A Suitable Lie (29 page)

O
n automatic, I headed straight home and went through the motions of pretending that everything was okay.

As I tended to the boys and parried any questions about Anna, all I could think was, Anna is dead.

Once the boys were settled and watching cartoons, I managed to grab a few minutes with Mum in the kitchen.

‘Dead?’ Mum’s face went grey and she all but collapsed onto a chair. ‘How?’

I told her. The words scarcely managed to push out of my throat.

She held my hand to hers. ‘Oh, my God.’ Her eyes bored into mine. ‘Do they know who did it?’

I shook my head.

‘You went round there last night…’

‘Yeah. I stopped at the kerb. Realised you were right, that this would achieve nothing and got back into the car.’

‘You didn’t go in the house?’

‘No.’

‘Did anybody see you?’

‘Not sure. Why?’

Her face lengthened. ‘Estranged husband seen outside the house on the night of the wife’s murder?’

‘I didn’t do it, Mum.’

‘Of course you didn’t,’ she said with just a little too much haste. Did she actually doubt me? ‘I just meant that if someone saw you and mentioned it to the police, it wouldn’t look good.’

M
um and I fed, bathed and put the boys to bed in record time.

‘When do we tell them? How do we tell them?’ I asked Mum when we were safely out of earshot, back in the kitchen.

She could only shrug. ‘Wee lambs.’ She held a hand to her mouth as a thought hit. ‘And Pat. That’s two mums he’s lost now.’ A tear slipped down her face.

I moved to comfort her but stopped when I realised I had nothing to offer, my emotional well was completely dry. I had nothing to give.

K
aren McPherson had bags under her eyes that could have carried the laundry from a small hotel, but the laser focus and the friendly smile that flirted across her lips suggested that she was a lawyer I could work with.

She leaned forward in her chair, pushed a filing cabinets’ worth of blue folders to the side of her desk and asked me to tell her everything.

I talked for what felt like hours. She nodded as I talked and stopped me occasionally to elicit further understanding and to fill a new blue folder with copious notes.

‘And you say they asked you for your brother Jim’s address?’ she asked once I’d almost run out of words.

I nodded.

She narrowed her eyes. ‘From what you just told me he isn’t an alibi.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Could he also be a suspect?’

‘No,’ I answered. But I said the word with a long, drawn-out note of contradiction – a thought had occurred.

‘What is it?’ Karen asked.

‘He told Mum that he went over there that night.’

‘Why would he do that?’

I sat back in my chair as I remembered talking to him in Sheila’s kitchen. The anger in his face. His balled fist. ‘I told him about the abuse and how Anna threatened to keep me away from my boys. He didn’t react well. Said he’d go round there and put her straight.’

‘Hardly helpful,’ she said and for a second looked even more tired than when I walked in. ‘And what happened?’

‘He told Mum the house was in darkness. No one came to the door, so he left.’

‘Any idea what time?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘So, on the night your wife was killed both you and your brother went over there at different times?’

I nodded. Crossed my arms. Didn’t tell her that I’d lied to the police about being there. Bit the inside of my mouth. It didn’t look good. If I was a detective, why would I want to look anywhere other than me and Jim for the killer? Will they hear about this and think we colluded?

I felt a chill. Jim wasn’t capable of murder, was he? Could he have lied to Mum? He had a temper on him, but I was all but certain he wouldn’t hurt a woman. An image of Anna in full battle mode jumped into my head. If she came at him, would he defend himself? Retaliate?

If I knew my brother that is exactly what he would do.

‘Tell me what you’re thinking,’ Karen ordered.

‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘He said he didn’t get an answer and left. I’ve no reason to call him a liar.’

Karen drummed her pen against her desk. Stopped, and then twisted the barrel of her pen off and on. ‘If the police had enough evidence to put you in front of the Procurator Fiscal they would have done that already. So the visits to your office and sitting outside your house are fishing trips. They want to rattle your cage. See how you react.’ She twisted the pen so that the nib shot out of the end and took some more notes. Once she finished, she looked up at me. ‘We’ll lodge a complaint. Say you’re being harassed at your place of work.’

‘What will that do?’

‘Probably nothing, but it will make them think twice. Maybe rein them in a little. Meantime, let me know if it happens again.’ She smiled to signal that the meeting was over.

I walked to the door. Hand on the handle, I turned to thank her for her time.

‘If Jim decides he needs legal advice, I can recommend some good people,’ she said and pulled a different file from the pile on her right.

M
um was bug-eyed with worry. I’d barely got one foot in the door before she was tugging at my sleeve.

‘Those detectives were here,’ she said.

‘Right,’ I replied, forcing calm into my voice and expression.

‘They asked about Jim. I had to tell them. I had to,’ she said as she twisted her fingers.

‘Ganny,’ Ryan chanted from the living room.

‘In a minute, son,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Be there in a minute.’ Then to me. ‘What have I done? Have I put them onto him? Do they think one or both of my sons are murderers?’

‘Mum.’ I took her by the elbow and led her to the kitchen. She sat at the table. ‘When did you speak to them?’

‘About eleven.’

‘They were in my office just after nine and they asked me how to get in touch with him, so they already had him on their radar before they spoke to you.’

We both sat with that for a moment.

‘Do you think a neighbour might have seen him?’ she asked.

‘Who knows,’ I replied and thought of the Stewarts across the street. They had Neighbourhood Watch stickers on every window and their net curtains were on permanent twitch.

‘Phone him,’ I suggested.

‘I have,’ she replied. ‘No answer.’ She went back to twisting her fingers. ‘What is happening to my family?’ A solitary tear slipped from her right eye.

I gripped her hands. ‘We’ll be fine.’ I offered a reassurance I didn’t feel.

‘You don’t think…’

‘What? No fucking way,’ I half-shouted. ‘Jim’s been in a few scraps in his time, but he would never hurt a woman.’

‘I know. I know.’ She pulled her hands from mine and held them
to her throat. I could see the skin there, like pale-pink crepe-paper, and was reminded of her age. ‘It’s just that you hear stuff. People stare, make comments and you start to think. Start to doubt…’

‘Who’s saying what, Mum?’ I prayed she would give me a name. Then I’d have someone to focus my anger on.

‘Oh, nothing. Nobody.’

‘Who was it?’ I stood.

‘Och, it was just … I was in the supermarket. Saw Jean Campbell and she couldn’t wait to ask me about Anna. Said she’d heard that both of you were round there that night.’

‘Jesus fuck…’

‘Daddy said a bad word again,’ said Pat. He’d appeared at my side as we were talking. ‘What are you saying about Mum?’

‘Go back and sit with your brother,’ I said with more anger than I wanted to.

‘But…’

‘Go,’ I shouted and pointed in the direction I wanted him to move.

He ran from me, crying, and I felt even worse. ‘Pat,’ I shouted after him, my tone an apology. Too late. The living room door slammed shut.

‘Poor wee lamb,’ said Mum. ‘He knows there’s something wrong. They both do.’ Her subtext was that we needed to tell them. I needed to tell them.

‘I can’t go there just now, Mum.’

The kitchen door slammed open and Jim stalked in. He was wearing a suit, but the top button of his shirt was open and the knot of his tie was at mid-chest level. His hair looked like it was no stranger to a hedge.

‘What the bloody hell is going on?’ he demanded of us both. ‘I’ve had the polis round my work asking all sorts. And everywhere I’ve been today it feels like everyone is pointing and staring.’

‘It’s gossip and speculation, Jim,’ Mum answered.

‘Do they actually think that between us we killed Anna?’ Jim asked, his eyes large and bright. ‘Are they fucking nuts?’

‘Killed Anna?’ I heard a small voice at my side.

Oh no.

‘Pat. I’ll…’

He ran.

Mum looked at me, her face a model of disgust that this was the way he’d found out about Anna’s death. ‘Go to him, Andy. He needs his dad.’

I
t was dark by the time I re-joined Mum and Jim in the kitchen.

‘How are they?’ Mum moved to the edge of her seat as if to go to the boys.

I stretched my neck to the side as if to iron out a kink in the muscles there and shook out my hands, willing the blood to return. I’d been lying on the bed for hours with both boys in my arms. Ryan didn’t have much of a clue as to what was happening, but he read his brother’s weeping and got caught up in it.

‘Ryan’s upset cos his brother’s upset. Pat is inconsolable.’ I looked back over my shoulder. ‘He’s sleeping at the moment, but I need to go back to him in a moment.’

‘We’re trying to work out who could have done it,’ said Jim. ‘We know you couldn’t hurt a fly, and it sure as shit wasn’t me. So who murdered your wife, Andy?’

I looked from Jim to my mother. Read the confusion and concern in their eyes. How do you deal with such an event? How do you take such a violent, irrevocable act and give it sense or meaning? Murder is something that happens on the news or in a book or TV drama. Not to someone you knew and loved.

‘The cops have got you and me in their sights, Andy,’ said Jim. He ran his right hand through his hair. ‘Why the hell did I go over there? What was I thinking?’ he asked no one in particular. ‘Somebody in this town just committed murder.’ Jim shivered. ‘Who?’

We sat in silence for a few moments, each of lost in terrible imaginings. I saw Anna’s face as it was two nights before, when I went to see her. Read the contradictions in her behaviour from the distance
of time. At first she’d been hateful, angry, but it was almost as if she was playing a part. Then the phone call and she switched completely. Told me to take the boys.

What one earth had been going on in her head?

Jim stood. Moving from a seated position to standing in a blink. The feet of the kitchen chair squealing in protest.

‘I can’t handle this,’ he said, his eyes on a fixed point in the distance. He looked at me. ‘Got to go.’ He made a tiny movement with his head, telling me he wanted to talk to me outside on my own. He kissed Mum on the cheek and without another look at me he left.

I counted to thirty and followed him outside.

He was sitting in his car. Drumming on the steering wheel with rigid fingers.

‘Jesus,’ he said when I sat in the passenger seat. ‘This is fucked up.’

I twisted in the seat to face him. There was something more here. This wasn’t just about my dead wife and police suspicions.

He turned to face me. Eyes large. He wiped a hand over his mouth. Returned to drumming. He looked into the driver’s mirror at my mother’s house behind us.

‘Those wee boys,’ he said. ‘These beautiful wee boys.’ His smile was tortured but full of love. ‘You know, I wouldn’t blame you if you…’ He paused. ‘Whatever happens, those boys have to be looked after.’ His eyes searched mine as if looking for some sense of my culpability in the death of my wife.

N
ext morning, Ryan was full of energy, but Pat hung onto my shirtsleeves as if he was worried I might disappear and never return. I read the haunted expression on his face and tried to reassure him with smiles, a hand on his shoulder and regular hugs.

‘Take them to the park, Andy,’ said Mum as she served up some toast for breakfast. ‘Some playtime is just what the doctor ordered.’

‘Good idea,’ I replied. We had to aim for some version of normality for the boys’ sake.

A
n hour later and we were in Belleisle Park, walking past the deer enclosure on the way to the swings and climbing frames. Ryan was zipping about. His movement like the flight of a bluebottle, he didn’t spend more than a moment in one place. He moved quickly and at random, as if as soon as something snagged his attention, something else replaced it.

Pat was by my side, but I was relieved to note that his grief was temporarily being elbowed aside by the fresh air, the greenery around us and Ryan’s infectious movement.

My youngest son reached the play area first. As he ran, he kicked up little clouds of the bark the council had used to cushion the ground. I took a seat on a bench and was followed by Pat.

Despite the early hour there was already several children in the playpark; parents dotted the area, holding jackets, keeping guard.

‘On you go,’ I said to Pat, using the tone I might with a pup with a sore paw. ‘I’ll hold your jacket.’

He looked from me to Ryan. Eased one arm out of its sleeve. He looked at me again. His eyes large, the pupils like bruises.

‘I’m not going anywhere, buddy,’ I said and leaned back in the
seat. The sun peeked out from behind cloud. I felt its warmth and leaned my head back and closed my eyes, hoping my relaxed posture might help.

‘Pat. Daddy,’ Ryan shouted over. ‘Swing.’

Without opening my eyes I spoke to Pat. ‘Go push your wee brother on the swing?’

I felt the light touch of his jacket land on my lap and heard him turn away and walk over to the swings.

Ryan let out a high, excited squeal and I sent a note of thanks for his sunny disposition and lack of awareness. He’d asked several times for his mother, but didn’t dwell on her absence, moving on to whatever was interesting him at the time.

I crossed my arms and legs. Exhaled. Felt a stab of grief. And then a note of relief – I wouldn’t need to justify anything to Anna when I got home. Then came a shock of shame that my thoughts had gone there.

In my imagination I was back in Jim’s car and listening as he spoke, my hands tucked under my arms as if that might stop me from punching him. His words had haunted my sleep, running over and over in my mind.

‘She was alive when I left her,’ he had said. ‘Believe me.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I replied. ‘You said to Mum that you didn’t go in.’

He looked at me. Quickly moved his eyes away as if looking at me caused him pain.

‘I was furious, Andy. That witch battered you and then tried to keep your sons away from you. I couldn’t just stand by.’

‘What did you do, Jim?’

‘Fucking vicious,’ he said. He rolled up his sleeve to display two red lines on his forearm. One wound through the thick hair there for about four inches. The other was about an inch shorter. Both looked like they’d tore off a good layer of skin. I recognised the shape and intent of them. Anna had inflicted those on me on many occasions.

‘Why didn’t you go straight to the police, Jim?’

He looked at me as if I’d asked him to lie down in front of a train.

‘A woman dies. You might well be the last person to speak to her. An innocent man would help the police and cross himself off their investigation.’ I couldn’t keep the anger from my voice, but I didn’t know who I was angry at. Him, her or me.

He pushed at me. ‘Andy, how could you think…’ Disappointment and anger vied for attention in his tone. He cut off his question as if he was telling himself that I was confused and bound to be looking for someone to hit out at. The confusion lingered in his eyes as if he was processing our conversation and everything he ever believed about me.

He rolled his sleeve back down. Buttoned it with his usual precision as if in this action he was closing off that part of the conversation.

‘Went round there like I said. She was in and got annoyed that I’d just walked in without knocking.’ He looked at me. ‘She said you’d just picked up the boys, which kinda took a wee bit out of my steam.’

‘Jim, what were you thinking?’ This wasn’t good. When the police got the details of his visit it wouldn’t look good for either of us.

‘I’m an idiot. What can I say? Anyway, we got into it. I told her she was a bitch and if she did anything else to hurt you she’d have me to deal with.’

Footsteps approached and I was back in the present. I opened my eyes, expecting to see Pat.

It was a woman with shoulder-length brown hair, a red fleece jacket that struggled to contain both her and her expression of disgust.

‘How dare you,’ she hissed at me. Judge, jury and social-executioner. She crossed her arms under her bosom and glared, her small, dark eyes telling me she found my very presence to be harmful. Then she turned away from me. ‘Chloe. Ashley,’ she shouted. ‘Come on. We’re leaving. You are not playing anywhere near those boys.’

I was on my feet before I knew it. Took two steps and towered over her.

‘What the hell is your problem?’ I’d wear any kind of criticism, but involve my boys and I’m a she-bear protecting her cubs.

Everyone around us stopped what they were doing to watch. A man who was a matching pair for my accuser, wearing an identical fleece inched closer. It was clear from his movement that he didn’t share his wife’s disgust, but felt pressure to back her up.

‘You’re sick,’ she said. ‘Everybody knows what you’ve done.’

She spat at my feet. Actually spat. I was so stunned I could do nothing but look up from the white glob on the tip of my right shoe to the righteous, tight expression on her face.

‘We’re leaving.’

She turned and walked away to the side, gesturing at her children, and sending looks that demanded solidarity from the other parents. A couple of other women made a point of walking close to me as they left.

‘They think it was him and his brother,’ said one.

‘Police don’t have enough evidence yet or they’d be locked up.’

‘Hangin’s too good,’ said the first one as she looked me up and down.

As they passed me they both looked at me as if they were daring me to strike out at them. As if they’d take courage from standing up to me and use that as a force field for the rest of their lives.

Within minutes the play area was empty apart from my two boys. Ryan was completely oblivious. Pat had paused in his play when he noticed people were all leaving at once.

‘Dad, why did everyone leave?’ he asked as he ran to me.

I fell back down on to the bench as if my knees had been taken from me. Throughout my life I’d always been popular. People liked me. They gravitated to me. My mum used to say it was a combination of my size and benign expression. According to her it said trustworthy and helpful. And now for the first time I was the object of scorn and hate.

Pat tugged at my sleeve. I looked at him. His face held a twist of fear and love. ‘Did you and Uncle Jim kill Mum? Are the people lying?’

I couldn’t answer him. My job was to protect him, not be the
source of his pain. I’d found him a mother to replace the one he never knew and we’d both let him down grievously.

‘Son.’ I turned to face him, loss a suffocating weight in my throat and chest. I heaved at it. My breath in gasps. And tears took me for the first time since that moment the police broke the news.

Not sure what to do, he placed a hand on my shoulder while I cried, as if he was too frightened to come any closer.