The Lost Sister

by Russel D. McLean

  “Isn’t everything?”

  Susan stood up. “Lucky I need the toilet.” She could have smiled. Would have made me feel better, at least. But she didn’t. The message loud and clear.

  I kept still.

  The two officers responding to Kathryn’s call about the broken window were young. Probably fresh out of training college. The lad with the bad skin looked me up and down and said, “You’re the investigator, then?” while his partner – a petite woman with an angular face and hard eyes – looked around the room as though expecting to discover some vital clue hidden in the corners.

  I stood up, offered my hand. “McNee,” I said. “Used to be on the force myself.”

  They both looked at my outstretched hand.

  The girl said, “Heard of you.” Flat. Emotionless.

  I tried for an ice-breaking smile. “All good, I hope?”

  “I worked a case with DI Lindsay a while back. What do you think?”

  I dropped the outstretched hand. No takers.

  What could I say? Working with Lindsay explained the eyes at least. And the suspicion. Christ, listen to what he had to say about me, you’d probably believe my real name was Beelzebub.

  The lad said, “There’s two of you here?”

  “My associate had to go to the bathroom.”

  “And your…associate’s…name?”

  Good question. I tried not to look like I was fumbling. “Elaine,” I said, and winced when I finished: “Elaine Barrow.”

  The lad nodded. The name meant nothing to him, but at least it was a name.

  One that caught in my throat.

  I looked at Kathryn Brown.

  She didn’t react.

  Maybe we’d gotten through to her. Maybe she understood.

  Or maybe she just wasn’t listening.

  I said to the lad, “Why the twenty questions? You’re here about the window? The break in.”

  The girl nodded. Turned to me and said, “All the same, from what I’ve heard about you –”

  “DI Lindsay and I have a history. Not a good one. I wouldn’t listen to much he says about me. And I’d expect he’d say the same about me.”

  The lad said, “Maybe he’s right. Maybe we should just –”

  The girl cut him off: “Aye, fair enough. Although I think this is private, Mr McNee. Unless you have knowledge of the felony? Can I ask what you were doing between the hours of six-thirty and seven-thirty this evening?”

  Check the impersonal, professional tone.

  Sending me a message? No doubt.

  I said, “I have business with Ms Brown. And even your friend, the DI, will tell you that a B&E isn’t really my style.”

  Kathryn stepped in, said to the officers, “Maybe we could talk in the kitchen?”

  As they left, the female officer turned to me and said, “I hope your associate’s okay. She seems to be taking an awful long time in there.”

  I resisted making any smart-arse reply.

  But only just.

  The coppers’ interview with Kathryn Brown was brief and perfunctory. Susan managed to stay out of their way until they left the building. They weren’t interested in her, anyway. I think they were both disappointed to have little more than a bog-standard B&E on their hands; little in the way of witnesses and evidence. The girl in particular seemed especially upset that she couldn’t pin anything on me.

  Lindsay had trained her well. No doubt there.

  They said it would take a while for SOCO to arrive, but that they doubted they would find anything useful. Until then, no one was to go in the kitchen. They recommended a 24 hour glass repair service who could block up the hole until a proper job could be done.

  Of course, I wasn’t listening in on the discussion. Not at all.

  When the door closed, I was standing behind Kathryn Brown in the hall. Asked her, “Everything okay?”

  “Nothing was taken. Looks like a random act of vandalism. You know how it is, sometimes. They reckon maybe I disturbed whoever it was when I got home and they went out the way they got in.” She shrugged. “I’ve got a friend coming over with some polythene and duct tape. I’ll have a Blue Peter house for a couple of days.”

  I nodded, turned to head back to the living room.

  She said, “Tell me why you lied about your friend’s name.”

  I stopped where I was. Susan came down the stairs, walked past me, looked Kathryn straight on and said, “I’m a police officer. A detective actually. CID.”

  “They’d recognise you, give the game away.”

  Susan nodded.

  Kathryn said, “And then the trust is broken. But either way…Bright. The name’s familiar for some reason.” She walked past Susan and into the kitchen. We followed, neither of saying a word. Difficult to gauge her reaction.

  In the kitchen, she stared at the shattered glass, kept her back to us.

  Susan said, “We need to know where your sister is. We want to help is all.”

  Kathryn said, “I know the name. The DS, the one I talked to about Deborah. The one who told me not to worry, that I was being stupid. Jesus, ten years ago. More. I should know that when I look in a mirror, but when you stop and think about it…It’s such a long time.” She turned round to look at us. “His name was Bright, too. The DS.”

  I couldn’t help but look at Susan.

  She didn’t react. Just nodded, and said, “It’s in the past now, right? All of that. I can’t apologise for mistakes made by other people. For oversights. Misunderstandings. All of that. I can only do my best to help you here and now.”

  Kathryn wrapped her arms around her middle and shuddered. Looked at us for a moment before she said anything.

  Chapter 39

  We took my car.

  Drove north of the city, through Birkhill and out into the countryside. Passed the Templeton woods; gathered trees bowing together in a way that appeared unnatural, their dark spaces hiding secrets that would not be given up easily.

  Maybe Susan was affected worse than me. Three months earlier she’d been involved in a murder case, the body found out in the woods in a shallow grave. An eighteen year old girl killed by a sad and desperate man who had been rebuffed one time too many. A man struck by his own actions who couldn’t even bring himself to finish burying the girl’s corpse.

  “Do you ever long for the masterminds?” she said as we drove into the night.

  “The masterminds?”

  “The Hannibal Lecters. The Blofelds. The Jokers. The bogey-men from comics and films and books. The monsters we can never really identify with. The ones we’ll never really know.”

  “The ones who make us feel safe?”

  She nodded. “Because they’re not real. Because if we ever saw them, we’d know they were the bad guys. I wish for that, sometimes. Something I could point at and say: that is evil.”

  I’d been a copper long enough to have seen the true face of evil. Not malevolent insanity, but mundane and petty jealousies and inadequacies. People drawn to commit unspeakable acts for reasons they could never explain or understand. You weren’t careful, you could get dragged down by that. Pulled into a mire of disgust at what the human race was capable of.

  Was I lucky to get out when I did?

  Sometimes the world isn’t the way you see it at all.

  “She mentioned my father.”

  Caught me by surprise. I took in a sharp breath, composed myself and said, “I suppose he took the case when –”

  “He palmed her off. That’s not like him. I mean, she’s talking about threats being made against another person by a known criminal element. He couldn’t simply ignore it.”

  I hesitated. “He’ll have had his reasons.”

  “Steed, you wouldn’t be holding out on me?”

  I didn’t reply fast enough.

  “Pull over.”

  “We don’t have the time –”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  I didn’t want to tell her. Not now.
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  Later, maybe.

  Or perhaps I could hold onto it forever.

  She said, “Pull over and let me out. Or tell me what you know about my dad.”

  I couldn’t look at her. Said, “It’s all in the past. I mean, he must have told you about the work he used to do in the bad old days. When the force was cutting deals with men like Burns.”

  “Not my dad.”

  “He was working under orders. I mean, the plan at the time –”

  “Do you know what the first thing he taught me about being a police officer was, Steed? He taught me that no matter what you do, do not give men like Burns a break. You do not give them a chance to even pretend that they are in the right, that they have some kind of moral high ground that allows them to do the things that they do. Because if you do that, they’ve won. He’d fight against that kind of strategy. Wouldn’t allow himself to get involved.”

  I almost laughed. Was thinking about Ernie standing in the back yard at Burns’s house, holding his drink in his hand. Making me apologise for doing what every right thinking bastard wants to do to men like Burns.

  I’d known at the time that it would kill Susan to know the truth. I’d hoped that the conversation would never come between us. That if she had to find out, then it wouldn’t be from me.

  I should have hidden this from her.

  Denied everything.

  But she could see right through me.

  Or else I wanted her to.

  “You should talk to him,” I said. “But right now –”

  “You’re right,” she said. “Right now, we need to think about the girl. About Mary.”

  We kept driving in silence. After a few miles, I turned to look at Susan. The moonlight caught her; surrounded her features with a soft light.

  The set of her face made me think of Elaine.

  Gave me that strangely sick feeling in my stomach again.

  We were friends, Susan and me.

  Could never be anything more.

  We’d made that mistake once. I wasn’t willing to try again, risk losing her friendship forever.

  She turned and looked at me, her brow creased in what might have been a question. I turned my attention back to the road. Focussed on the broken white lines, the curve of the tarmac.

  Neither of us said anything.

  The lines started to blur.

  Chapter 40

  “There are some places where you simply feel safe.”

  That had been Kathryn Brown’s response when we asked her where her sister was.

  My first thought was the she was answering her own question, not even listening to what we asked. Sometimes, during our talk, she would become distracted, drift off into a place where I don’t think either myself or Susan could follow her.

  “We were close when we were girls,” she said. “When we were eight or nine it seemed as though we would always do everything together. We were sisters. Inseparable.”

  A sadness washed over me as she spoke.

  Elaine’s family had always been close. Mother, father, sister; all of them inseparable in a way that had always made me jealous. Even after her death, they rallied around each other in a way that I felt I could never really be a part of.

  I was an only child whose parents had died too young. Who had allowed himself to play the role that other people expected of him: distanced.

  Not unfriendly, but never allowing anyone to get that close.

  My all too brief sessions with the counsellor following the accident that killed Elaine touched on my anger, withdrawal and need for revenge.

  And my childhood, of course.

  Counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists all have this strange fixation on what they call formative experiences.

  My sessions were marked by resistance, anger and impatience. Didn’t stop the bastard trying, right enough.

  “You seem resentful.”

  He had no right to make judgements on me. His own ground rules were:

  No judgement. No blame.

  I guessed they were the kind of rules that only apply to everyone else.

  Later, I’d try and apply the same rules to my investigative work. Ensure I was unbiased, uncompromised.

  Of course, I was every bit as hypocritical as the doctor. Whenever those rules become inconvenient, it’s easy to just throw them away.

  “Resentful?”

  Every session, I was one wrong word away from walking out the door. Forcing myself to stay because I thought I wanted back on the Job, back on the force. When I made the decision to leave the police, I’d give up on the sessions, too.

  The word mandatory holds a great deal of power.

  “Were you resentful of her family?”

  We’d been talking about Elaine. Why I hadn’t talked to her family since the accident.

  He pressed the issue. The way he always did. “They’re very close-knit. Would sacrifice anything for each other if they could.” He paused, watching my reaction. I was careful not to give him anything. Looking back, though, my emotions were likely lit up like a fucking flare. “Your words. Not mine.”

  “No.”

  “So tell me about your family.”

  “Nothing to do with this.”

  “I know your parents died young.”

  “Define young.”

  He was holding back his outburst. No judgement? He couldn’t help making them, the arrogant bastard. “Were you close?”

  “They were my parents.”

  “Doesn’t tell me much.”

  “You mean, were we like Elaine’s family?”

  He didn’t give me an answer.

  Two could play at that game, right enough. I still believed he had no business asking about my life, my inner thoughts.

  What could he tell me that I couldn’t tell myself?

  Aye, maybe these days I have a few better answers to that question.

  “You won’t tell me?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing to do with why we’re here.”

  When Kathryn Brown talked about her family, it made me think about the Barrows. Close knit. Taking the kids on vacations even when they were old enough to move out on their own. The whole clan sharing a house in the middle of the French countryside every year, like nothing had changed between them. Even though they had their own lives, they could still go home.

  The abiding rule of my life had always been:

  You can never go home again.

  I had nowhere from my past I wanted to revisit. Nowhere where I felt safe, where I would want to return when I wanted to hide. How could I hope to understand a woman like Deborah Brown?

  It was no wonder that I had believed Wickes when he talked about Deborah’s obsession. To anyone else, it would have seemed natural; an extension of her close-knit upbringing; a need for family that anyone else could empathise with.

  I hadn’t seen that. Hadn’t considered it.

  Wickes had talked about how we were the same. Burns had said similar things. And I was starting to wonder whether I really had more in common with these thugs and monsters than with anyone close to normal.

  Chapter 41

  The sun had set by the time we pulled off the main roads. I drove slow on what were little more than dirt tracks, focussed on what was ahead. The headlights didn’t seem to slice through the darkness so well.

  The fog was falling along with the temperature. We hit pockets of white that reflected the full beam of the headlights back on us.

  The car was forced down to a crawl.

  I hit the interior light so that Susan could read the directions.

  She kept looking out the windows, squinting slightly, “I hate the country.”

  “Really?”

  She gave a little laugh, killed it quick. “I’m a city girl at heart. Streetlights, you know? Marvellous invention.”

  I still couldn’t quite get over it; “City girl?”

  “Dundee’s a city.”

  “Hardly New York or LA. Not even Edinburgh.”
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  “The city with the small-town heart. Isn’t that one of the slogans the council tried out a few years ago?”

  “Some shite like that,” I agreed. Since the late nineties, Dundee had been constantly trying to reinvent its public image. The problem was that until you spent any time in the city, old prejudices and half-truths stuck in your mind, coloured your view of the place.

  What you saw from the outside was faded old buildings and empty factories, a downtrodden and desperate population trapped by the industries of the past that had left the city behind decades earlier.

  It was a phenomenon, how only when you lived in the place did you discover another side. As though Dundee was desperate to keep itself hidden from outsiders. Seeing the true face of the city was something reserved for those who were prepared to take the time to understand it.

  “The point is,” Susan said, still craning her neck to look out for any landmarks and turnoffs, “that I like streets. And buildings. And signposts. Out here, everything looks the same. There’s nothing to tell you where you are. One field is pretty much the same as the next.”

  We hit a curve in the road. The headlights spun, caught a sheep who was standing by a barbed wire fence looking out at us with curiosity, maybe having been awoken by our approach. Reflecting back the glare of the bulbs, her eyes took on a supernatural-looking sheen. I felt a shiver.

  What was the old saying?

  Aye, like someone had walked over my grave.

  “Next turn off,” said Susan.

  “You’re sure?”

  “On the right.”

  She might have injected just a little authority into her voice.

  It would have helped.

  The building, as I had pictured it in my head, was a bright and sunny place. The front garden was well maintained – maybe with a few vegetable plots the girls would have tended when they were young – and there was an air of life and beauty to the structure that emanated from the brickwork itself.

  Maybe I was just glomming onto Kathryn’s childhood memories.

  It had been years since anyone had come to the wee bothy out in the middle of nowhere. Kathryn told us how she had come up once since inheriting the building to check on its structural integrity. When she could find the time, she said, she was considering tarting the place up, selling it on.