At eleven a.m. the following day Meg said no to the offer of a wheelchair and walked beside a nurse to Maginnis’s office.
The police were already there. Maginnis got to his feet and went towards her. ‘Ah, Meg, you’re here.’
‘I’m always here,’ she joked, her smile tense.
She felt uneasy. It was not just the presence of the two police officers, it was Maginnis now, too, and the worrying thought that he might have been watching her, seeing her naked. Yet he seemed just the same, open and welcoming. Was it all in her mind? Her imagination?
She could see he had spotted that she was wearing make-up. It was nothing much, just a dab of lipstick and a little foundation to take some of the pallor out of her cheeks, but she saw the quick appraisal and the smile of approval that went with it. She had plucked her eyebrows, too, but she doubted whether he would notice that.
She had wondered what to wear for this, not that she had a lot of choice. None of her old clothes were much of a fit so she had put on the lightweight sweat suit and moccasin slippers she wore a lot and in which she felt comfortable. It hadn’t mattered before but now, facing the people in this room, she felt under-dressed and somehow exposed.
Maginnis turned to the others with an apologetic smile. ‘This is terrible. I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your names already so maybe I should just let you introduce yourselves, if that’s all right.’
‘Detective Sergeant Hugh Nixon.’
A hefty man of forty plus in a grim worsted suit, he gave a little involuntary grunt as he pushed himself out of his seat and stood to shake her hand. His felt like a baseball glove.
‘Meg Winter,’ she said unnecessarily.
‘And this is my colleague, Detective Inspector Florence Gilmour.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ the woman said. She had blonde hair, very short, and forty was still a few years off. Her hand was cool and firm. She was the senior of the two and Meg chided herself for assuming it was the other way round.
They smelled of the outside world, an odour of fast food and smokiness, lives led in a hurry, which the undercurrent of Gilmour’s perfume could not erase. Meg felt herself receiving a swift, practised once-over delivered by two experienced professionals. It was like an x-ray and she wondered what they saw.
They sat. The others had coffee but she declined Maginnis’s offer.
‘So,’ he said, clapping his hands together, ‘here we are at last. As I was saying before Meg arrived, when I was filling you in on what’s been happening. I’m going to sit in on this conversation, if you don’t mind.’
‘We don’t mind at all,’ Nixon told him.
‘Meg has made great progress since she regained consciousness but there’s some little way to go. I know she’s more than happy to talk to you but I’ve got to be careful she doesn’t suffer any undue stress. I’m sure you’ll bear that in mind.’
‘Of course. If she gets tired or anything, she’s only got to say,’ Nixon assured him.
She felt a flash of irritation. They were talking about her as if she could not understand them or answer for herself.
She glared at Nixon. ‘I—’ she began.
‘Years ago, I was in uniform down in Armagh,’ Florence Gilmour said abruptly, leaning forward.
Meg stopped in surprise. She saw something in the woman’s eyes that asked her to let the thing pass.
‘There was this kid, ten years old, and he and his mates decided to play chicken with the traffic one night, except that this one time he didn’t get out of the way fast enough and a car hit him. Drove on, too, and we never did get the driver. Anyway, the boy suffered a fractured skull and he went into a coma which lasted for three months. One of the doctors told me this story later. When he came round, his parents were at his bedside. A couple of right hard cases, as I recall. The doctor sat and told the kid what had happened and broke the news to him that he wasn’t ten any more – he was eleven. His birthday had come and gone while he was unconscious. Do you know what the wee fella said?’
Meg shook her head.
‘ “Fuck me,” – that’s what he said. At which point the parents looked at each other and the mother said, “Isn’t that great? He can still talk.” ’
The swear-word shocked for a second. Maginnis’s face was a picture. Then they all laughed. Gilmour sat back, having broken the ice. ‘I’m afraid that’s my only experience of someone coming out of a coma.’
‘My contribution might be just as brief,’ Meg said, ‘but maybe not as colourful.’ She began to relax.
‘It must be an extraordinary feeling for you,’ the other woman said, getting serious again. ‘I can’t possibly imagine what it would be like.’
‘No, indeed,’ Nixon agreed. ‘Listen . . .’ He looked into Meg’s eyes and lowered his voice in a way that suggested he was speaking in absolute confidence. ‘I’ve been talking to Mr Maginnis here and I understand the – the problems – everything you’ve gone through.’
He paused and considered what he had just said.
‘Well, that’s overstating it a bit. No one knows what this is like except you. But we don’t want to make things any more difficult than they already are. To be perfectly honest, this is a case we don’t know much about. We’ve been catching up through the files. It was one neither of us worked on the first time round . . .’ he looked at Gilmour and she shook her head by way of confirmation, ‘. . . but it’s been handed to us now and we’ve got to deal with it as best we can.’
‘I can appreciate that,’ Meg told him.
‘So,’ Nixon went on, ‘I kind of thought that maybe the best
thing to do was go through what we know of what happened and take it from there.’ He raised his heavy eyebrows questioningly.
‘That’s OK by me,’ Meg said.
There was a folder on the table in front of him and he took out a photograph which he handed to her. ‘That’s Paul Everett.’
She accepted it delicately. There had been pictures in the papers but this glossy colour print seemed to make him more real.
As she studied the face, Nixon gave her a commentary. ‘Aged 27 when he was found murdered. US citizen, came from Portland in the state of Maine. Graduated from university with a science degree – chemistry his speciality – then head-hunted by Vectra, the big American pharmaceuticals company, and went to Harvard Business School. He had been in Northern Ireland for about six months before he was killed. Chief Executive of Vectra (NI) Ltd, established just outside Antrim. Seen very much as one of Vectra’s high fliers. He was sent here to set up the Northern Ireland operation and he would eventually have gone back to headquarters in New Hampshire with a big promotion.’
The face in the photograph was boyish. A lop-sided smile. Dark hair brushed to one side. Meg thought it looked like a snap from one of those American high school yearbooks.
Nothing registered, ‘It’s better than the picture in the papers,’ she said.
‘That’s the best we have of him,’ Gilmour told her. ‘It was the most recent, taken for his company ID card. That’s about the way he would have looked that night.’
Meg stared at it for longer than she needed to, then she looked up. ‘If you’re expecting some sudden dazzling revelation from me, then you’re in for a disappointment. I’ve never . . .’ She paused. ‘I was about to say that I’ve never seen him before in my life but’ – she handed the picture back – ‘the facts would kind of indicate otherwise, wouldn’t they?’
She could feel their eyes search her face, looking for anything that might be hidden in it, then Nixon nodded, as if satisfied, and took a sheet of paper from the file. He began to read, starting with the date.
‘Almost four years exactly,’ he noted. ‘At approximately 2.06 that morning, an emergency call was made from a public telephone.’
‘Do you mind if I write some of this down?’ Meg said.
‘Not at all,’ Gilmour answered.
‘Here, take this.’ Maginnis put his hand in his pocket and gave her his Mont Blanc ballpoint. Then he handed her a notepad from the desk. It bore the logo of a company that made ulcer medication.
Nixon went on. His accent was thick, rural. She found herself listening to his voice as well as hearing what he had to say.
‘The caller was a Mrs Fiona Jackson of 43, Willoughby Park off the Saintfield Road who said she believed there’d been a serious accident out on the road at Hydebank, Shaw’s Bridge direction. She said she and her husband had been driving in towards the city along the back roads from Lisburn and when they came round a bend they were confronted by two cars coming towards them, one trying to pass the other. She said it all happened very quickly and they managed to get past without hitting anybody but she believed one of the cars might have gone off the road. She asked for the police and an ambulance and said they were going back to have a look. So emergency services were tasked to the scene.’
He took another photograph from the folder but waited before passing it to her. ‘This is a picture of the wreckage of the car. Are you happy enough to look at it?’
She nodded and he handed it over.
‘It’s a red MGB soft-top, 1968 vintage, which the police at the time established was owned by Paul Everett. Beautiful machine. Not like that, of course.’
The picture had been taken in a police yard somewhere after the car had been removed from the scene. The rear of the vehicle seemed intact but the front was an incomprehensible twisted mess of metal. The red paint looked like blood.
Meg stared in disbelief.
‘I – I survived that?’
‘Yes,’ Gilmour said. ‘It’s amazing.’
‘I, I recognise the car. I mean – the type. But I never knew anyone with a car like that. At least not that I can remember.’
Remember. How often she used that word. How useless it was.
Nixon continued the narrative. ‘When the emergency people got there they found you in the vehicle and a young man lying beside it. It was very quickly established that he was dead but that you were still alive, although very seriously injured. They couldn’t free you on their own because your legs were trapped so a fire tender was sent for and they used cutting gear to get you out.’
He stopped to drink some of his coffee. ‘Now, when the medical examiner got a look at Paul Everett—’
‘By the way, who identified him?’ Maginnis butted in. The two officers gave him a sharp glance. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to interrupt.’
Nixon answered anyway, taking a second to check the file. ‘Well, they found ID on him, driving licence and so on, and established that he was the owner of the car, then they notified Vectra and the head of personnel came down to the morgue. Miss Winter here was identified by documents, too. Her hospital identity card, her licence as well. They were found in her handbag.’
Meg listened to them, detached. She couldn’t associate herself with any of it. It was as if they were talking about somebody else.
Nixon said: ‘Everett had some minor injuries from the actual accident. He seems to have been lucky up to a point, if you know what I mean, in that the crash itself didn’t kill him. But the medical examiner very quickly discovered that he had sustained severe trauma to the head, inconsistent with the accident but totally consistent with being beaten with a heavy object. In short, the back of his skull was smashed.’
Meg felt a shiver at the back of her neck.
‘With what, we don’t know,’ Nixon added. ‘No weaponwas ever found.’
Gilmour came in. ‘It had been raining heavily that night. By the time the police realised they had a murder on their hands instead of a fatal road traffic accident, the emergency services – the ambulance team, the firemen, not to mention the police themselves – all of them had been tramping over the scene, destroying any kind of evidence there might have been, like footprints and so on. Not very good.’
‘The postmortem examination of Everett revealed that he’d been drinking,’ Nixon said, ‘but it also revealed strong traces of cocaine in his system. Our drugs squad got interested. They’d been hearing rumours about an American doing a bit of business on the local scene. They searched his home and the dogs sniffed out more. Not a huge quantity, mind. Looked like it was for personal use.’
‘I don’t know anything about any of this,’ Meg said. ‘I know nothing about cocaine. I’ve never used it in my life. I don’t know anyone who has.’
She felt a bit agitated. She twisted Maginnis’s pen in her fingers. Gilmour spoke, her voice soft, calming. ‘It’s all right, Meg. We’re not trying to put you on the spot. We don’t think this had anything to do with you directly. There was certainly no cocaine as far as you’re concerned, that’s not in question. But both you and the dead man had had a lot to drink. Are you aware of that?’
She nodded.
‘That was a bit of a problem which the doctors had to navigate when they were trying to operate on you. When the accident happened you’d have been at least twice the legal limit for driving.’
Meg’s palms were moist. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said in a whisper.
‘You’re sure?’ Nixon said. It was a reflex response. ‘Of course she’s sure,’ Maginnis snapped. ‘What sort of a question is that?’
‘I didn’t intend—’ Nixon began.
Maginnis did not let him finish. ‘You’re already aware that Dr Winter’s suffering from a loss of memory. I’ve given you a summary of the psychologist’s report. What Dr Winter – Meg – has is a form of what is known as psychogenic amnesia, which has most likely been brought on by extremely traumatic events which have quite simply been obliterated from her mind. If she says she can’t remember, then you’re just going to have to take her word for it because she’s telling you the truth.’
Nixon said nothing. Gilmour gave Meg an understanding smile. ‘I’m sorry. We’re not trying to put any undue pressure on you but we do have to ask these questions. This is a murder case; a young man brutally beaten to death. We have to find out what we can.’
‘Believe me, I’d like to find out more, too,’ Meg said. ‘I’m just as much in the dark as you are.’ She looked at Maginnis, grateful for his sudden forthright defence of her, but surprised by it as well. She had never heard him raise his voice like that.
‘Then are you happy to go on?’ Gilmour asked.
She nodded.
Nixon started again. ‘When the police talked to the Jacksons, they said that when they went back to the scene after they’d made their phone call, they thought they saw a light for a time, coming from where the wrecked car was lying. But then it disappeared. Mrs Jackson said she thought she heard a noise but in the darkness she couldn’t see. She called out but no one answered and then the emergency services arrived shortly after that.’
‘What about the other car?’ Meg wondered. ‘The one that drove . . . us . . . off the road.’
‘Still a mystery,’ Nixon said. ‘The Jacksons didn’t get a number and they didn’t see the make, except they both thought it was a biggish car. But no one’s ever had any luck tracing it.’
Meg thought of something. ‘What were those people doing on the road so late?’
‘Mrs Jackson owned a shop in Lisburn,’ Nixon explained. ‘The burglar alarm had gone off and the police had called her. Her husband didn’t want her going out on her own so he had driven her over there to get the thing switched off and they were heading home again to the Saintfield Road where they lived. This would have been the most direct route, along the back roads.’
He stopped and closed the file, then put it down on the table with what seemed to Meg like an air of finality.
Gilmour took over. ‘There are several ways of looking at this. One is that the car drove the MGB off the road by accident and then fled the scene. Not very probable, given what subsequently happened to the unfortunate Mr Everett, unless you think that someone just happened to be waiting in the bushes at the time, knowing that’s where he was going to crash, or happened to be passing and decided on the spur of the moment to kill him. Hardly likely, wouldn’t you say? The second possibility is that the presence of this other car wasn’t a coincidence, that the killer was in it, that he ran you off the road, whether by accident or design, then went back and, well, you know the rest.’
She didn’t really. That was the trouble.
‘So now we come to your movements and those of Paul Everett that night,’ Nixon said. ‘We have some idea of what your intentions were: where you planned to be. Your friend Elizabeth Maguire helped.’
Elizabeth.
Elizabeth had told the police what she knew about that night. Dr Sands had mentioned that fact to her and at the time Meg had felt a sudden sense of betrayal which she knew was totally irrational. But now she felt it again.
Gilmour explained. ‘She contacted us after it happened. One of the officers on the case interviewed her. It’s all in the file. You called her that night, round about seven, wondered if she fancied going somewhere for a drink. You told her you’d had a hell of a day and you needed to go somewhere where you could let your hair down. You said you’d been looking in the paper and there was some kind of music thing down at the Clarendon Dock.’
Meg gave her a blank look.
‘It’s along near the ferry terminals. There’s a couple of bars there, very popular, the Rotterdam at one end and Pat’s Bar at the other. There’s an open space in front. Barrow Square, they call it. They have open air concerts.’
‘And did I go?’ Meg asked. It felt weird posing a question to which she, more than anyone else, should have the answer.
‘We don’t know for certain,’ Gilmour said.
‘If I did, it was the first time. I’m sure of that.’
Gilmour nodded. ‘Well, that’s more or less what Miss Maguire said, too. Neither of you had ever been, which is why you suggested giving it a go. You arranged to meet there at nine thirty. What happened after that, we don’t know. Your friend Elizabeth didn’t go, as it turns out, and so we don’t know whether you did or not.’
‘Elizabeth said some boyfriend or other came by,’ Nixon added. ‘She said she called you at home but you’d already gone. She also tried both of the bars to see if you were there but it was hopeless. All she could hear was the music drowning everything out. Nobody would take a message or try to look for somebody they’d never heard of. So, as far as Miss Maguire’s end of the story’s concerned, that’s it – oh except that when she was asked about Paul Everett she said she’d never heard of him.’
‘O’Malley,’ Meg corrected. ‘She’s Mrs O’Malley now.’
‘When did you last see her?’ Gilmour asked.
‘I can’t recall.’ She gave a little smile. ‘Now isn’t that a surprise?’ ‘So you see,’ Nixon said, ‘we’ve no idea whether you went to the Clarendon Dock or not. As soon as your friend told the police, they went down there and talked to the bar staff but nobody remembered you. There would have been a couple of hundred people milling about that night. It was needle-in-a-haystack stuff.’
‘And Paul Everett,’ Maginnis wondered.
‘Was he there?’ ‘Possible,’ Gilmour said, ‘although nobody could say for certain about him either. What’s definitely known is that he was at a dinner in the Europa Hotel, a business thing for a visiting United States Senator. A lot of American executives working over here were invited. It broke up around eleven thirty and everybody went home. Nobody knows what happened to Everett after that. But according to those who were there he seemed fine when he left. No one seems to know a whole lot about his personal life, who he mixed with. He lived on his own. He had a nice apartment in a converted old farmhouse near Ballinderry in County Antrim, not too far from the factory and handy for the airport, too. He did a lot of travelling back and forth between here and the States. And of course his company shipped a lot of stuff to and fro. It would have been a convenient cover for his cocaine supplies.’
‘He could have gone down to the Clarendon Dock after he left the Europa,’ Nixon said. ‘We just don’t know.’
‘Although we’ve no hard evidence,’ Gilmour said, ‘we tend to go along with the gut instinct of the officers who investigated at the time. Our theory is that somehow you met Everett, probably at the Clarendon Dock, and unfortunately you got caught up in something that was nothing to do with you.’ She shrugged. ‘Someone was after Everett, maybe, some drugs-related dispute most likely, outstanding debts, whatever, and he was trying to get away from them when he was run off the road. So, even though you’re alive and well, we’re no further on than we were four years ago and we won’t be unless or until you regain your memory.’
Meg looked at them. In their faces she could see no real concern as to whether they solved this case or not. She thought about what Gilmour had just said.
‘But nobody knows that. Outside this room, nobody knows that. The person who killed Paul Everett doesn’t know that. You saw the photograph in the paper, what it said. He’ll think I’m telling you everything that happened. What if he comes after me to shut me up?’
Nixon tried to reassure her. ‘I don’t think that’s likely to happen.’
‘How can you say that? How can you say that for certain?’
‘We’ll keep an eye on you,’ Gilmour said and smiled.
‘Oh really? When I’m in here maybe. But what happens when I get out? You can’t possibly watch over me then. Don’t pretend that you can.’
They said nothing for a few moments, sitting awkwardly with her indignation. She looked at the three of them, thinking that she was in the hands of two police officers half-heartedly working an old case that wasn’t theirs and a physician who for all his apparent concern saw her merely as an object, some kind of medical phenomenon, a trophy.
And how else did he view her, she wondered.
Ultimately these people were just doing a job. They didn’t care, not really, about what happened to her.
She felt alone and vulnerable. ‘There has to be a way,’ she said to no one in particular.
‘Of what?’ Maginnis asked.
She pointed towards the window. ‘Of telling whoever’s out there that I’m no threat to him.’