Chapter 49

Mary was unresponsive after that. When I helped her to her feet, she took my outstretched hands with a kind of welcoming gratitude and allowed herself to be led back to the front room where she sat on the sofa again and started to shiver. I went to the bedroom and grabbed a blanket to put around her shoulders. Better than my jacket.

Susan and I talked in the hall, kept the door open so we could see Mary.

“So what do we do?”

I took a deep breath. “We can’t let her take the blame for this. She’s…she’s been through a lot. I don’t think –”

“We lie?”

“Bend the truth.”

“How?”

“I killed Wickes. Self defence. After he killed Deborah, he was coming back for you and me. I finished him off.”

“I had him cuffed to the radiator.”

“So we uncuff him. You have a better story?”

She looked ready to say something, then cut herself off at the last minute. Spun around on her heels and punched out against one of the walls.

“You were in deep water last year, Steed. When they thought you killed that man at the Necropolis.”

“I did kill him.”

“In fear for your own life.”

I didn’t say anything.

Susan hesitated for a second, tried to catch my eyes as though she might see something in them.

I wasn’t sure she’d see anything she liked.

“The story works if I attacked him,” I said. “Can’t think of anyone on the force would question that.”

“And what about your business? I know you were on thin ice with the Association and the Security Council.”

I looked through into the front room at the girl with the tattered blanket round her shoulders, her music blaring, her body shivering.

“Sometimes you have to make the sacrifice,” I said, finally meeting her eyes. “We need to be together on this.”

She hesitated.

“Forget our friendship,” I said. “If we don’t agree on what happened tonight –”

“And what about Mary?” asked Susan, her voice insistent.

“I don’t – I think she’ll stick with the story. I think she’ll want to forget this. Go back to her life. Look at her.”

Susan did, peering through the door.

I said, “If I was her, I’d take any opportunity to erase this night.” When Susan turned back to look at me, I said, “Wouldn’t you?”

DCI Ernie Bright acted the professional in front of his men.

Had them clear up while he walked us to a cop car. We leaned against the body while he smoked a cigarette, tried to think of something to say.

Caught between professionalism and fatherly concern.

I noticed one of the coppers trying to talk to Mary as he led her out to a waiting car. She wasn’t saying a word. Hadn’t uttered a sound since she told me that Wickes deserved that axe in the back of the neck.

Ernie said, “Two bodies. The kitchen looks like a slaughterhouse.”

“The big bastard,” I said. “He killed Deborah Brown. The woman.”

Ernie nodded. “And who killed him?”

I hesitated.

Susan was standing beside me. Hadn’t said a word since her father showed up.

I remembered our conversation in the car coming over here.

Would she bring that up here?

I was willing her to stick to the script as we’d agreed. Someone had to take the blame. Who could shoulder the responsibility. Knew enough of guilt that they could shoulder someone else’s as well.

I started to open my mouth.

Susan said, “I did, sir.”

It was the sir that got me.

But I think it hit Ernie even worse.

I stood near the overgrown area that might once have been a vegetable garden. I could see the remains of canes and some signs of what might once have been an attempt to tame the weeds.

Ernie came and stood beside me.

I said, “She’s giving a statement?”

“To another officer. I can’t be involved.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“DI Lindsay will take charge of this investigation.” He shrugged. “Wish it could have been someone else, but there we are.” He was dancing around something else. I waited for him to finally get to the point. “So tell me…would she lie to protect you?”

“No,” I said. The lie came easy. But we’d both agreed: once the story was out, we would stick to it.

“Did you tell her about our little encounter the other day?”

I couldn’t say anything to that.

“Something in her face, McNee. She’s a good copper, and grand at the old bluff. But she could never fool her dad.” He seemed ready to smile at that, but dropped it fast before it was fully formed.

I hesitated for just a moment before I said, simply, “She’s your daughter. If you talk to her –”

“She’s my daughter,” he said. “And there are some things I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain to her.”

The next morning I woke up late, buried beneath heavy covers, feeling strangely detached from the world. I put my feet out on to the floor, stretched and tried to figure if I could separate the disjointed dreams from what had really happened.

I stumbled to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror.

Couldn’t say what looked back at me.

Not with any certainty.

“Tell me, son, what separates us from them.”

Three weeks before the accident that killed Elaine. Drinking with Ernie Bright at the Phoenix Bar on the Perth Road, tucked into a corner booth. A pep talk, if you like. He was fond of what he called informal training. Teaching the stuff the textbooks can’t or won’t.

“Honesty, son,” he said. “Honesty and standards. All that good stuff.” He smiled as he talked.

Looking back, I had to wonder if he believed it. Convinced himself of his own version of the truth? Because he was still hip deep with Burns and his crew in those days. A sacrifice of his principles for the greater good?

Smelled like shite to me.

“A good copper doesn’t have to lie or cheat to get what he wants. Or to stoop to the level of the criminal, you understand? He’s better than that. Appearances count.”

Don’t they just?

Something had been slipped under my door.

An envelope.

I tore it open to look inside. Photocopied police reports. A transcript. One I didn’t want to read.

Present at interview:

Mary Furst

DC Dorothy Shepherd

DCI Ernie Bright

Also present: Rebecca Simpson (supporter)

 

Mary was a minor in the eyes of the law. No matter how mature she might appear there were guidelines that dictated how they would interview her. At least one female copper, hence the inclusion of DC Shepherd who would lead the interview. And a supporter; an independent party to oversee the interview. In this case, Rebecca Simpson was a social worker assigned by the council to Mary Furst’s case. It could have been Jennifer, but Mary was refusing to speak to the woman who had raised her.

I could only imagine what was going through the girl’s head.

 

DC SHEPHERD: In your own words, Mary, I need you to tell us how Ms Brown made contact with you. MARY: Contact?

DC SHEPHERD: How did she make herself known to you?

MARY: She was my art teacher.

DC SHEPHERD: That’s not the whole truth, is it? MARY: I didn’t. No one told me the truth. DC SHEPHERD: We’re not here to talk about that.

That’s a matter –

DCI BRIGHT: For another time. A private conversation with her parents. Who I still think –

MARY: They’re not my parents.

DC SHEPHERD: But they brought you up. They raised you.

MARY: She was my teacher. I liked her. She listened to me. It was…I don’t know, like the first time I ever connected with anyone.

 

The first time she ever connected with anyone.

We get older, we forget how it was being a teenager. Lost in our own heads, figuring out the world; we’re the only ones going through these experiences.

You’re always looking for that connection. It’s why teenagers fall in love so easy. Why your parents always tell you to wait until you’re older before you decide you really love someone.

Jesus, the first time she ever connected with anyone…

The tragedy of it all was that everyone who knew Mary seemed to think they connected with her. Or they knew her. Or they understood her.

But she felt disconnected from them. For all her popularity, all her intelligence, she just wanted to know who she was.

I supposed Deborah had offered her a chance to discover that.

I remember reading about how twins, separated at birth, can grow up apart and when they finally meet there’s this intense spark. Like falling in love.

Is it the same with parents and their children? Just this sense of connection; an intense familiarity that breaks apart the whole world?

I skimmed through the transcript.

 

MARY: She was honest with me. Told me who she was. Said it had to be our secret.

DCI BRIGHT: You were coerced into –

MARY: I mean, no. I mean…She never made me do anything I didn’t want to do. Never forced me to feel anything for her. She wanted to protect me. You have to understand that.

 

I had to sit down. The transcript fell to the floor.

All Deborah Brown had ever wanted was to see her daughter. I got the feeling she had never asked the girl to accept her.

This woman who I had believed to be a psychopath. Unstable. Unhinged.

The number one rule of police work, the unwritten one. Not just on the Job but for life:

No one knows anything.

Everything is deceit and turnaround. Expectations count for shite.

I closed my eyes. Couldn’t face reading any further.