The Innocent Dead - Rhona MacLeod Series 15 (2020)

by Anderson, Lin

  She halted at the gate, pleased to see the spring flowers in the neat front garden. Maybe this wouldn’t be too bad, after all. Although, too frightened that she might change her mind and chicken out, she hadn’t called ahead. Gathering her courage, she pushed open the gate, walked up the path to the front door and rang the bell.

  It took a moment or two before she heard footsteps, during which she veered between turning and running away and thinking her heart had stopped.

  Then the door opened and the face looking out at her now still held traces of its teenage self. Karen also realized that this was what Mary might have looked like if only she had lived. The face grew puzzled, then the light of recognition flashed in her eyes.

  ‘Karen Marshall, it’s you, isn’t it?’

  Karen nodded and was immediately swept inside.

  60

  The meeting room was gradually filling up. By the reaction of the crowd it looked like they anticipated something big was about to happen. Rhona wondered if it had anything to do with McNab’s mood when she’d spoken to him earlier.

  It began to look even more that way when Bill, after a brief introduction, called on DS McNab to come to the front. As McNab passed Rhona, he acknowledged her with a brief nod, but for once she couldn’t read his demeanour. Was he about to tell them something good or something really bad?

  McNab began by explaining how Karen had been located in Stirling, without placing too much emphasis on the role McCreadie had played in it. Despite this, you could tell by the audience’s reaction that they were keen to give the former DI credit for what he’d done.

  McNab now played the interview he’d conducted with Karen at McCreadie’s home. Rhona thought listening to Karen’s wavering and troubled voice, her starts and stops, her pain, both physical and mental, was even more poignant among others than it had been alone.

  The story of the dress, and the reason why Mary felt she couldn’t be confirmed, had the impact Rhona suspected it would. Most people in the room had no real idea of what life had been like in 1975 for children within the Church, and in wider society, although McCreadie, give him his due, had tried to enlighten the team to those facts in his address at the previous meeting.

  Rhona’s eyes were drawn back to the screen as McNab brought up the pages of the diary. Many of the team would have already read these, but by the reaction in the room some obviously hadn’t.

  McNab continued, ‘I probably don’t need to tell you this, but there are discrepancies in both Karen’s answers to my questions and what’s written in the diary. And for me, at least, there’s a strong sense that Karen may yet know more than she has revealed or remembered.’

  Rhona, having been summoned to the fore to do her bit, now brought up Dr Jen Mackie’s analysis of the soil on the shoes, confirming that the last place they’d been worn was in the wooded area of the girls’ den.

  ‘Karen said she came back from the chapel to the den to meet with Mary, but Mary wasn’t there. So she changed back into her own clothes and left the dress, veil and shoes in the plastic bag. However, when she went back later the bag had gone.

  ‘Karen also confirmed that the jumper we found in her loft was Mary’s and that she’d found it lying in the woods behind the den when she returned later. There is a possibility that traces of the killer may be on that jumper.’

  McNab thanked Rhona, then stood for a moment in silence. By his expression, Rhona knew what was coming next wasn’t going to be the good news she’d hoped for.

  ‘Within the last hour, Mr McCreadie has been in touch to say that Karen left his house undetected and is now missing again.’

  A babble of shocked chatter burst around Rhona.

  McNab carried on. ‘No one saw her leave. However, we believe she made her way back to her home, where she then took her car,’ he said. ‘So it’s likely she intends travelling further than her immediate vicinity.

  ‘Judging by Karen’s frame of mind, her friend at the recovery cafe, Marge Balfour, believes Karen may have decided to face her demons. What those demons are we don’t yet fully know.’

  The murmurings grew again.

  ‘However, according to Professor Pirie, who has also spoken to Karen, she is still in a fragile mental state and may in fact be a suicide risk. So let’s find her as quickly as possible.’

  As the crowd departed, Rhona caught up with Janice.

  ‘Did you know about Karen disappearing?’

  ‘It was as much of a surprise to me as it was to you,’ Janice told her, obviously annoyed that McNab hadn’t told her.

  At that moment, McNab appeared as though from nowhere, causing Rhona to wonder if he’d been listening in.

  ‘I was just talking about you,’ Janice said, unruffled by his sudden arrival. ‘What’s up?’ she said, noting his expression.

  ‘Jean Barclay just called me. She’s had a visitor. Karen Marshall arrived at her door an hour ago. Confessed to Jean that she was responsible for Mary’s death. That she’d replaced Mary at her confirmation, leaving Mary at the den. If she hadn’t done that, Mary would be alive today.’

  ‘Did she tell her why Mary didn’t go herself?’ Rhona said.

  ‘Apparently, Karen babbled a story about wanting a place in heaven, like Mary. Then she upped and left.’

  ‘Why didn’t she just tell Jean the truth?’ Janice said.

  Rhona thought of the recording and what Karen had said when McNab asked if she knew who’d been interfering with her friend.

  ‘She’s protecting the innocent, just like her father told her to.’

  61

  Had she lived, would Mary have looked like her big sister, Jean? They’d always shared the same dark hair, and Jean’s voice had reminded her so much of Mary, Karen had almost wept.

  Jean had been pleased to see her. It had showed clearly on her face.

  I should have gone back sooner.

  But how could she have done that, when she couldn’t remember what had really happened that day?

  ‘You didn’t tell her the truth,’ Jack told her from the passenger seat.

  ‘Protect the innocent. That’s what Dad told me to do,’ she replied.

  ‘Plus you took the blame. Babbling on about getting your place in heaven.’

  Jack’s voice annoyed her now. She wanted him to be quiet.

  ‘You’re dead,’ she replied. ‘I don’t have to listen to you any more.’

  ‘You’re sick,’ he shouted back at her. ‘You know that, don’t you? There’s a poison in you.’

  Karen turned the radio on to drown out Jack and wiped the sweat from her brow. The radiating heat from her body seemed to rise in waves, which even the car’s air-conditioning couldn’t help.

  Never mind, she didn’t have far to go. One last stop and it would all be over.

  The radio was playing old hits and Karen recognized a few from her early years with Jack. The music seemed to have calmed him too, because he’d stopped being cross with her and was humming alongside her, just the way he’d done during his illness.

  Funny how music memories were still in there, when dementia seemed to destroy everything else.

  Karen tried to remember what music Eleanor used to like as a teenager. There had been one she’d played over and over, Karen recalled. What was it?

  ‘“I’m Not in Love” by 10cc,’ the music host told her. ‘I’m playing it now.’

  ‘I’m Not in Love’, that was it. How did he know that was Eleanor’s song?

  Karen tuned in, humming along with it, and Jack did the same. For a moment she was happy, then another memory intervened. One Karen didn’t want to recall. Suddenly she was back at her sister’s wedding watching the bride and groom dance around the floor together, Eleanor’s dress so white it dazzled her eyes.

  The image abruptly changed to Mary trying on her confirmation dress, birling round in it for Karen to admire, even as a green spark of jealousy bit at her heart.

  Karen reached out and switched off the radio.


  ‘Why’d you do that?’ Jack complained.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ she told him.

  It would be dark when she got there; the sun was already turning the sky red. Karen fiddled with the air-con as the sweat broke out again on her brow.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I’ll soon be there.’

  62

  There was something wrong in all of this. Something he wasn’t getting. He’d kept telling himself that it was Karen who was either hiding something or not remembering clearly. But maybe it was him?

  He was supposed to be a detective.

  Somewhere in all this material – the statements, the forensic evidence, the interviews, the diary, his talk with Karen – was the truth. Concocted stories were never airtight and this was a concocted story. A web of remembrance, the criss-crossing of multicoloured threads, some strong, others weak.

  The past is what we decide it to be.

  No one in this was telling the truth. All of them were telling their own truths. The ways in which they wanted to remember it. The ways in which they could cope with that memory.

  Karen had buried her story in order to survive it.

  McNab chose the one thing he believed didn’t happen, then questioned himself whether it had. What had so traumatized Karen that day that she had ceased to speak at all? What had she buried so deep in her subconscious that it had remained hidden there for forty-five years?

  Karen had told him she’d always hoped that Mary had run away, and would eventually come back. Maybe that was the lie she told herself in order to survive, because she knew it wasn’t true.

  Karen, McNab realized with certainty, had always known her friend was dead.

  She had known because Karen had seen Mary killed. Or she knew because Karen had killed her. The shocking and possible truth of each of these scenarios began to play out in McNab’s head.

  Firstly, the one he definitely didn’t want to be true. The girls fighting over who would wear the dress. In the struggle, Mary falls badly, hits her head. Karen can’t rouse her. Would she do as she said and go to the chapel in Mary’s place? Or just run?

  The scenario, although possible, required an adult to remove the body and bury it. Would Karen tell anyone about the accident, and if so, who?

  It came to him then that if she told anyone, it would be her policeman father. And what would he do? Report his daughter? See her locked up for all her young life? Or remove the evidence? All the evidence that the girls had ever been at the den that day.

  The impossible had just become the probable.

  But what about the marks on the body that suggested a sexual motive for Mary’s death?

  DC Kenny Marshall would have known what to do, in case the body was ever discovered. McNab suddenly recalled the gentle way in which the body had been laid to rest, the pillowed head resting on the confirmation dress. Would a sex-crazed killer have done that?

  McNab realized he was the one writing the story now. Fashioning it in his own way to fit the known facts.

  And yet . . . what was it Karen had said at the completion of their talk?

  My dad told me I had to forget everything that happened that day. I was just a wee girl. I didn’t understand what was going on. Except, she’d added, if Mary was dead, it was my fault.

  McNab had chosen to use the car to visit Eleanor Jackson, rather than the bike. The Harley would have got him there faster, but he couldn’t think so well when riding it, his exhilaration taking up all of his thoughts.

  He’d decided not to give any forewarning of his visit. If Eleanor Jackson wasn’t in, he would simply wait for her.

  Karen’s sister had left East Kilbride sometime after she’d married Eric, moving down the A726 to Strathaven. McNab found the stone villa where they’d apparently brought up two kids who no longer lived at home, according to Mrs Jackson.

  The substantial property now looked way too big for a woman on her own, whose husband seemed to spend most of his time working abroad. McNab parked on the road outside, then gave Janice a call.

  ‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘Any word on Karen?’

  ‘We picked up her car on the cameras heading south through Glasgow – timing suggests that’s when she was making for her old address and her visit to Jean. We have nothing yet on where she went after that, either north or south.’

  ‘Make sure someone’s watching for her at Rowan Cottage. Let’s hope she heads home. Oh, and Janice, have someone at her husband’s grave. I have a feeling she may eventually go there.’

  Noting a light had come on upstairs, McNab got out of the car, locked it and headed up the short drive. The villa with its garden looked a bit further up the scale than the police house Eleanor had been brought up in. Which suggested her husband’s truck tours on the continent were well paid. Of course, Eleanor might also work. McNab tried to recall if she’d mentioned that in their conversation and realized if she had, he hadn’t made a note of it, only being interested in what had happened forty-five years ago.

  The doorbell produced chimes that weren’t answered, even though McNab was pretty sure they were loud enough to penetrate the entire house. The attached garage was closed and there wasn’t a car in the drive. But there was the light on upstairs.

  McNab rang again and waited, impatient now. Finally, he opened the letter box and shouted through.

  ‘Police. Open the door!’

  Eventually, he heard movement, a door opening, footsteps. Then a voice said, ‘Who is it?’

  McNab repeated, ‘It’s the police. Detective Sergeant McNab.’

  A moment’s silence, then the door was unlocked and opened a fraction. Mrs Jackson stared through the crack at him and his ID as though she’d never met him before.

  ‘May I come in, Mrs Jackson?’ McNab said.

  ‘Is it really necessary?’ Mrs Jackson used the irritated voice McNab had come to know.

  ‘Yes,’ McNab told her.

  The door was grudgingly opened further and McNab allowed to enter. Mrs Jackson was dressed in slacks and a sweater. Out of the formal clothes she’d worn to the station, she looked younger, although no less cross.

  ‘You should have called before coming here,’ she told McNab as he followed her into a sitting room where she switched on a light.

  ‘I was nearby, in fact just up the road at your old home, speaking to Jean Barclay.’

  She accepted his lie without surprise, which seemed odd. McNab had assumed she would ask why he should be doing such a thing, in the evening, like this.

  ‘What is it you want?’ Mrs Jackson said.

  ‘Shall we sit down first?’ McNab said.

  She grudgingly took a seat. McNab, as he did the same, was struck by the thought that the room was rarely used, just like the sitting room in Karen’s cottage.

  ‘Is your husband back yet?’ McNab said.

  ‘I told you already that he wouldn’t be back for at least two weeks.’

  ‘That’s odd, because his company believe he’s already back in the UK,’ McNab said, keeping a keen eye on her face as he said it.

  ‘That’s nonsense. He called me and told me the date himself.’ She looked as though she believed this, or perhaps just wanted to believe it.

  ‘Mrs Jackson, we have CCTV footage showing your husband, Eric Jackson, in central Stirling two days ago.’

  Now that statement did throw her.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ she managed. ‘Why would Eric be in Stirling?’

  ‘I was hoping you would be able to tell me that,’ McNab said.

  ‘There’s been a mistake, of course,’ she responded angrily. ‘The footage from those cameras renders people unrecognizable.’

  McNab was inclined to agree, but obviously didn’t.

  ‘It was Eric, that’s been confirmed.’ He stuck with the plan. ‘Your husband was in two images with your sister, Karen, during the time she was missing.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. Anyway, my sister isn’t missing any more,’ she sai
d.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ McNab said swiftly.

  ‘It was on the news,’ Mrs Jackson said. ‘Some former detective found her wandering in the woods at the castle.’

  ‘And that didn’t worry you?’

  She pursed her lips. ‘My sister was always a drama queen. Mary McIntyre encouraged her in that.’

  Despite her harsh words, something else had crept into Mrs Jackson’s speech. McNab, with years on the job, now smelled fear seeping through. She might be speaking harshly, but something he’d said had frightened Mrs Jackson. Something about her husband or her sister.

  ‘I’d like you to call your husband right now,’ McNab said.

  ‘I gave you his number. You can phone him yourself.’

  Nice try, he thought. ‘Call him on your phone, then give the phone to me,’ McNab ordered.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said, any fear now masked again by anger.

  ‘Now,’ McNab said.

  ‘Then I’ll have to fetch my phone,’ she said, and already he could read on her face what she thought was her way out.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  That was it. Her face crumpled and McNab found himself staring at a completely different version of Eleanor Jackson. McNab let her cry for a bit, simply waiting for her to stop.

  ‘Your husband doesn’t come home, does he?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not for the last six months.’

  ‘Where does he go, do you know?’

  ‘No idea. He won’t tell me.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘After the last tour. He came back for his clothes. Said he’d met someone else.’

  ‘And the number you gave us?’ McNab said.

  ‘He’s changed it. I can’t get him either.’

  McNab knew he hadn’t had the whole truth, but he’d had some of it. Maybe now was the time to tell Eleanor Jackson her younger sister’s version of what had happened that day all those years ago.

  Eleanor listened in silence. She seemed so unmoved by the tale, McNab began to wonder if she already knew it. If so, keeping it from the police would be a criminal offence. He told her so.