The Blood That Stains Your Hands (15 page)

'Is there any way to go through your records so we can see what she looked at?'

'Fuck off, man.'

You just want to give people a big old bear hug sometimes, don't you? And while you're hugging them, bring your knee swiftly up into their testicles.

'Maureen's dead.'

'What the fuck, man?'

'Committed suicide last week. We're just trying to work out her last few days, trying to find some clue as to why she might have killed herself. We need to know the kinds of things she did online.'

I'll give him some bonus points for the fact that he actually looks disconcerted by the news.

'That's terrible,' he says.

'Yes, it is.'

'I don't have that information here,' he says.

'Can you get it?'

'Not me. You'll need to contact head office. I'm just, like, a guy here, you know. I don't own this joint. I know dick all about those things. Any problems, I call Livingstone, they send a guy out.'

'Livingstone?'

'Aye.'

'OK. Give me a contact, and I'll make some calls.'

He turns away, digs out a card, which is stained with coffee and God knows what else, then hands it over. I'm about to slip it into my pocket when he says, 'I need that.' So I write down the details and hand the card back to him.

'Thanks for your help,' I say.

'Why'd she do it?'

'Don't know yet.'

He doesn't reply, but as I turn away he mutters, 'Fucking polis,' at my back. I stop for a second, contemplate crushing his skull with a Khan-like death grip, then head on out the door.

Darkness has arrived with much greater intensity in the few minutes I was inside. I look across the road. Soap box guy is gone.

––––––––

I
got to go out into a miserable fucking November afternoon and speak to people. Morrow got to sit and look at online porn. Although, ultimately it came down to online granny porn, so I think I was better off.

He's not looking at it when I get back though. I slump down into my seat, check the time. Feeling hungry. That's good. I can leave it another few hours, then by the time I get home I'll be ravenous. I can stop and get a carry-out on the way, fish supper probably, have a couple of beers with dinner, then crawl into bed. Avoid hitting the pub and hopefully get to sleep before the demons start demanding something of me.

'You already find what you're looking for?' I ask.

'Oh, yes.'

He's not smiling anymore. I reckon a couple of hours looking at old women naked is going to wipe the smile from anyone's face. He types a couple of things into his computer, then swings the screen round to let me have a look. I'm immediately greeted by the sight of old Maureen completely naked, lying back on the sofa in her front room, her legs wide open. I could add more, but I can't bring myself to think about it. No one wants to visualise that.

'Holy fuck,' I say.

Morrow nods, but doesn't look at the screen.

'I've seen enough.'

'Sure beans,' he says.

He turns the screen back, clicking off the page as he does so.

'So, that's something you can't un-see,' I say.

'You get anywhere?'

'Yep. She was using the café on Rutherglen Main Street. The guy recognised her. Sounds like she went in there a lot. I need to make another couple of calls to try to get access to what she was doing. That account of hers, was there the opportunity to chat with her online, anything like that?'

'Oh, yes. All sorts.'

'How do you suppose she uploaded the pictures?'

He shrugs.

'Phone, USB stick, who knows? But she must've then gotten rid of whatever she took to the internet café.'

'It's weird, isn't it? Why didn't she just have a computer and internet in her own home if she was going to do this kind of thing?'

He nods.

'Yep, I thought about that. Asked around up there in her little block. Internet's shit, apparently. Always has been. Maybe she tried and it wasn't working. Maybe she didn't want a computer in her house in case the rays from it killed her. Old people have weird ideas.'

Ain't that the truth.

'You spoken to Taylor?'

He nods.

'Right, I'll just go in and update him.'

And off I go.

*

F
ish supper dispatched, second bottle of Stella. 10.58 p.m. Pretty tired, not quite tired enough. Sitting in front of the television.

In the corner by the window is a large ficus benjamina, which, remarkably, has survived for over five years. I thought I'd kill the damn thing in days, but it's still going.

It'll outlive me. One day I'll be dead and it'll be sitting there for a while afterwards thinking, I haven't seen the Miserable Cunt much recently. I wish he'd come back, I'm dying for a pint.

There are three pictures on the walls. One is an original film poster from
Casablanca
. Worth something now, I dare say. Bought it in 1985 for £250. There's a painting of the harbour at Anstruther. It was a present. I stuck it on the wall to keep her happy, imagining that I'd take it down when she wasn't there. She's long gone and I never did get around to removing the picture. Then there's Grace Kelly. I never knew which movie it was from, never tried to find out. Someone said
Rear Window
once. Maybe they're right

There's something teenage about having a movie poster and a b&w movie star on your wall. Certainly, that's what Peggy used to say. I don't care. What does it matter? The women that come back here aren't doing it because they think I earned a 1.1 in classics from Oxford.

There's the air of cigarette smoke, but it's not as bad as some houses. I leave the windows open a lot, try not to smoke too much inside. Nevertheless, A Smoker Lives Here is more or less emblazoned on the walls.

BBC4 trundles round to the next show. The last one only finished a minute ago, and I've already forgotten about it. I don't even know what I was watching. It was just on, right there, in front of me. I have no idea what it was called.

'Now on Four,' says the faceless man on the television, over the BBC4 graphic, 'Dr Lesley Brothers travels to Israel to continue her examination of the Book of Daniel. With scenes of a graphic nature, that are liable to be upsetting to you in particular, Sergeant Hutton...'

The show starts.

What?

He never said that. He didn't. He couldn't have done.

Dr Brothers is saying something, standing in the middle of a Middle Eastern desert, but I can't hear what she's saying. The guy on the TV, he didn't just mention my name.

Is that a thing? Are they doing that now? They know who's watching and can tailor everything so that it's viewer-specific?

God, my head's swimming. Shut up! Shut up, Dr Lesley Brothers! Jesus!

I hit the remote, pressing buttons to turn it off. Keep hitting the wrong one. The volume turns up. What? What? Go away, for fuck's sake. Fucking television.

Just stop!

The remote control is a blur. I could get off my stupid arse and turn the set off, but do I even know where the button for that is? I never turn it off at the set.

Must be one of these buttons on here. Crap, come on. The channel changes. What? More noise? What?

There are images flashing by, images of a great beast, a beast with ten horns, crashing and breaking and destroying, images in black and white. The voice is talking, another voice. Not Dr Lesley Brothers. Someone else. Someone like her, lecturing us. Lecturing the viewer. Lecturing me. Telling me about Daniel.

Daniel. Why do I want to know about Daniel? Fucking Daniel!

Jesus, will you shut up? Shut the fuck up with your fucking voices!

I can't find the button on the remote. Go away. I can't leave the room, because it will still be here, louder and louder, eating at me. I need to turn it off. I jump out of my seat, so many voices in my head.

Stop it. Just fucking stop it! I don't know where the button is. The on/off button. I grab the television. The remote has fallen on the floor. I pull the TV forward. Not far enough. I shake it. Shake the TV. Grapple with it. Shut up, you useless piece of techno-shit! Fucking stop!

I push the TV off the unit. It falls onto the floor. The plug comes out of the wall. The picture dies. The sound stops.

Breaths are so heavy. Laboured. Fucking TV. You weren't speaking to me. Fuck you. Of course, you weren't. Fuck you. I stamp on the back of the TV. It's stopped now. I can leave. Where am I going to go? That's always the problem, stuck in this stupid little fucking piece of crap apartment. Me and Grace Kelly.

Fall onto my knees. Turn my back on the television.

Daniel. Fuck you.

Lean forward, head in hands. Breaths still short. Head. Head needs to explode. Squeeze it. Squeeze it harder. Maybe it'll stop.

––––––––

D
on't make it into work.

The alarm on my phone goes off at 6 a.m. as it always does. I haven't been in bed very long. Lay on the carpet a long time, fell asleep, woke up, felt cold, couldn't move. Shivered. Heating had turned off. Finally crawled into bed. The alarm goes off and it barely feels like I've been asleep. The alarm set to Nokia-supplied jazz music. The only thing that usually wakes me up. Set loud.

It plays and plays. Switches itself off after a couple of minutes. Comes back on, eight minutes after it turned itself off. I don't sleep through it. It's there, right next to my head, right next to my fucking head, right inside my head, but it doesn't make me move.

Finally turn it off, maybe the eighth time it's going through its cycle. Maybe the ninth. No one's counting.

Some time later the house phone rings. And rings. I think it wakes me up. Somewhere I recognise that it will be the station, looking for me. Sergeant Ramsay. I don't answer.

The mobile rings shortly afterwards. I let it. In some part of my brain I hear the conversation that's going on at the station. Ramsay reporting back to Taylor. Taylor not accepting that he can't get in touch with me, telling him to keep trying. Taylor irritated, the irritation covering up the worry. Has probably been waiting for me to fall off the cliff since I returned to work.

From somewhere I think of the toilet cleaner. The enlightened toilet cleaner, just trying to do a good job, trying to make peoples' lives that little bit better. I said I'd do something for him. I said I'd investigate ways to deal with the town graffiti artists. Investigate. Because that's what I do. Yet what have I done?

The home phone rings again. I don't have a phone in the bedroom. I'm not getting up. This time, however, I know I'm going to get the mobile. Taylor will be worried, and the least I can do is ease that for him. Albeit, I'm lying here at the bottom of the fucking cliff, so that thing he's worried about has happened.

The mobile rings as soon as the home phone rings off. I take the call without speaking.

'Sergeant Hutton?'

'Yes.'

'You all right?'

There's the question. I don't answer straight away, as I'm not sure what to say to that. Not in the mood for making shit up, not in the mood for pretending, but the thought of telling the truth ain't so fucking great either.

'No,' I say eventually. Look around for a clock, even though of course I know there isn't one to see. Take the phone away from my ear to look at the time. 10:13. Work starts officially at 08:30. Taylor gave me just over an hour and a half to be late before looking for me. 'Won't make it in, but I'm all right.' Bet I don't sound it. 'I'll take the day as leave, square it off with the boss later.'

'You'll be in tomorrow,' says Ramsay. Not a question, or an order, just a statement. Very straight, Ramsay. Knows who he's dealing with, but not judgemental.

'Yeah,' I say.

He clicks off. I lay the phone on the bedside table. The curtains are open, the morning outside grey and dull. The phone call has been little but a minor blip. It hasn't woken me up, hasn't penetrated the grey, hasn't allowed me to bounce back up from the bottom.

The toilet cleaner. That guy. I said I'd help him. I can't do it from here, can't do it today, but I can do it tomorrow, if I make it into work. He deserves it. Just a guy trying to help people. The least I can do.

This morning, that's all I've got to cling to. Not much, and not enough. The grey swirls around, crawls over my head, crawls inside my brain. I curl up under the sheets. Still feeling wiped out. Maybe I can get back to sleep.

That's all I've got. Sleep.

*

H
aul myself out for a walk just after two in the afternoon. Heading for the park at the top end of town, as that was where I so often found myself in the summer when I was getting over all that shit that happened in the spring. This time, however, I've no intention of going to the park. I time it so that I'll get to the church at the same time as Mrs Buttler. She said she was there at the same time every day. Practically invited me.

The person I really want to talk to, the person who's flitting in and out of my head, is Philo Stewart, but that's too complicated. I can't be having the feelings I'm having for her. It's not going to help anyone. Certainly not me. Mrs Buttler, sitting in silence in a silent church, is much safer territory.

Sure enough, the iron gates are closed but not padlocked. The door to the church is closed, but unlocked. I walk into the small entrance hall, along the short corridor, and into the nave.

Close the door behind me and take in the scene. Nothing has changed. Rows of empty pews in perfect silence. Empty, of course, bar Mrs Buttler. She doesn't turn to see who's there. I assume she knows it's me. Don't even consider for a second – having cast my instant judgement on him – that she will expect her husband to have come across. Not the type to step into the church. He likely would not even realise that's where his wife has gone.

I walk silently down the aisle and take my place in the pew across from where Mrs Buttler is sitting. We don't look at each other. I stare up at Jesus in blue behind the chancel.

Beautiful silence. So much more healing than it would have been sitting in silence in my front room, Grace and me. Nevertheless, I feel quite detached from the religion of it. It's not about God. It would be the same if this were a library, or an old stately home devoid of guests, or a magnificent old town hall, no one else inside.