Hanlon sat on the bed cuddling Wemyss and looking at Aurora. The two of them were back in Hanlon’s hotel off the Royal Mile. McDonald had stayed at the house in Morningside, ‘cleaning up’.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Hanlon asked.
Aurora nodded. ‘I was thirteen.’ Her eyes were focussed, not on the wall of Hanlon’s hotel room with its anodyne print of Monarch of the Glen, but on events a decade or so previously. ‘I’d been at that school for a year. I was lonely – lonely and bored. He came down – he was staying at the Hilton in Park Lane. He took me up to town, bought me lunch, gave me wine, said we should go up to his room to look at the view, you could see all over London, you could see Buckingham Palace…’
Hanlon nodded. Aurora carried on, tonelessly. ‘We did some coke – I’d never had coke before – and we smoked a joint, which I had done before, and then he put his arm around me, said I reminded him of my mum how much like her I was… then. Well, I don’t need to tell you the rest.’
She stood up; tears were flowing. She paced angrily up and down. Hanlon remembered Griffiths’ words.
We were looking at this text by an author who had been sexually abused by a close relation and Aurora, well, she almost literally howled…
Well, you were right, Dr Griffiths.
‘It became a regular thing, every couple of months. I tried to say no; he said he’d tell my mum, tell her what a dirty whore her daughter was; that I had done all the running. I told myself it was my fault, that I was bad, that I deserved all this shit… I tried to blot it out, to escape. I took drugs, I fucked around… I felt I was worthless—’ she gave a mirthless laugh ‘—so I acted that way. Give a dog a bad name… Christ…’
‘And it stopped?’ Hanlon asked.
‘Yeah, when I was seventeen, after Mum died and we had the funeral I didn’t see him. It was like he’d forgotten about me. And then he got in touch with me about a year ago. I got back to the flat and he was sitting there with Morag. I hadn’t seen him for four years or so. He wanted “to resume our relationship”.’
Hanlon nodded. Aurora continued, ‘I told him to fuck off. I told him I’d rather die.’
‘It looked like he took you at your word,’ Hanlon said.
She nodded. ‘I know that now, but not until a couple of days ago. When Jamie later told me he’d been hired to kill me, I thought it couldn’t be him – do you know, I even thought it might have been my dad. That Millar had told him what he’d done to me, or rather he’d have said what we’d done, and that Dad literally wanted to kill me. How fucked up is that?’
She stood up and walked around the small room restlessly. ‘Anyway, before Graeme got in touch, I’d been clean about six months. I saw him that one time and I was back to square one. I went out and I got some gear and a bottle of vodka and I got absolutely fucked. For several days.’
Hanlon thought of the paintings hidden in Luke’s cupboard, a record of those days, Millar’s legacy. Shooting was maybe too merciful a death for him.
Aurora continued. ‘Morag looked after me. Then, I pulled myself back together again. I started going to NA, which is where I met Jamie and we became mates. Just mates. I’d had enough of sex with violent criminals. I think that’s why I like Luke so much – he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ She nodded to herself. ‘If you want the opposite of Millar, it’s Luke.’
Aurora sighed. ‘So now you know my past.’
‘But why did he want you dead now?’ Hanlon asked.
‘I got this weird text from him in January. He said he’d always loved me, I was the one, he had to have me back in his life. I think he’d really gone off the rails. Anyway, I told him my answer was the same. He texted back, “you’ve made your bed…” I didn’t want to tell you and Jamie in the club – I’d have had to tell you the whole story and at the time I couldn’t. It was still my dirty secret, like he owned me. But now he’s dead, I’m free of him and I want to be free of the lies too, and free of the shame.’
Hanlon nodded. ‘Sure, I understand.’ She’d got enough dark secrets and shameful behaviour in her own life. She could sympathise.
Aurora sighed. ‘You’re only as sick as your secrets, that’s what they say, isn’t it…? So what happens now?’
Hanlon said, ‘McDonald will clean up. Millar won’t be found. The police will assume he’s been killed by a rival – they already think he’s involved in a drugs turf war. I’m not going to tell anyone what happened. Neither will Jamie.’
‘And Julia?’ Aurora asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what McDonald’s plans are for her.’ And I really don’t care, she thought. ‘Whatever happens, she won’t be going to the police.’
‘What about me?’ Aurora asked.
Hanlon took a piece of the hotel stationery from the desk in her room and wrote a name and a phone number.
‘This woman is a therapist. I’ll be in touch with her so she knows who you are. Dr Morgan is very good. She’s based in London. Go and see her – I’ll make sure she makes time for you. You need to get out of Edinburgh for a bit. Griffiths will be sympathetic. Take some time off. And when you get back, there’s always Skype or Zoom. She’s expensive, but your dad’s paying.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re the one who saved my life.’ Hanlon shrugged.
Aurora walked over to her and hugged her. She said, ‘You didn’t give up on me.’ Hanlon could feel the wet warmth of her tears on her neck.
‘Neither did your father,’ Hanlon said. ‘You should speak to him.’
In the flat in Marchmont, Ray and Dougie were getting increasingly stressed. Robbo’s android phone sat on the coffee table while they stared at it. They were waiting for it to ring. For Millar to call. They couldn’t open it. Ray had used Robbo’s thumb originally after they’d dealt with them, pressing it to open it and send the message to Millar, but Ray didn’t want to cut it off and take it with them to try and do it again. That was exactly the kind of thing Millar would have done.
‘Where the fuck is he?’ wondered Ray. They wanted the waiting to be over. They wanted the much-feared confrontation. Where the hell was he? He said he’d be there within the hour – that was four hours ago. Millar was never late.
‘He maybe went back to Glasgow?’ Dougie suggested. ‘Or he’s in his hotel?’
‘Well, surely to God he’d still call?’
Another hour went by. Where was he? Why wasn’t he calling Robbo?
‘Your turn to watch the street,’ said Dougie. They’d been taking turns on keeping a watch for Millar’s arrival.
‘Fuck it,’ said Ray. He couldn’t take this waiting around for nemesis to call any longer. ‘I’m gonna call him.’
‘How?’ said Dougie.
‘On my phone.’
‘On your phone?’ Dougie looked aghast. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t stand the waiting, Dougie.’
Dougie watched as Ray, pulling a face, found and pressed Millar’s number.
He listened, then put the phone down.
‘Did it go to voicemail?’
‘No.’ Ray’s face was exultant. ‘It’s completely dead!’
‘What, as in not working at all?’ Dougie asked.
Ray nodded. ‘No ringtone, no voicemail.’ The implication sank in. Millar would never go anywhere without his mobile; he was addicted to it, nearly as much as drugs and Scotch. It was unthinkable that he wouldn’t pick up. It wasn’t as if it were out of charge – something irrevocable had happened to that phone.
Had McDonald added Millar’s scalp to those of Jordan McKenna and Chris Harvey?
‘Do you think he’s…?’ Dougie drew a finger across his throat, expressively.
‘I don’t know, Dougie, but I think we can dare to hope. I think we can do that much.’
Ray and Dougie embraced. Dougie’s shoulder rubbed the puncture wound under his chin. I’ll bet it was her, he suddenly thought. I’ll bet it was Hanlon.