The Last Witness: A DCI Daley Thriller

by Denzil Meyrick

  Donald was almost asleep as his mobile pinged into life. He felt beads of sweat break out on his forehead as he read the message. He forced himself to breathe deeply and focus; the knot in his stomach grew even tighter.

  As Daley walked into the hospital, an agitated constable jumped from his chair and ran to his side.

  ‘Sir, Mrs Robertson is awake and asking for her family. I don’t know what to say. The doctor’s won’t sedate her any further, sir.’ Betty MacDougall had been taken to the local hospital, the shock of what was happening to her family simply too much for her to cope with.

  ‘OK, son,’ said Daley, trying to reassure his subordinate. ‘I’ll take care of it.’ He walked into the private side room where Frank MacDougall’s wife was sitting in bed, rocking backwards and forwards, her eyes red with tears: the picture of misery.

  ‘Hello, son,’ she said. ‘Have you got Frankie with you?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ said Daley, taking a chair at the end of her bed. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘I want to see Frankie,’ she wailed in reply, just as a harassed-looking doctor appeared in the room. Daley smiled, recognising the man who had revealed Liz’s pregnancy.

  ‘Mr Daley,’ the doctor said, with a weak smile. ‘I’m afraid Mrs Robertson is in no condition to be questioned by the police. I take it that’s why you’re here?’

  ‘Mrs Robertson is not under arrest, doctor,’ Daley assured him calmly. ‘I’m just here as a visitor. Is that not right, dear?’ He smiled at the woman in the bed.

  ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I need tae speak to this officer, anyhow.’ Daley was pleased that she seemed to have retained at least some reason. The young doctor frowned and left the room shaking his head.

  ‘You said something a couple of days ago,’ said Daley, conscious of the fact that their conversation might be cut short when a more senior medic arrived.

  ‘I cannae remember,’ she said, already sobbing. ‘When?’

  This could be a fruitless exercise, but the chief inspector had to try. ‘In your house, just recently, the first time we met at the farm.’

  Though she had closed her eyes, tears still rolled down her face. She tried to brush them away with a trembling hand. Despite her age and mental plight, the detective could see the ghost of the beautiful woman she had been years before.

  She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Dae ye never get times in yer life when it’s a’ too much, son?’

  ‘Yes, I think everyone does, Betty,’ said Daley, taking her hand in his.

  ‘The problem is when those are the only times ye have, the only ones ye can remember . . . that’s when it a’ gets too much. Ye just hide, aye, hide in a corner in yer own heid.’

  Daley smiled at her, but said nothing. At times like this he felt like a fraud, representing himself as a caring human being, when in actual fact all he was interested in was extracting as much information as he could from this poor soul, and then abandoning her to fate as the pursuit intensified. She was a means to an end, a tool, nothing else. Not for the first time, Daley was repulsed by his own actions.

  ‘D’ye know the first time I saw him?’ she said, a brightness in her eye.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jamie Machie. Aye, wee Jamie Machie.’ She smiled, as though the memory of the monster in far off days gave her pleasure, something that surprised Daley. ‘Bright as a button he wiz, heid an’ shoulders above the rest o’ the weans. Bonnie tae. Aye, right bonnie. He could charm the birds oot o’ the trees, Mr Daley,’ she said, looking genuinely happy for the first time since they had met.

  ‘How people change,’ Daley commented, then wished he hadn’t. He had that gnawing feeling in his head again; the sense that he had the answer but couldn’t piece the strands together, couldn’t tie the rope tight enough to allow him to pull what he needed from the depths of his mind.

  ‘I wiz three years or so older than him,’ Betty said, her voice light and conversational. ‘Aye, an’ Frankie tae. Though he went tae a different school fae me on account o’ him being a Fenian an’ a’.’

  Daley marvelled at the way casual sectarianism could enter a conversation in the west coast of Scotland. The idea that Roman Catholics and Protestants went to different schools, different churches, led different lives, in a city the size of Glasgow, had bemused him since he was a boy. Children living cheek by jowl in the old tenements who, left to their own devices, would have become playmates and friends. But that was impossible once the veil of bigotry was thrust onto them by their families. Children who shared the same close would grow up as ignorant of each other as though they came from different planets. While Daley had been brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, his father had no time for bigotry, so as a child he had been encouraged to mix with the other boys on his street who went to different schools and wore blue jerseys when they played football on the red blaes pitch at the bottom of the road. It was probably the greatest thing his father had ever done for him.

  ‘But that wiz later on, Mr Daley,’ Betty MacDougall said, the smile on her face stripping the years away. ‘When I first saw him he was in his christening shawl. I was only wee mysel’ but I mind o’ it like it was yesterday.’ She patted the policeman’s hand at the memory.

  ‘He made a big impression on you, Betty.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose he did. There they were, wi’ the wee blue shawls an’ the wee rattles – they were blue an’ white tae. Mind you, in oor street in them days, even the cats an’ dugs wiz blue an’ white.’

  ‘You said “they”, Betty.’ Daley’s ears had pricked up.

  ‘Aye, of course,’ she replied, a puzzled look spreading across her face. ‘Ye wid hardly get one christened an’ no’ the other.’

  Just then the door burst open to reveal the junior doctor, a middle-aged nurse and a young man in a suit. Betty MacDougall withdrew her hand from Daley’s grasp and pushed herself back into the corner of the bed, her face a mask of fear.

  ‘Mr Daley,’ said the nurse, ‘you have no right whatsoever to be here. Mrs Robertson is in no condition to be questioned by the police.’ She cast a disgusted look at the young doctor, who was biting his lip.

  ‘I’m not here as a police officer,’ Daley replied, furious that they had interrupted Betty MacDougall’s reminiscences.

  ‘Do yourself a favour, Mr Daley,’ the well-groomed young man advised, an arrogant smile on his face. ‘Leave now, before I contact your superior. I know your boss is in Kinloch at the moment.’

  ‘All right,’ said Daley. He rose and looked down at the stricken woman as tears began again to stream down her face.

  ‘You can tell me about that christening another time,’ he said, hoping to elicit one more snippet of information.

  Betty MacDougall merely sobbed. Mary Robertson was back and Daley knew he would get nothing more from her.

  ‘Right, officer, on your way, please. You realise that I’ll have to make an official complaint about your conduct today.’ He looked at Daley haughtily.

  The man was tall, but Daley was taller. The policeman walked to within inches of him, smiled and patted the man on the shoulder of his expensive suit. Daley’s voice was low and not without menace. ‘Don’t worry, son, I’ll be sure to let the heath board know how much you enjoy a recreational smoke. We arrested your dealer last week and he keeps excellent records. Your name was top of his list.’

  The detective walked out of the room.

  The car was small and nondescript. Donald was surprised; for some reason he had expected a much grander vehicle. He peered at it, trying to see the occupants, but the sun was too bright and he found it impossible to discern anything other than two shapes occupying the front seats.

  Donald recalled the other times he had felt this nervous. He remembered his first day in the shipyard in Govan. He had left school the week before, only the paucity of his parents’ expectations exceeding the pitiful list of qualifications he had to show for his many years in education.

  He recalled the noise,
the heat, the vastness of the yard where some of the world’s greatest ever craft had been built. He had been placed under the tutelage of a middle-aged welder, a thin man whose tongue was as sharp as his nose, which was already turning blue due to his addiction to drink. He hardly spoke to his youthful charge, and when he did it was usually in a gruff, expletive-ridden manner.

  On Donald’s third day in the Glasgow shipyard he and his mentor were detailed to weld a part of the vessel, high up under the prow. To access this, they had to ascend steel scaffolding to an alarming height. As Donald, who had never before been troubled by vertigo, looked at the void beneath him, his stomach lurched and dizziness took hold. The sensation heightened as they neared the top of the scaffolding, which swayed more alarmingly the higher they rose. He remembered the way his chest had constricted, anxiety making his breath short, and how a film of sweat had coated his brow.

  Without warning, his mentor had grabbed his arm and pushed him out into the abyss, over the flimsy rail of the scaffold pole. He stared into the emptiness, his heart thumping, as he desperately tried to cling to the scaffold planking with his toes, the only thing, apart from the welder’s grip, that kept him from death.

  ‘I want ye tae tell me yer a wanker,’ the man had said, as he levered his charge further out over the gap, like a sail on the boom of a yacht. ‘An’ if ye dinnae, ye fuckin’ nancy boy, I’ll fuckin’ let ye go. And dinnae think anybody gies a fuck aboot whit happens tae ye, ya little runt. There’s accidents here a’ the time, know whit I mean?’

  Donald could see a group of men, far below, laughing and pointing at his plight. He felt his bladder weaken; the humiliation of his own urine running down his leg and spreading a dark stain across his blue boiler suit had been nothing compared to the fear he felt.

  ‘I’m a wanker,’ he said quietly, his mouth dry.

  ‘Nae good,’ his tormentor sneered, loosening his grip on the young Donald’s arm.

  ‘I’m a wanker!’ he shouted at the top of his voice.

  ‘Cannae hear ye.’ The welder’s fingers began to slip on the sleeve of Donald’s oily boiler suit.

  ‘I’m a wanker!’ Donald roared at the very top of his voice, after which he spewed copiously.

  Despite his embarrassment, his relief was palpable as he was pulled back onto the scaffold platform, falling onto the wooden planking with a clatter.

  ‘An’ ye pished yersel tae. Yer a clatty bastard, as well as a fuckin’ self-abuser.’

  Donald remembered how he felt that day: the weight in his chest, the fear of death. Most of all though, he recalled the hatred, the silent need for revenge now focused on the man who had perpetrated such horror upon him. It was the feelings prompted by this incident that became the driving force in his life, the sharp spur that prodded him up the greasy pole. The next day, he resigned his apprenticeship and applied to be a police cadet.

  Donald looked across at the other vehicle in the car park, detecting no movement. He closed his eyes, and again the years dropped away. He was on duty on his beat in Glasgow’s Townhead. His four years as a cadet were over; he was now a police constable.

  There was something familiar about the figure that staggered out of the run-down pub. The man stopped, fumbled in his pocket, and turned away from the breeze, cupping his hand to light his cigarette, before turning in the direction of the young policeman.

  Donald watched as the man drew deeply on his cigarette. There was a dark lane two doors along from the pub. The man walked along the pavement and disappeared down this lane, leaving only a trail of cigarette smoke in his wake illuminated by the streetlights. Donald waited for a few heartbeats, then followed him.

  ‘What the fuck?’ the man exclaimed as he turned round, one hand against the wall as he urinated in the alleyway, momentarily blinded by the bright torchlight that shone in his face.

  Donald said nothing and directed the torch beam to the ground, away from the man’s face.

  ‘Aw fuck’s sake, the fucking polis,’ the man said, as he watched the policeman bend down and pick up something from amongst the detritus in the lane. ‘At least gie me a fuckin’ chance tae finish before ye huckle me.’

  The brick was rough and bulky in Donald’s hand. The pitted surface bit into his palm as he smashed it repeatedly into the man’s head. Eventually, the man fell into a pool of his own piss and out of existence.

  ‘Who’s the fuckin’ wanker now, you bastard,’ said Donald, as he threw the brick at the shattered skull. He walked from the lane, then slowly down the street, running his fingers along the plate glass windows of shops on one side of the street, and scrutinising those on the other side of the road carefully. The radio in his pocket crackled into life.

  ‘Two one two, your position please. Anything to report?’

  ‘Swan Street at Canal Street. Nothing doing, over,’ the young Donald replied.

  ‘Roger, carry on.’

  33

  Daley stopped at the end of the hospital corridor. Despite himself, he turned into it, then walked past a series of private rooms until he reached the one with a sign that read ‘L. Daley’. Without knocking, he turned the handle on the door and walked into the room.

  She was fast asleep. He felt his heart leap. Her thick auburn hair spilled across the white pillowcase. Her pallor hinted at her most recent trauma and current condition. He stared at the upward slant of her button nose, which he found so irresistible. Her small mouth was a perfect Cupid’s bow, slightly open, revealing the tips of her white teeth; a mouth that drew the eye, gladdened the heart and beckoned to be kissed.

  He stood, watching his sleeping wife, his heart breaking. The surveillance footage of her at the garage with Mark Henderson was etched in his mind’s eye. The affection between the pair spilled from every frame: his hand in her hair, the way she angled her face up into his. He imagined her pale blue eyes staring up at her sister’s husband with the gaze he had hoped was reserved for himself.

  Then came even darker thoughts. Her body entwined with another’s: her scent; the red-brown of her nipples; her long, graceful neck arching back as she gasped in the ecstasy of release; her fingernails leaving red welts on someone else’s back.

  For as long as they had been married, Liz had displayed a much more casual attitude to sex, and therefore, he presumed, to fidelity, than he. It was though that apogee of jealousy – the thought of a loved one being taken, possessed by another – somehow didn’t mean anything to her; as though she couldn’t understand why flesh penetrating flesh could possibly garner a feeling of revulsion and despair.

  And now – now everything was worse. Jim Daley was about to become father to a child he could never accept as his own. He had lived with his wife’s indiscretions for years – the memories haunted him – but now there would be a living, breathing testament to her dalliance. The sin of adultery made flesh.

  He walked from the room and quietly closed the door.

  The countryside hotel was a converted two-storey house, standing just off the road. Faded plastic tables and chairs, with puddles of melting ice, were scattered around an untidy beer garden to the front of the property.

  Despite the cold weather, the door to the public bar was propped open with a beer keg. As he walked in, his nostrils were assailed by the sharp aroma of newly applied bleach blended with the more sickly sweet bouquet of stale alcohol.

  ‘Aye, we’re jeest opened,’ shouted a woman from somewhere behind him.

  Startled, Donald jumped, then, in an attempt to impose his authority, slowly walked to the small bar and pulled out a stool. ‘In that case, I’m sure you won’t mind pouring me a large whisky.’

  A short, middle-aged woman waddled into view, dressed in a baggy white jumper, grubby black leggings and flip flops. ‘Is that your car outside?’ she asked, bridling at the tone of her new customer.

  ‘Yes,’ Donald replied. ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘No’ really,’ she said with a shake of the head. ‘It’s your licence. Remember, the co
ps often pop in here for a cup of tea. You know, the guys in the big traffic car.’

  ‘Oh, do they now? Well, I’ll keep my eye out for them, rest assured. Now, what about that whisky?’

  She busied herself placing a small glass under a large optic attached to an outsized bottle of whisky. ‘I heard the boss o’ the polis doon here got flung oot o’ the hospital the day, so you better watch your back.’ She placed the drink in front of Donald, who threw a twenty-pound note onto the bar and knocked back the drink in one gulp.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll keep a particular look out for that man, sounds like a thoroughly unpleasant individual,’ said Donald, holding up his glass. ‘Same again.’

  As the woman went about her business, Donald took in his surroundings; the usual collection of tatty bar stools and battered copper tables arranged across a bare wooden floor still damp from its cleaning. At the far end of the room, beside another door, was a sign that read Beer Garden, Toilets, Public Telephone.

  Donald fumbled in his pocket for the coins he had collected the previous evening in the hotel and recalled one of his mother’s favourite sayings: ‘A drinker’s never short of loose change.’

  ‘Just going to use your toilet,’ he said to the barmaid as he paid for his next drink. Through the door, he was faced by a yellow payphone protected by a Plexiglas canopy. His hand shook as he inserted a coin and dialled the number he knew so well. The voice he used when his call was answered was very unfamiliar to him; he kept the conversation short and hung up without saying goodbye.

  MacDougall wrestled with the padlock on the hull of the small cabin cruiser. He had been on it before, as a guest the previous summer, when he and the owner, a local man, had sailed around the island of Gigha.

  He had become a reasonably proficient sailor in the last few years, and he enjoyed being at sea. The motion of the vessel, the tang of the salty air and the ever-changing panorama were an assault on the senses. The first time he had sailed alone, he had pondered just how far this experience was from the relentless boredom of his youth, spent in a crumbling tenement in Glasgow’s East End. Narrow horizons begat narrow minds; the reasoning was flawless, yet across the generations nothing was done to correct this social dichotomy. It was as though the poor were not only an underclass, but an alternative species, condemned to experience life on a completely different plane. He knew his daughter was living proof that families like the MacDougalls, victims and perpetrators of crime across the generations, could change. He hoped Sarah would take the MacDougall name, at least, to new, greener pastures.