An Early Grave

by Robert McCracken

  Alan Murray rose from the table as Tara entered the interview room. He shrugged to indicate he’d got nowhere. She glared icily at him. She would speak to him later about protocol and, more importantly, about having some common sense.

  ‘Good morning, Callum. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’

  Callum rolled his eyes at Murray, who frowned and sighed.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said, opening the door and pulling it closed behind him.

  ‘You tell me,’ said Callum. ‘I was dragged here out of my bed, and those two started firing questions at me about the wee girl.’ It seemed that in anger his Belfast accent had gained the upper hand.

  Tara knew the situation had been handled badly. Murray was too quick, bringing Armour in for questioning, but she wasn’t about to criticise her colleagues in front of him for trying to do their job. The washed out, distant and unhelpful character sitting before her knew more about the murder than he had so far revealed. She stared for a moment at the swelling above his eye.

  ‘Do you have something you want to tell me about the killing of the girl?’ He had yet to focus on her, his eyes set on an infinite point beyond the room as if staring the past full in the face, trying his best to square up to whatever evil had destroyed his life.

  ‘Callum, you asked to speak with me. If you’ve changed your mind I can always get DS Murray to come back in.’

  ‘Why should I help you, when you and all the rest of them have done nothing to help me?’

  She saw the nerves rise in him, could hear the emotion breaking the last words in his sentence. She sat down, facing him across the table.

  ‘How do you spend your days, Callum? Do you work?’

  ‘Unemployed.’

  ‘So, what do you do with your time?’

  ‘I walk Midgey, I go to the library, the shops, the park and I go home.’

  ‘And your evenings?’ He looked at her for the first time. Incredulity flowed from brightening eyes.

  ‘I go out with my friends to the cinema, to the theatre, the opera and ballet. We have dinner in the best restaurants in Liverpool. We have a private box at Anfield. We drink in the liveliest clubs and get off with stunning women… What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s necessary. Something you may not have realised, Callum. You are a suspect in this murder. For your own good I think it’s best if we cut the sarcasm, and maybe we can rule you out of the investigation as soon as we can. Tell me what you were doing two nights ago.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. I want to go home. Midgey will be looking to be fed.’

  ‘A young girl was murdered in a house close to yours. I want to know what you were doing around midnight on Tuesday.’

  ‘I was in my bed asleep.’

  ‘Can anyone vouch for that?’ She knew it was a stupid question for a man in his situation. He gave her a look of disgust, and took to contemplation of the blank wall once again. Tara rose from her chair. She thought that after yesterday she understood this man a little better than others around him. She had sympathy for his plight. Today, however, she found him rude and obnoxious.

  ‘I’ll pass on your request to the Superintendent. If there’s anything you want to tell me, Callum, you know where to find me. I won’t be making this offer every time we meet.’ She left him as she’d found him, staring into his personal oblivion.

  CHAPTER 9

  They kept him until lunchtime but didn’t happen to give him anything to eat. Didn’t bother giving him a lift home either. He had some change in the pocket of his trousers, enough to scrape the bus fare to Netherton and buy some milk for his breakfast. Walking to the bus stop, he wondered if it would ever do anything else but rain in this damn country. Incessant drizzle that soaked you through, bleaching the will from you to do anything but get indoors and stay there, waiting, urging life to hurry on by. He thought of his native Belfast, a city he hadn’t visited since he was thirteen, trying to imagine if a life spent there would have been any better. Different surely, but he doubted better. Callum didn’t need any of it. He didn’t need reminders of where he came from, where he’d been or what he’d done, but the great paradox of his woeful existence was that reminders were all he had, the things he collected, drew around him. Why did he need such things? He had no idea, but he hurried to get home to them.

  Stepping off the bus on Glover’s Lane, he wandered across to the row of shops and bought some milk, semi-skimmed, and The Daily Telegraph. Usually he read the paper in Netherton Library, but today he wanted sanctuary, he wanted to restore himself as an island. He made his way home. He met no one. He felt the rain trickle down his nose, dribble through his thick beard and saturate the worn collar of his T-shirt. When he reached the cul-de-sac he could tell there was something wrong. Billy Hughes, his next door neighbour, stood under his porch, sheltering from the rain, looking up and down the road as if watching for somebody. He sported a serious beer gut that he nourished each Friday and Saturday down at the Hungry Horse and after a match at Goodison. The last few drags of a cigarette hung from a small mouth under a podgy nose, purple at the tip from a burst vessel. He had the remnants of what once had been a black DA hairstyle, thick strands of long hair greased over his scalp. His wife Jean wouldn’t let him smoke in the house.

  ‘See your door?’ said Billy as Callum reached the pathway leading to his house. ‘Bloody kids did it.’

  ‘Midgey! Is he all right?’ He fumbled in his pocket for a key, slipped it in the lock and opened the door. The dog, tail wagging, sniffed the air as Callum bent down. ‘Hiya doing, Midgey? Think I wasn’t coming back? I’ll get you a drink and some food, and then we can go for a walk, eh?’ He patted him on the head, and the dog responded by attempting to lick his hand.

  ‘Went daft, barking and getting on,’ said Billy. ‘But he’s OK. Been quiet all morning. Imagine them shites doing the like of that in broad daylight?’

  Callum examined the scorched wood of the door. Someone had forced the letter box open, and then tried to pour petrol, or lighter fluid inside. At least the word paedo was now obliterated, but how long before he or Midgey were burned to death?

  ‘My window,’ said Billy, ‘I saw them from up there.’ He pointed with his fag at the bedroom window above. ‘I came out after them, but they run like the beggars. Couldn’t run after them, not with my knees. Our Jean got a basin of water and chucked it at the door.’

  Callum nodded his acknowledgement. He didn’t know whether to sound angry about the damage or grateful for Billy’s intervention. He thought that maybe he couldn’t care less. More important things to worry about. Thoughts carried him so far away he tuned out Billy’s continued explanation of the incident.

  ‘Thanks, Billy.’

  He closed the door with Billy Hughes still looking on, straining the last drag from the butt of his cigarette.

  *

  Tara spent her afternoon reviewing her notes on the murder of the girl. Sadly, not much added since the first day. Murray sat with a flea in his ear on the far side of the office. She’d told him off for jumping the gun with Callum and giving her only lead a bruise on his face. He’d set her back at least a couple of days trying to cultivate some response from, potentially, their only worthwhile witness. At least he had the decency to apologise and to suggest a few less rash ideas for gathering information. Tara set him the task of tracing people who may be in the local pornographic movie-making business. She reckoned that should appeal to his facetious wit.

  She had a post-mortem report on the girl. Cause of death was asphyxiation by direct interference of the main air passage ways: most likely smothered under a pillow as she’d thought. No bruises, except for the effects of lividity. There were no cuts, just the burn marks on her chest, inflicted after death, and red scuffs on both knees. It was apparent that sexual intercourse had taken place, traces of semen and gel or oily substances consistent with lubricant materials found on her thighs, lower abdomen and vaginal area. SOCO found noth
ing in the immediate vicinity of the body. No clothing, shoes or personal items such as handbag or make-up in the bedroom. A sweep of the remainder of the house revealed nothing that could be related directly to the girl. The three bed-room terrace was furnished with basic items: beds in each room, a sofa in the lounge, a cooker, refrigerator and washing machine in the kitchen, all consistent with a property used and advertised as a furnished let. There were sheets, pillows and duvets on the beds in each room except where the victim was discovered. It seemed plausible that the duvet and pillows had been removed from there, leaving only the top urine-soaked sheet on the mattress. There were some articles of food in the kitchen: milk, low-fat spread and an open carton of orange juice in the fridge. Cupboards held some basic utensils, crockery, several wine glasses and tumblers. There was also an electric kettle and a toaster; a box of eighty tea bags, already open, sat on the work-top beside a jar of instant coffee. All items had been removed for forensic examination. Fingerprints were lifted from the internal and external doors, from the kitchen work-tops and the banister on the stairs.

  With no positive identification for the victim, Tara began to realise the enormity of the task ahead. The best lead they had was the suggestion about the activities carried on in the house, the making of pornographic films. Precious little to work on, and the idea had still to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt considering the dubious reliability of the witness, Callum Armour. A more definite piece of evidence was the Polish word, kurwa, burned into the flesh of the victim. With a Polish national identified as the house owner it suggested that the girl also came from Poland, and this was a murder within that particular ex-pat community. She knew that Tweedy would launch a public appeal for information if nothing was forthcoming soon.

  Mingling within her frustration over the girl’s murder were the bits and pieces of stories she’d read in that morbid box-file presented to her by Callum Armour. Much of it was a muddle of facts with his supposition and outlandish theories, but she found it hard to dismiss the account of his wife’s death. Yes, it was declared an accident, but Callum was so adamant about the blank sympathy card and the time at which he took possession of it.

  Deciding that for the moment she’d reached an impasse with her case, she ran a quick search on her computer, looking for any stories relating to the accident which claimed the lives of Tilly Reason and her daughter. A couple of items from the archives of the Oxford Mail displayed the original report on the deaths, and she found also the account of the inquest. It may have been the same report she’d read from the box-file, but she skimmed through it anyway looking for anything to give credence to Armour’s beliefs that his family had been murdered at the level crossing in Shiplake. She found plenty of articles on the dangers of un-gated level-crossings and noted with astonishment that out of eight thousand level crossings in Britain, two per cent did not have gates. Over three hundred accidents and near misses occurred each year. Police and motoring organisations blamed much of it on the contempt drivers had for the warning systems in place at level crossings. It was a sad fact that many drivers and pedestrians played Russian Roulette in using them. Shiplake had long been cited as a disaster waiting to happen, and Tara was relieved to note that major improvements were planned for the crossing that had claimed, among others, the lives of Callum’s wife and daughter. Undoubtedly tragic, everything pointed to it being an accident, and in the three years since then Callum Armour had failed to come to terms with it. His claim about the sympathy card, however, still rankled with Tara.

  She wondered how she might help him, not in finding the murderer he claimed to be out there, but in more practical matters. Could she sort his problems with the local troublemakers who were causing him to live in constant fear? Could she arrange for the community policing guys to sit down with Callum and, for the first time, talk through his concerns? Perhaps she could find someone, or some organisation to help him put his house in order, clean it up and advise him on a healthier lifestyle. Did Callum really need some form of counselling? She was beginning to think more like a social worker than a detective. She would have a go anyway.

  Before leaving her research into Callum’s past, she typed his name into the search engine just to see what came up. The first few hits were impressive. Callum Armour: ‘Matrix ion suppression in the detection of drug metabolites, case studies,’ published in the Journal of Mass Spectrometry. There was a list of several other scientific publications: The Analyst, Food Chemistry, Journal of Chromatography, Analytica Chimica Acta, and Food Additives and Contaminants, all dating back at least three years, some as far as eight. There were a few references to the Department of Chemistry at Oxford University, a couple of links to children’s writer Tilly Reason, and one to a conference on drugs and food analysis held four years ago in Brussels. Finally, although she couldn’t recall the name of the victim, she typed in ‘Canterbury Cathedral murder’ only to see hundreds of hits referring to the killing of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Scrolling down, however, she found a BBC news report on the more recent murder of the Cathedral Precentor and Liturgist, Peter Ramsey. As she mulled over the lack of evidence for the murder of the girl in Treadwater, so it appeared detectives of Kent Police were finding it difficult to establish a motive or to identify any suspects in the murder of the clergyman.

  Strange, she thought, that Callum Armour should think it plausible that she could and would help him, simply because she had been a student at Latimer College. Did he believe in some kind of brotherhood among the alumni, dedicated to helping each other through thick and thin? Or was he suggesting a direct link between the college and the deaths of three people? She now knew what he had studied during his time there, and perhaps he already knew she’d studied law, and had read all about her in the Alumni magazine. She was beginning to regret up-dating her profile and submitting the photograph of her in police uniform. Maybe she should get to understand Callum Armour a little better. Why, for instance, was he pointing an accusing finger for the murder of Peter Ramsey at this student who had disappeared? What possible motive? What motive to kill a children’s novelist? And there were years between the disappearance, Tilly Reason’s accident and the killing in Canterbury. If she were into pulling coincidences together, no matter how outlandish, why not consider Callum Armour as the link between his wife’s death, the murder of Peter Ramsey and, of much more relevance to Tara, the death of a young girl on the Treadwater Estate?

  CHAPTER 10

  She told herself on her way home that she wouldn’t go into the house alone, not without back-up outside. But this was not the route she would take from St. Anne Street to her apartment in Wapping Dock. She drove her own car, a Ford Focus, electric-blue, but she intended leaving a note inside for her colleagues to find if, for some reason, she didn’t make it out of the house.

  Tara’s decision to return home after Oxford had been in some ways disappointing enough for her mother Barbara, although now she had her daughter close by, where she could get to see her every week, but it fair knocked the wind from the fifty-year-old school teacher when Tara announced that she was joining the police. Tara, her mother often told her, had a chance of an exciting life, a great career as a lawyer or a barrister, earning good money in a city with better opportunities than Liverpool. On days like this she was glad her mother didn’t know the half of what she got up to in her job.

  Turning her car into Sycamore Drive, she wondered again about Callum Armour. He seemed a strange mix of Liverpool and Belfast, inhabiting a world so different from the one she knew while growing up on The Wirral. Their backgrounds were diverse, and yet he also had done well to make it to one of the centres of elitist Britain, the rarefied environs of Oxford.

  ‘I’ve arranged for a community police officer to call with you,’ she said, struggling once again to find a place to sit in the ramshackle of a living room. ‘They’ll advise you on what’s best for dealing with the harassment you’ve been getting from local youths.’

  From his a
rmchair of paper bundles he glared at her through puffy eyes, reddened as if he’d been crying.

  ‘What about harassment from the police? Who’s going to advise me about that?’

  She didn’t reply, didn’t rise to his challenge. She felt nervous enough sitting in this depressing room, and she’d forgotten to leave that note in her car.

  ‘There is also Community Support which is a charity that helps victims of crime. Here are the contact details; you can give them a call.’

  ‘Don’t have a phone.’

  ‘Do you have a computer?’

  ‘Not anymore. Had a break-in a while back. They took my lap-top, my TV and DVD player.’

  ‘You should consider getting a mobile phone.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No way. Those things pickle your brain. One day the world’s going to wake up to the number of cases of brain tumours and mental disorders and finally blame it on the use of mobile phones. By then, of course, the men running the companies making a fortune will be long gone, and it’ll be a heck of a fight to find those responsible.’

  ‘Just a suggestion,’ she replied. It wasn’t her intention to start a debate on health and safety. She reached out some leaflets, though she suddenly realised that what Callum Armour did not require in this house was more paper. ‘Some information which may be of help. You should check with social services or with the Citizens Advice Bureau about your entitlements. They might be able to help you…’

  She stopped, suddenly conscious of saying too much or something that may offend him. Besides, he didn’t appear terribly interested in what she had to say.

  ‘Do you have a social worker?’

  ‘You must think I’m a real basket case. What exactly have you heard about me? What do you think I am?’

  She really didn’t want to get into this. Hadn’t intended to rile him. Even Midgey shifted his location from the feet of his master to the worn mat under the table. She was slow to answer, but he filled the pause.