Risk of Harm

by Jane Renshaw

  Chapter 23

  ‘I don’t think Edith will want to come, though,’ said Beckie through a mouthful of muesli.

  Flora took a swallow of tea. ‘Well, maybe if you ask her really nicely she will.’

  ‘I’m already giving her like half my lunch and she still hardly speaks to me.’

  ‘Beckie, you do realise that your own lunch is exactly the same size as ever? I hope you have been giving the extra food to Edith, and not eating it yourself.’

  Beckie sighed. ‘Yes! But you know how seagulls swoop down and snatch your food and then they disappear? Edith’s like a human seagull. She’s suddenly there and then after I’ve given her the food she’s gone. I’ve asked her if she wants to play with us but she doesn’t.’

  Flora bit her lip. She had passed on to Mrs Jenner her concern about Edith not getting enough to eat, and Mrs Jenner had said she’d look into it, but according to Beckie Edith still seemed desperate for the extra lunch Flora was now packing, which included ever more calorific – and presumably tempting to Beckie – items such as Snickers and homemade flapjacks. Was Beckie handing it all over?

  She’d have to speak to Mrs Jenner again.

  ‘If she does come to the party,’ added Neil, ‘you’re going to treat her like a princess the whole time she’s here. That’ll be a good start to making it up to her.’

  Beckie sighed. ‘I know, but Edith hates me now.’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t,’ said Flora weakly, although this was all too likely.

  She waited for Neil to back her up, but he was intent on the screen of his laptop, breaking his own ‘no screens at the table’ rule.

  As she got up and walked to the sink behind his chair, she saw that he had a table of data up on the screen – catching up on the work he’d let slide since the Johnsons had reappeared. Getting back to normal life. Carrying on as if nothing had happened.

  They’d had another argument in bed this morning. Neil had decided that the Johnsons’ whole strategy must be to persuade the authorities to review the adoption; to cast doubt on Neil and Flora’s suitability as adoptive parents by provoking them to violence.

  ‘Or to make us appear violent,’ he’d added. ‘I hardly even touched Carly Johnson.’

  ‘They’ve got you on camera pushing her!’

  ‘I didn’t push her. I just tried to get past, and she deliberately fell to the ground. She’s a pretty good actress, as you found out for yourself yesterday.’ He’d sat up in bed and glared at her. They had intended taking the footage of Lorraine and Carly Johnston coming to the door to the police as evidence of their breaching the court order, but on playing it had discovered that the camera angle, from behind Carly, made it look as if Flora flinging out her arm to tell them to ‘Fuck off’ was an attempt to hit the girl, who had staggered back on cue. Flora had argued that Caroline would back up her version of the encounter, but as Neil had impatiently pointed out, a friend was hardly an independent witness – and what if the Johnsons had realised their nosy neighbour next door had been listening and told the police to go and ask Ailish? What might Ailish not say, just to land them in it?

  Flora had sighed. ‘We could just give the police the bit that shows them coming to the door. Truncate the footage at the point where I open the door...’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Flora. The Johnsons would counterclaim that you tried to assault Carly again, and the police would ask to see the whole interaction and maybe interview Ailish.’

  ‘But if we wiped the footage after the point where they come to the door...’

  ‘We can’t wipe it, it’s all kept securely for 6 months on Eden Security’s system. If the Johnsons do make another complaint off their own bat, and the police ask to see the footage, we’re in trouble. We’ve seriously underestimated them. We’ve been stereotyping them as violent thugs without a brain cell between them who’ve been making a series of incompetent attempts to snatch Beckie, or possibly just harassing us out of malice – but they’ve obviously got another agenda. They’re trying to make out we’re the bad guys. And so far they’re doing a pretty good job. What we have to do is remember that it’s all bluster – that they’re not going to actually do anything. They’re not going to hurt us or snatch Beckie. We have to just turn the other cheek. Not let them provoke us again.’

  ‘So you’re saying they’re not really dangerous at all. That they’re harmless, like – like kids using naughtiness to provoke a reaction. And that we should stop stressing about it and just ignore them?’

  ‘Exactly. Everything they’ve done has obviously been designed to provoke us into doing something stupid, so a lawyer can argue that we’re the ones who are unfit to have custody of Beckie.’

  ‘But we know that they are dangerous. They’re hardened criminals. We can’t afford to let down our guard, especially not where Beckie’s concerned. Maybe that’s what they want us to do. Maybe they want us on the back foot, maybe they’re counting on us relaxing and thinking “As long as we don’t react everything will be fine”, and that’s when they’ll strike.’

  ‘If they were going to “strike” they’d have done so by now. If snatching Beckie has been their aim, let’s face it, there’s nothing much we could have done to stop them, “hardened criminals” as they are.’

  She’d felt the bed rock as he’d pushed himself out of it.

  ‘I’m going to Glasgow to see Saskia,’ she’d said.

  ‘What good’s that going to do?’

  ‘I thought you agreed that we should speak to her? Find out which of the neighbours to approach...’

  ‘That was before it became clear what the Johnsons are up to. And anyway, we can’t believe a word that woman says.’

  Breakfast had been strained to say the least. But Flora knew she was right about this: they had to get as much on the Johnsons as they could from Saskia, and pick her brains on how to tackle them. Maybe Saskia would know something about the garage that had supplied Travis Johnson’s so-called alibi; and she might let Flora have the names and numbers of the neighbours who had been prepared to talk and had described the Johnsons as a ‘family from hell’, so Flora could call them and maybe arrange to meet at a café or something – because no way were either of them going anywhere near Meadowlands Crescent again.

  The landline started ringing on the side table by the TV.

  She picked it up. ‘Hello, Flora Parry here?’

  ‘Oh, hello Mrs Parry. This is Karen Baxter. I’m a Children’s Reporter with the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration. I’m calling to ask if it would be possible to arrange a time when I could pop round and see you and your husband and Beckie, just to check that everything’s okay?’

  Still smiling at Beckie, she pulled open the glass doors and took the call outside. ‘What do you mean, to check that “everything’s okay”? Scottish Children’s... what?’

  ‘Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration. We deal with child welfare and protection in Scotland. We’ve had a referral from a member of the public with a few concerns about Beckie. I need to just pop round and see you. Would after school on Monday be convenient – say, four-thirty?’

  Flora shut her eyes. Breathed in the fresh, early morning scents of the garden. ‘Concerns? What kind of concerns?’

  ‘We can talk about that when I see you.’

  ‘But that’s not necessary!’ She crossed the patio to the expanse of grass, wanting to take this call as far from Beckie as possible. ‘Beckie’s fine, there’s no –’

  ‘We have a duty to investigate every referral made, Mrs Parry – if as you say everything’s fine, no further action will be taken. But we do have to carry out an investigation, as I say, once a referral has been made.’

  ‘This is the Johnsons. Beckie’s biological family.’ The grass was still dewy, moisture soaking into her pumps. ‘It’s meant to be a closed adoption but they’ve found out where we live and they’ve been harassing us. It’s the Johnsons, isn’t it, who’ve made the referral?’

>   ‘I can’t discuss that with you.’

  Oh God. Neil, of course, was going to see this as support for his theory that the Johnsons were basically harmless, out to discredit them and nothing more; to make out that they were unsuitable parents for Beckie.

  ‘No. Of course. All right. Tomorrow at four-thirty then. I suppose you have our address?’

  The place is a fucking disgrace so it is, fucking needles and that lying in the close and a big jobbie that looks fucking human.

  Ryan’s pulling on the white forensic suit over his shirt and the wee cushion he’s got strapped to his belly, and then he’s putting on the tabard with ‘Environmental Health’ on the back like I’m wearing. When he’s done, I lean on him to put on the blue plastic covers for my trainers, and he’s leaning on me to do the same, then we’re pissing ourselves when we’re getting the showercap whoogies on us over the wigs, and pulling up the masks, like we’re dealing with fucking Ebola here.

  Aye well, what we’re dealing with isnae any less virulent, eh?

  I make sure the false neb’s still in place under the mask. Ryan got it off of the internet and it’s that realistic wee Kai didnae even know me when I was practising with make-up and that, the poor wee bairn was ‘Hello?’ and his wee face was Who are you and where’s my Nana?

  I pull on the gloves and buzz the buzzers at the door. I’ve got my story all ready – we’re from the Council, Environmental Health, here to get the place cleaned up – but I dinnae need it, the door buzzes open. Fuckers cannae even bother their arses to ask who’s there?

  Candy from a bairn.

  Mair likely thinks she’s safe enough in this dump.

  Ryan’s whistling his way up the stair, taking it two steps at a time.

  I like to see a man happy in his work.

  At Mair’s flat door I do a rap-tap-a-tap-tap nice and cheery, and I go, ‘Hi, Saskia, it’s Claire from the ground floor flat, can I have a wee word?’ Mair isnae gonnae know emdy in the stair. ‘It’s about the wee lassie in Flat 2, she’s in the hospital and I’ve got a card going round...’

  There’s sounds from inside the flat. Footsteps.

  I’ve got the dish cloth I’ve brought with me over the peephole.

  ‘Just take a sec for an autograph,’ I goes, so fucking cheery it would make you boak.

  There’s scraping and clunking and then the door’s opening and Ryan’s breenging against it and Mair’s ‘Uh! Uh!’ like she’s a fucking chimp, and then we’re in with the door shut behind us and I’m ‘Hello Saskia-hen’ and she’s making a run for it to the bog and Ryan’s got her by the arms and he shoves her back against the wall.

  I can tell he’s grinning away behind the mask.

  I shove the dish cloth in her gob.

  She’s a fucking mess so she is, like she’s no brushed her hair for a fucking month, and the stink off of her!

  ‘Aye hen,’ I goes. ‘You fucked with our wean and now we’re fucking with you. That’s justice. That’s fucking justice, eh?’

  Mair’s shaking her head.

  ‘You hurt our Bekki. You took her whole fucking family off of her and gave her to fucking randoms. Her whole fucking family, that loved her to pieces and that she loved right back.’

  Mair’s pure white and she’s shaking like an alkie.

  ‘Saskia-hen – I can call you Saskia, aye? Saskia-hen, it’s payback time. Me and the family have been having a wee conference about what all you can do to make it up to Bekki. That right, son?’

  Ryan smacks Mair back against the wall and goes, ‘Aye. We’ve had what you might call some constructive interfacing around the whole issue and we have come to the conclusion that you, hen, are a piece of shite needs wiped off the arse of the fucking planet.’

  Mair’s going ‘Oh go... gay gay-eh-eh!’

  ‘What’s that, hen?’ I goes. ‘We’re no gonnae get away with it? Oh, we’re gonnae get away with it, because unlike you we’re professionals. We’re not in fucking forensic suits for a wee joke, eh?’

  ‘It’s not fucking Hallowe’en!’ chuckles Ryan.

  ‘Ee-ee gi-ee,’ goes Mair.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘CCTV, hen?’ I chuckle. ‘There’s no cameras in the close – what bastard’s gonnae bother? Two in the street that maybe cover the entrance, but the boys dealt with they ones last night.’

  ‘Like Maw says, we’re professionals.’

  ‘It’s a wee shame though, eh, what it’s gonnae do to your kids? Hard on them, growing up without their maw. But maybe you shoulda thought about what kids’ families mean to them before you started fucking with their lives, eh?’

  ‘But check it, Maw.’ Ryan waves a hand. ‘Check the place. Check this bitch. Her weans come and bide, they’re gonnae get septicaemia off of all this crap and maybe while she’s high on her drug of choice they’re gonnae give it a wee try? We’re doing they weans a favour.’

  ‘You’re right, son. We’re practically Child Fucking Protection.’

  Ryan chuckles. ‘No word of a lie.’

  ‘When I think,’ I goes, real quiet, in Mair’s face, ‘when I think of you and that so-called Doctor Fernandez cooking up that pack of lies... The two of yous go for a wee coffee at Starbucks, aye, when yous was supposedly round ours carrying out a rigorous professional assessment of our ability to care for our wean? Sit there making up shite about low IQs and depression while you sipped your skinny lattes? Do I look like a fucking eejit, doll? Do I look like I’m depressed?’

  The grey, dirty, dingy little courtyard wasn’t just deserted – it felt abandoned, as if no one could possible live here. No one, surely, could open that battered, graffiti-covered door and think ‘Home’?

  Flora couldn’t remember which flat number Saskia was, so she pressed all the buzzers and waited.

  No response.

  It must have rung with voices once, this little close, with all those barefoot little Haghill children, their lives spilling out of the single-ends down the stair and into the close and the street, all mixed up together in happy, heedless communal poverty. She’d heard them on TV programmes, these children, saying in old age: ‘We didn’t know we were poor, you see – sixpence to spend down the shop and we were millionaires! Deprived? Not a bit of it! None of us felt deprived. We all looked out for each other, you know? If you were out playing and you were hungry you could chap a door and ask for a piece and like as not get it, though you’d maybe to put up with “Aw Davie the state of you!” and getting your face scrubbed and a comb through your hair. We were surrounded by folk that cared about us – how were we deprived, eh? Happy as the day is long.’

  Did Saskia hear those children’s ghosts, she wondered, their high voices echoing up the deserted close? Did they haunt her? Reproach her for what she’d done?

  She tried the array of buzzers again. This time, a crackly voice said, ‘Aye?’

  ‘Hello. I’m here to see Saskia Mair in one of the top flats.’

  ‘Okay dear.’ And the door buzzed open.

  Her shoes on the worn stone steps rapped out a rhythm as she climbed, clop clop, clop clop, echoing off the hard surfaces.

  Saskia’s door was open, just slightly. Maybe the neighbour had told her that Flora was on her way up. She knocked nevertheless.

  ‘Saskia?’

  No response.

  Could she have popped down to the communal garden or into a neighbour’s flat?

  ‘Hello, Saskia? It’s Flora.’ She pushed open the door.

  The place stank of stale air and drains. There was a pile of dirty clothes against the wall and something dark and wet had been spilt on the carpet.

  Not a pile of clothes.

  ‘Saskia!’

  That was blood.

  Hands shaking, Flora knelt to push the hair off Saskia’s face, to feel for a pulse at her neck.

  No pulse.

  She felt warm to the touch, but that could be because Flora was, suddenly, so freezing cold herself. Was she still warm?

  ‘Saskia,’ she
said again, stupidly.

  Vital signs.

  She’d been a nurse, for God’s sake.

  Vital signs.

  She found her sunglasses in her bag and held them, shaking, under Saskia’s nose, peering at the dark surface for signs of condensation.

  Nothing.

  Shoving the sunglasses back in her bag and fumbling for her phone, she turned on the flashlight app. Her hand steady now, she lifted Saskia’s right eyelid. The eye under it was rolled back slightly, as if already turned to heaven. She shone the light into the eye.

  No constriction of the pupil.

  She lifted one of Saskia’s arms - surprisingly heavy for such a thin person – and shone the flashlight onto the skin under the forearm. It was reddened in mottled patches.

  The first, definitive signs of lividity.

  So no CPR.

  She must have been dead for at least half an hour.

  And then all Flora could do was kneel there as Saskia’s blood soaked from the carpet into the knees of her jeans. The source of the blood, the nurse’s part of her brain noted, was Saskia’s chest – the front of the green T-shirt she was wearing was one huge dark purple stain.

  Saskia Mair had been stabbed to death.

  She needed to call the police.

  She tapped 999 on her phone and then stopped.

  She couldn’t.

  If she called the police she would be scrutinised as a possible suspect. They would dig into her past. They might find out that Ruth Innes didn’t exist before 1983. They might find out about Rachel.

  Okay.

  No one had seen her come in here. She needed to just go. She could find a phone box, disguise her voice, tell the police she was a concerned neighbour who didn’t want to give her name but there had been yobs hanging about the stair and she thought they might have got into Saskia’s flat.

  Or she could just go.

  She dropped her phone back in her bag and stood.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed to Saskia.

  The knees of her jeans were sticky with blood. But they were dark navy denim and it wasn’t too noticeable. She was parked just round the corner. All she had to do was get to her car without attracting attention.