A Wife Worth Dying For

by Wilson Smillie

  ‘I’ve been discharged,’ Carter said. ‘Faither offered to be my chauffeur for the day.’

  ‘Alice has ID’d Butler. DC Garcia showed her the picture from the Reverend, but she knew him as Moore.’

  ‘Kelsa’s shoes.’ There was a change in Carter’s tone, a focused tightness.

  ‘Oh, you’ve been to his house? Where would we be now, if only you hadn’t marked him as a dead end?’

  ‘Have you matched names of women to the pairs yet?’ Trying to keep Mason on track could be hard work.

  ‘It’s work in progress.’

  ‘Alice and Jodie will be two, Lily a third,’ said Carter. ‘Seventeen women we know nothing about. We’ll need to track them down. I’ll start with Alice once I’ve got a new phone and replaced the SIM.’

  ‘Give us all the new number when you get it,’ Mason said.

  ‘It’s the same number I used to have.’

  ‘He’ll be able to track you again.’

  ‘He’ll know I’m back and he’ll know I’m coming for him.’

  ‘I’ll bet he’s shittin’ himself right now,’ Mason said. ‘Wondering where his next drink is coming from.’

  ‘Things have changed, Nick. Jodie said something to Flowers and me about Butler when she came into the station. I’ve signed up for sniper training at the local college.’

  ‘You’re still the same pish-talker, Carter.’

  ‘Where is Dr Flowers, anyway?’ Carter asked.

  ‘Contract terminated. Again. Now Butler has gone, she’s got nobody to weep with. As a bonus, we need the money saved to pay for your private medical care, even if it was NHS staff doing all the caring. That’s how private enterprise works, I’m told. Fucked if I understand it.’ Mason rang off.

  Faither drove his grandson back to the Royal Infirmary and sat in the café. Dr Murray escorted Carter to Alice’s room. She was awake, but her blue eyes were subdued by drugs. Her face was full of red, grey and yellow blotches, and the monitors remained connected and monitoring.

  ‘She’s doing really well. Memory is still a bit dodgy, but it’s coming back,’ said Dr Murray happily. Alice looked at Angela hazily, but in the look, Carter saw something more. Devotion perhaps, love maybe, appreciation certainly.

  ‘Her physical injuries are another story, though,’ Dr Murray continued the review. ‘A wheelchair for a long time and lots of physiotherapy. After that, who knows what medibots could do.’

  ‘Are you, Sergeant Carter?’ Alice spoke directly to him. ‘Angela says you’ve been tracking down Joe, although his real name was— I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Nathan Butler,’ Carter filled in one blank. ‘Can I show you a picture of some shoes and can you tell me if yours are there?’ He took out his new Samsung phone, opened the ICRS app and showed her the pictures.

  ‘Wow, so many pairs – I wasn’t first; I knew that. I’ve made up what’s left of my mind – if I don’t like you, you can fuck off,’ she smiled. ‘The green stilettos with the ankle straps. He liked me to wear them on dates.’

  ‘How long had you been seeing him?’ Carter let the question hang.

  ‘I knew him from InterMide, but he was seeing someone else for a long time.’

  ‘Kelsa Dunsmuir?’ Carter asked.

  ‘She was a contractor too.’

  ‘When did you start dating him?’

  ‘Christmas – 2017.’

  ‘Did he ever speak to you about Kelsa?’

  ‘That’s how I knew.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She was special, and I wasn’t.’

  ‘What do you remember? The bridge?’

  ‘The drinking was always the start. He’d give me vodka coke sometimes to spice things up, but that night it was rocket fuel. He had a thing about suicide. When I’d had enough of him, he’d said there was only one way out.’

  ‘So you knew?’

  ‘Twice before – but I’d bottled it.’

  ‘Did you jump?’

  ‘After sex on the tomb, I remember being carried, then the noise of traffic and I knew where I was. He put me down and punched and kicked me, told me it was my time. A stocking – he choked me with it. Then I was flying. That’s all I remember.’

  ‘You landed on top of an ambulance and slid off. It ran over you.’

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Have you arrested him?’

  ‘He’s escaped,’ Carter said, disappointed. ‘But you’re safe.’

  ‘She needs to rest,’ Dr Murray said. ‘This has all been very stressful.’

  In Dr Murray’s face, Leccy saw a deeper look. She held his gaze and, for the first time, he really took her in. They turned to leave Alice.

  ‘Who is Kelsa?’ Dr Murray asked as they walked, smiling at his hesitation, misreading it, but prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘Longer than even I know.’

  ‘You can buy me a few drinks before we get to the end of it, then.’

  ‘Yes,’ Leccy said. ‘I will.’

  103

  A Cupboardful of Skeletons

  ‘Lachlan, why are you out of hospital. One of your colleagues informed me you’d been drugged.’

  Carter’s mother-in-law had an eye for detail. He’d called her from the station and confirmed the arrangement. After sending Faither home, he arrived at the mansion on Hermitage Drive in a police car, knowing the Sheriff would still be at his club.

  ‘What on earth have you been up to?’ Judith asked while ringing the service bell. ‘I’ll arrange some tea.’

  Her private sitting room overlooked the back gardens, but tonight the curtains were closed, the heating was on, and it was about to get much colder inside. It was just the two of them. Nathaniel was asleep in his cot upstairs. She sat in a comfortable chair. He made himself comfortable on the sofa.

  ‘Kelsa may still be alive.’ He watched for her reaction.

  ‘Lachlan, how can you say that?’ she stared at him. ‘It’s hurtful, and it’s in poor taste.’

  The door opened, the maid came in. She served tea and cake and cut the atmosphere with a knife. Once she left, Carter sipped his tea and sliced his accusations into easily digestible bites.

  ‘Nathan Butler was the mysterious boyfriend in between Hugo Mortimer and me. He has a psychopathic alter ego called Joe Moore who revels in raping and murdering women. Kelsa was his victim last March, and it was one reason why she wanted to take her life.’

  ‘I don’t really want to hear this,’ Judith said angrily. ‘But you’re not giving me a choice, are you? You’re going to ram it down my throat and to hell with the consequences.’

  ‘I’ve suffered the consequences, and you do have a choice, Jude.’ Carter put a USB stick on the coffee table where she could see it. ‘You can watch and hear it from her own lips. Butler is real, and hours ago, he killed me too. If it hadn’t been for the doctors, you’d have no choice other than to watch a video left to you by a dead man.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lachlan.’ She sobbed into her hands.

  ‘Answer me, truthfully,’ he said. ‘Were you a party to this conspiracy?’

  ‘What conspiracy? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Yes or no.’

  ‘Lachlan, you’re not making sense. I don’t understand.’

  Carter got up and stood over her. ‘Judith Dunsmuir, I am detaining you under caution—’

  ‘Are you out of your mind? No, no, a thousand times no.’ Judith was shaking, a hand across her chest. ‘I feel faint.’

  Carter poured her some fresh tea and sat down.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jude, but I had to know if you were involved.’

  ‘Involved with what, Lachlan?’

  ‘The conspiracy to murder Kelsa while she was in hospital after she gave birth. Butler agreed to do the murder. Others were along for the ride, too.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘Kelsa made videos last year before going into hospital. One was of her actual rape by Butler in M
arch. There is no value in watching it. She saved a video on her laptop in September, for my eyes only, before going into hospital. In it, she was cagey and resorted to hints because she knew I didn’t know the full family background, and I didn’t know what had happened to her as a child. The third video on the laptop was for you, and a digital copy is now on that USB stick. Kelsa knew I’d watch it because she knew the family would cover up its secrets like it’s covered up everything else.’

  ‘Is this a police investigation?’

  ‘According to Kelsa’s testimony, witnessed by a lawyer, James first raped her aged eight. He continued the abuse until her teenage years. Then Mortimer took over until her twenties when he saw profit in her. She was caught in a circular net of abuse and couldn’t get out. She thought she’d found her hero in Joe Moore, but he ultimately wanted her for himself. Nathan Butler was Moore’s public face, and he has committed at least twenty rapes and murders.’

  Judith had turned pale at the revelations. ‘What am I supposed to do with this information?’

  ‘Two nights ago, Butler told me she wasn’t dead. But you would’ve seen her body before it went to the mortuary.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘James wouldn’t allow me to see her.’

  ‘The police have a duty to exhume if they believe she’s been murdered, but the family can challenge in court. It won’t happen quickly, and she’s not going anywhere soon. Meantime, watch her testimony. DC Ellen Podolski will stay here with you. She’s outside in a police car. Stay out of sight when James arrives, I’ll detain him and take him to St Leonard’s.’

  Carter left her sipping cold tea and looking at the USB stick in absolute horror.

  104

  Epilogue

  Judith Dunsmuir sat precisely where she’d been sitting when Carter had left her, two weeks previously. But everything around her had changed. Surveyors, estate agents and workmen had the run of the place, leaving her at the centre of a black hole of professional activity. She wore a stunned look, and Carter wondered if she was on sedatives. He sat on the couch, reached over and squeezed her hand. She’d lost weight since he’d last seen her. Her eyes were red and the skin of her face and neck, once radiant with health, had sagged.

  ‘I’m going to live with my sister in Perth for a while. I cannot bear to be here any longer, Lachlan. For forty-five years, this house was my foundation. But as I slept upstairs, it was rotting from the core. I never knew, and I never thought to enquire, and for that self-deception, I am as guilty as him. She was a troubled child, but this abomination has shattered my self-belief. I doubt I will ever recover.’

  ‘James is under remand,’ Carter said. ‘He’s segregated in Saughton for his own safety. A psychologist and two detectives interview him every day. He’s not giving in easily. We have evidence he paid Butler fifty-thousand pounds on the third of January, via a lawyer called Dominic Love. He took out a loan against your home on the thirtieth of December. On the fourth of January, in the Reverend bar in Dalry, Mortimer gave him a cheque for twenty-six thousand euros, which James deposited in his bank the next day.’

  Judith put her hands to her mouth. ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Bankers never lie about their clients. Throughout, I’d spent too much time looking at who was in the Reverend, when I should have been looking for who wasn’t. Mortimer and Butler were present on the fourth. So was James, or so his mobile phone implied so I needed eye-witness confirmation. An informer who works in the Reverend said James was the man in the snug when shown his picture. As part of their conspiracy, I was to die too. Mortimer has fled. He’s abandoned his family in France, and there’s a European arrest warrant out for him. One out for Butler too.’

  ‘A few days after you were last here,’ Judith said, reeling from the latest news, ‘Robert Stenhouse, our family lawyer, came to see me. He was a long-time friend of James. Robert handled Nathaniel’s residency order on Kelsa’s behalf. He refused to be involved with the interdict against you, because, by then, he’d witnessed Kelsa’s testimony and couldn’t bear to be in the same room as James.’

  ‘About Nathaniel—’ Carter began to speak, but she cut him off.

  ‘Robert gave me an envelope. A private letter from Kelsa, most of which I’d prefer not to share if you understand. She dictated it to Robert in hospital after giving birth. She believed Nathaniel was Butler’s son and that it was unfair of her to expect you to raise the child of a rapist and murderer. She said you knew her feelings.’

  ‘I’d always wanted a son,’ Carter spoke quietly. ‘I don’t really know why, something to do with not having my own parents, I guess. I wanted to name him Daniel, after my dad, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She was adamant about the names, said I would understand one day. I understand now. Nathaniel and James were the two of the three men she hated most in the world. She handed me the biggest clue ever, and I totally missed it.

  ‘You are Nathaniel’s grandmother, so I’d like you to care for him. I won’t contest the residency order. This situation isn’t his fault, so he shouldn’t suffer for the mistakes of his family. But I can’t be the father he’s going to need.’

  Judith stood up and walked to a chest of drawers nearby. ‘Do you really believe she’s alive, Lachlan?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘I’ve spent much time thinking about the implications of exhumation. If it’s not her, she won’t want to be found. Maybe by you, but not by any of us. I’d rather leave things as they are.’ She came back from the chest with an envelope and handed it to him. ‘Robert had an envelope for you too.’

  Written in Kelsa’s scrawl were the words:

  ‘Wherever you go, I will be there.’

  The flap was sealed with a kiss of her scarlet lips. He hugged his mother-in-law and walked out.

  ‘Goodbye, Jude.’

  That same evening, the light dallied higher in the sky. Spring was winning its annual battle for dominance, although it would be months yet before the sun warmed Leccy’s back. The entrance gate to Old Calton Burial Ground was chained and locked with a heavy padlock. Eighteenth-century technology, designed to prevent illegal burials had worked well – there hadn’t been one for more than one-hundred-and-fifty years – so Carter found one of the other ways through its defences.

  This dusky evening, it wasn’t raining like it had been at her burial, but the air was bitterly cold. He pulled the collar of his Crombie coat around his neck and ambled around the sacred site, gazing out to the lights of the Old Town and the Castle on his right. On his left, Arthur’s Seat brooded in the gloaming, a reminder not to take liberties again. He walked down the gravel path to her grave and stood before it. Her headstone wasn’t yet installed, but the flowers had succumbed to the wintery weather. At the spot where he’d prayed only weeks ago, he took out the DNA profile graph that had been sealed inside Kelsa’s envelope. On the reverse were three little words.

  Pick better names.

  ‘Well, babes, if I believe your ex-fiancé, I’m not talking to you at all. But if you are there, I know that you died knowing of our beautiful boy. I hope it made you as happy as it makes me. You knocked the rough edges off me while you lived. But you tore me to shreds in death, and I’ll take a long time for me to recover from you. Our newly named son, Daniel Caroline Kelsa Carter, will grow up knowing how extraordinary his mother really was.’

  His phone pinged, not the ardent tone of an incoming threat from J, but a softer and quieter, read-me-at-your-leisure type of ping. Angie Murray was a Facebook Messenger addict and must be calling him to a pub. He looked at the message.

  ‘One day, I’ll come for the boy.’

  ‘Aye, right,’ Leccy straightened his strong Carter back and spat his words high into the frigid darkness. ‘We’ll see about that.’

  Detective Sergeant Lachlan Carter marched away from the grave, climbed over the wall of the burial ground and vanished into the vibrant city of Edinburgh.

  The End of A Wife Worth Dying For
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  105

  Story Notes

  I’m touching up these notes in February 2021, and Covid-19 measures on web pages do their best to obscure critical story detail readers might want to query as fact or fiction. Researching on the ground is restricted too, as it feels insensitive to ask trivial questions on points of fact when people are dying with the virus.

  The messaging app used by Nathan Butler/Joe Moore does not exist, as far as I know. No one in Government would confirm either way. In my profession, I have spent decades working on the Internet of things, and I genuinely believe untraceable forms of communication for espionage are as likely to exist today as they were in their Cold War heydays. Like a virus, it wouldn’t take much for such an app to jump into civilian mobile phones.

  The Reverend bar on Dalry Road, Edinburgh is a figment of my imagination.

  I’ve taken literary licence with the functions of Police Scotland’s Fettes office block. Although it has extensive grounds and warehouse-style structures, by default, Police Scotland don’t publicly comment on operational matters. The SoCO acronym for Scene of Crime Officers, well-used by crime writers over decades, has now been confined to criminal history in Scotland. Scene Examiner (SE) is the official title. However, I’ve stretched it to CSE to be in step with Crime Scene Manager (CSM).

  For those readers not familiar with Scotland, it has its own legal system, distinct from the English system, but there is cross-over of the Lex in solemn matters. Legal marriage in Scotland is simpler and easier than in England. If Scots couples choose to marry abroad, they cannot “sign the register” when they return home. Instead, they can voluntarily add their marriage to the Book of Scottish Connections held by the Registrar General in Edinburgh.