Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

“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.