Page 73 of Better the Devil

Logan let that sink in. Let the old man dwell on it for a while.

‘Do we understand each other, Joe?’

‘Yes. Yes, absolutely. I understand. Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me yet,’ Logan warned. ‘That light at the end of the tunnel might still be a speeding locomotive headed straight towards you.’

He looked to his left to make sure Fleck was paying attention. The sergeant looked worried on the old man’s behalf, but he had his notebook out and his pen in hand, ready to do his job.

‘Now, Joe,’ Logan said. He hitched his mouth into a smile that made the old man recoil in fear. ‘How about we take this from the top?’

Joe needed no further incentive to start spilling his guts. The nature of what he spilled, though, caught both police officers off guard.

‘It’s them bloody dolls. That’s the issue. That’s why I did it. Those awful bloody dolls.’

Fleck finished writing the word “dolls” on his pad, and then glanced down at it as if realising he’d made a mistake.

‘Dolls, Joe?’ he asked.

‘She gets them from China. Japan. I don’t know. Somewhere over that way. The Orient, if you can say that these days. They’re custom-made. Sort of’—he held both index fingers about twelve inches apart, one above the other—‘that size. Soft bodies, porcelain faces and hands. Hair. Clothes. Wee shoes, whatever.’

Logan grunted. ‘The fuck are you talking about?’

‘These wee dolls. The wee dolls she gets! She’s obsessed. Maureen. She keeps ordering the bloody things. Calls them “the great-grandkids” because they’re meant to look like, you know, ten-year-olds or whatever. Only they’re wearing kimonos and have got a full face of bloody makeup on.’ He shook his head. ‘Great-grandkids my arse.’

Fleck looked down at his pad again. He still hadn’t written anything else.

‘Maureen—your wife—she’s been buying dolls?’ the sergeant asked. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Three-hundred quid apiece!’ Joe cried. ‘That’s your basic model. Only, Maureen’s not satisfied with an off-the-shelf one these days. Oh, no. She needs custom. You can’t have them all the same, what would be the point in that? They all need to be different, which means…’

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in the universal gesture for hard currency.

‘So, to be clear, here, Mr Robertson,’ Logan intoned, ‘you’re saying you stole money from a murder scene in order to buy dolls?’

‘No! I just… We’re behind on bills. Price of electricity these days. Price of petrol. Price of food, price of everything. We’re just… we’re struggling. And I tell her, I do, I say, “Maureen, no more dolls. Enough with the bloody dolls.” But does she listen? No, she just tries to be fly about it. Gets a new credit card without telling me. Gets her sister in Fife to order it, and transfers her the money when her pension comes in.’

He had barely looked at the men across the table during the speech, the shame of it keeping his gaze fixed on his hands, which now rested on the table. He picked at loose skin around his thumbnails hard enough to draw tiny spots of blood.

‘I can’t sleep for worrying about it. Losing the house. Losing everything. I would never have taken that money otherwise. If I’d been in my right mind. If it wasn’t for them fucking dolls!’

He buried his face in his hands. His shoulders heaved as he tried to stifle his big, throaty sobs.

‘I thought stuff from China was meant to be cheap!’

Fleck reached a hand across the table and gave the old man’s arm a rub. Though it was clear from Logan’s face that he disapproved, he made no attempt to stop him.

‘I saw the body. And the blood, all that blood, and I blew my whistle for help, but nobody came,’ Joe said, spluttering and wheezing through shaky, irregular breaths. ‘I was going to run back to the house for my phone, but then, I thought I’d better check in the back to make sure there was nobody else there. Nobody needing help, or whatever. And that’s when I saw it.’

He met their eyes, just briefly.

‘The bag. With the money. And I thought… I just sort of thought…He doesn’t need it. On account of… You know. And I thought, if I took it, if I had that money, maybe things would be alright. I could take care of the bills. I could get some sleep, at last.’

Joe swallowed. His fingertips smeared blood down the sides of his thumbs.

‘But I didn’t. Not a wink. It was worse than ever, because I knew. I knew what I’d done was wrong. It was stupid, it was selfish, and if I could go back in time and stop myself doing it, I would.’

‘If you can go back in time, maybe stop the murder happening, too, eh?’ Sergeant Fleck suggested, and Joe managed a half-smile in reply.