The Sweetest Poison

by Jane Renshaw

  ‘For Suzanne?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mum. ‘The police, and the men from the Estate, and Uncle Jim and everyone – they’re all out looking for her. What happened, dearie? You need to tell us. Who did this to you?’

  ‘Someone – someone grabbed me. It wasn’t Hector. He grabbed me, and put his hand over my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get away. And then – I don’t know. Then I was here.’

  ‘Oh Helen,’ said Mum. ‘Oh dearie.’

  She lifted her head off the pillow. ‘Is Hector all right?’

  ‘Hector’s fine,’ said Mum, gently pushing Helen back down.

  ‘I don’t remember anything else.’

  ‘Never mind.’ Mum stroked her hair. ‘You’re safe now.’

  It was like trying to remember a dream. It was there, and she could nearly reach it, but when she tried it only slipped further away.

  DS Stewart said, ‘Was Suzanne with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Helen.’ He leant forward. ‘Can you tell us who it was who attacked you?’

  ‘No. I don’t know. He was behind me.’

  ‘But it was a “he”?’

  ‘Yes. But it wasn’t Hector.’ She looked at DS Stewart. At Mum. ‘Where was I, when they found me?’

  DS Stewart consulted the notebook in his hand. ‘Malcolm Kerr and Tom Strachan found you in the trees just off the path. The stalkers’ path, on the Knock. About half way down it.’ He looked at her suddenly. ‘Okay, Helen. Can you tell me about the last time you saw Suzanne?’

  The last time? The last time?

  No. Nothing bad had happened to Suzanne. She was just lying drunk somewhere, the bizzum – there must be about a million units of alcohol swilling around in her system.

  ‘We were lying by the fire. She’d had a lot to drink. She fell asleep. I told her I was going but I don’t think she heard me. I left her. I left her there. By the fire. Hector and Tom had torches, and everyone was following them into the trees. Maybe Suzanne did too.’

  ‘None of the group with the torches remembers her being with them. The last time they saw her, they say, she was with you by the fire.’

  ‘Maybe she got lost in the trees. It was dark in the trees. Maybe she fell –’

  ‘If that happened,’ said Mum, ‘they’ll find her. Shh.’

  Helen closed her one working eye.

  The policeman said, ‘You said that it wasn’t Hector who grabbed you. Why would it have been Hector?’

  She opened her eye. ‘I was – he said to meet him. At one of the Land Rovers.’

  DS Stewart wrote in the notebook. ‘And when did you have this conversation?’

  ‘He left a note, under my glass... I put it in my pocket. My jeans pocket.’

  ‘Why did he want you to meet him?’

  She didn’t know what to say. In the end: ‘Just to talk, I think.’

  ‘Okay. So you were going to meet Hector, and someone grabbed you.’

  Mum said, ‘If it was Hector Forbes who attacked her –’

  Helen yelped as she tried to sit up and pain shot up her right side. ‘He didn’t!’

  ‘All right, dearie.’

  DS Stewart turned to Mum. ‘Hector Forbes is under arrest for a number of offences – which we’ll be charging him with imminently, once we’ve finished speaking to everyone involved. If on the weight of evidence it looks like he’s responsible for the attack on Helen too, he’ll be charged with that in due course... Don’t worry – he’s not going anywhere.’

  Mum said, ‘What “offences”?’

  ‘Supplying cannabis and cocaine. Driving under the influence of both, plus a hefty dose of alcohol.’

  ‘He didn’t attack me,’ Helen said. She was so tired. ‘It wasn’t Hector.’

  ‘Okay.’ DS Stewart made another mark in his notebook. ‘Okay… Helen, I know you don’t want to talk about this, or even think about it. It sounds as if you’ve been through a terrifying ordeal, and the last thing you want to do is relive it. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to do just that. You want us to find Suzanne, don’t you?’

  She could feel tears at the back of her nose. ‘I’ll tell you everything I can remember but I can’t help you find her because the last time I saw her she was just lying on her own by the fire, and I don’t know what happened to her after that or where she went or anything, I don’t know anything about where she is!’

  ‘You might know something that can help us, even though you don’t realise it.’ He looked at her. ‘Whoever it was who grabbed you – did he say anything?’

  ‘No. He just sort of – grunted.’

  Mum squeezed her hand.

  ‘I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t breathe. I’m sorry, but that really is the last thing I remember. It really is. I must have blacked out then because I couldn’t breathe?’

  ‘We know you must have been conscious for at least some of the attack. There are – what we call defensive injuries on your forearms. Bruises. Where you must have put up your arms to ward your attacker off.’

  Your attacker. As if he belonged to Helen, as if she was somehow responsible for him, like a weird sort of pet. Like a lion or a snake, the kind of pet stupid people insisted on keeping. Instead of going to prison he would live in a cage in her room, and she would have to change his wood shavings and fill his water bottle every day. ‘What is it?’ people would ask, peering through the bars. ‘Oh, that’s my attacker.’

  Hysterical laughter wasn’t far away.

  She lifted the arm whose hand Mum wasn’t holding, and pushed up the sleeve of the hospital gown. There were purple and brown marks on her skin.

  ‘Try to think, Helen. Try to remember… He has his hand over your mouth… Does he pull you to the ground?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

  ‘You’re putting up your arms to protect yourself – Can you see his face?’

  ‘No.’ She let out a breath. ‘I can’t remember putting up my arms, I can’t remember if I saw his face or not, I can’t remember anything after his hand on my mouth. I’m sorry! I can’t –’

  Mum was rubbing her arm. ‘That’s all right, dearie.’

  ‘Did he – rape me?’

  There was a silence in the room and then Mum’s hand was squeezing hers tighter than ever.

  ‘No, Helen. No.’

  ‘But... the button was torn off your jeans,’ said DS Stewart. ‘And when the boys found you – your jeans had been pulled down your thighs... Which suggests... There may have been a sexual motive.’ His face had flushed.

  A sexual motive. Hands in the dark, hands pushing under her jeans.

  ‘Do you remember anything more about what happened?’

  She turned her head so she couldn’t see the policeman’s blushing face. ‘No.’

  There was only a sheet and a thin blanket over her. He would be able to see the shape of her body underneath.

  The quiet, calm voice of the doctor – she hadn’t realised he was still in the room – said, ‘Shock can have a powerful amnesiac effect. That’s why people in car crashes often can’t remember them. And we’re not dealing only with shock – there are the added complications of concussion, and the effects of alcohol and hallucinogens.’

  ‘I didn’t take any drugs,’ Helen said, and looked back at the policeman.

  He frowned, and looked like he was about to say something, but then there was the click of the door opening and a tall woman in a police uniform came just inside the room. DS Stewart went over to speak to her. After what seemed like a long time she left, and he sat back down, tapping his pencil on the notebook.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Mum said. And, her voice rising: ‘Have they found her?’

  12

  ‘Is she dead?’ Helen whispered it, as if saying it out loud would make it true.

  ‘No. No no,’ said DS Stewart. ‘In fact, there’s been a very positive development.’

  ‘Positive?’ Mum’s voice sounded strange.

&nbs
p; ‘It seems your niece’s boyfriend, Robin Beattie, is also missing – he didn’t come home last night. His sister – Lorna? – says she saw his car parked, further down the track than the others, at the Knock. She was heading off on foot, intending to walk to the phone box on the Tillybrake road and call her dad to come and get her. But when she saw her brother’s car, she went back up the hill to find him and cadge a lift home. She got back to the fire just after the torchlight procession had left. She followed the torches, assuming Rob was with the group. She never did find him, but she swears his car was there, although no one else saw it. If she’s right, though, and he was there, that puts a completely different complexion on things.’

  ‘Rob,’ said Helen.

  The doctor put his hand on her arm. She felt suddenly dizzy.

  ‘So – what?’ said Mum. ‘You think Rob and Suzanne have gone off somewhere? But Rob’s a responsible lad. He wouldn’t just take off like that, worrying his family. Suzanne’s another matter, of course.’

  Suzanne. There was something Helen had to tell them about Suzanne.

  ‘A good proportion of our time is spent dealing with the fall-out from parties like this. When you get a bunch of youngsters together and add drugs and alcohol to the mix, you’d be amazed at the situations they can get themselves into. This pair’s intention may not have been to stay out all night. Maybe they went off in his car... zonked out and left the headlights on, ran down the battery... Or he could have put the car off the road. Who knows. But I’ll lay odds that she’s with him, and they’re either sleeping it off or trekking back to civilization as we speak.’

  ‘But if they’ve had an accident –’

  ‘The search is being widened with that possibility in mind. In any event, it’s looking like the attack on Helen probably has nothing to do with Suzanne going missing. Could be that the only connection is that they were all out of their heads on a range of intoxicating and hallucinogenic substances.’

  Mum said something, and Helen shut her eyes.

  ◆◆◆

  The next time she woke, Mum was sitting in the chair DS Stewart had been in, and standing by the window was the tall policewoman, saying, ‘He’s admitted everything, he’s been fully cooperative – that’ll be taken into account – but I can’t see them handing down anything other than a custodial sentence.’

  Helen pushed herself up. ‘Have they found her?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Mum. ‘But they will.’ She took hold of Helen’s shoulders. ‘Lie back down.’

  ‘I need the loo. I’m okay.’ She pushed back the sheet and blanket and swung her legs over the side of the bed. When she sat up everything went swimmy. She concentrated on the opposite wall, on a plastic shape above the little metal sink – a soap dispenser? Mum held onto her as she stood, and Helen asked her: ‘Who are you talking about? Who’s “admitted everything”? Admitted what?’

  Mum looked over at the policewomen, who said, ‘Hector Forbes has admitted the drugs and driving offences.’

  ‘Custodial sentence? You mean he’s going to prison?’ She sat back down on the bed. ‘But none of this is his fault!’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me you’d have taken cocaine if it hadn’t been Hector Forbes handing it out?’ Mum said his name like it was a disease.

  ‘I didn’t take any cocaine.’

  ‘They found it in your bloodstream… Come on dearie, lie down. There’s a bedpan you can use.’

  The policewoman left the room while Helen did so, but she was back in a couple of minutes, pulling a chair next to Mum’s. ‘I should have introduced myself. I’m Pamela. Pamela McBride. Now, Helen... We’ve shown Hector Forbes the note from your jeans pocket, and he denies writing it.’

  ‘Oh. I must have made a mistake.’

  ‘He’s given us a handwriting sample and there are similarities, but we’ll need an expert to have a look before we can say for sure one way or the other.’

  ‘I must have made a mistake,’ Helen repeated.

  Mum looked at her. ‘Helen. Why did you assume Hector had written the note?’ And before Helen could answer: ‘The truth.’

  Helen didn’t say anything. Pamela had a notebook on her knee, and a pen poised over it.

  ‘If Hector didn’t attack you,’ said Mum, ‘there’s no reason for you not to tell the truth, is there?’

  ‘We’ve been writing to each other. Sheila – there’s no such person as Sheila. The letters were from Hector.’

  Mum took in a long breath. ‘Right. So you arranged... an assignation.’

  ‘No. It’s not like that.’

  ‘Not as far as you’re concerned, maybe.’

  ‘He would never hurt me.’ She put a hand to her face but she couldn’t stop the tears, and then her face was wet with them, her nose running, sobs gulping from her throat, and Mum was wiping her face and hugging her carefully, and Helen clung on to the soft wool of her cardigan and buried her face in her shoulder.

  ‘No one’s going to hurt you now.’

  ‘Suzanne...’

  ‘They’ll find her.’

  She’d remembered what she had to tell them: that Suzanne had had bruises on her back. That she’d not wanted Helen to see them.

  Rob had been there, at the Knock. Rob Beattie. Whispering poison at Dad’s funeral; stalking her through the trees on Craig Dearg; watching her face as he spoke about her cats dying.

  Her catties. Baudrins and Susie and Fergus.

  She’d found Baudrins, after looking for days, stiff and cold down by the burn, near the bridge, as if someone had thrown him over it. His head wasn’t Baudrins’ head, it was like something in the butcher’s, purple-red mess and sticky fur. She’d carried him home, and Dad had taken him and buried him up the hill, and told Helen he must have been run over on the track – hit so hard he’d been tossed over the bridge.

  He wouldn’t have felt anything.

  They’d got Susie from the Cat and Dog Home. She was stripey, orange and brown and white, and the people at the Home said she’d probably been weaned too soon because she loved sitting on you and kneading you with her paws and purring.

  Three weeks later Susie went missing. Mum and Dad found her body, but they didn’t tell Helen how she’d died, and Helen hadn’t ask.

  They didn’t have a cat for a long time after that. Then on her ninth birthday she’d come downstairs and there was the sweetest grey kitten in a box by the Aga. And he was Helen’s new cattie, and she could call him whatever she liked.

  She had called him Fergus.

  Robin and Suzanne had come to see him, and after they’d been playing with him for a while in the sitting room Robin had picked him up and given him a bosie. ‘Do you want me to bless him?’

  Helen didn’t, but she said, ‘Okay.’

  ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.’

  ‘He’s not dead!’

  ‘I know. But those are the words you have to say, to do a blessing.’

  ‘No they’re not. Stop it!’

  ‘I’m commending him to God.’

  ‘Stop it! Give me him!’ Helen had run with Fergus into the loo and locked the door.

  Three days later he’d gone missing.

  Helen and Suzanne had found him on their way to school. He’d been lying in the middle of the track. His head had been squashed like Baudrins’, with bits of white and red stuff coming out of it. Suzanne had hugged Helen and told her not to look, and taken her home.

  She’d told Mum that it was Robin’s fault, that he’d asked God to kill Fergus. Mum hadn’t listened. Helen had been allowed to stay off school that day, but no one had believed her about Robin.

  No one would believe her now. Not about the cats, and not about the bruises.

  ‘It was Rob who attacked me,’ she said.

  It must have been.

  Mum released her; sat back, and looked into her face. ‘Rob?’

  Pamela was leaning forward. ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘I remember now. I remember
him hitting me.’

  ‘Okay, Helen. Can you tell us exactly what you remember?’

  ‘But Rob –’ Mum’s face was very pale. ‘I can’t believe that Rob –’

  ‘That’s because you don’t know what he’s like. What he’s really like.’

  ‘Was Suzanne there?’ Pamela asked.

  ‘I don’t know. After he grabbed me off the path, he pushed me down on the ground – that’s when I saw it was Rob.’

  ‘There was enough light to see his face?’

  ‘Yes. He told me to keep quiet but – I shouted out, and he started hitting me.’

  ‘What with?’

  Could they tell from her bruises what had been used? She took a chance. ‘His fists. I think just his fists.’

  ‘Where did he hit you?’

  ‘He was punching my face.’ That was a safe guess. ‘I tried to stop him.’ And there was her rib. ‘He kicked me. In my side. Then I think I must have blacked out. I don’t remember anything else. I don’t remember about Suzanne.’

  Mum hugged her. ‘Oh Helen.’

  She could hear Pamela standing up; saying to Mum, ‘I’ll be back in a minute’; the door opening and closing.

  13

  It didn’t seem real. Sitting at the kitchen table with a mug in front of her, looking across at DS Stewart and Pamela, and DS Stewart’s fleshy lips moving as he kept talking.

  ‘... And given that you had no deep cuts, and the pattern wasn’t consistent with a nosebleed, the forensics people always did think it unlikely that the blood was yours.’

  They were talking about the blood they’d found on the jersey Helen had been wearing.

  It was Suzanne’s.

  Oh Suzanne Suzanne Suzanne.

  Mum was sitting close, a hand on her arm.

  ‘How can you know for sure?’ Helen said.

  DS Stewart flicked a look at Mum. A look that said, Maybe she’s not ready for this. But he smiled at her. ‘Don’t ask me to explain the DNA analysis. All I know is that the DNA sample they got from hair follicles from Suzanne’s brush matched the blood on your sweater. They used something called DNA fingerprinting – it involves looking at lots of bits of DNA, each of which is variable among individuals, so if they get a match across the board they can be pretty sure it’s DNA from the same person.’