See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘Her fucking tits weren’t even that great. Jesus. I mean, they were all right, but not especially pert or anything, the nipples were kind of, I don’t know, pale and non-descript. It wasn’t me who was fooling anyone, it was her! She was the one playing a part. Playing the part of the girl with the great tits. Fucking hell.’

  ‘What did you do to her?’ she asks, the question burning in her throat.

  ‘Oh, you know, just strangled her. Nothing, it was nothing. Didn’t even rape her. Thought about it, but rape is so... Well, for one thing, it leaves behind some rather clear evidence of the perpetrator. You have to bring some element of calculation into these things.’ He taps the side of his head, not looking at her. ‘So, yes, that was Bethany.’

  ‘And did you create another character? Someone else you could blame for Bethany’s murder?’

  ‘Yes, yes, oh yes. But, as I said, I didn’t need him. So, the good thing was, he was still there. I had him in reserve. I mean, for the next time. Do you want to hear about the next time?’

  He turns and stares at her with a look of expectation.

  12

  IN THE DOOR AT SEVEN minutes after nine. Stopped at the shops on the way home, determined not to have another night of alcohol and no food, or of me standing in the kitchen making a couple of crappy pieces of toast and eating cheese from the fridge, more or less drinking wine from the bottle. Bought a salmon fillet, some salad and a wholemeal ciabatta.

  So now I’m sitting at the table, place set, dinner on a plate. Listening to Bob. Been enjoying his albums of old American standards. Yeah, I know, they’re excruciating, right? Got to be plenty of people thinking that. His voice is so up front, it’s great. I love it. Everyone else, I don’t give a shit what they think. My only complaint is they’re too short. You put one of the CDs on to sit down to dinner, you eat your dinner, you’re thinking about shit, and then, poof! it’s over.

  Shadows In The Night, the first one, is my favourite. Pretty bleak and melancholic, though. Slow, so full of sorrow. Perfect for a miserable, grieving misanthrope like myself.

  Glass of wine, the usual Chilean Sauvignon. Stare at an indistinct spot on the wall in front of me. Mind near as empty as it’s going to get. Bob drones on, occasionally holding the notes, frequently magnificently off-key. A beautiful sound. New York in the fall, autumn leaves and lonely cups of coffee in old cafés that have been on the same street corner since the ‘40s. Untouchable women walk by, too remote, too unapproachable.

  Maybe those places don’t exist anymore. Those cafés. Maybe all you see is Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts and some coffee chain we’ve never heard of, serving the same stuff we get in the same cafés over here, and the women are just women, and the falling leaves are just dull and old and a sign of impending, gathering gloom.

  June in Glasgow. Autumn in New York. Maybe I could take a few days off, head out there. Don’t travel much. Don’t get around much anymore... Bob doesn’t do that one.

  Don’t feel like going online. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll check out flights to New York in October. If I remember. And if I don’t, well I guess I’m not bothered.

  The album comes to an end. The silence, just for a second, seems crushing, and then I lift the bottle, pour the third glass of wine, look at the clock. Ten o’clock.

  With an almost theatrical sigh, decide I’m going to stick the news on. I doubt our local rail death will have made any kind of impact, but I’ll take a look anyway. Grab the remote, TV on, sit back at the table.

  First up they’ve got the double beheading. Heart sinks. I don’t know what I thought there was going to be. Some crappy English political story maybe. The kind of thing the BBC can get excited about, when they can have one of their correspondents standing happily in front of Number 10, looking like it’s all terribly important, despite the fact we’ll all have forgotten about it by tomorrow morning.

  But no, despite having taken place in the complete independence-voting backwater of Glasgow, they’ve made the double beheading their main story.

  And there, on the screen, is the story of our times. Two whites beheaded in an Islamic centre. Outside the building, there are demonstrations. Demonstrations against the Islamic community. Demonstrations against immigrants, all immigrants. And then here comes the Muslim community leader to say we can’t blame Islam for this, and that they are appalled. And there’s the government minister saying they’ll clamp down on this kind of appalling extremist behavior. And then the expert predicting there will more to come, and the Tory backbencher saying the security services should have more power, and then there’s the liberal saying we must respect the right of people with a grievance, whatever their religion, to behead people.

  Maybe she doesn’t quite go that far.

  I turn it off. Don’t want to know. It’s all so fucking depressing.

  I have a niggling doubt. It doesn’t make sense, of course. Why would they do it in an Islamic centre? Wouldn’t you do it in a church? And I know, it used to be a church, but wouldn’t you do it in an actual, live, functioning church, or at least in one that’s not been converted for Islamic use?

  Fuck knows. Maybe they were also objecting to their own place hosting AA meetings.

  Take a long swallow of wine. I had thought the third glass would be my last, but the fourth now looks likely. Once you’ve had the fourth, the end of the bottle is in sight, and there seems little point in putting it back in the fridge.

  Get up, which in itself seems an effort, over to the CD player, start Bob off again from the beginning, and sit back down at the table. Back against the chair, eyes straight ahead at an indistinct point on the wall that seems to define my evening dining experience, glass of wine in my right hand, as the slow, wretched chords of I’m A Fool To Want You fill the room.

  THE CROW’S BACK AGAIN in the night. I remember I’m in the same position. I remember I can’t move. I remember the feel of his beak against my skull. I remember the pain. When I wake in the morning, it’s like I can still feel it. The pain is still there.

  I take a couple of paracetamol with some toast and a cup of tea, and the pain leaves. I can’t remember what the crow said though. Just his voice. Just the accent. Maybe the crow sounds like he comes from old New York because I’ve been listening to the Dylan CD every day.

  They say that accent, the accent of old New York, is dying out. Like the voice of Pathé newsreels and 1940s cricket commentaries.

  13

  CALLED INTO CONNOR’S room. Me and Taylor, and DCI Dorritt. I’m never sure why I get called into Connor’s room, but particularly today, as we’re not discussing the train death.

  Taylor still seems pissed off, although it’s not particularly directed at Connor. It’s hardly his fault. If Connor had his way, he’d increase his budget by 800%, and be in charge of a station four times the size. He won’t like the cuts any more than anyone else, although for different reasons. I doubt too much of the extra work that will have to get done will find itself his way.

  ‘So, we’re going to have to look at it all, right across the board. The recommendations are going bottom up, not top down. Of course, the decisions on what actually happens will go the other way, but we have to make proposals that suit us best, and meet the requirements of the organisation on all levels, and then staff those proposals appropriately up the chain of command with a view to things working out to our advantage.’

  Still not sure why I’m here. Perhaps he’s looking for some earthy commentary on everything he’s saying. The occasional, shut the fuck up or get to the point!

  ‘What kinds of things do you want us to look at?’ asks Dorritt.

  ‘Everything,’ says Connor. ‘No one’s leaving, so that’s fine. Can we move to a smaller building? Would it be cost effective, both in the short and long term, to sell this place, move in somewhere smaller? A different location in Cambuslang. A cheaper location. If we stay here, can we sell off some of the property? Can we move, for example, another government office onto the premis
es, rent the space out to them? Look gentlemen, everything’s on the cards here. And don’t think I’m immune. Even I’m looking at the real possibility of having to give up this office. We’re looking at all of us, every one, being in a large open-plan. That may well be just how’s it going to have to be.’

  Maybe we could have a massage parlour. A pub. Sex shop. All three in one exciting, modern venue. I keep all that to myself. Taylor looks like he’s ready to shout at someone, and it’d be foolish to provide him with an easy target.

  ‘Can I ask why I’m here?’ I say, because I seem to have too much urge to talk, yet not hungover enough to say anything that’s going to have Taylor manhandling my testicles.

  ‘Yes, of course. Like I said, this is going to be bottom up...’

  ‘I’m not at the bottom.’

  ‘Well... I’d like the views of the constables, and I thought you’d be a good man to go around, get them together, form, if you like, a task force. I’m not expecting... of course, I’m not expecting anything from them of the likes... you know, I’m not looking for the boots on the grounds men to come up with great, you know... what I’m looking for is nuts and bolts stuff. Penny-pinching we could call it. How we can save on the day-to-day stuff, but without it looking like... we need to not worry the public. We need the public to know the police are still here for them, that we’re still capable of doing the job.’

  What a dick.

  ‘Should I give my task force a name?’

  The question’s just out there before I can stop it. Should have kept my mouth shut. For his part, Connor’s mouth opens a little but he doesn’t really know what to say to that. Don’t look at Taylor, but can feel the death rays penetrating my head, more piercing and more painful than the beak of any crow.

  And there’s the crow. Back in my head. The stupidity of that last comment, and of the very idea of me heading up any kind of task force – a task force of lowly idiots, too stupid to think of big ideas – is gone. The crow is back, and he brings with him sorrow and fear.

  I make a small gesture, dismissing the question and the room relaxes. I owned the room there for a moment, which doesn’t happen very often. Of course, I owned it by being Jim Carrey in a room full of Angela Merkels.

  BACK INTO THE OFFICE. Dorritt peels off. Taylor walks towards his office, me behind, and he indicates for Morrow to join us as we enter.

  ‘I don’t even want to talk about that,’ he says, not looking at me, as he sits down. ‘Any of it.’

  He glances at his computer, without taking anything in, then indicates for Morrow to close the door. We wait, as Taylor places his hands on the desk, composes himself. I don’t think he’s trying to work out what to say. Just getting the ill feeling of sitting with Connor out of his head.

  ‘Right, we’ve got a murder to solve, and we need to get somewhere today. I’ve had enough of this shit. ‘Cause this... whatever we see, whatever any one of us thinks, when it comes down to it, it was a young girl getting hit by a train. And as time passes, and we don’t find this guy, it’s just another bullet in the ammunition of all those fuckers out there who think we don’t do a decent job. And at some point there’ll be an inquest, and we’ll be standing up there saying we couldn’t work it out. We had the guy caught on camera and we knew nothing.’

  He says all this while staring straight ahead. Finally lifts his eyes, moves from me to Morrow and back.

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘I think it’s random,’ says Morrow, straight off. I give him a glance.

  ‘Why?’ asks Taylor.

  ‘She was popular,’ he begins. ‘I mean, more than usual. She was a Californian amongst a bunch of pasty, white Scottish kids. She brought a bit of Hollywood. She had the looks, the accent, everyone liked her. And she wasn’t stupid, they liked that as well. She’d slept with a couple of the boys, a few of them had a thing for her, but it was nothing serious. No one had any expectation. If there were any of them with a secret desire for her, someone who maybe knew about her and Dr Ferguson, then it was a damned good secret. The classes she was in were fairly small, they all seemed like a decent bunch of well-adjusted kids. The tutors, not just Ferguson, are all very positive about the students. The ones I’ve spoken to, at any rate.’

  I nod in agreement.

  ‘We’ve been all through her social media,’ Morrow continues. ‘There’s nothing. She was bright, attractive, popular, and did what she said on the tin. She’s your classic untimely death, front page of the newspaper, popular kid, why did she have to die?’

  That should have been yesterday’s newspapers, except Cambuslang isn’t quite on the national radar. Maybe today they might have caught up, but then there’s a double beheading and an outbreak of religious and racial disharmony to talk about.

  ‘I really don’t think somebody murdered her for who she was. She just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or, the right place at the right time, if you’re the guy in the beanie.’

  Taylor accepts all of that, then turns to me.

  ‘The CCTV footage from the half-hour prior to the killing shows our man loitering at the station. He passes up two trains. Now, it could be he was waiting specifically for her, but it was a very precise set of circumstances he needed. The victim had to be standing close to the edge, she had to be distracted so as not to be too concerned about the train and not notice the guy hanging around just behind her, and it probably helped there weren’t too many witnesses around. With the other two trains that passed through the station without stopping in the previous half hour, there was no one especially close to the platform edge. As a way to kill a specific person, it’s not especially effective. What if they don’t go anywhere near the platform edge? What are you going to do? Drag her kicking and screaming, and then look at everyone else and say, she jumped!’

  ‘So you agree?’

  ‘Yes. Definitely a random killing. Look, there’s the possibility the seeming randomness comes from Ferguson, or someone, paying for this to be done to her, but I don’t buy it. Really don’t. This isn’t about the girl, it’s about the guy in the beanie.’

  ‘So you think there’s no point in pursuing any further inquiries at the University?’

  Give myself a second to think.

  ‘I don’t want to say there’s no point. But I think the things we started to find out, like Ferguson getting her pregnant... we shouldn’t let them go, but I don’t think that’s our focus. This is a random guy, killing out of badness.’

  ‘And pre-planning it,’ says Taylor, ‘as indicated by the disguise.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hmm, all right, that seems reasonable. Not good for us, not good for the possibility of getting a result, but reasonable. What next?’

  ‘I’d like to broaden the CCTV search,’ I say. ‘Rope in film from every camera in the area, see if there’s any further sign of him. From shops, cafés. Just the immediate aftermath...’

  ‘We looked at a lot of it already,’ says Morrow.

  ‘I know. But this is it, this minute, the guy in a beanie. Ten minutes later, five minutes, whatever, he wasn’t a guy in a beanie anymore. If we’re going to get sight of him, it’s then. We need to be looking at people and thinking, could it be him? Could this person be the beanie guy, two minutes after he’d taken the hat and coat off? Same trousers, perhaps, same build maybe. Anything. And we need to get the image of him from the CCTV out there. I know there’s no face, but we’ve got to do it.’

  ‘We already issued it,’ says Taylor.

  ‘And no one’s paid any attention. We need to get them to pay attention. It’s like Morrow said, she was American, she was smart, she was front page of the newspapers attractive. Let’s get her on the front page of the newspapers, get people talking about her and interested in her. Let’s get them interested in this random guy, who just chose a girl out of badness and pushed her in front of a fucking train.’

  Taylor scratches his chin. Coming out of his funk, the funk th
at talking to Connor inevitably puts him in. Coming up for the air of a genuine investigation, some serious police work to get stuck in to.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Let’s spend the day in this direction. We’ll leave the University be for now, at least. We’ll not say anything to anyone about that, of course. If any of them are stewing, we’ll let them stew. Dr Ferguson can stew. Haven’t heard from Balingol, whether he’s confirmed Ferguson as the father of the baby, but I don’t suppose it matters. Still, we won’t lose sight of it.’

  He stares again at his desk, cheeks puffed out, the universal sign of a man in deep contemplation, and then indicates the door.

  ‘Go to it. You don’t need to bring every suggestion to me, just work on what you think is best. If you need me to authorize anything in particular, I’ll be here.’

  We turn, Morrow opens the door.

  ‘And Sergeant, concentrate on this. I know you must be desperate to get your task force up and running, but not today.’

  Decent gag, although Taylor’s face does not crack, and then we’re out the door.

  Back to the desks, sit down. Morrow’s looking at me, questioning the task force remark.

  ‘Above your pay grade,’ I say, laughing.

  He keeps the bugger off to himself and then starts moving paperwork around. We’ll need to divvy up, get into the sit. room and get the others on board with what we’re doing.

  Move the mouse to bring the monitor back up, quick check of e-mails.

  And there it is, right there. The thing to stop the morning in its tracks.

  I can feel my stomach curling in on itself. Throat dry. It’s not fear. It’s not even dread. Just... it’s just this. This shit. All this fucking shit.

  I open the e-mail, but it’s only got one line, the line I could see in my inbox, then I forward it to Taylor, get up, indicate for Morrow to follow me, and back into the boss’s office.