by Helen Fields
Not just down to the local shopping centre to hide in the dressing room of some crappy store for a few hours until she was caught. Also not to her mother, current whereabouts unknown. When Meggy was four, her mother had decided a man named Garvin was a much more exciting prospect than reading bedtime stories, and disappeared off to live in a caravan in Bolton. She hadn’t bothered to keep in touch with her husband or her daughter. It still hurt, but Meggy had learned that anger was a more effective way to handle rejection than sadness.
No, if there was running away to be done, it had to be properly planned. She needed money, a safe place to go, and travel plans. She might be twelve, but she was up to the challenge. Her teachers had for years described her as bright, organised, thoughtful, and mature. It was time to put those compliments to the test. A lone twelve-year-old would necessitate a call to the police from any decent-minded citizen. If she could pass as fourteen with makeup stolen from her step-mother and some borrowed clothes, it became a grey area. Old enough to go out alone at night. Mature enough to make some legal decisions herself. Able to go to a doctor alone. She’d done plenty of research. Enough that she could write a running-away blog even. Or start a hostel for kids run by kids. That would be the best. It would have beanbags and unlimited snacks, while requiring everyone to continue with their education, of course. And to eat some fresh fruit and vegetables. There was rebellion then there was self-destruction, the two things not to be confused. Reminded of the need for vitamins and fibre, Meggy took an apple from her pocket that she’d saved from the school canteen at lunch, and bit into it hard.
A man walked into the playground, sat down on a bench and opened a newspaper. Meggy lifted her head from the roundabout and checked the area for his kids. She liked meeting new people at the park. Sometimes she could have conversations with people who had no idea she was regarded as the school geek or the teacher’s pet. That was nice. Sometimes those kids turned up with nice mothers, too, who would smile at Meggy and talk softly to her, ask about her school and her family.
Those days she would lie on the roundabout after the family had left and imagine being a part of it. A big sister to some wide-eyed kid who would want to sit with her and watch TV, or ask Meggy to play a game. Even better was the thought of being the little sister to someone cool, good-looking and streetwise. Someone who would sort out the bullies for her so she didn’t have to. They were good imagination sessions. Today gave her nothing. Just one lone weirdo, reading some story with more pictures than text.
He wasn’t looking at her and that was good. She knew better than to hang around a park with a man who was giving her the eye. The newspaper he was holding was quivering in the breeze, its corners whispering gently. Only it wasn’t windy. Not at all. It was curious enough that Scotland was having such a hot summer, but the lack of wind was remarkable.
Meggy sat up and looked more closely. Sure enough, the hands clasping the outer edges of the tabloid were shaking. Not hard enough to make the headlines difficult to read, but with enough movement to remind her of one of the residents of a care home the school had made them sing carols at the previous Christmas. She’d been fascinated by how the human body could sustain life even as it destroyed itself. She had peered into the eyes of one of the elderly men and could see a trapped animal within, still conscious but terrified, looking for a way out. Bugger ‘Hark the Herald’ and ‘Silent Night’. The reality for most of their audience was watching the clock as they waited to die.
The man changed seating positions and flexed his hands one after the other before returning to his reading. He glanced up at Meggy momentarily then looked away again. A brief spasm of his face signalled pain, and she considered going to ask if he was all right. But children weren’t supposed to do that to adults. For some reason she couldn’t fathom, it was regarded as disrespectful. Maybe if he’d been really old, but actually he looked younger than her dad, probably more like the step-bitch’s age. That made her smile. She liked swearing in her head. It was a simple act of rebellion, but Meggy didn’t care.
‘Step-bitch, step-bitch, step-bitch,’ she sang silently to herself.
The man’s violent coughing stopped her. Perhaps he really did need help. Now, he’d put the newspaper down and was doubling over with the force of the coughs. Meggy stood up on the roundabout and checked the distant reaches of the park for dog walkers or joggers, anyone who might offer assistance if the man didn’t stop hacking his guts up soon. She really wasn’t sure what to do. She didn’t have a mobile in her pocket. Her father had talked about buying her one last Christmas, but Carmen had said it was more of a teenager present – and Meggy didn’t really need one anyway, as she got dropped off and picked up every day with her own personal taxi service. Her father had, of course, agreed with her step-mother.
It was only when he actually dropped his newspaper on the floor that Meggy jumped off the roundabout and took a tentative step towards him. Not that he was paying her any attention. He had one hand pressed to his mouth and the other clutching the wooden slats of the bench as if to stop himself from collapsing.
‘Excuse me,’ Meggy tried.
The coughing only became louder, drowning out any hope of being heard from that distance. She walked closer still.
‘Are you okay?’
The man nodded – at least she thought he nodded – at her. But the coughing continued.
‘Shall I pick up your paper for you?’ she offered.
It was a pathetic thing to say, she knew that. He couldn’t possibly finish reading anything in that state, but still, it felt like the polite thing to offer.
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and put it to his lips, wiping sideways when the hacking abated for a moment. That was Meggy’s chance. She constructed a smile on her face, determined to give the appearance of being reassuring, and moved forward towards the paper just as the man deposited his handkerchief on the bench next to him.
Blood.
Tiny splatters, but blood nonetheless.
Meggy froze.
She didn’t do blood. Not her own and certainly not anyone else’s. The man paused his noise and stared at her, where she had frozen, mid-step, one leg raised slightly off the floor, looking at the handkerchief.
‘Don’t be scared,’ he said. ‘It looks worse than it is. Why don’t you sit with me for a minute? That would make me feel better.’
He reached out for the bloodied cotton and pulled it back into his pocket.
Meggy shook her head. His eyes were bloodshot too, and she couldn’t stop staring at them.
‘Come on,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t bite.’
He smiled and she saw gaps where there should have been teeth.
‘My dad’ll be waiting,’ she said.
‘Then why don’t I drive you home?’ He stood up, dropping the paper to the floor. ‘I can get you there quicker than you can walk.’
She stared at the newspaper. He made no effort to pick it up. Meggy got the impression he’d never really been interested in it at all. She suddenly felt as if she needed to pee urgently, and she was cold. He reached a hand for her shoulder, only it wasn’t shaking now. It was sure of its target, and those long fingers and yellowed nails looked perfectly strong to her. Strong and wrong.
Meggy bolted. She ran until she reached the gate to the park, and only then did she look over her shoulder, convinced he would be right behind her. Only there was no one there. The man was back on his bench. He’d picked up his newspaper after all and was reading it again. Forcing herself to come to a complete halt, Meggy stared at him. He was no threat to her now. Perhaps he never had been. She’d had no reason to run. He must have thought her crazy. Not that she was going back to the park today. Or tomorrow. Perhaps she’d give it a break for the week. He hadn’t done anything wrong at all, now that she thought about it. Offered her a lift home, which was stupid. Who did that these days? There were so many warnings about the perils of accepting lifts from strangers. That was why she’d freaked out.
And she was hungry. That wasn’t helping.
She began the short walk home, then decided she would jog it instead. Jogging didn’t mean she was still scared. It was good to get the exercise. With her hand on the back door handle, she already knew she wouldn’t tell her step-mother about the coughing guy in the park. It would be put down to more attention-seeking behaviour and an overactive imagination. And what was there to tell anyway? Meggy Russell could look after herself. She was tough and smart, that’s what defined her. She did her homework, had a shower, ate dinner and went to bed.
That night, Meggy Russell was still safe.
Chapter Nine
Connie stood in the postmortem suite, suited, hair net on, gloves ensuring she did nothing to disturb the evidence, and tried to imagine exactly what had passed between Angela Fernycroft and her killer, whose DNA had told them he was male and Caucasian but nothing else. Angela lay naked on a metal gurney, unable to help. Baarda was in another room taking one of the endless phone calls that plagued him. It was evening and quiet. Darkness had fallen as they’d driven over.
It was all too different. Her view wasn’t the same as Angela’s would have been. The brightness, the whole situation. Connie glanced into the corridor, checked no one was around, and pulled an empty cadaver trolley into the suite. She turned off the main lights quietly, leaving only that which seeped in from the small upper windows. Lying down on the empty trolley next to Angela, she turned on her side and stared at the dead mother of two.
‘What woke you up?’ Connie whispered, brushing a strand of hair back from Angela’s face. ‘Was it a noise?’ She closed her eyes, imagining the crash of a leg into the chest of drawers in a house that was supposed to have been otherwise unoccupied. ‘No. A noise like that would have had you moving immediately. He was right behind you when you woke. That’s how your head got injured.’
Sitting up, she took hold of Angela’s left leg and rolled it over the right, following with the left arm until Angela was on her side. Careful not to part the two gurneys and end up crashing to the floor, Connie moved herself behind Angela’s body until her nose was within smacking distance of the back of Angela’s skull, had there been life enough left in it to do so.
Sliding one arm over Angela’s waist, she joined the scene.
‘He spoke to you,’ Connie said. ‘He was holding you like a lover, but it was his voice that roused you. This man wanted you. He watched you and found something about you appealing. What was it? Did you remind him of someone? Maybe the two of you met previously, and you paid him attention.’
Connie lay quietly for a while, stroking Angela’s hair as she considered how the corpse and her murderer might have crossed paths.
‘The first thing he did when he had the opportunity was hold you. He’d longed to be where I am now, memorialising the moment you knew he existed. I don’t think it was someone you knew. You’d have talked to them first, tried to reason with them.’
‘I’m going to put the lights on now,’ Ailsa Lambert’s reedy voice informed her.
Connie stayed where she was and waited until Ailsa had brightened the room and come to stand over her where she lay.
‘I thought I’d seen everything,’ Ailsa said.
‘I need to figure out if Elspeth Dunwoody is alive or dead. To do that I need to know what he whispered to Angela as he held her.’
‘All right, I’ll accept that as an explanation on a preliminary basis. I’d prefer it if we could continue the discussion with you in less close contact with this poor lady.’
‘Sure,’ Connie said, shifting off the table and rolling the sheet back over Angela’s body.
‘Unusual methodology. If I saw one of our Police Scotland officers trying something like that, I’d have reported them by now.’
‘Are you after an apology, or for me to plead with you not to report me?’ Connie asked, stripping off her gloves and throwing them into the disposables bin by the door.
‘I’m not interested in either, as a matter of fact,’ Ailsa said. ‘I was told you had a question for me. While I have a few questions about your behaviour, let’s start with what I can do for you.’
Connie nodded and leaned against a wall, arms folded.
‘Is there any injury to Angela that suggests her assailant wanted to do her real harm, or that looks gratuitous or torturous?’
Ailsa mirrored Connie’s stance, folding her arms, then raised her eyebrows as she thought about it.
‘Only if you consider the use of the chloroform as a precursor to a rape. In terms of an actual injury, then no. Every mark on her body suggests an attempt at restraint rather than a violent assault.’
‘Even though she bit him and broke his nose?’
‘Even so,’ Ailsa agreed. ‘My turn. Why didn’t you tell me you can’t see colour?’
‘Relevance,’ Connie replied quickly. ‘Did Baarda spill it?’
‘No. A couple of times when we last spoke, I referenced coloured aspects of bruises and your eyes didn’t go to the correct places. You have achromatopsia. If you’d told me, I could have described the injuries more appropriately for you.’
‘There was me thinking your area of expertise was the dead.’
‘I may be a pathologist rather than a psychologist, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the reason I found you recreating a crime scene using the actual corpse involved is because you feel that your limited visual sense creates a barrier between you and the victim that you need to make up for in other ways. I want no apology, nor did I demand an explanation. You could, however, try to reduce the sarcasm when you’re in my company.’
Connie took a breath, made a noise in the back of her throat, thought better of continuing the banter and uncrossed her arms instead.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Accepted,’ Ailsa said. ‘So what caused it?’
‘My sarcasm? It’s been a lifelong condition.’
‘I was asking about the achromatopsia, as you were aware. And I thought we’d reached an agreement.’
‘Shit, sorry, Europe brings out the American in me in unfortunate ways. As far as the lack of colour vision goes, I suffered a head trauma during a game of lacrosse when I was eighteen. The injury wasn’t diagnosed at the time, and I ended up hospitalised a month later. They performed surgery to deal with the bleed, which solved the neurological symptoms, but there was damage to my optical nerve. Could have been worse.’
‘Indeed it could, but it was a life-changing event for you nonetheless. Walk with me,’ Ailsa said, opening the postmortem suite door and turning into the corridor.
Connie followed.
‘What made you choose forensic psychology as a profession?’ Ailsa asked.
Ailsa took a side corridor and opened another door that led out into the warm night. Ahead was a solitary tree and some iron railings. She took a moment to breathe in the night, listening to the occasional social roar from the city’s closest public houses and the intermittent traffic along Cowgate before looking to Connie for an answer.
‘Personal experience,’ Connie said. ‘Did we swap professions without me realising?’
‘Touché, but you don’t just look at a crime scene and assess whether or not an offender is high or low IQ, you try to get inside their head. What I just witnessed steps beyond the border of being clinical. When you touch a corpse, interact with it, you create a bond. Flesh does not need to be living for us to feel a sense of responsibility towards it, or a desire to act kindly. Do you not find it puts something of a dent in your objectivity to get so intimate?’
‘Everything I do is about figuring out motive. In this case, the motive will tell us whether or not he plans to kill again. My role is nothing like as intimate as yours. You take bodies apart, look within the most secret places. You move your hands around inside guts, literally touch brains. Nothing is hidden. I find it reassuring that if I die in unforeseen circumstances, someone like you will be here, following every pathway, inspecting every cell until you know what
happened. A reckoning is important, even if it’s after you’re dead,’ Connie said.
‘Reckoning is an emotive term,’ Ailsa noted. ‘What conclusions have you drawn in this case so far?’
‘I don’t think he planned to kill the first time, so it doesn’t seem as if that’s his agenda. I’m more concerned that he’s so ill-prepared for his victim’s reaction that killing is something he’ll do again by accident. Perhaps that’s why he was more careful when he took Elspeth Dunwoody. I believe she’s still alive, I’m just not sure why. There was a psychosexual force at play with Angela. She intrigued him. He didn’t want just any woman – he wanted her. Not to dominate and hurt her but, God, I guess, to cuddle her. I don’t know why I’m more grossed out by that than the thought of cold, hard violence.’
‘Violence is primeval. This is the sort of blurred-line killing that makes us all feel stalked. He’s a monster wearing mittens,’ Ailsa said.
‘You just coined the phrase “a monster wearing mittens”? And you were worried about me lying next to a corpse.’
Baarda walked out into the darkness behind them.
‘Sorry to interrupt. Bad news, I’m afraid. A twelve-year-old girl has gone missing, believed abducted. MIT are calling their officers back to that as a priority. Did you get the answers you were looking for?’
‘I did. Elspeth Dunwoody is alive. More than just alive. She’s fulfilling a need her abductor has. He went to a lot of trouble not to harm her when he took her. He’s already lost one target. It’s unlikely he’ll risk losing Elspeth as well. Dr Lambert, thank you, and apologies for the … oddness.’