Page 33 of Watching You
‘If I let you tell me, will you stop?’ Salter asked, already heading towards the staircase.
‘I will,’ Connie said, following after her. ‘That scar and the pain it gives you aren’t just reminding you to grieve the baby you lost, they’re actively stopping you from bonding with your adopted child. You feel obliged to hold a part of you back so that the betrayal you’ve imagined isn’t complete. Because guilt is the real monster that lives beneath every adult’s bed, and generally it has more teeth for women than it does for men. So here’s my prescription. See a surgeon. Let them improveyour scar. Grieve your loss by loving more, not less. Heal by feeling joy, not pain. Motherhood is hard enough without deliberately keeping yourself ripped in two for something that wasn’t your fault.’
They reached the corridor into the cells as Salter turned to face her.
‘Why do you do that – get into people’s heads? It doesn’t make you feel awkward?’
‘It’s how I learn. My job is like being a psychological dictionary or thesaurus. An encyclopedia. Every human being I can understand makes me better able to understand all the ways people break. Also, I hope I can help along the way. People always know what’s wrong with them really, it’s just that they fight the urge to admit the truth to themselves. Having someone else do it simply forces a reality check that hopefully leads to progress. Shall we?’
She walked past Salter and opened the door into the cells and the custody sergeant who was pointedly looking at the enormous clock on the wall.
‘Took your time. You’ll be glad to know that madam in cell two has vomited twice in the last fifteen minutes, so if you’re lucky her stomach will now be empty. In any event, I should stand well back and run if she starts groaning,’ he instructed.
‘What’s she in for?’ Salter asked.
‘Shoplifting. Haven’t seen her for a few weeks, but Mandy’s a regular. This time, the off-licence is insisting we prosecute as she knocked over several bottles of expensive wine on her way out, so the total damages run to about three hundred quid. Mandy, however, seems to think she has an ace up her sleeve. Said she wants to talk to whoever’s investigating Archie Bass’s death. I gather that’s you.’
‘It is indeed,’ Connie said. ‘Let’s go talk to Mandy.’
Mandy MacGill smelled worse than a student nightclub toilet at 4 a.m. She had a tattoo on her forehead that at one point must have said ‘Fuck you’ but it had such a deep wrinkle running across it that it looked more like the forces of nature had attempted to redact it. It was impossible to guess her age. Either she was much older than she looked and been pickled by all the alcohol, or it had aged her by a couple of decades. Connie felt a rush of sadness at Mandy’s vulnerability and let Salter take the lead, introducing them before getting down to it.
‘You wanted to tell us something, Mandy?’
‘I’ve got demands, I have. They’ve gotta be fuckin’ met, right, before I’ll say a bloody word. I’ve got important in-for-ma-tion!’ She punctuated the word with a pointed finger.
Salter sighed and folded her arms. ‘Your demands are?’
‘Bottle of vodka, not cheap shit, fish and chips, deep-fried Mars bar, a four-pack of Irn-Bru, and impunity in fuckin’ writing from all prostitutions.’
Salter rubbed her eyes. ‘You can have the food but not the booze. I’ll do what I can aboutimmunityfromprosecutionbut first you have to make us believe you’ve something to bargain with, or we walk and you don’t get so much as a sniff of deep-fried fat.’
‘Na, I’m not fallin’ for that. You’ll take the gold and disappear and I’ll get nuthin’,’ she shouted. ‘I want a fuckin’ lawyer in here!’
‘Mandy,’ Salter said. ‘I’m going to need you to shut the hell up. You don’t need a lawyer because Dr Woolwine and I are not here to charge you with anything. I can and will get you the food. You know the rules about alcohol in the cells and you never expected me to say yes to that. But if you don’t start talking, I’m leaving because I’m not in the mood to be messed around. You have one chance, and this is it.’
Mandy huffed and kicked at the badly stained floor before nodding.
‘Aw right, aw right. But I want curry sauce wi’ the chips. I was there, see, the night Archie got murdered. I seen it all.’
‘Tell us,’ Salter said.
‘We was both round in the road behind the back of them big shops, the electrical store and whatever. They’ve got the big bins out there that’s good for finding cardboard and you don’t get kicked by the fuckin’ passers-by like you do in the city centre. Less chance of being thrown cash, but less chance of getting fucked over, too, know what I’m saying? I was there first and I seen Archie come in but I was already in my boxes and I didn’t want him stealing my bottle, so I didn’t call out to him.’
‘What time was that?’ Salter asked.
‘Do I look like I wear a fuckin’ watch?’ Mandy replied. ‘Anyways, he’s over the road from me, wrapping himself up in his sleeping bag or whatever so I say nuthin’, just make sure I’m covered up and start to fall asleep. I wake up when I hear him moaning. He never screamed. Like it all happened so fast that he didn’t have the chance.’
‘Did you see the person who stabbed him, Mandy? Think hard, and don’t just tell us what you think we want to hear. It’s too important for that,’ Salter said.
‘It were just one person. Big coat, hood up. I only saw them from behind. I just know they were in front of him when I looked up, and he was groaning when they walked away. Didn’t say a word. I figured it was just like a fight or something.’ She put her head down. ‘I didn’t know he’d been fuckin’ stabbed, did I? I’d have done something. Told someone. He just sat there, and I thought he’d fallen asleep again.’
‘Was it a man or a woman? What were they wearing on their legs? Anything else, like skin colour or age?’
‘Dunno. Never saw anything except the back of the big coat. Wearing trousers, I guess, or I’d have noticed. They walked away normal pace, though. Didnae run. I’ve seen kids do that sort of thing before. Kids run away, like they’ve been brave wee bastards for a few seconds then they start to shit themselves.’
‘You didn’t go over to Archie, check on him?’ Salter asked.
‘To be honest, I was tired. Had a bit to drink, you know? And you get used to a bit of violence on the streets. Archie was all right, but he wasn’t a pal. I just thought he owed someone some cash or somethin’ and they were teaching him a lesson. I only found out a few days later that he was dead. When I left in the morning, I didn’t give him a second look.’
