Blood, Salt, Water (17 page)

23

Iain hadn’t slept. He didn’t have an appointment. He had just turned up at Dr Neiman’s early morning surgery. Dr Neiman. The name had rolled around and around his head all the way back to town. It became an anchor, a thing to think. Dr Neiman. He couldn’t think those other names, her and him, the black bags. He couldn’t.

He had spent the night walking, taking the Gareloch Road, following the water. He walked blindly for hours, through woods and towns, past marinas, inland to hillsides, always following the same road. His feet were numb. It rained. He was wet and then he was dry again. He didn’t remember turning around but he was heading back towards the town as the sun came up.

He sat down in the surgery waiting room. For a moment it felt wonderful, as if his hips and thigh bones were melting into the seat, but then a spurt of adrenalin forced him to his feet again and made him pace. It wasn’t easy to move around. There were a lot of people waiting, workers and navy staff, kids in school uniform, feet to step over. He did a couple of circuits of the central island of chairs until the receptionist called his name, waving him over to the doctor’s office door.

He passed the receptionist and saw that he was scaring her. Was he moving too fast? No, he thought, no. Dr Neiman. Dr Neiman. She waved him down the corridor to the doctor’s office. Iain was moving normally, but maybe he was a bit alarming. His manner was alarming because he was coming apart.

Dr Neiman stood up at his desk when Iain slid into the room. The doctor was scared too.

‘Mr Fraser!’ said Dr Neiman, his German accent lending a clipped, ordered tone to the name. ‘Have you been burned?’

Iain stared at him, his mind blank, feeling behind himself for the wall. Conscious suddenly of the blackness of his hands smearing the woodchip behind him, he let go. Adrift, he reached for the chair, the patient’s chair, at an angle to Dr Neiman’s desk. Iain held the back of it and used it as a guide rope to pull himself in. He dropped onto the chair, feeling his hip bones melt again.

‘Were you in the fire, Mr Fraser?’

‘No. Near.’

‘I can see that very clearly. You are covered in blackness, Mr Fraser.’

‘Blackness?’

‘Soot.’ Dr Neiman stayed on his feet, talking over Iain. He was very tall and thin. Iain found it was easier to talk to his stomach. His eyes were hard to look into.

‘Please. May I examine you?’

Iain sat limp while the doctor checked his forearms for burns, listened to this heart, took his blood pressure. He was used to this, allowing himself to be examined, sitting while prison doctors took bloods and checked his balls for lumps. Handing over responsibility for the chaotic tangle of threads to someone else was a relief, if only for a moment.

The doctor asked him to lift his polo shirt and he breathed on the metal disc of his stethoscope before placing it on Iain’s chest. He said something about cold.

‘Haven’t got a cold,’ said Iain.

‘Mmm.’ The doctor listened. Then he took the plugs out of his ears and asked Iain to lift his shirt at the back so he could listen. ‘I said this was cold. I just breathe on it, like this . . .’ he gave a little puff, Iain couldn’t see him, he was behind him now, ‘and it warms it a little bit.’

The metal disc was on his back.

Iain could feel her in there, no longer writhing and angry. She was bigger, grown, gnawing joylessly. Iain imagined the grind of her jaws, her face tight and tired.

‘I hear just a very slight crackle, Mr Fraser, not low down. It could be a little smoke inhalation. How’s your back?’

‘Still sore. Here.’ He reached up between his shoulder blades and drew the hand down his back. ‘And now I’ve got pain here.’ He touched his side.

The doctor nodded and frowned. ‘How long for, the pain in the side?’

It sounded innocent but Dr Neiman was a ponderous man.

‘Few days.’

‘Are you coughing?’

‘A bit. But I’ve been smoking again so—’

‘Ah, no. You must stop. Promise me.’

Iain shrugged and muttered that he would.

Dr Neiman nodded, as if that was agreed, and sat down in his chair. He began to write something on the computer. Iain felt a burst of sudden pride, noticing for the first time that he had managed to bring himself here, to the doctor. The thing inside him would hate that. He’d had the presence of mind to do that. Iain realised then that the doctor was looking at him, had spoken to him, and he wasn’t responding.

‘Sorry?’ said Iain.

‘You are dishevelled and smell heavily of smoke,’ said Dr Neiman, precise about his diction. ‘You were at the fire last night?’

The doctor’s eyes narrowed. He knew Iain’s history. He knew he’d been in prison. He suspected him.

‘I was at the dinner dance. I saw the smoke and went down.’ The doctor nodded, encouraging him to say more, but Iain had no more to say. ‘I went down,’ he repeated. ‘My best friend. Niece? In fire. Died.’ He stopped talking, understood the impossibility of being heard, of articulating a loss so deep. And he knew it didn’t matter anyway, explaining. And he sat for a bit, his blackened hands open on his knees like a beggar.

He looked up after a while and found the doctor still nodding and waiting. Everyone complained about doctor’s appointments being short but this felt interminable.

Eventually the doctor said, ‘So, what brought you here to see me today?’

Slug in my lungs. Snakes in lung. Iain didn’t know how to express it: ‘. . .
upset
.’

‘Would you say you are depressed, perhaps?’

Iain got stuck on the word
perhaps
. He meant to draw the doctor’s attention to the word, how odd it sounded, but the doctor took it as confirmation.

‘And you seem a little confused, also.’ He raised his eyebrows in a question. ‘Is that the case, would you say?’

He was right. Iain was confused. Iain nodded. ‘I am.’

‘Did you stay at the fire all night?’

‘I was. I was there all night. I couldn’t . . .’ A wave rolled up from the base of his spine, engulfing him in sorrow, throwing him forward over his knees, cranking great dry sobs up from his balls. He waited for tears to come out of his face but none did. It was stuck in his throat. He sat up and found the doctor’s hand on his. It was inappropriate, not the gesture of a doctor to a patient, but a kindness from one person to another and it was a comfort.

‘I don’t know,’ burbled Iain, ‘I don’t know what.’

‘You are overwhelmed.’

‘I am.’

‘I think you have had a very upsetting night.’

‘I have.’

‘You had one psychotic episode before, when you were in prison?’

Gripped with the sudden conviction that the doctor was going to put him in hospital Iain stood up and knocked the chair over. ‘I’m OK.’

But the doctor didn’t get up or try to wrestle him to the ground. He didn’t call prison officers from outside the door to restrain him, or inject antipsychotics that made the world move slower and his feet heavy. The doctor just sat where he was and looked straight at Iain.

‘This could be a recurrence. We have to be prepared for that. But it might not be. Everyone is very upset by this fire. Many patients . . . You have to know that you are not alone.’ And then Iain saw, or thought he saw, a tear well up in the doctor’s eye. But the doctor looked at his computer screen and blinked a lot and when he looked back it was gone.

‘Mr Fraser, please, sit down on the chair.’

Following orders, Iain righted the chair, sat down, didn’t know what to do with his legs, tried crossing them but got confused and gave up.

‘I would like to write you a prescription for one day only, yes?’

Iain nodded dumbly.

The doctor pointed at the screen. ‘Have you taken this medication before?’

Iain nodded. He’d had it before and it was a nice sleep you got with it. He didn’t get it on prescription though.

‘So, I want you to take,’ the doctor was writing on his computer, tip tap tip tap, ‘one pill three times today, again in the morning and come to see me tomorrow morning. We will see if the anxiety abates. Do you know what I mean by that?’

‘Goes away,’ said Iain, a little insulted.

‘Yes, goes away. And I want you to be very careful with yourself. I want you to make sure that you sleep and eat regularly. OK?’

A pink prescription rolled out of the printer. The doctor took a silver fountain pen out of his top jacket pocket, wrote on the paper and handed it to Iain.

Iain went to take it but the doctor didn’t let go of his end. He made Iain look at him. ‘Go and get these from the chemist now. Take one and only one. Go home and wash and try to sleep. When you wake up take another one. Then a third pill, you will take it tonight. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tomorrow I would like you to take the last one and come back, first thing. Nine a.m., am I clear?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come back and see me.’ He stood up, lifting a hand to the door. Iain looked at the hand, read it and oh! He understood. He was to get up also. He did.

Then the doctor shook his hand. ‘You have witnessed a horrific thing, Mr Fraser. It has been a bad night for everyone. You must look after yourself today and be careful.’

Iain saw the doctor’s eyes then, saw that Dr Neiman understood the horror of what Iain had seen and why he stayed at the fire. Iain felt heard and he felt better.

He left the surgery, walking through a backstreet that smelled of burnt paper and hair. The smell of the fire clung to the town, sticking to walls and streets despite the wind’s best efforts.

Iain slunk downhill to a chemist, clutching a paper promise of succour. He kept his eyes down and passed a bank, a grocer’s, a charity shop. He stopped at a newsagent’s window. A poster for the local paper:

FIRE KILLS TWO:

HEL. MOURNS

24

Before the questioning began and the tapes had been installed, Andrew Cole said he definitely didn’t want a lawyer. Now, when they asked him to say it again for the benefit of the tape, he didn’t sound sure.

Morrow and Kerrigan sat across from him, waiting for the answer. Cole looked anxiously at the tape recorder, an ominous black plastic machine fitted to the wall. Morrow knew that a hesitant answer on the tape could make the court think the accused had been leaned on. Sometimes the sharper accused were deliberately ambivalent or upset at interview, knowing they might give themselves later grounds for appeal.

She didn’t know Andrew Cole but suspected that he would have access to lawyers with the time and motivation to read the files before they came in for interviews.

‘Mr Cole, if you’ve changed your mind, please feel free to tell us and we’ll stop the interview right now.’

‘No,’ he said finally, ‘sorry, I’m just, I don’t want one.’

‘OK. You sure now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not too late to change your mind.’

He seemed to relax at that, as if all he had wanted was reassurance.

‘Fine.’ He gave Kerrigan a charming smile, sat back and opened his hands to Morrow. ‘Ask me anything.’

Morrow glanced at her notes. An odd boyish wee man. He didn’t seem to have a grasp on the shit storm about to engulf him but he had been in prison before. He couldn’t be entirely naive.

‘Mr Cole, you called the police yesterday—’

‘And I
must
,’ he interrupted her and turned to the tape machine on the wall. ‘Sorry,’ he told it, ‘but I must apologise for yesterday and um, the, you know
. . . ?’ He looked back at Morrow, asking whether they might just keep this between them? And, perhaps, not tell the tape machine he’d been spliffed? Please?

‘You called the police,’ said Morrow patiently. ‘From the boat. Can you tell me what happened there?’

Mr Cole smiled warmly and nodded, as if they had agreed to collude in covering up his parole violation. He launched into a prepared story about being told to go out and clear some dead wood floating in view of the course. Unsightly debris in the water. There had been a storm earlier in the week and some branches had come down. Andrew did as he was told. He was fishing some branches out when he saw a foot in the water, by the bank. Thinking it was a shop dummy, he went over to try to pull it out. He got closer and realised it was human and thought she was a suicide. But then he saw, you know . . . He ran a flat hand over the top of his head, cringing beneath it, looking sick. His body language was right for an accidental find. She wondered if he could have blacked out and killed her.

‘What made you think of suicide?’

‘Well, the south end of the loch is a terribly small place, really. If anyone goes missing everyone knows about it. We’d all be watching out for someone if there had been an accident of some kind . . .’

‘Tell me a bit about yourself, Andrew. I understand you’ve been in prison?’

‘Unfortunately, yes.’ Mr Cole gave a solemn nod.

‘What were you convicted of?’

‘Well,
sadly
,’ he said it as if it was a stage direction for his performance, ‘possession of cocaine.’

Morrow grinned at his expression. ‘That is very “sadly”.’

‘Yes, it is.’ He made himself look sadder yet, unaware that he was being mocked. ‘A very great shame.’

‘A shame that you got caught?’ asked Kerrigan sharply. She was less charmed by him than Morrow.

‘No, officer, it’s a shame that I did that. I had every chance, you know? Great school, great family.’ He held his hands up helplessly. ‘Threw it all away.’

Morrow was enjoying Mr Cole’s performance, not because his act was particularly credible, more that it was a refreshing change from cursing and silence or threats of violence. She wanted to prompt him into saying other daft things but they didn’t really have the time.

‘So, you did three years of a six-year sentence – that’s a lot of time.’

‘But I got out early. Exemplary behaviour.’

‘Three years, though. Serious offence.’

He wobbled his head ambivalently. ‘There were a lot of extrajudicial factors in the sentence being so
harsh.’

Kerrigan was exasperated. ‘Did you resist arrest?’

‘No, I mean
political
factors. Reasons why my sentence was so long. My family know a lot of people in the judiciary. Bad blood.’

Kerrigan sucked her pointy little teeth with annoyance. Morrow watched his eyes flick around the table as he theorised. The truth was that Cole got a stiff six years because he’d had so much cocaine on him. All sentencing was carefully monitored for parity. Judges couldn’t make it up on whim. Cole really believed though, that it was about who knew who and what they thought about him and his family. He was in an odd little world of his own, a charming one, compelling because it was so jarring, like stumbling across a bizarre foreign language soap opera.

‘Mr Cole, what I’m wondering about is who let them in?’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘Who let, sorry,
what
?’

Morrow spoke slowly: ‘Who let them in? To the golf course. Who gave them the code to get into the grounds?’

A titter of polite confusion. ‘So sorry . . . ?’

Morrow sighed and stared him out. ‘You trashed your cell this morning.’

Another titter. ‘Sadly—’

‘Sadly, the golf course don’t let anyone in without the code or a visual ID from security staff. They’ve got CCTV film of a blue van with the plates covered up stopping at the service gates that morning. An arm comes out of the window and types the security code into the keypad.’

Mr Cole looked confused. He opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it.

‘We checked with estates management. They didn’t ask you to go out and clear debris from the water.’

‘Well,’ very quietly now, ‘it
is
part of my job.’

‘You said you’d been “sent out to clear debris”. You weren’t. You went out because you knew something was out there.’

‘I did not.’

‘You knew she was there. Did you kill her?’

‘No! God, no!’

‘Take her out on the boat and kill her?’

‘No! I’m not
capable
.’

‘OK. If you just tootled out yesterday to do a wee job there’d be no traces of her on your boat. But Forensics found her hair trapped under a cleat. They’re looking for traces of blood now but they said the deck had been hosed down. If she was anywhere near your boat before she died they’ll find out.’

Cole was badly shaken and Morrow felt that now was a good time to draw his eye to a way out.

‘Look, Andrew, when someone unaccustomed goes to prison they’re befriended by people they wouldn’t normally be friends with. Sometimes, after the sentence is over, those relationships are used to make them do things.’

He looked wary.

‘People,’ she prompted again. ‘Nice people like yourself – and we see this
a lot
– get caught up in things.’

But Andrew was refusing to move towards the open door. He knew it was there, she could see that, but he had decided not to name and blame.

‘It’s a very prestigious golf course,’ said Morrow. ‘I’m quite surprised they’d give a job and a tithe cottage to someone with your record.’

‘Well,’ he shook his head, ‘it was my mother . . .’

‘She got you the job there?’

‘She knows . . . everyone. It was a favour.’

‘Have you been dealing cocaine to members of the club?’

‘Fuck no!’

She knew he hadn’t. The club wouldn’t tolerate a stoner with a criminal record dealing on the premises. They would tolerate a dealer waiter or a groundsman dealing, as long as he was discreet and got the members what they wanted.

‘See, this can be big or this can be small. Depends how willing you are to give us information. Who did you give the security code to?’

He wouldn’t say a name.

‘Mr Cole, we can just go through a list of names in Shotts Prison and see who you’ve been in touch with. My own guess is you texted the code to someone?’

He put a clenched fist over his mouth, elbow on the table, red-rimmed eyes staring furiously at the wall.

‘You won’t say a name. Maybe you’re afraid?’

His eyes flashed up her, angry at the suggestion. She pretended not to have noticed.

‘I see. Can we agree that you gave the code to someone? It’ll save me calling up your phone records.’

He nodded. She made him say ‘yes’ for the tape, even though they were being filmed. It was good to get them to speak.

‘Did you agree with this unnamed party that you’d go out on your boat and “accidentally” find the body?’

His face flushed pink suddenly and he shouted at the table, ‘
I didn’t know what was going to happen!
’

She could picture him trashing his cell now, cornered and desperate and feeling he had nothing to lose. Cole couldn’t cope with being held responsible for his actions. It was his weak spot.

She patted the table in front of him, rhythmically, as if it was his back. ‘Andrew, it’s OK. It’s OK.’

He looked to her, saw that she was still framing him as an object of concern. His panic abated.

‘It’s OK,’ she said again, giving him a tissue out of her pocket. He blew his nose with a comical little ‘parp’ that left him shuddering.

Everything about Cole was small and sweet and unthreatening. She thought about him ripping his cell apart this morning, doing a long sentence, cleaning his house of drug paraphernalia before going out to look for a dead body in the water.

Police interviews were intense. Like a job interview or a first date, people were profoundly self-conscious because a bad impression could have lifelong consequences. The pressure meant that they often presented themselves paradoxically and, instead of brushing over flaws, insisted the opposite. ‘No one fucks with me’ usually meant ‘People have been fucking with me’. ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks’ meant ‘I care what everyone thinks’. Thinking about that made Morrow consider her own frantic insistence that she didn’t care about her brother. The admission made her mood drop. She looked up again. Here was Mr Cole, telling and retelling the same story about himself in different ways: I’m a harmless little man, I’m Mr Mole. All my sins are crimes of omission and good faith, I’m not to blame and I am sorry.

‘Are you going to name the person you gave the code to?’

He shook his head, remembered the tape and said, ‘No.’

‘Because you’re afraid of them?’

He smiled. ‘
No.
’

There was no fear in there. Ridicule perhaps, but not for the person he’d given the code to. The ridicule was for Morrow.

‘Why won’t you tell me their name?’

He drew a parallel line back and forth on the table top with his finger. Mr Cole’s paradox was that he was not chaotic. He was calculating. He was going back to prison and knew what it meant to go back as a grass. It meant a full sentence in segregation units. Years in the segs, with no one for company but child rapists and the nutters who wouldn’t survive gen. pop. He wasn’t chaotic and he wasn’t going to budge.

‘OK,’ she said softly. ‘Tell me what
you
did. You texted the code, let them in and, what,
met
them?’

‘No.’ He had worked this out in the night, a legalistic version of the story that would make him the hapless patsy. ‘I texted someone the code. Lots of people on the estate do that. But I stayed in my house.’

‘And? What did you think was going to happen?’

‘I’d said they could come in and use my boat. I thought they were dropping something—’ He broke off, lost in considerations of parole violations, admissible and inadmissible facts.

‘I’m not interested in what you thought, Andrew,’ said Morrow. ‘What actually happened?’

When he spoke his voice was deeper and sadder, he sounded his age. ‘I was in my house, in bed, and I heard a scream. It woke me. They’d asked me to leave the key on the boat. I thought they were going to drop something— But then I heard her scream. I knew. I stayed indoors. I heard the boat go out and heard it come back. I stayed in. I was in all day. I was hiding in the back room. I heard them leave but it took me a whole day to come out. I went to look at the boat. Blood,
everywhere
.’

‘There doesn’t seem to be blood there now.’

‘Washed it. Hosed it.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged one shoulder.

‘Did you know her?’

He shook his head.

‘Can you say that for the benefit of the tape, please, Andr—’

‘
BITCH
,
I DID
NOT
KNOW
HER
.’
His eyes were so narrow they were watering. He caught himself, widened his eyes and acted as if he hadn’t said it.

But she’d seen him now, the real Andrew Cole. A bitter angry little man who wasn’t going to be told what to do by filth like her, or sympathised with by filth like her, or ordered around by filth like her.

She dropped the sympathetic mask and looked at him, cold. ‘You’re going back to prison.’

Morrow smiled warmly because they both knew what that meant: he would be ordered around by filth like her. He would be watched as he sat on the toilet by filth like her. He would have to beg filth like her for soap and shampoo and plastic forks. And he was going there for a long time.

They sat for a moment, she smiling, watching all the fight go out of him.

‘Why did you stay indoors for a whole day?’

He took a deep breath.

‘Andrew? You must have known. Otherwise, why’d you have to get off your face to go out looking for her?’

He looked despairingly at the ceiling, fat self-pitying tears rolled down his spoiled boyish face. ‘I didn’t. It was that scream. Wasn’t a normal scream. Not a person scream. Like an animal. Like an animal in a trap.’