Bad Samaritan

by Michael J Malone

  Maggie changes channels.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I turn to her. Hear the note of aggression and instantly regret it. ‘Sorry, I’m…’

  ‘Do you really want to hear any more? You need to switch off for the day, Ray.’

  I fall back into the cushions. ‘For sure,’ I agree.

  ‘How is he?’ asks Maggie. Her face full of concern for Kevin Banks.

  ‘He’ll survive.’ My sympathy for him is tempered by the fact that his actions have put us thigh-high in the shit. I close my eyes and allow my head to slump back into a cushion at the thought of the headlines the next morning. Sure, the online sites will be alight with all of this, but I can ignore them, can’t I?

  Nobody could say how he’d managed it. He was being escorted back into the station after appearing at the court. And just before the uniforms brought him inside, he’d taken advantage of a slip in concentration and wrestled himself out of their grip.

  Folk make a run for it all the time, said Daryl Drain afterwards. But they tend to run for safety, not the wheels of the no. 77 bus. The uniform who tried to re-capture him reported that it was as if Banks was aiming for the bus, rather than trying to get away from him.

  Was his grief fuelled purely by the loss of his daughter, or was there something more? Guilt perhaps? We did get confirmation from Mrs Banks that her husband was home that night. Even the nosy neighbour confirmed that. Could the neighbour be wrong? Certainly Mrs Banks was doped into a stupor, and it’s quite possible she had no idea what she was saying when she answered our questions.

  Sadly, I’ve spoken to many grieving parents in my time, but I can’t remember one who was driven to kill himself in such a dramatic fashion. At the least they want to find answers. They want to know what happened to their loved one before fully giving in to the tumult of emotion that such an event rouses. To attempt suicide before they are given that detail? I’ve never come across it, and it makes me question exactly what is going on in that man’s mind. Does he know more about this than he is telling us?

  To me, this is an act of guilt. Not grief.

  27

  Helen Davis waits at her living room window, arms crossed, anxiety hanging like a twisting weight just under her heart. Each breath a challenge. Each second until her son returns from the police station hangs on her as heavy as dredged-up sin.

  What could they be asking him?

  Why are they even interested in him? Yeah, he’s been a difficult boy, but surely they don’t think he could have anything to do with that girl’s death?

  The fact that she still can’t say her name, even within the confines of her own mind, gives her a little tug of guilt. She swipes it aside with a silent acknowledgement and the words: once her boy is safe from accusation. Or, make that boys?

  No smoke without fire. The words scroll through her mind and memory helpfully adds her mother’s scolding tone. That was her favourite saying. The old witch. She expected the worst of everyone and couldn’t wait to tell you if she was ever proven correct. Even if that proof was only in her own mind.

  Her mother’s attitude had gifted her a healthy dose of cynicism, but she didn’t ever reach the depths of imagination her mother plumbed on a regular basis. It made looking after her in those final years extremely difficult. The number of home helps they went through before she finally died didn’t bear thinking about.

  Helen turns on the television. Hopes that the sound distracts her. The news comes on. Is that really the time? She checks her phone. It’s after 6pm. Where has Matt gone? Surely he’s not still at the police station? And if she finds out that they finished with him hours ago and he didn’t bother to get in touch, she’ll bloody kill…

  A name sounds out from the TV. Worries at her attention. Kevin Banks. She steps in front of the screen, the better to see, and the detective who was in her house earlier fills the screen. Handsome guy, she thinks, but needs to cut out the pies, she hears her mother speaking.

  With a shake of her head, as if banishing the spirit of her long deceased mother, she tries to make sense of the words coming out of the man’s mouth.

  As their meaning becomes clear, an involuntary movement has her hand covering her mouth. Oh my God. Kevin ran under a bus? Is that what McBain said? What would possess him to do that? Grief must be driving him crazy.

  She recalls the first time she met Kevin Banks. They were waiting to collect their respective children from some event or other. The kids playing it cool. Not wanting the olds to meet. Of course I was curious, she thinks. This girl was taking up a lot of space in my son’s head. I wanted to know where she came from.

  Kevin had an easy smile, a trusting cant to his eyes, and who wouldn’t love that Highland accent? His wife on the other hand was a torn-faced cow. Barely gave her the time of day. Knew she was single and translated that into a threat to her marriage.

  She read all of that in the seconds it took to shake that wet fish of a hand and remembers thinking, you don’t know the half of it, darling.

  An endearment that sparks another memory of her mother. Her voice sounds in her mind. She tuts it away. Brushes it from her thoughts like she might flap at a wasp. Her mother was the worst judge of character she’d ever come across.

  Then her mother is louder than ever.

  It saves you time, darling. She even managed to imbue that endearment with the tone of doom. Expect the worst from everyone and sooner than you know, someone is going to prove you right.

  * * *

  Jim Leonard has been sitting at the church computer, just an hour distant by car from the Davis family. He’s been waiting with the patience and focus of a hunter. Waiting for Simon Davis to go active on the twin counselling website.

  He has a strong feeling about this one. A thrill in the gut that he’s not felt since he took a knife to that old hag of a nun. Doing God’s work my backside, he thought. The woman was clearly on the same side of the good/evil divide as he was.

  Closing his eyes, he focuses on the excitement of it. The hunger. The charge. Wills it to every cell in his body. Feeling it surround him like a full body halo.

  The word “halo” causes a snort of laughter. He revels in the irony. Then dismisses the thought, gathering the sense of excitement to him again. His own dark aura.

  Feeling a tremble in his fingertips and a shortness in his breath, he opens his eyes and releases the sensation. It’s too much. Demands release. And he’s too far away, in every sense of the phrase, from his target. Better not get too caught up at this stage or he’ll need to go out and hunt now. That would be sloppy and get him caught.

  He acknowledges the debt he has to McBain in finding this target. If it hadn’t been for him he’d never have come across Davis. So, you’re good for something, Ray, other than eating.

  An alert sounds on the computer. Just thinking of him and the internet sends notice of his appearance in the world. He enters a screen and sees that McBain has hit the news again. Another few clicks on the man himself appears. He turns the sound up. Some sap … scratch that, it’s the dead girl’s father, has run under the wheels of a bus and the media are giving the police a hard time. Grieving parent reacts to arrest. Blah. Blah.

  McBain is giving it the usual police speak. As if words of more than two syllables are supposed to be a sign of intellect. At the end of his speech, before the camera stops filming, Leonard notices that McBain gives a small look to the woman on his left. As if checking that his performance was acceptable. She moves her head very slightly in response and raises an eyebrow.

  She’s a good few years younger than McBain. Clearly in the force or she wouldn’t be standing there. The look passing between them suggests something more than just colleagues. Could McBain be having an affair with a workmate?

  He pauses the screen. Examines the look that passes between them. Congratulates himself on spotting it, as it would have been missed by e
veryone else. He hunkers down in his chair, legs stretched out before him, crosses his arms and tries to work out what is going on.

  McBain looks hale and hearty. And far too happy for his liking. Sure, he’s pale, too heavy and there are dark circles under his eyes. But he’s breathing, moving about and far too functional for Leonard’s liking.

  Of all the people affected by that night in the convent, they are the only two left alive. He really must do something about that. But first. He turns his attention to the female cop.

  Attractive face. Slim. A brightness about the eyes that he finds appealing. There’s a brain there, not withstanding her connection with McBain.

  She’s good looking, intelligent and is clearly drawn to McBain.

  This won’t do, he thinks. This won’t do at all.

  28

  Next day and Alessandra Rossi has just listened to my latest theory.

  ‘No way, Ray,’ she says with certainty. ‘No way did that man kill his daughter.’

  ‘So why, then? Why run under a bus?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Ale is driving. Takes her eyes off the road in front of her to look at me. ‘Grief does crazy things to people.’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep for thinking about this last night.’ I repeat my theory. ‘Surely, as a parent you want answers? You want to know what happened and that keeps you going.’

  ‘No two people react the same way, Ray.’

  I make a non-committal sound in answer and look out of my side of the car. We’re in a line of traffic on the M8, crossing the wide, grey ribbon that is the River Clyde. The driver in the blue Vauxhall alongside is moving his mouth rapidly. As if accompanying his favourite song on the radio. I study him some more. Read the furrowed brow and think, nah, he’s shouting at some poor sap on the other end of the phone. His top button is open and his tie unloosened. I can see his hair is damp with sweat. That’s technology for you. We don’t even get respite from the world when we’re in a car.

  Ale speeds up and we lose him.

  ‘Seems we’re all under pressure, eh?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is grief the only pressure Kevin Banks is under?’

  ‘I think everything else will be relegated to the Who Gives a Fuck file.’ Pause. ‘Do you think she’ll be in?’ asks Ale.

  ‘If she’s not at home, she’ll be at the hospital, by her husband’s side. And we’ll get her there.’

  ‘What are they saying? Coma?’

  ‘A medically induced one until the swelling in the brain goes down. He’s also got a large selection of broken bones.’

  ‘Jeez.

  We both lapse into our own thoughts, and fifteen minutes later we’re in suburbia and rolling up outside the Banks’s house.

  Jennie Banks has a long, lean face that has been hardened by recent events into her judgement of the world. And planet Earth can go nuclear for all she cares. Her arms are crossed tight, as if to hold in her crushing disappointment.

  ‘Yes?’ she asks, with one foot placed behind the door as if she can only allow the world entry one tiny piece at a time.

  I explain who I am and ask if we can come in. She simply turns round and walks into her living room without speaking. We follow, Ale first, and I close the front door behind me.

  ‘I was just heading out,’ Jennie says as she cushions herself into a chair. And not one person in the room is convinced by this statement. Least of all her. She drums the fingers of her right hand on the arm of the chair. Her left hand is wedged firmly into her armpit. She stills the movement of her fingers and stares at the carpet in front of her. Looks from me to Ale. Her sight lighting on each of us so briefly, as if to look at someone else hurts.

  ‘Need to go and visit my husband. He’s been in some sort of…’ It takes a real effort for her to speak, and I wonder if she has been medicated against the worst of her pain.

  ‘We know, Mrs Banks,’ I say. ‘Have you been in touch with the hospital to find out the latest news?’

  ‘I’ll get…’ she searches for the name of her neighbour, ‘…Tom from next door to phone for me.’ She wipes at her eyes as if trying to improve her vision. ‘It’s all so confusing. All that medical speak.’

  Alessandra tells her what we know.

  ‘Oh,’ Jennie Banks says. ‘Right.’ She looks out of the window. ‘Funny that, eh? Another head injury. Like father, like daughter.’ Her bottom lip trembles for a moment. Then stops. It’s like she’s gone to the well to find there are no more tears.

  ‘We’re really sorry to bother you again, Mrs Banks. We just wanted to run through the events of that night again.’

  ‘I don’t…’ She shakes her head so slow it’s as if she’s on a different clock than us. ‘Aileen went out with her pal. Just like she’d done a hundred times before.’

  ‘She didn’t say where she was going? Who she hoped to meet? There were no new friends in her life that you were aware of?’ Ale asks in the most apologetic tone she can muster. And as she speaks, Jennie Banks’s head maintains the same slow movement from side to side.

  ‘Aileen was a secretive wee madam. Even kept changing her Facebook name so I couldn’t find what she was up to.’

  ‘And you and Mr Banks stayed in that night?’

  ‘Barely have a social life. Been married too long.’ A small snort is as close to laughter as she can manage. ‘I went to bed at my usual, just after ten. Kevin stays up late when Aileen is out. Says he can’t sleep till he knows she’s home and…’ she stumbles over the word, ‘…safe.’ She crosses her legs. ‘One thing you can take to the bank. That man truly cares for his daughter.’

  From the way she trails off after saying this, I can’t help but read she doubts that the same level of care ever extended to her.

  Ale stands up, signalling an end to the questions. She looks at me as if to say, enough, the poor woman can’t take any more.

  ‘Mind if I use your…’ Ale asks.

  ‘It’s at the top of the stairs.’

  * * *

  Back in the car. Before Ale drives off she turns to me.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Seems Mr Banks still has his alibi,’ I answer.

  ‘Interesting though.’ She stares out of the window with an enigmatic smile.

  ‘Go on, spill,’ I say.

  ‘I didn’t need to go wee-wee,’ she says, and the smile is now a full-blown grin. ‘I was checking. Mrs Banks has a well-stocked drug cabinet up there.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘She’s got some heavy-duty stuff. And the thing is, the date on her pills is for a few months ago. She was prescribed this stuff yonks ago. She’s on 500mg for Christ’s sake. Something was not well in her world before this happened. Kevin Banks could have had a brass band playing in there and she wouldn’t have had a clue.’

  ‘So, he could have gone out and she would have been none the wiser.’

  We both say at the same time, ‘The nosy neighbour.’

  * * *

  Tom Sharp is all but wringing his hands with excitement at the thought he might be able to help us. He offers to make us a cup of tea. We refuse, saying we don’t have time to come in. Last time we saw him, I remember thinking this guy could talk for Scotland.

  ‘You want to run through the events of that night again? Aye?’

  ‘Please,’ I say. ‘We’ll get you down to the office to make a formal statement in due course, but we just wanted to check a couple of things first.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’ He nods and runs through his original story. Dwelling on Aileen’s pal, Karen with the big boobies, for so long that I feel the urge to slap him out of it.

  ‘So, you’re having your toasted bagel with banana,’ I’m impressed by my own power of recall. ‘Aileen comes down the drive. Gets in the car and off they go.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  ‘Anything
happen after that?’

  ‘You guys want a nice cuppa tea?’ he asks again.

  ‘No thanks, Mr Sharp,’ I answer. ‘We have a lot to get through today.’

  ‘Any more comings and goings from the Banks’ house?’ asks Ale.

  He shakes his head. ‘I closed the curtains and put on the telly. If I remember right it was NCIS I was watching. Good stuff that. Keeps the old grey matter tuned in, you know. Must be right smart people coming up with all those stories. There was one…’

  ‘And what time did you go to bed that night?’ I interrupt before we get a blow by blow account of the entire series.

  ‘Same time as every other night. 10:30. A fella needs his routine, you know.’

  ‘And you heard nothing more from the Banks?’

  He cocks his head back. Thinks. Shakes his head. ‘Nope. Not until the next morning at least. Soon as my head hits the pillow, I’m out. It’s all about the routine. You young people could learn something about that from your elders. I expect you are up and out and about till all hours?’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it, Mr Sharp,’ I say before he can continue, and take a step back from his door. ‘Thanks for your time.’

  ‘You’re welcome, son.’

  I take another step. Stop and turn back.

  ‘One more thing. You said last time that about eighteen months ago you believed that Mr Banks was having an affair?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Any more developments on that front recently?’ asked Ale.

  ‘I’m not exactly their confidante, hen. Who knows what’s going on in a marriage, eh? What I do know is that the shouting might have stopped, but Jennie Banks still wasn’t a happy woman. Always has that drawn look about her, you know? As if she’s the camel and she’s waiting for that one last straw to fall.’