The Innocent Dead - Rhona MacLeod Series 15 (2020)

by Anderson, Lin

  7

  Diary entry of Karen Marshall aged 11

  3 May 1975

  Today was Mary’s birthday. We were meant to have a party. But she hasn’t come home and the police are still searching for her. When the news comes on, Dad switches off the TV.

  I heard Dad tell Mum the police think Mary was abducted?? On her way back from chapel after her confirmation. Probably by a man with a car.

  What man? No one round here has a car except Father Feeney.

  I thought about the man at the shops, but his coat is ragged so I don’t think he has a car.

  Dad came up when I was in bed. He told me not to talk to strangers. Especially men in cars.

  I asked about Mary. Why would a man take Mary away?

  Some men are bad, Dad says.

  I wanted to ask, how do I know if they’re bad, but didn’t.

  Did I know any bad men?

  And then I thought of one.

  8

  The narrow road that led to the red-brick Victorian prison that was HMP Barlinnie, more commonly known in Glasgow as the Bar-L, went straight through a housing estate. Perched a little higher than the rows of neat houses, it provided little to no possibility for parking unless you managed to get a space in the official car park, which was anything but large enough for the task.

  Thus Professor Magnus Pirie had arrived early for his morning meeting, with the slender hope of finding a space.

  And, amazingly, it seemed he was in luck.

  A small van was in the process of exiting a parking bay near the gate. Drawing to one side, Magnus let him depart, before doing a swift reversal just as another car entered and assumed the vacant space might be for them.

  Not for the first time, Magnus, in his psychologist role, wondered how many fights had originated outside Barlinnie over a parking space rather than inside the halls of the vast and imposing prison.

  Locking the car, he made for the visitor entrance. Despite the early hour, there was already a stream of people entering or leaving through the glass facade.

  This wasn’t his first official visit so he knew the drill. Ignoring the reception area, Magnus crossed instead to the heavy metal door on the opposite wall and pressed the buzzer.

  ‘Professor Magnus Pirie come to visit Alec McLaughlin.’

  The buzzer sounded and Magnus pulled on the heavy door. Inside was the gathering area for those who were bound for locations not accessible to ordinary visitors – the halls behind the walls. Security was tight here, and wherever you went would involve an accompanying prison officer and a great deal of locking and unlocking of doors.

  Magnus’s allotted officer for today would likely be Archie Urqhuart, who he already knew from previous visits involving his current research.

  After giving his name and the reason for his visit, Magnus was asked to sign in before being handed his security pass, but he still had to wait until the four folk in front, two men and two women, went through the usual scanner bag and body checks.

  Entering a prison was much like trying to go through security at the airport. You were required to show photo ID and negotiate the screening process, the difference being that you weren’t allowed to take any personal items into the jail and especially not your mobile phone.

  Listening in on their chatting, Magnus realized the four were there to run the recovery cafe. The Recovery Community Network in Glasgow was something Magnus both knew about and supported, having been invited on occasion to talk to groups about the psychology of recovering from addiction. These four advocates were chatty and in high spirits and obviously knew most of the staff on duty.

  One of them, Magnus realized, he’d met before. Tall, in her thirties, with a blonde ponytail, Magnus remembered the woman as being a recovery development officer for a group he’d visited in Raploch, Stirling.

  ‘Pat?’ he tried as he emerged from the scanner.

  ‘Magnus,’ she said in surprise. ‘What are you doing in Bar-L? Not on remand, I hope?’ She gave the throaty infectious laugh he remembered.

  ‘Carrying out some research,’ Magnus told her.

  ‘Can I ask what about?’

  ‘Education and the Sexual Offender,’ Magnus admitted, with a wry smile.

  Pat grinned. ‘So you know they’re the ones who take all the education classes?’

  ‘You have a theory about why that is?’ Magnus said.

  ‘Interview me sometime and I’ll tell you all my theories on the subject,’ Pat promised.

  ‘I may well take you up on that.’

  Recovery development officers like Pat had their own experience of addiction. Pat had been quite open about hers – alcohol, with a good measure of cocaine thrown in. Her back story was as varied as any of the other women he’d met in the sessions he’d attended. What had struck him most during his visits was the mutual and safe support system the women had created for one another. This had given them the confidence to speak out and the stories of how they’d ended up in addiction were informative, if rarely pretty.

  Many had involved manipulative and often violent men. Not dissimilar to the men Magnus had been interviewing for his current research. Watching Pat depart with the group’s allotted prison officer, he found himself contemplating giving her a call. Barlinnie wouldn’t be the only prison she’d visited, so her opinions on the uptake of education facilities could be useful.

  At that point in his thoughts, Archie appeared.

  ‘Hey, Prof, you ready for the fray?’

  ‘Morning, Archie. I am.’

  ‘So it’s Old Alec this time?’

  When Magnus nodded, Archie said in a serious voice, ‘Just remember, Old Alec’s a highly intelligent and skilled liar. That’s how he managed to rape and sexually abuse weans for years before he was caught.’

  Archie wasn’t normally as blunt as that about his charges, so Magnus decided to take his warning seriously.

  ‘Thanks for the reminder,’ he said.

  ‘One other thing. He’s at the end of his sentence. Out in a couple of days. As a criminal profiler, you know all about modus operandi and the fantasy worlds men like Alec create for themselves.’ Archie looked Magnus in the eye. ‘In my opinion, McLaughlin won’t change his sexual habits, despite his age or all the qualifications he’s managed to acquire while inside.’

  Passing the educational unit, Magnus saw the long line of men waiting to go in for the morning sessions, the majority of them wearing the red fleeces indicating they were convicted prisoners. The blue signified those on remand.

  ‘I’ve got a room for you in another block. As you can see, the Ed unit’s pretty full this morning.’

  A few minutes later, Archie ushered Magnus into a small and sparsely furnished room where he found an elderly man waiting for him.

  Magnus had chosen a selection of men to interview based on the length of their sentences and the educational courses they’d picked during their incarceration. Alec McLaughlin was one of the long-stay prisoners who’d worked his way through three Highers and on to degree level. Interestingly, the degree he had been taking through the Open University was in Magnus’s chosen area of psychology.

  The white-haired man sporting a small, neatly trimmed beard was, according to his details, approaching sixty-one. The red cheeks, bulging waistline and welcoming smile only added to the image of a jolly Santa Claus, which was further enhanced by the red fleece.

  As Magnus entered, his interviewee rose with some difficulty and, leaning on the walking stick in his right hand, extended his left in welcome.

  ‘Professor Pirie. Alec McLaughlin. I’m delighted to meet you. I am so enjoying reading your work on psychopathic personalities, especially your study of the Reborn dollmaker, Jeff Coulter.’

  When Magnus didn’t immediately respond, he continued, ‘I wondered if you truly ever came to a decision on whether Coulter was a psychopathic personality, pretending to be ill. Or was he in fact in remission due to the drugs administered in hospital for a debilitating mental
illness?’

  It was a valid question, although not one Magnus particularly wanted to respond to. His whole research around Coulter had been to try and establish either a psychotic illness, treatable in part by medication, or an untreatable psychopathic personality.

  Jeff Coulter had been imprisoned for killing his baby son. Locked up in Carstairs and treated with drugs, he had reinvented himself as the Reborn maker, fashioning realistic baby dolls modelled on actual photographs of dead infants for their grieving parents. His work and apparent rehabilitation had made him something of a cult figure. Magnus remembered Coulter’s Reborn workshop, the wall festooned with photographs of the dolls he had made, pictured with their loving and grateful parents.

  It was a case that haunted Magnus to this day.

  ‘My conclusions are in the research paper, so I presume you know them already. Besides, I’m not here to discuss Jeff Coulter, but to talk to you about your studies.’

  Alec sat back at this point and for a moment Magnus caught a disgruntled look, which was quickly masked.

  ‘So,’ Magnus began, ‘can you give me a potted history of your involvement with the educational unit here at Barlinnie?’

  Alec did just that, succinctly and with occasional self-deprecating humour. He’d had very little formal education as a child, he told Magnus. Abandoned by his mother, he’d been put in a Catholic orphanage from the age of two to five.

  ‘Then my bitch of an aunt took me in. As for her husband . . . They had no kids of their own, so they could concentrate all their love on me,’ he said in a tone that suggested the experience had been anything but pleasant.

  He’d skipped school a lot and suspected his various teachers were rather glad about that.

  ‘They said I was disruptive. I wonder why?’ He paused at that point as though he anticipated an interruption. When that didn’t happen, he continued.

  ‘I was in and out of short-term sentences. Back then, there wasn’t any desire to educate inmates in Her Majesty’s prisons. It wasn’t until I had a substantial sentence that that became a possibility. I started with the O-level equivalents in English and Maths and went on from there.’

  He paused and examined Magnus. ‘Can I ask you a question, Professor Pirie?’

  Magnus nodded. ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Why are you so interested in sexual offenders and their thirst for knowledge?’

  Magnus wasn’t sure he had a straight answer to that, so instead he said, ‘May I turn the question round and ask why the more intelligent prisoners tend to be in here for sexual offences?’

  Alec gave a little snort of derision.

  ‘In my childhood, so-called sexual offences, just like domestic violence, weren’t regarded as crimes. According to the Bible, women were created for the pleasure of men, and children and wives were the property of their husbands. To do with as they wished.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe the sexual offenders in here just haven’t caught up with the changing nature of society.’

  ‘But that doesn’t explain why, in general, they are so keen on education,’ Magnus tried.

  ‘Most men in here are Neanderthal in nature and have one set of thoughts and actions they repeat ad infinitum. Also, they don’t favour the educational unit, but in some misguided sense of moral superiority, they dislike those who do.’

  They spoke for another ten minutes or so about Alec’s choice of psychology at degree level. After which Magnus was left with the idea that Alec was viewing his subject specialization as a training ground in mind manipulation, rather than as a way of understanding human behaviour.

  By then Archie had reappeared.

  ‘Time’s up, guys.’

  At this, Old Alec rose more swiftly and easily than at the beginning of their meeting, leading Magnus to think that his earlier difficulty had been merely for show.

  ‘So glad to speak with you, Professor Pirie,’ he said, as though he were the interviewer and Magnus the interviewee. ‘Next time let’s discuss that Catholic orphanage and what was regarded as right and wrong in there.’

  Archie ushered Magnus out, leaving Alec with his own guard.

  ‘So,’ Archie said as they crossed the open space between the halls, ‘what did you think of Old Alec as a fellow psychologist?’

  ‘He’s as intelligent and manipulative as you led me to believe,’ Magnus told him.

  ‘Don’t know if you’re into true crime podcasts and documentaries, Professor. But I watched an American documentary where a paedophile priest in charge of a girls’ school gets himself a certificate in psychology which he then uses to manipulate the girls even more than he did with religion. I can’t help but think Old Alec, who the guys in here call Secret Santa, has something similar in mind when he gets out of here.’

  ‘He’ll be on the sex offenders list and monitored though, won’t he?’ Magnus said.

  ‘I’ve a feeling he’s already working out a way around that,’ Archie said. ‘And we’re probably helping him.’

  They walked on in silence across the now-deserted yards to the high wall and exit door. The clunk of the lock just served to remind Magnus of the imminent departure of Old Alec, released back into the world again. A world he hadn’t been in for close on fifteen years.

  As Archie said goodbye before ushering Magnus through, he gave him his final thoughts on the matter.

  ‘You know this idea that men who abuse children do it because they were abused themselves? Well, just imagine if all the girls and women who’ve ever been abused decided to do the same? Where would we all be then, Professor?’

  9

  Karen checked her watch for the umpteenth time. Was she going or wasn’t she? Her indecision had grown with each passing moment. She’d risen at the usual time, determined to go, despite having had so little sleep.

  In fact, her brain had been turning like a concrete mixer all night, churning memories and thoughts together much like it had done after Jack’s death. The problem was, occasionally there was a moment when she thought that what she was remembering might be the truth.

  It was as though the imagined sighting of the crow in her sitting room, followed by the dead shadow of Toby, had opened a gate to the past. Just a little, but enough to tell her that there was more to come.

  And that was what Karen was afraid of.

  The kettle having boiled, she made herself a mug of tea and switched on the radio. It had been her lifeline since Jack died. It provided voices to listen to rather than focusing on her own traumatized thoughts. If it hadn’t been for the radio, her drinking would have been even worse than it had been. And that was bad enough.

  She’d started drinking as Jack’s health had deteriorated. It had been the way she got through the days and the nights. Jack, in his dementia, had swiftly forgotten who she was. Every attempted conversation had left Karen with the feeling that they had never met. That she was as much a stranger to their life together as he undoubtedly was.

  That maybe she wasn’t even real.

  But occasionally, just occasionally, the light in his eyes would shine and he would see her again and say her name. My Karen. Those moments were precious but grew few and far between.

  Alcohol had blurred the horror of her world enough for her to deal with it. Plus she kept telling herself that there was a way out for her. When Jack went, she could go too. But, in the interim, she had to stay alive to look after Jack. And to do that she needed to drink. After he went from her, she would be free to choose her own end.

  She’d carried on, though, after Jack died, drinking even more, putting off her decision on what would happen next. The days and nights met one another in an endless cycle until, one morning, she made up her mind to stop. It had happened after a particularly powerful dream featuring Jack. Not the frightened Jack who didn’t recognize her, but the real Jack. Her Jack.

  ‘What are we going to do about you?’ he’d said. ‘Well, first things first. You’re not a drinker, Karen. Never have been. Tomorrow you’re going back to being you.’
<
br />   So she’d tried, because Jack told her to.

  The memory of that dream and Jack’s words had taken her as far as the recovery cafe. The women she’d met there had done the rest.

  With her mind made up to go to today’s gathering, Karen carried her mug to the sink to rinse it. As she did so, the news bulletin came on the radio. Karen paused in her reach to switch it off, knowing the announcer was saying something she had to hear.

  And there it was.

  A child’s body had been unearthed on moorland south of Glasgow. It was thought that it may have been buried there for up to fifty years.

  Fifty years. A lifetime.

  As her thoughts swung back in time, Karen knew. This was what yesterday had all been about. The rush of memories, both good and terrifyingly bad. The knowing that something was about to happen. The certainty, by the images alone, that it had something to do with Mary.

  And here it was.

  As the mug slipped from her hand, Karen watched the remaining tea fan out like blood and thought of Mary’s disappearance, and her own part in it.

  10

  McNab emerged after his workout, not convinced that a gym membership was doing anything for his love life or his career.

  No time for early-morning sex any more and he was already knackered by the time he got to work.

  It was his colleague DS Janice Clark’s remark that he’d put on a few pounds recently that had forced him down this road. McNab liked to blame his current contented love life for his lapse into the fat bastard model of himself. Plus he hadn’t run after, or run away from, some mad Glasgow headbanger for a while, which could mean he was out of condition . . . but only just.

  So he’d taken up his SPRA membership and joined a gym as close to the police station as possible. When he’d told Ellie of his decision, he’d been shocked to note the smile of satisfaction on her face. Which meant she already thought he was a fat bastard, or she no longer looked forward to their morning couplings.

  When McNab had pointed out he would have to rise pretty early to fit in the gym before work, thus depriving Ellie of his company, she’d merely laughed.