Blood Tears (2 page)

‘Hey, big guy, fancy another beer?’ Daryl addresses me.

‘Aye.’ I hold up my bottle and grin. Then I look along the table at the team. I see Jim Peters hunched in his seat. Peters is renowned for being first out of the taxi and last into the pub.

He positions himself last in the ‘whose round is it’ queue, hoping that by the time his turn comes back round everyone is too pissed to notice. He’s not getting away with it tonight.

‘Is it no' about time that Jim bought a drink?’ I look along the table.

With a glare in my direction Jim stands up. He shrugs, attempting to appear good-natured.

‘Somebody follow him and make sure the fucker actually spends some money,’ I say. Raucous laughter along the table.

Peters gives me a look from the bar. I wink and raise my bottle to him. Memo to me. Watch out for DS Peters.  Ten years older than me and nursing an unhealthy dose of professional jealousy, I’m sure. Passed over for promotion several times, his file told me.

Resents me, his body language shouts.

I’m bored now. I could go to Theresa’s early. Though I’d better think of an excuse. Shouldn’t need one, I’m the boss. Besides, my presence after a certain point in the proceedings will only put a dampener on things.

By this time Peters has carried over his round.

Harkness smiles, ‘The bastard’s just spent twenty quid.’ A cheer goes round the table. Jim shrugs his shoulders, attempting to enter into the spirit of it. But anybody with a sober eye on them can see he’s gutted.  Excellent. But, unfortunately it’s a lesson I doubt he’ll learn.

I stand up, ‘Listen guys, sorry to break up the party, but some of us need our beauty sleep.’

‘Two years should be enough to do something about your cross-eyes then, Ray,’ Dave Harkness pipes up from the end of the table.

I clamber across a row of limbs, ‘Very funny.’

‘Who is it tonight then, Ray?’ asks Daryl Drain. He and I have come up through the ranks together. I would trust him with my life. But not my wife, if I had one. ‘Would her name be Susan, Marie or Rosa?’

‘Or Roger?’ asked Peters, just loud enough for everyone to hear. I am aware of the gossip. People love to speculate, don’t they? If you’re not married and don’t have a live-in partner by a certain age, then your sexual orientation is up for discussion.  I’m in my early thirties, well past the stage when I should have an indentation on my ring finger. Well past the stage when questions would be asked. And well past giving a fuck.

I turn to Peters and pout, ‘Would it make a difference, Jim?’ I ruffle his hair. Everyone laughs at his obvious discomfort.

‘That’s sexual harassment, you know,’ he complains.

‘You wish,’ I answer and push the back of his head. He says nothing, merely raises his eyebrows as if he’s keen to stay in the humour of the moment, but he can’t quite get there.

 At least the owners are making an effort with the female toilets, thinks Allessandra as she fingers the small bowl of pink and purple pot pourri. Shame it doesn’t distract the eye from the cracked mirror and the rust-stained sink.

After all this is a ‘polis’ pub, the landlord tells her. Handy for regional headquarters, and there are more and more lovely young ladies like her joining up all the time, he says, his jaw hanging open in a smile like the drawer from an open till. Maybe if he wanted to increase future profits, he should get in one of those kari-coki machines. And she could be his star turn.

Aye, Allessandra had laughed, and said that’ll be the day his profits fall lower than a tart’s knickers.

He had begun to smile at what he thought was going to be a funny comment from a welcome punter. It froze half-formed on his face when the young lady in front of him didn’t match up to his internal picture of ladylike.

While washing her hands Allessandra considers her face, slightly bent out of shape and given a sepia tint by the ancient mirror. She’d never be a contestant on
Britain’s Next Top Model
. Not that she wanted to be; she’d rather sit through one of her mother’s coffee mornings at St John’s Roman Catholic Church. She shudders at the thought. All those cupcakes and good intentions.

The boys used to call her
kipper lips
because of the naturally bee-stung look she had. As a teenager she spent too many evenings in front of a mirror, practising how to speak while trying to pull her lips in. It didn’t work. Just made her look slightly demented. She was also too tall for the boys in her class, ten pounds too heavy and way too much was going on behind those eyes. Her dad told her that from the moment she pushed her way out of her mother’s womb there was a knowing look in her eyes. A look that often unnerved people. A look that Allessandra used to good effect. And boy, had she found the right job to do that.

What a world of difference this was from being in uniform. No more standing on point. No more splitting up domestics. No more searching female shoplifters. If she had thought she would have become that intimate with the female half of the criminal world she would have taken a quick course in gynaecology.

Her mother reacted to the news of her joining up as if Allessandra had spat in her Earl Grey. It was bad enough that she had squandered her university education in a series of meaningless, minimum-wage jobs, but to then choose to come into daily contact with some of the planet’s most undesirable people was more than her mother could stand. She had set off round the west of Scotland’s scone country, with the other, very nice, daughter, Sheila, in search of calm. And found nothing but a burgeoning ulcer and a particularly nice carrot cake at a bookshop/café up by Loch Lomond.

Approval had been gained when Allesandra married Roberto. He was from a good Scots-Italian family and he was something in banking. Approval was then lost when after five years of marriage there was no offspring.

A round of laughter barrels in the door. Allessandra is instantly reminded of her father. If he was here he would have been the cause of it. A man who had to stoop at every doorway, he was equally large in character. His quick wit always provided him with a humorous retort and his meaty hand was always ready to heat someone’s shoulder with comfort.

Strange to think he had died more than half of her life ago, just before her sixteenth birthday. A hit and run, they were told. The driver and the car were never found.

How Allessandra misses him. Even now she hears his profound bass in the warning bark of a dog, glimpses his face in a crowd and at odd moments smells the cheap Avon aftershave she and Sheila gave him each Christmas.

‘My favourite,’ he would boom and scoop both giggling girls up in the air on one arm.

The police did everything they could to find the driver. Well, they would, for one of their own. Every man at the funeral swore to Allessandra’s mother that they would find the bastard who did this, even if it took until they retired.

Her mother only nodded her head and offered a weak smile to every threat of retribution. She had known this would happen. She expected the knock at the door every night of her eighteen-year marriage and when it finally came it was almost a relief. Now, she could relax.

Dad used to tease her mother into smiling; each curve of her lips his trophy in a hard-fought campaign. He used to say she worried too much because she loved too much. Allessandra worked it out at age thirteen: her mother just didn’t know how to be happy.

He is the reason Allessandra is here and she will do everything she can to make him proud of her. It had been a secret source of worry as she grew up that she knew her future was in the police force, but she knew Mother would go book herself into the nearest sanatorium at the mere mention of it.

Finally she found the courage. She wasted enough time behind the counter at Frasers, building up the strength to defy her mother. Now that she is in the job, she plans to prove her wrong and work her way up the career ladder. It doesn’t matter that she is a woman in what is still mostly a man’s world; she is going places. She simply won’t allow the glass ceiling or the innuendo to hold her back.

Allessandra dares to dry her hands on the nearly white and blue towel hanging from the plastic box on the wall and considers her workmates. By and large they are a good crew. There are a couple she could learn a lot from, Daryl Drain and Jim Peters maybe. DI McBain, certainly, but she will have to keep a distance from him.

The resemblance wasn’t immediately apparent. It was only after watching him talk for an hour at her first briefing session that the height, the girth and the voice wove their spell. It was like looking at her father.

 Theresa’s house is on the other side of Glasgow, in Newton Mearns. The house is in darkness when I get there. It’s only just gone eleven o’clock. Fuck it. I’ll take the risk. I give the taxi driver the amount that bleeds into the cabin from his meter. And a little extra for keeping his mouth shut, following my blunt request. Sometimes I can keep up with the most verbose taxi driver. Tonight I just want to sit in silence and savour the flavour of another successful case.

Some sicko murdered a prostitute, but not before he had smashed her face so badly even her own mother wouldn’t have recognised her.

The killer was a respectable pillar of the community. A city councillor, no less. We were ordered by the brass to get the job done. But do it quietly. The City Fathers didn’t want a scandal in the papers.

The problem was the wife gave him an alibi. Presumably she didn’t want to lose out on the comfortable lifestyle. Apart from his position on the Council, he was a senior lecturer at Glasgow University, a sizeable income to be lost there then.

But then a suspect from another case fingered him. A suspect I knew would come up with the goods. A suspect I leaned on until…

Then we accidentally let the wife see a photograph of the murdered prostitute and she quietly and calmly rescinded her alibi. Said she must have been mistaken. She was at a friend’s that night, had too much to drink and slept in the spare room.

For as long as I work in this job I don’t think I’ll ever get used to human nature and the way we respond to things. We had just proved to her that her husband was a vicious killer. She didn’t shout. She didn’t cry. She simply changed her mind; a knot of muscle working away in her jaw the only outward sign of emotion. As we led him away in the squad car she stared impassively from the large bay window of their Victorian townhouse. One arm tight round her waist like a belt, the other seesawing a cigarette back and forth to her mouth.

I throw a stone at Theresa’s bedroom window. Moments later, her head pops out. Her voice a harsh whisper.

‘McBain! You trying to get me a divorce? I’ll be right down. Don’t make a sound.’

I hear the sound of bare feet pad down the stairs. The door opens.

‘In.’

‘I have often walked down this street before,’ I sing, willing my voice to sound like Nat King Cole. I step in the doorway.

‘Ray, shut up.’

‘But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.’ I can barely sing for laughing. So much for Mr Cole.

‘Ray!’

‘All at once am I twenty storeys high, ’cos I’m here on the street where you live.’

She closes the door behind me and stops me the way she knows will be most effective. Her lips are hard on my mouth, her tongue a slow slip against mine. She pulls away.

‘Needed that,’ she grins, looking beautiful in that tousled, just awake way.

‘Billy will be gone for some time, I take it?’

‘What day’s this… Wednesday?’ She lifts some hair back from her face and smiles. ‘He’ll be back Friday.’ Her smile promises and I feel my heartbeat quicken.

I take her hand and move towards the stairs, ‘Excellent!’

In the bedroom, I make to throw off my clothes.

‘Shoes only, for now,’ orders Theresa.

‘Huh?’

‘You know what we do first.’

‘Right,’ I spot the incense already burning on the bedside cabinet. Theresa converted me to the art of meditation, by the simple expedient of proving that sex was outstanding afterwards.

Mr Pecker at attention, I sit cross-legged, leaning against the headboard. I’ve been practising this on my own, so my body recognizes the position and relaxes almost immediately. Well, apart from a certain part of my anatomy. It takes a little longer to curl back into its wiry nest.

After what feels like moments, but will have been at least fifteen minutes, Theresa’s hand touches mine and I hear her voice sing my name.

But just before this, a fragment of a recurring dream blooms in my mind. All I can see is a white feather. All I can hear is my panicked breath. Then it begins to snow feathers. My excitement dims. Then it’s rekindled by Theresa’s voice.

‘Okay, convent boy, let’s be having you.’ Theresa is one of the few people who know about my childhood. She loves to bring up my former status as she takes me to bed. From the grin on her face as she says it, she enjoys a slightly perverse thrill at the idea of sleeping with someone whose formative years were spent under the watchful eye of a group of nuns.

Afterwards, I’m lying in post-coital bliss. If someone were to hold a gun to my head, I doubt if I could move.

‘Hey, mister,’ says Theresa, ‘don’t even think about falling asleep. You’re out of here before the neighbours start to stir.’

‘But, Theresa…’

‘Don’t “But Theresa” me, sunshine. I don’t want Billy to get even a whisper of what’s going on.’

‘So why let me in, in the first place?’

‘You know why.’ She pokes me in the belly for emphasis. ‘I can’t resist your masculine charms, you sexy big hunk of blubber.’

‘Gee, ta.’ The thought of Billy finding out fills me with dread too. Not because I’m afraid of the guy. I’m more afraid of this relationship having a clearer definition. An illicit affair suits me quite nicely, thank you. For now.

‘So, you got your guy,’ Theresa slides her hand across my chest and squeezes, ‘Well done, big man,’ moving the subject on to safer ground.

‘Yeah… pleased to get that sick fucker.’ This is an understatement. ‘How’s your life?’

‘Oh you know… great, wonderful and amazing,’ a deep sigh, ‘if you want to live in Groundhog Central.’ When Billy proposed to Theresa, he promised to set her up in a beautiful house in a posh part of the city. He also promised that she’d never work again. Theresa loved the idea of being a kept woman. Doing lunch and shopping were her ideal. The reality turned out not to be so enjoyable.