Long Day Monday

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Drowned?’

  King nodded. ‘Death was due to drowning, but beyond that there are indications of suspicious circumstances, which is why I am obliged to tell you that we believe she was drowned. Rather than simply drowned. Our inquiries are far from complete so I can say little else. That is why…that is my second reason for calling.’

  Mr Shapiro nodded. The essence of his character seemed to King to be one of deference.

  ‘I was to break the tragic news of Sandra’s death, sir, and also to ask for information about her. As much as you can tell us.’

  ‘Anything we can tell you, sir.’

  King opened his book. ‘You won’t object if I take notes as we speak?’

  ‘Not at all, sir.’

  King looked at him. ‘You really don’t have to call me “sir”, sir.’

  Mr Shapiro nodded. Mrs Shapiro suddenly stood and ran from the room into the kitchen, pushing her face into a handkerchief as she did so.

  ‘Mrs Shapiro has a problem with her nerves,’ said the man. ‘She’s not so well able to contain her emotions at the best of times, at a time like this…’

  ‘There’s no need for apologies, sir.’ King held up his hand. ‘Please, really.’

  The man nodded and smiled briefly with tightly clenched lips.

  ‘Your daughter, sir,’ King prodded.

  ‘Our only child,’ said Mr Shapiro. ‘Just a few days short of her twentieth birthday. She had drifted away from us in the last year or two. Ours was a blissful family life for the first twelve, fourteen years. I had regular employment. I work for the transport executive, I drive a bus, the forty-one, City Centre to Easterhouse and back. I can drive the route blindfolded. Our Sandra was a bonny wee girl, made our life so full. Do you know that in those fourteen years the only crisis we had was Mrs Shapiro’s emergency appendix operation?’ He shook his head as if in wonderment.

  ‘There’s not many families that can say that,’ said King, as he gently slid his hand on to the wooden arm of the chair, hoping that the man didn’t see the small observation of a superstition. His own family life was full, his own cup runneth over, he had a blissful marriage to a beautiful Quaker woman, a lovely, lovely young boy, and as so often in his work, his visit to the Shapiros’ had forced him to confront the fact that it could all be taken from him in an instant. He knew that he would return home that night, that he would slide into bed and hold Rosemary even if she was sleeping, and that tomorrow he would roll around on the floor with Iain, that they would build a pile of coloured plastic bricks together, and he’d do that because they were alive and his. And if that meant that Rosemary’s shelves didn’t get put up, then they didn’t get put up because one day she and Iain might be late getting home and instead of them he would open the door to a cop, maybe one of his colleagues, who would say, ‘Richard…’ He took his hand from the wood of the armchair and held the pen over his pad.

  ‘Then, as many girls do, Sandra started flapping her wings when she got to be about fifteen or so.’

  ‘Normal,’ said King. ‘Normal and healthy.’

  ‘Aye, so we told ourselves, but looking back it was the end of our family, the end of the blissful period, see, her and Mrs Shapiro fighting like two alley cats. This is a quiet area, Mr King, as you’ll notice. I’m still embarrassed about the noise they made, spilled out into the street once, screaming at each other. Then when she was seventeen she announced that she was leaving home. All right, hen, we said. If that’s what you want, then go, but remember that this is home, this is where you belong. Come back any time, even if it’s just for a feed. See, me, I know how teenagers in bedsits neglect themselves, so I do.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said King.

  ‘Probably more than me. Drowned you say?’

  King nodded.

  ‘We knew she’d been reported as a missing person, sir, a policewoman came to the door. She told us, asked us if we knew of her whereabouts, took details and a photograph we had of her. That was about a week ago, we’ve been fretting ever since. When I saw you, I was upstairs, I watched you park your car, I watched you get out, I knew that you were a policeman, you have that manner about you, Mr King, even in plain clothes, it’s like a uniform in a way, neat, well turned out, if I may say so, and you carry yourself in a self-assured manner and as if you are saying by your manner “I know something that you don’t know”.’

  ‘Being that I am a policeman.’

  ‘Aye, you may, I’ve been driving a bus now for twenty years. I drive the East End schemes, I told you, and often I see a man dressed like you, neatly, and he’ll be tall, healthy-looking and he’ll be among all the overgrown gardens and burnt-out cars and houses with metal sheets over the windows and pale-looking people who don’t have enough clothing in the bad weather and I’ll clock him and say “police”. Often there are two of them. You stick out like sore thumbs, really.’

  ‘It’s not a question of us hiding our identity,’ said King, who knew well that the police could blend and merge if necessary. He had once had occasion to visit Easterhouse police station in the early hours of the morning, about 3.0 a.m., he recalled, and was standing chatting to the uniform bar officer when a man walked in off the street.

  Long hair, ragged beard, torn denims, dirty training shoes, the man walked past the uniform bar and through the door marked CID. ‘Drug Squad,’ the bar officer had said, ‘they’re here for the next week or two. There’s a big turn going down, strictly need to know only.’

  King asked Mr Shapiro for his daughter’s address.

  ‘I gave it to the other officer, the lady constable.’

  ‘I didn’t take a note of it.’ It was a diplomatic answer, the truth being that the only address in the MP file was Glenalmond Road, Egypt. It was poor attention to detail on the part of the interested constable.

  Mr Shapiro gave King an address in Hillhead. Cecil Street, Hillhead.

  ‘When did you last see her, sir?’

  ‘About ten days ago now, she came to see us, phoned us the day before, told us she’d be visiting for an evening meal, which she did, a salad, cold ham and a sweet. She stayed, late for her, stayed until nine-thirty. Funny how little details stick. I remember the conversation word for word. I walked her to the bus stop on the corner and she caught a bus to the town. She said she’d call and see us next week. Three days after that the lady constable knocked on our door. I told Mrs Shapiro that it would be all right but in myself… You know, I find it a strange relief that you’ve called. I watched you park your motor and I said to myself, “Thank the Lord Jesus, the waiting’s over.”’

  King paused. The man was lost in thought. The clock ticked. The budgerigar sang, a car drove past. Eventually King said, ‘What did Sandra do for a living, sir?’ though really King knew that a more accurate question would be, ‘What did she tell you she did for a living?’

  ‘She worked in a baker’s shop. A confectioner’s.’

  It was easily verified. King wondered if perhaps the nocturnal activity for which she fetched up in the District Court was a sideline, a bit of spending money. But it had been King’s long-held observation that a girl would go on to the streets to ease financial hardship, intending to do so for a brief period, but instead she would find herself on a downward spiral and the street would rapidly become her primary- source of income. Especially when she found that a few hours on the street would provide her with as much money as she would earn in a few weeks working in a shop. She might even get hooked on the adrenalin, and the camaraderie that exists among the girls. The drawback of the life is that if they survive the STDs, they may end up in a shallow grave in a field in Lanarkshire.

  ‘Any idea of her friends, her social life?’

  The man shook his head. ‘No. She wouldn’t tell us. We know that she had lost all contact with her school chums.’

  ‘Did you visit her flat?’

  ‘She wouldn’t let us.’

  King nodded. ‘Striking out on her own.’

  T
he door to the kitchen creaked open. Mrs Shapiro entered the room. ‘I want to see her,’ she said. ‘I want to see her now.’ Her jaw was firm, her tone resolute. King saw no trace of emotion in her demeanour, save perhaps for determination.

  ‘If you wish.’ King realized that she would not be persuaded otherwise, and it was her full and complete right to view the body of her daughter.

  ‘I’ll get my jacket.’ Mr Shapiro stood and left the room.

  ‘This is not a surprise to us.’ The woman spoke without looking at King. ‘I knew, as only a mother can. I think Sandy did too, but we didn’t tell each other. We pretended for the sake of each other.’

  King stood. ‘I’d like to make a phone call,’ he said. ‘To the GRI, let them know we are on our way.’

  ‘In the hall, sir. Bottom of the stairs.’

  King went into the hallway and picked up the phone. It was a bright red appliance, glaringly out of place among the polished wood, sober carpet and green plants.

  It was a procedure which never reduced in its solemnity, even for the cops and the nurses for whom it was a necessary part of the normal working day.

  There was first the hum and buzz of activity of the central rotunda in the GRI. Then the descent to the basement down a spiral staircase during which any noise of the hospital is left very rapidly behind, as if even another, much more sober world is being entered. It is also at this point that all conversation between relatives, police, and medical staff cease. From the point that the central rotunda is left behind the party walks in silence until moments before the viewing. There is then a long walk down a corridor, a corridor with central heating pipes running along the roof, doors set back and with yellow triangular radiation warning notices on them. A door is reached, another corridor is entered, this corridor is prefabricated and runs on the outside of the main building. It has a floor of black rubber matting and assumes a gentle decline. It bends at a sharp angle and continues on to a heavy door. King opened the door and the Shapiros entered in dumb shock; each, thought King, would be clinging to a shred of hope of some awful fortunate mistake having been made, a mistake that would mean their daughter might yet be alive. A senior nursing sister stood gravely beside a screen over which a heavy blue tapestry was draped. A golden cord hung beside the tapestry. Upholstered seats ran round the walls of the room. A low light burned.

  ‘Have you done this before?’ asked the sister.

  ‘No, miss.’ Mr Shapiro spoke.

  ‘She was a good girl.’ Mrs Shapiro shook her head, fighting back the tears.

  ‘It’s different to the way you might have seen it done on television.’ The nurse spoke with authority and deference. ‘The curtain will be drawn and you will view the deceased through a pane of glass.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Shapiro.

  ‘She will be lying on a trolley. You’ll see only the face. She has been bandaged at the scalp line and round the side and back of her head and under the chin.

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘She has been washed. You won’t see any injuries. It will be as if looking at her when she’s sleeping.’

  The Shapiros nodded.

  ‘If you’d like to take a seat.’

  King and Shapiro sat on the bench. The nursing sister left the room via a door beside the golden thread.

  All was silence. King moved and caused the plastic upholstery to squeak, after which he resisted all further urges to move. Minutes elapsed and then a trolley was heard being moved into position behind the glass behind the tapestry.

  Silence.

  A brief period of silence. The door opened, the nursing sister stood in the room. She paused and then began to pull the cord, the tapestry began to lift, and as one the Shapiros stood and walked to the glass. King waited a moment and then he too stood as if drawn to the glass. He looked down at a face he had only previously seen in a photograph, a girl, attractive, eyes closed, as if indeed she was sleeping on a trolley beneath tightly tucked blankets. Her face white, white, white.

  Nobody else was in sight, the lighting of the room was such that nothing beyond the trolley could be seen. It was as if the girl was lying suspended, devoid of any material environment.

  Mrs Shapiro collapsed on her husband’s shoulder. The nursing sister closed the curtain, all in silence.

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ said Mr Shapiro.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Shapiro. ‘I wanted to see her. I mean had to. Without seeing her I just would not have believed that she was dead.’

  King nodded his thanks to the nursing sister and then turned to the Shapiros. ‘I’ll take you home.’

  No. It never, ever, got easier. And the day it was easy, the day he did this and felt nothing, that day would be the last day he would serve as a police officer.

  She sat in the chair. She surveyed the room. The room she had grown up in. They were here somewhere in the room.

  They had to be.

  She had to find them. Before she fed him. That’s it, he would get food, no water, not until she found them. Her spare spectacles.

  She had done this before. It was like waking up after a dream.

  A dream that can last for days. The spectacles were all right on Wednesday. She saw the girl then. Now it’s Friday. She couldn’t remember what happened after she saw the girl to take her photograph.

  People came and went in these times. The girl had gone, but now she had a boy in the cupboard. She didn’t know why the girl had left, she had liked her. She didn’t know where her spectacles were. She had to find the spare pair. Then she’d feed the boy. Just a little.

  She’d get by until the optician could see her. Just use the left-hand fork to stab the left-hand piece of meat, the right hand to pick up the right-hand cup. Not difficult. Or keep the patch on.

  Can’t drive, though. Can’t do that. Have to find the spare pair or wait for a new pair before she could drive.

  ‘Oh, the little boy,’ said the woman with obvious sincerity and concern, after Abernethy and Willems had shown their ID and explained their purpose.

  ‘You know something?’ asked Elka Willems.

  ‘Only what I’ve heard, and what I’ve read in the papers. That poor woman and her husband, I wish I’d seen something. I have children of my own.’

  ‘If you hear of anything, anything at all,’ said Abernethy, feeling his hopes dashed again, ‘please contact us.’

  The door shut behind them and they turned towards the gate and the leafy Broomhill Avenue.

  ‘Just got to keep going,’ said Abernethy.

  ‘All we can.’ Elka Willems smiled. ‘It’s all we can do.’

  Donoghue sat in his office. He glanced up and to his side, at the people milling in Sauchiehall Street. It was the homeward rush hour, which as usual had begun earlier than on the previous days of the working week. It was 4.30 p.m. and the rush hour was already in full flow. The downtown bars would be filling and not a few wouldn’t make it home tonight, not without help anyway.

  Somewhere out there was a man. He had abducted a woman, held her captive, then drowned her and then buried her in a field.

  And he had done the same thing twenty-five years ago.

  And he may have done the same thing any number of times in the intervening period. And maybe even before that. There was no way of telling if the skeleton found that early afternoon was his first victim.

  He returned his gaze to his desktop; by that stage of the day, a shifting sand of files and papers and memos. He excavated his telephone, dialled nine for an outside line and then an Edinburgh number. ‘It’s me,’ he said when his call was answered. He heard his children squabbling in the background.

  ‘Just get home ASAP,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘I’m at my wits’ end, I’m at the end of my tether. I’m reduced to threats now and that’s not working, we need the calm controlling fatherly—’

  ‘That’s what I’m phoning for.’

  ‘Oh…you’re not going to be late…of all the days to pick. I’m pulling my hair out
here…’

  ‘And I’ll be working tomorrow. And maybe even Sun…’

  ‘Fabian…’ Pleadingly. Then his wife’s voice hardened. ‘Well, at least you can speak to them…’ She put the phone down hard on the cabinet and he heard her calling out. ‘Timothy, Louise…your father wants to speak to you. Now. I said now!’

  Bothwell scratched his head as he considered the car. It was a green Ford Escort, four-door, about two years old going by the registration. He took the squirrel-hair brush and began to dust the steering-wheel for fingerprints, knowing that the car had been driven away from the locus only after a second wheel had been braced over the steering-wheel to prevent the police driver smudging latents. A quick delicate dusting with fine iron powder revealed a series of smudges which could only have been made by a gloved hand. There was little point, he reasoned, in dusting for prints when the perpetrator had clearly worn gloves; who else, he thought, would wear gloves to drive a car in the middle of summer? He replaced the brush and began to go over the car inch by inch, bagging and tagging everything that he found. It was Friday, already beyond the end of his working day. He had an elderly mother with whom he shared a modest tenement in Queens Park whom he knew would fret if he was not at home on time. He had an obligation to attend a committee meeting of the Bowling Club that evening and began to doubt that he would be finished in time to attend. He put both nagging annoyances to the back of his mind and set to work diligently, methodically and slowly. By 19.30 he felt that he had searched the car minutely. He had bagged and tagged a number of items but would in his report bring special attention to:

  (1) strands of human hair

  (2) coarse tufts of fabric as from a carpet

  (3) a lens as from a pair of spectacles.

  He also noted in his report that the last person to drive the car appeared to have worn gloves. He added that he hoped the information would be of use. He signed his report in a large round hand—E. Bothwell.