by Jane Renshaw
With the sound muted, she watched an STV reporter standing on the street outside the entrance to the close, while in the background a little crowd of people had gathered and a policewoman stood in front of the ‘Police – Road Closed’ sign, hands behind her back, face impassive. Behind her, blue and white police tape was stretched right across the road, and between the Road Closed sign and the tape there were white vans and police cars parked and people milling about, some in black police uniforms, some in white forensic suits, some in plain clothes.
She closed the page and did another search for ‘Glasgow woman dead’. A BBC article was the first hit. It said that a woman had been found dead in a flat in the Haghill area of Glasgow and police were treating her death as suspicious. And that she was understood to be a former social worker who had recently been suspended from her post with Glasgow City Council pending an inquiry into her conduct.
She closed her eyes.
‘Mum?’ said Beckie. ‘Can we?’
She looked up. ‘Hmm?’
‘When Mia’s cat has kittens, can we have one? Dad says we can if you agree.’
‘I didn’t say that, Beckie,’ Neil said quickly, aiming an appeasing smile at Flora. He thought she was still angry with him – about the ‘assault’ on Carly Johnson and/or his new laissez faire strategy. He thought that was why she’d burst into tears when he’d started apologising again about it as they were preparing breakfast. He thought that was why she was so touchy and trembly and snappy.
She wished she could tell him about Saskia. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t tell him why she hadn’t called the police.
Instead, she’d told him she hadn’t gone to see Saskia after all. That she’d decided he was right, and they couldn’t trust her. That she would ask Deirdre about the Johnsons instead.
‘So can we?’ Beckie persisted.
‘No we can’t.’ She sighed. ‘Beckie. Do you really think getting a kitten is a good idea?’
Beckie’s face became expressionless. ‘Because the Johnsons might kill it?’
‘Oh, no darling, I just meant – kittens are a lot of work…’ She shut the laptop and came over to the table and draped her arms round Beckie’s neck. ‘The Johnsons aren’t going to do anything bad to us. And even if they try to, the police will arrest them.’
‘They already tried to and the police haven’t done anything.’
‘Well, they’ve cautioned them. So if they do anything else, they’ll be in big trouble. And now we’ve got the CCTV, we’ll have them on camera if they come anywhere near the house.’
What if she’d been caught on CCTV at Saskia’s? What if even now the police were on their way here to arrest her?
But if she was on CCTV, surely whoever had killed Saskia would be too?
The Johnsons.
She wasn’t going to kid herself that anyone else could be responsible.
They’d killed Saskia. They must have found out that Saskia had been suspended from her post for hurting children. And they’d managed to track her down and kill her.
And if they were capable of that, what might they do to Flora and Neil and Beckie?
‘They can’t do anything to us, darling,’ she finished lamely. ‘And now we’re going to forget all about them and have a really fun day. After we’ve been to Cairn Hill, how about we have lunch at the Bistro?’
‘Okay.’ Beckie wriggled out from her arms and stood. ‘I have to brush my teeth.’
When she’d left the room, Neil said, ‘Are you okay?’
‘Why on earth would you tell her she can have a kitten?’
‘I didn’t. But would it be such a terrible idea?’
‘Do you really think I have the energy at the moment to cope with a demanding small animal? Because it would be me dealing with it, wouldn’t it?’ She sat down at the table opposite him and rubbed her forehead. ‘Beckie can have her tablet in the car, just this once, so I can get some sleep.’ It was the only thing guaranteed to keep her quiet.
‘We shouldn’t be inconsistent about these things, Flora.’
‘I’ve got a really bad headache and I need to sleep in the car, okay?’
Neil raised his eyebrows – Whatever – and left the room.
Connor’s sitting in his PC World uniform with his laptop, reading all about Mair’s tragic and untimely demise, and he’s like that: ‘What if there’s another CCTV camera that yous didnae clock?’
Ryan rolls his eyes at me and he’s all, ‘Dinnae you have a cow, Wee Man. We was in wigs and that, eh, and I had a right fat belly on me, and the neb on Maw – you wouldnae have picked us out a line-up yoursel’.’
Connor’s no happy. ‘The motor, but?’
‘Stolen fucking motor with false plates?’
‘Aye…’ goes Connor.
‘Aye,’ goes Ryan. ‘So shut it with your fucking whinging. We covered all the bases. Gold stars all round. We’re no in performance-below-acceptable-standard territory here, eh?’ And he’s chuckling away to hisself.
Connor’s on another verbal at his work for performance below acceptable standard. They get in the shite if they just sell the punter what they’re wanting without any of they crap extra care plans and add-ons and that, and the manager’s telt the wee diddy he’d better start pushing the crap or else.
Jed wakes up and goes, ‘That bint’s motor’s gonnae be picked up in the vicinity though, eh? She’s no gonnae have false plates. Get on the polis, son, and get clyping on the bitch. You saw this bird looking suspicious and you got the plate.’
I roll my eyes at Ryan and he rolls his eyes at me. Are we the only ones in this fucking family with any fucking sense?
‘Naw Da, no yet,’ goes Ryan. ‘The plan, aye?’
‘The plan? The plan? Away and shove your fucking plan,’ goes Jed, and falls back asleep, the prick.
23
Flora was woken from a heavy doze by Beckie’s whine at the bedroom door. ‘I want to say goodbye to Mum.’
‘Mum’s asleep – we have to let her rest,’ came Neil’s voice.
‘It’s okay, I’m not asleep,’ she called, and Beckie shot into the dark bedroom and wormed into the bed and pressed her cool little body against Flora’s side.
‘I don’t want to go to school,’ she said. ‘I want to stay here with you. Can I?’
Flora’s heart turned over. ‘I’m sorry, darling, but you have to go to school. You have to give out the party invitations, don’t you?’
God. This bloody party.
‘I should stay and look after you.’ Beckie’s fingers stroked Flora’s arm.
‘Well, darling, really I think I just need to sleep.’
‘The doctor said it was nothing serious?’ Beckie had asked her this about three times since Flora had been back to Dr Swain about her tiredness and headaches and general – well, he’d said it was depression and upped her dose of the SSRI, but it would be a couple of weeks until she felt any effect. Meanwhile, it was a struggle to get out of bed, let alone cope with the nightmare their lives had become.
‘It’s definitely nothing serious, Beckie. I promise you. The best thing you can do to make me feel better is go to school so I know you’re with your friends and teachers having a nice time.’
‘I won’t have a nice time though.’
‘Beckie,’ said Neil gently, and Flora lay passively as he eased back the covers and lifted Beckie out of the bed. They’d all regressed in the last few days, Beckie behaving like a much younger child, and Neil and Flora treating her as such.
Things had got a lot worse after the Children’s Reporter’s visit. Although, as Neil said, the visit itself couldn’t have gone better – Karen Baxter had been a nice woman, lovely with Beckie, and had reassured them as she left after her private ‘chat’ with Beckie that she had no concerns and no further action would be taken – Beckie was far from stupid and had realised what it all meant. That Karen had been there to check that Beckie was being well treated by her parents; that Karen had the power to take Bec
kie away from them, like she’d been taken away from the Johnsons.
Ever since, she’d become incredibly clingy, only happy away from Neil and Flora when she was with Caroline – who’d been wonderful, taking Beckie after school sometimes to give Flora a rest.
A much-needed rest.
She didn’t even have the energy to keep tabs on the investigation into Saskia’s death. Neil was doing that off and on, although, of course, he wasn’t convinced that the Johnsons were responsible.
Saskia was all over the media now – she’d even been on the national news. Murder of disgraced social worker. Because, of course, the details of her disgrace had been leaked. And the police were now saying it was murder and were appealing for witnesses.
Someone was going to mention a strange woman in a grey hoodie, walking along with her head down. Maybe they’d be found, the hoodie and the raincoat, at the side of the road where Flora had flung them from the car window.
And her DNA would be on them, along with Saskia’s.
What more damning evidence could there possibly be?
She could hear Neil and Beckie now downstairs in the hall, Beckie whining about something or other, Neil’s voice patient, gentle. Neil was such a great father. He’d taken two weeks off work and did all the morning stuff, including making the extra lunch for Edith – she’d have to call Mrs Jenner again about Edith – and he drove Beckie to school every day; and because Beckie was nervous about being at school (‘What if the Johnsons come and get me?’), he then waited in the car outside until lunchtime – parked where Beckie could look out of her classroom window and see him – and then he drove her home for lunch, then back to school, where he waited until the school day was over.
He was prepared to humour Beckie’s fears, but not Flora’s.
Neil and Caroline thought she was completely overreacting to Saskia’s murder, that any number of people could have had a motive, given what Saskia had done – or that it could have been a motiveless stabbing by someone hanging about the close out of their skull on drugs. All of which was true, of course, looking at it objectively.
But Flora knew the Johnsons had done it.
She just knew.
The Johnsons were capable of anything.
So what was she doing lying here? What kind of a mother was she, not even able to get out of bed and protect her own child, when they were facing God knew what threat from a bunch of murdering psychopaths?
Clever murdering psychopaths.
Neil had engaged the services of a solicitor specialising in criminal law. Charles Aitcheson had advised them to record everything, to make sure their phones were charged at all times so they could film any further breaches of the court order by the Johnsons, any further threatening behaviour or trespass… Unfortunately there was insufficient evidence, in his opinion, to secure a harassment conviction as things stood, and Neil himself had ‘compromised’ their case with the ‘assault’ on pregnant Carly which, he had warned, was likely to end in a conviction when it came to court in three months’ time, given that the incident had been caught on camera.
At least Flora hadn’t been.
It had come out that the CCTV cameras on the street outside the close had not been operational at the time of Saskia’s murder, and that no one had seen anyone acting suspiciously at the relevant time. The police were appealing for information about a woman who had buzzed one of the neighbours to get into the building to see Saskia, and were appealing for this woman to come forward.
But no one had yet come forward to say they’d seen her.
She drifted into a confused, repetitive dream in which she was endlessly climbing the stairs to Saskia’s flat, knowing what she would find there but somehow unable to stop and turn and go back down the stairs. Endlessly buzzing to get into the stair.
No, she was awake, and someone was ringing the doorbell. Ringing and ringing.
Caroline.
Caroline had promised to come round.
She managed to roll to the edge of the bed and stand up, her head swimming. She managed to get out of the room, and down the stairs, and to the front door.
‘Oh God, Flora,’ said Caroline.
Flora couldn’t look at her. Head bent like a naughty child, she studied the pattern of tiles in the vestibule, studied her own bare feet, and the toenails that had grown too long.
‘Come on, love.’ And Caroline’s arm was round her, and Flora was suddenly crying, suddenly howling in her friend’s arms, and Caroline was closing the door behind her and saying, ‘Let’s get you sorted, eh?’
‘I’m not sortable!’ Flora wailed.
Caroline was brisk. ‘We’ll see about that.’
The Botanic Gardens had always been a favourite place of Flora’s. It had been the house’s main attraction, having the Botanics right opposite. She used to love to just stroll along the paths, touching the leaves of the plants, reading the Latin names on the labels, sitting on the grass with a book while Beckie lost herself in one imaginary world after another, bringing Flora leaves or blades of grass to hold that featured crucially in the dramas going on inside her head.
Today there was no Beckie, of course; nothing to capture her attention. Everything seemed flat, dull, one tree very much like the next, the late spring borders with their blocks of colour so painting-by-numbers ordinary that she couldn’t understand why Caroline was bothering to stop and admire them.
‘Coffee?’ said Caroline brightly.
‘What is wrong with me?’ Flora blurted. ‘What am I even doing here? The Johnsons are out there, they’re planning God knows what – They’ve got it in for us just as much as they had it in for Saskia –’
‘Flora.’ Caroline took her arm. ‘Come on. Even if the Johnsons did kill Saskia, which is pretty unlikely – I mean, how would they even know where she was? – they had good reason to hate her after what she did. I’m not saying it would justify murdering her… But the point is, they can’t have anything against you and Neil personally, not like they did against Saskia. It’s not your fault, what happened with Beckie.’
Flora breathed. She knew Caroline was wrong. She knew the Johnsons hated her. But she couldn’t explain it. ‘Okay, maybe not, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to get Beckie back. Beckie needs me, and I’m a useless wreck.’
‘Coffee,’ Caroline said firmly, pushing Flora in the direction of the tearoom.
They chose a table outside in the sun, and while Caroline went in to buy the coffees and cakes, Flora sat and looked across the expanse of lawn to the Edinburgh skyline. Even that looked wrong, like a hackneyed illustration in a tourist brochure, not a real city, not somewhere real people lived real lives.
Oh get a grip.
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, the sun hitting her retinas made it difficult to see, washing out the colours of the lawn, and the shivering bright leaves, and the tall shape of the man standing under a tree looking at her.
He levelled his hand at her, holding it with his other hand as he mocked firing off shots, his hands kicking up with the recoil.
And something in her snapped.
Leaving her bag on the table, she ran towards him as he slipped away round the tree. Behind her she heard someone shouting her name, but she didn’t stop, she kept going under the huge shadowed canopy, jumping over the slippery black roots in the grass, running to the path beyond –
Which way?
There were two elderly ladies on the path in one direction, a family with a buggy in the other –
No Ryan Johnson.
‘Flora!’ Caroline came skidding up. ‘What are you doing?’
‘It was Ryan Johnson.’
Caroline was holding her by both arms. ‘Flora –’
‘He was pretending he had a gun, pretending to shoot me… But I was too slow, and I – and now he’s gone and –’
‘And what do you reckon you’re going to accomplish by chasing after him?’
She felt all the energy,
the adrenaline, draining out of her.
‘Let’s go back and get those coffees down us, yeah?’
‘He must have been following me. They must be watching the house.’
‘Okay, so maybe Neil can fix up a camera pointing at the street. And Flora, instead of running after him, maybe you should have got out your phone and filmed him?’
Flora stared at her. ‘What would happen to Beckie if we died? If Neil and I died…’
‘God, Flora! That’s not going to happen!’
‘The Johnsons would get her back, wouldn’t they?’
Caroline shook her head, taking Flora’s arm like she was ninety years old and guiding her back to the tables. ‘Of course not. The courts would hardly hand Beckie back to the family responsible for the murder of her adoptive parents.’
Flora stopped walking. ‘But what if they made it look like an accident or… or suicide…?’
‘Even then…’ But was there a hint of uncertainty in her frown?
‘Beckie was taken from them in a miscarriage of justice. While we’re still alive, yes, the courts aren’t going to disrupt Beckie’s life by giving her back to them, but if we were dead and there was no one else to take her…’
‘Someone in your family would take her. Look, if it would set your mind at rest, why don’t you appoint a guardian to look after Beckie if anything happens to you?’
Flora looked up into the canopy of the tree. Two birds were squabbling, flying at each other, beaks stabbing.
‘Our only close living relative is Pippa, Neil’s sister. She’s not exactly…’ She grimaced. ‘She’s into having adventures, backpacking, rock climbing…’
‘But she would put all that on hold for Beckie. I bet she’d do anything for Beckie.’
‘Pippa’s hardly had anything to do with her. A few flying visits, the odd five minutes on Skype…’
‘But blood’s thicker than…’ She stopped. ‘Sorry. I mean, she’s family, isn’t she? She’d step up?’