See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘I know, it was weird.’

  ‘It was a straightforward enough question. And even allowing for her thinking everything over, deciding what questions were to be answered and what was encroaching on her damned confidentiality...’

  ‘Yep.’

  Holds my gaze briefly, and then turns away.

  He gets to return to his desk, I get to go and see the vamp. Sadly, just at the thought, I can feel myself getting turned on.

  What a dick. I mean, that’s the point of a fucking vamp, isn’t it? It’s the tease, it’s the style. They’re vamps, they’re not slappers. And really, this thing I’ve got going, where somehow I get women to sleep with me... it never happens on command. It just happens. Sometimes. And sometimes it doesn’t.

  Highly unlikely to be happening with Dr Brady, and if it did, how the fuck would I know she wasn’t playing me on Clayton’s command?

  Note to self: exercise extreme caution and try not to think with your dick.

  AS IT IS, EVEN MY DICK doesn’t get to do any thinking. She answers neither her mobile nor her work phone. I sit at my desk, the phone still in my hand, the anticipation fading, and then decide that I’m going to go round to her office. Sunday afternoon, chances are there will be no one there, but I have to give it a go. Everything’s open on a Sunday these secular days.

  Stick my head into the boss’s office, let him know what’s happening so he can pass it on to Connor if the knob comes looking, and off out the door, armed with both her office and home address.

  Her office is just off Kelvingrove Park, up behind, close to the statue of Field Marshall Lord Roberts, great hero of the Indian wars and others, who one day will no doubt find himself torn down, as righteous rage continues to grow against the old Empire.

  A large Victorian detached house, converted into a series of offices and surgeries. I get buzzed in, where a man sits behind a desk, the downstairs hall off the front door having been converted into a reception area. A few chairs, pictures on the wall. It oozes money.

  The guy glances at his watch as I approach the desk, then straightens his shoulders a little as I hold out my ID, steady before him for a few seconds, so that he can read the details.

  ‘Sgt Hutton?’ he says, looking up. ‘I’m afraid there’s no one here anymore.’

  I glance around. The place is deathly quiet, and even though you might not expect there to be any particular sound coming from a medical practice reception area, there’s a sense of the emptiness in the building.

  ‘This is a private doctor’s practice?’ I ask.

  ‘The facility is run by EmMed International, a subsidiary of Viathol. There are offices here covering various streams across the health spectrum, including dentistry, pediatrics, psychiatry, orthopedic... and many more,’ he adds, as though advertising a K-Tel best-of-the-60s compilation.

  ‘So why is no one here?’

  ‘It’s Sunday afternoon,’ he answers, in a tone suggesting I’m the idiot.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘To field enquiries until five pm. Such as this one. What can I do for you, Sgt Hutton?’

  I glance up the stairs, then take a quick look around the room. There are two cameras trained on us.

  ‘You like getting watched at work?’ I ask.

  ‘I doubt anyone’s actually watching,’ he says. ‘They’re only there in case of any incidents. What can I help you with today?’

  ‘I’m looking for Dr Brady,’ I say quickly, ditching the vague conversational style.

  ‘She’s on holiday,’ he says.

  ‘We saw her today.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘How d’you mean she’s on holiday? Since when?’

  ‘She’s been off all week.’

  ‘You know where she went? If she went abroad, England...?’

  He’s shaking his head, long before I get to the end of the question.

  ‘I don’t really know the practitioners particularly well. Only been here four weeks. Was previously working for the Forestry Commission. I’ll probably move on again in a couple of months. This is pretty boring to be honest.’

  Jesus, enough with the fucking commentary. It’s not about you.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Dr Brady?’

  ‘That would have been a week past on Friday.’

  ‘Can you describe Dr Brady to me?’ I ask.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can you de...’

  ‘I heard you, it’s just, you said you saw her today. You presumably know what she looks like.’

  ‘Just describe her, please.’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘This is about me, a police officer, asking you, a member of the public, some questions, coupled with you answering them.’

  ‘I do work for a private medical practice,’ he says, and as he talks, that thing you get where the tone lifts slightly at the end of a sentence or statement becomes more pronounced, ‘so I am bound by issues of confidentiality.’

  ‘I’m not asking anything confi-fucking-dential, I’d just like you to describe what one of your doctors looks like.’

  Nice, Hutton, you dick.

  ‘All I’m asking is why?’

  ‘So I know that the woman we interviewed today is the same woman you see in the office every day.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she be the same? Why would someone be pretending to be Dr Brady?’

  ‘Can you just describe her for me, please?’

  He holds my gaze, then says, ‘No,’ swallowing noisily as soon as the syllable is out his mouth.

  I manage to refrain from blurting out the work fuck too loudly, hands on hips, turn away. And there it is, the thing that was so natural in this setting, and so obvious, it hadn’t even registered with me it was there. The large board listing every practice in the establishment, with photographs of each of the doctors and other practitioners in house.

  I stare at it, turn and give the receptionist a glance, then walk over to the board.

  ‘You can’t look at that,’ he says, although the conviction in his voice has vanished even before he gets to the end of the sentence. I ignore him anyway.

  There she is. Dr Veronica Brady. Bobbed brown hair, fringe a little too long. No spectacles, barely any make up. Attractive, recognisably the same person we saw earlier today, but with none of the artifice.

  ‘Is this a recent photograph? I mean, is this how she looked the last time you spoke to her?’

  He doesn’t answer. I give him a second, then turn round. He’s looking at me, his face resolutely blank. Give him another second or two, then walk back over.

  ‘Just fucking tell me if this is how she looked the last time you saw her.’

  ‘We’re on camera, you know. Sound too.’

  ‘Good. We’ll have evidence when we charge you with obstructing the police.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘Is that what Dr Brady looked like the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says quickly.

  ‘Thank you. You know when she booked this week off on leave?’

  ‘She e-mailed it in,’ he says. ‘First thing last Monday morning. Asked me to cancel all her patients.’

  ‘How many patients did she have this week?’

  A short pause, and then, ‘A full slate.’

  ‘Did it include a Mr Michael Clayton?’

  He stares at me, the look on his face hardening. At least, the look he was attempting to put on his face hardens. There’s nothing hard about him, but I’m not going to push it.

  My eyes move to the monitor beside him, he follows my look, then quickly presses a couple of keys on the keyboard to log himself out. Now there’d be no point in me going over there and manhandling him off his computer, which is obviously what a police officer such as myself would usually do.

  He blinks beneath my stare.

  ‘In your limited experience, have you known Dr Brady to take time off before at such short notice?’

  ‘No.’ />
  ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just that she was going on holiday?’

  He pauses again, before nodding at his own thought.

  ‘I’m going to say she just wrote she was taking the week off,’ he says, ‘that’s pretty much all. I don’t know that she actually used the word holiday.’

  ‘Is it possible she’ll have seen any of her patients at her own home or at their home?’

  Blank look, finally, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Would there be a reason why she might not have wanted to work here all week?’

  My tone is getting harsher, and I’m quite pleased to see he’s wilting before it, his pusillanimity beginning to show. Unfortunately, he’s not hiding anything. Just scared of the police.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I let out one of those long, exasperated, tired sighs and turn away. Look back at Brady’s photograph. Quite ordinary. Nothing there to stir the contents of a pair of finest M&S NASA-technology pants.

  ‘Would you tell me her home address, please?’ I ask.

  ‘Couldn’t possibly,’ he answers quickly.

  I turn and look at him, just give him the menacing police glare, and then smile.

  ‘I already know it. I’m going round there now. You want to call it in, see if you can get the cops to head me off at the pass?’

  ‘What pass?’

  It seems everybody on earth is now twenty years younger than me, which is bloody depressing.

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ I say. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  31

  GRABBED BY TAYLOR, just as I get back to my desk. The place is quieter than before I went out. Have just sat down, had time to look at my inbox to make sure there are no further mocking missives. Contemplating getting a cup of coffee. Beginning to think it might be Sunday evening alcohol time. Taylor arrives to get my mind back on work.

  ‘How’d it go?’ he asks, standing by Morrow’s empty desk. ‘You don’t look flushed.’

  I wonder what he means for a second, then remember he sent me off with strict instructions to have sex with the witness.

  ‘Weird,’ I say. ‘Went to her office, the guy there says she e-mailed on Monday morning and cancelled all her appointments for the week. I went round to her house, no one in. Spoke to a couple of neighbours, no one had seen her for a while. They didn’t sound like that was necessarily odd, because it’s not like they were living on top of each other in a tenement, but even so... I broke into the house. Mail hadn’t been lifted all week.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ he mutters. ‘Did you try calling her again?’

  ‘Her phone is switched off or she’s gone somewhere with no signal.’

  He mutters some other curse under his breath, stares away off to the side.

  ‘Fuck it. Shouldn’t have let her go.’

  ‘We couldn’t really bring her in, could we?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sergeant,’ he says. ‘Maybe. But this, now, having let her go... it’s just weird, and we have absolutely no idea why. Fuck... Come on, we need to go in and see Connor.’

  I get up, start walking a step behind him.

  ‘You didn’t leave any trace of your break in, did you?’ he asks.

  ‘I was the Pink Panther.’

  He stops just outside Connor’s door and gives me the look.

  ‘You left a white glove with your initial on it?’

  ‘I was discreet.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Let’s leave it at that.’

  He turns, knocks once, and then we walk into Connor’s office.

  ‘I’M THINKING OF TAKING early retirement.’

  The words ease their way out into the middle of a brief silence. Taylor has been giving him the rundown on where we haven’t got to. Connor appeared at least to be paying attention, before turning away and staring off into a corner.

  Taylor gives me something of an eyebrow, then says, ‘I thought there didn’t have to be any staff cuts, sir?’

  Connor turns back, the momentary wistfulness having passed.

  ‘No, no there aren’t. But I’m done, I might as well admit it. My time here has been plagued, we all know that.’

  I don’t think it’s about you, to be honest, but if that’s how you want to paint it. I mean, it was pretty damn fucking shit before you arrived.

  ‘We just seem to lurch from one disaster to another. And now we’ve got this. I mean, we could potentially have been completely under the radar on this one. Even if someone else had pulled all these bloody murders together, we’re still the smallest, the least interesting. There have been six deaths now, and only one on our patch. We could have... yes, under the radar, we could have sailed under the radar, if it hadn’t been for those damn e-mails.’ He waves his hand, gives me a reassuring look, for which I’m obviously exceptionally grateful. ‘I’m not blaming you, Sergeant. I’m sure you no more wanted them sent to you than I wanted you getting them, and you did entirely the right thing bringing it to everyone’s attention.’

  Well, thank you for saying so, I feel vindicated.

  ‘But it promotes us into the Premier Division and suddenly everyone’s looking at us, and what do we have...?’

  And he waves a pathetic hand in Taylor’s direction.

  ‘I’m an organiser, I put things in order. That’s my superpower.’ What a dick. ‘I came here to sort things out, and the place has been cursed since the day I arrived. I’ve been cursed. Whatever God intended for me here, it wasn’t an easy ride, that’s for sure. I think perhaps, when all this is over, it might be time for someone more suited to the task to take over.’

  He laughs ruefully, sharing the smile with both of us. Neither of us smiles back.

  ‘No doubt as soon as I’m gone, things will settle down. That’d be just like the thing...’

  Palms of his hands on the desk, he looks between the two of us. Time to wrap it up. Thank God.

  ‘So, basically gentlemen, we have nothing to take to the boss tomorrow? Having made our pitch... if Mr Clayton is not involved, well, we have nothing to add, and if he is, he continues to run rings around us.’

  Taylor nods, looking extremely pissed off at that assessment.

  ‘We need to find Dr Brady again,’ he says.

  ‘You had her a few hours ago.’

  ‘We had no reason at the time –’

  Connor cuts him off with a wave.

  ‘And you’re no nearer working out what he meant today, this morning. What was it, his last e-mail?’

  ‘The first one didn’t quite work out the way I intended, so I had to do it over, that’s all,’ I say.

  ‘That’s what he said, or that’s what you’re saying to me now?’

  ‘That’s what he said,’ I say, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. We might as well be back out in the office getting on with this shit, rather than sitting here listening to him.

  ‘And you’ve got nothing?’

  It’s almost not even a question. More of a taunt. He’s owning the hopelessness of the investigation. He wants us to be shit. He wants us to not have a clue. He’s that miserable cunt Denethor in The Return Of The King. He wants to be able to take nothing to the Chief Constable, so we can disappear back into the shadows, and he can blame his detectives while he’s doing it.

  ‘There was blood,’ says Taylor. ‘That’s all we can think. The murder down at Cambuslang station had no blood, when one might well have expected some. For some reason, who knows why, he wanted there to be blood, so he staged another murder on the railway line where blood was guaranteed.’

  Connor looks mournfully at his desk.

  ‘Huh,’ he mutters. ‘He wanted blood on the tracks. Maybe he’s a Dylan fan.’

  ‘What?’ escapes my lips. Not at the words blood on the tracks, just at the fact Connor mentioned Dylan.

  Connor waves away the question, and the wave more or less turns into a dismissal in the direction of the door.

  �
��Just a stupid comment. Goodbye gentlemen. I’ll need you both here in the morning and we can go over our lines for the Chief Constable.’

  ‘Didn’t know you liked Dylan,’ says Taylor, getting to his feet. Introducing a more conversational tone, even though I suspect he wants to boot Connor in the face just as much as I do.

  ‘He lost me in the ‘80s, but I do sometimes enjoy his earlier work,’ says Connor, but he’s already lost interest, looking back down at some paperwork on his desk. Probably his pension plan.

  Taylor looks at me, the same thing running through his head – and it’s not about Connor – and we walk from the room, then wordlessly through the station, and together into Taylor’s office, closing the door behind us.

  He goes to stand by the window, looking out on the early Sunday evening. A bland, mild to warm, crappy day.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he says. ‘You thinking what I’m –’

  ‘Blood on the tracks...’

  ‘Blood on the tracks. That’s what he wanted to be different. He wanted blood on the tracks. Is it a thing, other than a Dylan album title? I don’t know, can’t be Shakespeare, can it? I guess they wouldn’t have had, I don’t know... did they call roads tracks back then. Or is it a Holocaust thing? The train tracks.’

  ‘Dylan didn’t mean train tracks, though, did he? He meant the songs. The tracks on the album are bitter, bloody, angry. I always presumed he just meant the songs.’

  ‘Jesus,’ mutters Taylor. ‘But there’s something, and it’s still what our killer meant, wasn’t it? The first murder didn’t work because there was no blood. And the second murder...? Lots of blood.’

  ‘Unbelievers. He wrote unbelievers next to the decapitated bodies.’

  ‘Infidels,’ says Taylor.

  ‘Yeah, I thought that before. But... yes, he could have used the word infidels, but he chose to use unbelievers. And spell it wrong.’

  ‘Which doesn’t sound like Clayton.’

  ‘Unless he was trying not to make it too easy for us,’ I say. ‘If he’d written infidels, we’d at least, you know, maybe it would have struck us Dylan fans, the name would have stuck out. This way, didn’t occur to us at all. Not until now.’