by Tony Black
Henderson was beginning to think he’d been had. It seemed the diary covered a period of about six months. After a month or so, she’d joined the gymnastics team, had a new coach who had said she had promise. There were a lot of entries about the gymnastics classes, the training and the after-school club. It bored Henderson.
He got up and took a cigarette from his packet of Club, sparked up.
What was she going on about with this diary?
Was she taking the piss?
He thought Angela had pulled a fast one; that she had used the diary to shut him up, to get away from him. She was probably at the bus station now.
‘The fucking bitch!’
He returned to the small book, scanned it faster, looking, searching for whatever it was that might have happened to her. His attention was roused now, because if there wasn’t something there — something worth his while wading through all this schoolie nonsense — then he’d been had.
Near the end of the diary Henderson noticed the handwriting had changed. It stopped being florid, it lost the big looping curls and smiley-faces above the ‘i’s. It became a scratch, sloped hard to the left and failed to keep a straight line, even though the diary had lined pages.
The entries changed too.
He read:
It was gymnastics class again today. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up, the Creep has started to act very strange since the night he tried to kiss me. I told him I didn’t want to do it, but he’s said that if I don’t then I won’t be on the team any more and he’ll tell everyone that I am a slut.
Henderson’s eyes roved over the page, tried to find another mention of the Creep.
He told me that I was the best gymnast he had ever coached and it would be a shame to throw it all away just because I was being immature. I’m not immature, I just don’t want to let him touch me. He said I wouldn’t know what I was missing and that all the other girls in the squad would think they were lucky to be in my position.
Henderson found himself tensing up as he read the diary entries. He crossed his legs, watched his ankle sit at a jagged angle to the rest of his body.
‘The dirty old fucker,’ he said.
Who was this Creep? he wondered. He’d heard about pervs, they called them beasts inside. They were scum, the lowest of the low. Beneath contempt. Hated. This guy was a teacher as well, a square peg
… the thought mangled Henderson’s mind.
He raised the book higher, swapped hands and massaged his left wrist for a little while. He couldn’t quite take in what he was reading, but he was sure it was a juicy story. He wanted to see if she did do the dirty old bastard.
The handwriting started to deteriorate even further now.
I told him no and I told him to stop but he didn’t listen. He forced my top over my head and started to bite at me. I was crying and pushing him away. I remember trying to scream but I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs and then he was on top of me and breathing hard. His breath smelled, I wanted away. I dug my nails into his face and I saw the blood run down his cheek, it made him jerk backwards and he touched his face. He said something to me, called me something but I couldn’t hear what because I was running…
Henderson was startled by a knock at the door; he put down the diary.
It was getting dark in the flat and he put on the main light as he edged past the mattress and crossed the narrow corridor to the door.
‘Who is it?’ he yelled.
There was no reply. He bent down, flicked open the letter box. He could see two legs in blue denims. As he scanned up he saw they were attached to a young man.
‘What do you want?’ said Henderson.
‘Er, I was looking for the lassie, y’know, Angela…’
Henderson straightened himself, he saw the youth was no threat; he opened the door. ‘Oh, aye.’
The young man stepped back, clearly not confrontational. Henderson looked him up and down, he was about to speak and then he suddenly felt a blinding pain strike in the side of his head; he fell to the floor.
‘How’s it going, Hendy?’ A large amorphous black mass loomed over him. ‘Forget about our wee arrangement, eh?’
Henderson started to regain his focus, realised he was bleeding from the mouth. The youth was walking away from him, counting cash as he slowly moved towards the stairwell. Henderson felt his collar grabbed, he was jerked to his feet.
‘Money y’cunt, I want it.’ A finger was pressed in his chest, it was attached to a bulky arm that led to a shaven head with a face like a pug; he recognised it belonged to one of Boaby Stevens’s boys.
Henderson nodded, rapid. ‘You’ll get it, tell Shaky it’s coming, eh.’
The finger moved from his chest to the flesh beneath his chin, pressed so hard it threatened to appear in his mouth. ‘I’ve no fucking doubt about it, Hendy. What you holding?’
Henderson emptied his pockets. His words were strangled as they came, ‘Just this.’
The man in the black leather jacket stepped back, roared, ‘That’s fuck all… It’s two-grand you’re in for, not fucking…’ he counted, ‘Fifty-five sovs, that’s not paying a day’s interest is it?’
Henderson edged towards the flat, spoke, ‘Look it’s coming, I’ve got a decent payoff on the way. Just give me a few days, eh, pal.’
The pug leaned forward, ‘I’m not your fucking pal.’ He drew a fist, planted it in Henderson’s stomach. He fell to the ground, coughed once and then vomited hard.
‘I’ll be back, and you better have the fucking money.’
Henderson’s vision blurred as he watched the man stride down the hall, he was so broad he almost filled the corridor. At the start of the stairs, he turned, pointed to Henderson and said, ‘Don’t forget now… your fucking life depends on it!’
Chapter 12
DI Rob Brennan knew there was a dark shadow which followed him around; it was the ever-present pall of his failure. It clung to him like the grim scent of death that pervaded the morgue, seeped into your clothes, your hair and had colleagues remarking, ‘Have you been to the dead place?’
Brennan knew he should have gone further, he knew he deserved it. He deserved better than having to answer to the likes of Benny, but then, he knew it was never about what you deserved in the ranks, in life. With each year that passed he felt the shackles of his station tighten. He would never rise above DI, he knew it; and he knew why. It was because he was real — a real person. He knew himself and he knew he wasn’t prepared to compromise on who he was for anyone — even if it kept him down.
Brennan saw the types that rose — Wullie had called them floaters, ‘Shit doesn’t sink, son,’ he had said. Floaters were the careerists and corporate gimps, the glory hunters, the desk jockeys, the bull-shitters and whorers, the Napoleon complexes and the, sometimes barely, socialised psychopaths. None cared about the job; none knew how Brennan felt.
Once, he had read about a native American Indian chief who had been confused by the way white men looked. He couldn’t understand why their brows were so furrowed, their eyes stared so intently, showing their need, their intense craving for something more than they already had. He thought they looked insane. The comment had struck a chord with Brennan, not because he was overawed by the chief’s insight, but because he had given voice, put into words, what Brennan felt inside himself: everyone around him was insane. The game of life was hardly worth the candle. It wasn’t that he rated himself a higher being, or felt embayed with some inveterate wisdom of his own, not at all — Brennan knew he was every bit as likely to be pulled into the maelstrom. A loss of focus, a weakness, giving in… any one of a thousand daily challenges not met and he would be in there, in the drink with all the floaters, swimming for his life.
Brennan sat outside his home for the best part of an hour, staring at Sophie’s window and waiting for the light to go out. When it did, the flickering of the television screen continued and Brennan smiled to himself.
�
�Don’t leave it on all night, love.’
He took another draw on his Embassy Regal and flicked the ash into the tray on the dashboard. He looked at the keys for his home in his left hand. Joyce had changed the locks, but she didn’t need to. He would have gone quietly. On the same keyring were the little keys he carried for his handcuffs; he lifted the metal ring and slid them off. For a moment he stared at them; he remembered the first time he’d put cuffs on someone, it was a drunk after Glasgow Rangers had played Hibs and he had chased the lad up Easter Road before pinning his arms behind his back. It had been a disaster; after getting one of the cuffs on he had failed to get the second one tightened in time and the drunk had lunged at him, swinging the open cuff and taking a lump of flesh out of his eyebrow.
Brennan grimaced with the memory, he leaned forward, checked in the rear-view mirror to see if he still had the scar. It was there; they were all there. He wondered how many scars he couldn’t see. It was the ones on his soul that worried him the most. He knew he was thinking too much about the past, and that was never a good sign.
Brennan stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray, opened the door and stepped out. He held his keys in his hand and wondered about mailing them through the letter box; he thought better of the idea, he didn’t want to alert anyone to the fact that he was there, least of all Sophie. It would be too painful to have to explain why he was collecting suitcases of his clothes from the garage, why her mother — his wife — couldn’t even look at him, never mind speak to him. He bunched the keys in his fist and proceeded down the driveway.
It was his property, his home and yet he felt like an intruder there now. He paused in the driveway; the building sat grey and weary against the night sky. He didn’t feel welcome there; he knew he had crossed a chalk line with Joyce and there was nothing else to do now but leave. He paced towards the garage door and opened up; at once he saw his two dark cases sitting in the middle of the floor. The sight of them caused his heart to sicken, he raised a hand towards his face and brushed the edges of his mouth as he slowly exhaled. A sharp, dramatic gasp followed, and then he placed the bunch of keys on the workbench and lifted the cases.
On the way down Corstorphine Road Brennan’s thoughts felt like splinters in his mind. He knew his marriage was over, he had no desire left to fight for it; it somehow felt like the end of yet another long journey; one that had promised a great deal and yet failed to deliver on almost every front. A lot of his life had been lived in expectation, and so much of it had been met with disappointment that he almost felt like laughing at the naivety of his youthful dreams and hopes.
‘Get a fucking grip, Rob,’ he said.
Princes Street had been opened again. He followed the thoroughfare to the end and snaked down Leith Street towards the Walk. He had secured a studio flat in Montgomery Street, it was a temporary measure he told himself.
‘The most burgled street in Edinburgh,’ had been his reply when he was informed of all that was on offer.
The agent hadn’t argued, ‘It’s all we’ve got.’
‘Take it or leave it?’
A shrug.
He took it.
As Brennan parked up he looked down the street towards the Walk; he knew Wullie was down there, not far away. For some reason the thought gored him. He didn’t know why that should be at first and then he remembered a visit to Wullie soon after his retirement; he recalled how shocked he had been at the state of the place, and the state of him.
Brennan smirked, ‘Partners in crime again, eh, Wullie.’
He took a recent purchase, a bottle of Macallan, from the passenger seat and placed it in the pocket of his overcoat, then got out of the car. At his new front door Brennan lowered his cases, ferreted for the keys the agent had given him earlier.
The Yale fitted in the lock and turned easily. He went inside.
The flat had been mis-sold; it was a bedsit.
There was only one room, about three-quarters the size of the living room he had in Corstorphine. In one corner was a sink unit with a small white boiler above it. A grey plastic draining board leaned against the wall next to the stainless-steel sink. Beside that was a heavily-bracketed shelf with a Baby Belling cooker. Brennan walked over, opened the door, it came away in his hand.
‘Well you’ve seen better days,’ he said. He put the door back, ‘Mind you, haven’t we all.’
He turned, scanned his new surrounds. There was a large window, covered with a set of psychedelic seventies swirl-print curtains. Brennan shook his head; he could see a street light burning through the thin fabric. In one corner was a bed, without bedding, and in the other an old couch that looked like it had been emancipated from a skip. He went over and patted the cushion; a cloud of dust rose into the room — little particles of effluvia were illuminated in the orange glow of the street lamp.
‘Fucking hell.’ He put his hands on his hips, stood firmly on the balls of his feet. ‘What a kip house.’
Is this what he had come to? Is this what his forty-one years of life had amounted to?
Brennan didn’t know where to look next; even as temporary accommodation, it couldn’t have been any worse.
He spied a foldaway table and two chairs, walked over and opened out the table. He removed his overcoat, then his jacket and loosened his tie. As he sat down he reached for the bottle of Macallan and a cup from the drainer. Just about everything in the room was within grasping distance.
He poured out a good measure of the whisky and started to roll up his sleeves; after the first sip he grimaced, then smiled.
‘Well, at least the company’s good.’
He delved into his briefcase and removed the blue folder with Fiona Gow’s name on the front, opened up.
On top were photographs of the victim. Fiona Gow had been a pretty girl; she had short straight blonde hair, she had been described as ‘leggy’ by the press.
‘Poor lassie,’ he said.
He leafed through a few of the pictures, until the scenes of crime shots appeared and then bunched them together, removed them from the file, and placed them face down at the corner of the table.
The girl had been a hairdressing apprentice, had a day-release class once a fortnight and was said to be ‘popular’ in the case notes. She was also described as a bit ditsy, and no one could remember her ever having had a bad word to say about anyone. She seemed the epitome of the girl next door. The murder seemed utterly pointless, unless she had been targeted at random.
Brennan scanned more of the notes, there were further details on her schooling — Portobello Academy — her social status, she went clubbing on the weekends. A
forensic serology report identified the presence of blood on her body that wasn’t hers; it was a rare group: B.
DI Jim Gallagher seemed to have talked to just about everyone who had ever known the girl, but had turned up very little that was going to be useful to Brennan.
‘Where’s the pull, Jim?’
Nothing in the notes indicated a cohesive investigation, it was all perfunctory. A couple of local sex offenders had been called in, interviewed, but neither had the blood group B and both had supplied alibis for the time of the murder. They were released and that was as close as the squad had got. As far as suspects went, that seemed to be it.
Brennan leaned over on the table, took another sip of whisky. He felt his brows start to ache, he rubbed at his forehead. Something bothered him; he reached back to his jacket, removed his mobile phone and called Gallagher.
Ringing.
‘Hello, DI Gallagher.’
‘It’s Rob.’
There was a stalled breath’s silence on the other end of the line, ‘Hello, Rob.’
Brennan toyed with the idea of demanding a sir, let it pass. ‘I’m going over your file on Fiona Gow here…’
Gallagher cut in, ‘Oh aye, definite links I’d say.’
‘You would, if you were angling to take the case off me, Jim.’ Brennan let his remark sting. ‘And you are, aren�
�t you?’
Gallagher wheezed, ‘Look, it’s nothing personal, Rob…’
‘ Sir.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll have the proper honorific, since I am leading this investigation.’
‘Yes, sir…’
Brennan knew he’d made it clear that he had Gallagher’s number, felt content to change direction. ‘Anyway, this file… a bit light isn’t it?’
‘Well, the lab reports are with the Chief Super… And there’s a profiler’s report on my desk but, truth is, we never really dug up that much.’
‘You’re not kidding, Jim.’
The line fizzed, then, ‘Well there would be a reason for that, which I think you know.’
‘Enlighten me.’
‘I think we have a serial killer on our hands, and they don’t get that tag because they’re easy to find, sir…’
A car revved on the street outside, Brennan put the phone to his other ear, ‘Nothing in this life comes easy, Jim. We’d have a damn sight more serial killers if it wasn’t for the likes of us. But let’s not get carried away with the terminology — Pettigrew’s meeting us at the morgue tomorrow at 7 a.m.; get yourself down there and let’s see what he turns up.’
Chapter 13
DI Rob Brennan had reached the stage where it no longer mattered what life threw at him. It couldn’t affect who he was any more. There was a time, he still remembered it, when life’s defeats and disappointments — the hurts and the devastations — felled him. It all seemed strange now — why? He was still here, after all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. None of his woes had killed him; killed a part of him, yes. He had lost the ability to feel wounded, hurt; they seemed like futile emotions to him now — like something children went through, not grown men. Not, for certain, police officers; men like him.
So what did that make Rob Brennan — insensitive? He didn’t think so, that part of him hadn’t changed. He still loved his daughter, nurtured fond memories of the brother he had lost. It was another part of him that had changed — the part that he showed to the outside world. His carapace had hardened. He knew this made him look insensitive, loutish to some, but there was nothing he could do about it. The act, the process itself, was instinctual. When he thought about it, he wondered if there was any real point to it. He could no longer feel, he could no longer be hurt, so why put up the shell? He surmised, after careful thought, and having assessed the trait in others, that it wasn’t for his benefit; it was for the rest of the world. Brennan’s outward subfusc was a warning flag, a marker for those who thought to seek the sympathies of a fellow traveller on life’s road: not here, it yelled. Move away, try someone else. If that was the case, so be it, he thought; we all wore masks anyway, at least his honestly reflected reality, as he saw it.
