Blood In The Water

by Gillian Galbraith

  The ambulancemen were gentle, easing the slight body onto a stretcher and picking up the loose change as it fell from his pockets onto the soaked ground. Sammy knew he should tell them that Davie was an alcoholic. Even if he recovered he’d soon start suffering the DTs and it would be all too obvious. But he didn’t like to betray his friend, and if he did they might try to involve him in some way. Instead, he gave the men the old fellow’s address and provided a false one for himself, otherwise they might try to contact him to help with any recuperation or, God forbid, arrangements for a funeral, and, really, it was none of his business. Davie had a missus somewhere, shed years ago, but no doubt the authorities would be able, somehow, to contact her.

  Sammy let himself into the house, luxuriating in its empty state, the welcome absence of any sulky wife, noisy children or screaming babies. Soon the taps were on, filling the pink bathtub and warming the cool air of the bathroom with steam. Soft music on the radio soothed him as he lay in the hot water, secure in the knowledge that no one was impatiently waiting to take his place, Shona would not be returning from her work as a barmaid until at least eleven-thirty pm. He had a good six hours all to himself. He washed his hair with her coconut-scented shampoo and scrubbed his fingernails vigorously to remove all the day’s grime. Looking around him he saw that all the clothing which had previously littered the floor had gone, and that Shona had laid out clean clothes for him on the bathroom chair. The ironed pile included the raspberry pink shirt, chosen by her before she understood his tastes, but no-one would see him in it in the house. Dressing, he felt an animal pleasure in his cleanliness, with the sweet smell of soap on his body and his crisp, freshly laundered kit.

  In the kitchen he unwrapped the parcel of fish and chips that had been keeping warm in its brown paper in the oven. The hiss of the ring-pull on the Tennants can made for the perfect evening. He opened Principles of Practical Beekeeping and read on:

  ‘Towards the end of summer, rearing and mating of queens usually ceases and as a colony has no further use for its now redundant residents, the workers turn upon the drones in fury. First they gnaw their wing bases so that they are unable to fly, then forcibly eject them from their home, where they quickly perish from cold…’.

  He thanked God that he hadn’t been born a bee, and closed the book hurriedly. Perhaps the TV would make for the truly perfect evening, so he flicked on the remote and was heartened to see the rugged features of Steve McQueen contort as he punched a cop on the jaw. Just as he felt himself slumping a few inches further into the easy chair he heard a knock on his front door. Steve was just about to land another punch, this time to the cop’s eye, so for a moment he considered ignoring the caller, but he had never been able to let a phone ring unanswered or disregard a doorbell. You never knew when such things might not signal an emergency: Shona might have been hurt or something. He pulled himself, reluctantly, to his feet, took a final swig of his lager and went to see who had come to call.

  4

  Tuesday 6th December

  DCI Bell waited impatiently for the rump of her squad to arrive. Eric Manson breezed in, last of all, as if he was attending a social gathering of some sort, clutching his polystyrene mug of coffee and nodding to his pals as he found his way to his seat.

  ‘Are you quite ready, Eric?’ Elaine Bell asked sarcastically.

  ‘Sorry Ma’am, got held up in the traffic,’ Eric replied, apparently uncontrite.

  ‘When I say nine, I mean nine. Nine o’clock precisely.’ She continued, unpleasantly aware that she sounded like an exasperated primary school teacher.

  ‘Last night a man named Samuel McBryde was found murdered in his home at Granton Medway. He was aged thirty-six and was discovered by his girlfriend, Shona Gordon, when she returned to their home after her work. She reckons it was at about eleven-fifty pm. His throat had been cut, and the pathologists think that the killing took place earlier that evening, which accords with the information we have from the girlfriend that McBryde normally got back home at about five or five-thirty pm. Another bit of lined paper, this time with the word “worthless”, and again written in green ink, was present near the victim’s left foot.’ She cleared her throat, before carrying on:

  ‘It looks like whoever was responsible for Dr Clarke’s death also killed Samuel McBryde. In both cases, the initial incision was high up on the left side of the neck, starting from just below the ear. Anyway, the presence of the pieces of paper with their inscriptions can hardly be coincidence. But Christ alone knows what the connection between the two of them is. Dr Clarke’s cleaner doesn’t think any knives were missing from the doctor’s flat. Miss Gordon doesn’t think that anything’s been taken from their house, two twenty-pound notes were lying on the kitchen table untouched. Neither she nor Mr McBryde were drug users…’

  Manson interrupted, ‘Is that on Miss Gordon’s say-so, boss? She’s hardly likely to admit that they were users to us.’

  ‘Yes, Eric. It’s on Miss Gordon’s say-so and I’m quite aware of the likely reliability of any such statements. If I could continue?’ She shot an impatient glance at the Detective Inspector before resuming her address, ‘As before, there were no signs of forced entry, so it seems probable that both victims knew their killer. In the circumstances, it’s been decided to enlarge the Murder Squad and we are to be assisted by some of the Leith people. We are getting DSs Moray and Sands and DCs Porter and Lindsay. The scene of crime officers are already at the locus…’

  DCI Bell allocated the day’s tasks amongst the squad. Alice was assigned, with Alastair, to talk to McBryde’s neighbours in Granton Medway. The place, when they eventually found it, was a midden, about as far removed from the graceful Georgian architecture of the New Town as a pygmy village on the Congo. Two rows of bleak, cement-harled houses were separated by a road rutted with potholes and pavements blotched with different shades of tarmac grey, a patchwork of repairs. Squat wheelie-bins flanked each communal doorway, many of them displaying obscenities in thick white paint. Litter was strewn everywhere as if a vast bin had exploded in the centre of the estate, showering everything in it over the houses, including the ubiquitous satellite dishes. The houses on either side of McBryde’s had their windows boarded up and then, for additional security, metal shutters had been fitted.

  In such a place the presence of any stranger was a cause for concern amongst the residents: bound to be a rent man, a bailiff, a DSS snoop or a vandal. The police were as unwelcome as the rest of them, nowhere to be seen when help was needed but ever-present when they wanted some. Eternal vigilance was the key to survival in the Medway, and the leisure provided by unemployment meant a full complement of sentries in the dwellings still occupied. The two sergeants trekked dutifully from door to door, hunched against the cold rain, avoiding the dog mess and broken glass, only to be told again and again that nothing had been seen, nothing had been heard. One inhabitant, among the hundreds, was prepared to co-operate, but then just to volunteer that Sammy had returned home in his van at about five pm.

  If the tourists visiting Holyrood Palace and Charlotte Square considered the capital akin to a beautiful woman, elegant and well-coiffeured, then Granton Medway was her underwear, and none too clean at that. It was a place forsaken by God and man alike, one where the few residents that remained shared a single, burning ambition, to move somewhere-anywhere-else.

  Dr Clarke’s former boyfriend, Ian Melville, was waiting in an interview room at St Leonard’s when they returned, weary and dispirited from the palpable antagonism that had met them in Granton. He’d been traced by DC Porter to an address in the city, St Bernard’s Row in Stockbridge, having left Leadburn about a month earlier. The man was tall, well over six feet, with long, gangly limbs and oversized hands and feet. He had the sort of irregular, asymmetrical features which produce either a plug-ugly face or one of great attraction, with deep-set dark eyes, a hook of a nose and crooked, inward-leaning teeth. The combination in his case was arresting, eye-catching in its idiosync
ratic appeal. As they entered, Alice saw him remove his drumming fingers from the table onto his trousers, where they continued, hidden, to drum on his thighs. Neither sergeant subscribed to the nasty-nice school of interrogation, preferring instead the role of overworked schoolteachers whose patience should not be stretched beyond its limit, for fear of some unspoken repercussion. As a tactic it often worked well, somehow regressing the interviewees back to powerless schoolchildren facing some omnipotent dominie from their past. The truly recalcitrant were left to Eric Manson and his incoherent code of ethics.

  ‘You’ll be aware, Mr Melville, of the death of Dr Elizabeth Clarke,’ Alice began.

  ‘I read the papers like everyone else, yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me where you were between five pm on Thursday evening and nine pm the next morning?’

  ‘Am I a suspect?’ Melville asked defensively.

  ‘No. You’re simply assisting us with our enquiries. Is that alright with you?’

  The man hesitated before replying, ‘Fine.’ His anxious expression undermined his words.

  ‘So can you tell me where you were…’

  ‘On Thursday evening I worked in my studio until about eight or so, and then I went home.’

  ‘Where is your studio?’

  ‘Stockbridge. Anyone see you at your studio?’

  ‘I don’t know. I certainly didn’t see anyone else there. Does that matter? I can show you the work that I was doing if necessary.’

  ‘After leaving the studio you walked home to St Bernard’s Row?’

  ‘Yes. I collected a carry-out from the Chinese and spent the rest of the evening in, watching the television, until I went to bed.’

  ‘Were you on your own all the time?’

  ‘Yes, but I have no one to confirm I was actually there, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Any phone calls to you or made by you?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. I use a mobile anyway.’

  ‘What did you watch on TV?’

  ‘I can’t remember now. I think I watched a DVD, something I’d got from the shop.’

  Alastair decided that his turn had come, and catching Alice’s eye, cut in.

  ‘I understand that you and Dr Clarke went out with each other up until about a year ago?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Why did the relationship end?’

  Melville didn’t answer immediately. He looked at his interrogators keenly, as if trying to assess what they might already know, and then committed himself.

  ‘You already know the cause, I’d guess. We broke up as Liz decided to have a termination, as she called it-an abortion, to have our child aborted.’

  ‘You hadn’t agreed to this?’

  ‘I wasn’t consulted. I was presented with a fait accompli.’

  ‘Had you been aware that Dr Clarke was pregnant?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you’d been told, what would your reaction have been?’

  ‘I’d have been delighted. What can I say? I loved Liz, I would have wanted my child to be half her, Liz to be the mother of my children.’

  ‘So you would have tried to stop her having an abortion?’

  ‘Obviously, if I had known.’

  ‘And you’re a Catholic?’

  ‘Lapsed. A lapsed Catholic.’

  ‘What was your reaction when you heard what she’d done?’

  Melville’s expression changed to one of hostility, disbelief that such a stupid question could be uttered. What the hell would you feel if your baby had been killed? When, at last, he spoke, he spoke slowly.

  ‘At first I didn’t believe her… I couldn’t believe it. But it’s not the kind of thing you make up, is it? So when the news sank in I was… furious, disgusted, sad… appalled. We had a tremendous row.’

  ‘Disgusted?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Disgusted with her. I never thought she could do such a thing, not her. It made me think of her differently-she had killed our child.’

  ‘Who ended the relationship?’ she continued.

  ‘She did… Liz did. After the row she refused my calls, never answered my letters, and on the one occasion when I waited for her to return to Bankes Crescent from work, she cut me dead, wouldn’t say a word and shut the front door in my face.’

  ‘Have you had any girlfriends since Dr Clarke?’

  His hackles rose again. None of your business.

  ‘No, I haven’t even been looking. I told you, I loved her and it’s not easy to get someone like that out of your system, even after what she did.’

  Alastair showed Melville a photo of Sammy McBryde. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Never seen him in my life before.’

  ‘Can you tell us where you were yesterday evening between four-thirty pm and, say, eleven-fifty pm?’

  ‘I worked in my studio until about eight pm or so, then I met a pal, Roddy, for a drink at the Raeburn Inn. I left there at about ten, I think, and went home. It’s just round the corner from the pub. I watched the TV until I went to bed.’

  ‘Anyone at home with you? Any calls?’

  ‘No. I can’t prove that I was there, but I was.’

  ‘Can you give us Roddy’s full name and address?’

  ‘Roderick Cohen, St Stephen’s Street. I’ll get the flat number.’

  No one brushed the stairs within Alice’s tenement in Broughton Place; they belonged to everyone in the block and so were cleaned by nobody. The last time they’d been swept was when one of the flats was for sale; a potential purchaser could not be expected to overlook the squalor routinely disregarded by the residents.

  Alice trudged upwards, blind as ever to the dust, stopping only when she reached Miss Spinell’s flat on the second floor. Without the aged spinster’s help as a dog-sitter she would have been unable to keep Quill, her collie cross mongrel, and she was painfully aware of her dependence on the animal for company, a source of silent support and uncritical adoration, and on Miss Spinell’s goodwill as his daytime keeper. Fortunately, the old lady needed the dog as much, if not more, than Alice, as in his absence day after endless day would be spent alone behind the multiple mortice and Yale locks with which she fortified her front door. Alzheimer’s was creeping up on her in the form of a thief, a thief who made free with the contents of her fridge, her pan cupboard and her underwear drawers. One day her favourite aluminium cooking pot would have disappeared, the next a tin of sockeye salmon would appear half-consumed beside the ice cubes, and her numerous locks no longer provided any protection against the quick-fingered scoundrel.

  Alice knocked on the heavy door and waited patiently for the characteristic thuds, clicks and bangs which always preceded its opening. Finally, her identity having been confirmed from behind the last chain, Quill was released to her with the usual polite little nod that signalled the changeover of custody. The dog ran, yelping excitedly, up to their flat on the third floor and waited patiently as Alice fished in her bag for her keys. As the door swung open, she caught the end of a message on her answerphone. Bridget’s voice: ‘Sorry you’re not in. Had thought we might meet up tonight. I’ll try again later in the week.’

  She breathed a sigh of relief. No white lies needed to excuse her reluctance to leave home again, just the prospect of a drink in the company of her own thoughts. She poured herself a glass of New Zealand white, unable, as she sipped it slowly, to switch off. Ian Melville seemed believable, but he had a motive or two for killing his former lover, and the opportunity; his house and studio were less than ten minutes from the victim’s flat. Of course, he had no alibi, but he seemed, somehow, an unlikely killer. Surely, if he had done it, it would have been in the heat of the moment, a crime of passion. Yet Dr Clarke’s cleaner said that no knives were missing, which meant the murderer must have brought his own blade with him. So it must have been a premeditated crime, just like Sammy McBryde’s. The paper chase connecting the killings and the calculated way in which they had been carried out were as if someone
wanted to ensure that they got the credit for both.

  5

  Joe used to marvel that she slept so peacefully, motionless with her head invariably turned to the left. Like she was already dead, he’d once observed. Not tonight, though. Alice could not keep still, she could feel herself tossing and turning, now one arm above her head, now to the side, now one hand under the covers, now on top. No position was comfortable, no position brought sleep any closer. The sheets themselves seemed to be made of sandpaper, abrading her face and bare arms. She needed to talk to someone, to unburden her mind of the thoughts that were chasing each other, exhausting her. Two am. But there were no friends good enough for that any more, and no lover to be roused in extremis like this. If Joe had been beside her she could have touched his shoulder or whispered his name, confided in him the troubles that now wracked her. But he was the trouble, or a big part of it, the one who had explained that dependence was attractive, that independence was not always viewed as a virtue in women. It was Joe who had planted the seed of doubt in her mind, now a full-canopied tree, and then gone away. At four am Alice gave up the unequal struggle, turned on the light and finished the bottle of wine in the fridge. If nothing else could bring about slumber, alcohol certainly would, even if her return to consciousness would be accompanied by a hammer and anvil of a headache.

  She woke four hours later, unrefreshed, nauseous and feeling that her age had doubled overnight. Her bedroom mirror, ruthless in its honesty, reflected a sallow-skinned, red-eyed stranger sitting up in her bed. Quill slipped off his chair in one fluid movement, stretched, wagged his tail and bounded, bright-eyed, into the kitchen as if it was the first morning of creation. He knew the routine, and in anticipation of his walk raced round the flat while his mistress dressed with care, preparing herself for the cold world outside-the cold, still dark, world. Twenty minutes later the pair set off towards Canonmills, the dog straining on the lead, pulling his reluctant owner with him from lamppost to lamppost, zigzagging all the way to the park.