by Claire Askew
That could be why he killed her, she thought. That might be why she was first.
The final entry was from that Monday, the night before the shooting. The night before she died: the thought formed itself before Ishbel could push it away. The night they had fought. The night Ishbel wished she could go back and do again, more than she wished for anything – perhaps more, even, than she wished for Abigail to be still alive. She remembered standing on the stairs, carrying on the fight with Aidan because Abigail had removed herself to her room. Then she’d stomped past her daughter’s bedroom door like a teenager, hoping Abigail could hear her petulance, her rage. She’d gone to bed in the spare room and lain awake in the dark, thinking of all the righteous and punishing things she should have said. She’d even thought about marching back to Abigail’s room, waking her up and saying them. Now, she sat on her hotel bed and thought, It’s me. Me. I’m the monster. She realised she hadn’t once thought to wake Abigail and ask her what was really wrong. To tell her daughter she was sorry. To say she loved her. To do these things in case the next day her daughter ended up dead.
The diary entry from that night read:
Got a lift to the pick-up from Mum. Ha, just joking. She drove me as far as football practice and I went on from there. Jack bailed on me though, just never showed up. Jamie was fucking raging, scared the shit out of me. AND no lift back, so I had to get the bus. Timed it wrong and Mother Dearest saw that I hadn’t been at football. Had to basically run out of the car and lock myself in here to avoid the twenty questions. Last thing I need is her sniffing around.
To top it all off I had to rearrange with Jamie to go back on Friday with Jack. So that’s another morning of classes missed. I’m fucking failing my course. I’m freaked. I’ve got to get out. Especially if Jack’s going to bail on me anyway. I love him but it isn’t worth this. I’ve got to get out.
Ishbel’s phone rang, vibrating off the bedside table with a noise so loud that her pulse gunned. She snatched it up: for just a moment it was Abigail, phoning to tell her she was sorry, she’d made a mistake, but she was coming home now. I’ll see you at home, Mum.
But on the other end of the line was a man’s voice. A voice Ishbel recognised: that only-very-slight Scottish accent.
‘Ishbel Hodgekiss?’
She wanted to hiss, like a cat does when it’s cornered.
‘How did you get this number, Lockley?’
There was a pause, but when he spoke again it was as though she’d said, How can I help?
‘I was phoning to see if you’d like to make a comment on a new piece I’m writing. It’s to coincide with the public memorial service next week.’
‘Tell me,’ Ishbel said, feeling every muscle in her body tense, ‘how you got this number.’
‘Will you be at the memorial, Ishbel?’ He had a true talent, she found herself thinking, for persistence. ‘Or are tensions between you and your husband just running too high?’
She found that she couldn’t speak. She heard her own incredulous breath crackle in the phone’s speaker.
‘I know,’ Lockley said, ‘that the rumour mill is a terrible thing. Why don’t you set the record straight, hmm? Tell your side of the story. You and I could sit down, somewhere private, no one else around, and you could just say absolutely everything you’ve been wanting to say to the world. About Abigail, about Jack Egan, about Ryan Summers. You could reach out to the families of the other victims, all those other people who are hurting. You could tell the world what a wonderful young woman Abigail really was. I can help you do that. That’s how I like to see my role – I can be your mouthpiece to the world.’
Ishbel’s mouth hung slack at the sheer gall of this man, but a small part of her pulled and twisted in his direction. If it came without strings, his proposition would be attractive indeed. She could see how Jack Egan had fallen for it. But she’d also seen, thanks to the hotel TV, that Jack Egan was now in police custody.
‘I had a talk with Moira Summers today,’ Lockley said. ‘You know she’s got opinions on everything that happened. Should the mother of your daughter’s killer be allowed a platform, if you don’t have one? Don’t you want to be able to counter anything she might say?’
Ishbel did feel a spike of anger, then – but she forced herself to push it down. He’s getting to you. Ryan Summers’ mother might think she had something to gain by speaking to the press, but she was wrong. Anything that came out of her mouth would be shot down. Under the anger, Ishbel was surprised to find herself feeling sorry for the woman.
‘I can make you a generous financial offer,’ Lockley tried.
Ishbel opened her mouth to speak, and still could not. Clearly tired of her silence, he changed tack.
‘You know,’ he said, his tone darkening, ‘it would be a good idea for you take this opportunity, and get into the clear while you can. There’s damaging information out there about everyone, and it doesn’t take much to dig it up.’
Ishbel found her voice.
‘Are you threatening me?’
Lockley blustered loudly into the phone.
‘Not at all,’ he said. She could practically hear him throwing up his hands. ‘I’m just doing my job, writing what comes to me. Writing the news. It’s not me you have to worry about. It’s people like the Telford family.’
Ishbel blinked in surprise. She knew exactly who he was talking about, because the case had been on her mind a lot lately. She’d begun to think of it as the starting point of something – the wheels coming off her marriage, really, if she was honest. Three years ago, she’d had a case at work that involved accusations of embezzlement at a privately owned care home. With the help of another agency, she’d uncovered a years-long paper trail of profit-skimming by the business’s founders: a couple named Stuart and Annie Telford. She’d handed her evidence over to the police, but not before the Telfords had hit back at her with an official complaint that they took all the way to the ombudsman. She’d been cleared, but it had been a long, hard year and had impacted on her other cases, her relationship with Aidan, and even her health.
‘Don’t you want to get your name cleared,’ Lockley was saying, ‘before Stuart Telford hits the papers saying you had him unfairly sent to jail?’
The line went quiet. Ishbel listened to the dim swish of Lockley’s breath as her mind raced.
‘Just think about it, Ishbel,’ he said, at last. ‘And call me when you’d like to talk.’
29 May, 6.45 p.m.
‘I’m sorry, Helen.’
McLeod didn’t look the least bit sorry. He’d gone home two hours earlier, but someone had called him back in. Lockley had finished his write-up of the meeting with Moira, including a detailed paragraph about police manpower being used to set it all up, and had emailed in wanting a quote. Some complete bastard somewhere in the building had forwarded the email to McLeod, and he’d actually come back to the office in order to play hell with every single officer who’d been even vaguely involved.
Birch and Amy he’d saved for last.
‘I just do not know what possessed you.’
Amy was fighting tears. Birch was trying not to look at her.
‘DI Birch thought that—’
McLeod’s head snapped round towards Amy, who made a kind of choked sound to silence herself.
‘I’ll get to you in just a minute, Kato,’ he said. ‘DI Birch can bullshit me all by herself, I think you’ll find.’
Birch began to count, in her head. Stay calm, Helen. She got as far as six before McLeod’s angry blue silence became too much to bear.
‘As I said, sir, my first priority was always Mrs Summers’ safety. I spoke with Mr Chaudhry, and—’
‘You see, Birch.’ McLeod pressed one palm against his forehead. ‘Those were your first two mistakes. One: you dragged that fucking greasy lawyer into things. Two: you forgot that your first priority ought always to have been the success of this fucking investigation.’
Birch tried to make herself coun
t again. She failed.
‘With all due respect, sir, I don’t think we need to resort to that sort of language about Anjan Chaudhry.’ She felt her cheeks turning red, but realised there was nothing she could do to stop it. ‘I went to him because I wanted to find an easy solution to this problem. I thought he could talk Moira out of it.’
McLeod snorted. He’d noticed the blushing. Don’t let him fluster you – the voice in her head was a yell, but it wasn’t working.
‘And how did that work out for you, Helen?’
‘It didn’t.’ Birch set her teeth. ‘Mr Chaudhry pointed out to me that Moira Summers was free to do what she liked. It became apparent that she would do what she liked. So then I had to make a call about her safety.’
‘Bollocks to her safety.’ McLeod banged a hand against the desk beside him, so hard that Birch found herself thinking, That had to hurt. ‘What about how this looks? We’d just been talking about this fucking Lockley problem. You went and made it ten times worse!’
I still think what I did was right, she wanted to say. If I’d let Moira go out alone and she’d been attacked, we’d all look a whole lot worse in the press right now. But there was no point. McLeod was raging from a place of fear that she couldn’t assuage. Come the inquiry, he’d be the one getting photographed walking in and out of court. If a scapegoat were required, he’d be it. As if he’d read her thoughts, he leaned in close to her, and said:
‘If I get taken down by this, Helen, I swear to God I will be taking you with me.’
She felt the words brush against her ear as they left his lips. A shiver ran through her.
‘Yes, sir,’ was all she could manage to say.
McLeod straightened up.
‘I’m reining you in, Birch,’ he said. His voice was back at full volume, as though he were saying this for the benefit of someone sitting outside the room. ‘From now on, I want to hear about everything. Every decision you make, you run it by me first. Every penny that’s spent on this investigation, I want to approve it first. Consider your wings mightily fucking clipped, do you understand me?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Fucking good.’
He turned on Amy.
‘As for you, Kato,’ he said, ‘what I am about to say should come as absolutely no surprise to you whatsoever. I’m taking you off this case, and I’ll tell you right now, I think it was the wrong call to put you on it in the first place.’
He glanced back at Birch, who decided not to meet his eye.
‘You’ll hand over to another FLO of my choice,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a think about it and let you know who in the morning.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Birch didn’t look at Amy, either, but from the crack in her voice she knew that the younger woman had now lost the battle with her tears.
‘Right.’ McLeod straightened up, and knocked his hands together as if shaking off dirt. ‘Both of you get the fuck out of this office. I should have been home an hour ago.’
Birch held open the door for Amy.
‘Chin up,’ she whispered, as Amy passed in front of her. Straight away, Amy snapped her face upwards, and screwed her tearful face into a hard line.
‘Good girl,’ Birch said. She closed the door on McLeod, already climbing back into his overcoat.
She took Amy gently by the elbow, and steered her down the corridor, away from ground zero.
‘Don’t let them see you bleed,’ she said, as two male officers rounded the corner and began to approach.
‘Lads.’ Birch nodded as they passed, and they nodded back. When she glanced at Amy, she saw she was just about holding it together.
They made it to the ladies’, which was mercifully empty. Birch hoisted herself up onto the bank of sinks and perched there, biting her bottom lip, while Amy collapsed into a stall and sobbed. Birch passed the time trying to think and re-think the events of the day – was there some other call she could have made? Was McLeod right? Did the PR stuff come first? But she kept thinking about Anjan’s star-anise smell, then thinking about Charlie, and then thinking how much she hated Grant Lockley and how she wished that, just for once, karma really would be the bitch everyone said it was, because that man was due one hell of a karmic kicking. The thoughts chased one another in a circle, over and over, and Birch realised her brain was done for the day.
In the cubicle, Amy’s sobs were easing.
‘I’m sorry I got you into this, Amy,’ Birch said. ‘Maybe McLeod was right: I shouldn’t have put you on this case. I should’ve seen it would turn to shit. It couldn’t not, with a crime like this.’
There was a clunk as Amy unlatched the cubicle door. She emerged looking younger than usual – her makeup mostly smeared away, and her face a little puffy.
‘Remember you said we could go for a drink sometime, guv?’
Birch blinked. ‘I do.’
‘Well.’ Amy gestured at her own reflection in the mirror behind Birch. ‘I think now is as good a time as any, right?’
They ended up in a Stockbridge wine bar, a few doors down from Amy’s flat. The place made Birch feel old, and the lighting was too dim. But she watched with some admiration as Amy ordered a steak burger with sweet potato fries, and then when it arrived, practically inhaled the stack of food. Birch ordered a salad and silently wished she had Amy’s metabolism.
‘I’m so sorry this happened.’ She could no longer keep from saying it, even though Amy had explicitly forbidden her from apologising any more. ‘The more I think about it, the more I think McLeod was right about some of this. We should have just let Moira go out and meet Lockley. She knew the risks. Probably nothing would have happened to her, and you’d still be her FLO right now.’
Amy was shaking her head.
‘No,’ she said, quietly. ‘I’m glad you – we – did what we did. If nothing else, it showed Moira that we care about her. That we value her life as much as the lives of the victims’ families . . . even if no one else does.’
‘I guess so. But I’d be lying if I said I did it out of concern for Moira. You know, I look down my nose at McLeod’s preferred mode of police-work, but I could do to learn a thing or two there. He’s aggressive sometimes, but he never gets personal. He never takes it home with him, have you noticed? He clocks in at nine and clocks out at five and that’s the only time he gives it. He doesn’t get emotionally attached, ever.’
Amy swilled the wine in her glass and then watched the mini-tornado she’d created as it whirled and subsided.
‘You think that’s a good thing?’
Birch was quiet for a second.
‘Before this case,’ she said, slowly, ‘I would have said no. But now I think . . . yeah, he’s maybe got the right idea.’
Amy wrinkled her nose.
‘It’s easy for him, though. I mean, emotional attachments or not, I’d love to just put everything down at five o’clock and walk out the door. And you know you’re being generous to him there, guv. Four thirty’s nearer the mark most days.’
Birch laughed. She could feel the wine starting to muddy her thoughts.
‘Okay, you’re right about that. And maybe he can only do his tidy little leave-it-at-the-office thing because he hands so much work down to the rest of us.’
‘That’ll be you one day,’ Amy said, raising an eyebrow.
Birch clapped one hand against her chest in mock-horror, reminding herself of Lockley.
‘God forbid,’ she said. ‘To be honest, after this case? If they asked me to give my pips back tomorrow I wouldn’t fight them.’
Amy seemed to be watching as Birch polished off the wine in her glass.
‘I think you’re doing the best job you can,’ she said.
‘You’re a kind woman, but you’re wrong. This is what I mean about not getting too involved. I think I made the wrong call with Moira today because I let it get to me.’
Birch looked over at the bar and cocked her head slightly: more win
e required. She hadn’t drunk this much for a long time.
‘Specifically, I’ve let Lockley get to me.’
Saying it out loud felt significant: not a relief, exactly, but something close. Like feeling the rock you’ve been trying to push aside shift, just slightly.
‘Yeah, what is that? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.’
Birch looked at Amy. She knew what she meant, but said:
‘What is . . . what?’
A waiter delivered two new glasses of wine to the table. Birch thought he looked about twelve, and then immediately thought, Great, I’ve got to that age where I think all young people look twelve. She watched the waiter look at Amy’s legs as she thanked him.
‘You and Lockley,’ Amy said, oblivious. ‘There’s a rumour doing the rounds that you two have previous.’
Birch shrugged.
‘Anyone who’s been around long enough has previous with Lockley,’ she said. ‘He’s been a champion cop-baiter since he was still in short trousers.’
Amy smiled, clearly disappointed. Oh, what the hell, Birch thought.
‘But yeah,’ she added, ‘it’s true. I’ve got more beef with him than most. And it’s not professional, in my case. It’s personal.’
Both women took a long drink. Birch watched Amy settle back, waiting for the story.
‘Okay,’ she said. Somewhere in the ragged landscape of her mind one mast was still upright, transmitting a vague warning against going any further. But she was fuzzy with wine, and didn’t know if she could keep thinking about Charlie all the time without going mad.
