They both shake their heads.
‘Was it a Friday night?’ asks Jack. ‘We were wasted, bud.’
‘What about the boyfriend?’ Ale asks. ‘Do you know him?’
The smiles slide off both boys faces. ‘Not really,’ says Ian. ‘He’s a bit of a college boy, Mr Try Hard. We wondered what Aileen saw in him.’
‘Aye,’ Jack agrees. ‘Do you think he did it?’ He looks eager to know, and I read more into his asking the question than curiosity.
‘Nothing’s been ascertained yet,’ I say. ‘He, along with a group of people, are helping us with our enquiries.’
‘That’s polis talk for, “he’s guilty as sin, man.”’ Jack has lost his comfortable slouch against the bar. His shoulders are squared off, and he looks braced for a couple of rounds in an MMA gym.
‘Calm down, Jack,’ I say. ‘It’s polis talk for “we don’t know enough to be charging anyone with this death yet.”’
‘Fuckin’ waste of space, man. He fuckin’ did it.’ He pushes past us and walks out of the bar as if his jacket’s on fire and he’s hoping it’s raining outside. As he does so, he all but knocks over a couple who are just ahead of him. Strangely for Glasgow, the male of the couple doesn’t challenge him to a stare off at five paces and carries on his way.
‘What the…?’ I ask, looking at Ale and Ian. The change was so abrupt it took us all by surprise.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Ian. ‘I’ll go and talk to him and calm him down.’
‘What’s the problem?’ Ale asks.
‘His sister was raped a couple of years ago. He takes this thing kinda serious. Has a zero tolerance you might say.’
As he tries to walk past us, Ale puts her hand up. He stops with her palm on his upper chest. She looks him in the eye and says, ‘Tell him to calm down. We’ve been watching your activity online. If anything happens to Simon Davis, we know where to go.’
Once the boy leaves, Ale looks at me as if she’s annoyed.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s not a face with nothing going on behind it.’
She says no more. Her mouth firmly closed. She distracts herself by buttoning up her jacket and then walking over to the table where the couple she looked at were sitting.
I join her. ‘Aye, what was that about?’
‘The girl sitting here. It was Karen Gardner.’ Aileen Banks’s friend. ‘The guy. I swear I recognised his face.’ She examines their discarded drinks as if seeking inspiration. ‘That’s it. He was at the hospital when we were up seeing Simon Davis. Even looks like him.’ She waves a hand across the middle of her face. ‘Has the same eyes. I’ll bet you anything that’s the brother.’
‘And?’
‘Ray, you need to wake the fuck up. What’s wrong with you today?’
It stings. I know she’s right. Don’t want to admit I’m not on my game.
‘Rein your neck in, Rossi. What are you on about?’
‘Karen Gardner was here. At this table with a boy who is very probably Matt Davis.’ She pauses and looks into my eyes, waiting for the proverbial penny to drop and catch. ‘The best friend of the deceased and the brother of the deceased’s boyfriend getting all nice and cosy. Doesn’t strike you as odd? Or worthy of comment?’
‘What of it?’ I say. ‘There’s any number of reasons why they might want to offer each other support.’
Ale examines the abandoned drinks. Picks one up. Looks like the drinker had about two sips from it before leaving.
‘Why did they leg it as soon as they spotted us?’
19
We’re in the car, shaking drops of rain from our heads.
‘Jeez,’ I say. ‘It was glorious sunshine when we went in to that place.’
‘Aye,’ agrees Ale. ‘Typical west of Scotland. Give it five minutes and it will be snowing.’
Ale and I rarely indulge in such mundane chatter. It’s a clear sign that there’s something we need to air, but the thing is, I’m not in the mood to get talking. I fire up the engine, check the traffic in my mirrors, indicate and then enter the flow just before a double-decker bus.
Silence.
And I’m stewing in it. If you were to ask me what I’m annoyed about, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’m just fucking angry. Aware that my hands are trembling, I hold the steering wheel tighter.
Ale is first to break the quiet.
‘Karen Gardner and Matt Davis. Wonder what’s going on with them.’
‘You sure it was Matt Davis?’
‘We don’t have a firm ID on him, but there is a strong resemblance to that boy we talked to in the hospital.’
I take a moment to think about which lane I need to be driving in. Realise I need to change, do so and earn a loud note of warning from the horn of the car I narrowly miss. Looking in the car mirror I can see a red face mouthing a few obscenities. I shout a few of my own.
Ale shifts in her seat. Looks out of her window.
‘What?’ I ask. And flinch at the aggression in my tone. Ignore it. I’m not the one in the wrong here.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
Ale ignores me. Crosses her arms. Looks straight ahead.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, Ray. Just drive.’
‘Jeez, it’s like being fucking married.’ I have a moment where I recognise I need to take a deep breath. The traffic feels too busy, the buildings are crowding in on either side and Ale is doing that judging thing.
‘Christ, who’d want to marry a crabbit git like you.’
‘Now we’re getting personal. You on the rag or something?’ As soon as the words are out of my mouth I regret them.
Ale looks at me. I risk a glance. Her lips are a tight, narrow line. Her jaw clenched. She looks away as if considering her response.
‘You know, a certain amount of sexist shit comes with this job. All that banter with the boys crap. Fine. I can take it. I’ve got broad shoulders. But that … rag comment, I don’t expect from you, Ray. You’re better than that.’
I exhale. Screw my eyes shut for a moment. Force my shoulders down.
‘Sorry.’ It’s a mumble.
‘Can’t hear you. Did you say something?’
She’s not for letting me off.
‘Sorry.’ Louder.
‘For what?’
‘For being a sexist prick.’ I actually manage a half-smile.
Ale grins back. ‘Knob.’
I relax a little. Throw her a grin of relief. We’re good. I owe Alessandra a lot. She was one of the few people who stood by me when I was on the run, suspected of being the so-called Stigmata Killer. It almost cost her career. She deserves more from me.
‘Did you just call me a knob? A gendered insult could be construed as sexism, Detective Constable Rossi.’
‘I could have called you a cunt, but that is a powerful, beautiful thing. And from me could be construed as a compliment.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ Ale thrusts her chin out. ‘I’m reclaiming the word “cunt” as a thing of beauty and declaiming the insult it has become through a male-dominated Christian religion that is terrified of the power of the female.’
‘Good for you,’ I say.
Ale smiles, pulls out her mobile. Gets thumb-busy. I feel relieved that there is no bad feeling and recognise that my earlier irritation has receded somewhat. I know I should delve, try and get to the source of my earlier mind-set, but my courage is lacking.
‘Excellent,’ says Ale, studying her phone.
‘What?’
‘I sent a friend request on Facebook to the two guys we met in The Horseshoe, and they’ve both accepted.’
‘Really? Won’t they recognise you?’
‘I set up a fake account a while ago fo
r this kind of thing. My name is Sandra Ross, and I used a photo from a young, American actress. So, I’m all pretty and everything.’
‘Ah. Alessandra Rossi becomes Sandra Ross. I see what you did there.’
‘And our friends are already busy.’ She reads. ‘Jack is saying that he better not meet Davis when he’s out at the weekend. Can’t trust that his actions will be entirely sane.’ She looks at me. ‘I’m paraphrasing. He says he’ll slice his balls off.’
‘Do you think he’s just blowing off steam? Trying to look tough to his home boys?’
Ale giggles. ‘Did you really just say home boys?’
‘What, is that not how these guys talk?’
‘Yeah. If they’re in the ‘hood. And I’m not sure that the Merchant City comes into that category.’ She laughs again. ‘Home boys.’
She reads some more. ‘His comment has over a hundred likes and a whole string of comments encouraging him to teach Davis a lesson.’ She makes a face. ‘I’m worried, Ray.’
‘Forgive me if I’m wrong, unsocial networking newbie speaking here, but my reading of this malarkey is that people like to sound off, be seen to be strong and active. It’s all about having the image of being a certain way rather than actually doing something about the stuff you say you are concerned about.’
‘Yeah, and normally I would agree with you, Ray. But there’s a tone here. Just not sure about it. And what if Jack does actually meet Simon Davis when he’s on a night out? You saw how he was when we were talking to him in the pub. That was not a normal reaction.’
‘True.’ I say. Ale does have good instincts. ‘Keep an eye on it, will you?’
We’ve reached the office. I spot a free parking space and manoeuvre into it. I apply the handbrake and pull the keys out of the ignition. Instead of stepping out of the car, Ale remains in her seat.
‘I’m going to ask you a question, Ray, and I don’t want to hear the words “fine” or “nothing” in the answer.’
I slowly release my seat-belt. ‘Right…’
‘What is going on with you?’
I open my mouth to speak.
‘You’re not allowed to say “nothing”.’
‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ I reply. She gives me a look. ‘OK. I’m OK. Honest.’
‘Pants on fire.’
I feel my face heat and the earlier irritation return.
‘DD…’ she means Daryl Drain. ‘…tells me you were at a funeral the other day.’
‘Drain has a big gub.’
‘And shiny blue contact lenses, but let’s leave that for another day. The funeral?’
She stares. My eyes move away first. Cursing the confessional of the car, I tell her everything, and as I speak, her chin drops lower and lower.
Ten minutes later and I’m still talking.
‘Fuck,’ she says. Giving the syllable good length. ‘So, Joe was never Stigmata. You knew, told no one and allowed that poor guy to go take on several life sentences?’
‘We think he did murder his carer, Carol,’ I say and cringe at my weak attempt at mitigation.
Ale stares ahead as if trying to assimilate all this new information.
‘Fuck,’ she repeats.
I cross my arms. Hold myself tight, tucking my hands into my underarms until I feel them go numb with the lack of circulation. Ale looks at me and reads my expression.
‘Ray,’ she says. ‘Jesus.’ And I can read her compassion and lack of judgement and feel my eyes spark with tears. I exhale in an attempt to quell my emotions. Then cough. Now I’m clenching my teeth.
‘And Leonard? He’s the bogeyman?’
I can only nod. Her question sums him up perfectly, and I acknowledge this, feeling weak and ridiculous.
‘Why does he have such a strong hold over you, Ray?’
As children, Jim Leonard and I shared the same space in a convent orphanage. He and his twin brother lived in each other’s shadow. There was something uncanny in their communication with each other which, combined with their joyless demeanour, freaked out all of us other kids. Then his brother died from pneumonia, and Jim became so distant from reality that he was removed to another form of care. One that the other kids were sure consisted of padded cells.
Just before he was taken away, he had taken to following me. I would often wake up in the morning to find him standing over my bed. Each time he would be chanting, “We’re going to kill them all.”
The other kids just laughed at him, but there was a fixed look to his eye as he said this that I couldn’t shake from my dreams.
It doesn’t take much digging into any man’s psyche to reach the tender child, and it’s only now that I can see that the boy I was never recovered.
The last time I encountered Leonard, he drugged me, murdered an aged nun before my eyes and then sliced my wrists to the bone. In his twisted mind, he thought he could stage the murder to show that I killed the nun and then, torn with guilt, turned the knife on myself.
If we were standing face to face, I know I could take him no problem. I have height on him and weight. And yet.
‘We? You said we, Ray?’ Ale asks when I stopped talking.
‘Sorry?’
‘Why would Leonard chant “We’re going to kill them all”? Was he including you in this somehow, Ray?’
‘Ale. Leave it.’
‘I’m just trying to make sense of it all, Ray.’
I silence her with a look. We aren’t going there. Enough with the sharing. But Ale is no longer easily cowed.
‘And what about Joseph McCall?’
I’m holding my right arm by the wrist and rubbing the scar with a thumb. Realise what I’m doing and go back to the cross-armed position, hiding my scars in the damp dark of my armpits.
Looking out of the window, I offer nothing but silence to Alessandra’s question. In the distance I see a stretch of blue sky, skirted by another weather front rolling in on Glasgow. A mass of cloud stretches across the horizon. Dark and heavy, like a conscience gravid with guilt.
20
Jim Leonard was in Father Stephen’s office in St Aloysius Roman Catholic church using the parish computer for purposes it was never considered for.
Father Stephen was so naïve and trusting it doesn’t occur to him that his odd-job man might have purposes other than social networking for using the machine. It was Jim that talked the priest into having a Facebook and Twitter account. And once these were live, the priest quickly ran out of interest and left them to Jim to update.
Which suited him fine. So he began every computer session with a quick scan of the banal and then added to it. Once his boredom threshold was truly tested, which took all of ten minutes, he would then get on with his main occupation online.
Hunting.
First, he had to stoke the fire. He searched for Ray McBain and clicked on a link to a recent news bulletin. A young girl had died. She had a boyfriend who was helping the police with their enquiries. McBain’s fat face was spewing police speak and Leonard felt the adrenalin surge of hate. He allowed the sensation to rise and felt his hands shake. The video ended and he replayed it.
McBain was wearing a dark suit. Leonard could see that the top button of his shirt was open behind the knot of his blue tie. Putting on the weight again, Ray? Too much fat on your neck to button up your shirt?
Confidence was apparent in his stance, the way the words flowed, but Leonard could read impatience there. He’d rather be out there investigating the case than speaking to a camera.
A reporter interrupted with a name. Simon Davis. Leonard noted it. Spends the next hour doing some online digging. Before long he knew more about the youth than his mother did. He was a twin. One of the good guys. Or he was before Aileen Banks’s death.
He was a counsellor on a website for twinless twins. ‘Help yourself by helping other twinless
twins’ was the strapline. Made total sense, thought Leonard. Why didn’t he think of joining something like this before?
He found a twin site. Signed up. But he couldn’t find a mention of anyone called Simon Davis. He got into a chat with one woman. She was grief-stricken when at the age of thirty-two her other half, as she called her, took an overdose. Then followed the usual blah about how could she not have seen it, how could her twin do this to her, how could she not have stopped it? Leonard played the part of online listener to perfection. Drew this woman out so that she was telling him stuff that she wouldn’t even tell her counsellor.
Once that trust was established, Jim played her like a fiddle. Started to remind her of how bad she felt when her twin died. Suggested that suicidal impulses were genetic. Stayed up all night in the chat room with her telling her how lonely he was and that if only he was braver he would join the suicide club. Planted a seed that they should do it together. Talked about the best methods of joining their twins in heaven.
‘See you on the other side’ was the last message he received. And six words never had such an impact on Jim. Kept him awake for nearly forty-eight hours while he thrilled at the conclusion of his efforts.
But then the woman came back online with a meek, ‘I couldn’t do it. Could you?’
He hadn’t replied. Let her think he had ended his life. She could add that to the guilt of the death of her twin.
Nope, this online stuff could only achieve so much. The problem with that woman was that she was in the States. He needed someone local. Someone he could meet. Someone whose life he could watch ebb and end.
He went back to watching McBain. The familiar face filled his screen. A reporter interrupted, repeating Simon Davis’s name. And Leonard saw that the media were itching to start their own blame game.
He could have fun with that.
He was on Simon Davis’s Facebook page. There wasn’t too much activity with status updates, and Leonard almost found himself liking the boy. Then realised that with the recent death of his girlfriend and “helping the police with their enquiries”, he was going to be too busy to post what he’s having for breakfast.
Bad Samaritan Page 10
