The Devil's Due: A Cooper and McCall Scottish Crime Thriller by Ramsay Sinclair (nonfiction book recommendations TXT) 📕

a glance back behind, a pair of women’s boots lay near the door from Laura’s feet, mud covering them entirely.

“Laura?” I attempted another try.

Her baby wailed once more, and that was all it took. I pushed her bedroom handle pushed down softly and gingerly opened the piece of wood which separated us.

“Hello?” I whispered. The first sight my eyes set upon was a cradle, holding a swaddled baby, crying its tiny head off.

“Shhh,” I coaxed him, two gorgeous eyes of green admired me greatly, chubby cheeks shone radiantly from its own saliva. Gross but sweetly innocent.

“Where’s your mummy?” I asked, expecting no reply.

Laura’s room featured an insight into her faith, a Bible placed carefully on top of her bedside table and a decorative cross hanging on the wall. Church robes hung over her wardrobe. A strong smell still filled the air, as though a prayer candle had recently burned out.

A swipe of mud caught my eye. I double-checked my own shoes to ensure mine wasn’t leaving those traces. No. Mine were damp, but not muddy. They directed inside of a smaller room, attached to Laura’s bedroom, undoubtedly an en-suite.

“Laura? Are you in there?” I pressed my ear to the door, unwilling to burst through, in case Laura was having a bath. That would be an awkward encounter. A definitive noise of rushing water echoed against her bathroom tiles.

I waited. And waited. It wasn’t until a puddle of water escaped underneath the door that fear gripped hold of my heart. My fist pounded forcefully.

“Laura?” I wriggled the door handle to unhook whatever latch she’d done up.

Thankfully, the latch was relatively weak, weak enough for me to undo. An unforgiving sight met my eyes. One which I could never unsee.

“Oh my God,” I breathed openly, blaspheming in vain of the lord. An uninhibited, frightful gasp erupted behind as Jimmy had come to show me one of his favourite pictures he’d drawn at home. The paper floated away from his hands, landing at my feet.

“Mum?”

22

“Ah, shit,” I cursed at the woman lying in her bathtub surrounded by blood-splattered walls. Her wrists were slit deeply with a singular razor blade lying in the water, crimson still pouring out from her veins. “Classic case of suicide. It’s like a scene from Jaws in here.”

A puddle of water covered my suit shoes in a washed-out blood mixture. My eyes squinted and narrowed accordingly, gazing closer at the slits on her arms.

“Agreed.” McCall smacked her lips together, focusing away from the woman’s limp body. “Poor boy,” she said about the sobbing kid outside.

I glanced out of the small bathroom window below. Blue lights flashed on and off, various police officers speaking to the woman who found Laura’s body.

“And the baby,” McCall’s voice cracked unexpectedly. I glanced over to see her head buried between both hands, hiding her face from view.

“Don’t cry. I’ll have to watch. Do you know how boring it is to watch someone cry?” I tried to lighten the mood, but it was clear I needed to do more. Both arms opened of their own accord and pulled her into a protective hug. McCall breathed in and out deeply, her ragged breath warming my chest. My arms hung limply around her shoulders. “Don’t you dare tell anyone about my secret kindness. They’ll ne’er take me seriously again.”

“W-we wouldn’t want that,” McCall blubbered, and her gingery hair tickled my nose. I rested my chin on top of her head to calm her juddered breathing.

“God,” McCall whispered feebly into my chest. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise.”

“They’re too small to see something like this,” she said from experience. I remembered from Jack Harper’s interview that McCall lost her mother as a young girl.

“Did you, uh…?” I struggled to word my question correctly. “Did you see your mother when she—?”

“Died?” McCall helped me out, wriggling away from my grasp. I let her go, allowing her to stand up on her own two feet. “Yeah, I was the one who found her.” She wiped her face rather viciously free of tears, angry at being so vulnerable.

“I’m sorry,” I admitted slowly, knowing that my comment couldn’t change the past.

“Yeah,” she replied, for lack of a better response.

A man burst through the room unexpectedly and brought us back to earth, aware we were standing opposite a dead woman. It was the pathologist, unhappy to see us for a second time.

“This is a cheerful scene,” he perkily noted.

“Someone died. Doesn’t that bother you?” McCall, especially in her fragile state, couldn’t stand his happiness, whistling away cheerfully.

“Not really.”

I begged him to rephrase that, mouthing ‘no’ to him, with wide eyes. I discreetly tilted towards McCall to show she was upset.

“Ah.” He caught my gist. “I spend every day alone with these people. I’ll have another one to talk to now.”

“That’s creepy,” McCall bluntly said. “Even so, you could at least be sensitive to other people’s emotions.” McCall wandered out, leaving him to it.

He whistled, visibly taken aback. “What's up with her?”

“Quite frankly, none of your business,” I said to protect McCall’s privacy, certain she would do the same for me. Then I chased after McCall, worried for her state of mind. She’d already retreated outside, into the cool night air.

The woman who had called this in insisted CID and forensics take a look at the death. I had no doubt this would all be filed and never looked at again, for we dealt with so many suicides weekly.

“Found anything?” I asked forensics, half-heartedly keeping up appearances.

“Yeah, only half of a boot print,” one of them replied. “Male, possibly. Roughly a size nine, at a guess.”

“Male?” I asked again. “That can’t be right. No men live here, unless she’s got a lover boy. Can’t imagine that’s the case, due to…” I gestured towards the huge cross nailed to her wall.

The forensics officer shrugged. “Like we said. Size nine. Unless you want to believe she had size nine feet, I’d suggest it’s probably not suicide.” His tone was cocky, as though I hadn’t presumed that since they