The Doll's House

Two hours after leaving the crime scene, Kate pinned the images couriered by O’Connor to the wall of her study. The simple act of pinning them up, bringing the victim, his life and death close to her, formed the intimacy that began her task of working out the kind of person who had committed the crime.

Knowing Charlie wouldn’t be back for another hour, Kate decided to go for the run she’d promised herself earlier. It would be a good way, she hoped, of digesting the images she’d seen.

Outside there were dark rainclouds, but once she heard the repetitive sound of her feet hitting the footpath, and her breath got into a settled rhythm, it wasn’t long before her mind returned to the images.

The first group of photographs were of the body prior to its retrieval from the canal, Keith Jenkins’s brown hair floating in the water like a mass of tangled seaweed. His arms and legs were stretched out in perfect alignment, his outer clothing ballooning with water and air. His shirt, covered with blood, had loosened, revealing the lower part of his upper torso. It looked a mess. The froth O’Connor had referred to was also visible, oozing from his mouth and nostrils. The short time the corpse had been in the water meant there hadn’t been any bloating, although the skin had the faded colour of death.

O’Connor had confirmed the victim’s wallet and other personal possessions were intact, yet although Jenkins had been married, Kate noted there was no wedding ring on his left hand. Perhaps he didn’t wear one, or he’d removed it prior to going out that evening. He had a reputation for being a bit of a ladies’ man. But as a well-known figure, he would have gained little from hiding his marital status, unless the ring had been removed by someone else. If it had, there were very different implications.

Depending on what Morrison came up with on the stabbing, if this turned out to be a crime of passion, the ripples might reach close to Jenkins’s home life.





Alleyway off Mount Street


I’m not altogether sure why I’ve come here, back to where I spotted good old Stevie McDaid. Watching him in the alleyway brought back something sordid. Nonetheless, at least here I can be on my own and do some straight thinking. It hasn’t ended with Keith Jenkins. If I doubted it before, I don’t doubt it now. There’s satisfaction in knowing he’s gone. Like any other piece of lowlife, best forgotten. He didn’t go too easy, and not before he’d pushed that final nerve before going under. The thin strands of the spider’s web move further out. At times the links feel faint, almost transparent, but at the core, Keith Jenkins was the beginning of it all.

I could have taken Stevie out as well. Beaten the crap out of him for good measure. He was always one step closer to shithead than most other scumbags. I have enough anger in me to do it. But now the thought of killing feels more measured, and that’s important. Bet he would have laughed in my face, jerked around even if his head was near done in. His kind is made like that. Part of their survival mechanism. Brought up that way from the time their mothers and everyone else decided they were worth shit.

Maybe that’s why Stevie always wanted to smell of roses, pretending to be the furthest thing from scumbag that his small intelligence imagined he might be. Either way, makes no difference now. Like Jenkins, he wouldn’t be of the mind for changing. The only thing that would change Stevie McDaid is a bullet in the head. It would have to be a perfect shot. Miss the target by a millimetre and Stevie would laugh in your face, wearing the hole like some kind of bloody medal.

It made me sick watching him with that girl, pushing himself inside her like she was some kind of dead thing he’d found discarded but worth dragging into an alleyway for a fuck. That was what he shouted in her ear as he came off inside her. He was already too far gone for me to do anything for her. A couple of minutes earlier, I might have pulled the lowlife off her. The bastard even used her skirt to wipe himself, standing back, smirking at her.

I got one decent look at her, sixteen at the most. I think she was crying. Out of habit, I flicked my lighter, lit a cigarette, not thinking. He looked my way, aware of an uninvited stranger. ‘Fix yourself. Come on, will ya?’ I heard him say. It gave the night an aftermath of something rotten. At least this time the girl was a stranger.

I turned away from the alley, leaving the jerked-off Stevie McDaid behind me, knowing I had a long path ahead. That wouldn’t include good old Stevie. For now, at least.





Mervin Road