Wee Florrie by Ian Ibbetson.

The interview room was sweltering. Flies gathered around the one small window high up on the street-side wall. The Scottish summer heat didn’t seem to bother the old woman in the other chair. Archie’s first thought was how cool she looked. The tweed jacket remained on despite the heat and the pearls sat perfectly against the olive green twinset. Every tight white curl had been marshalled precisely into position. His own shirt had begun sticking to his back an hour ago.

“Don’t mistake composure for truth,” DS Lennox had warned him. He knew his superior would be watching him through the blacked-out observation panel in the wall opposite the flies’ social club. He knew that for him this was part opportunity to prove himself, part test.

The old woman fixed him with a cool look.

“Ah,” she said. “Archibald James Rutherford.”

“Detective Constable Rutherford in here, I’m afraid.”

He heard the officiousness too late.

“Of course,” she said. “And I am Miss McDonnell.”

“Aye, of course,” thought Archie. “Even my old man wouldn’t dare call you ‘Wee Florrie’ to your face, even if that is what everyone calls you.”

He remembered Florence McDonnell as taller. Most adults from his childhood had suffered the same reduction, but with her the discrepancy seemed particularly unfair. Now she regarded him with exactly the same bright blue eyes that had once caught him climbing over the bowling-green fence. He pushed on.

“I understand you have some information concerning the death of William Skerry, back in, what was it, 1970?”

“1971.” The tone at once reduced him to a youngster again. No matter, he told himself, glancing down at the file in front of him.

“1971,” he conceded. “The fifteenth of August.”

“The early hours of the fifteenth.”

“Yes.” He placed his pen against the page. “What information do you have for us, Miss McDonnell?”

“I killed him.”

Bill Skerry had been found in an alley with severe head injuries, but the post-mortem gave the cause of death as ligature strangulation. Tom Cruikshank had been arrested but eventually released without charge. No other suspect was identified.

Lennox’s words came back to him: “She’ll probably have it all prepared, a nice wee fantasy that she’s played out in her heid a dozen times, a thousand times. The quicker you can take it apart the quicker we can send her home and do some real policing.”

He hadn’t anticipated the flat matter-of-fact tone in which the confession was given though. She might as easily have been correcting the date again as confessing to murder.

He waited. Most people disliked silence, so given enough of it, they generally tried to fill it. Florence McDonnell was not most people. Archie had hoped to be away in time for tonight’s darts match in The Stagg Inn, so prompted her.

“You killed William Skerry?”

“That is what I said.”

“And how did you do that?”

“I strangled him.”

Archie had read the file. There were photos too, though he hadn’t dwelled too long on them. Everybody knew Bill Skerry had been strangled; it had been all over the local rag.

“Perhaps you could give me just a little more detail, Miss McDonnell,” he said, doing his best to sound cool, polite and not totally detached.

“I was on my way home, in Kirk Lane, heading for the High.”

Archie knew the geography. Kirk Lane and the High Street were connected by a narrow, unlit alley beside the Coach and Horses. Two people passing would have brushed shoulders.

“What time would that be?” he coaxed.

“After midnight.”

“What, one o’clock, two maybe?” The post-mortem report judged the time of death to be around that time, but again, that had been reported in the press.

“I didn’t own a watch.”

“But you remember the date.”

“I would hardly forget.”

Archie gave what he hoped was an encouraging nod. The old bat had probably spent the morning rereading the cuttings. Perhaps she had dreamed the whole thing and polished it into certainty over breakfast.

“What did you see when you entered the alley?”

“Skerry was lying on the ground.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Closer to Kirk Lane than the High Street. Against the wall, near the drainpipe.”

That was in the newspapers too, or close enough.

“Was he alive?”

“Oh yes.”

“How could you tell?”

“He was calling for help. He was obviously hurt. There was blood in his hair and on his face.”

Archie decided it was time to scribble a couple of notes in his pad, hoping the extended silence would work this time. Florrie sat gazing silently at him.

“What happened next?”

“Well I had to stop or climb over the man, so I stopped.”

“To help him?” Mentally Archie bit his lip – no point in putting words in Florrie’s mouth.

“Aye, at first.”

“At first?” repeated Archie.

Florence looked towards the flies gathering at the high window. As if on cue one peeled away and buzzed over to inspect the perspiration on Archie’s forehead. Where did the damned things come from? Florence looked back as Archie brushed the fly away.

“I didn’t recognise him at first.”

Archie gave another nod, “Aye, go on.”

“When I realised, I took off my belt and strangled him with it.”

“Just like that, you put a belt around his neck and strangled a strapping big builder?” He couldn’t help the sarcasm. Florrie’s reply was ice cold.

“No, Detective Constable Rutherford. Not just like that. It took some effort.”

“But nonetheless you expect me to believe that you overpowered Bill Skerry?” He glanced at the file again. “He was a big man. Six foot one, fourteen stone. Fit.”

“He was barely conscious and I worked at McAllister’s ironmongers. Six days a week carrying half-hundredweight bags of nails out to customers’ vans.”

“That’s not quite the same thing.”

“Correct. The nails didn’t struggle.”

The flies rose together from the window and settled again. Florence’s fingers moved lightly over the false pearls at her throat. Archie tapped his pen against the paper. He focussed his attention again.

“Describe exactly what you did.”

“I put the belt round his neck from behind and pulled it as tight as I could.”

“And he just let you?”

“I told you, he was barely conscious.”

“He didn’t resist?”

“He did, as best he could.”

“How?”

“He tried to get his fingers under the belt. He wriggled about a lot – or maybe he was convulsing. I don’t know which.”

“But you held on?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Thirty seconds? A minute? Five minutes?”

“Until he stopped moving.”

Archie allowed himself a glance towards the observation panel. His backside was itching in the heat and there was nothing he could do about it under the watchful eyes of two powerful women, even if one of them did appear to be losing her sanity. He turned back to Florence.

“I still find it difficult to understand how you overpowered such a big man.”

“Aye, well, I did have to put my foot on his neck to keep the belt tight.”

The pen stopped tapping. Archie looked at her as a chill meandered down his spine.

“Where exactly did you put your foot?”

“Just below the hairline, here.” She indicated the spot on herself, touching the base of her skull with two fingers.

“Are you sure about that?”

“I have already told you. He was struggling.”

Archie lowered his eyes to the file again. The post-mortem photographs did show a dark oval mark beneath Skerry’s hairline, separate from the ligature wound. He found the line he was looking for. The pathologist had described the mark as ‘an area of contusion caused by sustained pressure from an unidentified blunt surface’. That information had never appeared in any newspaper report Archie had seen, but that still didn’t make her story true. Fifty-five years was a long time for a supposedly confidential detail to remain confidential. Police officers talked to wives, wives talked to neighbours and neighbours talked to everybody. And Florence McDonnell knew everybody.

But still. Archie turned to a clean page in his notebook.

“Let’s go back. You said you were walking home.”

“That’s right.”

“Where from?”

“Kirk Lane.”

“Where had you been?”

“Out.”

“At that time of night?”

“I was twenty-five years old, Detective Constable. We occasionally went out after dark.”

“Out drinking?”

“No.”

“Then where?”

Florence regarded him calmly. “Maybe I’d been to see someone.”

“And who would you be seeing at gone midnight, Miss McDonnell?”

“Maybe that is irrelevant.”

“It places you in the alley where a man was murdered. I’ll decide what’s relevant.”

A faint tightening at the corners of her mouth suggested that she might disagree. Archie decided to let it pass for now; he needed Florrie to keep talking.

“Tom Cruikshank lived in Kirk Lane, didn’t he?”

“Aye, you knew that.”

“And you knew Tom?”

“Everybody knew Tom.”

“His house, in fact, was just a few yards from where Skerry’s body was found.”

“Right next door to your grandfather’s. James Rutherford, the cobbler.”

Archie’s eyes lifted from the page. Florence watched the thought arrive and made no effort to keep it at bay.

“Were you coming from James Rutherford’s house?”

“That is not what I said.”

“But were you?” His voice felt a little tighter.

“Is your grandfather under investigation?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps he is irrelevant.”

Archie felt the damp collar of his shirt against his neck. The wee voice in his head told him to move on.

“Did you see Tom Cruikshank that night?”

“No.”

“Did you know he had attacked Skerry?”

“Not then.”

“But you knew they had argued in the pub.”

“I only learned that afterwards.”

“Tom initially admitted waiting for Skerry and striking him with a length of wood. He withdrew that admission when he was accused of murder.”

“Aye. Because he never strangled the man.”

That tallied with the case file. When he was told that Skerry had been strangled, Cruikshank had appeared genuinely shocked. The notes quoted him: “Strangled? I never strangled anybody.” From that point on he changed his tune and denied everything.

“What was the beef between Tom and Skerry?”

Florence paused.

“Bill had been tormenting him for months. Tom had worked on one of his building jobs. There was money owing. Bill thought it amusing to make a man ask repeatedly for wages he had already earned.”

“That was the sole reason Cruikshank attacked Bill Skerry? Help me here, you know these people better than I do.”

“It was one of them. Bill enjoyed humiliating people. That evening he did it in front of a crowded public house.”

“So Tom jumped him and stoved his head in?”

“In a nutshell.”

“And you expect me to believe that Tom Cruikshank stopped there, but you happened along just in time to finish the job by strangling him?”

“I don’t require you to believe anything. I am telling you what happened.”

“I think you’ve made your opinion of Skerry fairly clear…”

Florrie’s voice didn’t rise as she interrupted him, but it cut nonetheless.

“I haven’t begun to make my opinion of Bill Skerry clear.”

Archie sat back. This time Florence’s voice quietly filled the silence, each word carefully enunciated.

“He was a bully. Not the sort who lost his temper and regretted it afterwards. Bill enjoyed fear. He liked watching a man decide whether to swallow an insult or risk a beating. He liked putting his hands on women and seeing whether they dared object. If they did object, he laughed. If they didn’t, he took it as permission.”

“You knew him through the ironmonger’s. Did he ever threaten you?”

“He tried his luck.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means exactly what you think it means.”

“Did you complain about him?”

“To whom?”

“The owner. The police.”

Florence almost smiled.

“This was 1971, Archie.”

“Detective Constable Rutherford.”

“Of course.”

Motive and opportunity were beginning to arrange themselves in Archie’s mind. Means was still problematic. He leaned forward now, looking intently into Florrie’s eyes.

“When you approached him in the alley, what exactly did you see, and what exactly happened?”

“His right arm was trapped under his own body, only his left was free. He saw me and leered at me. ‘Come here lass and do as I tell ye’, he said. He was reaching for the wall trying to push himself over onto his back. When I hesitated he raised his voice: ‘Now lass’. His face was close to the wall, but not so close that I couldn’t quickly bob down and slip the belt over his head and round his neck. Then I pushed his face up against the wall with my foot, and braced my shoulders against the far wall. It must have been rather inelegant, but that wasn’t my concern at the time.”

She paused briefly, took a small breath and fixed Archie with those piercing eyes again. Archie did his best to look impassive, while mentally picturing the young Florrie and the fourteen-stone hulk of Bill Skerry, wedged together in the narrow alleyway.

“I had one foot on the back of his neck, the other pinning the elbow of his free arm against one wall while I leaned back and braced myself against the other, and I pulled on that belt with both hands. I pulled with all my might. I pulled for all the girls he had abused. I pulled for all the men he had intimidated. I pulled for all the dirty tricks he’d played in business and on his customers, and yes, I pulled because I hated the way he treated me. I pulled until he stopped moving, and then I pulled a little longer for good measure. I killed Bill Skerry.”

“You’re telling me that Florrie McDonnell, pillar of the estate, simply decided to execute an injured man in an alleyway?”

Her eyes sharpened at his use of the name.

“You will find, Detective Constable, that most of the good I have done came after that night. Perhaps some came because of it.”

Archie looked at the glass of the observation panel and saw only the two of them reflected back at him.

“Why are you telling us this now?” he probed.

Florence did not look away.

“Tom is dying.”

“I know he has cancer.”

“Stage four. His daughter says the doctors have stopped talking in months. They’re talking weeks.”

“So you want to clear his name, is that it?”

Florrie was impassive. Silent. Archie continued.

“He was never convicted.”

“You think that matters on the estate?”

“It matters in law.”

“Tom will not be buried in law. He will be buried in the cemetery on Muir Road, and people will stand at the gate and say, ‘That’s Tom Cruikshank away. The one who murdered Bill Skerry.’”

Archie looked again at the notes he had made. A confession to a notorious unsolved murder from a respected eighty-year-old woman. A possible piece of special knowledge. A dying former suspect.

“The mark on Skerry’s neck is interesting, but after fifty-five years it proves very little. Tom may have heard about it during questioning. He may have told you. A police officer may have talked. The pathologist’s report may have been seen by people who had no business seeing it.”

“Perhaps.” Florrie was still all but impossible to read.

“You knew Skerry. You knew Tom. You knew where the body was found. Everything else was in the papers. You’ve given me nothing new that I can corroborate.”

Florence sat silently. The silence drew Archie back in.

“You say you used your belt. What happened to it?”

“I kept it.”

“For fifty-five years? Why?”

“It has…” For the first time she faltered for an instant. “It has personal meaning to me.”

“I’d say so,” Archie agreed, “So where is it now?”

“Here,” said Florrie.

She took a small canvas drawstring bag from her handbag, loosened the cords, turned it upside down and let the belt fall onto the formica, its buckle striking with a small, hard click.

Neither of them broke the silence for a moment.

The belt was old, its leather dry and the buckle dulled almost black. The design was still distinctive though. It was made from four strands of leather thong in different shades of brown, twisting together in a repeating Celtic knot pattern. His grandfather had made bootlaces from similar thongs.

The post-mortem report had noted an unusual pattern to the ligature. If the belt fitted that pattern… Fifty-five years was a long time, but there might still be evidence of blood, hair or fragments of DNA. Whether there was anything left with which to compare them was another matter.

“There’s your corroboration.”

Archie pushed his chair back and slowly stood. Florence looked smaller from this height, but no less in command of herself.

He heard Lennox’s warning again. Don’t mistake composure for truth. The trouble was composure didn’t make Florence a liar either.

“Florence McDonnell, I am arresting you under section one of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 for the murder of William Skerry.”

Florence inclined her head slightly as she listened.

“You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say will be noted and may be used in evidence.” The formal caution came mechanically now. Then he spoke with more feeling: “Do you understand that, Miss McDonnell?”

“Aye, Archie. I know what I’m doing.”

Ian Ibbetson

Image: Police interview room with a table and two chairs from Pixabay.com