Condition Purple

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘I remember when we were first married, house had to come first, didn’t have a proper holiday until three years after we had moved in, we didn’t miss one either. It was a very happy period. Now we let our children choose the holidays, we give them the brochures and they choose the location on the basis of the pictures. Last year it was Greece because Louise went ga-ga over a photograph of a donkey on a hillside. This year we’re going to Malta because after all the squabbling they finally agreed that they both liked the brightly-coloured boats in Valetta harbour. My wife—’

  Then the phone rang.

  ‘Donoghue.’ He listened. ‘Yes, put her through, please…Yes, hello, madam, thank you for being so prompt…’ Donoghue picked up his pen and scribbled on his pad. ‘Thank you, that’s a great help.’ He replaced the receiver. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Mr and Mrs Durham live in Galloway Street, Springburn. If you’d like to go and do the necessary. Never easy, but it has to be done. Try and dissuade them from viewing the body. We are certain of the identity.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘For myself, as a privilege of rank, I shall take a drive into the country to see how close I can get to the Rottweilers.’

  Richard King and Elka Willems climbed the concrete stair of the flats at Galloway Street. The contents of a large communal dustbin which stood beneath a refuse chute had been incinerated, the flames had scorched the wall at the side of the stair up to a height of twenty feet. The cops stepped on to the landing which stretched the length of the street and which was broken up at intervals by iron railings, and padded along the heavy-duty rubber matting that formed the surface of the walkway. Below them in the street, boys kicked a ball about, two men leaned over the open bonnet of a car. A woman laboured with a heavy shopping-bag in each hand. King and Willems walked along the gallery until they came to a door with ‘Durham’ engraved on a tartan background just above the doorbell. King pressed the bell and, in doing so triggered an electronic rendering of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ which played loudly in the interior of the flat.

  The front door was immediately wrenched open by an angry man. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t do anything, but both cops felt his anger. It was in his eyes, the accusatory, aggressive coldness of his look. Similarly both cops recognized the pent-up resentment and fury of the type so common in prison inmates. Elka Willems’s skin crawled and she was very very glad she hadn’t come alone.

  ‘Mr Durham?’ King asked, holding the man’s stare. ‘Police.’

  ‘I can tell that,’ he snarled, rather than spoke.

  ‘We’re calling in connection with your daughter, Toni. May we come inside?’

  The two cops found Mrs Durham to be the opposite of her husband. She was small and timid and sat hunched on the settee. She whimpered as she recognized the uniform of a WPC.

  ‘What is it?’ growled the man.

  ‘I’m afraid we have some bad news, Mr Durham,’ said King, again holding the man’s stare. ‘I’m afraid that I have to inform you that Toni is dead.’

  Mrs Durham let out a piercing wail and ran from the room. Elka Willems followed her.

  ‘Leave her be,’ said Durham.

  Elka Willems paused, turned and glared at the man and continued to follow the woman. The man flinched with anger.

  ‘So what happened?’ He turned on King.

  ‘We believe she was murdered,’ said King.

  ‘Murdered, ha!’

  ‘You don’t seem so concerned, sir.’

  ‘Should I be?’

  The man dominated the room, by his sheer overpowering personality as much as by his bulk. He was a man who bristled with cleanliness, neatly pressed shirt and trousers, polished shoes. The house was neat, tidy, a household where everything was kept in its place, including, thought King, the women. Durham squared up to King, balancing his weight evenly on both feet, pulling his shoulders back, and slightly bending his elbows. He was just one or two movements away from throwing a punch at the thing who had upset the order of the household.

  ‘So what happened?’ he said again. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘She was murdered.’

  ‘You said that, you already told me that, and look at the effect you had on her.’ The man nodded behind him towards the bedroom door from which a low wailing sound was emanating. ‘She did that as well, our Toni, she was a rotten little bitch, she did that to her, made her upset.’

  ‘She died about ten days ago.’

  ‘So that’s why she didn’t call this time, this time she had some excuse.’

  ‘Excuse?’

  ‘Excuse for not calling her. She was dead so she had an excuse, but not for the other times, week in, week out, we never get a phone call, never get a letter. Look at the house, have a good look at it. There’s not many girls grow up in a home as good as this, see the hours I had to put in to buy this furniture, see that velvet wallpaper, all that crawling under people’s cars I did just to build a home they could be proud of and she thinks she can walk out at the age of seventeen and not see us except maybe once or twice a year. And when she does come it’s smart clothes and a fancy motor. Never told us what she did, said she was some kind of personal assistant.’ The man’s voice rose steadily. ‘She had two sisters, I did right by them, was a proper father and they turned out all right, got married, had kids, what else do you want for your daughters and as soon as possible, so they don’t have any chance to get into trouble. Leave school at sixteen, marry at eighteen, first child at twenty. That’s how it should be. The first two did it like that, just like they should, but our Toni she got away with too much, let her off too often, her mother wanted it that way, said I was too hard on the others, but she was wrong, I was right. If she’d have let me bring up Toni properly she wouldn’t have ended up like this. Let my woman stay upset, she brought it on herself I knew she was wrong.’ By this time the man’s voice was echoing in the house, utterly drowning the sound from within the bedroom.

  Donoghue drove out of Glasgow. He enjoyed the drive, out towards the Campsies, Verdi on the hi-fi, sun roof wound open, the Rover behaving impeccably. Out here, he thought, one could breathe, and breathe in Scotland at her most beautiful; in the summer.

  He parked his car in the pub car park at Strathblane and strolled with his jacket slung over his shoulder up a narrow road which led ultimately to Lennoxtown. Within five minutes he was well clear of the village and out to where the houses stood in their own grounds, clearly fenced off from each other, surrounded by well-tended gardens and cypress trees. Two, sometimes three, cars stood in the driveway. Donoghue eventually came upon the house identified by British Telecom as having the phone number written against the entry ‘Fingers’ in Toni Durham’s crisp and almost void address book. The house was surrounded by a high wire fence and at frequent intervals along the fence at adult eye level were signs in bold red paint which read ‘Dangerous Dogs’. Donoghue stepped off the roadway and approached the gate.

  Nothing moved. The house was in silence. The gardens quite still, not even a breath of wind to disturb the shrubs. He looked again at the house, it was large, white-painted with a roof of black tile. He shook the gate.

  A dog barked.

  Then another. Barking with a deep, menacing tone. One, then two dogs approached at the far end of the drive, black and brown animals with wide shoulders and powerful jaws. Rottweilers. They ran down the drive towards Donoghue. Two more followed. Four dogs in all pounded down the driveway and ran at the gate, throwing themselves, clawing and snarling at the fencing, slavering at the mouth with massive claw-like paws. Some dogs.

  A middle-aged and overweight man in corduroy trousers and garden boots walked from behind the garage and stood staring down the drive, looking at Donoghue. Donoghue looked back. The distance between the two men was too great to enable them to communicate even by shouting but they stood there fixing each other’s stare. Then Donoghue stepped back from the gate and the growling, snarling pack of dogs and turned to walk on, but not before he n
oticed a sneer grow on the lips of the gardener; another city smoothie out to clear the tubes and getting more than he bargained for.

  ‘Where are you going, Dino? You’ve just come in from your work and I’ve made a nice quiche for you. Tomorrow it’s Friday, I want to be taken out to look at the flowers. I mean, it’s the end of the week, but you just dash in and out and I’ve got the good china out for your tea. When will you be back? An hour, two hours? I’ll make some more tea when you get back in.’

  He gripped the steering-wheel. God forgive me, but you bitch, you damn bitch, whistle, won’t you, please just break into song, you’re almost there, if I deliberately annoy you you might just do it. Your voice goes through me, it goes down my spine like the sound of a wet finger being drawn across glass it goes down my spine. Make as much tea as you like when you like, with your pretty, dainty little hesitant movements.

  ‘I can see what Montgomerie’s grass meant about the dogs,’ said Donoghue. ‘There was a tall and hefty fence between us but I was scared none the less.’

  ‘I’ll bet, sir.’ King sipped his coffee. ‘I’ve heard of Rottweilers. Came to the United Kingdom with the Roman Legions, I believe.’ Donoghue pulled on his pipe and glanced at his hunter, 17.00 hours, a nice point to begin to wrap up the day’s work and allocate tasks for the back shift and the graveyard shift. A suspect has been identified, a warrant for arrest issued, present location unknown. ‘How did you get on with Toni Durham’s next of kin?’

  ‘Her father is a pure animal,’ said King and went on to explain what he meant.

  ‘I see.’ Donoghue drained his mug and placed it on his desk. ‘I see.’

  ‘So what’s on the agenda, sir?’

  ‘I was chewing over that question,’ Donoghue replied. ‘I think the only thing we can do is to watch the house and the casinos until we see Purdue and then bring him for questioning. We’ll need overwhelming numbers when we do move.’

  ‘Firearms, sir?’

  Donoghue shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, Richard. Purdue is a knifeman, a dozen drawn truncheons will suffice, use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, prevents unnecessary violence. We have to pounce before he knows what is happening, snap the cuffs on and seize control.’

  ‘Hope it’s as easy as that. Do we have a warrant?’

  ‘Yes. It was sworn this afternoon. I think all we can do now is wait for him to surface, could be a long wait, he’s a bit of a fly-by-night.’

  King smiled. ‘I think we can seize the initiative, sir. I mean what if Sid should phone wanting to speak to Fingers?’

  Donoghue smiled. ‘On you go then, Sid.’

  King picked up the phone and dialled 9 for an outside line and then dialled the number of Purdue’s residence in Strathblane as Donoghue read it out from the file.

  The phone rang out.

  ‘No answer,’ said King.

  ‘Hang in there,’ said Donoghue. ‘At least the gardener is at home.’ So King hung in. Eventually the phone was answered. ‘Yes,’ said a gruff voice.

  ‘It’s Sid,’ said King.

  ‘Sid?’

  ‘Yes. Fingers told me to phone him when I got into town. We’ve got some business to talk over.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ said the voice. ‘He’s not due back from Germany until the end of the week.’

  ‘That’s tomorrow,’ said King. ‘It’s Thursday evening now.’

  ‘Aye, so it is. Sid, you say?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I’ll tell him you called. You could try again tomorrow.’

  ‘Right.’ King put the phone down. ‘We have to watch all incoming flights from Germany, sir.’

  ‘Germany?’

  ‘Yes. From right now. He’s returning any time now.’

  ‘Right.’ Donoghue snatched the phone and dialled the Airport Police. He spoke to them briefly and then replaced the phone. ‘They’ll check the passenger lists for all flights from Germany for a male, McLelland or a male Purdue,’ said Donoghue. ‘But they’d like a photograph of our man as soon as possible.’

  ‘Abernethy could do that, sir,’ King said. ‘He’s coming on duty any time now. He could drive down to the airport with a copy.’

  ‘Right, if you’d ask him, please, Richard.’

  Then the phone rang. Donoghue paused and then picked it up, identified himself and listened, said, ‘Thank you,’ and replaced the receiver. ‘Well, well, well,’ he aid.

  ‘Well, well, well?’ King raised his eyebrows.

  ‘That was the uniform bar. A lady of the street has just phoned us to inform us that there is a man walking up and down Blythswood Street asking for Stephanie Craigellachie, telling the girls that Dino is looking for her. And I was looking forward to getting home on time for once.’

  ‘We have a terrible, terrible relationship,’ said the man. ‘We just seem to mince about being nice to each other because she can’t conceive of any other way for a married couple to behave. It’s like playing at dolls’ houses for her. I know these things cut both ways and I suppose I’m partly to blame, but I can’t see my own faults, like most people. We don’t have any level that we can communicate on.’ The man shrugged and took another cigarette from his packet. Donoghue extended his lighter. ‘Thank you. On Friday evenings she wants me to take her for a walk to look at the wild flowers, I want to go to the hotel for a beer or two to unwind after the week’s work. There’s nothing wrong in wanting to go for a walk on Friday evenings and there’s nothing wrong with having a drink after work on Friday, but there is something wrong in one wanting to do one and one wanting to do the other and still calling it a relationship. We are not married, we are two strangers living in the same house, sharing the same bed.’

  Donoghue glanced out of the window. He liked the man, he liked his earthy honesty. He had decided very early in the piece that Dino Bawtry was of no interest to the police other than as a member of the public who was willing to give information. Dino Bawtry had been startled by the police officers, Richard King and two constables, but had after a few seconds’ protestation willingly accompanied the officers to the police station. There he had taken the news of Stephanie Craigellachie’s death very badly. Very badly indeed. It was some minutes before he was composed enough to continue the interview.

  ‘Where does “Dino” come from?’ Donoghue filled his pipe.

  ‘Army days,’ said Dino Bawtry. ‘I was in the Royal Horse Artillery, Madras Troop, you don’t get better than that. There were three Davids in the same battery, so one was Dave, the other was Davy, and I got Dino, simple as that and the name has stuck down the years. I enjoyed the army, lot of good blokes in the army, the nickname carries a lot of good memories with it.’

  ‘So how did you get to know Stephanie Craigellachie?’

  ‘I was lonely. I suffered that awful form of loneliness that can only happen in a so-called relationship. You know that phrase, “my wife doesn’t understand me”: what it really means is that you can’t be yourself in your relationship and in that case you’re better off alone because you can be yourself if you live by yourself. I dare say it’s the same for my wife, Theresa, I dare say she can’t be herself either. The obvious thing would be to separate but we are practising Catholics. We have made vows and we both intend to keep them. It doesn’t follow from that that we are content. I realized too late that Theresa is very naive.’

  Donoghue grunted, pulling and sucking on his pipe.

  ‘I’m a businessman, I install central heating systems in folks’ houses. I tend towards hard-headed cynicism and in the beginning Theresa’s big-mindedness was, I thought, a good check and balance for me, but for many years now I have accepted that her magnanimity is nothing less than childlike naivety. She just hasn’t a clue about life. I think that she was a perfectly behaved little girl who did what was expected of her. When she reached the age of twelve she sniffed at adolescence and decided she didn’t like it and became middle-aged and then waited for the rest of her generation to catch up with her. It meant sh
e never developed any sort of personality over and above being a model of “proper” behaviour. So I did what many men would do. I went up the Square. Or rather the streets round the Square. The difference between me and most men who go up the Square is that I had no interest in sex. I hadn’t. I went up to communicate with a female who was realistic about life.’

  ‘Realistic?’ Donoghue was suddenly reminded of a drunken conversation he had had while at university, he and two friends debated with steadily slurring speech the number of different ‘realities’ that existed. Not surprisingly, there was no resolution to the dispute.

  ‘It was just refreshing for me to talk to a female who wasn’t naive, to sit with a girl whose bodily movements are strong and positive instead of being retiring and delicate. Theresa, when she reaches for my plate at the end of dinner, will hesitate just a split second before she lifts it from the table. She wants to avoid snatching it, but I wish she would just grab it. That would make her real. So I went up the Square to talk to some realistic women. Girls really, and you know, more often than not they are nice girls. A few hard-edged ones but mostly they’re nice kids. They have a tough life so there’s no naivety on the street.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

  ‘Eventually I met Stephanie. I became her guardian, a protector. I’d give her what money I could to get her off the street for a night or two but she was a heroin addict.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So I could afford to pay for her habit. I wouldn’t have done anyway but I did what I could. I tried to persuade her to start a detox programme but she wouldn’t, she needed that evil stuff. She started to tell me about her life, she had a terrible childhood. I was the father she never had, she was the daughter I never had.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She was what I believe is currently called an “abused child”.’

  ‘She grew up in foster care,’ said Donoghue.

  ‘I know, but there’s foster care and foster care. Her foster home sounded like hell on earth. In an odd sense my wife might be happy there in that everything is perfect. It was a home I understood that was littered with delicate ornaments, little glass animals, cuckoo clocks, fish tanks with model castles inside. Stephanie wasn’t part of even that, her foster parents dressed well and she was given a school uniform to keep up appearances, but in the house she had to wear charity shop castoffs, because she was fostered.’