Blood Tears (12 page)

And I have a horrible feeling I phoned Theresa last night. That would mean I’d broken the golden rule. She’d made me promise from the very beginning that I don’t phone her. She would phone me if and when she wanted to see me. It suited me just fine. Until now.

As the alcohol kept out what the nuns might have called “dark thoughts”, it replaced them with thoughts of Theresa.

I can’t remember what I said, or who I spoke to. Shit.

And Allessandra Rossi. What was all that about? What does she see in Peters? She doesn’t strike me as the type to go for the older man. He’d be delighted if everyone knew about it. Recently divorced, an attractive young woman interested in him. The fucker will be really pleased with himself. We can only hope she’s just using him.

The boss calls me into his office. I fall into a chair. He looks like he’s ready for a police promotional photo-shoot: like he’s already been airbrushed for the occasion.

‘You look like shit, Ray.’ One trimmed eyebrow is higher than the other.

‘Yeah. Couldn’t sleep last night,’ I mumble. He leans towards me, grimaces and sits back in his chair.

‘And you stink of booze.’

Memo to me. Don’t drink when you’re working the next day. Nausea swirls in my stomach and flows up my throat. Another memo to me. Don’t fucking drink ever again.

‘Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again.’

‘So. What developments have we got then?’ he asks. I want to laugh at his use of the royal “we”, but my head is too sore.

‘It’s a struggle to find a strong enough connection with the deceased and any of the suspects.’

‘What about this chap in Aberdeen?’

‘Yes.’ I pretend to think, it hurts my head too much to actually do it. ‘He’s a possibility. There’s definitely something wrong there.’

‘Ray!’ he claps his hands. ‘Get with it. We’ve a murderer to catch. You can suffer a hangover in your own time. Don’t bring it into work with you.’

Bastard.

I walk along the corridor towards my office. Is it just my imagination or are people staring at me? They’ll be delighted. Ray McBain, wonder-boy, has slipped from his pedestal. Why were you so stupid? I berate myself. Fuckwit.

‘Sir.’ It’s Allessandra Rossi. She’s actually pulling at my sleeve. I stop and turn to her. Slowly.

‘Yes, Allessandra.’ I half-expect Peters to be with her, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

‘There’s a name on the Bethlehem House list.’ She steps back from me. Presumably the smell of booze and vomit is too much for her of a morning. ‘I think it might be quite interesting. Carole Devlin.’

A face flips forward from my memory-bank. Black NHS spectacles and brown, stringy hair. She was a good bit older than me and a Donny Osmond freak. Used to scream, actually scream, when he was on the TV. On one occasion she pretended to faint.

Allessandra is still talking. ‘We’ve been going on the assumption that it’s a man. What if the “woman” seen with the deceased actually was a woman?’

‘Then she’d need to be built like the proverbial brick shit-house to subdue and kill our guy.’

‘S’possible.’ She inclines her head to the side.

‘True. We should never discount anything.’ Right, McBain. Police work. But my head is so sore. ‘What’s come up on the system?’

‘Serious Assault, sir. And get this. The victim was a man.’

‘Was it a domestic?’

‘Well… yes. They weren’t married. Just living together. She claimed it was self-defence.’

‘Anything else on her record.’

‘No…’ she pauses in thought. Her head to the side again. ‘DD was the arresting officer. We can ask him if he remembers her.’

On cue, Daryl Drain stalks across the corridor to the toilets. He turns and faces us. Senses our attention.

‘What?’ he asks.

‘Carole Devlin?’ says Allessandra.

‘Who?’

‘Carole Devlin.’

‘Assault?’ asks Drain.

‘Yes.’

‘What can you tell us about her?’ I join in the less than elaborate discourse.

‘Nutter… Look guys, can I go for a piss first?’

‘What do you mean “nutter”?’ I ask. I realise through the fog of exhaustion and pain that I could have some fun here.

‘Just that. Something not quite right.’

‘What do you remember about the case?’

He’s all but holding his groin in his need to go to the toilet. ‘I… can this wait for two seconds?’

‘Was it a domestic?’ asks Allessandra realising where I’m going with this.

‘Read the report, for chrissake.’

‘Was it a domestic, Daryl?’ I ask.

His body is facing the toilet door, straining towards the urinals. Only his face is pointed in our direction. ‘Yes.’

‘Were they married?’ We edge closer to him.

‘No… look… give us a…’ He looks like he’s going to start hopping from one leg to the other.

‘They were living together then?’

‘Aye.’ The fingers of his left hand are wrapped round the door handle, those of his right are travelling towards his zipper.

‘What damage was done to the victim?’ I ask.

‘He was in a bad way… look can this not wait for two minutes?’ His eyes are watering.

‘How bad was he?’ Allessandra asks. I’m struggling to keep my face straight. Allessandra on the other hand looks like she would be a great poker player.

‘She battered him with a…’ he stops. ‘You bastards.’ Ignoring our laughter, he pulls open the door and all but runs towards the urinals.

‘That was funny.’ I chuckle. And groan. Laughter makes the pain in my head throb at an even greater intensity. Allessandra is leaning one hand against the wall.

‘Did you see the look in his…’ fresh laughter peals from her lips. ‘That was brilliant.’

Heads pop out of various rooms along the corridor as people wonder at the hilarity. Seeing only Allessandra and me, they all close their doors.

By the time we recover Drain is back.

‘Very funny.’

‘Prostate problems?’ asks Allessandra.

‘I’m not that old.’ He looks at me as if for the first time. ‘Jesus, Ray. You look like shit. If I didn’t know you better I’d think you were on the sauce last night.’ He leans towards me and sniffs. His eyebrows jump three inches higher. ‘You were…’

‘Can we get back to work now?’ I’ve had enough camaraderie for the moment.

What can I say? Touchy subject. I walk into the office, followed by the two of them. I fill a glass with water from the cooler.

‘Devlin?’ I face Drain.

‘Yeah. I remember it quite well. Any women I’ve come across in that situation have tended to act in the heat of the moment. But she waited until the poor bastard was relaxing in the bath before she went at him with one of his steel, toe-capped boots.’

The classic equalizer. Wait until the larger individual was in a more vulnerable position and then strike. 

To be on the safe side, Rossi is driving. I’m probably still well over the alcohol limit. She takes a corner too neatly. My brain swims within my skull. Much more of this and I’ll be sick.

‘What’s the fucking rush?’ I ask.

She shoots a glance at me, ‘Sorry, sir. I forgot you were feeling… fragile this morning.’

‘Touch of the flu.’ I examine the other cars in the traffic as the obvious lie stumbles from my mouth.

‘Right.’ In a disbelieving tone.

We’re on the M8 headed towards the east of the city. Impressive buildings line our route. Here and there cranes stretch their frames into the sky. Glasgow is a “happening” city, I read daily in the papers. One of the top shopping destinations in the UK. Oh happy day. Used to be the Second City of the British Empire. Examine how our priorities have changed.

I look beyond the buildings towards the sky. Nature is reminding us that whatever we come up with, she can trump it with a simple light show. The sky is a bright, light blue. For once the clouds are sparse. Those that do appear in the sky are in the formation of a shoal of fish. Their underbellies are aflame from the rays of the sun, as it begins its journey for the day.

I think about Theresa. She hasn’t called for a few days. I surprise myself, find that I miss her. I think about her smiling. One eyebrow is raised. Her lips are plump. Ripe. Opened in laughter. Her issues are so… normal. Whether or not to go out and work? Whether to wait for the sales or buy that coat now. Whether to cheat on her husband that night?

Her arm is across my shoulders. I can feel her lips pressed against my cheeks, her breath damp on my skin, like a prelude to the connection. But there’s a shadow behind her. The shape shifts in a slight breeze. Reforms and shifts again. I can see the outline of a head and shoulders. Wide shoulders. The arms that hang off them taper down to the full stop of clenched fists.

‘Do you want to go for a bottle of Irn Bru?’ asks Rossi.

‘What for?’ I’m dazed by the dream. And a little disturbed. Was it a warning about Theresa’s husband, or am I just seriously fucked up? ‘Irn Bru?’ I try to enter the conversation with Allessandra.

‘Best flu cure known to man.’ She examines me. ‘You all right?’

‘How does it work for a hangover?’ I ignore her question. She’s a bright girl; I better get my act together. Don’t want her asking too many questions.

Teeth coated in sugar, stomach filled with gas, I knock on Carole Devlin’s door.

The neighbourhood looks like it’s never seen any good days. The only cars on the street look like they are held together with rust. Some of the windows are boarded up. A couple of residents have defied the collective state of mind and worked on their gardens. Everywhere else grass and weeds flourish.

If the path to her door had any more cracks on it, it could be described as crazy paving. The door opens. A round face appears. Her cheeks are pockmarked. I pulled a dead body from the Clyde once. Its face had more colour than hers. Carole’s hair is brown and lifeless, hanging round her ears like a proclamation of her lack of care. She is wearing a baggy black T-shirt and a pair of black leggings. We introduce ourselves. She turns and walks into her house without a word.

Her living room comes as a surprise. The furniture looks fairly new and the table pushed against the wall reflects enough to base a close shave on.  A door at the end of the room leads into a kitchen. It is open, I can see a half-built cupboard. Arranged on the floor is an array of tools.

She reaches a leg behind her on to an armchair and drops on top of it. Once seated she pulls her T-shirt over her outstretched knee with strangely pink hands and looks at us. Challenges us.

‘What do you want?’

I had taken a calculated gamble coming here. If memory serves me well, Carole is at least five years older than me. Chances are I hadn’t even registered on her childhood radar. Her eyes skim past my face and move to Allessandra. Good, she doesn’t know me. But I remember her well.

The attraction was purely linguistic. She could speak French. I wanted to learn. A Spanish boy and his pretty sister were attending our school temporarily. They were exotic to a ten-year-old and French was close enough. The nuns were horrified. Carole Devlin was a bad influence on a young boy like me, they said. She’ll lead you right to the gates of Hell, they said. I ignored what they said in the interests of international relations.

‘DI McBain and DC Rossi. We just want to ask you a few questions about Paddy Connelly,’ I say.

‘Who?’ Her eyes flicker behind the lens of her thick glasses.

‘He was a caretaker at Bethlehem House.’

‘Never heard of him.’ She frees her foot from her perch, then crosses her legs and her arms.

‘He was murdered a few weeks ago.’

‘Shame.’ She would have shown more emotion if I told her the dry weather wasn’t going to last.

I turn my head to the kitchen. ‘Doing a wee bit of DIY?’

‘Who needs a man when you know the business end of a screwdriver?’ She aims her humourless smile at Allessandra.

‘You’re better than me.’ I go for the nice cop routine. ‘I’d rather get someone in to do it for me. I’m hopeless.’

She just looks at me. Like I’m completely without worth. I feel uncomfortable under her gaze and I’m lost for an explanation. Usually an interviewee displays some kind of emotion. It can range across the spectrum from admiration to hate, mild irritation to fury. But her eyes reveal nothing. Only her movements prove a person inhabits the shell.

‘So you have no recollection of Paddy Connelly?’ I fill in the silence.

‘No.’

‘How was your time at Bethlehem House?’ asks Rossi.

‘Oh you know. Great. All that was missing was the balloons.’

‘Eh?’

‘It was like living in a 24-hour party. Just fucking lovely. A pile of balloons would have just made it perfect.’

‘There’s no need for sarcasm,’ says Rossi.

Devlin squeezes up the sides of her mouth in a formation loosely based on a smile. Her expression reads more eloquently than the spoken word would have. Ask a stupid question.

‘So, it wasn’t very nice, I guess,’ I say.

‘No.’

‘Paddy Connelly was a caretaker in the home while you were there. You say you can’t remember him.’

‘You callin’ me a liar?’

Allessandra butts in, ‘Do you live here on your own?’

‘Mostly.’

‘Who stays with you?’

‘Why you askin’ that?’

‘Answer the question, please.’

‘Go look it up in the voters’ roll.’ She looks around herself at the photos that sit on every available surface. A boy in various stages of his life smiles out at us. There are two women in some of the photos, Carole and another woman. She is thinner than Carole. Her cheeks are sunken almost to the extent of being able to count teeth through the impressions they make on her paper-thin skin. Her eyes are dark and anxious and at odds with the beginning of the curl of a smile below them. It looks like clever camera work, putting the mouth and eyes of two different people together. She appears in most of the boy’s younger photos.

‘Good looking lad,’ I say.

‘Yes.’ Usually when you compliment the offspring of even the most taciturn individuals they respond. Not Carole. Not even a flicker.

‘What age is your son?’ There’s a photo I take to be quite recent. He looks in his late teens. I consider the street outside and the type of individual who makes it his hunting ground. I don’t know if I’d like a son of mine growing up in an area like this.