The Campbell Curse

by Olivier Bosman

  “Bunny.”

  “Bunny McVey?” Thwaite couldn’t stop a smile from forming on his face. “Your parents called you Bunny McVey? The priest baptised you as Bunny McVey?”

  “Aye,” the suspect said, nodding his head and smiling back.

  The suspect was clearly a simpleton. A short, skinny man, lost in an overcoat that was much too big for him. He kept staring at the inspector with wide eyes and an open mouth. He also kept mimicking him inadvertently. Whenever Thwaite would smile or frown, so would Bunny. Whenever Thwaite leaned sideways or fidgeted with his foot or looked behind him at the other detectives, so would he.

  “Who is the wee lass you attacked this evening in Princes Street Gardens?” Thwaite continued. “Do you know her?”

  Bunny looked confused.

  “The pretty wee lass. That sells beef and oyster pies on Princes Street. Do you know who I mean?”

  “Aye.”

  “Who is she? What is her name?”

  Bunny continued to look confused.

  “Don’t you know her name?”

  Bunny shook his head.

  “But you know her by sight, don’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  “You’ve seen her before, haven’t you? She walks through Princes Street Gardens every evening with her empty basket.”

  “Aye.”

  “And you like her, don’t you? The pretty wee lass.” Thwaite smiled and winked at the suspect as he said this.

  “Aye,” Bunny said, smiling and winking back at the inspector

  “And you wanted her for yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  “So you grabbed her, didn’t you, you fecking reprobate!” Thwaite suddenly raised his voice and scowled. “And you tried to kiss her!”

  Thwaite’s sudden change of tone alarmed the suspect, and he dropped his head and started gazing at the floor.

  “Didn’t you!” Thwaite banged his fist on the table.

  “Aye,” Bunny finally responded.

  Billings frowned as he witnessed this and leaned in to Flynt. “He’s leading the suspect,” he whispered into his boss’ ear. “The suspect doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s just saying what he thinks Thwaite wants to hear.”

  Flynt pushed Billings away and shushed him.

  “You like the wee girls, don’t you?” Thwaite continued. “They make you feel all soft and gooey inside, don’t they? Little butterflies flapping in your belly.” Thwaite put his hands together, raised them in the air and mimed the flapping wings of a butterfly.

  Bunny smiled and did the same movement with his hands. “Aye,” he said.

  “Where were you on the night of March 6?”

  Bunny stared back at the detective without replying.

  “Well? That was five nights ago. Where were you?”

  Still there was no reply.

  “You were skulking around town, weren’t you? Wandering the streets, looking for pretty wee lasses?”

  “Aye.”

  “You were hanging around Grindlay Street on that particular night, weren’t you? That was a theatre night, and there’s often a pretty wee lass selling flowers outside the theatre on a theatre night. Do you know who I mean?” Thwaite smiled and winked at the suspect again.

  “Aye.” Bunny smiled and winked back.

  “She’s a pretty wee lass, isn’t she?”

  “Aye.”

  “But there was another pretty wee lass that night, wasn’t there? A pretty wee lass you had never seen before. She was wandering around the dark streets in a nightgown. Do you remember? The pretty wee lass in her nightgown?” Thwaite nodded his head as he asked this.

  “Aye.” Bunny nodded back.

  Again, Billings frowned and leaned in to Flynt. “He’s putting words into the suspect’s mouth. And Kitty was wearing an overcoat!” he whispered.

  “That’s the coat the suspect is wearing now,” Flynt whispered back.

  Billings looked at Bunny’s coat. It was long and tattered and of a dark grey colour.

  “That’s not Mr Westbrook’s coat. Westbrook’s coat was a frock coat. An expensive burgundy-coloured frock coat.”

  “Well, perhaps he sold it. You promised to be quiet, so shut up now.”

  “The wee lass in a silk nightgown,” Thwaite continued. “You don’t see that very often wandering the streets of Edinburgh, do you?”

  “No.”

  “This was no ordinary girl. Not like all them costermongers and flower girls you normally prey on, was she? This one was special.”

  “Aye.”

  “And you liked her, didn’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  “And you tried to kiss her, didn’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  “But she wouldn’t let herself be kissed, would she? She fought back.”

  “Aye.”

  “So you grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the wall, didn’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  “And then you strangled her. Strangled her until she stopped breathing.”

  Bunny didn’t reply this time. He started looking around him, at Billings and Flynt and Clarkson, as if suddenly realising that he was being interrogated.

  “You strangled her, didn’t you?” Thwaite asked again.

  Bunny shook his head.

  “Yes, you did, you murderous cunt! You killed the wee girl, didn’t you? You didn’t mean to, but you killed her!”

  Bunny continued to shake his head.

  “Say yes!” Thwaite shouted at him. “Go on! Do it! Say yes!” He banged his fist on the table once again.

  “Yes,” Bunny said finally.

  “Yes what?” Thwaite replied.

  Bunny looked confused.

  “Yes, I strangled her!” Thwaite prompted.

  “Yes, I strangled her,” Bunny repeated.

  “Thank you!” Thwaite turned around in his chair and looked at the detectives behind him. “And that, gentlemen,” he said with a broad grin on his face, “is how you extract a confession.”

  “That was a disgraceful charade,” Billings said after Bunny McVey had been taken to the holding cells.

  Flynt looked at him and frowned. He was about to tell him off when Thwaite interrupted him.

  “No, that was no charade,” he said calmly. “That was clever policing. That’s what that was.”

  “Clever policing? You used an innocent man as a scapegoat.”

  “McVey was far from innocent. We have plenty of eye witnesses who saw him attacking that lass in Princes Street Gardens.”

  “But he was innocent of killing Kitty.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And now he’s going to hang because of you.”

  “He’s not going to hang. He’ll most likely be sent to the lunatic asylum where he belongs.” Thwaite closed his notebook, put his pencil behind his ear and got up from the table.

  “And in the meantime, the real killer is still out there,” Billings continued.

  Thwaite turned to face him and looked straight into his eyes. “What you don’t understand, Billings,” he said, “is that we’re not here to do justice. That’s not our department. That’s the judge’s department. We’re here to keep the peace. A protracted investigation will do more harm than good. The whole of Edinburgh has been on edge since the newspapers printed the story. Now the papers can claim that the case has been closed and the city can breathe a sigh of relief.”

  “What if the killer strikes again?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “But you’re on the bridge now.”

  Thwaite frowned. “We’re nowhere near the fecking bridge, Billings. We have no credible suspects. You don’t really think that Mary Wesley killed the girl, do you? Or Mr Westbrook, who can only have had ten minutes to drag the girl to that close and bash her head in before returning to the back of the theatre and doing lord-knows-what with you by the rubbish bins!”

  Billings glanced, embarrassed, a
t Flynt and Clarkson when Thwaite said this.

  “You should be pleased that we have a confession,” Thwaite continued. “At least Bunny McVey has exonerated you.”

  Billings shook his head and frowned.

  Flynt put his hand on Billings’ shoulder. “You must think of the victims,” he said. “A trial date can be set now, and Miss LeFevre and her companions can go home. They can start healing now.”

  Billings wasn’t convinced but didn’t say anything.

  “If new evidence surfaces, we can resume the case,” Thwaite concluded and headed for the door. “But for now, the case is closed.” And with that, he exited the room.

  Billings was lying face down on his bed, peering at the photograph of the crime scene. Smudges of blood on the wall, scratches on Kitty’s nose and the smashed pendant watch suggested that Kitty had been strangled while her face was being pushed against the wall. However, the body was found a few feet away from the wall. It was clear that Westbrook’s coat had been taken off the body after she had died. The coat may well have been the reason why she had been killed. It was an expensive coat and would fetch a lot of money on the black market. But why had the body been dragged so far away from the wall? Kitty could just as easily have been stripped of the coat in the place where she fell. Why spend time and energy dragging the body to another spot and increasing the risk of being seen?

  Then an idea occurred to him. Billings jumped off the bed and rushed out of his room. He ran to Clarkson’s room and knocked on his door.

  As soon as Clarkson opened the door, Billings rushed into the room.

  “I need your help!” He pushed his colleague against the wall. “Stand against the wall!” he ordered. “With your back towards me.”

  Clarkson looked back, confused. “What are you doing, Billings?”

  “You have just been strangled. I strangled you. I pressed my thumbs against your air pipe and you are dead. Now fall.”

  “What’s this all about, Billings? We’ve already charged someone.”

  “Come on, Clarkson. Indulge me. Fall over.”

  Obediently, Clarkson fell forward and allowed his knees to buckle so that he was now kneeling on the floor with his arms dropped beside him, his chin touching his chest and his head against the wall.

  “That’s how you would fall, right?” Billings asked.

  “Yes,” Clarkson replied. “If I lost consciousness in the position that I was standing in, then this is how my body would end up.”

  “And if I wanted to steal your jacket, I could easily pull it off you.”

  To demonstrate, Billings pulled Clarkson’s jacket down from his shoulders to his elbows.

  “But that’s assuming I had two functioning arms,” he added. “If I only had one arm, then that would be harder.”

  Billings pulled Clarkson’s jacket back up to his shoulders.

  “In that case, it would be easier to take off your jacket if I dragged you away from the wall.”

  He took Clarkson’s arm and dragged him across the floor a few feet away from the wall and laid him face down on the ground.

  “If I only had one functioning arm, it’d be easier to take off your jacket like this.” Again, he demonstrated this by pulling Clarkson’s jacket off with his left arm.

  “So what are you saying?” Clarkson stood up again, straightened his jacket and tucked in his shirt.

  “I’m saying that the person who killed Kitty is not the same person who stole the coat. Kitty was strangled with two hands. This was confirmed at the inquest.”

  “So you think Bunny McVey acted with an accomplice?”

  Billings frowned. “Bunny McVey had nothing to do with this! I think that whoever killed Kitty did not take her coat. Her coat was removed by someone else after she had been murdered.”

  “Like who?”

  “An accomplice. A lame accomplice. We need to find that coat, Clarkson. Whoever took that coat will be able to tell us who did it.”

  “But the case has been closed, Billings. Somebody has already been charged. We’re going back home in a few days.”

  “Well, then we had better get a move on, hadn’t we. I’m not leaving until the real killer has been found.” And he rushed back to his room.

  9. Knuckles Nancy

  Billings was sitting at a table in Burn’s Tavern, a pint of ale before him. He’d been wondering what a criminal would do after committing a heinous crime in a public place and concluded that he would have come here. Kitty’s murder had been opportunistic; the murderers had seen a girl wearing an expensive frock coat wandering the streets and had taken their chance. According to Kitty’s pendant watch, which broke when the girl was smashed against the wall, the attack occurred only ten minutes before the body had been found. The streets of Edinburgh were clearly well patrolled by the police, as proven by the fact that ten minutes after the murder, no less than three police officers had arrived at the crime scene – two of whom were instantly dispatched to check for suspects. Billings himself had been walking around the block at the time and found the streets deserted. So the criminal could not have run far. They must have been drunk or out of their minds, and they were obviously desperate and destitute.

  Burn’s Tavern was just around the corner from the crime scene. It was an old-fashioned tavern, not like those fancy public houses that had been popping up all over Edinburgh in the last few years. This tavern did not have eye-catching decorations to entice the public to enter. In fact, it was anything but enticing. Dimly lit, noisy, smoky and filled with loud, foul-smelling, crude-acting drunkards, this was a working man’s watering hole. The assailant would have stood out in any of the other pubs in the area. But not here. And what’s more, there was money in the pockets of the stolen coat. Just a few coins, according to Westbrook. Not much, but enough to buy a drink. It seemed almost inevitable to Billings that the assailant should have come here straight after the crime.

  Billings looked around him as he sipped his ale. He had raised a few eyebrows when he entered the tavern, but the punters stopped paying attention to him as soon as he picked up his tankard and settled down at one of the tables. Now it was his turn to inspect the clientele. Three large, bearded men were standing in a corner. They were tipsy, but not quite drunk. They were bantering with the barmaid, laughing, sometimes bursting into song. An old man with a hunched back was sitting at the bar. He kept frowning at the laughing men in the corner and muttering grumpily to himself. There was a group of young men at another table playing cards, although mostly they were arguing with each other and challenging each other to fights. Apart from these residents, there were also a few customers who wandered in without speaking or looking at anyone, slammed some coins on the bar, downed a quick drink, then walked off again.

  The last customer to come in was a woman. She stumbled towards the bar, already drunk.

  “Back for more, Nancy?” the barmaid called.

  “Give us another shot of gin, will you, duckie?”

  The woman wore a long, dirty coat, and kept her hands in her coat pocket as she leaned against the bar to steady herself. Her thick grey hair, which was cut at the shoulders, stuck out of a tattered old hat and was matted to her craggy face.

  “Have you any money?” the barmaid asked.

  “Aye, I do.” The woman took her left hand out of her pocket and proudly slammed a leather pouch on the bar.

  The barmaid looked surprised. “Where did you get that from? I thought you’d spent your last penny on the last drink.”

  “Pawned me coat, didn’t I?”

  “But you’re still wearing your coat.”

  “I have another one.”

  “You have two coats, have you? Where did you get a second coat from?”

  “Found it.”

  “Found it, did you?” The barmaid looked at her sceptically. “You haven’t been stealing clothes from the bath house again, have you?”

  “I found it!” the woman repeated. “Now, give us another shot of gin, will you, ducki
e?”

  She took her other hand out of her coat pocket and opened her pouch. Billings noticed that she seemed to have problems taking coins out of it, and he craned his neck to get a better view. He saw that the fingers of her right hand had been cut off at the knuckles.

  “Let me help you with that,” the barmaid said and reached for the pouch, but the woman quickly pulled it away.

  “You keep your filthy mitts off me money!”

  Billings jumped up from his table and, leaving his half-drunk tankard behind him, went up to the bar.

  “I’ll have another one, please,” he said to the barmaid.

  “But you ain’t finished your first one yet.”

  Billings ignored the barmaid and addressed the other woman. “I heard you speaking about the coat you pawned. What colour was it?”

  “What’s it to you?” the woman said, looking the detective up and down with a frown on her face.

  “It wasn’t a burgundy-coloured gentleman’s frock coat, was it?”

  “You didn’t take this gentleman’s coat, did you, Nancy?” the barmaid asked.

  “No, I didn’t take it off him!” the woman replied indignantly.

  “But you did take it off someone?” Billings asked.

  The woman hesitated. “I found it,” she said eventually.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “On the street.”

  “Which street?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “It wasn’t Grindlay Street Court, was it?”

  The woman didn’t answer, but Billings could tell by the reaction on her face that he was right.

  “I need you to accompany me to the police station,” he said, grabbing the woman’s arm.

  “’ere, let go of me!”

  Billings grabbed his badge from his coat pocket and slammed it on the bar. “I’m a police officer.”

  He knew, of course, that he had no jurisdiction here and wasn’t legally allowed to arrest anyone, but he banked on nobody in here knowing that. An eerie silence suddenly came over the tavern. Billings saw the three bearded men in the corner turn their heads towards him. The hunched man at the bar had stopped mumbling to himself and was also looking in his direction. And the four young men at the cards table had laid down their cards and risen from their seats. Billings suddenly realised that perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea to confess to being a policeman in a place like this. He needed to get out of the tavern quickly, before the customers turned on him.