See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

by Douglas Lindsay

  See That

  My Grave

  Is Kept Clean

  Douglas Lindsay

  This edition Long Midnight Publishing, 2019

  Copyright © Douglas Lindsay, 2019

  The moral right of Douglas Lindsay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or by licence, permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  www.douglaslindsay.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  epilogue

  prologue

  SO HERE I AM, A GUN in my hand, one bullet, and Michael fucking Clayton standing right in front of me.

  Michael Clayton, for his part, seems unconcerned. He’s smiling, the smile in his eyes more than on the lips. He genuinely believes I’m going to use the bullet on myself rather than him. That was why he gave me the gun in the first place.

  The weird fucking thing is, he’s right.

  1

  ‘GOT SOMETHING THAT’LL be right up your street,’ says Ramsay.

  Walking into the station. Nine-thirty-four. Late. Again.

  Woke up at half-two, could feel one of those fucking birds pecking at my brain. Right inside. Like it was there. Lay there for I don’t know how long, finally got up, made a cup of tea and turned on the TV. Not much on at four in the morning. Watched half an hour of the Cubs at the Nationals. Tied game, into overtime, bottom of the fifteenth. The fifteenth. Jesus. Even that didn’t put me back to sleep.

  Went back to bed, lay there like a lemon as the day got light, finally got back to sleep at seven, or something, just when I should have been getting up. And now I’m late and will have to deal with Taylor’s eyebrow, or however it is he’s going to express his disapproval.

  Stop to talk to Ramsay on the front desk.

  ‘Why do I think I’m going to be offended?’ I say.

  Ramsay laughs.

  ‘You look like shit, by the way,’ he says.

  ‘I know. Give me the thing.’

  ‘There’s a guy in Room 3 wants to complain about the people who live across the street.’

  I lean on the counter, settling in for the duration of the story.

  ‘Those kind are certainly my favourites,’ I say. ‘Mowing his front lawn too early on a Sunday?’

  ‘Shagging his wife up against the window of their bedroom,’ says Ramsay.

  I take a moment to process that one. Not just the fact someone somewhere is shagging his wife up against a window, or that someone who’s watched it wants to complain rather than get the popcorn in, but the fact he’s been saving it for me.

  ‘Are you making that up?’

  ‘Takes all sorts,’ he says.

  ‘And you think it’s a job for a detective sergeant?’

  A defensive look crosses his face. I don’t think I’ve ever, in all my career, played either the detective or the rank card. Don’t know where that came from. Obviously not in the mood for exhibitionist sex acts.

  ‘Taylor said you weren’t busy and you could handle it.’

  ‘Did he?’

  And just like that I’ve ruined it for him.

  ‘Whatever, Sergeant,’ he says, ‘if you’re going to be a dick about it. I’ll give it to Anderson.’

  He sits down, back in front of the computer.

  ‘Sorry, Stuart, you’re right. It’s up my street. Bad night.’

  Tap my head, as though he’s supposed to know what that means. As though I’ve been telling people about the fucking birds which, of course, I haven’t. Why would I tell anyone about the birds?

  ‘Room 3,’ I add. ‘I’m going, I’m going. Straight there.’

  Walk away, waving off any objections he might have, but I don’t think there were going to be any anyway. He was going to have a laugh, I ruined it, and now we’re moving on. We’re all grown ups here.

  THE CROWS ARE BACK. I don’t know why.

  I mean, in my head. They’re still outside, of course, all over. More and more of them every year. But those crows never went away. The crows in my head though, those fuckers had gone.

  After all the shit a year and a half ago, my head was full of them. This cacophony of noise. Crows, with their jibber-jabber. In my dreams at night, in my waking nightmares in the day.

  I’d go and sit in the park at the top of the town, just to get some air, listen to the wind in the trees, and there would always be the ugly sound of the crows. Everywhere.

  But it didn’t last. Not the ones in my head. A couple of months maybe, and then they flew off somewhere. I don’t know where they went. Just disappeared. The fucking plague. Had it one day, gone the next.

  The real crows, the ones in the park, sitting on the roofs, waiting for spilled kebabs after closing time on a Friday night, they were still there, but they didn’t bother me anymore.

  I could look at a crow and think, yeah whatever, your uncle nearly had the chance to eat my brain, but it didn’t happen, and so we’ve all moved on. Fuck you, you shiny, jet black asshole.

  But now, the last couple of weeks, they’re back. Back in my head. Back in my dreams. Talking to me. I think they’re talking to me, but I can never remember what they say. And those crows out there, the ones on the telephone poles and sitting on walls. They’re looking at me again. I can feel them. Piece of shit, carrion scum bastards.

  So, why are they back?

  Jesus, how the fuck do I know? But there’s something. There’s one possibility. One thing standing out and crying, me, me, look at me, this is why!

  It’s got to be that bastard, Clayton. Michael Clayton. He’s out there somewhere. Never went away. That’s what the crows are telling me.

  Could we have snared the fucker if we’d gone for him after the absurd Plague of Crows crap?

  We got the killer, and the suits upstairs were happy to assume it was a one-woman job. She was a serial killer. Serial killers don’t usually have evil masterminds behind them. We’d done what was needed, we’d caught her, and killed her, red-handed. The killing stopped. They weren’t about to go back out to the public and say, you know that case we cracked, you know how we said you could stop living in fear, yo
u know how we were all self-satisfyingly licking our own balls – even though cracking the case was actually nothing to do with us suits in the first place – well we’ve only told you half the story. There was someone else involved and they’re still out there, so if you thought you were safe walking home from work tonight, think again. You’re all going to die.

  They were never going to say it, and sure enough, they didn’t. With Clayton having established his credentials as a walking law suit, and the main piece of evidence against him being the time he pitched up at the hospital and more or less confessed to me, the suits chose to leave him alone. Perhaps they would’ve been more credulous of my story if I hadn’t been so doped up on morphine at the time of the confession. Ultimately, I’m not sure I believe it myself. Can I even be certain he was in the hospital room at all?

  Nevertheless, he’s back now. At least, that’s what I’m assuming, but I don’t think anyone higher up the food chain, starting with DCI Taylor, will take my word for it based on conversations with crows in the middle of the night. I need more.

  I’m not going looking for it, though. If the crows are speaking the truth, and he is back, then the asshole will know where to find me.

  Maybe the morning I wake up remembering what the crows have said to me in the night, will be the morning I die.

  That would be a relief.

  THE COMPLAINANT IS sitting across the desk from me, holding an iPad. An older version. One of the ones weighing eight or nine kilos. So far, he’s yet to show me anything.

  I’m dying for a coffee, but since I made such an ill-gracious hash of receiving the assignment from Ramsay, I kind of rushed in here, not stopping on the way.

  I have my notepad. Haven’t written anything yet.

  ‘What makes you think it’s aimed specifically at you?’ I ask.

  ‘Because no one else, no other house I mean, looks directly on to their front window. I know what they’re doing. They wait until there’s no one about on the street, and you know what it’s like up there. Those streets can be very quiet, particularly these days when parents don’t let their children outside without a bodyguard.’

  He’s in his early sixties, small round glasses resting on the end of a large nose, mostly bald but with longish grey hair at the sides and back. Needs a cut, I’d say. I think he’s trying to cultivate some sort of professorial look, but I’ve already learned he’s in insurance. I elected not to go any further.

  ‘Big houses up there,’ I say. ‘What do they do?’

  He snorts.

  ‘I doubt she’s ever done anything. He was at RBS. They made him redundant, and he walked away with one point three million.’ He articulates the figure like he might be getting lip read, enhanced mouth movement/lower volume combination. This guy really is a twat. Still, here now. All in.

  ‘Show me the photograph,’ I say.

  ‘There’s more than one.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  He turns on the tablet, tips it up so I can’t see him type in the pass code – which is fair enough, because obviously being a police officer I’m this close from reaching over there, grabbing the thing the fuck off him and never giving it back – has to concentrate while he works out how to retrieve a photograph, and then turns the tablet round, making sure to hold on to the device.

  ‘See?’ he says.

  There, right enough, is a picture of a woman, her breasts squashed against the window. Her face is squashed too, although the look of pleasure is still apparent. The man behind is not in shot, but for a single hand holding her stomach. A large lady in her fifties, a mass of curly hair, dyed auburn.

  I study it, noting the high quality of the double glazing – if these were 1930s windows, that woman would be going for a Burton, shards of shattered glass embedded in those large, compressed boobs – before looking up at him.

  ‘That’s some pretty graphic evidence,’ I say. ‘When was it taken?’

  ‘Oh, that was the third time.’

  ‘The third?’

  ‘These people aren’t messing around, Sergeant.’

  ‘And do you have photos from the first two?’

  Pursed lips.

  ‘The first time, well to be honest, I was shocked. And I wouldn’t have dreamt of taking a picture. I thought they must just have got carried away. But then, sure enough, a few days later, they did it again. Right there, up at the window opposite where I sit and do my jigsaw puzzles.’

  He does jigsaw puzzles. Oh well, they can be fun. Or something. Meditative. That’s the word. Not fun. Maybe it would help me if I did jigsaw puzzles.

  ‘What kid of jigsaw puzzles do you do?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you do those, you know, five thousand piece things, or...’

  ‘Oh, usually fifteen hundred. Anything else is too... Wait. What does that have to do with it? Are you mocking me?’

  ‘Not at all, Mr Gregson. Sorry, so you took the picture the third time?’

  He looks suspicious, and then says, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And this was in the last couple of days?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, this was three weeks ago.’ His eyes have widened. ‘The other pictures, they’re from other times. I have a lot of pictures.’

  ‘How many times have they had sex in the window, Mr Gregson?’

  The lips tighten a little again, the way one’s sphincter does any time a doctor mentions the word suppository.

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘And why has it taken you so long to come to speak to us?’

  He leans forward on the desk.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. Mr Hartwell and I, you know, we’re on the Bowling Club committee together. We all know each other. I’ve eaten Mrs Hartwell’s cake.’

  Keep a straight face now, Sergeant, none of your sniggering. This isn’t a Carry On movie.

  ‘Have you seen them socially since the window sex began?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And...?’

  ‘Nothing was said,’ he says primly.

  ‘So, why d’you think they’re intentionally letting you watch them have sex?’

  He looks back at the picture of the woman, and then turns the tablet back to me. He starts slowly dragging his finger across the screen, flicking from image to image. Mrs Hartwell pressed against the window. Mr Hartwell side on, his wife on her knees fellating him. Mrs Hartwell sitting on her husband’s face. Mrs Hartwell, seemingly with her legs between her husband’s armpits, her head resting on the ground, as he fucks her. There’s the clincher. I don’t get a really good look at it, but it’s the kind of position you only do for show. Can’t possibly be comfortable for either of them.

  There are a lot of pictures. He keeps going, flicking through. It’s probably up to me to stop him.

  ‘Wow, you got an ejaculation shot. Nice timing.’

  He presses the off button, and brings the tablet fully back under his control, looking uncomfortable.

  ‘You want me to go and speak to them?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘OK, I can do that. Don’t you think... they must have seen you taking the photographs, though, right, especially if you were taking it on that thing? It’s hardly discreet.’

  ‘Yes, of course they saw. They clearly loved it. Look at the pair of them. They’re like rabbits.’

  ‘Perhaps they were thinking you were enjoying it. You took all...’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Have you asked them to stop? Have you, for example, drawn a curtain so you can’t see them?’

  ‘It’s summer. I don’t draw the curtains until after ten.’

  ‘All right... Why do you think they’re doing it, then?’

  ‘Clearly they want me to join in. But I’m not going to. They can’t have me.’

  Time for coffee. I push the chair back, stand up. Despite the fact the woman in the photograph is so unattractive she could have played one of the dwarf women you never actually get t
o see in Lord Of The Rings, there was a time when I would have been turned on looking at those pictures. Not any more. Well, not at the moment.

  ‘Thanks for coming in, Mr Gregson. I’ll go and see them and report back, and we’ll see where it’s going to go.’

  He doesn’t look convinced. Perhaps if I’d said I’d go round there with a SWAT team.

  2

  CLAYTON LIES ON THE sofa, staring at the ceiling. The psychiatrist sits three yards away. She holds a notepad, and a small pencil, the kind golfers use to mark a scorecard. She seems uncomfortable, but Clayton is oblivious.

  ‘You wanted to talk about school,’ she says.

  Clayton taps the ends of his fingers together.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I did, didn’t I? And you’re absolutely right, because where else does it all start? One wastes so many years of one’s life in those God-awful institutions. And they wonder why we’re so messed up. Why we need help.’

  ‘Most people don’t need help when they leave school. Not psychiatric help, anyway.’

  He snorts, closes his eyes.

  ‘What was so different about you?’

  He makes a theatrical hand gesture, tossing her words across the room.

  ‘There’s no point in doing this if you’re not going to talk to me,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he says, his voice mellower than she’d been expecting.

  She watches him, he does not look at her. His eyes are closed, she knows from experience with others that he is reliving a moment, finding the words, wondering whether or not to tell her the story. The less she says now, the more likely he’ll eventually talk. She wouldn’t be here, after all, if he wasn’t going to.

  ‘All right, all right, of course,’ he says. ‘Of course.’

  He clasps his hands, his fingers rhythmic, constant small movements, and nods to himself again.

  ‘There were three things. I was quiet, of course. Didn’t have many friends. Wasn’t bullied much, although I was soft. Too soft. But they didn’t realise. I think... yes, I think they were scared of me. Because I was quiet, and I watched. One day in music the teacher asked who could play the piano.’

  He seems embarrassed by the memory.