A snatch of music from a radio ended with the closing of another door.
'There are a lot of things I don't know about,' Murray said. 'Like whether it's really Frances who has done all these murders?'
'It's possible.'
'You think she would have killed John Merchant? And those other men? You think she could have done all those terrible things to them? But if it was her, wouldn't she do it again? Kill someone?' And, of course, he wasn't sure. How could he be, remembering the submissiveness of a woman watching as he threw her possessions scattered on to the floor?
'It's possible,' he said stubbornly.
'Malcolm's with her.' Irene reached out and touched his hand. 'She phoned this afternoon and he told her he would come. He's been with her all this time.'
24 Blood on a Mirror
SATURDAY,OCTOBER 6TH SUNDAY,OCTOBER 7TH 1988
After they had waited for a time without an answer, Irene produced a key. She saw him look at it, but he said nothing; if it was a challenge, this was not its time.
From the first, the flat felt wrong to him, even before they put on the lights and went from that room along the passage to find the bedroom empty. The bed was disturbed, but there was no way of telling if it had been used or left unmade from the previous night.
'They may have gone out somewhere,' she said.
'Where?'
As a couple, Malcolm and Frances Fernie had no right to exist outside this flat. They were only bodies that came together. One of the pillows was dragged half-way down the frozen wound of the bed; a woman might have done that, gathering it under her to raise her buttocks. He looked up and met Irene's eyes.
'It seems,' she said, 'as if we have the place to ourselves.'
The bathroom was empty, which was only what he had expected; but as he turned to go out, he caught sight of his face in the round mirror. Across his nose and cheeks, there was a stain like a tribal scarring. He put on the fluorescent strip around it to see better, but there was only the single mark like a smeared handprint. It was in the front room beside one of the chairs that he found a dark circle of spots.
'He'd been hurt and he fell here or bent forward.'
He sought out with his finger for her each separate indication. 'He?'
'There's blood in there too. On the mirror in the bathroom.'
'But she wouldn't hurt him,' Irene said. 'And neither of them are here.'
'He's been hurt.' He saw Malcolm's face in the mirror tattooed with blood. He kept his voice steady, but at the last word he felt a pulse shake his right eyelid as if a shock had been carried into his whole system.
'What about Frances then? What are we going to do?' she asked.
He was paralysed by the impossibility of telling Mother that Malcolm was dead.
'We can't stay here,' he heard her saying.
He could not decide. In a crisis, when other people panicked, he had always been able to ace. Now in the nightmare he could not decide.
'Your friend Eddy Stewart would be able to find out if anything's happened to them,' she said. 'Eddy?' He stared at her stupidly.
'You know where he lives, don't you?' He nodded.
'We'll go there then.'
Sitting beside her in the car as she drove, he said, 'When I was a boy my father would say to me I had hands like shovels. You'll never be a gentleman with hands like that, he said to me. I went back to the house for his funeral when I was sixteen. Malcolm was just a baby and I had never seen him, so I went into the bedroom and picked him up. He was all wrapped up in white and he jumped in my arms like a fish. I dropped him.'
Gaping at the doorway in terror then, he had seen the figure of judgement. Oh, Mother, I've killed the baby.
When Lynda Stewart had been a kid who laughed easily, with long blonde hair that wasn 't washed often enough, skirts had been worn long and over the months her growing belly had gradually raised them at the front. After seven months of pregnancy, Eddy Stewart had married her and as things went in Moirhill that was luck.
'I didn't come from Florence Street,' Lynda said.
They were waiting for Eddy to come home.
'Carnation Street,' Murray remembered. 'It was Eddy – and Billy Shanks, of course, who came from Florence Street. Just round the corner.'
Back then, rather than watch her marrying someone else, Murray had chosen to go away and leave the city, so there had been luck in it for him too, though no way of being sure which kind.
'Different. It was different!' Even in her sudden animation, she was careful to keep the left side of her face angled from them. She had taken a chair with its back to the light, which made no difference since when she opened the door they had seen the black eye and the ugly bruise on her cheek. Pride was a strange thing. 'Don't compare it to Florence Street. My mother would shout at us – if we did something dirty when we were wee, "They wouldn't do that even in Florence Street." They were right rough in Florence Street.'
She seemed to have finished, and Murray was about to say something, when she burst out, 'They were rubbish in Florence Street.'
From somewhere upstairs, plaintive and discordant, noise skirled female like a wounded cat. With an inarticulate cry, Murray leaped to his feet.
'It's Sally,' Lynda Stewart stared in fright. 'It's just Sally.' Sally... He turned in a kind of bewilderment from her to Irene. He remembered Eddy Stewart with his face sagging in pouches of self-pity, complaining about his marriage, 'Sally - a magic wee kid...'
'Sally,' he said and sat down again, ashamed 'According to Eddy, she's a daddy's girl.'
'She's bothered with nightmares,' Lynda said.
As if suddenly too tired to pretend, she lay back in the chair like that she looked younger. He stared at her breasts and at the way the nightgown fell between her thighs and at the dull flare of the bruise on her cheek.
'I went to the Marriage Guidance and said I couldn't stick it anymore,' she said dully. 'The stupid bitch asked me if I wouldn't be lonely. I told her I'd had practice. It's bad enough when they're in uniform, but once they're in plainclothes you've no life at all. He was never here for the kids – not even when they were ill. And when he was here – you watch a policeman's children – they all expect the third degree, they're used to it, that's the way they get treated at home. He made Jenny feel as if she was a prostitute until she walked out. Peter wouldn't have joined the army if it hadn't been for him.' She got up and went behind him so that he had to twist around to see that she was opening a drawer of the sideboard. Beyond her, he saw Stewart in the doorway. 'Peter wrote to me,' she said, searching.
'Postcard,' Stewart said, pointing his finger at her, 'because your big son is too fucking idle to write a letter.'
He had been drinking and wasn't carrying it as well as usual; or maybe he had come to the point Murray had seen in other hard drinkers when all the bottles over the years started to catch up.
'Has that bitch been crying on your shoulder?' he asked.
But it was Irene who explained and persuaded him to come with them out of there, and, following the two of them through the hall, it was Murray who glanced up and saw the white triangle of a sick child's face watching them from the landing. Little Sally had got out of bed to see what was happening.
'The world's gone fucking mad.' Eddy Stewart pushed up his cheeks with both hands as if he could squeeze out tiredness like water from a sponge. 'Why the hell should anything happen to your brother?'
Murray, who had taken over the driving, was conscious of Irene
in the seat behind him. It was as if she was a prisoner; as if he had never left the police force and his old partner Eddy and he were taking in a prisoner; as if everything in his life had been different and he would not have to tell the old lady her son was dead.'Your brother should have stayed in his own bed,' Eddy grumbled.
In the last hour before midnight, Moirhill Road was busy with
cars; groups of young men spilled off the pavements; there were girls still walking home alone. He swung
in where the side streets curved into ambushes of darkness. Outside the school, they stopped and Eddy Stewart got out. Busy with their own thoughts, they waited for him to return with whatever he had discovered. Murray wiped steam from the window in an arc using the edge of his palm. Just here, he had been shirricked by the group of women demonstrators: Women don't kill! And the tall one with the wild grey hair, like a crazy family doctor, eyes wide and shining: Jill uses violence to make you face the truth!
Make up your minds, he should have said.
The track he had wiped in the steam was filling with a haze of tiny pearls of moisture. Dimly he made out a figure crossing the yard.
'Let me speak to him.'
But when he got out, it was not Stewart but Peerse erect and reproachful who strode through the gate.
'The man was off duty, but you brought him back.' Peerse gave what passed with him for a smile. 'That's what happens on this kind of enquiry. Conscientious officers do more than anyone could ask of them.'
'Is there any news of my brother?'
Peerse bent to peer into the car. 'That's your brother's wife in there? Take her home.'
As he straightened, Murray grabbed him by the upper arm. It was so thin his hand closed around it. 'Tell me. Has something happened, you bastard?'
Above his head, Peerse said, 'I'll deal with this.' Grouped in the gate behind him, three plainclothes men, beefy, crumple-faced and scruffy, hovered uneasily. A yellow carpet of light spilled from the side door of the school they had neglected to close as they left. Murray let his hand fall to his side. The nearest of them farted, muttered 'pardon' into the silence, and then under Peerse's stare they broke and moved off, bulkily unconcerned.
'Take her home,' Peerse said, speaking even more quietly than before. 'Her husband could be sitting at home wondering where she is. I'll send a car after you to check it isn't a false alarm. Meanwhile, I'll go and have a look at the Fernie flat for myself.'
'There's blood on the floor in the front room – and in the bathroom – on the mirror.'
'Your brother should have paid heed,' Peerse said. 'I warned him about the woman Fernie the day I came to your mother's house.' Perhaps despite himself, his voice was full of anticipation. 'If she has harmed him, she's made her big mistake.'
As Irene got out of the car, she must have heard only the last words for she said, 'Is it all right?'
'You've to go home,' Peerse said. 'I'll be along later to ask you some questions.'
'She doesn't know anything,' Murray said quickly. He was afraid that she would blurt out that Frances was her sister. It was was though he was in a conspiracy with her against Peerse. 'They haven't had anything reported.'
'There isn't anything you can do,' Peerse said. 'As soon as we know about your husband, we'll be in touch.'
'They might both be hurt,' she said.
'Both?'
'Come on,' Murray said. 'I'll take you home.'
'What about Mary O'Bannion?' Irene asked.
Fat drops of rain splashed on the bonnet of the car beside Murray. As Peerse stared down on them, about to stoop like a predatory bird, Murray felt his mind go blank, then blurted, 'I've been telling her about Kujavia.'
'That's a story he's been telling everyone,' Peerse said. He sounded bitter. 'Did he tell you about the concentration camp?' He turned from her and put his face down close to Murray's. 'McKellar told me all about it – he thought it was very funny. He said it reminded him of my father.' He straightened. 'Do what I've asked, Mrs Wilson, and go home. Believe me, you haven't anywhere else to go.'
But in the car she said, 'It's not far away, is it?'
The rain was falling heavily now, pouring from the edges of the wipers on each upswing. All those years ago on the beat, the night the mob had cornered them, Peerse on the ground, twitching like a daddy-long-legs when you opened your fist and it was too injured to take off. Peerse had seemed too fragile to last.
'He's right,' he said. 'There wouldn't be any point.'
'I want to go.'
'Why?'
'Because I don't know anywhere else,' she said.
Above his head from the bracket on the landing wall, the gas mantle glowed white except where from one broken corner a blue discharge flared and swayed. It hissed in the stillness as he waited and the smell from the flat, worse than memory had prepared him for, licked out from the crack of the open door as if the dead dog had been left where he dropped it to rot heaving with blind white maggots. He hit the door with his full weight and heard the chain rip out. The edge of it hit something solid and it gave until, staggering, he stood inside.
The bulk of Mary O'Bannion foundered in the ghastly light of the flaring lamp, the waterfall of flesh that was her face decomposed with shock. Covered only by a dressing gown, wine red with decorative detail in gold thread picked out on the cuffs and neck, she cradled in both hands a great exposed flop of breast where the door had struck her.
'Where's Kujavia?'
He pushed her aside moving fast to keep the advantage of surprise, and felt her roll at his touch like a sack of milk. As he forced his way past, she groaned recognition, 'It's you – ya bastard!'
He had a choice of the room where the dog had been or the kitchen. He was prepared for two possibilities: that the place would be empty or that he would have to deal with Kujavia. On the hand that knocked wide the kitchen door, the marks of the dog's teeth had left a ragged half circle puffed and pink like a burn that would not heal.
A third possibility that he had not considered was that Mary O'Bannion would have a customer this late into the night.
Beyond the table with its litter of uncleared dishes, a naked man, tall, fleshy, bent a little forward facing the sink and the window black above it. His back was ridged with fresh stripes and the white strokes of old beatings. The long muscles stood out on his sides and flanks like a man in the stress of a task. At the opening of the door, he had wrenched to look over his shoulder, turning only his head so that each eye showed a streak of spooked white. The full mane of hair spread out like a soiled halo.
'Ah, no,' Tommy Beltane groaned in disbelief and vexation.
For Murray turning away was an act of involuntary decency. The recess bed was a tangle of blankets and outdoor coats. It was noisome but unoccupied, and there was nowhere else to hide in the room.
'Look at him. I tell you look at him.'
For a crazy second, he thought she was calling on Kujavia, and saw him, a column of shadow, in a corner where he could not be. Sweating malevolence, she waved at Beltane the bulging slab of her arm with its incongruously tiny hand flapping like an excretion of sick flesh. Unheld, the dressing gown slipped to reveal breasts, shaking belly, a cascading enormity of thighs with at their juncture a patch of hair, folded and crushed amidst her fat, the light colour of which suggested some trace of the lost girl Tommy Beltane had bought.
'Turn round so he can see you.'
Very slowly then and laboriously, a puppet worked by her drunken scream, he began to edge round, one foot and then the other, inch by inch it seemed until he faced them. Crouched forward, knees bent, hands braced on his thighs, he supported from a thong tied around his testicles, drawn out from a thick bush of white hair, a bag looking very like a housewife's shopper made of string. The shopper was half full.
'More weight. He keeps crying on more weight.' Mary O'Bannion cursed him. 'He'll go on till one time it'll pull the balls off him. Not that he'll know any fucking difference.'
'Jesus wept,' Tommy Beltane said, and grinned with a horrible wincing bravado.
Murray could not bear the sight he made. 'Tell Joe Kujavia –' he began, but the fat woman made a noise like a spitting cat.
If she comes, I'll punch her out, Murray thought, and closed his fists with a serious exultation.
She glared, ropes of saliva twining from her lower lip as if like a monstrous tabby with a mouse she would sink her teeth in him. Physically she appeared to swell with malice, but an instinct of self-preservat
ion at the last moment deflected her rage. With a rush that defied her bulk, she threw herself at Tommy Beltane. Though she held out her hands against him, most of the damage was done with a great swing of her belly like the comedian in an old-time movie. Beltane staggered under the impact, his hands lost their support, and with a squeal of anguish he came down on his knees.
That finished Murray.
'Get up,' she screamed. And slowly, groaning, he began the effort of rising to his feet. 'Oh, I'll make you pay. You'll pay, you bastard. I'll have them off you.'
Even going down the stairs, her voice pursued him. Taking them two at a time, he stumbled on the second flight and saved himself by clutching the banister. Shaken, he stood still and then, instead of going on, turned his head to listen.
The crazy tirade had stopped as abruptly as the turning of a tap. Poised, straining to catch any sound, the second room where the dog had been caged came into his mind. If someone had been hidden there, Mary O'Bannion's obscene rage would have been a way of distracting him. If Kujavia... The broken gas mantle sputtered in the stillness overhead.
He had taken the first step up when he was arrested by the clatter of feet mounting towards him. Irene appeared on the landing below, stopping with a catch of the breath as she saw him above her.
'Stay in the car.' His whisper echoed harshly between stone walls. 'I told you – stay in the car and lock the doors.'
'Eddy Stewart's down there.'
'What?' the sweat burst out on his forehead. 'They've found them.'
'What about Irene's car?' Murray said dully. 'It'll get vandalised if it's left there.'
Vaguely, he was conscious of Stewart's quick appraising glance. 'No problem. I'll get it picked up.'
The police car gathered speed, barely paused at the intersection, began to go faster. Stewart muttered something in answer to Irene, and Murray leaned forward to listen.
'Where they've been found. Not anything else, I don't know anything else.'
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