Ken McClure - Eye of the raven

As they walked along the corridors it became clear that the prisoners had their own ideas about what had been going on. A muted chorus of, ‘McGregor’s off to sunny Spain, Viva Espa n a,’ broke out to mark their progress and brought an angry flush to the cheeks of the officer. Steven pretended that he had heard nothing. His inner feelings of amusement evaporated in an instant however, when he saw the state of Little.

Little had been moved to accommodation of the type used for prisoners who were ill and required medical care but who were not going to be moved to hospital for whatever reason. Little was lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and taking rapid, shallow breaths. If anything he seemed even paler than last time and his cheekbones were making him look positively skeletal.

‘ It’s you,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Come to tell me it’s all been a horrible mistake.’ He tried to laugh but a cough beat him to it and seemed to rattle his very ribs. He picked up a metal bowl that sat beside his bunk and spat into it. His lack of energy and co-ordination made it a messy business and bloodstained sputum trickled down his chin as he fell back on the pillow, seemingly exhausted.

Steven took out a couple of surgical gloves from the box by the sink and put them on. He picked up a pack of surgical wipes and cleaned Little’s face before dumping both gloves and the used wipes in the pedal bin marked ‘Biological Waste.’

‘ No, I haven’t,’ he said. ‘The tests proved beyond doubt that it was your semen they found in Julie Summers’ body.’

Little shook his head despairingly and resumed his survey of the ceiling. ‘It just cannot be,’ he murmured. ‘I didn’t do it.’

Steven remained impassive.

‘ Christ!’ exclaimed Little angrily after a moment’s thought. ‘I actually allowed myself to believe that you were going to come up with something where the others failed or didn’t even bother. And what happens? I get kicked in the balls again. Fuck! I just can’t win.’

Little’s emotional outburst brought on more coughing and Steven gloved up again before helping him through it. He held his bony shoulders while Little hacked in protest at the pneumonia that was attacking his defenceless lungs. A sudden clunk in the bowl made him look down to see with revulsion that one of Little’s teeth had come out of his gum and now lay in the bowl attached to a stringy piece of bloody tissue. Little’s gums had been retracting with his severe weight loss. ‘I’ll get you some help,’ Steven said.

Little spat out some blood from his mouth and held up his hand. ‘No,’ he said, looking at Steven with eyes that were dark pools. ‘Just fuck off, will you?’

Steven arranged for medical staff to see to Little before walking back to the office with McGregor.

‘ I take it you had bad news for him then,’ said the officer. ‘Good. Maybe that’ll stop the bastard playing the injured innocent from now on.’

‘ Si,’ said Steven as the strains of Viva Espa n a broke out again.

Steven called Macmillan from the car park and gave him the news.

‘ I won’t pretend I’m not relieved,’ said Macmillan.

‘ I’ve just told Little,’ said Steven. ‘And now I feel awful.’

‘ You raised his hopes?’

‘ I didn’t mean to, but yes, I did. For whatever reason — and don’t quote the Boys’ Own Psychiatry Manual at me — the man still clings to the delusion that he’s innocent. He must have seen me as the saviour he’s been waiting eight years for. For my part, I just had to make sure the DNA tests were right.’

‘You intentions were honourable,’ said Macmillan. ‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘ Thanks,’ said Steven.

‘ As to whether Lothian and Borders Police are going to share that view, that’s another matter. Have you told them?’

‘ Not yet. I’ll call DI McClintock before I drive down to see Jenny tonight.’

‘ When will you be back in London?’

‘ I thought I might take a couple of days off at the start of the week to clear up here and say thanks to a couple of people. I’ll see you Wednesday, Thursday at the latest.’

‘ You are going to let this go now, aren’t you?’ asked Macmillan.

‘ That’s what I agreed,’ replied Steven.

‘ But the bad feeling remains?’

‘ Yes.’

‘ See you Wednesday.’

Steven drove back to Edinburgh haunted by images of Little’s tooth falling out of his gum and the dead look in his eyes when he’d told him to get out. Even if the man’s proclaimed innocence was down to self-delusion, the feelings inside his head must surely be the same as if he really were innocent, he reasoned and that must come pretty close to being hell on earth. The loss of wife and family, eight years of solitary confinement, the onset of full-blown AIDS and now he had just done his bit to make matters worse. Talk about kicking a man when he was down.

Steven lingered in the shower when he got back, hoping the warm water would wash away some of the stress of the day. He bowed his head and closed his eyes, listening to the sound of the water cascading off his shoulders, using it as white noise to block out all other thoughts. He sought the temporary absolution that would allow him leave his professional self behind and step into the role of being Jenny’s father again. He wanted to join her world, unfettered by thoughts of his job, thoughts that she must know nothing about with its cast of Hector Combes and David Littles. Tomorrow he would take her and Sue’s two kids to the swimming pool in Dumfries and be an ordinary father and uncle doing what ordinary folk did at the weekends. This was the plan but first he would have to call McClintock. He did that, sitting on the bed, rubbing his hair with a towel.

‘ Thank Christ for that,’ said McClintock when Steven gave him the news. ‘I’m so relieved I won’t even say I told you so.’

‘ Kind of you,’ said Steven. ‘We’ll have a beer before I go back to London, huh?’

‘ Sure thing. Are you going to tell the papers?’

‘ That’s being taken care of,’ said Steven.

‘ Fair enough. Don’t feel too bad about this. You were right about there being a lot wrong with the Summers case but at least we didn’t stitch up the wrong guy.’

‘ There’s still some mileage in taking a look at Paul Verdi’s involvement with the police lab at the time though,’ said Steven.

‘ We can talk about that before you go,’ said McClintock. ‘Want to make it tonight?’

Steven apologised, saying that he was going down to Dumfriesshire. He’d call and fix up something when he got back.

Following one of his practised rituals of the changing of lifestyles, he put on a pair of black Levi jeans and a Nike sweatshirt instead of one of the dark suits he wore during the week. He pulled on a pair of K-Swiss trainers and finally slipped on a tan leather blousson before grabbing his travel bag and heading for the car park. All that was required now was that his mind would play along with the game. It got off to a bad start when he found himself humming Viva Espa n a.

He pressed the remote button on his key to unlock the car door but nothing happened. He tried twice more before realising that it was already unlocked. He must have forgotten to lock it when he’d got back from Glasgow. He didn’t usually forget to do that but then his mind had been on other things. He got in and turned on the radio, searching briefly through the stations for some middle-of-the-road music, before starting the car.

Ella Fitzgerald was singing, Take the A train, when the man who’d been hiding in the back of the car suddenly sat up and clamped something over Steven’s face. He held it there with vice-like fingers. Steven’s attempts to get to grips with his assailant were hampered by the seat’s headrest and by the time he’d changed tactics to trying to prise the man’s fingers off his face, the sweet heady scent of chloroform had subverted his senses and lulled him into unconsciousness.