The Unburied Dead (16 page)

'Hutton?' he says, unpleasantly. 'What?'

'Thought I might have a word, Chief Inspector.' Show respect, even though I can think of no one less deserving.

'Jonah sent you on an errand?' he grumbles. 'Let you in on the secret. Herrod told him to piss off, I expect. Need someone to do their dirty work after last month. Well you can tell him to fuck… off.'

He begins to close the door.

'This has nothing to do with Jonah. I don't know what you're talking about.'

He stops. A half-truth – I haven't the faintest idea what that was all about. I can worry about it later.

'What is it, then?'

'Christmas. Thought I'd just come and see you, see how you're getting on.' An absolute shitstorm of bollocks. Serves me right for not giving it more thought on the way down here.

He steps back from the door, ushers me in.

'Fucking shite, Hutton, but you might as well come in since you're here.'

He walks down the short hall and into the room with the TV playing. I close the front door behind me.

The room is a tip. Empty wine bottles, beer cans, dinner plates, microwave oven-ready meal containers. Crow's wife left him ten years ago, taking all four of the kids with her. He moved into this place just after that, and some of this stuff looks as if it's been sitting here since then.

He slumps into his favourite chair – the one surrounded by the greatest amount of detritus – and stares at the television. A
Morcambe and Wise
re-run. At least, you have to assume it's a re-run. The bloody BBC will do anything to try and get an audience.

'Have a seat,' he says, and gestures to an old settee. I sit on the edge, clearing junk out of the way.

'Here,' he says, and tosses me an unopened can of warm McEwan's. Seriously.

'Thanks.' Rather drink my own urine, but I try not offend. Open it, take the merest sip and put it on the coffee table with all the other litter.

I really don't know what to say – beginning to feel stupid – so sit and watch the TV. Eric and Ernie are in bed together. By God, the '70s were innocent times.

'Well, what is it Hutton?' he says. 'You didn't come down here to drink my fucking Export.' Ain't that the truth.

Consider subtlety, but that's not really an option. It would have required some prior thought. Have no option but to be straightforward. Not completely straightforward, however. I have learned the odd thing about interviewing suspects in the last twenty years.

'Heard a rumour,' I say.

He looks at me. Can tell he's interested.

'What kind?' he says.

'About you and Bloonsbury stitching up your man over the murder trial last year.'

He nods, takes a loud slurp from the can.

'What about it?'

What about it? I don't know.

'Did you do it?'

'What?'

'Plant evidence? Incriminate him, because you didn't have enough to put him away?'

He looks me full in the eye. Contempt.

'What is this, Hutton? You working for some polis commission? You on some fucking crusade against injustice? Fighting on behalf of the wrongfully imprisoned Fucking Headcase Killer Bastard One?'

'What did you mean about Bloonsbury needing someone to do his dirty work after last month?'

He barks out a laugh, chokes on a swallow of McEwan's, washes it away with another loud slurp from the can.

'Listen, Wee Man, why don't you just fuck off? You obviously don't know fuck, so take a hike. You're out your depth, Wee Man, out your fucking depth.'

Stand up to go. This is getting me nowhere and I'm not going to tell him everything I know. And what difference does it make if he did murder that woman last year? Really?

As crusaders for truth go, I'm completely shit.

One last question, because I don't care what he thinks about me asking it.

'You have anything to do with the murder the other night?'

He looks up at me, but there's nothing in those eyes. No giveaway, no hint.

'What the fuck are you talking about?'

'Ann Keller. She was murdered in Cambuslang on Monday night.'

He shakes his head, rolls his eyes. Plenty of drink, no acting. Nothing to do with it. Gut instinct.

'Wee Man, the only times I've left this seat in the last five months is to go for a shite, and to open the door to you. Now fuck off. And excuse me if I don't see you out.'

Look down at him. Had enough. The stench, everything is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. And I hate getting called Wee Man, particularly by drunken old farts who're about a foot shorter than me.

I see myself to the front door, step out into the rain. It feels clean and cold, and the grey day seems a lot fresher than it was ten minutes ago.

I was sitting by the side of the road. It had been raining, but the sun had just come out and the heat was making steam rise from what tarmac there was left on the road. I hadn't slept in a couple of nights, but at some point in the Balkan summer that seemed to have begun in March, my body had become used to it.

Sleep was when bad things happened. When you lay still the world around you changed. You went to sleep in a bed in a small room in a quiet house in a nondescript village, and woke up to find you'd been surrounded by armoured vehicles, or that there were soldiers from God only knew what side, going from house to house. Your body got to learn that no sleep was bad, but that sleep itself could be much worse.

I had a bottle of water in my hands. I'd dropped my backpack on the ground behind me and lain my camera on a large stone set back from the road. I hadn't taken a photograph in five days. There were probably a couple of editors back in London wondering what the fuck I was doing, but I wasn't thinking about them at the time.

There was a kid walking towards me along the road, dragging a tired old doll alongside. I could see that she was crying before I could hear her. A kid walking alone in the middle of a forest, miles away from the nearest town. Jesus, I couldn't have wanted to know her story less. At the very least it would have been a great photo, but I was through with that. I was only picking up my camera again to move it from one shit hole to another.

She got closer, walking in my direction, but she had no interest in me. She possibly couldn't even see me. She was walking along a road, and I doubt she had the faintest idea where she was going. The tears had made lines through the dirt on her face, her mouth was open in a frozen grimace. I think I knew as soon as I saw her that it wasn't a doll that she was pulling along beside her. It had a weight that a doll would never have had.

The thing that really got me about the fact that she was dragging a baby beside her along a potholed road, was that she was holding it by one ankle. The baby was wearing some rudimentary all-in-one, which was dirty and torn; the other leg hung limply, the shoulders and head bumped silently along the ground with the arms. The baby's face was looking at me as the kid approached. It was a face that had been dragged through the dirt for many miles.

The girl walked past me in silence, never noticing I was there. Lost in her own disaster. It didn't even cross my mind to ask if she wanted my help, as if the fact that she was ignoring my presence absolved me from having to provide any assistance.

I didn't move, but watched her all the way down the road, until she had disappeared out of sight behind the trees. The last sight I had was of the baby, its head bouncing out of a pothole.

I stared into the trees across the road. There was silence. No birds. The birds had got the fuck out of Dodge as soon as the war had started. They had more sense than the rest of us. Even the insects appeared to have given this place a rest.

The kid might have gone, but the baby's face was emblazoned in the back of my eyes. At some stage I realised that my face was wet with tears.

Some time later I heard the low rumble of a truck, coming from the same direction as the kid. The day was so quiet that I could hear the truck for some time before it appeared, slowly negotiating its way around the holes in the road. It was an open-topped green 4 tonne military vehicle with no plates. There were two guys in the cab at the front, seven or eight slouched unhappily in the back. Hot, dirty, miserable. Croatians, leaning on guns, or slumped over, their elbows resting on their knees. Most of them looked at me as they drove past. They didn't stop.

I wondered for a while what they did when they came across the kid in the road. The kid with the baby. Maybe they slowed down.

*

Walk back into the office just after lunch, having helped myself to a Little Chef all day breakfast on my way home. Herrod called five times while I was out, but I let the phone ring out each time. Not in the mood.

Can tell something's happened. Herrod's there, talking agitatedly to someone on the phone. There are a few more constables about the station than should be on Boxing Day, and they all look as if they've got something to do. One of them calls over that Taylor wants to see me, then scurries off. The door to Miller's office is open and I can hear her speaking to what is obviously an inferior. Recognise the tone. All connects with the press hanging around outside the front door. The place is in a state of controlled excitement. Wonder if we've got our man, and where General Bloonsbury is amidst the turmoil.

Herrod slams down the phone as I walk past.

'Where the fuck have you been?' he growls at me, and I've a good mind to tell him what I was doing, and that if he ever talks to me like that again I'll get him thrown in jail. Ignore him. He gets up, and walks quickly out the office.

'I'm getting your mobile surgically attached to your arse,' he grumbles as he goes.

Stupid bastard.

Another constable buzzes past. Catch the faint trace of alcohol in the air. Called in unexpectedly over Christmas – what do you expect? Walk into Taylor's office, expecting to find him feverishly arresting criminals. He's leaning back in his chair, feet up on his desk, a cup of tea in his hand. Looks as if he's just enjoyed a nice bit of lunch. An oasis of calm. Pull up the seat across the desk but don't go so far as to put my feet up.

'Can I take it I missed something?'

He takes a drink from his tea, places the cup back on the desk, puts his hands behind his head.

'Where've you been, Sergeant?'

'Pursuing an independent line of inquiry,' I say.

He nods. Trusts me enough to know he'll find out about it when I'm ready to tell him. Although, in this case, who knows when that's going to be.

'We think our man had another go last night. Followed a woman back to her flat in Rutherglen, she asked him in…' raises his eyebrows as he says it, and he's right. Don't these people read the papers? 'She starts thinking there's something a bit weird about him. He goes to the toilet, she looks in his jacket, discovers a knife. Usual thick bitch with her head in the sand, doesn't know anything about the murder on Monday night. But she does know she's got some heid-the-ba' in her bathroom, so she gets out. Goes to a friend's house. The friend is a bit more switched on, shows her our first photofit in the paper, and she thinks it's him. Waits until this morning...'

'What?'

He shrugs. 'That's the helpful public for you. Anyway, she gets one of us to go back to her flat with her, just in case he's lying in wait. Long gone of course, but not before he's ripped the shit out the joint. Stupid bitch is still downstairs peeing her pants.'