Chapter 43

The first Deborah Brown knew of Wickes was a phone number scrawled on a piece of paper.

A friend had given it to her, telling her in no uncertain terms that she was in trouble. That this man could help her.

And she needed help. She knew it, then.

She needed a white knight.

Or she was going to die.

I asked, “How did your friend know Wickes?”

Deborah shook her head. Her gaze slipped to the floor. She swivelled one foot. A child-like gesture. “I don’t know. This girl, she was in my class. She…I didn’t have many friends, not really. She…she listened. I think he may have done some work for her dad, I don’t know.”

I let it go. It could slide for now, I figured. We’d get the full story once this situation was under control.

“I knew that in my heart. That unless someone took me away from everything, I was going to die. By my own hand. Or…someone else’s.”

Three nights after the incident where she broke into the Furst household and watched their – her – baby sleeping, she was woken from a light sleep by someone banging on the door of her sister’s place. She’d been staying there since leaving the flat she’d been sharing with other art students.

The reason for the move?

She told me, personal issues.

Given the rest of her story, that could have meant anything.

“Couldn’t have been past nine in the evening,” she said, talking about the banging on the door. She’d been sleeping a lot in those days. For all she slept – and with the black depression that was shrouding her more than ever, she was sleeping a lot – she never felt like she could get enough rest. She was always tired, crawling back under the covers the moment she tried to get up. The world was too much for her. All she wanted was an escape.

I understood the feeling.

Wished I could reach out, let her know she wasn’t alone.

But I wasn’t talking to her as a friend. Not as a confidante or a sympathetic ear.

I was an investigator.

Searching for the truth. Couldn’t afford to distort it by throwing my own feelings into the mix.

Detachment. My professional watchword.

The one quality I strived for and rarely reached.

“They were ugly,” she told me. “The two of them. I remember that. One of them had stupid hair, looked like Peter Stringfellow jacked out on steroids, you know?” She laughed at little at the memory. “They told me that I knew why they were there.” And she did, but claimed not to anyway; some tiny part of her hoping they’d believe her, think they’d made a mistake and just walk away.

Didn’t happen of course.

The two of them beat her. Hard.

“They just walked right in. I tried to close the door, but they kicked it back. I remember stumbling back and closing my eyes. Opening them again and seeing this fist right in front of me. Then I didn’t know what had happened until I was on the floor. They kicked me, you know? I couldn’t help but remember when I was six years old and this boy thought it would be funny to punch me in the stomach. This older boy – Gary, that was his name, Gary Smith, I had such a crush on him – he stepped in and grabbed the other boy. Told him, you don’t punch girls in the stomach. It’s wrong. Plain wrong.”

I remembered being told the same thing when I was young. Among the many sins you could commit – and given Scotland’s Calvinist heritage, the litany of sins were a shared memory we all had of childhood – punching a girl in the stomach ranked somewhere just short of genocide.

The two thugs beat Deborah hard. Landed her in hospital. A broken wrist, shattered ribs and black eyes you couldn’t disguise with just a pair of sunglasses like they did in the films.

She lied about what happened, of course. Knew that the attending doctors in the A&E didn’t believe her. But then, she knew what would happen if she told the truth.

She made Kathryn keep quiet, too.

“It was our first real fight as sisters,” she told me. “I mean, we fought over things when we were younger, but this was the first time it felt like maybe there was no way back from what either of us said that night. I’m amazed she ever talked to me again.”

Say what you like about their methods, the hired muscle had made their point.

The worst part was that I knew David Burns wouldn’t have given a fuck about the pain Deborah suffered. For all his grandiose talk of being a family man in touch with the people, he was a cold-hearted bastard who wouldn’t blink twice at any atrocity committed in his name.

But, of course, he wasn’t so cold hearted that he would get his own hands dirty. Oh, no. He was too much of a fucking coward for that.

Deborah told me she needed air.

I let her step out the back door. Everything was under control. We had time.

What was important: Mary was safe. We knew where she was. The ticking clock had turned mute.

Susan had been standing in the hallway. I didn’t know for how long. She came in when Deborah went out the back door and reached out to place her hand on my arm. She squeezed gently.

“It’s a mess, aye?”

I nodded.

She said, “Mary’s fine. In case you were wondering.”

It felt like a rebuke, although there was nothing in the way she spoke that came across as vicious.

I looked at the back door, which sat ajar.

“I’m glad.”

“I heard what she was saying.”

I nodded, kept looking at the door. “She never meant the girl any harm.”

“But she has to understand –”

I cut Susan off, waving my hand. Didn’t want to hear what she had to say.

“You talk a lot about being detached,” she said. “How a good investigator never involves himself in the lives of his clients. How you sit back, refuse to let your emotions get the better of you. Great delusion, Steed. You’re nothing but emotions. Why else did you stick with this case?”

I pretended that I hadn’t heard. “She’s scared for her daughter, you know.”

“But scared of what? That business with Burns, if she hadn’t come back –”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

I’d taken my eyes from the door. Hadn’t noticed Deborah come back inside.

She said, “His name is Wickes. And he’s a killer. He was going to kill Mary. Because I loved her. Do you understand? I had to protect her.”

Wickes.

Charming, empathetic and sweet. That’s how Deborah described him. At least, her first impressions.

He came to her. She’d called that number, spoken to him and the next day he showed up at her door. Overnight train.

Who could resist a damsel in distress?

That was what he said. Patronising? Perhaps, but I knew what he was like, how his earnestness could make you believe almost anything he said.

He listened to her story without interruption. Didn’t ask for clarification, justification or any of that bullshit. Took her at her word. When she was done, he said, “You don’t deserve any of this.”

She told him she didn’t know why she’d called. Didn’t know what he could do.

In the end, she asked him to help her escape. Not just Burns and his thugs, but her mess of a life. She needed to start over again. Hit the reset button. Give herself a second chance.

Maybe that was how she could get rid of this cloud that had hung over her for so long. The one she thought would be lifted when she had the child. When she worked her way into the affections of the Furst family. When she did something that might finally give her life the meaning she thought had been missing.

He did as she asked.

Because he was smitten.

“When he came through the door, he had this look like he’d just been hit on the head by a falling slate, you know? I thought he was handsome, too.”

Deborah smiled at the memory. For a moment, all the worry that had gathered in her features seemed to melt away and I saw this look in her eyes that seemed innocent. A glimpse of who she used to be, perhaps.

Susan said, “This was the man you just called a killer? A psychopath?”

“Don’t all the girls love the bad boys.”

I didn’t have to look at Susan to know she wasn’t holding back the sneer.

“When did he change?” I asked.

Deborah looked at me, and that innocence that had momentarily overtaken her was again replaced by the hardness that she had grown into. She didn’t appear older, exactly. Just tougher. The kind of woman who wasn’t going to take shite from anyone anymore.

“He changed,” she said, “Slowly. Or it seemed that way to me. Maybe I was just trying to fool myself. Who wants to admit, after all, that they’ve made that kind of mistake? That the man they find themselves falling in love with is just as likely to kill them as kiss them.”

Susan said, “Tell us.”