Double Mortice

by Bill Daly

  ‘This bedroom and the hall have been furnished and now they’re empty. I reckon we’re standing in the room where Anne Gibson was murdered.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Not wanting to switch on his mobile in case it was being traced, Michael Gibson went into a telephone booth in Dumbarton Road to call McGurk. He recognised Bernie’s voice. ‘Do you have anything for me?’

  ‘Good mornin’, Mr Gibson. I think I may be able to help you. I believe the punter you’re looking for is stayin’ in Turnberry Road. Do you know where that is?’

  ‘Off Hyndland Road? Near Clarence Drive?’

  ‘That’s the one. Your friend’s dossin’ down at Larry Robertson’s place. He’s got one of those swanky detached houses near the top of the street, not far from the junction with Hyndland Road. But you wouldn’t be wantin’ to go near the place. There are CCTV cameras everywhere.

  ‘However, tomorrow mornin’ at ten o’clock your man is goin’ to meet some of his pals in a flat in Great Western Road. It’s less than a mile from where he’s stayin’ an’ it’s odds-on he’ll walk. He likes walkin’ – and I’m told the weather forecast for tomorrow is good.’ McGurk chuckled. ‘Which means you could probably bump into him in Hyndland Road sometime between half-past nine and ten o’clock, if that suits your purpose?’

  ‘Thanks, Bernie. I’ll send an envelope across as soon as I can.’

  ‘Thanks very much, Mr Gibson.’

  When Charlie got back to the office there was an urgent message waiting for him, asking him to call Sheila Thompson

  ‘Miss Thompson? This is Inspector Anderson. I believe you were trying to get in touch with me?’

  ‘It’s about Michael Gibson, Inspector. I saw him yesterday.’ Sheila sounded extremely agitated. ‘He came round here,’ she blurted out, omitting to mention that he had been in the flat during Anderson’s visit.

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘No. But I’m worried about him. He’s gone looking for Jack McFarlane – he says he’s going to kill him.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘You’ve got to find him before he gets to McFarlane, Inspector. He’s been drinking. He needs help.’

  Philippa Scott pulled two heavy bags of groceries from the boot of her car. Sunday shopping suited her because by the time she got out of the office on weekdays, she never felt like going to a supermarket. She was slightly out of breath by the time she’d climbed to the third floor landing. She dropped her groceries onto the doormat and fumbled in her bag for her key to unlock the door.

  ‘I’ll get those.’ The voice from behind startled her and when she spun round she saw Michael Gibson sweep up the groceries and carry them ahead of her into the apartment.

  ‘Michael! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Where do you want these?’ he said, ignoring her consternation. ‘In the kitchen, I suppose.’ He walked down the hall and dumped the bags on the kitchen table.

  ‘You’re crazy! You shouldn’t have come here. The police have been round looking for you, questioning me about you and Anne. For all I know they might be watching the building.’

  ‘They are. There’s in an unmarked car out front. I spotted it. I climbed over the wall and came across the back court. I was worried for a minute that the entry code for the back door might’ve been changed, but it hasn’t.’

  ‘Why have you come here?’

  ‘I had to see you. I had to find out why you’ve been avoiding me. Why didn’t you return any of my calls or answer my texts? You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, Pippa.’ He put his arms around her and pulled her close, running his fingers through her long hair. She didn’t respond, her body remaining rigid, her arms by her side.

  ‘It’s no use,’ she said steadily. ‘It’s too late for this. In any case, I’m seeing someone else.’

  Michael released her from his grip and took a step back, his face turning scarlet, his eyes rolling in their sockets. He felt the room start to spin. He made a grab for her arm to steady himself, but his legs crumpled beneath him and he crashed to the floor in a dead faint.

  When Michael came round, he was lying on his back on the kitchen floor with a pillow propped beneath his head. Philippa, kneeling by his side, was dabbing at his burning forehead with a damp sponge. ‘What happened? Where am I?’

  ‘You fainted. You’re on my kitchen floor. I couldn’t lift you.’

  ‘How long have I been out?’ He tried to sit up but felt nauseous as soon as his head left the pillow. He sank back down.

  ‘Only a few minutes. Lie still. Don’t try to move. I’ll call a doctor.’

  He grabbed her by the arm. ‘No doctor. I’ll be all right. I only need to rest for a while. And don’t call the police either,’ he implored. ‘Trust me. I just need twenty-four hours.’

  Philippa continued to dab at his forehead with the sponge. ‘This cut looks septic – there’s dirt and gravel in the wound. And you’re shivering. I’ll fetch a blanket.’

  Michael closed his eyes to try to stop the room spinning.

  Philippa fetched a woollen blanket and draped it over him, tucking it in at the sides. She cleaned out the weeping wound with surgical spirit and dressed it. His shivering got worse.

  ‘You shouldn’t be lying on cold linoleum. I can’t lift you. Do you think you could make it as far as the bedroom?’

  Michael raised his head tentatively from the pillow. The worst of the nausea seemed to have passed. ‘I’ll try.’ He pulled himself to his feet, steadying himself against the kitchen table. Philippa supported him by the arm as she led him to the bedroom. He was sweating profusely. He lay down on the bed and she pulled the duvet over him. ‘You’ve got a fever. Why won’t you let me call a doctor?’

  ‘I just need to rest,’ he insisted.

  ‘When was the last time you had something to eat?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’ His eyelids fluttered briefly, then closed as he sank into a troubled sleep.

  Charlie summoned O’Sullivan and Renton to his office.

  ‘Forensics told me I’d have the results from flat 14 within thirty minutes,’ Charlie complained to O’Sullivan when he arrived. ‘That was an hour ago. What the hell’s keeping them? We might as well start to –’ Eddie McLaughlin’s rap on the office door interrupted Charlie’s flow. ‘What have you got for us, Eddie?’ he demanded.

  ‘The scratches in the parquet flooring in the bedroom and the hall are consistent with furniture having been there recently. There are small holes in the bedroom wall that look as if they were made by picture hooks and there were some minute stains on the floor in which we found traces of vomit and blood.’

  ‘Anne Gibson’s blood?’

  ‘A mixture. Anne Gibson’s blood – and sheep’s blood.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Eddie. What the hell’s been going on?’

  Charlie phoned home. ‘I’m not going to make it back for lunch, Kay. There have been developments.’

  ‘I’ll see you when I see you.’ There was resignation in Kay’s voice.

  Charlie pulled the flipchart stand to the middle of the office and picked up a blue marker pen. ‘Right, boys. Let’s take it from the top and sort out what we’ve got.’ He started writing on the flipchart:

  FACTS

  – Anne Gibson was the only person who had the opportunity to steal the key for flat 14 from Harry Kennedy’s wall safe.

  – She almost certainly faked her suicide in flat 14 on Wednesday 9th March. Motive unknown.

  – She hid out at her parents’ house from 10th to 15th March.

  – She was murdered in flat 14 on Tuesday 15th March (traces of her blood, and sheep’s blood, were found on the floor).

  Charlie put down his marker pen and stepped back from the board. ‘Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Michael Gibson didn’t murder his wife. In that case, he got out of the lift on the fourteenth floor on the evening of March 15th and found her dead body.’

  ‘Why would he get out at
the fourteenth floor?’ O’Sullivan asked. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘He thought he was on the fifteenth floor?’ Renton suggested.

  ‘You mean he pressed the wrong button in the lift?’ O’Sullivan said.

  ‘That’s so improbable it’s not even worth considering,’ Charlie chipped in.

  ‘Then what could have happened?’ Renton insisted.

  Charlie scratched at his bald head as he paced up and down the room. ‘The only conceivable way that could’ve happened is if the lift had been tampered with to make it stop at floor 14 when Gibson pressed the button for floor 15.’

  ‘Is that possible?’ O’Sullivan asked.

  ‘I haven’t the remotest idea. But nothing else fits, so let’s give it a whirl.’

  Charlie called Harry Kennedy. ‘Harry, what are you supposed to do if something goes wrong with the lift?’

  ‘There’s a maintenance contract with the firm that installed it. If the lift breaks down, I phone them and they guarantee to have an engineer here within an hour.’

  ‘Call them right now and report a breakdown. I’ll be there to meet the engineer.’

  Charlie turned back to the flipchart board. ‘What the hell’s this sheep’s blood nonsense all about?’

  ‘If we rule out satanic rites and bestiality for the moment,’ Renton said, ‘we can only assume the murderer took a container of sheep’s blood up to the flat for some reason.’

  ‘To pour over the corpse? To make the murder look as gory as possible?’ O’Sullivan suggested.

  ‘Seems really weird,’ Renton said, shaking his head.

  ‘Worth checking out,’ Charlie said. ‘If the murderer wanted to get his hands on sheep’s blood, for whatever perverted reason, I assume he’d go to an abattoir or a butcher’s – unless he gets his kicks by wandering into fields and slitting sheep’s throats. Check out everywhere you can think of, Colin. Ask around if anyone has tried to get their hands on animal blood recently. Tony, you come with me to Dalgleish Tower.’

  Tom Simpson was not at all pleased when he discovered there was nothing wrong with the lift. ‘I was in the middle of my dinner,’ he complained bitterly to Harry. ‘That phone number’s only supposed to be used for an emergency breakdown.’

  ‘No point in shoutin’ the odds at me, pal. I was just doing’ what I was telt. The cops’ll be here in a minute. You can moan all you like at them.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I will.’

  When Anderson and O’Sullivan arrived at Dalgleish Tower, Simpson was waiting outside the building to confront them. ‘What’s this all about?’ he demanded. ‘I get called out in the middle of my dinner, only to find the lift’s working perfectly. I’m going to report this to Mr Chalmers.’

  Charlie adopted a conciliatory tone. ‘I’m very sorry about that, Mr… Mr…?’

  ‘Simpson. Tom Simpson.’

  ‘Don’t blame Mr Kennedy. It was entirely my fault. However, this isn’t a false alarm. I had to get you here. I’m conducting a murder investigation and I need your expertise.’

  ‘Well… if it’s really that important… I suppose…’

  ‘It is. Your knowledge could be the vital factor in solving a murder.’ Putting his arm around Simpson’s shoulder, Charlie led him up the steps and into the building. When they reached the internal door, Simpson tapped in a code.

  ‘How did you do that?’ Harry demanded, scuttling across. ‘How did you know the code? I didn’t give it to you.’

  ‘Whenever one of our lifts is installed, we’re given a master code that works on all the secure doors in the building. We need that in case there’s an emergency and there’s no one around who knows the code the user has assigned.’

  ‘Nobody telt me about that,’ Harry grumbled.

  ‘This lift looks like a pretty complicated bit of equipment,’ Charlie said, stroking Simpson’s ego. ‘There can’t be many people who understand how it works.’

  ‘It’s the latest technology.’

  ‘Tell me, suppose you wanted to make the lift stop at a different floor from the one indicated on the buttons. Would that be possible? For example, if you wanted to make the lift stop at floor 14 when you pressed button 15. Could that be done?’

  Simpson furrowed his brow. ‘That wouldn’t be too difficult. When you press a button, it transmits a signal to the lift motor via a printed circuit card that sits behind the control panel in the lift. If you wanted to make the lift stop at a different floor, you would just have to cross the wires on the circuit board. Piece of piss for someone who knew what they were doing.’

  ‘Show me how you’d go about it.’

  Simpson summoned the lift and stepped inside, flicking the switch to hold the doors open. He took a screwdriver from his bag and undid the retaining screws that held the control panel in place. Having eased the panel away from the wall, he unclipped the circuit board and lifted it out. ‘This is what controls the movement of the lift,’ he explained, showing the printed circuit to Charlie. ‘If you wanted to change the floor all you would have to do would be – Hey!’ Simpson broke off as he examined the card. ‘Someone has been buggering about with this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look at the card. Somebody’s tampered with it.’ Simpson studied the board carefully. ‘The connection from button 15 has been cut and an extra wire, with a clip on the end, has been soldered on in its place. It’s a neat bit of work.’ He nodded admiringly. ‘Right now, the clip’s connected normally. But by moving this clip to a different position on the card, you could make the lift stop at any floor you wanted when somebody pressed button 15. Let me show you.’ He switched the clip to position 3 on the circuit board and replaced the card in the control panel, then released the switch that held open the doors. ‘Press number 15.’ Charlie pressed the button and the lift started to climb. When the indicator panel showed they had arrived at the fifteenth floor, the lift doors slid open and Charlie gazed out at the number ‘3’ on the apartment door opposite.

  He whistled softly. ‘As simple as that, eh?’ Simpson took the lift back to the ground floor, removed the circuit board and reconnected the wire to the correct position before screwing the panel back in place. ‘Mr Simpson, I can’t thank you enough.’ Charlie pumped his hand enthusiastically. ‘You’ve been of great assistance. Once again, please accept my apologies for dragging you away from your lunch, but we could never have got to the bottom of this without your help. I’ll make sure Mr Chalmers gets to hear how cooperative you’ve been.’

  ‘Glad to have been of assistance. Anyway – getting dragged away from my dinner wasn’t that much of a hardship,’ he confided. ‘The wife’s mother was there.’

  Charlie and Tony O’Sullivan drove back in convoy to Pitt Street. As usual on a Sunday afternoon, the city centre roads were quiet. When he got to his office, Charlie pulled off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and went back to the flipchart board. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere, Tony. Find Renton and tell him to join us. Let’s see where this leads us.’

  As Renton entered the office, Charlie was adding to his list of ‘facts’ on the flipchart:

  – The lift in Dalgleish Tower was tampered with by person or persons unknown.

  ‘Before we go on,’ Renton said. ‘The red Ferrari belongs to a bloke called Jonathan Sharp – he’s a partner in Colesell and Sharp – the law firm where Philippa Scott works now.’

  ‘A partner? Interesting. First Gibson and now Sharp. Our Miss Scott doesn’t mess about with hoi polloi.’ Charlie turned back to study his flipchart. ‘Some bits of the jigsaw are beginning to fall into place, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

  ‘Let’s start with Anne Gibson’s fake suicide on 9th March. She steals the key for flat 14 from Kennedy’s safe. Harry can’t remember the date precisely, but it was sometime early in March. She sends Harry to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water and while he’s out of the room she swaps her own door key with the one for flat 14. Harry’s not likely to not
ice the switch. He’s got no reason to try to use the key for flat 14 and, superficially, all the keys look the same.

  ‘The next step is to furnish the hall and the master bedroom in flat 14 so they look identical to number 15. That’s no easy matter in itself. There can’t be many suppliers of that type of furniture in Glasgow – and they can’t get too many orders for Charles Rennie Mackintosh reproduction bedroom suites. Get onto that first thing in the morning, Tony. Find out who supplies the stuff and what orders they’ve taken in the past few weeks.

  ‘The next problem is to work out how she got the furniture into the building. Kennedy never said anything about a furniture van making a delivery to Dalgleish Tower, but check with him in case it slipped his mind.

  ‘The more you delve into this, the more you realise how well this fake suicide was planned – though I still don’t understand her motive. The apartment door being wide open when Gibson got out of the lift was beautiful. It would instantly engender a sense of panic, which may have been part of the plan. And, of course, it was necessary to have the front door open because Gibson’s key wouldn’t have unlocked it.

  ‘And the phone line being dead. Effective – and yet so simple. Again, it adds to the tension and all she needed to do was get a handset that had never been connected. That’s something else to check out, Tony. Get in touch with the telephone company and find out if the line to flat 15 was out of order at any time on either the 9th or the 15th of March. I’m prepared to bet it wasn’t.’

  ‘What about his mobile?’ Renton asked. ‘Why was that not working?’

  ‘Maybe his wife managed to jam the signal to their flat,’ O’Sullivan offered. ‘You can buy gadgets that will do that.’

  ‘Can mobile phone companies tell if their signal was jammed at a particular location at a particular time?’ Charlie asked.