Gillian Galbraith - Dying Of The Light

‘A murder!’ the woman repeated, excitement enlivening her voice. ‘Whose?’

Instead of stopping the conversation and redirecting it, Manson seemed to feel compelled to answer.

‘Em… an Isobel Wilson. Just… eh… a woman in Edinburgh.’

‘The prostitute! You mean the prostitute! I read all about it in the Evening News . What’s Eddie to do with her, exactly?’

The Inspector swallowed, now looking rather pale, clearly in difficulty with the line of questioning but, apparently, unable to extricate himself from it. He threw Alice a pleading look.

‘Nothing,’ she cut in, ‘he’s nothing whatsoever to do with her – with it. He was here with you, after all. But, you see, we have to check up on the movements of anyone living nearby. Proximity, in itself, to the scene… we have to exclude neighbours and so on. Get assistance from anyone, really.’

‘But why do you need to know where he was, then?’

‘Routine enquiry,’ she lied, stonewalling the woman for her own sake. ‘Purely routine, Mrs Christie.’

Miss Spinnell peeped timidly from behind her half-opened door, loosened the final chain and came out onto the landing. Quill, attached to an over-long lead, trailed behind her, wagging his tail slowly in appreciation of Alice’s arrival. The old lady’s head was down, her shoulders drooped, and, in some mysterious way, the dog seemed to have absorbed her desolate mood, showing little of the characteristic elation he normally displayed at the handover. A fleshless hand was extended and Alice took the lead from it, looking into Miss Spinnell’s face and noticing that the huge orbs of her eyes were now red-rimmed, swollen with recent tears. She seemed so pathetic, so small and dejected that the policewoman longed to put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her, but resisted the impulse. She knew that physical contact, never mind the familiarity it implied, was considered unwelcome and, in all probability, unpleasant. Any kind of human touch was anathema to the old woman, something to be endured and, in itself, a test of her good manners.

Miss Spinnell handling a dog, however, was quite different. On countless occasions Alice had surprised her neighbour cuddling the animal, kissing his soft muzzle or cradling his head in her lap. Even now, she was absent-mindedly squeezing Quill’s ear, easing it through her fingers. Between caresses she spoke: ‘Today… Ali… Alice, is my birthday.’ But her leaden tone suggested that the occasion was not one of celebration but of mourning instead, just another milestone on the way to dusty death.

‘How splendid… I must get you something. Is there anything that you would particularly like, Miss Spinnell?’

‘Yes,’ her neighbour replied forlornly, ‘A new self.’

‘What’s wrong with the old one?’ Alice asked brightly, unsure where the conversation was leading.

‘I don’t know… and that may, possibly, be part of the problem.’

Sodding, sodding Alzheimer’s, Alice thought. A fiend so skilled in cruelty as to leave odd, disturbing flashes of insight, but enough only to compound the anxiety it brought with it.

‘How about…’ she racked her brain for inspiration, ‘some… chocolates?’ A favourite treat, she knew, remembering the time her assistance had been required to catch imagined pilferers, supposedly bloated on Milk Tray and Black Magic. In fact, Quill himself had been the culprit, canine teeth shredding the cardboard packaging, but the marks attributed, by his devoted admirer, to the long nails of the criminal classes.

‘No.’

‘What about a book then, poetry if you like?’ She could still see, in her mind’s eye, the Poetry Society Medal collecting cobwebs on the shelf.

‘I do not like poetry any more. Stop guessing. I can tell you exactly what I want.’

‘Yes?’

‘My sister. I would like my sister.’

Alice discovered that Miss Spinnell had lost touch with her sibling well over fifty years earlier. She asked for any details that might assist with the search, and was surprised to find herself escorted into the old lady’s drawing room. A visit to the Holy of Holies was an unexpected privilege. On the floor by the bow window lay an assortment of unwashed soup plates, packets of cornflakes, half-empty tins of beans, Oxo cubes and a heap of dog biscuits. Evidently, the area was Quill’s kitchen-cum-dining room. The carpet was strewn with single, unmatched pop socks and, crossing it, Alice inadvertently stood on a wet sponge.

Once she was seated on the sofa, Miss Spinnell returned from a search in a chest of drawers, weighed down by an old photograph album. Inadvertently, she flopped down next to Alice, their thighs momentarily touching. Springing up instantly, she removed herself to the far end of the sofa and placed the open book between them. After much fumbling, a crooked finger was pointed at a black and white image.

‘Annabelle,’ she said, ‘my older sister… em… eight years older than me.’

‘And on this birthday, Miss Spinnell, if you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?’ Alice asked gently. A suitably oblique enquiry, surely.

‘Eighty… ninety, that sort of figure or thereabouts,’ the old lady said, before, seeing what Alice was getting at, she added crossly, ‘She is alive, you know. If not kicking.’

‘Excellent,’ Alice replied, ‘you’ve been in some sort of contact recently?’

‘Of course not! If I had I wouldn’t need you. No. But she is here, on this earth. I’ve been along to the Scarlet Lodge, you appreciate.’

‘The Scarlet Lodge?’ Alice enquired, bemused.

‘Our spiritualist meeting place, dear. I attempted to make contact and failed. So she cannot be in their world… the spirit world, I mean.’

‘Spiritualism?’ Alice exclaimed in wonderment. A new facet of her neighbour.

‘Yes, spiritualism,’ the impatient reply shot back, ‘Spiritualism! Good enough for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, no less, so good enough – nay, too good – for you. Now, were I to entrust him with the case of the missing sister he’d be sure to come up with the goods! A real detective that one… unlike you, dear.’

Leaving the flat with the scant information she had been able to glean, Alice smiled to herself. Dealing with her neighbour was like trying to tame an ancient and confused stoat, an unlikely pet, and one which even in its dotage required to be treated with the utmost respect.

‘Four rolls. A Twix and a soup, if they’ve t… t… tomato.’

‘Four rolls!’ Alice repeated, astonished.

‘Yes. FOUR rolls, a Twix and a soup. Any kind of roll, by the way, ham, t… t… tomato, cheese, tuna. I’m not fussy and I’m still building up my strength after the accident,’ Simon answered, unabashed.

Chewing the dry pastry of her Scotch pie and feeling, for once, strangely virtuous in her comparative restraint, Alice decided to continue with her plan to get to know the new DS. If she said nothing the silence in the car would remain unbroken. Either he was shy or else conversation was not his forte.

‘In the accident, what happened?’

‘A car crash in 2007, on the bypass. I was in hospital for over three months… emergency transfusion after emergency transfusion. They didn’t think I’d pull through, actually. But here I am, and twice as large as life.’ He patted his ample belly, chuckling to himself.

‘Must have frightened your family?’