Fair Friday

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Why didn’t you contact the police?’ Montgomerie was more dumbfounded than angry.

  ‘Why didn’t you contact me? I’ve been waiting for over two days.’

  ‘Well, what did you see?’

  ‘I saw him attack the other man, look up because I was tapping on the window to make him stop, then he ran away.’

  ‘And you then sat and waited for the police?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I mean I’d done my bit, hadn’t I? Rattling the window like I did made him stop, didn’t it?’

  Montgomerie paused to gain some self-control and then asked what the man looked like.

  ‘Oh, I’m not really that good with words. Couldn’t I draw one of those little pictures?’

  ‘You’ll have to come to the station for that,’ said Montgomerie.

  ‘I’ll be ready in about an hour. Will you send a car for me?’ She smiled again and then shut the door.

  Montgomerie went into the backs and kicked a beer can over the wall into the school yard.

  At 9.15 a.m. Richard King walked thankfully out of the heat and entered the shade of a cool close in Lang-side. He took his tie from his jacket pocket and clipped it on to his collar while starting up the stairs to the second floor and a door with a highly polished brass plate embossed with the name ‘McGarrigle’. He tapped on the door.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ From holding the door with her hand, Bill McGarrigle’s daughter leant against the door. ‘I suppose there are more insensitive times to call but I can’t think of one right off.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You don’t give a damn.’ She spoke icily through a small mouth, a voice of pent-up anger. This is just another job to you, just one more old man, another statistic to add to the growth of violence in the streets which keeps people like you in a job. Have you never heard of crime prevention? Where were you when he was being killed, eh? Nowhere to be seen. But you swarm round when it’s safe and when it’s too late to do anything. Cops!’

  ‘If I could call back another time I would, love…’

  ‘And it’s Miss McGarrigle to you, not “love”.’

  ‘All right, Miss McGarrigle,’ said King, trying not to let his own voice harden. ‘I’m very sorry to have to call at a time such as this but it’s important. We haven’t exactly got all the time in the world and we want to catch the man who killed your father, but the trail’s getting colder by the minute and your anger isn’t helping any.’

  The girl was silent for a moment and then said, ‘I’m sorry I spoke like that…’ She let her hand slip from the door and King entered the flat. The curtains were drawn shut and the flat was gloomy and airless with the smell of the kitchen refuse beginning to rise. Two suitcases, still packed and strapped tight with leather belts, stood side by side in the hall.

  ‘She insisted on finishing the packing,’ explained the young woman. ‘Last night after the man from the hospital called to tell us and deliver the certificate, she started to pack his case and made it right for his holiday. Then she broke down and insisted we shut all the windows and curtains. I called the doctor and he gave her something. She’s still out. The doctor told me to open a window in her room. I think I’ll open some others.’

  ‘It’ll give you something to do,’ said King.

  ‘It gets like that, doesn’t it? Suddenly your life is nothing, you’ve got nothing to keep you busy. I still think it’s a dream and I keep expecting him to come home and put his slippers on and ask me to get him a mug of tea. It’s right what they say, isn’t it?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That it’s not the hole that people fill when they die that’s important, it’s the hole they leave behind them.’

  ‘I think that’s true, but you shouldn’t feel so guilty about anything you might have done or said over the last few years. I reckon if your dad could have his life over again he would have wanted it just the same.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Are you married?’ asked the young woman suddenly.

  ‘Yes,’ said King.

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Two. Both very young.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said the girl. ‘That sounds so very nice.’

  ‘It is.’ King privately conceded that it was very, very nice, and felt uncomfortable that here, amid grief and frightened adolescence, it was his cup which runneth over. ‘Miss McGarrigle…’

  ‘Call me Emma,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for what I said at the door.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘What shall I call you?’

  ‘Mr King,’ he said firmly. ‘Emma, when I called here on Thursday you said that your father had a study. Can I see it?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She stood and walked down the hallway. ‘He’s got tons of paper in there, it’ll take hours to sort. Would you like a cup of tea?’ She stopped and opened a door.

  ‘Yes,’ said King. ‘Thanks. That would be great.’

  Bill McGarrigle’s study was a small room. One wall was lined with books, a small roll-top desk stood underneath the window, the third wall was taken up by shelving on which lay boxes filled with papers or with sheets of printed matter lying loosely. The fourth wall was wholly taken up by the doorway. The room was dark and King flung open the curtains and then, remembering himself, shut them again.

  ‘You can have the curtains open if you wish,’ said Emma McGarrigle, who had appeared silently at the doorway.

  ‘I’ll settle for the light,’ King replied, reaching for the switch. ‘I’ll also open the window a wee bit.’

  ‘What are you looking for? Clues?’

  ‘Yes,’ said King, opening the window.

  ‘Dad used to spend a lot of time in here. Reading, writing letters, mostly reading.’

  ‘Didn’t your father ever clean it out?’

  ‘Never saw him throwing anything out. He didn’t like me and her going in here and he’d never let her dust in here. This was his den, he’d sort of hide in here while me and her were battling it out in the living-room.’

  She left the study and walked away, reappearing a few

  ■4

  moments later with a mug of tea. ‘Can I help?’ she said. ‘I’ve always been good at finding things.’

  ‘Away you go, hen,’ replied King.

  ‘But…’

  ‘Shut the door behind you, Emma.’

  She slammed the door shut and marched away down the hallway.

  The thousands of sheets of paper and hundreds of books were not as daunting as King had at first thought. He reasoned that if a guy lives in a mess and chucks his possessions all over the shop without rhyme or reason, there develops a certain order in the environment he creates. Any article in day to day use or of current relevancy is located within easy reach or at the top of the pile until it is superseded, whereupon it begins to sink. King sat back in the chair, sipping the tea and trying to get the ‘feel’ of the room, noting where the rough divisions lay and where similar articles were clustered. The pens, for example, enjoyed a definite grouping on the right-hand side of the desk’s writing surface, although old pencils and ‘dead’ ballpoints were also littered sporadically around the room. King noticed that a copy of the Evening Times dated Tuesday the 14th lay on a shelf to the left of the desk. It was probably the last one Bill McGarrigle had bought, certainly it was the last one he had brought home. He drained the mug and placed it on the floor so as not to let it intrude in the delicate balance of the room, and then reasoned that if anything in the room was relevant to Bill McGarrigle’s murder it would be within easy reach and not buried under papers and books and odd chattels which had taken years to accumulate. He found it under the four-day-old copy of the Evening Times. It was a folder in stiff brown cardboard marked clearly at the top corner ‘Gilheaney’. There was just a single sheet of paper in the folder which to King’s disappointment didn’t seem to contain a great deal to go on:-

  K
ing left Bill McGarrigles study with the folder under his arm and walked into the living-room. Emma McGarrigle was sitting in one of the armchairs, staring vacantly into the gloom, showing no trace of her recent anger or uplift.

  ‘Emma,’ said King, ‘I’m taking this file away with me.’ The girl didn’t say anything, she just turned her head slightly and glanced at King. He turned away and behind him the girl said, ‘He’s not coming back, is he?’ King stopped momentarily, but continued to the door and let himself out. As he was getting into his car he noticed that the flats on the opposite side of the street and the flats on the same stair as the McGarrigles’ had closed curtains; a community’s gesture of sympathy.

  12.10 p.m. Donoghue, Sussock, King and Montgomerie sat in a semi-circle in Donoghue’s office, in front of the desk behind which sat Chief Superintendent Findlater. The conference began with members reading through photocopies of the pathologist’s report, a report from the laboratory of Forensic Scientific Investigation, a sheet containing the abbreviations found in Bill McGarrigle’s diary and study, and copies of hastily handwritten reports from Montgomerie, King and Sussock. Richard King balanced a notebook on his lap; being the junior man, he had been designated minute taker.

  ‘So you’re convinced it’s not a bar brawl or chance attack,’ said Findlater in his deep Highland accent ‘These reports indicate the attacker was a bit of a yob-’

  ‘No.’ Donoghue cleared his throat. ‘No, sir, I’m not convinced of anything but I do think the whole situation is suspicious.’ He pressed a twist tobacco into his pipe bowl. ‘My suspicion is that Bill McGarrigle was hunting down a story, got too close to something and was murdered because of it.’

  ‘So point one, what was McGarrigle investigating?’ Findlater nodded to King, who scribbled on his notepad. ‘And why didn’t he inform us?’

  ‘His job was at risk,’ said King. ‘Like I said in my report, if he didn’t start producing he was for the chop. I think he must have been quite desperate, he was a modestly living family man who had suddenly found that his job wasn’t his for life.’

  ‘So he started out on investigative journalism, hit a rich seam and burrowed away until he was killed.’ Donoghue lit his pipe with his gold-plated lighter. ‘If we follow the same enquiry we ought to end up at the same place.’

  ‘Without the same result, I hope,’ grunted Findlater, a huge man who even in a sitting position dominated the room.

  ‘Where do we start?’ asked Sussock. ‘Do you think the coded entries in the diary hold a clue?’

  ‘I think they must,’ said Donoghue, holding up the sheet of paper containing the photocopies of the page of McGarrigle’s diary and the sheet found in the folder. ‘Heaven above knows what it means.’

  Wednesday 4. Mrs D 7. SS. c. G.

  Mrs D £

  £ ? McSW July 15

  Rmst.

  S McSW AM (FFM)?

  Gilheaney

  ‘I think it’s a simple abbreviation,’ said Montgomerie.

  ‘Simple?’ asked Findlater.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Montgomerie shifted on his seat. ‘Take his diary: there seem to be two appointments. One is for a Mrs D who also crops up later under the heading ‘Gilheaney’ which we think may be relevant.’

  ‘He mentioned that name while still semi-conscious,’ said Findlater.

  ‘Right, sir. The second appointment, “SScG Rmst”, I would suggest is a meeting with someone whose initials are SS.’

  ‘What then is Rmst?’ asked Sussock.

  ‘It stands for Rutherglen Main Street, which is about a hundred yards from where his body was found.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Donoghue, nodding. ‘What do you make of “c.G”?’

  ‘Well, the letter “c” is used by historians as an abbreviation for “circa”, about, to indicate, an approximate date or period, such as c. 1066, for example.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Donoghue.

  ‘Well, if we widen the meaning of the word “about” and say that in this context “c” denotes, say, “in respect of” or “to do with”, so that at seven o’clock on the fifteenth of July Bill McGarrigle was meeting SS about G—Gilheaney.’

  ‘He was meeting this SS on Rutherglen Main Street to talk about Gilheaney?’ said Findlater.

  ‘I think that’s a reasonable assumption,’ Donoghue said, taking his pipe from his mouth. ‘We certainly have to start with a hypothesis at some stage. What about the rest of it?’

  ‘Well…’ Montgomerie studied the sheet of paper. ‘There certainly seems to be a chain of events here, or a system being linked up. It starts with a Mrs D whom McGarrigle met on the day he died. She appears later as being connected with S. There follows a symbol for money and a question mark. What that means is not clear.’

  ‘Whose money is it, what is it for, where has it gone?’ said Findlater.

  ‘Yes, sir. That sort of thing.’ Montgomerie nodded. ‘The rest is still a bit of a mystery.’

  ‘It reduces to three, really,’ suggested Donoghue, ‘Who or what is SS, who or what is McSW, and who or what is AM (FFM)?’

  ‘That’s one line of enquiry,’ agreed Findlater clutching the sheet of paper in his huge hands. ‘What do they all stand for?’

  ‘Yes, I was going to propose that we follow two lines of enquiry,’ said Donoghue. ‘We have the forensic and path lab reports here. Bill McGarrigle died from a blow to the head which fractured his skull and led to a massive haemorrhage. The report indicates he was struck from behind, with the fracture to the rear and above the right ear and with a slightly inclined plane.’

  ‘Which indicates what?’ Findlater raised his eyebrows.

  ‘In itself, sir, nothing, but if we make the assumption, and I know this is a dangerous business, but if we make the assumption that this was the first blow struck, from behind, at a vulnerable part of the body, to disable the victim prior to setting about the ribs and the legs, then we may draw some indications about the physical make-up of the attacker.’

  ‘Such as him being a right-hander?’ suggested King.

  ‘Yes, I would say so.’ Donoghue pulled on his pipe. ‘I would also suggest we are looking for a small man, otherwise the fracture would have a horizontal plane, or one inclined down towards the front of the head instead of up.’

  Donoghue checked the front sheet of the pathologist’s report. ‘Bill McGarrigle was a man of medium height, five-eight, and so his assailant was probably considerably shorter, but at the same time he was no weakling. The murder weapon is a length of mild steel tube weighing nearly ten pounds. He would have had to carry it around with him for a while before swinging it, because according to Forensic there’s no indication it was a bit of metal which was lying in the back court rusting away which was picked up by chance.’

  ‘No fingerprints either,’ Findlater looked at the report from the Forensic lab. ‘Just Bill McGarrigle’s hair and blood, and a circumference which is conducive to the injury sustained.’

  ‘Oh, it’s the murder weapon all right,’ said Donoghue. ‘The cleanliness aspect is important: it implies premeditation. It adds weight to the theory that the attack was in connection with whatever Bill McGarrigle was working on.’

  ‘You were talking about the attacker, sir.’ King’s pen was poised over his notebook.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ Donoghue cleared his throat. ‘Its a length of metal which was carried for an indefinite amount of time, wielded with some considerable force for three or four blows, then carried for the hundred-yards-plus run to the railway bridge and thrown on to the tracks. How far from the bridge did you find it, Montgomerie?’

  ‘Twenty, twenty-five feet, sir.’

  ‘So it was thrown some considerable distance?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Even allowing for the adrenalin pumping through his body that’s quite a bit of physical endurance. I believe he’s small and strong and a right-hander.’

  ‘It isn’t much to go on.’ Findlater leafed through the reports whic
h were spread in front of him.

  The telephone on Donoghue’s desk rang.

  ‘It’s all we have,’ replied Donoghue, ignoring the telephone. ‘And even then I’m the first to admit that it’s based on the twin assumptions that he acted alone and the blow to Bill McGarrigle’s skull was the first blow of the attack.’

  ‘What do you propose, Inspector?’

  ‘Well, sir, I’d like Montgomerie to follow the murder enquiry.’ Donoghue glanced at his telephone with annoyance. ‘I’d like Detective-Sergeant Sussock and Detective-Constable King to follow up on whatever Bill McGarrigle was working on. The two investigations should converge at some point.’ He stood, walked to his desk and snatched the telephone. ‘Look, whoever you are, if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, if I haven’t answered my phone by the second ring I’m either out or engaged, and right now I’m…’ He paused, his grip on the telephone relaxing. ‘All right, someone will be right down.’ He replaced the telephone. ‘That was Constable Piper on the front desk. He has a lady with him, a Mrs Dinn. She has just seen the first edition of the Evening Times and would like to know who is going to see about her money now that Mr McGarrigle is dead?’

  CHAPTER 4

  King had noticed that it was not an unusual occurrence, not a strange way to crack a case. They’d come face to face with a brick wall and have no way to turn when someone would phone in or amble up to the desk sergeant and say, ‘Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought you might like to know…’ He looked at the man, then the woman and then looked again at the man. He said he didn’t understand.

  ‘It’s so simple,’ said the man and then said something to the woman, who snorted and said something to the man, who replied vociferously.

  ‘Hang about.’ King held up his hand and the chatter stopped.

  ‘Mrs Dinn is very angry, sir,’ said the man.

  ‘I can see that.’ King glanced at his notes. ‘But I’m not going to be able to help unless you can make me understand.’

  The man spoke to the woman, who replied sharply.

  ‘Mrs Dinn thinks you are very stupid, sir,’ said the man.