‘Found out? Found out what?’ Alice asked, puzzled.
‘That he wasn’t the dad.’
‘Do you know who the dad was?’
‘Of course I know. I was, I am.’
Noting the sergeants exchanging glances, Mair bellowed at them, ‘I know what you’re bloody thinking, but you’re wrong! It wasn’t incest and that’s not why he’s the way he is, it was the birth! I was adopted by Teresa’s parents when I was 10. Okay? You must be sick, the pair of you. I took their name, Mair. We are not blood relations, I’ve got no fucking blood relations. I don’t know how it happened with Teresa, it shouldn’t have, but it did, and just the once, believe it or not. But it was not incest. Davie should have been perfect. You’ve seen him, he would have been, if it wasn’t for those fucking doctors. Teresa and I knew from the moment he was born that he was mine. There’s photos of me as a baby and he was the split. Got the same birthmark even.’
‘How are you so sure that Sammy never knew?’
‘I told you. I made certain. When I saw him, before, like, we had a wee chat, I brought some cans and he was happy to share. I asked him if he fancied having a kid with Shona and he said no, one was enough for him. I said how come he never saw Davie? He said he didn’t care, and never wanted children anyway, didn’t like them. Sammy. He was just a fucking animal. I’d have looked after Davie even if he wasn’t mine. I’d have done it for the wee boy himself and for Teresa…’
‘Why the lawyers? Why were they to blame in all of this? What had David Pearson ever done to you?’ Alastair interrupted.
‘You know perfectly well.’
‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘He and his sidekick got the hospital off, didn’t they? The Infirmary would have had to pay up if it hadn’t been for them. The doctors destroy Teresa and Davie’s lives and walk away scot-free, all thanks to the top QC, Mr Pearson. You should have seen him in action. He fairly laid into Teresa, all oh-so-politely. He got her so confused she wouldn’t have been able to give you the day of the week. Made it sound as if she was lying when she was the only one in the whole fucking building who was telling the truth. “So, Ms Mair,” he says, all hoity-toity, “on a previous occasion you did turn down a Caesarean section?” and she said she had, she never said she hadn’t. But this pregnancy was different, she was so scared. Then he goes on, “But you expect us to believe that this time if you had been offered the same procedure you would have given a completely different answer and gone for the section?” and she said she would have. Because she would have. And all the time he keeps glancing at that Erskine woman, and she smiles back at him, like they’d scored a point in a match or something. I overheard them, the pair of them, talking together, and they were laughing away and do you know why? A video of Davie’s day had just been played in the court, showing his routine if you like, and there he was smiling, like he’s always smiling, only this time at the camera. “His lovely looks will add a couple of noughts to the figure for damages,” the QC says wittily, and his girlfriend laughs. That’s the way they look at things.
The judge wasn’t much better. He got so impatient with Teresa when she was muddled that she panicked. She could hardly speak, she was so nervous, and then when Pearson started to get things all mixed up for her she was nearly in tears. You’d think she was fucking on trial or something. The judge didn’t help her, he just kept saying “Keep your voice up, please, Ms Mair”, as if she could help herself, and “Please answer the questions you’ve been asked”, when she couldn’t understand the fucking question, never mind answer it. I seen him, too, the judge, I mean. I was sitting outside the courtroom at the end of the last day, and there he was, as bold as brass, talking and laughing with Pearson, like they were all dressed up for some kind of game, but now they could relax as the contest was over and the spectators had gone home. A fake wrestling bout or something.
And every day Teresa goes home to Davie and the other kids in that flat and she believes, she still believes, that because she’s told the truth they will get the compensation and they’ll be able to buy a proper house. Like the one she seen in all the experts’ reports, wi’ a garden for Davie, and a ramp, and special equipment too. She believes it! Her baby… our baby… was damaged, through no fault of hers, and all she’s asking for is the means to make his life and the other kids’ lives, better. And if there was any fucking justice that’s what would have happened. But what she didn’t know, what we didn’t know, was that they were all in it together, Dr Clarke, Dr Ferguson, Pearson, Flora Erskine and the judge. All old pals together, on the same side, playing their game to their rules, and Teresa didn’t understand any of it. She believed she’d get the money because she’d told the truth… and she’d made such plans, told the kiddies they’d have a room each, have holidays like other families, get a car… maybe even get some help wi’ Davie. She was so bloody trusting. Then she fucking goes and kills herself…’ Mair broke down in tears and Alice, instinctively, put her arm around his shoulders.
This should not happen, she thought, the boundaries should remain clear, delineated in black and white, not dissolving into shades of grey. This man had taken the lives of four innocent people. Smashed his fist into her face. But the distorted picture of the courtroom drama he had conjured up had been instantly recognisable to her. She, too, had been bamboozled by procedures and formalities, had strained to make sense of that arcane world and prevent its denizens from manipulating her within it. Gruff judicial admonishment had robbed her of the power of thought and of the ability to speak, and an oblique approach in cross-examination had left her unsure of the significance of her own answers, afraid to volunteer anything in case it could be used against her. The camaraderie she had witnessed between opposing Counsel had troubled her, seemed sinister, although it had been explained that they were all hired guns who would as easily, and as willingly, argue the opposite case, having no conviction, however passionate they might seem in court. Alice was familiar with the cosy establishment club in which professionals respect each other and honour their arcane rituals, but view with suspicion those outside it; those like Teresa Mair with no letters after their names and an unashamed fondness for daytime television.
‘What happened on the day Teresa died?’ Alice asked gently.
‘She sent all the kids except Davie off for the day’s school. She kept him back ’cause he gets home early from his special school. She asked her neighbour, Granny Annie, Annie Girvan, to watch him, saying that he’d a wee cold so she’d kept him off, and asking if it’d be okay for her to go up town to do a day’s shopping. Then she went back to the flat and took all the sleeping tablets she’d got. I think she knew I’d find her, ’cause I’d said I’d come to the flat about two. She needed Davie’s bath-sling adjusted and she couldn’t do it herself.
She left a wee note, and you know what it said? Just one word, “Sorry”. Sorry, for fuck’s sake! She should have been the last person in the whole world to say sorry. She had nothing to apologise for. She looked after John Bradley’s kids better than anyone else could have done and they were happy, then Davie came and nothing, nothing was too much trouble for her. She’d be up half the night stroking his head and then get the rest of the kids off and take him to his hospital appointments, with no car or nothing, then do all the washing, cleaning, shopping. She never stopped, and all she was asking for was what she was due. Their future depended on it. If she’d had that section Davie would have been born fine, just another kiddie like the rest of them. Granny Annie even tried to tell that David Pearson man the truth. She’d tried to say that Teresa had told her that she was scared, that she didn’t want another childbirth, but she was shut up completely, and every time she tried to get it out the judge kept saying, “Could you just restrict yourself to the questions that you’ve been asked, Mrs Girvan”.’
‘And the bits of paper… you know, with the writing on them. They’re from the judgement?’ Alice asked.
Mair smiled, pleased to solve the riddle and tak
e the credit.
‘Yes, I wanted everyone to know. I wanted them to know that it was me killing the people involved and why they had to die. The papers connected them all, eh? You got it. I took the words from Theresa’s judgement. I kept the copy she’d been given by her lawyers. That fucker wrote that my sister was “unreliable”, “untrustworthy” and the like, but he got it all wrong. The QC, he was the misleading one, it was Sammy who was worthless. I’d like to have got Dr Ferguson first, because he seemed to really enjoy lying, he was the one that frightened Teresa the most. She couldn’t believe he’d just make up a whole conversation with her, or that he’d alter the hospital records. She was shocked, genuinely shocked, that a professional would behave like that. It had never crossed her mind, before the case came to court, that Dr Ferguson would do that. The lawyers had told her that it would be her word against his, but she thought he’d realise he’d made a mistake, she didn’t think a doctor would just lie about something so important. I don’t know what word I’d have chosen for a cunt like that.’
‘How did you get in to see Dr Clarke in Bankes Crescent?’ Alastair asked.
‘Easy. I knew where she worked and followed her home. I knocked on her door and asked to speak to her about Teresa. She remembered, of course, and I was surprised how simple it was. Guilty conscience, maybe. I don’t know. Anyway, she just let me in…’
‘And Sammy?’
‘No problem. Sammy didn’t know I hated him, I didn’t always. When he lived in Bright Park we used to go out for a pint together occasionally. Like I said, I’d brought along a couple of cans… Next thing I knew I was in, and he was telling me all about his new life with Shona. It was all Shona this and Shona that and how they wanted to move out of Granton. He didn’t give a shit about Teresa or Davie, cut them out of his life like they were disposable…’
‘How did you get to Flora Erskine?’
‘That was a bit more difficult. I had to take a chance with her. I’d followed her from the High Street a few times, so I knew where she lived, and I’d watched her, I knew she lived alone. I’d seen her in court too. I got to know all her movements. Then, on the night I rang the doorbell and she came to the door, I just pushed her in. There was no chain or nothing. One minute I was on the doorstep, the next I was in her hall with her. She was easy anyway, small and frightened. Quite different from how she seemed in court, all puffed up in her black gown and wig. I felt sorry for her, nearly changed my mind, but then I remembered her laughing at Pearson’s fucking jokes about Davie’s good looks and it wasn’t too difficult.
Pearson, now Pearson, he was a challenge. I’d followed him, too, to his old nice house, his lovely house, up near Morningside, and I’d seen his wife and some old woman who kept popping in and out. So I knew that’d be tricky, and then there was his fucking bike too. But I got lucky. I was up at Parliament House late one evening trying to work out what to do about the judge and I saw someone come out and recognised him: David Pearson QC, no less and he started walking home. His bike was fucked, I think. I had the knife on me, nowhere safe to leave it, in the pocket of my parka. I think God was on my side, really. It started pelting down, bucketing, so hard it was difficult to see. It was my chance and I took it. No one else seemed to be about in the Meadows, so I killed him there and then. Used a ciggy packet for the word, the only paper I had. The blood went everywhere but the rain helped a lot, and no-one would look twice in weather like that at a soaking man in an old parka. Didn’t seem to be anybody about anyway, and my car, by chance, was really close. In Chambers Street, just down from the Meadows…’
‘All those people killed for Teresa and Davie,’ Alastair said, thinking out loud.
‘No,’ Mair corrected him, ‘not just for them, although that would have been enough. For all the other Davies too, and their mums. It was someone’s fault that Teresa killed herself, and someone’s fault that Davie was born damaged, but no one would have paid. Well, now they have, and Clarke, Pearson and Erskine won’t be able to bugger up anyone else’s life and Sammy won’t let any other woman down. I’m only sorry I couldn’t finish the job, get the judge and that liar. That would have been justice, but this time played by my rules.’
Though he continued speaking for a further ten minutes, Donald Mair said nothing new but returned, time after time, to the injustice done to his sister. It was his obsession and his torment, and it had transformed an ordinary, kind man into some sort of pitiless avenging angel.
With the job done, exhaustion set in, leaving Alice on the edge of tears. The pain in her nose had returned with a vengeance, and she felt dirty and dishevelled, in need of fresh air. She collected her coat from its hook, listening, as she did so, to the sounds of hearty laughter coming from the murder suite, all tension now spent and a trip to the pub imminent. But she had no stomach for celebration.
She left the car near the Palace of Holyrood and walked slowly, with Quill at her heels, towards the ruins of St Anthony’s Chapel. She followed the eastern path to Dunsappie Loch and then climbed more steeply to Salisbury Crags. By the time she reached the cleft at Cat’s Nick, dusk had fallen and the cold light of the full moon had turned the rock crimson, deepening the shadows between the columns and silvering her route. Gentle rain began to fall, but she persevered, undeterred, until her feet were on the summit of Arthur’s Seat, and only then, breathless, did she allow herself a rest. Her bodily aches and pains had not silenced the insistent voices in her head, demanding an answer. How could Mair have seen so much and yet so little? How could such a man have killed so many people? She had no answer.
Alice looked down onto the myriad lights of the city twinkling benignly below her, and watched as a single, flashing blue one moved slowly and inexorably in her direction.
GILLIAN GALBRAITH
Grew up near Haddington in Scotland. For several years she practised as an Advocate specialising in medical negligence and agricultural law cases. She was the Legal Correspondent for the Scottish Farmer and has written law reports for The Times. Blood in the Water, her first book, was published in 2007. A second Alice Rice mystery, Where the Shadow Falls, was published in 2008. She lives deep in the country near Kinross with her husband and child, cats, dogs, hens and bees.
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