Deep and Crisp and Even Read online

  He walked a little way toward Donoghue, but was careful to remain at a respectful distance, as he felt befitted a Detective-Inspector. He was also careful not to stand on the chalk outline.

  'I don't think he came in very far, sir, there's a bit of mud and slush on the floor by the door; well, there was—it's been trampled a bit; it melted and lost any shape quickly, so we couldn't take any casts. The photographers recorded it, but that was all we could do. I remember the footprints were small, but they were probably hers. She was wearing brogues.'

  'She was fully dressed,' said Sussock, holding the photographs. 'A coat, and a hat with a pin through it. So it's not an attack in the early hours of the morning when all good nursing sisters should be in bed.'

  'No. She was attacked when she was about to leave the flat or just as she returned,' said Donoghue. 'The water in the hall suggests she had just returned. She's lying facing the door, so she was probably knifed as she turned to shut it behind her.'

  'He was waiting for her.'

  'Or he followed her in.'

  'Who was first here?' asked Sussock.

  'King. He was the duty officer.' Donoghue looked at the Forensic Assistant. 'Where's King now?'

  The man shrugged his shoulders, and the gesture annoyed Donoghue and made him rethink the good impression the man had first made on him.

  'What's your name?' asked Donoghue.

  'Bothwell, sir. Jimmy Bothwell.'

  'Where's PC King?' Donoghue turned to the constable on the stairs.

  'Next landing up, sir,' replied the constable. 'Interviewing the couple who found the body.'

  'Well, we can leave him to do a good job. Come on, Ray, let's see what we can dig up.'

  Sussock and Donoghue had amassed forty-five years' police work between them and in that time they had been in a lot of rooms in a lot of houses. They had been into rooms which were full of youth and confidence, with pop posters on the walls and with trees painted on the ceilings; they had been into rooms which were full of nothing; the flat personality living there had no use for decoration or ornament. They had been in rooms like Patrick Duffy's, a room which was full of a life of oblivion because reality was so awful, rooms of acute depressives where the walls and even the windows had been painted black. Individually or together they had visited homes in Milngavie, Bearsden, Bridge of Weir, which looked as though they had been prepared for an Ideal Home display, and just as lifeless. Looking into other people's lives never bothered Donoghue or Sussock, but they were upset by Margaret Stewart's bedroom.

  There was a high, hard bed with a thick mattress, there was a dresser and a wardrobe and a chest of drawers, all very dark, very solid pieces of furniture. The carpet was dark green with tassells round the edges. There was a painting called 'Loch Lomond with Bluebells' hanging on the wall. It was a room of no ambition left, resignation to life's lot, it was a room of what you have left after it all at the age of sixty-two. Both men knew that they were looking into their futures. They left the room, silently shutting the door behind them.

  In the living-room they found Margaret Stewart's diary on a shelf underneath the coffee table. The entries for the 21st of January read:

  9.30 Duty Oxfam Shop

  12.00 Lunch at Meg's

  2.00 Hairdressers/shopping

  7.00 Amnesty International meeting

  Donoghue handed the diary to Sussock. 'Ray, I want you to look for her address book, it'll probably be near here somewhere. Make a list of all males with a Glasgow address and see them all. Sooner or later you'll come across one who was at the AI meeting, then you'll be able to get names of all those others who were at the meeting. Check them all out. We're looking for a male with light-coloured hair.'

  'I remember,' said Sussock drily.

  'That should keep you busy for the rest of the day. You can take my car back to the station.'

  Sussock stooped and rummaged among copies of People's Friend and a box of chocolates and located a slim red book with a pencil fastened to the spine. He opened it and nodded to Donoghue. He slipped the book into his coat pocket and left the flat.

  Donoghue heard voices in the hall. It was King talking to Bothwell. 'Living-room,' he shouted. King came into the room and Donoghue turned and looked at him, staring at him but not saying anything. King knew he was expected to start talking but didn't want to say anything irrelevant; he didn't want to say anything that Donoghue already knew. In a millisecond King reasoned that, Donoghue being the man he was he would have ascertained his whereabouts, and so he pitched straight into a précis of the interview he had just conducted with the young and much shaken couple who lived one flight of stairs up.

  'Came home at close on one, sir,' said King, feeling intimidated by the tall dapper man in a woollen overcoat and a fur hat like the ones the Soviet soldiers wear. 'Saw the door of the flat open, ajar a fraction of an inch. They were worried because Miss Stewart was usually in bed by eleven. Very consistent in her habits, Miss Stewart. So they said, anyway. They were worried because Miss Stewart wouldn't normally be up and wouldn't have her door open on account of the weather. So they rang the doorbell and got no answer and so they pushed the door open and saw the deceased lying in the hall. Then they phoned the police.'

  'Was there a light on in the hall?'

  'I asked them. They can't recall the light being on but saw the body clearly. It might have been the stair lighting which shone into the flat.'

  Donoghue was satisfied with that answer. In a state of excitement or stress people can forget the most obvious things, like whether the light was on or off, or come to the conclusion, for instance, that it was off by the circuitous route of remembering the glow of a luminous clock face. Not remembering the light being on seemed an honest and a faithful answer and Donoghue felt that there was a ninety per cent possibility that the light was off. It might be important. He walked into the hallway. King followed. The light switch was halfway between the front door and the living-room.

  'Water inside the door,' said Donoghue. 'Could have been brought in by him or her. What time did the couple upstairs leave for their party?'

  'Eight. Eight-thirty.'

  'They didn't notice anything unusual on the way out?'

  'No, sir.'

  'The pathologist will tell us later when she died but we might need to know sooner,' Donoghue mused to himself. 'They didn't notice anything unusual on the way down so we'll assume Miss Stewart to have been out, probably at the AI meeting as she had planned.'

  'AI?'

  'Amnesty International. So, she came back, it must have been her feet that brought in the moisture, and he stabbed her as she opened the door and before she could reach the light switch.'

  'Would he not have brought some muck in with him?'

  'Apparently not. The footprints were small, like a woman's.'

  'So he didn't step over the threshold. He stabbed her on the stair.'

  'As I said, as she opened the door. Or?'

  'Sir-'

  'I said, "or?" King. Why else would he not leave footmarks in the hall, if he came in?'

  King had a brief and fantastic vision of a man with a knife suspended above the ground by balloons. 'Well…' he said.

  'Well?' Donoghue sucked on his pipe. 'Well, perhaps he was waiting for her to come home, sitting on the stairs for up to an hour, with his boots drying nicely.'

  'That means he was known to her.'

  'Uh-huh. Sergeant Sussock has the address book at the moment.'

  'What a way to go,' said King.

  Sussock drove back to P Division. In the early morning snow the building's lights affected him like a lighthouse, or a home fire. Sussock didn't know which, but he felt better for seeing them glowing in the darkness. He had had no breakfast and a working man needs food and hot drink. In a small room, which contained four tables, chairs, a three-ring cooker and a fridge, and which was optimistically known as 'the canteen', Sussock made himself toasted cheese pieces and a mug of coffee. He sat down with his breakfas
t, an open notebook, and the late Margaret Stewart's address book. He made a list of all males with a Glasgow address and worked out a route which he would take to visit each. It was 7.15 a.m. He needed co-operation and he wouldn't get it by knocking people out of comfortable beds, not on a morning when the snow could be measured in tons per square yard, and ten degrees below could be considered warm. He put his feet up and went to sleep.

  Donoghue hitched a lift in an area car back to P Division. There are ninety-seven persons employed at P Division, from Findlater down to young Gus, recently recruited into the maintenance team, and there's the ninety-eighth person, who can get away with leaving dirty cups in the sink, the lighting on (despite 'save it' stickers), and who always walks away from the toilet without flushing it. Donoghue rolled up his sleeves and washed the dirty mug, and the plate which had once held a slice of toast. He made himself a coffee and carried it to the incident room. The duty constable stood as he entered. Donoghue waved him down and picked up the phone. It was 8.30 a.m.

  'Tress agency?' asked Donoghue, holding the receiver in one hand and his coffee in the other.

  'The very same,' said the voice down the phone.

  'Inspector Donoghue, P Division,' said Donoghue. 'We've some business for you. About the headbanger.'

  'That so?' The press agency had offices in Ingram Street near the Sheriff Court. They could telex the news to all the local and national papers in a matter of minutes and net themselves a handsome percentage in the process. Donoghue preferred press conferences, he liked the press to feel involved, he was continually wooing them because he never knew when he'd need their co-operation. But when a bulletin had to be out urgently he needed the agency.

  'That's so,' he said.

  'How about the code word?'

  'Moment,' said Donoghue. He indicated to the duty constable to pass him a strong metal box which stood on a shelf in the room. The constable handed it to Donoghue and Donoghue nodded to the constable to leave the room. He took a keyring from his pocket, and selected a chunky key, unlocked the box. He took a printed card from the box and said, 'My Fair Lady.'

  'Bang on,' said the voice. 'What news from the shires?'

  'Slow Tom struck again last night, retired nursing sister, spinster, lived in the West End.'

  'He's establishing a pattern, this guy,' said the voice.

  'Yes, she was murdered around midnight, that fits with the pattern too.'

  'She could have been knocked off yesterday night?'

  'Could have.'

  'Code for yesterday, please.'

  'Come on!'

  'That's not right.'

  'You know what I mean.'

  'That's not it either. Listen, I reckon there's enough on with one nutter out there, we can't have anybody ringing in and telling us Her Maj is being measured for the wooden box.'

  'OK' said Donoghue, running his index finger along the printed sheet. 'Yesterday was Chorus Line. I don't know how you think them up.'

  'We work them out in slack times. After stage shows we're having famous explorers—you know, Livingstone, Ericson—that should see us to the end of the winter. Keep that under your hat.'

  'I will.'

  'So she was murdered late last night or early this morning. Definitely the work of Slow Tom?'

  'Definitely.' Donoghue shut the box and locked it. 'She was murdered in her house.'

  'In the house!'

  'Right. I want you to play that up, although he was likely waiting on the stair for her or came to the door with her and stabbed her just after she had opened it.'

  'All right. Any name?'

  'Not yet, we're tracing relatives.'

  'I'll get right on it.'

  'Thanks,' said Donoghue and hung up.

  He went to his office and consulted the diary. The tape was the subject of his morning's work. At 9.30 a graphologist was expected from the university who would, Donoghue hoped, give some insight into the psyche of the man who wrote the note. At breakfast at the North British Hotel (at the expense of Strathclyde Regional Council) was an expert in regional accents who had travelled up from Sheffield on the night sleeper (also at the expense of Strathclyde Regional Council). He was expected at P Division (escort provided) at 11 a.m.

  The graphologist was a portly middle-aged man in tweeds who, to Donoghue, had an Edwardian appearance. He carried himself with a certain self-important pomp into Donoghue's office, and taking Donoghue's hand, sat down without first being asked.

  'I wonder if I could ask you to sign the Official Secrets Act, Mr Simpson,' said Donoghue. 'It's to…'

  'I know what it's for, young man. There's no need, I'm already bound by it.'

  'I didn't know that.'

  'Probably because I signed the Act,' said Simpson. 'It's nothing top secret; if you must know I help the MoD weed out the unsuitables among their applicants.'

  'Oh,' said Donoghue, sliding the paper back into his desk drawer. 'Well, I have photocopies of a letter and the envelope which contained it.' He handed the two pieces of paper to Simpson and reached for his pipe. He needed a lot of co-operation from Mr Simpson of the Applied Psychology Department and he needed it yesterday. Donoghue knew academics to be a whole bunch of queer birds, divorced from reality, the only currency they understood being brain power. You can tell an academic he's kind, Donoghue had once said to Sussock, you can compliment him on his personal courage or resilience, his wife can feed him cordon bleu for a month but you'll never reach him unless you get down on your knees and worship his brain. Donoghue thought that the only way to get rapid co-operation from Simpson was to relate to him as though he was the best thing that had happened to psychology since Adler.

  'I appreciate you have to study these samples in greater depth, Dr Simpson,' said Donoghue, beginning the homage by awarding Simpson a PhD, 'But frankly I would find your immediate reaction invaluable, sir.'

  'Well, m'boy.' Simpson inched forward on his chair and rested his right hand on his right knee. 'You're right, I'll have to take these back to the department and have a close look at them, because they are not at all what I expected to see, not at all.'

  'No?'

  'Not at all. You see, I would have expected this Slow Tom character to have thin spiky handwriting, possibly with arty decorations round the edge of the paper and big gaps between the letters of the same word and in other places the letters of different words running into each other.

  'But not this fellow, he's not got normal writing—what I would call normal—it's outside the wide mainstream of adult handwriting but yet it isn't grossly abnormal. At first glance it looks not unusual, but look at it closely; the big loop of the letters, strong, carefully constructed characters, all upright, the detached capital "I". It's like a child's writing.'

  'Mmm,' Donoghue took his pipe from his mouth. 'It's not a child, though, Dr Simpson, we have his voice on tape and he seems an accomplished guitar-player. Would you like to hear the tape?'

  'No, it wouldn't help me. The name he's chosen for himself is childlike; "Slow Tom" sounds like a character from a child's story book: "Slow Tom", the friendly snail who lives under the woodshed. Certainly doesn't go with the sort of personality who leaps out of the shadows and stabs people.'

  'No insight?' said Donoghue.

  'None. He's playing a game.'

  'That's the impression I have. Would he be a university student?'

  'Wouldn't think so. It's easier to get in now than it was in my day. He certainly wouldn't be a psychology student, he could be an engineer. You know the old joke, "Before I came to university I couldn't spell engineer, now I are one." I think there's a lot of truth in that, Inspector. But even then…'

  Donoghue smiled, but only because he thought protocol so dictated.

  Simpson folded the two pieces of paper into his jacket pocket and shook Donoghue's hand and promised a written report in two or three days. Donoghue thanked him and walked with him to the entrance of the building. They shook hands again and Simpson stepped out into
the blizzard.

  Montgomerie was beginning to feel hungry. The basement room he and Gillian had crept into the previous night was cluttered with bric-a-brac, old photographs and odd pieces of furniture with a curtain hanging in front of the washbasin. They had slept in a thin and uncomfortable bed pushed against a damp wall. He knew he should be out working, tramping the reading-rooms and libraries, attending the lunchtime meetings, looking for blondie with the box. But outside it was cold, he was lying with a sleeping girl, he was warm, and wasn't this what young bodies were for? He closed his eyes again: he could never cope with guilt.

  But there was a pain at the top of his stomach which pestered and nagged and wouldn't go away. He stirred and groaned and yawned in an attempt to wake Gillian. At 10.30 he was due to phone Donoghue.

  Gillian moved a little and nestled her shoulder into his armpit and her head rested on his chest. What did a man have to do to get fed around here? Me Tarzan, you Jane. Tarzan needs munchies. He decided to tickle her gently, and stopped just before she woke up.

  'Hi,' she smiled and reached up to kiss his beard. 'Sleep well?

  'Like a babe.'

  'Mmm, man.' She ran her hand over his chest. 'Would you like some breakfast, Man?'

  'Let me get it for you.'

  'No, I'll do it. I'd like to get it for you.'

  'I'd like to get it for you.'

  'You're my guest, I'll get it.'

  'OK,' said Montgomerie.

  At ten thirty-five with three cups of coffee and a bowl of hot muesli inside his stomach and 'see you later' ringing in his ears he left the house and walked down the street to the public phone box. The voice in his ears worried him. There was one problem about breaking records: you get tangled up in the finishing-tape.

  'Your time is ten thirty,' said Donoghue. 'Not ten thirty-eight.'

  'Yes, sir,' said Montgomerie. He adjusted his watch, which had shown 10.36.

  'Where were you last night?'