See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘That’s all very depressing,’ I say.

  She giggles. Yep, that’s it. A giggle.

  ‘It works for us,’ she says.

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘Anyway, if you’re not on to bid, why are you on...?’

  The voice drifts off, I decide to wait until the thought process has worked its way through her brain.

  ‘Wait... Sgt Hutton? The Sgt Hutton?’

  ‘Not entirely sure how you mean that,’ I say.

  ‘The Sgt Hutton who’s all over Michael’s book?’

  ‘He’s mentioned me by name?’

  She laughs.

  ‘You’re going to be the star of the show, Sergeant! Gosh, I was sleeping on the job this morning, wasn’t I?’

  Another giggle.

  A minute ago, despite everything, I was beginning to think she sounded quite nice. Attractive, in that way people can be as attractive as you want them to be when you’re just talking to them on the phone.

  Now I just want her to shut the fuck up. Fucking giggling.

  ‘Would it be possible to see some of what Mr Clayton has been writing, to talk perhaps about the process of –’

  She cuts me off with the laugh.

  ‘I can’t do that, Sergeant. I shouldn’t be talking to you at all, but you know, hashtag-YOLO, you’ve got a lovely voice, that whole Scottish thing, so I don’t mind. But really, client-agent confidentiality at this stage, so we have to keep it, you know, low-key. So we can talk, just not about what you want to talk about.’

  She giggles again.

  I take a second, during which I contemplate just hanging up without speaking, then quickly say, ‘Thanks for everything, we’ll be in touch,’ and hang up just as she’s sounding disappointed and sending a metaphorical sad face emoji down the phone.

  Push the handset away from me, place my head in both hands.

  I hate speaking to young people. Adds decades to your life.

  ‘Come on,’ grumbles Taylor, as he walks past my desk, ‘get your head out your arse, we’re going to talk to the psychiatrist.’

  29

  TAYLOR AND ME AND THE psychiatrist, sitting outside a café on the edge of Glasgow Green. Sun starting to break through, shirt sleeve weather. Not really the place to be conducting an interview with anyone, as the café is busy, and there are a lot of children around. The law of all things dictates it won’t be long before one of the weans is crying.

  The park is bustling, people hanging out, topless guys with beer bellies kicking balls around, mothers with prams, kids on the charge, a couple of old yins on mobility scooters. A guy speeds by on his racing bike, attired in bright yellow and turquoise Lycra, looking like a total dick.

  Coffees placed on the table by the waitress, the psychiatrist already on her second cigarette. She’s wearing a neck-high blouse, which most people in Scotland would probably think too warm for this kind of weather, but which would be getting worn beneath another three layers in this temperature in the rest of Europe. Whatever, it hugs her body, making her breasts look sensational.

  Yeah, so I’m back. Bite me.

  She’s also wearing sunglasses, which isn’t great, but I’m leaving it to Taylor to ask her to remove them. No thought, however, she might be wearing them to obscure the look in her eyes. It really has turned bright, the glare exaggerated by the white paintwork of the café exterior.

  ‘How long has he been seeing you?’

  She has a small smile on her lips. Her hair is blonde, her lipstick bright red, her blouse dazzling white in the sun. What a look. Total vamp. And that smile...

  ‘Can’t answer that,’ she says.

  ‘Are we going to get anything out of you?’ I ask.

  ‘You never know,’ she says, this time turning to me. ‘If you ask the right the thing.’

  ‘Can we ask how often you’ve seen Mr Clayton this past week?’

  She pauses, takes the opportunity to lift the cup and take a sip of coffee. The cup gets placed back in the saucer with a red lipstick mark on the rim. Fuck, that’s sexy.

  Jesus, I’m so in the wrong job. I mean, I’m not saying there’s an actual job where it would be a prerequisite to get turned on by vampy women leaving lipstick marks on a coffee cup, but it does point to me being completely shit at what I’m supposed to be doing.

  ‘I see Mr Clayton most days,’ she says.

  ‘And this week?’

  ‘I’ve seen Mr Clayton every day this week.’

  This time Taylor is the one to take a pause, lifting his cup. He slurps, and is nothing like as hot as the psychiatrist.

  ‘Is that normal?’ I ask. ‘I mean, it sounds like some pretty serious shit, to be seeing a patient every day, doesn’t it? You’re going to have to be pretty fucked up, right?’

  She smiles again, puts the cigarette in her mouth, draws it in while I imagine her eyes are on me, her cheeks sucking in, then blows the smoke out to the side.

  Dunhill reds. Nice. She offered us one, and I said no, out of some sort of sense of duty or something. You know, thought I shouldn’t be smoking on the job, some shit like that. Desperate for one now.

  ‘I’m not going to get into how fucked up Mr Clayton may, or may not, be. He likes to see me most days. I will have a set number of appointments every week, and if he wants any extra, I’ll do it if I have time.’

  ‘And how did it go this week?’ asks Taylor.

  Another sip of coffee, another aloof glance cast away over the park. What the fuck is this woman doing on Glasgow Green? She should be in Monte Carlo.

  You know, I’m not even sure she’s that great looking, I mean, underneath it all, but she’s got poise and style and oozes fucking sex. Holy shit...

  ‘We had three appointments booked between Monday and yesterday. I also saw Mr Clayton on the days when we had nothing booked.’

  ‘And was he particularly bad this week? Was there something...’

  Taylor lets the question go, as the femme fatale is shaking her head.

  ‘Nuh-huh,’ she says, before taking another draw, then holding the cigarette out to the side, perfectly poised between her fingers.

  I reckon, and I think it could be do-able, she might be the right psychiatrist for me. Taylor and Connor both want me to start seeing one, she is one, so why wouldn’t it work? I would happily lie down on a couch for her any day. I’d tell her everything, ‘n’ all.

  ‘Are you aware Mr Clayton is writing a book?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has he told you much about it?’

  Hesitation, the sunglasses turned my way, then she says, ‘He’s read me parts of it.’

  ‘Are you prepared to discuss it?’

  She smiles. Fuck, man, those lips.

  ‘He has a nice style. Captivates the reader right from the off.’

  The sunglasses move from one to the other of us, along with the lips. The smile goes, the sunglasses stay on Taylor.

  ‘Could you take the glasses off, please?’ he asks finally.

  She doesn’t rush to it, as I presume she does not rush to anything, then slowly she removes them. Closes her eyes, possibly against the brightness, then opens them, still looking at Taylor.

  ‘You want to look deep into my eyes and check I’m not lying, Chief Inspector?’ she says.

  Yeah, OK, her eyes are terrific. I wondered if the dark glasses were covering up something bland, that perhaps the eyes would detract from the mystery and the allure. But no. Straight up, gorgeous eyes. Deep, powerful, drawing you in.

  I know, I know. Mood I’m in, one of the female Muppets would draw me in.

  Taylor holds her gaze, pretty damn tight too. Doesn’t let go. Much better at not giving in to these women the way I do. Much better police officer on all sorts of levels.

  ‘We’re investigating a series of murders in this city,’ he says slowly. Great edge to his voice. You could get chills listening to this shit. ‘Some of them have been horrific. All of them, whichever way you look at it, as murders do,
have left someone dead. Someone’s wife, someone’s husband, someone’s son or daughter, someone’s mum or dad. That’s what happens when somebody dies. Every death leaves someone else scarred. Now you can hide behind your confidentiality all you like, and I completely appreciate your right and your need to do so, but we too know things we can’t tell you, and we have reason to suspect Michael Clayton might be involved in these murders. Whatever else you think, Dr Brady, I’m sure you don’t want to protect a serial murderer. So please, within whatever bounds of confidentiality you are constrained, tell us everything you can, and will you please stop with the fucking 1940s Hollywood vamp shtick.’

  Cool. Calling her out on the cover. Very bold. I mean, she might be like this all the time. This could be her, who she is. She’s a blonde fucking Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. She’s been like this since 1994. That’s a long time to be someone, then to have somebody else see through you and tell you to cut it out.

  The look you take as an adult, any look, even if it’s the most understated, dull-as-shitwater look of the invisible shadow, is still a conscious decision, and it’s pretty major when someone says, stop being you. Stop being who you think you are, or want to be.

  Unless, of course, he’s better at this than I am – fucking ha! – and he sees through her. He recognises she’s been like this for all of ten minutes. Or she’s like this when she’s speaking to people she doesn’t want to be speaking to.

  She holds the gaze. Maybe there’s a marginal shake of the carefully held cigarette.

  She puts it to her mouth, last suck, then grinds it out in the ashtray, the final movement allowing her to break eye contact, as she blows the smoke away to the side.

  ‘I’ve seen Mr Clayton six times in the last six days,’ she says. Voice steady. If she’s been rocked by being called out, it’s not showing. ‘I wouldn’t say there’s been anything different about his behavior during this time. He’s a troubled man, and I’m not openly going to speculate on the cause of that trouble.’

  ‘Can you tell us at what time your appointments have been?’ asks Taylor.

  ‘Four o’clock every afternoon,’ she says.

  ‘Every day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The smile again. Looks like he hasn’t dented the veneer even a little, and I like her all the more.

  ‘He comes to your place or you go to his?’

  Slight pause. There we are. Right there.

  ‘I go to him.’

  That pause. What was that?

  ‘You went to him every day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Why’d you have to think about it then, Mia Wallace?

  ‘Was that just the case this week, or do you always go to his home?’

  ‘Not always, no. He has been a regular visitor to my office.’

  ‘So, what was so –’

  ‘He asked me to,’ she says quickly. For the first time she seems troubled by the direction of the conversation. ‘And more to the point, he paid me, paid me rather well, actually.’

  She’s been holding Taylor’s gaze, then she glances at me before turning back to him.

  ‘So, I need to make money, Chief Inspector. Are you going to hold it against me?’

  ‘How did Mr Clayton come to you in the first place?’ he asks.

  Another pause. A more reasonable one, I suppose. That’s one question she might well have to think over before deciding what to tell us.

  She lifts the packet of cigarettes again, flips the lid and removes a smoke one handed, puts it in her mouth, lights up, long draw, and blows out the smoke as she settles back into her seat.

  ‘I was recommended by his GP.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘A certain amount of time ago.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’

  Another long draw, smoke held in the mouth and then exhaled to the side.

  ‘I know quite a lot about you two.’

  DRIVING BACK TO THE station. Less than ten minutes. Taylor doesn’t speak for the first half of the drive. Got the feeling she really did piss him off. Face set, lips tight.

  ‘No,’ he says eventually, just as we’re driving into Cambuslang.

  His voice is as firm and unyielding as the look on his face.

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘No, she can’t be your psychiatrist.’

  I glance back at him, and then turn and look out of the passenger door window. The grey buildings of the town flit by. Not many pedestrians down this way, down the hill, before you get to Main Street.

  I think about saying that I wasn’t going to ask, but I don’t feel like talking, and it would be a lie anyway.

  30

  THE DAY IS PLAYING a blinder so far. Another anonymous, untraceable e-mail, a dead girl on the train tracks, a barely post-pubescent literary agent who seems to know more about Police Scotland than I do, and then the unspeakably cool psychiatrist, who is probably in a position to help us, and who gives us absolutely nothing.

  There’s always the possibility, of course, that there’s nothing to tell. That, regardless of Clayton’s involvement in the Plague of Crows grotesquery, and whatever he told DCI Lynch about the previous murder charge on which he was acquitted, he really does have nothing to do with this.

  Still, I was the genius who brought it up and made sure it came to the attention of the senior suits in the service, so there’s no backing away from it now.

  Four in the afternoon, warm day, a quiet Sunday afternoon kind of buzz around the place. Morrow out somewhere, Taylor in his office, on and off the phone, me at my desk. Trawling through the details of the lives of all the victims so far.

  That, of course, is regularly the most depressing part of any of this kind of work. The poor old victims, about whom we so often forget. Or, in my case, try to not give a shit about right from the off.

  This is why, right here. You start looking into their lives, and you start to care. How can you not? How can you not care anything about them?

  Today’s victim was eleven years old and had been missing from her home in Kilmarnock since last Sunday afternoon. Her mother was a staunch supporter of letting her daughter roam free, playing in the street or in the park, walking to school, playing in the nearby woods. She didn’t want to over-protect, she didn’t want her kid watching TV for eight hours a day, while playing Two Dots on an iPod the rest of the time. She wanted to instill in her the kind of independence she’d had as a child, she wanted her to have the imagination to build a fort in the woods, and to go exploring and to make dams in any stream she could find. She wanted her daughter to be everything that children in our generation were, and which has now been lost through technology and fear.

  And this is what she got for her trouble. Her kid snatched from a wood, a week of worry, followed by a lifetime of regret and self-loathing.

  From what we’ve heard already, her husband is letting her take all the blame; indeed, has been doing so since the first moment they started worrying about where the kid had gone.

  Kid dead, marriage over, you sue me and I’ll sue you. Pass the pretzels.

  Always worse, of course, when the victim is a child, but it’s not like the rest of the dead leave behind stories that deserve to end in bloodshed and an early grave.

  I read on, sucked further into the mire of misery, and getting nowhere nearer any kind of answer or connection.

  Taylor pulls out Morrow’s seat and sits down opposite.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ he asks.

  ‘Got nothing so far. Nothing to suggest it’s not the worst case scenario for us that we’ve been assuming all along; an entirely random selection of individuals.’

  He stares idly at the papers lying around Morrow’s desk. Glad to see that as Morrow becomes more experienced and his workload inevitably increases, he’s becoming a lot less organised. By the time he gets to my age he’ll be filing documents in the bin by the hundred-load like the rest of us.

  ‘We should be talking to Connor,’
says Taylor. ‘I was hoping he’d have gone by now, and it could wait until tomorrow, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening. Anyway, doesn’t really matter. We are definitely presenting to the Chief tomorrow morning, so we need something, even if it’s a mea culpa and some sort of retraction.’

  I stare blankly into space, same as he is. Beginning to feel a little hopeless. Beginning to feel, absurdly, that Clayton has total dominion over us. Like he can do what he wants. Like we’re the Thistle and he’s PSG, and we can imagine for a few fleeting moments we have some sort of chance, but in reality, and ultimately, we’re just going to get our arses handed to us, even if it takes a penalty box dive by that little bastard Neymar in the last minute.

  ‘I want you to go back and speak to the psychiatrist,’ he says.

  I look up.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m just sitting here making shit up,’ he says, with instant anger.

  I hold up an apologetic hand, and he waves it away with some element of apology at his outburst.

  ‘Talk to her. I don’t know what that was earlier, and maybe it’s the real thing.’ He shakes his head at the thought. ‘I mean, seriously... If that’s who she is, then fine. But try and get beneath it, if you can. Maybe you’ll have more luck on your own. You can do, you know, whatever it is you usually do.’

  ‘I usually sleep with them,’ I say.

  ‘I know.’

  I give him a questioning look.

  ‘I don’t give a shit,’ he says. ‘Just get in touch with her, try whatever you think is necessary. It would be better.... It would be for the best if you didn’t get her into bed, but actually, like I said, I don’t care. Just try and get anything you can.’

  He stands up, looks somewhat troubled about having instructed one of his officers to go out and prostitute himself for information – at least on that front he picked the right guy – taps Morrow’s desk a couple of times, and then turns back to his own office.

  Stops, looks round, comes back to stand at the desk.

  ‘That moment, the second when I asked if she saw him at his house or her office... What was that?’