Driftnet (4 page)

Edward, Rhona
knew, would be on time and so she had arrived early to compose
herself. When she was with him she always had the feeling he was
trying to manipulate her, get her to do what he wanted. Even now
after all these years, he could still make her feel inadequate. In
court it was different. There, she was discussing facts. She could
weigh them objectively, make rational decisions. Edward could not
unnerve her there.

She left the
wee boy squatting below the genetic pattern of the dinosaur,
writing in big pencil letters in his jotter, and headed for the
café. She wanted to be sitting with her coffee when Edward
arrived.

Edward Stewart
turned into the car park, cutting abruptly across the path of a
battered red mini. He regretted it almost immediately when a quick
glance showed the driver to be an attractive young woman. He slowed
down and gave her a friendly apologetic wave, hoping to give the
impression his mind had been elsewhere (which it had), and was
rewarded with a dazzling smile.

There were very
few cars in the car park but he knew that didn’t mean the Gallery
was empty. He could only hope there wouldn’t be a horde of noisy
school kids in the café when he met Rhona. Perhaps this wasn’t the
ideal venue for what he had to say.

He pulled up
and waited for a moment before he switched off, taking pleasure in
the easy purr of the big engine, then he glanced in the rear view
mirror. He admired his tan, the result of a fortnight in Paxos with
Fiona. He smoothed back his hair, adjusted the knot on the new
Italian silk tie he’d awarded himself for the Guiliano case, and
gave himself a confident smile. Think positive, he told himself.
That’s what gets results.

He climbed out,
pointed the remote at the car and waited for the satisfying click.
He had already decided that he would tell Rhona just enough and no
more; he would rely on her need for privacy and her integrity.
Both, he knew from experience, were reliable.

The main hall
confirmed his worse fears. The place was swarming with primary kids
studying the exhibits. He glanced at his watch. Ten twenty-five.
Thirty-five minutes before this lot would descend on the café for
crisps and coca cola.

Edward spotted
Rhona as soon as he entered the café and was momentarily
nonplussed. It would have been a point of advantage for him to have
been there first. To be able to look up on her arrival, smile,
stand up. Rhona was normally late. He had assumed that.

She was looking
the other way and he paused, both to take her in and to settle his
thoughts. Rhona always had that effect on him. Like setting foot on
an enticing path to who knows where? He had started down that path
once before and turned back when the going got too tough.

It was then she
glanced round and spotted him. The sound of her voice calling his
name made his stomach spasm.

‘Rhona,’ he put
on a bright smile and walked forward. As always, he imagined what
he must look like as he approached her and made instant small
adjustments to improve the picture. He brushed her cheek lightly
with his lips. ‘It’s great to see you,’ he said.

The lie was not
lost on her and he immediately regretted his choice of opening
remark. He tried to retrieve the situation. ‘Would you like another
coffee?’

She nodded
without saying anything.

Edward headed
for the counter, annoyed to find the confidence of the tan and the
silk tie evaporating. There was only one person in front of him. He
was soon back at the table.

Rhona waited
for him to speak, her face expressionless. It was the look she wore
when she knew he was going to ask her to do something. The look he
had always striven to change, by fair means or foul. Today would be
no exception.

When the
constituency secretary phoned him and offered him the candidacy,
Edward felt like punching the air and shouting, ‘Ya beauty’. It was
what his kids might have done. Instead he said yes, walked through
to the sitting room, poured two large whiskies and gave one to
Fiona. She accepted it without a word and held it high in the air.
The triumph was no less hers. It was what she wanted too. Jonathan
and Morag were both upstairs, but they didn’t call them down to
tell them. Teenagers did not, could not, understand the
significance of such an event.

They sat
together that evening, basking in mutual congratulation, refilling
their whisky glasses and discussing the implications. The seat he
was offered was a promising one. There was no doubt about that.
There were few seats in Scotland that they would be likely to hold
on to, and this was one of them. If all went well, Edward’s future
was assured. He would be less involved with his law work, that was
true. But he had planned ahead. He was already on a number of
Company Boards and his knowledge of European law brought in
consultancy work. Becoming an MP would only serve to enhance the
comfortable life Edward Stewart had created for himself.

Rhona had
waited long enough.

‘Well?’

‘It was good of
you to come,’ Edward began.

‘Cut the small
talk, Edward. I’m not a future constituent. You and I both know
that you wouldn’t have asked me here unless it was absolutely
necessary. It must be something important.’ Rhona’s voice was rigid
with emotion.

She watched
Edward’s face tense up momentarily, then readjust into something
more pleasant. Whatever speech he had planned for her was being
seriously rewritten.

‘So?’ she
said.

‘Okay, okay.
Give me a chance.’

She waited.

‘I asked you to
come here this morning because,’ a pause here, - an attempt at
sincerity, ‘I need your help.’

Silence, then
her own incredulous voice.

‘You need my
help?’

She was making
him squirm, and she had to admit she was enjoying it. Edward looked
as though he might give up on the whole thing, then he marshalled
himself.

He reached for
the sugar.

‘Rhona, you’re
overreacting. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t keep in touch.
After all, we were once very close.’

‘Not any
more.’

‘That wasn’t my
fault.’ His voice adopted a petulant tone. ‘If you remember, you
walked out on me.’

‘I wonder why?
Oh yes, I remember. It was shortly after I came home to find you
using the flat for a lunchtime fuck. Your legal secretary, wasn’t
it?’

‘If I had to
look elsewhere for affection...’ he began reproachfully.

‘Don’t you dare
blame that on me.’ Her heart was thumping now. This was ridiculous.
She was arguing about something that happened donkey’s years ago.
She got up.

‘No, please
don’t.’ He put his hand on her arm. ‘You’re right of course.’ His
voice was apologetic. ‘It was all my fault.’

Rhona sat down
again, emotionally exhausted. She would let Edward have his say and
go.

‘After all, you
were ill,’ he continued, searching for the right words, ‘because of
the incident.’

She looked at
him, puzzled.

‘I should have
made allowances, but I needed...’

‘Sex?’

He was annoyed.
‘Company. You would hardly speak to me, let alone... anyway that’s
what I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘Your sex
drive?’

He cleared his
throat. ‘That’s not funny, Rhona. I am referring to the incident of
course.’

‘The incident?’
she repeated in disbelief. The feeling of hysteria that Edward had
generated in her was changing to depression. Edward couldn’t
possibly mean what she thought he meant. The incident? Of course.
What else would Edward call it? But she still had to ask. Had to
make sure.

‘What
incident?’

He ignored her
question, which could only mean one thing. She was right.

He began again,
his voice a little firmer this time. She found herself
concentrating on his mouth, out of which that word had come.

‘I wanted to
speak to you before the by-election,’ he was explaining.

Rhona stared
over his shoulder. The little boy from the dinosaur room was
heading towards the cafe. He looked excited, clutching an open
jotter in his hand. His teacher bent to look at his drawing, giving
quiet words of praise.

‘Rhona?’
Edward’s voice was tinged with annoyance.

‘Why are you
bringing this up now, Edward? It was seventeen years ago,’ she said
looking down at her cup, not trusting herself to look at him.

‘You know what
the press is like,’ his voice had a jocular tone now. ‘A story like
that about a prospective MP,’ he laughed a little. ‘And I wouldn’t
like your privacy to be violated.’

‘My
privacy!’

The words
exploded from her and the school party at the next table fell
silent, with the awkwardness of children in the vicinity of an
adult argument. Edward looked uncomfortable, then pulled himself
together and smiled vaguely. His discomfort, she sensed, had turned
to intense irritation. She had often irritated him, she remembered.
Whenever she had seemed ‘over emotional’, as he put it.

‘I have to get
back,’ she said, standing up and looking at her watch.

‘Right.’ He
stood up beside her and spoke firmly as if the end of the meeting
had been decided by him. ‘I’ll walk through the park with you.’

‘No you
won’t.’

He stepped
back, surprised.

‘Goodbye,
Edward. And Edward, don’t contact me again... ever.’

Chapter 5

Rhona left the
Gallery by the double doors hoping they would swing back and slap
Edward right in his condescending face. What a wanker. She should
have known better. The incident! How could Edward talk about Liam
like that?

Rhona headed
towards Kelvingrove Park. At her back the children from the primary
school were laughing and screaming as they came through the
revolving doors. They ran down the steps and headed for their bus.
Rhona turned quickly down the avenue of trees towards the river,
shutting out the sound of their laughter. When she reached the
bridge, she stopped, breathless. Below, the water moved sluggishly
between banks of bracken. She leaned on the metal rail, watching
the muddy swirl, and let herself remember.

It was the
morning they’d taken Liam away. The nurse had given her a pill to
stop the milk coming through. Her nipples were painfully tender
against her night dress, making dark circles in the white cotton.
Liam was lying in the cot beside her, washed and changed. She
reached over and touched his face. The blue-veined eyelids quivered
and the small mouth began to suck at nothing. She remembered the
shape of him, the long legs curled up when she wanted to change
him, the folds of skin waiting to be filled. They had told her he
was perfect. She wasn’t to worry about the birthmark, a strawberry
shaped lump on the inside of his right leg. It would fade.When she
first told Edward she was pregnant, he had been kind. He had put
his arm round her and she had nestled into him, feeling his heart
thumping in his chest. He was trying to work out what the hell to
do next. She knew he would not want the baby. She was nineteen, he
was twenty-one. He had just graduated. A law firm had already
grabbed him, he was so good. He chose his words carefully. It was
the beginning of their life together, he said. They weren’t ready
for a baby. She had to finish her degree. Do her PhD. She thought
she felt the same way. She didn’t want a baby. She wanted a career.
And that’s what she got.

Edward never
even came to the hospital (it was better that way, he explained).
Edward had never seen his son at all.

Rhona could
hardly bear the memory of it all. This had not happened to her for
a long time. This thinking and feeling. Thinking about stuff that
could never be changed. And the guilt. She shook her head and her
eyes were so full of tears that the trees dissolved together,
leaves into branches, branches into trunks, in a crazy
kaleidoscope. This hadn’t happened for years. She had thought it
would never happen again. She looked in her pocket for something to
wipe her eyes. She should have stayed away from him. Well away.
Even professionally their paths rarely crossed. Edward was not a
criminal lawyer. Crimes of passion were not his style. They were
too messy. Like having a baby at the wrong time.

Rhona sat down
on a bench and an old man looked round as if he might speak to her,
so she coughed into her hankie and wiped her nose and grinned at
him as he muttered something about the rain being on its way. Thank
God, she thought, for the shitey Scottish fucking weather. If it
rains, no one will see me cry.

And it did.
Above her the clouds rolled in, thick and grey. She watched as it
speckled round her feet, felt the drops fall singly on her head,
then in multiples. She got up and began to walk, holding her face
up to the downpour.

When she got
back to the lab, there was a message for her on the desk. She
looked guiltily at the clock above the door. Two o’clock. She must
have been wandering about for at least two hours. She hung up her
wet coat and went and washed her face and combed her hair, then sat
down at her desk.

Chrissy’s
message on the pad was brief. Rhona could smell annoyance in the
sweep of the pen and the final period that threatened to pierce the
paper. Chrissy was peeved about her disappearance ‘when there was
urgent work to be done’. She had had to go over to the chemistry
lab with some flakes of paint she’d found in the jacket pocket and
she hadn’t had a chance to start on the semen stains. And DC Clarke
had been on the phone from DI Wilson’s office looking for
results.

Rhona settled
down to do the work she should have been doing instead of listening
to Edward patronise her. Chrissy had meticulously entered the
results from her tests in the lab notebook. The rest was in her
notes. She’d examined the boy’s clothes in detail and taken samples
from the collar and cuffs of his jacket for DNA purposes.
Everything was standard teenage wear that could be bought in a
variety of shops throughout the country and so unlikely to help
them find out who he was. She had found some fibres on the jeans
which still had to be analysed. She had also established the boy’s
blood group from the sample taken from his arm the previous night
and compared it to the large bloodstain on the bed. There was no
surprise in the match. The boy was type A, as were approximately
forty-two per cent of the UK population. As for semen and other
blood samples on the cover, there was a lot of material still to
cover. Oh, and Dr Sissons had sent round the silk cord for them to
examine. He had finished with it now that he’d established the
cause of death.