The Lost Sister (23 page)

Wickes was still in the kitchen, cuffed to the boiler. We hadn't moved him far.

We'd left Deborah's body alone. Susan figured it was best to touch as little around the scene as possible. Let the SOCO crew deal with it. Give them an uncontaminated scene to work with.

“We're going to have to answer a lot of questions.”

I was hoisting Mary's body off the floor. She was breathing, maybe a little shallow, but she was going to live. The plan was to get her in the front room, make her comfortable.

I said to Susan, “If I've learned how to do one thing the past year, it's answer questions from the police.”

Sounded flippant even to me.

Wickes had gone silent on us. Was it possible he had never been able to acknowledge the things he had done? That when faced with the consequences of his actions, all he could do was shut down?

I figured him for playing some kind of con game.

Pleading insanity. Trying for a cushy sentence. Solicitors would be lining up around the block to take a high profile case, and this one was going national.

Connolly was going to have my balls when he found out what had happened. He was going to be pissed off that he wasn't in on a scoop like this.

I wasn't happy about moving Mary, but I needed to get her away from the kitchen. Didn't want her to see what had happened to her mother. Gingerly, I lifted her, carried her through to the front room, laid her in the recovery position and placed my jacket over her for warmth. Mild concussion? Couldn't be sure. Not until the ambulance arrived.

Susan's nose had been broken. She said she was fine, but I noticed a slight distance in the way she talked. And her voice sounded thick, bunged up like a bad head cold. Looking at her pupils, I couldn't be sure, but I thought they seemed larger than usual.

I tried to figure how long it would take the ambulance to arrive.

And kept telling myself, it could have been worse.

When I'd first got to my feet in the hall, frustration and anger had been burning me from the inside out. The white hot needles in my brain had made me focus on nothing more than simple revenge.

For Susan.

I'd already seen someone I cared for die.

Someone I loved.

Already let the person responsible disappear. Let them get away with it.

It wasn't going to happen again.

When I confronted Wickes, ready to kill the man, to have the revenge I'd convinced myself I needed…

I couldn't do it.

I'd felt sorry for the bastard.

Imagine that; feeling pity for a fucking monster like Wickes. A man who kept the woman he loved like a prisoner. Killed her dog. Tortured her psychologically and physically.

After making sure that Mary was comfortable, I went out into the hall with Susan. She stepped out of the shattered front door and into the night. Looked up at the stars.

Her feet crunched on the thin layer of night time frost. Her breath misted in the freezing air.

I stood behind her.

“You need to sit down,” I said.

“We have to call someone.”

I nodded, looked at the car. “She said the payphone was, what, maybe a mile or two?”

Susan nodded.

“You think you're okay to keep on that bastard back there?” I jerked my head back towards the house. Meaning Wickes.

“I don't think he'll be trouble.”

I grunted, non-committal. I'd seen the way his attitudes and behaviour could change. “I can get a signal before then, I'll call.”

“Steed, you need to sit down yourself.” Susan placed both hands on either side of my face. Her skin was warm, and I wanted to close my eyes, just fall forward and collapse into her.

She said, “Your pupils are dilated.”

Saying,
concussion
without mentioning the word.

The crashing waves in my skull had quit. I felt fine. Unsteady, but I figured I was okay to drive.

I'd rest soon enough.

What choice did we have? I wasn't taking him back in the car. Not with a dead body and both Susan and Mary in the state they were in. We needed coppers. We needed paramedics.

I'd take the car, head out, get a signal on the phone. Let them know where we were. What had happened.

Finally, I accepted this was something I couldn't handle alone.

And when I opened my eyes again and looked at Susan, I realised something.

I wasn't handling it alone.

I used to have nightmares. Dreaming of enclosed spaces. Blood. The still aftermath of the long scream of violence.

I would see faces I knew.

And I wouldn't know them, twisted as they were by the sight of blood and death.

When I woke up from these nightmares, I'd roll over and puke in the plastic tub I'd learned to keep beside the bed.

The bile gathered.

Susan was slumped in the hall near the kitchen, her legs bent up towards her chest, her head in her hands. Blood on her clothes.

I'd been gone maybe twenty minutes. Got the signal. Made the call. They were on their way.

It was over.

Except, I came back to…

What the fuck had happened?

I knelt beside Susan. She was breathing. Shallow.

But she was alive.

I dropped the phone. It clattered to the wooden floor.

Said, “Mary?”

Susan looked up at me and nodded to the kitchen. “In there,” she said.

I walked into the kitchen.

Deborah was still discarded on the floor.

Wickes was next to her.

The axe was buried in his chest. Didn't even look like he'd tried to ward off the attack. When I'd left he'd been close to comatose, had to wonder if maybe when the attack came he just no longer cared. One arm was stretched out, his palm resting gently on the small of Deborah's back. The gesture seemed bizarrely tender considering everything I knew about the man.

The floor was slick with blood.

And Mary was sitting against the back door, looking at the corpses.

Blood on her hands. The IPod I'd seen earlier in the front room plugged into her ears. I could hear the tinny sound of music emanating from the tiny speakers.

She had it turned up loud.

Drowning out the world.

She hummed with the music. The notes coming out in a halting fashion. She wasn't really thinking about what she was doing. Just trying to comfort herself.

As I came through the door, she stopped the humming, looked up at me and said, “He had to die. You understand, don't you? For what he did.”

I took a breath. The air tasted tart, something coppery there. Maybe the blood. Maybe my imagination. I heard sirens.

Mary was unresponsive after that. When I helped her to her feet, she took my outstretched hands with a kind of welcoming gratitude and allowed herself to be led back to the front room where she sat on the sofa again and started to shiver. I went to the bedroom and grabbed a blanket to put around her shoulders. Better than my jacket.

Susan and I talked in the hall, kept the door open so we could see Mary.

“So what do we do?”

I took a deep breath. “We can't let her take the blame for this. She's…she's been through a lot. I don't think –”

“We lie?”

“Bend the truth.”

“How?”

“I killed Wickes. Self defence. After he killed Deborah, he was coming back for you and me. I finished him off.”

“I had him cuffed to the radiator.”

“So we uncuff him. You have a better story?”

She looked ready to say something, then cut herself off at the last minute. Spun around on her heels and punched out against one of the walls.

“You were in deep water last year, Steed. When they thought you killed that man at the Necropolis.”

“I did kill him.”

“In fear for your own life.”

I didn't say anything.

Susan hesitated for a second, tried to catch my eyes as though she might see something in them.

I wasn't sure she'd see anything she liked.

“The story works if I attacked him,” I said. “Can't think of anyone on the force would question that.”

“And what about your business? I know you were on thin ice with the Association and the Security Council.”

I looked through into the front room at the girl with the tattered blanket round her shoulders, her music blaring, her body shivering.

“Sometimes you have to make the sacrifice,” I said, finally meeting her eyes. “We need to be together on this.”

She hesitated.

“Forget our friendship,” I said. “If we don't agree on what happened tonight –”

“And what about Mary?” asked Susan, her voice insistent.

“I don't – I think she'll stick with the story. I think she'll want to forget this. Go back to her life. Look at her.”

Susan did, peering through the door.

I said, “If I was her, I'd take any opportunity to erase this night.” When Susan turned back to look at me, I said, “Wouldn't you?”

DCI Ernie Bright acted the professional in front of his men.

Had them clear up while he walked us to a cop car. We leaned against the body while he smoked a cigarette, tried to think of something to say.

Caught between professionalism and fatherly concern.

I noticed one of the coppers trying to talk to Mary as he led her out to a waiting car. She wasn't saying a word. Hadn't uttered a sound since she told me that Wickes deserved that axe in the back of the neck.

Ernie said, “Two bodies. The kitchen looks like a slaughterhouse.”

“The big bastard,” I said. “He killed Deborah Brown. The woman.”

Ernie nodded. “And who killed him?”

I hesitated.

Susan was standing beside me. Hadn't said a word since her father showed up.

I remembered our conversation in the car coming over here.

Would she bring that up here?

I was willing her to stick to the script as we'd agreed. Someone had to take the blame. Who could shoulder the responsibility. Knew enough of guilt that they could shoulder someone else's as well.

I started to open my mouth.

Susan said, “I did, sir.”

It was the
sir
that got me.

But I think it hit Ernie even worse.

I stood near the overgrown area that might once have been a vegetable garden. I could see the remains of canes and some signs of what might once have been an attempt to tame the weeds.

Ernie came and stood beside me.

I said, “She's giving a statement?”

“To another officer. I can't be involved.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“DI Lindsay will take charge of this investigation.” He shrugged. “Wish it could have been someone else, but there we are.” He was dancing around something else. I waited for him to finally get to the point. “So tell me…would she lie to protect you?”

“No,” I said. The lie came easy. But we'd both agreed: once the story was out, we would stick to it.

“Did you tell her about our little encounter the other day?”

I couldn't say anything to that.

“Something in her face, McNee. She's a good copper, and grand at the old bluff. But she could never fool her dad.” He seemed ready to smile at that, but dropped it fast before it was fully formed.

I hesitated for just a moment before I said, simply, “She's your daughter. If you talk to her –”

“She's my daughter,” he said. “And there are some things I don't think I'll ever be able to explain to her.”

The next morning I woke up late, buried beneath heavy covers, feeling strangely detached from the world. I put my feet out on to the floor, stretched and tried to figure if I could separate the disjointed dreams from what had really happened.

I stumbled to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror.

Couldn't say what looked back at me.

Not with any certainty.

“Tell me, son, what separates us from them.”

Three weeks before the accident that killed Elaine. Drinking with Ernie Bright at the Phoenix Bar on the Perth Road, tucked into a corner booth. A pep talk, if you like. He was fond of what he called informal training. Teaching the stuff the textbooks can't or won't.

“Honesty, son,” he said. “Honesty and standards. All that good stuff.” He smiled as he talked.

Looking back, I had to wonder if he believed it. Convinced himself of his own version of the truth? Because he was still hip deep with Burns and his crew in those days. A sacrifice of his principles for the greater good?

Smelled like shite to me.

“A good copper doesn't have to lie or cheat to get what he wants. Or to stoop to the level of the criminal, you understand? He's better than that. Appearances count.”

Don't they just?

Something had been slipped under my door.

An envelope.

I tore it open to look inside. Photocopied police reports. A transcript. One I didn't want to read.

Present at interview:

Mary Furst

DC Dorothy Shepherd

DCI Ernie Bright

Also present: Rebecca Simpson (supporter)

 

Mary was a minor in the eyes of the law. No matter how mature she might appear there were guidelines that dictated how they would interview her. At least one female copper, hence the inclusion of DC Shepherd who would lead the interview. And a supporter; an independent party to oversee the interview. In this case, Rebecca Simpson was a social worker assigned by the council to Mary Furst's case. It could have been Jennifer, but Mary was refusing to speak to the woman who had raised her.

I could only imagine what was going through the girl's head.

 

DC S
HEPHERD
: In your own words, Mary, I need you to tell us how Ms Brown made contact with you. M
ARY
: Contact?

DC S
HEPHERD
: How did she make herself known to you?

M
ARY
: She was my art teacher.

DC S
HEPHERD
: That's not the whole truth, is it? M
ARY
: I didn't. No one told me the truth. DC S
HEPHERD
: We're not here to talk about that.

That's a matter –

DCI B
RIGHT
: For another time. A private conversation with her parents. Who I still think –

M
ARY
: They're not my parents.

DC S
HEPHERD
: But they brought you up. They raised you.

M
ARY
: She was my teacher. I liked her. She listened to me. It was…I don't know, like the first time I ever connected with anyone.