See That My Grave Is Kept Clean Read online

  ‘Where were you yesterday morning? And remember, I can independently verify your schedule.’

  ‘I was here.’

  ‘In this office or at various places around the university?’

  ‘In this office. I was working. I’m co-authoring a paper on the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. I don’t suppose you even know what that is.’

  Oh, fuck you, you pompous prick.

  ‘What time did you get here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It was yesterday. Think about it.’

  He shrugs, continues the annoyed look of the unfairly hounded.

  ‘What d’you want me to say?’

  Give him another second. I’ve had enough. Fun over.

  ‘Yesterday morning, not long before she was pushed in front of a train, Tandy Kramer had sex with a man in his forties. Given you’re the right age, you knew Miss Kramer, and you live in the same town in which she very probably had sex, it’s entirely reasonable for us to check the DNA of the sperm we found in her body against yours, which will tell us either way. So this it, maths guy. We’re going down to the station. Right now. You and me. You can tell me whether you had sex with Miss Kramer, but remember, I’m going to have absolute proof of whether you’re telling the truth. Now, get your coat.’

  ‘I don’t think you quite realise who I am.’

  There is a pregnant pause.

  Yes I do.

  You’re a dick.

  10

  ‘SHE WAS NINETEEN, THERE was nothing illegal. There’s no university law expressly forbidding relationships with the students. Yes, it’s frowned upon, but if you think I’m the first...’ He holds his finger up before Taylor can get in a line about the fact that none of the others got pushed in front of a train, less than half an hour after having slept with the member of staff. ‘And I’m not even married. So, I don’t see the problem here, I really don’t.’

  ‘She was pregnant,’ says Taylor. Voice low, calm. Great tone. ‘It may not have been illegal, but it would have been very bad for your career.’

  ‘You think I was the only one she was sleeping with?’ says the desperate Dr Ferguson. ‘Have you learned anything about Tandy in the last day and a half?’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough, when we get the results of the lab work back on the foetus.’

  ‘Fine, but I say it again, I wasn’t the only one.’

  ‘You weren’t the only member of staff?’

  ‘I don’t know. Jesus.’

  ‘Why are you so sure there were others?’

  ‘Oh, just look at her. She was gorgeous, she was confident. Girls like her... they’re always the same.’

  Go on, you idiot, keep digging.

  Taylor maintains the cold stare across the desk. I already told him Ferguson doesn’t like it. Can’t handle the silence.

  ‘I can prove I was on the train, on my way to Partick, when Tandy died.’

  ‘We know,’ says Taylor.

  ‘What?’

  That throws him. If this guy ends up in court, I hope for his sake he just tells the truth straight from the off, because otherwise it’s going to be embarrassing.

  ‘We have CCTV of you getting on the train in Cambuslang. We have CCTV of you getting off the same train in Partick. The person who pushed Miss Kramer onto the train tracks was smaller in stature than you.’

  His face starts to relax, his shoulders are a little straighter.

  ‘Well, why the fuck am I here then?’ he says.

  Manners. People just have no respect for the police. See the amount of this kind of shit we get?

  ‘Because someone killed Miss Kramer. The only exceptional fact in her life we know so far is she was pregnant. The only person we know for a fact was sleeping with her is you. Therefore, the only person in the entire world so far we know had a motive for perhaps wanting her dead, extreme though I admit that is just because she was pregnant, is you. That’s why you’re here. And the fact you had a perfect alibi, and had quite possibly arranged to go ahead of Miss Kramer to the university so you wouldn’t be seen together, does not mean you didn’t arrange for someone else to push her in front of the train.’

  ‘But...’

  Words dry up. You could see his emotions come and go. Taylor had him when he said about them going on separate trains so no one could see them together. That’s absolutely what happened, and no doubt he got to go first, because his job as a lecturer was more important than her position as a student. Great kicker when Taylor mentioned the possibility of him hiring someone to kill her. There’s nothing to suggest it, but it’s always good to put it out there and see what happens.

  ‘You couldn’t even let her get on the same train, three carriages apart, could you?’ says Taylor. ‘You made her wait in Cambuslang.’

  Not something you’d wish on anyone in itself.

  ‘Right, Dr Ferguson, I need to go to the airport to meet the girl’s father. You’re going to stay here with Sgt Hutton and tell him everything about you and Miss Kramer. The first time you noticed her in class, the first flirtatious glance, the first time you slept together. I want it all. And when I get back, and if the Sergeant’s happy with the information you’ve given him, then we can talk about what happens next. At the moment, all that’s happening next is you’re talking. And talking.’

  Taylor pushes his chair back, gives him a final stare and then leaves.

  Great speech, beautifully delivered. Just leaves the place feeling a bit flat afterwards. Now it’s going to be like trying to pick the room up again after Oor Andy has just beaten Djokovic 17-15 in the fifth.

  SITTING AT MY DESK a few hours later. Dr Ferguson is gone. We’ve got everything we need for now, and I doubt he’s about to flee the country. You get a feel for these people, and this fellow isn’t the kind to get anyone too worried. Yes, he’s in his forties and he was sleeping with a nineteen year-old, but we’ve all done that, right? Or, at least, some of us have.

  I told him to prepare for it all getting out. It’s going to happen. People are going to know, if they didn’t already. The two of them seemed to have done a decent job of keeping it under wraps, but too late to worry about that now.

  Taylor came back, looking as miserable as you’re going to feel having spent two hours with the deceased’s father, and authorized the release of the lecturer. Happy to go on my say.

  Now we’re sitting separately, at our own desks, trying to tie things together, seeing if anything matches, if any piece of information sparks off any other. Back in the ops room at seven this evening.

  Morrow returns to the room, having been gone for a while, and takes a seat opposite.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  I lift and drop a couple of pieces of paper.

  ‘Don’t know we’ve got much beyond our lecturer. For all his apparent presumption he wasn’t the only one, seems he was. At least, if there were any others, she was keeping them a good secret ‘n’ all. We really only stumbled upon this guy because he happened to live where she died and he’s absolutely shite under interrogation. Not sure we’d have got him otherwise.’

  Look around the papers and notes hoping something else might jump off a page at me.

  ‘Little else. We’ve looked through her stuff. She was pretty regular in her Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr posts. Mostly Fall Out Boy and Chris Hemsworth.’

  ‘I like Fall Out Boy,’ Morrow contributes to the conversation.

  ‘You just want me to know you’ve heard of them,’ I say.

  He laughs, finally sits down.

  ‘Hey, did you hear about the thing in Clarkston this afternoon?’

  ‘Clarkston?’

  ‘Fucking gruesome.’

  Morrow never used to swear. Must be my bad influence. At least I’ll leave some legacy around here.

  ‘Gruesome?’

  ‘Double beheading. Go on, put it up on BBC News.’

  ‘In Clarkston?’

  ‘That is just some freaky, weird shit man. Two w
hite folks in a Muslim community centre. Used to be a church. The place was locked up. The guy who runs it was opening it up for this AA meeting they have on Wednesday afternoons...’

  ‘An Islamic AA meeting in what used to be a church?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Isn’t there so much irony in that itself, it could explode?’

  ‘I don’t know if it’s irony,’ he says.

  ‘Suppose.’

  ‘Anyway, he opens up, nothing untoward about the locks or the doors or the windows or anything, then goes into the main hall, and boom. There they are, tied upright in chairs in the middle of the hall, back-to-back, heads in their laps. In red paint on the wooden floor was scrawled, Unbelievers. Oh, they got the i and the e the wrong way round.’

  ‘Holy fuck,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘holy fuck. You’ve got a church, you’ve got beheadings and you’ve got Islam.’

  ‘A perfect shitstorm.’

  ‘Exactamundo,’ he says. ‘It looks like a fun case, but kind of glad it’s not ours.’

  Well, I’ll just have to disagree with him there. I don’t think it looks fun at all, but I do have absolutely no doubt I’m delighted it’s not ours.

  ‘I’m disappointed for you, but you’ll just need to crack on with our mundane, old pushing in front of the train.’

  ‘Yep, I’m on it.’

  ‘Sit. room at seven.’

  ‘Right.’

  And even though I dismissed the conversation, there’s no way I’m getting that image out of my head. Two decapitated bodies tied back-to-back. More extreme and instant than the Plague of Crows, but it’s certainly reminiscent. Not that what the Plague of Crows did wasn’t extreme.

  ‘Maybe it’s a Highlander type gig,’ says Morrow.

  I’m still thinking about it and I don’t want to be, so I don’t respond.

  ‘Perhaps we should be checking out the whereabouts of Christopher Lambert.’

  ‘You can have that one,’ I say.

  He manages to focus for about a minute and a half, and then says, ‘You know Highlander 2 is like, I don’t know, the worst sequel of all time. I mean, what were they –’

  ‘Constable!’

  Finally he shuts up, looks back down at the pile of papers I’d placed on his desk. He looks at his, and I look at mine, but I still can’t concentrate. Not now.

  11

  ‘WELL, I DON’T KNOW. I never do.’

  Clayton stares at a vague spot on the wall in front of him. Not looking at the still life this time.

  ‘I just blocked it out,’ he says, making another of his affected hand gestures. Under other circumstances, Dr Brady might have been making notes on the hand gestures, and what they meant. She didn’t think, though, given the current set-up, he would appreciate it. ‘I mean, it was like it hadn’t happened. I created in my mind – oh, this is good, you probably want to write this down – I created in my mind a character. A beastly character. I never saw him again, I never held him responsible for anything again, but in my head I knew he was to blame for poor Adam’s death. So when they asked, when they came asking – oh, and they did – I knew who did it, and I wasn’t saying. That was my secret. So, I wasn’t lying when I said I had nothing to do with it, I really wasn’t. Adam’s killer was this other character who, I admit, I was protecting. But that was all. Who was I to judge?’

  Dr Brady realises more and more, as the sessions continue, she will be writing less and less of what she actually thinks.

  ‘Did you have an alibi for the time the murder was committed?’

  ‘Mother,’ he says, throwing the word across the room. ‘Not that she thought she was protecting me, or lying for me. I said I was in my room, and she backed me up. Elaborated, of course, just to make sure. Said she’d brought me a cup of coffee and some cake at almost the precise time Adam died.’

  He laughs, a high, curious, ugly sound, which somehow crawls right inside her.

  ‘I don’t even like coffee,’ he says, laughing some more. ‘Well, if they’d got us in separate rooms at the same time and asked us questions, I dare say they could have found us out on that particular lie, but what do the police know? Stupid.’

  ‘Perhaps they just didn’t suspect you at all,’ she says.

  ‘Probably not. There was so little to suspect. Just an anonymous, fat, little kid, sitting at the back of the class.’

  He laughs again, rueful this time, completely different in tone. Contemplative.

  Brady has a question for him, but doesn’t really want to ask. She takes a deep breath, watches him. Expecting his eyes on her, but he seems quite focused on whatever indistinct point he’s staring at on the wall, a smile on his face.

  ‘Have you killed anyone else?’ she asks finally.

  His eyebrows shoot up and he turns and looks at her, his expression amused rather than annoyed.

  ‘Why, yes! Of course!’

  She manages to hold his stare, but doesn’t ask him to elaborate. Again the fanciful wave of the hand, then he turns back to his current spot on the wall.

  ‘Took a while, of course. I mean, really, I’m not some, I don’t know, I’m not an uncontrollable psychopath. I took my time, I really did. There were others there, others in the class that year, who really... well, it was almost remiss of me not to do it, it really was. But I’m not stupid. If another member of the class had gone, well, really... The police would never have been away. And I know what you’re thinking. You probably see it all the time, you’re thinking I’d somehow scared myself. I was frightened by my own power, my own ability to be so cruel. Well, you’re having none of it. It was just a matter of common sense.’

  ‘You said yesterday you were crying while you were hitting him in the head.’

  She wonders if he’s going to turn on her, but you have to point these things out. The room is completely silent, not a sound entering from outside. She can hear herself swallow. Some people, most people, don’t like the contradictions being pointed out. Especially people like Michael Clayton.

  ‘So, I waited,’ he says eventually. His voice low, the tone the same, having addressed her words internally and having decided to completely ignore them. ‘Waited so long I quite forgot about poor young Adam. That may sound... I don’t know, how does it sound? Heartless? That I forgot Adam was dead? Anyway, there you are, you can’t decide what your brain remembers and what it doesn’t. And then it was university, and I stayed at home of course, because mother didn’t really want me staying in student digs. That would have been too... vulgar...’

  ‘Which university did you attend?’

  ‘Glasgow, of course. Good grief, I wasn’t going to go to Strathclyde. And all those other so-called universities around here, well they were just some fool’s pipe dream back then.’

  ‘What did you study?’

  ‘Oh, maths and eh... maths and computing. I was good. Had little trouble. A very smooth path. Well, academically. Otherwise... I thought, I really thought, you know, it’s time for a change. I can be a different person. Why not? People change. There was no one there from school, no one who was going to judge me. No one to tell other people I was this strange little boy sitting in the corner, not speaking to anyone. I could be an entirely new character. I could reinvent myself. Isn’t it just perfect? So, there I was. The talker. The debater. Joined the Conservative party, joined the debating club. Ha!’

  Having given the plan and the set up, he stops when it comes to explaining what went wrong. She waits for him to talk this time. In truth, she wishes he wouldn’t. She doesn’t want to know. The story that’s coming won’t be a pleasant one.

  ‘Really, they just... can you believe it?’ he says finally, the tone of voice now low. The bitterness has flowed through him, and has gone. Sorrow remains. The regret is at his rejection, however, not at the way he handled it.

  ‘Perhaps I wasn’t so good at the part. I don’t know.’

  ‘You didn’t... did you get on a debating team? Did you g –’ />
  ‘No! God no. I mean... There was Phil. I remember Phil. He was good, I admit it. And there were a couple of others, I had to give them that too. But Bethany...’

  Another burst of near-hysterical laughter.

  ‘She was a piece of work, she really was. The debating skills of a wildebeest fleeing from a lion. My God... No, no, it wouldn’t do at all.’

  Another pause. He stares at his vague spot.

  ‘Why did they pick Bethany over you?’

  ‘Because of her tits,’ he says, his voice level. ‘Her tits. She would go around, Jesus, she would wear these thin V-neck jumpers and no bra. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she had great tits. But tits don’t make the debater, believe me, they really don’t.’

  Brady has a sudden thought.

  ‘You didn’t kill Bethany?’ she says. ‘You killed someone who chose Bethany over you.’

  ‘No,’ he says, matter-of-factly, ‘it was Bethany.’

  She lowers her eyes. She can’t read him. She’s not sure her insights at the end of all this are really going to be of any use to anyone.

  ‘I left it over a year. I waited. I’m good at waiting. I can wait as long as it takes. I stayed in the club and in the party, making a gradual withdrawal. Soon enough I was the person I was at school, the quiet one sitting at the back. When I came for Bethany it was almost eighteen months later. When the police were asking who might have had a grudge against her, they’d all forgotten about me. It was so long in the past. And... and yes, it sticks in my throat to admit it, but they were all so, all so damned won over by her fucking tits it probably didn’t even occur to them I had been slighted. So, you know what? No one came asking. Not a single, fucking copper! Dear God.’

  Another short silence. The details of the death are coming. She doesn’t want to hear them.

  ‘And you know what? You know what I found out? When I dragged her into the bush, when I stripped the clothes off her, when I finally removed the thin V-neck jumper she always wore?’

  He turns and looks at Brady, his face hardening, a look of curious contempt.