That was when their plan was born.
This time he was the one who would be getting married, living a lie and sleeping with someone else. It would take a lot of work and sacrifice, years in the planning and the execution, but they could both work all their lives and come nowhere close to earning this much money.
It took patience to find the right candidate. There were women who were perfect but to whom he couldn’t get close, or who would never give him a second look; and there were women to whom he did get close, only to find their other credentials didn’t seem as convincing as he had envisaged.
Liz Miller had been ideal, but he had blown it with his impatience. He had moved too fast at a sensitive stage and she had started to sense something was wrong.
Then his job with Cobalt had taken him to Inverness, where he found out that this scary surgeon the IT guys detested was none other than the infamous Doctor Diana Jager. Having worked in hospital IT in the past, he knew all about Bladebitch, so when Lucy delved deeper into her background, discovering the accidental death of her student flatmate, they realised they had a winner.
THE VIOLENT KIND
They stared at each other, mutually uncomprehending, mutually horrified.
She let out a startled gasp but she did not scream, because although he was an intruder, he was not a stranger. It took her a moment to place him in this context, to work out why he shouldn’t be here, and then to realise the enormity of the fact that he was.
Parlabane felt like he was falling. That lurching beneath his feet had opened a chasm that was swallowing him.
Headlong into the abyss.
He had thought he was venturing into the darkness on Lucy’s behalf, ever wary of dragging her down with him. But all the time, she had been the one leading him there, and he hadn’t seen it.
She had been in the same position as Peter: raised with the trappings of great wealth but denied the privileges and freedoms to which she must have thought she would be one day entitled. She was the one who came to Parlabane with her doubts over the accident, and if she had never done that, then certain apparently damning evidence against Diana would never have come to light.
Follow me down.
Jesus, it was so obvious now. She had given him a list of names: some of them unknowingly primed by Peter to pass on just the right information. Now he understood why Alan Harper was puzzled that Peter should be reaching out to him of all people, confiding in him about his married life and depicting his wife as a controlling obsessive. It was so that Harper would feel the need to unburden himself later, troubled by the fact that Peter had left a distraught message on the night he apparently died, worrying about being in too deep.
Follow me down.
When Parlabane had begun to think there was probably nothing more to the story than how it appeared, he had gone for a drink with Lucy, at her request. She left before him, and shortly afterwards he was abducted, drugged, driven around in a van and then dumped back at his flat. All he knew about his assailant was her distinctive scent, which Lucy knew to be Blackberry and Bay, because Peter had given it to Diana as a present.
Follow me down.
Peter had primed Harkness by mentioning Diana’s student-years tragedy, and then Lucy had subtly nudged Parlabane in the right direction so that he would track down Emily Gayle. She said there was a friend Diana was still in touch with from her time at Oxford, but pretended she couldn’t remember the name, so that he didn’t twig he was being manipulated.
She had been part of the insurance con from the start. She had recruited the money and assistance of Sam Finnegan, and it had then been her crucial role to drip-feed the story to some mug of a journalist who would think he was discovering all of this for himself.
Somewhere amidst the maelstrom he found his voice. He surprised himself by how calm he sounded. He surprised himself that he didn’t scream with hurt and anger.
‘Hello, Lucy.’
He heard hurried footsteps, Peter having emerged from the bedroom to realise something was wrong. In a moment he was at his sister’s side, his ashen face a mix of incomprehension, outrage and fear. Like Lucy he had pulled on a T-shirt, the kitchen being too cold for sitting around in the altogether. He had a bandage around his shin: a shallow place to cut to the bone.
‘Who the hell are you? What are you doing in our house?’
It was Lucy who answered, her voice low and broken.
‘Peter, this is Jack Parlabane.’
It was possible to see it in his eyes the moment he deduced what this meant: the flash of panic Diana had described.
‘Sounds like you shag pretty well for a deid bloke. But if you thought you were well fucked five minutes ago, I’ve got some difficult news.’
Peter looked around, frantic, calculating, like he was searching for a way out. Parlabane couldn’t see one.
He edged past Lucy and lunged towards a worktop, hauling open a drawer and brandishing a carving knife.
‘Peter, what are you doing?’ she asked, tremulous, afraid.
‘He’s the only one who knows. If we get rid of him … if we…’
He couldn’t even bring himself to name it. That didn’t augur well for his ability to do it, but the guy was desperate, and right then he believed Parlabane was the only thing standing between him and several million pounds.
‘I’m not the only one, Peter. My associate knows where I am and knows everything else too. This phone has been uploading video of everything since I got here. It’s being relayed straight to Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod of Police Scotland. Believe me: this is over.’
Peter began advancing. His eyes were wild, his hands shaking. He needed to believe there was still a way out of this.
‘Why did you come alone, then? You’re lying.’
Parlabane held his ground. He knew the back door was still open, so flight remained an option, but he had a reason to believe it wouldn’t come to that.
Peter stopped. His expression was aghast, haunted as he gripped the knife in front of his face. He wasn’t coming any closer, but Parlabane knew he still needed to talk him down.
‘The hardest part of this was when you had to hit her, wasn’t it?’
Parlabane saw that flash in his eyes again: an awareness of his own vulnerability.
‘It was crucial to the plan: on the night you disappeared, you had to provoke a final argument, and you had to hit her. Diana told me. She thought you were shaking because you were angry, but you were trembling because of what you knew you had to do. You had to hit her hard enough to leave a mark for the cops to see. Doing that took more guts than cutting yourself.’
Peter didn’t have a brutal streak, cornered or otherwise: it was merely another of Lucy’s lies, part of the narrative they had constructed.
‘It was only one punch, but it was harder than all the other stuff, wasn’t it? Ruining Diana’s life, pretending to be in love with her, setting her up for a murder conviction: you could do all that. It was a game: a real-life role-playing game. That’s second nature to you, but violence is not. When you bundled me into that van with a sack over my head, it wasn’t just so that I couldn’t see your faces. It was so that you couldn’t see mine.’
Parlabane watched him crumble as he spoke. His eyes closed, wincing in remembrance of the punch, then tears fell as he let the knife slip from his grasp.
Lucy ran to him, putting her arms around his shoulders as he fell to a crouch. Down on the cold tiles they clung on to each other, helpless and broken. They flinched from Parlabane’s gaze, as though in his eyes they saw how they would be regarded when the world found out. They were wretched, naked in their shame. In that moment, he understood that not everything they had told him and Diana about their upbringing was a lie. He could see that they didn’t choose this, and for that he felt a brief moment of sympathy.
But they did choose what they had done to Diana, and what they had tried to do to Liz Miller. They did choose what they had done to him.
; Eventually, Lucy looked up at Parlabane.
‘What was the hardest part for you?’ he asked her. ‘Faking that you liked me?’
She looked away again, said nothing.
MORNING SICKNESS
Ali was coming out of the toilets when she saw Diana Jager making her way through the station, heading for the exit. Ali knew she was in the building: she had come in to give some more statements, this time helping shape the prosecution. They made eye contact before Ali had a chance to scope the passageway and pretend not to see her.
She wasn’t feeling so great, and she had eight hours to get through. Kicking off the shift with a dollop of awkward mixed in with a ladle-full of guilt and regret was not going to make it pass any quicker.
Jager didn’t scowl or indeed visibly emote in any way, but that wasn’t going to stop Ali projecting.
The good (and innocent) doctor’s attention was principally fixed on the reception area ahead, where Calum Weatherson was ready to take her home. He was the guy they had seen getting into his Porsche outside the cottage that time. Turned out she was having an affair with him before all this kicked off, so maybe that explained some of why Ali had thought she was acting suspicious.
Rodriguez was waiting for her, a newspaper tucked under his arm as he stood against a wall, all set to begin his shift. She was particularly pleased to see him on a day like this. He always had an energy and positivity about him that she could leech off of when she was running low.
The newspaper was folded but Ali could see Jager’s eyes staring out at her from the front page, and couldn’t help but feel a stab of accusation.
‘You all right,? You look a bit, well, like you’d be pale if you were, you know.’
‘I’m okay. Just had a mutual eyeball with Diana Jager, that’s all.’
‘Bet you wish we’d kept quiet for two minutes and let somebody else take the call that night. I’ve heard CID are requesting we get banned from responding to an RTA ever again.’
He looked like he was only half joking. Ali knew that they’d be getting grief over this for about a decade, but that was polis for you. They never forgot.
‘I felt awful, though: seeing her, knowing what I put her through. I feel like I ought to write to her and apologise.’
‘Absolutely not. That’s not how it works, and you know that. It wasn’t you who put her through anything.’
‘I played my part, though. I was suspicious of her from day one, and I was completely wrong.’
‘No. You were suspicious from day one because something about the situation felt wrong, and it turned out you were right about that. You’ve got good instincts, Ali.’
‘So I was wrong but for the right reasons. I’m afraid that doesn’t feel reassuring.’
‘Well, it should. It’s better than being right for the wrong reasons, because that just means you were lucky. Being wrong for the right reasons will serve you better in the long run.’
Ali nodded. She knew he was right, but that didn’t make her feel any better in the here and now.
They began walking out to their car. She thought back to their first shift together, which felt like months ago. It had been less than a fortnight.
‘Hell of a way to christen your new post,’ she said.
‘Christ, you’re not wrong. My days at the Met already seem like another lifetime. I’m starting to get a handle on this place. I feel like a different person up here.’
‘Aye, you’ll be fighting off the girls with a taser, soon enough. I mean, when you’re ready for all that,’ Ali added, realising it might have been inappropriate.
‘No doubt,’ he said.
Rodriguez smiled, that strange wee look on his face that he wore whenever she skirted this area.
‘Except, they won’t be girls.’
It took her a second, then a lot of things belatedly clicked into place. He’d even asked her about being religious, sounding her out in case she was going to have a problem with it if he told her. Bloody hell, how had she missed it?
‘Some poliswoman I am. Can’t see what’s right under my nose.’
Ali burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. A whole host of different tensions gave way and she simply lost it. Rodriguez began laughing too, the pair of them ending up like a couple of hysterical kids.
Eventually she managed to compose herself enough to suggest they get in the car and actually get to work. Rodriguez asked if he could drive, eagerly skipping around to the other side of the car when she acquiesced.
Ali climbed into the passenger side a little gingerly, wincing at another twinge of discomfort as she slid into the seat.
Rodriguez noticed it. His tone was sincere and concerned.
‘You sure you’re all right? You’re clutching your tummy there like John Hurt in Alien.’
‘I’m fine. Just my time of the month.’
HER DAY IN COURT (II)
Nothing transpired the way we intended, and yet as the jury files out to consider its verdict, I can’t escape the feeling that it worked out the way it should.
This was not meant to be my trial. Diana was supposed to be in the dock, and I was supposed to be the one watching from the gallery: looking on in anger and outrage at the crime that had been perpetrated against my brother, against me. But as Jack Parlabane once said to me, it is what it is.
I wanted to plead guilty, but I couldn’t convince Peter to join me, so I knew that if I confessed everything, I was throwing him under the wheels. This was all largely my idea, after all. Pleading guilty would have spared us a trial and resulted in a smaller sentence, but Peter convinced himself we could cast enough confusion over everything as to get a not proven verdict at least.
We came up with this bullshit about Peter having some kind of breakdown over his business and his marriage, faking his death so that he could drop out of his life and run away. We told the court that when Jack found me in France, it was because Peter had suddenly got in touch and I had rushed over to help him get his head together, having been pledged to secrecy. We claimed that Courtney Jean Lang was a real person, who had promised investment and then absconded, resulting in the pressure Peter found himself under. Peter therefore knew Lang’s place in France would be deserted, which was why he decided to lie low there.
It made just enough sense to cast doubt on the conspiracy theory, we hoped. But it all relied upon nobody believing the single worst truth about us.
That was the thing I was always most afraid of, and yet now that we can’t hide it any more, I am relieved. It is amazing how a secret loses its power, how the burden sheds its weight once it is out there in the open. I might be going to jail, but in other ways I have been liberated. For the first time, I feel truly free.
I have come to realise the ways in which I was trapped. I felt trapped when I married Gordon: partly deluding myself that it was real, all the time aware that it was a charade to fool my father. Father paid him off, but I lived permanently under the shadow of him some day revealing what he had discovered when he came home one night after a cancelled business flight.
At the time, when I regarded what I did to Gordon Holman, what I was doing to Jack Parlabane and Diana Jager, they were like pieces on a board, and I prevented myself from seeing them as human beings. It reminded me of my father, and I hated myself for that. I knew it was wrong, but it was as though I refused to acknowledge any reality other than the one I was constructing.
When Jack asked me if the hardest thing was pretending I liked him, something inside me screamed. I wanted to tell him it was the easiest thing. The hardest thing was knowing that I had to use and discard him, pretend he was nothing.
Peter can do that. He’s more like our father that way. I couldn’t fake it: I had to live it.
At times when I was with Jack, like that night in the bar, it was as though I could simply step over a line into a world where our growing closer was real. I could choose to live in that world instead. But I loved Peter, and everything was already in train by th
e time I even approached Jack at his flat.
I still love Peter, but what happened has freed me, shown me that I have been in pursuit of a single notion for so long, I had stopped seeing the wider world around me. I was so full of anger, full of resentment at what I felt I couldn’t have, that it blinded me to all that I could.
I actually liked Diana. I admired her. Now I can admit that. I couldn’t before, because of what I was complicit in doing to her. I told myself she would only get a few years in prison: she ought to be able to argue self-defence, given that Peter had hit her. But these were merely lies I told myself so that I didn’t have to think about what this was ultimately costing an innocent woman.
I look across the courtroom at her now and I see her take her partner’s hand, excitedly placing it upon her swollen belly. I don’t need to be a lip reader to know what she is saying to him:
‘It’s kicking.’
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