Just Duffy

by Robin Jenkins

  They were all agreed it must have been an accident. Crosbie had felt an attack coming on. He had crept into a close. There he had either died or fallen unconscious. No one was to blame. There would have to be a post-mortem but it would be a matter of course: the same with the Sheriff ’s inquiry.

  Policemen were now present in force. The workmen were kept well back, as were also some members of the public who had somehow got to know something untoward had happened. Dr Telfer, the police surgeon, preceded the ambulance by a couple of minutes. He had time only for a cursory examination before having to supervise the digging out of the body and the carrying of it on a stretcher under a white sheet to the ambulance.

  ‘It’s young Crosbie all right,’ he said. ‘He was a patient of mine. God help his mother. She doted on him.’

  ‘Angus here tells me he had a brain tumour,’ said Findlay.

  ‘That’s right. Inoperable. He could have died any time.’

  ‘There is no doubt in your mind that it was an accident?’

  ‘Well, when they knocked the building down they couldn’t have known he was in it. I expect he was dead then, anyway.’

  ‘He had a lot of enemies.’

  ‘So I believe. Well, since there’s nothing I can do here I’d better get back to my patients. Will they send somebody from Glasgow to do the p. m.?’

  ‘I expect so, doctor, but in our local interests I think you should be present.’

  ‘Just let me know when it’s to be.’

  As the doctor went off the foreman came forward.

  ‘Will it be all right for us to get started again?’ he asked. ‘We’re scheduled to have it finished by tomorrow night.’

  ‘It’s raining,’ said Findlay.

  ‘We’re used to working in the rain. We like it. It lays the dust.’

  ‘Just as long as you don’t find any more bodies.’

  McLeod took that remark seriously. ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to blow a whistle or sound a siren before starting to knock a building down. Small children could be playing in some of the closes or houses.’

  The foreman went off to give the order to resume work. He was annoyed with Detective-Sergeant McLeod. ‘That bloody Hielandman,’ he said, ‘with the heather growing out of his ears, thinks we should blow a whistle or sound a siren.’

  ‘It’s a wonder he didn’t say Gabriel’s trumpet,’ said one, who knew that McLeod was a member of the Free Kirk.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Now that they were certain the body was Crosbie’s it was time to inform his parents.

  ‘Why us, serge?’ grumbled Harry. ‘Let somebody else do some of the dirty work.’

  ‘I do not regard it as dirty work, Harry.’

  He regarded it as a sacred duty. He intended to invite the distressed mother to join him in prayer. He had been doing a bit of lay-preaching recently, embarrassing his family but, he hoped, pleasing God. He might be too long-winded, as both Flora and Mr McGeachan had hinted, but they were forgetting that in the old, more devout times, sermons in the Highlands had lasted two hours and longer.

  Harry’s presence would be inhibitory.

  Therefore in the car outside the Crosbies’ gate he asked Harry if he really wanted to be present.

  ‘I can’t think of anything I’d hate more,’ said Harry.

  Though relieved, McLeod made a note to deal with Harry’s hardness of heart, in some future prayer.

  Mrs Crosbie was wearing outdoor clothes, which included the black hat. She was just going out, she said, to look for Johnny. She was so humble that McLeod’s own heart melted in pity.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got news of Johnny,’ he said. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘You’re welcome, Mr McLeod.’

  Her house reminded him of Mrs Dykes’ pigsty, by being spotlessly clean and obsessionally tidy. She was the kind of housewife who polished the castors on chairs.

  She took him into the kitchen and showed him a place set at the table. It was for Johnny when he came home. He would be very hungry.

  In the living-room on the mantelpiece and the wall above it was a whole gallery of photographs of Johnny, from the time of his birth to the present day. It was fascinating to see how his insolence had progressed as he got older. She was in some of them with him, smiling fondly.

  There was no sign anywhere of Mr Crosbie, a man in whose existence McLeod found it hard to believe, though he had spoken to him once.

  ‘Please sit down, Mrs Crosbie,’ he said. ‘Prepare yourself for a shock. It’s bad news, I’m afraid. Johnny’s been found, dead. A dreadful accident.’

  He hadn’t expected her to shriek and then weep frantically: she was not that kind of woman. But he hadn’t expected her either just to sit and stare at him in silence, the black hat on her head and her small feet, in black shoes, close together and very still, like a pair of sleeping kittens.

  She could not have understood. ‘Johnny’s dead, Mrs Crosbie. A sad accident.’

  ‘I heard you, Mr McLeod. Who killed him?’

  ‘Nobody killed him. It was an accident.’

  ‘They were saying they were going to kill him.’

  He supposed she meant the Coopers. ‘That was just talk, Mrs Crosbie.’

  ‘They were jealous of him because he was too clever for them.’

  He noticed, for the first time, that she too had eyes of a different shade of blue.

  ‘Listen to me, please, Mrs Crosbie. Johnny was found in one of the derelict buildings in the Calton area.’

  ‘He was born there, in Crimea Street.’

  ‘As a matter of fact it was in a building in that street. He must have gone there suffering from one of his headaches. He must have passed away there, peacefully. Dr Telfer said it could have happened any time, anywhere.’

  ‘Don’t mention that man’s name to me. He never wanted Johnny to get better.’

  That accusation, monstrously unfair McLeod knew, was whispered shyly. So was the next one: ‘You were all in it together. You all wanted my Johnny dead.’

  There was in that just enough truth to keep McLeod from denying it as positively as he would have liked. If ever a woman was in need of God’s help it was her. Yet he hesitated to offer it.

  ‘Why did they send you to tell me?’ she said. ‘Why didn’t Mr Findlay come himself? He’s the one in charge, isn’t he?’

  He couldn’t very well say that the Chief-Inspector regarded such a duty beneath him. Nor could he, on the verge of prayer, tell a lie. So he changed the subject.

  ‘Johnny’s at the hospital, Mrs Crosbie. Either you or your husband will be required to identify him.’

  ‘Crosbie would spit on my boy’s face. He would rejoice.’ She smiled sweetly.

  The foundations of McLeod’s faith shook, both as a believer in God and as a detective who over the years had acquired a knowledge of human nature. He had never had the luck – from the point of view of prospering in his profession – to capture a murderer, but he had arrested a number of thieves who had looked and spoken like honest persons, but in none had he ever been more mistaken than in Mrs Crosbie. In his perturbation he did what he had been trying hard not to do: he fell into his lay-preacher’s way of speaking. It got him laughed at by his colleagues, behind his back. He had been warned about it by Flora. He himself thought it too solemn and a bit pompous. But when it took possession of him he could not stop it.

  ‘There are times, Mrs Crosbie, in this life of affliction, when our only comfort is the mercy of God. God is merciful. That is the greatest truth we know on earth.’

  ‘It is the greatest lie, Mr McLeod. God is cruel.’

  Never had atrocious blasphemy been uttered so quietly and with such assurance. There could be only one explanation. The devil was speaking through her. There should have been horns poking through that black hat, a tail should have been seen under her chair. Instead of neat false teeth there should have been fangs.

  Sometimes he had doubted when Mr McGeachan had told the congrega
tion that the devil still existed, able to assume any shape he pleased. For the rest of his life McLeod would remember Mrs Crosbie’s meek smile as she said ‘God is cruel’ and he would know that he had looked upon the devil.

  She stood up, so softly that it was as if the kittens had awakened.

  ‘Did you come in a car, Mr McLeod?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you take me to Johnny?’

  ‘There is no need to go now, Mrs Crosbie.’

  Findlay had said, give them time to clean up the face a bit.

  ‘Tomorrow morning would do.’

  ‘I want to go now.’

  She had not shed a single tear. But then who had ever heard of the devil weeping?

  ‘It might not be convenient.’ Even as he said it, trying to be kind, he knew it sounded heartless. That was the way the devil twisted things.

  ‘If you don’t want to take me I shall walk.’

  Was this how the meek were going to inherit the earth, with the devil’s help?

  Outside in the street when she saw Harry Black in the car reading a newspaper she said: ‘No thank you. I’ll walk.’ And off she went, meek as a mouse.

  She must have heard that Harry had miscalled her Johnny, as indeed he had, more than once.

  McLeod got into the car. He was still shaking.

  ‘Where’s she off to?’ asked Harry.

  ‘The hospital.’

  ‘But she wasn’t to go there till tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s what I told her.’

  ‘It’s quite a distance. Shouldn’t we have offered her a lift?’

  ‘I did. She preferred to walk.’

  ‘How did she take it? No hysterics? She looked calm enough.’

  ‘She thinks we all killed him.’

  ‘She would think that, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, none of us went out of our way to help the poor young bastard, did we?’

  No, they had not.

  ‘We can’t let her go to the morgue by herself,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll have to go after her, serge. One of us has got to be there to make the identification official.’

  ‘Would you like to be the one, Harry?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like it but I’ll do it if you’ve had enough, serge. You look as if –’ he was about to say ‘as if you had been kicked in the balls’, a very apt description of McLeod’s pale face and anguished snorts.

  ‘Do you know what she said, Harry? She said she did not want her husband to go and see the boy. She said he would spit in his face.’

  ‘People who have had a shock say things they don’t mean.’

  It was humbling, and also exasperating, for a man who believed in God’s mercy to be outdone in sympathy and understanding by a man who did not believe in God’s very existence.

  Black glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll be able to have a word with Fiona,’ he said, happily.

  They would later go to the Blue Lagoon, eat sweet and sour pork, drink wine, and dance. Afterwards they would make love. Harry would not lie beside his Fiona, fair-haired like McLeod’s Flora, and ponder that terrible saying of Mrs Crosbie’s: ‘God is cruel,’ as McLeod would. For in the depths of his soul he had now and then a great fear that it might be true.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  In many Lightburn households the evening meal coincided with the Scottish television news which came after the main news, at six o’clock. Often not a great deal of attention was paid to it, most of the items being considered dull and parochial. This looked to be the case that Thursday, in the Dykes household. Moreover, a dispute was going on between Mick and his mother as to the amount of strawberry jam he was allowed to spread on top of his bread and margarine. They were only half listening therefore when it was announced towards the end that the body of a boy, identified as John Crosbie, missing since Sunday, had been found by workmen demolishing some old buildings, in Lightburn. A view of the town hall was shown for a few seconds.

  Mick stopped in the act of reaching out again towards the jam pot. ‘Did she say Johnny had been found?’ he asked, incredulously.

  His mother had been too intent on policing his knife. ‘Do you know how much strawberry jam costs these days?’

  ‘Did you hear, Tam?’

  Tam had been thinking of his girl-friend who had told him, mendaciously he hoped, that she was pregnant. He had not heard.

  Behind his newspaper Mr Dykes was not to be disturbed.

  Luckily Jim, having nothing else to occupy his mind, had been listening and watching. ‘She said they’ve found your pal Crosbie’s body, Mick.’

  ‘Did she say he was dead?’

  ‘Bodies are usually dead,’ said his mother.

  ‘But how could he be dead?’

  ‘Ask the cats he killed. Maybe somebody stuck a knife in him.’

  ‘It must have been Cooley.’

  ‘I thought she’d gone to London.’

  ‘She must have sneaked back and done Johnny in. She didn’t like him.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Me. I liked him.’

  ‘You’re the only one that did.’

  ‘There’s somebody else.’ He meant Duffy.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I’m not saying.’ Mick gulped down the last of his bread. ‘Can I get going out?’ He was desperate with anxiety and also, though he didn’t realise it yet, with grief.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ snapped his mother. ‘Your week’s not up. You’ll stay in and wash the dishes.’

  ‘But Johnny’s dead, mother.’

  ‘According to your father you shouldn’t believe everything they tell you on television.’

  From behind the newspaper Mr Dykes said, sagely: ‘I was referring to political issues. On such issues it is the voice of the English Establishment and therefore not to be trusted.’

  ‘There’s somebody I’ve got to talk to about Johnny,’ said Mick.

  ‘Who?’ asked his mother.

  He knew Duffy would not want to be named. He shook his head.

  ‘It’s not that cow Burnet?’

  ‘She didn’t like Johnny.’

  Her voice softened but not much. ‘Is it Crosbie’s mother you want to talk to?’

  ‘No.’ Mrs Crosbie didn’t like him and had ordered him to keep away from Johnny. In his desperation he appealed to a higher court. ‘Can I go, Dad?’

  Mr Dykes lowered the newspaper. He hadn’t shaved for three days. Two of his front teeth were missing. His spectacles had wire frames. He had a low opinion of the judges of the land and frequently criticised their verdicts and pronouncements, but he was fond of adopting judicial attitudes himself. ‘I see no reason why not,’ he said, after a pause.

  ‘Just a minute,’ said his wife. ‘I said he couldn’t.’ She gave the table a bang, making the dishes jump.

  ‘Clear the ring,’ said Tam, grinning.

  ‘What I said,’ said Mr Dykes, ‘was that I could see no reason why he should not go out.’

  ‘I’ll tell you why not. Because I said he couldn’t.’

  ‘I was not delivering a judgment. I was merely airing an opinion.’

  ‘The one thing I’ll not tolerate is having my authority in this house undermined.’

  ‘Those that assume authority, Nellie, have to be very sure that they do not use it unjustly.’

  That was what Duffy had said. Abusers of authority, he had called them.

  ‘Are you calling me unjust?’ demanded Mrs Dykes.

  ‘That is not for me to decide, Nellie. It is for you yourself. For my part I simply wished to put it on record that I see no harm in letting him out for a prescribed period to talk to whomever he pleases about his departed friend.’

  ‘Just for an hour,’ said Mick.

  ‘Not for a minute,’ said his mother. ‘Why should you go out when I can’t? I can’t show my nose in any pub in town because of you and that fat cow Burnet.’

  ‘Another drawback is a shortage of funds,’ said his
father.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ muttered Mick. There was no private place in the house he could escape to to endure his misery and frustration. His brothers would not let him into their room, or his mother into hers. If he stayed in the bathroom longer than five minutes one of them would thump on the door. In any case he had been forbidden to snib it.

  He could not help tears coming into his eyes. He felt in his pocket for Johnny’s dice. If only he could have spoken to Duffy. He remembered how calm Duffy had been in the library and the church. For a few moments he thought of Molly and her boobs but even if they had been accessible they wouldn’t have comforted him. If he had had a girl friend whom he really liked and who liked him she might have comforted him, but he hadn’t.

  He began to clear the dishes off the table and carry them into the kitchen. His mother and brothers settled down to watch television. His father went off to the bathroom with his newspaper.

  ‘I didn’t know Crosbie was as ill as that,’ said his mother.

  ‘I told you but you didn’t believe me. Nobody believed me.’

  ‘We all believe you now,’ said Tam.

  ‘All right,’ said his mother. ‘When you’ve done the dishes you can go. Be back in an hour, mind.’

  ‘Don’t let him take his dick with him,’ said Tam. He and Jim roared with laughter.

  His mother laughed too. ‘You two shut up,’ she said.

  Even if he had known that the rain was so heavy and the night so dark he would still have wanted to visit Duffy. He had no cap and no raincoat and his shoes let in worse than ever, but he did not mind the discomfort, he was too concerned about Johnny, and besides Duffy’s house would be bright and warm.

  Perhaps Cooley had been driven to do it, by mysterious forces angry with them all for what they had done in the church. They had turned her into a kind of were-wolf. It could be that she had been ordered to kill him and Duffy too, and then herself. He had seen a film once with a story like that.

  He kept to lighted streets all the way until he came to Duffy’s which was in darkness near Duffy’s close. He slunk cautiously, looking all about him. It was the sort of place a killer under a spell would lurk, with a long sharp knife or an open razor. So keen was his fear, he felt a sharp pain in his throat.