“What is it?” I said to Angel once I was outside.
“Were you really going to hand over a flash drive to the cops?” he said.
“I printed it out.”
“They’d still know it came from my phone.”
“How?” My voice was a whisper as faint as that poor woman inside the station.
“Okay, well not my phone but one the same as mine. A Nokia. Not an iPhone. They can tell what make and model it was taken on.”
I swallowed hard. “They’d be able to tell that from a printed-out copy? Not just from a file?” I had the buzzing feeling in my lips that I knew went along with my face draining. I had got so close to doing something so stupid. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, turning my fright into temper, unable to help it. “Jeez, Angel. Why didn’t you say that right away?”
“I didn’t know! I-I looked it up.”
But I had heard the break in his voice. “Don’t lie to me, Angelo. What did you key in?”
“What?”
“Don’t mess with me. If you looked it up, what did you Google?”
“I can’t remember,” he said. He always was a terrible liar. Not much better now than when he’d say he didn’t know what happened to the choc ices when he was standing there with a mask of melted chocolate six inches wide all round his mouth.
“Who did you phone?” I asked him. “The same person you showed the picture to?”
“I didn’t show the picture to anyone,” he said, full of umbrage, covered by his technicality.
But what technicality?
I almost laughed as it hit me. He had practically told me. He’d said they “hung out” a few times before they met up, before their “real date.”
“You weren’t alone,” I said. “You didn’t have to show someone the photo because someone was right there with you to see the real thing. And that same someone just told you about identifying the phone from the printed photo.”
“Mum, for God’s sake,” was his reply. “No one was with me when I took the photo!” There was that same grievance and outrage again.
“Angelo, this isn’t a game and she’s not trustworthy. She’s proved that to you.”
“Never mind that,” he said. “I just want to forget all about it. Listen, I’ve worked out why the specs are posher than the rest of his stuff. At least, I think so.”
“Okay,” I said. “Convince me.”
“The cheap belt and jeans and watch, right?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Whoever stashed the body knew those things would be found, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Exactly. Whoever it was took his Gucci belt and Ferragamo suit and Hublot watch off him and disguised him as an ordinary Asda kind of guy. And they took his posh specs off him too. His smashed specs. Only, they didn’t know they’d left a bit behind. They had no idea they’d left behind a clue that he was rich.”
“God Almighty, you’re right!” I said. “Yeah, you’re right. Did you think of that all on your own? Do you really know all those designers’ names? Ferra-who??”
He didn’t answer me. But before I could wonder why, I saw the sergeant coming round the corner with one of his wee WPCs trotting at his side. “I need to go, Angel,” I said and dinked off the phone.
“Mrs. McGovern,” the sergeant said, twinkle-eyed and beaming, standing right in front of me that way that policemen do. He wasn’t tall but he was wide with big shoulders and thick short legs, and the overall effect was someone you wouldn’t mess with.
“I was waiting to see you,” I said, “but my phone rang so I had to come out.”
“And what’s brought you all the way in here from the wilds of Dundrennan to ask me,” he said.
“Tell you actually,” I corrected, which he didn’t think much of. “It’s about the Armani specs and how they don’t go with the—” My lips had rounded to say watch before I managed to stop and changed it to “own-make jeans and cheap belt.”
“Oh, uh-huh?” he said. “You think you’ve considered some angle that’s outwitted the plods, do you?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” I said. “It’s just it occurred to me, you know, chewing it over. That the cheap stuff was deliberately put on him to make you think you were looking for that kind of guy. An ordinary type. And whoever it was that bashed his head in didn’t notice that a bit of his fancy glasses got left behind. So I reckon you’re looking for a Flash Harry and they didn’t want you to know that. See?”
The look of scorn didn’t even flicker on his face as he answered me. “Very good, Mrs. McGovern. Yes, we’ve been working on that basis for eight days now. And I’d be grateful if you’d not gossip about your theory. Okay?”
But the WPC blew it. Her eyes flashed and a little grin crept onto her lips. She even half turned towards the door of the station, as if she was champing to get in and see what they could make of the new information.
“Really?” I said. “I’d have thought you’d want to spread the news. Help with the ID.”
“But you’re not a trained detective,” the sergeant said. His poker face was a thing of wonder. There wasn’t the slightest sign on it that he was talking shite, but his eyes had lost the twinkle.
“Right then,” I said. “I better go and see if that man of mine’s ready to hit the road.”
“Oh yes, that’s right,” the sergeant said. “The McGovern family is well in there all of a sudden.”
I nodded and left them. I wondered if he had always liked being a know-it-all and that’s what made the police service seem like such a tempting idea, or if being the one who got to ask the questions and didn’t have to answer any had turned him into what he was.
Marco was back in the manager’s office with my lukewarm tea and the coconut cake turning the bag greasy.
“You can use a stamp, Ali,” he said. When I didn’t answer he went on: “I didn’t go bankrupt over stationery.”
“What?” I said. “I never said a word.”
“Yeah, and it nearly deafened me.”
So I never said a word about the decoy watch, belt, and jeans theory and how the specs had scuppered it. We drove home in silence and he didn’t turn the car round to get the passenger side into the kerb like he usually did when it was raining. He just pulled in, climbed out, and slammed the door, leaving me to scrabble for my own key to dink the car locked and hurry up the path as the wind threw the cold rods of rain at the side of my head until my hair was dripping.
Nineteen
But I told Lars all about it in the car the next morning, and he told Belle and Hinny in the staff kitchenette, where they were setting themselves up with coffee for the change.
“Lord, you’re right, Ali,” Belle said, thinking it over and nodding. “Did all of that just come to you?”
“To my kid,” I said, squashing down another memory: Angel saying Gucci, Ferra-something, and Hublot. Unless they made aftershave, how could he possibly know about them?
“Bright spark,” said Hinny. I squashed down the image of him that morning, a mound under the duvet, refusing to budge, missing yet another day of school.
“Wasted effort, though,” Lars said. “He’s been in the ground over a decade. Whoever killed him and chavved him up away back when couldn’t have dreamed what was going to happen in between then and now, eh?”
“What’s that?” Hinny said.
“Computers,” said Lars. “The skull’s getting sent to Dundee to have the face reconstructed. All the cheap disguise in the world’s not going to help when they put his face back on, is it?”
“Egads, just the skull?” Hinny said. She shuddered and put a third spoonful of sugar in her coffee. “That’s not nice, whacking his head off and taking it … What are we saying, they take it up on the train in a biscuit tin?”
“Ali?” said Belle, her v
oice a soft stroke. “Are you okay? Are you still feeling poorly?”
I took a few deep breaths in and out and felt my pulse begin to settle again, the humming that had started as faint as a breeze in tall grasses already dying away. Belle’s face was puckered up with concern. Lars, leaning against the sink twitching the stretchy bandages over his nasty tattoos, gave me half a smile; just one side of his mouth hooking up and his eyes as sad as Sundays. Hinny checked both of them before she glanced back at me.
“Tell us,” she said. The kitchen worker as wise as the nurses, like before. Although I couldn’t remember what we’d been on about that time.
One more deep breath, right down into the pit of my stomach and held until my fingers tingled. I had never said it. I never even said it when I was ill. There was no point dwelling on what was past unless you could change it.
“I had a stillbirth,” I told them.
“Oh, love,” Belle said. “I’m sorry. When was this?”
“Oh!” I said. “No, don’t worry. It was years ago. It was ten years ago.”
Lars and Hinny shared a look. “It doesn’t matter if it was fifty years ago,” Hinny said. “Your baby died.”
“Not really,” I said. I knew something was coming. I thought it was a howl, but when I let it out and heard it I could almost think I was laughing. “It wasn’t a baby and she didn’t die. It was tissue. It was … I never saw it. I mean, they could tell it would have been a girl, but it wasn’t a girl. It wasn’t a baby.”
“Like a miscarriage, you mean?” Lars said. “How early?”
“A week,” I said.
I thought I saw all of their shoulders drop.
“How could they tell it was female after just a week?” Hinny said, glancing at the nurses.
“Oh,” I said. “No, I mean, she was a week early. But so deformed, you know. She had anencephaly. Severe anencephaly. She never lived. Couldn’t have lived. Wasn’t. Didn’t.” I wrapped my fingers, icy suddenly, round the cup Lars had handed me and felt the good solid burn of the hot tea through its side.
After a silence, Hinny spoke up. “Sorry, Ali, I’m just the cook. What’s anencephaly?”
“She didn’t have a head.” Again the cry that came out with these never-spoken words sounded more like laughter than I could believe. “She had no brain. She had no face.”
“Aw, shite, the rag dolls!” Lars said.
“Yeah, I’m a basket case but not a very complicated one,” I said. “My baby had no head to put a face on, and so faceless things just … headless things just … ”
“You must bloody hate those poxy china angels,” said Lars.
And why would that make the tears start to fall? But here they came, surging up and dashing down my cheeks and, with the first sob, snot bubbles too. I roared. I sounded like a sea lion, but Belle put her warm hand on my knee and Lars stood behind my chair and put both hands on my shoulders and held me tight like that and I didn’t care. I blew my nose on the tea towel Hinny handed me and I didn’t give one single shit.
“That actually feels a lot better,” I said after a bit.
“Do you think you can do the change?” said Hinny.
“And do you think you could answer a question?” Belle said.
I nodded, meaning it to cover both of them.
“Because that’s very severe anencephaly,” Belle said.
I blinked a couple of times and blew my nose again. “Eh? Well, it’s okay. I had my tubes tied. We decided it was best. There’s no danger.”
“Ten years ago?” Belle said. “At Dumfries?”
Lars had let go of my shoulders and walked round so he could see me. “That was a big decision to make at a time like that,” he said.
I nodded, but it hadn’t felt that way. I barely remembered it, except that it was one more thing my mum could have helped me through if she’d been willing to. I couldn’t even remember, now I thought about it, where the idea had come from. Marco, probably. He was thinking for both of us back then.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said. “You used to work in maternity, didn’t you?” Belle grew very still. “Sorry. I know it wasn’t very happy when you left. Lars said it was kind of hard at the end. But you might be able to tell me.”
Now it seemed that all of them were still. A drip fell from the cold tap into the shallow basin of bleachy water Lars had laid the dishcloth in and the plink sounded like someone hitting a triangle, a pure note in the silence.
“It was just this,” I said. “Is there any way I can name her? Now. We didn’t name her because of how she was, and now I wish we had. Can we do that? Is that something people ever do?”
“I don’t know if people ever do it,” said Belle, speaking slowly, “but I think it sounds like a good idea. Where is she? Is she buried or did you scatter her ashes?”
“We didn’t do anything. She just got … It wasn’t like that,” I said. “Hospital waste.”
“You could put a bench somewhere nice that you liked to go,” Lars said, jumping in. “You could put her name on a nice bench or a picnic table. Even if you can’t register a name legally. What’s to stop you?”
“So what were you going to call her?” Hinny said. “What would you put on the plaque on the picnic table?”
But there was only one name I could even think of and I couldn’t say it to them. So I just shook my head. “I don’t think I can face the staff meeting, actually,” I said. “If you think it would be okay for me to skip it, I think I’ll go and see how Sylvie’s doing today.”
She was in bed, propped up on her pillows with her eyes closed. I crossed quietly to her bedside and looked down at her, at her thin colourless hair and her pale dry skin, feeling my heart go out to her. It’s a strange expression until you’ve felt it, but after the first time it happens nothing else can sum it up so perfectly. My heart left my body, slipping in wisps from in between my ribs, and drifted over to settle on Sylvie. As if she had felt it, she opened her eyes and smiled at me.
Now I could hear the hirstle in her chest as she breathed. She had caught a cold out there in the gardens. I put the back of my hand to her head and thought I could feel a fever, her skin clammy.
“Next time we go outside, I’ll wrap you up better,” I said. “And we’ll wait for a sunny day.”
She closed her eyes in that way that does for nodding, like a cat.
“But we had a good time, didn’t we?” I said. “It was good to see you smiling, Sylvie.”
Still with her eyes shut, she pursed her lips and then let them fall loose again. “Ju,” she said. And again, “Ju.”
“That’s right!” I said. “Julia was there. Oh, you clever girl. You met someone called Julia yesterday. You clever, clever girl. They’ve all made a big mistake about you.”
“Ju,” whispered Sylvie. “Ju.”
“Do you want to see her?” I said.
Sylvie only breathed out, but something about the way her mouth relaxed sounded like a yes to me. “I won’t be long,” I said. I dropped a kiss on her damp brow and left.
Julia was in the shower, which was a step forward. Her room was littered deeper than ever with discarded clothes and ripped open mail orders. I skidded on a slippery bag and had to grab at the top of her chest of drawers to stop myself falling.
“Who the fuck’s that?” Julia shouted. “Ryan, if that’s you again you can fuck the fuck off. Byron, if it’s you, you can join me.”
“No luck,” I said. “It’s Ali. And you’re joking, aren’t you? The boys don’t come waltzing in and out of your room, do they?”
The water turned off and Julia opened the shower screen. She was bright red down her front as if the water had been too hot or she’d stood under it too long. “Fling me a towel if you’ve finished gawping, pervy.”
“You’ll get thread veins if you blast yourself with scorching wat
er like that every day,” I told her. “And you shouldn’t be using that apricot scrub either. It’s far too harsh. If you could see your skin under a microscope you’d see it’s lacerated. All those shards of apricot stone are like little daggers.”
“Oh, I see. You think we should let all the sea life fill their bellies up with plastic micro beads just in case we ever see our skin under a microscope? Pretty goddam shallow, if you ask me.”
I smiled. It was good to hear her sounding eighteen for a change. For some reason teenage girls always cared a lot about sea life. I blamed The Little Mermaid.
“What do you want, anyway? Have you come to rub my naked flesh again? What team do you actually play for, Ali? Your husband’s pretty tasty for a geriatric but you don’t half like to get your hands on the girlies.”
“I’ve come to see if you’d like to visit Sylvie again,” I said. “And how the hell do you know what my husband looks like?”
“Small world,” said Julia. “Why would I want another thrill-a-minute visit to Sissy?”
“Sylvie,” I said. “She’s asking for you.”
Julia had been bent over towelling her head but when she heard that she straightened up. “That zombie’s asking for me?” she said. “I thought she was supposed to be lobotomised.”
“Catatonic,” I said. “You don’t have to bend double to dry your hair now it’s short, you know. In case that hadn’t occurred to you.”
She gave me a screwball look then let out a shout of laughter. “Hah! You’re right.” Being told she’d done something stupid seemed to cheer her up in a way that didn’t seem like eighteen years old at all. I thought of how Angel grew red and mulish if I caught him out in the slightest dip in his cool.
“Yeah, okay then,” she said. “Why not? I’ve got nothing better to fill the aching void today. Sissy and Juju ride again. Let’s go.” She marched out of the bathroom and halfway across her bedroom, then looked over her shoulder and winked at me. “Hah!” she said again. “You win the game of chicken. Well played. I’ll put some clothes on, shall I?”
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