“You mean you haven’t caught him yet?”
“That’s why we need your help - you, and your sister’s. We need access to company records, and I believe you two are the new owners. I’d like you to come down to the factory with us. There may be something there that will point us in the direction of the killer.”
“Now?” Dave asked, and received a double nod in reply.
“No,” Lucy moaned, “I can’t. Not into that place. Not where…” She broke down again, her sobbing so quiet as to be almost inaudible.
Dave knelt by her side. “Come on. You need to rest,” he said, and helped her up out of the chair. She clung to him as if he was a lifebelt in a stormy sea.
“Give me a minute,” Dave said to the policemen, and led Lucy out of the room and up the stairs. She was a dead weight in his arms and he was almost carrying her as they reached her door. He leaned her against the jamb and pushed the door open.
“I’ll deal with the police,” he said, herding her into the room. She rubbed at her eyes, hard, as if disgusted with herself, and nodded, but something was gone from her eyes, something that had made her Lucy.
She might never be the same again.
She fished in her handbag. He thought she was looking for a fresh handkerchief, but she produced a bundle of keys that she handed to Dave as if she never wanted contact with them again.
“These are for the office - the filing cabinets and desks and such. They’ll find what they want in this lot.”
Dave had already turned away when a soft word drew him back.
“Dave,” she said, and she was definitely not the same woman Dave had left earlier. “Please be careful. I can’t lose you as well.”
There were tears in her eyes again as Dave hugged her close.
“Don’t worry big sis,” he said softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The policemen were waiting in the hall when he got downstairs.
“Can’t this wait till morning?” he said. “It’s all been a bit of a shock.”
They used a line he thought only applied in the movies, and he had to fight back a laugh -- once he started he might not be able to stop.
“This is a murder investigation, sir.”
He followed them out of the house and round the side of the house to where a patrol car sat in the shadows under the trees. A minute later they were barrelling along dark country roads.
Sitting in the back of the car Dave felt like a criminal, and the silence from the men in front only reinforced his isolation. He wanted nothing less than to find a bottle and dive into it -- but Lucy’s tear stained face kept coming to mind. He’d made her a promise now, and despite all that had happened over the years, she was all the family he had.
I can’t let her down. Not her.
He leaned forward in his seat, peering between the officers -- it made him feel less like a prisoner.
“So have you any clues?” he asked, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice.
“No,” the younger policeman said. “It’ll probably be some of them loonie lefties.” Now they were away from the house his accent had began to re-assert itself. “We’re hoping that there’ll be something in your old man’s files - threatening letters or some such nonsense.”
Nothing more was said until they drove through Monymusk - Dave saw the white wall and the still-lit facade of the pub as they passed and felt a pang of thirst - and pulled up in the drive of a converted farm building. The policemen led Dave along a corridor to a room with yellow crime scene tape stuck in an X across the open doorway. The walls and windows were covered in a frenzied splatter, a Jackson Pollock frieze of blood. Sitting on the table was a pile of cellophane wrapped packages, full of red, glistening, meat, like a butcher’s sale at a fair.
Dave couldn’t take his eyes off it. He felt the old nausea rise in him and he had to turn away and hold onto the doorjamb for fear of falling over.
Are ye your father’s son, or are ye your own man?
The younger policeman pulled the boardroom door shut.
“Sorry sir. You weren’t meant to see that. Come into the main office. The cabinets we need you to go through are in here.”
“I still don’t see where how this will help,” Dave said.
The young policeman lowered his voice.
“Sometimes these killers like to send messages beforehand -- threatening letters and stuff.”
“The old man wouldn’t have had any truck with any of that,” Dave said. “He’d have burned the paper to ash and pissed on it.”
“Please sir, just try,” the policeman said. “We need any lead we can get on this.”
The lad - younger even that Dave himself - looked as much in need as Lucy had.
Seems like it’s my night to be a good Samaritan.
Dave nodded and made his way into the office.
He almost turned and left again - the whole place reeked of the old man, from the pictures of his businesses over the years to the golf trophies, from conspicuous displays of his charitable endowments to photographs of him with prominent people. There was no way to escape the tyrant - not in here.
But the young policeman was just outside the door, and Dave wasn’t about to show just how weak he really felt. He turned back and started going through the files, slowly at first then quicker as he realised that most of it was just office admin -- and boring office admin at that.
He went through every desk drawer and filing cabinet in the office over the next half-hour before opening the last desk drawer. He found a bottle of malt whisky, and a thick manila envelope. He took to the whisky first. There was a glass - crystal of course - in the drawer beside the bottle and he poured himself a stiff measure, downing half of it in one gulp and letting the fire warm his belly.
He sat for a while turning the envelope over and over in his hands before finally opening it. It proved to be a thick printed proposal for the upgrading and mechanisation of the farm. He turned pages that showed fleshing machines, massive, pristine, blades gleaming on the page, huge industrial mincers and plans for the slaughter and packaging of huge numbers of animals.
He heard the Hag’s words again.
Are ye a herdsman or a butcher? It’s make your mind up time.
He was about to put the proposal down when several sheets of paper fell out from near the back. He made to stuff them back in, then realised they were notes written in his father’s painstakingly neat script. He read while sipping the rest of the whisky.
~-o0O0o-~
The first sheet was just a short note.
“She was here again last night,” it began, and Dave almost gave up there and then, but another sip of the whisky allowed him to continue. “I have no idea what she wants, or what she is, but she is most insistent. I must be on my guard.”
And that was all it said. The other sheets were more densely packed, and looked to be a series of notes - research even - on the mythology of old hags in Scottish folklore. As Dave read his sips at the whisky became more frequent. One passage in particular caught his eye.
She is also known as Beira, Queen of Winter and is renowned for the making of many mountains, built as she strode across the land dropping pebbles from her pockets, all the while herding the deer, fighting the coming of Spring, and freezing the ground.
Dave thrust the papers back into the proposal. He’d read enough, and now he was thinking too much, about pockets in black velvet aprons, and a thin layer of frost on the tarmac.
The younger policeman came back in just as Dave was considering making a new dive into the whisky bottle.
“Did you find anything that can help us sir?”
Dave stood, too fast, and the room threatened to spin. He held onto a filing cabinet for balance.
“No…. And I think I’ve had enough of this place. Where’s your superior officer. I need to find out when we can bury the old man.”
“Sorry sir,” the officer said. “There’s another call just come in that the D.I. needs to deal
with.”
~-o0O0o-~
D.I. Roberts really didn’t want to get out of the car. .
“It’s torn up bad,” they’d said.
He could already see it in his mind’s eye. Torn up was something he’d seen more then enough of in Glasgow, a city where the knife, or chib, was the weapon of choice of every daft boy with a chip on his shoulder and rage in his heart. There were nights when all he saw in his dreams was blood and tissue - on the outside of bodies they should be inside. He didn’t need to see any more, didn’t want to see any more.
As the car drew to a halt in a remote lane on the outskirts of town, Roberts considered leaving Sergeant MacLeod to deal with it. But that would be admitting to himself that the fear had got the better of him, and in all his years as a copper, that had never happened.
Not until tonight.
He pushed the thought away and got out of the car. MacLeod was waiting for him, and led him over to where a young constable stood over a body.
“What have we got son?” Roberts said to the constable.
“We got the call from somebody who said he thought a dog had been worrying sheep.” The lad looked down, and went pale. “Instead I found this.” He threw a hand over his mouth and lurched off to one side, starting to retch.
MacLeod bent down to study the body while Roberts lit a cigarette to cover the smell of blood and vomit. It didn’t help.
“Anybody we know?” he asked as MacLeod studied a face that was little more than scraps of flesh hanging off exposed muscle and jawbone.
“I think it’s wee Jim,” MacLeod replied. He lifted a bloody scrap of material away. “He’s got a jacket like this one, and the body looks to be the right size. But it’s hard to tell. He’s cut up bad.”
“Like the others?”
“Not as cleanly, but I’d say so, yes.” MacLeod paused and bent closer. “There’s something here.”
He reached forward to the body, intent on picking something out of the carnage, but Roberts stopped him.
“Best not to disturb anything else. Leave it for forensics.”
He bent down beside the younger cop and peered closer. A single length of bone seemed to be stuck in the victim’s chest, wedged between ribs exposed to the air and near where the heart had been forcibly torn from the chest cavity.
It looked remarkably like a finger.
Christ. I need a drink.
Ten minutes later Roberts and MacLeod stood at the bar. It was just past closing time, but nobody was being allowed to leave.
“So, Wee Jimmy was in, but he left early? That’s not like him, is it?” Roberts said.
The barman started washing glasses, and didn’t look the police in the eye.
“Leave that alone while we’re talking to you,” Roberts said, almost shouting. “Did the wee man argue with anybody?”
The barman was still fiddling with a dishtowel.
“Not that I noticed,” he said.
“Did he talk to anybody in particular?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“Did he seem agitated at all?”
The barman started to say something, but Roberts interrupted him.
“No... wait... Let me guess...”
He turned to the rest of the people in the bar.
“How about you? Are you any more observant?”
All he got in return was blank stares.
MacLeod spoke up.
“What’s wrong with you lot tonight? I thought the wee man was your pal?”
Still no one answered.
Roberts led MacLeod out, and left one parting shot.
“Just as well we’re not on fire son. This bunch wouldn’t even pish on us.”
Matters didn’t improve any when they got back to the squad room.
The press had finally got wind there was a story to be had, one with gore, local politics, skullduggery and mayhem. The corps of press were gathered around the station, salivating at the thought of juicy titbits to come.
They can stay hungry. There’s no way I’m going to feed the frenzy.
He was pinning pictures of the latest victim on the evidence board when D.S. MacLeod came in carrying a heavy plastic evidence bag with the bone finger inside.
“The forensics have been over this Boss,” MacLeod said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
“Just what I needed,” Roberts replied, almost falling into the seat behind his desk. “More good news. Well don’t keep me in suspenders son... Let’s have it.”
MacLeod sat down opposite the D.I. He put the plastic bag on the table between them and pointed at it.
“It’s bone... mammalian bone. And it has been sharpened at one end. It’s razor sharp.”
“This is the murder weapon?”
MacLeod nodded.
“Looks like it Boss. But it’s got the forensic guys stumped.”
“How’s that?”
“Look closer.”
They bent over for a close-up look at the bone. At one end, there was a mass of torn blood and sinew, still looking fresh and damp.
“It looks like this was forcibly torn from a hand during the attack on wee Jim.”
Roberts tried, unsuccessfully, not to think of the brute strength required to do the amount of damage they’d seen using this bit of bone as the weapon.
“We’re looking for somebody with a mangled hand?” he said, hoping against hope that there was an answer he could believe.
MacLeod took a few seconds to reply, as if he wasn’t sure of what he was saying.
“Not somebody guv. Something. The bone’s not human. Not even close.”
Roberts ran his hands through his hair and sighed deeply.
“It’s a wind up. It has to be.”
Once more MacLeod shook his head.
“Forensics don’t think so. They say it’s kosher. A real mystery.”
Roberts banged his fist on the table, hard enough to hurt.
“Well I’ll tell you what it’s not - it’s not the fucking Twilight Zone. I won’t have any mumbo-jumbo clouding the issue here. We’ve got a killer to catch, before he does it again.”
He stared into space for long seconds before continuing searching for an inner calm that seemed an awfully long way away.
“What about the Duncan boy? Anything there?”
“The lads said he was a wee bit drunk, that’s all. And clean. Whoever did the wee man would have been covered in blood.”
“Bugger,” Roberts said. He went to light a cigarette then remembered the station was a no-smoking area. “I had him down as prime suspect for the boardroom mess. Everybody knows he hated his old man.”
“Aye. But he was hundreds of miles away. He couldn’t have done it.”
Roberts chewed on the unlit cigarette.
“There’s something going on that we’re not getting,” he said. “Did you check on the other employees?”
“Yes Boss. All accounted for.”
“Well thank Christ for small mercies. Go home, get some sleep. We’ll start talking to them in the morning.”
They left the squad room and turned off the light. Neither of them noticed that the bone in the plastic bag glowed in the dark, faintly fluorescent blue.
~-o0O0o-~
Dave woke feeling groggy and unsure of where he was. It took him several seconds and two failed attempts to stand to remember.
When he’d got back from the farm he’d found Lucy in a drunken sleep on the sofa in the main room, the dregs of a vodka bottle on the table in front of her. It took most of his strength to get her upright and up to her bed. She hadn’t woken, had only moaned softly. He let her flop, fully clothed on the bed then pulled a quilt over her.
“Daddie?” she whispered, and that was enough for Dave. He left at a hurry, closing the door softly behind him. By the time that was done, he’d wanted more booze.
Lots more booze.
Luckily Lucy had opened the drinks cabinet. He’d made serious inroads into a bottle of whisky before
tiredness finally overwhelmed him. He too had gone to sleep on the sofa Now, sometime in the early hours of the morning, he was seriously unsteady as he forced himself upright and opened the big bay windows, taking gulps of cool fresh air.
The events of the previous night seemed little more than a blur of alcohol fuelled nightmares; the wee man in the pub, the back of the police car, and the old crone on the dark road. He’d lost all sense of perspective, and was starting to worry about his own sanity.
Grief does things to people.
He’d heard it said often -- it was just that he never expected to feel anything other than relief at the old man’s passing. He stepped out into the garden and looked up at a clear, starry, sky above. But even there the full moon’s face leered down at him, reminding him of old abuses. He moved to go back inside.
Rasp!
The sound came from behind him, a rough scraping as of stone against stone. He turned towards it. The Hag stood no more than three yards away from him. The contents of her pockets clattered as she moved closer, and she spoke in a soft, lisping highland lilt.
“So… Are ye your father’s son, or are ye your own man? Are ye a herdsman or a butcher? It’s make your mind up time.”
She seemed to roll backwards from him, one smooth movement as if she was slowly pulled away, lost in the darkness of the garden before he could blink. Dave staggered back into the room and finished the whisky in two gulps before collapsing, comatose once more, on the sofa.
~-o0O0o-~
The morning found D.I Roberts and D.S. MacLeod sitting on a sofa, awkwardly holding tiny china cups of tea. Jessie, the abattoir cleaner, was sitting opposite them in an armchair, staring at the fire. The woman looked on the verge of fresh tears. It was obvious from the puffiness around her eyes that she’d done plenty of crying already.
The policemen looked out of place in the small immaculate living room, stocked full of dainty floral prints, china ornaments and ranks of photographs of children and grandchildren. They sat perched on the edge of the sofa. Roberts didn’t know about MacLeod, but it felt like it wouldn’t be safe to sit back -- the thing looked like it was ready to swallow the unwary.
The Auld Mither Page 4