Ripped

by Frederic Lindsay

  'The people out there have had all their leave cancelled, right? And the days off. We've got the full team here from half nine in the morning till half nine at night - and after that there's still people here. We're tired. And then we've got you.' The smart thing to do would have been to grovel, but the best Murray could manage was to keep his face expressionless. 'They tell me you were a real copper once.'

  This time McKellar waited until there was an answer. 'A long time ago – I was in Eastern.'

  'I started in that shop. Nobody ever taught me to behave like a cunt there. I hear you went to America – is that where you learned to be a cunt?'

  'I went to America,' Murray agreed stolidly. Twenty years ago because he couldn't stand yes-sirring authority, he had left the police. Now he was standing in front of a desk again; it was as if he had never been away.

  'I send officers to interview a witness and they find him crying.'

  'When I got there, he was crying. He was fond of his brother.'

  'I've got your number. You see yourself as a hard character,' McKellar said. 'You're one of the bully boys.' He made a mouth of sour disbelief. 'Who paid you to go and see Leo Arnold? And don't give me any crap about confidentiality.'

  'Blair Heathers.'

  McKellar blinked; he controlled everything but that twitch of the pale sandy lashes.

  'He hired me after Merchant was killed. Not for anything fancy – just to check on a couple of things.'

  'Things,' McKellar said by way of acknowledgement, not recording any kind of opinion. Instead of leaning forward, he settled back, studying the biro as it turned end for end between his fingers. Murray had heard enough about him to know that he was straight; but Blair Heathers' name made him cautious. Murray was impressed.

  'Arnold says he's had bother with you before.'

  'I'd worked for his wife.'

  McKellar pulled a sheet from the pile and glanced at it. 'He's divorced.'

  'This was before, at the end of last year. They'd been separated, and she'd decided to protect herself. She wanted everything in the business checked out before the settlement. It was interesting, that firm wouldn't have survived without the contracts Blair Heathers put their way.'

  'I thought Heathers was your client,' McKellar said.

  'You told me not to give you any crap about confidentiality.'

  'I wonder if you're so stupid you're trying to get clever with me,' McKellar said, but he didn't sound in a hurry any more. When the interruption came, he waved to a chair by the wall. 'Sit there – till I've time for you.' And to the pot-bellied sergeant, who decided it was politic to allow himself a grin, 'This is a detective. He's going to tell us if he sees a clue.'

  Murray sat while they came in and out. McKellar went away for a time in the middle. At intervals to different people, he explained that Murray was a detective. Everybody seemed to enjoy the joke. With time to think, Murray thought of other and better ways he might have handled the interview. He thought of getting up and walking out. There might be something a man of his age not trained for any trade, without professional qualifications, could find to do. After a time, instead of concentrating on what was going on, which anyway was all routine, he became obsessed by the smell of food. Because of the size of the operation, they had reopened the old school kitchen as a canteen. A smell that was warm and savoury made Murray's nostrils widen. He knew it was an illusion, the nose's equivalent of a mirage; in the canteen, if he could have gone through, there would be pies of slippery mush, dry occluded pastry, plastic puddings, sandwiches. Still his nose told him differently. Over the long wait hung the tang of stew and fresh baked loaves making his mind wander. Some detective.

  'Some detective.’

  'It's a living.'

  'We were talking about Leo Arnold. Your story is that Blair Heathers told you to go and ask him some questions.'

  'No. He didn't tell me.' There was no point in trying to make that lie stick. 'But his instructions covered it. If there was anything he should know – money worries – that kind of thing.'

  McKellar looked sceptical. 'Money worries. In the middle of a murder enquiry. You picked a funny time.'

  'I didn't learn anything,' and as McKellar sneered and nodded his lack of surprise at that, Murray added foolishly, 'except that he was fond of his brother.'

  'How about your own brother? How do you feel about your brother?'

  Murray stared back blankly. Caught off guard, he could not stir his wits to find an answer.

  'Your brother knew John Merchant,' McKellar said, 'and Merchant's girlfriend.'

  In search of a diversion, Murray said, 'Merchant was afraid of a man called Joe Kujavia. Have you heard of him?'

  'Pimp. Strong-arm man. Are you telling me he had a connection with Merchant? A business connection?'

  'Not business.' For Malcolm's sake, the last thing Murray wanted was any probing into Merchant's business connections. 'Back when he was a student in Poland at the beginning of the war, Merchant was put into a concentration camp. I can't remember its name, but I can get it for you. I took a note after Merchant told me. Kujavia was a guard there – and Merchant recognised him, even though it was so long ago. He saw him kill a young boy and he never forgot him. He could have identified Kujavia as a war criminal.'

  McKellar was smiling.

  'A war criminal,' he repeated, and the corners of his lips twitched and he had begun to laugh. It sounded horribly genuine, even if rusty; but then he couldn't have found much to laugh at in the last three weeks. There was even as he continued the hint of a tear in his eye. 'You're a joke, Wilson. I didn't expect you to make me laugh –'

  This time, however, the interruption was a final distraction. The heavy-bellied sergeant was nodded in and laid a brown envelope on the desk in front of McKellar. He was wearing the familiar plastic gloves used to handle evidence or, more oftenly, to search a drunk and disorderly or verminous down-and- out in the station. Behind him, other men came in and congregated in a half ring in front of the desk. None of them paid any attention to Murray and from where he sat he could see McKellar, his own hands gloved now, open the envelope. He slit it at the wrong end; if a tongue had been used to seal the flap, forensic might establish a blood group from the mucus. Gently squeezed and tilted, the envelope gave up a length of folded paper. As McKellar spread it open, his expression did not change, only he kept it in front of him too long, like a man committing something to memory. When he held it up, they recognised the spiky variable script that carried the signature 'Jill'. It had been addressed to him and he would take personally whatever it had contained of mockery or of warning. He laid the letter in one compartment of the white plastic evidence tray and held the envelope again over another. He had to shake it more than once, turning and easing it until the little packet inside came free. The first impression was that it was red and then they saw that this colour was streaked upon a ground of white. As McKellar turned it, Murray recognised the Royal Bank logo and '£5 silver' written underneath in blue. In smaller letters at the bottom, it would carry the injunction: Re-usable bag. Do not discard.

  The tray had a dozen compartments of various sizes. McKellar held the bank envelope over one of the two longer rectangular ones in the middle. The envelope had a tuck-and-gather flap and it took him a moment to unpick it. Watching, Murray could see he was not very deft with his hands. A wad of cottonwool and what it held slid out into the compartment.

  It was then, remembering, or reminded by chance as he glanced up, that the Chief Superintendent told Murray, 'Get out.' And added on the next breath, 'And watch it. You're on a short rope.'

  Despite which, Murray went to the canteen. There were no prime rib steaks, so he took a hot meat pie which was neither and a plastic beaker of tea. The big men overflowed the furniture, shadowing tables with their shoulders and hanging their bums over chairs like pastry waiting to be trimmed. Pale lines on the walls marked where there had been transfers of birds and animals when this had been the school dining hall
. It was visiting day in wonderland.

  'What the hell are you doing here?'

  Murray had chosen a corner table with his back to the room. Looking up, he saw the plate and cup slide perilously on the tray between Eddy Stewart's startled hands.

  'Sit down before I get that stuff in my ear.'

  'No way. I don't want to be even seen anywhere near you, pal.'

  'You'll get your pension, Eddy – and you're too old for a promotion!'

  'They shouldn't have fed you. That shit's subsidised by the taxpayer.'

  'I put on a disguise.'

  'You even smell like a cop – McKellar make you sweat?'

  'You knew I was with him?'

  'There aren't any secrets in this place.'

  'McKellar got distracted.'

  'Eh?' Murray gestured with a thumb at his crotch. 'Somebody sent him a present. All wrapped up in cottonwool.'

  'Bloody hell!' Stewart said appreciatively. He glanced round and sat down. 'I heard the buzz there'd been a letter, but – So the Gaffer got a wee present from Jill? A prick for a prick.' He laughed and hefted the tray as if ready to get up again. 'He'll be as wild as hell.'

  'Hold it, Eddy.'

  'Make it quick. I'm nervous sitting here.'

  Murray hesitated. 'John Merchant told me he'd recognised a guy as someone he'd seen before. A guard in a concentration camp. You know, like an SS man? I think the guy he was talking about was Joe Kujavia.'

  'Do you tell me that?' Stewart said in a tone of respectful astonishment.

  Murray studied him suspiciously. 'I decided to tell McKellar. But when I told him, he laughed.'

  'Aye, well, he would, wouldn't he?' Stewart's deadpan cracked into a grin. With amusement, his face, beefy and pale from too many hours on his feet, reddened so that he looked healthy and cheerful. 'Let me tell you, Ian Peerse's father and Jackie McKellar hated one another's guts. This is a while ago – they were both inspectors – and Andrew Peerse got the same idea you've got there.'

  'Where did he get it from?'

  'No problem.' Stewart's grin widened. 'From the man himself. Kujavia used to boast about it. So Andrew Peerse took him seriously. He did a lot of work on it apparently. In his own time as well – bloody idiot – like father like son, eh?'

  'So what happened? I haven't heard the joke yet.'

  'Jackie McKellar did a bit of enquiring of his own. He traced Kujavia's first conviction. For pimping. In London. In 1939. I mean, before the bloody war at all, right? He got a lot of satisfaction out of making a cunt of Peerse. No wonder you had him laughing.'

  ‘You'd better eat that pie,' Murray said. 'It'll be getting cold. It's all right, I'm just going.'

  Stewart cut a wedge of the pie and shovelled it into his mouth. A wedge of white grease had begun to congeal round the edge of the crust. He made a face and swilled the mouthful down with tea. 'One other thing, Eddy. It'll only take a minute. Is it true they've identified the guy who was found dead off Deacon Street? The one that had the wheel over his face.'

  Eddy burped, and put another wedge of pie into his mouth. Indistinctly, through it as he chewed, he said in disgust, 'For all the good it did. An old guy called Lester Rose. Worked as a book-keeper or something with MacKinlays – the engineering firm, know it? Once they could check with his dentist, there wasn't any doubt. He'd had a lot of fancy work done on his teeth.'

  'No connection with John Merchant?' Murray wondered.

  Stewart stared. 'Why should there be? Just a wee clerk. He wasn't anybody. They wouldn't have known who he was yet if the daughter hadn't reported him missing. She'd come all the way over from America because she'd written to him and hadn't got an answer.' He burped again. 'She was in a hell of a state apparently. She seems to have been fond of him.'

  He came out of a side door into what must have been a children's playground once, and walked along by the line of trash silted against the wall. Until he got a view from the corner, he was puzzled by a thin, plaintive persistence of women's voices.

  There were six of them, gathered in a line on the edge of the pavement. One was fat and four were thin; and five were young, in their early twenties perhaps, though Murray found school kids fooled him now. The last one had hair almost entirely grey with only traces of its original red. She had a lot of hair and when it was all red men must have turned to look after her in the street.

  As he crossed the playground, the women started to clap their hands keeping time to his steps. It was a kids' trick, but an effective one. On the far side of the road, the usual idle group of the curious were watching. Making a fool of him seemed to be the game in favour that day.

  When he came through the gate and stopped, the clapping tailed away. Close up, the younger ones didn't look all that young. The one facing him had a T-shirt with the legend: My Name's Rita not Jill. She had dyed blonde, very soft hair that fluffed up like a halo round her head. There were placards too; homelettered; the older woman held the biggest: Women's Collective Protest – and a lot of words underneath too crowded to read easily.

  They stared at him uncertainly. None of the men going in and out would have stopped. It was natural, though, as Eddy Stewart had pointed out, for him to be mistaken for a policeman. He looked the part.

  'Does it matter more because it's men who are being killed?' the older woman cried at him. Her face was very passionate and earnest with sincerity. 'Would you care if it was one of these girls instead of some man?'

  The smart thing would have been to move away then.

  'If anyone's degraded, it's not the women, it's the men,' she cried.

  'You're talking rubbish,' he argued. With McKellar, he had been smart and kept quiet. 'It doesn't matter whether it's men or women. It makes no difference.'

  In their excitement – and it must have been boring standing there for so long without a response – they crowded him, although the older woman shrilled, 'Don't block the pavement. We're not blocking the pavement. Don't cause an obstruction, girls.'

  The blonde Rita shouted, 'A woman's got a right to self-defence.'

  From the babble, another one screeched, 'You're a fucking liar. All of you fucking liars. Who says a woman did it? You're protecting some fucking man!' She looked the youngest of them, a raw-boned girl with a big nose the cold wind had reddened.

  Self defence. Liar.

  'You want to make up your minds,' Murray said helplessly. They all wanted to make a point, and made them together.

  Three times in the uproar he heard the word 'degraded'.

  Degraded... degraded...

  And then he too was shouting and the bull roar of him knocked their mouths shut. 'Cut. Don't you understand he was cut? And –'

  But to his horror he might have wept.

  Cut – a farmer's word. The old derelict found in the backland had been cut, jibbed like a horse; worse, not gelded, but amputated. The bloody remnant poured into McKellar's tray, a toy for Forensic.

  In the silence a voice said, 'You don't understand the courage of prostitutes. The risks they run every day.'

  He looked and the speaker was the older woman. The mane of grey hair with its streaks of red had shaken loose around her shoulders and she seemed like a crazy Joan of Arc.

  To her, as if there was no one else, he said, 'This city has the ugliest whores in the world.'

  For her, too, they might have been alone for she held him with a look of hurt and shock. It was as if she were terribly disappointed. Just then a group of detectives came out of the school and started across to the gate, and seeing them the women fell back to their previous line at the edge of the pavement.

  22 A Taste of Alone

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4TH 1988

  Even though he had left the city, it had not been difficult to trace Father Joseph Hurtle, who twenty years earlier had been a young priest in the parish of Moirhill.

  The wind faltering across the square smelt of the sea and clean.

  There was a bank on one corner, a fountain in the middle, a hotel
and two pubs, in one of which he had been given directions. 'Father Hurtle seems a decent sort of man,' the landlord had offered unasked. 'But there's not many R.C.s in Beaton. I don't suppose you would have found half a dozen before they built the chipboard factory. So most of them are incomers. Not that some of them haven't settled in very well. It must be a real change – out here in the country from what they're used to. We got the chipboard factory and then we got the new houses. I suppose that's what they call progress.'

  He went out of the square by the bank corner and the directions were good for soon he found himself among a cross – hatch of new council housing, all the doors painted the same shade of brown and the hedges low and meagre. His destination was set on its own, across the road from the last of the houses. On the one side, it faced the sea, and on the other a low undulating landscape was blurred under a grey mist, except where on the nearest hill farm machinery, like a box of red and yellow toys, was laid out in lines as if waiting to be sold. The chapel was determinedly modern with a pleated roof like a paper aeroplane and, as he went round the side, he wondered which pleat hid the untowered bell.

  From some childhood urging, the thought came into his head, I won't call him Father. Tucked on the other side of a neat stretch of lawn, there was a house which bore a cheerless resemblance to the scheme through which he had come. Before he could ring, the door was opened by a thin-faced man with a head of curly black hair and an air of being flustered. Murray saw the clerical collar and next that the man was holding up his right hand in his left, and that it was wrapped in a white cloth.

  'Father Hurtle?'

  'Yes, but – Did you want to see me? Yes? Would you like to come with me?'