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

  ‘Not surprised that whore Jeannie Cameron ended up with a darkie kid. Left it too late to get rid of it.’

  ‘I heard she tried a coat hanger, but it never worked. Would’ve been better for Jeannie if it had. No man’ll take her on wi a darkie bairn.’

  As a child, of course Corrine had been oblivious to the real meaning of the women’s words, but she’d been in no doubt that she was to blame for the hardship that made her mother the monster she was. A tear of regret rolled down Corrine’s cheek. It was her fault her mum ended up dependent on drugs, alcohol, and prostitution – she was shamed by having a child who was half Jamaican and she never stopped letting her daughter know. Corrine sniffed. She’d been born in a time when racism was casually delivered – and she’d suffered for it. Her lovely little brother, although himself white, had suffered because of his sister’s darker skin. The weight of guilt lay heavy on Corrine’s shoulders and she supposed that was one of the many complex reasons she’d suppressed the memories.

  Now, as an adult, she could logically acknowledge that the guilt wasn’t hers to carry, that she’d been a child … an innocent in it all … still, the brother whom she’d loved so much had died because of her. A snippet of a song flitted into her head and she smiled. She and Jamie were snuggled up under a grimy eiderdown blanket. His little hand gripped her larger one tightly. He didn’t seem to care that Corrine’s skin was so much darker than his. He didn’t care. He loved her. ‘Sing it for me, Coco.’

  ‘Again? I’ve already sung it a thousand times … no, make that a squillion times.’

  He giggled and she tickled his skinny little belly and began to sing her own version of the nursery rhyme, the one she’d created for her and Jamie.

  Lavender’s blue, Jamie, Jamie,

  Lavender’s green,

  When you are king, Jamie, Jamie

  I’ll be the queen.

  ‘Hallo there, Mrs McGuire isn’t it? Are you OK?’

  Corrine looked up and saw a lad pulling a big Rottweiler on a lead. Behind his mask, his voice was a little muffled and the frown across his forehead told her he’d heard her singing. Probably thinks I’m losing it.

  Standing over a metre away from her, he pulled his mask down till it hung around his neck. Corrine wiped her cheeks and forced a smile to her lips. ‘Yes, it is. You’re Zarqa’s young man, aren’t you?’

  Her smile deepened when she saw the flush spread up his cheeks. ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m Karim.’ He plonked himself down on the grass, well away from Corrine. ‘We like it in the woods when it’s quiet, don’t we Trixie Belle?’

  His dog gave a bark and cocked its head at the boy, before sniffing around Heather and Skye, who lay basking in the warmth of the fading sun.

  ‘Yes it’s peaceful here. I like that.’

  They sat in companionable silence for a while, Corrine aware of the boy casting surreptitious glances in her direction to see if she was crying again. Poor kid probably thought she was going to do something drastic. She cleared her throat. ‘Karim … do you face racism?’

  He shrugged. ‘You talking about all the Get off my neck stuff?’ He nodded. ‘Sure. We all do. Anyone of colour gets it at one point or another.’

  He looked at her. ‘What about you, did you get it, growing up like, I mean not now.’ He looked horrified at the thought that a woman of Corrine’s advancing years might be subjected to racism today.

  ‘Yes, yes I did.’ She paused. ‘We mustn’t let it define us though. Otherwise they’ve won.’

  Ruffling Trixie Belle’s fur, Karim nodded. ‘True that. Don’t let the bast…’ Remembering who he was talking to, he clammed up and looked away.

  Corrine smiled. Zarqa was lucky to have such a lovely caring boyfriend.

  Chapter 29

  Bradford

  He stood watching from outside the window as Corrine McGuire poured milk into a pan and proceeded to heat the milk. It was late. Nearly one in the morning and Gus could tell that his mum was on her own. He wasn’t entirely sure what had made him run this route. Normally at this time of night, he stuck to the park or the main road, but his dad’s text and the image of his mum as a child kept popping into his mind, stealing him of sleep.

  If the house had been in darkness he would have reset the alarm and headed back home, but with his mum awake, he had no option but to go in. Rather than tap on the window, he slipped round to the front door, unlocked it, and entered quickly heading to the kitchen.

  ‘I wondered if you’d come in or if you’d stay loitering outside all night.’ Corrine looked up at him with an uncertain smile.

  Taking his cue from her, Gus settled onto a stool by the breakfast bar and returned her grin. ‘I couldn’t miss one of your famous hot chocolates now could I?’

  Hot chocolate was the one thing his mum excelled at in the culinary department. He’d never known her to make a mess of one of those drinks and, despite the warmth of the night, Gus had a longing for the comfort of the sweet milky warmth. While his mum busied herself preparing their drinks, Gus smiled at the rumbling snores emanating from upstairs. ‘Dad waken you up with his snoring or couldn’t you sleep?’

  Corrine pushed his drink towards him. ‘Bit of both, probably. No. That’s a lie. I’m used to your dad’s snores. It’s my memories that are haunting me tonight.

  ‘Want to talk?’

  Corrine reached up and cradled her son’s cheek in her hand. ‘Maybe a little … I’m still working on some things.’

  Gus blew on his drink and waited, allowing the aroma to tease his nostrils before he took that first glorious sip.

  ‘Professor Carlton has managed to get me a course of treatment from your Dr Mahmood.’

  That surprised Gus. He hadn’t been aware his mum needed treatment but judging by those sketches and the things Compo had discovered, he was clearly wrong. ‘Dr Mahmood is…’ He hesitated, searching for a word that would sum her up. She’d helped him, despite his resistance – still was in fact. ‘Persistent.’

  His mum’s tinkling laugh made him smile as he took his first sip of the drink. ‘She called you obstinate. I’m sure that’s why she is persistent.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you know me. I like to keep things private.’

  His mum nodded, her voice low. ‘Yes, me too. We’re alike in that respect.’

  As her words sunk in Gus realised that the very thing he was accusing his mother of – keeping secrets – could equally be applied to his own actions. He didn’t share his feelings – not about killing Greg to try to save his godson Billy, not about his ex-wife Gabriella being in a relationship with his sister, not about Sadia, who Alice, with little regard for his feelings had dubbed ‘the one that got away’, or Patti, his most recent love interest leaving him – no, he didn’t share either, so who was he to hold it against his mum when she did the same thing?

  ‘I love you, Mum.’

  ‘I know you do. That’s maybe one of the reasons it’s so hard to share my childhood with you and Katie. But I’m going to. Maybe not everything but enough of it to help you understand.’

  She took a sip of her own drink. ‘My mum was a prostitute, drug addict, and alcoholic. I was the result of one of her careless encounters and she hated me for it as did the entire neighbourhood, except for my little brother. He adored me. He was four years younger than me and I looked after him. One night she came home drunk. I hid Jamie under the bed and then she started singing her Golly wog song.’

  ‘Gollywog song?’

  Corrine snorted. ‘Quite the poet was my mum, Angus.’ And she began to chant the horrid rhyme her mum had created just for her.

  Coco the nig nog gollywog,

  Ugly little dog.

  Coco the nig nog Gollywog,

  Flush you down the bog.

  Gus’s mouth fell open. How could a mother sing a song like that about her daughter? Memories of his mum singing rhymes to Katie and him as children flooded his mind – the one about Goldilocks, where she changed the words to make it releva
nt for them instead of ‘Blue eyes and curly hair’ she’d changed it to ‘Brown eyes and lovely hair.’ She’d even changed the Dilly Dilly part of that stupid lavender rhyme to ‘Katie, Katie’ or ‘Gussy, Gussy’ – one of the few times she ever abbreviated his name.

  He didn’t normally swear in front of his parents, but it just exploded from his mouth. ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Exactly … Fuck. She wasn’t nice. Anyway, she was going to flush my head down the loo. She’d shoved my head in the toilet before and Jamie, bless him, he tried to protect me.’ Tears streamed down Corrine’s face and her gaze was focussed on the darkness outside the window, almost as if it reflected the darkness of her memories. ‘I’m not sure what happened, but Jamie ended up dead. I collapsed and when I wakened up, I was put in foster care with Rory’s family. I didn’t speak for two years – except to Rory and only when no one else was about.’

  Gus walked round the table and hugged his mum, breathing in her distinctive lavender scent. ‘Aw, Mum.’ His voice was hoarse, and no other words would come out.

  ‘I was getting better. Rory’s parents were nice – his two older brothers were idiots, but I ignored them, and they were much older and at uni. Then one day Rory’s mum committed suicide and Rory found her. Within hours I was taken from them and placed with another foster family. I didn’t see Rory again until I went to University in Edinburgh…’ She looked at Gus. ‘That’s enough for now, eh?’

  Gus nodded, but had to just make one thing clear to his mother. ‘He can’t have killed Miranda Brookes though, you realise that, don’t you, Mum?’

  Corrine tilted her head ‘Yes, I know that, but I do know Rory did kill his wife…’

  ‘Yes, he did. The same way as his mother was found and the same way Miranda Brookes was killed. You need to be careful, Mum – really careful.’

  ‘Rory was ill, but he did kill her and to my shame, I wasn’t there for him.’ She looked up at Gus ‘You’ll get him, won’t you, Angus? Whoever is doing this, you’ll get them – Before he does it again?’

  Gus wished he could promise his mum, but he couldn’t and the shadows under her eyes told him that she knew it too.

  Chapter 30

  Bradford

  Sweat pouring off him, Gus completed his second circle of Lister Park. All the while his mind was buzzing. They seemed no further forward in catching Miranda Brookes’ killer, yet for the past two mornings he’d wakened up with the same awful dread; would today be the day that victim number two was discovered? His, or rather, Alice’s team had put in the hours. They’d scoured the neighbourhood for witnesses, unusual sightings – anything that might shed light on it – they’d come up empty. Miranda’s social media was scrutinised by all of them and even Sebastian Carlton had been frustrated with the lack of leads that came from there. Miranda hadn’t gone public yet with her pregnancy and that threw a question mark on the significance of the foetal scan being positioned beneath the victim.

  Carlton was convinced it was related, that Brookes had been specifically targeted because of her pregnancy, but that theory was far from being corroborated. He and Alice had discussed this specific issue and agreed to remain open-minded about it. Perhaps their killer was taunting them – perhaps his MO was placing an inconsequential clue among other more relevant ones. Perhaps he’d just found it in their home and used it on the spur of the moment. Whatever the bastard’s reasoning, it had been a chilling addition to an already horrific scene.

  With the Smedley case still not moving forward, Gus had taken to exercising more often – searching his mind for something he’d missed – something that might help push things forward a little. When he’d exhausted his own case, he turned his mind to the Miranda Brookes murder. Although not officially on the team, Gus had memorised the crime board and each time he jogged, he ran until he’d been over every square inch of it in his mind, desperately seeking that elusive clue that would send them on the right track. A week later and every single lead seemed to point to a dead end. The nail polish was a Max Factor make, which wasn’t present in the victim’s home. This of course threw up two options. One, the killer had selected it from Miranda’s collection of nail polish and taken it with him when he left the scene, or two, he’d brought it, used it on Miranda, and taken it away with him again. Carlton favoured the second option – but again, with no corroboration they were stumped.

  Miranda’s husband had been distraught, but had been investigated and, as a long haul driver for Morrison’s supermarket and pulling overnight shifts, he was alibied. Not that Gus thought for a moment that he was guilty. The poor man had lost his wife and unborn child in one fell swoop and he’d gone under with the weight of it all – sedated and living at his parent’s home, he was in bits.

  The biscuit, as Carlton had suggested, had been bitten into by Miranda, leaving that another dead end. At Carlton’s instigation, Compo was today extending his search from crimes bearing similar MOs beyond the five years Gus had initially suggested. Sebastian was keeping his own counsel, yet Gus suspected when he had suggested widening the parameters, that the psychologist had a reason he wasn’t sharing. That irked.

  Gus was all about the team, yet Carlton, although able to be a team player, was also prone to worrying at a conundrum himself rather than asking the team for assistance. Alice, as promised, was happy to let him have access to the investigation and even listened to his comments and observations, but neither of them was comfortable. They were both very aware that something else had to break in order for them to progress the investigation. The trouble was, they were both equally aware that the break, when it came, would more than likely be another dead woman – possibly a pregnant one.

  Pounding the concrete round the boating lake, Gus considered doing one final lap of the park before heading up to The Fort. In his current mood, he was likely to snap at someone if he didn’t work off the building tension that had him fraught. He’d already had a go at Alice for eating the last of the bread – which was unreasonable considering it was always Al that bought it in the first place. Yes, he needed to really rein in his grumpiness and he veered off the path, increased his pace up the hill towards Cartwright Hall, enjoying the pull of his muscles as he headed up to work.

  ****

  Showered and in a marginally better mood, Gus was diverted as he walked down the corridor to the incident room.

  ‘Boss.’

  He turned and saw Compo’s head poking out of one of the smaller rooms they used for meetings. Despite the heat, Compo’s usual beanie hat was on his head and he’d clearly been outside for at least some of the weekend because while the rest of his face was tanned, the area around his eyes was white, giving him the look of a startled Panda. The lad beckoned Gus with a hand wave, and intrigued, Gus stepped towards him, as Compo, smiling widely, announced. ‘We’ve got visitors.’

  Gus froze. Normally visitors meant his mum with a burnt offering of some description to torture the team – well, the team – except Compo, whose belly of steel revelled in each and every one of his mother’s offerings. As he was still absorbing his mum’s revelations from the other night, Gus could do without seeing her again so soon. Especially if she was accompanied by his dad, whom he wanted to quiz in private about his mum’s wellbeing.

  Besides, he still wasn’t completely happy with them not confiding in him about the pictures they’d been sent. He’d let his mum know that and had seen the way she’d avoided meeting his gaze. She was keeping something else from him and whatever it was, Gus suspected it was worse than the confidences she’d shared over hot chocolate. That was a basic McGuire strategy – give a little, hide a lot. Gus hadn’t quite worked out what tack to take with them. He’d reached out to Katie to see if she was any the wiser, but with her final batch of chemo to go through he was reluctant to worry his sister and his gentle probing had resulted in no new information.

  He hesitated by the door to get his game face on. What he needed to do, more than anything right now, was keep any animosity away
from his team. The gulf between him and his parents couldn’t impact on the investigation, no matter how difficult that might be. Taking a deep breath, he followed Compo inside and nearly sagged with relief when he saw who his unexpected visitors were.

  Taking in the three faces that smiled at him – well two smiles and a sullen frown – would be more accurate, from their chairs in between Alice and Compo, Gus’s taut expression relaxed into a welcoming grin as he strode over to greet them. He hadn’t seen Imti Serafina and Shahid for ages and was surprised by how pleased he was to see them. The trio had been involved in one of his cases a few years back and they’d stayed sporadically in touch since then. Imti and Serafina ran The Delius Club on Leeds Old Road and Imti’s older brother Shahid, although once one of Bradford’s biggest gangsters, had turned over a new leaf. Although Gus uncharitably thought on occasion that it was easy to go straight when you had the money and various businesses behind you.

  ‘What the hell brings you three here?’ Gus, ignoring the Covid instructions, knowing all three would have been temperature tested on entry, hugged both Imti and Serafina, but settled for a grudging handshake with Shahid. Now stepping back from them, he saw that all was not well in their world. Imti’s face carried an uncharacteristic frown and Serafina wrung her hands in front of her, glancing anxiously at her boyfriend as she did so. Even Shahid’s usual impenetrable glare was fiercer than usual, and his eyes darted anywhere but at Gus.

  Alice rose and guided Serafina back to her seat and Gus waited while Imti and Shahid followed suit. It was Imti who eventually spoke. ‘Got a favour to ask, Gus. We wouldn’t normally. But we’ve got no choice.’ Imti glanced at Alice who nodded reassuringly in response.