Tony Black - Murder Mile

‘Angela, fuck’s sake…’

She got close to the door, cupping her stomach in her hand like she was holding in the contents. The voice sounded familiar now; as she reached the spy-hole she peered out. Her vision was too blurred to make out any more than the shape of a man’s frame. She paused for a moment, remembered her beating the night before. She felt scared, but she also wanted to block everything out and there was only one way to do that; only one way to get the money to do that. She slid the chain, turned the key in the lock and opened up the door.

‘Hello, Ange.’

It was Henderson.

‘ You?’

He stood there, smiling. He had a television under his arm, one of those thin flat-screen ones. ‘Look, I brought you a pressie.’

‘But, when… I thought you weren’t due out for another six months.’

Henderson put a foot in the door, ‘Aye well, they let me out a wee bit early.’

Angela stepped back, let him in. ‘But how… why?’

‘I dunno do I… something about overcrowding or that, needed the cells.’

As Henderson walked through the hallway, Angela closed the door behind him. He shook his head at the state of the place, he seemed to have something stuck to his shoe — a used condom. ‘Fucking hell, Ange

… This place is a shit-hole.’

She stood in the doorway, shivering. ‘Well…’

‘Well, do something about it…’ Henderson shook the condom from his shoe. ‘Have you been turning tricks in here?’

Angela shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘No fucking maybe about it.’ He moved towards the window, opened up. ‘This place fucking stinks. Bad.’

Angela took a step forward, ‘Where did you get the telly?’

‘What kind of a question’s that?’ Henderson turned round, looked at her. He stood facing her for a moment, showed her an open palm. ‘A man in a pub, of course.’ He turned away from her, leaned towards the shelving unit by the window and swept the contents off with the back of his hand. Angela shrieked as a cup smashed on the floor.

‘This place is a tip…’ said Henderson, he pointed at the cup. ‘I’d get that cleaned up… you going about in your bare feet and all that, you’ll get cut.’

Angela moved over to the shelves, started to gather up the shards of pottery as Henderson plugged in the television. ‘Good job I brought the cord as well… Bloody-well knew you’d have no cord for the aerial!’

The picture on the television came clear and sharp, Henderson stepped back, looked pleased with himself.

‘Not fucking bad, eh.’

Angela nodded as she emptied the broken cup shards into an open drawer. She moved to stand beside Henderson. He put an arm out, ‘Don’t crowd me out, come on.’

She put a hand into his jacket, ‘Hendy, I’ll look after you,’

He faced her for a moment, removed her hand from him. ‘I don’t need any looking after, Ange.’

‘But, I will… y’know, if you look after me.’

Henderson grinned, tipped back his head. ‘I’m not holding, if that’s what you were thinking.’

‘I need a shot, Hendy. I need it bad, I had a rough time last night.’

He flicked the television channels, found the lunchtime news slot. ‘That’s the nature of the business you’re in love, I’d say it’s you that needs me.’

She nodded, ‘I do. I need you, Hendy.’

‘Aye well. Maybe we’ll see about that.’ He pointed the remote control at the screen, shushed Angela as he increased the volume. ‘Check this out, that’s Edinburgh.’

The newscaster started to relay the details of a murder scene.

‘ Police are remaining tight-lipped about the discovery of a body on the outskirts of the city. No identification has been released for what is believed to be the body of a teenage girl found in a field near to the town of Straiton… ’

The camera zoomed in. Police officers stood outside a white tent as men in full-body overalls came and went.

‘Oh, my God!’ said Angela. She stared at the screen, raised a hand to her mouth and began to tremble.

‘Funny seeing your own town on the telly isn’t it,’ said Henderson. ‘Look there’s some filth daftie looking stupid!’

Angela raised both her hands to her mouth, then quickly put them to her ears, turned away from the screen. ‘Off. Off. Off.’

Henderson scoffed, ‘What?’

‘Turn it off.’ Angela moved towards the mattress on the floor, threw herself down and began to sob. ‘Turn it off. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see that place.’

‘What is it?’ Henderson walked round to her side, pointed the remote control at the television, ‘Right there you go, it’s off. What the fuck’s up with you?’

She sat up, screamed at him. ‘Why did you have to come back?… Why?… Why did you have to bring that in here?’

‘It’s just a telly!’

She rose on her knees and started to lash out with her fists, ‘You brought that here… That place.’

She was still lashing out, screaming hysterically as Henderson brought an open palm across her face. She fell sideways onto the mattress and was quiet.

DI Rob Brennan walked into the cafe on Shandwick Place, nodded to the woman behind the counter and produced a low-voltage smile. She already had the dazed, tired look of someone who was ill-at-ease with their lot; it was barely lunchtime. In Edinburgh, Brennan expected no less; working at a till could hardly afford you enough to cover the bus fares.

‘Coffee please, black,’ he said.

She nodded, retreated to the machine on the counter behind her and started to batter ten bells out of it. Brennan eased himself to the side of the queue of people; the place was filling up.

He had been home, caught a few hours’ sleep, but his mind never really relaxed. He could still see the image of the bloodless girl, dead in a field on the outskirts of the city. He knew it would never leave him. There were cases that he had worked when he was still in uniform, still buddied to a proper officer, that haunted him to this day. Death was always with him.

Brennan looked around the cafe; most people were dead anyway, he thought. Couples of varying ages stared out into the bright, over-lit, open-plan area. Few of the assembled made eye contact. Or even attempted conversation. Their mouths opened and closed like fish as they gnawed on shortbread biscuits and supped beverages that they didn’t really want anyway.

They were dead. If any were alive once, they didn’t know it, or, had forgotten it. What did life mean to a fool? What did it mean to him? Brennan’s days had been full of death; brutal, sometimes barbaric death — as he looked around this slim section of the public, he questioned the worth of his occupation. Would any of these drones miss what they had if it was suddenly wrung out of them? If their precious life was snuffed out — what difference would it make to the world to lose one more of these lifeless cabbages?

Brennan shook himself. It was a pathetic indulgence that he had allowed himself: weighing the value of a life. Who was he, God? He knew it meant nothing — no more than the flip remark that death comes to us all. It was a stupid indulgence and he understood that, regretted it at once.

The victim was only one half of the equation — the perpetrator was the other. Any notion that the victim had to be of an exalted value to the human race missed the point. It was the act, not the consequence Brennan knew he had to concern himself with now. It was the cold cruelty. The malevolence. The evil. That’s what fired him. No matter how indifferent he was to the mass of men and their lives of quiet desperation, he could not conceive of killing anyone himself; it took another type of man to do that — the type he had sworn to protect all others from.