The Innocent Dead - Rhona MacLeod Series 15 (2020)

by Anderson, Lin

  ‘Or maybe forty-five years ago,’ Rhona had finished for him.

  Eventually relinquishing the body to the mortuary van, Rhona went outside and discarded her oversuit. The night air was chilly, but she breathed it in with gusto, knowing that when she climbed into her car, she would still take the smell of that room with her.

  Seated now, with the car window open, she retrieved her mobile, only to discover a list of missed calls from Sean. In that moment, Rhona knew why he’d been continually phoning.

  It hadn’t only been Chrissy who’d had a dinner date tonight.

  She’d also had one, with Sean and her son, Liam. One she’d completely forgotten about.

  45

  McNab opened the garden gate and stepped inside. He wasn’t a garden lover, but even he could tell that this one was well cared for. The daylight was fading, but there was enough left to show off the spring flowers, none of which McNab knew by name, but they smelled nice. Certainly better than the house of death a few doors up.

  He’d called ahead to ask if it was okay to visit, and Jean Barclay had said of course. McNab wondered if she just wanted to know what had been happening up the street, or whether she knew already. News travelled fast in small communities and McNab suspected this street was likely as much a community now as it had been half a century ago.

  Jean opened the door to him and, with a cautious smile of welcome, invited him in.

  McNab had met Jean Barclay on a couple of occasions. When she’d given her initial interview and confessed to not being able to identify her sister’s confirmation dress. When she’d been asked to give a DNA sample to check against the body they’d found. And, finally, when she’d been told that it was her sister.

  ‘The family liaison officer has just left,’ she told McNab as she ushered him to a seat in the comfortable living room.

  ‘They’re looking after you then?’

  ‘I can’t thank them enough. If only we’d had that level of support when Mary disappeared . . .’ She tailed off.

  ‘Different times,’ McNab offered. ‘Hopefully we’re improving.’

  She nodded. ‘Can I make you a tea or a coffee?’

  McNab asked for coffee. ‘Strong,’ he said.

  ‘I remember.’ She gave a little smile. ‘You’re addicted to caffeine?’

  ‘It’s better than the drink.’

  His joke fell flat, but, maybe worse than that, McNab caught a fleeting glimpse of fear, as though he’d touched a nerve somewhere.

  A quick glance around caught the portrait gallery on the sideboard. He already knew the set-up. A family photograph of Jean with her husband and two children. Plus one of each of the kids graduating from college or university.

  On his earlier visits, there hadn’t been one of Mary. Now there was. A single small framed snap had appeared at the front, perhaps because she’d finally been found.

  Jean Barclay’s swift return with the coffee suggested she’d already had a pot warm and waiting. McNab accepted the large mug and took a mouthful.

  ‘Sam’s a lover of strong black coffee too,’ Jean told him.

  ‘Is your husband about?’ McNab said.

  She shook her head. ‘He’s out.’ She didn’t venture to say where.

  Samuel Barclay hadn’t appeared to have been on the scene when the wee sister went missing, so had stood back from the family appeals and the investigation in general. McNab had got the impression of a man of few words, who was concerned about the horror his wife was being put through again after forty-five years. He always spoke quietly, his Irish accent undiminished in the forty-three years since he’d arrived here from Donegal.

  Jean was waiting patiently for McNab to reveal the reason for his visit, if it wasn’t about the stramash at the top of the street.

  ‘I know about the body you found in the old McLaughlin house,’ she eventually said.

  McNab nodded, wondering how much she knew.

  ‘Folk are saying it’s Alec McLaughlin,’ she said tentatively. ‘He’s been hanging about here, so I wondered.’

  McNab considered whether it was worth just spilling the beans. The body had been identified as Alec McLaughlin. In fact he’d been the one to confirm it himself.

  She came in again. ‘He gave a story to the papers about Mary. About all of us. Said this was a street of evil back then.’ She looked distressed and angry about that.

  McNab didn’t respond, judging it was his silence that was prompting Jean to talk.

  ‘He was a pervert back then and he went on doing that until they caught him. Think of all those children he got to in between.’

  ‘Was Mary one of them?’ McNab said quietly.

  Jean looked shocked by the suggestion. ‘No. Definitely not. Robbie would never have allowed Alec near Mary. But Alec used to sit on the hill and shout things at her and Karen when they played tennis. Poor Karen, have you spoken to her?’ she added.

  ‘Karen Marshall has disappeared from her home in Stirling,’ McNab said.

  ‘Was this after our appeal?’ Jean said, concerned.

  McNab nodded. ‘Karen didn’t approach us, but a friend in Stirling went looking for her after the TV appeal and found her missing from her home.’

  A flurry of worry crossed her face. ‘Did we put her in danger?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘All this time I prayed Mary was still alive. That someone had stolen her. Like women steal babies from the hospital. Like those snatched children in America who turn up years later. Maybe she’d just run away. Mary didn’t like getting belted, but at times she seemed to invite it. Always coming in ages after Dad had whistled for her. I nursed that notion all these years, until you found her in that bog.’

  McNab had heard this before from Jean, but he was still moved by it.

  ‘Karen Marshall kept a diary at the time Mary disappeared,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen it, but we believe it might throw some light on what happened that day.’

  ‘Is that why Karen’s missing? Oh God.’ She covered her mouth. ‘Is Mary’s killer still alive? Has he finally got Karen too?’

  McNab didn’t want to register just how strongly that thought haunted him. He changed the subject.

  ‘The former DI McCreadie on the case, he remembered that Mary’s school clothes went missing around the time she did. He said a hand-knitted jumper, a grey skirt, white socks and sandals?’

  Jean thought for a moment. ‘I remember our school clothes. Mum hand-knitted our jumpers, to match the school uniform. Mary’s was blue. Mine, being the secondary school, was maroon. But I don’t remember anyone saying they were missing.’ She looked at McNab. ‘Have you found these clothes? Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘We found what might be the jumper.’ He brought up the image Rhona had sent and passed the phone over.

  Jean stared at it as though willing herself to recognize it.

  ‘It could be,’ she said finally. ‘Where did you find it?’

  McNab wasn’t about to reveal that, not until Rhona checked it for Mary’s DNA. Instead he said, ‘If Karen comes here, it’s important you let us know immediately. You have my card?’

  Jean nodded. ‘I hope she’s all right. When I think back, I realize that Mary disappearing was terrible for all of us, but for a child Karen’s age, who didn’t understand what men were capable of, it must have been the end of innocence.’

  The air outside had sharpened. McNab breathed it in, trying to clear his head. Someone was still on duty at the locus, just one vehicle left outside the door. Tomorrow there would be house-to-house enquiries, just like there had been all those years ago.

  Back then they’d started out with hope. The golden hour they called it, when everything was fresh in people’s minds. The hour immediately after a child disappeared. The hour in which they held out hope that the child would be found alive and returned to their family.

  There had been no golden hour result in the case of the missing Mary McIntyre and no peace for her traumatiz
ed friend. Not then. Not now.

  As he climbed in the car, McNab realized he was already too late to meet Ellie at the Rock Cafe as arranged. He would have to text her, blame the fact that he’d had a call-out. In that moment, McNab knew he couldn’t be bothered excusing himself or explaining.

  He was a detective, that was the job, and Ellie should know that by now. His silence, of course, might mean that she didn’t come back to his place tonight.

  Did he mind?

  He realized he didn’t but couldn’t explain why. If he went home alone, he would be free to brood. Maybe even take the whisky bottle out of the kitchen cupboard. McNab contemplated that thought for a moment, before switching to an image of himself in the shower. Hot and at full blast.

  As for food, he could pick up a fish supper on the way. He sent Ellie a brief text, Out on a murder case, then headed for home.

  46

  Rhona stood at the door listening.

  The faint aroma of something delicious had met her on the stairs. Being so late, she doubted there was the remotest chance the dinner party wasn’t yet over. That they were extending it, in expectation of her imminent return.

  The silence that met her suggested Liam had departed for his parents’ house. As for Sean, since she hadn’t returned his calls, he had likely gone back to his own flat.

  Part of her was disappointed and part of her was relieved that she wouldn’t have to make conversation with either of the men in her private life. McNab she could have managed, since they’d just shared a crime scene. Even Magnus would have taken little effort.

  Arriving back in the real world, when you’ve just been at the scene of a brutal murder, wasn’t dissimilar to a soldier coming home from the front line. You needed time to switch clothes and your mindset.

  Rhona slipped her key in the lock. As the door swung open, the one occupant she didn’t mind meeting came slinking towards her, tail straight up in the air, the tip flicking back and forth. Tom threaded through her legs and graciously allowed her to pat him before dashing off again.

  The silence in here was heavy, as though the flat was all talked out. Sean and Liam got on really well. In any previous meal, she had been the odd one out, watching in pleasurable silence as her blond son held his own against the dark-haired Irishman.

  Such a rapport could never have existed between Edward and Liam. Rhona had viewed the relationship Edward had with his other son first-hand. The son who’d been planned. The son he’d wanted.

  Truth was, Edward didn’t really want a son as an individual. He wanted a younger version of himself, and he’d spent a lot of time trying to mould Jonathan in that model. Jonathan had rebelled, of course, and the result had been worse than anyone could have imagined.

  Rhona hung up her coat and kicked off her shoes.

  The door to the spare room was open. She glanced inside, but there was no Sean asleep there. She checked her own bedroom now, to find the same. Relaxing into the realization that she was alone, Rhona headed for the shower. She was hungry, ravenous in fact, but the biggest desire was to shed her body of the smell of that room.

  Turning the setting up to the hottest she could handle, she stepped under the spray. At first she just let the water beat on her head and shoulders. Then she soaped every inch of her body and shampooed her hair.

  Only once she could smell nothing but the scent of cleanliness did she emerge to towel herself dry. It always amazed her that a shower did not just clean the body, but also seemed to clear her mind as well.

  Sauntering through to the kitchen, she noted that the slow cooker was still on and the aroma she’d caught on the stairs might just come from it.

  A note on the table from Sean said ‘Call me!’ with no mention of Liam or expressions like ‘Where the hell were you?’

  Rhona helped herself to a plate of vegetable curry and, grabbing a fork, headed for the sitting room. The shutters were closed, the lamps lit as though in welcome. Rhona put on the gas fire and, reclaiming the couch from Tom, stretched out on it with her plate on her knees.

  After which, she purposefully thought of nothing until she had cleared her plate.

  Depositing the plate in the dishwasher, she fetched her laptop and mobile and took them back through with her. Head clear now, hunger satisfied, her first decision was to text both Liam and Sean.

  She began with Liam, explaining about the call-out and her extended stint with the body, together with an apology for forgetting what day of the week it was. If Liam had time maybe they could meet for a drink at the jazz club tomorrow night, otherwise he could get in touch next time he was in Glasgow.

  It was strange, Rhona mused, how much easier it was to say things in a text, rather than face to face. As for Sean, she sent a similar excuse/apology and promised to make it up to him. What if she took him out to dinner at a restaurant of his choice, no expense spared?

  She didn’t promise him sex afterwards, but Rhona hoped that had been implied.

  Conscience assuaged, Rhona now checked for any updates on the investigation that had arrived in her absence. Finding nothing of significance, she switched back to the transcript of McCreadie’s interviews, looking specifically for those he’d conducted with Alec McLaughlin.

  McNab had questioned McCreadie at the recent strategy meeting about McLaughlin’s reappearance and his suggestion that Mary had been pregnant. McCreadie had been dismissive of anything McLaughlin had said, calling him an inveterate liar, who also had an alibi for the time Mary had gone missing.

  McCreadie’s notes on this were easy to find, because they were frequent. He’d obviously spoken to McLaughlin on a number of occasions but had been unable to disprove his alibi. The first mention of McLaughlin was shortly after the interviews with the two families.

  McLaughlin was sixteen, but he seemed way older, both in looks and attitude. I confess I didn’t like him from the outset. He didn’t like the police either. He also didn’t like most folk on the street. He knew the missing girl ‘to look at’, but not any more than that. ‘She’s too young for me, anyway.’ He repeated that a few times. He was living with an aunt after abandonment by his mother at three, followed by time in the care system. ‘Fucking Catholic orphanage. You should be jailing them for what they did to kids like me. After that my mad auntie and her drunkard husband. I’m there to keep him off her.’ When I asked him to elaborate, he wouldn’t, just made a gesture that suggested they were ‘doing it’. I’ve met young blokes like him before and it always ends badly. For women in particular. I think he’s predatory. I know he’s been watching Mary and Karen when they play outside. Robbie the brother hates him, but is adamant that the priest is implicated, not creepy Alec. And he’s got an airtight alibi.

  ‘What is it?’ Rhona found herself saying. Whatever it was, it wasn’t mentioned here. Rhona did a word search and, jumping back in the document, she found it.

  Alec maintains he was in the woods at the time Mary went missing. Robbie confirms he saw him there.

  So Robbie McIntyre, later championed by DI McCreadie, was McLaughlin’s alibi. Rhona assumed McNab was aware of this; after all, he’d asked the former DI about McLaughlin’s announcement that he’d spotted Robbie in the woods that day.

  Did Robbie acknowledge McLaughlin’s presence in the woods back then in exchange for his silence about what Robbie and his mate were doing there? Did Robert, as he now called himself, still maintain Alec McLaughlin’s alibi for that time? And had he stayed certain in his belief that the priest was the one to hold the truth of Mary’s abduction and death?

  Whatever role McLaughlin had or hadn’t played in Mary’s disappearance, he was no longer capable of either lying or telling the truth about it now.

  A further word search on McLaughlin’s name just repeated in some form what had gone before. Rhona abandoned McCreadie’s notes and, fetching a coffee, now began to peruse the photographs she’d taken of the victim at the scene of crime.

  The results of the taping of the body would be looked at mo
re closely tomorrow in the lab, followed by the further tapings done at the autopsy. As well as the severed penis, evidence of anal penetration (although no semen deposit) had also suggested a sexual motive in the death of McLaughlin, which might be a revenge attack for the rape of three minors or earlier sexual assaults that he hadn’t been brought to justice for. Or even all the way back to what he’d been up to on that street forty-five years ago.

  According to McNab, there had been a number of attacks on McLaughlin’s life in prison, and once he’d made his presence known to the outside world via the tabloid story, anyone who wanted revenge knew where to find him.

  Rhona didn’t envy the investigation team their job. In her case, the forensic trace evidence she found and identified didn’t involve truth or lies, just facts with their associated probability. For the team on Mary’s murder, McLaughlin’s death just added a further complication.

  It would also involve many more man hours, which officers would rather have seen used in the search for Mary’s killer. Assuming that killer wasn’t McLaughlin himself.

  Rhona transferred her thoughts to the image currently on the laptop screen. A close-up of the throat showed a homicidal wound to the neck. Deeper on the right, suggesting perhaps a left-handed killer, it was classically asymmetrical, with no tentative marks.

  There were also no defensive marks on McLaughlin’s forearms, hands or fingers, so he hadn’t been attempting to defend himself at the time. A forensic pathologist would report how this might have been played out.

  Rhona’s unpleasant mental picture was of McLaughlin forced onto his hands and knees before both wounds and the rape were inflicted. A man of his age, bulk and mobility would have been unlikely to have had the strength to resist.

  Unless, of course, it hadn’t been rape, and he’d adopted that position willingly.

  As for the size and shape of the knife, and the direction of the cut, the forensic pathologist would register their opinion on that at the autopsy.

  From a trace point of view, the killer had engaged with McLaughlin’s naked body. Perhaps also his clothes. On average, human beings lost 50 to 100 hairs from their head per day. It was no different with pubic hair.