The Careful Killer

By Murray Carr

A family is torn apart by a rushing police car. Brian Reid has been tortured for years by witnessing the tragic events. But what exactly did he see?A chance encounter a decade later prompts Brian and his sister Elizabeth to investigate what really happened on that day. Meanwhile, a serial killer follows h

• Language: English
• Publisher: Murray Carr
• Release date: Feb 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9781805414148

Book preview

Murray Carr

Copyright © 2024 by Murray Carr

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

ISBNs:

978-1-80541-413-1 (paperback)

978-1-80541-414-8 (eBook)

978-1-80541-499-5 (hardcover)

To mum and dad. Gone but never forgotten

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 1

Historians disagree as to where the town of Airdrie got its name. Some favour the Gaelic ‘ard ruith’ meaning a level height or high pastureland; others that it is derived from ‘Airidh’ meaning a shieling, or wayside town; while still others favour the name coming from Arderyth, the scene of an ancient battle. Situated a mere dozen miles from Glasgow and just over forty from Edinburgh, weaving and mining became major industries as the world approached the modern age. The First World War took a heavy toll on the population of Airdrie, and a high level of emigration during the 1920s may have been as a result of the fifty per cent unemployment rate in the town.

When Brian Reid left his home in Airdrie on this special day, he couldn’t have cared less about the history of his town. Cloudless blue skies, not enough wind to disturb even the most delicate of butterflies, and a stunning young woman about to dispense the most delicious ice cream in town Having just turned fifteen that day, Brian was at the stage of a boy’s life where the desire for the ice cream and the desire for the young woman jostled for supremacy.

Normally, Brian would not have been happy to be seen in town with his father and younger sister, but today was different. He had left them across the road whilst he went to the shop, initially for a bar of chocolate. The ice creams had been an afterthought, but he was sure they would be appreciated, given the unseasonably high temperatures for the West of Scotland. He was paying for them himself, but he had an ulterior motive. The next stop would be the computer game shop, where he would choose his present from his parents under the watchful eye of his father. The ice cream might just push the price limit a little higher.

Brian emerged from the shop into the bright sunlight. Across the road, waiting patiently, were his father and younger sister, Caroline. Although usually dressed in jeans, his twelve year old sister on this special occasion had consented to wear a dress.

Now she stood waiting, looking rather self-conscious. She glanced round and spotted Brian coming out of the shop. He raised the ice creams above his head in triumph. This only caused the ice cream to run down his hands, and he quickly lowered them and began to lick furiously at the dripping liquid.

Caroline mistook this action as being her brother’s attempt to devour the delicacy before she could get any, and with a gleeful squeal darted across the road. Too late, her father realised what was happening and made a rush to catch her.

Brian shouted a warning, but his sister either didn’t hear him or ignored him. She was now half way across the road with their father only a pace behind, arms outstretched and fingers grabbing desperately in an attempt to rein her in. Blood curdling squeals were coming from the speeding car as its driver stood on the brakes. Caroline began to look round at the source of all the noise just as her father pulled her up off the road and into his arms. Then the car ploughed into them, and they were tossed like rag dolls into the air and over the roof of the vehicle. The car flashed past and Brian caught a glimpse of three occupants. He turned his head back just in time to see his father and Caroline crash back to earth and they lay motionless amidst black, smoking tread marks.

He was roughly barged aside as people rushed to offer aid. The ice creams dropped from his hands and landed with a soft splodge on the pavement. He willed his legs to start moving and made his way towards where his father and sister lay.

An old woman pushed past him roughly and started to be sick at the roadside. He became aware for the first time of a flashing blue light, and a policeman forced his way through the growing crowd towards the injured people. Brian wondered how the police could have known of the accident and arrived so quickly. It was only later he would find out that it was the police car that had struck his father and sister.

Before he was aware of any individual event, he was sitting in the Monklands Hospital A&E. An ambulance had brought his father and Caroline the short distance to the hospital, and he had followed in a police car. It wasn’t the same police car that he had seen earlier. That one was still sitting where it had stopped with its blue light flashing, but barely noticeable in the blazing sunshine.

Brian had managed to pull himself together enough to raise his hand when a policeman asked if anyone knew the injured people. He had quickly been bundled into the back of the car which then sped off following the ambulance. He remembered giving a policeman his home phone number and telling him his name. The policewoman in the car had started to talk to him. She asked him about football, his school, but when he had only grunted his replies she had stopped, and the short journey was completed in silence apart from the wailing sirens.

On the pavement outside the shop, a stray dog eagerly lapped up the fallen ice creams.

The ambulance drove into a covered carport where staff were waiting with gurneys for his injured relatives. The police car parked directly in front of the A&E entrance, and the policewoman led him inside. She ushered him to a seat just past the main reception desk and asked him if he wanted something from the drink’s dispenser. He had declined and was now sitting alone. The small group of people waiting on attention had eyed him with curiosity when he sat down, but soon stopped staring when they could see no obvious injury. The restricted entry doors opened regularly as a variety of staff came and went. A nurse came out and called a name, and a young man with an ice pack grasped to his wrist got up and followed her. Brian’s hands were uncomfortably sticky from the melting ice cream and he would have liked to wash them, but he didn’t want to leave his seat.

Where he was sitting looked like a larger version of a doctor’s waiting room. One man dressed in a tracksuit sat with one leg resting on a chair in front of him with an ice pack strapped to his foot. Two men wearing overalls sat together, one with his right hand wrapped in a blood-soaked towel and the other talking quietly to him. A young woman was holding a piece of cotton wool over one eye while a much older lady with her jumped up expectantly every time someone approached them, only to sit down again when that person passed without stopping. After a few minutes, a woman in a white coat asked Brian to go with her. He followed her through the glass-panelled doors and down a corridor, oblivious to the accusatory glares as befitted a queue jumper. They took a few turns and then he was left sitting in a much less public area. Just a few yards down the corridor was what appeared to be another reception desk, and two uniformed police officers leaned against it and chatted to someone on the other side. He tried to relax and breathe normally. Everything smelt clean. Not a normal clean smell, but a sterilised clean smell.

Doors along the corridor opened and closed with annoying regularity, and people rushed back and forth feverishly. The scene reminded him of a nature programme he had seen on television about ants. He was sitting opposite a room that looked like a small office. He could just make out a desk and two chairs. Much to his surprise, the next person to come along the corridor opened the door to the very room he had been examining. The man was wearing a white coat and seemed to be in a hurry. He opened the door, laid a file on the desk, then turned and walked out again, closing the door behind him with a soft click. He glanced at Brian and smiled a thin smile. Brian looked up at him expectantly, but the man looked away and hurried down the corridor. Settling back into his seat, Brian shivered when his back touched the cold plastic of the chair. Given the sweltering heat, Brian had left home without a pullover or jacket. With no sunlight penetrating the corridor he had begun to feel quite cold. He reached behind himself to pull his shirt away from where it had stuck to his back. Glancing down the corridor he felt a wave of relief as the familiar figure of his mother approached. He jumped to his feet. A policewoman accompanied her, and the man who had smiled at Brian moments ago met them at the reception desk. The three now walked down towards where Brian was standing. His mother’s face looked strained, but she tried to smile as she reached him.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked in a rather husky voice.

Brian found he could only nod.

‘I’ve got to find out how things are with your dad and Caroline, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

Brian didn’t want to be left on his own again, but just nodded. He noticed that his mother still had her slippers on, and this made him feel very uncomfortable. She was ushered into the room Brian had been examining minutes before. He remained standing, resisting the temptation to move closer to the glass.

His mother stood with her back to the windows. The man glanced at the file he had left in the room previously, and then looked at her. The pain clearly showing in the man’s face said it all. His mouth opened and closed a few times, and then Brian saw his mother helped into a seat by the policewoman. Brian slumped down into the chair, but this time the numbness that had swept over his body prevented him from feeling the cold plastic. After what seemed like an eternity, the doctor and policewoman left the room and told Brian to go in and talk to his mother. He stood with his arms around her, hoping she would stop crying. She did long enough to tell him that his father was dead, and his sister was badly injured, then she started crying again.

Eventually, she managed to regain some measure of composure. Another white coated man asked them to accompany him, and Brian slowly helped his mother to her feet. He took her arm as they walked slowly along the corridor. His mother had always been a very active woman, and Brian had never seen her in the state she was in now. The situation brought back memories of helping his grandmother into the house after she had left the hospital. But she was over eighty and about to die. They followed the man into a lift that descended two or three floors. The door hissed open and they were faced with a sign saying ‘morgue’. The sign was written in a rather inappropriate flowery font. Perhaps this was an attempt to lessen the effect of what the sign meant.

A man met them at the door and ushered them inside to formally identify the body of his father. Brian was given the opportunity to remain outside but chose to be with his mother. He had never seen a dead person before and, had it not been his father he was viewing, he would have been quite disappointed. No blood, bruising or any other signs of injury. The absurdly bizarre thought sprang into Brian’s head that perhaps this was a very elaborate practical joke being played on him for his birthday. Any moment his father would sit up and smile. His mother would stop crying and laugh. The man in the white coat would reveal a present. Caroline would come into the room and embarrass him with a kiss. Involuntarily Brian closed his eyes for a split second. When he opened them, the man didn’t have a present, there was no Caroline, his mother was still crying, and his father was still dead.

They were led from the morgue, back up in the elevator, and into another small room. Here they were met by a female doctor who invited them to sit down then took a seat opposite. She explained that Caroline had suffered a serious head injury and was in a coma. Brian’s mum asked if they could see her, but the doctor said they were still carrying out tests. The hospital would inform them when there was any news.

For the next few days Brian felt as if he was in the eye of a hurricane. Friends, distant relatives and people he didn’t know phoned and dropped in continually. His older sister, Elizabeth, who had been on a working holiday during her university break, arrived back home. Brian spent a large part of his day making endless cups of tea for the visitors. He realised that the tea ritual was more important in giving people something to do with their hands and filling in awkward gaps in conversation by taking a sip, than drinking it. The newspapers carried a brief report of the incident and concluded with the usual statement that the Independent Office for Police Conduct would carry out an investigation. His mother spent more time at the hospital with Caroline than she did in the house, and he became weary of telling callers that she wasn’t home and trying to remember messages to pass on. Later at night the faint sound of his mother crying would be the last thing he heard before going to sleep. Often, he would dream of the incident and awaken in a cold sweat. Sometimes in his dream his father would reach Caroline and manage to pull her out of the path of the police car. Then he would wake up feeling really good until the reality dawned.

Brian started going to the hospital with his mother, while Elizabeth was left to attend to things at home. The idea was that by talking to Caroline she might be awoken from her coma by the sound of a familiar voice. But while his mother could talk to Caroline for ages, Brian felt very self-conscious, and quickly ran out of things to say. He made up tapes of his sister’s favourite music on an ancient recorder, and he played these as a substitute for talking.

After his father’s funeral, Brian noticed a change coming over his mother. She had been taking tablets since the accident. At first, she took some at night to get to sleep. Then she started taking others to wake up in the morning. She began to smell of drink, although Brian never actually saw her taking any. He had asked her when he would be able to return to school, but she said that he couldn’t go back yet, as she needed him to go with her to the hospital. She began to put letters in the bin without opening them.

Visitors and sympathy calls became less frequent as other peoples’ thoughts returned to their own problems. A small report appeared in a daily newspaper stating that no action would be taken against the driver of the police car involved in the accident. A larger feature appeared in a Sunday paper showing Brian’s mother sitting at her daughter’s bedside. Doctors had declined to comment on the chances of Caroline recovering, and the police declined to comment on the accident, apart from offering sympathy to the family. A spin off from this feature was the arrival of a cheque from the Sunday newspaper made up of donations sent in by sympathetic members of the public.

One day, a few weeks after a very miserable Christmas, an officer from the local authority arrived at the house and politely threatened them regarding what the authority would do if Brian didn’t return to school. His mother had had a tantrum, but decided when she had calmed down that he should go back.

Although the familiar sight of the schoolrooms was a relief from the hospital visits, Brian felt like a stranger in many of the classes. His important exams were only a few weeks away and he knew he had little chance of any success. Studying at night was almost impossible, as he had to make up for missing his daytime hospital visits by going in the evenings. Elizabeth had returned to her university work, although she came home every weekend. Their mother talked of Caroline as if she was on holiday or had gone out on an errand. The few people who continued to visit regularly went along with this, and at times Brian felt he was living in a fantasy world rather than the real thing. Inside, every fibre of his being wanted to scream out the reality of the situation, but outwardly he was the dutiful son, making tea and recounting, on demand, past stories of escapades he had had with Caroline.

The local newspaper, the Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser, briefly revived the story. The driver of the police vehicle was a constable who was returning to the police station with a witness in the back of the car. He was accompanied by an inspector. Brian had stared at the picture of the smiling constable posing with his wife and son. The boy looked to be a year or two younger than Brian, but he didn’t know when the picture was taken. It was a lovely family picture. Father, mother, and one son. The policeman deeply regretted the incident, but insisted that it had been a tragic accident. He had confirmed that he was not using his siren at the time of the incident, but was driving with the blue light flashing. They were rushing to the station with an important witness. The young girl and man had appeared in front of his car in an instant, and there was nothing he could have done to avoid hitting them. The blue light was flashing! Brian recoiled from the paper. Frame by frame the picture was explored in his memory. His father pulled his sister off her feet then tried vainly to stop his forward rush. The bonnet of a white car appeared, and his father and sister were thrown up into the air. The car continued across the screen in his mind with the man in the passenger seat holding his arms up to his face and the driver pushed back into his seat as he stood on the brakes. Clouds of thick smoke from the tyres engulfed the back of the car. But no blue light. Later, Brian had noticed a blue light reflected off shop windows and had been surprised the police had arrived so quickly. But at the time he didn’t realise that the car that had struck his father and sister had been a police vehicle. Had its blue light been flashing, he would surely have noticed it. He must be mistaken. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed it in the bright sunlight. Perhaps his attention had been focussed on his family.

Or perhaps the light was only switched on after the accident had happened?

Brian jumped to his feet, dropping the paper on the floor as if it had suddenly become too hot to hold. He tried to get a grip on himself. Whether the light had been flashing or not wouldn’t have changed what happened. His sister’s desire for the ice cream held her full attention. She wouldn’t have noticed the flashing light. But what if she had? Despite the brightness of the sun, she might have noticed the reflection from the shop windows. He shook his head as he tried to convince himself that he was wrong. The light MUST have been flashing. There must have been witnesses who testified to that.

Over the next few days, he tried as best he could to stop thinking about the blue light. But he couldn’t. Television programmes seemed to be full of scenes involving police cars and flashing lights.

His mother’s drinking had become much worse. She was now making no effort to hide the drink and had even been turned away from the hospital on one occasion, as she was considered to be in no fit state to visit. She managed to ensure that never happened again, but she was now taking pills in handfuls. Brian dreaded coming home from school, as he never knew exactly what he would find there. Sometimes his mother would be asleep. Sometimes she would be sitting staring blankly at the television screen. But every evening she would hug him until he felt he would break. The repulsive smell of stale alcohol washed around him as she held him in her grasp.

Eventually, she told him that the doctors had advised her that she should consider allowing the machines attached to Caroline to be switched off. Of course, she would have none of this. Elizabeth’s weekend visits became much less frequent. The story was that she was too busy with her university work, but Brian had overheard Elizabeth and their mother arguing on the phone. Now the phone calls had all but stopped, and on the rare occasion when Elizabeth did phone and spoke to their mother, invariably an argument ensued.

Brian’s teachers were sympathetic and tried to give him as much help as they could. While they offered advice regarding moving on, Brian simply couldn’t. Get up, prepare his breakfast and packed lunch (assuming there was anything fit to eat in the house) and go to school. Come home. Try to find money to buy basic necessities, and then prepare some sort of meal for himself and his mother. Attempt to fit in some studying. Day after day. Now the weekends, once a time for fun, he dreaded more than school days. He tried to tidy the house, do washing and ironing, cook meals, study, care for his mother and so on. The thoughts and ambitions he had always harboured as regards his future became distant memories.

The world Brian had been an active participant in now seemed to be rushing past him like one of those clever television adverts. Everyone else was rushing around getting on with his or her lives and he was stumbling along as if walking through quicksand. The future Brian now thought about was no more distant than a day or even hours ahead. If mum falls asleep early, I can watch a DVD. If I finish studying the next chapter I can go to sleep.

He did his best to hide the situation from neighbours, friends, and even the family doctor. His school friends didn’t want a morose, brooding pal. They wanted good old Brian back, joking, laughing, and clowning around. So that’s what they got. He really, really tried to be back to what he had been. He genuinely hoped this would give him respite from his other life. On occasions it did, briefly, but then the sickness in his stomach would return with a vengeance. The one person he could confide in was Elizabeth, but even with her he played down the situation as best he could. She had offered on many occasions to quit her university course and come home and find work, but Brian would hear none of that talk. In turn, Brian disguised as best he could the deteriorating physical and mental health of their mother.

He even gave religion a try, managing to slip out to attend a few services, then plucking up the courage to seek a one-to-one meeting with a church elder. As with his teachers, the man tried to work things out with him. But the bottom line was that God works in mysterious ways, and this did nothing for Brian. He had no idea what God could have had in mind in taking away his father, sister and reducing his mother to a physical and mental wreck. He was told that suffering was good for the soul. If true, he reasoned he must have an extremely healthy soul.

The examination diet eventually arrived, and Brian did the best he could. He told himself that the results didn’t really matter now anyway. Any thoughts he once had of going to university were gone. He would see what results he achieved, then get a job. That thought cheered him up. He would be earning money and would not have to depend on what was left after his mother had fed her increasing drink and drug problem. The doctor had refused to prescribe increased doses of her pills, but she had managed to find a friend of a friend who could get her what she wanted. At a price.

With the exams past, he skipped the last few weeks of school, reasoning, correctly, that his absence would be overlooked. He managed to find casual work which put much needed money into the family purse. He talked to Caroline and told her all his news, but he saw her less and less as his sister. What he saw was an empty shell. The first time that thought crossed his mind he was overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and reached out to touch her hand. The warmth he felt only served to increase his remorse over the thoughts he had had. But these thoughts wouldn’t go away. He began to wish she would die. The hospital would let her, but his mother would hear none of it. He was sure Caroline would want to die. She was growing up without living any of her life. If only she could wake up for a moment and tell them to leave her alone! That’s what she would do if she could see herself lying there as he did.

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