The Man with No Face

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Can’t think.’

  ‘She mentioned a car, a black car. Heard car doors slamming, got out of bed to look and saw three figures walk off the grass back to the car and then drive away, up the hill, Clevedon Road direction. She didn’t see anything or anybody being taken from the car. Just three people walk out of the gloom and get into the car and offskie.’

  ‘Two women and a man?’

  ‘Aye, she…oh, you got the same information?’

  ‘Seems like. I didn’t get the coffee, though—mind I could use one. Black and very strong.’

  ‘Well, I’ll take it from here, Sarge, for now.’

  ‘For now.’ Sussock squeezed his eyes. ‘Did you get a description?’

  ‘Guy was tall, aged about fifty.’ Abernethy consulted his notes and as he did so Sussock found himself, as on previous occasions, struck by the relative youth of his colleague. Abernethy was in his twenties but looked younger at times, at times he looked to Sussock like a gangly schoolboy. ‘One of the women she couldn’t say much about…but the other…she made observations that it seemed to me that only one woman could make about another.’

  ‘Being, in this case…’

  ‘That one of the women carried herself with an attitude, a movement…’

  ‘A body language. That’s the expression.’

  ‘A body language that said, “I’m right, I’m right, I’m right,” and also a sort of confidence which said, “I’m beautiful…I’m beautiful…” with long mane-like hair swept back. But apparently short legs and a large waist so that others might not exactly see her as quite so attractive. She said there was sufficient street-lighting to see all that.’

  ‘I see. It’s something.’

  ‘The lady couldn’t be sure of the time…she thought about midnight, summertime midnight, that is.’

  ‘It was,’ Sussock snarled. ‘If I got anything at all from my only successful call on this house-to-house, it was the time of the dumping of the body. Midnight, exactly, by three clocks and two wristwatches.’

  ‘Sarge?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Right, we’ll leave Sergeant Piper to finish the sweep. Doubt if they’ll find anything if they were dumping a corpse and nothing else. I’ll go back to the station.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Seven-fifteen. Be an hour and fifteen minutes before Fabian gets here. He’ll be having an extra hour in bed this morning. As in fact you did, Abernethy.’

  ‘Luck of the rota, Sarge.’

  ‘That’s the way of it, right enough. Me, I’m too old for this. Right, off to the GRI, represent the police at the postmortem. Pump Dr Reynolds for anything you can, anything he’ll venture off the record. I’ll send Bothwell to you.’

  ‘Bothwell?’

  ‘Bothwell. The deceased hasn’t a face, but he still has his fingerprints, and if I’m right and he was wearing a prison discharge suit, that means he’s known to us. His prints will be on the computer file. It’ll be a start. We can start to have wee chats with his associates: known, criminal.’

  ‘Very good, Sarge.’

  Sussock returned, wearily, to P Division at Charing Cross. He half hoped, half prayed that the parking bay marked ‘Reserved DI Donoghue’ would be occupied by a highly polished maroon Rover by the time he reached the police station. It wasn’t. Sussock parked his car in a vacant bay and entered the building by the rear ‘staff only’ door. He went to the uniform bar and signed in. He was elated, despite his fatigue, to notice Elka Willems standing there: crisp white blouse, black-and-white checked cravat of the policewoman. She smiled at him, a white beaming smile beneath high cheekbones, blue eyes and blonde hair. ‘Welcome, Old Sussock.’

  Sussock smiled as he signed in.

  ‘I gather you’ve been busy?’ Willems took the time sheet from Sussock and hung it up.

  ‘Just a routine murder.’ He managed a smile. ‘Got to fill myself with coffee, got to keep going, the slave driver will want to “kick it around”, as he is fond of saying.’

  ‘He’ll be late.’

  Sussock’s heart sank. ‘Oh…?’

  ‘Sorry, he said he’d be late—just now, he phoned in. Only half an hour, he said.’

  ‘Elka’—Sussock leaned forward—‘half an hour in my condition is a geological age. I’m finished, bushed, dead on my feet.’

  Elka Willems stole a quick glance to either side of her and then laid her palm on the back of his hand. ‘Look, Ray,’ she said softly, ‘it’s quiet, I can leave the bar…you go upstairs. I’ll fix you a coffee. Just as you like it.’

  ‘Strong and black?’

  ‘The strongest and blackest yet. I tell you, Old Sussock, the world will not have seen a stronger and blacker mug of coffee.’

  Sussock smiled and pulled his hand away. He went up the stairs to his room on the CID corridor, peeled off his coat and slung it on the back of a vacant chair. He sat at his desk and took a new file from the drawer and added blank recording sheets. He picked up the phone on his desk and tapped out a four-figure internal number. He relaxed back in his chair as the phone rang.

  ‘Collator,’ a fresh-sounding voice replied.

  ‘DS Sussock. I need a file ref number.’

  Sussock heard the tapping of a computer keyboard, and then wrote the file reference number on the case file, boldly in blue felt-tip pen, as it was slowly read out to him. This done, he opened the file, causing the new cardboard to creak and began the longhand recording of the events of that morning. Early on in the recording he was, pleasantly to his mind, interrupted by Elka Willems, slender and smiling, who walked into the office holding a mug of coffee in one hand and a copy of the Glasgow Herald in the other.

  ‘I don’t imagine you’ll be writing up until nine when Fabian comes in, so I brought you the Herald. Don’t know whose it is, but if you’re foolish enough to leave your paper lying around…’

  ‘Nothing’s sacred, not even in a police station. For this relief, much thanks.’

  ‘Got to go, can’t leave the bar unattended for long.’ Sussock nodded and smiled and sipped his coffee as he surveyed his office, grey steel Scottish Office-issue filing cabinets, his steel desk, with drawers to the right, but not to the left. A cabinet with old copies of Police News and dusty, weighty criminal law tomes, rarely opened but the visual effect was impressive. A Police Mutual calendar hanging on the wall. Any softening of the working area by posters and prints was frowned upon by the police authority. His office, like all other CID offices, was spartan and businesslike. Once he had occasion to visit the premises of the Social Work Department in Maryhill and had been pleasantly surprised by the colour that burst from every direction, caused by the staff putting up posters depicting far-off places basked in sunshine, or politically correct messages in angry red or black. But whatever, he left the premises impressed by the visual stimulation therein compared to the drabness of the interior of a police station. He put the mug down on the side of his desk and continued to write, sipping the coffee at intervals. At eight-thirty a.m. he had finished. He sat back and picked up the Herald, an early edition, could even have been left behind by an outgoing member of the night shift. It contained no mention of the corpse found on the green at Winton Drive G12, but by now the newspapers would have phoned the police headquarters at Pitt Street, as the media did each hour, and by then the press officer would have given all known information and the story would make the fillers in the margins of the later editions of the Herald and doubtless a leader in the Evening Times and the local radio and television news bulletins. Ray Sussock folded the paper flat and began to attack the crossword puzzle when his phone rang. ‘Sussock,’ he said slowly.

  ‘He’s in and on his way up.’ Elka Willems spoke softly. ‘Just thought you’d like to know.’

  ‘I owe you one.’

  ‘You owe me more than that.’ She replaced her phone before he replaced his.

  Sussock stood and collected the file, swallowed the remnants of the coffee, drew on the remains of his strength and alertness and left his of
fice. He walked the length of the CID corridor and tapped on Donoghue’s office door.

  ‘Come,’ called out, but only after a pause of imperious length.

  Sussock stepped into Donoghue’s office, glancing to his right up the length of Sauchiehall Street towards Queen Street at the brow. Dawn had given way to a grey morning.

  ‘Ray!’ Donoghue beamed, clean-shaven, early-morning start of the day fresh in a dark-blue three-piece suit, a gold hunter’s chain looped across his chest. At that moment Donoghue’s office was still, blessedly in the opinion of Ray Sussock, free of smoke. By the end of Donoghue’s working day it would, if Sussock knew his senior officer, be a blue fog of stale tobacco smoke. ‘Take a pew.’

  Sussock sat in front of Donoghue’s desk and opened the file. Then he closed it. He could remember the little that was in it. He patted the file. ‘We have a code four-one, sir.’

  Donoghue, much younger in years than Sussock, and senior in rank, remained silent but held eye contact with him. He remained steadfastly interested as Sussock related the story of the man found on the grass in G12 with his face blown out by a bullet fired at the rear of his skull, moving only to plunder his tobacco pouch and pipe from his jacket pocket, and placing the latter in a huge glass ashtray which lay on his desk top. The ashtray was sufficiently large for one junior constable, in a Batman-cartoon-like comment of crushing impropriety which entered the lore of P Division Police Station, to offer that all the detective inspector now needed was some water and a couple of fish. That particular junior constable was, for his sins, in receipt of an equally crushing glare from said DI. Not an experience to be forgotten. So it was said.

  Sussock reached the conclusion of his delivery and was saddened to see Donoghue reach forward and pick up his pipe, near lovingly, from the glass ashtray and, using only one hand to hold it and the tobacco pouch, begin to finger tobacco into the bowl.

  ‘So,’ Donoghue placed the pipe in his mouth. ‘Something for us to kick about, Ray.’

  Sussock’s heart sank. A ‘kicking about’ with DI Donoghue had been known to last for an hour at times. Neither did he want a ‘kicking about’ in the atmosphere of pipe tobacco smoke already seeping into his lungs. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  ‘I like your observation about the clothing, prison issue upon discharge. So he’ll be known to us?’

  ‘Yes, sir. In fact, I still have to ask Bothwell to attend the GRI to lift the prints of the deceased.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ Donoghue flicked his gold-plated lighter and rekindled the tobacco in his pipe bowl. ‘First pipe of the day, Ray, always the most enjoyable.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I remember that about the first cigarette of the day.’

  ‘I imagine you do, Ray…you don’t mind if I…?’

  ‘Not at all, sir. Doesn’t bother me at all.’

  ‘Good. Let me know if it does.’

  ‘Certainly will, sir.’

  ‘Gunshot?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The method of murder. If indeed that was the cause of death; I take the point that the deceased may already have been deceased when his face was blown out, that being done to hinder ID. What I’m saying is that this speaks of gangland, does it not? Ex-cons, shooters…I mean, this isn’t your rammy during a bender, this is planned, perhaps opportunist, but whatever, it’s got the mark of cold blood about it. Follow?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The pain of tiredness rose between Sussock’s eyes again, the invisible line that linked pupil to pupil. Sounds swam, distant then near, then distant again.

  ‘So, we have Abernethy down at the postmortem; Dr Reynolds is addressing that quickly. I’ll ask Bothwell to join him—if he can get at the fingerprints we should have a positive identification before lunch. One stage at a time and we’ll see what we shall see.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘If you’d leave the file with me.’ Sussock handed him the file.

  ‘So, you’re on nights this week, Abernethy on day shift. King and Montgomerie will be on the back shift?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Montgomerie’s snout, what’s his name again?’

  ‘Tuesday Noon.’

  ‘That’s it. Sorry, Ray, I’m just making a mental shopping list out. Bothwell to the GRI, Montgomerie to Tuesday Noon. You see, if this is gangland, Tuesday Noon will likely have heard a whisper. All right, Ray, that’s it. I’ll carry it from here. Thanks for staying on.’

  Sussock nodded and rose from the seat. He didn’t call back to his office, but went directly downstairs to the uniform bar where Elka Willems was busy giving directions to an out-of-towner, a Hebridean, Sussock thought by his accent, who had difficulty with Willems’s slight Dutch lilt: ‘…no…Ballater Street…B-a-l-l-a…here, I’ll show you the map…’

  He signed out and drove home to the West End and his flat, overconcentrating, fighting fatigue as he did so. But he made it, listening to the ten a.m. news on Radio Scotland.

  …the body of an unknown man was found early this morning in the Kelvinside district of Glasgow. Police are treating the death as suspicious and are appealing for witnesses. No further details are being released until relatives have been notified. Now the other headlines…’

  Sussock switched the radio off as he parked his car. He left the vehicle, entered the big house, checked the table in the hall for post, sifting through the envelopes, many for others, none for him. He climbed wearily up the stone staircase and let himself into his room on the first floor. The clock on the mantelpiece read 11.05. That was the time. Sussock sat on his bed. His body said eleven and eleven it was, not ten. That’s five hours of overtime at the end of a night shift. Five hours at the end of a day shift or at the end of an evening shift is survivable, but at the end of a night shift. He managed to peel off his coat and tug off his shoes before blackness swept over him.

  It was Monday. 10.05 hours.

  10.00-13.55 hrs

  Reynolds snapped on the latex gloves and felt into the pocket of his white coat for the on button of the tape recorder. He pressed the button and said, Testing…one…two…just to use up the leader tape, but don’t type this, Noreen.’ He pressed the pause button. He surveyed the body which lay face up on the stainless-steel table with a starched towel draped carefully over the coyly termed ‘private parts’. The table had a lip of one inch running round the edge and stood on a single hollow pedestal which also served as a conduit to drain any blood which might be drawn by the pathologist’s knife during the course of a postmortem. At the foot of the table stood a wheeled trolley containing sharpened sterilized silver instruments. At the head of the table stood a second man with slicked-back hair who seemed, to the third man in the room, to be eyeing the corpse with a sinister, unhealthy gleam in his eye. The floor of the room, so far as the third man could see, was covered in industrial-grade linoleum, heavily sealed with disinfectant. The walls were of white tile, gleamingly clean, except one wall given over to a large pane of glass behind which was a banked row of seats, all at that moment vacant. The room was brilliantly, if not harshly in the mind of the third man, illuminated by filament lamps, the bulbs concealed behind perspex covers to eliminate the potentially epileptic-fit-inducing flicker.

  The deceased’—Reynolds spoke softly, knowing the microphone of the cassette tape recorder was attached to his lapel—‘is an adult male, white European whose identity…’ Reynolds turned to the third man in the room and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘Not known,’ replied Abernethy.

  ‘…is not known at present,’ Reynolds continued. ‘Present in the room with myself are Everard Millard, mortuary assistant and…?’

  ‘DC Abernethy. P Division.’

  ‘DC Abernethy of P Division. That’s Charing Cross, isn’t it? DI Donoghue’s team?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I know Donoghue, good man. We haven’t met before, I don’t think?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Over the years I’ve gotten to know officers of the variou
s divisions…P Division…you have Sergeant Sussock. I saw him this morning, of course, and I’ve run into him several times over the years…Who’s the young bearded fellow?’

  ‘King,’ said Abernethy. ‘DC King.’

  ‘Dare say he’s heard jokes about King Richard…?’

  ‘He had plenty of that at school, he once told me.’

  ‘But, yes, I remember his name. He has a tall and handsome sidekick?’ Reynolds continued the conversation but Abernethy noted his concentration was fixed on the death-white corpse on the stainless-steel table.

  ‘Montgomerie,’ Abernethy offered, standing reverentially against the wall, close to the door.

  ‘Is that his name? Ladies’ man, methinks. I find his attitude somewhat flippant, I’m bound to say.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But good enough. Good enough. Now, in terms of the identification, I dare say you’ll want to take the fingerprints of our late friend here?’

  ‘DS Sussock indicated that he’d ask our forensic chemist to attend to do that, sir.’

  ‘Of course. He’ll have to wait, only room for one round the table at a time and I was here first. And anyway, it’s my table.’ Reynolds grinned. ‘The deceased has a tattoo which may help you—an old tattoo, certainly not new—of a blue bird at the top of the thumb on the right hand, in the joint between finger and thumb. If you flex your thumb the wings of the bird move as if in flight. It’s not an uncommon tattoo.’

  ‘I’ll note it,’ Abernethy nodded.

  ‘No other…oh, the date. Sorry, Noreen, put this at the—well, you know the place—is October twenty-fifth and the time is ten-zero-five hours. No other marks of an identifying nature. The deceased has a small frame even by the west of Scotland measure, where we are not noted for our height. This chap was in life a ‘tottie wee guy’, as is said. He measured…Can you pass the tape, please, Mr Millard?’ Reynolds and Millard held the tape from head to toe ‘…he measured five feet three inches in his stockinged feet…five-three in the appropriate box, Noreen, please. He has a frail frame…I mean, he’s all here but there is a visual impression of a certain awkwardness and imbalance in the skeleton. Such people are often the product of late pregnancies compounded by alcohol abuse on the part of the mother during pregnancy. Doesn’t have, didn’t have, foetal alcohol syndrome, but may have been lucky to escape it. You see, Mr Abernethy, it is a medical fact, a scientific fact, that a heavily drinking woman who becomes pregnant when in her forties will give birth to a small, sickly infant who will have a sickly childhood and grow into a small, awkwardly moving sickly adult. And here we have a man who in life was small, sickly and probably very awkward in his ambulation. In fact, the most appropriate age for a woman to give birth is around her seventeenth year.’