Condition Purple

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Indeed,’ said Sussock. Heroin, vaginal warts, maybe AIDS, West George Lane at 10.00 p.m., Stephanie Craigellachie had everything going for her.

  Reynolds grasped both her feet. ‘Let’s flip her over.’ Millard took the shoulders. ‘Three…two…’ said Reynolds and the body of Stephanie Craigellachie was turned on to its anterior plane in a neat, quick, well-practised manoeuvre. ‘We always do it clockwise,’ said Reynolds, noting Sussock’s admiration.

  It was to Sussock’s eyes, had he not been viewing a corpse, a not unattractive view of a young female. Again he found his eyes wandering to the assistant, Millard, and was not disappointed to find the man gazing at the corpse as though it was a feast to be devoured.

  Stephanie Craigellachie’s back, Sussock noted, was well-proportioned, and muscular rather than weak; her buttocks, he felt, were perhaps a little on the large side for her to have made a career modelling swimwear, but none the less she had in life probably considered herself to have a good figure, which is all that matters. Sussock could see nothing of concern but Reynolds’s trained eyes began to pick out minutiae of evidence. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘here, here, and here,’ and began to point to places on the lower curve of the buttocks and upper rear legs of the corpse.

  ‘See them?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Sussock.

  ‘Small patches of white skin, about a quarter to half an inch long.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Old lacerations,’ said Reynolds, ‘years old. I presume she had an accident, fell on to broken glass or similar. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sussock said. ‘Nothing of relevance to her death, then?’

  ‘Nothing at all. I think these injuries were sustained in childhood or adolescence, but I’ll mention them in my report anyway. Never know what is and what is not of relevance, but they contributed nothing to her death as such.’

  ‘So,’ said Sussock, ‘death was due to stabbing, pure and simple?’

  ‘Yes,’ Reynolds replied. ‘One blow, one penetration.’

  ‘The knife there is the murder weapon?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Reynolds, and then: ‘Well, the knife could have caused the injury. It’s reasonable to assume that it is the murder weapon. Slightly different emphasis. Just to cover myself

  ‘The deceased abused heroin?’

  ‘Yes, to quite a marked degree.’

  ‘And she once knew or might still know a person called Dino.’

  ‘Apparently, though I shudder to think of the nature of their relationship.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, a tattoo is painful to imprint anywhere on the body, but there, at the top of the leg, at the groin, that is a particularly sensitive area. It would have taken some time to do that and it could have been very painful for her. It could have been an ordeal.’

  ‘Well, it’s something to go on,’ said Sussock. ‘In the absence of anything else to do we can look for Dino.’

  ‘Don’t take yourself up a blind alley, the tattoo is some months old. I’ll do the HIV test and have the wound and the tattoo photographed.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Sussock turned to go. He crossed the floor and opened the door. As he did so, he glanced backwards and saw Reynolds peeling off his surgical gloves and Millard running his eyes lovingly over the body of Stephanie Craigellachie, deceased.

  Sussock left the hospital. It was a warm, balmy night with a pleasant breeze blowing from the south-west which whirled round the inner courtyard of the GRI. July. He counted off the months. Maybe he’d get through August, but in Scotland the ground frost can appear in mornings in August and in September the nights could already be cold enough to make his chest pinch. It was the legacy of having been a cigarette-smoker for a major proportion of his adult life. In the winter he suffered; for eight months from September to April the nights, all the nights and many of the days, caused him to have to live with a sharp pain in his chest as the icy air gripped at his lungs. But at the moment, now, it was July, it was warm, his chest didn’t hurt; he could even take deep breaths and kid himself that he was healthy.

  He walked through the casualty reception area of the GRI. He thought the waiting-room surprisingly full for 3.00 a.m., midweek. People sat in the waiting area, as individuals or in groups, agitated, or in a state of shock with no apparent injury, or holding a bloody towel or bandage to some part of their body. Paper tissues and cardboard vomit bowls littered the floor. No one talked.

  He walked out into the summer night again. Out to where he had left his car in the space marked ‘Ambulances Only’. Such latitude is excusable at 03.00 hours. A police car had parked behind him, two officers sat inside writing up their notebooks. He didn’t recognize them.

  Sussock drove across town. The city was at her quietest, a few buses, taxis, refuse collectors following the refuse lorries, the occasional drunk still staggering home. He turned down into George Square. A few younger people still sat on the benches, not wanting to go home, not being bothered by the law, people just waiting for the next all-night bus to an outlying town. Everything quiet, nothing getting out of hand. Hundreds of starlings sat, twittering noisily, on the front of the City Chambers. He drove up Bath Street, a long canyon of Victorian buildings with white lights attached to the buildings rather than standing on poles. He parked his car close to Blythswood Square and to West George Lane. PC Phil Hamilton stood on the entrance to the lane.

  ‘Morning, Sarge.’ Sussock stopped close to Hamilton.

  ‘Quieter than normal.’ Hamilton rocked backwards and forwards on his feet. ‘I’ve scared all the action down towards the bus station. The car drivers cruise round the corner, clock me and put their foot down, so the girls have gone to the bottom of the street, for tonight at any rate.’

  Sussock glanced down the street and saw a woman standing alone under the spill of a street lamp.

  ‘Just one or two left now,’ said Hamilton. ‘Earlier on, there was a whole team of them down there. The Vice came round and buckled a few into the van. I think they wanted to be seen to be doing something since they knew we were hanging about, eagle-eyed. Most of the rest drifted off about one or two a.m. The girl down there and one or two others on Holm Street and Cadogan Street, the Vice told me they’re waiting for the casinos to shut for night at about five a.m.’

  ‘Long hours,’ said Sussock. He knew little about Hamilton. He was a steady cop, wouldn’t set the heather on fire, he was about twenty-four, married to a nurse, so he understood.

  ‘Maybe, Sarge, but they can earn big money. Even more than you and me.’

  ‘Even more.’ Sussock grinned. Hamilton had a sense of humour. ‘Well, they can keep it. Can I borrow your torch a second, please?’

  Hamilton handed Sussock his flashlight and Sussock played the beam across the surface of the alley.

  Hamilton watched. ‘Looking for something, Sarge? We swept it, it’s clean.’

  ‘Looking at the blood,’ said Sussock, letting the torch-beam dwell on the wide dark stain which covered a large area of the cobbles. ‘Aye, there’s a lot there right enough. See, I’m just after attending the post mortem, the pathologist said that she could have shed a great deal of blood at the location of the attack. It means that this is the locus of the offence.’

  ‘She wasn’t dumped here?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘The rats were out earlier,’ said Hamilton. ‘I chucked some stones at them and they went squealing off.’

  ‘After the blood were they, aye?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hamilton. ‘About half a dozen big ones—they get big in the summer, the rats—came up scratching it off the cobbles and licking it. All good food to them, I suppose.’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ said Sussock. He thought that in a sense, since Stephanie Craigellachie had been preyed on by rats while alive, it just completed the picture that the night-time gutter rats came scratching up the alley to pick at her dried blood. No, it didn’t, it didn’t complete the picture at all, it just made the w
retched female’s life doubly cheap. She was a two-time loser.

  He walked on down West George Street, walking round the block to return to his car, enjoying the evening. He walked passed stone-coloured doorways, brass plates and stairs leading up. There was no sound, not on the street, no cars, no buses here, just the soft measured sound of his own footfall. Then a voice in darkness said, ‘Looking for business?’ He turned. At the top of a flight of stairs was a girl in a long summer dress which seemed to be of suede patchwork, high lace-up boots, handbag hanging on her shoulder. She looked sixteen, maybe seventeen, could be younger. Sussock flashed his identification, ‘Police,’ he said.

  ‘I’m just away home, sir.’ The girl stepped off the steps with a flourish at her skirt and walked away quickly into the night.

  ‘How far did you get?’ Sussock stirred his coffee. He glanced out of the window and saw his reflection, thin drawn face, greying, and beyond his image, a crimson dawn was just beginning to break over the city.

  ‘Not very far, I’m afraid.’ Elka Willems sat opposite him, crisp white blouse, serge skirt; she cradled a mug of coffee on her lap. Already her mug was half empty and Sussock had noticed before how quickly she could drink hot tea or coffee, whereas he had always to let his cool. ‘She appeared to have worked the street for all she was worth. According to her flatmate, she wanted to buy a house and settle down. Odd girl, the flatmate, if you ask me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, shocked at the news about Stephanie, smoked a lot to calm her down but quickly became detached. The deceased’s room was locked so I couldn’t get in, there ought to be a key in her possessions. She came from Bearsden but the flatmate didn’t know of her home address. She’s been lifted by Vice before but she apparently always gave her flat address. Can’t blame her, it’s permanent, and she wouldn’t want her parents to know how she put bread on her table.’

  ‘I’ll check it anyway.’ Sussock picked up the phone on his desk and dialled a two-figure internal number. ‘Scottish Criminal Records Office? Yes, DS Sussock here, SCRO, P Division, can you send me the previous on one Stephanie Craigellachie…yes, Craigellachie…aged approximately twenty years, probably has an address in Gibson Street, Kelvinbridge. I’d be particularly interested in a previous address believed to be in Bearsden. Perhaps you could phone me back with any information and send the paperwork by courier at your earliest convenience. Thank you.’ He replaced the receiver.

  ‘So that’s as far as I got,’ said Elka Willems. ‘She was earning money, taking home in a week, a good week, what I earn in three months. She was stashing it away somewhere. Building Society, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid the p.m. didn’t exactly bear that out.’ Sussock drank his coffee, now cool enough for his taste. ‘I’m afraid she was a smackhead. All her money went on junk.’

  ‘Oh.’ Elka Willems was genuinely disappointed.

  ‘She was a high risk AIDS carrier. She shot up, track marks on both arms and in her neck. You didn’t cut yourself when you were in her flat, no?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. She also had an interesting tattoo.’ He described the tattoo.

  ‘So who is or who was Dino?’

  ‘If we find that out we may be able to make great leaps forward,’ said Sussock. ‘But Dr Reynolds said that the tattoo wasn’t new.’ He glanced at his watch, 04.30 hours. ‘You sign off in ninety minutes?’

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled, ‘compensation of being of lowly rank: you tend to have a greater chance of getting off on time.’

  ‘Don’t remind me. I’ll have to stay until I hand over to Fabian. I won’t clear the station until nine-thirty a.m.’

  ‘Coming round?’

  He nodded. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘I’ll wait up.’

  Sussock smiled. ‘I’ll call at the flat first, I think, see if there’s any mail. I’m still waiting for the papers to come through. They could come any day now.’

  ‘One day at a time, old Sussock, one day at a time.’ She stood and collected both mugs and leant forward and kissed his forehead. He slipped an arm around her waist.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you were the one who wanted to be discreet.’

  ‘You’re right.’ She pulled herself away. ‘Let’s play pretend. Sergeant. I’ll be off now. You’ve got a report to write.’

  Sussock wrote up the report of the post mortem as neatly and fully as he could and, pending its being typed, folded it and placed it in Donoghue’s pigeonhole. He checked his own pigeonhole. A circular about leave having to be taken within the calendar year, and not from April to April. He read it, digested it, screwed it into a ball and tossed it into a waste-paper basket. It was by then 06.30 hours. Tired cops were leaving the building. Fresh-faced ones were already in the muster room.

  The man eased himself out of the bed and walked across the room, moving quietly and softly for such a large man. He opened the curtains, sunlight fell richly over the rooftops of Newton Mearns, and as it flooded out of the lace curtains he looked at suburbia, solid, expensive, prestigious housing, mature gardens, BMWs, Mercedes, Volvos in the driveways. He turned and looked at his wife, middle-aged like him, overweight like him, a lump in the yellow sheets. The central heating switched itself on and the trapped air bubble began to knock around the system, rattling in every room.

  The central heating on, in mid-July, and a hot July at that, and those hideous yellow sheets.

  The slumbering woman stirred, woken by the pipes knocking maybe, or by the sunlight streaming through the window, or by him moving and padding across the deep pile carpet.

  Deep pile, had to be deep pile, and yellow. Had to be yellow too. More like a vast ochre sheepskin rug, he thought.

  Soon she’d speak.

  He didn’t want her to speak. He didn’t want to have to hear her voice, not yet, not just yet, her voice as though she was going to break into song any minute, but never did. Sing or talk, you big bitch, that’s what he’d be thinking quite soon now, he knew he’d be thinking that. Sing or talk, as they dressed, as they breakfasted, passing the pieces of daintily cut toast, all without the crust, of course. He had tried to analyse her voice, it was pitched high to the back and top of her mouth, similar to the way he joined his mouth when he whistled. But she didn’t whistle, she talked: a high-pitched wailing, plaintive, nearly a song: so plaintive.

  It made him want to scream.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you’re up.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’ He turned to face her, leaning against the windowsill.

  ‘Did you sleep, Dino?’ she sang. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  Chapter 3

  Wednesday 08.30-11.30 hours

  Sussock sat in front of Donoghue’s desk, silently waiting for Donoghue to read his report, handwritten. Donoghue had arrived at P Division at Charing Cross at 08.30 hours, was at his desk, 08.31 hours, first pipe of the day satisfactorily alight at 08.32 hours. After the pleasantries he spoke only one sentence to Ray Sussock. ‘Can’t make this out, this word here, Ray?’

  Sussock leaned forward. ‘Groin,’ he said. ‘She had a tattoo on her groin, sir.’

  Donoghue grunted, took his pen and printed the word ‘groin’ over Sussock’s illegible wriggle. ‘Got to keep it legible for the girls in the typing pool, Ray.’

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ said the older man.

  Donoghue read the reports, Sussock’s report of the post mortem of Stephanie Craigellachie, and WPC Willems’s account of her visit to the domicile of the deceased. Then, as Sussock had expected him to, Donoghue turned again to the front of both reports and he re-read them, digesting every detail; if he was eating a meal he would have been said to be masticating thoroughly.

  Sussock shook the sleep from his eyes and tried to keep himself awake by focusing on the corner of the grey steel Scottish Office issue filing cabinet which stood behind and to one side of Donoghue’s chair. Then he looked at Donoghue’s desk top, the huge black ashtray big enough for one junior officer to have quippe
d in a moment of familiarity, ‘All you need now is a couple of goldfish, sir,’ the blotting-pad, fully redundant since the advent of the ballpoint pen but without which no desk looks complete. The telephone, the spread of reports and documents pleasingly untidy. Donoghue, Sussock had found, was a man of meticulous appearance and watch-setting punctuality, but his desk was often a human shifting sands of papers and files and memos. Sussock had long subscribed to the view that a tidy desk is the sign of a sick mind and despaired of the officers who had, it seemed to him, won promotion because at the end of their working day their desks were left clear and tidy, ruler just in front of the blotting-pad, three ballpoints in line abreast at the side, telephone in the right-hand corner, parallel with both edges of the desk. If he had realized that that was the secret years ago he might, he often thought, he might—just might—have got somewhere. Instead he often left more papers on his desk than were in his filing cabinet, usually burying the telephone, and so at the age of fifty-five he had achieved the lofty rank of Detective-Sergeant and even then he felt his promotion had been in recognition of long service rather than merit. Hindsight, he often told himself is a wonderful thing, but he regretted not having realized the importance of a tidy desk, sick mind or no sick mind. Senior Officers, he felt, are not interested in what goes on in the street, they care only about what goes on in the building, tidy desks are important, neatly written, promptly delivered reports are important, as is a small knot in your tie, because a big knot is for woolly-minded liberals. All such things are more important than your arrest rate. That and drinking in the right pubs.

  Sussock turned his gaze from Donoghue’s desktop to the coat-stand adjacent to the filing cabinet on which Donoghue had hung his light-weight summer coat, a Burberry, and a cream-coloured hat in a near ‘trilby’ style. Pretty soon, after a few more minutes of meticulous digestion of points and information, Sussock knew that Donoghue would lean forward, laying down the reports on the blotting-pad and say, ‘Right then, Ray, let’s kick it about.’ Sussock glanced to his right out of Donoghue’s window and gazed up Sauchiehall Street, angular buildings of stone and glass, buses with the liveries of half a dozen independent companies. His eyes swam and he shook his head again.