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Back under my umbrella again, I nodded towards the skeletal trees and spiny bushes. ‘I checked the weather reports: eighteenth of June, the city was thick with haar. Down here, in the gloom? You’d be lucky to see your hand in front of your face.’
Alice nodded. ‘Do you think I could talk to the mother, Ash? Would that be OK?’
‘Don’t see why not.’
Huntly leaned on the bell, setting its high-pitched trill ringing on and on and on and on.
The building must have been impressive in its day: a grand mid-terrace home with its garden out front, tiled entrance hall, and mahogany staircase, but carving the thing up into six small flats had turned its sweeping grandeur into a claustrophobic warren. The lighting wasn’t on in the communal stairwell, hiding things in the darkness.
And still the bell trilled.
Alice’s boxy wee Suzuki sat at the kerb outside, Henry’s nose pressed against the passenger window as the car slowly steamed up, marinating the interior in the stink of wet Scottie dog.
Finally, a man’s voice grumbled through the door to Flat 1L, getting louder. ‘God’s sake, buncha bastards …’ Then the door burst open, revealing a tousle-haired bloke in his mid-forties with tattoos visible on his arms and neck where they poked out of a pink towelling dressing gown two sizes too small for him. Puffy eyes. Chin blue with stubble. A droopy moustache. Squint teeth on show as he bellowed at us. ‘STOP RINGING THAT BELL!’ Jabbing a hand back inside the flat. ‘YES, I WAS ASLEEP: I’M ON BLOODY NIGHTS!’
Huntly took his thumb off the bell. ‘So sorry to wake you.’ Not sounding in the least bit genuine. ‘Is Mrs Brennan home?’
‘Why?’ The man tucked his chin in, creating a roll of fat around his neck as he looked the pinstriped tit up and down. Clenched his fists. ‘You some sort of lawyer?’ Making that last word sound as if it was code for intestinal parasite.
Alice got herself between the two of them, and gave him a wave. ‘Hello, I’m Dr McDonald, but you can call me Alice, if you like, and we’re looking to speak to Mrs Brennan, because we’re trying to help the police find out what happened to Andrew and why it happened, and who made it happen, of course – that’s the really important thing, isn’t it – so if you can help us to help them, that’ll really help, OK?’
The rolls of fat got deeper. ‘Mary’s not here.’
‘Oh, right, can we come in and wait, because it’s—’
‘What part of, “I’m on nights” did you not get?’ Closing the door on us. ‘She’s up the church. Been going there every morning since … you know, Andrew.’
‘Yes, right, well we can—’
‘Hang on.’ I stuck the tip of my walking stick in the gap, stopping the door from shutting. ‘What lawyers are these, then? The ones you were expecting.’
He stared at his bare feet. ‘I need to get back to bed.’
‘Professor Huntly, would you be so kind as to lean on this gentleman’s bell again?’
A raised eyebrow. ‘I hope that’s not a euphemism …’ But Huntly did as he was asked and that irritating trill rang out once more.
‘All right, all right!’ Our sleepy friend scrubbed his hands across his face. Sagged. ‘It’s Mary’s ex, Billy’s dad. The wanker who broke her arm and knocked out two of her teeth. He’s suddenly decided he wants visitation rights.’
Huntly raised the other eyebrow. ‘But he’s in prison.’
‘Yeah, but he wants Billy to visit him there. And Billy’s only fourteen months, so Mary would have to go with him. And that means Charlie Mitchell gets to screw with her head again. It’s all about control with tossers like that.’ The man tightened his too-short pink dressing gown about his middle. ‘Now, if you don’t mind: bugger off so I can go back to sleep.’
‘What do you reckon to our sleepy friend, then?’ Water gushed down the gutters on Denholm Road, rain drumming on the roofs and bonnets of the cars, bouncing off the overflowing municipal wheelie bins, as we slogged our way uphill.
Alice peered out from beneath her ladybird umbrella. ‘As a suspect? Possible, I suppose – clearing the nest, getting rid of any offspring sired by Mary Brennan’s former partners so he can repopulate it with his own, but it doesn’t really fit, I mean, why would he go after Oscar Harris and Lewis Talbot as well?’ She frowned. ‘Unless they were killed by someone else, but then we wouldn’t see such a clear progression of MO, would we, so on balance I don’t think it’s likely and anyway wouldn’t local police have interviewed him already?’
‘Ah, my dear Doctor,’ Huntly gave her one of his more patronising smiles, ‘you’re forgetting one very salient point: the local police are morons.’
Bit harsh, but not necessarily untrue.
The road curved around to the right, coming to a halt at a roundabout circled by shuttered shops. A lone newsagent’s was still operating, the sandwich board outside it proclaiming, ‘BOY’S BODY FOUND IN WOODS ~ PHOTO EXCLUSIVE!’
From here, Banks Road climbed away on the left, an arched bridge taking it over the raised railway lines. And down below, in the hollow beneath both, lurked the dark grey lump of Saint Damon of the Green Wood. Its jagged spire barely reached road level, the roof done with semicircular slate tiles, like fish scales. Miserable gargoyles. Stained glass that looked as if it’d never seen sunlight or soapy water. A steep set of stairs curled away down into the gloom.
‘Well, that’s not depressing in any way, shape, or form, is it?’ Huntly peered over the railings that separated the pavement from the near-vertical drop to the graveyard, fifty feet below. ‘What a silly place to put a church.’
A pair of stone pillars stood amongst the headstones, holding up the railway line, a vast bowed arc of steel allowing it to span the main body of the church, another set of pillars on the far side of its sharp pitched roof.
Alice wrapped an arm around herself. ‘Can you imagine being buried down there?’
Not yet.
‘Come on: less melodrama, more work.’ I opened the gate and led the way, descending the slippery steps. A drift of rubbish had built up at the base of the steep drop, empty crisp packets and plastic bottles mingling with wilting newspapers and takeaway containers, stretching out to touch the nearest gravestones.
She was right about not wanting to be buried down here, though. Felt as if we were already halfway to hell, without being another six feet closer.
Lichen covered most of the memorials, obscuring the names and dates. It stretched up the church walls too, joining the thick bank of rambling ivy that crawled across the façade, making those dirty stained-glass windows even darker.
Alice and Huntly followed me through the heavy wooden doors, the three of us dripping on the flagstones, breaths fogging the air as the plinky-plonk-squawk of someone not very good practising on the organ filled the vaulted space. The same musical phrase repeated over and over, getting it wrong every time.
‘Dear Lord,’ Huntly hunched his arms in and shivered, ‘colder in here than it is outside …’
Dark too – the only light came from clusters of candle stubs, flickering away in their wrought-iron holders, nowhere near enough of them to dispel the gloom. The cloying scent of incense not quite managing to cover the grubby taint of mould and damp.
Down the far end, looming out of the murk, a twice-life-sized wooden Jesus cried in agony on his oversized cross, eyes screwed shut, mouth open, the blood of his wounds darkened and chipped by time. Ribs visible through the slash in his side.
Rows and rows of hard wooden pews. A marble altar the colour of liver. A lectern decorated with dark metal skulls and bones.
Saint Damon of the Green Wood: about as cheery and welcoming as a landmine.
A woman’s head and shoulders were just visible over the pews, by the front of the church. Kneeling in prayer.
She didn’t look up as I slid into the space next to her.
‘Mrs Brennan?’
Her hair was dark as coal, pulled back from her face and tied with a black ribbon, giving her sharp features a crow-like edge. Bony hands working their way through a string of rosary beads, the fingernails bitten down to ragged stumps. Eyes closed, pale lips moving in silence.
The photo in the case file showed a young woman who’d hung on to her baby weight, smiling away in Montgomery Park, by the boating lake, a baby on her hip and a wee boy at her feet – throwing chunks of sliced white to the ducks. A small happy family, enjoying a day out in the sun.
But those days were long gone.
The organist made another assault on the same passage they’d screwed up at least two dozen times since we’d arrived. Got it wrong again.
And Mary Brennan kept working her way through the rosary.
‘Mrs Brennan, my name’s Ash Henderson. I’m part of a team who’re trying to help the police find out who hurt Andrew. Can we ask you some questions?’
Her eyes screwed tighter shut. ‘I’m praying!’
‘That’s OK.’ I settled back in my pew. ‘We’ll wait.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake …’ She thumped her beads down on the shelf built into the back of the pews in front, the one supporting a row of mildew-blackened Bibles. ‘What do you want now?’
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