by Jane Renshaw
Over a celebratory pint, Phil had explained to her that she needn’t feel embarrassed to admit to being afraid. ‘Fear is evolution’s way of keeping us out of danger,’ he’d pointed out. ‘It’s in no way a bad thing. A UC who felt no fear would be a bloody liability. That sort of mad bastard gets weeded out pretty pronto in the selection process, I can tell you. You have to welcome it in, the fear. You have to make it your friend.’
And so she had; she had accepted that the fear – or in her case the sheer terror – was part of the job, and the successes had continued. No one quite knew how, least of all Claire herself. A chameleon ability could only get you so far, and her string of successes couldn’t be ascribed to that alone. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that, for some reason, people always talked to Claire. If she was sitting in a waiting room or on a bus or the Tube, guaranteed someone would sit next to her and start chatting.
Phil had recommended her for increasingly difficult operations, increasingly high-profile cases, culminating in the attempt to infiltrate one of the biggest OCGs in London.
The Bristows.
And the house of straw had come tumbling down.
Had it? Had her previous run of successes just been flukes?
Had the Bristows taken one look at her and seen her for what she was – a stupid girl who shouldn’t even be attempting this? Who was only pretending to possess the qualities every UC needed to have, that steadiness, that calm unflappability? Who still threw up behind skips, who still got so nervous before a job that she could barely function, until lights, camera, action, she stepped onto the stage and retreated into her chameleon’s skin?
Phil said that all brilliant people doubted themselves; that her nerves, her ability to make the fear her friend, were what made her the great UC she was. That her doubts about herself were imposter syndrome.
But what if she was just an imposter?
DCI Stewart was still talking about Hector Forbes.
‘People die around him. And I’m not just talking about John Innes.’
She was going to throw up.
She looked desperately around the room.
Thank God, there was a water cooler and some cups... She stood, made herself amble over to it rather than pounce like a lunatic; asked if anyone else would like some water.
As she took a long glug and then filled the cup up to the brim again, and set cups of water in front of everyone, she told herself that they weren’t even sure that John Innes had been murdered. It was entirely possible it really had been an accidental drowning. Was DCI Stewart putting the cart before the horse here? Had he lost objectivity over time, over the years in which he’d tried and failed to get anything on Forbes?
The DCI ignored his own cup of water. ‘There was that business in the summer when he killed a man in “self defence” – got away with it because there was a witness, a traumatised woman who was besotted with him, and she backed up his version of events. All that’s in the file. I’ve also included the material we have on his father’s death and the investigation into it. Such as it was.’
‘You think he killed his own father?’ She resumed her seat; took another glug of water.
‘His father’s death came at a very opportune moment – killed in a tragic car accident just as the banks were about to foreclose on his mortgages, allowing Hector to inherit and giving him the breathing space he needed to turn things around. The banks tend to look favourably on young blood inheriting liabilities – tend to give them a chance to make good.’
Phil sat back in his chair. ‘But according to the collision investigation report, there was no evidence that it wasn’t an accident – albeit another vehicle was probably involved, the driver of which failed to stop...’
Claire looked from him to Stewart. ‘What happened?’
The DCI was frowning at Phil. ‘Car went off the road into a wall, on the B road into Kirkton of Inverglass, just a few hundred yards from the entrance to the driveway to the House of Pitfourie. Red paint marks on the bodywork suggested that there’d been a collision with another vehicle, but it was never identified. No one ever came forward admitting involvement. Happened on a straight bit of road in good visibility, dry conditions. Conclusion was, from the skid mark evidence and the damage to the vehicle, that Alec Forbes was possibly distracted by something, the car strayed over to the wrong side of the carriageway, there was a glancing collision with a vehicle coming the other way and the car spun off into the wall. Catastrophic, fatal injuries to the driver. Other vehicle didn’t stop, which is a crime in itself, of course, but it seemed that the collision was an accident caused by Alec Forbes.’
‘But that’s not your interpretation?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve had an expert revisit the evidence – in as far as that’s possible ten years after the event, with the limited photographic and written records we have of the scene – and it seems it’s also possible that the other vehicle involved in the collision, coming in the opposite direction, suddenly moved to the wrong side of the carriageway. Alec Forbes tried to take evasive action but there was nowhere to go. Car smashed into the wall.’
Her heart bumped. ‘You think Hector Forbes deliberately set up a collision to kill his own father?’
‘I have my suspicions, but that’s all they are at this stage.’ The DCI nodded to himself and added, as if as an afterthought, ‘There was a child in the car.’
‘Oh God.’
‘He wasn’t killed. Just badly injured. Leg crushed. Partial amputation.’ He spoke briskly, as if this was irrelevant detail. ‘Hector’s brother Damian. Seven years old at the time. There’s no mention of this in the report, but in my own, um, later inquiries I uncovered the fact that the first folk on the scene – local farmer and his wife – found the boy to be fully conscious. So there’s the possibility there may be something he could tell us.’ A grimace. ‘Not that I’m holding out any great hopes there either. I’d like you to give it a go, but Damian Forbes is extremely unlikely to give anything up, even if he saw his brother driving the other vehicle. He knows what side his bread’s buttered. Hector is his legal guardian.’ A grim smile. ‘If we haven’t managed to put him away for anything, at least he’s hardly been living the life of Reilly with that kid. The boy’s a little shit.’
Bloody hell. Was it any wonder?
‘Steady on, mate,’ Phil objected, and something in his expression suggested that he might have his own reservations about Campbell Stewart’s judgement in all this.
Claire didn’t know what to make of it. Was the DCI onto something, or was it a case of an obsession getting the better of him? A personal vendetta so pernicious it was reaching out tentacles to family members? Had his own ‘later inquiries’ into the car accident even been officially sanctioned?
She suspected not.
And Campbell Stewart wasn’t the sort of cop who bent the rules, let alone broke them. To have gone off on his own investigation into Alec Forbes’s death, he must really want a conviction. Really really want it. Need it, for the sake of his sanity.
And Phil – Phil needed her to bring John Innes’s killer to justice just as badly. As the train had come into Inverurie station, as Claire had been shrugging into her coat and preparing to stand up, he’d suddenly put a hand on her arm.
‘John Innes was my colleague and my friend for twenty-four years,’ he’d said, looking her right in the eye. ‘The guy was like a brother to me. He was Laura’s godfather.’ And he’d shaken his head, and smiled a little. ‘So no pressure, then.’
She took a deep breath, and turned back to the photograph of Hector Forbes. She had no choice: she had to bring this man to book. Not just for the DCI and Phil, but for herself. If she messed up again, best case scenario, she’d be busted back to regular CID duties. Worst case scenario, she’d end up like John Innes. But by far the most likely outcome of failure would involve Claire quietly resigning. Leaving the force. Spending her life doing something else entirely.
And that wasn’t
an option for her. She needed to stay in the police force. She needed to be ‘fighting the good fight,’ as Phil jokingly put it. It wasn’t a question of ambition or vocation. It wasn’t even a question of making best use of her talents. It was a question of reparation, of giving something back to the world, of putting something into the balance to make up for what she had taken from it.
A question of making amends for what she had done, all those years ago.
If that were even possible.
OCTOBER
2
Mrs Harvey had such a fake smile. Karen really hated her. She really hated her stupid office and the wall of ‘artwork’ done by kids that she’d framed up to make out like I’m so supportive of creativity in the school. Most of it was crap. Especially that portrait in charcoal of a boy eating an apple. The apple was the size of a melon and the boy looked like a capybara, his eyes way up on top of his head and his upper lip stretched out because whoever was responsible for that offence against art had obviously drawn the apple and the eyes first and then had to make everything in between fit.
She could have done better herself.
Well, maybe.
The blinds were pulled against the sun but she could see between the slats the flag over the roof of Upper Quad snapping in the breeze. So pretentious. Having a school flag, and calling the courtyards ‘quads’, like Glencoil was an Oxford college or something.
Karen and Mum were sitting on The Sofa and Mrs Harvey was in The Armchair, massive antiques covered in modern fabric with neon pink and yellow and green stripes – Mrs Harvey’s sad attempt to furnish her room like she was an Oxford professor. A cool Oxford professor.
Pathetic.
‘Would that be fair, Karen?’ she was saying, leaning forward slightly, smiling her fake smile and goggling at her. Those big glasses she wore magnified her eyes like something out of a cartoon, and you could see all the cakey bits of foundation round her eyes, and usually it was funny but now it was more like there should be the Eek! Eek! Eek! screechy violin soundtrack from Psycho playing in the background.
‘Karen?’ said Mum.
‘What?’
‘Would it be fair,’ said Mrs Harvey, ‘to say that you’ve been letting yourself down this term?’
Karen gave her nothing.
‘Karen,’ said Mum again.
She shrugged.
‘You’re certainly not doing yourself any favours now,’ Mum rapped. ‘Stop slouching and answer when you’re spoken to.’
No way was she crying in front of Harvey. She could do this. She could get through this without fucking crying. She pushed herself a bit more upright, and took a huge gulp of air in and out under the guise of a heavy sigh. ‘I only need Higher Maths. Making me do physics and music is what’s “letting me down”. I’m not, like, motivated.’ She’d got okay grades in her Higher English, Chemistry and French last year, and she’d aced Advanced Higher Biology, even though she’d been doing it a year early. She’d only failed maths. All she needed to do to get into Aberdeen was resit maths. The physics and music were just busy work.
‘Your marks in maths have also plummeted, though, haven’t they?’ Mrs Harvey wasn’t smiling any more. ‘And your behaviour in Mr MacDonald’s class seems to be, if anything, worse than in your other classes. He describes you as “truculent and disruptive”. He says you haven’t completed a homework assignment in three weeks.’
Bastard.
Her nose was tingling and her throat had started that swelling-up thing it did. Her eyes felt hot, and they’d started to water with fucking tears. She blinked. Frowned, swallowed, blinked again.
‘I thought we’d agreed, Karen, that in return for not being suspended over the incident with the rats, you’d work hard on improving your behaviour.’
‘What, so you reckon being a bit “truculent” in maths isn’t an improvement on the rat thing? Interesting.’
‘Karen,’ groaned Mum.
‘Well, if I’d known that, I could have smiled sweetly when Mr MacDonald pretty much came out and said I was a hopeless case and then gone and saved maybe like half the rats that are currently on death row and that would have been considered an “improvement”, from what she’s saying?’
Shocked silence.
But no way was she apologising for saving those rats’ lives.
Normal schools didn’t kill animals for dissections any more. Normal schools weren’t stuck in the 1930s. Normal schools didn’t have people like Mrs Harvey, who was probably some kind of psychopath, in charge.
It wasn’t like she’d broken into the lab or anything. She’d just been walking along the corridor of the Science Block minding her own business when she’d seen the door standing open and inside were all the cages with the poor rats in them that had to die just so kids could cut open their little bellies and find the kidneys and stuff and do crap drawings of their insides.
She hadn’t even thought about it. Before she knew it, she was in the lab with the door shut and transferring all the rats into one cage. They were lovely with their whiskers and their snuffly noses and gentle little eyes. She’d said, ‘Don’t worry, guys, you’re getting out of here,’ and she’d got a lab coat and draped it over the cage.
It had been quite heavy with sixteen rats inside but she’d managed to carry it along the corridor to the fire exit. She’d bumped the bar to open the door and put the cage down on the grass and laid it on its side and opened it. At the back of the Science Block there was a small bit of mown grass and then the trees of the birchwood started. Perfect for them.
It had taken a while for the first rat to pluck up courage to leave the cage, which was only to be expected for animals that had been born and bred in captivity. But once he’d braved it the others all followed, sniffing the air and delicately stepping through the grass with their little pink toes. Really cute.
She had cried, but in a good way.
What she hadn’t thought of was that some of them might go back the way they’d come. And she’d left the fire door open.
Three of them had scuttled back inside before she could stop them.
She’d gone after them but they were pretty fast, running along in a line next to the wall, and some stupid junior girls waiting to go into their biology class had started screaming. Karen had shouted at them to catch them but of course they hadn’t, and then Miss Simpson had come round the corner and she’d screamed too, even though she was meant to be a biology teacher.
Pathetic.
The rats had got away. She hoped they’d eventually made it outside.
Damian said lab rats didn’t have the necessary skills to survive in the wild and predators had probably got them within about five minutes of their release. But how did he know? And anyway, five minutes of freedom was surely better than spending your whole life in a cage just so you could be dissected by thirteen-year-olds.
Thinking about the rats had been a mistake.
She took another big gulp of air.
‘If you really want to be a vet, Karen, you’re going to have to buck up your attitude, because if you carry on at this rate you’re going to fail maths again and no university will take you. Not for Veterinary Science. Not without maths.’
She shrugged.
Mrs Harvey leant forward again. ‘I know you’ve been through a very traumatic experience, and that it’s bound to have affected you, but really, Karen, we can’t go on giving you slack indefinitely.’
‘I’ve got PTSD? I can’t like help it?’
Mrs Harvey blinked twice. ‘How are the counselling sessions going?’
‘Dr Hoang says they’re going really well,’ said Mum. ‘He’s pleased with you, isn’t he?’
‘Oh yeah, he’s pleased with me all right. At a hundred-odd quid a time, he’s ecstatic. He’s hardly going to tell you it’s a waste of money and you should stop taking me.’
Dr Hoang was useless. So, today, how full would you say the glass was, Karen? She’d made the mistake of telling him once, when he’d
started going on about glass half full or half empty – Dr Hoang loved a cliché – that she felt like the glass was always full to the brim but with fucking tears, and anything that tilted it just a tiny bit made them spill out. She’d made the mistake of telling him that, and now he wouldn’t let it go.
She felt so weird all the time, like her stomach and her lungs and the whole inside of her head were bloated with tears and just stopping them spilling out of her eyes and her nose was taking all she had. And what she would never tell Dr Hoang was that sometimes she wanted that glass to tip – not just to tip, to smash, to slosh everywhere, like that time she’d gone for a walk on her own to get away from everyone and at the side of the path had been these lovely pale blue harebells, a perfect little clump of them, and she’d stamped on them until her foot ached and she’d hated herself while she was doing it and she’d felt like the worst but also really good at the same time, like she wanted to hate herself, and she’d ground her heel right down into the leaves and roots of the little harebells so there was no way back for them. It was like she was an out-of-control junkie, high on her own fucking misery.
Mrs Harvey looked at Mum.
Mum looked at Karen. She might as well have come out and said it: This is reflecting badly on me too, you know. As if having a mum and stepdad who were teachers at your school wasn’t enough of a bummer, they used the fact to behaviour-shame you.
‘I’d hate to see you squander your potential,’ said Mrs Harvey.
Right. Her potential. What kind of a vet was she even going to be, in the unlikely event that she did scrape a pass in maths? She’d probably get the decimal point in the wrong place when she multiplied up dosages. Mr MacDonald was right. She would be hopeless. She would actually be dangerous.
She swallowed. Blinked. Blinked. Blinked again.
‘You seem to spend a lot of time with Damian Forbes.’
Mrs Harvey hated Damian’s guts. She seemed to think that now Damian was head boy, a hellmouth was going to open up under Upper Quad and demons and vampires and zombies were going to come through and cause havoc in Assembly. Bill, her stepdad, said Mrs Harvey had wanted to overturn the pupils’ head boy vote but she couldn’t because of Damian being disabled. It could have been seen as discrimination. Karen would have loved to have seen Mrs Harvey’s face sucking on that lemon.