DS Hutton Box Set

by Douglas Lindsay

  'Working on the suicide slash murder up at the Old Kirk,' I say. 'I'll need to check with Taylor. What's up?'

  'Need a few hands for the paper storage bust in Halfway.'

  'Sure,' I say. 'I'll speak to Taylor.'

  'Cool,' he says. 'Thanks. I'm just looking for feet on the ground. We've got the paperwork covered, just need bodies. Shouldn't be more than an hour and a half.'

  I nod. He pauses as if there's something else he wants to say, then turns back into his office. Maybe he's been told to include me in his team as often as possible to aid my recovery. It's reasonable that they probably think I need to recover.

  Taylor emerges from his office and snaps his fingers at me. Snaps his fingers. I jump up like the obedient little poodle.

  'Connor's office,' he says. 'He wants to speak to us about Maureen.'

  We walk quickly down the short corridor. The door to Connor's office is no more than twenty yards away, although fortunately he rarely emerges, so we don't see too much of him.

  'DI Dorritt ask you about the raid tomorrow morning?' Taylor says as he knocks on the door. A sharp 'enter' comes from within.

  'Yep.'

  'It's fine,' he says. 'They need the bodies. I'll take care of this for the morning.'

  'Thank you, sir.'

  We go in and sit down. Connor lifts his head from whatever paperwork he's studying. Financing, probably. He's your classic, modern-day superintendent. His days will be filled with paperwork, finagling budgets and moving people around to fill holes and questioning whether we can get away with using cheaper toilet paper. The management of doing more with less. Crime will cross his desk in the same way as a report on vehicular repair expenditure.

  'Update,' he says, by way of introduction. God, he's so warm. Touching really. I just want to reach out and hug him.

  Taylor and I haven't spoken for a few hours, and I immediately start wondering whether or not I want to pass on everything I was going to tell him in front of the superintendent.

  'Balingol has completed the autopsy,' says Taylor. 'He now believes there are possible signs of Mrs Henderson having been restrained, which could tie in with her potentially being forced to take the sleeping tablets. However, he does concede that it's also possible it occurred during coitus.'

  I do wonder if he could have said that without actually saying it.

  'I spoke to the daughter and she seemed genuinely surprised at the notion that her mother might have been having sexual relations. I wondered about not mentioning the age of the lover, but of course there was always the possibility of her having some young guy that hung around, that the daughter presumed helped her with the shopping or some such. Anyway, she claimed not to know of any young men in her mother's life, and I think was appalled enough at the suggestion that she'll strike it from her mind as most definitely untrue.'

  As soon as Taylor finishes talking, Connor slides his chin over in my direction and nods it by way of instructing me that it's my turn. He seems to be able to move his chin without moving the rest of his head. I wonder if he's ever considered going on Britain's Got Talent.

  Picking up on his demeanour while Taylor was talking, I decide that the superintendent has us in here so that he can do the talking, not the other way round. He has an instruction to pass on to us, and has no interest in what we're bringing to him.

  'Nothing,' I say.

  I get a side-glance from Taylor, but I'm pretty sure he'll have the measure of the boss.

  'Fine,' says Connor, then he leans forward on his elbows. 'I've been speaking to one or two of the members of the congregation.'

  As soon as he says that he raises his hands to silence any objection that might be coming. Obviously wary of stepping on his investigating officers' toes. 'Listen,' he continues, 'I've been attending the church for the past year now, since we came down from Aberdeen.'

  'You knew this woman?' asks Taylor. His tone is a bit snippy, perhaps because Connor never mentioned this when Taylor spoke to him earlier.

  'There are several hundred members of the congregation,' says Connor. 'I don't know everyone.'

  'She appears to have put herself about a bit,' I say.

  They both give me a look for the interjection, Connor more so because of my implied disbelief.

  'Obviously, I mean,' I say, 'she wrote to a lot of people, had plenty to say. Not, you know, that she had sex... with... you know, a lot of them.'

  'Are you finished?' snaps Connor.

  Another glance at Taylor, then I turn back to the superintendent and lower my eyes. Time to acknowledge the authority of the supposed alpha male.

  'I wasn't aware of Mrs Henderson, nor of her proclivity for writing letters of complaint as I was never in receipt of such. It would appear from my friends that those who did receive them tended not to discuss the matter as so many found the letters, and Mrs Henderson herself, so utterly distasteful.'

  'You would've thought she might've found you a worthwhile recipient of one of her angry missives,' I chip in. Don't know what's got into me today. I usually sit before Connor in depressed and oppressed silence. Perhaps today I'm seeing him as disingenuous, whereas usually I just see him as dull and jobsworthy.

  There's something about disingenuousness. Barefaced lying and thuggery and crack dealing and murder, the kind of things we come across in this job, you get used to. You understand it. But the artifice of disingenuousness pisses me off. And it's always a guy in a suit.

  'I can assure you, Sergeant Hutton, that I had no contact with that woman.'

  Hmm. The Bill Clinton defence. That usually works.

  I hold his eye for a moment, then once again lower my gaze to the desk. It's a reasonable point, of course, since we've already found the folder of all Maureen's outgoing correspondence on the church business, and there were no letters to Connor.

  'Gentlemen, the church has been through enough trouble in the past year without this getting out. There's been a horrible amount of infighting, and the congregation has just melted away. The last thing we need is an implication that one of our Christian family has murdered another.'

  'You want us to brush it under the carpet?' says Taylor. Nice edge to the voice. I approve.

  'Of course not,' he snaps back. 'If this is a murder investigation, then it's a murder investigation, and that's how it's going to be. The last thing we need, however, is a scandal around the town and around the church if all we're dealing with is a suicide of a mentally deranged old woman. It's the firm opinion of many of the people to whom I've spoken that she was showing clear signs of senility. Perhaps no one suspected she might commit suicide, but how can any of us even begin to understand what a woman in her condition might do? She was clearly unbalanced, and I wouldn't even be surprised if what we discover in the end is that she was doing this to implicate someone else. All part of her mischief-making.'

  Taylor has gradually eased himself back in his seat, the tension leaving him.

  'What do you want us to do?' he asks, his voice now having lost its edge. Disappointing.

  'I want you to hold onto your hats,' says Connor. Fuck's sake. 'I want you to not get carried away and think this is your new big case, something to help salvage the reputations you've both flushed down the toilet in the last two years. Until such times as you have absolute proof that Mrs Henderson was murdered, you will deal with this case as a suicide. You will ask questions as though it was a suicide, you will treat it as a suicide, you will go to bed tonight believing it was a suicide, and if the press come asking, you will tell them you are dealing with a suicide. Do I make myself clear, gentlemen?'

  Oh yes, you make yourself clear.

  You're a wanker.

  9

  Another night in the pub. This time, at least, Taylor has joined me for a while. I have my vodka tonic, he has his pint. Two miserable old middle-aged sad sacks chewing the fat and grumbling about the world.

  'We could do with finding the lover,' he says. 'Maybe he's not involved, but there might've been
some pillow talk.'

  'You ever go to church?' I ask.

  'When I was a kid,' he says. 'Sunday school, all of that.'

  'When'd you stop?'

  'Don't remember. Teenage years some time. When they stopped making me. You?'

  'Not really,' I say. 'I mean, I've been in the odd church, but never did Sunday school or any of that shit.'

  'You're going this Sunday,' he says.

  'To church?'

  'Indeed.'

  'Oh, good. You coming? Will we sit incongruously together at the back? If we wear work clothes, they'll probably think we're Jehovah's come to steal their congregation.'

  He smiles after taking a long drink from his pint. I've already got the feeling that he's only staying for one. I can't believe that he's got much more to go home to than I do, but he seems more at peace with it.

  I wish I could be at peace. There's probably some nineteenth century German philosophical shit about achieving that when you're dead. Or maybe that's biblical shit.

  'One of us is going to St Mungo's, the other to St Stephen's. We're going to blend in.'

  'Undercover?'

  'Not necessarily. If you get talking, I'm not looking for you to pretend that you're someone you're not.'

  'Well that's my Sunday morning sorted,' I say.

  'Like you were doing something else.'

  'Sleeping off the night before. Three hours, is it, something like that?'

  'The service? An hour. It's all very civilised, the Church of Scotland. They don't expect much for your membership, although murdering a fellow congregational member is probably off limits.'

  I drain my glass and mutter, 'Fuck,' just because I can. Glance over at the bar. Taylor looks at his watch.

  'Got a lot of interviewing to do tomorrow,' he says. 'You, me and Morrow, splitting it up. Need to get around as many of the parishioners as possible from all four of the original churches.'

  'You're saying I should go home, have a cup of tea and a biscuit, watch some crappy TV documentary and get an early night?'

  He downs his pint and sets the empty glass on the table, then smiles in his paternal way.

  'Maybe you should do an Open University course or something. Study philosophy, some shit like that. It'd be good for you.'

  What the fuck?

  'Really, no,' I say. 'Fair enough if you don't want me turning up at work in the morning, breathing fumes of fire all over these whiter than white church-going bastards, but don't go... Jesus... philosophy? Seriously? It's a fucking shit world, full of sadness and loneliness and melancholy. Then you die. Period.'

  Getting a bit annoyed, which is stupid. He means well.

  'I know,' he says, 'yet people get by. They enjoy themselves. They find the little things. People get jobs, people fall in love.'

  He's about to turn into Julie Andrews.

  'Thistle are in the Premier League,' he continues. 'The Scotland team's getting itself together. There are always new women to sleep with, even you haven't gone through them all. Crime's down, believe it or not. Serious crime, even the petty shit. Economy's on the mend. Exam grades are up, university results are up, there's less teenage pregnancy, there's talk of a new Scottish enlighten—'

  'Most of that's shit,' I say, finally cutting him off. 'We know crime isn't down, it's just reported less because people are so disaffected with us, which is fair enough because we've been cut back so far we are total shit. There may be the odd positive economic indicator, but the country's in trillions of pounds of debt, which one day soon is going to bite us all on the arse and we're going to be totally fucked. Thistle are getting gubbed most weeks, Scotland are still shit, and the only reason there's been a drop in teenage pregnancy is because of online porn.'

  He's been smiling at my rebuttal, but at that last one he laughs out loud.

  'Seriously? Only you, Hutton. How do you work that out?'

  'Firstly,' I say, turning and looking at the bar, because I don't care what he says, I'm having another one, 'there's lots of talk about the malign effect of porn on teenage girls. But I bet there are thousands of teenage boys scared to show themselves naked to a girl, because all they see are those monster porn guys with fifteen-inch erections who make them feel incredibly deficient in the cock department, and so they sit in total inadequacy in their rooms watching porn, rather than getting out there, getting girls pregnant.'

  'Hmm... has someone done a study on that?'

  'And secondly...'

  'Here we go,' he says, and now he gets to his feet.

  'The ones who are having sex have learned how to do it from the porn channels, so there are all these kids who are about to ejaculate inside the girl, then at the last second they withdraw and the girl's thinking, what's with that, that's incredibly sensible, then the kid starts pulling his pudding furiously beside the girl's head and she's like, what the fuck are you doing, and he says, I'm going to cum all over your face, and she's like, NO YOU'RE FUCKING NOT, and then blam, he does it anyway, and she's like, what the actual fuck, you moron, and he's like, that's what happens! That's what you're supposed to do! This is how you have sex! I've seen it on triple-fucking-X! And it's fucked up, man, and a bit mental, but on the plus side... nobody ever got pregnant from snorting semen.'

  Taylor is laughing and shaking his head as he walks out. I watch him go and then turn and look at the bar.

  Vodka tonic, bag of peanuts.

  10

  There's a small house attached to the halls beside the Old Kirk, and in the house lives the church officer. Kind of the gatekeeper figure, you know, if this was some kind of epic, Arthurian quest. But since it's just a bleak little house attached to the halls of a church that's on the verge of becoming an ex-church at the top end of town, gatekeeper might be a little too grand a title.

  Mary Buttler, early fifties, I'd say, and an air of common sense about her. The husband answered the door, didn't invite me in. She came and stood on the doorstep for a while, then offered to show me round the church.

  Across the small car park, through the padlocked iron gates to the approach path to the church. We pass the centuries-old head stones. Three locks on the church door.

  'Get much trouble up here?' I ask. 'Graffiti, kids getting drunk in the graveyard, that kind of thing?'

  Spent a couple of hours this morning on Dorritt's paper bust up the road. Not far, in fact, from the fourth church in our current little disaster. Didn't have much to do with the operation. I was there to add to the numbers as we were trying to impose ourselves. Everything came off well. Must admit, overall Dorritt impressed me in a way I wasn't expecting. Smooth, clinical, carried the whole thing off with competence. Lacking in the kind of panache that I bring to a procedure, you might say, but no one got shot, none of the suspected criminals even tried to leg it. They were impressed with the show of force.

  Me? I got some fresh air and didn't have to do any paperwork.

  'Comes and goes,' she says. 'We thought there might be more once the church stopped getting used full time, but there's still enough going on round here. There's the occasional wedding or a memorial service and, of course, the halls are used all week round for one thing or another.'

  She fiddles with the locks, takes her time to open, and then we walk into the church. She hits the light switches inside the door. A short entrance hall leading to a corridor running the width of the church. Doors at either end open into the nave, with stairs at one end leading, presumably, to more seating above. The gods.

  She turns to her right along the corridor, then opens the door to the nave of the church, ushering me in first. It's large, painted in pastel colours, the natural light in the room entering through stained glass windows.

  'Would you like the lights on in here?' she asks.

  'No, it's fine.'

  I stare up for a moment, and then walk slowly down the aisle. Each row of seats is split into three, with two aisles creating a centre phalanx of seating. I walk into the body of the church, and then take a seat
. Long, old-fashioned pews, with thin red cushioning. I sit and stare up at the chancel. The pulpit, set low down, the lectern with a large Bible open on top, a long table, the baptismal font, seating for the choir behind, organ pipes, although the organ is not situated next to them, and then at the back, a high, and pretty damned impressive, stained glass window. Twenty feet tall maybe. Maybe more. Beneath are two pots of red flowers.

  The silence is almost ear-splitting. I don't speak for a while. Mary Buttler sits across the narrow aisle in another pew. She doesn't look at me, and I don't look at her. I stare up at Jesus in the window. Suddenly I feel that I could sit here all day. I can't sit alone in silence in my own home for more than thirty seconds. I need noise, I need distraction. But this. This is a silence you can crawl into and surround yourself with. Let it envelope you, and shield you from everything outside. And everything that's inside as well.

  No wonder people come here. It doesn't matter whether you believe that the guy up there was the son of God or just some geezer who had a way with words. That's not what it's about. And no wonder fewer and fewer people are coming. No one sits in silence anymore. We all need noise. We all need music and chatter and videos and movies and TV shows and the internet and Facebook and friends and the sound of our phone pinging with an update on something that we haven't had an update on for upwards of three minutes.

  I don't think there's anything on earth, or otherwise, that could convince me to believe that Jesus was the son of God, or that religion wasn't just invented as a means to control the population, but I could be converted to sitting in this kind of silence.

  No idea how long we sit there, but I realise when I start to think about creating a little shrine in my own home where I could go and sit and meditate while sitting cross-legged beneath the picture of the Thistle side that beat Celtic in the '71 League Cup final, that I'm coming out the other side of my brief moment of awakening.