Potter's Field

by Dolan, Chris;

  “What you going to do with the shamans now?”

  “Drop them off at their temple, and get back quickly to the simple life – warm room, drink, book if necessary…”

  “I’ve got a real page-turner by my bed.”

  “Has it got etchings?”

  “Come back and see?”

  She went out to the car, smiling. He was as awkward as she was – but just as keen. The two priests seemed embarrassedly aware of her distracted state and said almost nothing on the trip between hotel and parish house. Crossing the river, Mike squirmed in the back seat, fishing keys out of a pocket deep in some black fold of his suit. Arriving at St. Catherine’s, keys found, he had to wait for Monsignor Connolly to squeeze himself free of the low-slung Mazda.

  Maddy got out her seat and stood with her car door open to wave the boys farewell. Before he turned around to leave, Connolly looked her dead in the eye: “Maddalena. The job you do, the life you lead. It’s too much to bear without support.”

  “You mean, metaphysically?”

  “In every way. You have a wonderful family. Don’t stray too far from them. But spiritual support too, yes.”

  “My family aren’t really very holy, Father. Mama only goes to Mass to show off new outfits. I’ve no idea why Nonno goes. He doesn’t seem to be a fan of the church generally.”

  “You’re too sophisticated a person, Maddalena, to be deceived by such shallow anomalies.”

  What did that mean? Perhaps the old man knew her grandfather in some way that she didn’t. Perhaps it took one ancient man to really know another. He walked slowly towards the parish house. Probably no more than his early seventies, she thought. Just one of these men who age in a spectacular way.

  “Should you need help,” he said as he kept walking, not looking at her, “from an old man. You know where to find me.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mike, in the glow of the house lights behind him, waved. “Have a nice night now.”

  The statement irked her as she drove away. Was he being sarcastic? It made what she was about to do in Louis’s hotel feel sinful. She speeded up, wipers on full, suddenly burning with desire.

  Summer rain. The papers had been crying out for it, when they weren’t panicking about the morality of our youngsters. Coulter was in the front of a marked car, driven by a Uniform. Russell in another car behind him. Together they headed up a little convoy of six, growing at every crossroads. Coulter considered telling them to put on their sirens, jump the red lights. Sometimes he was in the mood for that kind of stuff.

  But the night drizzle was having a calming effect on him. It fell steady, speckling the passenger window prettily, the little beads glowing in patterns when car headlights passed. The city looked shiny black. He remembered his gran, blackleading the range in her kitchen till it gleamed sharply.

  Tony Kennedy had remembered the name correctly. Ross. The man he had delivered a package to, on behalf of Ian Lennon, in Maryhill Park.

  What exactly Colin Ross – whom Coulter and Russell had just interviewed – had to do with Ian Lennon, let alone three dead juveniles, was still a mystery. The main discovery was that Mr. Ross owned two big, black Labradors.

  If he’s wrong, Chief Constable Robertson will kill him. But if his reasoning works out, Czar John MacDougall and the whole political system will embrace him like a brother. Coulter’s not sure which is worse. Colin Ross’s wife had no memory of any package being delivered almost two years ago, but was happy to state that Ian Lennon was once their gardener. Lennon, then, was the only link between Tony Kennedy, the father of one of the victims, and a black Labrador hair found at the scene of the crime. Quite apart from his possible American exploits, the bastard had also found Frances Mullholland’s body in a garden where he presently worked… Coulter wanted him safely in custody, with a few charges stacked up against him. He’d invent them if he had to. Tuck him up in a nice warm cell tonight. Let the bastard sweat.

  The rain drips out of a glowing dawn sky. A greenish tinge to it, as if the city is slightly corrupted meat. The drops fall slowly through the air and run down Louis’s hotel window. He and Maddy asleep, backs turned, but close, buttocks just touching.

  They fall on a police station where a clutch of men and women work behind closed blinds and a computer system never stops humming, hunting. In the basement Ian Lennon, if he’d been awake, wouldn’t have seen the drops, or heard them in his windowless cell.

  The raindrops form a pattern, like kids’ join-the-dots, on the bedroom window of Alan and Martha Coulter. Martha’s in bed alone. Asleep, but frowning, still feeling the pain, even unconscious. Alan’s downstairs, dozing on the couch, drifting off.

  And on it falls. Turning sandstone into the deep wet red of flowing blood. Dropping into the rivers, panning out gently to the hills that cradle the city. Nourishing the soil, the earth, in fields and gardens, and early-morning parks.

  IV

  Tuesday morning she kicked off with two double-shot skinny macchiatos and a fag begged from a stranger. The only way Maddy knew how to drown out dead yesterdays. She had taken Louis to the airport first light for an awkward farewell then back to her flat for moping and self-criticism and avoiding mirrors. Now she was faced with a grim-looking Alan Coulter.

  “Let me guess. Your Irish fella.” She was still standing in the café doorway, sucking the last drop out of her illicit ciggie. The air was still clean after the rain, and the sun looked as if it might make a reappearance. He took her by the arm and led her to an out-of-earshot table.

  “Correct,” Coulter said. Maddy tried to click her fingers rapper-fashion the way Manda could. She failed. It looked she was trying to get something sticky off her hand. “Two charges of murder. Paul Pacchini and Sy Kennedy.”

  “And he didn’t try to save Frances Mullholland. He killed her.”

  “That’s my contention.”

  “And your proof for the Kelvingrove murders?”

  “The black hair. Belongs to the dog of someone he works for and whose house he was in the day before.”

  “Why? Why kill kids? Why slash two of them but not the third? Why bring attention to himself?”

  Coulter sighed and went to get himself a tea. They were playing to different beats this morning. Maddy aware of her own speed. She had a million questions and she wanted to ask them all at once. She had a pile of work warm on her desk waiting for her teeth. She was itching to get onto the next stage of the case, happy to escape families and free time and fleeting love affairs. Alan, on the other hand, was being serious-minded, considered, and in the mood for milky tea.

  “He’s a professional leg-breaker,” he said, sitting back down with his cup and a warm croissant, the smell of which made Maddy feel slightly sick. “He’s killed before and—”

  “Do we know that?”

  He ignored the question, so clearly he didn’t. “He’s got connections to similar murders in the States. He discovered Frances’s body and was working at the scene of the murder the day she was killed. Now we can place him in Kelvingrove too. He has no corroboration for his alibis. He works the Glasgow underworld. He knew Sy Kennedy’s dad. What else do you want from an underfunded, understaffed police force? We’ve done our bit….”

  “Looks pretty monstrous. In the photos I’ve seen. I’ll grant you that.”

  “Thank you.” He wasn’t finding her easy this morning. Probably wished he hadn’t set up this unofficial meeting.

  “Then again, Al, I look monstrous in every photo.”

  “Maddy – don’t start! We’ll get all this shit from his defence.”

  She laughed. This is what she loved. Getting to the bottom of things. The heart of the matter. Inwardly she promised Sy and Paul and Franny that she’d get the bastard or bastards who killed them. If it was Lennon, she’d make sure he never saw the light of day again.

  “You’ll get the official call later this morning. I want you on this one, Maddy. I’ll make that clear. Just, don’t go playing funny
buggers.”

  She got up to go but he hadn’t finished his little lecture. “Don’t go chasing shadows. We’ve got the killer in our sights. I’ve given you the rod and the bait. Reel him in.”

  Things didn’t go much better with Maxwell Binnie. She’d tumbled in late in her boss’s office like a bluster of spring wind, files and papers and hair in uproar, the caffeine giving her adrenaline a jagged edge.

  “Not this case, Maddy.”

  Binnie had never qualified as a solicitor advocate, thus could never himself prosecute a murder case in the High Court of the Justiciary. And he was only fifty-five – fully intent on ten years more as Procurator Fiscal. From his point of view, Maddy Shannon’s career was advancing too quickly, closing in on him. She could be tipped for the top job – his job – in a few years. Sooner, if she got a result in a high-profile trial. He was jealous, no doubt about it. He thought her an upstart, vulgar. Right now she knew she was a little too fleshy for her tight jacket, too mature for this length of skirt. A sexual woman at a dangerous age who wasn’t the least bit interested in him. She leaned forward. “Then what was the point in me taking the advocacy exams?”

  “That was your decision.”

  “You didn’t say they would be taken in vain.”

  He leaned forward. He was the one with the power. He smiled condescendingly. “The Petrus case. I think that might be a better opportunity to try out our little experiment.”

  She got up to go. The Petrus case might take years to come to court, if ever. No point in keeping arguing. As ever, she’d have to do all the hard work and let an outsider take the glory. She went to the door, aware that Binnie was ogling her. Back on her floor, she skirted past Manda and Izzie. “I need to talk to you,” Dan said before she could close her fish-bowl door.

  “Paul Pacchini. Coulter told me.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t think it should wait.”

  “Course not. You done good.” But there was a hardness in her voice she didn’t think she had intended.

  Maybe some lawyers have a system; do things in a time-honoured, tried-and-tested kind of fashion. Maddy Shannon just jumped in, anywhere. Not because she was disorganised or haphazard – famously, quite the reverse. But because she had learned there is no beginning. No clean process. You could spend half your life looking for the proper starting point.

  She fired off a few emails to the august offices of Barnes Nugent Barnes Solicitors, where a certain Mr. Mark Alexander worked. Flash bastard wasn’t much older than Maddy, coining it in out there in the private sector, yet he was to be trusted over Maddy in pursuit of the prosecution. She didn’t bother to attach a friendly wee note to the necessary documents.

  Her own inbox was ringing out every couple of seconds, as impatient as she was. Coulter sent through report after report, from which she learned very little she didn’t already know. Except that a publican, one Charles Dempsey had come up trumps for Ian Lennon. He must be doling out a lot of cash to hire, on Lennon’s behalf, one of the rising stars of the Scottish courtroom, who in turn had immediately got Lennon bail. Dead on cue, Deena Gajendra’s office was in touch. Maddy replied immediately detailing access conditions to the victims’ corpses. Gajendra was as sharp as a field full of foxes. She was also half a foot taller than Maddy, half a decade younger, aristocratically confident, slinky and seductive. Maddy had said to Dan McKillop, “I’d go for her myself if I buttoned up different.” Actually she could anyway, regardless of buttons.

  The paperwork done, she headed for Lochgilvie House. The Home where one of the victims had spent time and where now the authorities in their wisdom had sent Darren Mullholland, brother of another murdered child. Within two hours of banging her boss’s office door shut, Maddy was sitting in a classroom with a traumatised waif of a laddie, and a silent, grim-looking social worker. Janet Bateman was supposed to have been there too, but so far hadn’t turned up.

  Maddy and Darren had already spent the best part of twenty minutes in near-silence, but Maddy prided herself on having a way with problem boys. All those years behind a deep fat fryer, hearing woes. “How is this place?”

  Darren looked like a boy out of a different era. Long blond hair spilled over his forehead and face. Small for sixteen. Pale, thick lips, ill-fitting clothes. He looked like a street urchin from some old black and white movie. A Bowery Boy. Angel with a dirty face.

  “How’s your mum?”

  He held her gaze. Fringe falling over his eyebrows. His anaemic mouth seemed poised to say something important at every moment. But he kept silent, and still.

  “I’m the lawyer, Darren, who’s going to try and make sure the man who killed Frances is punished.”

  “What kind o’ punishment’s that, d’you think?” His voice was deeper than she expected.

  “Ah – that’s not up to me, Darren. That’s up to the courts. My job is just to make sure—”

  “Know what I’d like to do him?”

  “Tell me. If it helps.”

  He looked at her askance for a moment, then shook his head, sat back in his chair.

  “What was she like, your sister?”

  Darren just looked at her, waiting for a question he was prepared to answer.

  “You got on well with her?”

  No response.

  “Miss her? Normal kid I suppose?”

  Now he smiled. “Depends on what you mean by normal. Normal enough for up our bit. Ran riot, swore and drank and smoked skunk. Normal for our family. I know for a fact she was shagging a wee arsehole loser.”

  “At fourteen?” Maddy had stopped wincing a long time ago.

  “She’s been getting felt up for a lot longer than that.”

  “She smoked marijuana, yes? Anything harder?”

  Darren shrugged. Either he didn’t know, or didn’t care to tell her.

  “You ever come across an Ian Lennon?” Maddy put photographs of Lennon on the table between them. Classic mugshots. Lennon, face-on, looked exactly like a killer. In the profile shot, though, there was a flabbiness that made him look less of a hard man; the skin around the eyes and under the chin sagged. Darren picked up this photograph up and looked at it hard.

  “Why would a man like that want to hurt Frances?” Maddy asked – herself as much as Darren.

  “Everybody wants to hurt everyone else.”

  The completeness of that little philosophy chilled her. “But why this man, and why Frances? Why that night?”

  Darren shook his head very slowly.

  “Where had she been, Darren? Could she have gone on her own to Bearsden?”

  “Franny went where she liked, when she liked, and with anybody she liked—”

  “Like who? Who were her pals?”

  “Wee posse of them. Pure mad.” He sighed. “Try Sophie Turner. Carol Ann Christie. Misha someone – don’t know her name.”

  Misha Donnell. The police had interviewed all the girls Darren mentioned. None of them gave them anything new. “School pals. She didn’t go to school too much though, did she?”

  He laughed, shook his head.

  “You used to try and make her go, though, didn’t you, Darren? You were the one who tried to keep the house running.” Darren replied with that unflinching cold stare. “You made the breakfasts, the dinners, every—”

  “Ma did what she could!”

  “You tried to get Frances—”

  “Franny.”

  “Franny. To go to school. To dress properly. Come home on time. That’s a lot to ask of a young boy.”

  He flicked his hair away from his face. His eyes glowing. “She was a laugh, Franny. Say what you like, but she made you laugh. She was off her fucking bonce, but funny wi’ it. And pretty. Specially first thing in the morning like that, before the make-up, the…”

  He couldn’t find the word, but Maddy knew what he meant. Before the hardness; before snapping her jaw into position, like slamming on a helmet.

  Darren couldn’t help himself. His body shuddered and jolted, went out
of his control. His sobs were gulps as he sucked in mouthfuls of air. He smothered his head in his hands, clenched his body so tight Maddy feared he might asphyxiate. The social worker stood behind him; put a cold, sanctioned hand on his shoulder. Maddy remained frozen for a second, until the only possible reaction kicked in. She went round the table and took the boy in her arms.

  “I was delayed at the Education Department.” Janet Bateman, director of Lochgilvie House, made it sound like the inner sanctum of the White House.

  “Well, Darren Mullholland got into quite a state, and I’m not trained in that kind of work.”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t have gone ahead with the interview.”

  They nodded a truce at one another. The little round lady opened a drawer and took out a stapled bunch of photocopied papers. “I’ve been instructed to give you everything we have on Darren.” She handed the papers over. “You’re going to see his mother, I believe?”

  Maddy flicked through the neatly-collected papers. Social Work reports, school notes and reports. Most of it she’d already seen – maybe all of it. But you took everything you got, in case a paper, a report, a note on the back of an envelope, told you something you didn’t know.

  “There’s something that’s not in here, not written down anywhere, so therefore probably not of much use to you….”

  Maddy looked up at Bateman, perched on her cushions. “Go on, please.”

  “This is purely anecdotal… One of Darren’s old primary school teachers is a friend of mine. Darren was always tired at school. Never slept enough. You’ll have gathered already that it was him who kept the house running. He collected the child allowance, made sure it was spent on food before his mother could get her hands on it to buy drugs…”

  “How long was he doing this for?”

  “From what I can gather, several years. Darren made sure the child allowance didn’t go on his mum’s habit, but he still needed more money, for the family to eat, buy clothes… So he was out late at night.”