by Caro Ramsay
‘Sorry?’ Dad shook his head. He got to his feet then Heather placed a hand on his knee, almost begging him to sit down.
‘Megan, pour us some more coffee.’
‘She was so good to me,’ I said. ‘I liked her.’
‘Of course you did, she went out of her way to get you to like her.’ Drew talked, we sipped the coffee and I looked at the photographs. ‘Her mother, Aileen Sullivan died in rather odd circumstances, dead in the bath. She had fallen asleep and drowned, wee Deborah was downstairs at the time, the only other person in the house. It makes you think.’
‘She’s a black widow?’ asked Heather, shivering.
‘She’s a something. We are opening the investigations into the death of her son, Paul. Of Andrew McColl a man she lived with until he was found with the back of his head smashed in.’ He pointed to a photograph of a vanilla wall with a broad crimson smear tapering down to a slumped bloodied figure on the carpet. ‘And of this poor man Bernard Long.’ He tapped at the photograph of the old man, sitting up in bed. ‘She did an angel of death job on him. There are others, other men she drew into her net, picked clean then disposed of. She got close to people then killed them. But she had to keep Carla alive because of you, Tom, you would notice if that particular little albatross around her neck suddenly turned up dead. Carla was only sacrificed because there was a greater prize on the table, namely Megan. Because Ivan Melvick would have nothing to do with Debs while Carla or Beth was on the scene. She must have thought all her Sundays were coming at once when Melissa removed herself from the picture. And Debs fancied the Melvick money, don’t get me wrong. It was the money, and there was Megan. Her own little project.’
‘That’s total nonsense.’ Dad looked as though he was keen to leave, but the right thing to do was to stay.
‘Is it? Just think of all that she had here. Debs came here just as Carla was getting her foot in the door, and Deb’s saw the way the wind was blowing. Carla was growing, she’d soon cease to be of financial benefit to her mother, or her father. Carla was easy to dispose of when Debs had the chance of getting her hands on all this, she only had to get rid of your wife. She knew Melissa was getting married and would move away. Then remember, Melissa came back, ill, and Deb moved in to nurse her, that was moving a fly onto the web. And then, the bonus of little Megan coming back, and there’s Debs, all supportive, getting a job here, being meek and mild. Befriending Megan, I saw it with my own eyes. Tell me, Mr Melvick, she was an attractive woman, was your relationship with her always professional?’
Heather rolled her eyes.
And then I got a whiff of her perfume, the perfume that Deb stole, that hung around in the bedroom Dad slept in. Deborah.
‘You should all hang your heads in shame, you were all so busy with your own importance, and you didn’t see what was going on under your nose.’ He held up a photograph for us all to see. I didn’t recognize it at first. It was Carla, much younger, much thinner, lying in a hospital bed, covered in bruises, tubes going in and out.
‘Bloody hell.’ That was Tom.
‘Yes, that’s what I don’t get. I bet that you all deluded yourselves about Carla, well I think it is more true that none of you had the compassion or the empathy to realize that this was going on. This wee kid who was in all your lives yet, you all missed the abuse, the bruises, the broken arms, the fact she was dragged out the hospital with pneumonia, with a severe head injury. She was abused by her mother’s boyfriends. Her behaviour was appalling, and you didn’t question why. None of you. Even the professional here. You must have seen her, heard the story. You’ve been a friend of the family, did Beth never mention Megan’s strange little friend.’ He looked at Dr Scobie. ‘And why was that, because she wasn’t worth your time or your attention? Too busy pampering the privileged offspring of a rich man to have any humanitarian concern for a kid who was really vulnerable? Shame on you, shame on you all.
‘So I will leave you with that. You deserve all that’s coming to you.’
And with that, he walked out.
The drawing room door slammed behind him, then the louder bang of the front door. There were voices raised outside.
‘Oh dear,’ said my dad. ‘There is truth in what he says.’
‘I’ll pour us that coffee,’ said Heather, her smile rather fragile.
Carla
There were no young men around for me to mess about with, the cops knew where to find me at the weekend that last winter, pissed on Thunderbird and cider, if I was lucky some vodka. I had a reputation as a cheap tart and an easy screw, but I always made them pay for it and I put the money away for a rainy day that never came as I never realized how much it was pissing down on me all the time. What I really should have been saving for was my day when the sun shone.
In the summer something changed. I was in trouble again, this time they were talking about a residential care order and Dad had taken me to the Italian House where he was working. We had driven up north, I was nursing a huge hangover and was in my bed all day. But the next day, he had to pop into work and then I saw the gates, the garden, the lake, the trees that dipped their leaves in the water like fingers off a rowing boat. I had never seen anything so beautiful, or smelled air so clear. My dad let me climb on the wall at the gate and pointed.
That was the first time I saw the Italian House. I think I had heard about it and the folk that live there with their good manners and good morals.
Ivan, he was called Ivan Melvick, he was a handsome man, getting more handsome as he got greyer. I had seen him around, he was blond now going grey, hair slightly long, a romantic, and I thought he was a man who might save me.
But he couldn’t.
I know who did it. I think Megan knows but, not only does she not hear what she doesn’t want to hear, she also does not see what she doesn’t want to see. Everybody forgets the hired help, they are invisible to the Melvicks, scuttling around under their feet, making dinners and doing the laundry. In the older original parts of the house there are tunnels running behind the living accommodation, narrow corridors for the servants to run backwards and forwards so they didn’t need to walk into the family while they were carrying dirty laundry to the utility room. The house had changed as the family had changed, some symbiotic evolution but the attitudes don’t change. There was still a divide between them and us. Megan was one of them, and I was very much one of us.
Megan
‘Deborah’s been taken away,’ said Dad. ‘Thank God, what a disturbed woman.’ The words came out Dad’s mouth but he didn’t look like he understood what he was saying, he was trying to reconcile the Deborah he knew as the helpful carer with her as a killer. ‘Thank you for your help on this, DS Murray, I realize now that your attentions have been part of some operation. I really thought you were here to look out for my wife, you knew about Deborah, didn’t you? You took advantage of me.’
‘We knew about her past. But I am not finished here. Can I have a quiet word? In the study? With you and Megan?’
And so the three of us walked to the library, Drew leading the way, carrying his file in his arm.
‘That was harrowing,’ I said, pulling my legs underneath me as I sat on the wing-backed chair. ‘I really don’t understand it.’
‘You will go mad trying. So don’t.’
‘Go mad, or go madder?’ asked my father.
‘Inbreeding.’ Drew seemed to pause until my father, my quiet acquiescent father, got himself comfortable in his chair on the other side of the fireplace. ‘Have you been out to the Benbrae, all the way round?’
‘Nope, I’ve never been down that way, that was more Melissa’s thing. She told me she made a path round there with her constant running.’
Drew nodded. ‘It’s all overgrown now. That’s what sparked the idea of Beth being moved, it’s hidden. And the items she left were left in the house which pointed to somebody in the house. Have you ever been down to the tree? I know you saw it on Friday.’
My father sai
d nothing.
‘I think you should tell her, Ivan.’
I noticed the Ivan. My dad and Drew stared at each other for a long time.
It was my father who looked away first. ‘Do you remember being a wee girl, Megan, me picking you up and taking you away from the old oak, down at the Tentor Wood?’
‘Vaguely.’ I had a flash of something, gone before it could register. ‘I thought you were laughing.’
‘I was crying. My father had just killed himself, Papa. On your fourth birthday.’
‘I don’t remember much, just that it was my birthday. I saw the tree swing, it made a creaking noise, and then … Then I saw Papa step forward. It was like he stepped forward to walk on the water. And then there was the awful noise.’ I closed my eyes, thinking. ‘I saw you there, Dad, you were there watching him. You didn’t try and stop him, you let him kill himself. Or did you help him? You could have put your hand out and stopped it. Why didn’t you?’
‘Yes, why did you not do that, Mr Melvick?’ asked Drew.
Ivan pursed his lips, getting his stiff upper lip ready. ‘Why do you think? I did it because he was my father.’
‘You were crying, Dad, I thought at the time that you were laughing because Papa was dancing. But you were crying.’
‘Mr Murray, can I …’
‘DS Murray, abetting suicide is a crime, Mr Melvick. I am sure you know that.’
‘There’s no evidence, no witness and you’re not getting any help from me.’
‘But Megan only has a vague memory of it.’
Both men looked at me, Drew’s eyes were cool and blue, Dad’s eyes pleading with me.
‘With the lapse of time and Megan’s struggles with her mental health in the past, nobody will believe her.’ Dad was dismissive.
‘I think they will when they realize that your actions and the cause of her mental health issues are one and the same. We believe it’s the trauma of what she witnessed that led her to choose to isolate herself from the world. And then her elder sister, knowing the family’s dark secret taunted her with it. It was cruel, Mr Melvick, cruel. And you didn’t stop it.’
‘I didn’t know …’
‘Is no defence in law.’ Drew stood up. ‘At the moment, I am taking the view that this is a family matter. So I will leave you and your daughter to discuss it.’ He turned to me. ‘I will be outside if you want me, Megan.’ He then turned to Dad and bowed his head slightly. ‘Sir.’
‘No, DS Murray, Drew, please stay. You seem to have a clear head, and we could do with that right now.’ Dad looked up at the Munnings.
‘Dad, I don’t I think I do have a memory of it all. Not all of it. I have bits here and there but mostly I have noises and then silence, an image of your arm reaching out. It could have been anybody’s arm, there for any reason.’
Dad smiled. ‘You were always my bright girl, Megan. You worried me so much more than Melissa. Her anxiety was worse but you were self-contained, quiet. You were very close to Papa and even at the age you were, you started to notice when he was struggling a little, confusing you and Melissa, confusing Melissa and your mother. Not just getting the names wrong but confusing them totally and then telling us that Gran was out with the girls at the flower arranging club.’
‘She had died years before I was born?’
‘Three years before you were born to be exact. Then he wouldn’t eat his dinner because he was waiting for his mum to come and pick him up, and he would get into trouble if he ate before supper.’
‘I thought he was funny. Dementia?’
‘I suppose so. Looking back, it has been in the family for many years. There is madness in this family.’
‘But you are not mad, Ivan Melvick. I bet all kinds of things have been happening to you, losing things, misplacing things. Megan told me,’ said Drew.
‘I have been, I know I have been. No point in denying it.’
‘You said so in the study that night but I doubt it. I wouldn’t take heed of anything that was reported by Deborah, anything that could be engineered by Deborah. She was around the house when the dog had its throat slit, just because she went out the door and said goodbye, doesn’t mean she left the premises.’
‘But she discovered the pan burned out and put the gas off.’
‘Only because she put the gas on herself. She’s a highly manipulative psychopath.’
‘But she was so believable. I bought into that madness, from years of inbreeding before. I don’t doubt it exists. I thought I had escaped it, I hoped that you and Melissa had escaped it as well but then Melissa started to be a bit’ – he searched for the word – ‘peculiar. And then you’d bang your head at loud noises, punch yourself on the ears. Melissa went strange at fifteen or so; you didn’t even make it to five.’ He dropped his head into his hands, looking for some absolution. ‘I cannot tell you how bad I felt when the explosion happened at Melissa’s wedding.’
‘We all felt bad.’
‘I know, Megan, I know. I was there, I heard it. Tom was very upset by it, so was Beth but Deborah wasn’t. Looking back. Hindsight is always twenty twenty.’ He sighed. ‘I was worried about the madness that lay within this family and I had no idea of the sheer lunacy that walked in through the door. And I welcomed it in.’
‘She was a very clever woman, a survivor, don’t forget that.’
‘Maybe if she had lived a different life, had a different start, she may have gone on to live a different, better life.’
Drew placed his fingertips on his chin, thinking. ‘As Carla would say, shite is shite by any other name. If you feel better thinking that Deborah could have lived a different life then do so, but she killed those closest to her; her mother, both her children, any man whose death could benefit her. And then she killed your wife. There’s a lot of death in her wake.’
‘But I must correct you on one thing, Drew. You see on that day I was trying to take my father down from the tree, take the pressure off from his neck in much the same way as you did for me. I was reaching for him, trying to pull him back to the bank and to safety when I heard a noise. I doubted that I heard it, my father was gurgling and wheezy, he had let out this awful yowl, but I did hear a splash out there through the grass and the trees. I saw a flash of white and blue, splashes. There was a grunt.’ He closed his eyes. ‘And I saw Megan in the faerie pool. We had left her with Melissa up at the house, yet here she was. The dog was barking. The stories of the pools are true, a man can’t get out, never mind a four-year-old child. So I made a decision. I let my father go. I rescued my daughter.
‘I made the right decision. I did the right thing.’
Carla
Ivan was doing his being brave impersonation. It was a lot to take in, a woman he had trusted and befriended was the killer of his wife. He had sacrificed his father for his daughter.
There were a lot of secrets still to come out.
I had never lost faith in Megan, not the way he had and now he felt awful. He was sitting at his desk, his fingers entwined round a cup of coffee, thinking about Beth, what had happened to her. What Deborah, my mother, had put him and his children through and maybe, I hoped a little, that he saved some of those memories for me, her only daughter, the cheeky one with the blue hair, the girl he used to pick up to help her finish her paper round, way back in the day when our families were connected merely by the fact that my dad worked for him, nothing more than that. And somehow we got sucked in, the cancer of my family spread through to his, killing as it went. The cancer was called Deborah and she hid in plain sight.
TWENTY-THREE
Tuesday
Megan
The sun was setting.
Drew was poking around the remains of the mosaic with the toe of his trainer, dressed in a white linen shirt that was open outside the belt of his old jeans. Whatever he was here for it wasn’t work, but it was nice to see him, nice of him to come along when most of the villagers were probably too scared to come near the place in case the bad luck we had w
as catching. He bent down, picked up a piece of yellow tile, shattered jaggy edges at odds with the fine patterns of veining still present on the top surface. He looked up, still holding the yellow fragment, and he gazed out over the flat calm water of the Benbrae to the weeping willows and beyond, then back to the yellow tile in his hand.
‘Please don’t.’
He turned, looking at me with his huge blue eyes, alarmed at my tone.
‘Sorry, I thought you were going to skim it, the way you were holding it and looking.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s part of Carla’s memorial, I wouldn’t throw it in the water.’
‘It would be much worse than that. My dad holds the Melvick family record, seven bounces. He takes it very seriously. If you challenge him, he will ask you for a duel at dawn.’
He turned away and muttered something under his breath that might have been, Wouldn’t bloody surprise me.
‘Here, I think that bit you have fits in there’ – I pointed to an indentation in the concrete – ‘yes, then that bit and that bit.’ I pointed to another.
He looked up at me from his position near the ground. ‘You really are good at getting other people to do stuff for you, aren’t you? Do you have an inherited chromosome for that?’
‘Probably. For them to be them, there always has to be an us.’
But he reached out and moved one piece of tile against another, a full yellow leaf of sunflower appeared, a sliver of brown centre. I looked around for any fragments that might hold the green of a stalk.
‘Why are you here? It doesn’t seem like you’re at work, not dressed like that.’
‘I like you, Megan, why should I not come here?’
‘We are cursed.’
‘Are you?’ He stood up, playing with a small piece of tile, flicking it around the palm of his hand. ‘I wanted to run something past you. Something that’s been on my mind.’
‘Oh God, not again.’
‘Hear me out. Does it not strike you as odd? The parents don’t notice, the doctor doesn’t notice, the nurses don’t, but at four years old, they realize there is a problem with your hearing. In the summer of 2003. And maybe nobody in your bloody family noticed that you couldn’t hear because you could. Why do you have excellent language skills when, it’s said, you were deaf right from birth? Because you weren’t. Maybe you decided to be deaf because of what you heard that day in the Tentor Wood, and what you saw, your Papa. Maybe you have refused to listen to anything ever again unless you wanted to, it had to be your choice, none of this mandatory noise that goes on nowadays is of any interest to you.’