Deep and Crisp and Even

by Peter Turnbull

'Visitor?' asked Sussock, but Donoghue didn't reply. The two men sat in silence, sipping at their coffee. There was a knock at the door and a constable showed Sam Payne into the room. He was wearing the same leather jacket, but Donoghue noticed that the look of energetic and youthful confidence had gone.

  'Come in, Sam.' Donoghue stood and smiled. 'Coffee?'

  Sussock also stood and smiled at the young man.

  'No thank you, sir.'

  'What can we do for you, Sam? Please sit down.'

  'Well, it's about the tape, sir,' said Sam Payne, sitting nervously. 'I was thinking about it last night. I'm trespassing on your territory, I know, tell me to shove off if you want.'

  Donoghue sat down. 'Carry on, Sam.'

  'Well, I've been reading the newspapers and it struck me that there's nothing on the tape that isn't in the papers. Have you considered the possibility that the tape is a hoax? It would fit with the immaturity of the person who made it.'

  Donoghue bowed his head and looked at the files on his desk, and the coffee pot and at his pipe and gold-plated lighter. It was his way of apologizing for being a fool.

  Sussock said, 'I'm going to nail that bastard.' After a minute Sam Payne left the room, quietly shutting the door behind him.

  The Rock was an up-market version of The Auld Hoose. The Rock was a grey, squat bar, a concrete complex, a centrally heated, wall-to-wall (red tartan) carpeted pillbox. It was up-market because it had windows and was set back from Highburgh Road, G12. There were low beams on the ceiling, wooden chairs and tables, a television perched in the corner, and a recess near the toilets for the pool table. There was a hat-and-coat-rack in the corner, and a long gantry, behind which were the barmen, who all wore blue shirts and baggy trousers.

  The bar was beginning to fill with Saturday night youth, and the juke box, which offered one hundred and twenty selections, seemed to be playing the same five records over and over again. At the door a man in a blazer and peaked cap checked the identification of suspiciously under-age-looking girls.

  Montgomerie sat in a large circle of people crowded round three tables underneath the window, a trifle too near the juke box, but seats anywhere in the Rock on a Saturday night are a priceless commodity. His left hand rested on Gillian's leg. Gillian had proved to be quite a catch: attracted to her because of her pert bottom clasped in denim, he had subsequently found that she (a) went like the Glasgow-Edinburgh express and (b) knew a lot of people who played guitars, who knew other people who played guitars, etc, etc. Gillian, for her part, had been without a man since the beginning of the academic year and was now pleased to have a bearded one sitting with his hand on her knee, especially since he happened to be tall, good-looking, worldly-wise, and seemed to have more money than any other post-grad she had met. She looked warm, her cheeks were full, her eyes were wide and she couldn't help smiling. Montgomerie's eyes and ears missed nothing, but he said little; his mouth was mostly used for drinking Belhaven with relish.

  He scanned the room. Most of the clientele were young, a lot were very young, young enough for Montgomerie to feel old—and, were it not for Gillian's flesh, out of it, over the hill, past it. He wondered if he was getting to that point in life when you are nearer the end than the beginning. He was only twenty-six but it was old enough for the other people in the bar to look like children, velvet-smooth chins and giggling nervousness, and they were drinking hard, three deep at the bar, knocking it back like steel-makers and clamouring for more. He wondered was he like this at university, a child thinking he was a man because he had pubic hair and a glass of amber-coloured liquid in his hand? Going to change the world, but not on a Saturday night because that was the night grants were used to keep the breweries solvent?

  Sometimes, Montgomerie thought, sometimes it isn't comfortable to see yourself.

  A man walked into the bar. He was in his fifties, balding, portly; he had a dripping Burberry and a battered trilby. A lot of young faces turned and glanced at him, probably because he stuck out like a white rhino at a tea party. The man seemed to be looking for somebody and Montgomerie wondered how he could attract his attention. The man was Ray Sussock.

  Montgomerie moved his arm and scratched his head, the man saw the movement, nodded towards Montgomerie and walked towards the toilets. Montgomerie patted Gillian on the knee and stood.

  'He's burst at last,' said a boy who was hiding his youth behind a ginger beard. The group laughed and Montgomerie smiled.

  'Don't go away,' he said.

  He and Sussock stood side by side at the urinals. Behind them, inside the cubicle, somebody was smoking cannabis.

  'You'll get a bust there,' hissed Sussock.

  'He'll still be in his nappies.'

  'Any progress?'

  'No. Not a dicky-bird. I needed this piss, I never know when to go in case I miss something. How did you know where to find me?'

  'You gave your movements to Fabian this morning when you telephoned in.'

  'Did I? Oh, yeah…yeah, I did.' Montgomerie had said he'd be in the Rock that evening because Donoghue had insisted on a place for each phase of the day. But it was only six to four odds-on that Gillian and her gang would opt for the Rock.

  'Losing your memory, Constable? Don't let the good life get to you.'

  'Oh I'm not, Sarge, I'm not,' Montgomerie whispered earnestly.

  'That's good, because we're taking you off the case.'

  'C'mon!' Montgomerie turned to him. 'It's hardly my fault I haven't heard anything. Anyway, I'm in with an interesting bunch, they're into guitars and folk music. I hope to get a lead.'

  'I noticed. Who is the girl?'

  'Just a girl. Part of the interesting bunch.'

  'Anyway, stick with it,' Sussock said.

  'I thought you said you were taking me off the case?'

  'We are. You're now looking for a hoaxer.'

  'Jesus Christ!'

  'Right. Fabian wants him badly. He's screwed up the whole investigation.'

  'What do you know about him?'

  'We don't know the colour of his hair, that's for sure. Or his blood group, but it could be O+.'

  'Just the voice, then?'

  'Aye. Can you remember it?'

  'Aye.'

  'Fabian had a couple of university teachers in, one was wearing a leather jacket. I'm getting old.'

  'I know how you feel.'

  'Anyway, he's thought to be immature. That should make us both feel older, first nail in the coffin.'

  'They're all immature.'

  'This one was even more so. He comes from Dumbarton way. Working-class parents and he's a good guitar player. That's your best line. Apparently he's a natural.'

  'OK,' said Montgomerie, flicking his penis at the urinal. 'A guitar player, working-class origins, from Dumbarton.'

  'No further west. He doesn't roll his Rs enough.'

  'Do what?'

  'Roll his Rs, Montgomerie, his Rs.'

  'Oh.'

  'Just don't get too comfortable, we're still likely to pull you out at any time.' Sussock pulled up his zip.

  OK, OK.'

  They rinsed their hands and separately left the toilets. Montgomerie went back to his place in the group, to his seat by the radiator, to his beer and his girl. Ray Sussock went back into the snow.

  In Edinburgh a mother and her daughter were baking in the kitchen. The mother was thirty-five years old, she was a handsome woman with sharp features and short hair and a slim figure. Her daughter was ten and kneaded her piece of dough just like her mother was kneading her larger piece. In the front room a boy was playing with toy soldiers on the carpet in front of the fire. He was eight years old and knocked the soldiers down by skimming a domino at them. The domino was a shell fired from a Tiger tank and was killing the Tommies who were trying to destroy it. Of the Tommies left standing the boy had already identified the one who would rush forward and heroically save his comrades. The boy was getting tired but he had been allowed to stay up late and so he fought the sleepine
ss. He tossed the domino again and more soldiers died.

  'It's gym on Monday,' said the girl to her mother. 'I don't mind it, but it's so cold, we have to run across the yard to the gym.'

  'But that doesn't take very long, dear,' replied the woman warmly, but firmly. 'A matter of seconds.' The woman had seen the school buildings on open days and knew that the gym was a new building about fifty yards from the main schoolhouse. The children had to walk or, in the rain, run, along a tarmac path in order to get from one building to another. She was quite pleased that her daughter had to endure this small hardship; she felt that because of it, and other similar experiences, her daughter would find her adult life easier to cope with.

  'But I get so cold, Mummy.'

  'You can use your overcoat, can't you?'

  'Yes, but my legs get cold.'

  'Well, we shall have to hope it's thawing on Monday. Come on, this is ready for the oven.'

  The family heard car tyres on the gravel drive which had been cleared of snow and they ran to welcome the man as he opened the front door. His children hugged a leg each and his wife put a powdery arm around his neck and kissed him.

  Fabian Donoghue had come home.

  Whether Sunday ever dawned was a moot point. Certainly there was a time when the street lights were switched off, and a time when the stars could no longer be seen, a time about 9.30 a.m. when the darkness gave way to a grey half-light, a chilling and an empty greyness which covered Glasgow like a wet army blanket and which would give way to nothing until the darkness came again at 4 p.m.

  It was Sunday morning in Glasgow, the city was still and quiet, on the seventh day its citizens rested in the struggle against the winter, save perhaps for a solitary venture over the ice to collect the Sunday papers. Sunday morning in the working city, and, like every other city and town in the British Isles the adult population were either nursing hangovers or preparing for worship.

  At 10.30 Malcolm Montgomerie's throat felt like the bottom of a budgie's cage and his headache had moved to a concentrated attack on two square inches of skull just above his left ear. At the side of him Gillian was being sick into a plastic bucket.

  At 10.30 Richard and Rosemary King took their children to Meeting for Worship at the Friends' Meeting House.

  Richard King was not a Quaker, he was not even a Christian. But he had married a girl from a Quaker family who now sat next to him in Meeting with her head bowed and her hands crossed on her lap and who would call herself by the endearing and archaic term 'Quakeress'. He admired and respected the Society of Friends for their grasp of an ideology he felt himself not yet ready to grasp and he respected them for the girl they had raised to a woman for him to marry, and he felt he would like to do the same for his children.

  He hoped that by the time his children were old enough to challenge him on his beliefs he would have assumed some Christian commitment and so be able to defend his actions of today, but at the moment he was giving them something and that, he felt, was the important thing.

  The children sat in the first fifteen minutes of the meeting and then an adult stood and opened a side door. Without a word being spoken the children slipped off the benches and padded out of the room. They were going to Sunday School in a downstairs room and would file back five minutes before the handshaking which signified the close of the meeting. Last Sunday the children did the United Nations. He watched his children go; he felt proud and at the same time terrified of parenthood.

  About him most heads were bowed. One man beamed at the ceiling and another stared out of the window.

  King felt clumsy amongst the gentle, vain amongst the humble, and thoughtless among the pensive. Everybody around him seemed to know what they were doing. From the next building came a dull knocking sound. It was not at all disturbing and seemed to contribute strangely to the silence.

  He thought if he was a Christian he ought to be praying. Who for? His family? That would be selfish. Who, then? The murderer, the man who is stabbing people in the cold and snow-bound city? For Donoghue and his loneliness of command? But he wasn't a Christian, he did not believe.

  He wondered what his children were doing. Somebody shifted on the bench. Somebody else coughed.

  He felt guilty that he couldn't follow a train of thought, or ponder upon an issue. He wanted to reach for the Bible which lay on the shelf which ran along the back of the bench in front of him, because at least it would give him something to read, but he hesitated in case by moving he would show his wife that he was restless.

  He decided that if he was a Christian he would pray for the McAlpine family of Partick. A good policeman can switch off, he can leave his work at his desk, but not all policemen can switch off all the time and every policeman has one case, at least one, that pursues him in his free time, that makes him depressed in the bar at night, that upsets him during fitful sleep and haunts his innermost thoughts. Richard King knew that if he was a Christian his prayers would be with the McAlpines of Partick.

  In front of him a woman stood and cleared her throat. The Meeting stirred, people shifted on the benches, raising their heads. The woman said that the knocking from the next building reminded her that Christ was ever knocking at our hearts and it was our duty to let him in. Then she sat down. Heads bowed, ruminating on the woman's words, and the banging took on a new significance.

  King knew that throughout his life he would never forget the visit he had made to the McAlpines. The little girl running into her bedroom.

  The banging began to sound metallic and hollow. A central heating system being installed? On a Sunday? The black economy, nudge, wink, the old man would charge three ton for this but me and the boys will do it for half-price on Sunday, cash.

  He remembered the kitchen door needed painting.

  Very suddenly he knew that the McAlpine boy was dead. All along, even from the moment he had picked up the file and put it on his desk, he would have been surprised if the boy had turned up alive. But for the first time he now knew he was dead. He didn't know how he knew, he just knew. He was as certain that the McAlpine boy was dead as he was certain that that night he would make love to the beautiful Quakeress who sat head bowed beside him. It was a similar kind of certainty, and he was certain of what he knew.

  He also knew that Jamie McPherson, who lived in Partick with his father, who had run from the police one morning in Riverside, who had a ring in his ear and a boyish face and who had been in Paisley police cells when the first murder had taken place, had killed the McAlpine boy. King had released him from questioning on the Monday and he had killed on the Thursday.

  He told himself he mustn't blame himself. He told himself he must never tell his wife, but he knew he would tell her that night in bed, long afterwards, while they were just lying there silently.

  He wondered if he could arrest somebody for murder if he had no body.

  He wondered if he should be thinking such things in a Meeting for Worship.

  He wondered when his children were coming back. He wanted to look at his watch but he didn't want to show his wife that he was restless.

  I don't know when I'll be back. Yes, I've got to go out. No, it's not the bird, the bird's all right. You don't have to throw it out. You mustn't. I know it's late, stop nagging at me.

  It's still cold. I wonder when the summer's coming? When it's like this I think the summer will never come. I think the winter's dug in, it's got hold of the earth and it's not going to let go. Down on the coast on an outing, I once saw a crab's leg and the pincers had round a bit of driftwood. The crab was gone, but the leg was still there with the pincers still holding the piece of wood. Winter's like that, winter's a big white claw.

  Tonight's going to be dangerous, I went yesterday and I went the day before. Just to check it out.

  It's cold.

  I'll take the bus. A 56 across the city. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be the first one I know. She doesn't know me, but I know her. I saw her from the Welfare minibus. Three month
s ago on our way back from the Transport Museum. She got out of the car and went into her house. Rich bitch, big house.

  She needs learning.

  Lissu told me. He told me about her and he told me that tonight's the night. Three days ago he told me it was to be her.

  I'll come back and finish the book. I don't need much sleep.

  I read a lot.

  CHAPTER 8

  She was twenty-six years old, five-ten and weighing ten stones, she had shoulder-length blonde hair, blue eyes and high cheekbones, but not too high, and she had a small mouth, but not too small. She was wearing a black evening gown from Pepperoni and her full-length fur coat was a Cooney; she wore a Cartier watch on her left wrist and a bracelet from Baume and Mercier on the other. Her sheer tights were from Bloomingdales and her boots were from Midas. Her handbag was an Etienne Aigner, and inside was her driving licence and car keys. The name on the licence was Susan Smith and the keys fitted a shiny Morgan plus-8 tourer which was parked in the driveway of her house. Susan Smith had an alias, a pseudonym, a trade name, it was 'Simone', and Simone had been in the first division of the London modelling circuit until she came north to become Scotland's No. 1 model. She bought a house on Albert Drive which had previously been owned by a whisky baron and had had it completely redecorated while she was holidaying at Champneys. She was now lying on the sixteen foot long sofa with one delicate foot resting on the pile of the Durri carpet. She was staring at the ceiling. She was cold. She was dead.

  Donoghue stared down at the body. She had been stabbed twice, once in her throat, and a small hand with perfectly manicured fingernails was resting on a bloody gash in her evening gown, just over her stomach. He was mesmerized by the body. He felt that all deaths which warrant a police investigation have an element of sadness, murders more than others, and the murder of the young and the beautiful have tjie most sadness of all.

  A camera bulb flashed and Donoghue was brought sharply back to reality. Ray Sussock was standing by his side, Jimmy Bothwell dusted the hi-fi for fingerprints, two photographers recorded the body and aspects of the room. The ambulance crew waited until they were given permission to remove the body. There were voices from the next room where Richard King was talking to Ellen Murphy. The camera bulb flashed again.