Two things struck Alice Rice as she walked through the doors of the Abbey Park Lodge in search of Una Reid. The first was the unnatural warmth of the place, enveloping her like a soft blanket, and the second was the institutional smell. Her nose told her that it was composed of a blend of yesterday’s mince, floral air freshener and stale human urine, and in the competition between the three ingredients the last emerged as a clear victor. Initially, she attempted to make the supply of fresh air in her lungs last unnaturally long, but by the time she reached the bottom of the main stair they were crying out for oxygen and she had no alternative but to breathe in and inhale the place’s foetid atmosphere.
Entering the residents’ lounge, she almost walked into a paper banner which hung loosely from one side of the room to the other, proclaiming in huge, multi-coloured letters, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RHONA’. As she stood in front of it, a female resident sidled up to her, looked timidly into her eyes, and then, unexpectedly, grasped her hand and began pulling her towards the Formica-topped table at one end of the room.
Seated at it were five elderly women, three of them fast asleep with their chins resting on their bony chests, another one apparently awake but staring blankly into the middle distance. The last was cleaning her paintbrush by sucking it in her toothless mouth. A male care assistant was busily engaged in painting a giant birthday card, dipping his brush in and out of the paint pots, apparently oblivious to the fact that most of his helpers had dozed off. Assuming she was related to the resident clasping her hand, he gave Alice a friendly nod and began sprinkling glitter on the lettering of the homemade card.
‘Excuse me,’ Alice began, ‘but I’ve come to see Una Reid, could you tell me where I’d find her?’ As she spoke, she tried to free herself from her captor, but the bony hand was immovable.
‘Aye,’ answered the attendant, blowing away loose sparkles before turning his attention to the stranger, ‘she’s… ah,’ he hesitated as the last specks flew off the table and onto the floor, ‘she’s giving Miss Swire her tea.’
Thanking him, Alice turned to leave the group, but found that she was unable to do so, the old lady still firmly attached to her and leaning back on her heels, straining to prevent any escape. Seeing Alice’s discomfort and realising his own mistake, the assistant said, ‘Come on now, Betty, let the nice lady go.’
Betty, however, had no intention of releasing her new friend, and making her defiance plain, simply clamped her other hand over Alice’s already entrapped one.
‘Maybe she could just go with you as far as Miss Swire’s door?’ the assistant asked tentatively. His attention was now divided, as he busied himself doing up the buttons on the blouse of his nearest neighbour, as she resolutely and as quickly unbuttoned them.
‘Aye, I’ll just come along to Miss Swire’s ro…’ Betty declared, ready to go, but before she had finished her sentence, an over-vigorous movement on the part of the yellow-lipped painter sent the paint-water jar crashing on its side, flooding the table and ruining the card. Within seconds, the thin khaki liquid began to drip over the edge of the Formica onto the laps of those sitting at it.
Alice silently nodded to the assistant. After all, he only had one pair of hands and the air was now filled with shrill cries of horror, as the three sleepers were woken by the cold water pouring onto their sunken laps. One of them, her hair scraped back into a sparse bun, began shouting, over and over, ‘Stop it! Stop it now! Stop it! Stop it now!’ staring at the water, ordering it to cease flowing and stand still.
Edging together along the low corridor, Betty’s tottering gait dictating their speed, Alice and her companion finally reached Miss Swire’s bedroom door. Pinned onto it, as a reminder that the past had been different, were a couple of photographs of the resident in her youth. The largest one showed her wielding a golf club and beaming happily at the camera, and in a smaller picture she was in an academic gown, distributing prizes at the school she had been headmistress of for almost quarter of a century. As Alice was examining it, at the same time trying to work out the best way to free herself, Betty pushed the door open with her forehead and, still hand in hand with her victim, began to walk into the room jerking her reluctant companion with her.
‘Betty! Who’ve you got wi’ you now?’ an exasperated female voice asked, and as Alice stumbled into the room, she saw another care assistant, a stout, sandy blonde with a pitted complexion, standing beside the bed, tilting a spoon into the bloodless lips of its occupant, Miss Swire. The old schoolteacher herself registered nothing on the entrance of the uninvited pair, continuing to chew mechanically while looking beseechingly into her feeder’s eyes, like a nestling begging a worm from its parent. Gently catching a drip that had begun to weave its way down from Miss Swire’s puckered mouth, Una Reid shook her head fondly at Betty and asked Alice, in a nicotine-ravaged voice, if she had come to see Miss Swire.
‘No,’ Alice began. ‘You. I was looking for you, if you’re Una Reid?’
‘Aha, I am, yes,’ the woman croaked back, now patting the resident’s bluish lips with a napkin, cleaning off a tidemark of tomato soup.
‘Could I talk to you? I’m from Lothian & Borders Police, Detective Alice Rice. I’d like to ask you some questions about Gavin Brodie.’
‘Aha,’ Una replied, sounding slightly distracted. After offering a fork full of potato to Miss Swire, she added, ‘It’ll hae tae be in here, mind. We’re short-staffed the day, an’ I’ve another three ladies tae give their teas before seven o’ clock.’
Moving towards an empty seat, and gesturing for Betty to sit on it, Alice said, ‘As you’ll know, Gavin Brodie was murdered on Saturday night, and I understand that you saw him on that date. You may, in fact, have been the last person to see him alive.’
‘Is that right?’ Una cut in, apparently unperturbed by the thought.
‘Can you tell me what you did for him, on the Saturday?’
‘Just the same as I always done. I gi’ed him his tea at aboot seven, then I gi’ed him a wee bed bath an’ changed his PJs.’
‘When exactly did you leave him?’
‘Eight o’ clock, mebbe, ten past eight, somethin’ like that.’
‘Which door did you leave by?’
‘The front.’
‘Did you check that the back door was locked before you left?’
‘Naw, I never. I never done, that wasnae pairt o’ ma job. Why would I?’
‘How did Mr Brodie seem when you left him?’
‘Like he always done. Moanin’ awa’ tae himsel’. He wis unhappy, cross… greetin’ tae himsel’.’
‘When you were with him, did anyone else come to see him or phone him?’
‘Naw,’ the assistant said, putting the fork back on the plate in recognition of defeat. Miss Swire’s tightly closed teeth had barred its passage.
‘Are you aware whether anyone else saw him after you left?’
‘D’ye mean Mrs Brodie?’
‘Anyone at all.’
‘Well, she will hae, won’t she, whenever she got in. She wis the wan who left a message tae tell me that I neednae come in, oan the Sunday morning like. That’s how I wis able to see my friends in Aberdeen early.’
‘One last thing, Mrs Reid. Can you tell me what you gave Mr Brodie for his tea on the Saturday night?’
‘Aha.’
‘Could you tell me what it was?’
‘Why do youse need tae ken?’ the woman asked, pulling the foil lid from a chocolate mousse pot and then licking it herself.
‘Because we do.’
‘Yes, but why?’ The policewoman’s answer had not been good enough.
‘Because… because we just do,’ Alice snapped, suddenly feeling impatient in the stifling, smelly heat, with Betty’s arthritic fingers gripping her own tightly. She was longing to get back into the fresh air, back into life and away from the place. And as if sensing her tension, Betty began gently stroking her captive’s hand as if comforting a frightened bird.
‘Aha, but why?’ Una Reid repeated, unpersuaded, wafting a teaspoon of the mousse to and fro below Miss Swire’s nose, as if the scent of chocolate might tempt her to open her mouth.
‘Because we just do, alright? For the purposes of our investigation into the man’s murder.’
‘Okay doaky, doll. It wis Heinz’s lentil soup. Just a wee pickle, all he’d ever take.’ Una tried one final time to tempt the old lady to eat, and, defeated, put the dripping spoon into her own mouth.
As Alice moved towards the door, Betty began to move with her until the policewoman stopped and, looking into the old lady’s eyes, gently tried to prize one of the gnarled fingers free from her own. Instantly the grip tightened once more and Betty began to shake with the effort of maintaining it. Seeing Alice’s unsuccessful attempt and look of despair, Una Reid grinned at her, then clapped her red hands loudly and said ‘BINGO!’ Instantly, Betty released her hold, glanced at her wrist-watch, then sped out of the door in the direction of the residents’ lounge.
‘Why didn’t you do that earlier – when we came in?’ Alice asked, mildly amused at the strategy and massaging her freed fingers.
‘Because it wasnae 6.30, dear. The game doesnae start until 6.30.’
Once back home in her flat in Broughton Place for the night, Alice picked up her dog, Quill, from her neighbours. Mrs Foscetti and Miss Spinnell were a pair of octogenarian twins. The younger by a few minutes, Miss Spinnell, suffered from Alzheimer’s, but was utterly devoted to the mongrel, and the pair of them were his day-time keepers.
Having first fed Quill, Alice set to work at speed, expecting Ian to return at any minute, putting his favourite food in the oven and running a bath. A birthday dip with him would have been perfect, had been her plan all along. But as time wore on and he failed to appear, she had it herself, the water now tepid, downing a couple of glasses of wine to keep her spirits up. Before she knew it half of the bottle had gone.
By the time she got out of the bath, all the dozens of candles she had lit, covering every free surface in the flat, were beginning to gutter, pools of hot wax dripping from them, deforming them and making them overflow their saucers. There were no spares left to replace them with, and the electric light seemed discordant, too unmagical in comparison.
She tried Ian on his mobile phone again, but as before, it had been switched off. Then, to cap it all, she noticed a strange smell, and she inhaled deeply, trying to identify it, uncertain what it could be. A loud bleeping began as the smoke alarm went off. Feeling slightly dizzy between the drink and tiredness, she walked slowly to the kitchen.
The pastry on the butcher’s steak pie was burnt black, and the baked potatoes were no more than carbonised shells, crumbling when touched. She tossed the lot into the bin, thinking the evening could still be saved if she rushed to the nearby Indian takeaway for a banquet, but first of all the alarm would have to be silenced.
Standing on a chair she prodded the white plastic casing with a broom handle, trying to locate an ‘off’ button with it, but becoming impatient, she thumped it over-vigorously and part of the casing broke. It hung uselessly from the ceiling, showering her with a fine spray of black dust as it fell. But its innards continued to flash and shriek.
Hearing a loud knocking at the door, Alice leapt off the chair, believing it to be Ian, thinking that perhaps he had left without his keys that morning. Instead she was greeted by Mrs Foscetti, her sister peeping wide-eyed out of the nearby, half-closed door of their flat.
‘We’ve had smoke coming into our house, and the alarm’s gone off. Perhaps there’s a fire here? Hadn’t we all better evacuate the building, dear?’ Mrs Foscetti asked, calmly.
‘It’s in my house, the fire… except it’s not,’ Alice said, coming out onto the landing and beginning to explain.
‘In your house? Then for Heaven’s sake, get Quill!’ Miss Spinnell shouted, gesturing impatiently with her good hand for her neighbour to go back into the burning flat. Alice explained again that it was a false alarm, that they were not all at risk of imminent immolation, and apologised profusely. Then she turned, intending to go back in, snatch her wallet and rush off to the Taj Mahal.
‘We’ve a window pole. That might do the trick and incapacitate the alarm,’ said Mrs Foscetti, jabbing an imaginary pole at an imaginary ceiling.
‘What’s happened to your face?’ Miss Spinnell asked, bemused, coming nearer and pointing at Alice, ‘you look like a darkie!’
‘Sshh’ Mrs Foscetti said sharply, embarrassed both by her sister’s use of the term, and her frankness in making such a personal comment.
‘A blackie…’ Miss Spinnell murmured to herself, ‘inky… a coalface,’ her voice petering out in thought.
Alice put her hand up to her cheek, and when she examined her fingers she found they were thickly covered in soot.
‘Listen,’ Miss Spinnell said mysteriously.
‘To what?’ her sister asked.
‘The silence…’
The alarm had switched itself off.
Once in the flat again, disconsolate that everything was going so wrong and desperate for something to eat, Alice washed her face in the basin, producing black smears on it as she did so. And while she was trying to clean herself, Ian Melville walked in, a huge bunch of freesias in his hand.
‘I’m so sorry…’ she began, knowing before she had even started speaking that as she explained all the mishaps, the candles going out, the burnt food, the alarm going off and everything else, all of them would, even in combination, sound inadequate, an insufficient excuse for a presentless, celebrationless birthday. Even pleading the pressures of a murder investigation seemed too tired, too weak an explanation in her own ears, never mind his. If only he had been on sodding time though, she thought, but it seemed a churlish justification, better left unexpressed. He had red paint on the side of his face, and, as was often the case, on his hands too.
‘So we’ve nothing to eat, eh… Sooty?’
‘I think perhaps you mean Black Beauty…’ she stopped, suddenly remembering that Black Beauty was a horse. She racked her brain to think of a suitable insult in return, but, drink-befuddled and exhausted, found all inspiration gone.
‘Perhaps we should be flexible, change the plan, and just have a bath instead?’ he said, smiling, his red fingers already hovering over the top buttons of her blouse. She nodded, only too pleased at the suggestion.
As she lay down in the warm water, letting it lap over her and beginning to relax, he disappeared, returning with a single candle. Just as he climbed in beside her, soap in hand, intoxicated by the thought of their evening together, the ring-tone of her phone shattered their peace.
‘Leave it,’ he said.
She looked at him and shook her head.
‘Please, Alice, just this time. It is my birthday. Please, please, don’t answer.’
‘I have to.’ It was pointless to explain. There would be nothing new to say, nothing that she had not said too many times before. By now he should understand.
DI Manson walked into his own front hall. He threw his overcoat over the banisters, his body aching, feeling work-soiled and drained. Glancing through the living-room door, he was dazzled by the blue and red lights blinking on the Christmas tree, then noticed a partly completed jigsaw on a tray on the coffee table. The radio was broadcasting a carol service from somewhere, and a woman’s low voice, emanating from the kitchen, was accompanying the choir in ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’. He entered the warm room, hoping that Margaret would be there and on her own, but instead he found one of her friends, singing to herself, busy removing his dinner from the oven.
‘Where’s Margaret?’ he asked, feeling too tired to face any food.
‘Upstairs with the girls.’
‘What’s she doing?’
‘Never you mind, love. Just get that down you,’ she answered, placing a plate of some green tagliatelle mixture in front of him. ‘I’ll keep you company, while you eat.’
He rose from the table, pushing the dish to one side, determined to see his wife and to rid his house of the coven that seemed to have taken up residence in it for the last few days. Suddenly, Margaret came racing into the room, his mobile clamped to her ear.
‘It’s Elaine,’ she whispered. ‘You left your phone in your coat. Here you are…’
‘Ma’am,’ he said, trying to force himself back into work-mode and summon some vitality from somewhere.
‘Go to Saxe-Coburg Street now. Someone from Criminal Intelligence has just been in contact. There’s been an incident there, a sort of break-in, I don’t have all the details, except that it’s an invalid’s house. I’ll tell you when I see you there, OK? Alice is already on her way. A constable’s just picked her up.’
‘Right,’ he replied, moving towards the door.
‘You don’t have to go now, do you pet? What about your tea?’ a concerned voice asked. But he did not feel the need to respond, because it was not Margaret speaking.
The man was chittering, trembling like a frightened dog, his whole body convulsed by continuous wave after wave of involuntary movement, as if it no longer belonged to him, but had been possessed by fear. Elaine Bell pulled up a seat opposite his wheelchair, looking into his anguished face, her eyes now level with his own.
‘Can you tell us what happened, Mr Anderson?’
He said nothing, then his lower lip jutted out as if he was about to burst into tears, and he gave a low, vulpine moan. His carer leant over him and took one of his hands in hers, squeezing it gently between her fingers.
‘Come on, pal, just tell them what you told me.’
The man nodded, lip still protruding, then began to speak, a slow babble of sounds issuing from his mouth, each word slurred and jostling with the next to form a single stream of incomprehensible noise.
Alice caught the DCI’s eye and Elaine Bell shook her head, her expression one of bafflement. Eric Manson was staring at the man’s mouth as if by looking at it for long enough, or hard enough, he might somehow acquire the art of lip reading. After speaking for a further thirty seconds or so, the man fell silent. His carer sighed and said, ‘See? Just like what I told the constable earlier. What a bastard! You wouldn’t believe it, would you?’
‘Sorry. Sorry…’ Elaine Bell replied. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t catch a single word he said. Could we try again?’
The invalid repeated his story, pausing every so often to look quizzically at the police officers, checking whether they could understand him. But again the noise that he made sounded entirely alien, reminiscent of a record playing at the wrong speed, far too slowly.
‘Dreadful, eh?’ the carer said, an expression of outrage on her face and her hands clenched pugnaciously on her broad hips.
‘Diane, perhaps, just for the moment, you could translate for us, tell us what he said?’ the DCI asked, rubbing her eyes with her fingers, desperate to find out what had happened and to be able to start the investigation.
‘Well…’ Diane began, ‘Ron said that he was in his bed – he goes early like, I put him into his bed – he was in it, nearly asleep, and he heard a noise so he opened his eyes. He’d had a pill…’
‘A sleeping pill, you’d given him a sleeping pill?’
‘Aye. He opened his eyes and saw a man in his room, prowling about like. Picking up his things, even had a wee go in his wheelchair, using the joystick and everything. Well, the man comes over…’
A strange honking sound drowned out her voice, as the invalid joined in, gesticulating excitedly and jabbing the air with his right hand. Just at that moment the spin cycle on the washing machine started up, drowning their words with a high pitched whine.
‘Unbelievable, eh?’ Diane said, her eyes wide.
‘What – what’s unbelievable?’ Elaine Bell asked, trying to control her impatience with the woman and the background noise.
‘To do that – to do that to anybuddy.’
‘To do what! You’ll have to tell us, we can’t understand him, remember,’ the DCI snapped, her voice raised, ensuring she was audible over the loud whine, losing the battle for manners.
‘Oh, aye. Right. The man came over and he’d a long knife in his hand.’ Diane stopped speaking as the racket from the machine continued, now punctuated by an occasional clicking sound as a loose coin revolved in the drum.
‘Then what? Then what?’ Elaine Bell almost screamed.
‘Then… well, I must have come in, I think, back into the flat. I’d left my bag behind in the kitchen so I came back for it. The key had gone from under the mat but the door was still open. I came in, picked it up, then I heard Ron shouting, shouting my name, shouting out what had happened to him. I was the one dialled 999.’
‘Did you check the flat to make sure he’d gone?’ Eric Manson enquired, looking all around the room, and then, with a sigh of irritation, turning off the switch for the washing machine.
‘It’d no’ quite finished,’ Diane said, looking annoyed.
‘Did you check…’ the Inspector repeated, his hand still on the switch.
‘Oh, aye. Looked a’ ower the place, but the man had gone. Out the door, I suppose.’
‘What did he look like?’ Elaine Bell asked.
Immediately, Ron Anderson began to speak again, his head moving excitedly. Diane made no attempt to translate, so the DCI said, ‘Well, what did he say?’
‘He said it was dark, and he was half asleep, but it was a big fellow, heavy-made like.’
‘Did the man say anything?’ Alice asked.
Once again the invalid replied, his eyes darting from one to the other, as if expecting that they would understand the language of his eyes, if not his mouth.
‘Diane? Translate for us, for Christ’s sake!’
‘He said… the man talked a lot – not really to him, though, more mutterin’ to himself.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Ron said he stank. Reekin’ like bath-time, or a baby or something.’
‘It’s him,’ Alice said, ‘it must be.’
‘Who?’ the DCI demanded.
‘Norman Clerk. It must be him. Fat, arguing with himself, with the voice in his head. And when Tom and I saw him, in his flat, he smelt – I can smell it in here, now, too. Baby powder. It must be him.’
While Eric Manson searched Clerk’s odiferous bedroom, she scurried around the rest of the flat, looking behind curtains, into cubby-holes, anywhere and everywhere that anyone could hide. In the bathroom, through her haste, she accidentally pulled down the shower curtain, exposing an array of tall cannabis plants in the old enamel bath, each flowerpot resting on a layer of damp newspaper. Spiders’ webs hung from the bath taps and a chain dangled against the side, plugless and rusty. On the nearby cistern were the man’s toiletries: a tin of Johnson’s Baby Powder, a razor and dusty toothbrush. Four unopened packets of Risperdal lay beside them.
‘There’s a loft, I’m going into it,’ Manson shouted, followed by the sound of a Ramsay ladder being unlatched and hauled down.
Alice returned to the kitchen, pulling open the doors of the units and peering inside a musty-smelling broom cupboard, double-checking the places she had already looked in her desperation. Suddenly she remembered that Clerk’s brother lived on the bottom floor of the tenement. Maybe he was hiding down there.
‘Sir – Sir, I’m going to check flat number three on the ground floor, Clerk’s brother’s place.’
There was no answer, but she could hear her colleague’s heavy footfalls above her, see the plaster vibrate slightly as he clambered about on the rafters.
After racing down the three flights of stairs, she arrived out of breath in the entrance hall, pressed the bell marked ‘R. Clerk’ and waited for someone to answer it. Nothing happened, so she pressed again, harder this time, keeping her finger on it to produce a single continuous, insistent ring. Once more there was no response. In her impatience, she gave the scuffed grey door a slight push and it opened. In less than a second she had decided to go in, search warrant or no search warrant.
The place was in darkness, lit only by the faint orange glow of the streetlights outside. She padded about, going from room to room and giving each a hasty check. Finally, only one door remained, and from behind it came loud, intermittent snores which vibrated in the air and sounded like a chainsaw starting, revving up and then cutting out.
As she came in she was able to make out the vast bulk of Robert Clerk on a brass bedstead, his barrel-like torso rising and falling with each noisy breath and one pale foot protruding from below his duvet. The space under the bed was hidden by a thick, candlewick bedspread which lay in folds on the carpeted floor. Just as Alice was about to tiptoe away, one of the corners of the bedspread moved slightly, as if a mouse was trying to escape from beneath it.
Holding her breath, she waited and watched, and once again the material twitched. Her heart now racing, she stepped towards the bed, and as she did so, Robert Clerk let out a loud groan, startling her and stopping her in her tracks. Trying to keep calm, she stared at him, but he remained fast asleep.
Very carefully, she picked up one of the bottom edges of the bedspread and began to raise it. As she bent forward to look underneath the bed, a sweet smell hit her nostrils. Just as she realised what it was, a hand shot out, grabbing her hair, wrenching its roots and pulling her towards the ground. As she fell forward, Norman Clerk hooked his arm around her neck, pulling her face towards him, pressing her hard against his chest and suffocating her in the folds of his flesh.
She cried out but nothing came, her voice absorbed, muffled by his solid bulk. Keeping his grip with one arm despite her scrabbling hands trying to break it, he used his left hand to grind his knuckles back and forth in her eye-socket. The pain was excruciating, like a red-hot arrow piercing her eyeball. Its sharpness shocked her, revitalised her.
Suddenly, the thought that she might die by the hands of a creature such as him, an unwashed, pink Buddha-like thing, infuriated her. It seemed like a grotesque impertinence. Enraged at the very idea, and using every ounce of her remaining strength, she smashed her thigh up between his legs, her hard flesh hitting his soft flesh, feeling him instantly loosen his hold on her.
He groaned, recoiling from her, fell and doubled up, foetus-like, on the ground beside her, his hands now protecting his battered genitalia from any further attack. Aware once more of the sharp pain in her eye, her bruised scalp and with the disgusting scent of his rank, powdered flesh in her nostrils, she was sorely tempted to give him another kick for good measure. But the sound of a prolonged, pig-like grunt distracted her, and as Eric Manson strode in she watched Robert Clerk’s eyelids flutter as he snored on, oblivious to everything around him in his untroubled, drugged sleep.
The young psychiatrist who arrived from the Royal Edinburgh had never had to carry out such an assessment before, but he was secretly pleased to be called upon to do it. Seeing his smooth, rosy cheeks and bright eyes, Elaine Bell’s spirits rose too. This beginner should pose no problems.
‘It’s largely a formality. We just need you to speak to the man, check him out, make sure he’s fit for interview. He was in Carstairs and he may have committed a murder, so there’s a degree of urgency about the business as you’ll appreciate.’ She spoke conspiratorially to him as if he would, indeed, understand the need for urgency, looking him directly in the eye to emphasize the point. And the young man nodded, saying nothing by way of reply but seeming gratifyingly eager to please her.
The social worker who had picked the short straw and found himself allocated to assist Clerk as an ‘appropriate adult’, passed them in the corridor, making his way to the interview room in the company of a WPC. Recognising him, the DCI knew that their luck was holding, because the man was an unashamed time-server, his ideals lost long ago along with most of his hair. He was one of those raw-boned, denim-clad, northern Irishmen who had seen it all, tried to mend the world, failed, and finally discovered that their well of compassion was not quite bottomless after all. So, Pat could be relied upon. Usually he sat quietly in interviews, filling in the forms, no longer even attempting to hide his impatience, his desire to get back to the office to ‘process’ his remaining cases. His attitude was commendably simple: if they were fit to interview, they were fit to interview, and therefore his presence was a mere formality. This time, all he would be thinking about would be getting back to his bed.
After an hour had passed and Dr Tynan still remained closeted with their suspect, Elaine Bell listened at the door, then knocked loudly on it. She peered round it and said, breezily, but with a slight edge in her voice, ‘Nearly finished in here?’
‘It’s up to you,’ Clerk replied, brushing dust and fluff off the elbows of his pink pullover. ‘I know I am.’
‘Well,’ the young man began, ‘I’m finding it diff…’ Then he thought better of speaking in front of his interviewee, smiled at him and left the room. Sounding slightly agitated, he said to the Chief Inspector, ‘To do this properly, I really ought to see his records – from Carstairs, I mean.’
‘Nonsense,’ Elaine Bell replied, a fixed smile on her face. ‘It’s his fitness now that we have to be satisfied about. The records will provide his history, granted, but really it’s his present state that concerns us. And it could delay everything significantly…’
‘Yes,‘Dr Tynan began, ‘but I really ought to see them if…’
Elaine Bell interrupted him, speaking sternly. ‘I had the advantage of exchanging a few words with Mr Clerk a little earlier. Then he seemed entirely lucid, rational, orientated in time and space; he did not appear to be remotely delusional, or confused. It’s unlikely that anything’s changed between now and then, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Well, yes, I would, but it would still be better if…’
‘Dr Tynan, I did explain to you when you first arrived that there is a degree of urgency in this case, didn’t I? This man may have cut somebody’s throat, so time is of the essence. So far you’ve had…’ she looked at her watch, ‘over one hour to satisfy yourself. Your colleague, Dr Lowell, who we know well, usually manages to wrap things up in forty minutes, sometimes less. Would another five minutes be sufficient?’
‘Erm… yes,’ Dr Tynan said, cowed and overawed by the woman’s certainty, and sufficiently undermined by her manner to wonder if it had been reasonable, after all, to consider checking the records. Perhaps that was never normally done in these kinds of cases?
When Norman Clerk was introduced to the social worker and told that Pat would help him with the interview, make sure he understood what was going on, ensure that his interests were protected, he looked at his ‘helper’, held out his hand towards him and said, delightedly, ‘All for me? You shouldn’t have bothered.’
‘My pleasure,’ Pat said under his breath, shaking his head and returning his attention to his newspaper.
Once seated at the table in the interview room, Clerk busied himself straightening a stray paper clip, then used the jagged bit of wire to clean the dirt from beneath his fingernails. Eric Manson entered the room, his entry logged on the tape by Elaine Bell, sniffed the air and immediately opened a window.
‘Too warm, officer?’ Clerk asked, adding, ‘me, too, thanks, I’m roasting… toasted.’
‘Can you tell us what you were doing in Ron Anderson’s flat in Saxe Coburg Street, earlier tonight?’ Elaine Bell asked, gesturing for her Inspector to take the seat beside her.
‘Looking around… I was just looking around it,’ he replied airily, extending his fingers in front of his face as if he had just had a manicure, examining them, his tongue poking out as if in concentration.
‘How did you get access to his premises?’
‘With a key – with a key.’
‘And how did you get the key?’
‘From under the mat, dear Lilah, dear Lilah,’ he sang, putting down the paper-clip and looking the Chief Inspector in the face for the first time.
‘What were you doing with the knife in the man’s bedroom?’
For a split-second Clerk was unable to disguise his surprise at the question, then he pursed his lips and said, ‘Making a casserole. No, really… what was I doing with the knife? Nothing. I just picked it up. Indeed, I picked up quite a few things – a silver ashtray, a Chinese vase, a packet of chocolate buttons. No harm in picking things up and putting them down again, now is there?’ He nodded several times, as if convinced by his own answer.
‘And what were you doing concealed under your brother’s bed when Sergeant Rice found you?’ Eric Manson asked, leaning menacingly towards the man, annoyed by his flippant manner.
‘Hiding,’ he replied playfully, twiddling with his hair, then shuddering and removing a dead fly from it.
‘Hiding from what?’
‘From the intruder, of course! I heard noises, the sound of someone else in the flat, so I ducked for cover. Who wouldn’t?’
‘And you attacked her because?’ Elaine Bell said, knowing already what his answer would be.
‘Because… because… well, wouldn’t you have done the same? An intruder comes into your flat – well, your brother’s flat… he’s an invalid, he can do nothing. Would you wait to be attacked? Indeed, I think not.’
‘OK,’ Elaine Bell said, leaning against the closed door of the now empty interview room. ‘A good night’s work. Bed now. But I’ll want you back here first thing. Both of you. Is your eye alright, Alice?’
‘Actually, it’s bloody painful, but I can still see out of it. It’s just bruising, I think. In a couple of hours I’ll look as if I’ve taken on Mike Tyson – and lost.’
‘Fine. Clerk will be in court in the morning for battering you, Alice, and for entering Anderson’s home. We’ll oppose bail. With the search warrant we’ll pull his flat to pieces. We’ll take the cannabis plants and hopefully find something of Brodie’s, a memento perhaps. That would give us enough to charge him with the man’s murder. Eric, you go with Ally Livingstone to the Dean Bridge, everything’s already tee’d up there for 11 am. See what you can find, eh?’
‘Aye, aye, Ma’am.’
Returning to her room, the DCI moved a sheaf of papers towards the back of her desk, clearing a space for the cushion she intended to place there for her head. A single sheet fell off the pile and she picked it up. It was a note in Alistair Watt’s cramped hand that she had not noticed before;
‘Dave from the Lab phoned at 4 pm. We’re to get the report on India Street tomorrow. Also Prof McConnachie’s coming to see you, he thinks he’ll be at St Leonard’s at about 3 pm. Don’t know what about. He wouldn’t tell me over the phone.’