It didn’t take him long to remind himself of all the details of the chapter entitled ‘A Final Romance’. It was an unspectacular tale of two people in their mid twenties who had loved with a passion and warred with just as much fervour. You could write a love song about their highs and horror story about their lows. When they quarrelled, everyone in the same sombre blocks of flats in Clepington Road where Alison Brown resided and where Bryan Gilzean spent most, but not all, of his time, heard about it. Sometimes you would think the folk two streets away were probably tuned in as well.
On Alison’s last night on earth, she had again shouted out in anger. Then she fell silent and the eavesdroppers imagined her rage had once more given way to sexual fulfilment – which was indeed an inevitable feature of their making-up scenario.
It wasn’t until they read The Courier the following day that they discovered her sudden loss for words had not been the result of any loving embrace but a consequence of having been throttled. She had been found that morning by a friendly neighbour who had called to enquire if Alison would be interested in a shopping expedition later in the day. There had been no response to her knock and the neighbour tried the door handle. Finding it unlocked, she entered and walked hesitantly into the living room.
Alison would not be going to the shops that day or any other. She lay, quite serene but very dead, on the floor beside the sofa she had saved up so hard for and which she had finally been able to afford a week or two earlier. Her pallor practically matched the colour of the soft white leather of the Italian-made settee but her make-up might have been applied just an hour earlier. Her clothing, in co-ordinated shades of terracotta and cream, was all neatly in place and she was still wearing her brown, strapless, high-heeled shoes. She could have been ready to welcome visitors – except she had long ago stopped breathing because of a tie which was knotted tightly round her windpipe.
Before expiring, it looked like she’d enjoyed a drink. A bottle of white wine, with only two inches left in it, sat on a low table beside two glasses, each with their contents unfinished.
Within an hour of the unfortunate neighbour’s grisly discovery, scene of crime officers in their white paper suits and masks were swarming all over the small flat that was meticulous in its neatness except for the corpse on the floor.
A post-mortem indicated that death had probably occurred around 11 p.m. on the previous evening – which was around the time her raised voice had been heard coming from the flat. Forensics were the clincher. Gilzean’s semen had been found inside Alison and a hair from his head was on the tie. The wine bottle had been wiped clean but his prints were on the glass.
McBride continued to reread the words he had written some twelve months previously and found the subsequent arrest, trial and conviction of Bryan Gilzean just as inevitable as he had when composing the chapter. It was a fairly simple conclusion based on the facts and a view that was obviously shared by the police who had arrested Gilzean within hours and the High Court jury who took only fifty minutes to unanimously find him guilty.
Apart from an abundance of forensic evidence, he had no believable alibi, was known to be hot-headed and was liable to be quarrelsome with a drink in him. And, on top of this, there were enough witnesses to testify how frequently the couple could be heard arguing. As homicides went, it verged, just as he had remembered, on the mundane – it was as uncomplicated for the investigating officers as it was undemanding for those who sat in judgement on Bryan Gilzean.
He had been given the mandatory sentence of life in prison, with a recommendation that he should serve a minimum of fifteen years before being considered for parole. It seemed a reasonable enough tariff in the circumstances.
McBride fell asleep. It was just a few days before Christmas and he was in a hotel room in Dundee when, by rights, he should have been occupying a warm corner of his local in Maida Vale. For the first time that week, he slept well.