All the Hidden Truths

by Claire Askew

  ‘Evening, marm,’ Rema said, stepping into the circle of chairs. She handed Birch a cardboard cup – tea, thank goodness, though the little tag on the teabag’s string had fallen in and been submerged. ‘You look like you need this.’

  ‘Thanks, Rema,’ Birch said. ‘Hydration is key, or so I’m told.’

  Birch had assigned Rema to the family of Liz Gill, the student who’d grabbed Ryan Summers in a bid to disarm him, and been shot at point-blank range for her trouble. Birch hadn’t even seen the crime scene photos when she made that decision. The Gill family were going to need a special kind of support, having clearly lost a very special daughter to truly horrifying injuries. Liz had been a twin, too.

  ‘How are they doing?’ Birch didn’t need to specify who she meant.

  ‘Devastated,’ Rema said. ‘The worst I’ve ever seen, though I guess that makes sense.’

  ‘The sister?’

  Rema shook her head, her eyes closed for a moment. Birch noticed the glitter of silvery powder on her eyelids.

  ‘Wee scrap,’ Rema said. ‘She’s just zombiefied. And yet you can see her trying to take care of her parents, trying to be the strong one. It’s the worst thing.’

  Birch nodded, blowing on her tea.

  ‘Such a drama with the press, too,’ Rema went on. ‘Everyone wants a piece of them. I daresay all the families are finding the same . . . but because of what Liz did? Everyone wants the exclusive with the heroine’s family. My phone’s ringing all hours of the day and night. They’ve been doorstepped more times than I can count. We had one journo turn up at the front door pretending to be a vicar. A vicar, with the costume-shop dog-collar and everything. A woman, too – for some reason I imagine they’ll know better, but no.’

  In spite of herself, Birch smiled. Rema’s patter was effortlessly engaging, no matter the subject.

  ‘Honestly,’ Rema said, throwing up a hand. ‘If you didn’t laugh at these people, you’d cry.’

  Birch thought for a moment.

  ‘You’ve formally logged the fake vicar episode, though, right? We could talk about threatening behaviour.’

  Rema raised an eyebrow.

  ‘No need. It was me who answered the door to her. Trust me when I tell you she’ll not be pulling a stunt like that again for a good while.’

  Birch laughed, too, and then stopped herself.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you just said if you didn’t laugh you’d cry, but . . .’

  ‘Feels wrong, doesn’t it?’ Rema said. ‘I know. Being in the midst of it, in the family home, and seeing them so besieged on top of it all . . . it makes you wonder if there’s humanity left in this world.’ She paused for a moment, her eyes upturned. ‘But in a way – and I’d never say this to them, of course, or not in so many words – I think they’ve got the edge, the Gills. On the other families, I mean. It’s the smallest silver lining round this cloud of grief that is just massive, but . . . they’re proud of her. That she died that way, trying to save her friends. The kid was a superhero. I couldn’t have done what she did.’

  Birch felt a lump forming in her throat – took a gulp of too-hot tea to try and dissolve it. Yes you could, Rema, she thought, but she didn’t say it.

  ‘And imagine,’ Rema went on, ‘if she’d succeeded. Imagine if she’d rugby-tackled that little shit to the ground, and actually disarmed him. She must have been so close to doing that. She must have known it was possible, right? Or she wouldn’t have tried it.’

  Birch tried to remember what Liz Gill’s father looked like – what his profile was. Dear God, she thought, though she was praying to Marcello, really, please don’t let it be him.

  ‘Ah,’ Rema said, gesturing towards the door, ‘time for me to make myself scarce.’

  As Birch looked up, Rema melted out of her eyeline. McLeod had arrived, with the last few FLOs and a good number of other police personnel, uniformed and not, straggling in his wake.

  ‘Showtime at the Apollo,’ Birch muttered, and stepped out of the circle.

  16 May, 6.57 p.m.

  Ishbel stood on the pavement on Fettes Avenue, looking up at the police buildings behind their railings. Around her, cars drew up and pulled in to the on-street parking, their passengers skip-walking across the road between after-school traffic from nearby Broughton High School – the same school Abigail came to for football. Or used to, Ishbel thought, her throat thickening. Some of the people who filed into the police station wore lanyards round their necks, or carried briefcases. Ishbel could identify other Three Rivers family members easily: they were either crying, or looked like they were trying not to. Even the men looked numbed, lost.

  Ishbel wasn’t sure how she’d got there herself. She had no memory of the short drive over, though she knew she had done it: right now she was leaning against the back corner of the car to cover up the shaking in her legs. This was the first time she’d changed her clothes in two days, and she’d taken them from the drawer and put them on without really looking at them. Now, in the car window she could see her own gauzy reflection: a work blouse that needed an iron, a clashing floral cardigan Pauline had given her. Her short hair stuck out at angles. Her eyes were so swollen with crying that she started a little – her crow’s feet had smoothed with the swelling, and she looked like she’d been punched. Reflected behind her was the sky, beginning to turn pink, wisps of high cloud purpling on it like peripheral bruises.

  Aidan was walking up the pavement towards her. She was supposed to be keeping an eye out for his car, but had missed him, looking at herself. As he neared, she could tell from his face that he’d been crying, too – the whites of his eyes were bloodshot, and his cheeks were red. She hadn’t seen him cry thus far: he’d been disturbingly, angrily stoic throughout the process of being told that Abigail was dead, throughout the awful identification and paperwork in the morgue, throughout the meeting with Rehan – the young officer assigned as their police family liaison. On the day of Abigail’s death, they’d stayed in the hospital for a long time: by the time they left, dark was falling outside, and Ishbel had shied away from the car park with its long blue shadows and taxi-engine noise. It had seemed like such a halfway house, that brightly lit place with its disinfectant smell and squeaking floors, that she felt if she could just stay there till morning, she might find that none of it had really happened. The hospital felt like a dreamscape, and she wanted to wake up.

  She’d made the mistake of saying this to Greg and Aidan, standing at the threshold of the exit door engulfed in sobs, not able to walk out. Greg had told her to wait, and disappeared, and in the quiet after he clicked away, Ishbel listened to her own wet, ragged breaths.

  ‘Aidan,’ she’d said, baffled by her husband’s upright silence. ‘Abigail is dead. She’s dead.’

  He hadn’t replied, just looked at her as one might look at a whimpering animal – with pity, and slightly askance.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ She’d heard her own voice raised, become aware of faces turning to look at her. ‘What’s wrong with you, Aidan? Say something.’

  When he turned his gaze on her properly, she’d flinched.

  ‘I understand.’ She’d seen then the form his grief was taking: he was furious. There was a glitter in his eyes, but it wasn’t tears. For the first time in the twenty-five years she’d known him, Ishbel had felt afraid.

  Greg had returned with a plain white box, which he pressed into Ishbel’s palm. Looking down at it, she could see the top of a prescription slip sticking out of the carton: these were sedatives. To her surprise, when she looked up again, Greg was hugging Aidan: one of those powerful bear hugs men reserve for rare times of true need. When they broke their embrace, Greg’s eyes were wet, but Aidan’s still weren’t. Ishbel wanted to be held, too – by either of them, or by anyone – but Greg only placed his arm lightly around her shoulders, and pointed down at the little white box in her hands.

  ‘If you need one,’ he’d said, ‘take one. I know nothing can help, really, but
. . . you know.’

  Ishbel had made it across the car park, then dry-swallowed two of the pills before she’d fastened her seatbelt. She’d woken hours later on the sofa in the house – Aidan had driven her home. He must have carried her in and left her there, fully clothed, in the dark.

  ‘You’ve been crying,’ she said to him now, as he reached her. She was smiling, and she knew that was wrong, but it was a relief to see him show what felt like normal emotion.

  ‘A little,’ he said. ‘In the car.’

  Ishbel had been asleep for most of the past two days, thanks to Greg’s pills – only really awake for the brief meeting with Rehan – but she’d somehow felt Aidan moving around in the house, and leaving, and coming back, and leaving.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

  He paused, and blew air out of his nose, as though suppressing some initial response.

  ‘I had to duck into work,’ he said.

  Ishbel frowned.

  ‘Just for a half-hour,’ he said. ‘They were worried.’

  He looked away from her, glancing up and down the street to check for traffic. Ishbel felt that same, strong urge to be held by him – the one she’d got in the hospital doorway – a thing she hadn’t felt for years until now.

  ‘Aidan . . .’

  She reached out to take his hand. He had big hands, with fine blond hairs on their backs – hands like spades, Pauline had said once – and Ishbel used to love watching them doing whatever they did, whether that was washing up or writing shopping lists or changing Abigail’s nappies. If he’d been crying, she thought, perhaps that meant he’d be softer now – softer perhaps than he had been for months, since the Telford case, when Ishbel had stopped paying attention. But he flinched away from her.

  ‘Come on, now,’ he said, not unkindly, but his voice was even. ‘We’re late as it is.’

  Aidan needn’t have worried about them being late. They were led through the corridors of the police station’s ground floor by a young officer in uniform, but when they walked into the room that she directed them to, there were no signs of the meeting having officially begun. As Aidan held the door for her and she edged inside, Ishbel balked: there were far more people here than she had expected. In the centre of the room, a circle of chairs had been laid out, and inside it, those who were obviously family members of victims had begun to sit down in small groups, talking quietly, some of them crying already. Among them, people in suits with police lanyards were dotted about: the various FLOs, Ishbel assumed. But standing elsewhere – in knots of four or five outside the circle, or leaning up against the walls – there were uniformed police, Three Rivers staff whose lanyards were red instead of blue, and some of the briefcase-carriers Ishbel had seen outside, whoever they were. Ishbel wasn’t quite sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this. She felt her body sag, and Aidan closed one hand around her arm to steady her. After two days of waiting for contact, his touch shocked her.

  Rehan picked his way across the circle, and took Ishbel’s hand in his own. His handshake was damp, and not very firm, but he said, ‘Ishbel, you made it,’ and waited until she looked him in the eye. Then he broke free of her and did the same to Aidan. When he turned, Ishbel stumbled after him into the circle, and sank into a seat.

  ‘There’s tea and coffee,’ Rehan said. ‘Would either of you . . .?’

  Ishbel shook her head, but Aidan, who had not yet sat down, said, ‘I’ll get it.’ She watched him stride towards the hot-water urns.

  She tried not to make eye contact with anyone. She didn’t want to have to talk about Abigail, or even reveal who she was. She didn’t want to admit that she was the same as these people: here because her only child had died. But, as she glanced round the circle, she felt a flicker of comfort, seeing the other women were also dishevelled and shrunk. No one else seemed to want to make eye contact, either – the families were mostly talking amongst themselves, with their respective FLOs. In some of the little groups there were siblings – young people holding fast to their parents’ hands with whitened knuckles. One woman sitting near Ishbel – undoubtedly a mother, too – was staring dead ahead at a bare patch of wall, while a man who may have been her husband talked to their FLO through the straight, invisible beam of her gaze.

  Beyond the circle, Ishbel was able to pick out DI Birch, the female supervising officer who’d visited them, very briefly, to introduce Rehan. She was taller than most of her female colleagues, and Ishbel found herself leaning a little to see if the DI was wearing heels. Her hair was a mousy reddish-brown, all of it pulled into a ponytail except for a long fringe that looked in need of a cut. She looked tired. Ishbel was just hazarding a guess at her age – forty? Not much older than that, anyway – when she remembered, for the five thousandth time, who she was. Why she was here. You’re not at work, she reminded herself. You don’t have to appraise everyone. But in the absence of Aidan, and with Rehan looking down at his smartphone, there wasn’t much else to do but think about Abigail, and no, that was unacceptable.

  A plain black suit and pale shirt seemed to be standard issue for more senior officers, though DI Birch was speaking to a man in an ensemble that was just a touch flamboyant. His suit was a deep blue, with a wide pinstripe and shoulders that were clearly tailored to fit. This was a person of high rank, she could tell: the other officers looked at him differently, and when they passed, made a wide circle around him. At DI Birch’s side there was a young Asian officer, wearing a new-looking lanyard under a long sheet of dark hair – she wasn’t quite the DI’s height, in spite of her towering high heels. The young woman’s face was a mask of worry, and from under that mask she occasionally glanced up at the pinstriped, high-ranking man.

  Rehan had dimmed his phone screen, and pushed the small machine into his pocket.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Ishbel asked him. He followed her gaze.

  ‘With DI Birch? That’s Detective Chief Inspector McLeod. He’s here to . . . oversee proceedings.’

  Ishbel frowned.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘the young woman.’

  She watched Rehan’s mouth slacken.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. Then, after a pause, ‘That’s Amy. She’s a family liaison officer, like me.’

  Ishbel cast her eyes around the circle.

  ‘Her . . . family. They’re not here?’

  Rehan tensed up, and glanced behind him, to where Aidan was stirring a cup of tea with a little wooden stick.

  ‘What?’ Ishbel said.

  Rehan turned back to her, and when he spoke again, his voice was low.

  ‘Amy has been assigned to Moira Summers.’ When Ishbel frowned, he added, ‘Moira Summers is the mother of Ryan Summers, who . . . the gunman.’

  Ishbel felt a jolt of something run through her. Panic, maybe.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But – Rehan, does that mean she’ll be here, tonight? The – Moira? The mother?’

  Rehan placed a hand on Ishbel’s arm. Again, she felt the electric shock of human contact.

  ‘It’s okay, Ishbel,’ he said. ‘No one here would think that was appropriate.’

  Ishbel’s brow furrowed deeper. Why not? she wanted to say, but she knew why not.

  Her head was swimming: either the sedatives were still in her system, or she was suffering some sort of withdrawal symptom. The room felt hot, too full of limbs and eyes. She got the feeling that Aidan was deliberately keeping away from her, watching her from a distance for signs of madness. Every thirty seconds or so – a pattern that had kept up for two days now, as long as she was awake – she remembered that Abigail was dead. The remembering throbbed inside her, as though she’d swallowed some cold and terrible engine.

  DI Birch had pulled herself from the suck of her DCI’s attention, and now stepped into the circle of chairs.

  ‘Good evening, everyone,’ she said. Her voice was quiet, low for a woman’s voice, and she spoke slowly. ‘I think most of you know me. I’m Detective Inspector Helen Birch, and I’m doing a lot of
work on . . . this investigation. I want to thank you all for coming to this meeting tonight. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for many of you to leave your families and support networks to come in and see us. We really are very grateful.’

  Ishbel’s attention drifted. She thought of her own ‘support network’, as DI Birch called it. These past few years, it had grown thin. She had Aidan, of course, and Greg, though she saw him rarely, and Pauline was a regular presence in the house. She got on well enough with her mother-in-law, but she was still her mother-in-law. Ishbel’s own parents were dead – her mother long dead now, it felt like. When it came to friends, she had a great rapport with her colleagues: on the rare occasion she went to the pub these days, it was always with them. The job they all did was esoteric, misunderstood, sometimes even hated – it was hard to explain to anyone else. They hung out together and bitched and commiserated, offered advice – but, Ishbel realised, really only ever talked shop. They’d send Christmas cards to each other with ‘and family’ tacked on; occasionally, someone would ask about someone else’s kids. They were great people, and she loved them, but there was no one among them she felt could join her ‘support network’ at a time like this – not even Dave, her secret favourite of the bunch.

  I have one best friend, Ishbel realised, only one. She and Caroline had been joined at the hip at uni: St Andrews, where they’d both studied sociology and bunked out of lectures, scoffing at the posh toff students who went to the society balls and wore the ridiculous optional scholarly robes. Later, Caroline had dated a friend of Aidan’s for a while, a guy called Sandy who looked like a male model, and she and Ishbel had chattered excitedly about the prospect of a double wedding. But Caroline was restless in Edinburgh: the city was too small, too parochial to hold her big ambitions. She trained as a psychotherapist, and had moved to America – Abigail was small at the time – nearly twenty years ago, Ishbel was shocked to realise. Now, Caroline lived in New York, and had a fancy private clinic in a brownstone on a tree-lined street. She hadn’t been back to the UK in a decade. Ishbel hadn’t visited her in five years. They mostly communicated via email, and the emails had become more and more scarce.