In My Time Of Dying: DS Hutton Book 5

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘She’s so beautiful,’ says the minister, her voice suddenly altered. Softer, quieter, the edge having gone. ‘I mean, when you really look at her like this. She’s beautiful.’

  ‘Let her live then,’ I say, as though all Goodbody’s been waiting for to change her mind is a sign of God’s hand at work.

  ‘I can’t,’ says Goodbody, her tone unchanged, her anger dissipated. ‘You know I can’t. Anyway, all things must pass, everyone has their time. And time has come prematurely for plenty of people this year. What’s another one or two?’

  Her eyes haven’t left Kallas, and then finally she turns to me, holds my gaze for a moment, smiles and says, ‘Let’s see what lies beneath, shall we?’ and then gets up out of her seat.

  ‘Come on, you fucking coward,’ I spit at her, but the words have nowhere to go.

  ‘Let’s just make sure she’s as out as we all think,’ says Goodbody, and with that she brutally strikes Kallas across the face, open hand, a loud, perfectly timed slap.

  Kallas’s head jerks to the right, her body pulls against the constraints, and then she settles back into position.

  ‘Ha! Look at that,’ says Goodbody, ‘Well, you don’t mind if we don’t try to wake her up before the big event, Sergeant?’

  She steps forward again, begins to cut the tape around her chest that binds her to the chair, then she pulls it away, and it lifts Kallas’s black blouse, pulling it tight, and then it comes away and Goodbody scrunches up the tape and tosses it aside.

  ‘Think we’ll leave the bonds on her wrists and legs for the moment,’ she says, her tone again like a children’s TV presenter, explaining how to make a telephone out of two tin cans and a piece of string. ‘Can’t be too careful.’

  She turns and gives me a strange smile, as though we’re all in this together.

  ‘You engaged, Sergeant? You ready for the big reveal?’

  Her eyes are wide, the intoxication showing, then she turns back to Kallas, holds the knife to the side, so that the blade is coming out of the bottom of her fist, grabs either side of the blouse and rips it open. Beneath, Kallas’s pale chest, her small breasts in black lace.

  ‘Ooh, look at that,’ says Goodbody. ‘What d’you think, Chipper?’ She turns to give me another smile, and then looks back at Kallas. Now, the knife placed almost gingerly in the join between the cups in the bra, she pulls it tight, and then whips the knife through it.

  Her breasts are revealed, the bra falls to the side, and Goodbody pushes it beneath Kallas’s arms out of the way. I’m expecting her to turn, insomuch as I’m expecting anything, because fuck it, I’m feeling tired, I really am, and sleep would be so nice, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t turn.

  She’s held there for a moment, captivated by Kallas’s beauty, and then she reaches out, a tentative finger, and slowly runs it over the skin of Kallas’s right breast. Across the nipple, which does not react to the touch, and around and down across her taught stomach.

  ‘Jesus,’ mutters Goodbody. ‘I never looked this good in my life, even when I was eighteen.’

  She turns to look at me now, her pupils seriously dilated, the look on her face this strange mixture of hate and wonder.

  ‘How does it feel?’ she says. ‘To get so close, and yet –’

  The movement, when it comes, is quick, brutal, instant. Kallas lifts her bound hands, up, over Goodbody’s head. There’s time for the shock to show on her face, but that’s all. Bound wrists around Goodbody’s neck, Kallas uses the purchase to force herself up off the seat, and then her weight is on the minister, driving her back, then the two women are falling, and Goodbody smacks her head off the table and hits the ground with a thud, the knife skittering from her fingers across the floor.

  Kallas kneels on her back, pulls the chokehold tight, forcing her hands together behind Goodbody’s neck.

  The last thing I think, before finally blacking out, is that Goodbody is already knocked out or dead, but Kallas is here for the fight, and does not relax.

  And that is all I can remember.

  47

  ‘You’re like James Bond,’ says Harrison. There’s a flippancy to her words, but not her tone. ‘Seriously, what is it with you?’

  I smile, and discover that it doesn’t actually hurt to smile, which is good because it hurts to do pretty much everything else.

  ‘I do what I can,’ I say, weakly.

  ‘Most of us manage to solve crimes without too much drama... but look at you. Sex with as many women as possible? Check. Invariably end up in hospital? Check. Constantly on the point of getting kicked out of your job? Check... Bond. James Bond. You’re a piece of work.’

  Outside there’s one of Springsteen’s unbelievable blue skies. Inside, white sheets and magnolia walls, the antiseptic sterility of a hospital ward. I’m sure I usually get my own room in these circumstances. We must be making cutbacks. There are three other occupied beds, two old guys asleep, another bloke talking to his wife.

  I close my eyes for a moment, rest my head further back against the pillow. Lost a lot of blood, they say. Nearly bled out, they say. Stitches in my shoulder, on my legs, on my face. Going to have scars to remind me, and plenty of them.

  Mouth dry, reach out, lift the cup and straw without opening my eyes, take a drink, place it back on the table.

  ‘I think maybe I’ll be getting kicked out anyway,’ I say. ‘About time.’

  There’s a pause, a silence, the peculiar kind of silence that sounds like it ought to be filled by something, and I open my eyes.

  ‘Not what I heard,’ says Harrison.

  I straighten up, finally manage to prop myself a little further up in bed.

  Eileen looks as wonderful as ever. A heavy winter jumper – must be cold out – high neck, blonde hair down over her shoulders.

  ‘I’m sorry about the thing,’ I say.

  She holds the look. This is a conversation we’ve had before, earlier this year, previous years, a multitude of times. Feels a little different this time.

  One of these days, I always think, she won’t be so forgiving. I think it, but don’t really believe it. I think it, but there’s another thought – the narcissist’s crutch – that says everything will be fine. Sorry, so easily spilled from one’s lips, will be the cure-all.

  She doesn’t speak. She kind of nods, just a small movement. An acknowledgement that I spoke, but not necessarily an acknowledgement that the apology is accepted.

  That’s all I’m getting.

  She possibly thinks this isn’t the time to have the conversation, and I’m not man enough to start it. And anyway, what’s there to say? Words are meaningless. All that’s left is time, and the time needs to be filled with the guilty party – me – not doing what it was that’s created this atmosphere in the first place. Me, going days and weeks and months and years choosing to be a friend rather than an asshole.

  The prospects don’t look so great for Sgt Harrison and I.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ I ask, to fill the void.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘That I won’t be getting kicked out? The chief’s gunning for me.’

  ‘I believe the inspector might have come to your aid. Like Theoden turning up at Pelennor Fields.’

  Smile at that, but then, Theoden dies.

  ‘Kadri’s all right?’

  ‘Sure. Not a scratch on her. Looks like she can take care of herself.’

  OK, that was the nagging worry at the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t thought about it enough to have located it yet, but now that I hear Kallas is fine, my stomach relaxes.

  ‘She shouldn’t be protecting me,’ I manage.

  ‘She’s your boss, it’s her job.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘To hear her tell it, she would’ve died if you hadn’t been there.’

  I hold Harrison’s gaze, searching her eyes for the joke or the teasing or the disbelief, but there’s nothing there. Literally nothing there. Harrison is here, sitting by my b
ed because she feels she should be. It’s what friends do.

  I smile wanly, tiredness beginning to sweep back over me. Try to recall the evening. Which evening was it? Last night? The night before? Time is lost.

  Maybe Kallas is not wrong. If I hadn’t been there, perhaps she would just have been killed. There would have been no showmanship, no drama, the minister wouldn’t have had time to get drunk.

  ‘Is she dead?’ I ask.

  A moment, and then, ‘The vicar?’

  Go to reply, but the word stalls on my lips, and I nod instead.

  ‘No. Knocked unconscious. She’s in hospital, under guard. Not this hospital.’

  I want to ask what was going on, what was her motivation, but there’s nothing there. No more words to be spoken. Anyway, wasn’t her motivation clear? Revenge on a society that had failed itself. A society that couldn’t cope with inconvenience for too long. Here I am, hand raised, one of the many to blame.

  My eyes are closed. The sounds of the ward, of the hospital, of a distant road outside, blend slowly into one. I feel Harrison’s soft lips on my forehead and feel no more.

  WHEN I WAKE UP THERE’S someone standing at the window. Dark out there now, the blind is raised – though I’m sure I saw a nurse lower the blind at some point – and the lighting in the ward is low. Night lighting.

  He turns, seeming to feel that I’m awake, then he nods and comes to sit down beside the bed.

  ‘Hey,’ he says.

  ‘Hey,’ I reply.

  It’s hard to look at him. I’m not sure I can do it without crying. I don’t want to cry.

  ‘Pulled another one out the bag by the skin of your teeth,’ he says with a smile. ‘You have a way about you.’

  I make some kind of rueful noise as a substitute for words.

  I don’t know what to say. The last two months I’ve had no trouble talking to Taylor. The idea of him. Me and Dan, huddled over a bottle of vodka, talking through the case, talking about anything. He didn’t need to know what happened. He didn’t need to know my part in his downfall. No one did.

  And then I blurted it out, because that’s who I am, always totally fucking useless under pressure, always selfishly spewing forth the inner me – some fucking James Bond I’d be – and now it’s out there. The secret is revealed. And it’s not just that I said it to the minister, and not just that Kallas was presumably awake throughout and will have heard. It’s out there, dammit. That’s what matters. It’s not just Goodbody and Kallas that know, the Universe knows. Everyone knows.

  Taylor knows.

  I wanted to say to him when he was in hospital, but of course, of course, none of us could get to see him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ finally appears in my mouth.

  I open my eyes. He’s leaning forward, elbows on his knees, head down, and then he looks at me, feeling that my eyes are open.

  I want to say it again. I want to be able to give an explanation, except there isn’t an explanation to be given. I am sorry, that’s all. And I’ve said it. Anything else would just be talking, talking for the sake of it. And it wouldn’t be about him, it would be to make me feel better. Just like the entire conversation itself.

  ‘You don’t have to apologise,’ he says after a while.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Tom...,’ he begins, then he smiles, his eyes with an old, familiar look, ‘I’m not going to blow sunshine up your arse or anything, but we were both out there doing our thing. Doing our jobs. I was in contact with people all spring, all summer. God knows where I picked it up. And sure, it might have been from you, and you shouldn’t have come to work, and I know you came... I know you came because you didn’t want to sit at home any longer, and there was selfishness there, but Jesus, son, you’re not alone. Won’t say everyone was doing it, but thousands were.’ A beat. ‘Tens of thousands.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘I did it, you’re dead. That’s all.’

  ‘And I might be dead anyway.’

  A sob chokes in my throat, but I manage the words, ‘That’s a pretty big fucking might, by the way,’ and we both laugh. Laughing at bringing the word fuck to the discussion, like it’s actually funny anymore. Like me saying ‘fuck’ could possibly be funny, ever.

  ‘I don’t have anything for you,’ says Taylor. ‘It happened. Life goes on, or not. We all die at some point. You will one day, and the way you’re going, one day pretty soon.’

  ‘I can hope.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  He doesn’t answer. We hold the gaze for a while longer, eventually the look slips away, and now we’re just two guys sitting together, him staring at his hands, me staring blankly at the end of the bed, in the half-light of a hospital ward in the middle of the night.

  ‘You’ll come back,’ I say eventually.

  Maybe there’ll be a time when we can get past this, move on, back to the old conversations.

  ‘I can’t,’ he says.

  I wait for the addition, the words tagged on to the brutal truth. This isn’t real. None of this is real.

  We look at each other again. I’m so tired. Tired and sad, and it feels so real, like it has a physical form, this amorphous mass sitting on me, crushing me, and all I can think to do is sleep, because that’s the only way I can ignore it, the only way for it not to be here.

  ‘Will you be here when I wake up?’

  Feel like a kid asking his dad if he’ll stick around. Watch me while I’m sleeping.

  ‘No,’ he says.

  Swallow. Choke it back. Choke back the hurt. Choke back the self-loathing, that other entity with whom I exist.

  ‘That’s just the way it is.’

  Those words are spoken, they’re there, somewhere, in the air, hovering over the bed, existing somewhere in the room, and I don’t even know who said them. Maybe it was me, maybe it was Dan. Someone said them. Last thing I’m aware of before I fall asleep. The last thing I remember having been said when I wake up.

  AND WHEN I WAKE, IT’S morning, and the chair beside the bed is empty, and the first thing I think about is that Taylor is dead, which is the same thing I’ve thought every morning for the last two months, and the pain of it is so visceral, so aching, so real, that I can barely move.

  There’s a nurse, and she’s young. Tall, beautiful, Somali origin maybe, but her accent is finest Glasgow.

  ‘You feeling all right, Tom?’ she says. ‘You were restless in the night.’

  epilogue

  Soon enough, back at my desk. Compiling the case. Ducks in a row, everything that needs to go to the procurator’s office.

  Detective Inspector Kallas did her bit. Told her tale. Seems she neither lied nor even exaggerated, but made the point that if I had not suspected the minister, had I not therefore gone to the church, then the minister would not have been alerted by the alarm app on her phone, allowing her to apprehend me and bring me along to the death party in the old abandoned village hall on the Halfway Road. And then, more than likely, Kallas herself would just have been killed without ceremony, along with Gill Blair. In short, were it not for my actions, she would be dead. Shorter; I saved her life.

  One way of putting it. And all true apart from the bit about me going to the church because I suspected the minister.

  Either way, my job got saved. Again. Always landing on my feet, said the chief, which was weird, because I thought I always ended up on my knees.

  Sometimes the accused sing and sometimes they never open their mouths. The Rev Goodbody is, mundanely, somewhere in the middle. Boy, how much of myself I see in her own self-contempt.

  She’s already admitted guilt, and is cooperating, so there’s that. There will be no drawn out court case, no day-after-day trial, the details poured over by the media.

  The church in Scotland is floundering, we all know that. Was before this started, and now, in the midst of a pandemic and several thousand deaths, and all the associated crap that’s gone with it, it’s p
ossibly received its death knell. The slow decline just got that bit faster. Nothing to be done but pray, and we all know where that gets you. And so the Reverend Goodbody, faced with week upon week upon bloody week of funerals and death, finally cracked. Took her revenge. Identified people in the area who she held responsible, either for specific deaths or just in general, and went after them. Tony Blair was just a random victim on the path, just a someone who got in the way, as Kallas could have been, had I, the hero, not turned up to inadvertently affect events.

  Goodbody selected Lord as her first mark. Sucked him in with a faked flirtatious personality. Bizarrely ended up in his attic, neither intent nor pre-planning involved on her part. Over dinner he’d said it was the only place in his house he’d never had sex. So they went up there to fuck. Men... Well, he got fucked all right. The only time in all my dealings with her where I’ve seen any kind of light in her eyes, was her retelling of having to creep down from the loft in the middle of the night, trying not to wake the wife. Called herself a cat burglar, even got the giggles when she invoked David Niven in The Pink Panther.

  Why leave the masks? She wanted everyone to know why the victims deserved to die. Why then construct the cover story around the movie? She initially said she thought it was fun, then retracted that because, perhaps, she realised it made her sound psychotic, rather than pissed off and driven to ill deeds by circumstance. She had another distraction lined up, a link between the members of a choral group, who had, it transpired, secretly rehearsed in the choirmaster’s house. The choirmaster had been fined for holding the meeting, though he never got the chance to pay the fine. Dead now. So are three other members of the group, with who knows how much mayhem spread around the community as a result.

  The minister was onto it, the next hit list in her diary. So, hey, look at us, we saved some more lives...

  Kallas and I, stuck on the same awkward merry-go-round, are stopped for coffee on the way back from the procurator’s office in Glasgow. Her husband came back when he learned of her brush with death. Brought the kids. Happy family. I have no idea if he’s staying.