(2013) Four Widows (15 page)

We were later told that the couple had been reconciled. “She took him
back
?” I could not believe it.

“Lost a few brain cells after all,” remarked my father without looking up from his paper.

My sister and I focused on this tale for entirely different reasons. Gee became fixated on gunshot wounds to the head, fascinated by brains swelling, excessive bleeding, burst blood vessels; the grisly details. She was disappointed, almost, that our father’s miracle woman had lived. Whereas I wanted to know what the
hell
the couple had been arguing about. What does it take to point a gun at someone’s head–and go boom? Motive.

Chapter Twenty Two

Dead People Don’t Answer Questions

I checked out McCarthy online. More than once, more than decent. He was who he said he was. Cases included financial fraud, theft, murder. I also found links to anti-terrorism work, including an incident at Glasgow International Airport.

When we next spoke on the phone I echoed Cece’s concerns. “Can you lead an investigation based on an
email
?”

“An email’s more than just a hunch,” McCarthy said, his no-nonsense response shooting me down.

“But…”

“This
email
tells me your husband was as good as murdered. Want me to wait for a talk-show confession?”

Chastened by the brusque response, I backtracked. “I’m in denial. It’s so hard to accept that someone would w-want to… you know…” I failed to finish.

He softened his tone. “Edinburgh isn’t Miami. We’re driving down the levels of violent crime and
will
get to the bottom of what happened to your husband. It’s not a straightforward case and there are no witnesses but we don’t give up.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to question…”

He cut short the apology. “We’ve wasted six months on this. I feel responsible.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I still feel responsible.”

Edinburgh’s not Miami. McCarthy didn’t know I was walking around with a real-life firearm. I took it with me everywhere: to work, to Ribbons, to Costa. It terrified me. I couldn’t hold it without breaking out in a sweat, finger on the trigger. This fear corroded my stomach lining worse than mountains of anti-inflammatory drugs ever did. You see, guns and bullets aren’t dangerous; people are.

Cece, with her distinctive Southern twang, which hadn’t been diluted crossing state lines and countries over the years, was telling us earnestly how a curse works.

“It’s remote influencing,” she said. “People can generate malicious energy to make bad stuff happen.”

Kate scoffed. “Spare us the voodoo talk.”

“Laugh all you like but it’s true. Look at you. Look at me. Lori too.”

She had a good point. The Watcher was still out there and I’d shown Cece, Suzanne and Kate the envelopes filled with photographs and personal paperwork. These anonymous deliveries continued: addressed to Harrison, redirected to me. There was no set routine–sometimes weeks with nothing through the post. Ominous silence.

I would handle the photographs of Vivienne Roberts with extreme care and pour over them with an intensity usually reserved for our cover models as we flagged up stray hairs, wrinkles or pigmentation. In this situation, though, instead of looking for physical flaws I searched for answers, obsessing over the life of someone I had never met. Hoping, I guess, this bewitching woman would lead to clues about how I lost my husband.

Then the tone changed–and content. I received a mailed package containing a newspaper cutting folded precisely into four. Vivienne was dressed in a spectacular red evening dress surrounded by six or seven other people smiling at the camera. The caption underneath read:
Vivienne Roberts, 28, organised and helped raise £225,000 at the annual London Diabetes Society charity ball.
I didn’t read this at the time though because someone had scrawled a bespoke caption in red pen:
Vivienne Roberts. Murdered
.

Other photographs were similarly defaced with reddish ink that looked suspiciously like blood. Some looked scratched; fingernail frenzied.

I read the bullet spray of words scrawled, scratched across the surface:
murdered; evil; killer; you are dead; time is running out; Dr Murderer.

I remember holding one photo for what seemed like an unimaginable amount of time before letting it fall to the floor, seemingly guileless. Hate had been passed down from Harrison to me. Personal debt; a score to settle.

Damn you, Harrison
, I raged. What did you do?

It is effortless to relive fear: it worked its way through me, cold sensation drilling through my veins like analgesic drugs, although it had absolutely no effect on me. I still felt excruciating pain but couldn’t raise my hand to make the procedure stop. Whatever the truth, it wasn’t good or honourable. I started to believe in ghosts–I needed to make a connection and ask questions.
Harrison would never cheat on me
, I told myself. He loved me.

Now I know I could have spared myself immeasurable amounts of angst if someone had reminded me this: dead people don’t answer questions.

Sleep was not to be. Insomnia reached Trump-tower size; I had more to think about, more than ever. This was the usual run of events. Is Harrison’s murderer out there and where? Did he sleep with Vivienne Roberts? This made me think about the letters addressed to Harrison and redirected to me. Then there was The Watcher. Ted Holmes got airtime too. Now, I was affected by gun-toting Kate and hoped she wasn’t going off the rails; off the bridge.

The incident had shaken me more than I let on to Cece and Suzanne. I closed my eyes and could see Kate standing there, shooting her husband; one, two, three, four. It was a savage scene; so furious and controlled. This is what I couldn’t explain to the others. Neil might be dead but she still shot him. Blasted a loved one through the grass into oblivion. Forced him down through the ground into hell. It was a horrible violation, an attack on someone defenceless on the ground; albeit six feet under.

What did you do, Neil Moritz? What the hell did you do to deserve this?

Then I remember what Cece had told me. “She
found
him, you know. She. Found. Him.”

Cece put Kate’s behaviour down to a moment of significant hormonal upheaval but I had my doubts. Kate lived a controlled life with no surprises. I’d already established that she had a logical, unneurotic brain. She wasn’t a spontaneous person who’d grab a gun and let loose. Battle-tested and brave, she had strategies and even organised time to cry; whenever the children weren’t around. I could picture her writing the date in her desktop diary at work:
Morningside Cemetery 11am, shoot dead feckless husband. Four times.
I imagined her making notes, ticking off her list.
One for each year since you’ve been gone. That should do it
.

Mostly, of course, I would lie awake and think about Harrison, attempting to work out what happened that night. How could
he
have been so senseless? That’s what I asked myself over and over. We are here because of a heartbeat. His job was to sustain life, save lives, not throw it away through drink. Or overdose.

I never thought his recklessness would derail him, fatally. I definitely didn’t think he would risk killing others, which is what would have happened had the car collided with another vehicle. Harrison
saved
people. That’s what he did. He rescued them from disease. From themselves.

Chapter Twenty Three

Watch, Wallet, Wedding Ring

Much of what happened around the time of Harrison’s death is vague but it is coming back to me now. Three new friends trigger a cure for six-month amnesia.

I remember the phone ringing just after 6am, lunging at it, thinking it was the alarm. I had been to see Jim’s band Malt the night before; had drunk too much as usual and didn’t get in until 2am. Jim was forever pestering me to go to his gigs and I went willingly, the entire office did. He had a great falsetto and used it to his advantage. He frequently liked to remind us that:
I can hit a soprano high C, maybe even F sharp above that
.

I don’t remember getting home other than Jim dropping me off. He didn’t drink on the job and insisted I wait for him to pack up his gear so he could drive me home. He fussed like that, which, I reminded him, did nothing to enhance his playboy slash rock-star image.

Earlier I had listened to a voice message from Harrison, who said he planned to stay over at the hospital. He’d sounded okay, surprisingly perky for someone who had volunteered to do an extra shift.

Falling into an empty bed, I crashed into an exhaustive sleep, ears ringing from audio speakers the size of cars. My hearing was still fuzzy when I took the call and a moment passed before I realised someone was asking to speak to me, Lorien Walker, repeating the name. “Mrs Lorien Walker. Is this Lorien Walker I’m talking to? Dr Harrison Warner’s wife?” It was a firm authoritative voice.

The conversation comes back to me in vivid detail. I think the speaker paused just a fraction before she said, “There has been an accident.” Part truth.

At this point, I’m sitting up in bed, surprisingly calm, expecting to hear that Harrison had lost someone on the operating table, perhaps a straightforward procedure had gone wrong. There are different kinds of accidents.

I called my sister first but it rang out to voicemail. I tried again, the landline this time, but no answer. People with a two-year-old child had to be awake at 6am, it was a given, surely, but I had no success.

I tried Jim next. He answered his mobile on two rings with a grunt.

“I won’t make it into work,” I said, controlled and quiet. There was a small silence and I volunteered more information, repeating carefully what I’d been told: there has been an accident.

I’m standing at the kerbside holding my handbag tight to me; riot shield. Jim picks me up from outside my front door and we drive to Perth, racing up the M90 motorway at such breakneck speed it’s a miracle we didn’t add our names to the accident sheet.

The world was not quite awake. Just commuter cars zipping onward to beat the morning rush. Jim didn’t speak. I didn’t talk. To think that a few hours earlier he was delivering an encore to a lively crowd in a bar on Leith Street. Now this. All because of one phone call and unfortunate fact: there has been an accident.

Harrison was pronounced dead on arrival. His arrival, not mine, which explained the pause on the phone. I had an extra 45 minutes believing he was still in the world with me; the time it took me to race from Edinburgh to Perth. Now there was no pretending and the words carried an electric surge.
Your husband is dead
. High-voltage news
.

Jim was pacing the corridor. I could see him through glass swing doors walking back and forth, rubbing his unshaven chin. I felt the sympathetic hand on my shoulder from the doctor who broke the news, he looked worse than I did. Christ, I even managed to sign some paperwork.

It was the weirdest feeling, as though I was wide awake during a nine-hour operation. I could see the surgical scalpel remove my heart. I watched the intricate skill and methodical manner involved, but the procedure didn’t hurt me. Arguments and absence, the silences in our marriage had caused me more pain than this.

Your husband is dead
. Feel something,
anything
, a voice whispered inside my head.

The doctor stood with me. My only symptoms: a dry mouth and cold fingertips. There was no rapid heartbeat or chest pain. I was simply in a state of daze and complete detachment.

“He’s dead,” I told Jim when I pushed through the swing doors into the corridor. “I can see him now.”

Jim looked absolutely floored, as though he was the bereaved spouse, not me. I don’t remember what he said other than he had better luck contacting my sister. “Shocked, I think,” said Jim. “She can’t make it to the hospital, but you’ve got to call her.”

Damn downers, I thought, feeling a pierce of panic hit me. I’m not strong.

“Let me make the calls, paperwork, whatever needs to be done,” said Jim, pulling himself together.

“I’m not sure I can do this.” First wobble.

Jim gripped me by the elbow, pinching skin as he steered me towards the nearest vending machine. “I’m here,” he said, ferociously. “I’m not leaving you.” I watched his mouth move. It looked like he was speaking through glass.

There was muffled silence as I struggled to take in further instruction from another doctor. Fortunately, Jim acted as interpreter: I could see my husband now.

I found him in a ward where I would sit with him before he was wheeled to the hospital morgue. He looked unscathed but inside was a different story. Crushed, including a broken neck. Quick and painless death, so someone said. I love you, I thought. From the first.

I didn’t fall apart or sob as I sat there. I just looked at the face of the person I loved the most in the world, the stillness of him startling. This was my second dead body experience in a short space of time; first my father, now Harrison. His lips were icy cold when I kissed them. I was aware of the murmur of nurses, hand on my shoulder and a glass of water for me on the table by the bed.

No concept of time. I could have been sitting by his bedside for minutes or months but when I left the ward the world was back on its time axel and people continued about their business as before. I couldn’t pretend there had been some mistake.

I also remember Jim standing in a whitewashed corridor lined with orange tip-up chairs and a drinks vending machine, looking more devastated than before. The truth had hit home, sledgehammer hard.

He was clutching a plastic bag holding Harrison’s belongings: watch, wallet, wedding ring.

More memories return; catching a flight and falling into a cab, which took me to my mother’s house in Kent. She accompanied me to north London for the funeral but there would be no headstone because Harrison was cremated on his wishes after a thorough and extensive episode of organ and tissue donation.