Blood Tears (30 page)

Dogs are barking, people are shouting and feet are drumming as I chase McCall through the back gardens. The bastard is fast. And fit. I can hear his taunts.

‘Keep up, prick!’

‘Where’s that fuckin’ herd o’ elephants?’

Each insult is punctuated with a hysterical, high-pitched giggle. He sounds like he’s got energy to spare, while I’m starting to tire. We’ve been running for what feels like hours, but is probably only thirty minutes. Here’s me thinking  I was fit as well. But I’m running faster than normal and I have the added problem of anger. His shouts are really starting to piss me off. If I catch the bastard he’ll wish the nuns had forced his mother to abort.

There’s no point in shouting back at him, it will just burst my lungs. I need to concentrate on where McCall is going. He’s not too far ahead of me. I can hear his feet and occasionally catch a glimpse of his head as he enters a nimbus of light from people’s kitchen windows and the odd streetlight that is still working. Here and there he turns to face me. Light catches on the blade of his cheekbones as he shouts back another insult.

I’ve got to catch the fucker. Got to make him confess. Then I can get my life back.

My legs are coping with the strain. My lungs are not so good.  There’s an asthmatic pitch to every keenly gulped mouthful of air. Got to keep up. Got to. I’m willing the anger into my legs, pumping my arms and struggling to get enough air.

Where’s he gone? I stop running and bend forward, hands on knees, fighting for oxygen and wondering where the bastard has gone. No sign of him. I fight to control my breathing so that I can hear something. Apart from the odd shout at dogs from owners, telling them to calm the fuck down, I can hear nothing.

Fuck.

Where will he be? This is his neighbourhood. I could wander around here forever and not see the bastard again. The best option would be to go back to Devlin’s. She is holding out on me. She knows stuff and by fuck she will tell me.

When McCall came in the room, she put on a shabby piece of acting.

‘Joseph. What’re you doing here?’  She stood up, that ugly mouth of hers open in a supposedly innocent “O”. What was not feigned was the look of fear in her eyes. That was real. Meryl Streep would struggle with accuracy of emotion like that.

I felt it myself as I looked at the young man. There was an aura about him, a look that spelled out nothing was beyond him, nothing could stop him and nothing mattered. It was written all over his stance, the way his black hair framed his face, and in his eyes. They were black, devoid of colour and hope.

Looking into those eyes was like looking into the worst aspects of your own psyche, all the more difficult to bear because you couldn’t, wouldn’t accept it in yourself.

He looked at me, his mouth open in a noiseless, humourless laugh.

‘Plod,’ he said. ‘You just don’t have a fuckin’ clue.’  Then he turned and ran out of the room like it was some kind of game.

Maybe it is to him. But this is my life and no mad fucker is going to spoil it.

Devlin’s back door is still open. I don’t bother knocking, I just go in. No point in observing the niceties now. Carole is in her usual perch, a lit cigarette gripped in her right hand.

‘Has he came back?’ I stand in front of her and look down.

‘Who?’ She bites a nail.

‘The fucking tooth fairy. Who do you think?’ Who. Woman or no, I’m about to pin her up against the wall and pull the information out of her. Along with a couple of teeth.

‘No.’ Her voice is barely audible.

‘Where will he go?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Come on, Carole. You can do better than that.’ I bend further into her space.

‘I’m telling ye. I don’t know.’ She shrinks back into her chair and takes a defiant drag at her cigarette. I pull it from her mouth and throw it across the room.

‘That was fucking clever.’ She jumps from her chair and runs round the side of the coffee table to retrieve the cigarette. ‘You could have set the hoose on fire there. Wanker.’

‘Don’t fuck with me, Carole. Where is the sick bastard?’

‘You still think he done it, don’t you?’ Her cigarette finds its way to her mouth again as she moves towards me. Anger pinches at her already thin lips.

‘I know he did it.’ My face is inches from hers.

‘You know fuck all,’ she sneers. ‘Always were a wee know-all, weren’t you, Ray? And a wee sook. Bowing and scraping to those nuns like that. Watching you used to make me sick.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Her barb cut deeper than I allowed to show.

‘Terrified so you were. Terrified. They nuns had you exactly where they wanted you.’

‘I was ten, ya stupid bitch. Of course I was terrified of the nuns.’ But she isn’t listening.

‘And I had to take you in hand. Get you the revenge you needed.’ Her eyes move to a spot above my head as she recalls events from the past. ‘’cept we got the wrong man. But it wasn’t our fault, was it? He always did it in the darkness and we…’

‘What the hell are you talking about? Revenge? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Joseph is doing all this for you and Frances. You turned him into the man he has become.’

‘Man? He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be. Some wee women in black were enough to have you cowering in your bed and pissing in your sheets. Until I showed you what to do. ’

‘Shut up, Carole.’ I try to force myself to calm down, but it’s like I’m ten again and these insults are
intolerable
. And the things she is alluding to, just too frightening. ‘Just shut the fuck up. You were hardly perfect yourself. Poor wee Frances having you for a pal. Saves you from Connelly and she gets raped for her troubles.’

Her hand shoots out and catches me on the ear. Before I can formulate a response my arms have stretched out and she is lying at my feet. She stands up, face contorted with fury.

‘Ya cunt. Nae bastard hits me.’ She runs at me, her fist drawn back.

Black.

There is black.

Then there is rage.

Leaning on one elbow, I try to sit up. Opening my eyes can wait. Too painful. My head is so sore. There’s a wet patch at my arm and shoulder. I feel warm enough. So where has the liquid come from?

I manage to sit up and lean forward. Beyond the shield of my eyelids a light is blaring. I have to open my eyes. Have to see where I am. I suck in some air, between my top teeth and bottom lip. Here goes. My eyes are open enough to let in a sliver of light.

Okay. I’m still at Devlin’s. So why is nobody shouting at me? And how have I ended up lying on the floor?

Pain at my right temple sends an extra surge to distinguish itself from the rest of what’s happening to my head. I send a hand to explore. There doesn’t appear to be any broken skin, but there is a lump that any self-respecting ostrich would like to model her eggs on.

Did some fucker come up from behind and lamp me one? My eyes open a little more and notice the corner of the coffee table. I wince as if in delayed sympathy with my head while my fingers rub the black ash tabletop.

So I’ve fallen, or I was pushed by Devlin. My head hit the table and it’s Goodnight Govan.

Where did Devlin go? How long have I been out for? After all of the shouting and barking and running that was going on before, this house is now very quiet. Remarkably so. It reminds me of how everything goes quiet just as the snow begins to fall. Or when, in the movie, the hunter becomes the hunted and all of the forest animals lie as still as death.

McCall. I jump to my feet and close my eyes to the fresh wave of pain in my head. He could easily find his way back. If he finds me in this state, I’m a goner.

Memory provides me with a fair idea of where the sofa is, so I locate the edge of it with a heel and with a slight change to my direction I fall on to its cushions. This makes me more aware of the wetness of my shirt. I stretch across with my left hand and feel it. It’s soaking wet. There is a faint tang to it. I bring my hand to my nose. A metallic tang. My eyes open by their own volition.

Several pictures flash to my brain like an MTV horror flick. The two most prominent are the blood on my fingers and the body stretched out on the table before me. Arms wide. Her mouth open in a silent scream. 

While one part of my brain goes into a corner and retches, another part, the part whose sole purpose is self-preservation, swings into action. If the police find any trace of me in this house, I may as well douse myself in perfume, then they’ll have something nice to smell while they ram a life sentence up my arse.

The time is 01:20 according to the green light blinking on the DVD player. I have to be thorough, but quick. Whoever did this, and it has to be McCall, wants to set me up. So surely the police would have been contacted in the hope that they find me blood drenched, in situ.

The possibility that I am to blame for the corpse on the table is sent to the corner with the screams.

If I’m quick I can clean up and go. And hope none of the neighbours see me leaving. The hope that none saw me arriving is plenty slim. They would have definitely heard me giving chase to McCall. In most neighbourhoods that would have been cause for a phone call to the local police station, but if you live around here I expect all you do is shout like fuck and look forlornly at the phone.

I take a quick inventory of my person. The only blood on me is on the arm and shoulder of my shirt. It will have to go. I pull it off and roll it into a ball. Carole is bound to have a few extra T-shirts upstairs.

Back-tracking my movements, I clean each surface with my shirt. Thankfully I haven’t been through too much of the house. It really was just the living room. I did run through the kitchen, but didn’t I lay a finger on anything. From experience I know of the care I need to take. Our forensic boys are shit hot. If I even leave as much as a partial print or a fibre behind they could place me here.

Right, okay, I survey the room. Everything seems to be clean. I run upstairs with my hands in my pockets. That way I won’t touch anything. All three doors from the landing at the top of the stairs are open. The first one is a toilet so I can ignore that. The next room is as bare as a nun’s cell. A single bed lines one wall and a tall chest of drawers is placed against another one. This room looks like no-one has slept in it for years. Must be McCall’s.

In the next room I am disabused of this notion. There’s a poster of Partick Thistle on one wall and one of Pamela Anderson on the other. All very mundane and non-murderous. A baseball cap has pride of place on a chest of drawers that matches the one in the other room. Next door must be Carole’s room.

I retrace my steps and pluck a piece of black material from a drawer, hold it up, yes it’s a T-shirt, push the drawer closed and use the material to wipe the handle dry of any possible print.

With baseball cap pulled low over my forehead, a quick glance at my watch — it’s 01:30 — I leave the house as silently as I can. There’s nothing I can do for Carole now, I reason. No sense in going back and making her look more comfortable. The best thing I can do for the poor cow is find the bastard that did this and find a nice uncomfortable cell for them. That is, if I can keep my hands to myself.

Back at the hotel, Calum is lying on top of his bed, fully clothed, hands behind his head.

‘Nice T-shirt,’ he says.  Three loaded syllables. The fact that he doesn’t actually remonstrate with me for sneaking out while he was in the shower somehow makes me feel worse. I could have lost him his job.

‘Sorry, Calum. I just had to…’ I’m speaking to his back as he goes into the toilet. He leaves the door open and I undress to the drizzle of his piss and subsequent flush of the pan.

We’re both in bed. I turn off the bedside lamps and speak into the first burst of darkness before my eyes are able to discern any shapes. ‘Anybody phone?’

‘No.’ I hear him turn on to his side. Fuck you then, I think. Huffy bastard. My sympathy has a short shelf life these days.

Sleep is like a distant, hateful relative tonight; he doesn’t visit very often, but when he does it’s very brief and a bit of a nightmare. When daylight stretches in through a chink in the curtains I feel every bit as tired as when I went to bed several hours before and my eyes feel as if they have been dipped in sand.

Thankfully, I don’t remember any of my dreams, but I’m left with a residue in the form of hairs on end along my arms. For the long hours when I wasn’t asleep, one phrase ran through my mind.

‘I didn’t kill her… I didn’t kill her… I didn’t kill her.'

I go over and over the events of the evening. McCall must have come in behind me when I was arguing with Carole and knocked me out and then did his dirty work.

So why is the lump on this side of my head? The side furthest away from the door. Did he push me on to the coffee table, hoping that it would do his work for him? There’s just too much uncertainty about all of this. Did I clean up enough? Were there any other signs of me being there? Think. Think. One thing I am sure of is I didn’t do it.

I didn’t.

Calum stirs, stretches, kicks his legs over the side of the bed and faces me. He slips one hand inside his black briefs and rearranges himself.

‘Pubes caught in my foreskin,’ he offers by way of apology. He’s all hard curves; shoulders, pecs and abs. He’s too close and too male. Thank Christ the days of living in a dormitory are well behind me. I couldn’t put up with much more of this. He has his other hand on the phone.

‘Bacon rolls do you?’

No health kick this morning then? ‘Aye.’

Order made, he puts the phone down and walks over to the trouser press. After liberating his threads he stretches one leg after another into them. While he zips up he asks me, ‘What’s on the cards today?’

I sit up and look at him, ‘Listen, I’m sorry about yesterday, Calum. I know Kenny would take a dim view of you losing me. But I can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again. The best I can say is that I’ll keep it to a minimum.’

‘The best you can say is, “Calum, why don’t you come with me?”’

‘If I did that, you might become implicated in a murder.’