by Caro Ramsay
The last of the forensic team are packing up, chatting after a hard day. I go into her bathroom, the en suite one; not the best place to keep a laptop. She likes long baths and gets the place all steamed up. Beside her bed are her books: The World of Emily Dickinson and Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti. A cookery book about baking for kids. And that is that. The Rossetti book is a shabby second-hand copy of an old edition; its jacket is missing. The sum of three pounds fifty is scribbled in pencil on the flyleaf. Probably from a charity shop. I never knew she had it; she had never mentioned it, not even in our Goblin Market conversations.
I sit on the bed for a long time. Someone downstairs is shouting for car keys. The place already seems emptier without Mary.
I go to the kitchen and find Parnell and Charlie drawing. Parnell is guiding Charlie’s hand, his other hand is on his mobile.
‘Do you want some juice, Charlie? Fruit Shoot?’
‘No, thank you,’ he says politely. He is drawing a woman being pulled out the door with blood shooting from her arm.
‘Maybe you should show that to the nice policeman,’ I say. Parnell suddenly notices what his son has drawn and nods. Even he seems more tense than usual.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’ I pick up a duster and nip to the big library, running the cloth over the bookshelves. The collector’s edition of Rossetti is still there on its stand, still in its cover. I dust down the leather-bound volumes that have never been read. Then I go to the lower shelf where Mary keeps her own precious collection: Jane Austen and the Brontës, Enid Blyton and J.K. Rowling, the books that she is keeping for Charlie. And then, wedged between them, The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti. Three copies? But it’s just the old cover, wrapped around something about ten inches high, slotted upright between the books. Something laptop-shaped.
Parnell is about and he is sharp. It might be something, it might be nothing. If it’s nothing, then Parnell need not concern himself. If it’s anything to do with her kidnap then I will tell Costello. Either way, Mary did not want her husband knowing and I will not tell him. She had her reasons, as did Sophie. Goblin Market. It’s about the mistakes women make for men. One sister has to look out for the other. I need to find Mary. If I find Mary, I might find Sophie.
‘You find what you were looking for?’ The gruff voice of Parnell speaks behind me, very close to my shoulder. If I turn round, he will be eyeballing me.
I do not turn. ‘I was thinking about Mary and Sophie, wondering if they are together.’ At that point I turn round. We eyeball each other, I know that he cannot read me.
He looks annoyed. ‘I have to go to Glasgow. I’ll be back tonight. I want you to take Charlie upstairs to the flat, and don’t let anybody in. I’ll phone when I get back, do you understand?’
‘Of course.’
He turns, his shoes clicking on the marble floor. He pauses, looking round as he walks out the library. He knows I was searching for something.
By eight, Charlie is lying on the settee eating some of a Cornetto and rubbing the rest on his face. We have modelled with Play-Doh and we have watched Bob the Builder. He thinks it is about his father. So far, Parnell has not called. Once he had driven off, I told Charlie that he had five minutes to find his Play-Doh and his DVD and meet me at the front door. The back door is out of bounds. I heard him running around being as noisy as possible as I went into the library and opened the laptop. No battery. I go back and find the flex coiled up behind the books. It took ages to power up, even longer to let me open the document. Charlie shouted something; Bob the Builder had gone AWOL. I said he could have another ten minutes. I pulled the flash drive from my pocket and inserted it. There was only one Word document. I didn’t care what it was, I just copied it. It took forever.
Once it was finished I turned the laptop off, closed it and returned it to its hiding place. When I came back Charlie was staring through the banister, watching my every move.
‘What are you doing, monkey woman?’ he asked.
‘Monkey things,’ I said.
Now he has his DVD and his Cornetto, he will lie like that for ages. All I have to do is pay attention when he tells me there is a funny bit. And laugh.
The start of the narrative is simple. And awful.
Today he told me that I was having another keeper.
So that is how she thought of me? A keeper?
This will be another pretty girl, young enough to be impressed by Alex. I wonder what kind of regime he will have in store for this one. He will have told her that I am bored, or that I fantasise and need to be kept an eye on because I might harm Charlie. She will look at him doe-eyed.
I was glad to read that she changed her mind a few pages later once she met me. I kind of like Elvie, she’s weird but nice … Eric had already told her about Sophie, she writes that it gave her a creepy feeling. Then a name jumps out at me …
Natalie.
She writes about Magda and Natalie, she writes about the Not Knowing. The style is elaborate and flowery. I scan on looking for their names – murdered on her way across the park – I have not cried yet, it rams home all that Mum and that Dad have been saying. I might not stay at uni after all.
There is a gap, then something written at a different time. Growing up in East Kilbride. She sounded trapped even then.
Our house was at 37 Cloverview Brae, it looked on to a field and I always had a view of something else going on, another life …
My phone interrupts. I close my laptop, deep in thought. Some of that diary is obviously typed up from some other notes Mary had. Notes about Natalie. Natalie who had introduced Mary and Alex. Natalie, who was only eighteen when she was murdered. And Billy was in charge of that case and did not solve it.
I answer the phone. It is Parnell.
‘How’s Charlie?’
‘Fine.’
‘Can you put him to bed in the big house and meet me there in twenty minutes? Hopkirk will be joining us.’
TUESDAY, 12 JUNE
I walk up behind DI Costello as she waits to cross the road outside Partickhill, and tap her lightly on the arm.
She gasps. ‘God, you made me jump. Has Anderson called you in?’
‘Well, yes, but you wanted to be told if anything happened with Mary. A ransom demand arrived yesterday. It was sent to the Glasgow address, plain brown envelope, posted in Glasgow. Half a million. Parnell is going to pay it. He doesn’t know where or when yet. And he doesn’t want you to know.’
We are at the bottom of the steps of the station. Costello does not miss a beat. ‘You will keep me informed?’
‘You’ll find out anyway. Does Matilda work at the forensics lab in the university?’ I lower my voice as we go in the door.
‘She does.’
‘I think Parnell is going to get his private security company to commission Forensic Services to test the paper, the envelope, the glue. You can keep track on it. You can get the results.’
‘You’re very public spirited all of a sudden.’
‘I don’t want him doing anything that you don’t know about. If there’s anything in those tests that relates to my sister, I want to know.’
‘Not that public spirited then.’ But she smiles.
‘Thank you for coming in,’ says DCI Anderson.
I give him my shrug. I do notice that the kindness has gone out of his eyes, as though he’s joining Costello at the steely-eyed school. He has a file and a large plastic envelope in his hand; he puts them on the table as he slides on to the seat opposite me. Costello does the same. Her hair is fluffier today, and the scar at the top of her forehead is clearly visible. It is very red, angry. Every trace of the friendliness of the wee chat in the street outside has gone.
‘We need to talk.’
‘So talk.’
‘We are bit concerned that all this is following you around.’
‘I had noticed.’
‘The flat at Ardno had white goods, a sofa, a bed. All the rest is yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘So can you tell me where this came from?’
It’s the copy of Catch-22 Mary gave me, wrapped in a plastic envelope. I explain this to Anderson. ‘She was thinking about suggesting it for the book group.’ But I now know this is not true, she was not going to her book group.
He nods.
‘It was on the coffee table.’
‘We found a few of your fingerprints on it.’
‘As you should.’
‘And Mary’s.’
‘It was her book.’
‘And a few others.’
I nod. ‘People touch books,’ I say, not following where he was going.
‘One was a match for someone on our database.’
A small flame of hope begins to burn. ‘You mean the person who took Mary?’
‘No.’ He is talking slowly as if I am retarded. ‘We lifted a few epithelial cells. The fact that we could means that the book must have been touched recently, as the cells had not degenerated in any way. Can you explain how somebody missing since 2006 has their fingerprints on a book that was not printed until 2011?’
For some reason this makes me look at my hands, at my own fingertips. ‘Missing since 2006? Who?’
‘Magdalena Freeman.’
That name means something to me.
‘Magda Mason,’ Anderson goes on. ‘Eric Mason’s wife.’
In my bed I am thinking through everything that has happened. A woman that had lived next door to us, who went missing six years ago, is still alive. Then Gilly went missing, then Sophie, and now Mary. Lorna was taken six months ago and escaped. The unknown girl, Katrine, might have died as she too was dumped and ran. None of it makes any sense. But it is real, as real as the book that I pushed across the desk with my finger, sliding easily in its plastic bag. Anderson told me that he had fed all the information into the major incident computer. My name started flashing like a Christmas tree.
I am sure Alex Parnell’s did as well.
So I have to go back to where it started for me.
I open the drawer and look at the photographs. In my mind I am asking Sophie what the hell is going on here, why she has dragged me into this nightmare. Billy is sleeping downstairs; Charlie now has a bronchitic minder. I’ll be going back to Ardo tomorrow.
Rod has moved in with a sister and I don’t know where that is exactly. Mark’s wallet had an ATM slip dated fourteenth of April and Costello is slowly forming a timeline of his movements to that point. The post-mortem has concluded that his death was caused by a slow bleed from his middle meningeal artery after a blow to his head sometime earlier.
I know I did not react. But Anderson asked me politely if I would mind handing over my passport.
I recall the pressure of his hands on my arms, the desperation in his eyes. I nod and tell Anderson I am not going anywhere.
The big question in my mind is how Magda’s prints got on that book. Eric has been questioned, he is as confused as anybody. Magda has been around here somewhere, she touched that book. Mary and Magda had met.
Maybe she’s come back to the Glen, where she was born. But it’s a sparsely populated place, she would be noticed. So how has she stayed under the radar? Did Mary track her down? Why would she? For Eric? Maybe there is no mystery, except that Magda Mason, née Freeman, was last heard of in Stoke Newington six years ago and hasn’t been seen since.
I snuggle up underneath the duvet and fire up my laptop. Mary knew something, I’m sure of it. I just hope she wrote it down. Mary was a precious child, to older parents; a previous child had been stillborn.
My parents had a great life mapped out for me. I learned to ignore and dismiss my own will as if it was of no importance whatsoever. They were determined I would not spend my life mopping the floors in the Italian café like Mum or spending my winters under cars getting covered in engine oil like my dad. As a child my week was carefully planned, scheduled to the nth degree, and on a Saturday I was allowed a packet of sweeties, but no chocolate.
I did well at school, very well. I studied really hard, taking a break every hour so I could look out the window over the green field of Cloverview Brae where next door’s kids played on the grass. I wanted to lie down and roll down the slight hill with the other kids, join in the nips and dumps. I wanted to join in.
Then I got into Glasgow uni, and decided that I could reinvent myself. Or so I thought. My parents were talking about selling the house and moving back to the West End as I was going to the university there.
That was the first night that I can recall crying myself to sleep.
Crying herself to sleep?
I don’t see why she didn’t just tell them all to piss off. However, she got a lucky break when her parents realized how high house prices in the West End had spiralled. Then her dad came up with Plan B. He would drive to the bus stop and pick her up. Every day. She wrote, The world had just slammed shut in my face.
I get up and refill my coffee, padding lightly across the floor in my bare feet. Then I go back to reading, realising the degree of control Mary lived her life under. When she studied, her mum brought her food on a tray so that she wasn’t interrupted. Then she met Natalie, a fellow student who was impressed by Mary’s insight into the world of the demented and the bored in the novels of the Romantics. I guess Mary would have been good at that. Natalie tried to take Mary out for a drink. It was her first taste of friendship, I think.
It reads as though Natalie was outgoing and fun-loving and took her awkward new friend under her wing. I can relate to that. Natalie then suggested Mary as an interviewer for the uni newspaper, interviewing her boyfriend at Alex Parnell’s Glasgow office.
Mary recalls that meeting with humour then writes about the next day when Natalie did not appear at the lecture, leaving the seat beside her empty. She was in the library when she heard the body of a young woman had been found amongst the trees in Kelvingrove Park, and deep down, Mary knew.
Natalie had been strangled.
They never got the man who did it.
She had noticed at the funeral how Natalie’s parents, supposedly Alex’s good friends, avoided him, leaving him to be comforted by his friend, Eric. Mary had noted how upset Eric was – she’d thought he had no time for Natalie.
Did he marry me on the rebound? Or because he lost her and he was not in control of that? George Bernard Shaw once said, ‘To be in hell is to drift, to be in heaven is to steer.’ That sums Alex up.
Deep inside I know it is my fault Natalie was killed. She wanted me to stay on in the pub then go up to her flat to change into some costume she had for me. Then we’d go across the park to the party together. I declined, I left her in the pub. If I hadn’t, she would still be alive.
Alex and I bonded over our loss and I was flattered by his attention, if I’m honest. After one interview the police phoned my father to take me home and he told Alex I wouldn’t be coming back to university.
Alex had other ideas.
Three months later we got married in Gretna Green. His friend Eric and a woman we met in the cake shop were witnesses. I thought it was very romantic.
So Eric and Alex had been friends for a long time, and close friends.
But once Charlie was born I overheard his secretary say that it was odd Alex’s two kids were both called Charlie. He had been married before, had been a father before.
I asked him about his other family. That was the first time he hit me.
WEDNESDAY, 13 JUNE
In the end Vera Haddow was easy to find – Mary had left enough clues – six stories up in a block of flats in Broomhill. It was getting away from Parnell and Charlie that proved difficult. Her flat is only a mile from my own flat in Glasgow, and I have a million and one reasons to drive down to Glasgow early on Wednesday morning. By half past ten I am standing on the concourse of the tower block, looking up, thinking what hell it must be to live here with a child. The residents seem happy, though, cheery folk who meet on the stairs and chat to each
other.
In the lift I ask two of them what number Vera Haddow lives at, and they look at me with some suspicion. I say the paperwork I’ve been given refers to the wrong tower block, that I’m here about young Charlie.
‘Charles,’ I am corrected. But they accept my knowledge as some kind of proof that I’m legit.
One minute later I am outside her door.
She is a thin woman, of a similar type to Mary and Natalie, small boned and dark, her hair in a very modern spiky cut but her face much older, more weary. Her short nails constantly rake the white skin of her forearm as she holds the door open a crack.
‘Hello, I’m looking for Vera Haddow,’ I say.
‘Who’s looking for her?’
‘My name is Elvie McCulloch, I’m a friend of Mary.’ My name is not a surprise to her. ‘She came to see you? I’m worried about her.’
‘Mary? Is she OK?’ The door opens a little.
I can tell by the way she said it she knows something bad has happened, and she is not surprised.
‘I’m not sure. I’m trying to find her,’ I answer truthfully. ‘She mentioned you in a diary.’ I’m out of ideas now. ‘Why did she come to see you?’
She leans her head on the side of the door. ‘It was about Charles.’
‘Your son?’
The lips purse into something like a smile. ‘My Charles, yes.’ She explains. ‘My son is Charles Alexander Parnell but my ex-husband thinks my son is not good enough to inherit the name. Hence Mary’s son is also called Charles. I hope he fares better, for his sake.’ She holds open the door so I can see into the living room, where a chubby boy of about ten is staring at a huge computer monitor. Letters appear on the screen in a grid, he clicks on the mouse. Makes a word from the letters and moves on. He gets ‘hose’, then ‘stern’. His focus is total. He does not look up as we cross the narrow hall to peer into the living room. My mum used to give me a row for ignoring people like that.