Blood In The Water

by Gillian Galbraith

  Alice studied Campbell-Smythe’s face, realising, with surprise, that she recognised it. Glasgow High Court, 2001, the trial of William Head, an ordeal by fire from which she had emerged blistered and burnt. The accused’s Counsel had been Campbell-Smythe, then plain Matthew Campbell-Smythe, QC. He had battered her, harangued her, made her feel so foolish that she had almost conceded that her certainty that she had seen Head at the crime scene had been misplaced. How could she have forgotten, for even an instant, those beetling brows and that projecting jaw, Neanderthal features concealing a piercing intellect. He had even made a pass at her later in the canteen, as if the court room pummelling had never taken place, and been surprised by the vehemence of her refusal. Rebuffed, he had whispered into her ear, ‘It’s just a job’, leaving her feeling gauche and awkward, inexperienced in the real rules of some sophisticated play.

  16

  Saturday 17th December

  The smell coming from the baker’s was irresistible. Without conscious thought Alice found herself at the counter, eye-level with a miniature glass oven laden with hot pies, sausages and bridies, each item surrounded by its own individual pool of grease. At last, an old-fashioned shop immune to the current trend for wraps and lattices or brie-and-bacon baguettes, specialising instead in egg rolls, crisps and Irn Bru. Back at her desk she bit into the Scotch pie, savouring its cardboard pastry and peppery interior. Scanning her list as she ate, she noted with dread that she still had four more refuges left to call in the city, excluding the Salvation Army and Jericho House. Her phone rang. It was DCI Bell. ‘Any results with the hostels, Alice?’

  ‘No, Ma’am, but I’ve still a number to do. What about the vehicle, has it been found?’

  ‘Not yet. Every second uniform is out looking for it, but it seems to have vanished into the ether.’

  ‘By the way, Ma’am, in the judgement, the words “unreliable”, “worthless”…’ She left her sentence unfinished, on hearing the dialling tone.

  The supervisor of the Pilton Shelter appeared to be in no hurry to answer. As Alice hung on and on, impatient for a reply, her mind drifted back to Mair himself. What sort of man was he? What precisely did she know about him? His wife had been cool, detatched, living in a bubble of her own creation and unconcerned about the world outside her own door. Little appeared to penetrate the mind of his friend, Gannon, but maybe Mair used him precisely because of his lack of acuity, his lack of curiosity. Then again, perhaps Mair also did not see things too clearly or chose to insulate himself from reality until life no longer let him do so. The unusual thing about their man was the strength of his attachment to his sister and nephew, a love so powerful that he had been prepared to sacrifice his own marriage in order to go on looking after them. He was impulsive, hot-tempered even; Mrs Girvan had said that he had blown any chances he might have had of caring for Davie by swearing at the social worker in Bright Park. If it was me, if I was Mair, she thought, where would I go? What would I do? The job he had set himself was unfinished, four down and two to go, he must be aware that his luck could not go on forever. It was a simple calculation; at best, a lifetime in prison, at worst he’d be killed by the police whilst attempting to complete his self-appointed task. The Bradley children were now all dispersed, and his beloved sister, dead. Only Davie remained nearby and he would know where the boy was, he could still see Davie. That’s what I would do, she mused, get my fill, while I was still able to do so, of those I loved.

  Without waiting any longer for the supervisor’s response she replaced the receiver, dialled the City Social Work Department and was able, without the fight she had anticipated, to extract the name, address and telephone number of the child’s foster parents. As she was holding on, waiting for another answer, Alastair returned to the office. He ripped open a packet of sandwiches. ‘Shitey press,’ he said loudly, ignoring her gesture for him to be quiet, ‘they’re all over the place. I had to fight my way back into the station and I got poked in the eye by one of their sodding sound booms. Of course, not as much as an apology from the swine responsible.’

  Alice put down the receiver, acknowledging defeat. No reply.

  ‘Did the skateboarder identify Mair from the photograph?’ she asked.

  ‘So so… He thinks it could have been the man he saw at McBryde’s place. Who were you trying to speak to?’

  ‘Davie’s foster parents. Fancy a trip there? I’ve been thinking about Mair’s likely whereabouts and I reckon he’ll base himself somewhere close to them.’

  ‘Why on earth should he?’

  ‘Because before he’s caught he’ll want to see as much of the boy as he can. If I’m right, the Hendersons, Davie’s foster parents, may already have seen Mair. It has to be worth checking out. If they have, then it’s odds-on he’ll return and we could have the place watched. What do you think?’

  ‘What’s the alternative?’

  ‘Phoning round the rest of the shelters and ensuring that they get copies of the photos.’

  ‘Why do you think he’ll want to be close to the boy?’

  ‘Because he loves him. He even wanted to look after the child himself. How many uncles do you know like that? He doesn’t even have a wife in tow to help. Mair will want to be sure that the boy’s in good hands as a minimum.’

  ‘The boss won’t approve. You’re taking things into your own hands again, Alice. Shouldn’t we check with her first?’

  ‘No. She might say no. I’m going anyway. Are you coming or not?’

  ‘Well, anything is better than more phone calls. Let’s leave by the back entrance, avoid the swine.’

  Eskside West is a pleasant, cobbled street, leading up to the old bridge and separated only by an area of municipal parkland from the broad, slow-flowing river Esk. The Hendersons’ house, distinctive with its soot-blackened exterior and disabled ramp, was in the middle of an unostentatious Victorian terrace and easy to locate. No one was home. A neighbour, hauling black bags of rubbish to a skip, told them that he had seen the family leave to go shopping about an hour earlier. From the warm interior of the car, Alice gazed idly at the river. Frozen reeds protruded from its banks and the edges of the water had iced over. Seagulls paraded up and down on the grass, and two of the three arches of the bridge were blocked by mounds of branches, straw and an old tree trunk, the remnants of the last spate. In the shallows a mattress lay stranded on a bed of gravel, springs spilling out along with the rest of its entrails.

  The indignant wail of a car horn drew her attention towards the traffic lights, and she noticed a family of four making their way towards the car. A man pushing a boy in a wheelchair, on his right a woman, laden with the double burden of the shopping and a baby in a sling. Their progress was slow and Alice stared at them as the boy’s erratic, uncoordinated movements and bright hair proclaimed his identity. While the man wrestled with the catch on the little metal gate leading to their large front garden, the two sergeants approached. A passer-by, eyes fixed on the boy’s lustrous head, bumped into Alice and mumbled an apology. She looked round, catching the stranger’s eyes.

  ‘It’s him,’ she said mechanically, staring at the man as he moved on.

  ‘Who?’ Alastair asked.

  ‘Mair! Who do you bloody think!’

  Her lungs were hurting, her head down, arms swinging wildly, mouth full of warm saliva. A gallon of acid must have been pumped into her chest, the pain was so intense. All her attention was on her prey, her eyes streaming and puffs of frozen breath billowing from her as she ran. Catch him, catch him, CATCH HIM. And then she fell, hard, onto the unyielding ground, legs entangled in some kind of snake-like obstruction. Panting loudly, she raised herself up and found a toddler, reins fluttering in the wind, crying angrily beside her.

  ‘You’ll need to watch where you’re going, Lucy, you’ve tripped the nice lady up,’ the woman said, glancing apologetically at her child’s victim while lifting the uninjured tot off the road. Alice ran on in the direction she had seen Mair take, increasingly con
scious of an agonising pain stabbing her knee with every footfall. On the High Street she stopped to recover her breath. Gasping noisily, she stood, hands on her hips, trying to scan the pavements on either side of the busy road. A few hundred yards ahead, on the river side, she noticed a cluster of pedestrians being jostled as a dark-haired man pushed through them into an Oxfam shop. Fat bloody chance it’s him, she thought, and unable to run any further, she hobbled towards her destination.

  Circular racks of trousers, jackets and skirts barred her way as she crossed the shop-floor towards a counter where two elderly women, apparently oblivious to her presence, were chattering with each other. Edging past a skyscraper of stacked jigsaw puzzles, she noticed a narrow archway above which was written ‘Children’s Books’, leading to an additional room, and limped in its direction. The man within had his back to the entrance but he wheeled round instantly on hearing the sounds of an approach.

  As Alice looked in Donald Mair’s eyes, she knew from the expression of fear that flitted across his face that he had recognised her as his pursuer. In that instant he launched himself at her, a human battering-ram, smashing her shoulder and the side of her face with his own. Her instinctive attempt to grab him failed, her grip broken at the sickening sensation as he slammed his knuckles into her nose. Excruciating pain engulfed her whole face and blood poured from both nostrils, streaming over her lips and cascading off her chin.

  Turning round she saw Alistair blocking the doorway into the street. When Mair charged at him she watched as her friend swung a heavy wooden lamp at the man’s temple, the cracking contact causing him to stop in his tracks, legs buckling beneath him as if they could no longer bear his weight.

  The Hendersons were an organised pair, the sort that not only have a family first-aid box but also know where to find it and how to use it. Alice’s bloodied nose was bathed and anointed by Elizabeth Henderson, while her husband busied himself making a pot of tea. They both recognised the man in the photo. He was the one who had come to their door, only a week earlier, offering to tidy up their oversized, neglected front garden.

  ‘Did you take him on?’ Alice asked, her voice uncharacteristically nasal.

  ‘No,’ Elizabeth Henderson replied, putting the hank of lint back into its box, ‘He was a bit odd. The garden is a mess, and we could do with help, but we don’t have the money. I told him that. Then he said he could do DIY work in the house. To be honest, he spooked me a bit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. He was polite, I never felt in danger or anything, but he was so desperate, begging almost, beseeching us. I suggested that he try in Inveresk-there are big houses in that part of the town-but he wasn’t interested, which seemed a bit odd. I thought he wanted to talk, but Ken thought that was fancy on my part…’

  An ear-splitting shriek pierced the air and Alice looked round, startled, to find the source of the cry, and saw Davie smiling beatifically at an illuminated lava lamp. Elizabeth Henderson got up and patted his head fondly, and he appeared, momentarily, to catch her eye before returning his attention to his toy.

  ‘Is he alright?’ Alice asked, shaken, her ears still ringing from the eerie noise. ‘It sounded like he was in pain or terrified of something.’

  ‘He can’t help it, and I don’t think it means anything. He does it several times a day, sometimes at night too, and we’re just beginning to get used to it…’ the woman replied, handing her a cup of tea. ‘I nearly jumped out of my skin the first time, so did Ken, even though we’d been warned. I thought the boy had been burnt or scalded, hurt in some way, but there he was, smiling sweetly away to himself.’

  The kitchen door bumped open and Alastair Watt entered, Donald Mair, now in cuffs, beside him. Both men were breathing noisily and their faces were cherry-red from the exertion of the chase. Mair’s head was bowed and Alice watched as he slowly raised it, took in his surroundings, caught sight of Davie and beamed. When the child, unaware of his uncle’s proximity, let out a little coo of pleasure as a big bubble of red lava erupted upwards, the man’s tender smile broadened. Despite the sweat running down his forehead, the curl of damp hair clinging to his bruised brow and his laboured breath, he appeared happy, as if being with Davie, simply looking at him, was enough for complete contentment.

  ‘Can I say goodbye to the laddie?’ he asked.

  Without speaking, his escort moved towards the child, allowing Mair to accompany him. The prisoner placed his cuffed hands on the boy’s soft curls and twirled the fine, golden hair in his fingers before kissing the crown of his head. Davie’s attention, briefly, left his toy and he gurgled happily again as if aware of a familiar, benign presence at his side.

  ‘But he doesn’t want a solicitor, Ma’am,’ Alice said to DCI Elaine Bell defensively.

  ‘He needs one, so get him one anyway. The duty solicitor, please,’ her superior responded.

  ‘He’s adamant that he won’t have one, Ma’am. I can’t force him. He says he’ll speak to us but he wants nothing to do with “the law”, as he calls them. He knows his rights, and I told him it would be in his interests to have a lawyer in attendance, but he’s unshakeable.’

  ‘Just get the duty solicitor, Alice. Alright?’

  So Alice sat and watched as Mair talked his way into prison, the tape recorder picking up every syllable and every pause, catching every word in order for it to be used against him. His legal representative might have been on Mars for all the attention he paid to her increasingly desperate attempts to protect him from himself. As he spoke it was like witnessing the actual moment when the dam bursts, the instant when the might of all the accumulated water causes the first crack in the massive structure and it forces its way out, splintering and smashing everything in its way.

  ‘I did do it,’ he began. ‘I killed them and each of them deserved exactly what they got…’ Alice nodded as if she understood, and, encouraged, Mair continued.

  ‘Teresa’s at rest now. We thought we’d get justice from the courts, but they are not courts of justice-injustice, more like. I know, I was there every day, so I saw it for myself. Teresa was not, WAS NOT, offered a Caesarean section by anyone…’ His voice rose in anger and he looked round as if to ensure that he had everyone’s full attention. Again, Alice nodded sympathetically at him, but she said nothing.

  ‘I know that. That’s what caused all the trouble, believe me. She was petrified, shit-scared, before Davie was born, she didn’t want to go through it all again, and if she’d known she could have had a section she’d have been at the front of the queue. We’d talked all about it, long before the laddie was born. But that Dr Ferguson said in court, in the actual courtroom, that he’d offered her one and she’d turned it down. Just lies from start to finish, but, of course, it was just her word against his, and you should have seen him, smart suit, smart tie, with the plums fairly falling out of his mouth. He’d even fixed the records, the hospital’s own records. There was no second meeting! When Dr Ferguson said it was supposed to have happened, Teresa, Sammy and the kids were on holiday in Ayr, but Teresa only remembered that once she got home after the trial was over and when she was talking to Granny Annie about it… so that Dr Clarke was lying when she said she’d checked with Ferguson and he’d said he’d offered…’

  ‘Why?’ Alice asked, ‘Why should Dr Clarke have been lying?’

  ‘I told you, she must have been lying, because Teresa was not offered a Caesarean section by anyone, I said…’

  Alice interrupted. ‘Maybe she was telling the truth. It’s possible that she did ask Dr Ferguson and he, to protect himself, lied to her. She was his boss after all. He wouldn’t want to admit to her that he’d failed in something so important.’

  ‘Naw,’ he shook his head, ‘they’re all liars. They’re all in it together. Protecting each other, like, protecting the hospital too. And the judge was no better. He believed every word she said. She could have been singing nursery rhymes to him and he would have been happy enough. He couldn’t ta
ke his eyes off her, bewitched by her he was, and, make no mistake, she knew it. Smiling at him in her expensive suit and expensive shoes… and poor Teresa could hardly find the money for a new skirt for her own court case. You see, everything went on the kids, and she needed, she really needed that compensation money…’

  ‘Why did you kill Sammy?’ Alastair asked.

  ‘Because he deserved it!’ Mair responded immediately and aggressively.

  ‘Why did he deserve it? We need to know. Tell us, please,’ Alice said, keen to placate him and keep the flow running.

  ‘Because the wee shite left her to drown when she depended on him. She bloody loved him, too. Sammy was fine when the wean was a baby. Claimed him then, acted the proud dad even, but once things got hard, once the doctors started to say that he wasn’t right, that he would never be right, then Sammy didn’t want to know. Never changed him once, never got up in the night once. When Davie’s screaming began he’d just leave the house… leave it all… leave it all to Teresa. He was a useless cunt but he broke her heart when he left… and he wouldn’t even help her with the court case. She might never have killed herself if he’d stayed. It wasn’t because he’d found out anything… He didn’t know. I checked on that before I killed him.’