© 1996 by Peter Turnbull
Peter Turnbull’s police P Division is back in a procedural packed with a fascinating array of Glaswegian characters. In reviewing the author s last-published novel, The Killing Floor (St. Martin’s Press), Publishers Weekly praised Mr. Turnbull’s incisive characterization of even minor figures. He brings the same concern for realistic rendering of all his characters to his short fiction.
TUESDAY — 23:30
John Black saw the dark heap by the roadside half on the pavement, half in the gutter. It unnerved him. Even at a distance of about three hundred yards, he guessed, it unnerved him. He knew intuitively that his walk home on this pleasant summer’s night, here in well-set Bearsden, was going to be cut short by unpleasantness. Here among the ancient tribe of Volvo and Mercedes and Jaguar, here, basking in the soft yellow glow of the sodium lamps, here was tragedy. He quickened his pace. A car passed him, moving in his direction; the headlights picked up the mound in the gutter; the car slowed and then sped away. Human nature often dismayed John Black. He kept his eyes on the mound, which as he approached revealed itself to be of human form, then a male, an adult, lying in a crumpled heap against the kerb stones. He knelt by the man, a youngish man, he noted, well dressed, his head lolling to one side: no evident injury, not drunk, no smell of alcohol at least. John Black felt for a pulse; it eluded him. He placed his hand inside the man’s light summer raincoat and felt something warm and wet and sticky. He stood, looked for a phone box. Seeing one, he ran to it and dialled three nines, smearing the man’s blood liberally about the handset as he did so.
Later, in the comfortable, reassuring lapping of the blue lights of Papa Tango Foxtrot, he answered PC Hamilton’s questions as carefully as he could, occasionally, and anxiously, glancing at the paramedics as they gently lifted the body onto a stretcher and eased it into the back of an ambulance. Occasionally a passing car would slow as it passed, a pedestrian would pause before moving reverently on his way, because this was Bearsden. In the East End schemes, or neighbouring “needle city” Drumchapel, the crowds would gather at such a spectacle, ogling as people once ogled at public executions.
“You didn’t see anything suspicious?” Hamilton asked.
“No. Nothing. Just a mound in the road. I saw it as I turned into this road from Roman Road. I saw him as soon as I turned the corner. I got close, saw what it was, checked for a pulse, but I didn’t move him in case he was a hit-and-run victim. I’m a paramedic.”
“Useful.”
“Aye. I work at Lightburn Hospital, elderly terminally ill, but I know how to check for a pulse. I couldn’t feel one, but his body was warm.”
“It was warm,” Hamilton noted in his pad.
“Then I felt the blood on his chest and then I dialled three nines.”
An ambulance crewman closed one of the rear doors and climbed in the back of the vehicle. The other crewman closed the second door and then ran to the cab. He turned the vehicle in a 180-degree turn and drove towards Glasgow, with klaxon, blue lights, police escort.
“They must think they’ve got a chance.” Black watched the ambulance turn. “They probably found a pulse. Not the sort of thing you’d expect to happen in Bearsden.”
“What isn’t?”
“This isn’t.” Black pointed to the place where the man had lain.
“Do you know what happened, Mr. Black?”
“No. Just as I told you, but blood on his chest, he’s not been hit and run, he’s been knifed...”
“We’ll wait for the medics to tell us that, Mr. Black, but let me tell you that sort of thing happens anywhere.”
“Aye.” John Black nodded. “I suppose it does.” He shivered; the warm evening no longer felt warm.
Richard King sat hunched over the file on his desk, writing up his case notes. He glanced sideways at his image reflected in the glass of the office window, a full-cheeked, bearded young man, a full head of black hair. Beyond his image he could see the graceful curve of Charing Cross Mansions, lit up at night, as always, and beneath the building, the headlights of the cars as they swept by. He returned his attention to the case file. He wanted a quiet shift. He had a case load to get up to date, all recording to be done, all documents properly filed in the correct places. The six-monthly caseload inspection was due to take place on Friday. He glanced at his watch, ten after midnight, Wednesday already. Richard King wanted a quiet shift more than he had wanted a quiet shift for an awfully long time.
Then his phone rang.
He knew it was bad news. As soon as it started to ring he knew that he was in for a busy shift. He picked up the phone. “DC King.”
“Control, sir.”
“Yes?”
“We’ve just received a radio message from PC Hamilton. He attended an incident in Bearsden.”
“Yes?”
“He’s at the A and E department of the Western Infirmary. The victim was coded condition purple on admission, died en route to the hospital. The death is deemed suspicious and the CID are requested. It’s a possible murder.”
“Code forty-one,” sighed King. “That’s all I need. All right, get back to Hamilton, let him know that I’m on my way.” King stood, replaced the file in his cabinet, signed out of the building, and drove from Charing Cross to the Western Infirmary along Dumbarton Road. The night was at its darkest, he mused; be getting light at about three A.M. He enjoyed Scottish summers, brief as they are.
He drove up the ramp towards the Accident and Emergency department of the Western Infirmary and parked the car in the Ambulances Only bay. This, he found, was the way of it at night; it was one of the few aspects of working the graveyard shift that appealed to him. At night, rules were relaxed — during the day he would have been chased out of the Ambulance Only parking bay by a petty tyrant in a peaked cap, but such people are no night hawks. At night the rule seemed to be companionship amongst the night workers, no matter what job you did. And since there was always plenty of space in the Ambulance Only parking bay at night because the vehicles which ferried the out patients to and from their appointments were all in the garage, King parked there with impunity. He walked across the tarmac towards the electronically operated doors of the A and E department. A nightingale sang as he did so. PC Hamilton stood by the reception desk, grim-faced.
“He didn’t make it, I understand?” King said as he approached. Hamilton shook his head. “Died in the ambulance. I’ve had a wee word with the ambulance crew; they couldn’t say for certain, in fact, if he wasn’t dead when they picked him out of the gutter, but he was still warm, so they had to proceed on the assumption that he was alive. He was pronounced dead on arrival by the junior houseman.”
“Any ID?”
“His wallet, it gives his name as...” Hamilton consulted his note pad, “... Jack Cunningham, has an address in Mount Florida. Lochleven Road, Mount Florida.”
“So what was he doing in Bearsden?” King pondered aloud. “He lives south of the water; he was found in a gutter in a posh area north of the water.”
“No reason why he shouldn’t go for a wander.”
“No reason at all. Can I leave the ID to you, please?”
“I’m glad it’s not like that,” said the woman, pale-faced, tear tracks over ashen skin, under silver hair. She sat in the anteroom of the mortuary of the Western, a cold, hard room which had been softened a little by purple velvet covers on the benches which ran along the wall. “In the films, ye ken, they pull them out of drawers.”
“No.” Hamilton shook his head. “It’s not like that.”
“Looking at him through a window, it looked as if he was floating so peacefully...”
“Mrs. Cunningham...?”
“Aye.” The woman nodded. “That’s my son Jack. Named after his father.”
“Thank you.” Hamilton wrote on his pad.
“It’s like it’s not real,” said the woman. “Who’d do this to my wee Jack, my wean... murder...?”
“We don’t know that it’s murder yet.” Hamilton spoke softly. “All we can say at the moment is that he has what appear to be knife wounds to the chest.”
“Well, he didn’t do that to himself. Oh, who’d do that to my son? He was to be married, he had a good job, an accountant, he’d got the world to live for. See, me, son, I only ever had the one wean and when his father died, my Jack, there was just me and him.” The woman began to weep. “You couldn’t wish for a better son, so kind, so helpful, so he was. He would have left me to get married, but that’s the only reason. Mind, I’d want him to leave for that reason. It was the right time to, he was twenty-seven. Time to leave home.”
“Who was his fiancée, Mrs. Cunningham?”
“Aye, she’s a girl called Sally Aushenbaucher. I don’t really care for her. She was nice, she’s pretty, but she’s a wee bit flighty for my Jack, I always thought. I wanted him to find a more sensible lassie but he was besotted with her, so he was. She’s an address in Partick, no really a stone’s throw from here. Her real name’s Sarah. See, that’s her, she’d no be a daughter of mine, a beautiful name like Sarah and she gives herself a daft wee pet name like Sally, like she was some pet rabbit. She is a daft wee wean to my way of thinking, but like I said, Jack was determined. She is a good-looking girl, but I couldn’t see anything behind the smile. Never worked, you know, never had a job.”
“What’s her address, Mrs. Cunningham?”
“You don’t think...?”
“We don’t think anything at this stage, Mrs. Cunningham.”
“No... I suppose... One Thirty-six Mansfield Street, I don’t mind which door on the stair, but it’s One Thirty-six Mansfield Street, house of Aushenbaucher.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cunningham. We’ll run you home.”
Reynolds extended his arm and caught the phone on the second purr. He pulled the handset under the duvet cover and listened. Then he said, “Reynolds here... yes, yes... right. I’m on my way.” He replaced the receiver and slid out from under the duvet. He glanced at the softly glowing display on the radio alarm: 01:35. Early, he thought, preferable to the calls at three and four A.M. He took clean clothing from the drawers and wardrobe, moving silently so as not to wake his wife, who lay still and silent on her side of the bed. Carrying his clothing he crept out of the room and dressed in the bathroom. He went downstairs and let Gustav the St. Bernard into the rear garden while he made himself a cup of instant coffee and a bacon sandwich. He never left the house without something in his stomach and made sure that his family didn’t either. It was one of the few carved-in-stone rules that he insisted on. With Gustav back inside the house, and with himself feeling warmed and refreshed by the coffee and sandwich, he left his house and reversed his silver Volvo estate down the gravel-covered drive, slowly, steadily, as soft as he could, minimising the sound of the wide tyres crunching the stones. The gravel was another carved-in-stone rule that he had insisted on; there’s nothing like gravel to stop bandits creeping around your house in the wee small hours. Gravel and a St. Bernard ensured his family slept safely at nights.
Janet Reynolds lay still and listened as her husband drove his car down the drive, listened as it climbed through the gears as it was driven away from her villa in Glasgow’s leafy and prestigious Pollokshields and towards the city centre. She had, despite her husband’s determined sensitivity and thoughtfulness, woken the instant the phone rang. She suffered from insomnia, and knew that she now wouldn’t sleep. For many years she had been distressed by her condition and had tried to knock herself out with drink and drugs for eight hours each twenty-four. Eventually it had occurred to her that her insomnia was a blessing, a privilege, a gift from God. She reasoned that if her body didn’t need it, simple as that, it meant that she had six extra hours to herself that others didn’t have. She had used the extra time to study, in the first instance; had reached university where she had met her husband, her wonderful, wonderful husband. Now she used it to consume endless novels, study foreign languages, or just have a few hours of uninterrupted peace, space for herself before her children began clamouring for attention. As soon as she knew that her husband was safely round the first corner, she switched on the bedside light and slipped into a housecoat and went downstairs. She percolated a pot of coffee and carried it into the living room where she curled up with an historical romance. Heaven.
Reynolds drew the circular saw downwards over the breastbone, exposing the chest cavity, exposing the heart. He turned and nodded to King. “Yes, Mr. King, it is as I thought, it’s a case of fatal knife wounding. Two, three deep, penetrating wounds to the chest angling upwards, and a fourth, fatal wound which penetrated the aorta. Death would have been instantaneous, but not before the deceased knew terror, caused by the first three wounds. Now, I confess I find the angling of the blade to be interesting. The wounds drive upwards at an angle of forty-five degrees under the rib cage; it is as if the murderer knew what he was doing, aiming up, under the rib cage, seeking out the heart with his blade. That’s how it’s done — with an amateur, or a frenzied partner, it’s usually an attack directly against the rib cage.”
“But this attacker knew what he was doing?”
“Yes.” Reynolds studied the corpse on the stainless-steel table. “Yes. One single knife wound to the aorta might be luck or ill luck, depending on your point of view, but four, all at a similar angle, grouped in the same location... no, this is the work of a man who, as you say, knew what he was doing. The man who did this has been trained in the grim art of taking human life.” Reynolds paused. “I think that I can detect a slight tendency for the wounds to run from bottom right to top left, as seen from the anterior aspect. It might, but only might, indicate a right-handed perpetrator.”
“Every little bit helps, sir.” King watched as Reynolds turned his attention to the fingernails of the deceased.
“Ah...” he said. “Here.” He took a scraping from under the nail of the middle finger of the right hand. “Here the deceased has left you a present, Mr. King.”
“He has?”
“He has. In the form of a hair, red. The perpetrator had red hair. I’ll let you know if this hair is from a human scalp or a beard. If it is from a beard, you’ll know the perpetrator is a male. If so, that’ll fit neatly with the knowledge displayed by the use of the knife. What I mean is that that sort of knowledge is more likely to be held by a man rather than by a woman, but again I emphasise only more likely — but that’s more your department than mine.” He placed the small fragment of hair in a test tube and sealed the top. “I notice grazing on the head and hands, indicating a scuffle, possibly in soil, or the street, rather than in the home. There appear to be vegetation stains to the head and soil deposits in the hair.”
“He was found at the side of the road, sir.”
“Really?... He could have been pushed from a car. That would be consistent with these grazings. Now the perpetrator would have blood about his clothing. If the deceased was pushed from a car, then there would be blood in the car as well.”
“I see, sir.”
“Young man,” mused Reynolds, considering the body. “Not at all bad-looking, appears healthy, he was clean-living, no indication of alcohol or tobacco overusage, good teeth, neat hair, sedentary occupation, office worker — doesn’t have the grime about him that a manual worker would have... He appears to have had much to live for.”
“Everything,” King said. “He was engaged to be married.”
“Really?” Reynolds sighed. “Well, some poor lassie will be crying herself raw in a few hours’ time. I’ll have my report typed up and faxed to you ASAP. It’ll be midmorning. Noreen starts her working day at nine A.M., but she invariably spends the first half of the morning pouring hot black stuff down her neck to compensate for all the colourless stuff she pours down her neck each evening. So you may expect my report by about eleven A.M.”
“Very good, sir.”
Sally Aushenbaucher woke as the sun crept into her bedroom and she lay there basking as the sunlight flooded her room, so that by 7:30 A.M. her bedroom was fully and brilliantly illuminated by natural light. She rose slowly, sensually, because she liked her body. She stood in front of the angled mirrors soaking in the beauty of her being from every angle, from the front, the sides, and the rear. She liked her long legs, she liked her pert bottom, she liked her trim waist, she liked her breasts, she liked her face, she liked her long golden hair. All the parts of her body were perfect, and all the parts were in proportion to each other. Life was good. She glided across the carpet and sat at her dressing table. On one side of the dressing table was a framed photograph of Jack Cunningham on which was written “To Sally with all my love, Jack.” On the other side of the dressing table was a photograph of Shane Short on which was written “To Sally with all my love, Shane.” Sometimes she adjusted the photographs so that Jack and Shane looked at each other as she sat between them applying her makeup, which she knew she didn’t really need. But most of the time they were angled towards her, like her mirrors, so that she was gazed upon from different directions.
Fabian Donoghue sat in his chair and reached for his pipe. “So what happened in the night, Montgomerie?” He began to fill his pipe, holding it and scooping the tobacco using one hand, in a practised manner.
“Well, sir.” Montgomerie shifted his position in his chair. He was twenty-seven years old, chiselled features, downturned moustache. “Richard King didn’t hand much over at six A.M., a burglary, aggravated...”
“Aggravated?” Donoghue flicked his gold-plated cigarette lighter and played the flame over the bowl of his pipe.
“Aye, sir. Three youths, waded into an elderly couple’s house with an imitation pistol. It looked real to the victims, who are now in a state of shock. We’ve got good witness statements, no prints, though, they wore gloves...”
“Television teaches them something then?”
“Indeed, sir, but Richard thinks the operation has all the hallmarks of a ned that’s known to him, so we’ll be pulling him for a quizzing.”
“All right, you’ll be getting on with that, I take it?”
“Yes, sir, but I really want to draw your attention to this.” Montgomerie handed Donoghue a file. “It’s a code forty-one.”
“Oh. Murder most foul.”
“Indeed, sir. The victim is a young man by the name of Cunningham...”
“Tell me about it.”
So Montgomerie told him about it.
“I see.” Donoghue pulled lovingly on his pipe. “That does take precedence over the aggravated burglary. What are you going to do, do you think?”
“Well, sir, I’ve chatted to Richard King, we both felt that we should look at the deceased’s living circumstances. He still lived with his mother, but he would have had a room of his own. Might be something there. His murder seems to be more than just a brawl that got out of hand.”
“What do you know about his fiancée?”
Montgomerie shook his head. “Not a thing as yet, sir.”
“As you say, a chartered accountant doesn’t get involved in street brawls, especially if he’s soon to be married. Speak to his lady friend, she might be able to tell you of enemies without number. His place of work also might be harbouring a knifeman who had a score to settle.”
Montgomerie stood. “I’ll get onto it immediately, sir. The rest of the night shift was small beer by comparison.” He glanced out of Donoghue’s office window, along the length of Sauchiehall Street, the mixtured buildings, the old, the new, the vehicles, the pedestrians, windows glinting in the sun. “Dr. Reynolds’s report may be expected at eleven or thereabouts.”
“Very good. Leave the other files too, please, I’ll read them now.”
Montgomerie and Constable Wanless called on Mrs. Cunningham, mother of the deceased. She had returned to her sandstone tenement in Mount Florida, and was being comforted by relatives. No, she had no idea who would want to murder her son, no, she had no objection to the police looking in her son’s bedroom, second on the left.
Jack Cunningham’s room was neatly kept, almost to the point of fastidiousness. It was decorated with gentle pastel shades, which contrasted effectively with the solid, sensible furniture. On Jack Cunningham’s desk was a photograph of a young woman, fetching in open-neck shirt and jeans, on which was written “To Jack with all my love, Sally.”
“His lady friend?” asked Wanless.
“They were to be married, or so Mrs. Cunningham told Hamilton in the night after she identified his body. She lives in Partick, I’ve a note of her address. I’m a bit surprised she’s not here; you would have thought she’d have come round.”
“You’d’ve thought so, if they were that close. Hang about, what’s this?” Wanless picked up Cunningham’s desk diary. “Look at the entry for yesterday.”
Montgomerie did so. It read “S.S. at the Bear and Billet, 9:00 P.M.”
“The Bear and Billet?” Wanless asked.
“It’s a pub. In Bearsden. Right, I think we take a wee wander out to the Bear and Billet, see if anybody, like the landlord, remembers Mr. Cunningham speaking with somebody there about two or three hours before he was murdered. We need a photograph of the deceased.”
“This’ll do, I think.” Wanless took a second framed photograph from the desk. It showed Jack Cunningham in happier times, arms around a girl who was clearly Sally.
“It’ll do. We’ll ask if we can take it with us.”
Montgomerie took the wheel and drove the unmarked police car out of the sandstone tenements of Mount Florida, over the Kingston Bridge, through central Glasgow, and out to suburban Bearsden. As they drove along Great Western Road, they were called on the radio. Wanless reached forward and pressed the Send button. “Receiving.”
“Control to Papa Sierra November, message from DI Donoghue reference Cunningham murder. Hair under the fingernail of the deceased believed to come from the perpetrator has been identified as being a beard hair, red in colour. For your information. Control Out.”
Wanless replaced the microphone. “So the perpetrator is a red-haired, bearded guy.”
“Looks that way.” Montgomerie turned up Bearsden Road at the Anniesland junction.
“They can tell a beard hair from a scalp hair? Didn’t know that.”
“Simple,” said Montgomerie as he overtook a blue and yellow Kelvin Scottish double-decker. “Beard hair is triangular in cross section, scalp hair is circular, pubic hair is oval. They’re very easy to tell apart under a microscope. So our perp has a red beard. Narrows the field nicely.”
Montgomerie turned into the forecourt of the Bear and Billet. Only one other car, a yellow Nissan, stood in the car park. He and Wanless left their car and walked towards the low-roofed, long and thin building that was the Bear and Billet, licensed to sell alcohol since 1642, according to a blue plaque on the wall by the wooden door. Inside, a woman in overalls vacuumed the carpet; flecks of dust floated in the air, caught in the shafts of sunlight which streamed in through the windows.
“Not open yet,” she said, almost shouting, as Montgomerie and Wanless entered. Then, noticing Wanless’s uniform, she said, “Oh.” Then she turned and yelled, “Mr. Pike,” into the gloom.
“What now?” came the answering yell.
“Polis,” yelled the cleaning lady. Then she recommenced the cleaning.
Montgomerie and Wanless heard a shuffling of furniture above the din of the vacuum cleaner and a well-built man, casually dressed, walked out of the gloom. He looked questioningly at Montgomerie and Wanless. “Aye?” he said apprehensively.
Montgomerie showed his ID and said it was nothing to worry about, he said they were looking for information. Pike immediately relaxed; so obvious was Pike’s apprehension and relaxation that Montgomerie could only wonder what the man had on his conscience. But he asked if Pike was serving last night.
“Aye.” Pike nodded. “But there was nay bother, I don’t get bother in here, not like in my last pub. People who drink here are professional types, mostly.”
“Busy?”
“Busy enough. But it was Tuesday, always the quietest night of the week.”
“I wonder.” Montgomerie took the photograph of Jack Cunningham with Sally from his jacket pocket and showed it to Pike. “Could you tell us if the man in this photograph was in the pub last night?”
Pike studied the photograph. “Nice-looking lassie,” he said.
“The guy, Mr. Pike. It’s the guy we’re interested in.”
“Och aye... aye... the guy... aye, aye, he was in.” Pike nodded. “See, I mind him because he was so different from his mate... Sat at that table there. I couldn’t see what they saw in each other, so I thought they must be talking business. They talked, what’s the word, intense, that’s it, real intense talk they had. See, him, small neat guy, didn’t drink too much, but his mate, great bear of a man with red hair and a beard, Jeso, talk about Red Fergus of Glen Orchy, drank like a sailor.”
“Red beard?”
“Aye. She’s a bonnie lassie, though, eh?”
“Seen him before?”
“The guy... no, no I haven’t, not the wee guy, but Red Fergus comes in from time to time, not often enough to be called a regular. But you notice him, red hair and cold blue eyes.”
“Did they leave together?”
“No.” Pike shook his head. “No... the bear left first, he looked angry, so he did, stormed out, didn’t cause a scene but he left the wee guy sitting there looking pleased with himself, so he did. See, while you’re here, there’s a car been left in my car park, can you tell me whose it is? I mean you’ve got all they details on computer.”
Wanless said, “Sorry, sir, we can’t do that.”
But Montgomerie said, “You mean the yellow Nissan?”
“Knew you’d help.” Pike smiled.
Outside, in the sun, walking towards the Nissan, Montgomerie said, “It’s a long shot, a very long shot, but they’ve paid off before.”
The yellow Nissan stood in the corner of the car park beside lavender shrubbery. Montgomerie said, “Don’t get too close.” They halted. “Can you radio in the registration number?” Wanless did so and held the channel open. A few seconds later Control replied that the registration number was that of a yellow Nissan, registered to a Jack Cunningham of Lochleven Road, Mount Florida.
“Well done, you,” said Wanless to Montgomerie.
“Cop’s intuition,” Montgomerie replied. “Let’s take a closer look, but don’t touch.”
They approached the car. “Here.” Montgomerie pointed to the concrete beneath the driver’s door. “Here be blood.”
Wanless looked at the dark stains on the concrete. “They lead to the shrubs,” he said.
“Don’t they just.” Montgomerie stepped towards the shrubs and peeled a branch back. He noted signs of a recent disturbance, broken saplings, crushed vegetation, footprints in the soil. Blood on the leaves. He stepped back. “Better get onto Control. This is the scene of Jack Cunningham’s murder. Can see it, can’t you? Red-bearded guy left before Cunningham, waited by Cunningham’s car, dragged him into the shrubs, did the business, bundled the body into his own car, and dumped it in a gutter close by.”
Wanless nodded. “Aye. I can see it as clear as daylight.”
Wanless and Montgomerie remained at the crime scene until Donoghue arrived with a scene of crime officer and six constables and a sergeant who proceeded to cordon off the area with blue and white police tape. Pike stormed out of the pub complaining about the parking space he needed until he was snarled at by the uniformed sergeant, at which point he retreated rapidly.
“What do you plan now?” Donoghue pulled on his pipe.
“Visit Jack Cunningham’s intended,” Montgomerie said. “See if she can identify the bear with the beard.”
Donoghue nodded.
“Which one?” said the woman.
Montgomerie’s jaw sagged. “What?”
“I said, which one.” The woman stood on the threshold of her flat, two up left, 136 Mansfield Street, Partick, Gil. “She’s got two.”
“She can’t have two fiancés.”
“Sally can. So which one’s dead?”
“Cunningham,” Montgomerie replied meekly. Deflated. “Jack Cunningham.”
“Jack, eh.” The woman shook her head. “He’s the one I would have liked to have seen her with. Still, now she won’t have to agonize about which one to go for, will she?”
“Sorry, you are...?”
“I’m her stepmother.”
“I see. Is Sally in?”
“No, no, she’s away into the town, buying clothes again, I expect.”
“Can we come inside?” Montgomerie asked. “This is a confidential matter, just the sort of thing your neighbours will love.”
“Aye, so they will, on this stair they will.”
Sally Aushenbaucher and her stepmother’s home was clean, delicate, neat, fragrant, predominantly pink, with a dash of white here and there. Montgomerie “read” the room. No man had lived here for many years.
“Aye.” Mrs. Aushenbaucher reclined in a chair. “Please take a seat.” Montgomerie and Wanless did so. “Aye, see, when I married her father, she was ten, so she was. This is my house now, bought and paid, my man’s been away this seven years. He left me the house on the condition that Sally be allowed to live in it until she married, and he left her enough money to survive without working until she was married. So she never worked. She’s a daft girl. She wouldn’t be daft if she was mine, but at ten her personality was formed. All ‘me, me, me, me’... aye, she’s no daughter of mine, I can tell you. But I agreed to her living here because she’s attractive and I knew it wouldn’t be long before she was away, but I didn’t expect her to have two fiancés.”
“How can she?” Montgomerie asked. “I mean, you can’t wear two engagement rings — what did she do, wear one or the other depending on who she was spending time with?”
“It wasn’t like that, see she wasn’t engaged engaged, if you see what I mean, she was just, well, sort of engaged.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Aushenbaucher.” Montgomerie smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, she’d got to that stage with both of them, considering themselves engaged, but still to make the announcement, buy the ring, have a party. But she couldn’t decide which one to go with and which one to break if off with. See, Jack was an accountant, she was fond of him and he offered safety, won’t ever be hungry as an accountant’s wife, but she thought he was dull. The other was a guy called Shane Short.” Mrs. Aushenbaucher grimaced. “I didn’t care for him, but Sally thought he was exciting. He’s an ex-marine, built like an ox, fiery red beard and a temper to match his name. Can’t keep a job, but the lassie’s go for him. Sally said she wished she could put them both in a pot and melt them into one person, get the best of both. The daft lassie, she’s got photographs of both guys on her dressing table, one at each side, as if looking at her.”
“Do you have a photograph of Shane Short?”
“Plenty. He loved his image. I’ll let you have one. Anyway, both guys kept pressing Sally for a date to announce the engagement, so she solved the problem by telling them about each other. She thought they could work something out, help her make a decision. The daft lassie.”
Montgomerie groaned. “Do you know Shane Short’s address?”
“Aye.” Mrs. Aushenbaucher reached for her handbag. “It’s in my wee book, here in my bag.”
After she thought that a decent time had elapsed since Jack’s death and Shane’s arrest, a little over a week she thought fitting, Sally Aushenbaucher dressed in her most fetching outfit and went to a nightclub. Alone. She was looking for a man. She knew it wouldn’t be difficult. Men pure killed for her. So they did.