Blood Tears

by Michael J Malone

  I shrug, ‘You could always check my pockets on the way out.'

  ‘The body. You asked who discovered it?’ Ruth has followed me in. She is looking around her like a child who has entered a ghost ride for the first time. Her head is forward, eyes wide, arms back as if in preparation for flight. ‘It was the neighbours who complained about the smell and some poor sap from the council was sent out to investigate.’

  ‘You really don’t have to come in,’ I say.

  ‘No. No. I don’t want to let Hutch down. Besides I’ve already been in.’

  ‘You have? When?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. It was after your guys had finished. Photos taken, samples lodged and all that. My mum’s a cleaner. And I didn’t want Hutch to come back to all those… blood stains.’

  ‘That couldn’t have been easy.’

  She purses her lips and exhales. ‘That’s an understatement. Good job Mum was with me. You know, the blood without the body was really strange. I could pretend for moments that it was just paint. Then my mind would try and fill in the spaces between the stains. With flesh. Here’s where an arm might have been and here’s where… you get the picture.’ She shudders.

  We have a communal shudder. I’m getting it clearly. ‘Can you show me?’ I look around at the doors leading off from the hallway. One is signposted with the shadow outline of the Palm Sunday Cross. Where it would have been pinned to the door rests a tiny black wound in the wood.

  Ruth leads me to the door next to it and pushes it open. ‘And it wasn’t even Lenny’s room. This is Hutch’s.’

  The room is in darkness. Closed curtains keep out light from the street.

  ‘A fair sized room,’ I say as if I was on a viewing and mentally berate myself for being an arse. Ruth flicks a light switch. The light displays a double bed with a dark green velour headboard pushed against the far wall. It has been stripped down to its base which is cream and displays a multitude of stains, but none that look like they could be blood.

  A large wooden wardrobe and chest of drawers are posted against the wall to my right. They are fine specimens, almost Calvinistic in their sturdiness and lack of decoration. I can imagine them being taken from a house sale in one of those sandstone merchants’ mansions that proliferate in this city. The house will have been eventually sold off when the spinster daughter died aged one hundred and one and none of the furniture would have changed since Daddy strode the markets of Glasgow while he fingered his gold fob watch.

  ‘There were no covers, pillows or mattress on the bed when I came in to clean. So I’m assuming they soaked up a good deal of the blood. And the carpet has been ripped up. The stains were here.’ Ruth’s legs clad in tights, swish in accompaniment to the percussion of her heels on the wooden floor as she walks to the end of the bed. She points to the floor, just at the centre of the foot of the bed. ‘And here, at either side.’ Again, she points to the floor about eighteen inches from the end.

  ‘It was like three points of the cross. The head and the arms. I wouldn’t have thought of it if Lenny didn’t have a cross on his door.’

  Her voice is quiet, almost reverential. It’s as if for the first time she has realised somebody died in this room. Sitting on the edge of the bed and looking down at my feet, I can see where blood has soaked through the carpet and into the fibre of the wood. It’s like a dark shapeless blob. If I stare at it long enough I’m sure it will start to take some form of recognisable shape. Like when I was younger and from my bed in the darkness I used to look at my dressing gown hanging on the door. I used to see faces in its folds, faces with fangs and horns, monsters who were waiting until I slept. Then they would pounce.

  Poor bastard. How long did he lie here knowing his life was about to end? We know he suffered, but through it all, when did he give up hope? Or did he cling to life, any life, until the last breath left his lungs?

  A gasp from Ruth made me turn.

  ‘I never noticed this before.’ She is holding something in her hand. When she first entered the room she had the expression of someone who had brushed against the edge of a stranger’s death. It left its mark, but it was weak and would soon fade. Her expression is now of someone close to tears.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask and follow her as she leaves the room. Ruth moves through to the kitchen and leans against the worktop, cradling something in her pale hands.

  ‘I spotted this in the drawer.’ She waves… it looks like a passport sized photo-booth number… at me. I take it from her. Ruth and a young man, heads pressed together wearing matching grins. A professional would have done well to define that moment so clearly. It said that when we are together and we’re blazing our smile into the world, we are untouchable. For that moment, the joy they found in each other lifted them up into another plane and they were cleaner, brighter and sharper than the rest of us.

  ‘He has beautiful teeth, doesn’t he? Could be in an advert. Never ever goes to the dentist. Lucky bastard.’

  ‘Your teeth are not too bad.’ Okay, McBain. Shut up why don’t you.

  ‘That was his favourite photo of us. I can’t believe he left it behind. How could he not take it away with him?’ She hides her face in her hands, collects her thoughts. ‘Something’s wrong. He loved this photograph. It was taken the night before he left.’ She looks at me. ‘My Hutch would have taken this with him.’

  ‘Maybe you read it all wrong. Maybe the guy didn’t love you after all.’ I put my hand on her shoulder. I realise that I’ve been watching way too much daytime TV and take it off.

  We are in the hall now and I spot a brown envelope against the far wall as if it would have been pushed there when we opened the door. One envelope.

  The guy’s been gone for two months and he has one envelope. I turn to Ruth. She is still holding the photograph.

  ‘Does someone collect Hutch’s mail?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah, I do,’ she answers like she has just come out of a dream. ‘Oh.’ She spots the envelope and rushes over to pick it up.

  ‘It’s addressed to Hutch.’ Greedily she rips it open as if contact with his mail will bring him closer. ‘It’s from the V.S.O.’ She scans the page. Then she does so again, as if the words are in Sanskrit.

  ‘This doesn’t make any sense.’ She looks at me and then back to the letter. I pick it from her hands and read.

  ‘We regret that you felt unable to commit to your agreed time with us blah, blah… and should you decide ever to… blah, blah.’

  Hutchison never made it overseas. Is he our killer? Is he in league with McCall? A body is found in his flat, while he is supposedly away helping the starving millions. Doesn’t look good for our Hutch. I look down at the photograph in Ruth’s hands. At the smile blazing from the young man’s face. But what if…

  ‘Did you say that the body was found in Hutch’s room?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s one thing I found quite odd, why would…’ Ruth looks from the photograph, to me, to the room.

  ‘Do you know who ID’d the body?’

  ‘How the hell would I know that?’ She takes a step back. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’ And another. ‘DONT LOOK AT ME… like that.’

  Her face has lengthened, in grief and realisation. Her eyes large with pain. She knows what I’m getting at. Something passes between us, a spark, a current.

  What if Leonard didn’t die in that room?

  And Hutchison did.

  Chapter 38

  It was so easy.

  So confident was The Muscle in his own strength and abilities, it didn’t occur to him for one moment what he might want to do to him. Even the most suspicious of people, when approaching someone, or when someone approaches them, anticipate the communion to be one of friendship. They see the hand stretched out in welcome and ignore the closed fist. They feel their mouth curved in a smile and ignore eyes, slitted with suspicion. People are weak and crave that connection. They expect it. And therefore open themselves up to the others. People who hunt. People like him.


  Others.

  The Muscle didn’t want his friendship. He called him “Pal”, the word as bland as a packet of cornflakes.

  He saw The Muscle sitting there and knew he could identify him. This death was not in the plan, but the devout learn to make sacrifices and to adapt.

  He staggered on to the car. Righted himself and gave the car a drunk’s kick. The Muscle was out of the car, spiked with anger.

  ‘Hey pal. What the fuck…?’ He ran up a side street and The Muscle followed. So predictable. There he cowered in a doorway. Acted like he was terrified of the younger, stronger man’s wrath. But it didn’t measure up. He was no saint. No Satan.

  The Muscle’s face was a picture of surprise when he felt the punch spike his gut. “O” came out of his mouth like a faint climax when his hands came away from his stomach covered in blood. Then his legs gave way as blood raced to the site of the rupture from all parts of the body in a vain attempt to seal the wound.

  He fingered the piece of palm leaf in his pocket. Thumb and forefinger following the raised lines up to the bar of the cross. It was a risk, but it was worth it. He couldn’t leave it behind. Some career sinner would just have thrown it in the bin without realising its true worth.

  Once back on the main street, he pulled a wallet from his pocket, the leather still warm from the body of the newly departed. There was a row of plastic cards and a thick pile of paper notes. He pulled out a gold coloured credit card and read the name: Calum Davidson.

  I’m walking from the dead man’s flat. My head is congested with this new information. Ruth is following me like the tail of a comet.

  ‘What just happened in there?’ She is pulling at my sleeve. ‘You’re not a cop. WHO ARE YOU?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ruth. I really am.’ I have the strongest feeling that the deceased man was Hutch, not Leonard. And if so, what is the importance of that? I need to get away, go for a run and have a think.

  ‘But what have we found out? Nothing, really. Nothing,’ she says. As she talks her hair lashes against each side of her face as she turns this way and that, looking up and down the street as if she’s grounding herself back into real life. The physical proximity to people going about the actions of their daily lives will make what happened in that room upstairs fade like the mist of a dream. The wild shake of her head is slowing to a resolute “No”.

  ‘But the body was identified as Leonard…’

  ‘Well, we need to check that out for starters.’ As I continue speaking my mind is running ahead. ‘You said yourself it was strange that the body was found in Hutch’s room.’ I need to get her onside. She needs to contact the police with my suspicions and put them over like they are her own.

  ‘That means nothing.’ The stress she put on the word nothing is full of desperation.

  ‘How likely would it be that Hutch wouldn’t go on his overseas trip?’

  ‘But I only knew the guy for a few months. That’s not long enough to really know someone.’

  ‘Do you know him well enough to know if he is capable of killing someone?’

  ‘My Hutch is no killer.’ She is on her tiptoes and her face is in mine. She needs to stop smoking and start eating concentrated mint.

  ‘It doesn’t look good for him, love. A dead body is found in his flat, in his room. His flatmate is dead and he hasn’t gone on his volunteer’s trip. Has he gone on the run instead?’

  ‘My Hutch is no killer,’ she repeats. Her face is full of defiance, which is being replaced with grief as she considers the alternative.

  ‘That’s how it’s going to look now that we know he hasn’t gone where he was supposed to.’ I feel like a shit for doing this to her but it is crucial she believes me. She can then do my dirty work for me, phone the police and pester them until they have another look at the body, this time with a view to documenting who really died.

  ‘Ruth.’ I grip her on both shoulders. ‘I don’t think Hutch is the killer. Something, I don’t know what, tells me that he was the one who was killed. The body they found and identified as Jim Leonard was actually Hutch.’

  Her head is still shaking, ‘No, no, no, no. No. Mark can’t be dead. I love him.’ Her legs give way as heavy sobs wrack her body. I manage to catch her before she falls to the ground.

  Propped against me, I half carry her back to her flat. Once through the door I lead her to the couch, where she lies down.

  ‘Will I make you a cup of tea? Is there someone who could be with you just now?’ While I ask this I’m wondering what happened to Calum. When I passed the car again, he still wasn’t there.

  Ruth sits up. ‘No. It’s my house. I make the coffee.’

  ‘Is there someone I can phone for you?’

  Her hands are over her face. ‘He was such a lovely guy. Poor Hutch.’ Then she looks up at me, her eyebrows high against her hairline in horror. ‘I cleaned up his blood. Oh my God. That was Mark’s blood I cleaned up.’ She falls the length of the sofa, her whole body shaking with grief.

  Passing on the bad news was never my forte. I don’t know any cop who has become inured to it. I feel like I’m diseased and I’ve somehow infected her. I kneel down beside her and put a hand on her shoulder until the worst of the sobs recede.

  ‘Coffee?’ We can take comfort in the banal.

  In the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, questions rise with the steam. Did Leonard fake his own death? Did he come across the body, decide to opt out of life and somehow make it look like it was him that died? Not making sense. Where is McCall in this little scenario?

  Hutchison is not an ex-inmate of Bethlehem House. So why was he murdered? He must have got in the way somehow. Could it be that McCall and Leonard are in on this together? Unless, Leonard, being a convent boy, has also been killed and his body stashed somewhere else. Why would the killer hide a body? For maximum effect. Perhaps he wants to stage something. Send a message to the world. Maybe Leonard is the person he was after all along and the rest was just a screen.

  Okay McBain. It’s official. You are a wanker. Mental diarrhoea or what. Learn the facts first.

  ‘Allessandra.’ I’m leaving a message on her mobile. ‘Could you or Daryl give me a call? This is important. We need to talk.’

  She rings me back almost immediately. ‘Ray. What’s up?’

  I get her up to speed. There isn’t even the merest pause when she exhales, ‘Oh my God. Ray.’ She doesn’t doubt me. ‘But wasn’t the body identified as Leonard?’

  ‘That’s what we need to clear up.’ We hang up.

  Out of Ruth’s kitchen window I can see a row of back gardens, replete with a forest of metal clothes poles sticking out of a series of postage-stamp sized pieces of lawn, like a graveyard for stick men.

  I hear feet shuffle on the carpet in the hall, then they slide on the wooden laminate of the kitchen. There’s no lift to the stride, just the foot being pushed along the floor.

  ‘Daryl. Or whatever your name is…’

  ‘It’s Ray.’ The skin on her face has lost all colour and elasticity. It looks like I could stick my finger in her cheek and leave a dent that would still be there in a week’s time.

  ‘Why, Ray? Why? Why would someone kill Hutch and make it look like Lenny?’

  ‘Don’t know yet, Ruth.’

  She’s looking at me. Barely even blinking. ‘Who are you, really? There’s something about you. You’re not… acting like you should. Why are you so interested in convincing me that the body is Hutch? Shouldn’t you just be running off and checking what you need to check. Who the fuck are you?’ She ends with a shout.

  ‘C’mon, have a seat. I’ll make us a coffee and tell you everything.’ I put my hand on her shoulder and lead her back into the living room.

  Once there she shrugs it off, like there was a satellite delay to her reaction. ‘Don’t… don’t bloody patronise me. Who are you? And why are you involved in all of this?’

  What do I tell her? The full truth, nothing but the truth? So help me. Go
d, if I were her would I be able to listen to my story at this point, with a sympathetic ear?

  ‘I am a policeman. My name is Ray McBain. Detective Inspector Ray McBain. But I have recently… been wrongly charged with murder.’

  Her face screws up with confusion and she looks in the direction of Hutchison’s flat.

  ‘But you never even knew Hutch. I’ve never seen you before. Why would you be under suspicion of killing Hutch?’ She’s taking two and two and making up lottery winnings.

  ‘Not Hutch. I’m not connected with this killing. But the real killer is, and through…’ Oh fuck. This is confusing me. How is she going to feel? I take a deep breath. ‘There is a connection with the man identified as deceased and a series of other deaths.’

  ‘Oh,’ she holds her hand over her mouth, ‘I thought your face was familiar. You’re that cop that’s wanted for murder.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what I’ve been saying.’

  She stands up and moves away from me, ‘I’ve got a murderer in my house. I’ve got a murderer in my house. I’ve got a…’

  ‘I’m not the murderer. The police have got it wrong, love.’ I walk towards her, hands out at my sides, palms facing up. The body language of the honest.

  ‘But you look different. You were in the news for ages.’ She is backing up towards the kitchen. Why there? Is she looking for a phone? For a weapon? ‘Did you kill Hutch? What have you done with Lenny? Did you kill Hutch, you bastard?’ She screams before she turns and runs towards the far wall of the kitchen. I follow her, aiming for a non-threatening pace. A mobile phone is plugged into a socket beside the kettle. She reaches for the phone with one hand and with the other pulls a bread knife out of its hole in a wooden block.

  ‘I’ll call the police if you lay as much as a finger on me, you bastard.’

  ‘They’ve got the wrong man.’ My voice is calm and even, while my mind is racing. Why did this all go so wrong? I need her on my side, not phoning the cops. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’