The Lost Sister (3 page)

The report wrote him off. He wasn't behind it.

I was inclined to agree, but figured I had to speak to the lad myself. People are more than words on a page. Sometimes even the clearest reports can leave out the subtlest of details.

All the same, reading the report, I was thinking, Jesus, when you can split with a teenage boy and he shrugs it off like a rational human being…you're truly something special.

The school and Mary's social life had been the investigation's primary area of focus. Not that the police found much of anything except a whole lot of concerned friends.

When they looked to her family, of course, things got interesting.

They say you can choose your friends but not your family.

Truer words never spoken.

It wasn't her immediate family that caught my attention of course.

But you'd never choose to have a man like David Burns as your uncle. No matter how many times removed. And godfather? Your moral guardian and role model? Aye, forget that one.

When I called Susan back, I asked her if she was sure they had the family connections right.

“Oh, aye. Dad's heading round to talk to the old git this afternoon. See what he knows.” She hesitated. I could sense her gearing up to ask a question I'd been trying to avoid myself. “Given your…history with Burns, do you really want to touch this case?”

I didn't say a word.

Thinking about David Burns.

The old git
.

Old bastard, more like.

It's hard to open the local papers and not see a mention of the man. He's a local hero. Dundee Boy made good, as so many people say. Has interests in the local community, does what he can, publicly, to be seen attempting to rejuvenate the poorer areas, keeping the profile of the city high and proud.

A local hero. A good man.

A scumbag.

All that charity, that social work, those exhaustive public appearances are just so much smoke. He knows how to play the game, act untouchable. Except he's knuckle deep in drug money, extortion rackets, underground deals, blackmail. You name it, he's behind it. The kind of man who's unafraid to employ violent methods as a means to an end. Long as he doesn't have to get involved himself. Oh, no. He's got an image to maintain. And, aye, he'd say himself he has limits. Never anything with children. Never in his street. Call that his moral yardstick.

A year earlier, I'd got myself involved with his affairs. Almost lost my life because of it. Came out with a broken hand and a good friend lying close to death in the hospital.

Swore I'd never go near Burns again.

Or else I'd crucify him the first chance I got.

I'd called him the devil incarnate. And worse. Hard to believe he was related – however distantly – to Mary Furst. The saintly girl I'd been reading about in the police reports.

But there it was: this missing girl, no matter how smart and sweet she was…she had a dangerous kind of family.

And maybe that put a whole new spin on her disappearance.

“What do you figure?” I asked Susan. “Turf war?”

Susan seemed to think about it. “You mean Gordon Egg? We've been talking to boys in the Met. Those flames have been extinguished.”

“You really believe that? Last I knew, Egg had a price on our man's head.”

“Call it an uneasy truce between London and Dundee, then. Whatever, this has nothing to do with Burns's…private business.”

Some euphemism.

I paced my office to the windows. Outside, the skies were dark, the clouds hanging heavy.

“It's not too late for you to back out, Steed,” Susan said. “Connolly would understand.”

I made this non-committal sound. As in: I'd consider it. My track record for listening to good advice was spotty at best. And worse when it came to listening to Susan. She knew that as well as I did, didn't push any further. She'd said her piece; what more could she do?

Susan said, “You want to ask questions, you want to tag along, you talk to Dad.”

I took a breath. One of those prices I wasn't sure I could pay.

Still thinking:
David Burns
.

I told Susan I had things to do. Remained deliberately unclear on whether I wanted to remain on board with the Furst case.

I hung up the phone. My chest started to constrict, like someone had wrapped an iron band around it and the metal was shrinking fast. I fought to control my breathing. Feeling dizzy, a little nauseous. My mind moving fast, replaying my conversation with Susan.

Concentrate on the moment. The job. The case.

But other memories intruded. Like my life had disconnected itself. A tape winding back on itself; becoming twisted like a nest of serpents.

I remembered:

Soft skin beneath my lips, the scent of perfume knocking my brain out of my skull.

The agony as someone stamped their foot down hard on my fingers on a rain soaked evening.

My hands seized up, muscles contracting, blood rushing away from my extremities. I knew what was happening, had to fight to control it.

I fell back against my desk, just about toppled right over the top. Steadied myself. Concentrated on staying upright.

On the rhythm of my breathing.

Everything else was just a distraction.

Concentrate on the breathing.

Attacks like these used to come on and off during my teenage years. They lingered, recurring once or twice since my mid-twenties. But never anything quite like this. Easy to pass them off as growing pains over a decade earlier. But now…could I dismiss them?

Maybe there was a reason. A psychological tick that sent my body into some hellish fight-or-flight parody without warning. But I figured it wasn't anything I wanted to explore. Not yet, anyway.

DCI Ernie Bright got out from behind his desk when I knocked at the door. He moved slowly. Old age, maybe. I didn't want to think about it.

The desk itself was cluttered. Paperwork spread out. Family photos, most of them old, featuring a Susan young enough you had to wonder if the newly minted Detective Constable wasn't embarrassed to walk in here.

Then again, maybe that was the idea.

Ernie gave me the courtesy smile, but I couldn't read what was going on in his head. Maybe I was distracted by how much he'd aged. Or else he was just that good.

It had only been a couple of years since we last spoke, but Ernie looked more like ten had passed. His hair – salt and pepper before – had turned a distinguished silver and was longer; swept back from the temples. It gave him a distinguished air. Aristocratic seemed a good word to describe the way he looked now. His face was thinner than I remembered, too, and the lines cut deep into his weathered skin. The eyes were sunk deep, too, but still flashed with the energy of a much younger man.

He said to me, “You're looking older.”

I hadn't considered how much I might have changed.

Ernie gestured for me to sit down. “I'm going to guess at something, Ja – uh, I mean McNee.” Remembering how I didn't like people to use my first name. I used to kid that I even made my parents call me McNee. No one's ever been sure how serious I am on that point. And Mum and Dad aren't around any more to ask. Ernie was grinning at me, like he'd made the slip on purpose. Wanting to see if I was still the same man he had known.

In some ways, I hoped not.

“You were always good with wild guesses,” I said. “Hunches, too.”

He snorted, put his hands behind his head as he leaned back in the swivel chair. “If I don't give you access, you're going to poke around anyway.” Not a question.

I couldn't say anything in response. Opted for a half-shrug.

He said, “You were a tenacious little prick even as a constable. One of the things I liked about you.” An accusation?

Fuck him if it was. He wasn't my superior any more. Nothing he could do to me that hadn't been done. So why was I still on the defensive?

“The same can't be said for others.”

He got it. “Lindsay's not attached to this case. Oh, I know he'd be all over it. You know how he is since he had his wee lad, but a case like this requires someone with a…subtle touch.”

Subtlety wasn't one of Lindsay's traits. A lot of people in the department talked about how he got results, as though that one simple fact somehow excused the fact he was an unreconstructed arsehole.

In the police, results wash away all other sins.

I pressed on: “How much access do I get?”

Was he happy that I'd avoided airing my opinions on Lindsay? Did I see a smile play about the DCI's usually tight lips? Christ, time was I might have been able to tell. He had been my self-appointed mentor and now…now we were strangers. Alien to each other in the worst possible ways. He said, “How much do you want?”

“Much as I can. All the way. I need to know when there's a break. What the break is. What it means. I need to be there in meetings, observing interviews, all that good stuff.”

“You're asking a lot for a courtesy.”

I gave it a shrug. Emphasis; making sure he got the point. “Like you said, I'm a tenacious prick.”

“Jesus, what is it with you? You're bored, don't have anything else to do?” He shook his head, leaned forward. “When I tell you to back off, you do it. Don't think I don't know about you and David Burns. I don't want this getting personal. There's a girl's life at stake. So when I say…that's the condition.”

I hesitated long enough to worry him. Then I said, “That's the condition.” Shot him a smile, too. Playing with him just a little.

First time I met Ernie Bright, he called me up to give evidence on an internal police matter. A DI by the name of Griggs had got himself in hot water over his handling of a murder case. I'd been present at the scene when Griggs had taken charge. Didn't do much more than guard the door at the crime scene. Standing around the hall of a halfway house keeping away the lookie-lous and the gawpers who came out to see what was going on.

All of them wondering, who finally got killed. And was it by their own hand or someone else's?

It has been a shitty detail, but I followed the chain of command in those days. And why not? One of these days, I figured I'd be the one asking some poor sod to do the dirty work. The copper's version of karma.

I remember waiting to go in for the interview, sitting on a felt-covered chair in the hall outside and sweating beneath my uniform. Not knowing what to do. Whether there was a right or wrong way to approach this.

I'd picked up fast on the politics of policing. As with every other job, there were ways of approaching affairs that had little to do with the work and everything to do with saying the right things to the right people.

When the Chief Constable poked his head out and asked me to come in, I wasn't even sure I could stand. In those days I was always waiting to be found out as some kind of fraud. As much as I loved and respected the Job, I always worried that maybe I wasn't right for it. Or it wasn't right for me.

When I walked in, I saw three men behind the desk. The Chief, imperious. The air of Ming the Merciless about him. Minus the dodgy facial hair. And he was shorter, fatter than the Emperor of Mongo. Of course, it was all in the eyes. Attitude is what people remember about you.

On the other side of the Chief sat two men in uniform. One was DCI Black; a grumpy bastard, originally from Lothian. Griped constantly about Dundee. Kept going on about how much cleaner Edinburgh was. How much more beautiful. Christ, even if it wasn't true, I had the feeling he'd find some way to justify his hatred of the city; Dundee has a polarising effect on those who come from the outside.

The other copper present was Ernie Bright. In those days I only knew him by sight and reputation. He had a good reputation. The word,
fair
was used. Along with,
a good man
. Aye, try throwing a brick in a room full of senior officers and see if you hit many of those.

The meeting went as well as could be expected. I didn't know anything, they tried to make out like maybe I did. I kept to my line, they finally let me go.

When I was walking down the hall, I heard footsteps behind me, turned and saw Ernie Bright following me. I stopped, let him catch up. He leaned close, and said in a voice close to whisper: “You ever want to transfer to CID, let me know.”

Anyone asks what I did in there to impress him, their guess is as good as mine.

Do I ever regret it? Leaving the force?

Aye, of course I do.

But there are a lot of things I regret. Some of them are stupid. Others make me want to get hit by lightning. But isn't everyone the same?

We all have our ways of dealing. Time was I'd have hashed things out with Elaine. My sounding board. No idea how she put up with the rants, my disjointed monologues and irrational annoyances. Ask me why she loved me and I couldn't say. I'm just glad she did.

When she died, I couldn't go to her graveside. Afraid of how it might affect me. To break down like I feared was a sign of weakness that Scottish men are taught to dismiss.

We don't break down. We don't cry.

At least, that was the excuse I used for myself.

What I held on to for the longest time was the anger. Finding it hard to let go.

But after a while, I came to accept her death. And the anger that came with it. Started making regular visits to the cemetery. Feeling like maybe I should talk, but not wanting to be one of those lunatics mumbling to themselves in the graveyard. They say it's perfectly healthy; I say it's just an embarrassment.

Didn't stop me wanting to say things, though.

The grave is simple, erected by her family. I didn't have much say in the matter. There's an inscription in French on the headstone. I don't speak the language so well, but her sister told me what it meant:

Our nature consists in movement. Absolute rest is death.

Maybe if I'd known that earlier, a lot of things would have been brought into perspective.

It was late afternoon when I stood in front of the stone, read the inscription even though I could quote it without hesitation.

I closed my eyes, tried to remember her face. Little by little, she was escaping me. Getting so I could only remember how she looked when I came across old photographs.

Some days, I thought I was betraying her by starting to heal.

Overhead, heavy skies threatened. The grass at my feet was stiff, with a thin covering of frost that sparkled gently in the late afternoon light. I could feel it crush when I pressed my weight down on the ground. Wind rattled at the branches of old trees that stood in the grounds of the Balgay cemetery, and I felt a strange sense of loneliness. I was the one living person in a field of the dead.

I crouched in front of the headstone, traced the dates that marked Elaine's life with my index finger. Closed my eyes.

Tried to conjure up her face.

Wished she was here with me. To answer my questions. Offer reassurance. Remind me what it was to be in love with life again.

Here was the reality: she wasn't coming back.

I was alone.

In the end, that was the one inescapable truth of my life.

Maybe I was alive. Had moved to a place of understanding, after all.

In the car, I read through the files again. Looking for something I had missed. Drinking in the details.

Working it like a real case and not just a favour for a friend.

I was parked near the cemetery gates; had turned the interior lights of the car on as the day darkened considerably. Grey light made it hard to see, and I was grateful for the shelter as rain started to whip down over the car. The winds got up enough that I could feel a gentle rocking motion.

Reading the files I kept coming back to one name: Burns.

Susan had told me she didn't suspect the disappearance had anything to do with Mary's Godfather's more unsavoury connections. Can't say that I was so sure.

The thing I had to figure, why was I drawn to this case? It wasn't about doing Connolly a favour.

And could I say that the girl's disappearance affected me that much? Maybe reminded me of someone I used to know. Some girl at school, perhaps.

Or was I looking for some closure with Burns? Some way of taking revenge by tying him into the girl's disappearance. By making him the bad guy. By exposing the bastard once and for all.

Was I looking to make this my case for all the wrong reasons?