The Lost Sister Read online

  Oh Jesus, after all this, dead?

  I flexed my hands, pressed down and tried to lift myself off the floor.

  A couple of inches. My muscles trembling.

  I collapsed again.

  Vomited.

  The bile burned my throat and the back of my nose. Threatening to choke me. Talk about undignified. But no one dies like a hero. Not in real life.

  My skull was vibrating. My vision was blurred. My muscles ached, unwilling to work for me.

  A punch to the head.

  After everything that had happened, I could die because some prick gave me a sucker punch to the head?

  My eyes were blazing. On fucking fire.

  I looked at Mary.

  Her right hand twitched.

  She was alive.

  She was alive.

  I lifted my head. Blinked out the blur.

  Fuck this.

  I wasn’t going out. I wasn’t giving up.

  I swallowed hard. My ears popped.

  The sounds of the outside world rushed into my skull. Tried to knock me down again.

  “This is on your fucking head. Do you understand? All of this is your fault!” Wickes. Not talking to me. I guessed he was talking to Deborah. Out of sight behind the kitchen doorway. Punctuating every word with a dull thump. Sounded like he was hammering a head of lettuce.

  My stomach churned.

  Fuck this self pitying crap.

  I reached out, grabbed the wall. Hauled myself to my feet.

  Didn’t look behind me. Told myself that Susan was fine. She’d rip me a new arsehole if I attended to her first.

  Aye, protect the innocent first and foremost.

  My left leg was useless. The old wound playing up. As though the muscles had snapped. I imagined them like pressured strings on a guitar, tensed to breaking point.

  I roared.

  Struggled.

  Hands on the walls to steady myself.

  My eyes on Mary.

  That one hand clenching. Eyes flickering. As though she wanted to wake up, couldn’t quite figure it out.

  I pushed the walls for momentum.

  The rhythmic thumping from the kitchen pulled me along.

  Through the door, I stopped, one hand on the wall, barely able to keep upright when I saw the source of the noise.

  Wickes had a grip on Deborah’s hair. Her body was limp, legs bent at the knees, spine curved. Her arms flailed, useless, and for a moment I might have convinced myself that the big bastard had a grip on some kind of rubber doll.

  Smashing her face against the worktop.

  The veins popped out on his neck. His skin flushed red, his eyes bulged.

  His movements were brutal yet mechanical. I couldn’t say for sure if he even knew what he was doing.

  One last thump and he stopped.

  Let go. Looked up at me.

  Loosened that grip.

  Deborah dropped.

  No resistance.

  Her head smacked against the worktop, bounced off the floor once and then she was completely still.

  Blood pooled.

  “Think she gets it,” he said. “She understands.”

  He was trembling.

  Remorse?

  Was this fucking monster even capable of such a thing?

  He said, “I loved her, you know. Believe it, McNee. I loved her.”

  “You killed her.”

  He said nothing.

  “You killed her.” The repetition no longer for his benefit. I felt empty, as though something had been stolen from me. My voice threatened to crack. I swallowed, turned my full attention onto him. “Because she loved her daughter? Because she didn’t want to be yours alone?”

  My legs were shaking. I could feel the world spinning on its axis.

  How long could I stand?

  If he turned on me, could I fight back?

  “You didn’t love her, you fuck. You wanted to possess her. If she couldn’t be yours, she couldn’t be anyone’s, right? That’s why you killed the dog.”

  Wickes said, “Natural fucking causes,” in this low and uncertain voice. A child who knew he was going to be caught in a lie.

  “You really believe that?” My leg was still on fire, but the pain had become dull and distant.

  He didn’t say anything. Looked down at the body on the floor.

  The inside of my head was roaring.

  “It didn’t have to be like this,” he said. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  I said, “You were supposed to protect her.”

  He nodded. Took deep breaths.

  Looked ready to collapse himself.

  “It’s over, then,” I said. “All of this. Done with.”

  He got down on his knees, reached out towards Deborah, touched the back of her head with the tips of his fingers. Caressed her hair, matted with blood.

  He started crying like he didn’t know how this had happened. Was at a loss to explain any of it.

  Chapter 48

  Wickes was still in the kitchen, cuffed to the boiler. We hadn’t moved him far.

  We’d left Deborah’s body alone. Susan figured it was best to touch as little around the scene as possible. Let the SOCO crew deal with it. Give them an uncontaminated scene to work with.

  “We’re going to have to answer a lot of questions.”

  I was hoisting Mary’s body off the floor. She was breathing, maybe a little shallow, but she was going to live. The plan was to get her in the front room, make her comfortable.

  I said to Susan, “If I’ve learned how to do one thing the past year, it’s answer questions from the police.”

  Sounded flippant even to me.

  Wickes had gone silent on us. Was it possible he had never been able to acknowledge the things he had done? That when faced with the consequences of his actions, all he could do was shut down?

  I figured him for playing some kind of con game.

  Pleading insanity. Trying for a cushy sentence. Solicitors would be lining up around the block to take a high profile case, and this one was going national.

  Connolly was going to have my balls when he found out what had happened. He was going to be pissed off that he wasn’t in on a scoop like this.

  I wasn’t happy about moving Mary, but I needed to get her away from the kitchen. Didn’t want her to see what had happened to her mother. Gingerly, I lifted her, carried her through to the front room, laid her in the recovery position and placed my jacket over her for warmth. Mild concussion? Couldn’t be sure. Not until the ambulance arrived.

  Susan’s nose had been broken. She said she was fine, but I noticed a slight distance in the way she talked. And her voice sounded thick, bunged up like a bad head cold. Looking at her pupils, I couldn’t be sure, but I thought they seemed larger than usual.

  I tried to figure how long it would take the ambulance to arrive.

  And kept telling myself, it could have been worse.

  When I’d first got to my feet in the hall, frustration and anger had been burning me from the inside out. The white hot needles in my brain had made me focus on nothing more than simple revenge.

  For Susan.

  I’d already seen someone I cared for die.

  Someone I loved.

  Already let the person responsible disappear. Let them get away with it.

  It wasn’t going to happen again.

  When I confronted Wickes, ready to kill the man, to have the revenge I’d convinced myself I needed…

  I couldn’t do it.

  I’d felt sorry for the bastard.

  Imagine that; feeling pity for a fucking monster like Wickes. A man who kept the woman he loved like a prisoner. Killed her dog. Tortured her psychologically and physically.

  After making sure that Mary was comfortable, I went out into the hall with Susan. She stepped out of the shattered front door and into the night. Looked up at the stars.

  Her feet crunched on the thin layer of night time frost. Her breath misted i
n the freezing air.

  I stood behind her.

  “You need to sit down,” I said.

  “We have to call someone.”

  I nodded, looked at the car. “She said the payphone was, what, maybe a mile or two?”

  Susan nodded.

  “You think you’re okay to keep on that bastard back there?” I jerked my head back towards the house. Meaning Wickes.

  “I don’t think he’ll be trouble.”

  I grunted, non-committal. I’d seen the way his attitudes and behaviour could change. “I can get a signal before then, I’ll call.”

  “Steed, you need to sit down yourself.” Susan placed both hands on either side of my face. Her skin was warm, and I wanted to close my eyes, just fall forward and collapse into her.

  She said, “Your pupils are dilated.”

  Saying, concussion without mentioning the word.

  The crashing waves in my skull had quit. I felt fine. Unsteady, but I figured I was okay to drive.

  I’d rest soon enough.

  What choice did we have? I wasn’t taking him back in the car. Not with a dead body and both Susan and Mary in the state they were in. We needed coppers. We needed paramedics.

  I’d take the car, head out, get a signal on the phone. Let them know where we were. What had happened.

  Finally, I accepted this was something I couldn’t handle alone.

  And when I opened my eyes again and looked at Susan, I realised something.

  I wasn’t handling it alone.

  I used to have nightmares. Dreaming of enclosed spaces. Blood. The still aftermath of the long scream of violence.

  I would see faces I knew.

  And I wouldn’t know them, twisted as they were by the sight of blood and death.

  When I woke up from these nightmares, I’d roll over and puke in the plastic tub I’d learned to keep beside the bed.

  The bile gathered.

  Susan was slumped in the hall near the kitchen, her legs bent up towards her chest, her head in her hands. Blood on her clothes.

  I’d been gone maybe twenty minutes. Got the signal. Made the call. They were on their way.

  It was over.

  Except, I came back to…

  What the fuck had happened?

  I knelt beside Susan. She was breathing. Shallow.

  But she was alive.

  I dropped the phone. It clattered to the wooden floor.

  Said, “Mary?”

  Susan looked up at me and nodded to the kitchen. “In there,” she said.

  I walked into the kitchen.

  Deborah was still discarded on the floor.

  Wickes was next to her.

  The axe was buried in his chest. Didn’t even look like he’d tried to ward off the attack. When I’d left he’d been close to comatose, had to wonder if maybe when the attack came he just no longer cared. One arm was stretched out, his palm resting gently on the small of Deborah’s back. The gesture seemed bizarrely tender considering everything I knew about the man.

  The floor was slick with blood.

  And Mary was sitting against the back door, looking at the corpses.

  Blood on her hands. The IPod I’d seen earlier in the front room plugged into her ears. I could hear the tinny sound of music emanating from the tiny speakers.

  She had it turned up loud.

  Drowning out the world.

  She hummed with the music. The notes coming out in a halting fashion. She wasn’t really thinking about what she was doing. Just trying to comfort herself.

  As I came through the door, she stopped the humming, looked up at me and said, “He had to die. You understand, don’t you? For what he did.”

  I took a breath. The air tasted tart, something coppery there. Maybe the blood. Maybe my imagination. I heard sirens.

  Chapter 49

  Mary was unresponsive after that. When I helped her to her feet, she took my outstretched hands with a kind of welcoming gratitude and allowed herself to be led back to the front room where she sat on the sofa again and started to shiver. I went to the bedroom and grabbed a blanket to put around her shoulders. Better than my jacket.

  Susan and I talked in the hall, kept the door open so we could see Mary.

  “So what do we do?”

  I took a deep breath. “We can’t let her take the blame for this. She’s…she’s been through a lot. I don’t think –”

  “We lie?”

  “Bend the truth.”

  “How?”

  “I killed Wickes. Self defence. After he killed Deborah, he was coming back for you and me. I finished him off.”

  “I had him cuffed to the radiator.”

  “So we uncuff him. You have a better story?”

  She looked ready to say something, then cut herself off at the last minute. Spun around on her heels and punched out against one of the walls.

  “You were in deep water last year, Steed. When they thought you killed that man at the Necropolis.”

  “I did kill him.”

  “In fear for your own life.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Susan hesitated for a second, tried to catch my eyes as though she might see something in them.

  I wasn’t sure she’d see anything she liked.

  “The story works if I attacked him,” I said. “Can’t think of anyone on the force would question that.”

  “And what about your business? I know you were on thin ice with the Association and the Security Council.”

  I looked through into the front room at the girl with the tattered blanket round her shoulders, her music blaring, her body shivering.

  “Sometimes you have to make the sacrifice,” I said, finally meeting her eyes. “We need to be together on this.”

  She hesitated.

  “Forget our friendship,” I said. “If we don’t agree on what happened tonight –”

  “And what about Mary?” asked Susan, her voice insistent.

  “I don’t – I think she’ll stick with the story. I think she’ll want to forget this. Go back to her life. Look at her.”

  Susan did, peering through the door.

  I said, “If I was her, I’d take any opportunity to erase this night.” When Susan turned back to look at me, I said, “Wouldn’t you?”

  DCI Ernie Bright acted the professional in front of his men.

  Had them clear up while he walked us to a cop car. We leaned against the body while he smoked a cigarette, tried to think of something to say.

  Caught between professionalism and fatherly concern.

  I noticed one of the coppers trying to talk to Mary as he led her out to a waiting car. She wasn’t saying a word. Hadn’t uttered a sound since she told me that Wickes deserved that axe in the back of the neck.

  Ernie said, “Two bodies. The kitchen looks like a slaughterhouse.”

  “The big bastard,” I said. “He killed Deborah Brown. The woman.”

  Ernie nodded. “And who killed him?”

  I hesitated.

  Susan was standing beside me. Hadn’t said a word since her father showed up.

  I remembered our conversation in the car coming over here.

  Would she bring that up here?

  I was willing her to stick to the script as we’d agreed. Someone had to take the blame. Who could shoulder the responsibility. Knew enough of guilt that they could shoulder someone else’s as well.

  I started to open my mouth.

  Susan said, “I did, sir.”

  It was the sir that got me.

  But I think it hit Ernie even worse.

  I stood near the overgrown area that might once have been a vegetable garden. I could see the remains of canes and some signs of what might once have been an attempt to tame the weeds.

  Ernie came and stood beside me.

  I said, “She’s giving a statement?”

  “To another officer. I can’t be involved.”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “DI Lind
say will take charge of this investigation.” He shrugged. “Wish it could have been someone else, but there we are.” He was dancing around something else. I waited for him to finally get to the point. “So tell me…would she lie to protect you?”

  “No,” I said. The lie came easy. But we’d both agreed: once the story was out, we would stick to it.

  “Did you tell her about our little encounter the other day?”

  I couldn’t say anything to that.

  “Something in her face, McNee. She’s a good copper, and grand at the old bluff. But she could never fool her dad.” He seemed ready to smile at that, but dropped it fast before it was fully formed.

  I hesitated for just a moment before I said, simply, “She’s your daughter. If you talk to her –”

  “She’s my daughter,” he said. “And there are some things I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain to her.”

  The next morning I woke up late, buried beneath heavy covers, feeling strangely detached from the world. I put my feet out on to the floor, stretched and tried to figure if I could separate the disjointed dreams from what had really happened.

  I stumbled to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror.

  Couldn’t say what looked back at me.

  Not with any certainty.

  “Tell me, son, what separates us from them.”

  Three weeks before the accident that killed Elaine. Drinking with Ernie Bright at the Phoenix Bar on the Perth Road, tucked into a corner booth. A pep talk, if you like. He was fond of what he called informal training. Teaching the stuff the textbooks can’t or won’t.

  “Honesty, son,” he said. “Honesty and standards. All that good stuff.” He smiled as he talked.

  Looking back, I had to wonder if he believed it. Convinced himself of his own version of the truth? Because he was still hip deep with Burns and his crew in those days. A sacrifice of his principles for the greater good?

  Smelled like shite to me.

  “A good copper doesn’t have to lie or cheat to get what he wants. Or to stoop to the level of the criminal, you understand? He’s better than that. Appearances count.”

  Don’t they just?

  Something had been slipped under my door.

  An envelope.

  I tore it open to look inside. Photocopied police reports. A transcript. One I didn’t want to read.

  Present at interview:

  Mary Furst

  DC Dorothy Shepherd