See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘Why does he want the doc to think he’s a killer?’

  ‘I don’t know. But they’re all... they’ve all got some connection to me. It’s like he’s using her to taunt me. Just the same as he’s been doing with the Dylan murders.’

  I’m looking curiously at him, like I expect him to have an explanation. I sure as fuck don’t.

  ‘So why was she suddenly happy to break the doctor/patient confidentiality?’ he asks. ‘Those bastards usually dine out on that shit.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You think maybe you broke down the walls with your whole, damaged, Casanova thing you’ve got going on?’

  ‘You’re cracking me up,’ I say.

  He sighs heavily.

  ‘Jesus, I fucking hate this guy. We could have video evidence of the bastard knifing someone in the face and we’d still be wary of him having faked it. He’s got us, and the fucking suits, pishing in our pants every time we mention his damn name.’

  ‘What d’you want me to do?’

  ‘You’re going to have to... first off, you’re just going to have to look into all those old crimes, get the files out, maybe even speak to the fuckers who’re in prison. Speak to people. Find out if there’s the slightest possibility Clayton could have been behind any of it. After that... God, I don’t know. We need to speak to Clayton again, but he can easily hide behind doctor/patient. Jesus... This bastard just runs rings round us.’

  ‘Maybe we should just take him out,’ I say. ‘Take him out the game.’

  He blinks, keeps his eyes on mine.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kill him,’ I say.

  ‘Jesus. You’re saying that in here, when not twenty-four hours ago we were wondering if he had the place bugged? Are you out of your fucking mind, Sergeant?’

  There he has a point.

  He leans forward, elbows on the desk, face into his hands, then quickly rubs them and looks up.

  ‘Go home, Sergeant. Be in early tomorrow, write it up for me. Whatever you were thinking of doing now, don’t. Just go home. You’ve done enough for the day.’

  ‘I’d be pushed to say I’d describe the last few hours as work.’

  He waves me away, I look down at him for a few moments, but he’s turned back to some paperwork and I’ve been dispatched.

  Out the door, close it on him, annoyed at the dismissal and head back towards my desk. I stand and look at it, contemplate logging on and seeing if there are any more e-mails, mutter ‘fuck it,’ to myself, and then I’m out the door of the open plan and practically jogging down the stairs.

  38

  THE THOUGHT’S IN MY head now, once, twice, three times, keeps on coming back, as if Clayton planted it himself.

  This torture would be over if I killed him. Me. Doesn’t have to be some secret police unit that doesn’t actually exist, (even though most of the population probably think the police have a secret assassination squad.) We don’t have to call in a random US airstrike, following which we can have some official say, oops, sorry, we meant to hit Iran. We don’t have to order some reluctant young constable, or pull a dodgy favour from some dodgy Glasgow gangster who still owes us one from some fucking dodgy deal we did at some point in the last twenty years.

  I could just do it. Go and interview him, then kill him. Been a while since I fired a gun, but if I was close enough not to miss, well... I wouldn’t miss.

  There would be no point, and no peace of mind to be had, in trying to cover it up. I’d always be waiting; waiting for Clayton to come and bite me from the grave. I’d need to do it and then face the consequences, or do it and then turn the gun on myself.

  Jesus, the thought of that brings blessed relief.

  Taylor was right, though. I shouldn’t have mentioned it in his office. That was just stupid. Unbelievably stupid. He really should have complete deniability. That’s the trouble with me now taking the law, and Clayton’s life, into my own hands. Taylor is liable to be caught up in it, and dragged down in the aftermath. I’d need to do it in such a way Taylor was totally detached. Mentioning it to him was a lousy start.

  So, Sergeant, you’re seriously thinking about it?

  Sitting at home, at the small dining table I’ve occupied more and more since the one time I sat there with Philo. Just me, a bottle of wine, and Bob on the CD player. Shadows In The Night. It remains as ephemeral as it was last week, so as usual I’m playing it over and over. He’s on his third run through the songs since I sat down, swallowing me up in his melancholy as we go along together.

  Bottle of wine nearly empty, this on top of three hefty g&t’s this afternoon. Drove home too. Fucking tube.

  Turning the bottle around and around in my fingers. To be honest I didn’t really get the notes of citrus and passion fruit. But yes, Mr Marketing Man getting paid at £500/a word, it is nice to drink on its own.

  I had an all right few months after Philo, helped through by my lesbian buddy. But really, all that time I was just one crisis away from batshit crazy, and boom, here we are, the crisis has come calling on its miserable grey horse, gloom and depression quickly descending, sending me the way of the bottle and inappropriate sex. Sex with interviewees on desks, sex with witnesses, weird non-contact sex on a couch with a colleague. Perhaps, before any of this crap is over, I’ll have come up with some other ill-chosen method of sexual congress, like sex with a victim’s partner at the undertaker’s.

  Empty the glass, tip the rest of the bottle into it. Already wondering whether I’m going to open the next bottle, and knowing I will.

  I want to talk to Harrison, she’d probably enjoy the story of the nymphomaniac psychiatrist, but I shouldn’t call her. Not again. Not that I called her on Saturday, but it’s too soon. This is a difficult time, but it’ll pass soon enough, even if it just passes with me dead, either with my liver as the centrepiece of an exhibition or finally at the hands of Clayton. Whatever happens, it’ll slip away, and the story of the psychiatrist and me will wait for another day. When it’s all over, I still want to have Harrison around. I don’t know how many times I could sit next to her naked and drunk and not fuck things up.

  Tired, drunk, miserable, beginning to feel nauseous. Jesus fucking Christ. What if I do? Really, what if I get hold of a gun or a knife or a fucking vacuum pack of fucking coffee granules, go and see Clayton and shoot him or stab him or beat the living fuck out of him? What’s there to lose?

  Arms on the table, then rest my head on my forearms. As I make the movement, I catch the glass of wine and it tips, the glass tumbling on the table and breaking, and at the same time as my head touches my hands, glass shatters and the wine spills over the table.

  ‘Aw, fuck!’

  Straighten up, sit back, as the wine runs off, soaking into my trousers.

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  Can’t be bothered moving. Jesus, what fucking difference does it make? Wine soaking into the old, fucking, stupid soak. Sit there, feeling the drip of the booze on my leg, the dampness spreading, and then put my hands and forearms back where they were and rest my head again.

  Pressing my hands into the table I feel the sharp jab of broken glass.

  39

  TUESDAY MORNING. THREE plasters on my right hand. Tried taking them off this morning so I didn’t look like a dick, and immediately started covering everything I touched in blood.

  On the plus side, the crows took a night off. I think. Maybe I just don’t remember. And if there weren’t any crows, why weren’t there? Maybe they’ve done their work. They wanted me to assume command over my own life. They wanted me to realise what it was I had to do. Put a bullet in Clayton, then do the same to myself. Everything over.

  It’s time to take control, and while I’ve yet to do it, I know now what it is I’ve got to do. And so, no more crows.

  More likely, more mundanely, I dreamt about them and had just forgotten by the time I woke up.

  Still no reports of any further murders around these parts. The bout of random s
laughter on the streets and railway lines of Glasgow really might be over, and all because the boss and I worked out the killer was working around Bob Dylan album titles (with incidental help from the less-than-super superintendent). Fortunately that information hasn’t yet reached the media – a miracle in itself – so we haven’t had The Bob Dylan Murders graphic on the news.

  Obviously it’s good that the murders are done and dusted, but I’m kind of curious as to what he would have done next. Curious enough that I spent some time this morning going through the album titles and contemplating how it is one would murder someone after the fashion of Street Legal or Shot of Love. Christmas In The Heart, where someone would be stabbed through the chest by a tree decoration or a giant Santa candle, is the one I think we missed out on.

  Taylor’s not known as the wisest man in Police Scotland for nothing. They’ve done what he was suggesting they would, by bringing all the cases together under one roof. We gave them Morrow, and he’s off into Dalmarnock for the foreseeable.

  The press are loving it of course. They’d particularly love it if there was another murder, but they don’t necessarily need it just now. Seven murders in six days, all the work of one person? That is at least a month worth of headlines, and they’ve made up for a couple of days without a new death with sad tales from bereaved relatives, funerals and vigils, plaintive flowers beside the train tracks, and occasional angry mobs outside the Islamic Community Centre that used to be a church.

  Tandy Kramer’s dad is still around, somewhere. With the investigation being taken over by a new team – led by a DCI Collins – it was obvious they weren’t going to let her body go yet. More questions to be asked, even if ultimately they never actually get her body re-examined. Mr Kramer, meanwhile, has taken the opportunity to speak to every newspaper going, the story of his relationship with his daughter and the heartache he feels – and the lawsuit that will be coming the way of the Police, Transport Scotland and the Scottish Executive – telling not quite the same story he told me.

  Whatever. The guy lost his daughter. If he wants to make a play, if he wants to own the bereavement while spouting shit to the media, he might as well go ahead.

  First word from Morrow is that things are a bit strained in Dalmarnock, but not as bad as they might be under the circumstances. He likes Collins at any rate, which is something. Trouble is, while the e-mails sent to me – and the fact the murders stopped as indicated – imply these seven deaths were all connected, they’ve found nothing else to join them, with the obvious exception of the two people dying together at the community centre.

  Seven deaths, six acts of completely random violence. There are a few potentially useable pieces of evidence in there, every now and again, but they’ve all turned out to be on a par with our guy caught on CCTV. They mean nothing, they go nowhere. They are the killer perfectly covering his tracks, they are red herrings, they are ghosts placed in the machine to keep the police occupied. Like the ghosts Clayton placed in my machine, through the mouth of Dr Brady.

  These deaths may look random, and perhaps some of them owed something to chance, but they had been planned well in advance. The killer knew what he was doing, knew when each murder was going to be committed, must have had an intricate plan mapped out. This wasn’t him getting up in the morning, rifling through his Dylan albums and thinking, oh, OK, I’ll do this one today.

  So, yes, I wonder what would’ve been next. And who was the lucky bastard who escaped?

  And the other thing. Should I be feeling guilty about not working it out earlier? If I had done, fewer people would have died.

  Some time after eleven, Taylor stops at my desk, hands thrust deep into his pockets. Glances round the station.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asks.

  ‘Chasing up Clayton’s backstory. Is it possible he was actually involved in any of those murders he described to Brady, or is he taunting? And if it’s the latter, how in the name of fuck did he manage to find all that shit out?’

  ‘Getting anywhere?’

  ‘Believe it or not... no. I’m learning things I’d forgotten, but nothing about Clayton. This is just... what was that Woody Allen movie... Zelig, it’s Woody Allen in Zelig. The guy has placed himself at the centre of the action, even though he wasn’t there. Clever, clever bastard. And... well, I don’t know. He knows so much about me, I can’t begin to wonder where the Hell this is going to end up.’

  ‘You think he got the doctor to seduce you, and then tell you this stuff, specifically yesterday afternoon?’

  Puff out my cheeks, stare straight ahead.

  ‘Where are we going to go with it, that’s the question?’ I say, looking back at him.

  ‘Yep,’ says Taylor. ‘This is, indeed, the damned question. One of them, at least.’

  He starts to turn, then says, ‘Well, keep at it for now. Before we go anywhere with this I’d like to get right down to the bottom layer of it. Write me a report. Everything he said to the doc, how it ties in with your own experience, where he was and what he was doing at the time of each of the crimes.’

  He starts walking away, then stops and turns back.

  ‘And look... look, you know we’re not supposed to be on this at all anymore. Do this thing, send the report over, and then we’re going to leave it to the boys over in Dalmarnock. I’m going to need you to look at –’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, cutting him off. ‘I’ll give Ramsay a shout, see what’s happening.’

  ‘Thanks, Tom.’

  And off he goes. I watch him for a second, and then turn back to the computer screen, which has powered down during my brief chat with Taylor.

  A blank screen, nothing to be learned. That there, my friend, is an actual fucking metaphor if ever there was one.

  SITTING IN THE CANTEEN eating a ham and cheese panini, drinking a Coke Zero and eating a packet of sea salt and blood-of-my-enemies vinegar crisps. I’m not celebrating the fact we prevented further death after Sunday – because we probably should’ve worked it out more quickly – but I’ve yet to beat myself up about being so late to arrive at the party.

  There’s plenty of time for that. Maybe I need to read some misery stories from the families of the victims.

  ‘Hey.’

  Look up, and here comes my sergeant-at-arms, Eileen Harrison, sitting down opposite, a bowl of pasta and a bottle of water. Having not seen her previously today, I notice she’s dyed her hair. The same blonde as before, but now the colour is richer, the roots lightened.

  ‘Hair,’ I say, approvingly.

  She smiles and settles into the seat, pours water into a glass, and immediately starts twiddling spaghetti around her fork.

  ‘What happened to your hand?’ she asks.

  ‘Broke a wine glass.’

  ‘Drunk, or fit of rage?’

  ‘Neither. Slumping in pathetic fashion, head down, onto the table while listening to Bob Dylan.’

  ‘So Dylan is to blame for another injury?’

  ‘It’s fine. I won’t be contacting his lawyers. Good day?’

  ‘Hmm...,’ she says, continuing to eat pasta. ‘Got a woman who says her son has been slowly poisoning her by giving her thick cut marmalade.’

  She sucks up a few strands of spaghetti which hang from her lips, briefly making her look like the Ood from Dr Who.

  ‘She thinks thick cut marmalade is poisonous?’

  ‘Yes. It’s dangerous to eat too much of the skin, she says. Her son knows this, so is intentionally feeding it to her.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she just refuse to eat it?’

  ‘He forces her.’

  ‘And thin cut marmalade would be OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK. Good luck with that one.’

  ‘Well, unsurprisingly it looks like she’s on the Alzheimer’s scale, and I’ve spoken to the doctor to confirm it. But on the other hand...’

  ‘Oh, nice, there’s another hand. Go on.’

  More pasta, more sucking up of spaghetti strands.
Try not to watch. She chews, dabs her chin with a napkin, although she didn’t need to.

  ‘On the other hand,’ she continues, ‘the doctor has admitted her health is on the decline and he can’t explain it. And this is coupled with the fact the son is, well... he comes across as a bit of a cunt.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘So, I’m wondering, you know... Maybe he’s not poisoning her with thick cut marmalade at all.’

  ‘Maybe he’s poisoning her with something else?’

  ‘Yes. And the marmalade’s a distraction.’

  That’s the kind of thing that happens. Well, it’s the kind of thing that happens in a certain kind of crime fiction narrative. I don’t know if it ever happens in real life.

  ‘I wondered if you wanted to speak to him?’ she says, before sticking another huge forkful of pasta in her mouth.

  ‘You in a hurry?’

  ‘Absolutely stacked this afternoon,’ she says, ‘and I need to go down to Rutherglen for a thing. So what d’you think? I reckon it requires some detective work. Thought of you.’

  Funny.

  ‘Sure. Bring it to me when you’ve got the time. I’ll speak to the son. Cunts are my specialty.’

  40

  GOT NOWHERE FURTHER with Clayton, of course. Feel like I should be round there, pounding the fuck out of him, or shooting him, or doing something. Anything. Instead, Taylor told me to take a step back, and now I’m doing this. I’m here. I’m having to listen to this level of bullshit.

  ‘Can I ask what the fuck this is?’ says the Cunt.

  ‘Ian! Show some respect.’