Ken McClure: Eye of the raven

After half an hour, Steven concluded that there was nothing of any great significance to be learned from the cuttings. He decided that he needed a break before moving on to the Hector Combe material and checked his watch before deciding that he should phone his daughter before going out to get something to eat.

Jenny lived in the village of Glenvane in Dumfriesshire in Scotland with his sister-in-law, Sue and her solicitor husband Richard who had two children of their own, Mary and Robin. She had lived with them since the death of her mother — Steven’s wife and Sue’s sister, Lisa, who’d died of cancer some three years ago — and she’d now settled in as one of the family. Steven saw her as often as he could and he tried to spend every second weekend in Glenvane, work permitting. In addition he phoned Jenny twice a week to get her news about school and her friends.

‘ How are things?’ asked Steven when Sue answered the phone.

‘ Absolutely fine,’ replied Sue, her great good nature shining through as always. Sue was the most relaxed person Steven knew. She saw the good in everyone and could find positive things to take from situations where others might find only gloom and despair. In this she was almost matched by her easy going husband, Richard who was a partner in a law firm in Dumfries where he took care of the commercial property side of the business. The couple had taken Jenny into their family seemingly without a second thought when Lisa had died, something Steven would be ever grateful for. The weeks and months following Lisa’s death had been the darkest time of his life.

‘ How’s my little monster?’

‘ She’s fine. I spoke to her teacher at the gate this morning; Jenny’s a born organiser, she said — quite happy as long as everyone does things her way!’

‘ Sounds like her,’ said Steven.

‘ I’ll put her on.’

Steven heard Sue call out Jenny’s name and heard the faint reply, ‘I’m busy.’

‘ It’s your daddy,’ Sue called out.

Steven heard the running feet and then the breathless, ‘Hello Daddy, I’m painting an elephant.’

‘ What colour are you painting him, Nutkin?’

Steven heard Jenny’s fit of the giggles. ‘Not a real elephant, silly, a painting book elephant!’

When he’d finished talking to Jenny, Steven went out to find something to eat. His culinary skills did not go much beyond heating up packet meals so take-away food tended to play a significant role in his life. Tonight he returned with a selection of Chinese food from the Jade Garden where he was a once-a-week regular. He reheated it in the microwave before taking a Stella Artois from the fridge and moving everything through on a tray through to the living room where he watched the early evening news on Channel 4 while he ate.

Trouble in the Middle East, trouble in Ireland and trouble in Zimbabwe, was followed by party political squabbles at home over farm subsidies. There was a warning about dearer food prices and an ‘and finally’ story about a kitten marooned on a log floating down a river in Kent and the efforts of the emergency services to rescue it. Steven finished eating and switched off.

The file on Hector Combe related a very different story to that of David Little. Little’s file — up until the time of the computer pornography incident — was a glowing record of personal achievement and academic success; Combe’s recorded a lifetime of mental illness and criminal activity. Born the illegitimate son of a Glasgow prostitute, he had shown a propensity for violence from an early age, being taken into care at the age of seven and failing to fit in with three separate sets of foster parents by the time he was nine. At this point he had already established himself in police records as a juvenile tearaway.

A teenage life of crime punctuated with periods in various corrective institutes and hospitals had established Combe among the criminal fraternity as a true Glasgow hard man — a man without fear and without conscience. He was assessed by the psychiatric fraternity as a borderline psychopath when he was fourteen and had killed his first victim by the time he was eighteen — a twenty-three year old man who didn’t like the idea of Combe chatting up his girlfriend. Combe had knifed him in the stomach and, according to witnesses, stood over him smiling as his intestines spilled out on to the pavement outside a nightclub in Glasgow.

Amazingly, Combe had successfully managed to plead self defence after an exercise in witness intimidation carried out by his underworld friends who valued Combe for his powers of enforcement. Anyone threatened with a visit from Hector Combe generally paid up or shut up, whether it was a case of protection money or sorting out ladies of the night who had become a little too keen on privatising their assets.

Combe had gone to prison for the killing but was out again within five years, the psychiatric board having failed to agree his mental status but deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt in their recommendation to the parole board. It was obvious that the Glasgow police could have helped them out with their assessment of Combe as ‘one evil bastard’ however, this classification had not been recognised in the psychiatric lexicon and Combe had been freed to continue his ‘career’.

For the next few years Combe had managed to avoid crossing paths with the police, not that he had mended his ways but assault and rape perpetrated by one of their own on their own went largely unreported by criminal society so Combe managed to stay clear of the courts. The prostitutes he was employed to keep in line loathed him but were too afraid to refuse an ‘invitation’ when it came, knowing that if they declined he would have them anyway and it would be twice as bad. In the end they might literally lose their face as one girl had after Combe had taken a knife to her.

Although not officially on any wanted list, the police kept track of Combe through exchanges of inter-force intelligence. As an enforcer, he occasionally moved around the country, accompanying gang bosses on ‘business trips’ to other cities in the UK. The Glasgow police would inform colleagues as a courtesy when Combe was known to be heading their way.

This situation had continued until June of 1995 when Combe had developed an obsession with a girl outside the criminal fraternity who worked in a flower shop in the centre of Glasgow. At first she had been flattered by Combe’s lavish attention: money was no object in his line of work and fast cars and good restaurants were very seductive to a girl earning four pounds an hour. She went out with him several times over a period of six weeks but, as she told friends later, she’d never felt truly at ease in his company. She said that she found his mood changes ‘odd’ and that he frightened her at times. She suspected that he could be dangerous.

After an incident in a pub in which Combe had threatened a barman with a broken glass, she had told him that she wanted nothing more to do with him but Combe had kept pestering her to continue the association, ultimately threatening her with disfigurement should she even consider seeing someone else. In the end, she had felt obliged to go to the police and they had warned Combe off.

Combe appeared to comply but being a good — or indeed, any kind of loser — was not in Combe’s make-up. A month later he turned up at the girl’s home late at night. After savagely beating her he raped her in front of her parents whom he’d tied up and when he was through, he murdered all three of them, the parents by strangulation, and the girl by cutting her throat.

He had showed no remorse when the police arrested him, maintaining that the girl had simply got what she deserved. He actually appeared to have forgotten that he’d also killed her parents when the police read out the charges. Combe was sent to prison for life, the psychiatrists finally awarding him full-blown psychopath status. Steven paused to pour himself a gin and tonic. He felt he needed it.