A Taste for Malice by Michael J. Malone Page B

and sit back in my seat. ‘What a fucking loser, Joe. Fucked over by everyone who has ever met you.’
    His eyes shift focus. From nowhere to me. There’s no other movement that I can discern. I feel only sorrow for this sad lump of humanity in front of me and I hate what I am doing. I find the coals of my fear of Leonard and breathe heat into them. I am tired of being chased by my thoughts of this man. I hate what he has made of me and I will no longer take it. And the focus of all that is sitting in front of me.
    ‘Don’t you wish they still had the death penalty in this country? Then you could put an end to your pathetic, miserable existence once and for all.’ My face is close to his.
    ‘You fucking pisspot. You sorry figure of a man. What could you have been? You got yourself an education despite everything. And here you are. Bet you have a queue of men outside your cell at night beating themselves off at the thought of your lily-white arse.’
    He continues to stare at me. The only sign he has heard any of my words is the strange light that has come in to his eyes. There is someone there. He’s just been hiding. He opens his mouth to speak and what he says leaves me as the one who has been diminished by my own weapon of choice.

    In the car I think about what has just happened. What did I hope to achieve by visiting McCall? Closure? Redemption? A clue as to where Leonard might be? I got none of that. Instead I allowed a shell of a man to beat me with four words. He said the one thing that would be guaranteed to get through any defences I had managed to construct with my all out attack.
    Four syllables: maximum effect.
    ‘At least I’m safe.’

    Back at the office, Alessandra is about to get into her car. She tells me Mrs Browning phoned in with the details of the woman that recommended Hepburn as a child-minder.
    ‘Can I come?’ I ask with a look that is calculated to make me look like a twelve-year-old whose friends have all pissed off and left him on his own. See me, I’ve no dignity.
    ‘Can I stop you?’ replies Alessandra.
    ‘Not really,’ I press the remote to unlock my car and open the passenger door. ‘You can drive.’
    ‘Gee. Thanks.’
    Mrs Violet Hogg lives in a bungalow in Giffnock. This is a highly desirable part of the city for the upwardly mobile, formerly working class and the recently retired. Nice houses, nice schools, in a nice part of the city. And when we get to Mrs Hogg’s house it is, well, nice.
    ‘What was Mrs Browning able to tell you about this woman,’ I ask Alessandra as she parks the car in front of a short but well-maintained, mono-blocked drive. The border is well populated with the remains of this year’s crop of daffodils. The recent loss of small yellow trumpet heads is offset by the flowers of the rhododendron bush that are just bursting into a furious pink bloom.
    ‘Not that much,’ replies Alessandra. ‘In her mid-forties, widowed in her twenties. Never met anyone else, apparently.’
    We walk up the path and ring the doorbell. The door opens immediately, like the owner of the house is desperate to relieve her boredom.
    ‘Come in. Come in.’ A smiling woman holds the door open and lets us walk past her into the small square of her hall-way. ‘Through to your right.’ A well manicured hand points to an open doorway. She’s taller than Alessandra I realise as we walk past her. And she looks in her early fifties, wearing tight, black jeans and a pink cardigan that is buttoned all the way up to the top. ‘In you go, officers. Have a seat. I expect you’ll be wanting a wee cuppa.’
    Her face wears the gaunt look of the over-exercised and no amount of make-up will disguise the shadows under her eyes. A recent upset, I imagine.
    Alessandra and I walk into a bay-windowed room, bright with sunshine and flowers. Every surface sports a vase with a riot of colour and fragrance spilling from it.
    ‘Have we come at a bad time?’ I ask as my eyes adjust to the