Conviction

by Denise Mina

  And so I became Anna McLean and I got the job. I stayed a week. Then another week. A month. Eight months in the end. In time I drifted to Glasgow, met Hamish and had the kids. I had a home. For years nothing happened. No one was interested in me.

  I loved Hamish. I need to say that. I can’t always remember why any more but I recall the feeling and it was real. The money and the stuff, the pay-off for being a rich man’s wife, that wasn’t why I was with him. I was there despite the money. If you’ve ever had to run you know that stuff is just stuff. Even rich people can only stand in one room at a time.

  When I got pregnant I remade myself again. I’d stopped smoking and swearing and hitting people with trays. Now I became mild. Anna McDonald from Glasgow was on the parents’ council, campaigned for a new lamination machine for the school office. I shopped and read a lot. I couldn’t go abroad because my passport was in the wrong name so I said I was afraid of flying and we holidayed in Cornwall.

  That was the best life of all my lives.

  But as the girls grew the strain began to tell. Old Anna was scratching away from the inside. Resentments came back first. Then the aggression and that was hard to hide. Reading and listening to stories in the early morning helped me get my mask on straight.

  Estelle Cohen was the first person to see me. Trophy wife to trophy wife, she saw the conflict and layers, that there was more going on. As I came out of the stupor of early motherhood Sophie started coming back. That was who Estelle saw.

  Now I have no mask left. I am not Anna McDonald née McLean, soft-spoken younger wife from Somewhere-Outside-of-Aberdeen. I am Sophie Bukaran, the disposable girl, and I am not yet dead.

  The disposable girl should develop a drink problem or take drugs. She should become the victim of someone else, somewhere else. At best she becomes a campaigner against whatever she was a victim of. Nothing can happen to her that doesn’t refer back to the attack. She has been branded. The event owns her. She can only ever exist in reference to it.

  But that’s not true because the world is full of us. One in five. We are as perennial as love. We go about our business, raising kids, running countries, starting wars and solving crimes. We don’t tell our stories because, if we’ve survived, that can only mean that what happened wasn’t so very bad after all. It never means that we are fucking amazing.

  I am fucking amazing.

  When I was nineteen I ran so fast I left a branding behind. And I have stories to tell that are more than titillating details or pleas for your pity.

  This is just one of them.

  26

  WE WALKED UP A hill overlooking the sea.

  ‘Albert–?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He strode on ahead.

  Albert knew who Sophie Bukaran was. He’d heard, somehow, about Gretchen Teigler. I knew that the further we got from the house the worse whatever he had to tell me was. My heart rate slowed to a treacly bump, a familiar numbness crept over me. The body develops a tolerance to adrenaline. At a certain level all that remains is a paralysing ennui.

  Heavy-footed, I followed him to a copse of trees on a hillside. He sat down in deep shadow, scanning the horizon. I copied him.

  We were looking out over the Firth and the North Sea. The lights of Dornach glinted in the distance and a faint, sour smell of fermented barley wafted over from the Glenmorangie distillery. Far away, a toy town car rolled over the bridge, twin headlights cutting through the dark. There was a time when I was so watchful I could tell the size of a car from the sound of the engine.

  Albert reached into his pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes. The brand was Marlboro Lights, a big favourite from twenty years ago. It was a middle-class brand, low tar, and that spoke of an aspiring quitter who had smoked heavily at one time.

  ‘Didn’t know you smoked, Albert.’

  He took one out for himself and handed me the packet. ‘Should try to quit.’

  I took one and gave it back. ‘I just started again today.’

  ‘How are you finding it?’

  ‘Disgusting. I love it.’

  He half smiled as he lit up. His eyes seemed sad but it was dark and his face was hard to read. I could see that his jaw was tight, his lips bloodless.

  I asked him, ‘How long have you known I was Sophie?’

  ‘Since Leon Parker was here with Harkän.’ His voice had dropped. ‘He asked me if Gretchen Teigler was a club member. He’d been chasing her for quite some time, I think. He said you knew her name, asked if I had mentioned her to you. It was quite sneaky the way he did it. I said yes, I had, but I hadn’t. I did a bit of research after that. Traced you.’

  ‘It was that easy?’

  He looked at my scar and touched his eyebrow. ‘That’s a fairly distinctive mark. The police posters were everywhere. Do you know what happened to her?’

  ‘Gretchen?’

  ‘Not Gretchen.’ He cast me a reproachful look. ‘The other girl. She hid but they found her. She wasn’t as good at it as you. You have quite a talent.’

  ‘Who found her?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  We sat with that for a while. Then Albert said: ‘She was quite a troubled person. She had a drugs problem. She grew up in a foster family.’

  What difference did her background make? Albert meant no harm but he made it sound like a mercy killing. The murderer’s difficult background would be relevant, not hers. I was dismayed by Albert parroting that crap at me. But he worked in a luxury resort, he sucked up to rich people all day, he dressed like them, toadied to them, shared their values. He really wasn’t the most critical of thinkers. We probably needed to stay off the subject of politics if I was going to keep liking him.

  I sat and smoked and talked myself out of saying anything to correct him. The sweat from the hill climb was cooling on my clothes. The wax jacket held it against my skin.

  ‘I’m quite disappointed in Leon for telling you that,’ I said, actually talking about Albert, ‘I liked him.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  He shrugged. ‘He was my age. As a contemporary I’d judge him a little differently from you.’

  ‘How would you judge him?’

  He pressed his lips tight and shrugged. ‘On the make. Relying on his charm. A good nose for money, a bit desperate.’

  ‘Desperate, like he was broke?’

  ‘Well, I think he was very wealthy at one time, but not any more.’

  ‘I liked him, at the time I thought he was, you know, a guest but maybe, under other circumstances, he could have been my friend.’

  He gave a cynical smile and drew on his cigarette. ‘They’re not your friend, Anna. Ever, ever, ever. Remember that.’ He looked at me for a while. It felt quite final, as if he was looking at me for the last time, and he said very quietly, ‘Keep your head down, get away from that bloody Cohen bloke. He’s drawing attention.’

  ‘I don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘Keep out of sight or you’ll get it. Teigler can’t afford any complications like you suddenly appearing in public, not right now. Her company has finally taken a controlling stake of the club. They now own two square miles of undeveloped land in central London. Can you even imagine the value of that?’

  ‘They can’t sell off a stadium. There’d be a massive public outcry.’

  ‘They won’t. They’ll manage it badly and be forced to sell it to pay their debts. It’ll take a long time. It’s all legal, but at a very delicate stage right now. This is the worst time for you to reappear. You need to hide, especially now the feminists are involved.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The feminists. You’re a hashtag–#JusticeForBukaran.’

  That explained why I had dropped off Fin’s Twitter feed.

  ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘The feminists are amplifying it all, calling out the people threatening you. They’ve traced IP addresses and they’re naming them. They’ll make it impossible for you to keep your head down.’


  I wanted to say that rapist footballers and billionaires and hired hit men were the people who were making things difficult for me, not allies. But he was like an uncle to me, and politics is not always for the kitchen table. I had to say something though, so I said quietly, ‘I don’t think “feminists” is a proper noun.’

  Albert smiled at that. We smoked our cigarettes. It hurt my throat so I drew it in deep and looked out over the sea. I struggled to remember why I liked Albert. I had felt safe here because of Albert. I remembered his patience when I couldn’t find Anna McLean’s national insurance number. I was nervous about it, kept my bag packed, ready to run. A month into the job he stopped asking for it and said that HMRC had sent him the number. I was too afraid to ask what happened.

  I asked, ‘Did you hide me? That thing with the national insurance number…’

  He smiled, so wide and unguarded that, for the very first time, I saw he had a dimple in his cheek.

  ‘Well, it was nothing,’ he said humbly. ‘I’m glad you made it. Let’s go back down.’

  We stood up and brushed ourselves off. Albert kicked the flattened grass to hide the marks we had made. I watched him and wondered why we had come all the way up here for this conversation. He could have whispered all of this while Fin was upstairs. We were here so that no one ever knew Albert had helped me, because there would be consequences for him if they did. He’d protected me and I hadn’t even noticed. He had been the friend I thought Leon was.

  ‘Albert.’ I put my hand on his forearm. ‘Thank you.’

  He stopped breathing and tensed as if I had tasered him. It was an electric moment.

  What I meant was thank you for giving me this extra time. For my girls. For the moments of peace I have known. For the books I got to read. For my flawed and cowardly Hamish, whom I still love, for Christmases and all this extra life. The years he gifted me felt like a story I told myself as I bled to death on the kitchen floor in my mother’s house.

  He blinked hard at my hand until I took my hand away.

  We tramped downhill, hard on the knees as descents often are, heading back to the cottage. A lone rabbit darted across a dark field. It was lovely to be back in the hills, under a big grey moonless sky. Air to breathe. Abrupt freedom in an ancient, half-forgotten land full of lies and people who don’t belong.

  As we walked back down I thought more about the national insurance number. Something bothered me. The chronology was wrong. Albert got the number a month after I arrived here but Leon didn’t come until seven months later. Had Albert always known who I was? Did he recognise me when I turned up for the interview? Why not say so now then? I looked at the back of his head and decided not to ask. The intimacy of my saying thank you was awkward enough.

  We followed a line of trees, skirting the drive, making our way back round to the kitchen door. The cottage glowed, warm and inviting.

  My toe was dipping into the pool of light around the cottage when Albert stopped me dead with a raised hand.

  We could see through the French windows into the kitchen.

  Fin was sitting at the table, clutching the arms of the chair, looking up, looking scared.

  In front of him stood a brawny man in dark clothing. He was holding a hunting knife to Fin’s face.

  27

  WE SNUCK UP TO the house, keeping to the shadows.

  Fin was speaking. The man was speaking but his voice was so low I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Fin’s voice was uncharacteristically high.

  ‘No! No, what?’ said Fin, ‘I came here with a friend to see someone. No, I didn’t know why, I didn’t even know where this is, not really. No! I don’t have a gun! Why would I have a gun? This is my phone!’ He held it up to show the man. ‘What are you doing with that big fucking knife?’

  Flush to the wall, still in the dark, Albert reached for the door handle. I expected him to kick his way through the door but he didn’t. He just opened the door, not even terribly quickly, stepped into the kitchen and shouted, ‘YOU!’

  The man swung round to face us. He was nothing to do with the castle. Skibo security men dress as ghillies, in discreet off-the-peg outdoorsy gear. Tweed coats and green trousers. This man was dressed in nondescript black clothing, like the man in my kitchen all those years ago. Dull, dreary clothes that no one would remember seeing, jacket and trousers that evoked no associations or comment.

  He looked at me, dead-eyed. ‘Sophie Bukaran.’

  From the corner of my eye I saw him slide the knife into a leather sheath on his waistband. It caught the overhead light and flashed. Fin was very close. He was staring wildly at it.

  ‘“Sophie Buchanan”?’ Fin stood up. ‘What in the fuck is actually going on right now?’

  The man lifted his hand almost languorously and jab-punched Fin on the solar plexus. Fin gasped and dropped back into his chair like a kitten swatted off a lap.

  I ran across the room–‘Don’t you fucking touch him!’–and reached over to shove the man away but he smirked and grabbed my elbow joint, pinching pressure points until I was seeing white flashes. My knees buckled.

  He reached back for his knife.

  ‘NOT IN HERE, PLEASE.’ Albert spoke loud and slow.

  The grip loosened on my elbow. The man looked at Fin wheezing and holding his chest, looked around the room, and saw how consequential that might be. He gave Albert a small bow and Albert nodded towards the front door, walked past and the man followed, tightening his grip on me, taking me with him.

  We filed out of the kitchen. Fin stood up but I glared at him to sit back down and stay. The man saw my warning and hesitated.

  ‘What’s the point?’ I said. ‘Look at him. He’s half dead anyway.’

  He might have trouble managing both of us even with Fin looking so weedy. The space between his thighs was big enough to accommodate another thigh. The man huffed a laugh and tightened his grip on my arm, yanking me out of the cottage and down the steps, hurrying to catch up with Albert.

  We headed into the shrubs, following a path between old hedges. Albert was in front of us. He didn’t glance back. It was a strange walk, not long but tense. Each passing second I expected Albert to lead us across a trip wire, turn and shoot, turn and karate-chop, like an old-fashioned hero. But with every step Albert did nothing. Time slowed down.

  I was ignoring the obvious. Why did Albert’s hand hesitate on the door handle on the way into his house? When did he realise I was Sophie? Why did he make me go up the hill?

  We were passing a line of dark trees when Albert looked back. I thought he was signalling to me. He wasn’t. Albert and the man locked eyes. Too long. An understanding. They had a plan.

  Albert had taken me out walking to give the man time to get into the house.

  He knew I was Sophie Bukaran all along. Albert was never with me. He hadn’t given me a job and good references, he’d been holding me and keeping track. I was a bargaining chip and he was cashing me in while my value was high.

  ‘Albert?’ I pleaded. ‘He’s going to kill me.’

  He couldn’t meet my eye.

  I shouted at him, ‘You soulless fucking lickspittle. He’s going to fucking kill me.’

  The nape of Albert’s neck blushed and he hurried on ahead.

  We walked into the staff car park. Albert raised his hand, pressed a fob. A car winked through the dark and we walked over to it. The hand tightened on my arm.

  Refusing to look at me, Albert opened the back door of the car and stepped away. The man cupped the top of my head and pushed down, shoving me into the back seat roughly. I landed on my side. He lifted my feet and pushed them in. He stepped back and raised a hand to slam the door.

  Then, out of nowhere, a hill fell on us.

  28

  THE DOOR WAS GONE. The men were gone. The night was still. I scrambled upright and saw the car door skidding, freestyle, across the ground. It came to a stop. I heard a groan. A body was on the ground thirty feet away, moving in the dark. Twin red lights blinked
and reverse lights came on.

  It was Hamish’s car. The lights had been off and the engine was so quiet that I’d had no warning of it coming towards them at fifty until it ploughed into us and ripped the door clean off.

  It backed up wildly, spraying gravel in a wide arc, and pulled up next to me. The front passenger door flew open. Fin Cohen was in the driving seat. I leapt out of the back seat and clambered in.

  Fin drove off at high speed before I’d shut the door. I slammed it and held tight to the seat as car alarms–seat belt undone, door open–all blared in the cabin.

  In the side mirror I saw Albert get up and stagger, head in hands, and the knife man roll over on the ground, clutching his arm.

  Fin drove up and over the little hill heading for the main gate. The barrier was down. It was a heavy metal barrier, an anti-terrorist measure–I remembered it going in. We’d never get through it. But Fin took a sharp left, crashed through the wooden fencing around the paddock, drove across rough grassy ground for a hundred yards and then crashed through another part of the fence, completely skirting the metal post, made it out on to the road.

  He took a skidding right-hand turn, scraping in front of a heavy goods lorry before flicking the lights on.

  We sped away from the lorry’s indignant horn, heading for the bridge over the Firth of Dornoch and the south.

  Aware that the airbag folded on the dashboard was on my side now, I fumbled my seat belt on.

  Fin was wild-eyed. ‘Phone the police.’

  ‘No. No police.’

  ‘I just ran over two men, Anna. We have to call the police.’

  I grabbed his elbow. ‘Please, Fin, please, no police.’

  ‘Why did he call you by Adam Ross’s girlfriend’s name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you and Adam rob that place?’