Short Story: Somewhere in Scotland
“How about the weirdest case you’ve worked?”
“Weirdest? I’ll have to think. I haven’t told you the Jude Harrington story, have I? About the detective up in the Scottish highlands?”
“I don’t think so, no”.
“I never get tired of telling newbies this one. Jude told me it when I was about your age. He was an old fella by then and I never got to know him too well. He retired while I was still working the beat. Wrinkled guy, lots of years on him, a pack a day for forty years type guy - you don’t get many like him anymore. Anyway, I didn’t talk to him much, not many people did, but we’d all have a squad game of poker once a week, every Tuesday night, where we’d bet wages and tell a few stories. Jude would come and sit there sipping on whiskey, occasionally playing a good hand, not a very talkative guy. Well, one day we’re all a bit merry and we keep prying him, asking him to tell us about himself. Rory Keanes, guy a bit older than me, you’ve met him, he kept asking Jude what his craziest copper story was. I mean Jude was old so we knew he must have a few good ones. And Jude says yeah, I’ve a good one, and so we all pause the game and listen to his story, and it was a good one, didn’t expect something like that to come out of his mouth. I made him tell it to every new recruit who came through the door.
“Jude came from a big policy family: father had been a cop, and his grandfather and his uncle, all had been big shots in the force. Then Jude becomes a policeman and it’s slow going, he’s not getting many good cases, makes a few sloppy mistakes, he works his way to DI but he still feels he needs to do something to prove himself. And it just so happens there’s a case going in Scotland that nobody wants. The local police aren’t getting anywhere and there’s already four men dead. So Jude volunteers himself and heads up there”.
“Where in Scotland?”
“Far north of Glasgow or Edinburgh, right up in the highlands, small village, very secluded, I forget the name now actually - Jude said it was like taking a trip 30 years into the past. Lots of farmers and miners. Not many TVs. Said the police force were like the Keystone Cops, very old fashioned, not cut out for doing much apart from breaking up fights and telling kids to be on their way. So, the four murders: all happened in the exact same way. About a week after Jude got there there was a fifth murder and he got to see it for himself. All the victims were men, all killed with a knife while they were sat at home distracted in a chair, you know reading the paper or listening to the radio. The killer came up behind them and stabbed a blade right through the skull, then really went to town on the guys, made a real mess, real “crime of passion”, which was strange because every other part of the killing was well planned. The killer must have known the schedule of the house because he always came when the wife was out out at a friends’ or at line dancing, whatever, always with an alibi. The door to the house was always forced open but he would have had to do it quiet enough that the husband wouldn’t hear. The killer left a calling card after each murder, too: wrote messages all over the walls in the victim’s blood, usually total nonsense stuff about devils and the antichrist, and near the body there was always a red origami figure folded in the shape of a swan, placed on the floor. The same for each murder. Mad, right?”
“So it was a serial killer? I’ve never heard of that one: the origami swan killer”.
“Like I said, it was a small town; you don’t get reporters trawling round places like that, at least not back then you didn’t. Anyways, Jude gets put in charge of a small team of police and they do the usual stuff, start by interviewing all the victim’s wives and neighbours, you know see if anyone heard anything or saw someone fleeing the scene, find out if the guys had enemies. Nothing. They look back over the houses for anything they might have missed. Nothing. And this was the days before DNA evidence. They had no leads. The best theory Jude could come up with was that maybe these five guys were all having an affair with the same woman, you know some girl giving it out to anyone who wanted some, and then this girl had for whatever reason went hysterical and killed them all. It was a stretch but it made a little sense considering the profiling of these guys: they were all boozy old-fashioned types, spent whole weekends disappearing without a call back to the wives to say when they’d be home - but that theory didn’t go down well with the local bobbies, you said a woman was a serial killer back then and you got a whole station of cops laughing at you.
“So Jude has nothing to go on, he just stays in the town, searches for new leads and hopes something turns up. And a good few things turn up. The bodies start to pile up. Crime scene is always the same: mangled husband, forced entry, red swan, bloody writing, no good evidence to go on. All these cops are tearing their hair out and every week or two another body is showing up. Jude stays there for months and months, so long that even the local cops tell him the whole thing is a dead end and he might as well go back to England and forget about this case, but Jude stays, I don’t know why exactly, maybe he had a personal stake in it by then, just had to catch the guy, or maybe he didn’t want to come back with nothing to show for all that time away. The numbers were crazy: there was about 20 men killed when it was all said and done. Jude became a mess over it, started drinking himself silly, snapping at the other DIs, said he grew a big beard that he never washed, looked like he’d come back from working an oil rig by the time he eventually came back”.
“So he never found the killer?”
“Let me finish. He stayed there through the winter, didn’t even come see his family over Christmas incase this guy killed someone else while he was away. He says he was close to giving in and heading back here when another body showed up, but this one was a woman. From the second Jude entered the house he said he knew something was off. The door had been kicked open but the wife had been killed while she sat watching the TV like she didn’t know it was coming. The husband’s alibi was he was out for a drive. And the red origami swan, well, Jude said it was terrible, the worst folding he’d ever seen, said he looked at the swan and knew it was the husband who killed her right away. They brought the husband in and it only took a few hours for him to crack - confessed the whole thing. He broke down crying saying he killed his wife but he didn’t kill any of the others, just tried to make it look like the other killings. He was more worried about getting pegged for the other murders than getting done for his wife. He said the wife had driven him to do it, nagging away at him day-in day-out, very weak-willed guy.
“It gave Jude an idea, though. If this guy had tried to stage his murder like the original killer then maybe some of the other murders were copycats too. They had a look again at the alibis given by the wives of the most recent victims. All the people that confirmed the alibis were women whose husbands had also been killed. They brought the women in and questioned them with the pretense that they’d all done the killings themselves and they started to notice a lot of details that didn’t add up”.
“So there was a club of unhappy wives who used a serial killer as a chance to off their husbands?”
“Well, not exactly. See, after the last few killings turned out to be copycats they went to the few before to see if any of them were too. And turns out there was no “serial killer”, just 20 or so unhappy housewives who decided they’d had enough of their husbands. The whole red origami thing and the writing on the wall, that was all just nonsense they did to throw off the cops, make them think they were all killed by the same person”.
“You’re saying every wife in this town was up for killing her husband?”
“Not every wife, but a good few. It was a weird time back then - all these women in an old fashioned town like that, they just sat around listening to the radio and watching TV and seeing all this feminism and equal pay stuff and “career women” who didn’t need a man, and back in reality all they got is some lumbering drunk who comes back smelling of another woman then beats her around for not having dinner ready on time. Most of these women didn’t work, either, they were just housewives, which gave them a lot of time to sit around with other housewives and complain about their husbands, and one day they must of just snapped and agreed to do something about it. I’m telling you, that case didn’t need a detective it needed a Sociology professor”.
“What happened to Jude in the end? They give him a promotion for figuring it all out?”
“Nope, nothing like that. Like I said: wasn’t a big village so wasn’t a big story. Jude came back and just went back to the beat. Don’t think his family ever thought he was much of a copper besides that case. He never got himself a family, hell, maybe seeing all those murdering wives put him off the whole family thing. Nope, just worked the beat round here, played cards quietly and died a year or two out of the force. Damn interesting case though”.
“Weirdest? I’ll have to think. I haven’t told you the Jude Harrington story, have I? About the detective up in the Scottish highlands?”
“I don’t think so, no”.
“I never get tired of telling newbies this one. Jude told me it when I was about your age. He was an old fella by then and I never got to know him too well. He retired while I was still working the beat. Wrinkled guy, lots of years on him, a pack a day for forty years type guy - you don’t get many like him anymore. Anyway, I didn’t talk to him much, not many people did, but we’d all have a squad game of poker once a week, every Tuesday night, where we’d bet wages and tell a few stories. Jude would come and sit there sipping on whiskey, occasionally playing a good hand, not a very talkative guy. Well, one day we’re all a bit merry and we keep prying him, asking him to tell us about himself. Rory Keanes, guy a bit older than me, you’ve met him, he kept asking Jude what his craziest copper story was. I mean Jude was old so we knew he must have a few good ones. And Jude says yeah, I’ve a good one, and so we all pause the game and listen to his story, and it was a good one, didn’t expect something like that to come out of his mouth. I made him tell it to every new recruit who came through the door.
“Jude came from a big policy family: father had been a cop, and his grandfather and his uncle, all had been big shots in the force. Then Jude becomes a policeman and it’s slow going, he’s not getting many good cases, makes a few sloppy mistakes, he works his way to DI but he still feels he needs to do something to prove himself. And it just so happens there’s a case going in Scotland that nobody wants. The local police aren’t getting anywhere and there’s already four men dead. So Jude volunteers himself and heads up there”.
“Where in Scotland?”
“Far north of Glasgow or Edinburgh, right up in the highlands, small village, very secluded, I forget the name now actually - Jude said it was like taking a trip 30 years into the past. Lots of farmers and miners. Not many TVs. Said the police force were like the Keystone Cops, very old fashioned, not cut out for doing much apart from breaking up fights and telling kids to be on their way. So, the four murders: all happened in the exact same way. About a week after Jude got there there was a fifth murder and he got to see it for himself. All the victims were men, all killed with a knife while they were sat at home distracted in a chair, you know reading the paper or listening to the radio. The killer came up behind them and stabbed a blade right through the skull, then really went to town on the guys, made a real mess, real “crime of passion”, which was strange because every other part of the killing was well planned. The killer must have known the schedule of the house because he always came when the wife was out out at a friends’ or at line dancing, whatever, always with an alibi. The door to the house was always forced open but he would have had to do it quiet enough that the husband wouldn’t hear. The killer left a calling card after each murder, too: wrote messages all over the walls in the victim’s blood, usually total nonsense stuff about devils and the antichrist, and near the body there was always a red origami figure folded in the shape of a swan, placed on the floor. The same for each murder. Mad, right?”
“So it was a serial killer? I’ve never heard of that one: the origami swan killer”.
“Like I said, it was a small town; you don’t get reporters trawling round places like that, at least not back then you didn’t. Anyways, Jude gets put in charge of a small team of police and they do the usual stuff, start by interviewing all the victim’s wives and neighbours, you know see if anyone heard anything or saw someone fleeing the scene, find out if the guys had enemies. Nothing. They look back over the houses for anything they might have missed. Nothing. And this was the days before DNA evidence. They had no leads. The best theory Jude could come up with was that maybe these five guys were all having an affair with the same woman, you know some girl giving it out to anyone who wanted some, and then this girl had for whatever reason went hysterical and killed them all. It was a stretch but it made a little sense considering the profiling of these guys: they were all boozy old-fashioned types, spent whole weekends disappearing without a call back to the wives to say when they’d be home - but that theory didn’t go down well with the local bobbies, you said a woman was a serial killer back then and you got a whole station of cops laughing at you.
“So Jude has nothing to go on, he just stays in the town, searches for new leads and hopes something turns up. And a good few things turn up. The bodies start to pile up. Crime scene is always the same: mangled husband, forced entry, red swan, bloody writing, no good evidence to go on. All these cops are tearing their hair out and every week or two another body is showing up. Jude stays there for months and months, so long that even the local cops tell him the whole thing is a dead end and he might as well go back to England and forget about this case, but Jude stays, I don’t know why exactly, maybe he had a personal stake in it by then, just had to catch the guy, or maybe he didn’t want to come back with nothing to show for all that time away. The numbers were crazy: there was about 20 men killed when it was all said and done. Jude became a mess over it, started drinking himself silly, snapping at the other DIs, said he grew a big beard that he never washed, looked like he’d come back from working an oil rig by the time he eventually came back”.
“So he never found the killer?”
“Let me finish. He stayed there through the winter, didn’t even come see his family over Christmas incase this guy killed someone else while he was away. He says he was close to giving in and heading back here when another body showed up, but this one was a woman. From the second Jude entered the house he said he knew something was off. The door had been kicked open but the wife had been killed while she sat watching the TV like she didn’t know it was coming. The husband’s alibi was he was out for a drive. And the red origami swan, well, Jude said it was terrible, the worst folding he’d ever seen, said he looked at the swan and knew it was the husband who killed her right away. They brought the husband in and it only took a few hours for him to crack - confessed the whole thing. He broke down crying saying he killed his wife but he didn’t kill any of the others, just tried to make it look like the other killings. He was more worried about getting pegged for the other murders than getting done for his wife. He said the wife had driven him to do it, nagging away at him day-in day-out, very weak-willed guy.
“It gave Jude an idea, though. If this guy had tried to stage his murder like the original killer then maybe some of the other murders were copycats too. They had a look again at the alibis given by the wives of the most recent victims. All the people that confirmed the alibis were women whose husbands had also been killed. They brought the women in and questioned them with the pretense that they’d all done the killings themselves and they started to notice a lot of details that didn’t add up”.
“So there was a club of unhappy wives who used a serial killer as a chance to off their husbands?”
“Well, not exactly. See, after the last few killings turned out to be copycats they went to the few before to see if any of them were too. And turns out there was no “serial killer”, just 20 or so unhappy housewives who decided they’d had enough of their husbands. The whole red origami thing and the writing on the wall, that was all just nonsense they did to throw off the cops, make them think they were all killed by the same person”.
“You’re saying every wife in this town was up for killing her husband?”
“Not every wife, but a good few. It was a weird time back then - all these women in an old fashioned town like that, they just sat around listening to the radio and watching TV and seeing all this feminism and equal pay stuff and “career women” who didn’t need a man, and back in reality all they got is some lumbering drunk who comes back smelling of another woman then beats her around for not having dinner ready on time. Most of these women didn’t work, either, they were just housewives, which gave them a lot of time to sit around with other housewives and complain about their husbands, and one day they must of just snapped and agreed to do something about it. I’m telling you, that case didn’t need a detective it needed a Sociology professor”.
“What happened to Jude in the end? They give him a promotion for figuring it all out?”
“Nope, nothing like that. Like I said: wasn’t a big village so wasn’t a big story. Jude came back and just went back to the beat. Don’t think his family ever thought he was much of a copper besides that case. He never got himself a family, hell, maybe seeing all those murdering wives put him off the whole family thing. Nope, just worked the beat round here, played cards quietly and died a year or two out of the force. Damn interesting case though”.
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