In My Time Of Dying: DS Hutton Book 5 Page 12

  Am I not a romantic drunk? Hey, Kallas said it, didn’t she? The melancholic drunk. Ha! Maybe I can go back to Switzerland, and sit at the side of a lake, and write rank awful poetry, then I can drop dead, and some eejit somewhere can find my rank awful poetry and declare me a genius, and I’ll be a posthumous literary hero.

  Met a girl,

  Had some sex.

  Soon enough,

  She was my ex...

  Or maybe I can just head off this afternoon, early this evening, late this evening, whenever, whatever, stop at the off licence along the way, fill up, go home and drown myself in it. Maybe that’s all.

  I’m jerked sharply from my plunge into the abyss by Kallas placing a cool hand on the back of my hand, which is still gripping the steering wheel.

  ‘It is OK, Sergeant,’ she says, ‘you do not have to answer the question. Everything will be fine.’

  She squeezes my fingers, I’m frozen by the touch and thank God do not respond, and then she’s out of the car and walking briskly into the house.

  Taylor never squeezed my fingers.

  The feel of her touch stays on my hand, comforting yet mindfucking in its way after the quick descent into madness – suicide by vodka – and then I’m following her, staring at the ground, trying not to look at her, even though she’s ahead of me and wouldn’t notice me staring, and into the home of the latest victim, mind on autopilot.

  IT DOESN’T TAKE LONG to find it. Five minutes maybe. Certainly no more than ten. The search begins in the victim’s bedroom and home office. While a lot of people developed the home office during the lockdown, if they’d had the space, it’s apparent that Mr Cowal, the independent filmmaker, had an office set up at home long before that.

  He made films, in the way that guys in suits in offices make films. They move money around, they hire talent, but they don’t actually have any talent themselves. So, the independent filmmaker, David Cowal, facilitated people with talent, and appears to have been pretty decent at it. Knew how to play the system, at any rate, even if he’d never had a really successful movie. Certainly not successful enough to get hired by one of the studios, or larger independents, but he did his thing, and made a decent living out of it. Knew where to get funding. Knew how to put a movie together, and to make sure it was finished, packaged and released. The keepers of the cash could trust him. A safe bet to look good on the annual report of Screen Scotland or Creative Scotland or whoever the fuck he approached for funding. They wouldn’t have to worry about allocating fifty grand to some project that then faltered and died. Cowal would take that fifty grand and add it to all the other funding he’d hoovered up, and that film would be made, and he’d make sure he got a decent producer fee along the way.

  So, he had his home office, as well as his small office with Mrs Blair in Baillieston. Here first, there next, on and on we go.

  I’m in the office, going drawer to drawer in his desk, trying to squeeze my brain into the autopilot box, when the call goes up from the next room but one, along the elegant upstairs landing, wooden floor, long, thin Moroccan runner in dark blue and orange.

  I stay where I am. Whatever the news is, it will find me quickly enough. I continue to carefully rummage, each item taken out of a drawer and considered. Either put to the side to be placed back in the drawer, or put to the side to be taken into the station for further review.

  Here, for example, in the large lever file drawer on the right of the desk, folders containing paperwork for seven different films, all seven projects still active, which is why they will be here. Given our digital age, the files are all slender, but there’s still a lot to look through. It’s easier than spending the however long it takes for our tech guys to crack his computer, and here is the bare essence of police work.

  This is the victim’s day job. The reason for his murder may well be nothing to do with his day job. The time spent trawling through this could well be time wasted. And yet, there could, in the tiniest footnote of the most insignificant looking page, be a thing. The thing. And so the time will be spent.

  ‘Sergeant.’

  I turn at the sound of Kallas’s voice. Was relieved to not be in the same room as her, but now she stands in the office doorway, holding a white mask in her gloved fingers.

  ‘He had yet to get rid of his wife’s clothes. There was a walk-in wardrobe. This had been placed in her underwear drawer.’

  ‘Buried, or at the top, easy to find?’

  ‘The latter.’

  ‘That’s where we are, then,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. Emma is here now, we will leave her in charge. You and I will go and speak to Dr Fforbes, then we will visit Mr Cowal’s office in Baillieston, and then we will consider the next step.’

  A pause. For some reason I stay there like a lemon, kneeling down beside a desk drawer, the folder for a film entitled Ballad In Blue in my hand, until she lifts her eyebrows at me and says, ‘We will go now,’ and then turns and walks away.

  24

  ‘I have a theory,’ says Fforbes.

  We’ve retreated to the hospital café, drinking coffee. ‘The coffee’s terrific,’ she said, by way of explanation, and she’s right.

  Fforbes is sitting across the table from us, eating a Danish. It’s almost as though we’re in interview formation. I, too, have a Danish. Kallas, the slimmest most gorgeously-bodied woman on earth, as I now know, is not eating a Danish. I suspect she eats a carrot once every three or four weeks.

  Having taken a moment to chew her penultimate bite of maple pecan plait, and just as she’s about to launch into her theory, Fforbes sticks the last piece of Danish in her mouth anyway and talks through it.

  ‘Little Mr Cowal had much higher levels of GHB in his body. He also had more interesting bruising to his testicles. Earlier bruising. The flaying of the penis,’ involuntary groin squirmage, ‘was also early and fascinating. So, my theory is that his killer sees this little guy, thinks, this’ll be fairly straightforward, shouldn’t take too much intoxicant to incapacitate him, gives him the thing, but then it turns out the little guy has something going for him. I mean, the human body is the most extraordinary machine, after all.’ She dabs her lips with a napkin, takes a drink of latte, and really, if the coffee’s so great, which it is, why would you waste it by having that much milk, then continues, ‘You just never can tell how it will react. So, I think perhaps the killer, wherever this took place, got a little more fight from Mr Cowal than they were anticipating. So, they went for his most vulnerable spot. There’s a lot of testicular bruising. There was a violent, pre-thousand cuts attack on his testicles.’ More squirming. ‘Then, when the killer had regained the upper hand, if that’s what happened, they injected way more than the required amount of GHB. Way more. Mr Cowal is out for the count. His body is moved, he’s strung up on the cross, now the killer wants to wake him up, so they can enjoy the bloodletting together. Except, Mr Cowal doesn’t want to wake up, because he’s been so heavily sedated. The killer tries a variety of strategies. None of them work. So, in the end, they go for the strategy of pain.’ She pauses. She looks across the table from me to Kallas and back, and then can’t stop herself saying it. ‘He flays the penis.’

  ‘And that would wake him up?’ asks Kallas.

  Personally, I can’t speak at the moment. That uncomfortable feeling in the groin has worked its way up my body.

  Fforbes shrugs.

  ‘Not sure. But it would’ve been sore. Am I right, Sergeant?’

  She smiles wickedly, and I give her the appropriate look.

  ‘So, who’s your guy?’ asks Fforbes, glancing at the café counter, contemplating another Danish, I dare say.

  ‘He is a film producer,’ says Kallas, having left a small space for me to answer, and realising that I might have wandered off mentally.

  ‘Made anything I’ve seen?’ asks Fforbes, in the way that people do.

  ‘I do not know what you have seen,’ answers Kallas, the literalist, and Fforbes looks at me for the k
ind of answer one might expect to that question.

  ‘A lot of small Scottish movies, some TV,’ I say. ‘So, it depends. Look him up on IMDb. He appears to have been successful at getting films made, not necessarily at getting people to watch those films. Perhaps that’s not what it’s about at that level.’

  ‘It’s art, love?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘So, what’s your connection between the two?’

  ‘Still looking.’

  ‘You have further intelligence about the corpse?’ asks Kallas, not ready yet to be distracted.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ says Fforbes. ‘The first dose of the drug, what I surmise to be the smaller dose, was administered around eleven p.m. The penis was flayed around one p.m. The man was dead by two. More than half the cuts were administered post mortem. The killer very clearly keeps count, and on this occasion made sure they got to the required number, even though the victim wasn’t alive to feel it. It does make one wonder if there’s significance in the thousand cuts, and for whose benefit it is.’

  ‘That is interesting,’ says Kallas. ‘The death was carried out with the same implement as before?’

  ‘The very same,’ says Fforbes. ‘There’s a small nick somewhere in the blade, an uneven serration. Almost as though the killer wanted to make sure it was apparent the murders were done by the same person, in case you might think there’s more than one lingchi-ist on the loose. Just something else to tie it all together.’

  ‘We have a showboater,’ I say.

  ‘That you most certainly do,’ says Fforbes. ‘And I think, sadly, that his work is not yet done.’

  We nod together, we accept our fate, we drink coffee, while around us the tired work of a hospital, enduring the longest of years, continues.

  ‘NO, IT WASN’T JUST about that, it really wasn’t.’

  Kallas, having been filled in on my assessment of David Cowal’s filmmaking abilities, has just put that assessment to Gill Blair, his former assistant.

  ‘We had some success,’ she says, ‘and it was far more, far more, than a form-filling, financial exercise. Dave was passionate about film, he loved film. He dearly believed in every single venture he got involved in.’ She’s staring intently at Kallas, brow furrowed, eyes piercing, some sort of derangement about her, I’d say. Of course, her business partner, and quite possibly boyfriend, has just been horribly murdered, so there’s probably all sorts of shit going on in her head. I mean, we’ve all been there, right? ‘We had great viewing figures for our feature with David Hayman that was shown on the BBC. Very good feedback, and a Scottish BAFTA nomination.’

  She’s a little bit defensive there. Of course, she was defensive from the moment we walked in.

  Decent-sized office. Bright. First floor, looking out on the main street. Venetian blinds on the large windows, which can be drawn when you’re having sex on the comfy sofa. And there is, sure enough, as well as the two desks and the small coffee table, a large, comfy sofa. Easy to clean leather at that. I think we know why Mr Cowal continued to come to the office when the lockdown started.

  ‘This can often seem like a very blunt question,’ begins Kallas, completely undaunted by Blair’s nervy bullshit, and in those words are the acknowledgement, to me at least, that she’s charged in bluntly without the preamble many times in the past, ‘was there anyone in the business who held a grudge against Mr Cowal? Anyone who might have wanted him dead?’

  ‘What? Really? Dave? What? That’s... what?’

  Kallas lifts a hand to cut her off, which is good, because for a moment I thought we were going to have to listen to Blair ejaculate in single syllables for several more minutes.

  All right, really has two syllables. Fuck off.

  ‘Do not sound so surprised,’ says Kallas. ‘Mr Cowal was brutally murdered. Someone, somewhere, wanted him dead. Otherwise, he would not be dead.’

  ‘It must have been random,’ she says quickly, the same strained tone in her voice. ‘He must have been chosen at random. One of those, it must have been one of those.’

  Kallas answers that with a vicious stare across the desk. I mean, the stare is blank really, but it’s the most vicious blank stare you’ve ever seen in your life.

  ‘Random murders happen,’ blurts Blair.

  ‘The killer took another victim earlier in the week. Both that attack, and the attack on Mr Cowal, were malicious and well-planned. Designed to inflict pain.’ The hand to the mouth. Oh, poor Dave, how he suffered... ‘We do not yet know for sure, but everything about the attacks suggests these men were picked for a reason. There was nothing random about either one.’

  Blair has gone a little pale now, as she sits there, in her defensive bubble, behind a packed midfield, thinking about poor Dave.

  ‘Do you know if Mr Cowal had any dealings with Mr Harry Lord? He was the –’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ says Blair quickly.

  A beat. Kallas looks across the desk, just that hint of inquisitiveness about her, waiting for further explanation. It ain’t coming.

  ‘They had business dealings?’ I chip in from the sidelines.

  Good move, as Blair looks a little thrown, as though she’d forgotten I was there.

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  ‘Maybe you could give us the details?’

  ‘Mr Lord had an interest in the arts. There were a few wealthy, private individuals who Dave felt comfortable approaching, if the project seemed appropriate.’

  ‘So, you know that Mr Lord was murdered a few days ago,’ says Kallas, a statement rather than a question, and I know where this is going, even if Mrs Blair doesn’t.

  ‘Yes,’ says Blair. ‘Everyone knows.’

  ‘And now Mr Cowal has been murdered,’ says Kallas.

  The face across the desk goes through the logical progression of what Kallas is going to say next, her shoulders straighten at the realisation, someone somewhere having inserted something up her arse, then she says, ‘No, no, I don’t believe it. I just... I don’t believe it.’

  ‘You think these might have been two completely random, brutal murders in Cambuslang?’

  ‘Yes, yes. That there might be a connection didn’t even cross my mind. Dave, for the most part, made small arthouse films. He perhaps was not the artist himself, but he was an auteur.’

  Kallas employs that stare again, says, ‘You do not understand the meaning of the word auteur,’ and Blair straightens even further. She might possibly be about to point out that of course she knows what an auteur is, she’s in the movie business after all, it’s just that she was assuming Kallas wouldn’t. Instead, she stays quiet, and sits there in bolt upright stony silence, her lips pinched like a contracted sphincter.

  ‘We need to know details of every deal that was done between Mr Cowal and Mr Lord. In particular, we need to know other people that might have been involved in those deals. We also need to know if there were any potential deals between them which fell through.’

  Blair swallows, loudly and obviously. She doesn’t like this, but there’s no escape.

  ‘Were you involved with Mr Cowal?’ asks Kallas.

  Much more delicately put than I would’ve managed. Involved...

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ says Blair, but the tone says, Oh yes! ‘We worked together, of course we were involved,’ she adds, weakly.

  Kallas holds her gaze for a moment, and then delicately, slowly, beautifully, casts a short glance in the direction of the sofa. Oh my fucking God, I love that!

  Blair looks at the sofa, Blair, in fact, cannot take her eyes off the sofa, and then finally she turns back to Kallas, holds her gaze for a moment, then drops her eyes.

  Guilty as charged.

  ‘What about Mr Lord?’ asks Kallas.

  Jeez, she’s good, hadn’t even thought of that. But she’s right. Harry was a bit of a lad.

  Blair’s head snaps up so fast she’s probably going to need to wear an orthopaedic collar for the next month.

 
‘What about him?’

  ‘Did you sleep with Mr Lord?’

  Nice. No surreptitious glances at the sofa this time. No need. She may have slept with Harry, but she’s not upset about it.

  Again she answers in silence, but the answer’s there all the same. In time we’ll get the details, but for now, really, we already know. Harry loved and left, Harry never hung around. Whatever they had sexually, it would have been brief.

  ‘Did it suit Mr Cowal for you to have sex with Mr Lord?’

  Oh, she doesn’t want to answer that either. She’s been trampled flat now, the stuffing knocked out of her. Defeated, the shoulders start to go.

  ‘And what about Mr Blair?’ asks Kallas.

  ‘What about him?’

  Words back out like a whippet.

  ‘Does he know of your infidelity?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  Kallas allows the silence for a while, and then says, ‘Perhaps he is a suspect, as you have cuckolded him with both murder victims.’

  ‘No!’

  Eyes wide. She stares at Kallas, she stares at me.

  ‘You can’t... you really can’t say that. Will you just leave Tony out of it?’

  Well, that just sits there, the words occupying a large space in the middle of the room, for a while.

  ‘Your husband’s called Tony Blair?’ says Kallas, just before I ask the same question. Actually, I’d been going to preface mine with, ‘no fucking way’. Then Kallas, sensible as ever, follows with, ‘That is a nickname he was given after Blair became Prime Minister?’

  ‘Yes. He was, I don’t know, eighteen at the time. At university. A bad time to get a nickname, as he says. It stuck.’

  ‘What is his real name?’