Davie orders two lattes and two cakes: one carrot with cream-cheese frosting and the little black seeds on the top, one chocolate fudge. He walks up to the back of the café and chooses one of the booths, sitting with his back to the far end of the room so that he can see everything that’s going on. Force of habit. It’s been a while since he’s been in Landucci’s, but, an occasional paint-job aside, the place has barely changed in twenty years. Good. The waitress – a smiley-faced woman in her late 60s called Hetty – has just delivered his tray with a nod and a comment about the weather, when Davie spots Laura coming in through the front door. Even from thirty feet back, he can see that she’s stressed. The way she’s all tightened up inside her skin. He raises a hand to catch her attention, but she’s already coming his way. After all, where else would he sit? She knows him well.
With her face scrubbed free of make-up and her eyes shaded with the dark rings of tiredness and tears, Laura looks younger than her sixteen years. He’s seen her dolled up at parties before, and he’s torn about what he wants her to be. She’s a young woman, yet he’s known her since she was a kid. He feels protective of her, which seems to be a role he finds himself in more often than not these days. He might need to redress the balance at some point. Was it not about time someone started to look out for him?
Laura smiles as she sits down, but it seems like an effort for her to push the sides of her mouth up into something that isn’t a frown. ‘Carrot cake. My favourite,’ she says. ‘I hope that’s for me.’ She picks up a fork and cuts off a huge chunk. It’s in her mouth before he can object. Not that he was going to.
‘Of course it’s for you. Anyway, looks like you need it. You feeling a bit better today? Do you want to talk about it?’ He hoped, secretly, that she didn’t. There were many things he was good at, but teenage relationships definitely wasn’t part of his expertise.
Laura chews the cake for what seems like longer than is necessary. She looks away, reluctant to catch his eye. The night before, she’d told him she’d done something stupid. She hadn’t said any more, but Davie already knew. Marie had told him about Laura and Mark, and it didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened. There was no chance of him asking her to elaborate. He just needed to find a way to take her mind off it.
‘It’s nothing,’ she says, eventually. ‘Not really.’
Silence falls on them again, punctuated briefly by the sounds of forks scraping on plates, cups rattling on saucers. In the background, Hetty is chopping something onto a board. Cucumber, Davie guesses. Tomatoes. Chop chop chop. He can smell something cooking in the oven. Lasagne, maybe. A warm garlicky smell that makes his stomach flip. Maybe he’ll ask for a piece to take home.
‘I thought I’d made a fool of myself,’ Laura continues at last. ‘But I’ve already realised . . . it’s not me who’s the fool.’ She looks up from her plate and grins. She has a poppy seed stuck in between her front teeth.
‘You’ve got . . .’ Davie gestures to her mouth, bares his teeth at her.
Laura slides her tongue over her teeth and makes a sucking noise. She opens her mouth again and grins like a monkey. ‘Gone?’
‘Gone,’ he says, smiling.
‘Thanks. Anyway, it’s forgotten already. Bad day. Stupid. All good now.’ She is still poking at her teeth. ‘I’ve had some ideas for the new term at the club. I think we should start thinking about doing a demo again. I’ve been looking at some of those videos on the Sankukai site. Have you seen them?’
‘Aye. Some good stuff on there. Seems to be an injection of new blood into the sport over in Japan. The new styles are becoming popular. Mixing things up a bit. You’re right – we should think about bringing in some of the elements at ours. Maybe we can arrange a demo at the harvest fair or something? Gives us time to decide on what we’re doing. Get it arranged. I’ve been letting things go a bit stale for a while. After we did the one-off self-defence class, I’d expected a few more new members, but nothing’s really happened.’
‘Things always go a bit like this in the summer. I’m blaming the weather. It’s too hot. It’s all gone tits-up since I went into Marchmont Lodge with Mark. That place is totally creepy, by the way. I think there was someone in there, skulking about. Bit heavy-footed for a ghost but Mark reckoned there were no junkies hanging about in there any more. Oh yeah, and then there was the shows, that stupid fortune teller . . . Remind me never to go there again, OK?’
He smiles at her rambling train of thought. ‘Ha . . . I went yesterday. Got coerced into going on the Big Wheel. I hated every minute of it. Then Marie disappeared and left me with the hot dogs and the lowlife.’
‘What do you mean she disappeared? Is she OK?’
‘Yeah. No. I don’t know. She ran off. She’s fine though, I think. But she’s blowing hot and cold. Starting to think it’s not worth the hassle, but I need to talk to her about something and every time I open my mouth she seems to shut me down.’
‘This is exactly what I mean,’ Laura says. ‘Relationships are just too much bloody hard work. I should’ve known, really. The fortune teller told me it was all going to shit. Then I had the displeasure of meeting one of Mark’s skanky fairground mates. Baz. No, Gaz . . .’
‘Gaz. He the one your pal Hayley’s been hanging around with?’
Laura’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘She’s not my pal. But yeah, that’s him. Greasy little shitbag. She’ll probably catch something off him. I reckon he’s dealing something too. Mark had a plastic bag stuffed in his pocket after we met up with Gaz the other night and it definitely didn’t have a goldfish in it. Bastard.’
Davie shook his head, confused. ‘Goldfish?’
‘Never mind. Anyway, Hayley’s meant to be going out with Sean Talbot. Maybe I should meet up with him so we can talk about how awful our partners are and how we’re better off without them. I quite like Sean, actually, but he’s not my type. Maybe I should change my type.’ She laughs.
‘This Gaz, though . . .’ Davie leans forward. ‘Have you got any actual evidence that he gave drugs to Mark?’
Laura drains her coffee and sets the cup back in the saucer. ‘Nope. It’s probably nothing. Could’ve been anything in that bag. I’m just pissed off with Mark. You should leave it. Sorry I said anything. I just hate the lot of them right now.’
Davie frowns. He’d hoped this was the lead that would give him an excuse to take a closer look at Gaz and the rest of the gang from the shows. Maybe not, but it’s something to think about. Laura slides along the seat and stands up. She has a bit more colour in her cheeks now. Davie is pleased. Mission accomplished. This one, at least.
‘See you later, Davie. Thanks for the cake . . . and the chat.’
‘Any time, love. Send me some links to that new karate stuff you were looking at. We’ll sort something out.’
He waits until she leaves before he goes up to the counter. ‘Can I have some of that fresh lasagne to take away please, Hetty?’
She has only just taken it out of the oven. The smell is making his stomach growl.
‘Well, of course, Sergeant Gray,’ she says. ‘I’ll stick in an extra-large slice, just for you. Tell you what, though, son, you need to get yourself a woman to be making your Sunday tea for you, you know. You’re no’ getting any younger.’
Davie leaves the café with twice as much food as he wanted, and half as much dignity.
* * *
Back at home, Davie cuts the lasagne in half, leaves the foiled half on the side and sticks the piece he wants to eat into the oven to heat through. It’s still warm, but he wants it piping hot again. Plus, he has stuff to do before he sits down with the pile of carbohydrates that will send him into a coma for the night.
He opens his laptop. The link that Malkie sent him is still there in the browser window. He’d already read it on his phone, but he knew he needed to read it again.
Graeme Woodley. The teenage schizophrenic.
The photograph, taken in 1995, on the steps of a grey-bricked police station, shows a hollow-eyed youth being led towards a waiting van. His expression is surly, his body stooped. Hands cuffed in front of him. The article has various snippets of sensationalist words and phrases peppered throughout: Paranoid schizophrenic. Psychotic. Beast. No remorse. Dead-eyed monster.
Woodley sexually assaulted his victim with a rolling pin and beat her half to death. The details are graphic and make Davie wince. The victim had been left in a coma, from head injuries and more than likely shock. He’d used the rolling pin on her internally as well as externally. He’d been found in a local pub, sitting calmly on a bar stool. He was covered in blood. A pint of Tartan Special in front of him, barely touched. The barman had called the police, tried not to make a fuss. He said: ‘The boy smiled at me and ordered his drink. I could see from the amount of blood on him that something was very wrong, but there was something in his eyes. In the way he acted. I served him the pint, but he offered no money and I didn’t ask. He was numb. Expressionless. He didn’t even blink when I picked up the phone behind the bar and called the police. I could barely dial the number, my hands were shaking so much. He smiled at the police when they arrived too. He didn’t put up a fight. I’ve seen plenty of stuff from my years behind the bar, but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced something as chilling as this.’ Meanwhile, the victim was barely ten minutes from bleeding to death. The paramedics had saved her life, but due to the unknown injuries sustained and the massive blood loss, they’d put her into a medically induced coma so they could work out what to do. She’d had an emergency hysterectomy when it became apparent that the greatest damage had been done to her internal organs.
Same as the poor Jane Doe in the hospital right now.
Davie looks at the photograph again. Shudders. Something about his face. It’s familiar, somehow. He can’t place it. A feeling, too. Something he hasn’t been able to shake since the attack on the woman who’d led them to all this.
Underneath the article are links to others that Malkie has pasted in with question marks at the end: what happened to him (detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act), an interview with a neighbour (‘We always thought that boy was a strange one but we had no idea he was a paranoid schizophrenic’), links to articles on the effects of cannabis misuse and the triggering of mental illness. Finally, at the bottom, an article in a medical journal about ‘Patient X’. It’s been anonymised, but Malkie has written next to it: This is a study by Woodley’s doctor. Let’s just say I had to buy a bloody expensive bottle of whisky to get hold of it. Of course, we don’t have any concrete evidence that this is the guy we’re looking for, but you can’t ignore the similarities between the attack and what Woodley did to his victim. We’ve got tissue samples at the lab, so we’ll know for sure soon. In the meantime, we can’t use this or say anything officially, but it might give you an idea of what we’re dealing with.
He can’t take any more of the brutality right now. He skims the synopsis. Scrolls down through the background sections. Patient X had a history of cannabis use and was badly scalded as a child, as was his sister. This type of trauma is a risk factor for schizophrenia, yet his sister was not affected (as far as the doctor knows, as he has never actually spoken to her and got an assessment). It’s more common in boys. There is some anecdotal evidence that the boy almost drowned when he was young. Further trauma. He was a loner, very withdrawn. Blah blah blah . . . then he sees it:
Patient X was a twin.
The victim was his sister.
‘Christ,’ Davie mutters. He rarely drinks, but he could do with one now. He’s not used to reading things like this, but if he wants to stay with CID, he’s going to have to harden up.
He takes a long, slow breath. Lets it out fast.
He closes the laptop again, and as he does he spots Marie’s keys sitting behind it. He picks them up and stares at the keyring. Sunlight has faded the photograph so the two faces look bleached and almost featureless. All that are left are eyes and lips. He recognises Anne. She has barely changed. The same cheeky grin. The wide smile. Marie looks haunted. Her hair is roughly cut, choppy, as if she has done it herself. As if she has tried to become someone else. Her mouth is a dark slash, the tiniest of curves at one corner, as if she is trying to smile but can’t even fake it for the camera. Her eyes are deep hollows, staring at something long gone and far away. Her eyes . . .
His eyes.
Marie was sixteen when she moved to Banktoun. Anne took her under her wing. He remembers now, him and Anne drinking cans of Coke on a bench after school one day. Anne saying: ‘Something bad happened to that girl, Davie . . .’
He closes his eyes. Runs a hand across his face. He can smell the lasagne burning in the oven.
Snippets of information – clues and connections – burst into his brain like soap bubbles popping in the wind.
It is all starting to make sense.
20th July 2015
Hey Marie,
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
Is that enough?
Please write. Please.
Love,
Graeme