The Lost Sister

by Russel D. McLean

  Later, Deborah would say that she thought they had become closer than sisters.

  She’d be wrong, of course.

  “There’s something you’re holding back.”

  He shook his head. “But you see where this is going?”

  “Deborah was important to you. You were close to her.”

  He nodded. Closed his eyes, and kept his hands on top of the table. Rocked gently in his chair, keeping time to some melody only he could hear. “Close to her? I loved her.”

  The pregnancy itself was uneventful.

  The two women – Jennifer and Deborah – spent a lot of time together. Maybe more than they should have. Part of the agreement drawn up stated that after the baby was born, Deborah would sever all ties with the family.

  Closer than sisters?

  Chalk that up to delusional.

  I could see Jennifer Furst’s point of view. For her, it was a business arrangement. She got what she wanted. Deborah got what she wanted. Everyone was happy.

  “Deborah was looking for a family,” I said.

  Wickes nodded. “She wasn’t close to her parents, then. Had a sister, but even if the lass kept an eye out for Deborah, they weren’t close. The sister never had Deborah’s best interests at heart.” He closed his eyes again. Close to tears? Hard to imagine this giant of a man welling up, but I could feel it in the same way you sometimes feel a storm coming over the hill.

  Hearing Wickes tell me the story, I reckoned that things had got complicated before the ink on that agreement was even dry.

  Any agreements between surrogates and parents are private. They cannot be upheld in a court of law.

  In Scotland we have a law of verbal contract. All it takes is for two people to state their intent and the agreement is binding. There are grey areas, of course. This was one of them.

  As the birth grew closer, Jennifer started to back off from her friendship. Treating the whole thing professionally; a transaction and little more.

  Deborah didn’t take too kindly to the cooling off of what she thought was a close friendship. Put this down to her being younger than Jennifer?

  Maybe.

  Or maybe she was just more innocent.

  That’s the way Wickes played it up in his version of events. Like Deborah wasn’t cynical enough to grasp what was really going on.

  I’ve been around long enough to realise that there is no such thing as pure innocence. That naivety is more often a cover than a truth.

  Made me wonder why Wickes was making such a conscious effort to fool me. And himself.

  I loved her.

  Aye, love’ll do funny things to a person, right enough.

  When Mary was born, everything happened according to the agreement. The parental order was signed, meaning that Deborah Brown was no longer Mary’s legal mother, even if her name would still appear on the birth certificate.

  Jennifer Furst expected Deborah would just back off.

  Take the money and run.

  Like I said, these things have a habit of getting complicated.

  Chapter 12

  “When she saw Mary for the first time, it was…a religious experience. Her words.” Wickes was holding his coffee in both hands. Had raised it a few times close to his lips, but he hadn’t actually drunk anything. By now it would be cold.

  He hadn’t been thirsty. Just needed a prop.

  I sat back and listened.

  A good investigator doesn’t talk. He prompts. Listens to what people have to say, knowing they naturally want to open up. They’ll do it without thinking if you give them the opportunity. No matter how much they’ll consciously deny the impulse.

  I wonder if the Catholics have the right idea: confession is good for the soul. Everybody needs someone to talk to.

  Wickes’s eyes were damp; filming over. Was the big man coming close to tears? Seemed unlikely, but you’re a fool if you think you know anyone within five minutes of meeting them. He was talking about Deborah after the birth, “Holding this wee life in her hands. Realising that it came from within her…”

  Talking like they were his own feelings. Like he knew this woman so completely, there was no need to separate her emotions from his.

  It worried me a little.

  Then again, I’d been called a heartless bastard before. Maybe I just couldn’t understand the depth of his empathy.

  If I didn’t jump in, help him a little, I feared he might break down. I wasn’t ready to cope with that.

  “So suddenly the business arrangement didn’t seem so important.”

  He smiled, nodded. “You get it, then?”

  “Guess so.”

  Except I didn’t. Not really.

  Wickes had this strange look about him. A smile that was blurred by an odd regret.

  Love makes you believe foolish things.

  Impossible things.

  Thinking you’ll know that one person forever is just the beginning of your delusions.

  My job was to separate Wickes’s raw emotions from the facts. Distil what he told me until I could properly understand the situation.

  I had the feeling he already knew the truth,

  Needed someone else to bring it out for him.

  Deborah didn’t want to give up the rights to her child.

  She tried to push the matter, pleaded with Jennifer Furst. Asked for some access – any access – to Mary’s life. When she told Wickes about it, she said, “You won’t ever understand it. But you carry this life inside you for nine months, you form a connection. A bond that no one else can understand. Separation is the hardest part. You don’t want to let go. You can’t.”

  Jennifer Furst didn’t understand, believing that getting Deborah more deeply involved with Mary’s life was asking for disaster.

  I didn’t have all the details. Just a rambling third hand account from a second hand source who was too emotionally involved to give me the dispassionate facts I needed.

  But I could fill in the blanks.

  What was obvious was that the Fursts had rushed into things. OK, they made sure they’d crossed the i’s and dotted the t’s on the paperwork, but what they hadn’t done was properly screen their choice for surrogate.

  As in, psychological evaluation.

  Emotionally speaking, would Deborah Brown be able to handle carrying a child to term and then giving it up?

  Wickes may have been in love with Deborah – so he kept telling me – but even he was willing to admit that she had problems.

  “She was a depressive as a teenager. The kind of kid who contemplated suicide.”

  “Self harm?”

  “Nothing that left a lasting impression.”

  “But something?”

  He didn’t seem willing to answer. As though he’d be admitting to something he didn’t want to hear himself.

  I pushed: “But something?”

  Aye, something.

  A laundry list. Depression. Eating disorders. Mood swings.

  The kind of problems that don’t just go away.

  I got the sense there was a great deal Wickes wasn’t telling me.

  My gut said it was because he wanted to protect Deborah. Didn’t want to dirty her name any more than he had to.

  “Why did you come to me?”

  He straightened, scraped his chair back a few inches away from the table.

  “What?”

  “You approached me,” I said. “You knew who I was. Came to my office. To talk about this. Said you knew about what had happened to Mary. Why? Why not go to the police?”

  “I didn’t want them involved –”

  “You’re being naïve,” I said. He had to hear the truth from someone. Who better than a dispassionate observer.

  “Aye?”

  “Or you’re leaving something out.” I was pushing him. Had to.

  He took a deep breath, turned away.

  I said, “You want to tell me. We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

  He nodded, turned back
to look at me. Held it. “Doesn’t sound so bad, aye? A mother wanting to be reunited with her daughter.”

  I nodded. “But the girl’s gone.”

  “The girl’s gone.”

  Something in his face. His lips twitched. “We had this dog,” he said. “We had this fucking dog, and she loved it. Spoiled the little bastard completely. And…the poor creature…got into the fridge. Because of a fucking chicken. A bone got caught up in the digestive system. I don’t know…I mean, something to do with its kidneys…whatever, the wee thing was going to die. Painfully, you know?”

  “Had to be put down?”

  “Aye. I made an appointment with the vets, came back to get the poor bastard. But it was gone. She…she wouldn’t tell me where it was. Said it had run away, must have known what was going to happen to it.”

  I said, “It didn’t run away,” filling in the gaps.

  He shook his head. “I woke up, found she wasn’t in bed.” He hesitated, seemed to think of something. Clarified by adding: “By then, we were close.” He was hesitant, searching for the right words. I got the meaning. “She wasn’t there, and…I went to look for her.”

  I was the one who broke eye contact this time.

  “Found her in the cupboard in the hall. Sitting in the dark. With the dog’s corpse. She’d poisoned it. Rather than let someone else do the deed.”

  “She poisoned her own dog?”

  “Hid it in the cupboard. So that no one would find it. She was so attached to the fucking animal that she would rather kill it and keep it to herself than let anyone help.”

  I nodded.

  Understood what he was telling me.

  She loved the dog. Couldn’t part with it. Maybe love wasn’t the right word. I got the feeling Wickes was steering me towards, obsessed.

  She didn’t let go easily?

  Try at all.

  Chapter 13

  “Tell me where you came in to the picture.”

  He hesitated. Started looking around. The café was beginning to fill up. Maybe he was worried that someone was watching.

  Like who?

  He seemed satisfied, dropped his head again and said, “Maybe six months after the lass was born.” He looked ready to start glancing about again. Then gave me an explanation for his sudden attack of nerves. “You know about Jennifer Furst’s family, of course?”

  “Oh, aye. I’ve had my dealings with…Mary’s godfather.”

  Always came back to that bastard. I tried not to let Wickes see how I felt about Burns.

  Wickes said, “He’s something of a legend, aye?”

  I shrugged. “They say a lot of things about David Burns. If only half of them are true –”

  “– Then he’s the devil himself.” Wickes looked around the café, as though coming out of sleep, realising where he was. Caught the eye of the wee waitress, waved her over and ordered a fresh coffee. She looked at his mug with a strange expression as though she couldn’t figure why he hadn’t finished the last one.

  When she went away, Wickes turned his attention back to me. My own coffee had been finished minutes earlier, and I still had my hands wrapped around the mug. Must have looked as though I was afraid to let go. My fingers were whitening with the pressure.

  Wickes started talking again. “In fairness to her, Jennifer Furst didn’t have much to do with that side of the family. Least, it’s the way things used to be. She thought of herself as a decent citizen. Law abiding.”

  Everyone does.

  Until they cross the line.

  And one thing being a copper taught me: at some point, everyone crosses the line.

  Would it sound like tit-for-tat to say that Deborah was first? Her behaviour shifting from insistence to harassment.

  Even Wickes couldn’t sugar coat it, and emotionally involved as he was he still had the detachment to tell me outright everything that Deborah had done.

  Phone calls. Standing outside the house. Following Jennifer and the child to the shops.

  And finally, breaking and entering. Coming through a window at night and sneaking upstairs to the baby’s room.

  The husband found her in there, standing over Mary’s crib and making soft, cooing noises. “To help the baby sleep.”

  Sometimes it’s not what other people do to us that hurts the most, but what we do to ourselves.

  I could understand Deborah. How she felt. Had some sense of her reluctance to let go. But she had known what she was getting into. Must have done. Wickes had gone into detail, told me everything about the surrogate arrangement. How it was all above board. Utterly transparent.

  I couldn’t help thinking about the dog. About Deborah sitting in the dark, holding its corpse, unable to let go.

  Charges should have been pressed against Deborah. The way Wickes told it, Jennifer refused to proceed with pressing criminal charges and the situation was settled, “with a few words.”

  And still…Deborah persisted. Continued to try and insinuate herself into the child’s life.

  “When she came to me, she was a mess,” Wickes said. “Told me all of this. Nearly broke down, you see. Jesus fuck.” He wiped at his face as though batting away tears. Maybe the ones I’d seen earlier making another attempt to break through. “I mean, she was a state.”

  What did she tell him?

  She told him all that he had told me.

  Told him that after the courts slapped her on the wrist, she kept trying. Believing she was a woman getting fucked by the system.

  Mary was her child, and she knew it now, she’d make a better mother than the girl’s legal guardians.

  Surrogacy be fucked.

  Mary needed her mother. Deborah knew this – felt it – from the inside out.

  Deborah snatched the baby. In broad daylight.

  “She had no control,” said Wickes. “Over her own actions.”

  Jennifer didn’t call the police.

  No, she went to her husband’s uncle.

  David Burns.

  “All things considered,” Wickes said, “The bastard was gentle as a lamb.”

  Gentle as a lamb. Aye, sure, if that lamb shared traits with Hannibal Lecter.

  Even fifteen years ago, Burns had the kind of reputation that meant he no longer had to lift a finger. He gave the nod, a whole squad of would-be hardmen jumped to attention.

  The daylight snatch was resolved fast. Deborah had moved back in with her sister. Had taken the baby there. Christ, I could only imagine her reaction when the hard men came round to “persuade” her to give back the kid.

  I had to ask: “Did the sister know?”

  “Must have,” he said. Skipping over the subject like he wasn’t sure.

  Or he didn’t want to tell me.

  I wasn’t there when the men came for the child. Neither was Wickes.

  But he talked like he was. As though he’d been there. Watched the whole damn sorry affair unfold. And maybe he’d heard the story enough he could come to believe that he had been.

  Deborah had let herself in earlier that day using the spare key her sister had given her. She was sleeping in an upstairs box room on a fold out bed. She didn’t have many possessions. Had a few boxes that she left unpacked. Because she didn’t want her sister to see what she had in there.

  Baby clothes. Toys. All the shite she’d have bought for her own baby.

  No, she still couldn’t accept that Mary wasn’t “her” child. That it wasn’t as simple as who gave birth to the girl. That she had no claim, not after the paperwork had gone through declaring the Fursts as Mary’s legal guardians.

  She took the baby upstairs, wrapped in the blanket she had grabbed when she took Mary out of the stroller.

  Feeling ashamed of herself, even then. Or at least that’s what she would later tell Wickes, that she knew what she was doing was wrong.

  Yet did it anyway.

  Did that make her a bad person? Or just sick in some way?

  These were the questions she asked herself. Maybe that
hinted at an answer. I couldn’t really say for sure.

  She laid the baby on the fold out bed. On top of the thick blankets her sister had pulled out of a cupboard a few days ago.

  Mary Furst, barely six months old, gurgled happily. She didn’t cry. Hadn’t done since Deborah had snatched her. The baby understanding that this was her mother. That this woman didn’t mean her any harm.

  “And she didn’t. You understand?” Wickes snapped the question into his narrative with an intensity that could have knocked me off my seat.

  Did he expect me to judge?

  Or was he trying to convince himself?

  Whatever the case, Deborah was upstairs with the baby. Digging into boxes. Looking for something she could give the baby. Something that would make it appear as though Mary was truly her daughter, now. Nothing was ever going to separate them.

  The baby gurgled. The baby squirmed.

  Deborah wanted to cry. Couldn’t say for sure whether this feeling was good or bad. Just that it overwhelmed her; made her want to break down and cry.

  That was around the same time she heard the noise from downstairs. The door breaking in. Wood splintering.

  Male voices shouting. Their words indistinct.

  Footsteps on the stairs.

  Wickes couldn’t continue.

  As though there was something he didn’t want to say.

  I guessed at it. Maybe just knew instinctively.

  I pressed the issue. Said, “She tried to kill the baby.” Bad interview technique. You never push the subject in a direction. You never put words in their mouths. But I was acting like we were on a deadline here. Like this was my case. But I’d given it up. Right?

  Wickes said, “She’s not a bad person.”

  I nodded. “If she couldn’t have it…”

  He finished for me’ “…then no one could.” I was giving him the cues here. Against every professional instinct. “She was ill,” he said. “You know that, right? The kind of ill you don’t get better from.” He tapped the side of his head. Not with a sense of distaste or mockery, but reinforcing the point. “Up here. They don’t have medicines that work, you know. Not really. The last few years, we tried a lot of things. I wanted her to get better. To be well again. You have to know that. You have to understand.”