Dead Lovely (16 page)

‘Chas, don’t make me look, please.’

But the gentleness of his hand and then the expression on his face made me stand up and follow him to the opening.

It was dark in the shadow of the cliff, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything but black. I moved closer, dreading the sight of Sarah, the best friend I’d killed and left in this place. I was closer now, my head in the darkness, my eyes adjusting slowly to the black, something coming into view now, something white, red …

‘Krissie! Krissie, wake up! Krissie, can you hear me?’

Chas and one of the inspectors swirled into view above me and the huge sky was blue and innocent for the brief moment between unconsciousness and reality.

I sat bolt upright.

‘Jesus. What? How?’

From the look on the inspectors’ faces, we all felt the same; we all wanted to scream in horror at the bath of blood the body swam in, at the open mouth where a three-inch spider was propped on its perfect web, at the sinews of flesh that dribbled from the severed arms, and at the gouged-out eyes of Doctor Kyle McGibbon.

It took Chas a while to convince me that I hadn’t killed Kyle, because I just couldn’t get my head around it. How else could Kyle be in the crevice? After all, I’d been mad as an ox ever since that illicit shag. Maybe I’d pushed Kyle, not Sarah? Maybe

Sarah wasn’t even on the cliff that night? ‘Sarah was here,’ said Chas, pointing me in the direction of the detectives, who were placing an item of women’s underwear in a plastic bag.

‘Oh God!’ the detective said, holding Sarah’s soiled pants away from his face between two gloved fingers.

The police investigation kicked into action with the arrival of the chief inspector. I sat and watched as they sniffed and brushed before moving us back to the place where it had all begun: the Kingshouse Hotel – where we had watched Germany beat England, where I had lain underneath Kyle’s
thrusting
body, and where I had run off into the darkness,
mortified that Sarah was right, that I was unworthy and undeserving of motherhood.

The police set up in the hotel, lining up everyone in chairs in the foyer to be interviewed in turn. I looked around me. The only person I remembered properly was the blonde waitress who had been snogging Matt on the dance floor the night it all started. And that made me think.

Matt. He was there when I walked away that morning. He’d said something – he’d better watch out, what goes around comes around. He had forced himself on me. He had looked at me with evil eyes in Inverarnan and in this very hotel. He had stalked us. Perhaps he had killed Kyle. Perhaps he was so sexually deviant that he had taken Sarah’s dead body, and … Oh my god, what had he done with Sarah’s body?

I rushed into the interview room and told them about Matt and then listened as the inspector radioed Highland headquarters.

‘We’re looking for a twenty-five-year-old man, blue eyes, blond matted hair, hiking gear, with a LOVE tattoo on his upper left arm, very large hands, carrying a red tent on his grey-blue rucksack, probably dressed in khaki shorts and a bright yellow T-shirt that says
I AM NOT GAY!
in black italic lettering.’

The radio crackled an irregular whoosh: ‘Could you be more specific?’ the voice sniggered.

I waited in the bar while the rest of the hotel staff were questioned one at a time. They all looked at me suspiciously, especially the blonde waitress Matt had been with. Not just suspiciously, but angrily, as if to say ‘Maniac-murderer-bitch!’

The waitress’s interview seemed to be
interminable
but eventually the door opened. It wasn’t the waitress who emerged, though; it was the
inspectors
– and they did not call in the next hotel worker, they walked directly over to me. What were they going to say? They had found Matt? Arrested him? Would they say he had confessed to other murders as well? That he had taken Sarah’s body to his damp little cellar to make a set of coffee mugs out of her femurs?

One of the officers ushered me into the makeshift interview room and sat me down next to Matt’s waitress bird.

‘Krissie, you’ll be charged with assault. Maybe attempting to pervert the course of justice. But you’re not a suspect.’

‘You found Matt,’ I said, nodding.

‘No, Matt’s not guilty of anything.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Sarah McGibbon …’

‘Yes?’

‘Sarah McGibbon is alive.’

I rang Mum and Dad. The hearing was at six and if we hurried I would make it. Sarah was alive. I had not killed her. She had left small bloody footprints along the heather, which strongly suggested she had killed her husband and fled the scene. And if more
evidence
was needed, it was available, because the cute waitress Matt had been with saw her run down the trail like a mad ghost in men’s clothing and get in the black four-wheel drive that had arrived in the middle of the night. The cute girl had been bemused and had told several of her colleagues about it over lunch.

But Kyle was dead because of me. If I hadn’t gone down on him in the tent, hadn’t slept with him in the hotel, hadn’t pushed Sarah off the cliff, Kyle would be alive. I had sent him to his grave.

At the same time, I felt elated. I hadn’t actually physically
killed
anyone. Thank you, Lord, I said
over and over and over again as the hills became farmland became country park became the ugly grey pebble-dashed walls of Glaswegian bungalows. I had not murdered my best friend. I did not have to live with the guilt in a smoky wee room with spookily vacant eyes and bedraggled hair. If given the chance, I could try to be a good mother to my child.  

It took a while to persuade the police to let me go to the hearing, for I was a material witness and there were questions to be answered. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘He’s sick and he’ll be crying … Let me go to the Children’s Hearing. It’ll only take half an hour. Then my parents can look after him till you’re finished with me.’  

They relented on the condition they escort me there.  

As we approached the Children’s Hearing, I ran things over in my head. The pros, as the panel would see it, for me keeping my son were as follows:  

I was the child’s mother.  

I would fill the rest in later …

The cons for me keeping my child would be:  

I was suffering from postnatal depression.  

I was an alcoholic.  

I had a history of drug use.  

I had left the child alone on two occasions.  

I was the neighbourhood – hell, the country’s – slut.  

I was an adulteress.

I had pushed my best friend over the edge of a cliff and then left her for dead, hidden in a cave.

I had to be optimistic, I told myself. So,
optimistically,
I added: But it was all a mistake.

If I were writing a report for the Children’s Hearing on myself, it wouldn’t be good. In fact, it would be downright bad. I would use sentences like:

Ms Donald seems unable to prioritise her child within her chaotic lifestyle.

There is little evidence to show that Ms Donald can provide consistent and secure care for her son.

Ms Donald showed no insight into her own
behaviour
and the impact that this behaviour might have on her child.

The writer has little confidence that Ms Donald can work with the department to improve her
parenting
skills …

‘Look at me, Kriss.’ It was Chas, trying to calm me down. ‘You’ve made mistakes, but you’re a good person and we’ll work everything out. Just tell them how you feel.’

With the police car waiting outside, I ran into the building with Chas and one of the detectives in tow. ‘You stay here,’ I said to Chas, and then went inside and took my seat at that awful table again. The twenty-eight-year-old-arse-with-cowlick who’d accused me (rightly) of being judgmental months earlier, sat opposite me with two other panel members. Mum,
Dad and Ms Twin-set and Pearls Social Worker sat next to me, and the reporter sat at the end. They were here to review the child protection order, the reporter said, and to make a decision about what is best for the child. Did I have anything to say?

‘Yes,’ I coughed. The word stuck in my throat; no arrogance, no aggression. I did have some things to say.  

First, I wanted to apologise for the mistakes I had made – for leaving Robbie alone, drinking slightly too much, working too hard, and – I looked at the guy with the cowlick – for being judgmental in the past. Being a mother is the hardest thing in the world, I said. I’d never realised how hard.  

Then I begged for help. I would see a counsellor, stop drinking, live with Mum and Dad, take my medication, anything. ‘But please, please,’ I begged, ‘let me be the one to look after him.’  

Pearls spoke for too long in the local social work dialect called Jargonish, which left the three panel members to make their decisions like reality talent show judges.  

‘I have made my decision and …’  

Long pause.

‘… And I would like to recommend that the child be returned to the mother, with some voluntary social work support, to get her on track again.’

An identical recommendation followed, before it was the arse-with-cowlick’s turn. He looked at me
for the first time since that hearing fourteen months before and said, with surprising tenderness, ‘That’s unanimous. Robbie should be with his mother.’

I was so happy I could have hugged him, that little softy who was doing a good decent job and not getting paid, and I was almost about to when the reporter at the end of the table said, ‘You can collect Robbie from your friend whenever you like.’

‘What?’

‘Your friend, Sarah McGibbon.’

‘
Sarah McGibbon?
’

‘She picked him up from the foster carer first thing this morning.’

I hyperventilated all the way to Sarah’s house. She had been cheated on, lied to, assaulted and buried alive. She had gouged out her husband’s eyes and sawn off his arms. And now she had Robbie. What would she do next? What would she do with my little boy?

Maybe nothing, I told myself. Maybe nothing. Maybe she would look after him, love him. After all, a baby was all she’d ever wanted.

‘His medicine!’ I said. ‘Check if she took his medicine!’ If she took Robbie’s antibiotics and
paracetamol
, I figured, then in her own fucked-up way it would show that she still had Robbie’s best interests at heart.

Everyone got on the job of trying to find out if Sarah had taken Robbie’s medicine from the foster parents. After twelve phone calls and seven minutes we discovered that she hadn’t.

Oh God, I thought to myself, she has no
intention
of looking after him.

The storm doors to Sarah’s sandstone semi were locked. There were no lights on, and there was no car in the driveway. I opened the car door before we’d even stopped and sprinted over to where the spare key was kept. It was gone, so the police kicked in the door. There was no-one in. I checked every room, but each one seemed emptier than the last, none more so than the nursery Sarah had
meticulously
decorated. Tiny Tears, twenty-nine years old but still in pristine condition, was lying in the cot.

I jumped back in the police car and the siren went on. Where could she have gone?

Her mother’s?

Her father’s?

Loch Katrine?

The airport?

We sped back the way we had come, screeching to a halt outside Sarah’s mother’s building.

I ran out and pressed the button that said Morgan.

There was no answer.

‘Shit.’ I tried again.

No luck. A third attempt …

‘Yes?’ The voice I wanted to hear.

‘Mrs Morgan, it’s Krissie Donald.’

‘Krissie! Hello.’

‘I need to come in. It’s urgent.’

The buzzer sounded and I bolted up the stairs to the third floor.

She opened the door calmly.

‘Is Sarah here?’

‘No.’

‘Have you heard from her?’

‘No.’

‘Listen, Kyle’s dead, and she’s gone off with my baby.’

‘Oh dear Lord!’ she said. ‘Why me? That girl! Will I never have peace?’

I had no patience for her self-obsessed melodrama. ‘Mrs Morgan, you have to call 999 immediately if you see her!’

The police took calls as we drove. Another policeman radioed to tell us Sarah’s dad was lying drunk in his council flat and had not seen her since he’d asked her for money two years earlier. ‘
Tight-arsed
bitch,’ he’d said, apparently, before pouring himself another Buckfast.

She hadn’t tried to leave the country, police
headquarters
informed us. They’d checked the airports.

She’d withdrawn money in Glasgow around eight-thirty am, but had not used any credit cards.

It took us forty minutes to get to Loch Katrine and when we did the local police had already checked the house. Though they’d seen no sign of
Sarah having been there recently, they did want to show us something.

A police officer was waiting at the front door. ‘No one’s been here for a while by the looks, but come in and check this out.’

I followed the police officer into the master bedroom, where he stopped in front of a tipped-over cupboard. Behind it was a dusty alcove-room.

There’s always one, isn’t there, in stories about mad people? Locked rooms with bad lighting and pictures and clippings all over the wall. Only the pictures are usually of potential victims and the clippings are of casualties. In this case, as the single bulb swung, pictures of a smiling face came into view.

The man getting an award in LA.

Getting into his car in London.

Getting married in Glasgow.

Getting reviewed in the
Guardian.

Getting out of hospital in Islington.

All the photos had been scribbled on with angry black pen.

And the man in question – Mike Tetherton.

‘That’s Sarah’s stepdad,’ I said.

Chas walked into the room and saw the pictures. His face changed and his whole body went stiff.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, panicking because it seemed we had run out of leads to find Robbie. Mike Tetherton hadn’t been part of Sarah’s life since
she was six. She’d never mentioned him and hadn’t even invited him to her wedding.

Chas led me to the living room and sat me down on the sofa. ‘Mike Tetherton is the man I assaulted,’ he said.

‘What? What’s that got to do with anything? We need to find Robbie.’

‘Remember when you vomited in your mum’s attic?’

‘When I was looking at the jewellery box?’

‘Sarah’s stepdad gave it to you.’

He was looking at me intensely, waiting to see something in my eyes, and initially it confused me. Then he said, ‘When you were six, Krissie.’

It was such an innocent thing in itself, the box, embroidered pink flowers encrusted with silver glitter. Such a pretty thing, the white ballerina. Such a lovely tune, ‘Doctor Zhivago’, pinging out
mournfully.

Tears shuddered out of me as my eyes filled with the memory.

I had never bought all that stuff about repressed memories and I used to hate social workers who went on and on about it. The idea that people could bury stuff in their minds and just forget had seemed ridiculous. Real experiences couldn’t be brought back to the surface by a smell or a sound or an object.

I was wrong. It was like a whole piece of my life flew into the window, smashed through the glass,
and fell down dead at my feet. There it was. Very sudden, very distressing, and very ugly.

He was so nice, Mike, I remembered. I used to beg to go to Sarah’s and play because we got crisps whenever we wanted and even watched
Prisoner Cell Block H
once, which my dad had banned because it was ‘that bloody lesbian show’. And even after the first time, when we went to the guest bedroom to read some of Mike’s Noddy books, and Sarah went into the en suite for a pee, and even after he accidentally spilled a glass of Ribena on me and took my clothes off to dry me with a towel, even after this first time, I still wanted to play there more than anywhere else in the whole world.

It was only after the next time, when there were no crisps and no Ribena and no Noddy books that I started to change my mind. Sarah went in for a pee again, and as I had no goodies to distract me, I noticed that he locked the door of the en suite from the outside and the door of the bedroom from the inside and that he did not talk with his sweet smooth voice but with a hard one that said: ‘Just lie there and be quiet.’

The guest bedroom was filled with toys. The guest bed was so pretty, with a fluffy pink and mauve
patchwork
quilt. There was a video recorder set up in the corner. He was a man, but he seemed to like pink and mauve and Noddy and Big Ears. I didn’t think any of this was unusual at the time; a six-year-old doesn’t.

I did think to ask him if I would get any crisps and he said only if I lay down and kept quiet. So I did, and afterwards I not only got crisps but the most glorious jewellery box I had ever seen.

Mum almost forced me to have a sleepover at Sarah’s not long after. She had been called into work, and was annoyed with me for having a tantrum and making her life hard.

An hour after Mike had generously sent his wife off for a night out with the girls, I could hear Sarah banging on the door of the en suite but not helping me.

Afterwards I was surprised at the re-emergence of his lovely honey-gravel voice.

‘She and Sarah played Twister. I’m afraid her wee leg got a bruising,’ he said when Mum picked me up.

One more time after that, and some blood which kept on coming so I had to make up a story about falling off my bike, and then I wrapped up Mike Tetherton and his hard bit and put them away and never thought about him again until Loch Katrine.

I was still crying when Chas explained about the newspaper article in the attic. It was about Marie Johnston. She’d been there too, positioned in front of that camera, that recorder, the little blossom. She had told her mum, but he’d got away with it.

Chas told me gently that that was why my mum let it lie. She didn’t want me to go through what Marie had gone through. What was the point? Marie had been examined by social workers and doctors and police and her mum had refused to let her out to play for weeks on end and her father told her never to wear skirts again and she and her brother became weird at school and no-one wanted to play with them.

I realised that was why Sarah had always watched out for me while I counted bricks at Central Station, why she gave me money when I needed it through uni, why she made freezable meals for me, why she took me on the West Highland Way. She had
protected
me ever since, because she hadn’t been able to when we were little.

I looked at Chas sitting beside me on the sofa.

‘Stop!’ I said, coming back to the real world at last. ‘There’s no time for this.’

‘But don’t you see?’ Chas said. ‘She’s getting revenge – killing Kyle, stealing Robbie – it’s like a list of things to do …’

I finished Chas’s sentence for him: ‘She’s going to get Mike Tetherton.’