A Song for the Dying

34

Darren blinked across the table at me. ‘I…’ He picked at the lining of the cast on his left arm. ‘It’s not like that.’ A sniff. ‘Wasn’t like that.’

Twenty to five, and we were still stuck here, the clock’s minute hand sweeping ever closer to Paul Manson’s appointment.

Alice leaned forwards, elbows on her knees. ‘It’s perfectly understandable. You’re only looking out for her, aren’t you? She does all these stupid things and you’re the one who has to clean up the mess. She needs to learn, doesn’t she? Needs to do what she’s told, when she’s told.’

He kept his head down.

The HR Manager, Sarah, narrowed her eyes. ‘I’m not comfortable with this line of questioning. Darren has already told you that he didn’t assault Jessica McFee. I don’t see why you’re fixating on this.’ Playing the lawyer.

Alice placed both hands, palm up, on the table. ‘And if she steps out of line, it’s only understandable you should give her a slap every now and then. For her own good? It works with dogs, doesn’t it? Why should women be any different?’

‘I can assure you that not only did Darren excel in our gender-parity training, he’s one of the hospital’s Equality Champions. This is completely inappropriate and-’

‘Come on then, Darren,’ I picked up my walking stick and poked him in the chest with the rubber end, ‘tell me about this hit-and-run.’

He shrank back into his seat. ‘It was dark. I was crossing the road and a car came out of nowhere and hit me. Didn’t see it.’

Another poke. ‘Where?’

Pick. Pick. Pick. ‘Just down from the chipper on Oxford Street.’

‘When?’

Nothing.

So I poked him again. ‘When — did — it — happen?’

‘Ow! … I don’t know.’

‘Please stop poking him.’

No chance. ‘I checked the Police National Computer — there’s no record of you being run over on Oxford Street, or anywhere else. What, you decided it wasn’t worth reporting? Accidents will happen?’

He kept his eyes down. ‘Didn’t think there was any point. You know. Cos I didn’t see the car or anything…’

‘Right.’ One more poke for luck. ‘You got flattened by a car. Your leg’s broken, arm too. You look like you’ve spent an hour being a trampoline for skinheads, and you didn’t think it was worth reporting?’

‘Detective Constable Henderson, if Darren says-’

‘You see, Darren, you told your boss here you were hit on a zebra crossing, but there’s no zebra crossing on Oxford, is there?’ This time I aimed the rubber tip at his ribs and he winced. Recoiled in his seat. Wrapped a hand around the impact spot. So I did it again, going for the other side instead. Same result. ‘The only person in a hit-and-run who doesn’t go to the police is the driver. Take off your shirt.’

Sarah stiffened. ‘All right, I think we’ve been patient enough. That’s completely-’

‘There wasn’t any car, was there? Take off the damn shirt.’

She stood. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave. If you want to conduct some sort of strip-search, you can do it under caution at the station. Until then- What are you doing?’

I lunged across the coffee table, grabbed two handfuls of his shirt and yanked. The buttons pinged off like tiny bullets, the tails wrenched out of his trousers. His tie dangled over the purple, scarlet, and yellow mess of his chest. Bruises covered both sides — not in a hard line like you’d get from a car bonnet, or a bumper but haphazard and patchwork. And right in the middle of his stomach was the perfect negative image of a bootprint.

‘Strange tyres on that car. Looks more like a size nine than a Dunlop radial.’

Sarah jabbed a finger at me. ‘I’ll be making a formal complaint to your superiors. How dare you subject a member of my staff to this humiliating-’

‘Oh, grow up. He wasn’t in a hit-and-run, someone beat the living hell out of him.’ I put my stick down. ‘Why did you lie, Darren? Who’s got you so scared they can do that to you and you don’t even report it?’

He bit his bottom lip, the one good eye glistening in the light. ‘Nothing happened…’

‘Really?’ I rapped my cane on the coffee table and he flinched. ‘Is that why you’re after a shotgun licence? Bit of revenge?’

She pulled out her phone. ‘I’m calling security. You’re both-’

‘No!’ Darren grabbed her arm. ‘Please. No. I… I don’t want to make a fuss. Please?’

She stared at him for a moment. ‘Are you certain this is what you want?’

He lowered his eyes and went back to picking at his cast. ‘Can I get a glass of water, or something?’

Sarah placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Of course you can.’ She scowled at me. ‘And no more questions.’

Darren Wilkinson licked his lips and blinked as the door clicked shut behind her. Then gave a little shuddering sigh. ‘I … never meant to hurt her.’

Alice patted him on the arm. ‘You need to-’

‘It was…’ He cleared his throat. Stared at the coffee table again. ‘Sorry, you first.’

‘No: what were you going to say?’

‘Jessica… She wasn’t like…’ Another sigh. ‘She wanted me to hit her.’ He dug his thumbnail into the lining of the cast, gouging out a tuft of white. ‘I don’t mean “she was asking for it” in a misogynistic way, I mean literally. She literally asked me to hit her. I just wanted to be like normal couples, holding hands, walks in the park, but…’ He puffed out his cheeks. Hacked out another tuft.

I stared at him. ‘Aye, right.’

Silence.

‘It’s OK, Darren. What happened?’

‘The first time, I thought she wanted me to spank her. You know, just a bit of fun? And I know it enforces gender stereotyping and patriarchal dominance, but she told me not to be so bloody wet. She didn’t want spanked, she wanted me to hit her.’

‘And did you?’

His eye came up, wide. ‘No! Of course I didn’t. I don’t believe in the physical subjugation of women or any of that outmoded sexist crap… But she wouldn’t let up, she kept badgering me and then she was hitting me and screaming in my face…’ Darren turned away. ‘And I did it. I slapped her, I didn’t mean to, it just… And that was it — she was…’ A cough. ‘You know.’

Alice tapped her fingertips on the coffee table. ‘She became sexually aroused.’

‘Sometimes I think she … confused violence with love. Like they were the same thing. And that’s how it went. She … needed it to feel wanted and valued and I…’ He bared his gap-filled teeth. ‘I hated myself.’

There were thousands of excuses — things abusers told themselves to justify pounding the crap out of their other halves — but that was a new one.

While he was scrubbing the tears from his bruised face, I pulled out my phone and flicked through to the photo that Jessica’s flatmate, Liz Thornton, had sent me. Held it out to Darren. ‘Do you recognize this man?’

He blinked at it a couple of times, then sniffed. ‘He’s the pervert who went through their bins, isn’t he? I chased him once. Jessica and me were going down to the car park — it was someone’s leaving do that night — and he was fiddling with the mailboxes. You know, like he was picking the locks or something? So I shouted and he ran and I chased him.’

‘Did you see his face?’

Darren shook his head. ‘It was dark. He ran off into the woods and there was no way I was going to follow him in there and end up getting knifed or something.’

I put the phone away again. ‘So who beat you up?’

‘I can’t…’ Deep breath. ‘I fell down the stairs.’

‘And somehow managed to stamp on your own stomach on the way down?’ I leaned back. Stared at him until he dropped his gaze and went back to digging the lining out of his cast. ‘You get beaten up on Thursday night. And on Friday you text Jessica McFee and tell her you never want to see her again.’

Pretty obvious really.

He kept his head down.

‘It was her dad, wasn’t it? Wee Free McFee didn’t like some godless Dundonian rutting away on top of his daughter.’

Darren’s head snapped up, one good eye wide open. ‘No! It was nothing like that he never touched me it was an accident. I’m not pressing charges!’

‘I’m sorry…’ Alice fiddled with her keys in the darkness between our stolen Jag and the scabby Renault parked next to it. Tried the button on the fob again. ‘It was working earlier…’

‘Give.’ I held out my hand and she passed the keys over.

The multi-storey smelled of rotting weeds, laced with a dirty ammonia tang. A puddle stretched most of the way across the concrete floor — ankle-deep by the lifts — empty plastic bottles and crisp packets marking high-tide with a dirty flotsam line. At least it was reasonably dry over here by the far wall. Even if the stairs had been used as a urinal.

Alice wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe it needs a new battery, or we could-’

‘Or we could just do this.’ I stuck the key in the lock.

‘Ooh, I forgot about that…’

Kids today.

The boot creaked as I opened it. Nothing in there but a tartan blanket and a dog-eared ‘COLLINS ROAD ATLAS OF SCOTLAND’ twenty years out of date. I pulled out the blanket and dumped it on the back seat.

‘Ash, I’m sorry, I didn’t think it’d take that long and-’

‘Nothing we can do about it now.’

The stuff we’d bought at B amp;Q clanged and thumped as I dumped it into the boot, leaving the tarpaulin till last, spreading it out over everything else. Making a little waterproof pouch.

‘Maybe, if we hurry, the traffic won’t be too bad? Ash?’

I clunked the boot shut.

‘Ash?’

‘Maybe.’ I limped around to the passenger side and eased myself into the seat. According to the dashboard clock it was nearly quarter past five. Should have got out of there when we had the chance.

The Jaguar’s windscreen wipers squealed back across the glass, smearing the rain into scarlet arcs, catching the tail-light glow of the queue of traffic crawling across Dundas Bridge. Streetlights made orbs of sickly yellow. The sky tumour-dark.

On the other end of the phone, Chief Superintendent Ness went silent for a bit. Then, ‘I see… And are we supposed to prosecute him for domestic abuse?’

The car crept forward another couple of feet.

‘Jacobson said it was up to you. Darren’s got an alibi for when Claire Young went missing, and Alice says he doesn’t fit the profile. So, probably not the Inside Man.’

Alice’s voice was barely audible over the engine’s rumble. ‘Ask her about the letter.’

‘What about the letter? What did you tell Wee Free?’

A sooking hiss came from the earpiece. ‘Mr McFee has been informed that we’ve received another letter from someone purporting to be the Inside Man. I wanted to persuade the News and Post not to run it, but Dr Docherty thinks if Tim doesn’t see his letter in print he’s going to think we’re not taking him seriously. Jessica McFee’s in enough danger as it is.’

‘You giving Wee Free an advance copy?’

‘Might as well: he’s going to find out tomorrow morning anyway.’

Alice waved at me.

Right. ‘We’ll need one too.’

‘Come into Division Headquarters and you can pick up a press pack.’

‘Email it through. I’m following something up.’

There was a pause. ‘What?’

‘Ask Jacobson. My organ-grinding days are over, remember?’ Another trundle forward. More silence, punctuated by the groan of rubber on smeared glass.

‘I see.’

We crept forward another couple of feet.

‘Mr Henderson, let’s get something sparklingly clear: as you so eloquently pointed out earlier, you’re not a police officer any more. Do you seriously believe that you merit a personal briefing from the head of a major investigation? If you want to know what’s going on, you can get off your backside and turn up to the team meetings.’

All one big happy family.

Up ahead, the traffic was thinning out, escaping the bottleneck of the bridge and the roundabouts on either end.

‘I don’t care how big a wheel you were in Oldcastle CID — that means nothing to me. You want something? You earn it.’

A clunk, and the line went dead.

I blew out a breath. ‘Think she likes me.’

Rain drummed on the Jaguar’s roof. Bounced off the bonnet.

Alice’s knuckles stood out pale around the steering wheel. ‘What if we can’t get there in time?’

‘We go to plan B.’