The Lost Sister

by Russel D. McLean

  I had no idea how to take her. Was she playing with me? Her idea of fun; exploiting people’s insecurities? Maybe she was going to rat me out to her father as an arsehole.

  My shirt stuck to my skin. Christ, could anyone see it?

  Around us people talked with ease and familiarity. Those who had been strangers minutes earlier talked like they’d known each other for years. Inane discussions that sounded so easy coming from everyone else’s lips. Casual handshakes. Big smiles. Effortless laughter.

  And me in the middle of it all, sweating to make small talk with the host’s daughter.

  Would it have been easier if she wasn’t a copper, too?

  Maybe.

  But I doubted it.

  I was overcome with the overwhelming sensation that everyone could see me as a fake. A kid who wasn’t ready to step up yet. They were asking themselves what was Ernie Bright thinking, marking this wee eejit for promotion and transfer?

  Finally, knowing I’d fucked up completely, I went outside, sparked up a cigarette. I’d quit three months earlier. But Elaine wasn’t with me, and maybe I deserved this one. For the endurance; getting through as much of the evening as I had without utterly pissing it up.

  I became aware of someone watching me. Could feel their eyes focussed on my back. I turned, saw Susan standing just inside the French windows at the rear of the house.

  She stepped out onto the patio with me. “You don’t fit in.”

  “That obvious?”

  “He said you were smart…”

  I knew where she was going. “But not exactly sociable.”

  She smiled at that, came and stood beside me and looked up at the sky. The moon was at three quarters, slipping in and out from beneath the scudding clouds.

  “It’s a game,” she said. “The social part. You don’t have to mean what you say, just look like you do.”

  “That’s not so easy.”

  “You wear your heart on your sleeve?”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. Just turned to look at her. She nodded. “Aye, that you do.”

  “You think there’s something wrong with that?”

  “How would I know?”

  I nodded, looked back at the sky.

  “Seriously, if my dad’s got a good feeling about you, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then go in there and prove him right.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t like to see him embarrassed. And that’s what you’re doing tonight. By not playing the game, you’re making him look like a prat.”

  “What if I don’t like the game?”

  “Then suck it up.” She casually flicked out a hand, knocked my cigarette from between my fingers. “Ask yourself where you want to be in five years time. And whether you really want to be there. Then you’ll know whether you can play the game.” She slipped her hand through my arm to pull me back inside. “I’ll show you how it’s done, pal. It’s easy, believe me.”

  And I guess I did.

  Five years after that party, I was alone. Not just professionally, either.

  Elaine was long gone.

  And there was no one else.

  Right?

  Sitting in the car, still fuming from the encounter with Ernie Bright, I took a deep breath, started the engine. Closed my eyes and saw Susan. Not as she was now, but as she had been at her father’s party.

  Cocky. Confident. But still young and inexperienced.

  I’d been the same way, I guess. Just without that self-assurance to fool everyone around me.

  I don’t know that I ever found it, either.

  Chapter 20

  This was the sensible move:

  Go to Susan and tell her everything. Admit the truth. Just deal with it. She was working the case, after all.

  Sure, my experience with her father – the man in charge of the Furst investigation – complicated matters. But in the end, maybe the knowledge that someone knew his secret would only double his dedication to finding the girl.

  Back on the induction courses I took with the Association of British Investigators, one of the instructors talked about our relationship with law enforcement:

  “The police are not our enemy. Forget all this crap about being Britain’s second police force. There are limits to our skills. Our powers. There is no such thing as carte-blanche for an investigator. We have to know when to step back. When to say no. When to see that our clients are asking us to act outside the law. When to know that we ourselves are acting unlawfully, no matter how justified we believe our reasons to be.”

  And more:

  “An investigator is not a vigilante. An investigator is not an outlaw. He is a professional with a distinct sphere of influence. There are clearly defined edges to any case. We do not blur the lines. We do not lose ourselves in heroic fantasies or self-aggrandizing bollocks.”

  In other words, we know when to quit.

  I pulled my mobile, made to dial Susan’s number, but hesitated with my thumb over the call button.

  We do not blur the lines.

  I put the phone back down.

  Wickes talked a good game. And I felt for him; his need to try and put right his own mistakes.

  I could help him find the redemption he was looking for. It didn’t have to take me or him outside of the law to do that. Once we found out the truth, we called in the professionals.

  And Wickes had said as much himself, men like us were uniquely placed to slip into the places the police could never go.

  Heroic fantasy?

  Self aggrandizing bollocks?

  Maybe.

  I dialled in another number.

  Wickes answered in three rings.

  I said, “You went to the school?”

  “Got nothing.”

  “All the same, I think someone’s bound to know something.”

  “I have some leads,” he said. “A few things I could check out. Places she used to go. People she knew.”

  “I want to give the school another shot,” I said. “They knew Mary and they knew Deborah. I don’t know, maybe someone there knows something.”

  “They don’t,” he said. “She wasn’t social. Wouldn’t have mixed with her fellow teachers. They’ll tell you what I already know, that she was a recluse. Kept herself to herself. Probably appeared aloof to everyone. Nobody really knew her.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “It just takes asking the right question.”

  Wickes was silent. Finally, he just hung up on the line.

  I didn’t call back. Figured he was under enough pressure.

  That was all.

  Chapter 21

  For all the shite Dundee takes from the rest of Scotland– a folk-reputation for violence, thuggery, idiocy and poverty – it has some of the best schools in the country. Dundee High is a private school with a national reputation, and the public schools do pretty good for themselves as well.

  I knew a few kids who went to Bellview – in the North West of the city – when I was younger. Over a decade and a half since I’d graduated, and yet when I pulled up outside the main building, it was as though nothing had changed. The buildings were exactly the same, but then, what had I expected?

  The campus was centred on an old, imposing Victorian building. The received wisdom of Dundee school pupils is that Bellview used to be a mental hospital. What we’d charmingly call the nuthouse, the loonybin. Anything to make it sound more frivolous than it was.

  You have to love the ingrained Scots’ attitude to mental health. Find yourself in anything less than perfect condition – and admitting to it – you’re seen as “a bit soft”. Or, touched as my gran used to say.

  I never found out if that particular rumour about the asylum was true, but it still made sense to me when I saw the serious nature of the architecture and the imposing grandeur of the brickwork on the main building.

  I left the car in the visitor’s car park, walked up the main doors. Signs said,
Visitors this way, and warned about being thrown off school property without the correct identification.

  Back when I was at school, you could wander the halls with impunity. These days, everyone was scared. Sometimes you had to wonder whether the world was really a more violent place or whether we made it so by constantly acknowledging our social fears and insecurities.

  I followed the signs, found the office. I rapped the safety glass, got the attention of a blonde lass who didn’t look like she was long out of the school herself.

  “Help you?”

  “I’d like to talk to the rector.” I didn’t have a name, but it seemed like an idea to go straight to the top. When in doubt, just looking like you know what you’re doing can work wonders.

  “You have an appointment?”

  I shook my head. Bashful smile. Figured it might work with this girl. “No. I’m…” Fumbling in my pockets, I pulled out my wallet and my ABI membership; closest thing to a license for the UK, although a change was whispering in on the breeze. The Security Industry had changed a great deal in the new millennium, with smaller, independent operators feeling the worst squeezes. Belonging to an organisation like ABI took some of the pressure off.

  I said to the girl behind the glass, “I’m an investigator. I need to talk to the rector about –”

  She got it before I finished. “You can talk to the police about Mary Furst.” She’d probably already had enough pricks trying to get in on the story over the last forty-eight hours. I wasn’t of any interest to her now; just another ghoulish prick looking for scandal.

  I said, “I’m not here to waste anyone’s time.”

  “I said, no.”

  I thought of old public information campaigns: No means no.

  The blonde girl, raised her eyebrow. Looked a little like a female Mr Spock from the old Star Trek.

  I returned the look. If rational argument wouldn’t work out, then maybe the stubborn arsehole approach might achieve something.

  What do they say about desperate times?

  She caved first.

  Told me, “Wait here.”

  I waited till her back was turned before I relaxed. Felt a little smile creep about my face. Killed it fast.

  She made a call from a phone near the back of the office. Keeping her voice low so I couldn’t hear anything. Kept turning her gaze back to me as though afraid I’d maybe bolt.

  Wouldn’t have made her day any worse, I reckoned. But I stayed where I was.

  The girl finished on the phone, but didn’t come back to the glass.

  Further down the corridor, a door opened.

  The woman who walked out was in her mid thirties, tall and slim, with a sober, no-nonsense dress sense. Dark-red hair fell in ringlets down her back, and while her features were soft, she had eyes that burned with intensity. Guess they were the kind of eyes a good teacher needed, could stare down the most belligerent of pupils. I certainly felt a little unnerved, half-expecting her to accuse me of skipping class. She wore a trouser suit with a silk blouse that sat loosely on her frame.

  “I’m Ms Foster,” pronouncing the Mizz clearly. But I could see the wedding band on her finger. “You’re the second investigator I’ve talked to today.”

  Ms Foster was cut out for the teaching life. Had the look down cold. The one that made you feel guilty even if you hadn’t done anything yet.

  I was sweating hard.

  Hadn’t even sat down.

  The rector’s office.

  Christ, some aspects of childhood never quite escape us.

  I waited for the invite. Playing the game carefully. She knew I wanted something, wanted to know what it was and even then didn’t want to give it to me.

  Christ, all I wanted was some clue as to what happened to Mary Furst.

  The girl had been missing over 24 hours now.

  The coppers would be searching for a corpse soon.

  “You want to tell me why you’re here?”

  I said it fast and firm: “Mary Furst.”

  “You and everyone else in the country”

  I said, “Tell me about her art teacher.”

  Like a slap across the face. Oh, aye, check that highly visible reaction. Her face reddened. Her eyes darted away from contact with mine. Her hands reached to grip the desk in front of her.

  Steady, now.

  I said, “They were close. The girl and her teacher. Not quite what you’d expect.”

  “Who told you?”

  “An investigator listens to what’s going on around him.”

  “You’re not like the other one.”

  The other one?

  She second guessed me, said, “The other investigator.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

  “All the subtlety of a natural disaster.”

  I nodded. Definitely Wickes.

  “Had him ejected from the premises.”

  I wanted to ask, why, but figured it would only lead to questions about why I wanted to know. And then how I knew Wickes. He made that bad an impression on Ms Foster, I didn’t want her connecting us. It would only sever what was already a tenuous relationship.

  Investigations are built on relationships.

  This business, it’s all about people.

  I said, “Tell me about the teacher. About Deborah Brown.”

  Ms Foster chewed on her lower lip.

  I prompted: “Mary had an interesting family.”

  “The private affairs of –”

  “Her godfather is a known criminal.”

  “Never arrested. Never proven. A businessman, Mr McNee.” Did she believe it? Like hell.

  All the same, I nodded. Like I understood her. Like I agreed.

  She said, “And what does that have to do with Miss Brown?”

  “They were close, Mary and…Miss Brown,” I said. “I know that. Maybe even know why. And here’s the thing, Ms Foster.” I placed the emphasis on her title, calling her on the pretentiousness of it. “I want to find Mary. I think the police are looking in all the wrong places.”

  It wasn’t quite enough.

  I leaned forward, caught her eyes so she couldn’t turn away. “I know you have a reputation to protect. I know you’re conflicted about protecting your staff and admitting the truth. In here, it’s just you and me talking. None of it leaves this room.”

  I meant it, too.

  And I think for a moment her guard dropped. And she understood me.

  We made the connection.

  The connection that means everything for an investigator.

  Chapter 22

  Sometimes I feel as though my life is made up of other people’s stories.

  Do I have any perspective on my own affairs when I spend so much time entrenched in other people’s?

  I’m not sure if I would want an answer to that.

  “Some pupils are talented with numbers or language,” Ms Foster told me. “Very few are truly talented artists. Not in the way that Mary was…is.” She ran a hand through her long hair. Uncomfortable, maybe wondering just how much she should be telling and what she should be keeping back.

  “She came to your attention?”

  Ms Foster allowed herself to smile. “You try to keep in touch with what’s going on…out on…” she hesitated, as though choosing her words carefully, before saying, “the front lines.” She shot me a nervous grin, as though checking I was in on what was clearly a joke shared among the teachers. “Some pupils float to the top of the pile. Sometimes for the wrong reasons.” She made sure I caught the eye contact this time. The firm seriousness in her face. “But not with Mary.”

  “Her mother told me, she’s a model pupil.” I was careful to avoid slipping in past tense, no matter how accidentally.

  “Aye, I guess if there is such a thing. Like I said, talented. And smart. Her test scores were…impressive. We were guessing A’s by the end of her higher exams.”

  “You knew her to talk to?”

  Ms Foster nodded. “Like I s
aid, I try to keep in touch. Try and meet as many pupils face to face as I can. She was assured, you know.”

  I sensed something else.

  Didn’t tease it out.

  Just waited.

  Let Ms Foster interrogate herself. Sometimes all you have to do is sit back and listen.

  She gave a little cough, as though clearing her throat. Passed a hand delicately in front of her mouth. “I mean, for a teenager. The thing…I mean, I don’t…she was confident, and the staff adored her, and so did most of her peers, but…”

  I had to push. Just a little.

  Call it a nudge.

  “…Sometimes she’d drop off during class, I guess. Drift, I mean. She wouldn’t quite be there. I mean, you asked her a question, she’d answer it, but I think it unnerved a couple of the more demanding teachers.” She smiled again, too broadly for it to be comfortable. “I still teach a few lessons. Keep my hand in. A few Soc-ed – that’s Social Education – classes on the timetable so that I can keep in touch with the pupils. I’ve witnessed it myself, this sudden distance that would come over her.”

  “Don’t most kids have a short attention span?”

  She nodded, smiled. “Of course. I don’t even know why I mentioned it.”

  Neither did I. But there was a reason, somewhere.

  “She never had any troubles at home?”

  “Not that I knew.”

  “And you say…her peers…her classmates…they all liked her?”

  “Yes. Like I said, I didn’t know of –”

  “What about Richie Harisson?”

  That made her pause. She lifted her head. “What about him?”

  “They were going out, right?”

  She licked her lips. A quick, darting motion. “I don’t see –”

  “The police must have asked already. I’m not asking for anything you didn’t tell them.”

  She took a breath. “I don’t know about that.”

  “You know something.”

  “Like I said, I knew her. She stood out. For her talent. For her attitude. For being in the drama society, volunteering on the paired reading programme with the younger kids, all of that. But that doesn’t mean I knew anything about her life. Not outside of –” She cut herself off. Maybe regretting the fact that when asked she knew only facts about this girl who had gone missing, but had nothing to say about Mary as a person that was definitive and utterly personal.