Unbound Ties: When the past unravels, all that’s left is death ... A Gritty Crime Fiction Police Procedural Novel (Gus McGuire Book 7)

by Liz Mistry

  Well, well, well. What have we here? His cursor hovers by a name. His smile widens, his heart rate increases, and if he wasn’t in such a public space, he might punch the air. This is bloody brilliant – unexpected, which makes it all the more brilliant – just what he needs. All he has to work out, is when this one will become his target. His instincts tell him to make her his grand finale … he googles the address – hmm, not appropriate for his usual MO, but if he leaves her as his final montage – his last calling card, it could work. Hell, he’ll bloody make it work.

  Satisfied, he continues working with a smile on his face underneath his mask. By the time he is ready to leave, he’s added five possibles to his list. Tomorrow will be spent scoping them out, assessing their vulnerabilities, and making his preparations. But tonight, he has something else entirely in mind. DI Gus McGuire and his team won’t know what is about to hit them.

  Chapter 13

  Bradford

  Silence, except for the yelps of Bingo and his parent’s dogs frolicking across the grass, and bird tweets from the woods surrounded the three of them, like a huge cloud of accusation and dread. Her brother? Gus couldn’t formulate a word of response. His mum didn’t have a brother.

  ‘It’s actually your mum’s foster brother, Angus. He’s not a well man. He’s…’

  But Gus jumped to his feet. ‘I don’t want to hear another word. I’ve had it with the lies and deceit and secrets of this bloody family. First all that stuff with Gabriella and Katie last year … and now I’ve got an uncle I knew nothing about. What’s happening to us? What’s happening to you?’

  He spat the last sentence out, savouring the way his parents flinched as his words hit them like arrows. ‘Get the envelopes they came in and all the details of this brother of yours. I’ll send someone to get a statement from you.’

  Before his mum and dad could object, he’d spun on his heel, whistled to Bingo, and was off jogging down the path to the gate and out. As he ran, his mind almost buckled under the muddled thoughts pounding at him. He hated this. For years, all through his childhood he’d been the one from the functional, normal family. Mo’s parents hadn’t taken care of him – Greg’s had been even worse. Gus’s family had been the one they’d all gravitated towards and now, at the ripe old age of thirty-five, he’d discovered it was all a lie. His family were as dysfunctional as the next. Each one of them putting lies and deceit before the family unit. The trust was gone, dark secrets always came back to bite you on the arse, but much as he would have liked to have been the one to grill his parents, he couldn’t bear to be anywhere near them right now.

  It was as if that safety net of honesty and trust had been ripped from underneath him and as he ran, the breath ragging through his lungs, threatening to spill over into a panic attack, he increased his speed, legs pumping, sweat flying, and heart breaking.

  When he burst through the door from the back garden, Alice took one look at him before jumping to her feet and rushing towards him. ‘What’s happened? Are you hurt?’

  Breath rasping in his throat, hair sodden, Gus realised he must look a sight. Falling onto a chair by the table, gasping for air as Bingo lapped up water from his water bowl near the back door. Unable to speak, he tried a smile, but judging by the increased furrow across his housemate’s brow, his attempt at reassurance fell far short of the mark. His chest heaved and now that he’d stopped moving, adrenalin settled around his muscles, its insistent throb an indication of the punishment he’d suffer later.

  Alice walked to the sink, let the tap run for a few seconds, then handed him a pint glass of cold water, before re-filling Bingo’s empty bowl. Voice tetchy, she glared at Gus. ‘What are you doing running around like a bitch in heat in these temperatures? You should know better. Look at poor old Bingo. He’s knackered.’

  Bingo did indeed look knackered. Having drunk his fill, he’d slumped onto his back, legs splayed and belly heaving in time with his panting gasps. Contrite, Gus held out his hand to the dog. ‘You OK, Bingo?’

  In response, the dog, gave a satisfied woof and promptly went to sleep. The water landed like a bucket of ice in Gus’s empty stomach and he wished he could just nod off at will, like his four-legged friend. Instead, he knew he’d be plagued by, not just the row with his parents, but also wondering how it all tied in with this murder.

  Pushing his half empty glass aside, Gus got up and putting the tap on full blast, ducked his head under it for a second or two before washing the sweat from his face with both hands. From her perch in the seat opposite the one he’d just vacated, Alice tossed him a towel. ‘Don’t drip all over the floor. I mopped it earlier.’

  Raising an eyebrow, but not replying, Gus dried his face and ran the towel over his hair to remove the worst of the water, then returned to his seat. ‘You know, Al, things are just sometimes so fucked up.’ And he told her what had happened at his parents’ house.

  ****

  Alice listened without speaking, allowing Gus to spill out his words in whatever way felt comfortable. Everything about him spoke of tension, from the pronounced lines spreading out from his lips, to his brow creased with interweaving tramlines. His fingers burrowed into his damp hair. Alice had little understanding of conventional families because her own was very unusual to say the least.

  However, unlike Gus, she wouldn’t consider his family to be strictly conventional. She understood Gus’s need to believe it was. It was both his strength and his weakness that his moral compass didn’t waver – and he refused to make allowances for those he loved. Yes, in the job, he was more than able to empathise with the circumstances and motivations of the people they came in contact with on a daily basis, yet in his personal relationships, he held the bar high … and anything less than complete honesty fell short of that bar.

  Aware that she had to navigate these revelations carefully, Alice wished that Gus would, for once, just loosen up – allow his family and friends to be fallible. She knew it was because he expected so much from himself, yet on occasions like this, when he felt betrayed by those he loved, he could stick his head into the sand and be blind to the possibility that people were acting in what they thought might be his best interests … or as Alice suspected, in this case, to preserve some secrets his mum didn’t want to share.

  So, while she would eventually have a go at opening up Gus’s viewpoint on this issue, for now, Alice thought it best that she remain in professional police officer mode and leave Gus to lick his wounds. Who knew, he might come round if left to his own thoughts for a while. For one thing, Alice knew that Gus would do whatever he could to protect his parents and that ultimately the thought of their vulnerability would serve to help him meet them halfway.

  ‘Right.’ Alice’s tone was brisk as she stood up, phone in hand. ‘I’ll get Taffy to come with me and I’ll interview your parents formally and bag the evidence. You can do three things – one, take a bloody shower and eat something, two, contact Prof Carlton, and three, get your arse over to The Fort. We need to get moving on this asap.’

  With no energy to protest, Gus nodded as Alice made the call to Taffy, then piled a plate with rice and chilli and chucked it in the microwave, before heading out the door with a, ‘Shower first, then eat.’

  Chapter 14

  Bradford

  Wanting to scream and yell wouldn’t do any good, so instead, Gus focussed on organising his team. ‘Compo, what have you found out about this Rory Robertson?’

  Compo jumped to stand to attention, as if Gus had fired a warning bullet in his direction. The entire room was affected by his mood and he hated himself for it, but he was still too angry and too confused to rectify it just yet.

  Reading from his screen, Compo supplied the pertinent details. ‘Rory Robertson, born in 1961 to Mrs Grace and Reverend Gordon Robertson. Rory was the result of a second marriage by the Reverend, who had two much older sons, by a previous wife who died of cancer in 1959. Corrine Cameron – I mean, your mum – em, Mrs M.’

 
Compo glanced at Gus, his face red and clearly, he would have given anything not to be in the same room as Gus at that moment. Gus forced a smile to his lips. ‘It’s OK, Compo – just give me the details.’

  ‘Mrs M was fostered by them between 1972 and 1973.’

  Gus frowned. ‘She was only with them for a year?’ Although Gus didn’t know much about his mum’s childhood, he had known she was in foster care before she went to university and he’d always assumed she’d been with the same family all that time.

  ‘Well, an unfortunate event occurred.’ Compo exhaled. ‘Poor Mrs M…’

  ‘Compo!’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. Well, it seems that Mrs Robertson committed suicide – by hanging herself. The report says she had a history of mild mental health problems. Anyway, it was Rory who found his mum.’

  God, poor sod, how would a kid ever get over something like that? ‘Well that explains the drawings I suppose and possibly what landed him in a psychiatric unit.’

  ‘After Mrs Robertson’s death, the family couldn’t cope with Corrine, so she was fostered out. Rory was already a very talented artist at that stage and despite his morbid fascination with drawing death scenes, he grew up, apparently ‘normal’, whatever that is, and ultimately attended Edinburgh Art College. He had a very promising career as an artist – was well lauded in the Scottish art world. He graduated in 1983. Unfortunately, according to his medical records, Rory was diagnosed schizophrenic just before he graduated, but medication controlled his illness and he got married in 1987 to a Helen Read. He has an accolade of awards and prizes and big commissions to his name – everything was going well for him until, in 2006 when, seemingly out of the blue, he killed his wife and hanged her in the same way his mother had hung herself in his childhood.’

  Gus hadn’t expected that. But it all tied in to their case, except for one inextricable fact that let Rory Robertson off the hook for their current crimes – Robertson now, according to Gus’s mother, resided in a psychiatric facility called Bellbrax located in South Lanarkshire, after having been found guilty by reason of insanity of his wife’s murder. Gus turned to Taffy who was liaising with officers from Police Scotland in Livingston whom Gus’s parents had managed to convince to check out Rory Robertson’s presence at the facility. ‘So, what can you tell me about Rory Robertson? Is he still incarcerated?’

  Taffy nodded. ‘Unfortunately, he is. According to the officer who visited to check on your parents’ behalf, Rory is completely off the hook. He rarely communicates with anyone else, is heavily medicated, and spends his days drawing, mainly scenes like the one found at our crime scene. The officer was adamant that he couldn’t possibly be our killer. She also looked at who had access to his drawings – apparently he has sketchpad upon sketchpad of them, and she did find one sketchpad with some pages ripped out. The facility holds records of all inmate’s visitors, and Rory Roberson hasn’t had a visitor since he arrived there. They admitted the possibility that visitors to other inmates, may have had access to Rory’s books. I’ll add the Police Scotland report to our files, but it doesn’t tell us much. I’m going to obtain their visitors records, by liaising with Police Scotland and also see if I can get access to staff background checks.’

  ‘Good job, both of you. Somehow someone got those sketches from Bellbrax facility and sent them to my mum – and left them at the crime scene. As a priority – we need to find out who. Clearly with Robertson still apprehended in the facility and in his current mental state, he’s not our killer, however, my parents are convinced that the sketches were drawn by him.’

  Chapter 15

  Bellbrax Psychiatric Facility, Scotland

  She’s back again. The girl with the dark hair and brown eyes. I shuffle round, put my arm round my sketch pad and huddle over it. Maybe she won’t see me. But I know she will. It’s me she’s come to see, no one else. I keep drawing, pressing my pencil harder and harder on the paper till it scores right through. Look what the bitch has made me do now.

  ‘Hey, there. Thought you’d be outside in the sunshine today.’

  I ignore her. That’s all I can do. I don’t even let my eyes squint in her direction. She’ll go away if I don’t play her game. That’s what I did before, and it worked. A dark weight presses down on my scalp, like something’s trying to squash something out of my brain. It hurts so much; I screw my eyes tight and stop drawing. What’s going on? What’s happening to me? The pressure is increasing and tears seep from under my eyelids … then, as a thought pops into my mind, it eases. Not fully, it’s still there, squeezing the thoughts out like mouldy toothpaste from a tube – stop!

  I want it to stop! But it’s there and it won’t go away. It won’t stop. It keeps coming out. Instead of white, minty paste, it’s all maggoty and green and stinks like sewage. It’s beginning to write inside my head. A toothpaste crayon calling me a LIAR! A sludgy green paste yelling LIAR at me. It’s banging around in my head, like an echo bouncing around, rattling in there trying to escape.

  My head falls forward and I rest my brow on my drawing as the toxic paste writes the word again and again in my mind: LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! At last, eyes still shut, I realise that keeping quiet didn’t work last time. Not speaking got me hurt. Not speaking made the headaches and the weird burly colours blind me. It was only when it all burst out of me like a river bursting through a dam that it eased. Only then did the voices stop, the heavy pain go away.

  Instead of that though, the other voices come. The ones that smell like lavender, the ones that get into my heart and twist and twist till I think it’s going to explode right out of my chest. Again, and again, in purple, the scented voice, all sad and disappointed – disappointed in me – asks ‘Why? Why? Why?’ till they give me something to make it stop. But, deep down inside, even now, I know I shouldn’t have spoken.

  I lift my head up from the paper and gather my things together. The LIAR voice is fading and so is the lavender voice. They’ll come back. Just like the girl with the dark hair and brown eyes. They’ll all come back, and I’ll be the one to suffer then, because I’m to blame. I’m to blame for everything. It’s all my fault. That’s why she stole the drawings, that’s why she keeps asking me about Helen, about Coco. I can’t stop myself drawing her. My beautiful Helen swaying from the rope, her eyes accusing … ‘Not Again.’ I spit the words out, dribbling a little and still my pencil draws that horrid image. Where is the lavender voice now? No sooner does that thought occur, than the nasty one takes over. ‘You did that, Rory. You did that. First your mum and then your wife. Murderer!’

  Chapter 16

  Bradford

  Sebastian Carlton was fascinated by the sketches and had barely uttered a word since Alice pinned copies of them on the board. The only responses he’d given to any of Gus’s questions were, ‘patience’ and ‘hmmm’, neither of which were satisfactory for Gus, who was impatient to find a crack in the case.

  According to Alice, his mum had been tearful and his father stoic during the interview. Alice had tried to brush over the fact that the first two envelopes had been disposed of by his mother and focussed on the other three which appeared to have been posted from South Lanarkshire, all postmarked at intervals over the past few weeks.

  What particularly interested Gus was the information that Compo was pulling up regarding Rory Robertson’s crime. Gus couldn’t get the idea that Rory’s fate had been sealed the moment he had found his mum’s body. In the seventies, mental health support after such a trauma was largely absent. That poor boy would have had to struggle with nightmares and flashbacks of that horrid day with little or no support. Being no stranger to dark nightmares, Gus knew that the worst thing that accompanied them was the overwhelming guilt. As an adult, Gus had almost succumbed to his pain, he could only imagine how that poor child, Rory, had coped for so long. Greg, Gus’s friend had killed his wife and son after coming off his medication and Gus knew that the man who committed those awful atrocities was nothing like the loving husband and father
Greg had been for most of his son’s short life. Never far from Gus’s thoughts was the guilt that he hadn’t done enough. Hadn’t supported his friend more, hadn’t realised when he was unravelling. That ghost would always haunt him.

  The similarities between Rory’s mum’s suicide, his wife’s murder, and their current case were too close to be ignored, so Gus set Taffy the task of chasing down the original investigative officers. With any luck they’d be keen and eager to share their thoughts on the case. Meanwhile, he was needed upstairs to discuss how they should play this out in the press. Although he resented the influence the press had over any major investigation, he recognised the importance of getting them onside from the start. He was just glad he wasn’t the one who had to flirt with them – especially not that little gobshite Jez Hopkins.

  ****

  By the time Gus returned to the incident room after updating DCI Chalmers about the unexpected turn the investigation had taken, Carlton had pinned duplicate photos of the sketches, the five sent to Gus’s mum and the one left at the scene, on the expanse of white wall at the back of the room. Now, he was busy scribbling notes on multicoloured Post-it pads and dotting them around the different sketches. Loathe to interrupt the psychologist when he was so obviously in the zone, Gus stood, arms crossed over his chest, and studied the detail of the sketches.