died. Ian’s body language got very defensive when he talked about it … He probably looked after them for three or four months after she went missing, starts off as a duty, turns into a bargain – if I keep the gerbils alive she’ll come back to us – and the longer it goes on the more desperate they get, the gerbils become symbolic of Helen’s disappearance, then they become responsible for it, and gradually Ian stops feeding them and they die.’
‘What a lovely—’
‘Or perhaps one night he got drunk and battered them all to death with a hammer …’ She fiddled with her glasses. ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Dickie tells me you’re still in touch with Hannah Kelly’s parents?’
‘Hannah didn’t have any gerbils.’
‘Is her house like this, have they kept it like a shrine to her memory, do they expect her to just turn up one day like nothing ever happened?’
The pink unicorn had fallen on the floor while I’d been shifting the mattress. I picked it up. Fuzzy. Soft. Warm. ‘Her parents don’t live there any more. Must’ve moved about five times in the last eight years, and he still finds them. Every sixteenth of September: another card.’
Dr McDonald wrapped an arm around herself, head on one side, frowning at the bookshelves on the wall above the desk. They were full of hardbacks: a couple with leather bindings – Dickens, C. S. Lewis – others in faded dust jackets – Ian Fleming, Jilly Cooper, Harper Lee – some that looked as if they’d been wrapped in clear plastic sheeting – Anthony Horowitz, Gabriel King, a couple of Harry Potters, some vampire bollocks. She pulled Moonraker from the shelf and flicked through it, the creases between her eyebrows getting deeper. Then she did the same with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, chewing on her bottom lip.
‘I’ve been through them, no hidden messages tucked in between the pages.’ I checked my watch. ‘Time to make a move.’
Nothing. She was still squinting at the book.
‘Hello? You in?’
A blink. ‘Yes, right, time …’ Dr McDonald slid the book back onto the shelf, then picked up a framed photograph from the chest of drawers. It was a little girl in a pink princess party dress complete with tiara, magic wand, and a pair of fairy wings. Big grin. Two missing teeth. Bright ginger hair swept up in a sort of bun. She was holding a turnip lantern, a candle glowing inside its jagged mouth. ‘When I was eight Aunty Jan made me this all-in-one suit for Halloween: black, with a white tummy and paws, a swishy tail, and a three-foot-tall stripy red-and-white hat. All my friends wanted to be Disney princesses.’
‘Rebecca was a zombie. Katie went as Hannibal Lecter. We got her an orange jumpsuit and Michelle made this little straitjacket from an old blanket.’ A smile broke free. ‘I got her a restraint mask, and we pushed her about on one of those two-wheeled trolley things, Rebecca shambling along behind us, growling “Brainssssss” at everyone … Tell you, they ate so many Sherbet Fountains and little Mars Bars they were sick for days.’ I ran a hand through the unicorn’s soft pink fur. ‘Was the best Halloween we ever had.’ And the last. Before the bastard took Rebecca and everything went to shit. I put the fuzzy unicorn back on the bed and arranged the Multicoloured Bear Gang around it, then dug my hands into my pockets. Shrugged. ‘Anyway …’
Dr McDonald put the photo frame back on the chest of drawers.
Silence.
I cleared my throat. ‘We’d better get going.’
The windscreen wipers sounded like someone rubbing a balloon along a window, back and forth, leaving one greasy arc across the glass where the rain refused to shift. Squeak, squeal, squeak, squeal.
Dr McDonald wriggled in her seat. ‘Of course it was never his fault – you know what some pathologists are like, kings of their own little kingdom and anyone who shows the slightest backbone, or contradicts them in any way, has to get this huge lecture about how things are done in the “real world”, and I mean how can they even say that—’
On and on, all the way from Dundee – the rain, and the squealing wipers, and the roar of tyres on the road, and the grumbling engine, building up into a headache that must have registered on seismographs on the other side of the bloody world.
A green road sign loomed out of the rain: Oldcastle 5.
Thank Christ.
‘—so when I turned around and showed him the injection site hidden in the bite marks on her breast I thought he was actually going to explode, boom, right then and there—’
A huge Asda eighteen-wheeler roared past in the outside lane, and the crappy little Renault rocked on its springs, caught in the backdraught. The windscreen disappeared under a wall of spray.
‘—I mean psychologically it was the obvious place to look, given the indicators, but try telling him that—’
On and on.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel: imagine it’s her neck and squeeze …
‘Ash?’
Keep squeezing.
Silence – nothing but the engine and the road and the radio and the rain.
She coughed. ‘You don’t really like me, do you? Every time you look at me, there’s this little pause, like you’re trying not to beat me to death. Do I threaten you, or am I just really annoying? I bet it’s annoying, I annoy people when I’m nervous and new people make me nervous, especially when they’re all covered in bruises.’
‘Maybe … Maybe we could listen to the radio for a little bit.’
More silence, then a little, ‘OK.’ She reached out and turned the volume up. A song by one of those emo bands Katie liked crackled out of the speakers, all guitars and angsty vocals.
I glanced over at the passenger seat. Dr McDonald was staring out of the side window, both arms wrapped around herself, as if she might split down the middle and this was the only way to hold both halves together. Probably sulking.
As long as she did it quietly it was OK with me.
The road climbed up Pearl Hill, past the huge Costco, then down again. The valley opened out in front of the car as the dual carriageway dipped towards Oldcastle. Amber streetlights mapped out the city, even though it had only just gone twelve. Up on Castle Hill, floodlights caught a squall of rain as it hammered the crumbling ramparts. On the other side of the river, warning lights blinked red on top of the Blackwall transmitter. The high-rise blocks and grimy council houses of Kingsmeath loomed up the side of the hill, as if a tidal wave of concrete was about to crash down and sweep everything away. The sky looked like a battered wife.
Welcome home.
I pulled the crumbling Renault into the kerb and killed the engine. McDermid Avenue was a dirty-beige terrace of four-storey buildings with railings to keep the pavement at bay and steps up to the front door. Satellite dishes pimpled the sandstone walls like blackheads on a teenager. Bay windows, fanlights, gnarled oak and beech trees lined the road, their naked branches dripping in the rain.
The twin chimneys of Castle Hill Infirmary’s incinerator poked up in the background, trailing plumes
