A Taste for Malice (9 page)

Earlier on that day he had, for the umpteenth time convinced himself that he needed to tell Angela the truth of their relationship. What would the truth do to her right now? She was too fragile. She needed her husband’s support. She simply couldn’t function without it.

What was he going to do? Tell the truth, or continue with the lie? He thought of Angela in the bookshop; fear and uncertainty tattooed into every word that came out of her mouth.

Who was he kidding? There was simply no other option.

The lie was pristine in white and had to remain.

Those held in Barlinnie Prison are allowed one thirty minute visit between Monday and Friday. The man I’m sitting in front of has had no-one in to visit him since he was locked up several months ago. Bar-L as it is known locally, was built in the late eighteen hundreds to cure the chronic overcrowding problem in Scotland’s jails. Ironic that it is now part of the problem.

It is famous for the odd rooftop protest, a certain Libyan diplomat who was found guilty of involvement in the Lockerbie disaster and, until only fairly recently, for forcing the inmates to deposit their overnight excrement into a bucket and then “slopping out” in the morning.

Joseph McCall is looking younger than when I first met him. He looks as if he has lost more than a couple of the twenty-two years he has lived so far. His prison garb is too big for his slight frame and his hair is longer and in need of a wash. His facial hair sums him up, thin and patchy.

‘Hi, Joseph,’ I say.

He looks at an indeterminate space between us, his eyes dull and unfocused. He does nothing to show that he knows I am sitting in front of him or that I have actually spoken.

‘Just thought I’d come and say hi,’ I say. And wrestle with a few demons.

He doesn’t move.

I look around me. The Visits Hall is pretty busy. Wives and children sit before husbands and fathers, separated by the width of a table. Might as well be a thousand miles. They are a poor bunch. Cheap shoes and overcoats. Plastic bags from supermarket chains at their feet. It strikes me when I look at the people dotted around at the tables that more than a few of the inmates look better fed than their visitors. From exaggerated looks I judge that a few of the convicts “make” me. I must have cop engraved on my forehead.

I consider for a moment that visiting Joseph in the general visiting area might cause him some problems. Then I look at him and change my mind. He looks like he wouldn’t care if the whole Scottish legal establishment was sat in front of him.

‘They looking after you in here?’

Nothing.

Not for the first time I think about the life this boy has had until now. He is born to a poor, unmarried mother with substance abuse problems. To get her next fix she regularly trades him off to men whose tastes run to the pre-teenage boy. His mother dies and her best friend takes over. He finally manages to make some form of life for himself and gets an education only to find out that his father was a career paedophile. He is then befriended by a serial killer who trains him up as an assistant. To escape this serial killer he takes the blame for several vicious murders and is given life imprisonment. If you watched that story line in a movie it would be titled “Unbelievable”.

All this and he’s only in his early twenties.

In some ways I feel responsible for him. We are linked in suffering. His mother and I were both victims of the same man. And now he is in jail for the rest of his life because I was unable to convince the powers that be they had locked up the wrong man.

‘Can I do anything to help you?’ I ask.

‘Is there anything you need?’ I ask.

It’s like I’m speaking to a tailor’s dummy for all the reaction I get. I study his face for a clue that there is a shred of something resembling human intelligence within. His eyes are brown, each pupil a small black spot. His eyes look as if they have been dried of life, sandblasted to nothing but stone.

Concern is clearly not the tactic to reach this man. I try something else.

‘Leonard been in to see you yet?’

His nostrils flare slightly as he takes air in to his lungs.

‘Didn’t think so. How do you think he would thank you for being his bitch?’

A muscle twitches in his jaw line.

‘He’s probably pissed off, ’cos that means he’s got one less target. One less slab of meat to slice open.’ I take a deep breath and sit back in my seat. ‘What a fucking loser, Joe. Fucked over by everyone who has ever met you.’

His eyes shift focus. From nowhere to me. There’s no other movement that I can discern. I feel only sorrow for this sad lump of humanity in front of me and I hate what I am doing. I find the coals of my fear of Leonard and breathe heat into them. I am tired of being chased by my thoughts of this man. I hate what he has made of me and I will no longer take it. And the focus of all that is sitting in front of me.

‘Don’t you wish they still had the death penalty in this country? Then you could put an end to your pathetic, miserable existence once and for all.’ My face is close to his.

‘You fucking pisspot. You sorry figure of a man. What could you have been? You got yourself an education despite everything. And here you are. Bet you have a queue of men outside your cell at night beating themselves off at the thought of your lily-white arse.’

He continues to stare at me. The only sign he has heard any of my words is the strange light that has come in to his eyes. There is someone there. He’s just been hiding. He opens his mouth to speak and what he says leaves me as the one who has been diminished by my own weapon of choice.

In the car I think about what has just happened. What did I hope to achieve by visiting McCall? Closure? Redemption? A clue as to where Leonard might be? I got none of that. Instead I allowed a shell of a man to beat me with four words. He said the one thing that would be guaranteed to get through any defences I had managed to construct with my all out attack.

Four syllables: maximum effect.

‘At least I’m safe.’

Back at the office, Alessandra is about to get into her car. She tells me Mrs Browning phoned in with the details of the woman that recommended Hepburn as a child-minder.

‘Can I come?’ I ask with a look that is calculated to make me look like a twelve-year-old whose friends have all pissed off and left him on his own. See me, I’ve no dignity.

‘Can I stop you?’ replies Alessandra.

‘Not really,’ I press the remote to unlock my car and open the passenger door. ‘You can drive.’

‘Gee. Thanks.’

Mrs Violet Hogg lives in a bungalow in Giffnock. This is a highly desirable part of the city for the upwardly mobile, formerly working class and the recently retired. Nice houses, nice schools, in a nice part of the city. And when we get to Mrs Hogg’s house it is, well, nice.

‘What was Mrs Browning able to tell you about this woman,’ I ask Alessandra as she parks the car in front of a short but well-maintained, mono-blocked drive. The border is well populated with the remains of this year’s crop of daffodils. The recent loss of small yellow trumpet heads is offset by the flowers of the rhododendron bush that are just bursting into a furious pink bloom.

‘Not that much,’ replies Alessandra. ‘In her mid-forties, widowed in her twenties. Never met anyone else, apparently.’

We walk up the path and ring the doorbell. The door opens immediately, like the owner of the house is desperate to relieve her boredom.

‘Come in. Come in.’ A smiling woman holds the door open and lets us walk past her into the small square of her hall-way. ‘Through to your right.’ A well manicured hand points to an open doorway. She’s taller than Alessandra I realise as we walk past her. And she looks in her early fifties, wearing tight, black jeans and a pink cardigan that is buttoned all the way up to the top. ‘In you go, officers. Have a seat. I expect you’ll be wanting a wee cuppa.’

Her face wears the gaunt look of the over-exercised and no amount of make-up will disguise the shadows under her eyes. A recent upset, I imagine.

Alessandra and I walk into a bay-windowed room, bright with sunshine and flowers. Every surface sports a vase with a riot of colour and fragrance spilling from it.

‘Have we come at a bad time?’ I ask as my eyes adjust to the volume of colour. Did somebody just die, I wonder? Alessandra did say she has been widowed for some years, didn’t she?

Mrs Hogg follows my line of vision. ‘It’s my Tommy’s anniversary. It’s nineteen years to this day that he passed away.’ She’s wearing an expression that suggests she’s not only a widow, but a martyr to the cause. ‘He so loved flowers. Every year at this time,’ she makes a sweeping gesture with her right arm, ‘I give myself a wee treat. Lovely, isn’t it?’

‘It’s beautiful,’ says Alessandra.

I want to say, time to move on, Mrs, makes your house look like a funeral parlour. Instead I nod. The upside is that at least we know how to get on her good side. Something Alessandra also picks up on.

‘I bet Mr Hogg is looking down and really appreciates what you’re doing,’ Alessandra says.

I pass her a look that says, don’t overdo it. I realise that I needn’t worry when I move my eyes over to Mrs Hogg. She looks like a special effects team have given her the Ready-Brek glow. She beams pure love at Alessandra.

‘That’s such a sweet thing to say, dear.’ She hugs herself. Her waist is so thin she could probably reach round her waist twice. ‘I think he would love it. Flowers are such a joy, he used to say.’

‘I say it all the time as well.’ The words spill out of my mouth before I get the chance to stop them. I cringe and hope Mrs Hogg doesn’t think I’m taking the piss. Which of course, I am. I’m just not normally as obvious.

‘We often tease DI McBain down at the station, Mrs Hogg,’ Alessandra joins in. ‘Not many police officers share his enthusiasm for a fine set of blooms.’

Steady, Alessandra.

‘Ohh, how lovely to meet a keen horticulturist.’

‘Yes, he bought a new greenhouse. Never misses an episode of Beechgrove Garden,’ Alessandra’s enjoying herself.

Enough, Alessandra.

‘He keeps bringing in fresh cuttings off his plants for the rest of the guys. I swear if there was a police equivalent of the “Town in Bloom” competition, we would win it hands down,’ she trills.

I resort to an open glare. Then I twist my features into a grimace-cum-smile when I realise that Mrs Hogg is examining me very keenly. She plays with her necklace, sliding a flat, pink stone of some sort back and forth on its fine chain. Then she unfastens the top button of her cardigan. Christ, on a bike. Surely she isn’t giving me the glad eye. I sneak a look in Alessandra’s direction and she’s gone pink. Looks like she is about to burst.

‘If we could talk to you about Mrs Browning, please?’ Time to direct the conversation on to safer ground.

‘Not before I bring through a cuppa for you fine officers,’ Mrs Hogg stands up and leaves the room.

Alessandra takes the opportunity to vent some suppressed laughter. Her head is in her hands and her shoulders are shaking.

‘You are dead, Rossi.’ I say. This only makes her movements more severe. She’s saying something. Sounds like Beechgrove Garden. Over and over again. We hear the footfall of Mrs Hogg as she returns to the room. Alessandra corrects her slump and coughs a couple of times. She adopts an expression of pain, like she is reminding herself of every terrible thing that has ever happened in her life in an attempt to sober up. While she does so I look around the room. It strikes me that there is no evidence of children. If Mr Hogg had died some years ago, any issue they had would be in their twenties. There are photographs placed here and there. Mostly black and white. Group photos of grim-faced Glaswegians from the early twentieth century. All dressed in their sombre Sunday best. There are also a couple of photos of who could only be a certain Mr Hogg. One was beside a Ford Cortina, where he wore a smile to suggest the car was his pride and joy. His hair was permed in that style so beloved of footballers during that era, and he sported a moustache that would have gained him entry into every gay club in Glasgow two decades later. What a postscript. Remembered by the fading colours of a fashion disaster and a form of gaydar.

The delectable Mrs Hogg didn’t get a chance to produce offspring for the sainted Mr Hogg. And if not, what would be the basis on which Mrs Hogg would recommend a child-minder to her dentist?

I hear the tread of Mrs Hogg approaching the room with the drinks. I hiss at Ale to contain herself. She’s still not over the Ray McBain, gardener thing.

‘Are you okay, dear,’ Mrs Hogg asks as she places a tray down on the marble-topped coffee table. I lean forward to slide a vase out of the way, to give her tray more room. My hands on the vase is enough to make Alessandra snort.

‘She has terrible hay fever, I’m afraid, Mrs Hogg,’ I say.

Alessandra rubs at her eyes for effect. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says with a weak smile. ‘I’ll acclimatise.’

Mrs Hogg has a look of mild panic. ‘We can go into … oh, dear. There isn’t a room in the house without any flowers.’

‘Don’t worry yourself, Mrs Hogg,’ I say. ‘Give her a couple of moments and she’ll be right as rain.’

She beams and sits down opposite me and I notice she has released another button. Then I notice that despite being pencil thin, she has quite a rack on her. She is on the edge of her low-slung chair and her legs are demurely crossed in that way only skinny women can cope with. She has one knee leaning on top of the other with the leg stretching down so that the foot belonging to the higher placed knee is wrapped round the other’s ankle. There must be a rigorous set of stretches they teach to allow women to do this. My thighs are protesting at the thought of it.

‘How can I help you?’ Mrs Hogg leans forward, picks up a white china tea pot and pours.

‘Mrs Browning, your former dentist, tells us that you recommended Lucy Hepburn to her as a child-minder,’ I say.

‘Oh, how is Mrs Browning?’ she asks. ‘You’d never have known that poor woman had such an awful disease. She was always so capable.’

Strange choice of word I think. Having met Mrs Browning I know she would feel horribly patronised by such a comment.