In My Time Of Dying: DS Hutton Book 5

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘And what?’

  ‘She’s an attractive women. How’s she look naked?’

  Eileen, of course, likes the look of a naked woman as much as I do.

  ‘Amazing.’

  A beat.

  ‘That’s all your giving me?’

  ‘She looks amazing.’

  ‘In the unlikely event of our lives being made into a movie, who’s playing her?’

  ‘Vikander,’ I say, nodding, having already given that a certain amount of thought.

  ‘Vikander,’ repeats Harrison, with just the right amount of awe, looking away across the office. ‘Hmm, I can see that. Wow.’

  ‘Yep,’ I say, ‘wow sums it up pretty well.’

  She takes a bite of pizza, another drink of Coke, staring dreamily off across the office.

  ‘That’s a kind of weird thing to do,’ she says.

  ‘I’d say.’

  ‘D’you think everyone in Estonia’s like that?’

  ‘Don’t know any other Estonians.’

  ‘Wow,’ she says again, still with that same look on her face. ‘Maybe Estonian beaches are filled with gorgeous naked women stepping boldly into the sea.’

  Can’t help laughing.

  ‘That can be our next trip.’

  ‘I’m free this weekend,’ she says, and we both laugh. ‘Oh my God. Maybe I can wangle a trip to some seaside town with her. I’ll see if I can dig up a lead in Girvan or St Andrews.’

  ‘You’re shallow, Sergeant,’ I say.

  ‘You’d know about that.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Maybe we could switch our bet from the Chief to the Inspector,’ she says, shoulders raised slowly, hopefully, looking for me to play along.

  ‘Married, three kids,’ I say. ‘We really shouldn’t try and fuck with that.’

  ‘Yeah, all right.’

  ‘I mean, I know we don’t know anything about the Chief. Maybe she’s engaged to some twat called Rupert, and they’re getting married at Christmas, but there are no kids, and she is way more fair game. And anyway, we both know neither of us is going to play.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, coward,’ she says, and we smile, and we eat pizza, and we drink Coke, and soon enough we’re wrapping up for the day, and heading out into another chill, October evening.

  14

  Sometimes it’s the small things. The smallest things. The look in the eye, the turn of phrase, the glance cast over the shoulder. Never takes much to fall for someone.

  I’ve been trying to be on autopilot. Easier that way. Clinging on to Eileen Harrison, the platonic friendship, the easy conversation. In some ways I’ve been clinging on to alcohol addiction. Which, by the way, is a fucking stupid thing to cling on to. To focus on.

  By this means, I try not to think about women and sex.

  And now, not even thinking about sex.

  It wasn’t the inspector getting undressed and walking naked into the sea. It wasn’t the strangeness of it, it wasn’t the easy acceptance of the intimacy, it wasn’t those perfect, small breasts, the beautiful slim body, the strange little smile she gave me when she emerged from the water, like, I don’t know, Ursula Andress times a thousand, taking a small cotton tissue from the pocket of her jacket, and somehow drying herself with it, not concerned that I couldn’t stop watching her the entire time.

  We were in the car on the way back up the road from Ayrshire. Another long silence, one which felt a little awkward, unlike the silences of the way down. Then, somewhere between the motorway and Eaglesham, it was me who broke it. One of those occasions when I was thinking about something, and from nowhere the words were in my mouth.

  ‘Is he ever violent?’ I asked, which was a follow-up to our conversation from two hours previously.

  It was not impossible that she’d have had no idea what I was talking about, but of course she did. Perhaps she’d been thinking about it at the same time. Perhaps we’d been having some sort of telepathic conversation.

  ‘No,’ she said. The silence threatened to crawl back in, then she added, ‘He is angry, and it is uncomfortable, but he is never violent.’ Another long pause, then, ‘You do not need to worry.’

  It would have been the predictable thing to say that I wasn’t worried, but then she would have known I was lying.

  ‘He has two job interviews in the next week,’ she said. ‘Hopefully one of them will come off, and he can be himself again. He does not like that I am the breadwinner.’

  Well, there’s another tale as old as time.

  I think I was ready to leave the conversation there. I’d checked in on her, expressed my concern, played my part – even though I wasn’t thinking of it as playing a part – and I could have driven home in silence.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as we hit the East Kilbride Road, five minutes from the station. Another one of those long silences that pepper her conversation followed, then she said, ‘I should not have gone swimming. I should not have undressed completely.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘Thank you, but I should not have done it. It was unprofessional.’ A beat. ‘I did not want to get my underwear wet.’

  Passing a BMW 320 on the outside, heading towards the turn-off down to Kirkhill golf club, I thought about Kallas removing her underwear on a cold autumn beach, goosebumps on her skin, her nipples hard.

  I didn’t bother with the really, it was fine. The concept of not saying everything that was going through my head must have been catching.

  Down past the golf club, past the farms, to the top of the town, then on down Greenlees Road, past the Institute and the site of the old police station, down to the Main Street. Stopped at the lights by The Clock, and the building where I spent so many godawful hours of my youth at the dentist, she finally said what she wanted to say.

  ‘Sometimes I miss home. That’s all.’

  AND THAT WAS ALL. IT didn’t take much. But it was the delivery. The sadness. The years of melancholy and longing poured into four words. Sometimes I miss home.

  I wanted to hug her. And weirdly for me, it was entirely about making her feel better. I wanted to hug her, and make her a cup of tea, and then take her back to Estonia.

  We drove the final minute round the road in silence. I didn’t ask why she doesn’t go back, at least to visit. Maybe she visits, and the visits make the parting all the more painful.

  Sometimes I miss home.

  Lying in bed, those words mixing with the longing of the day, and the flat calm of the sea, and the strange, absurd, bizarre and beautiful sight of her walking out into the water naked, as though she would swim away and never be seen again.

  Fifty-two. I’m fifty-two now. Too old for this shit. Too old for infatuations and fantasies, and dreams of hopeless, melancholic romance. I’m fucking wasted. Mentally wasted at least, and my body probably worse, though I haven’t had a medical in three years to find out.

  I don’t want to fall for my boss. I don’t want to think anything about my boss, other than vaguely wondering what she’s going to tell me to do next. I don’t want to fall for anyone. My longing for Eileen that will never come to anything is quite enough. I drink, I have random sex, I go to work, and sometimes I think about putting a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger, and one day maybe I’ll actually do it, and that’s all there is. That’s all there need be.

  And now here I am, one a.m., once again unable to get to sleep, staring at the orange of the streetlights and the shadows they throw across the ceilings, wide a-fucking-wake. Thinking about Kallas, like some ridiculous nineteenth century poet, looking wistfully at an Italian lake, writing some shit about feeling as miserable as the next poetical cunt on the balcony two along.

  Jesus.

  15

  Thursday morning, and the tentacles of the investigation go off in various directions, each of us dispatched to play our part. Quite relieved to get a mundane task, and not be doing anything in conjunction with Kallas. Will be happy to avoid her today.

 
I have no ideas, no dreams or ambitions, to crack the case, get a breakthrough, solve the crime, find the killer. I genuinely don’t care. Look, it may not sound great, but what difference does it make to me? I’ll still be doing this shit, one way or another, every day until I pluck up the guts to retire, or I finally go too far and get pushed, or I pull the trigger on the gun aimed at my head, the gun that I don’t yet have in my possession. And all the while I’m doing it, crime will come and it will go, weaving in and out of the fabric of society, picking off victims as it winds its way, and there’ll be someone sitting at the desk opposite Detective Constable Ritter, and maybe it’ll be me, and maybe it’ll be someone else.

  All I have to do is make sure that when it’s me who’s at that desk, the job is getting done as well as it can be, and – with due consideration given to the fact I’m a messed up, alcoholic, sex addict – all in, I still believe I do a reasonable job.

  But I don’t care.

  Maybe that helps.

  Park my car in front of the large house set back from the Clyde, up past the Garrion Bridge. Haven’t been up this way in a while. Don’t really like to think about the last time.

  This is care home and garden centre country. More or less every building up this way is given over to one or other of those pursuits. Looking after old people, or providing old people potting soil, and lunch in the God’s waiting room of the garden centre restaurant. As soon as you come off the motorway, there should be a sign warning you to get the fuck out if you’re under seventy. If you’re over seventy, enter at your peril. You may never leave. Maybe when you hit seventy, there’s a chip that gets inserted, and you suddenly aspire to spending all your time in these places.

  Thank God I’ll be dead by then. Cannot stand the thought of it, me old and wizened and bitter and wrinkled – and with the amount of smoking and drinking I’ve done, there’s no way I’m going to be one of those fit seventy year-olds you see – sitting in the corner of the café with my fish and chips or my bread and butter sandwich, with bread on the side, my wee, mini-arsed bottle of wine on the tray, struggling to keep my teeth in, eyeing up the women, desperately trying to imagine them in the midst of a screaming orgasm, in the forlorn hope I can find them attractive, even though there will be zero chance that any of them will find me attractive.

  For now, here we are. A care home. The one where Harry Lord’s father died. Might be a stretch, but there are so many strands here, who knows which one will lead to the pay off.

  Living the dream.

  Can hear the river as I get out the car, though the house is between it and me and I can’t actually see the water at the moment. All around, the weeping branches of trees, shedding leaves as I stand, the day nothing like yesterday. Wind up, grey clouds covering the sky, rain in the air, coming our way, sometime, somewhere.

  Up to the door. I press the intercom, give my name, the anonymous white doors swing open, and then I’m inside, into the reception area, a small unmanned desk, four armchairs, and a table with a coffee machine, a sliced sponge cake on a plate, a plate of biscuits, cups, a small jug of milk. Magnolia walls, a large, atmospheric black and white photograph of the Garrion Bridge in the mist behind reception, another couple of small black and white shots of the river on the side walls. Large windows either side give an enchanting view of the carpark.

  However, like all care homes, the first thing that greets you is the smell of death.

  OK, not death.

  Piss.

  A woman in a white uniform appears from the door behind reception and smiles.

  ‘Sgt Hutton?’

  I begin to extract my ID from my coat pocket, and she waves it away.

  ‘That’s OK. I’ll show you through to see the day manager, Geraldine. If you’d like to follow me.’

  Geraldine. That’s the way it goes. No reason why the person on reception couldn’t be a man, no reason why the day manager couldn’t be a man, but here we are, and as Harrison observed, I’m cursed to be surrounded by women on this case.

  ‘Windy day,’ says Karolina, easing straight into small talk.

  ‘Blew in the clouds,’ I answer mundanely.

  ‘Just through here,’ she says, holding the door open for me to follow her, then we’re walking down a short corridor, everything about it painted and cleaned and scrubbed to make it depressing as fuck. Pictures of flowers on the walls, the kind of picture you would pick up at a car boot sale for fifty pence, with a couple of noticeboards covered in A4 posters proclaiming, Pilates at 4 every Thursday, and Weekly movie night, Saturday at 6, this week 633 Squadron, and Wash Your Hands So You’re Clean When You Die!

  An open door, a quick glance inside as we pass, the lounge, several occupied seats, old people in somnambulant repose, not a word being spoken, nor a word being read or listened to, behind them large picture windows looking out on the river, and then we’re at the end of the corridor and Karolina is knocking on the door, and the voice, ‘Just a minute,’ comes from inside.

  Karolina and I stare at each other, trapped in social awkwardness at the end of the corridor.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say, ‘I can take it from here.’

  ‘Geraldine likes guests to be escorted in,’ says Karolina, and I nod, and we resume standing awkwardly outside the door.

  ‘Where are you from?’ I say. It’s my job to ask questions, after all.

  ‘Kaunus.’ Then as she adds, ‘Lithuania,’ I’m saying, ‘Lithuania,’ at the same time, and we smile again like we’re in some sitcom or other.

  ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘Three years,’ she says. ‘I might have to leave after this year, I’ll see.’

  ‘How’s it been over the spring and summer?’

  Her face falls a little, and she shakes her head.

  ‘We lost a lot of people. Residents. A couple of staff too. But then, the staff have not needed to be replaced, as the residents have not particularly been replaced.’

  ‘You knew Mr Lord?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Did you know his –’

  ‘Geraldine asked that I do not answer questions about them. She will tell you everything you need to know.’

  We hold the stare in the confined space of the end of the corridor beside a print of a painting of a vase of flowers, and she smiles apologetically.

  ‘You go swimming in the Baltic every week when you’re in Lithuania?’ I ask, and she says, ‘Kaunus is two hours from the sea,’ and I feel ignorant and stupid and British, and decide I’m just going to keep my mouth shut, then she says, ‘We do swim in the lake sometimes, but not in the winter,’ to make me feel better, and then, thank God, the voice comes from the room, and Karolina opens the door, announces me like I’m a guest at a ball hosted by Mr Darcy, and then I’m in the room, and Karolina has gone, the door closed behind me.

  In a turn of events that surprises no one, the day manager’s office does not smell of piss, and the art on the walls is of a vastly superior quality. Large windows looking out on to the river, the desk to the side, so that Geraldine can look out the window when the mood takes her, two armchairs on the other side of the desk, a small table with a similar drinks set-up to the one in reception, minus the cake, a large and immaculate ficus on the floor, and a vase of flowers on a small table opposite the desk. From them, or perhaps from Geraldine herself, comes a delicate floral scent, which is not at all old or sad, and really rather attractive.

  ‘Sergeant Hutton,’ she says, ‘please come and sit down. Help yourself to coffee on the way.’

  ‘I’m good, thanks,’ I say, taking the seat.

  Geraldine is haunted. Drawn thin, her existence stretched to nothingness, the scars of a long summer on her face. At some point she stopped dying her hair, grew it out, but she has yet to visit the salon, and her hair is a mix of greys, turning to the old blonde at the end. The collar on her turquoise blouse is a little loose, her cheeks are tight to her bones, as though her mouth were a vacuum.

  ‘Th
anks for making the time,’ I say.

  ‘These days we have all the time in the world.’

  After the initial offer of coffee delivered in a familiar welcoming manner, her voice quickly takes on the quality of her face. Exhausted.

  ‘Must’ve been a tough few months.’

  She doesn’t reply. Those eyes. Jesus. Just trying to do a minute or two of introductory, ice-breaking small talk, and she crucifies me from four feet for mansplaining the shittiest spring and summer in seventy-five years.

  ‘We should get to it,’ I say, voice down in the resigned bin, and she makes a small papal gesture, indicating for me to get on with it, even though she started off by implying we literally had all day.

  I’m probably over-thinking it. She’s just miserable. Who isn’t these days?

  ‘You had a resident named Benjamin Lord, who died in the summer.’

  ‘Yes. Benny. Lovely man. Died on 23rd of July.’

  ‘You remember the date?’ I can’t stop myself saying, even though it’s kind of obvious she remembers the date, and she looks at me like that’s exactly what she’s thinking, then I say, ‘When did Covid get into the home?’

  ‘July.’

  Her voice now is sharp and cold, a slap across the face on a bitter day.

  ‘That was late.’

  ‘We managed to shut down before it arrived in the spring. We did everything we should. It was tough, tough on the residents, and the staff, and the families – some of them, anyway – and we got through it. Then, when the restrictions started to be relaxed, we managed to stay on top of things, played it a little tighter than was required. Kept it at bay. Then some of the families started complaining, insisted we relaxed things further. They went over our heads, went up the corporate ladder. Some people knew other people. Connections. Money. You know the score, how the world turns.’

  That phrase again, the same words from Victoria Lord’s lips two days ago.

  ‘We asked that all visitors test themselves, but we could do little more than trust people. And, to the surprise of no one, the virus got in. Not with a dry, hacking cough, not with a sweating, tortured gasp, but invisibly, silently, on the breath of who knows?’