In My Time Of Dying: DS Hutton Book 5

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘We need to speak to the ex-husbands,’ says Kallas. ‘Can you make some calls and fix it up for tomorrow? How recent was the most recent ex-husband?’

  ‘Got divorced in July last year.’

  ‘Do we know if they had any kind of on-going relationship?’

  ‘The sister didn’t think so. She didn’t think they were capable of it, though she did think him capable of killing her.’

  ‘OK, that is a start. We will have a busy day tomorrow.’

  She looks back at the wall, eyes running over the mass of information and photographs and names, trying to make the connections that are not immediately obvious.

  ‘We cannot allow ourselves to be completely side-tracked by this film, even though it does present the most obvious connection between the three.’

  She looks like she’s going to add to it, but perhaps she decides all she’s doing is adding words that don’t need to be spoken, and then she says, ‘That will do for today, I think. Thank you all for your work. Back in tomorrow morning, I’m afraid, and we can split up the interviews.’

  There are murmurings around the table, and we rise and head to the door. I like the way she said I’m afraid there, like she didn’t really understand why one would say those words at that particular point in a sentence, but she knew, nevertheless, that it was appropriate.

  ‘I’m heading over to see Dr Fforbes now, if you care to join me,’ she says as I’m heading out the room.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Wasn’t about to leave anyway.’

  ‘You should. We will see Dr Fforbes, and then we will be finished for the day.’

  I look at the clock, nod in agreement, even though it means that I’ll likely be walking back into my house at seven-thirty on a Saturday evening. Kallas is obviously one of these new-fangled bosses who believes in a work/life balance. Tickety-boo when you’ve got a family at home. When your life consists of an unfinished jigsaw of space, however...

  I really don’t want to have that much time. Maybe I can be completely hammered by ten, then have more time to sleep it off before I need to come into work in the morning.

  ‘You all right?’ asks Harrison, appearing by my desk, as I’m getting my shit together.

  I nod.

  ‘You going to come back in here anyway?’ she asks. Must have overheard.

  We hold the gaze. She knows what I’m thinking.

  ‘Would you like me to come over?’

  ‘You’ve got plans for the evening,’ I say.

  ‘I can cancel them.’

  ‘Don’t you dare. You have plans for the evening that you’ve been looking forward to, so don’t mess with them.’

  She holds the look, her concerned Emma Thompson face that I find so attractive.

  ‘I can cancel.’

  ‘Don’t. After all...’ and I nod over in the direction of Kallas. ‘Who knows what the DI has up her sleeve, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, it was funny when I was taking the piss out of you for it, mate,’ says Harrison, ‘but it’s not happening.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I say. ‘Call me around ten or something, if you’re worried, you can check up on me, then go back to your thing.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What will you do?’

  A pause. It’s Harrison. She can see through me just the same as Kallas, and Harrison will just get it all out there, opening me up like she’s gutting a fish.

  I swallow. Shove my hands in my pockets, aware of the slight tremble. Fuck’s sake.

  ‘I’m going to stop at Oddbins on the way home. I’ll pick up a bottle of vodka. And some tonic, this time. I’m going to go home. I’ll... fuck, I’ll do Rebecca’s jigsaw. I can sit at a table, on my own, drinking vodka and doing a jigsaw, and hopefully, since it’s, I don’t know, about fifteen years since I got a good night’s sleep, I’ll feel tired before the evening’s too old, and I can go to bed.’

  ‘And you won’t go out anywhere?’

  Fuck me.

  She’s right, of course. Bad things happen when I have a drink at home and then go out.

  ‘Yes, mom.’

  ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘I’m not doing it.’

  I can’t get annoyed at Harrison when she’s telling me off. She’s right, and I love her. That’s all.

  ‘We’re good, don’t worry,’ I say.

  Clench my fists in my pockets. Smile. Do my best to smile.

  She does the concerned friend thing, her hand resting on the desk.

  Taylor used to stand there like that, his hand resting on the desk as he talked. Then he’d tap the desk before he walked away.

  Don’t think about that.

  ‘You better go out and enjoy yourself,’ I say. ‘You’ve put up with my shit for too long. I want a full report tomorrow morning of a night of filthy sex.’ A beat. She stares at me. Time for a regular, well-used joke. ‘I’ll want to see video as confirmation.’

  ‘Take care of yourself, Tom,’ she says.

  ‘It’s cool.’

  A moment, she finally makes the resigned I’ve-done-what-I-can face, then turns to walk away. Before she goes, she taps the desk.

  I wish she hadn’t done that.

  34

  Check my phone for the whateverth time. Nothing from Samantha. I want her to text and say she’s coming round again this evening, roughly the same amount as I don’t want her to. A real conflict, not an ounce of indifference to be seen. I never want to see or hear of her again. I was an idiot for sleeping with her, and I hate myself today – just that tiny bit more than normal – for having done it in the first place. But, Jesus, it was sensational, and how can you not want to do something that good again?

  ‘There is something we should not get away from while we are pursuing the film lead,’ says Kallas, as she pulls the car into the hospital car park, as if recognising that I need to be brought back to the case. ‘These three murders have all been in Cambuslang. That is not necessarily odd in itself, three murders in Cambuslang, but it is odd if it is related to this film. The film itself is not Cambuslang-based, the people were not, the company was not.’

  ‘The exec producer was, that’s the start,’ I say. Look at me with my exec producer schtick. Got the lingo. ‘Then some of the money. But then, you’re right, in that Harry Lord was just one source of financing. It looks as though the money came from about ten different places, so why specifically Harry Lord...?’

  ‘Unless the killer is Cambuslang-based.’

  ‘Which would tie in with the murder of Margaret Malone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Gill Blair, I forgot to mention that.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Born in Cambuslang. Didn’t go to school there, but lived there until she was, like, fourteen or something her husband said.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, we will add her to the list. I will speak to her again tomorrow. She is an interesting character.’

  Car parked, masks on, and we’re out and walking into the hospital, past reception with a nod, quick squirt of hand sanitizer, then down the long white corridors, a few people around, the walls covered in Covid warning posters, innumerable pictures of people with face coverings, and hands beneath running water.

  ‘I made some more calls,’ says Kallas, as we pass a man in blue scrubs washing his hands in a corridor sink, while he stares straight ahead at the white wall, looking as though he’s been standing there, in that position, hands endlessly going around and around each other, trapped, for several days. ‘Another check to see if there have been similar murders elsewhere. There have been four murders in Scotland this week, eleven in England.’ A beat. Down a flight of stairs, along another short corridor, blazing white beneath fluorescent lights. ‘All were either domestic or alcohol related. Or both, naturally.’

  ‘Good to confirm our lingchi killer is a little local difficulty.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and we’re at the morgue, and Kallas taps her knuckles quickly a
nd lightly against the door and in we walk.

  All my confidence and that sort of laissez-faire, don’t-give-a-fuckness, about turning up at the mortuary, particularly when it’s like the fiftieth visit of the week, disappear when suddenly I’m standing there at the table beside an enormous dead body, there’s a huge cut down the gullet, every inch of the skin is lacerated, and of course, there’s that face. Like, fucking Red Skull out of Captain America. Not that Hugo Weaving looks much better when he’s got skin, by the way. Fucking miserable elven Lord Of The Rings bastard that he was. Men are weak... Too fucking right we are, you ancient cunt.

  ‘This is horrible.’

  There, I said it.

  Fforbes glances up at me, gives me a strange kind of a smile, then continues to work on the area of the lower left leg which she’s cleaning up.

  ‘I agree,’ says Kallas, surprisingly. ‘I find it extraordinary that you can do this with continued good humour, doctor. It must be very difficult.’

  ‘Weird thing is,’ says Fforbes, straightening up now, and laying down the surgical cloth with which she’d been wiping away the congealed blood on the leg, ‘I rather enjoy it. The human body’s fascinating. How it works, how it stops working. I always... when I was young I used to wonder, when you see people in TV shows, and they get shot in the stomach, and,’ she snaps her fingers, ‘they’re dead, just like that, I always thought, why? Why are you dead because you get a bullet in the stomach? Right away, right then, why does your brain instantly stop working? Why can’t you move your muscles for a while longer, why can’t you think? Isn’t it fascinating? When does life actually leave the body? Even if you get a bullet in the heart, why does the brain stop sending messages that very instant? Why can’t it limp on a little longer, just because the heart has stopped working, and the blood has stopped flowing?’

  She looks between the two of us.

  ‘It’s such an extraordinary machine, and it’s all tied up with this,’ and she taps the side of her head, which is fine wearing a bloody glove, because she’s also wearing a surgical skull cap.

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ says Kallas.

  ‘When I was a kid my dad told me the story of Frederik Ruysch.’

  ‘Full back for the three-time European Cup winning Ajax team?’ I venture.

  The fool and his frippery are not easily parted.

  ‘Seventeenth century Dutch anatomist,’ says Kallas, nodding.

  At least I got the nationality right. I can cling to that so as not to feel like the idiot in the room. Imagine being the only person not to have heard of Frederik Ruysch.

  ‘He was fascinated with the human body, and how it worked. He developed a method, far exceeding that of anyone else at the time, of preserving body matter. He dissected bodies, he preserved them, he preserved animals... he built a collection. Ruysch’s cabinet.’

  ‘Sold it to Peter The Great for thirty thousand Gilder,’ chips in Kallas.

  ‘Thirty thousand Gilder,’ repeats Fforbes, like she’s yon woman repeating everything her husband says in that When Harry Met Sally clip. ‘Then he built up another collection, starting when he was in his eighties, and that got sold to August the Strong.’

  ‘King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania,’ chips in Kallas, as though we’re on University Challenge.

  ‘Your dad told you this story?’ I say. ‘I remember my dad telling me about Willie Woodburn getting sent off four times for Rangers, and getting banned for life as a result.’

  ‘Dad’s a mortician,’ she says. ‘He likes talking about his work.’

  She smiles. There’s potential for this kind of conversation to make a chap feel a bit stupid, but not with these two. Fforbes is funny, very, very likeable. And Kallas...? She can say any old shit to me, I don’t mind.

  ‘Is there anything significantly different?’ asks Kallas, getting the meeting over Giant Red Skull here back on track.

  There’s a natural efficiency about Estonians. When they say a meeting will start at ten, it starts at ten. Arrive a minute late, you miss the first minute. She says that in Tallinn when a cinema lists a movie start time as six-thirty, it starts at six-thirty. There’d be bedlam if they tried that in the UK.

  Of course, soon enough there will be no more cinemas in the UK.

  ‘The significance, once again, is in the similarity. Mrs Malone was injected with GHB. We can surmise, although obviously this is more your territory, that the killer attacked her as she lay in bed because...’ and she indicates the prodigious body lying before us. ‘Mrs Malone was not getting crucified.’

  ‘Not without the use of a crane,’ I throw in, and Fforbes can’t help herself laughing.

  ‘One thousand cuts?’ asks Kallas, keeping the discussion focused, though there’s no censure in her voice. Observing that you would need a crane to lift Mrs Malone up onto a cross would probably be entirely logical to her, rather than a joke.

  ‘I haven’t catalogued them all yet, but I’m at nine hundred and seventeen, and, as you can see, at the lower legs. I’ll have the final number before close of play this evening.’ This woman doesn’t have a life. Lucky her. ‘It would be interesting, and potentially significant, if the killer changed the number. Just a small change, however, and you have the quandary of whether they’ve done it intentionally, or whether they miscounted.’

  ‘It does not seem that they miscount.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You have been into the stomach?’ asks Kallas, indicating the slit through the abdomen.

  ‘Yes. I completed the study of the upper body lacerations, then did the internal. She ate and drank, well, copiously, it seems. She had two bottles of red wine, and two pizzas. One chicken, one meat feast I’d say...’

  ‘It wasn’t one giant pizza?’ I venture, albeit, it’s kind of a moot point. We do like detail, though. Always helps.

  ‘These were two giant pizzas,’ says Fforbes. ‘Quite a lot of garlic bread, a lot of doughballs dipped in some kind of tomato sauce.’

  ‘Pizza, doughballs and garlic bread?’

  ‘Yep.’

  We look down at Margaret Malone.

  ‘How was her heart?’ I find myself asking.

  ‘Almost perfect. She had a long, long way to run yet, despite the morbid obesity. Obviously flourished on her white flour-based carbs.’

  ‘Would she have been drunk?’

  ‘Hard to say. I kind of doubt it, given her size. Slowed, maybe, but she ate well, she drank well, so she may well have slept well. If she was doing that, her killer might not have had too much difficulty breaking into her apartment and administering the drug. Once that was in her system, and again the killer took no chances and delivered an explosively large dose, once that was done, she wasn’t going anywhere.’

  Kallas stares along the body, foot to head, finishing up at the red skull.

  ‘You think she was awake for the torture, despite the dosage.’

  ‘Yes, but haven’t nailed that down yet. Let me get the tests back on the brain.’

  We stand in silence for a few moments, looking down on the corpulent, bloody mess of the now dead Mrs Malone.

  ‘She really was remarkable,’ says Fforbes. ‘A fascinating case. I’ll maybe... sometimes you’d like to be able to speak to the family.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  Fforbes holds my gaze for a moment, thinking about something, makes the decision, and then leans over the corpse and pulls apart the large cleave down the centre of the diaphragm, revealing the mass of organs beneath. Having done that she stands for a few moments to admire it, while I reel a little at the pungency. Kallas is a rock, as ever.

  ‘Look at it,’ says Fforbes.

  ‘I’ve done that.’

  ‘When you see someone like Mrs Malone, you make judgements. We all do. We may approach those judgements from a different perspective, but we judge and we can’t help it. I see someone like this and I think, my God, what will her blood vessels be like? Her liver, her bowel, her pancreas... And, of co
urse, her heart. I mean, how do all these pieces of human kit, evolved to carry someone of, what, ten stones, keep functioning with someone more than twice the size? And yet, look at this. It’s gorgeous.’

  Kallas and I stare into the visceral mire.

  ‘No sign of a fatty liver, no degenerative joints. Heart in perfect working order, she had the bowel of an Olympic athlete, lungs just full of life and energy and bursting to keep working for decades to come. Wow...’

  Fforbes really is looking at the corpse with the appropriate wonder on her face, eyes wide, head nodding.

  ‘It is remarkable,’ Kallas manages.

  ‘That it is.’

  ‘We should go now,’ she then says, snapping the moment. Or rather, stamping efficiently on the moment.

  ‘Yep, I’ll crack on,’ says Fforbes. ‘Shouldn’t take me too much longer. The report should be waiting for you in the morning.’

  ‘Very good,’ says Kallas. ‘Thank you.’

  She nods, she turns, she walks back to the door. Fforbes and I smile at each other, the familiar look, and I nod in the direction of the intestinal melange.

  ‘Fill your boots,’ I say.

  ‘Bugger off, Sergeant,’ says Fforbes.

  WE SIT IN THE CAR IN silence for a while, but the drive is not long.

  ‘I will drop you at your apartment, and not back at work,’ says Kallas, not giving me the option. ‘If you like, I can pick you up in the morning, since you won’t have your car.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I say.

  I’ve walked in often enough. Though that does require getting out of bed in time.

  We drive on in silence, now doing thirty behind a yellow Ford, now sitting at a red light. Kallas doesn’t listen to music. It probably constitutes unnecessary enjoyment.

  There’s an elephant in the car.

  Wait, is there an elephant in the car? And if there is an elephant, is it the elephant I think it is?

  Who am I kidding? And she’s got that say-it-first-never-think-about-it approach to absolutely everything, so why should there be any elephant?

  Time moves with the car. We get to my street, we park outside my door. Like a movie, a decent-sized parking space right there, where and when we need it.