‘Well, I don’t know if it’s relevant.’
‘Then best let me decide.’
She nods ruefully, but there’s no smile on her lips.
‘God, it’s so predictable,’ she says. ‘I might as well say it. We had a brief thing, Harry and I. Didn’t amount to much, but it happened.’ Staring at the floor. Wallowing in her regrets. I recognise that look. Here I am, a fellow liver in the past, a regreter of rash things, a rememberer of every act of fuck-witted stupidity.
‘You ever tell anyone about it?’
‘Nope.’
‘Did Harry?’
‘I don’t know. However, it’s possible he told Victoria, or somebody somewhere, so it’s possible they tell you, and so here I am, telling you first, in case you find out from someone else.’
‘How did it end?’
‘Ha. Usually with him ejaculating inside me,’ she says bitterly, ‘though he did cum over my face that once, which was a bit unnecessary.’
I do one of those sideways glances to the camera. Like I’m being filmed for a day-in-the-life type docudrama. Even though there’s no camera. But I give that invisible camera a look that says, no one saw that coming from the vicar’s mouth...
‘How did it end?’ I repeat. Deadpan. No judgement. I’d hardly be one to judge, after all.
‘Much as it started. No announcement, no declaration of intent, no fanfare, no objections, no remorse, no complaints. We were here one night, in the vestry, going over the church finances. He wasn’t the treasurer, didn’t want the official position, but he knew money and financing in a way our dear treasurer doesn’t, so... he was the de facto treasurer. And there was a look across the table. That was it. Out of nowhere, and suddenly there we were, having sex on the desk.’ A pause, then, ‘Happened another couple of times, then it didn’t happen anymore. That was all.’
‘When was the last time?’
‘A year and... a year and a half ago, something like that. We’d been having sex, then we weren’t. It was always here, always after discussing church financing. Neither of us seemed happy about it. Then that last time... I don’t know, it went a bit further. Lasted a little longer. We had oral sex for the first time, and then...’ She grimaces, shakes her head. I glance at her, so that I can share in her feeling of self-loathing, then she continues, her voice now soft and low and bitter, ‘then there I was, on my knees, the penitent believer, kneeling before God, with Harry’s cock in my mouth. And I couldn’t stop, and he couldn’t stop, and he came on my face. And that, I think we both knew, was that. It wasn’t like we had love or affection to retreat to.
‘He continued in his unofficial capacity, but the next time he came it was like it’d never happened. There were no looks across the table. I was disgusted with myself.’
‘And Harry?’
‘No idea.’ She turns and looks resentfully at me. I recognise that look. You’re a man, you ejaculate, you can bear the burden of all your sex. ‘Would it disgust you to do that to someone?’
Unavoidably, the couple of times I’ve done that in my life appear in my head. And when I say couple of times... Alison, my brief third wife, very, very unimpressed. A hooker I originally busted in Buchanan Street, who was being paid to enjoy it. A vague memory of a drunken party a few years ago, one of those nights that gets lost in the swirl, where the woman – about whom I recall nothing – seemed to like it, though that may be alcohol remembrance. There were others.
‘It didn’t matter,’ she says, when I don’t answer. I can feel her contempt, reading my thoughts. ‘That was all there was. Maybe he’d had enough. Added me to the list. Screwed the minister. Tick that box, move along, find a nurse or a doctor or an astronaut, or whatever uniform was next in the catalogue.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’
‘Sunday, of course. He came every week. Services started back up again in August. For what they’re worth, given the attendance.’
‘I mean, the two of you alone in the vestry?’
‘Oh.’ Voice dead, the sound of someone who hates herself. It’s always heart-warming when you can bring an interviewee the gift of bitter introspection. ‘March, before the lockdown. During the summer we chatted briefly over FaceTime, once or twice. We were going to meet later this week, maybe next week. That would have been the first time.’
She finishes that sentence with a small head twitch, and I know that look, that involuntary spasm, the build-up of remorse and repugnance.
‘OK,’ I say, trying to keep my head straight. Unavoidably thinking myself into a depressive state as I sit here. Hating everything in this bloody church, dark and bleak and grim, nothing about it inspiring devotion or awe or compassion for one’s fellows.
‘I should get on,’ I say. ‘Sorry,’ I add, which might be odd, because I have to be here, but I feel bad for blessing her with guilt and revulsion.
She doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t ask why I’m apologising. She knows. Doesn’t accept the apology.
‘You drink?’ I ask.
‘More and more,’ she says. A beat. ‘And you, Sergeant? You wreak of it.’
‘I haven’t had a drink in three days.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I’m good, thanks.’ I don’t want this to be about me. ‘Can you think of any reason why anyone would want to kill Harry?’
‘No. I mean...’ The pause, the lowered head. ‘I don’t want to think about it, that’s all. He was sharp with money, knew what he was doing. Maybe he annoyed people. And, as we have illustrated here today, he slept around behind Victoria’s back. Maybe he annoyed someone by doing that. The way he picked me up and dropped me, I could’ve been annoyed.’
‘Enough to kill him?’
The contempt flashes across her face.
‘Everyone’s different, Sergeant. I was too busy hating myself to hate him.’
I nod, though she’s not looking at me to see it, then I straighten a little, detaching myself from the inquisition. Eyes straight ahead, running over the usual suspects of a nave, and an altar, the stained glass windows behind. Here, disciples or angels or saints or God knows who, kneeling at the feet of the exalted Christ. Whatever.
‘How’d the congregation hold up over the summer?’
‘You need to ask?’ she says.
‘How bad?’
‘Thirty-one members of the congregation died.’ A beat. She lets the number sit there, old and ugly and unrepentant. ‘Thirty-one. Maybe they weren’t all Covid-related. Must be the same all over. Church congregations more or less hit the demographic of the illness head on. Now... now, a lot of those thirty-one didn’t come here anymore anyway, or at least, not regularly, but what...’ Heavy sigh. ‘It made a dent on our Sunday morning, either way, and worse, there were far more people who just found something else to do on a Sunday. As the lockdown lifted, people might have raced back to pubs, and raced back to the airports, and raced back to the beach, but they seem to have rather enjoyed whatever else it was they were doing on a Sunday morning. I mean, can you blame them? Here we are, still constrained. No singing, no joyousness, nothing.’
She looks at me, and holy shit, that is a wonderful look of loathing, as though the entire thing has been my fault – and I’ve been looked at loathingly by a lot of women, so I know what I’m talking about – and then she continues her look around the nave.
‘Now we could seat our entire congregation in here about twenty times over,’ she says, turning back to the altar, sharing that contemptuous look with her Lord. ‘Thank you, God.’
‘Maybe they’ll come back,’ I say, finding common cause with her misanthropy. ‘The ones who have found something better to do,’ I add, pointlessly, to clarify I didn’t mean those who had died.
She doesn’t look at me. It wasn’t worth turning her head for.
‘They never come back,’ she says, after a while.
9
I lie in bed at just after ten-thirty. Been a long day.
Got home
at some time after eight. Moved a ready meal from the freezer to the oven. M&S, lasagne for two. Took the bottle of white wine from the fridge, opened it, hesitated for all the world like I was in some shitty TV drama, then poured it down the sink. A £7.99 Tesco Finest Pinot Grigio. Yeah, I know, it would’ve been wrong to mix supermarket brands like that in any case.
But there it went, down the sink. The only bottle of wine in the house. How bold of me, how brave. What a statement.
Bollocks. I had as much contempt for myself pouring it down the sink, as I would’ve had drinking the fucker. Might as well have. The only point in pouring it away, is when you don’t buy any more, ever, and for that you need commitment and determination and balls.
I don’t have any balls. I’ll hold off a day or two, and then I’ll crumble, because that’s what happens. That’s what always happens.
I had the same damn bottle of wine in the fridge for the past couple of days and managed not to drink it, but somehow tonight, with murder back on the agenda, and after talking to the cloven soul of the wasted minister, sitting in that desolate building, I wanted to pour myself the biggest glass of wine anyone ever drank down in a oner. And once I’d had that, I’d’ve finished the bottle before the lasagne had defrosted in the oven, never mind cooked, and I’d have been taking that six and a half minute walk to the off licence on Reynolds Street, and no amount of mouthwash would’ve been disguising the smell when I’m sitting in the car with Kallas tomorrow morning.
We have a nine a.m. appointment with the club secretary down at Troon. I’ve to pick the DI up at her house at eight.
I just can’t turn up there reeking of mint-covered, stale drink, the stench of it leaking from my skin. And so the wine went down the plughole, and I stood over it as it collected in the sink before draining away, clutching at vapours, embarrassing enough that a small moan escaped my lips at the scent of the wine in my nostrils, and then it was gone, and I was standing above a sink, breathing in fumes, stopping myself bending down and licking the basin.
A steel sink. That kind of basic steel sink you get in houses the world over.
And I didn’t manage to stop myself bending down and licking it.
It wasn’t the highlight of my career, though, let’s be honest. If Channel 5 ever made one of those Top 100 Embarrassing Moments shows about my life, it wouldn’t even be close to making the cut.
The sink, at least, was relatively clean. I didn’t taste anything other than wine, so there’s that. When I licked the rim of the plug, I was reminded of too much else, and finally pulled myself away, shrouded in even more disgust than I’d found earlier.
And now it’s ten-thirty and I’m in bed. Long since dark outside, curtains closed, orange of the streetlights creeping around the edges, casting an eerie light across the room.
I should be asleep. I was exhausted five minutes before getting in to bed. I could barely brush my teeth, barely change out of my clothes, or throw on those pyjama shorts I wear, falling into bed was the easiest thing in the world. And then my brain was like, fucking get in, we’re in bed, let’s start thinking about stuff!
Round and round it goes, buzzing industrially, so many things to think about, all of them terrible.
I don’t know how people like that idiot Trump do it. I don’t know how you continually make an arse of yourself, I don’t know how you continually say stuff that’s proved to be unbelievably stupid, and not want to go and shut yourself in a room and never speak to anyone again for the rest of your life. What’s the mental process that allows brazen, constant fuckwitted stupidity? How is it that that brand of fool manages to not give a fuck?
Yeah, I know, Trump is literally a psychopath. No self-awareness whatsoever.
I lie in bed, my brain plagued by the past, a smörgåsbord of embarrassment, a neverending series of incidents and accidents and missteps and long drives in the clown car, seemingly long forgotten, that are just waiting to latch on to some random thought. A humiliation for every occasion.
So here I lie, in the same position as yesterday evening. A little earlier this time, as I never learn. I thought perhaps the ten minutes sleep in the last thirty-six hours thing might have had a part to play. But my brain’s having none of it.
I give in to it, as much as I gave in to leaning over the sink and licking up my shame, and I start thinking about the conversation I had with Eileen – and thinking about Eileen always gets me excited, even though it shouldn’t – and then I’m thinking about fucking Chief Inspector Hawkins on her desk. An easy, cheap thought, that needn’t ever trouble me in real life. It’s never going to happen, the idea of it so remote and absurd and ridiculous it’s worthy of a throwaway moment like this one. A cheap fantasy, based on nothing. An image easily conjured up, easily forgotten. So I imagine her lying on her immaculately clear desk, her short skirt bunched at her waist, her blouse and her bra thrown aside, and me leaning over her, hands grasping her hips, licking her pussy, and she’s soaking and moaning and as loud as you want someone that cold to be in passion, and she’s pushing back at me, demanding more, desperate for my tongue on her clitoris, and then she’s gasping, and grabbing at my hair, and coming loudly, and while she’s still shuddering, her eyes closed and mouth open, I stand up and thrust my erection inside her, and she cries out and looks at me with so much lust, and says something both mundane and exciting like, ‘Fuck me! Fuck me! Come on!’ and I fuck her, and her small tits are moving back and forward, looking absolutely amazing, and I lean over her and take her tits into my mouth – and try not to think about leaning over the sink, lapping desperately at the wine – and the noise of my cock slapping into her soaking pussy is as glorious as the noises she makes, and then my cock is shuddering in my hand, and I ejaculate, lying on my side, semen shooting out over the sheets.
I lie there, cock still twitching, a moment, another, in the dark, feeling the tiredness, and then I wipe the end on the sheets, and move to the other side of the bed, and settle my head into the pillow and let the tiredness wash over me, and then my brain says, you’d better make sure you wash those sheets before you go to work in the morning, and then I start to calculate what time I’ll need to get up in order to wash sheets and get them out the machine before I head off, and that seems incredibly early, and then I wish I’d figured out how to use the timer on the machine, because I could just do that, but I’ve never worked it out, though, really, it can’t be that hard, and I wish I’d just got up and gone into the bathroom to ejaculate, or just come in my hand, or something, something, something, anything, and now I’m thinking of all the other small things that need doing around the house, and my brain is whirring, and all I’ve got for my sexual fantasy about the chief inspector, is messy sheets, an adrenalin buzz and several more hours of wakefulness.
Fucking chief inspector.
Like it’s her fault.
10
In the car, sitting outside Kallas’s house. 07:53. Got here ten minutes early. Texted from the car, rather than ringing the bell. What was I doing, other than seeking the new DI’s approval? Look, I may be an alcoholic, borderline suicidal, useless wreck of a messed-up wastrel, but I’M EARLY! I’m up. I’m risen!
Showered. Shaved. Sheets washed. Teeth cleaned. Coffee, toast and eggs for breakfast. And water. We all have to drink water these days, even though we didn’t have to drink water in the seventies and eighties when our bodies were made of exactly the same shit they’re made of now.
Had a look at the news online, what everyone’s saying about our murder victim in the loft. We didn’t give them all the details, so at the moment, they’re not saying much. For now it’s just a guy dead in his loft under suspicious circumstances. Didn’t make a single front page, which it would’ve done, had they known about the mask and the thousand cuts. The press like Statement Murders, and this was a murder that made a pretty big fucking statement. It’s just too early for us to know exactly what the statement was.
I wondered if Kallas would invite me in for coffee. No
t that I wanted her to, and it’s certainly not why I turned up ten minutes early, but it wouldn’t have been the weirdest thing to have happened. Fortunately, she said she’d be out in seven minutes, which means I don’t have to make uncomfortable conversation with the husband and the children, whoever he is, whatever age they are. Or maybe there’s a child minder or a mother-in-law, or a whoever. I know nothing about her life, and now, sitting outside a detached house, with broad bay windows either side of the elegant front door, a driveway that swings round with an entry and an exit, a perfectly sculpted hedge, and a magnificent monkey puzzle tree emerging from a small planted area in the middle of the central lawn, I feel I’m all caught up as much as I’d like to be.
And I know that when she emerges from the house, it will be exactly seven minutes since she texted. That’s who she is.
Windows open letting in the chill October air, Dylan low and soft on the CD player. This morning, “Love and Theft”, early 00’s classic. Come for Mississippi, stay for the blues and the folk and the jazz and the rock ‘n’ roll and the lyrics that rip your heart out. Or something. I like it, that’s all. That’ll do, that’s all that matters.
All my wives so far have hated it.
As with anyone these days waiting in a car, I look at my phone. Who doesn’t?
No messages. Nothing on WhatsApp. No personal e-mails. Nobody loves you when you’re down and out...
Look at the news, what sport there is, then a quick look at work e-mails. I already looked at them, cleared them while sitting at breakfast. There are three more, including one from Chief Inspector Hawkins, entitled ‘Courses.’
Deep breath, glance at the house to see if Kallas is about to emerge, although I know she’s not due for another three and a half minutes, and then open the e-mail.
There are some words at the start that I skip. I’m not really interested in what she has to say, just curious at the courses she thinks I need to attend.
In My Time Of Dying: DS Hutton Book 5 Page 4