Potter's Field

by Dolan, Chris;

  “Will you be working with the other boy’s Ma and Da as well?” asked Anne. Maddy nodded. “Poor bastards.” Strange how pity for others can gleam through your own personal darkness.

  “I’ll do everything in my power to get justice for Sy.”

  Anne hauled herself out her seat, as though her muscles had ceased to function. Tony scurried to the door, in case a bigger bird swooped down and caught him.

  The girl’s name was Frances Mulholland and there was no obvious connection between her and Sy. She came from Drumchapel. She had no family in the Gorbals, and apparently no connections with the Kennedys. Nor, for that matter with a graphics company called Sign-Chronicity, or any charities they had worked with. She was a pupil at St. Catherine’s and no one in her family had ever heard of Lochgilvie Home.

  The Mullholland family hadn’t reported Frances missing, or heard about a body being found in a garden. The police had found them by accident. Two PCs, one of them young, both of them new to the Drumchapel beat, had been sent to Coulter this morning to tell him about it.

  “We responded to requests to look into a domestic disturbance at the address indicated in the report.”

  “As a potential ASBO—”

  “You can speak English with me, guys.”

  “Sorry, sir. Anti-Social Behaviour—”

  “I know what it means, Constable! Just tell me in nice short words – what kind of a disturbance?”

  They stiffened, straining now for casual English. “Raised voices—”

  “Shouting.”

  “Shouting, and noises that indicated – I mean seemed to… suggest… physical violence.”

  “A fight. In other words.” Coulter groaned inwardly. All he wanted was the basic details. But people don’t like giving the basic details, especially if it’s part of their job. Makes everything look too simple.

  “And the requests for the police to visit the Mulhollands came from neighbours? Do we know if this is a frequent request?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “One of the neighbours said it had happened before, but not for a long while.”

  “When we went in, we found Mrs Mulholland under the influence of alcohol—”

  “And perhaps drugs.”

  “In a bit of a state. There was a man there, who had also taken drink and possibly drugs—”

  “He looked glazed.”

  “They admitted there had been a fight, but it was all settled now.”

  “A young boy was crying in a bedroom next door. We asked Mrs. Mulholland if she could bring him through.”

  Eventually, Coulter got the whole story. The visitor was Ricky Graham, a local dealer; one who had been helpful to the police in the past. He had no reputation for violence, but both he and Jacqueline Mulholland had been drinking and dropping speed, never a very peaceful combination. It turned out she owed him money, which he, in the usual domino pattern, owed to his masters. The boy, Darren, was brought out for inspection. There were no bruises or cuts or obvious signs of abuse. The uniforms had noticed photographs of a second child, and Jackie Mulholland herself had mentioned the name Frances. It was the boy who said his sister hadn’t been home in two days.

  “How come? How come the mother doesn’t notice a thirteen year old missing for over a week?”

  “We never got much sense out of her after that.”

  “The girl often stayed over with friends she said.”

  “Mrs Mullholland started wailing, sir, shouting out for Frances, shaking Ricky, screaming if he knew anything.”

  “Did he?”

  “Only to suggest that he had assumed that the girl – Franny they called her – could have been coming and going as usual. She’d often get in at night before her mother and be out before anyone in the morning. We got the impression it’s a pretty disorganised household, sir.”

  Jacqueline and Darren Mulholland were now being looked after by a relative. Jackie hadn’t been officially informed of her daughter’s murder, but she knew the minute the cops started asking about her.

  The officers then visited some neighbours to get an impression of life chez Mullholland. Darren and Frances got up and went to bed at all kinds of hours. They spent as much time in pals’ houses as they did in their own – ate better and more regularly with some of them. Both children were in the habit of sleeping over, sometimes for more than a night, at more settled, warmer, safer houses.

  “The boy. Darren. What’s his story? His sister missing for a week and he does nothing?”

  The two policemen looked lost for words. Anything was possible in a house like that. And they shuffled off to write their reports.

  “Completely unrelated murder,” Russell insisted afterwards. Coulter thought he was probably right. Hoped he was. The implications otherwise were terrible. If Frances and the boys truly had nothing to connect them, yet were killed by the same hands, then Glasgow had a serial killer on its hands. A serial killer of children.

  Antonella was inside the house, shouting on Vittore over the din made by her mother and Ettore’s parents and by the boys and a few villagers who were hampering progress as much as helping. Ettore was tying up bundles and stacking items that would be left with parents and neighbours either until the Di Rios returned, or sent for their things.

  A kitchen table with its legs dismantled. Pots and pans that no one wanted to use in the meantime. Old tools – hoes and spades and hammers and an old blunt scythe – tied up with rope. Sacks full of the boys’ clothes – not to be stored away, but to be delivered to Antonella’s parents’ house along the road at Procchio. A single suitcase lay by the door of the house, alongside an old army kit bag, a large seed-pouch, and Ettore’s regimental belt, good for carrying the few coins and notes to begin their journey.

  “You’ll need this.” His mother came out the house holding up his army coat. The war had ended and no one ever came back for his military gear.

  “It’ll be cold in the north.”

  “It’s too heavy to carry.”

  “Then wear it.”

  “Some days it’ll be too hot.”

  “It’ll be good for bedding, if you have to stay out a night.”

  He took it, folded it, and stuffed it into the seed-bag. Ettore wasn’t sure if they’d ever have a roof over their heads again.

  Carlo was helping. Bringing out sides of wood from the dresser being dismantled by his grandfather and uncle. Vittore was supposed to be helping, too, but was really just getting in the way. Every time Carlo, the oldest, came out with a flattened drawer, or a slat from the dresser’s back, he caught Ettore staring out to sea.

  “That way?” the boy asked.

  “No,” Ettore said. He pointed northwards. “You’d have to walk up and right round the cliff tops. And then you’d have to be tall enough to see over France and Spain.”

  “I’ll be tall enough.”

  Ettore smiled. Carlo was holding his shoulders high, to make him seem bigger, manlier and healthy, and clenching his muscles, holding his soul in, straining not to cry. He’d hoped up until the last minute that his parents would change their mind and take him with them. Just a year or two older, his dad had said, and they might have considered it. And anyway, with his coughs, this wasn’t the best time. They needed Carlo here to help look after Vittore.

  All day, Carlo had helped out, almost wordlessly. Resigned. Steeling himself for the moment when his parents would walk down the road towards Portoferraio, away from their farm and their house, perhaps never to return. Headed for some land that the boy could not begin to imagine. He had hoped his mother at least would have stayed, but then worried that, without her, his father might fare worse.

  Ettore couldn’t put his arm around his son – the slightest contact might bring on the weeping in all of them. Behind them, Antonella was coming out of the house for the last time, ahead of the procession of mothers, aunts, uncles and neighbours. Ettore’s father sat in the shade under the slats of the roof. Antonella had Vi
ttore in her arms. As Ettore came towards them, she held the child out.

  Six years old, though he had hardly grown since he was four. His face was full of confusion. The tumult of the day, the presence of his entire family, the noise and activity and dismantling of everything had excited him. Ettore could see in his eyes that the lad knew some crucial moment had arrived. He took the boy from Antonella. “Hey, my big soldier.”

  The sky stretched out over them, almost white; the sea below them, black out in its depth. Carlo hung tight to his father’s side, Vittore to his neck. The same sky and sea that reached as far as Francia and Inghilterra and Scozia where one day, if everything went well, the boys would follow their parents. Right now, though, that sky and the sea were stealing his mamma and papà.

  “Look after Vittore. You’re in my place now.”

  Both boys looked back at him through dark, wet eyes. Nobody moved. Not Ettore, or Antonella, or any of the dozen friends, family or neighbours. A single step seemed too big, too decisive. Vittore clung on hard, and Carlo clenched his muscles tighter. If either one of them relaxed for a second it would be their fault that their mamma and papà were leaving them behind; their fault if they never returned again.

  Maddy didn’t normally take her car into work, the subway going from door to door, with less than five minutes’ walk either side. This morning, though, she had filled the boot and the back seat with stuff for the charity shop. Her recycling duty done, the afternoon was still bright and the evening would be long – summer solstice just around the corner.

  Coulter had gone to ground. Maybe they were getting close to an arrest. Maddy should start getting to know the details of this case. The faces. So far she had only met – of the living – Tony and Anne Kennedy.

  She had seen photographs of other people attached to the investigation, in files that Coulter had slipped her earlier than necessary. The blank – frankly boring – faces of both Martin Whyte and his business partner Jim Docherty. The heavy-lidded carnality of Elaine Docherty. Though perhaps Maddy was just imagining that – hardly surprising, after the way Alan had described the woman, slouching suggestively at him and Russell, flashing her undies. Wishful thinking no doubt. Maddy knew that some colleagues and a lot of policemen talked about her in those terms. Single. Goes out. Wears high heels and makeup. Takes a drink. Down at Division A she’d be gagging for it.

  Then there was the photo of Ian Lennon. A face hewn from the living rock. His picture shouted in her hands, though Coulter had said he’d been quiet-spoken. His eyes were set so deep set they seemed to belong to a face hiding inside another. Skin the colour of Aberdeen granite, crevices and gorges in it worthy of Cairngorm. Lennon was fast overtaking Whyte as the police’s front-running suspect. Ex-jailbird, IRA hit man – of the mercenary type, apparently, rather than the politically dedicated. Lived alone, gardened alone, had no one to corroborate his alibi for Sy, and was in the garden the day Frances was killed, possibly around the same time.

  Now that Maddy had decided not to get rid of her house, she wondered if she should change cars instead. Get rid of the little Mazda sports; everyone commented on it. Flashy, tawdry, yellow. Her mother hated it – though Maddy knew Rosa would have loved being seen getting in and out of it when she was younger; when her legs worked better. Outside the church at Procchio. Marco and all the village boys looking on.

  Maddy wanted to glimpse the places of the story so far. Where the Kennedys and the Mullhollands lived. The gardens, other than Mrs. MacKay’s, tended to by Lennon. Lochgilvie House. She drove over the Kingston Bridge. Glasgow’s skyline brittle like a cracked eggshell, the late sun’s yellow yolk dribbling down into its streets.

  Lochgilvie looked pleasanter in real life than in the web photograph. A glowing red sandstone building, only one window cracked, and a couple of kids standing outside, chatting and laughing. Moments like these, she could almost believe in progress. In the law managing to help the vulnerable. She tried to imagine Sy and Micky X standing there talking, laughing. About what? After all the time she had worked with kids in this city, all the times she’d served the local bad boys chips, she still couldn’t imagine what they said to each other in the privacy of their own company.

  The big difference between the photograph of the home and the reality, was the garden. It had been a patch of mud on the website. Now it had a lawn – a few divots and holes in it, but still a lawn. At one side, a basket ball hoop; at the other a giant chess set. Those pieces must be chained to the ground. Benches had been provided at either side of the door. A flower bed at the front looked well tended. All of it the work, presumably, of Sign-Chronicity.

  A woman – of fantastic girth – had clocked Maddy from a window and within a couple of seconds was standing staring at her from the front door. A good sign – staff picking up on strangers hanging about. Maddy got out to introduce herself.

  The woman looked askance at this designer-suited stranger, skirt half an inch too short, lipstick tenth of a millimetre too thick, getting out of a yellow sports and clacking her heels on the pavement.

  “Miss Bateman?”

  “Uh-hu.”

  “Maddalena Shannon. Procurator Fiscal.”

  “Follow me.” Janet Bateman, perfectly small and fat, wheeled along in front of Maddy to her office. Popped behind her desk, she looked globular. Her eyes were strict and tired, narrowing behind thickish lenses. “Fiscal. Thought you don’t get involved until there’s an arrest.”

  “Usually. But I was passing, and as I’ll be working on the case soon enough—”

  Bateman waved away the procedural protocol. “Sy was sent here for menacing behaviour—”

  “I thought it was shoplifting?”

  “As well. Like most of our youngsters in here – Sy was out of control in most areas of his life.”

  Maddy nodded. “As would be the other, unknown, victim?”

  “I’ve spoken to the police about this. He’s not one of ours.”

  “Could Sy have befriended someone outside the Home, during his stay?”

  Bateman took off her glasses. “Let’s not be romantic, Miss Shannon. My clients are capable of secret lives that would astound you. Having said that, Sy Kennedy wasn’t one of the worst. Came from a better home than most. Father around, in some shape or form. Confident enough boy. He could easily have met someone locally.”

  “Did he get into trouble often, in here?”

  “Boys like Sy don’t have to go looking for trouble. Trouble finds them. Like a mangy dog that follows you home. Trouble’s everywhere. This building’s a magnet for all sorts of low-life. Yours isn’t the only sports car to sit out there.”

  “What others?”

  “Gangsters looking for errand boys. Posh men in tailored suits with enough dosh to tempt careless laddies into doing whatever they ask. Big brothers, and ex-graduates of the home on revenge missions. Local kids – some of them well-educated and nicely-spoken – bored and looking for adventure. Fifteen-year-old private school girls looking for a bit of rough.”

  “Do you have any idea, Ms Bateman, which of those threats might have led Sy Kennedy to Kelvingrove that morning?”

  Janet Bateman replaced her glasses with a sigh.

  “You’re understaffed here.”

  “Pool of seven. Only three on at any given time. Fifteen, sometimes seventeen clients. Admittedly, others come in to help. Some local volunteers.”

  “Like who?”

  “The local Minister. A few socially minded neighbours. The parish priest, one or two parents…”

  “How do bad boys get on with do-gooders?”

  “Men like them can be better with boys than you think. Get them to turn up for football games. Putting a team together is nigh on impossible, though. The players are only here a few weeks, and then they end up in borstal, or, if they’re very lucky, back home, or….”

  “Dead.”

  DI Coulter, DS Russell by his side, gave an update on the case so far to the Chief Constable. Not a task he
ever enjoyed; even less so today. Martha was at home having one of her worse headaches. They could go on for days, weeks. Where they came from, nobody knew. Not classic migraines. They’d had tests done over the years for everything any doctor could think of. For a while they suspected ME, but she had none of the symptoms between attacks. That left the sole probable cause, Alan reckoned: him.

  Nobody was in the mood for this meeting. Chief Constable Robertson had never mentioned Coulter’s walking out in the middle of Maxwell Binnie’s speech at the Youth Crime Committee. He didn’t need to – the facial expression of a maltreated pit-bull sufficed. “‘Some loose ends’, Coulter? You’re a master of understatement.”

  “Not enough of them, sir” – he never called Robertson “sir” but thought on this occasion it might be politic – “to make me think Whyte or Docherty are responsible for very professional executions.”

  “You’d call the Mullholland girl’s killing professional, would you?” CC Robertson was itching for a fight.

  “Possibly. But we’re not even sure it’s connected.”

  “Docherty and Whyte had done some work up in Drumchapel, three, four years ago.” Russell spoke as if he were in full agreement with Coulter, but was just having a couple of niggly difficulties. “We know they worked directly with Kennedy.”

  “Whyte ran past the murder scene twice….” Robertson flicked through Coulter’s report as though it were covered in slime.

  “We’ve checked the Docherties’ and Whyte’s medical records,” Coulter soldiered on. “Driving records, financial history, passports, credit cards, family background… Nothing. I think we need to look closer at Ian Lennon’

  “The gardener.”

  “Ex-IRA hit man. A hired hand, we think. My guess is Mr. Lennon doesn’t believe in anything.”