Blood Tears (3 page)

‘So get a job.’ I suggest.

‘Billy won’t hear of it. He says no woman of his should go out to work.’

‘How delightfully unreconstructed of him.’

‘And meantime, he’s working all the hours to keep me in the style he’s accustomed to… and I’m miserable. Bored out of my tits.’

‘And lovely tits they are too,’ I give one a squeeze.

‘But what can I do? All I’m trained for is teaching… no way I’m going back to that.’

‘Why not? You were a good teacher.’ That was the impression she gave anyway.

‘Why not?  The wee shites made my life a misery. That’s why not.’

‘So what’re you going to do?’ I ask, not really looking for an answer.  I just want to sleep.

‘Don’t know.’

‘So think of something.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know, you’re the one who’s bored.’

‘Yeah and I’m bored with this conversation.’ Her hand slides down my chest and rests a millimetre from my groin. Heat jumps into my penis. I’m awake again.

‘Right, sleepy,’ an elbow in my ribs, ‘Time you made a decent woman of me.’

‘Mmmm.’

‘Ray McBain, will you move it!’

‘Oh Tess, can I not have another five minutes?’ I mumble into the pillow. I save this moniker for special occasions. Like this one, when I want to melt her heart, so she‘ll let me sleep.

‘Another five minutes and my foot will have to be surgically removed from your arse.’

My phone rings. Shrill and insistent. Saves me from an embarrassing medical procedure.

‘Uh?’ I manage.

‘McBain.’ The voice on the other end of the phone is a bucket of ice down my shorts.

I wake up instantly.

‘Yessir?’ It’s the high heidyin. My boss, David Campbell.

‘We’ve a dead body for you.  See if you can leave your lovely ladyboy and get your backside over here pronto.’

The body is safely in its bag by the time I arrive. Briefly sanitized, before the next part of the detection process can begin. There’s enough blood in the vicinity to hint that the deceased did not die of natural causes. We are in a small ex-local authority house. The attention lavished on this house and its neighbours hint at a pleasant, quiet place to live. A place where the inhabitants take pride in their ability to own their own home and make the best use of the excess funds they manage to borrow from their bank. I walk past the constable on point duty and through the front door.

Jim Peters is here and talking to the boss. And he looks as if he’s slept like the proverbial log. Bastard doesn’t even have the decency to suffer a hangover.

‘Right, Jim. What have we got so far?’ I give him a brief smile of acknowledgement. He looks at his watch before answering; a non-verbal comment on my apparent tardiness. I don’t say anything; I match his stare until his eyes drop from mine and I log it away for future reference. Don’t you just love office politics?

‘Elderly male, sir. Caucasian. Name of Patrick Connelly. Victim appears to have sustained multiple wounds. Wrists and feet pierced with sharp object. Stab wound on the right side of deceased’s chest. Ligature marks on his neck…’

‘And strange scratch marks around his forehead.’ I speak without realizing.

‘How the fuck did you know that?’

‘It’s the stigmata. You mentioned the wrists, feet and wound on the side. The next item on the list was the wounds on the forehead.’

‘Looks like we’ve a religious nutter on our hands,’ says the boss. ‘Let’s find this guy before he goes for a full crucifixion.’

A moan sounds from behind us. I turn and see a head of white hair just before I hear feet drum up the stairs.

I leave the room and follow the woman I expect to be the deceased’s wife. The stairs end at what appears to be the bathroom, judging by the tasteful sign on the door. Then a passage stretches along to my left, with another two doors off it. Loud sobbing allows me to open the correct door.

‘Sorry, sir.’ A young WPC is sitting on the edge of the bed, one arm around a small woman.

‘Mrs Connelly, I’m sorry you had to hear that.’ I glare at the WPC. She shouldn’t have let the woman come down the stairs.

‘It’s not Mrs, it’s Miss,’ comes from the small frame.

‘Miss Connelly is the deceased’s sister, sir,’ offers the WPC.

‘I can speak for myself, hen.’ She forces herself to sit up and visibly steels herself against any further displays of emotion.

‘Can we get you a cup of tea?’ I motion with my head for the constable to leave the tiny room. With three of us in it, I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.

‘If anybody else asks me that, I think I’ll scream.’ Her hair is pulled tight across her head and tied at the back. This has the effect of sharpening a nose that already looks as if it could be used to crochet. Her lips are almost non-existent, but what is there is painted bright red. Lipstick leaks from the straight line of her lips into the cracks radiating around her mouth, like rust. A bit early to be putting the war paint on, I think. She’s cradling a brown pipe in her hand. I don’t think it’s hers.

‘DI McBain. Mind if I sit down?’ I ask, aware that my size might intimidate her.

‘It’s a free country,’ is the sharp reply. So much for intimidation. I sit as far away from her on the bed as I can.

‘I won’t bite, you know.’ Tears are no longer in evidence. Miss Connelly has made a remarkable recovery.

‘How old was Patrick?’

‘Seventy-two. I was his big sister, by two years.’ She is staunchly in the camp of being proud of her age then.

‘Do you know of anyone who might want to kill your brother, Miss Connelly?’

‘Kill Paddy? I don’t know who would do such a thing. He might have been a miserable old bugger, but I didn’t think anyone would be driven to that extreme. Unless modelling yourself on Victor Meldrew has become a capital offence.’ I think again of how composed the woman before me has become. Then I notice the small hanky poking out from a tight fist. Blue veins and brown liver spots stand out in stark contrast to the tight, white knuckles. She is mourning, just in her own particular fashion.

I spot the crucifix above the bed and the statue of Our Lady, arms outstretched, on the dressing table.

‘You a Catholic, son?’

‘Once upon a time,’ I answered.

‘Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.’

‘Was Paddy a regular church-goer?’ I ignore her pointed comment.

‘Never missed it.’

‘Did he have many friends?’

‘Are your ears painted on? He was the spit of Victor Meldrew. People avoided the daft sod. He had… acquaintances.’

‘Acquaintances?’

‘Your ears are painted on, son. Acquaintances as in folk he bumped into now and again. Folk would normally speak to him only when cornered. They ran a mile when they saw him coming.’

‘Do you know of anyone who would want to do your brother harm?’

‘Jim Phillips at number 23. Our Patrick had his garden fork for well over a year. That’s about the only person I can think of that might be annoyed with him.’

‘A garden fork?’ People say some weird things when they are trying to find a frame of reference in their mind for an event as vast as this.

‘Aye, but you don’t know Jim Phillips. Treats that garden like it was his bairn.’ She paused and looked out of the small window. The view was a sky of concrete grey. Defiance, or whatever was keeping her in the conversation, fell away and before me I saw a small, frightened woman.

‘Miss Connelly, do you have somewhere you can go?’

‘They’re no’ putting me out of my home, son.’ Steel returned to her spine, but fear and fatigue pulled at the muscles of her face.

‘I’m not suggesting that it’s permanent, just until you can get someone in to clean the place. It’ll be some while until we’re finished examining your home. You don’t want to have to face that every day and it would help us find the killer faster if we have a free rein in the house.’ I don’t have to ask, but it feels like the right thing to do.

‘Aye, you’re right, son. I wasn’t thinking. Our Agnes has a house down in Ayr. I’ll give her a phone and ask if I can sleep in her spare room for a wee while.’

‘Be sure to give the female constable a note of where Agnes stays, so we can keep in touch with you.’

‘Aye.’ She looked deep into my eyes. ‘You’ll find him, son. Won’t you? Patrick was a miserable old git, but he didn’t deserve this. You’ll get him won’t you?’ Her hand gripped at my sleeve.

Back at the station, the shift has gathered to hear the news. I’m standing waiting for the din to die down. Everyone’s talking about last night. A good time was had by all, if the noise of the chatter is anything to go by.

There’s a box of cakes on the table in front of me. Must be somebody’s birthday.

‘Okay, folks. Rein it in. Time to review what’s happened this morning. Peters was first on the scene.’ Against my better judgement, I give him his place. ‘Tell everyone what we know.’

As Peters reviews the facts we’d determined so far, my mind chases ahead of him. Had Connelly been killed where his body had been found, or was the kill zone elsewhere? The spray of blood should indicate the murder was committed in the victim’s home… and the amount of blood indicates the wounds were inflicted before death.

The sick bastard wanted the old man to suffer.

He must have made some noise as those wounds were inflicted.  Surely his sister would have heard and come to investigate? Unless they’d been carried out post-mortem… which I'm sure wasn’t how it happened. She must have cuddled up in bed with a tub of Temazepam. If he wasn’t killed there, then where? And how did the killer get him back inside his home without waking up Miss Connelly? Unless she was the killer. Nah. No way. She appeared way too frail to be able to carry out a crime like that.

‘Stigmata?’ I hear someone ask.

Peters looks at me. ‘You’re the expert, sir.’

‘For those of you who didn’t see the film of the same name… it’s a religious… thing. It refers to the wounds that Christ received on the cross.’

‘Did the killer not get it wrong then, sir?’ asks Daryl Drain, chewing a pen. ‘The wounds were on the wrists, not the deceased’s hands.’

‘No, in fact the scholars would say he got it dead right. Religious artefacts usually depict the wounds on the palms of Christ’s hands. But there is an argument that if he was hung from a cross by nails piercing the palms of his hands, his weight would have pulled him off the wood. Nails through the wrists, however, would have better supported his weight on the cross. Stronger formation of bones.’

‘Where did you pick up that little titbit of information, sir?’ asks Harkness.

‘Let’s just say I had a misspent youth,’ I answer. In the convent orphanage. A child of nine or ten, I read of the saints who displayed these marks and was deeply impressed. I wanted them too and went as far as drawing them on with a red pen.

Sister Mary dumped me in a bath straight away, after boxing my ears. As she scrubbed my flesh with a nailbrush to get rid of the marks, she called me a thousand different kinds of heathen, each one punctuated by another knock on the head. She was disgusted that I would mock the saints in such a way. But my ambitions were far higher than mere mockery. I wanted to become one. In the world of black and white that is a child’s, I couldn’t hear enough stories of these men and women who were good enough to receive the ultimate sign of their piety. We were fed religious dogma with our porridge. In that environment, what impressionable child wouldn’t want to earn their place in heaven, while wearing the marks that proved their eligibility?

‘Okay guys, let’s do some digging.’ I shout over the suggestions as to exactly how I’d misspent my youth, ‘A man has just been horribly killed. Drain, you look into Mr Connelly’s past. I want a complete biography. Rossi and Harkness, door to door around the neighbourhood. Find out if anyone saw something on the night of the murder. Peters, see if you can piece together a timetable of Mr Connelly’s movements for the few hours preceding his death.’

‘One last thing, people,’ I kept my expression grim, and then looked down at the cakes, ‘I’m on the Empire Biscuit.’ It won’t kill me. I’ll start the diet for real on Monday. 

The lock eventually gives. Allessandra kicks the door open and bends to pick up her food shopping bought at TV dinner heaven. She’d received a text from Roberto earlier in the day:

Working late, babes. Don’t stay up. xxx.

She shrugged and thought; what’s new?

Belly full, a cool-ish glass of Sauvignon Blanc in her hand and legs tucked under her on the sofa, she allows her body to relax. A smile of satisfaction forms on her face. Excellent. She’s involved in another murder case. If she does a good job here, who knows where it could lead?

She enjoyed the door to door exercise. It felt like she was doing real police work. Although Harky had a face on him. A face that suggested he’d been stung on his wee man by a wasp. Mind you, none of the neighbours were very helpful. The deceased was a quiet old chap. Never as much as bothered a fly. Kept mostly to himself. And no, they didn’t hear a noise the night he died.

Allessandra didn’t do much talking, she simply observed Dave Harkness at work. He had been in the job for twenty years; surely there was something she could learn from him. Not that there was much on show; a house to house investigation in a self-respecting working class neighbourhood wasn’t going to show up much of the city’s underclass.

At least they got a laugh when Mrs Jamieson at number 42 came to the door minus her false teeth. Throughout the interview, her husband hissed at her to go and put her teeth in, but she was so excited to have such an event on her doorstep she ignored him. When it became clear to them that the couple knew nothing, they made to leave.

‘So whit happened, hen?’ Mrs Jamieson mashed each word out of her gummy mouth. ‘How did the old bugger die?’

‘We can’t be certain of that yet, madam,’ answered Harky with a warning look to Rossi. ‘We have still to perform an autopsy.’

‘Oh. Just like they do on the telly.’ She hugged herself with a rubber-necker’s glee. ‘Just like that
CSI
?’ she sprayed over Harky’s face.