by Tony Black
Melanie removed the cap and threw it on the ground. She downed a mouthful and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. ‘That’s the trick!’ She let out a long exhalation of breath as she steadied herself on the countertop. She took another deep swig and then she walked, shakily, towards the breakfast bar and sat down with the bottle of vodka in front of her.
For a moment she stared at the clear liquid swirling in the bottom and then she sighed, raided the mug rack and poured until the brim was overflowing. She raised the mug, drank greedily until it was drained. ‘Fuck, Mel…’ she laughed at herself for a moment and then, inexplicably, her laughter turned to tears and she lowered her head in front of the bottle.
Melanie didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, leaning on the breakfast bar, but when she heard the sound of car tyres on the gravel of the driveway, she knew it had been some time. The sky outside had darkened and the only light in the kitchen was coming from the cooker’s digital clock and some shafts through the windows where the garden security lamps had come on.
Her mouth felt dry, her tongue harsh. She rubbed at her head — her temples burned. She had been slumped forward and the nape of her neck ached like it had been in a vice. She raised herself, tried to straighten her back, but her head swam, threatening to drop her on the floor. The physical discomfort was intense, but nothing compared to the realisation that she had returned to the real world — the drinking bout had done nothing but delay the fact that she had to face up to her actions, and Devlin.
Melanie shuffled towards the sink, ran the tap. The water came out too fast, too hard. At first she threw up her arms, shielded herself as it splashed off the plates and cups and wetted her face and chest. When she gathered herself, she turned the tap the other way a little, diminished the flow. She cupped her hands underneath and splashed the cold water on her face. It made her eyes smart. As she fanned her hands under the tap, the beads of moist ure seemed to rouse her. She recouped her senses and retreated.
Melanie was running her hands through her hair, tucking stray strands behind her ears, as the front door opened. She heard the heavy thud of the door closing, then Devlin’s keys being thrown on the little table nearby. She had expected to hear shouts, bellows after that, but as his footfalls made the living room she heard an altogether different noise to the one she expected.
It sounded like a baby crying.
She tugged the cord of her dressing gown round her waist and tapped the sides of her cheeks in an effort to waken her senses yet further. Shushing, she heard Devlin shushing. His voice seemed lower than she had ever heard it; unnatural. Slowly, she edged herself towards the kitchen door.
The floor felt cold beneath her feet as she walked but once through the door the carpet was soft. She was so intrigued by the noises coming from the living room that she managed to push the accident with the wine out of her mind. As she turned the corner into the seating area, she straightened the lamp she had knocked earlier, and switched it on.
Light flooded into the room. Melanie felt her mouth widening but no words seemed to be forming on her lips.
‘Hello, dear,’ said Devlin.
Melanie pointed to him. ‘What the hell is that?’
He turned towards the light and held out a small bundle. ‘It’s, well, kind of…’ He was searching for the words but none came.
‘It’s a baby, Devlin.’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
Melanie walked towards her husband. He shook the small child up and down to try and calm it. ‘Come on now, that’s enough.’
It was clear to Melanie he had not a clue how to look after a baby. Something leapt in her; she took the child in her arms.
Chapter 23
The baby calmed in Melanie’s arms, gurgled. She looked at the small round cheeks and the pink nose and thought how cute they were. The child was like a toy, a squirming noisy toy. She lifted the baby onto her shoulder and started to walk around the living room, shushing and cooing. McArdle watched for a moment or two then threw himself down on the sofa. He seemed unaware of, or unconcerned about, the red wine stains.
Melanie watched her husband as he took out his mobile phone and checked his calls. He scratched the back of his neck and sighed, returned the phone. ‘You all right with that nipper for a bit, doll?’ he said.
Melanie turned round, looked him in the eye. ‘What do you mean?’
McArdle sat forward, rested his elbows on his thighs. He looked, if not troubled, at least not his usual self. Melanie had expected shouting, screaming about the wine stains but he wasn’t bothered in the slightest. He seemed to be preoccupied; there was something troubling him. ‘It’s like this… I’m minding it, for a pal.’
Melanie felt her brows crease, her jaw sag. He made the poor child sound like a car or something that was stolen from a building site — a generator or power tools. It was a child. ‘What the hell do you mean, minding it for a pal?’ she launched into him.
McArdle rubbed his neck again, brought his hand up the back of his head, smoothed his palm over the stubble on his crown. His eyes darted from left to right; he was about to lie to her, she could tell. ‘See, there’s this couple and they have a bit of a problem and can’t mind the kid for a bit, so-’
Melanie arked up, ‘So you said you would!’ It didn’t sound like Devlin McArdle to her. It sounded like a decent thing to do and she knew he wasn’t capable of a decent action. If he had taken this child he had done it for some other reason. ‘Oh, come on, do you expect me to believe that?’
McArdle flared his nostrils, opened and closed his mouth, then, ‘Mel, you can believe what you want.’
Was he testing her? She knew he was playing at some kind of game but she couldn’t work out the rules. He liked his psychological sparring as much as the physical, but this was all new to Melanie. She understood that someone had to look after the baby — and that someone was going to have to be her — so McArdle needed to keep her onside. If he lost patience with her, he’d have to look after the child himself, and that obviously wasn’t part of his plan; neither was letting someone else look after the child. If he had intended to leave the child elsewhere he would have already. There was a reason why he had brought a baby back to their home and Melanie wanted to know what it was.
‘I want the truth,’ she said. Her voice betrayed the seriousness of the situation, sounded harsh. The tone had surprised Melanie. Was she standing up to McArdle? She knew she would never do that herself, but she seemed to draw strength from the situation.
‘Okay, okay… Come here.’ McArdle motioned her towards the sofa. ‘Come and sit down, Mel.’
‘I mean it, I want the truth… This is a baby, not some knockoff gear you’ve brought home.’
McArdle breathed in. His chest rose as he spoke: ‘I was out at Muirhouse today…’
‘I fucking knew it. You’re not doing anyone a favour!’ Melanie stood again. She felt light-headed.
‘Sit down, love.’
‘No. No way.’ Her adrenaline spiked at the mention of the scheme. Nothing good came of McArdle’s doings there. She knew he dealt drugs, but he had a small army of people to do that for him. If he’d been visiting the badlands it meant trouble: someone hadn’t paid up, or an old score had been settled. She prayed he hadn’t taken some poor mother’s child to put a scare on a bad debtor.
As she walked away from her husband, Melanie McArdle suddenly wondered to herself, where was she going? She could flee to the kitchen, the upstairs bathroom maybe, but that was as far as she’d get. The thought stilled her. She turned, faced him. McArdle was fiddling with his watch strap. His teeth clenched as he readied himself to deal with Melanie’s rebellion. She felt her nerves shriek. The realisation of her situation was like a hard ball being bounced on her head. She scrunched her eyes and looked away. When she returned her gaze, McArdle had reclined in the sofa, crossed his legs; she could see the Adidas symbol at the top of his socks.
He patted the cushion beside him. ‘Come on, Mel�
��’
She sucked at her cheeks, pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth. She tried to keep her mouth closed, but the words wouldn’t stay in: ‘What’s going on?’ She wanted to know, she wanted to hear the truth, but at the same time she felt helpless to do anything about the situation. She couldn’t stand against him — he would kill her before he tolerated that.
McArdle tweaked the tip of his nose with his finger and thumb, spoke: ‘Well, if you’re ready to listen, I’ll tell you.’
She nodded; hugged the baby close.
‘As I said, I was in Muirhouse… Now, it’s not what you think. I had some legitimate business there and, well…’ he paused, cleared his throat, coughed into his fist, ‘well, how can I put this, love…’
Something was wrong, she knew that the second he started to call her love. He was lying. McArdle never stalled for words. He was lying to her because he needed her to help him out of a fix. She’d seen the look before, when police were involved. It put a shard of ice in her spine. She gripped the child again.
McArdle continued, ‘There’s this couple there and, well, they have their addictions… Nothing serious, mind, they take a bit of grass and a bit of skag and they’re payers, good payers, I’ve no worries with them on that score if that’s what you’re thinking.’ He rubbed his knuckles, fiddled with a heavy gold sovereign ring. ‘Melanie, it’s like this… The social services are coming down hard on them, threatening to take the kid away. Really shook them up, so it has…’
Melanie couldn’t look at him any longer. She turned her head away, spoke: ‘So you said you’d take the kid… Why?’ It didn’t make sense to her.
‘Because, love, they need a break and they don’t want to lose the kid… Look, they’ve no family to speak of, so the social would just put the nipper into care. I couldn’t let that happen, could I?’
She huffed; who was he kidding? Since when did Devlin McArdle give a shit about the people he supplied drugs to? He cared if they didn’t pay him. He cared if they short-changed him, lied about having money when they didn’t, or bought from someone else, but that was all. He wasn’t a social worker, and he thought about one person and one person alone: himself.
‘Mel, please… Hon, it’s not going to be for long. A week at the most. You can look after the kid for that long, can’t you?’
Melanie stared at her husband. The blood surged in her veins. He had reached a new low and she hated him for it, but she knew she was powerless to do anything about it.
He spoke again, his voice a pathetic low paean: ‘Mel, I know you can do it… I know you can, one week, that’s all I’m asking.’
She felt a spasm in her neck tug her gaze from him. She took in the full horror of the winestains. Before she knew what she was doing, Melanie had answered him: ‘Okay. One week.’
Chapter 24
DI Rob Brennan paused on the way to the interview room, gathered his thoughts. He leaned against the wall and watched the flurry of activity around the station. The momentum of the case had seemed to stall not long after finding the body, then accelerated once they had identified her as Carly Donald. Things had lunged forward rapidly once more, but the mood of the investigation had altered. Nothing was being taken for granted.
He had worked hundreds, thousands of cases in his time on the force but Brennan had never encountered anything like this before. There was, for sure, a reason why Carly’s parents had kept the details of their granddaughter Beth’s birth to themselves, but he couldn’t fathom what it might be. A child was a gift from God, in any circumstances — his mother had said that when Sophie was born, and she was not a religious woman, but the sheer significance of the event had prompted a spiritual outburst. How could a so-called man of the cloth carry on like that? It felled Brennan to think of it. Was life so cheap?
He knew, when the case was over, complete, tidied up and all the loose ends put together into one nice neat bow, things would make perfect sense. They always did, then. The reasons for seemingly inexplicable behaviour always became clear; motives presented themselves. Sometimes it was money, sometimes lust. He had seen just about every variation in between, but for Reverend John Donald and his wife to lose not only a child but a grandchild too, and to keep quiet about it before the investigating officers, was perplexing. Brennan thought about the picture Lorraine had handed him earlier. He placed his hand into his pocket and removed the small photograph and stared at the tiny shape, barely recognisable as human. A small smile spread from the corner of his mouth. He touched the picture with his fingertip, then hurriedly returned it to his pocket.
A siren sounded in the car park and Brennan was poked back to the waking world. He watched as a young WPC worked the photocopier. She retrieved her copy then walked off, getting only a few paces before returning to the machine to raise the lid and retrieve the original. She smiled at Brennan on her way back to her seat. They knew; they all knew. This case was turning out to be a thankless task: the kind of crime that had a clear victim, but that was all that was clear. Brennan had decided early on that the girl in the dumpster was local to Muirhouse — it looked that way, everything pointed to that — but now he had to reassess his assumptions. He had to go back to the start, look again. Was he missing something? He knew he must be, but what? All he needed was one break, one pointer, something to set the ball in motion and the rest would gather in its wake. If he was a religious man himself, he thought, prayers might not be a bad idea.
As he paced through Incident Room One he saw Lauder coming from DC Stevie McGuire’s desk. Brennan approached him, stood in his path: ‘What are you doing in here?’
Lauder grinned. ‘Who promoted you to hall monitor?’
Brennan stood his ground. ‘This is my investigation, Lauder, and I’d like it solved.’ The bustle of the room ceased — they had an audience. Brennan sensed himself becoming a gladiator, all eyes upon him for a reaction as Lauder replied.
‘I’d ask how you were getting on, but I think I’ll just catch it on the news later.’
It was a low blow, designed to rattle Brennan. He returned a volley of his own: ‘We’re doing fine here, so you can take yourself elsewhere, Lauder, I don’t want you fucking up our mojo.’
Lauder riled, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Now Brennan smiled. ‘How’s the shooting case going?’
Lauder shook his head. ‘That’s a complex investigation; it would take me too long to explain to you, Rob.’
Brennan walked past him. ‘Broad-daylight shooting, in a public place… Sounds it!’
Lauder looked ready to spit as he turned for the exit. Brennan knew he was storing up trouble for himself if he didn’t ease off on him, but he didn’t care. The man had messed up the investigation of his brother’s murder and the thought rankled, more than a bit.
Outside the interview room Brennan stalled, looked in the peep-hole. The minister sat silently inside, head bowed. Brennan lowered his eye, rested his forehead on the door for a second or two, then jerked his neck back and walked into the room opposite. DC Stevie McGuire was sitting inside. He had a sandwich box open on the desk and a styrofoam cup filled with grey coffee halfway to his mouth. When he saw Brennan he lowered the cup, said, ‘Sir, how’s it going?’
‘It’s me that should be asking you that.’
McGuire took a quick sip of the coffee. ‘Well, I warmed him up for you but didn’t get much.’
‘What’s he saying?’ Brennan sat on the edge of the desk.
‘Not a lot.’ McGuire exhaled slowly. ‘He said he was going to tell us about the baby… in due course.’
Brennan smirked. ‘Oh, really… When, exactly?’
‘That he didn’t say.’
‘What else?’
‘Nothing much. I didn’t go in too hard, just wanted to give him a foretaste, make him think, y’know.’
Brennan knew exactly what he meant — he was leaving it to him, didn’t want to mess up. ‘And the wife?’
‘I’m just goin
g in there now. Thought I’d question her whilst you took the husband. We can compare notes.’
Brennan made a conscious effort to keep his expression blank, register nothing. He rose from the edge of the desk, turned for the door he’d walked through a moment earlier. He was about to close it behind him when he retreated a step, said, ‘I saw Lauder through there.’
McGuire’s eyes widened. ‘You did?’
‘Yes. I did.’ Brennan let the statement hang in the air for a little while, then, ‘If there’s any media enquiries come in, say nothing.’
McGuire’s lips parted. He seemed to be unsure of his answer, then: ‘Yes, sir… Of course.’
Brennan closed the door behind him. As he turned for the interview room, he took a moment to think about his strategy: he was going in hard, studs first. There was nothing to be gained from holding back. They had treated the minister with too much civility already. A man that hides the fact that he has a missing granddaughter, in the wake of his daughter’s brutal killing, deserves no leeway.
Brennan reached for the handle, turned it briskly and strode in. He did not acknowledge the minister, merely removed his jacket and flung it over the back of the chair. There was an empty plastic cup on the table. It toppled in the draught the jacket’s landing threw up; a little sliver of brown tea spilled on the table. The minister stared at it, seemed unsure of what to do next. He righted the cup and returned his hand to beneath the table.
Brennan spoke: ‘Who was the father?’
‘ What? I–I’ve no idea.’
‘You never asked?’
‘She wouldn’t say.’ The minister looked away.