DS Hutton Box Set

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Taylor gives him the look. See? That’s the look he usually saves for me. It’s as though he’s already moving on, even though the moving on has so far only been taking place in my head.

  ‘Anyway, a lot of people are coming up with ideas, it results in a lot of work, and so far...nothing...’

  ‘Anyone talking about Clayton?’ I ask.

  Morrow holds my gaze for a second, looks at Taylor, I follow, Taylor nods at him, and so I look back expectantly. Sounds like someone’s been talking.

  ‘DCI Collins took me into his office this morning,’ he begins, ‘and we talked about Clayton for an hour. In fact, we talked about you for an hour mostly. He wanted my take on it all, on why you might have been getting sent the e-mails, on what I knew about Clayton, whether I thought it really was going to have been him who sent them...’

  He stops talking, although his tone suggests there’s more to be said. However, he really has just stopped, then when I raise my eyebrows at him, he shrugs.

  ‘It’s not unreasonable,’ I say, ‘so I don’t mind you talking about me. I don’t even care what you said. Is someone taking it on as a result?’

  ‘Hard to say at this stage. The DCI didn’t want me taking it on, that’s for sure. As to whether he’s given it to someone else... He certainly sounded sceptical about you’re level of involvement, and seemed to want to think the e-mails were directed at the station, and therefore at the Police Service as a whole, rather than just you.’

  ‘I hope you said that was bullshit?’

  ‘I queried why anyone would randomly pick you out of everyone in the Police Service. However, it was like... his attitude was almost like someone seeing a ghost, or something inexplicable occurring. There’s no rational explanation, or you don’t like the only explanation there is, so you choose to park it to one side and pursue a completely different line of inquiry. One based on something more concrete, or at least, more palatable. That’s the impression I got, but it’s not to say he’s definitely dropped the ball.’

  Turns to Taylor – they’ve obviously already had this conversation – looks back to me.

  ‘That’s all I’ve got,’ he says. ‘Thought it might be of use, but otherwise, you know, everyone over there is just pissing in the wind.’

  Taylor gestures to acknowledge Morrow is doing all he can. Long sigh.

  Odd phrase, pissing in the wind. Usually it’s used to refer to doing something that’s not getting anywhere. But when you piss, all you’re trying to do is void your bladder. Pissing into the wind achieves the objective just as well as pissing into a toilet. So it’s not that it doesn’t achieve anything; it achieves what you’re looking for, but just causes unnecessary mess. So, for example, if you see someone scrambling eggs with their fingers, that might be a situation where you could say, you’re pissing in the wind there, mate. Not so much this kind of getting-nowhere situation.

  I notice Taylor watching me, and manage to snap out of it. He’s going to say something, and then dismisses it, turns back to Morrow.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, indicating with a head movement for him to leave. Morrow nods, turns, and walks past me out the door, closing it again behind him.

  Taylor sits in silence again, elbow on the desk, rubbing his right eye. Other hand starts to drum.

  ‘You were working a different case this afternoon?’ he asks.

  ‘Attempted murder. Investigation, proof, and confession ultimately all came within about three minutes of each other. It’ll take the social services longer to sort out the leftovers.’

  He taps his fingers. I know there’s further conversation about Clayton to come, but will leave it to him to start it off.

  ‘OK, back to the more pressing matter,’ he says. ‘If they’re going to be ignoring Clayton... We’ll do what we can until such times as told otherwise. I’m interested in this doctor of yours. Do some more digging. Find out if she’s telling the truth about this BMA investigation. Doesn’t sound right, does it?’

  ‘You mean, saying she had a sex addiction is almost like something she made up just for my benefit?’

  ‘That, Sergeant, is exactly what I’m saying.’

  Can’t argue. I more or less thought the same thing as soon as she said it. At the time, however, I was happy to believe.

  He glances at the clock. ‘Make a start this evening, but don’t work it too late. Try and have something together by tomorrow lunchtime...’

  ‘Right,’ I say, and I’m out the office.

  AN HOUR LATER I’M SITTING in the bright shining offices of the practice run by EmMed International in the West End, waiting to be summoned for a chat with a Dr Cairns, the head of the medical practice which hosts our Dr Brady.

  Dr Cairns is a woman in her late sixties, I’d say, judging from the photograph, with an air of ball-busting confidence about her. I’m standing with my hands in my pockets, slouching more than likely, looking down on the street below, when the door to the small, antiseptic waiting room opens, and I get the call.

  The squirt from two days ago is still here, regarding me warily as he collects me, then leads me along the short corridor. He opens the door into Cairns’s office, gives me the final disdainful look with which we police are so familiar – it’s a bit like the Queen thinking everywhere smells of fresh paint – and I walk in to the small office of the doctor in charge. She looks up from a file, and offers me the seat across from her wooden, leather-topped desk.

  The place has a nice sense of order, the smell of old books, shelves of them on either side. From the large windows you can see the university, although she sits with her back to the view. Her guests get the privilege. There are three family photographs on the desk, one single one of the husband, plus two different families of five.

  ‘Sgt Hutton,’ she says. ‘You wanted to speak about Dr Brady?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, settling into the seat. Haven’t been offered a cup of tea or, indeed, any alcohol. Must be pushed for cash. ‘I realise you won’t be able to tell me much, but she’s involved in a case we’re working on at the moment and –’

  ‘Not the Bob Dylan Murders?’ she says.

  There is what the ancients would have described as a pregnant pause.

  ‘The what?’ I finally say.

  ‘I saw you on the news, Sergeant.’

  ‘I never referred to them as the Bob Dylan Murders.’

  ‘No,’ and there’s a nice smile on her face, ‘I know you didn’t. But that’s what they are, even if no one’s saying it.’

  ‘How... I mean...’

  She laughs lightly.

  ‘I’m a Dylan fan, as are you, I daresay.’ I nod, but it’s only confirming something she was absolutely sure of in any case. ‘Every time I hear about a suicide on the railway lines, I always think, ah, yes, blood on the tracks. Thought the same last week, of course. And then, over the week as these murders started piling up... I don’t know, something just clicked.’

  Fuck. She got there faster than we did. If I’d thought blood on the tracks right away, this thing could have been over by Wednesday. This here is a real Dylan fan. Taylor and I look like rank amateurs beside her.

  ‘Then when you started your press conference with the words before the flood, well...,’ and she makes a small hand gesture to complete the sentence.

  ‘You haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I thought someone would’ve picked up on it. That did make me wonder if it was just me, but it seems you’ve confirmed it.’

  ‘We can’t have...,’ and I just let the sentence go.

  ‘You don’t want the media talking about the Bob Dylan murders?’ she says. ‘Don’t worry, Sergeant, your secret’s safe with me. But someone, I would think, will work it out eventually.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘So, what did you have? Someone killing people after the manner of Mr Dylan’s album titles, and you had to work this out? Your two or three mentions in your oth
erwise seemingly irrelevant press conference were your way of letting the killer know you’d made the connection?’

  Jesus, she’s seen right through us.

  ‘You don’t want to come and work for the police?’ I say, and she laughs.

  ‘I might be of some use if all the crimes you investigated had a Bob Dylan angle, but otherwise, I think my talents better serve me here.’

  ‘You must have seen him in concert,’ I say.

  ‘Five or six times.’

  I look surprised.

  ‘I see. You’ll have seen him over a hundred, I’m supposing,’ she says.

  ‘Well over.’

  ‘Well, each to their own, Sergeant. I’m old enough to have seen Mr Dylan in his heyday. These days, these fifty or sixty concerts a year he plays that all you younger Dylan junkies overdose on so you can swap stories about how many you’ve attended, like guys in a bar comparing penis size...,’ and she finishes the sentence with a dismissive wave. ‘Mr Dylan just ain’t what he used to be. I’ll keep my memories where they are.’

  ‘You weren’t at the Albert Hall in ‘66? No wait, Manchester? Were you at Manchester?’

  In actual, technical terms, this isn’t really any different from jumping a witness on the desk, in that the job’s equally not getting done, but chatting about Bob at least has a more wholesome feel to it.

  ‘No, but I saw him in Glasgow in between.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Actually he was rather good. I got his autograph too.’

  ‘No way. You still got it?’

  I automatically look around the walls of the office, expecting to see the small, framed piece of paper, the legend’s scrawl preserved behind glass for future generations.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t really possible to keep it.’

  She smiles again, and I’m so detached from my detective’s brain – largely because I’m sitting here like some sort of brain-dead fanboy, who’s lost all sense of reason – I have no idea what she means, so ask the question with a couple of raised eyebrows.

  ‘He signed my thigh,’ she says.

  ‘No fucking way,’ I say, quickly holding up an apologetic hand at the language.

  ‘It was Mr Dylan, you could hardly be surprised.’

  ‘Holy crap.’

  She takes a moment, then looks to the side. I follow her gaze, and find she’s looking at the clock sitting on the mantelshelf above the filled-in fireplace.

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘You’re right. Dr Brady...’

  Probably best. I mean, how far away was I there from asking if I could see the actual thigh that was signed by the legend himself? Not very far, to be honest, and if there wasn’t such an air of grown up respectability about Cairns, I’d probably still have a go at it.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I’m curious how she comes to be involved in these murders. We haven’t seen her in over a week, so I do hope she’s all right.’

  ‘I saw her yesterday. She was fine. Well, physically she was fine, I’m not sure...’ and there the words drift off.

  I’ve come in here to talk about Brady, but it doesn’t mean I actually know what I’m going to say, of course. Slightly thrown, not so much by Dylan fandom, but by the fact Cairns is on to us, that she knew what Clayton was thinking even before we did.

  ‘I may not be able to answer all your questions, Sergeant, either ethically or because I just don’t know, but please feel free to ask and discuss anything. You can be assured it won’t go any further than these walls.’

  ‘Right.’

  Take a second, get my head in the right place – like that ever happens – and then, ‘How long has Dr Brady worked here?’

  ‘A little over two years. She’d been working in Germany for, I’m not sure how long, I think several years, and she applied for this post while she was still there. She’s been with us since she arrived back in Scotland. I do remember her getting in from Frankfurt on a Sunday evening, and starting work on the Monday morning.’

  ‘And she’s well remunerated for her work?’

  A pause, while she thinks this one over.

  ‘I think her wages here are not really on the table of the discussion, but I do know she was in a very lucrative practice in Frankfurt.’

  ‘Why did she come back?’

  ‘That’s a personal matter for Veronica. She left her family behind in Frankfurt. A husband and daughter. I imagine there was some sadness there.’

  ‘Does she see them? You know if she travels to Germany much?’

  ‘I believe so. In fact, I rather presumed that was where she went last week, and that her sudden request for time off work was perhaps as a result of some family crisis, or that some unexpected opportunity had arisen to spend time with her daughter.’

  Eyes lowered, thinking this through. Not the time for it, though. Just need to be gathering information, try to put it all together.

  ‘We saw her yesterday, and also on Sunday, so no, she’s not in Germany.’

  ‘And she was all right?’

  ‘Like I said, physically, yes.’

  ‘If you could tell me the way in which she might be linked to your murder investigation, I might know better if there is any way in which I could be of help.’

  ‘We have a suspect. The name isn’t in the public domain, at least, not in terms of this investigation, although he is someone who’s been involved in police matters before. Michael Clayton.’

  Leave a gap to see if the name rings a bell, but there’s nothing on her face.

  ‘Dr Brady’s story for the past week seems a little thin, and we’re not sure about it. But she says she’s been seeing Mr Clayton as a client for some time, and she’s also been seeing him as a private patient every day for the past week.’

  The brow furrows, Cairns leans forward on her elbows.

  ‘I don’t know the name, Clayton, but I don’t know the names of all the clients we have here at the practice. But that does sound suspicious. Just give me a second.’

  She lifts the lid on the laptop that’s been sitting, closed, beside her, and I look past her head, out at the spire of the university, while she checks up on the names of Brady’s clients.

  If this isn’t straightforward, if this isn’t a simple matter of Clayton having a psychiatrist, then why did Clayton put us on to her? Why would he help us?

  Help us? He wasn’t helping. He was just using her as a messenger, to further taunt me.

  There he goes, tying me up in knots again, and he’s not even in the room.

  She closes the laptop, head shaking.

  ‘No, there’s no Michael Clayton. Is it possible he was using a different name?’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘but then, we asked Dr Brady about him, and she didn’t react. If he’s registered with you under a different name, she at least knows what his real name is, and she didn’t mention any other.’

  ‘Well, that makes no sense. Perhaps you were right to come and see me.’

  ‘She also says she’s under investigation from the BMA.’

  The brow furrows again.

  ‘What for?’

  Don’t immediately answer, partly because of my own part in this issue, then finally I internally roll an eye or two and get on with it.

  ‘Having sex with her clients.’

  Cairns looks surprised, then says, ‘Good grief. Which ones?’

  ‘All of them.’

  ‘We are talking about Veronica here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A second while she processes this, then finally the shoulders lift.

  ‘There is definitely something fishy about all of this, Sergeant, I’m afraid. I obviously don’t know the level of involvement of your Mr Clayton in these crimes you’re investigating, but if he’s got Veronica involved, then I urge you to get to the bottom of it with all speed. She has been an asset to this practice, and there has never been the slightest hint of trouble or of an investigation from the BMA.’

  We hold the gaze, then her eyes drift to the clock aga
in.

  ‘I think perhaps you have some investigating to do,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. One more thing. You know if Dr Brady has any family in the city, close friends, anybody like that I could speak to?’

  ‘Sorry, Sergeant, she’s a good doctor, but we are in fact quite a disparate practice, even though we’re all confined in this small, old building. I’m not sure she even has any close relationships with any of the other staff here. I’ll ask around in the morning and let you know.’

  I push the chair back.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor, you’ve been very helpful. I must... maybe some day we could meet socially to talk about Bob. I’d love to hear about the concert in ’66.’

  ‘Give me a call, Sergeant, you know where to find me.’

  42

  Back into the office, almost eight by the time I get there. Need to find out about Brady’s husband and child back in Germany, but that they exist, and that they’re in Frankfurt, is all I’ve got. Taylor’s not in his office, Morrow back at Riverside or has gone home for the evening, the superintendent’s door is open, his chair empty.

  Check of the watch, wonder how long I’ll give it, wonder if it’s too late to call Germany. Whatever, it’s never too late to speak to someone, but it might just be too late to actually get hold of anyone useful.

  I Google the doctor, and it seems odd it’s taken any of us two days to do it. And there we are, 763 results (0.447 seconds), and the next hour or so will take care of itself.

  DON’T GET HOME UNTIL well after eleven. Stopped for a Chinese on the way, lemon and ginger chicken with fried rice, pop it on the table as I walk past, heading for the fridge. Also dived into the off-licence for a vodka and wine top-up.

  Found what I was looking for a couple of hours into my late evening stint back in the office, nothing but the duty constables for company. A report in German on a missing child. Dr Brady’s missing child. No way that’s a coincidence.

  I called Germany, everyone I spoke to spoke English, which was a bonus – and naturally, spoke it better than me in a couple of cases – but I was calling late enough our time, and it was obviously an hour later with them, and I didn’t get hold of anyone familiar with the case. Alarm clock will be set, and I’ll be in early to crack on with it.