Ken McClure: Eye of the raven

‘ What the… fuck kind of a minister are you?’ demanded Combe, making an angry but only partially successful effort to sit up before lapsing into a coughing fit as he fell back on to one elbow. The nurse reappeared and held a metal bowl up to Combe’s face to receive what he was bringing up from his raddled lungs. Lawson was very aware that Combe’s eyes never left his as he continued to hack up blood and phlegm. They were filled with hatred. Lawson wanted to look away but found himself mesmerised as if held in thrall to some strange animal he had absolutely no understanding of.

Combe finally pushed away the bowl. ‘Fucking… tosser,’ he managed to gasp. ‘What kind of a f…’

Combe appeared to freeze in mid sentence and Lawson, still transfixed by the strength of Combe’s hatred, found himself part of a frozen tableau for a few moments before the look in Combe’s eyes suddenly became quite neutral and, with a final gurgling sigh, he fell back on his pillow, dead.

‘ Not exactly Oscar Wilde when it came to last words, was he?’ murmured the nurse who’d seen the distressed look on Lawson’s face and come over to join them.

Lawson accepted the offer of a whisky in the assistant governor’s office and took two large gulps before he could say anything, finding welcome if only momentary distraction in the burning sensation in his throat.

‘Combe couldn’t have done it,’ said Traynor. ‘The police got the right man for the Julie Summers murder. He’s eight years into a life sentence in Barlinnie. It was thought at the time that he should have been sent here but the medical experts declared him perfectly sane. Traynor snorted his derision and added, ‘He rapes and murders a thirteen-year-old girl, and they don’t even come up with a “personality disorder”. Makes you bloody wonder.’

Lawson was only half-aware of what Traynor was saying. He was still thinking about his nightmare meeting with Combe. His hand was shaking as he raised the whisky glass to his mouth for a final gulp. ‘Combe was adamant that he did it,’ he said.

Traynor looked at him sympathetically and said, ‘No way, minister, but I’ll send in a report to the relevant police authority of course.’

‘ Why confess to something he didn’t do?’ persisted Lawson as the whisky finally started to have a calming effect and he got his wits back about him.

Traynor shrugged and said, ‘I’ve long given up trying to work out what goes on inside a psycho’s head. They don’t think like you or I do. Don’t dwell on it, minister.’

Lawson, who had just undergone what he felt was perhaps the worst experience of his life, looked questioningly at Traynor as if he were completely insensitive to what he’d gone through. Of course he was going to dwell on it! It was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. All that came out however, was, ‘Oh dear God,’ as looked down at the floor and shook his head.

Traynor still seemed insensitive to the extent of Lawson’s trauma. ‘About Combe’s funeral, minister, would you want to officiate yourself?’

When Lawson responded with a blank look he continued, ‘Perhaps in the circumstances you’d prefer me to ask someone else?’

‘ Definitely somebody else,’ said Lawson.

‘ Julie Summers?’ exclaimed Detective Inspector Peter McClintock of Lothian and Borders Police, his red face showing disbelief. ‘Combe confessed to killing Julie Summers?’

‘ That’s what the report says,’ confirmed his sergeant, Mark Ryman.

McClintock maintained his look of incredulity as he firmly shook his head and said, ‘No way Jose, we put David Little away for that one eight years ago and the evidence against him was watertight.’ After a few moments thought he added, ‘Why on earth would a nutter like Combe want to put his hands up for the Julie Summers killing? It doesn’t make sense.’

Ryman shrugged and said, ‘Apparently he confessed to some Church of Scotland minister who was on-call at Carstairs last night.

‘ Some guys get all the good jobs,’ muttered McClintock’

‘ His name’s Joseph Lawson; he’s the minister over at Upgate. The report suggests it was a deathbed confession,’ said Rivers. ‘Combe moved on to the great State Hospital in the sky shortly afterwards.

‘ Not all bad news then,’ muttered McClintock. ‘Except for God, that is.’ But his mind was already drifting elsewhere. He was running through the details of the Julie Summers murder in his head and it wasn’t that difficult given it had been such a high profile case.

Although an arrest had been made and a conviction secured on irrefutable evidence, it had left a trail of damage in its wake, including several resignations from the force and the suicides of both the initial suspect, Bobby Mulvey, and his mother, Mary.

A missing schoolgirl was the kind of case that the press made a meal of and there had been massive public interest at the time. Before the body had been found, Bobby Mulvey, a seventeen stone, six-foot tall man with the mental age of an eight-year-old had been brought in for routine questioning. He had lived in the same street as Julie and had been seen talking to her on the day she had disappeared. Because of this he received a particularly rough ride from the tabloids.

Although they didn’t actually accuse him in print, they did succeed in fuelling a whispering campaign against Mulvey, which spread like wildfire throughout the small community and beyond. To his added misfortune, Mulvey looked like everyone’s idea of a suspect for that type of crime. He was swarthy, had long unkempt hair and seemed to have a permanent leer on his face. McClintock remembered the officer in charge of the investigation at the time, DI Bill Currie, saying that Bobby Mulvey was the only man he’d ever come across who actually looked like a photo-fit picture.

Mulvey didn’t have a police record but he had more than once caused unease among the locals by throwing spectacular temper tantrums in public — usually after some of the local kids had been bating him. This was something his mother insisted they did it on purpose in order to provoke such a response.

As rumour and innuendo about Mulvey’s involvement fermented into openly voiced suspicion, some of the locals had demonstrated their frustration at what they saw as police ineptitude by throwing bricks through the Mulveys’ windows and daubing the walls of their small cottage with abusive slogans. His mother’s insistence that Bobby had been particularly fond of Julie and would never have done anything to harm her only served to foster a general belief that he might have made sexual advances towards her and got angry when she had rejected him.

Julie’s body was found some three days later after a massive search involving hundreds of public volunteers who’d responded to an appeal put out by the papers. Her naked, broken body had been discovered lying like a discarded doll in woodland about half a mile outside the village. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with her own underwear.

Under terrific pressure from the media to make an arrest, Currie decided in his own mind that Mulvey must be guilty and brought him in again. He attempted to break him by subjecting him to what amounted to unceasing verbal abuse for thirty-six hours interspersed with episodes of actual physical violence.

Mulvey, desperate for sleep and in need of respite from the angry men who constantly accused him, finally broke down and confessed to the rape and murder of Julie. He probably would have admitted to causing the downfall of the Roman Empire and having complicity in the murder of John F Kennedy had Currie and his team suggested this were so.

Mulvey’s mother had complained bitterly when she was finally allowed to visit her son and saw the bruising to his ribs and his kidneys. She tried lodging an official complaint but found the police surgeon, Dr George Hutton, less than helpful. Hutton hadn’t been interested in tabulating or recording her son’s injuries. He shared the public’s distaste for anyone who could carry out such a crime and felt confident that the tabloid-readers weren’t going to be too concerned with a little physical discomfort being meted out to little Julie’s killer should details leak out. Apart from anything else, Hutton played golf with Currie and wanted the glare of publicity to be off the force just as much as Currie so they could all get back to normal. The public wanted Bobby Mulvey’s head on a plate and that was exactly what the force had given them — or so it seemed.