Chapter 15

“When she came to see me, I got that spark. You know the spark?” Wickes paused, fixed those wild eyes on me, looking for something. Nodded, more to himself than me. “Aye, you know the spark,” he said, “Can see that, at least. Wife?”

I held up my hand. No ring. Said, “She died.”

Wickes nodded, looking serious again. “Well, this lass, I guess you felt the spark with her. Electric. First time I saw her, I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”

I didn’t want to disillusion him.

First time I saw Elaine, I was thinking, here’s another drunk driver and then was glad to see someone sober roll down the window.

No sparks.

Maybe a connection, though. Tender. Fragile. Fleeting. One that would build, evolve, become something else entirely.

I’m not sure I believe in love at first sight. I think sometimes we want to see it; we fall in love with being in love. Retrospectively we create that fantasy of instant chemistry, desire, attraction. But the truth is, that kind of immediate spark with another person, that absolute certainty that here is the person for you…no, I can’t believe in it. Love builds. Grows. Evolves.

I didn’t say any of this to Wickes.

People don’t like having their beliefs challenged.

“So I helped her. Because I couldn’t say no. Not to this woman. Not with her story.”

He admitted fully that this was done, at least in part, for selfish reasons. “Did I know it at the time? Fuck knows, eh? We don’t always have the idea why we do anything. No one knows nothing, eh? I just had this feeling that I needed her near me. That we were supposed to be together. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Not that I want to bring up bad feelings, but you remember?”

“I remember.” And maybe I did at that.

He told me how he kept her close. Protected her. The cynical part of me thought it sounded as though he had made her dependant upon him.

It was what she asked for, after all. She came to him for protection. Looking for a way out.

How could he refuse?

But I dismissed the idea that he somehow twisted their relationship; manipulated her into falling for him the same way he had for her. Sure, he was over the top and maybe a little too in touch with his emotions, but there was something about him I liked. He appeared innocent in his beliefs, and the twinkle in his eye when he laughed…maybe that’s what Deborah had finally fallen in love with.

He talked like it was an instant thing, their love affair, but I sensed it took time and maybe even a little coercion on his part. And sometimes I got the impression that even he realised how ludicrous he sounded. Just a dip of the head here or a shift of the gaze there that told me he was self-editing.

Touching as it was, his story was drifting. Two cups of coffee, both gone cold. If we had all the time in the world, I might have let him keep talking. But at the centre of this story, there was a missing girl. She couldn’t afford to wait.

I said, “Tell me how all of this connects to Mary Furst. Her disappearance.”

And that’s when he hesitated.

Never a good sign.

It started out with little things. Temper tantrums that were wildly out of proportion with what started them. Melodramatic behaviour. He’d come home late, she’d throw a plate at his head. The phone would ring, she’d start to tear up as though she thought death was on the other end of the line.

Wickes let it pass for the first few months. Who could blame her for being paranoid? After what Burns’s hired muscle had put her through she had every right to nerves and anxiety. These would disappear in time. Wickes was sure of that.

Except they didn’t.

They got worse.

“She became a different person. Started to live out this paranoid fantasy life. Self harming.” He blinked a few times in rapid succession. I couldn’t see a trace of tears or broken capillaries in his whites. “Telling me someone else did it even when I knew that there was nobody who could have. She would leave the house without telling me where she was going.” He talked like she’d escaped, broken the walls of some compound.

How close was the protection he offered?

Even he had to admit that perhaps it was too close. Smothering, maybe. “You ever had that moment of clarity? When you realise that you were in the wrong all the time?” He told me with no hint of self-deprecation or regret about what he did to make her feel better.

“That’s when I bought her the dog.”

That was when it became clear to Wickes that any attempt to substitute for the child she had lost was doomed to failure. Maybe even made her behaviour worse.

He started to spend more time at home. Became worried for her state of mind, started to fear that she might somehow kill herself.

It was art that finally saved her. “That’s what she did before, when she was at university, before all of this crap took over her life. She was an art student. Duncan of Jordanstone, the art college. She was good, too. Know when they call someone promising? Aye, she was that and more.”

Wickes took the credit for reawakening her interest. “It saved her. Externalised all the shite she bottled up inside, you know? Her fear. Her need to make up for what she saw as her mistakes.” He stopped talking, cocked his head to one side as though thinking back on what he just said. “I sound like a psychologist, right?”

Without thinking, I corrected him: “A psychiatrist.”

That seemed to unnerve him. Struck some chord. Maybe he hadn’t expected me to know what he was talking about.

He hid a lot behind the jokes and bluster.

Maybe more than I’d realised.

But the slip lasted only a moment. And then he was talking like nothing had happened. Just pushing through, maybe hoping I’d get caught in his slipstream, start to doubt I’d even observed the hesitation.

He told me how he persuaded her to start painting again. Encouraged her to apply to a local art college and finish her training. Get her teaching degree.

“She needed a life. She’d come to rely on me completely. I ask, is that healthy?” The hint of a laugh on the horizon, but it never came.

Deborah got a job. Art teacher at a Glasgow High School.

Her vocation.

Wickes told me how she appeared to finally put the memories of her daughter behind her. Their lives started to approach normal. “I loved her,” he said. “I love her. All I wanted was for us to be together.”

I expected him to add, “and for her to be happy,” but he didn’t.

Of course, nothing good ever lasts. About five years later, he realised that the lies had started again. Little things. Inconsistencies and hesitations in her stories. They seemed insignificant at first but took on more weight with their consistency.

She began working longer hours. Attending more after school conferences. Leaving earlier in the morning.

He did some work. Put that old training into practice. Aye, he wasn’t affiliated, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t an investigator, didn’t have the skills.

He found out that she’d transferred schools. From Glasgow to Dundee. Back to the city she told him she’d left behind.

No wonder she was working longer hours. Taking all these trips out of town. “I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight,” he said, and there was a tremor in his voice that should have been regret but came across as harder and more vicious. Subtle enough, I couldn’t be sure if I’d imagined it.

“You know the work,” he said. “It takes time. And I didn’t want to be wrong. Didn’t want to accuse her of anything, maybe kick off more problems. Who knew why she was coming back, right? So I tried to keep it on the QT. Figured maybe she got a transfer, didn’t want to tell me because she knew what I might think. It’s been fourteen years. I doubted that eejit Burns even remembered who she was, eh? And then…I got a look at her email account. Broke in, found out she’d been in touch with the girl. With Mary.”

I nodded. Could figure where this was going.

“I was going to confront her before I realised she was gone. Last email on the account, she had arranged to meet the girl a few hours before she was reported as missing.”

“She give a location?”

“Oh, aye.” Wickes shook his head, a gesture of disappointment more than a contradiction. “The train station, you believe that? I was only twelve hours too late.”

By the time he got there, she was long gone.

And, of course, so was Mary Furst.

Her daughter.

The baby she’d never really been able to let go off. To forget.

I couldn’t help thinking of Deborah in the dark, cradling the corpse of the dog she had killed.

Hoping she could tell the difference between a pet and a human being.