See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

by Douglas Lindsay

  AND SO THE NEXT FEW minutes pass in a blur, a flurry of desperation. The roll of tape flung at Taylor; Taylor binding Clayton; me removing the bonds from Harrison, as careful as I can, careful but desperate, and then ripping them with little care from the doctor, so she can attend to the Sergeant; the call to the nearest station; Harrison lying on the floor, her buttocks raised so that the side wound is elevated above her heart, the doctor holding a compress against the wound; me running out of the room, running around the house, looking for the invisible girl, the girl without whom Dr Brady would never have been involved, and finding her, two rooms along, neither bound nor gagged, but asleep behind a locked door; taking her back to Brady, then taking over from her, kneeling beside Harrison, keeping her talking, making sure the flow of blood has been stemmed.

  And all the while, weirdly, bizarrely, the music plays on, while Taylor watches over Clayton, and Clayton lies still, now bound by his own tape.

  And then suddenly there are footsteps outside, growing in volume and number, and then the room is full, and people are shouting, and someone in green is pushing me away from Harrison, and I squeeze her hand, a last touch of the fingers, and then I’m pushed back and I will have no further part to play in the sergeant’s own small tale of survival.

  I step away, the scene playing out before me, still alive against all expectation. Clayton in handcuffs, on the floor, the paramedics beside Harrison, Brady and her daughter, still hugging, the swarm of officers, and Taylor barking at them not to touch anything.

  ‘Crime scene, crime scene!’ he shouts at one point.

  epilogue

  THREE DAYS LATER. SMALL dinner table, Chinese carry out, a bottle (or two) of Sauvignon Blanc, my turn to go to Eileen’s house.

  She looks fine, not even pale. Just fine. Her movement’s a bit stiff, but just sitting here at a table eating dinner, you’d never know anything was wrong.

  The crows are gone. We’re done, for now. Three night’s sleep, restless, uneasy nights, but no crows. Gone for good, though? I doubt it.

  Maybe this little episode is over. But what happened in Bosnia, that’ll never be over. And if Clayton could go out his way to investigate my past, someone else could too. And everything he found out will be on his computer, and the computer is now in the hands of the police.

  And even if it’s never mentioned again, it doesn’t matter. What happened back then still happened.

  Clayton, for his part, will not go easily to prison, and once he’s there, there’s nothing to suggest he will rest on his past triumphs. Clayton’s story ain’t finished, not by a long shot. The crows, however, have decided to give me some respite.

  I’ve just sat down, having been in the kitchen getting plates and glasses and cutlery and distributing the food. Arrived five minutes ago, kissed her, shared one of those looks women give each other in American romantic dramas, then we hugged briefly, until she winced, then she sat down, and now I’ve joined her.

  ‘Getting shot looks good on you,’ I say.

  ‘My mum didn’t think so. She thought I was near death and should be in hospital for another month.’

  ‘How is she, by the way?’

  ‘In her element.’

  ‘She always knew you’d get shot if you joined the police?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You should have been an accountant?’

  She laughs, nodding.

  ‘What about you?’ she asks. ‘You on actual suspension yet, or is Taylor managing to keep you as his pet sergeant for a while longer?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I reply, taking the joke. ‘And yes, I’m suspended pending a full investigation into my habit of sleeping with people involved in an investigation. It’s been noted, apparently, that this isn’t the first time. And while the doctor might’ve been only acting to protect her daughter, she still aided a murderer, and the procurator’s looking at her for now. She’ll be fine. Me...? Whatever. Anyway, Taylor has my back, as ever, just as he’d have yours if you needed him to.’

  ‘I know!’

  ‘Totally bummed, though, I’m not now going to get to complete the work on my taskforce. Or start it, for that matter.’

  ‘There goes your MBE.’

  ‘Exactly. Total bastard. Meanwhile, the boss says they’re turning up a decent amount of shit on Clayton’s files. Enough to really nail him. Apparently there’s been the odd muttering from above asking why we weren’t listened to sooner.’

  ‘Jesus,’ says Harrison.

  ‘Yeah, I know. Still, good to hear someone realises we haven’t been crying wolf for the last year and a half.’

  ‘Well, about time. You think you’ll still have a job?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just have to wait and see. Given the level of budgetary savings they’ve all been asked to make, kicking me out and replacing me with a sixteen year-old constable’ll save a pound or two.’

  She nods in agreement. Food is eaten, thoughts thought, or not. A lifted glass of wine, conversation lapses. Talking about the case feels like going through the motions. Has to be done, but that’ll do, Donkey, that’ll do, the case is over – until the inevitable, convoluted, God-awful trial – and it’s time to move on.

  ‘How about you?’ I ask ‘How long you signed off for?’

  ‘A month.’

  ‘Seriously? They know the bullet passed straight through, right?’

  ‘Fuck off!’ she says. ‘And don’t make me laugh, it hurts.’

  ‘At least a couple of those weeks must be sympathy weeks, though?’

  ‘Exactly what it said on the doc’s sick note. What about you?’

  ‘I have to appear before some dick in a suit to answer preliminary questions, three weeks on Monday. And not before.’

  ‘You’re getting paid all this time?’ she asks.

  ‘Including overtime.’

  ‘I bet. What you going to do with yourself?’

  Jesus, it’s just like, there you go buddy, there’s the fucking question. Three days ago you’d got yourself into a place where you’d been about to put a bullet in your head. So, what are you planning to do instead? Go to the pub? Binge-watch a couple of boxsets?

  ‘What about you?’ I say, to avoid the question.

  ‘Not sure. Mum wants me to go there for a few days. Or, well, forever actually. I think if I do go, she might break my legs and pull a Misery on me, then get a series of attractive male doctors to attend to me in the hope of curing my accursed condition.’

  ‘So you’re not going to your mum’s then.’

  ‘Nowhere bloody near.’

  Another silence, more food, more wine. There’s a solace in talking to Eileen Harrison I didn’t think was to be found. Nevertheless, the gun that rested so comfortably in my mouth will not easily be forgotten. That I did not pull the trigger was as a result of not wishing to give Clayton the satisfaction, not because it wasn’t the right thing to do.

  ‘So, we’re still talking to each other,’ she says after a while.

  I hold her gaze. I wondered coming over here how awkward it was likely to be, and it seems strange that so far it’s not been awkward at all.

  ‘Even though you turned down the chance to have sex with me,’ she continues. ‘I mean, I was strapped down, and you still didn’t want to do it. You, who’s had sex with more or less every woman you’ve ever met.’

  ‘Bugger off.’

  ‘I thought the venue and the circumstances were pretty romantic,’ she adds.

  ‘Certainly how I envisioned it when I’ve fantasised about you in the past.’

  A beat, one of those rom-dram looks across the table.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Again. You keep not having sex with me. I appreciate it.’

  Jesus, don’t say that, Eileen. Don’t appreciate me. I don’t deserve it. Let’s just be normal. Two normal people, talking about normal stuff over a normal carry out.

  ‘There was a lot to take in on the video he showed us,’ she says, and the jokiness has completely gone from
her voice, as she doesn’t yet share my desire for normality. Maybe she’s right. ‘You going to tell me about it?’

  Don’t reply.

  ‘Might do you some good to talk. I suspect, being a man ‘n’ all, talking about it isn’t really your thing.’

  She’s right, of course. Can’t say I haven’t been thinking the same thing. Because I have to do something. Talk or die. Maybe both.

  ‘The video’s already doing the rounds of the station, I expect,’ she says. ‘I can imagine they’re all loving that. You and me –’

  ‘Taylor’s doing what he can. He wants the investigation into this side of it undertaken by a complete outsider, trying to make sure it doesn’t get passed around, because, of course, it’s not just what we saw, it’s all the potential files and Jesus knows what else on Clayton’s computer. We’ll see, see if it works. He got me a copy of the disk, which was big of him. He thought I should talk to someone about it, though he didn’t offer up himself.’

  ‘Has he watched it?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You want to talk about it?’ she asks.

  ‘Seems to be the way forward.’

  ‘You want to talk to me about it?’

  Hold her gaze across the table. Mind a total fucking rollercoaster. Well, a dumbass, fucking rollercoaster that only ever manages to be on some sort of level pegging before plummeting miserably deeper into the abyss. There don’t appear to be any available highs.

  ‘You’re the only name on the list of candidates,’ I say. ‘But not today.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Today’s for unbridled meaningless chit-chat.’

  ‘And drinking.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Shall we watch it again?’ she says. ‘In better circumstances? You can talk me through it.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, we can. Jesus... And I’ll stop it on every frame, every photo, every fucking clip of a damned forest, and I’ll tell you why it’s there... and... and I don’t know what state I’m going to be in by the time we get to the end of that, and I can’t begin to imagine how long it’ll last...’

  She reaches out and squeezes my arm. Fuck, I think I might be about to start crying again. Fucking Hell, Hutton, get a grip.

  ‘But not tonight,’ I manage to say.

  ‘No, I thought we’d watch High Society tonight,’ she says, and there’s the change of tone, Eileen rescuing me from the next descent.

  ‘What?’ I ask, smiling as I do so.

  ‘Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. And Grace Kelly, of course.’

  ‘I know. But why?’

  ‘It’s an antidote to modern life. It’s old-fashioned and romantic, and Grace is utterly gorgeous in it. But, you know, gorgeous in a way that makes you want to fall in love with her, not gorgeous in a way that makes you... you know, the other thing. It’ll do us good. Some wholesome, 1950s romance.’

  ‘Wholesome?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Apart from the fact one of the reasons Grace Kelly’s character is considered aloof is because she disapproves of her father having a mistress.’

  ‘Shhh.’

  ‘And if we ignore Bing Crosby not kicking the tail off being thirty years older than her, which is kind of creepy.’

  ‘Shhh. It’s romantic. I love that movie, and you’re not spoiling it. It’ll do us good.’

  I let out a long sigh, take a drink of wine. Hold her gaze across the table. Some 1950s romantic decency. Maybe she’s right. I certainly don’t want to think about Clayton, and I don’t want to think about the catalogue of depressing psychological horror contained on the disk.

  ‘That sounds nice,’ I say.

  ‘Good. Grace Kelly it is. And we might as well plan a getaway while we’re at it. We both need cheering up.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Some r&r. I’ve got a month off and you’ve near as dammit a month. We should go and recuperate by the seaside.’

  ‘Like 19th century poets?’

  She laughs. ‘Yes, exactly. Like 19th century poets.’

  ‘Millport?’ I say.

  ‘God, no,’ she says. ‘I was thinking the south of France. Or Brittany, at the very least.’

  ‘How about a Swiss lake?’ I venture. ‘That’s what the poets would’ve done.’

  She laughs, takes a drink, lifts the bottle and tops up both our glasses.

  ‘Settled,’ she says. ‘We shall take to the Internet after dinner and map out a plan. We’ll be drinking champagne and eating olives in the shadow of the Alps by this time on Friday.’

  We clink glasses, we laugh, we drink. Normal, jokey, surface conversation, covering up the hurt and the turmoil and all the shit that lies beneath.

  Maybe this is all that the upward swing of the rollercoaster is. Idle chatter, passable food, decent wine, chat with a friend. There are no fireworks, there’s just doing what you can to get by, and letting someone else help you every now and again.

  ‘Mountain air,’ I say.

  ‘Exactly,’ says Sgt Eileen Harrison. ‘Mountain air.’

  – END –

  By Douglas Lindsay

  The Barber, Barney Thomson

  The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson

  The Cutting Edge of Barney Thomson

  A Prayer For Barney Thomson

  The King Was In His Counting House

  The Last Fish Supper

  The Haunting of Barney Thomson

  The Final Cut

  Aye, Barney

  The Barbershop 7 (Novels 1-7)

  Other Barney Thomson

  The Face of Death

  The End of Days

  Barney Thomson: Zombie Slayer

  The Curse of Barney Thomson & Other Stories

  DS Hutton

  The Unburied Dead

  A Plague Of Crows

  The Blood That Stains Your Hands

  See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

  DCI Jericho

  We Are The Hanged Man (DCI Jericho Book 1)

  We Are Death (DCI Jericho Book 2)

  DI Westphall

  Song of the Dead

  Boy In the Well

  The Art of Dying

  Pereira & Bain

  Cold Cuts

  The Judas Flower

  Stand Alone Novels

  Lost in Juarez

  Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!

  A Room With No Natural Light

  Ballad In Blue

  Other

  For The Most Part Uncontaminated

  There Are Always Side Effects

  Kids, And Why You Shouldn’t Eat More Than One For Breakfast

  Santa’s Christmas Eve Blues