In My Time Of Dying: DS Hutton Book 5
Page 28
‘I never suspected her,’ I say, as ever the one drawn to talk by one of the silences.
The inspector looks at me over the top of her flat white. She takes a sip, her tongue elegantly removes a little spot of froth on her lips, she lays the cup back in the saucer.
‘The minister. I never suspected her. I went there...’
I don’t get the words out. Seems pointless saying them, and they drift away. I don’t even lift my coffee, just stare across the shop, looking at the two women sitting at the window, laughing over something on a phone.
‘You knew she had vodka.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘Your DNA was on the bottle and both glasses. We knew it was you who’d been drinking in the church vestry.’
I nod, the nod becomes a head shake. That was pretty obvious.
‘It will remain in the report that you went there because you suspected her.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I cannot change it now. That would not look good for me. You have to stick with that story for my benefit.’
Well there’s a sharp piece of legerdemain, turning this in to me somehow helping her. What can I say to that?
Another one of those silences, this one accompanied by an uncomfortable look across the table. Choosing to leap into the fire, I decide to address it, having practiced this conversation while lying in bed, wide awake, at four a.m.
‘You were awake the entire time I was talking to the minister?’ I ask.
We all know where this is going, but there is at least marginally easier footing to begin with.
‘Yes.’
‘How did you even manage that? Didn’t she give you the GHB?’
‘She did, but we know from working the case she varied the dose. She administered what she thought was required. She took me by surprise at Gill Blair’s home, she incapacitated me with a small dose. This knocked me out, although not for long. However, even though I pretended to still be unconscious, she later gave me a further dose. Again, I was not out for long, I do not think. I awoke while she was killing Gill Blair.’
‘She didn’t notice?’
‘I barely opened my eyes. It was apparent Mrs Blair was already dead, so I elected to play the part, rather than reveal myself. I wondered if a more suitable moment might arise.’
Something in her eyes, a shadow I don’t recognise in her, but which I instinctively know is guilt. I wasn’t expecting that, but, of course, I’ve thought that evening through often enough in the past couple of weeks. She picked her moment, but the moment was after I’d been stabbed and slashed. Sure, Goodbody wasn’t trying to kill me at that point, but it was entirely to chance that one of those knife wounds didn’t do the job nevertheless. She was drunk and out of control by then.
‘There would have been no point in you reacting before you did,’ I say.
She blinks. Even that seems a significant and rare deviation from the normal. Everyone blinks, but that was a blink. A guilt blink.
‘What were you going to do? If you’d spoken up, we’d both have died.’
‘I was lucky. I should not have been so helpless as to have left something to such chance.’
‘We all walked into it.’
‘That does not make me feel any better.’
‘You can’t feel guilty about it.’ She still looks guilty, so flippant words find their way, to no one’s surprise, from my lips. ‘Letting me get repeatedly slashed, so that I look like Al Pacino in Scarface, times a thousand, was really your only option.’
That doesn’t really get much of a reaction. We need to work on her flippancy-recognition skills. Maybe the chief can send her on a course.
‘I have not seen that film,’ she says, and I can’t help the small laugh.
‘Well, Inspector, it worked out. You couldn’t save Gill Blair, you saved the only person there you could, and you got out alive.’
She has nothing to say to that. She takes an evasive sip of coffee. Perhaps she’s contemplating the fact, as I already have, of just how fortunate we were to wrap the whole thing up when we did. We stumbled upon the killer. Nothing we did as detectives helped solve this crime.
Don’t linger on that, don’t linger on how we got here.
‘Nice job not reacting to the face slap,’ I say.
‘One learns to brace while walking into cold water.’
Ah. That’s why they do it. So they can be cool while getting smacked in the face. That’s some life planning.
I take a drink of coffee. Another silence threatens, and so I give myself a shake. I didn’t start this conversation to linger on the guilt I didn’t know Kallas was feeling, and I didn’t start it for it to go nowhere.
‘So you heard everything I said?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Naturally, that’s all she says. Deep breath. Come on, come on, spit it out you fugitive from reality.
‘You know I... you know I think I might have infected the boss? DCI Taylor?’
‘Yes, of course. I already wondered if that might have been part of your trouble. A lot of people close to others who died are blaming themselves, often wondering why they survived while others didn’t.’ A moment. That familiar, sympathetic look across the table. ‘You are not alone. And DCI Taylor was a busy officer, he would have come across many hundreds of people in the community...’
‘He was closest to –’
‘It does not matter. It is impossible to know how and when and where the DCI became infected. Your guilt is understandable, Tom, but please accept that there is no one else who will share your need to appropriate blame in this way.’
I swallow. Having blundered into the conversation, I really wasn’t expecting compassion. Certainly wasn’t looking for it. On the other hand, what did I think she’d say?
Lower my eyes, swallow again. Don’t cry, you fool. Now, come on, you started the conversation, and you didn’t do it because you wanted to talk about Taylor.
‘You heard the other thing I said?’ I ask, although I don’t actually manage to look at her.
A beat. The silence. She waits for me to lift my eyes. She reaches out and squeezes my hand.
‘You said many things, Tom,’ she says. ‘We do not need to talk about them.’
She pauses. Maybe she doesn’t pause. Maybe she just stops. Maybe that’s all that there is.
What was I looking for anyway? I love you too? I will tell Anders to return to Estonia, and you and I will be swimming naked together in icy waters by the weekend?
‘My husband is home. I have children. You and I need to work together, and neither of us is going anywhere. We should not talk of feelings, regardless of what they might be.’ A beat. I stare at her like a hopeless fool, waiting to see if there’s anything else. Waiting for the crumb to be thrown from the table.
There are no more crumbs, but she squeezes my hand again, everything said that had to be said, and then she elegantly drains her cup of coffee, nods at my cup for me to do the same, I obediently follow, and then together we get to our feet.
Well, I think we should not talk of feelings, regardless of what they might be, accompanied by the hand squeeze, more or less said my husband is home, and I really need to make this work, but for sure, I want you to take me over the desk, and one day, hopefully, that will happen.
And so we walk from the coffee shop back to the car, just as we’re getting booked for parking on a yellow line. She shows the traffic warden her ID, the guy is about to make a disparaging remark but, as has been well documented, Kallas is gorgeous with an occasional killer smile, and she uses it now, and he smiles with her, gives me a more grudging nod, and as the rain begins to fall on another bleak and miserable afternoon in autumnal Glasgow, we get back into the car. I stick Bob on the CD player – the near-seventeen-minute majesty of Murder Most Foul – and off we head back out into traffic.
‘I am not sure why this song exists,’ says Kallas, eight minutes later.
1930HRS.
ON THE BUTTON.
The guy who makes the sandwiches. A desk sergeant. The supervisor of the cleaners. Me. A constable I recognise, whose name I don’t know. Five others whose identities and job titles are unknown to me. The politician, who must not have thought his more regular channel would offer the requisite anonymity. DCI Barnard, who once I helped on a nationwide fraud case. A face I recognise, to which I can attach neither name nor job title.
Thirteen in total, sitting in an anonymous room at Police Scotland HQ in Dalmarnock. Thought there’d be more, but on the other hand, there are three of these meetings a day. Used by our people from all over the west of Scotland.
That’s who we are.
The sandwich guy is the main man. He’s just one in a group, arranged around three desks pushed together, but he stands out. Natural authority. The little conversation that there is dies away, and all it took was one glance from him at the clock above the door.
‘Thanks for coming,’ he says.
He looks around the table, his eyes settle on me.
Harrison is in the café. Drinking coffee, looking through bullying and harassment figures that came out of the last station-wide staff survey. Waiting for me. Made sure I got here, heading back to the station to eat pizza together at our desks afterwards.
His hands open. I like this guy. Speaks as little as possible. If only everyone was like this.
I swallow. Nervous, which is strange. I’m not usually nervous. I’ve been here before. And literally here, sitting in this room, doing this. This thing.
‘My name’s Tom,’ I say. Words up and out without any aforethought. It is after all, my name is Tom. How hard was that to say?
I pause. He looks at me.
You’ve come this far.
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
Curse of The Clown
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
Scenes from The Barbershop Floor
DS Hutton
The Unburied Dead
A Plague of Crows
The Blood That Stains Your Hands
See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
In My Time of Dying
DCI Jericho
We Are the Hanged Man
We Are Death
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
These Are The Stories We Tell
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
Cold September