'I didn't say that,' I lie. Shut up, you dick. Have never lost the tendency to say too much. Some women find it endearing.
He gauges me for a moment and then turns back to his precious view, which I'm starting to believe he thinks he owns.
'So you're not questioning me as part of a murder investigation, then?'
'No,' I say. 'We're just following up on Mrs Henderson, to establish her state of mind before she died.'
'She was ruddy miserable,' he says, 'but I doubt that's so different from how she spent her last eighty-odd years.'
'Why did she stop writing to you?' I ask. 'She was still bugging plenty of other people.'
He looks imperiously over his land and his sea.
'God knows, Sergeant,' he says. 'Maybe she was beginning to see sense.'
*
Driving home I have a brief interlude of road rage. In my head I don't consider it road rage though. It's just rage to me, regular rage, the same kind of thing resulting from impatience that I'm liable to feel in the supermarket or watching TV when there are too many adverts. Road rage has a specificity to it that I don't feel is appropriate.
Nothing more than the usual, stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle. A Peugeot 206 or something. I can see the sprouting of grey hair above the driver's seat headrest. An old woman driving, the kind who I would test every couple of years after the age of seventy, so we could get the licence off them and make the roads safer. Not that my ensuing actions are liable to make any road safer.
Try to control it for a while, then I start to go. Drive up really close behind her. She's doing thirty-four in a sixty zone. No long straights, too many cars coming from the other direction, no chance to overtake. My presence close to her rear end is enough to make her slow down even more. As her speed drops below thirty I have a brief contemplation of pulling her over, producing my ID and telling her I'm an unmarked traffic cop, and booking her for driving liable to cause an accident. The thought is brief indeed.
Instead I lean on the horn, then start jabbing it repeatedly. My head is exploding with instant, uncontrollable fury, the kind of fury that you can unleash from behind a wheel.
'Fucking move!' I'm screaming at her. 'Fuck! Fucking move, you old fucker!'
Punching the horn. Punching the horn so hard it hurts. Spittle flying onto the plastic of the centre of the steering wheel.
We approach a parking place. She slows down even more, then pulls in. I don't turn and stare at her, just gun the accelerator. Ultimately, of course, I'm not in a rush. I've no intention of thrashing the speed limit into non-existence. Within about a hundred yards, I hit a thirty zone, and I slow right down and am now driving more slowly than I was previously. The guy behind catches me and we mince along, bang on thirty miles an hour.
My rage passes. I forget that I was angry. I forget about the old woman, and do not wonder how long she sits in the parking area recovering her equilibrium.
12
'How's this?' I say. Taylor's office, me and Morrow, coffee and doughnuts. Yes, coffee and doughnuts. We're all Americans now, as the Muppet Blair said. 'There's a correlation between the sleeping drug and the semen, but not directly with the death. Someone drugged her and raped her. Maureen, unable to cope, killed herself.'
'Hmm...' begins Taylor. 'Not bad. I know, just because a woman is raped, doesn't mean she's going to commit suicide, and you'd think that an older woman might be able to handle the situation better than someone much younger, but then... what do any of the three of us dicks know?'
'I'll check it out,' says Morrow. 'Speak to some people. Rates of rape amongst the over-60s, the victims' psychology. Like you say, everyone's different, but there might be some sort of pattern of behaviour.'
'Have we established her whereabouts on her final evening?'
Shake of the head from Morrow and me.
'OK, well that's something we really need to find out. Did she go anywhere, did anyone come to her house, did she have any clubs or other regular Monday evening activity?'
'On it,' I say.
'I've been hearing a lot about Paul Cartwright,' says Taylor. 'We need to get along to see him.'
'Me too,' says Morrow. 'There's a general feeling that he's a nasty piece of work.'
'Interviewed him yesterday afternoon,' I say.
'Good man,' says Taylor. 'How was that?'
'There's something about him,' I say. 'I can see why everyone hates him, and I can see why his church won out in the end. Very focussed. He set out to achieve something, and he did it. People in his church will have been pleased, those in the others pissed off. What are you going to do?'
'He know Mrs Henderson?'
'Just from the letters, which he was happy to talk about. Recalled every one...'
'Quite a few people said he has a freakish memory.'
'Yep, happy to admit it. Before this is out I think we'll be talking to him again, and I think there's a lot to learn from him, if we can work out how to get him to say the right things... but I don't think he had anything to do with her death. Not directly, at any rate.'
'OK, we'll leave him for the moment, but keep tabs on him. Once we get to second interviews, that's when people start to think, hang on a second, isn't this something more than a suicide enquiry?'
'And Cartwright's the kind of dude that Connor will be hanging with. Written all over him.'
'Well, I'm sure you were your usual discreet self,' says Taylor.
Morrow even laughs at that. Fucking hilarious.
'The fact is,' continues Taylor, 'we've yet to come up with proof of anything suspicious, so we have to continue to be careful. The superintendent is going to be shutting us down first opportunity he gets, so no mention of a murder investigation until such times as we know for definite.'
A couple of raised eyebrows dispatched across the table, and Morrow and I take the signal to leave.
*
I find myself back at the Old Kirk. No reason. I just felt drawn here for the silence. I parked in the small area between the church and the halls, noticed that the gates were unlocked. I'd been intending knocking on the gatekeeper's door and asking in some sort of small voice if she wouldn't mind me sitting in the church again. I wasn't going to have a reason. There was a fair possibility that in fact I was going to sit in the car park for ten minutes, not get out of the car, and then drive off.
Do I have a pathological fear that she might think I'm contemplating turning to God, or do I have a pathological fear that I am actually turning to God?
Neither, really. I want the silence, that's all. I'm just as happy to share it with Mrs Buttler.
So I walked in through the front door of the church. She turned at my footsteps as I entered the nave, and now we're back in a not dissimilar position to where we were yesterday. Her sitting at the end of a row, me directly across the aisle at the end of the adjacent row. I get the smell of her today, something I didn't notice yesterday. A light fragrance.
Neither of us has spoken. Not sure how long we've been sitting here. Ten minutes? Fifteen?
If God is everywhere, then is this place any closer to God than anywhere else? Does the silence and the art and the Bible and depictions of Jesus make it any closer to God than a forest or a field or a supermarket or a studio basement flat with no windows, rats in the walls and a soiled mattress lying in the middle of the floor?
I lower my eyes from Jesus in blue above the chancel. I'm thinking about God now. Stupid bastard. How many times have I asked the question in the past? If there's a God, why did my dad get killed by a drunk driver when I was two and a half? Why's the bastard who killed my dad still alive today?
How many times? I asked it enough to not need to ask it anymore. To not even consider God.
'You believe all this stuff?' I ask, my voice cutting uneasily into the bright light of early afternoon.
'How do you mean?' she says. Glances round at me.
'Historians these days,' I say, 'they know. They know how it worked out. There w
ere hundreds of religions in the Middle East two thousand years ago, and Christianity was just one of them. St Paul was better organised than everyone else, managed to drag Christianity's head above the parapet, and eventually it flourished. It was like Hitler emerging from the shambles of post-WWI German politics. It wasn't like he was the divine leader or anything, he just played the game better, persevered, played his cards at the right moment...'
'You're comparing Hitler to Jesus?' she says curiously, although she's smiling.
'Actually, I think I was comparing him to Paul.'
'Oh, OK, that's fine.'
We laugh. Together. Like some sort of version of normal conversation. It's been so long.
'I just mean, it's kind of clear how Christianity got started, and how it managed to flourish, and how the books of the Bible were chosen, et cetera. It was all just politics. Which, you know, is why this church merger business wasn't so un-Christian after all. This is how it works. People have self-interest, they work to protect and extend that self-interest. In this way, Jesus was just a product that Paul was selling, and he was good at his job. Nowadays he'd be working for Apple.'
'Unless,' she says, turning away and looking back down the body of the church, 'Jesus is the true son of God, and then he would undoubtedly have risen, regardless of whether or not Paul had been a good salesman. Perhaps, in fact, it was God who made Paul a good salesman on the road to Damascus.'
'A fair point,' I say. 'But that's what I'm asking. In the face of the evidence and the plethora of historians and books and documentaries, which do you believe?'
'Can't you believe both? That God delivered Jesus to us, and then used St Paul to extend His message?'
'But all those Bible stories that are just made up or cribbed from other religions. The virgin birth and the wise men and all that?'
Notice how I'm not swearing in church.
Notice how I'm not mature enough to do that without thinking I should be earning some kudos. From somebody!
'You believe what you choose to believe, Sergeant. One cannot argue with faith. I will say, however, that I have never truly believed. I have prayed and I have come to this church all my life, but I've never truly believed. But that's not what it's about. I would say, in fact, that it doesn't matter one bit. It's community, that's all. About being there for people, having a set of values, sharing those values, helping others, giving of yourself, and hopefully receiving too.'
'Do you need God for that? I mean, do you need the church for that?'
She finally turns and looks at me again.
'People need a focus, that's all. The church gives them a focus. We preach understanding and compassion. It does no harm.'
'The crusades weren't so hot.'
She smiles at that, rather than whacks me over the head with the nearest heavy object.
'What was it you wanted to talk to me about?' she says after a few moments.
I turn away and stare off into the far distance.
'Nothing,' I say. 'Sorry. Just felt like I needed the silence.'
She smiles. I can feel her smile, although I'm not looking at her.
The silence is like a wall, rising up, surrounding us. Slowly melting, folding in at the sides, closing in at the top. Blanking everything else out. Enveloping us.
God, what am I on?
My phone beeps, cutting through the wall.
She glances over as I take it from my pocket, embarrassed.
'You should switch that off when you come in here,' she says, unnecessarily.
'Sorry.'
'I mean, not just during a service. If you're coming in for peace and quiet, you're not going to get it if you leave your phone on.'
I read the text.
21 Burns Street. Now.
Rare for Taylor to invest anything with a note of urgency.
'Got to go,' I say.
She watches me as I get to my feet.
'I come into the church most days at this time,' she says. 'You know, if you think you can find what you're looking for in here.'
'Thank you. When's the next time the church will be used for a service?'
She gives it some thought, lets her eyes express doubt.
'There's a wedding in three or four months. But then, I expect Maureen would have wanted to have a memorial service here, so that might happen shortly. I suppose you'll need to release the body first.'
I don't think that's going to be happening any time soon, unless Connor pulls rank and shuts us all down.
I nod. She smiles and I leave.
13
It's a small bathroom, so not a huge amount of room for our lot. Three at a time maybe. I stick my head over the back of one of the SOCOs, catch a quick look at the pasty teenager lying in cold bathwater turned bloody red, then go back through to the lad's bedroom.
Taylor is in here; the mother is downstairs with a couple of constables, if she hasn't already been taken off somewhere else.
Tommy Kane was seventeen and he's not coming back. Dead as a badger.
'You have this guy on your list?' asks Taylor.
'You mean, anything to do with the church business? Maureen and that?'
'Yes,' says Taylor, irritably, as if I ought to know what's going on inside his head.
'No. You think they're related?'
He looks up from where he's been rifling through some music magazines, gives me a glance. His annoyance seems to dissipate, and then he shrugs.
'Fair point, Sergeant. Who knows? But you know as well as I do, this town is a small place. Months go by without anything ever happening. Ever. Two apparent suicides a few days apart, especially when the first is a woman known to have had sex with a young man, possibly a youth, and the second is of a youth...'
'No way,' I say, shaking my head.
'No way what?'
'No way Maureen had sex with this kid.'
'You heard it from Balingol,' says Taylor. 'She had sex with a young man.'
'Yeah, I know, but a twenty-five-year-old or something.'
'For someone who'd have sex with a packet of biscuits, you can be terribly prudish and old-fashioned sometimes, Sergeant.' He lets out a big sigh, as if talking to a child, then he gives a slight wave of the hand. 'We'll know once Balingol's had a look at him.'
'Did he have anything to do with the church?'
'He helped out at the Sunday school down at St Mungo's,' says Taylor, 'so that at least puts them in the same ball park.'
I look round the room at the standard teenage walls. Posters of bands and half-naked women. Hey, nice one of Emily Blunt's breasts, wonder what movie that's from. I'll need to check it out. Iron Maiden. Judas Priest. Natalie Portman, topless but with a conveniently positioned arm. A Green Bay Packers pendant. A Neymar picture. Fucking Neymar, the cheating, diving little cunt. Dylan. Good lad, he's got a poster of Bob, circa 1962. Some concert ticket stubs. Some football ticket stubs. Rangers. So, he's the one.
'He taught at the Sunday school?' I ask.
'Given his age, I don't think he was enrolled as a student,' says Taylor pointedly. As he speaks, he's looking through a drawer, tossing some porn mags onto the bed. I glance over. Commercial, off-the-shelf porn mags. Very mundane, in these internet days. I turn back to the walls.
'The walls don't look like the walls of a Sunday school teacher.'
'Maybe not,' says Taylor, 'but he's a teenager in the third millennium. What would you expect? Posters of Jesus?'
'Suppose.'
Taylor straightens up, gives another quick look around.
'See what you can find. I'm off to speak to people. Try not to spend too much time looking at naked women.'
'I'm on the job,' I say, with irritation.
He looks at me blankly.
'Try not to spend too much time looking at naked women.'
*
An hour in the room of a dead teenage boy. One long, depressing hour.
It takes me back to the awfulness of it. The awfulness of being a teenager. Jesus. T
here's just so much shit. Sure, you might think, I'd love to be a teenager again. There are so many possibilities, the world is your clichéd fucking oyster. But if you do ever think like that, what you're really thinking is, I wish I could be me now, an adult, transported back to my teenage years, before I fucked up my life.
No one really wants to be a teenager again. What you want to be is an adult who happens to be seventeen years old, an adult who hasn't yet committed himself to all the mistakes that he's made (and would inevitably remake, if given the chance).
And yet teenagers grow up. They escape those god-awful years. At least, they should do. They hopefully do. If all goes to plan. If they make sure they don't end up lying in a bath of their own blood. And every life has so much promise. Even the ones that start off shitty and depressing, they still have the opportunity to get out, escape, fly into the world and create something for themselves.
But not this kid. Not Tommy. Tommy is dead. All these higher exam past papers are for nothing. And the football and the girls and the music and the few scattered books on eastern philosophy, and the DVDs of Chinese war epics, and the posters, and Call of Duty. All for nought, because he's dead in a bath.
Almost doesn't matter whether or not he committed suicide. Murder, suicide, accident (it wasn't an accident!), whatever way, it's just sad.
I could look through the room in about ten minutes. I spend much of the hour sitting on the bed staring at the walls. Not looking at anything in particular. Just tired, filled with an unusual melancholy.
There are different types of melancholy, and this isn't one of the good ones. This is one of those that says, I just want to get out of here, I want to go home, I want to drink. I probably also want some female company. Little chance of getting that.
A constable sticks her nose into the room at some point. Webb, maybe, not sure of her name. She's new.
'Everything all right, sir?' she asks, at the sight of her sergeant staring idly into space.
'Yes, thank you. Has the body been removed?'
'Yes, sir,' she says. 'The SOCOs are finished in the bathroom.'
'OK, thanks. I'm nearly done here.'
The Blood That Stains Your Hands Page 6
