ‘Details, man. Details.’

  ‘Oops. Too late.’ He smiled. ‘We’re at the ward.’

  ‘Bastard,’ Ale said to his back as he walked into the small room and over to one of the beds. She watched him and noticed that there was definitely a bounce to his step. And adding that to the singing, she was sure there was more to this than just some groin action.

  First, however, there was the small matter of a young man, a possible murder suspect, who’d been put in that hospital bed by the father of his deceased ex-girlfriend.

  Ray was already doing the introductions by the time she caught up with him at the side of the bed.

  ‘We just want to talk to you about the other night, Simon. You feel up to talking?’

  The boy on the bed nodded. ‘You mean when Aileen’s dad gave me a doing?’ He had a line of stitching on his left eyebrow and plasters over the bridge of his nose, which was badly swollen.

  Ale sized him up. Under the bruising there was enough on show to suggest he was a handsome young man. The width of his shoulders and the line of his legs under the sheet gave a suggestion of height. He brushed his hand over his cropped, dark hair and steeled himself to briefly look both Ale and Ray in the eye.

  ‘That and the night Aileen died,’ said Ale.

  A large Adam’s apple bobbed up and down the boy’s throat as he swallowed. His hands were on his lap, fingers twisting. ‘I was with my pals that night. Craig and Douglas. And I met my brother, Matt, later on. You can ask them. I didn’t touch her. Didn’t even see her.’

  ‘That’s fine, son,’ said Ray. ‘We’ll get your statement later. We just want to ask you a few questions for now.’

  ‘Statement. You want me to make a statement?’ He sat forward on the bed.

  Ale pulled out her notepad. ‘Just some questions for now. Where were you exactly?’

  He told her. She wrote it down.

  ‘From when to when?’ she asked. Same again.

  ‘And could you give me the full names of the guys who were with you?’

  The full names and addresses of Matt, Craig and Douglas were supplied.

  ‘So you didn’t see Aileen at all that night?’ Ale asked.

  ‘No,’ Simon answered, his eyebrows raised in a “see me, I’m being totally honest” expression. He couldn’t meet Ale’s eyes for long, and he looked away. Out of the window. Then back to Ray and Ale. ‘Didn’t speak to her at all that night.’

  ‘We have her phone,’ Ale went for the bluff, inwardly cursing the fact that they still hadn’t worked out how to unlock the machine. ‘We can read her texts.’

  ‘Good.’ Simon stuck his chin up as if bracing himself against a lie. ‘Then you’ll know I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘There was some semen on her top. Mind if we do a wee DNA swab?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Simon, a flush forming on his cheeks.

  ‘Hot in here, innit?’ asked Ray. ‘We should ask them to turn the heating down. Hospitals, eh? Must waste a fortune.’

  ‘What’s the swab thing then?’ Simon asked.

  ‘It’s like a cotton bud. We swipe the inside of your mouth. It picks up some cells from the inside of your cheek, and we compare the DNA structure of that to the DNA found on Aileen’s body,’ answered Ale.

  ‘Easy peasy,’ said Ray.

  ‘So anything to tell us before we go ahead and get it all organised?’ asked Ale.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down a few times before out squeaked, ‘No.’

  ‘Sure?’

  A silent nod while Simon studied the sheets covering his legs. Poor kid, thought Ale. Looks like he’s about to shit himself. Then she studied her response to the guy. Had she already written him off as a suspect? She mentally corrected herself. This was way too early in the investigation to be making any assumptions.

  ‘Look, we all know that things can get out of hand,’ said Ray in a consoling tone. ‘You have a wee knee trembler out the back of the pub, for old time’s sake, and before you know it, there’s an argument. It gets heated and…’

  While he spoke, Simon continued to study his sheets, but he was shaking his head in a rhythm to match Ray’s words. His lips were pursed tight and his nostrils flared. When Ray stopped, he said, ‘No, no, no, no. No.’ The last “no” was almost a shout. Then he looked at them both defiantly with a final, ‘No.’

  Simon crossed his arms. Sucked in some air like he had just remembered to breathe.

  ‘I loved Aileen. I wouldn’t harm a hair on her…’ His voice cracked. He held a hand over his face and started to cry.

  Ale heard footsteps as someone entered the room. When whoever it was reached hearing distance, they speeded up, and Ale saw a small, heavy woman with straightened blonde hair and full make-up on barrelling to the bedside. She was in a dark trouser suit, wearing a cream raincoat and carrying a voluminous tan handbag. Ale guessed she was in her early forties.

  ‘Who are you people?’ she asked. ‘A
nd why are you upsetting my son?’

  ‘It’s OK, mum,’ said Simon. ‘They’re the police.’

  ‘Oh they are, are they,’ Simon’s mum said, pulling her coat tight around her. ‘Well, I hope they are going to be charging the man that put my son in this hospital. I know his daughter is dead, and God knows I share his pain, but you can’t just go around battering innocent children.’ She quickly looked Ale and Ray up and down and, dismissing them, turned to her son and forced a lighter tone into her voice.

  ‘The doctors are saying you can go home now. That’s great, eh?’

  Simon nodded, but looked as if he’d rather have all this teeth pulled without anaesthesia.

  ‘You okay, son?’ she asked and, leaning forward, pulled him into a hug.

  Simon tried to extricate himself from her mothering, but was no match for the power of her solicitation, so he settled for mumbling into her hair. ‘I’m OK, mum. I’m OK.’

  ‘Mrs?’ asked Ray.

  ‘Davis. Helen Davis,’ she answered and pulled herself up to her full five feet nothing.

  ‘Mrs Davis,’ said Ray. ‘I fully understand that you are concerned for your son’s welfare, but this is a police investigation. And if you don’t mind, we would like to ask your son some questions.’

  ‘Aye, sure, sure,’ she answered and looked over Ale’s shoulder.

  ‘Who are you looking for? Matt?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Aye,’ she answered. ‘He brought me up in that wee death-trap of a car of his.’ She took a step to the side and tried to look down the passageway beyond the door. ‘He was right behind me. Must have carried on down to the drinks machine at the…’

  ‘We’ll only be a few minutes more, Mrs Davis,’ said Ale. ‘If you could…’

  ‘Aye, sure, hen. Sure. I’ll … eh …’ She was clearly torn between her mothering and her duty as a law-abiding citizen to comply with a request from the police. Ale thought it was delightfully old-fashioned, and her heart went out to the woman. She didn’t see enough of that kind of respect these days. ‘I’ll go and find number one son.’ She offered a small smile. ‘He of the shitty car.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ray. ‘We won’t be long, and then you can take your son home.’

  Mrs Davis took a couple of steps out of the room. And then turned back.

  ‘Here, do we need a lawyer? Cos I’ll get one. I’ll find the cash. Anything for my boy.’

  ‘There’s no need for any of that right now, Mrs Davis. But if we do, Simon will be fully appraised of his rights.’

  ‘Right. Sure. Aye.’ And her face crumpled as she turned and walked away.

  Ale waited until the woman was out of hearing.

  ‘Your dad?’ she asked.

  ‘Dead,’ answered Simon in a flat tone. ‘Afghanistan, about eight years ago.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that, son,’ said Ray. ‘Must have been tough on you guys.’

  Simon shaped a what-can-you-do shrug.

  ‘How many of you are there?’ Ale asked.

  ‘Just me, Mum and Matt.’ He squared his shoulders as if he had made a decision. ‘Just us three against the world.’ Had the sound of an often used expression. He exhaled. ‘So, what else do you need to know?’

  ‘Tell us what happened between you and Aileen. Why you broke up.’

  ‘She said we’d been together for too long for people who were so young. That we needed to see a wee bit more of life before we settled on each other.’

  ‘You didn’t agree?’ Ale asked.

  ‘Other people make childhood romances work. Why couldn’t we?’ He looked out of the window. Stared at the monochrome sky. ‘University life. There’s so much going on. She wanted a taste of all of that. ‘ He turned to face Ale and Ray, his weak smile painted with every grey in the spectrum. ‘When a parent dies when you’re young, you mature quickly. Know what really matters. The people you’re with. Not the fashion, the bling, and certainly not The Only Way is bloody Essex.’

  Ale noticed Ray making a face of enquiry.

  ‘It’s a programme, Ray,’ she explained. Then, looking at Simon, tried to make an ally of him by nodding at Ray as if to say, what a numpty.

  Simon smiled, and Ale felt herself warm to him a little more. And then steeled herself against the feeling. This young man was their main suspect.

  ‘We heard she wanted you back,’ said Ray.

  ‘Funny way of showing it.’ He looked at Ray, a question in his eyes.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Snogging those guys down at the student union. They were all over her. Made me sick.’

  ‘Sick enough to have an argument with her?’

  ‘If someone tells me they don’t want me, I’ve enough self-respect to take that on the chin and try to move on.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take her back then?’ Ale asked.

  ‘One, she didn’t actually come out and say anything. Two, I think she needed to get it out of her system. If we’d got back together, something else would have caught her attention, and she would have dumped me again. I’d be the comfy slipper dude she came back to after other guys messed her around.’

  His speech sounded to Ale like one that was a rehash of a conversation with some mates late at night in the student union after a few pints of beer. Also sounded like he was a young man with a good deal of self-awareness.

  ‘Weren’t you tempted?’ Ale asked.

  ‘I might have been, if she’d asked. But she would do that flirty thing with me, expecting me to read her mind and…’ He stopped speaking and moved his hand to his mouth as if to stop the words from pouring out of him. ‘It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.’ He closed his eyes and a solitary tear slipped out. ‘If I’d read the signs, I would have gone back with her and she would have been with me that night, and she wouldn’t have died.’ His right arm was across his chest, and with his left hand he was pressing into his eyes, as if trying to push the tears back in. Grief took over and his shoulders moved to its lament.

  ‘I should have been the comfy slipper guy for her. She’d still be alive.’

  * * *

  Helen Davis had a fatalistic view on life. Shit happened and then more shit piled on top of it until you were sitting in the shadow of shit mountain. She was a teenage bride to a soldier, and she knew, just knew, that the army would be the death of him. Then, when her sons were born, she took the view: hope for the best, but expect the worst. Then the worst happened, and it was just her and her boys, and by God she would do everything she could to protect them.

  She saw the way that detective looked at her. The female one. Poor bitch, she was thinking. A dead husband and two strapping boys to look after. She felt her jaw muscle twist and her stomach sour at the thought of her sympathy. She didn’t need anyone’s pity. Her and her boys would get by. They would survive.

  But then there’s the loneliness. The weight of it surprised her. It was a physical thing. Straining her thighs, her back, pulling at her eyelids until all she could do was close the curtains, crawl under the covers and sleep. People give you a year and then expect you to recover. The first birthday, the first Christmas, the next wedding anniversary, get them over and you’ll be OK, they told her.

  Ha. Idiots and liars, the lot of them.

  The boys acted out, got bullied, bullied back – all spit, fists and fury for a time – then friends, school, routine helped them adjust to the father-shaped hole in their lives.

  But she had moments every day when she was elsewhere, listening for his voice in a crowd, looking for his face in a photo, searching for his underwear among the laundry. Just that morning, when she woke up, her first question, even before she was fully awake, was why wasn’t there an impression of his head on the pillow beside her. Then the gut-punch of realisation and the soft moan into her quilt before she pulled herself together. Her boys needed her.

&
nbsp; She heard footsteps, and the two police officers were walking down the corridor towards her. She pulled her capacious handbag to her midriff as if it was giving her heat and sustenance.

  ‘We have everything we need for now, Mrs Davis, but we may need to get back in touch,’ the male detective said.

  Mrs Davis nodded slowly as if a weight was being balanced on her head. Several thoughts passed through her mind, each reflected by her expression, before being moved on for something else. And each one of them brought her pain. Except for the last.

  Then she stood up and brought her phone out of her coat pocket. Quickly thumbed through some pages and held it up for them to see.

  ‘You people need to do something about this,’ she said.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Ale took the phone from her.

  ‘Bloody Facebook. Some wee bastard is mouthing off about my Simon. Saying he’s guilty. Saying Aileen’s dad gave him a doing and that the police had arrested him.’ She looked from Ale to Ray and then back again. ‘And it looks like there’s a lynch mob going on in Twitter. Somebody has cooked up a hashtag: #Simonisguilty. And everybody is sharing it and…’ She sat back down on the chair. To Ale it looked like she sat down before she fell down.

  Helen knuckled a tear away from her cheek. ‘My boy did not kill that girl. I know my son.’

  That girl.

  Helen recognised what she was doing as soon as the words left her mouth. She was distancing herself from Aileen Banks in her mental war to help her son. The kids had been together for a few years. Most of their “winching” had been carried in and out of each other’s houses. Plenty of time for Helen and Aileen to eat together, play together. Plenty of time to form a strong bond. They’d even gone shopping a couple of times after her and Simon split up.

  The power of Helen’s desire to protect her son surprised her, and it was all caught up in those two words. “That girl”.

  Helen closed her eyes, felt a pang of missing for Aileen. Opened them, looked at Ale. ‘I was really fond of her. She was like the daughter I never had. She made my son happy, but I can’t grieve for her until I know my son is safe.’