Trying to imagine the stick-thin, pale creature behind the reception desk having the strength to lift, never mind bowl, a bowling ball without being pulled, helplessly, towards the skittles herself, or pirouetting on ice in skates, risking her bird-like bones in the cold, Alice marvelled at her kindness. Books should not be judged by their covers.
‘Fine. I’ll nip round to the surgery right now and speak to her,’ she said, rising, eager to leave.
The man looked surprised and then burst into laughter.
‘Not my current receptionist – Christ Almighty! My last one, Tanya. Norma’s not interested in sport… or men, for that matter.’
As she was leaving the house Alice caught a glimpse, through an open door, of the man’s bedroom. A tangled mess of clothes covered the floor and the curtains were closed. But within the chaos there was an island of order; a wooden chair on which a set of women’s clothes were laid out, including tights, a skirt and a cherry-red cardigan. Like a shrine.
When Alice broke the news to Father McPhail’s named next-of-kin of his hospitalisation, following his failed suicide attempt, Mrs Donnelly covered her mouth in shock and let out a heart-stopping wail, understanding more fully than most the depths of the man’s despair. Unexpectedly, she then grabbed both of Alice’s hands, clasping them tightly in her own.
‘You believe, Sergeant, that he didn’t do it, don’t you?’ she said earnestly.
Alice hesitated for a second or so before answering. As it happened, she did not feel that he was the killer, but the damning forensic evidence against him had never been satisfactorily explained away, and a hunch seemed too little to go on.
‘What I think doesn’t really matter, it’s what the Detective Chief -’ she began, non-committally.
‘Stop right there!’ Mrs Donnelly said, interrupting her angrily, still clutching Alice’s hands and drumming them on the table as she spoke. ‘Of course it matters. If you think he’s guilty, you won’t continue looking for those women’s murderer, will you? And Father will try again, maybe succeed the next time. He must have lost all hope…’
The truthful answer would be short and simple. No. We won’t. But it sounded so final, likely to make the woman’s unhappy existence unhappier still, and so Alice found herself replying, ‘Actually, I do still harbour some doubts…’
I knew it – I knew it!’ the woman repeated, exultantly. ‘You’ve seen what Father’s really like. I’ve known him, been with him, for over two years, and there’s not a vicious bone in his body.’
Alice nodded, disconcerted by the situation and unimpressed by the length of time on which the housekeeper’s testimonial was based. If she’d known him over twenty years, maybe. Also, by admitting her doubt she might be, unintentionally, nurturing Mrs Donnelly’s false hopes, raising them higher yet before they were finally dashed. In all probability, they would be dashed.
‘I will keep trying,’ she said out loud, although speaking more for herself than the housekeeper. Mrs Donnelly smiled, finally releasing the policewoman’s captive hands, clearly embarrassed by her own reaction.
‘I don’t suppose,’ Alice said, the longest of long shots, ‘that Father was a bone-marrow donor – a kidney donor – anything like that?’
‘No. He is a blood donor, though, we both are.’
14
Gusts of wind gave the arctic air a razor’s edge, cutting Alice’s face as she fought her way up Broughton Street and making her eyes sting. Every few hundred yards she turned her back against the blasts, finding a temporary respite from their force before, with a sensation of dread, turning to brave their full fury once more. Throughout her slow ascent she fumed inwardly, thinking about Mrs Donnelly and the burden the woman had somehow managed to put on her shoulders, all hopes and expectations now resting on her. If Father McPhail was to try and kill himself again, never mind succeed, she would feel responsible – unless she had, whatever the rest of the squad thought, turned every remaining stone.
She rubbed her eyes, aching from lack of sleep. She had spent the early hours agonising over the woman and her concerns, frightening herself with visions of the priest swinging from some makeshift noose or blood-spattered, his wrists sliced to ribbons. After all, his ingenuity was not in doubt, and nor, it would appear, was his determination. So, long before the alarm went off, she had given up the losing battle and crept out of bed, dressing hurriedly in the dark, lingering only to brush her lover’s temples with her lips.
The icy silence of the tenement was broken by the sound of her footsteps on the stone stair, echoing in the lonely space as she took the steps two at a time with only her shadow to accompany her descent. Frost had silvered the cobbles on Broughton Place, shafts of white light catching them each time the clouds raced past, revealing the face of the moon.
Overtaking a solitary old man, busy muttering to himself and tugging an aged spaniel behind him, the dog’s barrel-chest rolling from side to side as it made its bandy-legged way along the pavement, she attempted to focus on the case, hoping that the intense cold would help clear her head and sharpen her thoughts, rather than paralyse her brain.
All the evidence relating to the man must be reconsidered and she must reach her own conclusions. But, thinking about it, other than the forensic stuff there was nothing. Among the hundreds of witnesses questioned, not a single soul had identified him or spoken of his presence in the prostitutes’ territory. Of course, he had denied any involvement in either of the killings, and June Sharp had provided him with an alibi of sorts for the first one. And while he was out of circulation, twiddling his thumbs in Saughton, someone else had attacked another prostitute, and with a knife, the killer’s favoured weapon. Obviously, the city’s unofficial red-light district attracted a disproportionate number of its less well-intentioned citizens, creeps, perverts and pimps, but the selection of the same type of victim and the use of the same sort of weapon seemed an unlikely coincidence.
Her hair already flying about her face, unruly strands lashing her eyes and making her blink rapidly, Alice walked along North Bridge, finding herself hit by cross-winds that blew, dust-laden, from the east, their eddies making the cigarette-ends and sweet-papers in the gutter waltz. Turning her collar up, she tried to concentrate, but found that she could not, a raw ache in her ears distracting her until she clamped her hands over them, trying to stop the pain.
Start from first principles, she told herself, consider everything anew and think the unthinkable. On each occasion on which the priest’s DNA had been found, it had come from blood that also contained some of Simon’s too. Suppose McPhail’s DNA had come, not from a mixture of two bloods but instead from a single sample containing the two types of DNA. Simon had told her that he had received multiple blood transfusions and Mrs Donnelly had said that the priest was a blood donor. Suppose Simon Oakley’s blood contained Francis McPhail’s DNA? It seemed a long shot, to put it mildly, but with nothing else left she would have to check it out. Another unpleasant vision of the man in his prison appeared, unbidden, before her eyes. A figure weeping and in despair, railing against the world and its works, a piece of broken glass hidden in his hand. And it would be her sodding fault this time.
Creeping past Elaine Bell’s closed door she noticed light spilling under it. She had taken up residence there, pushing herself to the limit and reducing the compass of her life to the confines of the station. A sheet of lined A4, with ‘Do Disturb’ written on it in biro, had been attached to the door handle, as if in supplication. And it was hardly surprising that her temper, never fully in check, now ran wild and free, or that the targets of her irritation were becoming increasingly arbitrary. The squad tiptoed around her like well-intentioned Brownies humouring a cantankerous Brown Owl, desperate to avoid her attention. And while there were badges for following her instructions to the letter there were none for pursuing idiosyncratic, unauthorised lines.