In My Time Of Dying: DS Hutton Book 5

by Douglas Lindsay

  She puts the car in neutral, and the engine cuts out.

  Silence.

  We don’t look at each other.

  I think about my trembling hands and realise they’re not trembling any more. And they weren’t trembling while being bludgeoned by the sight of the naked and dead and flayed Mrs Malone. God, I’m still getting that drink in when she’s gone, but right now, the need for drink has been temporarily displaced.

  Mind all over the place.

  ‘Perhaps you could make me a cup of tea,’ she says.

  Hmm, inviting herself up. Did she make a deal with Harrison? I didn’t see them talking. Did Kallas get Saturday evening duty? Make sure the sergeant isn’t a dick?

  That doesn’t make sense. For Harrison, perhaps, we’re friends, but not Kallas.

  Wait. That means this isn’t about me, it’s about her.

  Uh-oh.

  ‘You don’t have to get home?’

  ‘The babysitter is at home. There is no rush, though I would like to see the girls before they go to bed.’

  ‘Your husband’s not home?’

  A beat. The silence returns like a positive force, wrapping everything in its morbidly tight and strange embrace.

  We’re both looking straight ahead. I’m a little lost in the moment, to be honest. It’s so long since I did actual emotion with a woman. For years now it’s just been a rough calculation about sex. Maybe that’s all it’s ever been. Schrödinger’s shag. Either it will happen, or it won’t, and you won’t know until you make the positive move.

  This isn’t that, though. This is fuck all to do with Schrödinger.

  ‘He left on Thursday. Went back to Estonia.’ A beat. ‘He is gone.’

  Oh, fuck.

  There’s a game changer.

  I mean, here I was, thinking, you know, romantical thoughts, imagining the DI getting carried away, doing something stupid that would lead to awkwardness, but at least would get me an outrageous and unexpected shag out of it. But not like this.

  Anyway, no way she’s sitting here looking for sympathy sex. A cup of tea, that’s all. Maybe she won’t even need to talk.

  ‘Come on, I’ll stick the kettle on.’

  35

  Nine-fifty. How an evening changes on a sixpence.

  Two hours ago I was sitting here with Kallas having a stilted conversation about her marriage. She didn’t really want to talk about it, and I ended up burbling on about all the times I fucked up my marriages, while we drank a cup of tea each.

  When she left, she said it had helped. Who knows? For someone who can be so expressionless, got to say she looked incredibly sad. Jesus. Three kids, newly promoted, big-ass murder investigation, asshole husband buggers off. She even said she wasn’t sure she would ever see him again, which sounds dramatic, and a step or two up from just leaving his wife. I asked if there was someone else, she said she didn’t know. I asked, boldly, why she went swimming naked in front of me the other day, and if that was some sort of self-power play on her part, doing what the hell she liked, doing something she knew her husband wouldn’t want her to do, because she knew they were in trouble, and knew his departure was imminent. She said, ‘No, I felt like going for a swim and did not have a swimming costume.’

  She left after thirty-five minutes. Not the easiest thirty-five minutes of the year, although there have been, and will be, worse. I kind of melted when she left. Relaxed, at least. It had just felt so intense. And yes, there was an elephant, big as a fucking house.

  We got nowhere near talking about the elephant.

  And I’m still in love. I’m, like, one fucking step from the bastard love child of Hugh Grant and Richard Curtis.

  She left, I gave it a few minutes, looked out of the window to make sure she wasn’t sitting in her car weeping – she was never going to be sitting in the car weeping – moved a sweet and sour chicken with egg fried rice from the freezer to the microwave, then nipped along the road to the off licence for a bottle of vodka and some tonic.

  I’d been telling myself all day I’d just be buying a half-litre, maybe even something smaller. I could do that, no bother. I bought a litre, and only the thought of a series of women at the station looking disappointed in me stopped me buying two. On the plus side, I got the tonic, so I could drink half and halves and spin it out. Then I thought, on the other hand, if I drink it far too quickly, and drink it all, that’s more likely to make me vomit, which increases my chances of not being an obvious, drink-soaked moron in the morning. Though, in my favour, my first engagement is coffee with the film producer in Bridge of Allan at ten, so I’ve got until maybe midday to sober the fuck up.

  Yeah, all right, wouldn’t be great to conduct an interview while still drunk.

  So, that settled it. Decision made. Don’t eat, drink quickly, get it over with.

  So, here we are, me and my bottle of vodka, nine-fifty in the evening. Still sitting at the table with my space jigsaw. Mercury: Distance from earth, average 149.95 million km, temperature 450°C, length of year, 88 earth days.

  I’ll have forgotten that by the time I get to the end of this sentence, but there it is, right there. Of course, since I haven’t touched it before tonight in three months, the jigsaw exists to more or less just taunt me. This is who you are, Hutton, the jigsaw says. You start something you can’t finish. Not even a jigsaw puzzle.

  Well, fuck you Mr Jigsaw Man, just watch as I finish this bottle of vodka. Yeah, exactly, so fuck off.

  The first vodka tonic was pretty sweet, as was the second. And the third. Was it the fourth or fifth when it started to go a little awry? Can’t remember. Bubble bubble, boy’s in trouble. Now, fuck, we’re at the bitter stage. No one knows how many drinks in we are. The bitter stage, when the alcohol and tongue have fallen out of wedlock, and no longer want to be acquainted with one another, but when the brain refuses to back down.

  Starting to feel a bit sick, but my hand keeps pouring vodka into the glass, and getting more ice from the freezer, and pouring out tonic, and my arm keeps lifting the glass to my lips, and my tongue and my throat just have to accept the situation.

  I did three pieces of the puzzle in the first half hour, and then I spent another thirty to forty minutes looking with blank eyes, and then it got too tiring, and now I’m just sitting here, drink in one hand, head resting in the other, feeling tired, and wondering if I’ll be able to fall asleep, and stay asleep, before I need to throw up.

  Another drink drained, ice still extant, pour the vodka, pour the tonic, swirl the glass around, listen to the pleasing clink of ice in glass, take a drink, do the loud satisfied sigh, even though it’s no longer satisfying, not by a long fucking way, head snaps, forcibly allow myself a second twitch, and then a thought formulates in that slow, thick head of mine, and I get up, drink still in hand, stagger a little, bump my thigh against the table, the bottles wobble, the vodka manages to hold its nerve, the tonic topples, and of course, of course, you rat-arsed skunk, you fucking loser, full of washed out spunk, I hadn’t tightened the lid properly, and it sploshes onto the carpet, just a little, as there’s not much left, and I bend down to pick it up, and in doing so, spill a little of the drink from my glass, and I right the tonic, but leave it on the floor, and stand up, the sharp movements up and down making me feel even more like vomiting, and I stand there trying to think of what it was that made me get up in the first place, and I’m standing, and I’m standing, and I’m standing, and so I down the drink in one long pull, and feel absolutely fucking terrible for it as it goes down, then I lay the glass back on the table, keeping it away from the jigsaw, and I remember what made me stand up, and it wasn’t to vomit, though that may be on the cards now, and I go to the window and look down onto the street, and there she is, sitting in her car, maybe fifty yards along the road.

  Sergeant Harrison, spending her Saturday evening making sure I don’t go out and do something stupid.

  Sober, I’d love her for it. Drunk, feeling this shit and drunk, I don’t care
either way. Ruin your evening, for me, I think. Seems stupid, but if you want to crater your night at the altar of a craven fuckweasel like me, on you go. Standing here drunk and shallow and alone and exactly the kind of man Elrond was talking about, I’m so glad Eileen didn’t invite herself in. I don’t want to face loving her and not being able to have her tonight.

  Wasn’t it the DI you’re in love with?

  Ah, OK, in love with two women at the same time. I can do that, I contain multitudes.

  Having been standing, staring down the road for several seconds, I lift my hand. No point in pretending we don’t see each other. She lifts her hand back. I neither signal for her to go nor to come in, and then I turn away, turn my back on her, and look down on all the sorrow.

  Tonic on the carpet, a jigsaw puzzle that defeats me, a hollow Saturday night, the waste of a life.

  I feel the vomit rising.

  I DREAM OF THE WAR in Bosnia. My part in the abomination. There’s me and a group of women, and I have a gun, and I’ve told them they all need to lie there, because I’m going to rape them one by one. There’s Eileen, and there’s the chief, and there’s Kallas, and there’s Samantha, and there’s Fforbes, and there’s Margaret Malone, and Taylor’s there too, standing off to the side, his arms folded, watching me. He’s not stopping me, he seems disinterested, he doesn’t move.

  And I order Eileen to get undressed, and she does, and she lies back on the forest floor, and there are bugs and spiders starting to crawl over her body, and I kneel over her, and that’s when I realise how flaccid and useless my penis is, and I’m sure I’m turned on, I’m sure I want to do this, and my penis is like, don’t be daft, son, and Taylor starts mocking me, and then the women start mocking me, and I want to run away from them, but I can’t, I’m stuck here, on my knees, and now Harrison is fully clothed again, they all are, and I’m the only naked one, and they’re all laughing, and there’s nothing I can do about it, and when I look down at my penis to try to talk some life into it, there are bugs crawling all over it, and that spider from Margaret Malone’s bedroom, big and long-legged, starts to crawl up my stomach, then suddenly it’s racing up my chest, and I swat at it, and miss, and I can’t hit it, and it’s getting higher and higher...

  I wake feeling indescribably awful. I wake feeling like they will know, that I will wear that dream on my face. At work, the women will know I dreamt about them. They will know what I intended doing to them. They will scorn me, and I will deserve it.

  On top of that, however much vomiting I did in the evening, it wasn’t enough.

  Six thirty-nine a.m. Out of the bathroom, still drunk, corrosively hungover, hands shaking. On my way to the kitchen I see the vodka bottle on the table. Unfinished. Still with something to say for itself.

  How low are you prepared to go, Sergeant? That’s exactly what it’s saying.

  36

  We have no idea, we really don’t. About movies. We have no idea about movies. You watch a movie, you see, I don’t know, George Clooney and Ewan McGregor, and all those other bastards. They’re the face of it. They’re the ones you think of. Some directors are famous, but the producers and moneymen? Unless you’re descending to geek level, you don’t know any of them. Why should you?

  But however much your famous guy is getting for the movie, there’s someone you never heard of before getting that little bit more.

  Now, here we are, Sunday morning, and it’s Bridge of Allan, not Beverley Hills. Nevertheless, this is the house of someone who’s made a fuck tonne of money in the movies, and I’ve never heard of her, and I expect most other regular people haven’t either. Don’t even think you would’ve if you’d read Empire magazine.

  I’m standing in the study, waiting for Annabeth Blake to return with the coffee. I walked to the station, didn’t go in, picked up the car, headed out of town. Now I’m here. When I arrived, Blake took one look at me, offered the coffee, then asked if I wanted something stronger. The dog, a big bugger, sussed me out, and obviously decided I was too wasted an individual to be any kind of a threat, and left.

  So, I stand at the window, looking out on the lawn, with an interesting tree and plant selection around it. Interesting is pretty much all I’ve got. There are trees and there are plants. My ability to describe them would be on the level of that first year French you did in high school. There are trees. The trees are big. The leaves are yellow.

  At the bottom of the garden there are two trees with a gap in between which perfectly frames the view of a mountain in the distance. I’ve been walking in those mountains. Ben Vorlich maybe, or Ben something else. From here, I’ve no idea which one I’m looking at.

  The room, the study she introduced it as – ‘this is The Study’ – like she was introducing me to an actual living being of some species or other, holds the memories and triumphs of her movie career. Awards and film posters, signed photographs, pictures of her and several well-known actors. Tom Hanks and Charlize Theron, Al Pacino, some guy who was in a thing, whose name I forget. Spielberg and David Lynch. Harvey Weinstein. Hmm, interesting. A talking point, I suppose, regardless of what you think of the bastard.

  My one act of determination through the fug of hangover, is not to let her catch me looking at all her movie shit. So, I’m standing here staring at a view of the hills, which is something you can do from tens of thousands of homes in Scotland.

  Damned movies. Such a bullshit world.

  I can feel her behind me, a noiseless presence entering the room, and then she’s laying the tray down on the coffee table, and I turn, just as she’s bending over the table, and the airy, Asian type of top thing she’s wearing, is floating around like a butterfly, the neckline hanging low, and I wonder if she was just going to stay there, bent over the table like that, until I turned, and she straightens up and smiles, and says, ‘There’s fresh pain au chocolat, I wasn’t sure if you’d want something to eat.’

  I swallow, nod, certainly don’t say yes, and then we’re sitting down, the coffee is poured, the fresh pain au chocolat remain where they were on the tray, the smell of them haunting the air.

  She smiles, studies me with a filmmaker’s curiosity. She can fuck off with that shit. Of course, I’m studying her. Early-sixties, got that Hollywood look about her, which is, as it always is, slightly incongruous with her Scottish accent, although there’s none of the Hollywood sixty year-old woman’s clutching at former glory, skin stretched and lips done, the start of the descent into plastic, manufactured abomination. She’s natural, the wealthy woman’s healthy glow about her, her only nod in the direction of American dreams of perfection, the iridescent, snowy-white teeth.

  ‘Did you sleep with Harvey Weinstein?’ is out of my mouth before I remember I wasn’t going to ask about any of that movie shit. Of course, I’m here to talk about her making movies, and it is curious why someone with all this paraphernalia, this homage to movie success, was making a shitty, low-budget Scottish film that was never going to get released.

  She smiles.

  ‘Harvey’s a darling,’ she says, then she smiles. ‘Unless he’s a cunt. You take the Harvey you get, I’m afraid, but is that so different from any of us? Harvey’s just a little larger than life than most, so the highs and the lows are so much higher and lower.’

  Yeah, all right, that was a lousy first question. I don’t give a fuck about Harvey Weinstein.

  Take a moment to have a drink of coffee, composing the first proper question in my head, and she fills the gap.

  ‘You’re an interesting looking character,’ she says.

  ‘It’s not about me,’ I say, putting the cup back down.

  That is good coffee. Holy shit. What the fuck is that? I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to give her the pleasure, nor, for that matter, find out just how much it cost.

  ‘Why not? Your life is about you. Life is about people. There are stories all around us, and you must see that more than most. And now look at you.’ Do I have to? ‘Come to conduct an interview on
a Sunday morning, terribly hungover. You probably shouldn’t have driven.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Maybe you are. Maybe you can conduct yourself like this, carry out your duties, because you’re used to it. But a police officer on a big murder case, and you’re getting horribly drunk on a Saturday evening. What are you, early-fifties? Interesting. I take it your divorced?’

  I take another drink of coffee, staring at her over the top of my cup as I do so. Damn, that’s good shit.

  ‘How many divorces? Two, three? I’ve had five myself. Rather wonderful the way one allows oneself to believe, isn’t it?’

  ‘Three,’ I say.

  ‘Ah, yes. And...’ and she cuts herself off, smiling, leaning forward to take a drink of coffee. I glance out of the window, just in case. ‘You have such an air of melancholy, Sergeant. Such a man of sorrow. One can only imagine the things you’ve seen.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘You’d make a fascinating subject for film.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, you would. Look at you. Damaged. Women love damaged. Men, too, depending on how they react to it. But women, they would really go for your character. And I bet they do. Damaged, with that hint of danger. The unexpected. Knowing that you’re always going to be let down. How thrilling.’

  ‘You’ve got all this,’ I say, moving the conversation along, or trying to, indicating the movie room, and the house, and the view, and the yellow leaves on the large trees, ‘the trappings of a successful Hollywood career, and your movie page reads like a fucking Blockbuster Video encyclopaedia, so what were you doing making some shitty, low budget Scottish movie that was never going to be released?’

  She does the thing, she actually does the thing, where she holds her hands up, making the camera frame, the ends of her thumbs and forefingers pressed together, viewing me through the lens.