Absolution Read online

  She was being pulled from sleep, up to the light. She lay quietly, listening to the silence, listening to the breathing at the end of her bed. She knew she was being studied. All her life men had looked at her, and she knew this too was a man.

  She heard a deep sigh, felt a hand touch her foot. She waited for the prick of the injection.

  Nothing, only the soft stroke of flesh against flesh. Slow, soothing A grip on her heel, firm yet delicate, almost a lover’s caress…

  ‘You’re not supposed to be in here!’ The redhead was standing behind him, the look of a dispossessed wife on her face. ‘You could infect her.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Not that it’s going to make any difference.’

  ‘You don’t think she’s going to survive?’ McAlpine asked. ‘Why? Surely it’s only her face?’

  ‘Her face, her neck, her arms, her hands, her tummy.’ The nurse’s voice softened a little as she approached the bed, folding the yellow blanket over the bare feet. ‘Poor lass. She was pregnant and lying in acid. It burned deep. It’s sad. Come on.’ She gestured to him to follow her to the sluice room, where they kept the spare kettle. He had to hurry to keep up. ‘It’s the depth of the burn that matters. You know your body is basically water? If your skin comes off, as hers has, you leak, leading to dehydration, leading to failure of all the major organs. There’s nothing we can do for her, except wait.’ She pulled two mugs from a cupboard. ‘Sometimes they get an infection that glows in the dark. Gives them the heebie-jeebies in the morgue if they don’t wash the body properly.’

  ‘If she’s as ill as all that, why keep her tied up? Hardly likely to do a runner is she?’ asked McAlpine.

  The nurse sighed, tilting her head to one side, as if forming an explanation for a slightly stupid child. ‘Her instinct would be to claw the dressings off, and that would allow infection in, so she’s tied for her own good.’

  ‘So she lies there in frustration?’

  ‘But safe from nasty bugs as long as daft cops don’t keep going in and out, touching her.’

  McAlpine ignored the jibe. ‘She was pregnant. She would have attended a clinic. Where would she go, do you think, in the West End?’

  ‘You not from round here?’ she asked, fishing.

  ‘No, Skelmorlie.’

  ‘Now that’s a one-horse town.’

  ‘And the horse died of boredom. What prenatal clinics are near here, then?’

  ‘Might be the Dumbarton Road Clinic, but women like that, you know, they don’t exactly look after themselves, do they?’

  ‘Women like what?’ McAlpine bridled.

  ‘Well, you know, that end of Highburgh Road, down on her arse. She’s a hooker. Must have been.’

  McAlpine shook his head. Vice would have had her on file. She had no phone numbers, no… He shook his head again.

  ‘And you’d know?’ The redhead licked her lips slowly. ‘She was a hooker, I tell you.’

  ‘You talk to her when you’re in there? Do you think she can hear anything?’

  The nurse blew on her coffee, pursing her lips and looking at him through the steam. ‘It’s never been proved that people in coma have any awareness of anything, but we put the baby in there just in case she can hear or sense something. She’s probably brain-damaged, deaf, dumb and blind.’

  ‘Should play a mean pinball,’ McAlpine muttered.

  Every day that passed her sense of smell got stronger. She knew he smoked. He wore aftershave, he smelled nice.

  And she could smell the sweet milkiness, the soft breath of the little person, the little bit of herself who lay by her side, so close but too far away. More than anything she wanted to touch her baby, to cuddle and caress her. She needed someone to lift her up and place her daughter in her arms.

  She thought about the policeman, the young one with the kind brown eyes, sitting just beyond the door.

  Kinstray, the landlord at 256A Highburgh Road, was blind and hunchbacked. He stood in the narrow crack of the door, wearing a beige cardigan that was more holes than wool, one red hand held up to protect rheumy eyes from the sun, the other feeling the card carefully between his thumb and the palm of his hand.

  Would that be more polis?’ he asked.

  Two minutes of monosyllabic conversation revealed that Kinstray had little to add to his statement. His speech was so Glaswegian McAlpine found himself subconsciously translating everything the man said. It was a sin what happened to the lassie, he said. She was quiet; he’d heard she was a looker, but he wouldn’t know, would he? She paid her rent in advance.

  ‘How far in advance?’

  ‘Right up tae the end o’ July. Paid it aw up front, the minute she arrived. Wisnae too bothered when ah said she wouldnae get it back if she left early.’

  ‘And she’d been here for…’

  The bony shoulders shrugged. ‘Months.’

  McAlpine sighed. ‘How many months? Look, I’m not interested in how much she paid you, but I need to know when she came here.’

  ‘April, it was. Four months.’

  ‘You didn’t know she was pregnant?’

  ‘If I’d known that, she wouldnae’ve got her foot in the door. That’s just trouble. I foond oot later, though.’ He sniffed in disgust.

  ‘And you didn’t know her name?’

  ‘Don’t know she ever told me, son. Paid cash. No need for references, ah ask nae questions. It’s no’ against the law.’

  McAlpine thought it probably was against some law somewhere, but continued, ‘No visitors?’

  ‘How would ah know, son? She wis in the top room, she’d her own bell. Came and went as she pleased.’

  ‘But you did see – meet her, at some point?’ McAlpine probed gently. ‘You must have gained some sense of her, some impression? Tall? Thin? Fat? Clever? Thick?’

  Kinstray’s tongue probed at the side of his mouth, thinking. ‘Slim, young, she moved light on her feet, even heavy with the child. She wore a nice scent, like spring flowers. She was polite…’ He sighed slightly.

  ‘Local?’

  ‘Wouldnae’ve said so, son. She was polite but’ – he considered – ‘she wis carefully spoken, like, you know? Not stuck up but polite, like a lady. Well brought up now, that’s what ah would say.’ He nodded as if the answer was the best he could do and he was pleased with it.

  ‘How long have you been here, Mr Kinstray? In this house?’ McAlpine asked.

  ‘Thirty-two years, thereabouts.’

  ‘Could you place her accent?’

  Kinstray smiled, a sudden rush of humour lightened his face. ‘Wisnae English, she spoke it too well.’

  ‘I know what you mean. You don’t mind if I look around?’ McAlpine chose his words carefully – this wasn’t an official visit.

  ‘Dae what ye want. You boys took a load o’ stuff away. Told them, end o’ the month, any’hing in her room is in the bin, unless ye can get somebody tae claim it. Shame.’ He tutted, arthritic fingers feeling for the door handle. ‘Shame.’

  The building was tall, narrow, stale and dark, and uneasily silent. As McAlpine reached the second-floor landing, someone came out of one of the rooms and locked the door behind them. McAlpine registered the prime example of Glaswegian manhood immediately: dirty-haired, undernourished, hardly out of his teens and scared of his own shadow.

  ‘Just a minute,’ McAlpine called, as the youngster made to scuttle past him to the stairs. ‘Number 12A, up on the fourth floor – did you know her?’

  McAlpine stood in his way, receiving a nervous flash of stained teeth.

  ‘Did you?’ he repeated.

  ‘No. No… I wouldn’t be knowing about that. She never spoke to me, but she would pass a smile on the stairs. That’s all.’

  McAlpine noticed the Highland lilt. Not a Glaswegian, then. ‘Pretty girl?’

  The ratlike teeth flashed again, the thin fingers grasped the leather book he was holding even more tightly. McAlpine saw a glimpse of compassion, a slightly pained expression, before the young man dropped hi
s eyes to the book he was holding, his thumb riffling the gold-edged pages. McAlpine recognized the Bible.

  ‘I wouldn’t be knowing about that,’ he repeated, eyes still downcast.

  McAlpine was about to ask him if he was blind as well, but the young man stood back, gave a slight bow and turned to go down the stairs. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be late for a lecture.’

  ‘But you know she was badly hurt? Sunday? 26th of June. Teatime? Do you remember – ?’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t help you.’ The blue eyes looked more troubled, guilty even.

  ‘Look, pal, one question.’ McAlpine’s voice whiplashed down the stairs. Where would you say she was from?’

  The other man stopped, shrugged. ‘I couldn’t tell you that. But I saw her with an A to Z, so she wasn’t from round here.’ He sighed and looked up to the ceiling. ‘I’m sorry, I never spoke more than two words to her.’ And he was gone, taking his guilt with him.

  McAlpine lit up a Marlboro on the top landing after the four-flight climb, leaning outside the single toilet, flicking the cracked terracotta floor tiles with the toe of his boot. The smell of stale urine seeped out on to the stairwell. He tried to see those little feet padding their way through there, and couldn’t. He pulled the nicotine deep into his lungs, kissing a plume of smoke from his lips to freshen the air.

  The door of bedsit 12A opened with the touch of a fingertip to reveal a room frozen in time, circa 1974. The fluttering of the tiny drawings around the bed gave McAlpine the impression somebody had just walked out of sight. The air was heavy with mould and dampness; the chill in the air had been hanging there for years. McAlpine ground his cigarette underfoot and took a deep breath before going in. Going through dead men’s stuff was one thing. This was something else.

  A narrow single bed with a white plastic padded headboard under the cracked roof. The bedding had been dumped on the floor in a routine police search, the mattress left crooked on the base.

  Everything was brown, beige or mouldy, and the room stank of depression. He shivered. He couldn’t imagine those beautiful feet treading across that filthy carpet, creeping down the cold stairs to the smelly toilet. He couldn’t place her in this room at all; it was all wrong.

  The smell was getting to him. He opened the door of the fridge and closed it again quickly. The meter had run out, the fridge had stopped chilling, and mould had launched biological warfare. He took a deep breath, opened it again and had a closer look. Nothing he could identify, but the botanical garden where the salad tray used to be suggested a healthy diet. Another thing that didn’t add up.

  Under the sink he found bleach, cloths, pan scourers, washing-up liquid and a rolled-up pair of rubber gloves. He sniffed around the drain, poked his finger down the plughole and withdrew it covered in black paper ash. In two minutes the ring holding the U-bend was off, and he watched as the plastic basin filled with thick inky water. Nearly a fortnight had passed, but he could still smell the evidence of burning. He swirled the basin as if panning for gold and fished out tiny flakes of unburned white paper. Thick paper, non-absorbent, glossy on one side, the remains of a photograph, maybe more than one. He stood up, staring at his blackened fingertips. Why – if she was thinking of coming back?

  There was more here, more for him to learn. He took a closer look at the little drawings, each held by a single drawing pin: sketches of hands, feet, noses, arms, legs, ankles. Some were of faces, perfect tiny portraits, all of the same man.

  He smiled to himself. ‘Steve McQueen?’

  A quick search of the small drawer by the bed revealed nothing; it had already been searched, he could tell by the casual disruption of the contents. She had folded over page 72 Jane Eyre, a battered old copy bought from a charity shop for 10p, the only book in the room.

  Behind the door was a coffin of a wardrobe showing signs of woodworm rampage. A quick look revealed a few clothes, carefully placed on individual padded hangers. He pushed them apart with his palms, knowing good silk and cashmere when he felt them, examining the names on the labels – MaxMara, Gianfranco Ferre. That was more like her.

  A white dressing gown, thick heavy towelling, hung on a peg on the door. He read the label and smiled, sniffed the collar. It smelled of flowers, bluebells?

  He glanced at the single pair of shoes lying in the bottom of the wardrobe, black, kitten-heeled, leather, with a perfect velvet bow. He flicked them over to glance at the size, knowing what he would see. Size 35. European.

  Sitting among the detritus of evidence – the cardboard boxes of knives and assorted blunt instruments, bag upon bag of jumble – was a quiet little black handbag, its velvet bow clearly visible through the plastic.

  ‘That one there, the black one,’ McAlpine said, pointing. ‘Middle shelf, third one from the end.’

  The production officer bit a mouthful from his bacon roll before lifting the bag from the shelf and pushing it across the desk.

  ‘What contents were listed?’ asked McAlpine.

  ‘See for yourself.’ The production officer fixed the A4 sheet on to a graffitied clipboard and turned his attention back to his breakfast.

  McAlpine read from the list. ‘Perfume, Scent of Bluebells; three pencils, HB, 2B and 2H – somebody with an artistic touch… a comb, blonde hair on it, a tube of mascara, a book of first-class stamps.’ He flicked the page over, then back again. ‘So – no bits of paper, no credit cards, no receipts. A normal woman’s purse is full of crap.’

  The production officer shrugged and wiped a smear of butter from the corner of his mouth.

  McAlpine opened the plastic sleeve, lifting the bag clear. It was curiously heavy, lined in silk, hand-stitched, its clasp made of pleated goatskin. He tipped it, spilling the contents. And checked them against the list. Perfect match. He put the contents back in the bag, his sense of unease growing. Every answer he found led to another question. His fingers felt something hard trapped between the silk lining and the leather shell. He worked his fingers round the top, found it and passed it through a cut, not a tear. He pulled out a gold-faced man’s watch and a fold of cardboard cut from a Kellogg’s Cornflakes packet.

  ‘You checked this?’

  The officer backhanded some crumbs from his mouth. ‘I wasn’t on duty when it came in. No ID in it, so it’s of no interest.’

  McAlpine’s fingers caressed the watch, the lizard-skin strap and the hinged fastening, which clipped down flat. She had petite wrists; this was a man’s watch, far too big for her. Had she brought it with her because it was part of him? A way of bringing something of him with her? McAlpine turned his back slightly on the productions desk, making a point of looking closely at the bag, while prising the fold of cardboard open. Wrapped in a web of Sellotape was a ring, plain silver with a single diamond. A lover’s ring. Another thing too precious to leave behind.

  It was McAlpine’s first Saturday night on duty, his third night shift in a row. He had come to prefer these nights to the day shift. Outside, Glasgow was sweating. The hospital was quieter, cooler, the nurses friendlier, and the sleeping beauty alone as often as not.

  It had become a habit with him to slip into her room, to have one-sided chats about anything and everything. Sometimes he got the feeling she was listening, that there was an awareness behind that mask. Sometimes he wasn’t so sure.

  As far as the hospital was concerned, McAlpine was invisible. The nurses had dropped their guard around him completely, and he could harvest little snippets of information from their indiscreet conversations, or from the papers on the aluminium clipboard at the end of her bed. Slight improvement, reflexes plus plus. A list of drugs, mostly unpronounceable. He ran his finger down the column, some dosages the same, others getting less – even he could understand that. She was getting better.

  He thought about the fine muslin that covered her face. He had got into the habit of screwing his eyes up when he looked at things, seeing the world her way. It was like looking up through thin ice, the ice getting thinner every day. W
hen she broke through and took her first breath, he would be there. When she said, ‘My name is…’ he would be there. He could see her perfect features, hair wet and smoothed back like a marble sculpture, could see himself cradling her beautiful face in his hands, lifting her clear and carrying her away. With this kiss I shall wake you.

  As he walked back, he heard a nurse on the phone, her little gurgling laugh like a teenager’s. He’d bet she wasn’t talking to her husband.

  Their eyes met.

  She looked away quickly and cut the call short.

  He strolled back to his seat, thinking about women. How deceitful they could be. Or how wonderful.

  He heard a cough, indistinct at first, then again. And again.

  He looked up and down the corridor, opened the door and slipped inside. She was lying as usual, arms at her side, her body jerking with the spasm of each cough. The gauze was slipping from her face, revealing a line of fresh blood. He lifted her head a little, cradling the weight of it. She coughed again, louder, the force of it racking her body, but then the blockage cleared and her head lolled back slightly. He placed her head gently down on the pillow, and, as she slowly exhaled, he could feel her body deflate. Not like any corpse he had touched but not like a living person either; she was suspended in between.

  He leaned over, looking at her closely, two faces separated by a wall of muslin and silence. He adjusted the gauze over the curve of her cheek; he twirled the wisp of blonde round his finger. She didn’t pull away. He thought the veining of blood underneath was fainter, the scars beginning to heal. He stood back, regarding her, thinking how she would have been. She was young, slim and fit; her calves had been firm, her ankles still slender despite her pregnancy, her toenails perfectly cut. Even the scar round the base of her toe was smiling.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he said. ‘I need to see.’ He lifted up her left hand, rolling back the cotton wool padding on her palm, where the burning was deepest, where she had lifted her hands to her face. The nails were long and shaped, the back of her hand was covered in smooth tanned skin. He traced a thin band of white at the base of the third finger. He felt – imagined – that she pulled her finger away from his touch.