The Man with No Face

by Peter Turnbull

  He walked along the CID corridor, down the stairs to the uniformed bar, where he signed out and told Elka Willems that he was going out to lunch.

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Elka Willems smiled, high cheekbones, blonde hair done in a tight bun, a flash of blue eyes, crisp, starched white blouse, black-and-white cravat fastened at the nape of her neck with a strip of Velcro. Should she get into a confrontation, it couldn’t be grabbed by an assailant so as to throttle her. It would, as designed to do, come off in his, or more likely her, hands.

  Donoghue dropped the pencil back on the time-sheet pad and left the building. The air was fresh and cool, a pleasant change to his office where he conceded he didn’t help matters by smoking. He walked up Sauchiehall Street and entered Malone’s.

  The usual?’ The young man in a red shirt and black tie smiled as he appeared.

  ‘If you don’t mind.’ Donoghue returned the smile. He liked that young man whose name he didn’t know. His manner, he found, was quite genuinely warm and cheerful. It was a manner that would carry him far in life, especially since he had yet to display, to Donoghue’s observation, even a trace of arrogance, though he was clearly handsome enough to flaunt it. Later, after a second cup of coffee and a glance at Malone’s copy of the Glasgow Herald, Donoghue decided upon a turn to George Square and back, exercising his legs, his lungs, getting out of the office for an hour. Taking in the city, the architecture, the bustle, the traffic…He reached George Square and stood on the corner of Queen Street, looking out over the expanse, the statues, to the City Chambers at the far end of the square, just standing, looking, like police officers do, and he saw Tony Abernethy emerge from North Hanover Street, jog across George Street and resume a leisurely pace across the square, tending, so far as Fabian Donoghue could detect, to walk looking upwards as if at the skyline.

  ‘I just can’t believe I did it.’

  ‘Well, I suggest you start believing it.’ The second woman too was shaking. She was more composed than the first but she too was shaking.

  ‘I woke up this morning—’

  ‘You mean you slept!’

  ‘I woke up hoping it was a dream

  ‘Well, it wasn’t…look at your carpet…look at the wall…this is him…what did you?…oh…’

  ‘I wish we’d hidden the body…I wish I hadn’t…there would have been other ways…we panicked…they’ll have found the body by now They have. I heard the lunchtime news. But what did you expect? Did you expect him to get up and walk away and conceal himself, or is…?’

  ‘We should have…that would have given us a few more days…it’s only a matter of time before they link him with me…me…with you…’

  ‘Don’t bring me into this. I didn’t pull the trigger. I didn’t even know that you had that blunderbuss in the house…the noise. I’m surprised half the street didn’t come round chappin’ on the door.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ The man spoke and the two women fell silent. ‘What’s done is done…we have to decide how to recover from this…if we can. But Mary’s right, this could be the end for us. Now we really are going to have to cover our tracks. You’re going to have to cover your tracks.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You. Well, I wasn’t here…and if you threaten to take me down if you go down…well, look at what happened to boy Ron. What’s sauce for the goose…’

  The woman’s face paled.

  ‘Get everything out of this room.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘You’ll have to help me.’

  ‘I won’t have to do anything. Clean up the mess, wipe it off the wall, clean it up as best you can.’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘Hang a painting over the worst mess, it shows up too much. Then call the charity shops, ask them to come and take the furniture away, it’s good stuff…they’ll jump at it.’

  ‘It’s new!’

  ‘Say you’ve had a burglary and that you feel violated so you’re chucking it out. They’ll buy that. You’ve got to get shot of everything in this room, strip it down to the bare plaster and the bare floorboards. Then lift the carpet and take it up to the dump at Dawsholm and chuck it in a skip.’

  ‘That I’ll need help with.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ said the second woman, lighting a long cigarette with trembling fingers.

  ‘Then strip the wallpaper, dig the bullet out of the plaster, then repaper, and paper over the bullet hole first. When the police come you say you’re redecorating. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ the first woman nodded.

  ‘It’s got to be like this, see the thing that’ll link this room to Ron’s death is…something you probably can’t see with your naked eye…a speck of blood…one of the hairs from his head…The word is sanitize…this is a crime scene…a locus of the offence…so sanitize it.’

  ‘If I just started a fire…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The whole lot would burn.’

  ‘It’s an idea…’ the second woman said.

  ‘It is. It’s a bad idea too. We haven’t got enough time to do it properly so it looks like a genuine accident. An old building with dodgy wiring, full of furniture, well, that was one thing…but a bungalow in Kelvinside…no way…the only way is to clean it, this room, as if you’re redecorating.’

  ‘The whole room?’

  ‘Well, it’s your room, you pulled the trigger…your life sentence, hen. I mean, you’re no chicken, Mary Carberrie, no chicken at all. You’ll be old and shot with Alzheimer’s when you get out. If all the dykes don’t get you first…the things they can do with a chair leg. So they’ll find out who he is today. How long till they link him with you?’

  ‘Day. Two days. His mother doesn’t know my address.’

  ‘Just your name, that’s enough…your prints are on the police files…you visited him…they’ll link you together, it won’t take them long to find you. Are you in the phone book?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s something.’ The man stood. ‘I’m going. I’m sorry I came here now. I won’t be back until this is over. If it ever will be, stupid female. Why didn’t you give him the money?’

  ‘I spent it.’

  ‘You spent it?’

  ‘I spent it. I spent it. I spent it. All right! Anyway, you’re the one who said what’s done is done. I can’t unspend it any more than I can bring him back to life.’

  ‘Jesus…what a mess…we’d done it. We’d pulled it off, things were quietening down…we were rich…and you spent his cut. Now we’re all looking at life sentences…Thanks a hunch. So what did you do with the gun?’

  ‘It’s in the Kelvin.’

  ‘Off the bridge at the top of Belmont Street,’ offered the second woman.

  ‘That could be recovered. You know that? It could be linked to the bullet…Is that…? God in heaven, is that more than one hole in the wall?’

  ‘Aye…there were a lot…bits…fragments.’

  ‘You’d better dig out every bit of metal you can find in the wall…start now.’ He picked up the phone and put it down again. ‘Get rid of the furniture…any charity shop, any second-hand dealer…the first one that will collect it all this afternoon…then lift the carpet, strip the wallpaper…work through the night…don’t burn anything in the night…it’ll make the neighbours suspicious, they must be deaf as it is, it’ll be too much to hope they’re blind as well. Go out and buy one of those steam strippers, that’ll make short work of it, and it will get shot of a lot of evidence as it destroys the paper

  ‘I’ll go and buy one for you,’ the second woman offered. ‘I mean while you’re phoning round the furniture places

  ‘Put the paper in liners and take it up to Dawsholm…get the carpet up there today…if you work well into the night you’ll have the room stripped before dawn. Get the stripped paper up to the dump as soon as you can. Redecorating the room isn’t so important as destroying the evidence…but redecorate as soon as you can.’
<
br />   ‘You could help…if the police put two and two…’

  ‘Look, Carberrie. Listen. Just listen…I don’t know you…I don’t know your name…I’ve never met you…all right. What happened to Ron could easily happen to you. Keep it zipped or we’re going to have a massacre here. I shouldn’t be here. I’ve got a distinctive car…so I’m off…if the police trace you, cough to murder.’

  ‘Cough to murder?’

  ‘Cough to culpable homicide, involuntary manslaughter…don’t tell them…I mean…at least that way when you come out you’ll still come out to money. If they get to know about the rest, we’ll all go down and we’ll come out to zip. Ron took a rap…it may be time for you to do the same.’

  ‘I’m not going to prison.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. I hope to God you’re right…but I’m going…start phoning…my God

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is that one of his teeth?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mary Carberrie nodded. ‘I got the worst up but there’s still some bits about here and there.’

  ‘Start phoning.’ The man turned, and then turned back to face the two women. ‘You do not know, you can’t believe the handstands we are going to have to do to get out of this. It was sorted, Carberrie, well sorted, dusted and done, signed and sealed. We have enough dosh to see us out, but you, Carberrie, you had to be greedy. Should have known really, Mary Carberrie, greed is your middle name. Start phoning. Oh, and your car…you’d better burn it. That you can burn.’

  Fabian Donoghue returned to P Division Police Station. He signed in and checked his pigeonhole. There were two circulars: one about being cost effective whenever possible—using both sides of a sheet of paper, phoning after two p.m., using second-class postage—and one notifying of the retirement of one Chief Inspector Gill of X Division. Those wishing to contribute should contact Detective Sergeant Virgin at X Division. Donoghue knew Virgin, he bore his unfortunate surname with soldierly stoicism, but had once drunkenly confided that his schooldays had been, ‘sheer hell, Fabian, you’ve no idea’. There was also a message to the effect that Dr Jean Kay of the Forensic Science Laboratory had phoned him.

  Donoghue skipped up the stairs to the CID corridor two at a time, strode confidently down the hard-wearing brown carpet, along the corridor to his room, placed coat and hat on the hat stand and slid into his chair. He placed the circulars and the note in his in-tray. Then he reached for the telephone with one hand and his pipe and tobacco pouch with the other. He punched a nine for an outside line and momentarily longed for an old-fashioned rotary phone. He had noticed that as his forties had dawned so had the harbingers of nostalgia for strange things: buses with diesel engines that growled rather than whirred and fast food meaning a ham sandwich on the Flying Scotsman, being but two. His longing for rotary phones had stemmed from the days that he had caught his ankle in the phone cord and had brought his newly installed push-button phone crashing to the floor. He had been dismayed not only by the ease with which the thing had disintegrated after falling from such a modest height, but also by the flimsy, fragile appearance of the electrics inside the phone. But the march of progress couldn’t be halted and he tapped the numbers on the keyboard of the phone while filling his pipe with the other hand. He was just able to ignite his gold-plated lighter and play the flame across the contents of the bowl of his pipe before a voice in his ear said, ‘Dr Kay.’

  ‘Ah…DI Donoghue. P Division.’ Then he drew the smoke up the stem of his pipe and relished the taste of the tobacco on his tongue.

  ‘DI Donoghue, you received my message?’

  ‘Just that you phoned, Dr Kay.’ He reached for his pad and ballpoint.

  ‘I thought you may be interested in the preliminary findings about the clothing that was brought in this a.m.’

  This is quick. It’s rapid.’ Donoghue allowed his smile to be ‘heard’ down the phone as he held the phone clasped between his head and left shoulder, being obliged to use his hands to hold the notepad and his ballpoint.

  ‘It’s a quiet period. Make hay while you can.’

  ‘Indeed. But it’s still good of you to put yourself out like this.’ Donoghue was more than aware that Dr Kay’s expertise was sought after by the neighbouring forces of Central, Lothian and Borders, and Dumfries and Galloway. That she had attended to this particular referral with such alacrity was a favour indeed.

  ‘It’s not preferential treatment, Mr Donoghue, the policy is that if something has obviously waited before coming here it can continue to wait, if something is fresh it gets as rapid attention as possible.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s a response to the observation that the first twenty-four hours of a murder investigation are the most crucial. We don’t want to be responsible for any hold-ups.’

  ‘Still, I’m very impressed.’

  ‘Well, you may not be so impressed with the content. The clothing was newly issued.’

  ‘Issued?’

  ‘Scottish Office prison discharge suit, grey, white ankle socks, white shirt, boxer-type underpants. It even smelled new. No name tag, no wallet, some loose change amounting to about two pounds. One pound and eighty-six pence, so my notes tell me…’

  ‘We thought that.’ Donoghue scribbled on his pad. ‘We recognized the suit

  ‘As you would.’

  ‘As we would.’

  ‘The inference being that he was recently discharged from prison after serving a sentence of…’

  ‘Five years or more…or unless he hadn’t any clothing anyway for whatever reason…a down-and-out might be kitted out after a short “drying-out” spell but that’s not official policy.’

  ‘I see, but that’s more for you rather than me.’

  ‘There were traces of soil and grass on his anterior aspect clothing, shirt front was muddy. In other words…we found only one item which may be of use.’

  ‘Oh…?’

  ‘A fibre, three, in fact, which is very useful.’ She had a soft voice. ‘Of a carpet, a synthetic polymer, trapped between the sole and uppers of his shoe. Red in colour…’

  ‘New meaning of the red carpet treatment.’

  ‘Indeed…at least I believe it to be carpet. Could be something else, but what I can’t think. They’re synthetic, and uniform in length, hence the usefulness of having these fibres, and they appear to have been cut at each end. They haven’t been torn or uprooted or hacked, but cut cleanly. I’ve come across this before…I believe it’s associated with a process known not surprisingly as “flocking”.’

  ‘Flocking?’ Donoghue wrote the word in his pad.

  ‘Flocking is the process whereby nylon is drawn into long strands which are then cut into smaller strands with a machine known as a guillotine. The small or shorter strands of nylon are electrically charged and then fired with some velocity at a base material covered with adhesive. The fact that they are electrically charged means, for some reason that I don’t fully understand, that the short bits of nylon impact with the expanse of base material end on, rather than lengthways. It’s a manufacturing process which has various uses, one of them being carpet manufacture.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The uniformity of the length of the nylon strands put me on to the flocking process, and their length indicates a carpet, their length being about a quarter of an inch.’

  ‘A red carpet.’

  ‘Or a carpet with a red pattern. I should also add that their thickness is carpet-strand thickness.’

  ‘So a house, or similar, with a red carpet. Shouldn’t be more than a few hundred thousand.’

  ‘Hence I may be able to help you, Inspector.’

  ‘Oh…?’

  ‘Yes…it’s for you to make the decision. The option is that I melt the fibre, just one. If I note at what temperature it melts at, that may, and only may, indicate which particular type of nylon the fibre is made of. That could isolate the source. But it would destroy the evidence. But like I said, I may be able to do it with one fibre only, th
at would preserve two for evidential purposes.’

  Donoghue asked her to proceed.

  He replaced the receiver and the phone rang immediately. There was also at the same instant a knock on his door.

  ‘DI Donoghue…come in.’