14
THE SENDER’S E-MAIL address shows as: [email protected]
There is no title in the e-mail.
The single line reads: Have you worked it out yet?
Taylor has the e-mail open already as we walk into the office. I stand back from his desk, let Morrow lean forward and look at it.
‘That’s from the university, right?’ he says.
‘Yep.’
‘Fuck it,’ says Taylor. ‘I expect it’s a pointless exercise, but just send a reply, a blank reply, from your account, Tom, see what happens. I presume...’
He lets the sentence go. I pass the instruction down the line, indicating for Morrow to go and do it. He turns, walks quickly from the room.
‘Fuck, we had a plan, thirty fucking seconds ago,’ says Taylor.
Swearing an awful lot these days. Very poor.
Taking it in turns, as one so often does in a partnership, I immediately have to be the positive one, to pick the investigation back up again, even though I walked in here with my stomach in my mouth under the crushing weight of pessimism.
‘It’s easily looked into,’ I say. ‘I’ll get in there, establish who runs their tech, speak to them, see how it could have happened. It could be anything. Remote computer genius, right down to some first year kid just putting a week one lesson into action and pulling our chain.’
‘Yes, but unless it’s the latter, it ties this thing to the university, which means it’s quite possibly what we’d just decided it’s not. i.e. they were targeting Tandy Kramer herself.’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t think this alters the arguments we’ve just been making.’
I’m saying it. I really don’t think it.
Footsteps, Morrow back in the room.
‘Got the Mailer Daemon straight back,’ he says.
‘Fuck,’ says Taylor.
‘Right,’ I say, taking a much tighter grip on the thing than I feel like I have, ‘I’m going in there to speak to their IT. Rob, you just keep doing what we were going to be doing. If I’m not back by the time you’re ready to move ahead, get some of the others in and get on with it.’
‘Yep,’ he says, and he’s gone again.
Look at Taylor, shrug, not much else to say. Well, at least, I don’t.
‘It was sent to you, Tom,’ he says. ‘They know you’re investigating Tandy Kramer. Who knows that? You’ve not been on TV, you’ve not been high profile...’
‘I’ve been at the university, spoken to a lot of people,’ I say.
He nods, turns away.
‘Fuck,’ he mutters again. ‘Just be careful. You’ve had enough shit in the past couple of years.’
I wait for him to turn back, but he doesn’t, so out the door, give Morrow a quick thumbs up and then off down the stairs, back out into the world.
‘I’M NOT SURE.’
In a small office with a woman in her late forties. She’s squeezed into an emerald green top, showing every middle-aged bump and lump and bulge. Tell you what, it’s unbelievably sexy.
I mean, I don’t know where my head is, do I? I’m fucked up. I own my fucked-uppery. I’ve given into it, enabling myself. I allow it to excuse everything. Weirdly, since the time of Philo, it’s not had to excuse much. I drink every night, but rarely get drunk. Sure, I’m regularly late for work, but it’s the lack of sleep that’s getting me rather than the alcohol. Haven’t had sex, at all, which means, more to the point, I haven’t had sex with anyone I deeply regret having had sex with. And let’s face it, I usually exist in a permanent state of what the fuck were you thinking?
I know. The feeling’s more than likely mutual.
Yet, I’m sitting side on to this woman, no desk between us. She’s attractive, a large woman, great breasts, legs crossed, skirt just above knee-length, long dark hair, and I want to sweep all the crap and paperwork off the desk and bang her right here.
Seriously, where has that come from?
Ah, yes, of course. I’m fucked up. I have the wastrel’s excuse. I don’t have to feel bad about myself.
‘You don’t know?’
She sighs.
‘I expect it’s the same with you. Cuts, cuts, cuts. I was working in the accounts section. Been there for fifteen years, then they move me here.’
Lovely soft accent. Highlands somewhere, I reckon.
‘But someone must oversee the e-mail system?’
She smiles. Great lips.
Focus!
‘Off-site.’
‘Off-site? Is it in Scotland?’
‘No. Sorry, you didn’t have to come in here, although I’m glad you did. Could have saved yourself the trouble with a phone call. Everything’s run out of California somewhere. When we’re talking about it, we always call it Silicon Valley, but I don’t know if it actually is. We just call it that. Office joke. Could be in Los Angeles for all I know.’
‘Do you have a contact there?’
‘Yes, of course. Do you want me to speak to him, or would you –’
‘It’d be best if you could just give me his number.’
Check the clock. California, eight hours behind, do the quick calculation.
‘Probably won’t be in work yet, anyway. Yes, just give me the number, I’ll call him later. A couple of contacts, in fact, just in case.’
‘Of course.’
She reaches over the desk, lifts a business card from a small holder. My eyes get stuck on her breasts, the stretching of the tight green top, as she moves. When I look back at her face, she’s already looking at me.
Jesus, I need to get a grip. By the age of forty-seven one really ought to have mastered the skill of staring at a woman’s breasts without her noticing. Or, more to the point, have stopped staring at women’s breasts altogether.
Yeah, I know, it’ll never happen.
‘Sorry.’
She looks at me in a superior manner – and it is one of the ways in which women hold immense superiority over us – but accompanies the look with a straightening of the shoulders.
‘This is my card, in case you need to get in touch again. I’ll write the American numbers on the back.’
I watch her, leaning on the desk, copying numbers slowly from a sheet. Wedding ring. A bonus. Always better when they’re married.
‘What do you do all day?’ I ask. ‘I mean, if you’re in technical support and the technical stuff is staffed out?’
She smiles, glances over at me, catches me looking at her breasts again. She raises her eyes, but she’s still smiling.
‘Are you going to stop that?’ she says.
Manage to look slightly abashed. Just slightly.
‘Maybe if I just got them out, you could have a good look and we’d be done with it.’
I have some glib comment to say to that, but it’d only get in the way. No words required.
She smiles again, there’s a small movement of her eyebrows.
‘AND THEN I FUCKED HER on her desk.’
Eating pizza, eight in the evening, still in the office, with Eileen Harrison. She laughs.
We’re sharing a 14” funghi with extra cheese. Eileen likes extra cheese, like there’s never enough cheese on a pizza.
‘You are unbelievable,’ she says. ‘I mean, seriously, did you make that story up when you were fifteen?’
‘Look, it happened. These things just happen.’
‘It happened this afternoon?’
‘Yes.’
‘You had sex on a desk with a large-breasted witness in the middle of a murder inquiry?’
‘I think witness is a stretch. She was someone I just happened to be speaking to.’
She looks around. There’s no one within earshot anyway. I had already checked. It wasn’t as though it lasted very long, but even so, I don’t want Taylor getting to hear about it, the mood he’s in. And Eileen’s right. I do feel like a naughty teenager, worried about getting caught with his pants down.
‘OK, details,’ she says.
> ‘I gave you the details.’
‘You gave me a little of the set up, which quickly jumped from the two of you chatting happily about you being a pervert, to the two of you fucking on the desk! Those weren’t details.’
‘How many details do you want?’
‘Remember when, a few weeks ago, I told you about me and the fitness instructor at the gym, late evening, everyone else gone home?’
What a great story.
‘That kind of detail.’
Take my last bite of pizza. Need to be getting back to the grind.
‘And don’t give me the, I’ve finished, sorry, need to get on with it crap.’
‘I have and I do,’ I say, looking up, with what I’m afraid can only be described as a mischievous look on my face. ‘Have to admit, there was a moment after she’d removed my trousers when I thought maybe she was going to avenge my staring by taking a photo and sticking it on Instagram, but no...’ Close my eyes for a second. Shake my head, open my eyes again, look at Eileen. She’s smiling. ‘Wicked tongue on her.’
‘Always a bonus.’
‘And then...,’ I begin, but really, I don’t want to get into this now. Middle of a murder enquiry, bad enough doing what I did, just ridiculous getting turned on again in the office. ‘Well, you’ll just have to wait for the details, my old friend. Need to get on.’
She rolls her eyes.
‘Charlatan,’ she says, still smiling, as I get up and start walking away.
‘Thanks for the pizza.’
‘Leave me.’
A casually waved hand, and I’m across the office and back at my desk. Sit down, bring the e-mail in-box back up. Constantly checking for anything new. Of course, it could come from anywhere.
Look back at the short report I’m writing up for Taylor. The feeling of unease, that I have lurched back into my old ways, that I have been stupid and immature, a feeling I haven’t had in months, suddenly comes sweeping over me, and I feel useless again.
Sex on a desk with a stranger. Giggling about it over pizza with my mate. Grow the fuck up, man!
And I force myself to think about California, and an e-mail coming from there, coupled with the fact that was where Tandy Kramer had lived, and that was where Mr Kramer arrived from this morning, and that maybe, rather than spending twenty minutes fucking whatever-her-name-was in the emerald top, I really ought to have been shooting back here to say to Taylor, Hey there’s this, and it might just mean something.
Waste of fucking space.
15
HOME JUST AFTER ELEVEN. With the sex, comes the darkness.
I feel guilty. Not just because of acting like some sort of sex-obsessed, teenage wanker while I should have been working, but because of Philo. In my head, which is the only place she exists for me anymore of course, she’s not judgemental. She thinks it’s funny. I can’t get past her thinking it’s funny. But she wouldn’t have thought it funny when she’d left her husband and she and I were living together.
Into the kitchen, light on. There she is on the door of the fridge. The small black and white photograph I cut out of the Evening Times. Smiling back at me, every time I’m in here.
How pathetic.
Into the fridge, can barely look at her, other than some sort of apologetic glance, grab a bottle of wine, get the glass from the draining board, into the sitting room. Slump back on the couch, unscrew the bottle top, pour half a glass, take a drink, top back on, bottle on the floor.
Half a glass of wine at the end of a long day, investigating crime, working hard at the office, fucking women on a desk? Are you a pussy? I’m going to drink the whole fucking bottle, half a glass at a time. It’s something about keeping the wine colder in the bottle than in the glass, but at the rate I’m drinking it, it really, really doesn’t matter.
I put the television on, as ever BBC News pops up first. I don’t know why I do it. Putting the TV on late at night never ends well.
First up, starving and burned Syrian children. Yes, Hutton, on you go, you feel sorry for yourself because you had fucking sex on a desk, you stupid twat. Much worse than having your entire society destroyed, losing your family and getting half your face burned off.
Next half glass.
Sit through a report on trouble brewing in the Baltic states, the beginning of unrest amongst the Russian population in Estonia. The man from the BBC, standing at a safe distance from a demonstration that is shaping up to turn violent, discusses whether the unrest is genuine or is being orchestrated by Moscow. There’s a brief interview with a commentator from Moscow denying all Russian involvement.
And then we’re on to continuing unrest in certain parts of Glasgow after the double beheading. Today not as bad as yesterday. Well, there’s some good news. Following that, a quick mention of another suspicious death in Glasgow, a twenty-seven year-old fuckwit badly beaten, and then drugged. Police are still in the initial stage of their enquiries; i.e. they haven’t a fucking clue. That was a one-line item with three seconds of footage of a taped-off scene in a sink scheme somewhere on the south side, and then we’re onto sport.
What a nice epitaph for the deceased. They can put it on his gravestone. Here lies Malky Big Baws. Loving son and father of eight, he was the last item on the news before the Test Match.
More wine. This time I don’t bother putting the bottle back on the floor, leaving it sitting between my legs. It won’t be good for the temperature, but it’s not going to be in the bottle very long anyway.
16
FRIDAY MORNING. HAVE been in since five to seven. Set the alarm for five forty-five. Forced myself up, ate breakfast, drank coffee, walked to work.
Suddenly I realise just how good I’ve been mentally the last few months. I would have said I was shitty, humourless, going nowhere, barely contributing to my own life, never mind anyone else’s. Yet now I’ve plummeted back to pre-Philo levels of ill-humour and despair, I can see, by my own standard, the last few months have been pretty fucking good.
You don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it, and I just lost some kind of peace of mind. It might have been mournful, but at least it wasn’t catastrophic.
Roll on the end of the world, my feeble friends, it can’t come soon enough.
Taylor sits down opposite and looks across.
‘You’re in early,’ he says.
I acknowledge him, but don’t really have any words. He looks like he might be about to say something along the what’s the matter with you? line, or who are you and what have you done with the real Hutton? but decides not to bother. We’re both men after all.
‘Any more e-mails?’
‘Nope. You speak to the father about it?’
‘Yes, saw him last night. Asked him straight up. He looked... he’s pretty dead. Think he’s probably popping something. He’s American after all, they have a pill for everything. But his daughter just got murdered, can’t blame him. So, I don’t know, I really don’t think there’s a connection between the university having their shit hosted in California, and Kramer coming in from California, but we’ll see. Anyway, for now we’re not looking to let the body go until Monday, and I told him it’s not out of the question we keep it longer, so you know, we’ve got time to look into it.’
‘He must be pissed off, having to wait around Cambuslang?’
‘He’s staying in the city, and he’s got a cousin in Perth. I got the my family left Scotland in 1792 line.’
‘The year of the sheep,’ I say.
‘What?’
‘There were sheep riots in Ross-shire. The government clamped down, fucked everybody up the arse. Lots of them emigrated.’
‘There were sheep riots?’
‘Riots about owners populating their land with sheep rather than people.’
‘Oh.’
He stares blankly at the floor, probably considering his embarrassment at his complete lack of knowledge of Scottish history. Fucking listen to me, fucking Neil Oliver here.
‘I’m
not sure he actually said 1792. I think I just said that now, as a kind of, any given year.’
You know, ‘whatever’ as a word, phrase and social concept is overused, but sometimes there’s just nothing else to say.
‘Whatever.’
‘Anyway, he’s going to visit the cousin in Perth for the weekend. Some home comfort, he said. His ex-wife, Tandy’s mother, lives in Brazil with her Zumba instructor, hadn’t see Tandy since she was eleven.’
‘Another happy family brought to its knees.’
‘Yes, that would be it. Anyway, Kramer’s coming back in on Monday morning. We should have a decision for him by then, either way. And we’re getting a visit from the American consul in Edinburgh, or someone from their office, this afternoon, but Connor can handle it.’
‘Let me,’ I say, although my voice doesn’t carry any enthusiasm for the joke.
He smiles, stands.
‘Come in and see me when Morrow gets in and we’ll discuss the day.’
‘K.’
He taps the desk, is staring vaguely across the office.
‘Another murder in Glasgow last night, d’you see that?’
‘Heard it on the news,’ I say.
‘Four murders in three days,’ he says. ‘Seems kind of weird.’
I can’t muster much enthusiasm for the conversation. I want to know about our murder, not anyone else’s. All murders are shit. Sometimes life goes a while without springing one on you – unless, obviously, you live in America where people get murdered by the dozen on a daily basis, all in the name of one of the amendments or other – and sometimes it just dumps a shitload of them in your lap.
‘Maybe Glasgow’s just becoming that kind of place,’ I say.
Catch his eye, then look back at my inbox. Slowly working my way through the crap as he talks to me. For example, there’s one from HQ entitled Effective Use Of Arrest Statistics When Dealing With The Media. Straight in the bin without opening. They can probably look and see who reads, or at least, opens their shit. I’m happy for them to discover that as soon as I see anything with their fucking name in the title, I’m depositing it in Trash quicker than a professional cyclist flushing drugs down a toilet.
See That My Grave Is Kept Clean Page 7
