by Jane Renshaw
Flora stared at her, at this woman who for some unknown reason seemed to think she was worth saving. ‘Thank you. Thank you. I don’t know how to thank you.’
Caroline pulled her into a hug.
Chapter 31
Jed’s getting right on Ryan’s tits. Ryan’s got on his old jeans and T-shirt and him and Connor are in the garden at the newbuild planting up the bonnie flowers and that from the garden centre, doing a wee bit chillaxing, but Jed’s following Ryan round like a fucking Labrador giving it ‘Wee spastic must have been bricking it, aye?’ and ‘Did he shite hissel’?’
Fucking psychopath willnae let it go, but Ryan’s no giving him nothing.
‘Gies that trowel Da, aye? And if you’re wanting to make yourself useful you can get Connor that begonia while you’re at it.’
‘Aye, fuck off.’
I’ve had it. ‘Right you.’ I get in Jed’s face. ‘Get your arse back to our bit. There’s a million fucking things to do and you’re pissing about getting in the boys’ road?’
‘Oh yes, they’re doing vital work here right enough,’ he goes in what he thinks is his posh voice. He flips a limp wrist at Ryan. ‘Fucking wee poofs.’
When he’s gone I’m like that: ‘Connor son, get us some cold beers, aye? Should be some wee packets of crisps and that an’ all in the cupboard.’
Connor gives me evils. He stands up and wipes his hands on his jeans. ‘And take my time about it, aye? Dinnae worry Maw, I’m no wanting to hear it. I’m no fucking wanting to hear it.’
‘Is that right?’ Ryan’s got a smile on his face. He’s taking hisself for a wee stroll in Connor’s direction. ‘Is that right, Wee Man?’
Connor’s backing up.
‘You no wanting to hear it?’ Ryan’s all conversational. ‘You no wanting that? Cannae have the Wee Man hearing something he’s no gonnae like, eh? I cannae provide the sand, but there’s some nice earth there, look, if you’re wanting to bury your fucking head in it. You’re happy enough taking a wee road trip to Peebles or St Andrews and sitting round drinking tea and eating fucking crumpets, you’re happy enough on the fucking net getting us shite, long as some other fucker’s doing the dirty work, eh? Long as you dinnae have to hear it?’ Ryan’s in his face. ‘Do me a favour, aye, and spare me the fucking hypocrisy?’
Connor’s eyeballing me.
‘Okay boys, play nice. Get us those beers, son.’
Connor goes to Ryan, ‘Aye, Mair had it coming right enough, but this guy... There could’ve been some other way, aye?’
‘Oh is that right? Like what?’
Connor’s shaking his head. ‘Could’ve just snatched her.’
‘And how long before the polis would be on our tail? Christ! Just as well Mastermind here isnae calling the shots, eh Maw?’
‘Aye son,’ I goes. ‘Snatching her, that’s straight out your Da’s book of shite.’
And that’s Connor’s arse out the windae, and Ryan’s patting his cheeks and going ‘Dinnae have a cow, Wee Man,’ and Connor’s heading off inside. ‘We’re cool, aye?’ Ryan goes, and Connor’s like that: ‘Aye Ryan, no worries.’
I cannae lie, they two are my favourite weans and I’m no happy when they’re butting heads. Ryan takes a seat at the table under the parasol, and I go and join him. ‘He doesnae mean nothing by it.’
‘Thinks I’m a fucking psycho like Da?’ Ryan’s rattled so he is.
‘Naw son. Naw.’
‘It’s no like I was thinking Barry, I’m gonnae top this fucker – it’s no like I got any fucking pleasure out it, eh? No like Da would’ve.’
‘Naw son. Naw.’ I push the pay-as-you-go across the table at him. ‘Let’s us make that wee call, eh? Wannae do it?’
Ryan calls 101 and when he’s put through he goes, ‘The woman that got murdered in Haghill, aye? I’m no wanting to leave my name or nothing, I’ve got a wee shop on the street and I’m no wanting involved, I’m no wanting reprisals, get me?... Aye, I’ve got information that’s maybe pertinent. Saw someone acting suspicious right when it must have happened. We’ve been getting hassle with shoplifters and that, all of us with shops on the street have been getting hassle, so we all try to keep an eye out, eh, coordinate our response? And this woman walking by the windae, she was acting suspicious so she was, so I tells the wife, ‘Gonnae go and check that out,’ and she goes and follows her.... Eh? Aye, she was a fat bitch in a hoodie, a grey hoodie, pulled right up over her face and she’s got her head bent over while she’s walking, right, like she’s no wanting seen?... Aye.... About average height for a woman. Fat aye, but no massive... About the wife’s size, size sixteen maybe? Think her hair was maybe light brown? She goes round the corner of Quarryfield Lane and she gets in a car – red Ford Ka, wife got the registration number if you’re wanting it?’ He tells them Flora’s number. ‘We didnae think it was relevant, eh, when yous had arrested the neighbour, but now he’s been released without charge we’re like that: Let’s us do our civic duty and call it in... Aye... Naw, have you got cloth ears by the way? I said I’m no giving my fucking name cos they fuckers round here are mental, aye? It gets out I’ve called yous and I’m fucking dead.’ And he ends the call.
Connor’s back with the beers. ‘Looking good, eh?’ he goes, sitting back admiring the wee border they’ve been planting up.
‘Aye, magic,’ goes Ryan. ‘Magic.’
In the communal lobby outside Caroline’s flat, Beckie grabbed Flora’s arm. ‘Can I come with you?’
Flora squeezed her. ‘I’ll be back before you know it.’
‘Come on, sweetheart,’ said Caroline. ‘Let’s make a start on the new jigsaw, eh?’
‘Do you think they want to tell you something about Dad?’ Beckie clung on. ‘Do you think they’ve found... something?’
‘I think they probably just want to update me on what they’ve been doing to find him, darling.’ She was sure Beckie must be able to feel her heart thudding. ‘I –’
She broke off as the door to the other flat opened. Tony Hewson slithered through it into the lobby, keeping it open only as much as necessary to allow him to pass through.
So no one can get a look at the body parts stacked up in there, Alec would probably have said.
‘Hi Tony,’ said Caroline brightly.
‘Hello Caroline. Flora. Hello Beckie.’
‘Hi.’
‘Is there um – there’s no news, um...?’
‘No,’ said Flora. ‘No word as yet.’
One of the policewomen who’d been to the house had called to update her – no trace of Neil in any of the hospitals, or of his car at work, and he definitely hadn’t been in to work that day. A colleague had been round to the Johnsons’ to ask them if they’d seen him that day, and they said not. The neighbours had been interviewed, and one of them, apparently hoping to land the Johnsons in trouble, had provided CCTV footage of the street, which had confirmed that Neil had not been there.
Tony Hewson grimaced, nodding and making a strange ‘Mm’ noise in the back of his throat.
Sitting later in the bland, pale blue interview room at the police station, trying not to think about how hot and airless it was, trying to concentrate on what DI McLean was saying to her, she told herself that Tony Hewson was a perfect example of how an innocent person could make themselves look guilty of something when they weren’t. They couldn’t charge her with ‘looking guilty.’ It didn’t matter that her hands were sweating, that she was breathing as if she’d just run a marathon.
When she was only three years older than Beckie, she had had to sit in an interview room just like this in Peebles police station with Mum and two policemen. Only no one had had a laptop, and the walls there had been grey. And everything anyone said, everything she had said, had had to push its way through the scream inside her: I killed Tricia, I killed Tricia, I killed Tricia.
And she had found herself saying it out loud:
‘I killed Tricia!’
And the grey walls had come in on he
r, blotting out the policemen’s blank faces, Mum’s mouth open in a huge ‘O’, voices receding suddenly until there had been nothing at all but grey.
But now, the sense of what DI McLean was saying was penetrating her brain.
He was saying he was from Haghill in Glasgow. And he was talking about Saskia.
Not Neil.
Saskia.
‘A witness, a shopkeeper, saw a woman matching your description on the day in question, walking along Renfrew Road in a westerly direction at the relevant time, turning into Quarryfield Lane and getting into a red Ford Ka. The witness has also been able to give us the registration number.’
All Flora could do was stare at him. He was a big man with a shaved head. Like Kojak.
‘Ms Parry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you that woman?’
And before she could do anything about it, the silence had stretched on too long for a denial.
‘Yes. I – I’d gone to see Saskia, to ask her some questions about the Johnsons – my daughter’s biological family who’ve been hassling us. I tried the buzzer, I tried all the buzzers, but I couldn’t get a response. So... I just came home.’
‘I see. And why didn’t you come forward with this information?’
She swallowed. ‘Because I didn’t see anything. There was no point. And – to be honest, I didn’t want the hassle. We had enough to deal with, so...’
‘You weren’t at any time in Saskia Mair’s flat?’
‘No. Well, I was before. Neil and I went to see her, after we found out she’d been suspended, and why.’
DI McLean leant back in his chair. ‘Okay, here’s our problem with that. The witness who saw you getting into your car says you were wearing a grey hoodie. And there’s a grey hoodie, according to Mr Mair, missing from Saskia Mair’s wardrobe.’
Silence.
Flora looked from him to the dumpy policewoman sitting alongside him taking notes on a laptop.
‘I found her!’ she blurted. ‘Okay, yes, I was in the flat, I found Saskia... I found her dead! I’m a nurse – I used to be a nurse, I knew she was dead, I knew there was no point calling an ambulance...’
Kojak nodded at her, a little smile of satisfaction tweaking at his mouth. ‘But surely that would have been the normal thing to do? Call 999? Ask for the police, if not an ambulance?’
‘I couldn’t! The Johnsons – the Johnsons were obviously trying to set me up! Why would I kill Saskia?’
‘Saskia Mair hurt your daughter.’
‘Yes, but only so she could get her away from them! If she hadn’t, Beckie would still be with those monsters! It’s the Johnsons who hated Saskia. It’s the Johnsons who had a motive for killing her – surely you can see that?’
Kojak raised an eyebrow.
Chapter 32
Flora pressed her shoulder blades into the padded back of Alec’s swivel chair and breathed out, letting her gaze move slowly around the room. The desk faced the window and the blinds were open, so the midday sunlight was streaming in, reflecting off the glass in the pictures on the wall to her right. There were six Victorian prints of fungi, with their Latin and common names underneath. The red and white fairytale toadstools, three fat specimens growing on a mossy woodland floor, were ‘Fly agaric, Amanita muscaria’.
What were the police doing now?
Trying to gather evidence that she’d killed Saskia? That she had something to do with Neil’s disappearance? Were they looking into her – Ruth’s – background?
They couldn’t have enough evidence of anything, or they’d have charged her yesterday rather than just letting her go.
It was suddenly important to remember what Alec had told her about fly agaric.
She said out loud: ‘Something about different varieties of it being found not really to be varieties...? Just changes in a few genes or something?’
She could imagine him smiling at her. ‘You really want to know?’
She stared at the print. ‘I had to. I had to take you – your body...’ She laced her fingers together to stop them shaking.
Oh God, his body, all this time, lying under that bush in the cold and the rain, with maybe foxes coming and –
He would be raising his eyebrows, flapping his hands a little maybe. ‘You did what you had to do. It was only my body. It is only my body. All consciousness would have ceased long before you found me. And I don’t know what you think you’re doing, talking to yourself and pretending I’m talking back. As Beckie would say: Really?’
She smiled.
And jumped as the doorbell went.
Buzz buzz buuuuuzzzz.
She didn’t want to speak to anyone. But maybe it was Caroline. Or Shona.
Maybe Shona had brought Beckie back for some reason – Flora didn’t have her phone, she realised – must have left it upstairs. Maybe Shona had been trying to call without success. Maybe looking after both Edith and a traumatised Beckie was too much for her, and the sleepover was cancelled. Or maybe Beckie couldn’t do it after all.
It had taken all Flora’s powers of persuasion this morning to make poor Beckie agree to it. When Flora had dropped her off, she’d suddenly grabbed Flora’s arm on the doorstep, while Shona and Edith had disappeared discreetly back into their flat, and cuddled into her. ‘You’ll be lonely without me,’ she had whispered.
‘Oh darling, I think I can survive without you for one night.’
Then she’d realised what she’d just said.
‘You have a good time with Edith and try not to... to think too much about Dad.’
Beckie had clung to her. ‘Dad would have let us know he was okay, wouldn’t he, if he was?’
She had been trying to prepare Beckie, gradually, for what was coming; starting to say things like, ‘I don’t think Dad would have left us not knowing what had happened to him if he was able to get in touch.’
So she’d said, ‘Yes, darling, I think he would.’ And she’d hugged Beckie tight.
‘I don’t want to have a good time.’
‘I know. But Dad wouldn’t want you being miserable the whole time, would he?’ She hadn’t been eating properly. She had literally been sick the night before after Flora had made her eat some lasagne, normally a favourite. ‘It’s all funny in my mouth,’ she’d sobbed, swallowing and swallowing. ‘I can’t even taste it.’ And Flora had reassured her: ‘Me too. It’s what happens when you’re really stressed – you don’t feel like eating and any food you do eat tastes of nothing. But we have to eat to keep our strength up.’
Ironic, she’d reflected, that now it was Shona who had resolved to get some food into Flora’s daughter.
Flora had wanted to bundle Beckie back into the car. To never let her out of her sight. But she’d known that Beckie needed this distraction – and she’d be safe from the Johnsons here. ‘What would Dad say?’ Flora had mused. ‘I think he’d say Having a good time isn’t compulsory, but it helps.’
Maybe the guilt had been too much, though. Maybe Beckie hadn’t wanted to be distracted.
She heaved herself up from the chair and out into the hall. The sun through the stained glass windows was flooding the vestibule with coloured light, painting her feet in her sandals alternately green and yellow and red as she crossed the tiles to the door.
She opened the door not to Beckie’s tears or Shona’s embarrassed apology, but to the two policewomen she remembered from that awful night.
‘Mrs Parry. Can we come in for a moment?’
This time they refused tea or coffee. They made her sit down on one of the sofas in the family room, and perched on the facing one.
‘I’m very sorry to have to tell you,’ said the blonde, ‘that a body has been found in woodland and we believe it could be your husband’s.’
She stared at the woman’s face. At the tiny mole just above her mouth. The strand of hair coming out of her bun.
And all she could think was: Now Beckie has to know he’s dead.
She wouldn’t j
ust sit in silence, would she? No matter how shocked she was, she would ask questions.
‘How – how sure are you that it’s him?’
‘We believe that it is your husband. I’m so sorry, Mrs Parry.’
What would she say now? What should she say?
‘How about we get that cuppa after all?’ the other one said, getting up and heading for the kitchen area.
As the kettle boiled, Flora tried: ‘Where...?’
‘Woodland at Cairn Hill, near North Berwick. The body was discovered early this morning by a forestry worker.’
‘But – How can it be Neil? What would he be doing out there?’ Good. That had sounded convincing, surely? She wouldn’t accept it. She would fight against it. ‘It can’t be him.’
‘Well.’ The brunette placed a mug of tea on the coaster in front of her. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to come with us, when you’re ready, to identify him.’
‘I’m ready now.’ She jumped up, knocking against the coffee table and making tea slop from the mug. ‘I’m ready. It’s not him. I know it’s not.’
God. She sounded like a badly acted character in a TV drama.
But the brunette touched her arm. ‘What about your daughter? Is she here?’
‘No. She’s staying overnight with a friend.’
She knew they were watching her, the two policewomen, one on either side as they stood in front of the curtained internal window. The strip lighting overhead bounced off the white walls and floor and the line of pictures along the corridor. They were all hung at the same height, a series of carefully neutral abstract blocks of colour.
‘I’m afraid his face is quite damaged,’ the man was saying. ‘He’ll look very different. But if you can, please take a good long look.’
She nodded.
As if it wasn’t bad enough, she had to make sure her reactions were what they would be expecting.
The curtain was pulled back.
He was lying on a table. No – his body was lying on a table, with a sheet covering it up to the neck. His face – she could only look at his face long enough to make sure it was him.