The Lost Sister Read online

  “I showed this picture to Mary. She said she had the dog until she turned ten and then she lost it somewhere. She doesn’t remember where. She called it Glen. Doesn’t know where the name came from. Maybe Jennifer gave it to her. Maybe it was just a word that stuck, aye? Who knows?” Deborah smiled as she handed us the picture to look at. Again, the kind of smile I had difficulty ever imagining Jennifer Furst using when she thought about her daughter.

  What had Susan said earlier about my getting emotionally involved?

  Both Susan and I dutifully examined the image and passed it on. It wasn’t important to us. But Deborah needed for us to look as though there might be something in that image that would make us understand everything.

  Maybe I wanted to see it, too.

  She needed us to be on her side. It had been so long since anyone had taken the time to truly listen to and understand her that she was desperate to make her feelings known; reaching out for anyone who might empathise with her.

  I wanted to pull her close and tell her that everything was going to work out. But I didn’t.

  Couldn’t.

  Part of Wickes’s makeup plan had been to offer Deborah the chance to apply for an art course at a local college. She’d never completed her degree at Duncan of Jordanstone back in Dundee. And Wickes understood the need for her to feel she had some freedom. It wasn’t that he was without heart, but he understood the kind of difficulties he would face without taking some kind of affirmative action.

  The kindest acts sometimes come from the cruellest place.

  She took the offer, under a series of strict rules. Similar to those imposed on her when she first moved in with him.

  Deborah started to convince herself that Wickes was calming down.

  The incident with Chess had been a one-off. Oh, aye, he didn’t mean it. Just had a mean temper. And forget that, look at all that he had done to help her.

  He was her saviour, right?

  Wasn’t that what she wanted?

  Wasn’t that what he told her?

  He wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t in her best interests.

  Easy to think that when the bruises began to fade. When the memory of that night in the cupboard, huddled together with the corpse of a poisoned dog began to fade like the worst nightmares always do.

  A few months after she started, she went out for a swift drink with someone she’d met on the course. A young guy – young enough she wasn’t that interested in him – with a good line in jokes who didn’t seem to take himself quite as seriously as some of the others in the class.

  A drink was all she was after. A drink in someone else’s company. Without the Big Man’s presence looming over here.

  She had a good night, too. Until the guy went to the bathroom. Never came back.

  That was when Wickes sat down across the table from her, this grin on his face like he knew something she didn’t.

  “A child with a guilty secret,” she said. “He could look like that, sometimes, when he’d done the most terrible things.” Stumbling again. Dancing around the edges of her life with Wickes had become second nature. She knew that he had done terrible things. But when it came to the specifics, perhaps there was still some of that old fear left in her. If she talked about it, admitted the truth, she knew what he could do. What he would do. “I knew something had happened. I didn’t…I mean…I thought that he’d gone over the edge. Killed that lad. Just for talking to me, you know?”

  When they went home at the end of the night, Wickes acted as though nothing had happened.

  The next morning, she went to class as usual. The guy wasn’t there.

  “He ever turn up?”

  Deborah looked surprised at Susan’s question. The answer should have been obvious. “I asked the course convener about it, why he hadn’t come back. She said she’d talked to him, some kind of personal issue meant he wasn’t able to continue the course.”

  The call meant that Wickes hadn’t killed the man. Deborah could cling to that, at least. Getting roughed up was better than winding up dead. But the message from Wickes was clear: he was all she ever needed.

  That was when she began to worry for Mary. That night brought everything into focus for her.

  Funny the way the brain works sometimes, the connections that it makes. How one incident can lead you to see another – unconnected – in a whole new light.

  She’d kept that picture of Mary. Her one betrayal.

  It had seemed insignificant at the time.

  Would Wickes see it like that?

  When she graduated, Deborah applied for a teaching course. Again, Wickes loosened her leash.

  The “leash” metaphor was apt. She felt like a pet; a dumb animal who couldn’t look after herself. That was how he treated her, how she sometimes came to think of herself.

  Her world became defined by praise or condemnation from this bastard. Any disobedience was punished. Any glimmer of independent idea was squashed.

  Her only rebellion: the photograph.

  A baby on Christmas morning.

  Her baby.

  What might have been.

  She enjoyed the freedom she was allowed. Took to the teaching job with enthusiasm and dedication. Was careful to avoid socialising with other members of staff, became aware of her reputation as talented but cold. Figured she was protecting everyone else, didn’t care what they thought of her for it.

  I remembered Ms Foster telling me how Deborah had rarely socialised with any other teachers at the school. How when she came close to talking about anything personal, she would leave or change the subject.

  She was a martyr. Suffered in silence.

  Something romantic in that, or so she started to tell herself.

  Every night, she locked herself in the bathroom, looked at that picture.

  Imagined the girl that the baby had grown into.

  Knew what Wickes would do if he discovered the truth. If he knew what she was thinking.

  “The teaching gave me a way out,” she said. “While I was in school, I was out of his sight for a while. I felt relaxed. I felt…like me again.”

  I asked, “When did you think about tracking down your daughter?”

  “I heard about an opening in Dundee. Knew that I would be stupid to come back. But all the same…fifteen years. Who would remember me, right? And just to have that connection –” She stopped talking for a moment, and I thought maybe she wouldn’t be able to go on. She had been talking for almost twenty minutes, only the occasional interruption from me or Susan.

  Then: “He thought that I was his. That he owned me. And maybe he did, but as long as I had the picture…I don’t know, if he had taken that away from me, maybe things would have been different. The picture gave me hope. Reminded me that there was something I wanted outside of the world that he defined for me. I couldn’t just walk away, of course. And I knew I had to be careful. Had to make him believe that he had won. That he had broken me completely.” She took several deep breaths, as though she was about to duck her head beneath water with no idea when she would come back to the surface. “Took me a long time, but I had him convinced. I started taking more chances. He started to look at me less intently, believing that I was too scared to do anything that would upset him.”

  That was when she got back in touch with her sister. Kathryn helped her to set up an escape, helped her with the move back to Dundee.

  “I was away. He didn’t know where I’d gone. I left nothing behind.”

  Wickes had told me that it had only been the last few weeks he realised something was wrong, made it sound like he’d come here the minute he realised something was wrong.

  “I was here for months. He talks a good game, Mr McNee but in the end he didn’t help me disappear like he promised. He just isolated me from the world. Made me afraid. He talks like he could hunt anyone to the ends of the earth, but that’s all it is. Talk. He’s full of hot fucking air. Only thing he can do well is hurt people.”

  But
even if he wasn’t so smart as he liked to make out, he still tracked her down. “I heard there was someone asking around about me. A few of my colleagues at the school, they said that some bearded guy had been asking how well they knew me, where I lived, if they had my number. Because we’d been on a few dates and he’s lost my contact details.”

  That had been when she’d realised what was happening. She’d already told Mary the truth, made the girl promise not to tell anyone. It was their secret. But now, she had to be sure that the girl trusted her. Because if the incident with Chess had taught her anything about Wickes, it was that he didn’t care who or what he hurt.

  Or killed.

  “I panicked. I mean, I thought maybe if we came out here, I don’t know, we could figure out something…It was stupid, I know. But who else was going to protect her from that bastard?”

  Susan said. “The police.”

  Deborah laughed. No humour. Hard and cynical. “Don’t take this personally, but –” She stopped talking, lifted her head.

  The sound of an engine outside.

  She looked at me, “You said no one else –”

  “They don’t.”

  The engine cut off.

  I looked at Susan. She shook her head. Not her doing.

  The sound of a car door slamming shut.

  I knew who it was out there.

  Looking at Deborah, I could see she knew it, too.

  Chapter 46

  Deborah pushed past us, into the front room. Hustled Mary back out. Looked at me and said, “Keep her safe.”

  I nodded.

  Susan looked at Deborah, said, “He knew about Mary, didn’t he? Figured out what you were doing?”

  Deborah nodded. “That’s why I had to protect her. He would have killed her. To teach me a lesson.”

  Mary remained silent throughout all of this, sticking it out in the front room, watching the TV snow and insulating herself from everything that was happening.

  The big question: why did Mary trust Deborah Brown so implicitly? This woman who claimed to be her mother. Who hadn’t seen Mary since she was a baby.

  The girl everyone had talked about when I started making enquiries had been smart and sensitive and popular. But the biggest clue probably came from Jennifer Furst:

  The last few years, it’s like she’s been looking for herself. It’s something I can’t help her with. I don’t know if anyone can.

  I think she had known instinctively that the woman who raised her was not a blood relative.

  Did she know the truth when she met this Deborah? Walking into art class for the first time, did she get hit with some bolt of lightning? Did she realise that somehow this woman could help her find out who she was?

  What made her trust Deborah enough to simply vanish with her?

  There had been no coercion. No forcing the issue.

  Maybe that’s how it is with family.

  An instinctive trust borne through the blood.

  Some families, perhaps.

  Others have to work at it.

  I didn’t have the answers. Maybe never would. Sometimes, to get at the heart of someone’s story, you have to be so much inside their head that you can understand the incommunicable motivations that drive them. So many decisions we make are inarticulate, leaving us isolated and alone in our actions and choices.

  Deborah and Mary were in the kitchen. They’d locked the back door.

  Susan and I stood near the front door.

  I heard the sound of heavy footsteps crunching on frost outside.

  Susan looked at me.

  The door rattled. Then someone started hammering with their fists. Howling. A strange, heightened sound; barely human.

  The cry of a predator.

  Or a madman.

  Susan turned back and said to Deborah. “You’ve got a phone?”

  “No.”

  There had been no lines leading to the house.

  “Christ! I can’t get reception here. You’ve got to have stayed in touch with your sister, someh –”

  “A box about two miles away. Main street of a wee hamlet. I walked down there once every day, called my sister. Seemed safer than –”

  “Open the fucking door!”

  Wickes. His voice guttural, shredding his vocal chords with anger.

  Susan looked to me again, took a deep breath and then turned to the door. “This is Detective Constable Bright of Tayside Constabulary,” she said, her voice strong and assured.

  Aye, you don’t mess with Detective Susan.

  “I am asking you to step away from the door, get back in your car and drive away.”

  “Fucking bitch!”

  “I’m giving you one warning –”

  He didn’t want to listen to her. “You in there, McNee? Did the cunt give you the sob story about how badly I treated her? She needed protecting, you know. From the world. Herself. You understand? How people need saving? From themselves as much as anyone. You know we’re alike, McNee. Both of us. We understand people. What they need. We step up to help them when no one else will.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  My muscles contracted. My fists closed. Blood beat around in my skull.

  I closed my eyes. Felt that pressure inside my head. Same as when I’d woken after cracking my head on the concrete.

  My legs felt unbalanced.

  I could have toppled over.

  All I heard was his voice. Echoing around, bouncing off the bones of my skull. “The thing is, you know it, we’re easily led, McNee. You and me. So fuckin’ desperate to help people, they take advantage. I know what she’s told you. The things she said. The fuckin’ lies. Come on, pal, who the fuck do you believe? We’re brothers in arms.” He hammered on the door again. The wood was shaking, buckling. Could he break through? Man his size, I wasn’t sure.

  “The cunt’s a fuckin’ liar!”

  Susan turned back to look at me.

  I stepped forward.

  She said, “The thing about going to CID, it’s all head-work. The thinking copper’s game. Been a while since I’d had to sort out a brawl.” She smiled.

  “Like riding a bike,” I said.

  The banging stopped.

  Susan reached out, touched my forearm.

  A small gesture. And like everything else in life, it was fleeting.

  Susan said, her voice unnaturally loud in the sudden silence, “Think he’s given up?”

  “You?”

  “Aye, right.”

  Something started smacking on the door. A different kind of sound. Not fists and feet.

  The wood splintered.

  I remembered. Outside. The axe. Rusty and unused, but a weapon all the same.

  The wood panels splintered in.

  “Here’s fuckin’ Johnny!” A howl. A roar. No: a war cry.

  Susan said, “This is your last chance, Mr Wickes –”

  Like anything we said could have made a difference.

  The door crashed in.

  He was bigger than I remembered; maybe the shadows or my imagination. The adrenaline.

  His eyes were wild, and those hands could have crushed someone’s skull.

  To Susan: “Do you ever shut the fuck up?”

  Susan said, “Put down the axe.” Her tone even and measured. I remembered her talking about attending the crisis negotiation skills workshop a few months back. Hoped they taught more than hot air.

  Wickes stepped forward. Moving fast, swinging round with the axe. In the narrow corridor there was nowhere for Susan to move.

  I couldn’t react fast enough.

  Again. Something in this man made me react in a primal fashion; the prey’s reaction to the presence of a predator.

  The blade arced in a blur.

  Susan appeared to move before it struck her. Her body jerking, her head snapping back and her arms flailing.

  Took me a moment to realise Wickes had managed to strike her with the butt of the axe. The handle. Right in the face.

/>   But it wasn’t the business end.

  Susan crumpled fast. I ran forward. Not thinking, just wanting to grab the fucker’s throat, squeeze the life out of him.

  The world blurred around the edges. That sound of the ocean in my head grew even louder, the bass line of my pulse sounding just below that constant roar. Made me feel lighter than air; I could fucking fly.

  The axe swung.

  I ducked, thinking I was too slow, marvelling it never hit me, heard the head smash into the wall.

  I came up underneath, hoped to fuck it was stuck.

  And…

  He doesn’t waste a moment. Lets go of the axe, brings both hands round on either side of my head and slams them together.

  Chapter 47

  I couldn’t move.

  Paralysed?

  The word echoed in my brain. Took on its own weight, forced my head back down onto the uncarpeted floorboards.

  He’d cracked the base of my skull with those sledgehammer hands, caught me beneath the ear.

  There are tiny bones in the ear that help with balance and co-ordination. What happens if they get broken?

  My body was heavy, sluggish. A burden.

  My neck screamed in protest as I turned to see where he’d gone.

  How long had I been lying there?

  All I could think was: I’ve failed. Again.

  The over-arching pattern of my life.

  Who was I kidding thinking anything had changed over the last year? Was I somehow a better person because I could pretend to be at peace with what had happened to Elaine? Because I no longer spent my time trying to figure just how it was my fault that someone I loved had died?

  His footsteps echoed back along the floor. His voice – dulled and unclear through the cotton wool that had clogged my brain – roared threats like some animal closing in for the kill.

  I needed to move.

  I closed my eyes, concentrated, rolled over, made it onto my stomach. Let out a cry from the effort and stayed still for a few seconds to regain my strength. Enough at least to raise my head.

  I could see back into the kitchen. Mary was slumped against the units, her body loose, her head lolling to one side. Blood dripping from her nose.

  Dead?