The Innocent Dead - Rhona MacLeod Series 15 (2020)

by Anderson, Lin

  Rhona glanced at Magnus. How did he want to play this?

  Picking up on her signal, Magnus indicated with a nod towards Emma that they should leave it up to the girl to decide.

  It seemed Emma had done so already.

  ‘I’d like to be taken to where you found her.’

  Rhona nodded. ‘Okay. If you’re sure.’

  Rhona led the way, followed by Emma, with Magnus bringing up the rear. The path she and Chrissy had made with their trips back and forth to the forensic van was still visible, and taking it again now brought an instant recall of what they’d unearthed in this place.

  The lochan came into view first, its peaty waters brightened by rays of sunshine, then a glimpse of a tattered crime scene tape that had broken free from its moorings.

  Rhona halted for a moment, until all three of them were together.

  ‘The grave is a little ahead. It’s not been filled in,’ she warned. ‘That’s distressing in itself, plus—’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Emma said firmly. ‘I’d like you and Magnus to wait here. It’s better if I go on alone.’

  Rhona glanced at Magnus and he gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  Emma, it seemed, had not waited for their approval, but had set off in a determined fashion towards the flapping yellow tape.

  ‘We’ll wait in the car,’ Magnus called after her.

  As Emma raised her hand in acknowledgement of this, Magnus said, ‘We have to talk.’

  ‘Okay,’ Rhona said, struck by Magnus’s expression.

  They turned and headed back on the beaten-down heather path and climbed into the car, this time with Magnus in the passenger seat.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Rhona said.

  ‘Before I begin, I have permission from DS McNab to tell you this.’

  ‘Okay.’ Rhona waited.

  ‘DS McNab and DS Clark interviewed a Mr Alec McLaughlin this morning, on my recommendation. I know Mr McLaughlin from Barlinnie where he took part in my research on the take-up of educational classes by prisoners. Just released from prison himself, he contacted me and when we met he told me he had information about the disappearance of Mary McIntyre. DS McNab then arranged an interview with him, which I observed from the neighbouring room.’

  ‘Go on,’ Rhona said, realizing from Magnus’s expression how significant he felt this interview had been.

  ‘Before I tell you what he said, I should point out that he took an Open University degree while incarcerated and achieved a first-class honours in Forensic Psychology, so he’s well versed in interview techniques. He was also convicted of raping his partner’s three children, for which he’s been incarcerated for fifteen years.’

  ‘So whatever he told you could have been a lie,’ Rhona finished for him.

  Magnus nodded. ‘However, he was a neighbour of Mary’s whilst a teenager, so knew her and her family well.’ He paused as though they’d reached the crunch of the story. ‘McLaughlin told us that Mary McIntyre was pregnant when she went missing. In fact he said he thought that’s why she disappeared.’

  Rhona attempted to assimilate what Magnus had just said. Dr Wang, at post-mortem, had recorded what she believed to be a female of around eleven. The age of course couldn’t be exact, and numerous females as young as ten were recorded as having given birth in various countries around the world, including the United States, although not in the UK.

  In many of the listed cases, the one to make them pregnant had been someone close to the child, either a relative or a family friend.

  ‘What d’you think?’ Magnus said.

  ‘If you’re asking me if that was discussed at the post-mortem, it wasn’t. Also, like the spleen, intestine and stomach, a pregnant uterus decays early. Plus we’re not yet certain that the victim is Mary McIntyre, and won’t be unless we can extract DNA.’ Rhona explained further, ‘Bogs are acidic and they tend to strip the base pairs off the DNA, so although you can see the DNA, you can’t read it. Think of letters scattered about a page. You can see them but, because they aren’t strung together, there are no words to recognize.’

  The rain had come on again with a vengeance, the wind whipping it against the windows.

  ‘She’ll be getting soaked out there,’ Rhona said, opening the car door. ‘I’m going to get her.’

  Dark clouds had now obliterated the earlier sunlight, although Rhona could still make out Emma’s bright blue coat, which suggested the hooded girl was seated near the grave.

  Pulling up her own hood, Rhona began the trudge over the heather against the driving rain. Letting Emma do this once before, in not dissimilar circumstances, had proved fruitful. At this moment in time, it seemed not only ludicrous, but also dangerous. To take an imaginative girl like Emma, on the cusp of womanhood, or maybe already there, and put her back in an environment where she might relive all her own trauma had been a mistake.

  As Rhona neared the figure, Emma stood up, but didn’t indicate that she’d noted Rhona’s approach.

  ‘Emma,’ Rhona called, her voice whipped away by the wind. Reaching out, she took the girl by the arm. ‘Emma, let’s get you back to the car.’

  The buffeting wind was catching the slender figure, almost lifting her off her feet.

  She turned suddenly, as though just waking up to the fact that Rhona was there, and without saying anything, moved to make her own way back along the path.

  Magnus met them en route and, placing his arm about Emma, sought to shield her from the worst of the wind.

  Once inside the car, Rhona started up the engine. Their breath had steamed up the windows, obscuring what lay beyond their metal cocoon.

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ Emma said.

  ‘Wrong how?’ Rhona asked, fully expecting Emma, like before, to suggest the grave they’d uncovered wasn’t the only one on the moor.

  ‘Two people were in that grave. Not one.’

  27

  Karen had lain awake most of the night and what snatches of sleep she’d grabbed had been fuelled by nightmarish images of a blood-splattered Mary in her white dress. Moments of elucidation during these dreams convinced her, however fleetingly, that she knew what had happened to her friend, but each time she forced herself awake to write it down, the memory had deserted her.

  Had she had any alcohol in the house, she would have drunk it. All of it. Regardless of the consequences.

  Eventually Karen had risen, gone downstairs and put the kettle on, Jack’s answer to every problem being, Let’s have a cup of tea.

  From the kitchen window, Karen had a clear view of the castle. The image of the rock formation with its hilltop fortress had become so familiar that she no longer paid it much attention. Today was different. Today, she thought of her own memory as being as inaccessible as the castle itself, with no hope of ever penetrating its defences to discover what lay within.

  As for the delivery last night when she was out walking the length of Castle Hill . . .

  The piece of paper contained what? An accusation? A threat?

  And from whom?

  The note still lay on the kitchen table where she’d tossed it in her horror. It was crumpled because, after the first reading, she had screwed it up into a ball and thrown it in the bin, only to fish it out again for a second and third reading.

  The diary was sitting on the kitchen table, awaiting its trip to the recovery cafe. The question was, could she go there now after receiving the note? Could she go there at all?

  The diary now reminded Karen of a scary book she’d once taken out of the library. The horror story had been about an evil house that had preyed on its owners, finding out all their secrets and using those secrets against them. The book had disturbed Karen, so much so that she’d taken it back to the library without finishing it. She’d even put it in the garden shed until she could return it.

  Jack had laughed at her fears, but then things had started to go wrong in the house. Little things, inexplicable things. Jack thought she was just being forgetful, like whe
n the gas ring was left on and a tea towel lying close by caught fire. But Karen knew she’d turned all the rings off when she’d finished making the meal. She was always careful about that. So the very next day she’d taken the book back to the library without finding out whether the family had defeated the evil presence in their house, or whether they’d sold up and moved away.

  Staring at the diary, Karen suspected she was in the same scenario. The evil from forty-five years ago had never really gone away, it had been lurking there all those years just waiting for her to pick up that diary again.

  I should have burned it like Jack told me to, she thought. She’d intended doing that, but for some reason never could. If she did, she’d reasoned, she would never be able to fill in the blanks of what had happened.

  Your parents took you away from that street so you wouldn’t be reminded of what happened there. They wanted you to forget.

  Karen had done what Jack had advised most of the time, but not with the diary. There she had defied him. And that decision had come back to haunt her.

  But I can at least get it out of the house, she told herself. She would give it to Marge. The house would be free of it. The diary could no longer taunt her by its presence.

  But what about the note? a small voice said. Should she show them the note too?

  Karen immediately knew that if she did, she would appear guilty of something.

  And she didn’t know what that something was. Or did she?

  She reached for the diary, and in that moment in her head she heard a frightened voice repeating the same words over and over again.

  You have to help me.

  28

  McLaughlin had read his statement and signed it. The flourish with which he’d done the latter reminded McNab of the way celebrities gave their autographs, certain in the knowledge of their own fame.

  By that stage, McNab was finding it increasingly difficult not to kick McLaughlin under the table, or even better, in the balls. However, he’d done such a thing once before in a not dissimilar situation and the boss had taken the blame for it.

  Had DI Wilson not done so, you would have been out on your ear, McNab reminded himself.

  DS Clark had looked relieved when they’d eventually shown a preening McLaughlin the door.

  ‘Any more help I can give you, don’t hesitate to get in touch, officers,’ had been his farewell gift.

  McNab had hoped as he’d watched McLaughlin depart that the next time they met would be when he arrested him.

  He’d had only a short exchange with Pirie before the Prof set off with Rhona and the girl on their paranormal escapade, although he had told Pirie to share McLaughlin’s revelation that Mary McIntyre had been pregnant when she’d disappeared. At least when Rhona arrived at the strategy meeting, she’d be up to date.

  ‘So,’ Janice was saying, ‘what d’you think?’

  ‘Give me your take on it first,’ McNab said, handing her a coffee.

  ‘He’s intelligent. I can see how he got that degree.’

  ‘Okay, he’s a clever, scheming and manipulative bastard who managed to ply his trade for a long time before we caught him. So why present himself back in front of us now?’

  ‘We would come knocking on his door again, and soon?’ Janice tried.

  ‘So he gets in first. But how much did you believe of the story?’

  ‘I’d like to know how much Professor Pirie believed.’

  ‘You’ve got more experience of liars than the Prof.’

  He’d always considered Janice a thinker and an astute judge of character. After all, she had him down to a T. Of course, he’d never actually told her that.

  Janice gave an amused smile. ‘Is that praise, DS McNab?’

  McNab didn’t respond to the question but repeated his own instead. ‘How much?’

  ‘I think we wrong-footed him when we asked where he was when he heard that Mary was missing. And when we shifted the focus to Karen Marshall. I wondered about what he said about Mary’s father. Whether he didn’t like the man in general, or whether it was more personal. Then there was the remark about the brother, which I noted you didn’t pursue.’

  ‘Robbie, or Robert as he gets called now, is gay. He made a point of telling me by reference to his partner, Andrew. I think that’s what McLaughlin was implying when he talked about Robbie at the den.’

  Janice gave a little laugh. ‘And you showed no interest, much to his annoyance.’

  ‘Robbie-turned-Robert was keen for us to talk to Father Feeney, who’s apparently still alive,’ McNab said. ‘Claims he was a paedophile and probably protected from on high – and not by God.’

  ‘Which was McCreadie’s take on things too,’ Janice reminded him.

  McNab raised an eyebrow. ‘You angling for another trip to see your famous author?’

  ‘So will you when you’ve read the transcripts of the notebooks,’ Janice said.

  ‘Is it legible this time?’

  Swivelling in her chair to come alongside him, Janice brought up a document on his screen. ‘My advice is to read as much as possible before the strategy meeting.’

  ‘I would rather do interviews,’ McNab said.

  ‘Better to know as much as we can about what went on back then before we do.’

  Janice was right, McNab knew that. Getting as much info as possible before meeting those still alive was the sensible way to go.

  Never the big reader, McNab now looked at the filled screen with a degree of trepidation. He would, he realized, much rather have had Janice give him a summary of the leading points. He was planning to say as much, but she’d swivelled back to her own monitor before he could suggest such a thing, announcing that she was on to notebook three and keen to get back to it.

  It’s funny, McNab thought as he began to read, how much you can hear an author’s voice in your head when you read his words. In McCreadie’s case, McNab could also see him in his mind’s eye saying the words in front of him now.

  He wasn’t a book fan, but if he was, McNab decided, he would never want to meet an author in person, even if he did enjoy their books. But hey, in McCreadie’s case, he already had, and every word he read would likely be coloured by that meeting, never mind his opinion of the man who’d written them.

  Yet McNab was surprised to find that, after the first few sentences, things changed. Perhaps it was because of his own obsession with the case, but he found McCreadie’s personal take on what was happening back then compelling, in particular the fact that he’d opened with his notes on Mary’s friend, Karen Marshall.

  The child, Karen, is terrified. Of me. Of everything that is happening around her. She’s stopped talking about how much Mary loved her dress. How her friend was happy. Now she says nothing. I think she’s blotting out something from her memory. Something too terrible to contemplate, let alone say out loud.

  McNab thought back to what McCreadie had said when they’d met, which pretty well mirrored his thoughts on Karen all those years ago.

  He read on.

  Karen’s family –

  Her father, a DC (who I don’t know personally but apparently he’s sound enough), maintains his youngest daughter has always been quiet. Liz (the mother) is inclined to mollycoddle her, being a late baby. Mary, her pal, is the opposite. More grown up and worldly wise. Probably because of her family who are a bit wild. The mother doesn’t approve of Mary as a friend for Karen. The father allows it.

  The mother is nervous, fearing if Mary can be taken so can Karen. She is disapproving of Mary. She doesn’t come from a good home, she says. The father hits his children. Karen was innocent before she became pally with Mary. Mary is old beyond her years. When I asked what she meant by that, she flushed and told me to ask Mary’s mother. I wondered if Mary might have already had her period, or that she knew more about sex than Karen?

  Eleanor, the sister of sixteen, was next. Her mother offered to stay with her, but Eleanor declined, saying she’d manage alone. She appeared nervou
s, clasping and unclasping her hands. She asked what Karen had said. I explained it was better that we just concentrate on her and what she could tell me about Mary. She said she was sorry but she didn’t like her. That she bossed Karen around and upset her wee sister by saying there wasn’t a seat in heaven for her because she was a Protestant. She thought Mary was just hiding somewhere, so that everyone would look for her. Mary likes to be the centre of attention. And she flirts. With Alec up the road, even Eric. She halts there as though she’s said too much. Who’s Eric, does he live nearby too, I ask? She shakes her head. Eric’s my boyfriend. And he knows Mary? He doesn’t know her, she says firmly. But when he comes to collect me, she talks to him. Eleanor insists she isn’t worried and that Mary will turn up and get her picture in the papers, which is what she wants.

  McNab paused there. He hadn’t met Karen’s big sister yet, although a couple of uniforms had taken an initial statement from her, the bare bones of which were that she hadn’t seen Karen or spoken to her since their parents’ funerals and she had no idea where Karen was living now. She thought Karen had married, although she hadn’t been invited to the wedding.

  McNab recalled Robbie’s declaration that his family had been as happy as anyone else’s on that street. It seemed that wasn’t far from the truth.

  The next piece, he realized, was McCreadie’s emotional take on the situation. McNab rarely, if ever, spoke about how the job affected him. Forty-five years ago, when the nature of policing was more gung-ho, he couldn’t imagine any officer openly revealing the personal impact of some of the horrors they’d had to face.

  Yet here was McCreadie, doing just that.

  I wish I could have met Mary McIntyre. (Let’s hope I will.) In the few photos taken of her, she seems to challenge the photographer. Bright, according to her teacher, Miss Stevens, likely to do well at secondary school, where she would go in August. There are some issues at home, her teacher says. A father who uses the belt on his children. Miss Stevens disapproves of using the belt in her classroom. Miss Stevens walked them to the chapel and she’s sure Mary was with them.