The car wasn’t in the drive at the Cooper house. That surprised me. Margaret’s level of disability was severe, taking her anywhere was impossible, and anyway, what would be the point? She spent most of the day sleeping, and when awake, she didn’t know where she was. Life had been reduced to a one room limbo on the ground floor. For David and Margaret the world outside didn’t exist.
It was a crime. Yet nobody had admitted to it.
Since my last visit, especially in the wee small hours, the memory of Cooper tending his wife would come into my head, and for a few harrowing moments, I’d relive their tragedy and pity them. Witnessing what Margaret had become must have torn David apart. At times, he’d be forgiven for seeing her as his mute, helpless and relentlessly demanding jailor.
James Hambley’s irritated phone call, his groundless insistence I was hounding Wallace Maitland, had struck a warning note I was unable to articulate, even to myself. But it was enough to bring me here.
I got out of the car and walked up the path. David’s routine would run parallel with his wife’s. Time meant little to these people now; they might both be asleep. For a second I hesitated. The front door was open.
In the hall, I called his name. ‘David? David, are you there?’
No one answered.
Shadows from the street fell across the lounge and, as my eyes adjusted, I recognised the stand-by on the hi-fi, glowing red in the corner. The sound of my breathing was the only sound. My fingers scraped the wall, searching for the light switch, aware this was someone’s home and I was an intruder with no right to be here.
If the Coopers weren’t home, where were they? Where would a quadriplegic woman and her husband be on a winter’s night in Scotland?
I reached for options – maybe the wife’s condition had taken a turn for the worse and she was back in hospital. Maybe it was an emergency and, in his hurry, David hadn’t closed the door behind him. Maybe they…
I turned on the light and froze.
Margaret Cooper was exactly as I remembered her: in her chair, eyes closed, head slumped forward on her chest. A spoon and a carton of ice cream lay on the floor beside the plastic bib; her hair was combed and a pillow rested on her lap.
People say peaceful when they mean something else. Margaret was certainly that.
She looked younger. Her features had lost the intensity her condition had imposed and there was a softness to them, a beauty I hadn’t noticed before.
And she was dead.
Suddenly, James Hambley’s accusation made sense though his certainty it was me stalking Wallace Maitland was off the mark. I retreated into the hall, took the mobile from my pocket and punched Andrew’s number. When he answered, I barked an address at him and ran to the car. I could be wrong, though I knew I wasn’t.
The drive across the city passed in a blur and ended with mounting the pavement outside Maitland’s house. The blinds were drawn. Two voices carried as far as the gate; one crying, one angry. Instinct took me to the back door. It was open. I crept into the kitchen and peered into the lounge.
Wallace Maitland knelt in the middle of the room, naked from the waist up. There were cuts on his face that didn’t look new. His hands were tied and blood ran from wounds carved criss-cross on his bare chest. David Cooper was standing behind him holding a knife in his hand. He caught Maitland by the hair, dragged his head back and whispered in his ear. Whatever he said made the obstetrician beg.
‘No. No. No!’
Cooper noticed me and laughed. ‘Just in time, Mr Cameron. I take it you didn’t find, Law? Doesn’t matter now.’
He waved the knife in the air and I noticed its short blade: not a knife, a scalpel.
‘This bastard’s about to tell us something he should’ve said at the beginning.’
The irony of the weapon was clear: it traced a path to Maitland’s left nipple, leaving a thin trail of sliced flesh in its wake. Maitland moaned and Cooper grinned, unrecognisable from the gentle caring husband I’d met. He was ready to kill, though he wasn’t a murderer; he’d cracked. Margaret may have died unexpectedly. In her condition, that was always a possibility.
I didn’t believe it.
The ice cream, the combed hair – and perhaps the most telling detail of all in that macabre still-life, the pillow on her lap – helped me guess what had gone on. A decision to bring the hell they were living in to an end had been taken. Out of love, David had smothered Margaret, and stepped over an invisible line into madness. All that remained was revenge. And here it was. I was looking at a man with nothing left to lose.
Cooper deftly flicked his wrist and the nipple parted company with Maitland’s torso. A red rivulet flowed down Maitland’s pale skin; he screamed. The obstetrician was minutes, at most, from a violent death. If DS Geddes was coming, it better be soon or it would be too late.
Cooper inspected the scalpel, satisfied with its work, and spoke to me, smiling. ‘Doesn’t like it, does he?’
I moved cautiously into the room and tried to reason with him. ‘David, this isn’t the way. This isn’t what Margaret would want.’
He snapped and turned his anger on me. ‘How do you know what she would’ve wanted? How would any of you know? All he had to do was admit it was his fault and he wouldn’t.’
Terror distorted Maitland’s face. His eyes darted wildly as he mouthed please help me, over and over again.
Cooper yelled at him. ‘Say it! Say it!’
Maitland confessed to save his life. ‘Yes. I did. I did it.’
Cooper yanked his head back and shouted. ‘Say what you did!’
‘I killed her.’
Cooper relaxed his grip but held on. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘At last the truth.’
Before I could get to him he drew the blade across Maitland’s throat. White became crimson. A jet of blood splashed the carpet in a long red line and Maitland fell to the floor, making a noise like a rubber bag releasing air. There was nothing anyone could do for him, and whether Andrew came mattered less than it had a minute ago.
‘Put the knife down, David.’
Cooper talked to himself. ‘Say it. That was all he had to do. Just say it.’
‘David…David…’
What happened next was more sickening to witness than the execution, and would stay with me for the rest of my life. Cooper raised his head and looked straight at me. I doubted he even recognised who I was anymore. The blade came up and he slit his own throat. Blood spurted onto the carpet and the light went out of his eyes; he stumbled forward and fell on top of Wallace Maitland.
I was riveted to the spot; my feet were lead, unable to move. It had been so fast. A car door slamming in the street barely registered with me. Andrew Geddes arrived with uniformed officers and stopped in his tracks. The DS thought he’d seen everything. But he hadn’t seen this. He edged round the pool of blood and the bodies on the carpet and touched my arm.
‘Christ Almighty. You all right, Charlie?’
I did what Maitland, Hambley and Francis Fallon had never done – I told the truth.
‘Not really, Andrew. Not really.’