Long Day Monday

by Peter Turnbull

  At 14.30 he still didn’t like that one. He had allocated the case to Elka Willems who had already done a good job of drafting a missing persons poster. He had approved it and sent it to the printers, who now only waited for the word ‘go’ before running off two hundred copies in the first instance, but he had privately envisaged many more copies being needed; in fact, he had rapidly envisaged a national coverage for this one, every police station, large and small, every railway station, every bus station, every public library, and the London Underground system as well. Sussock just had this feeling, a gut-wrenching certainty that Tim Moore of Broomhill would not come running home bubbling an apology. Indeed, he had a gut-wrenching feeling of certainty that Tim Moore would not be coming home at all. But it was still officially a missing person, a missing child, not three hours old, a child who had not returned home for lunch and still had not returned by mid-afternoon. It was too early to panic, too early to organize a house-to-house, too early to sweep local open country, gap sites, waste ground, with troops and civilian volunteers. Sussock had tried to comfort himself. He had had similar gut feelings before which had in the event proved groundless. He’d been proved wrong before. He’d also been proved right before. At that moment the file on Tim Moore, aged ten, was thin and crisp and new, a top sheet providing basic information—name, numbers, address—and so far a single handwritten continuation sheet recording the visit to the Moore household and the drawing up of the missing person poster. It also contained a photograph of Tim, a smiling boy with golden hair and a blue sweater taken in Saltcoats earlier this year. It looks sunny but the wind was cold. ‘He’d just had his first Knickerbocker Glory in Nardini’s. In fact his first ever, not just his first in…’ but the rest had been lost in a flood of tears.

  There had been one good solid-as-a-rock collar during the day: late in the morning a young man had been observed breaking into a car with intent to steal. He had come quietly, a practised felon who seemed to know when the game was up. A visit to his home had revealed a backyard strewn with parts from twenty or thirty cars, ready to be sold as bolt-on spare parts, everything from engine blocks and gearboxes to wing mirrors. Inside the house had been a similar treasure trove of hi-fis, fascias, upholstery. Two uniformed officers were still there drawing up an inventory. The man was in the cells, Pringle sweater and slacks, jawing frantically, jawing with his solicitor, looking for a plea bargain.

  And that was it. Montgomerie on the graveyard shift had handed over to him at 06.00, bleary-eyed and stubbled, and hadn’t passed any work on, and he looked like keeping his end up with Richard King who was to take over from him at 14.00. The CID officers took a sense of pride in not handing work on to each other, but ‘cleared their shift’ if they could. The case of Tim Moore was the only worrying one, and deeply worrying at that, but at this stage all that could be done had been done.

  No. No, it hadn’t.

  One thing had not been done.

  Sussock reached forward and picked up the phone on his desk. He dialled 9 for an outside line and then a seven figure number. A gruff male voice said ‘Yes?’ after the phone had rung once and then been picked up.

  ‘Taxi Owners’ Association?’ asked Sussock.

  ‘TOA. Aye.’

  ‘Police.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘We have a missing child.’

  ‘Aye.’ But in a concerned, interested tone.

  ‘Could you circulate the description for us, please?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Ten years old, male,’ said Sussock, opening the file, ‘blond hair, dressed in a shell suit, red and white shell suit. Called Tim. Last seen at home address in the West End of Glasgow, but could be anywhere.’

  The TOA controller read the description back.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Sussock. ‘If you’d put it out on the air as soon as you like. We’ll get posters to you for your garages and control rooms as soon as we print them.’

  ‘Will do, sir.’

  ‘Appreciate it.’ Sussock put the phone down and in the Moore file added to the continuation sheet: 13.10, phoned TOA, gave description to be circulated over the radio.

  Glasgow is a taxi-minded city, the ‘fast blacks’, the London-style cabs, swarm across the city from the intimacy of the grid system at her centre to the anonymous dull expanse of the peripheral schemes, and the taxi-drivers have evolved as the unnoticed eyes of the police. They have often—more out of excitement than public duty—assisted in police chases—better doing it than being uninterested—they have reported crimes in progress over the short wave, rushed victims to hospital. Equally, the taxi-drivers have to survive and have kept quiet when advised to do so. A cab hailed in Castlemilk by three guys in long coats was directed to Dennistoun. Two guys left the cab and went up a close taking sawn-offs from under their coats while the third guy stays in the cab, coolly drawing on a nail and says equally coolly, ‘Keep the motor running, Jim,’ and ‘My mate’s come back, take us to “the milk” and drop us.’ Then the driver heard four distinct shotgun blasts from inside the close, the two guys came back hurriedly, but not running, weapons concealed, climbed into the cab. The driver swung the vehicle and drove south of the water, back to ‘the milk’. In ‘the milk’ he stopped close to where he had picked up the three hard cases and they left the cab. Two walked away without looking back, but the third, the one who’d stopped in the cab while the turn was going down, stood by the cab door and stared into the face of the driver and said, ‘I’ve clocked you, I’ve clocked the number of this cab—keep it shut,’ then he bunged the driver a wedge of more than ten times the fare. Later that night the driver hears of a double murder in Dennistoun, believed to be gangland and drug-related. Police, and the Radio Clyde bulletins, are appealing for witnesses. But the driver, sensibly, had kept it shut.

  Sussock had heard about the incident years after it had happened and attached no blame to the driver. What person could? But this was different, a missing child. The taxi-drivers compose an unofficial community watch and just like the police they could maintain a watch around the clock: twenty-four-hour monitoring.

  Tim Moore was the only ‘live’ case he had to hand over to Richard King. King couldn’t complain and wouldn’t, he’d be home on time, a fine afternoon…

  His telephone rang. He picked it up. ‘295, Sussock.’

  ‘Switchboard, sir,’ said a young, keen as mustard, female voice. ‘Tango Delta Foxtrot has just requested CID attendance at the locus of a stolen vehicle.’

  ‘Why?’ Sussock sighed before he knew he was speaking. ‘Just notify the owner and get him to recover it…’

  ‘They reported a Code 21, sir.’

  Sussock’s heart hit the floor. ‘A murder,’ he said.

  ‘CID attendance requested, sir,’ the voice repeated with an added note of urgency.

  It was all right for her, Sussock reflected bitterly, she’d be off the switchboard on time, switchboard and clerical staff didn’t ever…

  ‘All right.’ He put the phone down. Could he get out of it? It was less than an hour to closing time, the team comes and goes with each other, he could do nothing and sit on the request for fifty minutes and appeal to Richard King’s better nature, but that would look too bad, fifty minutes and nothing to show for it, and he knew what Richard’s response would be: ‘Oh, come on, Sarge, it didn’t come in at 13.50, it came in at 13.10. In fact, it came in earlier and just changed to a Code 21 at 13.10, the case is two hours old,’ and: ‘You’re right, I don’t like the smell of the Tim Moore case. Even if it is brand new it has an old and familiarly unpleasant odour. We’re into the white nights, I’ve got daylight until 22.30, I’d like to sweep local open areas, start looking at the disused railway tunnels…I think I’d like to start on it, not drag my feet, and I can’t do two major investigations, haven’t the resources…and you know the rules. And Tango Delta Foxtrot wouldn’t take kindly to being kept fifty minutes longer than necessary…’

  Sussock knew fine well what the i
ncoming constable would say. And he’d be right to say it. It had for Sussock just been a passing fancy, a fantasy that he indulged in briefly for a second or two. It had flooded into his mind and it had lingered there, he had toyed with it, wondering how he could make it work and finally accepting that he couldn’t, not in any way that he could square with his conscience. He then reached forward and picked up the phone on his desk. He dialled a two-figure internal number which was answered promptly by the young, keen as mustard, female operator who would be home on time. ‘Switchboard.’

  ‘Sussock,’ he said. ‘Inform Tango Delta Foxtrot that I’ll be with them ASAP. ETA thirty minutes from now.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  He replaced the telephone receiver and stood, wearily. He walked to the hatstand and picked up his light summer coat which had long since lost its shape and which now hung from him like a sack, and he also plucked from a hook a long since fashionable summer hat. He walked out of his office and into the CID corridor.

  A detached observer would have noted a certain resignation in his step, and a weariness across his eyes which were set deep in his craggy life- and weatherbeaten features.

  ‘Don’t like it here. I want to go now.’

  ‘Soon. Not yet. Your mother will collect you. Play with the rabbits. I told you I’d show you some rabbits. Stop crying. I’m going now. I’ll leave the light on.’

  The door closed. The key turned.

  She went down the long dark corridor. She went into the huge heavily and densely furnished room which could never be heated, even in summer. It always had a chill about it. It always had. She sat in the deep armchair and felt two old springs giving under her weight. She pondered the threadbare carpet, the old paintings in heavy frames, the moth-eaten curtains, the old plants in copper pots. She had grown up in this house, moved from this house, assumed ownership when they had died, grown old here.

  Murdered here.

  Been taken away from here.

  Murdered here again.

  And again and again.

  Now she had another little boy. He was about as old as the first one. All those years ago.

  Strange how things seemed to come full circle. After those young women it was a child now. A boy. Again.

  ‘Just him and me in this huge flat, must be the only flat in the street which is still one-family occupancy. Family, that’s rich, just me and my guest, when I have one.’ The woman continued to ponder. All six rooms and the walk-in cupboard, the guest room, the room that had kept the guests over the years. Made for the job, the guests could scream and shout until they grew hoarse. The walls backed on to the other rooms in the flat or back court where only cats and city foxes went these days. The ceiling was twenty feet above, and the floor was the floor, nothing underneath at all. Except the clay and they’d be in that soon enough.

  She thought again about the boy, talked to him on impulse walking down the street, so angelic, so appealing, the blond hair, the smile like a sunburst, so she stopped the car and asked him if he wanted to see some rabbits?

  Maybe she had wanted a child again. Maybe that’s why she had done it. She wanted a child. Something deep within her craved for a child. She’d keep him a day or two, but then she’d have to serve him as she had the others. If she let him go he’d only talk and then they’d take her away again to the place of white huts and wire on the hills near where the railway line divides, near where the trains from England split into two, front half for Glasgow, rear half for Edinburgh. Then, after years and years had come and gone, they’d put her in a van and driven her to a place of rambling brick next to another railway line, the one between Edinburgh and Glasgow, where she’d knitted and watched the trains thunder by as if travelling across the fields, where she’d been surrounded by females in dressing-gowns.

  They never checked the flat. Each time they’d taken her away they’d never checked the flat. They just made sure the windows were closed, the gas and electricity turned off and the front door locked. They didn’t check the rooms, especially the locked one, and the last time they took her away she had a guest, weak from thirst and starvation, too weak to cry out or scratch on the door, and when she returned after shock treatment and drug therapy, it was to a semi-mummified corpse. It had been a day’s job to dismember the body and put it into bin liners; easier than a fresh corpse, though; the fluids had solidified. She tossed a bin liner into a skip here, another into a skip there. The rest she took up to the council dump at Dawnsholme and a kindly man helped her lever it up into the huge container to be taken away for incineration.

  The real problem had been the smell, took a week to get rid of the smell, couldn’t be smothered with aerosol, she had had to get close in on her hands and knees and scrub the walk-in cupboard with bleach and open the nearest windows, buy incense from the craft shop on Great Western Road and burn it continually. The smell was always a problem; sound may well travel downwards in tenements, but smells rise. The people in the flat above were young, exuberant, they polluted her flat with their noise, loud music, stamping feet and squeaky bedsprings. They got her smells. The smell could have been awkward but these old tenements were not just built, they were solidly built. Her ceiling might well have been their floor, but the two were separated by eighteen inches of grit filling. It had kept the odour of rotting flesh contained until she had been deemed fit and sane and able to return to the community.

  She turned and gazed at her reflection in the mirror. Heavy features, heavy frame, short dark hair, silver tufts here and there, matched by her dark jacket. Fit and strong. Good for her years.

  She’d keep the boy for a few days. Maybe till early next week. He probably wouldn’t survive as long as an adult anyway.

  ‘Just seemed odd, right from the start, Sarge,’ said Piper. ‘It just didn’t look right. I mean, stolen cars are abandoned, doors left unlocked, open even, they’re not locked and neatly parked. Most of the time they’re vandalized; this one’s been cared for.’

  ‘Who reported it?’ Sussock felt he had to say something. Piper, junior in both years and rank, and in uniform, seemed to be more on the ball than he. Sussock felt a certain challenge to his authority.

  ‘This gentleman here, sir.’ Piper nodded to McWilliams, who stood against his Land-Rover, perspiring gently in the sun. Sussock glanced at McWilliams, a stocky man, dour of expression, whose one concession to the heat seemed to have been to roll his overall sleeves up above his elbows. He took his eyes from McWilliams and looked lovingly about him, at the fields and the blue hills, filling his lungs with sweet country air as he did so. It was not often that his job took him out of the city: not often that he could breathe so freely. He suffered badly from bronchitis and the thin air of the Scottish winters was difficult for him, and the thicker exhaust-heavy air of the city summers was only a little easier, a brief respite, but here in the country, in the summer with the trees in full foliage, the sweet Clyde flowing softly through a meadow, it was a rare opportunity for him to fill his lungs. He no longer begrudged this particular piece of overtime. ‘You’ve started, so you must finish’.

  ‘And it was while we were here, Sarge, that Mr McWilliams drew our attention to the grave.’

  ‘The grave?’ Sussock brushed a troublesome fly from in front of his eyes.

  ‘For want of a better word, Sarge. It’s in the field. Just here.’

  ‘Wasnae there two days ago.’ McWilliams spat on the ground. ‘Fresh dug.’

  Sussock nodded. He thought McWilliams must be at the very edge of earshot.

  ‘I borrowed the gentleman’s spade, sir,’ Piper continued. ‘Went down about ten inches. Came across an arm, I think.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘What appears to be an arm.’ Piper stuck rigidly to basic training, never saying what he’d found/seen, but what he appeared to have found/seen.

  ‘An arm,’ Sussock repeated.

  ‘Human. Appears to be female from the rings on the fingers. Still flesh-covered. No evidence of de
composition, so far as I could detect. I covered it up and reported it.’

  ‘Very good.’ Sussock felt himself falling into a state of numbness. What to do, what to do? People looking at him. He began to wish himself far away. He shook himself into sensibility. ‘Right… we need assistance…The first thing to do is to cordon off the area, the corner of the field, say one hundred feet square, encompassing the grave…Careful where you tread. Don’t have to tell you not to touch anything.’

  Piper turned and walked briskly to the boot of Tango Delta Foxtrot and took a coil of blue and white tape, three inches thick, from the boot. He climbed the fence and stepped into the field and, taking McWilliams’s spade from beside the mound of freshly turned soil, he carried it away from the grave to a point a hundred feet in the field from the road and one hundred feet from the track to McWilliams’s farmhouse and slung the tape from the fence to the spade to the fence, thus forming a cordoned-off area one hundred feet square, as requested by DS Sussock, senior officer at the locus. As he was delineating the square, Hamilton was also acting on the instructions of DS Sussock, sitting in Tango Delta Foxtrot and speaking on the radio, passing on Sergeant Sussock’s request for a pathologist, please, extra men for a search, bags and tags, scene of crimes officer, car to be collected for forensic examination.

  Sussock approached McWilliams. ‘If you didn’t see anything, sir, perhaps you might have heard something?’