G. Moffat - Blindside

Wondered if he would feel the pain.

His leg started to ache under the scar.

He pressed the trigger some more. Realised that it was more than he had ever done before. Wondered if this time he would keep going until all the lights went out.

The phone rang through in the kitchen. Raines waited for it to ring out.

It started again as soon as it had stopped. He sighed, released his finger from the trigger and placed the gun on the rag spread out over the table.

Went to the kitchen to get the phone.

‘Sorry about earlier,’ Matt Horn said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you when you were here.’

‘I wasn’t upset.’

‘What are you doing right now?’

Raines rubbed absently at the welt by his temple where he had pressed the gun to his head.

‘Nothing much, you know. Watching TV.’

‘Anything good?’

‘No.’

‘Want to come over for a beer?’

He stepped into the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, looked at the gun sitting there on the table.

‘We could watch a game or something,’ Horn said. ‘Like we used to. I mean, we haven’t done that in a while.’

‘Sounds good.’ He hung up and went back to the table, looking down at the gun sitting there. He wondered if Horn was now a security risk and whether he should go over there again tonight and make sure he wouldn’t talk to anyone. But he couldn’t find it in himself to do that. Not after everything.

He switched off the TV, picked up his keys and went outside into the dark. The gun still lying on the rag on his table.

Wednesday

Wiping condensation from the mirror in her bathroom, Irvine leaned forward and looked at the side of her face. It looked worse than it had last night. She prodded gently at the stitches in the cut by her eye and winced at the pain.

She stood back a little and turned her face to the side so that she could see the full extent of the damage. The area around the wound was swollen and discoloured and her eye had closed a little overnight. A dull throb pulsed behind her eye so she took two painkillers from the drawer in the vanity unit beneath the sink and washed them down with water from the tap.

Irvine got dressed in her bedroom and was drying her hair when Connor wobbled into the room in his jammies and wrapped himself around her legs. She switched the dryer off and lifted her son into her arms.

‘Hey, little man. How are you today?’

He grinned at her and buried his face in her neck, putting his hands in her still damp hair and twisting it around his fingers. He pulled back from her and put a hand on her bruised face.

‘You hurt, Mummy?’

Irvine stroked his hair back from his forehead and kissed him.

‘No,’ she lied.

‘Good.’

She hugged him again.

‘Breakfast?’ he asked.

‘What do you want?’

‘Toast.’ His face contorted as he considered other options. ‘Juice.’

Irvine admired his ability to communicate his precise needs in as few words as possible — thought it would be nice if little boys could grow into men and not lose that trait.

After dropping Connor at the childminder, Irvine looked up and saw a jet high above her, fumes trailing behind it. She checked her watch and guessed that Logan and Cahill were probably sitting around the lounge at Heathrow waiting for their connection to Denver right now.

She got in the car and her phone rang. It was Armstrong.

‘How’s the face? Bet it looks like you’ve gone ten rounds with someone.’

‘I’ve looked better.’

‘You coming in today?’

‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘No reason. Just that after last night, you know…’

‘Listen, why don’t you speak to Jim Murphy. See if the forensics people have come up with anything yet. I spoke with him last night. He said they had found Lewski’s clothes.’

‘Where?’

‘Not sure. Nearby somewhere.’

‘Intact?’

‘No. They’d been burned just like we thought. But there might be something they can get.’

‘Blood results back yet?’

‘Not as of last night. Ask him about that too.’

‘I’ll see if I can find him.’

Irvine started her car and tuned the radio to a news channel. There was a brief story about the body found in the river but there was nothing much to it. Basic information. She switched it off and drove into town.

Armstrong wasn’t around when Irvine got to her desk so she called the CCTV centre again and spoke to the shift supervisor, hoping he would tell her that the stuff was on its way to her already.

‘Dan Patrick,’ the supervisor said when he came on the line.

‘Dan, this is DC Irvine from Strathclyde CID. I’m looking to see if we can get anything from the last couple of days in connection with a murder investigation. I spoke to someone already about getting some recordings over here.’

‘Okay. We’re kind of short-staffed. But I’ll help if I can.’

She got the impression that no one had done anything about looking at the footage yet. Irvine went through the circumstances of Joanna Lewski’s death and the time periods that she thought would be crucial. Again.

‘We should have some coverage that might help,’ Patrick told her. ‘It’ll take a while to go through it, though. I mean, that’s a lot of hours.’

‘I don’t need you guys to go over it. And I need it now. Send it to DS Jim Murphy at Pitt Street. Today.’

There was a brief pause before he replied.

‘I’ll get someone on to it.’

After an hour, there was still no sign of Armstrong. Irvine picked up her desk phone and called his mobile.

‘Kenny, it’s me. How are you getting on? Any progress after the post-mortem yesterday?’

‘I’m over here at the mortuary with the pathologist. He’s finished with his report and I’ve got some samples from Lewski’s body. I thought I’d pick them up and rush them over to the lab. Let forensics get a head start on things.’

‘You should have told me you were going there.’

‘Just trying to move things on, you know?’

‘I told you that I’m fine, Kenny. You don’t have to treat me like an invalid.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘What kind of samples did we get?’ she asked.

‘A swab of semen and also some hairs.’

‘She had sex before she was killed?’

‘That’s what he says.’

‘If we’re lucky we’ll get a DNA hit on it.’

‘I’ll get the stuff up to Pitt Street, to the lab, then meet you back at your desk. What you been up to?’

‘I’m going to see the lawyer here, find out who owns Suzie Murray’s flat.’

‘It’s not hers?’

‘She said no.’

‘Okay. Let’s keep this thing moving forward.’

‘Hey, how did you get on with Jim Murphy?’

‘Yeah, they haven’t finished with the clothes yet. Don’t worry, I’m on it.’

Irvine went down the stairs to the ground floor of the building and through the main reception area to a corridor at the back. At the end of the corridor was a large, open-plan room with four desks. The force’s only full-time in-house lawyer was a middle-aged woman with a fondness for green tea and blueberry muffins who sat at the desk nearest the door. The muffin habit had not been kind to her waistline. She looked up as Irvine sat in the chair on the other side of the desk.

Irvine smiled and introduced herself. The lawyer took her glasses off and fidgeted with a paper clip that she had bent out of shape, using the end of it to scrape under her nails. She brushed the resulting debris off her desk and on to the floor.

Irvine’s smile faltered.