Into the Dark

by Stuart Johnstone

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’m at a family dinner. Trust me, you’re doing me a favour. What’s up?’

  Vicky leaned forward and spoke. ‘Do you remember that night with Martin? He was going off and we had terrible trouble quietening him?’

  ‘Aye, we were up half the night with him.’

  ‘Well, do you remember what it was he was saying? It was something about God, like hearing the word of God, right?’

  If I’d thought about it earlier, I’d have asked Vicky not to prompt him. It would be better to hear his thoughts without influence, but I needn’t have worried.

  ‘Sort of, aye. But the thing that struck me was he wasn’t talking about himself. You remember? He kept going on about “how can he hear the word of God?” over and over.’

  I felt a wash of dread, or perhaps excitement, flow through my entire body. It must have washed the colour from my face as Vicky was looking at me with concern.

  ‘Is that right, Vicky? Is that what you remember?’ I said.

  ‘Uh. Yeah. I think Mathew’s right. That’s what he was saying. Are you OK?’

  ‘Do you remember anything else, Mathew? Anything at all?’

  ‘Uh, not really. Except he was begging us to call the police. We figured he had his conversation with you in his mind. Right, Vic?’

  I spoke again before Vicky could respond. ‘Listen, thanks for your time, Mathew. It’s a big help.’

  He managed to get out ‘Aye, no bother’, before Vicky ended the call. She was following me down the hall as I went searching for my probationer.

  It might have been the only thing in the world that could have made me stop in my tracks at that moment, but the sight of Morgan, in full uniform, doing a pony-spank dance with his hat to the sound of ‘Gangnam Style’, with a beaming Michelle bent over in front of him was just about too much to handle. Elderly residents stood to either side of him trying to replicate the move.

  ‘Morgan, we’re off,’ I shouted over the music. He didn’t even seem embarrassed; he just came running.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ Vicky asked as she opened the front door for us.

  ‘Honestly, I’m not quite sure what’s going on. Look, I’ll be back. If I can explain I will. Right now, we have to go. Thanks for your help.’

  She smiled, though there was more concern than anything else in it.

  It took moments to get back to the station. Morgan had been trying to ask me the same question as Vicky, but I had no answers for him. I told him to go work on his probationer progress file and I closed the door to my office. I took a pad of paper from a drawer and called to speak to a supervisor at the call handling unit.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  You Better Sit Down

  When I called Alyson, she was pleased to hear that she could move herself in, but when she said she would be going back to her own place to pack some things, that she’d stay as of tomorrow, I insisted that maybe she suffer another night without a change of clothes.

  ‘It’s really late, Don. You’re lucky to have caught me here at all. I’m practically heading out the door. What’s going on?’

  ‘I … I’m not sure exactly, but I really do think you should head over to the flat, I’ll meet you there.’

  There was a pause and a heavy breath before she said ‘Fine. I’ll probably be half an hour or so.’

  I was dog-tired myself when I got in, but was still running on a buzz of adrenalin. It was a little after midnight and I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. I filled myself with toast and peanut butter while I arranged the paperwork on the dining table and waited for Alyson to arrive. When she did, she dumped her coat in my arms at the door and went rooting around the cutlery drawer for a bottle opener, until I pointed out the bottle of white she brought in with her was a screw top.

  ‘For fuck sake. Honestly, I can barely keep track of the days of the week. And getting through town was a nightmare, every road I know is shut off with the bloody festival. How long is it on for?’

  ‘Just a month.’

  ‘An entire fucking month?’

  ‘Yup. We get the city back in September. Don’t be a grouch, it’s great. We should do something.’

  ‘I am doing something and I’ve no time for anything else. Now, what’s so bloody important?’

  I took the bottle from her and filled two glasses. ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘McD’s on the way here. Not proud of myself, but it’s calories. Now, out with it.’ She drained half of her glass, which I refilled and gestured for her to sit. ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘It’s sort of a timeline.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Let me just start from the beginning.’ This time I gulped from my glass and tried to find a way to explain. ‘So, this is about Mr Beeswax, Martin.’

  The look on Alyson’s face was one of abject frustration. ‘I’m way too tired for this, Don. And I’m in no mood to be taking backward steps. Seriously, I don’t—’

  ‘Just hear me out. It won’t take long. Here,’ I said and planted the bottle next to her glass. ‘You drink, I’ll talk.’

  She sipped and glared at me over the rim of her glass, tapping a fingernail on the neck of the bottle. ‘Fine, but if you’re still talking by the time I reach the bottom of this, I’m leaving you here and going to bed. Now, go.’

  ‘OK,’ I said and searched out my first sheet of paper from the pile in front of me. ‘Yes, here. So, I’ve been doing some digging. This first bit you know. Martin calls treble-nine in the early hours of the seventeenth of March, right?’

  ‘If you say so,’ she said and drank, barely engaged.

  ‘Callum Bradley is murdered on the ninth of April. That’s twenty-three days. Now, what was the date of the second murder?’

  ‘I’m guessing you already know that, but you’re trying to get me involved in your little Columbo moment here?’

  ‘Fine, it was a week ago today, tenth of August. Now, do you remember the date you met me at the care home when I took a statement from Martin?’

  ‘Nope,’ she said, bored.

  ‘All right. It was the twelfth of July.’

  ‘Wow. Hey, do you have any peanuts, crisps even? I think that junk I ate has me craving for more salt.’

  ‘Uh, maybe.’ I fished around in a cupboard and found a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch. I tossed them to her and for the first time tonight she seemed excited. I continued: ‘That same night Martin had a complete meltdown. I thought it was because of me, and, well, maybe it was but then again maybe it wasn’t—’

  ‘You’re rambling, Colyear.’

  ‘Right. OK, the crux of it is this.’ I pushed a piece of paper across the table. Something I’d handwritten earlier.

  Alyson took the sheet, turned it around and squinted at it before shaking her head and reaching into her coat for a set of glasses I wasn’t aware she wore. She pushed on the tortoise-shell frames and squinted still, but read it aloud. ‘“How can he hear the word of God?”’ she turned the page over to see if there was more. ‘That’s shocking,’ she said.

  ‘Well, that’s what I thought.’

  ‘The handwriting is shocking, not the message.’ She pushed the paper back across the table.

  I was getting a little frustrated with her sarcasm, but I refused to let it get to me. ‘This is what Martin was yelling, all night. That and he wanted to call the police. If the staff hadn’t been holding him to the bed, that’s exactly what would have happened and we’d be looking at another call like the one that started all this.’

  ‘It’s a coincidence, and maybe not even that. I see how you’re trying to connect the call to the injuries to the priest, but you’re stretching at best and at worst you’re taking the senile ramblings of a man, probably not far from the end of his time, and trying to force them to fit with a completely unrelated murder. Do you have any idea what would happen if I took this to my boss? When she got done laughing, she’d have me directing traffic in the Outer Hebrides until I retire.’
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  ‘Aly, at least try to be a little more open-minded. Those dates I mentioned, between Martin’s outburst to the discovery of Father McCauley’s body, that’s twenty-two days. Almost exactly the same timeframe as the Bradley murder.’

  At least this time she took a moment before shooting me down. She swirled the wine in her glass, her eyes on the table while she thought. There was a suggestion of a smile on her face. ‘What exactly are you saying? You’re suggesting that our old man is somehow involved in these murders? Because if you are, I’d do two things: One, go take the man’s prints to prove you’re wrong and then, two, we get your head checked, because you’re nuts to—’

  ‘I’m not saying he did it. Of course not. He’s not capable and has an indisputable alibi. What am I suggesting?’ I said, a question to myself which I hadn’t, until that moment, allowed to be asked, at least not so clearly. ‘I don’t know. I’m just asking you to listen, that’s all for now.’

  ‘All right, Don. Look, I don’t want to fall out, I know you’re trying to help and God knows I’m grateful to you and your dad for letting me crash, so I’m sorry if I seem less than impressed here. I can see you’ve gone to some trouble. Maybe we should just drop it? I’m under a lot of pressure and I’m really behind on my sleep. How about a movie and I can watch half before I zonk out on the sofa?’

  ‘I know you’re really under it, Aly. And I know this is all a bit out there, but let me just show you what else I found. Please?’

  She topped up my glass and then emptied the rest of the bottle into her own. It was a metaphorical hourglass, so I got on with it.

  ‘The call that we connected, rightly or wrongly, to the Bradley murder was not the first time Martin picked up the phone to us. I’ve spent the day going through call data and then most of the evening going through crime and incident reports. Now you might need to let your mind relax a bit here, try to just listen.’

  ‘Like one of those magic eye illusions? You know, the pictures that are all lines and dots until you relax your eyes and wham, a fucking horse appears?’

  ‘I think you should slow down on the wine, but yeah, sure, like that. Since Martin entered the home, there have been a total of ten calls to treble-nine from the first-floor call box. Of the nine I hadn’t heard until today I think we can discount four where he doesn’t really say much, or it’s just abuse and no content, and one where he’s actually just singing down the line. In the remaining five, he does have something to report. I can let you hear the audio files if you like?’

  ‘You’re doing just fine there without, Don. Crack on.’

  ‘The first one comes in at the beginning of last October, it’s here somewhere.’ I pulled out the sheets from the pile and pushed them towards her. She glanced at them, but only picked up her glass. ‘That would be around four months after Martin moved in. Like the call you heard, there’s a whole preamble and fuss with the call handler, trying to get his name, only to be met with “none of your beeswax”. Then there’s some abuse and just as the call handler is about to hang up on him, Martin reports the slaying of a monster. “The beast cut down” and why are we, the police, not doing anything about it? I know, I know,’ I said looking into Alyson’s bored and twisted face. ‘Here’s the thing; twenty-five days later there’s an assault. A Halloween party in Harthill, so not too far from where Bradley’s body was discovered. Two guys have a falling out and end up in the street. Guy A is dressed as the Joker from Batman, guy B is in a big furry suit, he’s come as Sully from Monsters Inc.’

  ‘Love that movie, cry every time.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a good one. Anyway, on paper you’d fancy the Joker in a fight, but he’s getting the shit kicked out of him, so he pulls a knife and plunges poor Sully three times. He does a runner, but it’s witnessed by a dozen costumed piss-artists and he’s picked up the following day and arrested, they got the knife too and it’s nothing to do with our two murders, but still …’

  ‘What happened to Sully?’

  ‘Oh, right. He’s fine. None of the new holes were fatal.’

  ‘Good, but you’re seriously stretching there, Fox Mulder.’

  ‘I know. On their own, they’re unremarkable. But, listen, next call that comes in, where something of any note is actually said, is about six weeks later. Martin is all upset about the “wrath of the driver”, his words. The call handler tries to get more out of him, but Martin is all over the place, talking about food. This is the first time we see a bit of humour from the handlers as they play with him on the line for a little while before the call ends.’

  ‘Then you trawl through the crime reports for anything that happened twenty-something days later, and you find some spurious connection, right?’

  I pulled out the next set of stapled sheets I’d prepared. ‘Road rage incident in Portobello. Someone gets cut up at traffic light and then forces the other driver to stop by boxing him in. He gets out and tries to get the other driver to enter into a fight. He’s not interested and warns the other guy to get out of his way. He refuses and is subsequently reversed into. Nasty as it turns out, broken arm, ribs and apparently only inches away from having his head under the wheel.’

  ‘You’re—’

  ‘Stretching, yes. I know. But the driver was charged with attempted murder, though it later gets pleaded down to assault and no jail time. Interesting note from the court case though, the culprit avoids a driving ban. His brief argues that it would be devastating to his income and therefore his family as his job is driving for a local pizza and kebab place.’

  ‘Donald Colyear,’ she said, placing the palms of her hands flat on the table. She spoke in a measured and thoroughly patronising tone. ‘I love you. You know that, in a strictly platonic way of course. And I am grateful for you trying to look out for me, but trust me when I say that I think it might be you who really needs a good night’s sleep. This is beyond batshit and it’s so tenuous that I am, frankly, a little worried about you. Look, any and all avenues of tangible enquiry are well under way. The rest of CID and I know what we’re doing. Now, I am going to bed.’

  ‘There’s a few more things.’

  ‘Are they any less ropey than what I just heard?’

  I thought for a second. No, I’d already played my best hand. Showing her any more only weakened my case. She took my silence as the only answer she needed.

  ‘Good night, Don.’ She rose, walked around the table and kissed the top of my head.

  ‘I’ll bring you some water,’ I said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Morning Meeting

  Alyson was on time for once. It was a curious thing, walking to work, not something she’d ever before been able to do. It was common for police officers to ensure they lived outwith their beat, never shit where you eat, that sort of thing, but since the inquiry being moved to the capital was likely to be a temporary arrangement, she didn’t see the harm in it.

  The morning meeting had become a stale and repetitive gesture. New updates that might promise to take the investigation forward were now a rare phenomenon. Perhaps she’d liven things up by getting to her feet and giving them Don’s passionate presentation from last night. The thought made her laugh and she chuckled into her hand.

  ‘What’s funny?’ said Duncan.

  ‘Oh nothing, just a joke I heard.’

  ‘Come on then, I could do with a laugh. Before the DCI gets in.’

  Alyson shook her head, she was still laughing. She was picturing Don’s face. He’d looked like a cat who’d brought home a dead mouse, proud, excited and entirely incredulous as to why you weren’t pleased to see it. ‘It was one of those had-to-be-there things,’ she said.

  The door crashed open and DCI Templeton strode into the room. There was a time when these entrances had made Alyson jump, but now she was all but immune, unlike the two Edinburgh DCs, one of whom, who’d been swinging back on his chair, smacked a hand on the table to stop from toppling.

  ‘We got the toxicology back from the lab;
nobody will be shocked that it threw up nothing of any interest. About as much use as tits on a bull,’ she said. She hadn’t once looked up from the folder in her hand. She found her seat either by peripheral vision, or muscle memory. This first-floor office in Leith Police Station had been their base since moving the operation. There was no separate room for the DCI, instead she worked from this large desk in the back corner which then doubled as the morning meeting venue. The rest of them hot-desked around three smaller tables. From here you had a view of Constitution Street and the sound of constant drilling from the tram-works. You could actually see a corner of the church from the window. DCI Templeton was referring to the blood work of Father McCauley. They all knew and nobody was at all surprised that it failed to help them in any way. His cause of death was one of the more obvious Alyson had encountered, only the decapitated casualty of a motorcycle accident in her second year had it beat.

  ‘Duncan, where are we with congregation interviews?’

  The DS looked over at the two Edinburgh DCs. Danny, the older of the two, cleared his throat and said: ‘We’re getting through them, ma’am, though every time we get one down on paper it throws up another three names. All as useless and loosely connected than the last.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve read through the ones you’ve submitted. It’s not likely one of his Church crowd is suddenly going to hand us a suspect or even a motive, but it’s important to tick these off.’

  ‘We’ve another three lined up for today,’ said Adrian, the other DC. It may not have been in the best interests of group harmony to have these two work together while Alyson and Duncan continued as a team, perpetuating the east-west divide, but she wasn’t here to make friends and she liked working with Duncan and so she was relieved.

  ‘Duncan, I need you two to go back to Rickerburn and re-interview Bradley’s friend. His parents won’t be pleased so be sensitive and take the statement at the house. The first two accounts tell us almost nothing.’