2004 - The Reunion

by Sue Walker

  Her voice, low and languid, boomed out. No hard-nut, tough-girl, put-on accent now. In fact she was sounding unnaturally and suspiciously sympathetic. “I’m glad your little girl’s back with you, Si. How is she?”

  “Hard to know.”

  She looked back at him, puzzled. He went on. “She’s not living with me. Neither is my wife or my elder daughter, Lily. They’ve been at my mother’s for some months now or at our house in France. Just as well, or we couldn’t be meeting here, could we?”

  She sneered at that. “And the police? They know damn-all then, in essence?” Her tone sounded strident in the cocooned, low-ceilinged room.

  He stood up and attended to the fire. “Yes, damn-all. I’d say that was a fair assessment. The abductor has simply disappeared into the ether, just as he did following the other abductions. It’s like he never existed. However, my daughter’s remaining injuries, albeit psychological, indicate otherwise.”

  He waited for her response. Instead, she stood up and moved two paces towards the hearth, sipping away at her Scotch. Then she turned round and faced them, her body erect and towering above them as he and Danny sat back in their seats.

  Simon gave her the floor. She seemed as cocky as ever. He glanced at Danny. The man seemed transfixed. A powerful woman was just too much for the guy. Danny was typical of so many rapists. Terrified and suspicious of women. Yet clearly in awe of this one. Well, he wasn’t that easily impressed. He had a fuller picture of her now. A before and after picture. Despite her brazen and icy exterior, he had a good idea of at least some of what that mind ticked over on. You didn’t have to be a clinical psychologist to work that out. Your most basic pop psychology could do it.

  She was taking control. Her gaze was directed primarily at him, with the occasional condescending glance at Danny peppering her statement.

  “Now look. What we’re about to discuss tonight we all promised, twenty-six years ago, never to mention to anyone, including each odier. Some of us broke that pact in 1979. I trust, since then, we have all kept it. Though, let’s remember, we all kept in touch for a reason. A simple note to each other every November 8th to let each of us know where we were, how we were. A little act of mutual trust. And now here we are. On this night of all nights. This November 8th we’ve substituted our annual missives for this. That makes me worried. Very worried.” She stopped, looking down at them in turn, assuming the stance, Simon presumed, she used when dealing with lovers and underlings.

  She continued, the tone of her voice, if not the accent, familiar to them all. “Another November 8th we all made that pact, and I, for one, despite recent events forcing our hands, am deeply reluctant to break it. Even now.”

  Simon recognized the steel of old in this transformed version of Alex. She wasn’t going to be easy. He sat back dreading what was to come, and brooding over what appalling clash of events had brought them all to this. He’d always known there’d be a reckoning. And tonight was it. Or rather, the beginning of it. He hoped Danny would be on his side. He’d need that. He could feel his own tension levels rising by the second. It was going to be a bloody few hours.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The door shut with a firm shooting of the bolts. Just before, Danny had managed to catch the glance of a red-eyed Simon and mouth an “It’s okay, pal.” He drew his jacket collar round him and started through the rain towards Alex’s car. He watched with amusement as she picked her way in high heels over the muddy water, her athletic figure skipping across the puddles towards her vintage Mercedes Sports. He followed in her splashing wake.

  “‘It’s my fault…it…it’s all my fault! My wee girls! My wife! They…they’ll never ever come back! I did it! It’s my punishment! G…od! I’m sorry. Please, it’s best if you go now. I’ll…I’ll call you tomorrow, Dan. I didn’t want to be like this. I’m sorry.’ God what a moaner!”

  Danny smirked at Alex’s uncannily accurate, if somewhat exaggerated, aping of Simon’s last outburst. She’d always been a good mimic. Merciless to her Unit victims, both staff and patients. As he pulled the seat belt around him, he suddenly realized exactly where he was. And he felt distinctly uneasy. Alone with Alex for the first time after all these unknowable years. What…no…how had she turned herself into this stunning sex goddess? Whatever he’d expected, it would never have been this. That she was rich, professionally successful and had married money didn’t surprise him. But this oozing of self-and sexual confidence was about as far from the adolescent Alex as it was possible to imagine. That adolescent Alex whose tough skinhead exterior had hidden a marked, though impenetrable, vulnerability. Dr Laurie had tried often enough to get through to her. And failed. She still seemed impenetrable, but now it was clothed in an alluring aloofness that he knew would get the sexual interest of many, male or female. She retained that dykey thing about her, but straight, red-blooded males would like that too. She had it all in the looks department And she knew it.

  Mind you, her hard face was not really to his taste, but many others would find it a sexy challenge and come-on. In a firm attempt to keep any trace of his thoughts from her, he kept a careful eye on the rain-soaked road, while trying to slump in a relaxed pose. The chain-smoking might give him away but she didn’t seem to notice. He’d lit up immediately. It was a smoker’s car. Though spotless, it had the smell of stale tobacco that you could never hide. He leaned forward to flick his fag into the ash tray and, not for the first time since they’d set out, felt her gaze. This time he returned it. She had a studied, raised-eyebrow expression: a cynical, facial pose that she’d used several times during the past three hours. And countless times during their Unit days. Her strident tones were tinged with sarcasm.

  “Fucking cry baby. What an absolute arsehole Simon still is. I’m completely bloody gobsmacked that he’s got himself a grown-up job, got a grown-up life. He just lost it in there. Like a bloody baby. He always was a bit of a spineless prick.”

  Danny checked his annoyance, instead grinding his cigarette butt out more firmly than was necessary. “Perhaps it was because you were pushing him, Alex. There was no need to keep bringing up what a bitch his mother was or slagging off his wife. You don’t even know her, for fuck’s sake! The man is hurting. Can’t you see that? What’s happened to him is a living hell. That’s why he was throwing so much booze down himself. That and your needling. He was relatively all right when I first went round. It’s a real fucker seeing a guy in that state. Practically sobbing his heart out. I tell you, Simon’ll need a sight more gentle handling than that in the future.”

  He waited for some smart-arsed rejoinder from her, but instead she let the silence win. For two minutes.

  “Well, Danny, you’re obviously not going to be getting the last bus back from this godforsaken place at this time of night. Pointless dropping you at the village bus stop. I’ll take you all the way back. What part of Edinburgh does this mate of yours live in?”

  He zipped up his biker’s jacket even further—as protection against her as much as against the cold he’d just escaped outside. “Easter Road. Thanks for the lift. Simon had said if it got late I could stay but…” He paused for a few seconds until the reassuring tarmac of a proper road greeted them. She was turning the heater up as rain lashed its way against her windscreen, and she stole a quick glance at him again. He knew he was looking stony-faced. And bloody tired.

  “You frightened of my driving, Dan? Don’t be. I might be over the limit, but I can handle this car. It’s called power with control. Hard to find.” He said nothing and she tried again. “Well? What d’you think of tonight? Like I said in my note to you, I should’ve kept quiet last year about nothing exciting ever happening. Christ, what a turn-up. Unbelievable. Well? What did you think?”

  He wasn’t letting her get away with it. “Why didn’t you let me know Simon had been in touch? At least I had the decency to write to tell you what had happened to him and that I was going to meet him. Simon’s a bloody liar. He said he hadn’t been in touch with you.”


  “Oh, get over it, Danny. Yes, I enjoyed your letter, but I was worried about you being able to keep a lid on things. I don’t know why Si didn’t tell you. Fuck it, we’re all liars in one way or another. But anyway, what did you think of tonight? Hah! Tell you one thing, though. Si turned out better looking than I thought he would. Studious but sexy. Yeah, turned out much better looking than I would’ve thought.” She paused, obviously for effect. “And so did you, by the way.”

  He refused to look at her. She let her wedding ring tap tantalizingly, suggestively, on the gear knob, waiting for his response. Then the crimson nails of her other hand started a slow tattooing on the walnut steering wheel. Jarring but flirtatious. He had the definite sense of being played with. Part of him regretted accepting her offer of a lift. He was going to be her captive audience. But he had his own reasons for wanting to be alone with her. He’d just better keep his wits about him, that was all.

  He ran his fingers along his stubbled jaw line, determined to seem casual but dioughtful. “I feel fuckin’ sorry for Simon. Poor bastard. I can understand how he feels. I don’t have kids, but I’ve thought the way he has over the years, from time to time. Haven’t you?”

  She’d stopped her gear-knob tapping and moved the hand to her slinky-trousered thigh. “Not really. The past is the past. We were loonies in the past. We’re not now. I hope. Well, I’m not and you don’t seem to be. The thing is, all this business is not about what happened to his daughter. Of course that’s hell. But this whole thing, though, it’s really about two simple things. His obviously shit marriage. And his cow of a mother. The mother was always a problem. Remember those coundess sessions with Laurie as he forced Si to admit that his mother hated him? Excruciating. As for the marriage? Well, as I recall, Si was always crap with women. Every damn one of us in the Unit terrified him. Shit scared of us he was. Scared of the effect we had on his dick. Fool. No, the thing with his daughter was just very bad luck. It’s Marriage and Mother. That’s what’s up.”

  He dared a glance this time. “How d’you mean? What’s that got to do with what he wants to do? Other than have an honest relationship with his wife and have his family back.”

  Alex gave him a hoot of forced laughter, tossing her hair back against the learner headrest. “Honest relationship? Oh, come on, Danny! What fucking planet are you on? Not one of us is capable of an honest relationship! And I bet you we’ve all had shit things happen to us in our lives since we left the Unit, but it hasn’t made us do a Simon! He’s fucking losing it.” She turned her head to him again, for emphasis. “And you know that’s a danger to us all.”

  “But look what happened to him, Alex! That. Of all things! Christ, it’s like it was tailor-made to punish him!” He reduced his voice to a near whisper, almost talking to himself. “To punish us all.”

  She practically spat at the windscreen. “Pah! Christ, Dan, you even sound like him. You’ll be thinking it’s some divine retribution thing soon. Nemesis! Watch it, or you’ll both end up in another Unit. Look, I know it’s a really shitty thing to happen and a bit wekd, but it still can’t excuse him becoming a loose cannon. He was always the weakest link, you know. He was always going to abort some day. That’s why I made it my business to see him for a while, after we all left the Unit. Just to keep an eye. Anyway, I think we held back the tide tonight. Time’ll sort the rest out for us, I’m sure. I’ve a mind to go and speak with that bitch of a wife of his. Tell her to get her arse back home with his, his kids. That’d stop all this nonsense.”

  He marvelled at her aggression. As potent as it had ever been. Just packaged differendy. But there was something else that Simon had told them that was bothering him.

  “What about this Sarah Melville thing? That’s bloody unbelievable. God, if I was Si, I’d think the fates were after me, I tell you. It’s spooky.”

  She gave him a quick glance in reply, followed by a nonchalant shrug. A bit too forced, in his opinion, as was her over-light tone of voice. “Oh, come on. It’s not that weird. Sarah Melville mixes in a small world. It’s only because Simon found himself in the position of needing a child therapist for his daughter that he came across her. It was chance. Pure chance. Yeah, yeah, so poor, deluded Simon sees it as some part of some quasi-supernatural conspiracy to force him to look at his past. That’s bollocks. Jesus, Sarah Melville was probably more shocked and embarrassed by being confronted with an ex-patient and in her girlfriend’s house to boot! Anyway, apart from Simon bumping into her, she’s a total irrelevance. Funny, though, I always knew she was a dyke.”

  That was rich coming from her, and he wasn’t sure if she expected a response. But he wasn’t going to give her one. He leaned back into the luxurious leather as they drove on in silence, the squeaking of the wipers and swish of the tyres through rain the only noise. Alex had put two cigarettes in her mouth, lit them, and was passing one on to him, its tip ringed with a kiss of scarlet lipstick. The little flirt!

  He accepted the cigarette with a curt nod but otherwise ignored her, instead staring ahead into the middle distance. Un-bloody-believable. She was out-and-out teasing him. What did she expect him to do? Wrest the wheel from her? Drive to the nearest lay-by and fuck her senseless? Or maybe she wanted him to rape her? She, like the others, had always been fascinated by his ‘rapist-at-fourteen-years-old’ status.

  She was the one to break the silence first. “Penny for them?”

  He said nothing.

  “C’mon, Dan. What’s in that clever head of yours? Worried about your sheep or whatever it is you do back home? God, how can a guy with your brains live where you live? Or are the Western Isles populated by Heiland lovelies? Do you have a lovely little crofter woman at home, keeping things warm?”

  “Fuck off, Alex.”

  She tossed her head back again, showing off the mane of black hair. “No need to be so touchy. But then you always were touchy about girls. Well, no, only one girl. The lovely Isabella. I s’ppose no woman has ever held a candle to her, eh?”

  This time he looked directly at her, secretly relieved that she’d brought up a subject that had been festering within him for most of the evening. “Oh, p/ease. But, since you raise the subject, that was a pretty stupid idea of yours to get in touch with Isabella. I’m glad Simon didn’t hear it. I talked him out of that course of action a while back, when I first met him. Anyway, Isabella’s got nothing to do with this.”

  She changed gear roughly as she spoke, taking out her irritation with him on the car. “Of course she has! If, if Simon’s going to go all loose cannon on us, we need to be prepared. We have to speak to both Lydia and Isabella. Just in case. I mean, I think Si will calm down now. But he’s still unpredictable. He’s got addresses for them both, as you well know. He might just get in touch with them on impulse. We need to spin a line and explain to Lydia and Abby that poor Si’s not too well and may start causing us all a bit of trouble and embarrassment in the future. I mean, let’s face it, we’ve all got our lives to lead. Who wants our days in the Unit exposed? I certainly don’t intend to let it all, let anything, hang out.”

  She was making him angry now. “This isn’t about Isabella and you know it. You s—”

  She cut across him, trying to change the subject. “I was glad to hear that the obsessive nut has kept track of the others. And by the way, I know you took his address list. I saw you in his study. Hardly difficult to do, given Si’s pissed-up state and the fact that he was boring the arse off me about his bloody wife. Too het up to notice what you were doing.”

  “You know he’s got our phone numbers and everything? I didn’t know he’d gone that far. I think it’s a bit mental, all of it, and him keeping track of the others. But I wanted a copy on disk. Just in case. I th—”

  She cut back in, laughing, before he had time to make any justifications about why he took the list. “C’mon, Danny. You took a copy because you wanted to know where Isabella is and what she’s doing. You’re so transparent. But since you’ve got it, I w
ant a copy of that before we part company tonight. I’ve got the laptop in the back. Just for my own peace of mind. Like you say, just in case…”

  She lit another cigarette, without offering him one, and blew a distorted smoke ring at the windscreen. Straight away she took another drag and breathed a gentle kiss of smoke at him as she smiled, her tone back to sarkiness. “I’ll tell you this, though. If Isabella’s going to be talked to, it would be better if jou did it. I think you and I should start making a plan. We’ve managed to hold Simon back from any…any precipitate move. He’s agreed to more discussion and thinking, thank God. But I don’t know how long he can be kept back. I think you should contact Abby. After all, you do still have her best interests at heart. Don’t you?”

  He’d had just about enough. “Leave it, Alex. Anyway, what about Innes Haldane? We never talked at all about her tonight.”

  “That’s because, like Sarah bloody Melville, she’s a complete irrelevance.”

  He peered through the rainy gloom. Conditions were atrocious. Alex had stopped talking as she took a rain-soaked corner too fast, the rear of the car threatening to fishtail. But she quickly sorted it out with another rough gear change. She started in again. “Innes Haldane was a naive fool. She didn’t know what the Unit was really about, silly cow.”

  “That’s rubbish, Alex. Innes wasn’t stupid and she was close to Isabella.”

  “She was close to Isabella for only a while. Remember? That all fell by the wayside. Innes was clueless. Like I say, an irrelevance. I don’t know why Simon even bothered keeping track of her. So, she’s a divorced Civil Service lawyer, living in London. How typically and tediously conventional. She’d probably run a fucking mile from any reminder of the Unit. I think we leave her well alone. And she’ll leave us alone. Anyway, stop changing the subject. If you’ll be bloody honest with yourself for one minute, you’ll admit that you’d use any excuse to get in touch with Isabella. I know you. Lie away to yourself, but you can’t lie to me.”