A Taste for Malice (3 page)

He leaned down until he was on the same eye level as Ben.

‘Mummy might not remember us, buddy. She might not even remember that I was living with Nana and Papa before the accident.’ Ben’s eyes were large with amazement that this might happen.

‘Mummy might be sick for a little longer. We will all need to live together until she’s better. But it might make her more sick if she knew that I was not living at home, so can you be like Mummy and forget that ever happened?’

Jim put his arms round Ben and held him close. He felt sick. He closed his eyes tight against the guilt.

And so the lies began.

There’s a line of trees on the road outside my flat. They’ve got their blossom out. Every time the wind blows, the air downwind is filled with a pink snow. The small flowers then gather in clumps at the side of the pavement like a scattered offering to the gods. When nature does litter it puts on a show.

Didn’t sleep much last night. Ate a huge bar of chocolate before I went to bed and it was enough to keep me awake. Eventually I nodded off only to wake up mere minutes later with my eyelids being sun-blasted by a bright spring morning.

I stumble into the shower and repeatedly promise myself a set of black-out curtains while the hot water pours over my head and shoulders. I fill my hands with liquid soap and start to work it over my body.

I think of Theresa. I stop working the lather over my chest. You know how it is; you haven’t really grown up yet although you are technically an adult, you see the chance of some no-strings-attached shagging. You take it. You take as much as you can. Except something happens that makes you grow up. Then you realise you want more. You catch her scent while sitting watching TV. You think you see her head bobbing in a crowd of people just ahead. Always just ahead.

I did see her just last week in Argyle Street. I was going in to Debenhams, she was on the way out. A man held the door for her. She saw me and a smile stuttered into place. My eyes were drawn down to her full belly and back up to her face. The world slowed and settled. We held each other’s gaze. Her eyes read of acceptance and content. Was there an apology in the lift of her brow? My eyes moved back down to her swollen abdomen. Mine, I wanted to ask?

Real time settled back into place with the bustle of shoppers. My momentum carried me past her and her companion’s voice reached me.

‘Did you know that guy? Theresa, did you know that guy?’

Her answer was lost among the footfall and charge of rapacious consumers. In a daze I walked on past M&S and towards Trongate and Glasgow Cross. She’s pregnant. And by the size of her stomach — and this is a man’s judgement — she is due to give birth any second. Which means the baby could be mine. Fuck. I will be a father. Scratch that. I was the sperm donor, nothing more. She has her life all mapped out, I was clearly nothing but a diversion until she found a purpose.

I dry myself and dress. A black coffee and a scan of the news channels later and I am on the way to work.

More emails. I read them while the thought of Theresa being pregnant with my child is like a saccharine hangover that colours my thoughts. For sanity’s sake I need to try and get over it. She has clearly decided that I am not parent material.

More emails. More coffee. No-one has a birthday, so I buy some cakes. The clichéd American cop would have a number of doughnuts with a variety of toppings. None of that shite for your Scottish cop. We have a selection of cream cakes, apple turnovers, strawberry tarts, carrot cake, iced gingerbread, iced fruit slice, empire biscuits, snowballs. Just looking at the pile on the table is enough to strip the enamel from your teeth. Daryl raises an eyebrow when he saw me carrying in the cake boxes.

‘Shut it,’ is my qualified response. ‘Besides,’ I pull in my belly. ‘I am no longer wearing a fat-suit.’

Daryl raises the other eyebrow.

‘That’s a neat wee trick. How do you do it?’ I ask.

‘Hours in front of the mirror,’ Ale jumps in. ‘Don’t you know that’s his hobby?’

Daryl puckers up for a kiss.

‘In your dreams, loser,’ says Ale walking back to her desk.

I turn and walk back into my office. Someone follows me and closes the door behind them.

‘What can I do for you, Daryl?’ I sit down.

‘I have a problem with my pussy.’ A grin fills his face. He puts a pad of paper on the desk.

‘There’s a lot of it going around.’

‘I need some counselling.’ He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. ‘I hear you are the right man with the right set of skills to help me.’

‘I hear you will self-destruct when you leave this room.’

‘From your mouth to God’s ears.’ Smile. He sits in silence for a couple of minutes while I read the notes on the paper.

‘Anyway,’ he stands up, ‘I feel so much better now. Bye.’

Several sheets of A4 paper are left on my desk. The hand-writing is too neat to be Daryl’s. Alessandra’s then. I pull them towards me and read. This is a file from the “Unsolved” pile. A case that has been superseded by a number of other crimes, usually involving murder. Until some parents came looking for answers and someone’s conscience was given a prod, considering the fact that young innocents have been damaged. And the worry that it might be happening to others while we focus on more “serious” and immediate crimes.

Due to their past proximity to me, Daryl and Alessandra are clearly ideal candidates to head the investigation of this “cold case” before the parents go running to the press.

We are looking for a young woman. She may have an accomplice. She may have some medical training. What we can say with some degree of certainty is that she has some serious issues.

We know of two families so far that she has destroyed. The pattern of her activity with both was very similar. She insinuates herself into the bosom of the family. She becomes best friends with the woman and flirts with the man. The children — and both families had young boys — adore her.

To start off with. Then she has some “fun” with them. For fun, read torture and mental cruelty. In each case she disappeared as suddenly as she arrived, and only then do the children tell their parents what happened.

Nice.

Her description varies. In one she is small and round, with long dark hair. In the other she is small and slim with short, blond hair. Another variation was in the way she treated the children. The first family was subjected to what could best be described as mental cruelty. The kids in the next family had similar treatment, but this time it had more of a physical nature. This gave the initial team pause for thought. Was it one assailant or was it two unrelated cases? They asked for photos. There were none.

The time lapse between cases was twelve months. Sufficient time to gain weight and get a hairdo. The name she gave to each family convinced the team that she was one and the same person. Both families said her name was Lucy Hepburn. But she asked that they call her Audrey.

There’s an e-fit drawing on file from each family. Computer graphic eyes stare out from the pages. I sit the drawings side by side and study them.

Different people can see the same thing and their brain contrives somehow to create differences. Ask three witnesses to describe the same crime and you can often receive three different accounts. The differences here are largely cosmetic. A change in hair-style and colour is easy enough to explain. One face is rounder than the other. Again, easy to explain.

Both faces have similar shape of eyes and mouth. One has a slightly bigger nose. However, the first team noted that they considered all of this information and were certain that these were the act of one woman.

I would have added that a woman who changes her appearance with both hairstyle and diet is one cunning individual.

And one who is intent on making some form of career for herself.

Below this Alessandra has noted that Sherlock Drain detects some duplicity. All that genius and alliteration as well.

I send Alessandra an email. Drain is copied in.

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Alessandra replies.

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<<>> I asked.

Before I could receive a reply a bell sounded from my computer. Shit. Have you ever tried to deliberately forget something? Can’t be done. I wanted to forget I had an appointment with a counsellor that morning. Tried to banish all thoughts of it from my mind. But what happens with the human mind is that whatever you resist, persists. Every five minutes your mind tells you to remember to forget that appointment. And then you go and make it harder by putting a reminder in your desktop diary. Given the amount of pish that comes out of my head, the wisest thing is probably to go ahead with the meeting after all.

It is part of my agreed recuperation that I download all of my worries to a total stranger paid for by the police. The name on her card reads Elaine Gibson. It is followed by a bewildering array of letters, like an abstract and truncated alphabet. She must be good then.

Her office is in the other side of town, so at least I get to remove myself from HQ. A taxi ride later and I am looking at a brass plaque pinned to a sandstone wall. “Chalmers, Crowe and Gibson” it reads.

I wait for less than a minute in the reception area before I am guided into an office. If I were to pin a number on the young lady with shoulder length brown hair who walks towards me it would be a ten. As in, out of ten. The new Bo Derek walks towards me with her hand outstretched and a welcoming smile on her face. I estimate her age in the early thirties. Ms Gibson is dressed in a brown, chalk-stripe trouser suit, with a cream blouse underneath. Only one button is open, but this doesn’t diminish the view in any way. The material of her suit is being pressed by her flesh in all the right places.

‘DI McBain. Nice to meet you.’ Her handshake is firm and confident and involves a full grip, not the girly press of thumb and finger on the second knuckle that some women seem to think of as a handshake. Her eye level matches mine. You don’t meet too many women as tall as I am.

‘Please, DI McBain, have a seat.’ She points to a pair of brown, padded chairs that flank a small coffee table.

‘Thank you, and you can call me Ray,’ I say and my voice seems too loud and masculine in this environment. There’s a plant on every available surface and a couple of limited edition prints of flowers hang on the wall. I reconsider my initial impression; the objects in the room are expensive, but as far as gender goes they are nondescript. Any femininity found in this room is coming from its occupant.

We sit; she crosses her legs in a fluid motion and slides a leather folder across the coffee table and on to her lap. I can’t take my eyes from her face. She has large eyes framed with dark lashes, an apple-pink blush to her cheeks and her lips are full and curved in a smile. I feel my stomach do a flip when she looks into my eyes. What is it about very beautiful women that make a man feel that he’s eleven and obliged to flirt at the same time? Not a winning combination. As your desperation to impress increases, your ability to do so fades in a pre-pubescent fuddle.

‘You have a nice office.’ Way to go, McBain. That’ll have her eating out of your hand in no time. I distract myself from my ineptitude by looking around myself in an exaggerated manner. A six-foot bookcase rests against the far wall. It appears that the top three rows are filled with dull, academic texts if the boring covers and large letters are to be believed. The bottom two rows are filled with brighter covers that suggest more popular and widely available books are stationed here.

‘Do you read, Ray?’ she asks me.

‘If you count Our Willie or the underwear pages of the Next catalogue as reading.’ I curse myself. Now she’s going to think I’m some kind of pervert.

She smiles and writes something down.

‘Sorry,’ I offer. ‘In my head, that sounded funnier.’

Her answering smile is non-committal. ‘Humour is good.’ She sets those eyes on me. ‘Is that how you deal with things, humour?’

‘It beats flagellation.’ What’s with the sexual undertones, McBain? One syllable answers only from now on. You don’t want this beautiful woman to think you are a sicko.

She scratches her pen across the paper on her lap.

‘Tell me why you are here.’ She lifts her eyes from the paper. ‘Please forgive me if I appear distracted. If I didn’t write while you spoke I would forget too much.’ She smiles and I can refuse her nothing.

‘Tell you why I’m here? Because the high-heid-yins want me to talk about my recent trauma.’

‘Is that how you would describe it? Trauma?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘Your employers have included in their report what happened. But, no offence, the language your bosses use would cure an insomniac. Why don’t you give me the detail?’

‘Careful, Ms Gibson. That could be classed as an opinion.’

She smiled. ‘It would more accurately be described as a weak attempt to get you onside by being disrespectful to your employers.’

‘True. And if I respond you get the bonus of getting me used to doing all of the talking.’

‘Does talking represent a challenge to you?’

‘Not if it includes a good wine and a well-chosen menu.’

‘Has alcohol been a problem in the past?’

‘No more than food.’

‘You turned to drink when things initially started to go wrong. Why do you think that is?’

‘There were too many celebrities doing daft stuff on TV.’

‘Tell you what.’ She closes her folder, puts it on the table and places her pen on top of that. ‘Why don’t we stop the verbal tennis and you just give me the highlights.’