Candles and Roses (31 page)

‘What do you think?’

‘It ties in with what Gorman told us.’ Horton took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. ‘Christ, must be kill or cure in this place. But, yes, it all rings true. Whether it justifies what she did—’

‘That’s for the jury and judge to decide,’ McKay said. ‘All we can do is make sure we’ve got the facts.’

‘Unpleasant as they are.’

‘Aye, no question of that.’

They reconvened five minutes later. Hamilton looked slightly more settled, the expression in her eyes less haunted. At least for the moment.

‘Tell us about your father.’

‘You know about my father, don’t you?’ she said. ‘You know all about him?’

‘We think we know something,’ McKay said. ‘Tell us what you know.’

Another lengthy pause. ‘When I was small—when my mum was alive—I idolised him. I thought he was the perfect father. He used to take me down to the beach, play with me there.’

‘Rosemarkie beach?’

‘Aye, among others. It was one of my favourites.’

‘So what happened?’ McKay asked. ‘Was it when your mother died?’

‘He changed. He thought we should have looked after her better. He blamed himself. And he blamed me. I was too young to see it, but he must have gone through a bad time. I think he was drinking too much. He was made redundant—he’d been working in a managerial job for some US company who pulled out of Scotland. He didn’t know what to do with himself.’

‘This was before he started the counselling work?’

‘He eventually did the training for it. Used his redundancy money. It must have given him some direction.’

McKay couldn’t imagine she would have been aware of these issues at the time. He could imagine Robbins telling her this, justifying himself, what he did. ‘How was he with you?’

She shook her head. ‘Awful. I mean, looking back, he was abusing me. Not, you know, sexually. Not then.’

‘Not then?’ From Horton.

‘That came later. When I was older, a teenager.’

McKay said: ‘At this point?’

‘Psychological abuse, I guess you’d call it. Leaving me on my own. Scaring me. Piling all his own guilt on to me. And physical, too. He used to spank me. He used to say I’d been bad when I hadn’t. He used to make me sit silently for hours, doing nothing.’

‘Watching the tide?’

Involuntarily, her gaze moved away from his. ‘That, too. And then later there was the sexual abuse. Me and others.’

‘Who were the others?’

‘His—patients, clients, whatever you want to call them. He built up this practice. Specialising in troubled teenagers and young people. People already damaged by their backgrounds, by what had happened to them. He took them on. Sometimes referred by their doctors. Sometimes just private cases. If they were deserving, as he put it, he didn’t charge them. You can guess which ones were deserving.’ The last sentence, for the first time, had a real edge of bitterness.

‘He had a technique,’ she went on. ‘I watched him do it. I realised it was what he’d done to me, over the years. He took you back into the past. Back to the last place, the last time, you’d been really happy. And then it was as if he unpicked your whole life, everything that had happened from that point on. Slowly demolished it until there was nothing left. He said it was to free you, to enable you to rebuild your life. But what it did was put you in his control, make you dependent on him. It was like he was playing with you.’

McKay swallowed. It was all too recognisable. It was what Robbins had done in the session with Chrissie. He’d unpicked them, taken everything away. Begun to create that dependency. ‘No-one complained?’

‘Not as far as I know,’ Hamilton said. ‘When he’d had enough of them, or when they stopped playing his games or whatever, he got rid of them.’

It was as if the air had grown suddenly colder. ‘Got rid of them?’

‘Sometimes he’d just cut them off and that would be it. But sometimes they were more persistent. He had contacts in Manchester—he was building up a subsidiary practice with some associates down there—and he’d arrange for them to move. Told them it was for the best that they got away, that he’d continue to look after them. Helped sort out their accommodation, sometimes helped find them work.’ She paused. ‘They were troubled souls. Most of them would do whatever he said.’

‘Lizzie,’ McKay said slowly. ‘You’re aware we’re investigating three recent murders?’

‘Aye, I know,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

McKay raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Why you’re here?’

‘Why I came back, I mean. As soon as I saw the first one reported on the news, I knew it was him. I don’t think it was the first—’

‘Go on.’

‘It was when I called him up. After, you know—’

‘Why did you call him? You hadn’t seen him for, what, the best part of ten years?’

‘Something like that. I’d walked out. I’d made a couple of friends. They helped me to see what he was doing, what he’d done. And they helped me leave. I went to Glasgow. It didn’t work out, not for long. But it got me away from him.’

‘But now you phoned him?’

‘I was desperate. I thought I was pregnant. I didn’t want the child. I wanted to get away from Gorman. I had a bit of savings, but nothing worth talking about. He was the only person I could think of.’

‘What happened?’

‘We met up. He drove up to Fortrose. I didn’t want him in my house so I let him take me down to Chanonry Point. You know, where the dolphins are. It was a beautiful afternoon. I picked a place where there were plenty of people around. So there was no danger of him—well, you know.’ She took a breath. ‘I told him what had happened. I asked for help.’

‘How did he react?’

‘He was the same as ever. Just laughed. Began playing his usual mind-games. Began trying it on again.’

‘And that was it?’

‘No. I’d thought about this. I knew how he’d react. So, in the end, I did the only thing I could think of. I threatened to expose him. I told him I’d report him to the authorities, to his professional body. Tell them what he’d been up to with his clients. I’d done some checking up on him on the internet. He’d become quite a star in his field. He wasn’t short of ego, and he’d got himself on various committees. Speaking conferences, all that stuff. There’d been one or two allegations about his behaviour over the years, but he’d been able to shrug them off. His specialism was dealing with troubled young people, after all. You couldn’t trust what they said. But I thought it would be different coming from his own daughter. And over the years I’d gathered the names of a few other women who’d be able to support what I was saying. Other victims.’

‘At first he laughed. Told me I wasn’t the first to try. Told me no-one would believe me. So I started telling him the names of some of the other women who’d support what I had to say. He carried on mocking me, but I could see he was beginning to take it more seriously.’

‘The names you mentioned,’ McKay said, gently. ‘Did they include any of our victims?’

Another pause. ‘I shouldn’t have told him their names,’ Hamilton said. ‘That was my stupid fault. That was why I felt responsible.’

‘How did you know them?’ Horton asked.

‘I’d met them when he was treating them. I knew Katy Scott fairly well, the others less so, but I’d talked to them then. I knew a bit about them. They were women I knew had moved to Manchester. Women I knew he’d been involved with.’ She shook her head.

‘What did he say?’

‘I could tell he was rattled. He told me I was talking rubbish. He said he’d pay me off, just once, just to stop me bothering him. Offered me five thousand. It was a lot more than I’d expected, to be honest.’

‘What happened after that? You left Fortrose?’

‘His condition was that he wanted rid of me, then and there. Said he’d drive me to Inverness station, buy me a ticket anywhere and stick me on the train. I’d got a friend I knew I could stay with for a bit in Aberdeen, so I agreed. And that’s what happened. I didn’t much care by then. It was when we were driving down that he got more threatening. Said I should be more careful. That I needed to watch myself. That I should leave it here or I wouldn’t be the first he’d had to
silence
.’ She stopped, as if surprised by her own words. ‘It was that word “silence” that shook me. Then he leaned forward and said that I needed to realise that, after the first time, it became easier. That it became easier every time.’

There was a protracted silence. The solicitor—McKay had almost forgotten his presence—was scribbling furiously. McKay asked quietly: ‘What do you think he meant?’

‘Killing,’ she said bluntly. ‘That’s what he meant.’ She was silent for a moment, those piercing blue eyes fixed on his. ‘And you know what? He was right.’

***

There hadn’t been much more after that, not then. Hamilton was already looking exhausted, and McKay had been conscious that there was no point in pushing her too hard. They’d have plenty of time to continue.

‘It was my fault,’ she said yet again, as they were finishing up. ‘My fault they ended up dead, those poor girls. And it was all a joke to him, wasn’t it?’

‘A joke?’ McKay had asked.

‘Bringing it back to where he’d started. To where they’d started. Doing what he did in those sessions of his. Taking them back to the places where they’d last been happy. Pretending to commemorate them with those bloody candles and roses—’

McKay had stood watching her, thinking. Then he’d nodded to Horton and the solicitor. ‘We’ll leave it there for now,’ he said.

Now, a couple of hours later, sitting in front of Helena Grant, he was still thinking.
Are we sure he’s our man?

‘We’d need a lot more if we were in a position to be prosecuting Robbins,’ he said. ‘But that’s academic. We just need enough to be sure we’re right.’

‘And we have that?’

‘We’ve found traces of the DNA for two of the victims in the old van,’ he said. ‘The van was parked in a garage round the back of the house, accessible from the street behind but on Robbins’s property. We know the van made trips from Inverness to Manchester on or around the key dates. We’ve got Hamilton’s evidence that he knew these three women, and we’ve been able to trace that one of them—Joanne Cameron—was referred to him by her GP.’

‘Any DNA in the Shogun?’

‘Can’t find any. Maybe he was more careful with that, or maybe it wasn’t the vehicle he used to take the body up to Caird’s Cave. Who knows? You could probably do it with a standard vehicle if you were prepared to drag the body a bit further.’

‘You think it’s enough?’

‘Like I say, we’d need more if we needed to make it stand up in court, but in the circumstances—’ He shrugged.

‘It sounds pretty cut and dried,’ she said.

McKay nodded. Cut and dried.

Except, he thought, for that strange moment at the end of the interview when Hamilton had mentioned the candles and roses. It had taken him a moment to realise that it was a detail they’d never released to the media. He supposed she could have picked up the information from some insider source. And, if he were to ask her, he had no doubt she’d be able to conjure some story to explain how she knew. He could tell she’d registered his hesitation and had known what he was thinking.

Then there was the van. It had been found in Robbins’s garage, but neither of the immediate neighbours could recall seeing it being driven in recent months. He’d apparently bought it cheaply to transport equipment for the various conferences and exhibitions he’d attended. It was registered to his company, and they’d been able to trace a few sightings of it on the ANPR Network in and around Inverness but—other than the trips to Manchester—there were no records of it further afield.

They had only Hamilton’s word about the trip to Inverness station. She’d claimed her father had paid cash for the ticket, so there was no way of checking whether it had really happened. What they did know—because Hamilton had told them—was that she’d stayed in Aberdeen only for a couple of weeks until she’d received the money transfer from Robbins into an account she’d set up for the purpose. Then, having discovered she wasn’t pregnant after all, she’d returned to Inverness and found herself some lodgings and a couple of cash in hand jobs. And, McKay thought cynically, perhaps found the opportunity to screw some more cash from some other lecherous male.

He knew he wasn’t thinking rationally about this. It was the resemblance to his own Lizzie. No doubt, as he’d done with Chrissie, he was transferring his own guilt. Wanting Hamilton to be something other than another victim.

But there was something about Hamilton that reminded him of Robbins. Like father, like daughter. Another manipulator. Who knew if Robbins had agreed to lend her the van as a way of getting her out of his hair, or even if she’d just taken it, knowing he wouldn’t have the bottle to risk reporting her?

And if Hamilton had possession of the van, their only real evidence against Robbins was no evidence at all. They’d found nothing in his house other than traces of the chloroform used to overcome Gorman and Robbins himself, with the remaining bottle left in the rear of the Shogun. But that didn’t mean that the chloroform had belonged to Robbins.

So who knew?

Someone had brought those young women back. Brought them back to the places where they’d last been happy. Had commemorated their lives and deaths with shop-bought roses and plastic candlesticks.

Maybe to silence them. Maybe to frame someone else. Maybe simply to bring them home.

But someone had done it.

‘You OK, Alec? You’ve been unprecedentedly quiet for at least two minutes? Not even an expletive.’

‘Ach, I was just thinking.’

‘Don’t let it become a habit, will you?’

‘Lot on my mind, you know?’

‘Aye. How are things at home?’

‘Not so good, you know?’ The truth was he didn’t know. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to open Chrissie’s note before he’d left that morning.

‘Sorry to hear that, Alec. I mean, really sorry.’ She shuffled embarrassedly with her papers, wishing he’d begin his usual prowling instead of just sitting there. ‘Look, you in a hurry to get home tonight?’