Patricia Shawbridge lived in a mansion in Colinton, a suburb of Edinburgh. Million-pound houses in an area less than five miles from the city centre. Her house was the biggest in the street, an example of symmetrical Georgian architecture, complete with side-wings and a grand pillared doorway. Set back from the main road, accessed by a gated entrance, sitting on four acres of manicured gardens, it was an impressive package, thought McGuigan, as he announced their arrival into a metal box fixed on a stone column. The gates clicked, swung ponderously open. McGuigan, accompanied by Dawson, parked up on a white cobbled forecourt.
“I should have worn my best tie,” remarked Dawson.
They had left the police station immediately upon receiving the message. The journey, under normal circumstances, would have taken an hour and a half. Dawson had pressed his foot on the pedal, and got there in under an hour.
McGuigan rapped a brass door knocker. They waited. He rapped again. The door was eventually answered by a young woman, face smudged, wearing black plastic gloves and blue overalls covered in dark stains. She appeared flustered.
“Sorry,” she said, breathless. “Police?”
“Yes.”
“Patricia’s in the conservatory. Come in, please.”
“Is everything okay?” asked McGuigan.
She gave her head an exasperated shake.
“Raven.”
McGuigan and Dawson exchanged puzzled glances. They followed her through a wide, high-ceilinged hallway.
“I don’t understand,” said McGuigan.
She cast a grinning sidelong glance.
“They always come down the drawing-room chimney. Bloody ravens. Or crows. Sometimes you can’t tell the difference. They fly in, down, then out through the hearth, all mad flapping and hopping, bringing with them a bucketload of soot. The mess of the walls. They do it on purpose, just to test me, I swear.”
“Must be difficult to catch,” said McGuigan.
She gave them a sly smile. “I have my ways.”
“I’m sure you do.”
They were led to the rear of the house, through a living room, to an expansive conservatory, connected by a series of bi-folding glass doors, the glass imbued with gold and silver motifs. The garden beyond was a display of vivid colour.
A woman sat on a woven rattan chair, her back to them, facing the garden, sipping coffee from a porcelain cup.
She turned her head a slight angle, acknowledging their presence. “Please,” she said, without looking at them. “Come, and take a seat.”
They sat opposite on similar-style chairs. Soft piano music played, just on the periphery of the senses.
“Tea or coffee, gentlemen.”
“We’re fine,” replied McGuigan.
“As you wish. Thank you, Vivien. I’ll let you get back to your tussle with your crow. Or raven. Or whatever it is.”
The other woman – Vivien – responded somewhat sarcastically: “You’re very kind.” She gave a curt nod, retreated back into the interior of the house.
Patricia gave a dry chuckle. “She’ll spend all afternoon trying to catch the damned thing.” It seemed to McGuigan she was talking more to herself, than to them. He introduced himself and Dawson.
“I suspect my phone call brought a spark to the fire,” she said.
“It was intriguing,” replied McGuigan. “We’re keen to know what happened, Mrs Shawbridge.”
She took a careful sip of her coffee.
“Do you like gardening, Chief Inspector?”
McGuigan pondered at the change of subject, deciding to go with the flow. This, he thought, was a woman who did things in her own time, in her own way.
“I potter, now and again.” He looked out at the scenery beyond the glass of the conservatory. “My garden isn’t quite in the same league.”
Patricia nodded at the comment, as if it carried great weight.
“I like order and precision. Two qualities I believe the modern world lacks. I’ve spent many years creating the garden you see this afternoon. It’s taken time and care and patience. Everything must be just so. My point is this – I am not someone who takes to idle flights of fancy, or who imagines things that never happened. Without order we have chaos.”
“Of course.”
“Do you read the scriptures?”
“I’m a novice.”
Patricia sighed. “Lately, I’ve taken an interest – Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. Psalms. It seems to fit the picture.”
“And what picture is that, Mrs Shawbridge?”
Another sip. “My husband died several years ago.” She made a vague sweep of her arm. “He left me money, and property. But it counts for little when tragedy enters your life. Which is why, suddenly, the Bible becomes important. My son is dying, Chief Inspector. He’s in a private hospice, barely able to move because of a particularly aggressive type of bone cancer. He cannot eat food, because the act of swallowing gives him an agony he cannot endure. He has perhaps weeks. Maybe less. I should be with him. I should be at his side. But instead, I’m here, talking to two policemen, which makes this situation all the more abhorrent.”
McGuigan waited. Dawson, next to him, had his notebook on his lap, tapping a biro on the paper. A gesture indicating mild impatience. McGuigan, however, was content to hear her story. She was a woman with everything, and nothing. He felt the sadness in her voice, the ache in her heart, and understood she deserved to be listened to.
She told them what had happened, her speech punctuated with pauses, as she held back tears. McGuigan admired her composure. She told them about the urgent call from her lawyer, Bronson Chapel. She told them about the meeting in his office, that he had presented her with a photograph of a man leaving a house, this man apparently shooting another, then the man approaching the camera. She told them about Bronson’s accusation, that the man in the picture was the serial killer known as The Surgeon, that clearly the man was her son, and that he would turn a blind eye, provided she pay him a large amount of money. Essentially, he was attempting blackmail.
“The man in the picture bore a striking resemblance to my son. I can see how he may have made that mistake. I explained that it could not be him, for obvious reasons. He did not take this well. I told him I was first going to report his conduct to his partners, next go to the police, and finally, when I have the strength, seek redress for his disgusting conduct through litigation.”
“And did you?” asked Dawson.
“Did I what?”
“Report him to the partners.”
She nodded. “I did. I told them exactly what I have just told you. Perhaps with a little more passion. They needed to know that such an individual works under their roof.”
“And their reaction?”
“Shock, sympathy, and some resistance. I sensed a ‘closing of the ranks’. That’s what lawyers do, isn’t it?” She allowed a wintry smile. “Rather like the police?”
McGuigan pursed his lips. “I would ask you don’t tell anyone else, Mrs Shawbridge. This is sensitive information. For now, the fewer people who know, the better, until we can make some sense of the situation.”
Her mood changed. She sat rigid. She spoke in a brittle voice. “There’s nothing here that’s complicated. The equation is simple. Ask Bronson Chapel. He holds all the answers.”
“Your son’s name?” said Dawson.
She blinked back tears. She seemed to slump. Her frosty demeanour disappeared. “Wallace Ramsay Shawbridge.” She gave a sad, wistful smile. “He used to say he had the type of name a murder-mystery writer might use. His father’s idea.”
A shuddering breath as she contained her anguish.
“Which hospice, Mrs Shawbridge? I have to ask.”
“St Columba’s, here in Edinburgh.”
McGuigan shifted in his chair, uncomfortable at his next request: “You say that your son – Wallace – looked very similar to the man in the picture. Would you have any…”
He didn’t need to finish.
“Yes,” she said. “I anticipated this.” She stretched over, to a neat little side table, upon which stood a lamp with a delicate shell lightshade, and beside it, a black leather-bound photo album. She opened it, leafed the pages, stopped at one, pulled out a photograph from a clear plastic sleeve.
“My son, six months ago. There’s little point in giving you a recent one. He is now…” again the staggered breath, “…completely changed.”
McGuigan took the picture. There, a man in his early forties, smiling, sitting at an outdoor table, a glass of red before him. Lean face, hawkish nose, heavy, dark eyebrows, blue eyes sparkling with humour and intelligence. McGuigan scrutinised the face before him, fascinated. Perhaps, for the first time, he was looking at a face resembling one of the most prolific killers in Scottish history. An ice-cold flutter brushed the nape of his neck.
“Can we keep this?”
She tilted her head in acquiescence.
She gave both policemen a candid regard – “What I have said is all true. Do you believe me, Chief Inspector?”
“I do.”
“And what of Bronson Chapel? I assume he has denied everything?”
“We have to find him. Bronson seems to have gone off-radar.”
“Not surprising,” she said. “Given the circumstances. If what he is saying is the truth, and if The Surgeon really does look like my son, then I believe the photofit you showed the public is a million miles off the mark.”
“I believe you might be right.”
“A tough one, Chief Inspector. I wish you well.”
The meeting was over. They stood. Suddenly, for a reason he could not explain, he took her hand, this lady with a perfect garden and a dying son.
“I’ll pray for you,” he said quietly.
She clasped her other hand in his. Tears welled up. “Why does God allow this?”
He gave a small sad smile. “It’s a question that has no answer.”
Vivien escorted them out. By the front door was a bucket. In the bucket was the raven, on its side, eyes black and dead as stone, wings twisted.
“You caught it,” remarked McGuigan.
She responded in a hard, flat voice – “It got what it deserved.”
McGuigan and Dawson remained silent.
During the car journey back to Glasgow, Dawson made the necessary call to the Crown office. They had enough now to seek search warrants and production orders. They would require to speak directly to the Crown’s lawyers, face to face, framing their reasons. But the facts were compelling. A reliable witness; a possible picture of the serial killer; alleged blackmail. Strange, thought McGuigan, how only two hours earlier, they were drifting, like flotsam in a fog, and now, amazingly, they had found a direction, and a little daylight to help guide them. But to where? McGuigan wasn’t entirely sure.
The parameters had changed. Before, Bronson was merely a hunch in the back of McGuigan’s mind. Now he was a clear and unequivocal person of interest. The firm of SJPS would have little choice. They would be compelled to provide details of the ‘boat house’. That, of course, was on the presumption they possessed such information. Plus, Bronson’s office would be searched, and his flat.
“We’ll have to check Mrs Shawbridge’s story,” said Dawson. “About her son being ill.”
“Peculiar, isn’t it,” replied McGuigan. “How one seems to look to God in times of dread and sadness. But yet, when the sun’s out and there’s laughter and wine, he tends to be forgotten about.”
“Human nature, I suppose. Why look for help when you don’t need it? Perhaps all this churchgoing is paying off.”
“Perhaps,” mused McGuigan.
“But why would Bronson want to go out of his way to come to the police station, give a statement, and describe a completely different face?”
McGuigan looked out through the car window, at the passing trees and hedges and houses. The day was overcast, the sunlight splintered and random. Life goes on, he thought, despite the unfairness of the world. He was bone weary.
“To make sure.”
Dawson cast a quizzical glance.
“To make sure we got it wrong,” he continued. “To use a cliché, keep us off the scent. In his mind, if the killer got caught – who he believed was Mrs Shawbridge’s son – he wouldn’t get his money. Ergo, he tried to sabotage the system. But his plot seems to have backfired magnificently. He got it as wrong as it was possible to get.”
Dawson nodded. He was about to speak, but chose to say nothing.
“What is it, Kenny? Speak up.”
“Okay. It looks like Bronson’s been a bad boy. But…”
“But?”
“…but it doesn’t really bring us any closer to capturing the main man.”
“The main man. The leading actor in a slasher horror flick. Who knows? We follow the path, and see where it leads. Perhaps, if we find the boat house, we might find Bronson. Maybe Bronson holds the key.”
Dawson didn’t look convinced, and McGuigan couldn’t blame him. An image popped into his mind. The dead raven, its great dark wings broken and mangled, and he wondered, as did Mrs Shawbridge, why God played such evil games.