Deep and Crisp and Even

by Peter Turnbull

  'It was a black shape and it went diagonally across the lawn. It climbed from the road, on to the wall and went across the lawn towards the front door.'

  'What happened when it reached the front door, sir?'

  'I didn't see it reach the door. I only saw it going in the direction of the front door. It didn't use the drive and so I thought it was a stray. I had a mind to go and bring it in for the night but I thought that it would be long gone by the time I reached Miss Smith's house and so I turned from the window to attend to my exercises.'

  'Can you describe it, please?'

  'Well I said I thought it was a dog because that's the only thing I thought it could be. The visibility was poor and I only had a fleeting glimpse, but if I am to be completely honest the gait of what I saw put me in mind of a monkey.'

  'A monkey?'

  'An ape, then. It sort of rolled across the lawn, I'm using the word figuratively, it had a rapid, rolling gait. I thought I could not have seen an ape and so I decided that I had seen a large dog.'

  'Large?'

  'About the height of a Great Dane. I had a Great Dane once. Magnificent beast.'

  Delicately Montgomerie enquired about Benjamin Strachan's vision.

  'I have perfect vision, young man. I'm also fairly observant. Did you know that one of the decorative cuff-buttons on your overcoat is missing?'

  Montgomerie confessed he didn't know.

  Montgomerie thanked the old man and drove back to P Division. He tracked Donoghue down in the canteen and told him about Benjamin Strachan and what Benjamin Strachan had said.

  'What do you think?' said Donoghue, sipping his coffee.

  'He seems compos mentis, sir, and he could see better than I could in that room.'

  'He probably knew where everything was, like a blind person would. If you moved his chair six inches to one side he'd sit on the arm.'

  'Probably, sir. But I didn't get that impression.'

  'I don't think it gives us any leads. Was he an old man asking for attention?'

  'He was old, but not desperately lonely. I think he was sincere. He seemed to take himself very seriously, he wasn't the sort that could make wild claims so that he could entertain somebody.'

  'Write it up and file it. Chimps with kitchen knives, that takes the cake.'

  'Perhaps it's been specially trained,' suggested Montgomerie with a grin.

  Donoghue rose and rinsed his cup. 'I wish you'd stop making jokes, Montgomerie,' he said with a frown. He had left his car at home and was using the train because that day he had a terror of an ice-bound M8. It was 7.30. If he got the eight o'clock he'd be home by 9.30. 'You'll be on your own tonight,' he said to Montgomerie. 'Ray Sussock's phoned in sick, he's gone down with a cold. He may be in tomorrow, but right now I imagine he's snug and warm with a strong toddy inside him. If you need support King is on call. The desk sergeant has the list of uniforms and if he strikes, be he man or be he ape, pick up the phone and call me immediately. I'll get in somehow.'

  'Yes, sir/ said Montgomerie, awed at the responsibility that had just been thrust upon him.

  Tomorrow night I have an appointment with the Welfare Lady. Lissu said I could. I made the appointment for five o'clock, for after my work, as if I go to my work… ha, ha, ha, ha… She said did I need to come? Couldn't I discuss it over the telephone? I said I needed to see her. After work, I said. She gave me an appointment for five o'clock. She's old and has a stiff hairdo and she thinks she does me favours. Tomorrow I'm going to take my friend with me.

  CHAPTER 10

  The solitary figure solidified out of the shadows and walked slowly down the street. The street was dark, there was slush underfoot, the buildings at either side of the street were derelict. The man thought this city was a bitch. A wild, red-haired Irish bitch. She had the long flowing hair of the Campsies, two long limbs which lay either side of the river and met at the intimacy of the grid system at her centre. This city would love you or hate you, but she would never be indifferent to you. Not this bitch. The solitary figure was a policeman. His name was Hamilton and he knew he'd never leave her, not this bitch.

  It was 2.30 in the morning of January the 26th. The temperature was nudging two degrees above freezing. Hamilton's feet slid through the ankle-deep slush, it looked like a thaw had set in, he hoped it was the thaw. But it wasn't warm enough to prevent his ears pinching and to prevent his breath hanging in the air like saloon-bar smoke.

  Hamilton didn't care, he wouldn't have been too concerned if summer had been cancelled and the next Ice Age was making its way down Renfield Street. Tonight he felt sixteen feet tall, away tae hell, he felt twenty feet tall, tonight his chest was big, but big, tonight the slush was air and he was walking on it. Tonight his wife had told him she was pregnant. He thought this bitch of a city was a good one to bring a child up in.

  He wanted a son. He'd call him Davey, after his own dad.

  Hamilton saw a figure in the road ahead of him. Two hundred yards away. The figure staggered. Hamilton's pulse began to race and his stomach tightened. He quickened his pace and felt in his trouser pocket for his truncheon. The figure became a man, a short man in a raincoat too big for him. The man moved towards Hamilton, beckoning him as he did so.

  'In the midden, sir,' said the man when he was within earshot. His jaw glistened with days' growth of whiskers and his breath was hot from ten feet. 'In the midden,' he said again. He grabbed Hamilton's arm. Hamilton shrugged him off.

  'What's in the midden?' he asked, releasing his grip on his truncheon.

  'My bed, under my doss.' The man gasped for breath and coughed deeply. The thin air was torturing his lungs. 'This way.'

  Hamilton walked after the man, keeping pace with him, and he heard layers of paper creasing under the man's coat as he ran with tiny hobbling steps. The man's boots were tied with string. He stopped at the entrance of a derelict tenement; the corrugated iron sheet over the doorway had been kicked down.

  'In there, sir. Dead body.'

  Hamilton stepped forward and shone his torch into the close mouth. The steps were worn down, the paint was peeling, the tiles were chipped and the sandstone was pitted. Through the close he could see the dereliction of the waste ground which had once been back courts. The air stank of urine, even at 2° Centigrade.

  'Top flat,' said the man.

  'Top!'

  'Aye.'

  'The stairs OK, aye?'

  'Aye.'

  Hamilton turned his head and spoke into his radio. 'Poppa Control, this is P246, Constable Hamilton.'

  'Control receiving.' The radio crackled. On the river a ship was moving. Its foghorn blast rolled heavily over the rooftops.

  'Control. Am entering derelict property at…' he peered at the flaking paint on the stonework outside the close mouth but couldn't discern the numbers… 'At two-thirds of the way along Caledonia Street proceeding south from Glasgow Cross. Am investigating report of dead body. Assistance required. Over.'

  'Control. Wait until assistance arrives. Over.'

  'Understood,' said Hamilton and flicked off his radio.

  'What's your name then, Jim?' he asked, taking out his notebook.

  'Alexander McCaig, sir.'

  'Where do you live?'

  'Top flat, sir.'

  'So this body wasn't there last night?'

  'Couldn't say, sir. I've been on furlough for a week.'

  'On where?'

  'Furlough.'

  'You mean you haven't been there for a week?'

  'Aye, sir.'

  'And you discovered this body when you returned the night, aye?'

  'Aye.'

  'What sort of body is it?'

  'Dead, sir. It's a dead body.'

  'I mean, is it a man or woman?'

  'No, sir?'

  'What?'

  'It's not a man or a woman.'

  'What is it then, a tailor's dummy?'

  'No, sir. It's a wee boy.'

  A car slowly turned the corner. It was white
with a yellow flash and had a blue revolving light on the roof. It could only have come from the next street. Hamilton flashed his torch and the car drove alongside Hamilton and Alexander McCaig. It halted smoothly and quietly. Two constables in flat white caps got out.

  'Report of a dead body on the top landing,' said Hamilton.

  'Stairs safe?' asked one of the constables.

  'Apparently,' Hamilton answered. 'But we'd better be careful.'

  'Would you like to sit in the car, Jim?' said the other constable and held the rear door open. McCaig slid on to the back seat, seeming pleased to be part of the team.

  'What do we do now?' asked Hamilton.

  'We go and investigate. One stays with the car and him, the other two go up and check it out. Two will have to go up because we may need to corroborate the evidence about the discovery,' said the driver of the car, a constable called Piper who was junior to Hamilton, and who Hamilton thought was well on his way to becoming a sergeant.

  'Yes,' said Hamilton, and very nearly added, 'sir'.

  Hamilton and Piper started up the stair. In the car the other constable took out his notebook.

  'Mr McCaig, is it?'

  'Aye, sir. Sandy McCaig.'

  'Sandy, is it? How old are you, Sandy?'

  'Twenty-three, sir/

  The constable turned round and gave Sandy McCaig a cold stare. Sandy McCaig beamed at him.

  'What do you do for a living, Sandy?'

  'I'm in the army, sir.'

  'Oh?'

  'I'm a dispatch-rider with Field Marshal Montgomery. I'm on furlough at the moment. Off to the desert soon.'

  The constable shut his notebook and took out a packet of cigarettes. 'Smoke, Sandy?'

  'I don't mind if I do,' said Sandy McCaig.

  The stairs were dark and damp. They were so dark that Hamilton's torch had little spill and he could only see clearly what the main part of the beam lit. Everything else was blackness. The windows on the stairway had been sheeted over with corrugated iron and the doors of the flats had been bricked up. It didn't prevent the rats from getting in, their scratching, bouncing, rhythmic footfall echoed in the empty rooms. Hamilton shivered. He felt he could reach out and grab the dampness, the sour smell filled his nostrils and made his chest feel hollow. He pressed on. His son would need someone to look up to.

  The stairway was four floors high. At the topmost landing the bricks at the entrance of one flat had been knocked in at the centre, resembling a doorway in a ship.

  Hamilton and Piper stepped over the lip of the doorway and into the flat. They shone their torches down the hallway. It was a large flat; five, probably six rooms; the plaster had fallen off the walls, the doors hung loose on hinges, there were holes in the floorboards, and where there were no holes the boards sagged under their weight.

  'Careful how you go,' said Hamilton.

  'I always am,' answered Piper drily.

  Hamilton let that go and began to walk down the hall, testing the floor with his front foot before shifting all his weight from his back foot. On the wall was a portrait; Hamilton's torch beam picked it out, a sepia print of a young woman who was looking downcast and holding a bunch of flowers. She was in an oval frame.

  In the room at the end of the hall, the room which may have been the parents' bedroom or the living-room, they found some empty cartons of cereal, some empty milk-bottles, a plastic dish and a metal spoon, a pile of dusty and empty wine-bottles, and a mound of sacking.

  The head of a boy was sticking out from under the sacking. The eyes were open. That made it worse, the eyes glistening like that in the torch-beams.

  Hamilton and Piper pulled back the sacking. The body was naked. Hamilton turned his torch away, but Piper continued to shine his on the boy, playing the beam along the length of the body, the folded-up legs and the bloodied anus.

  'Hope I never find out who did this,' said Piper in a voice as chilly as the night. 'I've got a little brother about his age.'

  Hamilton said, 'Just put the sacking back, for God's sake.'

  They shone their torches about the room. Scattered on the floor were the boy's clothing; shoes, thick socks, pullover, shirt, a parka with a furry hood. In the pocket of the jeans they found a Transcard and a membership card of a youth club. The photograph on the Transcard was that of the boy who now lay underneath a pile of damp hemp, with his eyes open. The same name was on both cards: Ronald McAlpine.

  The duty sergeant was a Sergeant Anderson and he checked the missing persons register. Ronald McAlpine's name had been entered on the register when his file was opened five days ago and it stood as an example of the grim statistic that if a missing person isn't found within 48 hours of being reported missing, the chances of their being found alive are a slim one in ten. Phil Hamilton stood in front of Sergeant Anderson and wrote the address of the McAlpine family in his notebook. He looked up, white-faced. 'Off you go, lad,' said Anderson. It was 3.20 a.m.

  At 7.30 Montgomerie called King at home.

  'Would have called you earlier, mate,' said Montgomerie. 'But it didn't seem an emergency. We found the body of the Mc Alpine boy in the night. The case was cross-indexed to Jamie McPherson and out to you. I read the file, looks like you've netted a big one, you'll have your stripes up this afternoon all right. Anyway, I saw the pace you're moving at so I didn't think it would be necessary to get you out of bed at three in the morning.'

  'Thanks, Mai. I appreciate that.' King was standing at the unpainted doorway of his kitchen. His children were midway through the process of transferring porridge from their bowls to the table top. His wife was at the sink, in her housecoat. King thought her hair was a mess. Tinny music came out of a red transistor radio.

  'The boys at the Path. Lab. and Forensics are going over the place where he was found.'

  'Where was that?'

  'Some old guy's doss down near the Barrows. What time will you be in? You're not on duty until two this afternoon.'

  'What time do you expect the reports?'

  'Forensic should be any time now, mate. Dr Reynolds has his typed up by a dolly secretary who doesn't start work until nine so he should send his over by ten at the latest. Mind you, he'll give a verbal to Hamilton, who's at the Path. Lab. now.'

  'Do the parents know?'

  'Yes, Hamilton told them.'

  'Hamilton again?'

  'Uh-huh. He went from the parents' house straight to the Path. Lab.'

  'He's not having an easy time, that lad.'

  'He's not. In fact, wasn't it him who found the first two bodies left by our other friend?'

  'That's right; I hope he's in for the kill, if and when it comes; he deserves it. Quiet night otherwise, was it?'

  'Like a grave.'

  'That's not funny, Mai. Anyway, thanks, I'll be in at nine.'

  He was in at 8.30. He hung his hat and coat on the peg, pulled his sodden trousers from his knees and went to the canteen and made himself a coffee. In his pigeonhole were two circulars, one about saving fuel, the other about annual health checks, and reports from Hamilton, Piper and the Forensic Department. He let the circulars lie and took the reports to his desk.

  Phil Hamilton's report was a what, why, when, how, where and who, blow-by-blow account of the discovery of the body. It was completely corroborated by Piper's report, but Piper's report had more depth and more comment. Piper, who knew nothing of the finger of suspicion pointing unwaveringly at Jamie McPherson, had thought fit to help the C.ID in every way possible and he reported that the boy seemed to be dead, but no cause of death was immediately obvious. However, he reported, death may have been caused by strangulation, because there was bruising around the throat, or it may have been shock because the boy appeared to have been raped. It was very cold in the building, read the report, but death by hypothermia could be ruled out because, although the body was naked, (a) it had been lying under a mound of sacking, (b) he had not been restrained in any way and his clothes were easily within his reach. Piper also noted that th
e clothes were scattered and torn but were not bloodstained and therefore suggested that the clothes had been completely removed before the boy was raped. King put the report down, impressed. The third report had come from the Forensic Department:

  Strathclyde Police, Forensic Science Unit. Jan 26 R. King P Division for information: C.P., R.D., G.F.

  Report on body discovered at 27 Caledonian Road on 26 Jan

  (1) Location of body: top flat in derelict tenement property. Used for rough sleeping by vagrants.

  (2) Samples taken of dust from floor and fibres from sacking for later comparison if required.

  (3) Three different sets of fingerprints found. Please see attached transparencies. NPC read-out on prints to be forwarded.

  It was signed, neatly, J. Bothwell.

  Clipped to the report was a manilla envelope in which were six black-and-white photographs of the body and the room and the sacking and the clothes strewn across the floorboards. The photographs were still tacky. Also in the envelope were transparencies of three different fingerprints, marked A, B and C. A typewritten note explained: Print A: Found on bottles, paper packages, dish, spoon, door of room. Multiple traces. Print B: Found on doorway, left shoe. Two traces. Print C: Found on shoes, Transcard and youth club pass. Multiple traces.

  King didn't think he need wait for the NPC data on the prints. He went to the basement and signed the file on Jamie McPherson out to himself and returned with it to his office. He checked the information in the file. Print B was Jamie McPherson s left thumbprint.

  King went to the canteen and made himself another mug of coffee. He was shaking slightly, and wanted to calm himself. He carried the coffee back towards his office, glancing in at the front office as he passed, where the Wagnerian form of Elka Willems was slipping a sheet of paper into his pigeonhole. He went into the office and retrieved the paper: it was a report from Dr Reynolds of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Back at his desk King sipped the coffee and read the report.

  Glasgow Royal Infirmary Department of Clinical Pathology.

  26 January The Chief Superintendent, Strathclyde Police P Division G.3

  Preliminary report on an examination of body believed to be that of Ronald McAlpine, aged ten years and nine months.