Truth Lies Waiting (Davy Johnson Series Book 1) (26 page)

Dad
looks at me warily. ‘So how do ye know Les then?’

I
shake my head. ‘I don’t really. I did some work for a friend of his. He’s
returning the favour.’ I suppose that’s one way to describe Daz’s safe
house.Dad looks as if he’s about to say something then changes his mind. He can
hardly counsel me on the company I keep, I think darkly.

‘Why
was it all a big secret?’ I demand, suddenly impatient for answers.

‘This
is no place for a wee laddie,’ Dad says simply, ‘it’s not always been like this
ye know,’ he spreads his arms open indicating the modern hospital building and
spacious grounds. ‘Time was these places were built to keep ye out of sight. Ye
could be brought in one afternoon and never see the light of day again. They
didn’t call ‘em mad houses for nothing, ye know.’ He sighs, ‘Ye could make
yourself demented trying to convince them you were better.’

‘Times
change.’ I say.

‘Ye
think?’ he says, then, ‘Mebbe so,’ he concedes, ‘but don’t be fooled by the
modern buildings or the kiddie play area, to be sent here you’ve fallen into a
dark pit, Son, and sometimes the best remedy is to be left the hell alone.’

‘Did
Mum come and see ye?’

‘No.’

‘Did
ye want her to?’

A
pause, ‘No. I could hardly expect that of her could I?’

He
starts to rock then, slowly, back and forth, like a child in reception class
impatient for the home time bell.

‘Why
did they bring ye here?’ I ask.

‘I
did a bad thing,’

I blink away
his face as he pushes me into the hall cupboard.

‘Tell
me what happened.’ I prompt, a cold feeling forming in the pit of my stomach.

He
breaks eye contact to look off into the distance. The rocking revs up a notch,
his back and shoulders hunch as he moves to an internal beat.

‘Who
was the woman ye killed?’ I prompt.

He
jerks his head from side to side. ‘Don’t want tae talk about it.’

‘That’s
the only reason I’m here,’ I persist. ‘Tae find out why ye did what ye did.’

‘I
made a stupid mistake, Davy,’ Dad slows his rocking as he says this, but his
eyes remain locked straight ahead, ‘Don’t make me re-live it.’

‘I
don’t want to,’ I say truthfully, ‘but I’ve been lied to all my life and I need
to know why.’

‘Don’t
blame your mum,’ he says quietly, ‘we all agreed it would be for the best.’

‘What
would?’

‘Growing
up without me in your life.’

As
I look at him I recall the crap days out: visits to the bookies dressed up as a
treat, the tip-toeing on eggshells when we trudged home later; the quick fire
temper after a row with Mum. He’d been a selfish bastard right enough, and
locking me in the hall cupboard that second time showed he could be cruel, but
it was still a big leap to murder.

The
rocking continues, as though the constant motion keeps him focussed on the
present.

‘What
do you know?’ he asks quietly.

I
try to sort out the facts I’ve gleaned so far into some sort of order. ‘I know
that you killed a woman.’ I say, ‘That’s all Les would tell me, the rest I got
from the internet.’

‘Like
what?’ he asks suspiciously and I realise his experience of Google would be

limited.
‘I looked up copies of old newspapers that reported the murder at the time,’ I
explain. ‘They helped a little.’

‘What
did they say?’

‘That
you’d been having an affair with her. That she’d broken up with ye because she
felt guilty deceiving her boyfriend, only ye couldn’t stand her choosing him
over you.’

Dad’s
rocking picks up pace as I talk. I know I’m upsetting him but how does he think
I feel? It’s bad enough thinking your Dad is a loser, but a killer? That takes
shame to a whole new level.

The
online news archives I’d read described a typical love triangle gone sour,
instead of walking away Dad chose to punish this woman for dumping him, for
choosing her old man over him. ‘How long had you been seeing her?’ I ask.

‘Six
months.’

‘Where
did you meet?’

His
rocking stops abruptly at this, as though the memory of it requires all his
energy.

‘She
worked at the bookies.’ He says, avoiding my eye.

‘You’ve
got to be kiddin’ me?’ I laugh, ‘The woman who turned a blind eye when ye
brought me in and slipped me sweeties when her boss was in the back? Christ
Almighty, I’d laugh out loud if it wasn’t so fuckin’ tragic.’

Dad’s
rocking starts up again, more focussed, like it’s become an Olympic sport and
he’s training for the national squad.

‘Did
Mum find out?’ I ask, shaking my head, anticipating his answer.

‘Not
till after.’ He says.

‘And
this woman’s fella, did he have any idea what had been going on?’

‘No!’
Dad’s voice booms out.

I
stare at him, my lip curling in disgust. ‘Probably didn’t have a clue until he
came home and found her body, eh?’ I sneer.

‘All
those years,’ I spit, ‘All those years people looked at me like I was some sort
of sad case and I thought it was because of Mum! The teachers, the do-gooders,
Jesus, I must have been the talk of the staff room!’

Dad
covers his ears with his hands. ‘I’m sorry
,
sorry, sorry, sorry-’

‘Yeah,
like that’s makes it all better!’ I snipe. Then something occurs to me. ‘So
that’s why I was sent away to another school for a while, to let it all die
down. The fact that my dad was a killer, a mean spirited one at that. And there
was me thinking I was bad. Better bad than mad though eh?’ I lurch forward and
grab the front of his shirt, ‘Do ye know what you’ve done to me?’ I shout, ‘Do
ye?’

‘That’s
enough!’

I
turn in the direction of the raised voice to see Tanya marching across the lawn
towards us. ‘Can’t you see he’s distressed?’ she demands, motioning for the
nurses sitting at the picnic table to give her a hand. I hadn’t realised he was
so shaken; he sits hunched forward, curling into himself as though hell bent on
making himself disappear. He’s genuinely terrified. Of me.

‘Take
him back to his room,’ she instructs, eyeing him with concern before turning to
me: ‘You’d better go!’ She says angrily, her eyes narrowing, ‘You could have
set him back years, you know, this was foolhardy to say the least.’

I
watch in alarm as Dad is helped to his feet by the nurses. Shoulders stooping,
he hangs his head as though the muscles in his neck have given up. My face
burns with shame.

‘Dad,
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset ye.’ I put out my arm to reassure him but he
recoils from my touch. ‘Come on Donnie,’ Tanya coaxes, ‘Let’s get you back
inside.’

Dad
nods jerkily as the nurses guide him into the clinic. He looks smaller than
when I arrived, as though he’s retreated into himself. Instead of a monster I
see a little old man. A little old man frightened of his son. The gardener and
his apprentice look over in my direction but I can’t return their gaze. Instead
I count the blades of grass beneath my feet, willing a sink hole would
materialise big enough to swallow me up. On the floor by the bench is the
lighter I’d given him; it must’ve fallen from his pocket in his rush to get
away. I pick it up, turning it over in my hands, much as I’d watched Dad do
before. Someone must’ve stepped on it; the plastic casing is cracked beyond
repair. Out of habit I flick the barrel, watching as the spark amounts to
nothing.

‘Don’t
be too hard on yourself.’

I
look up in surprise, I thought Tanya had followed Dad inside but she’s standing
just a couple of steps away looking right at me. ‘I’m sorry if I was harsh with
you,’ she says, ‘but meeting your father like this was always going to be a
huge risk, for him as well as you.’

‘So
why did you allow it then?’

Tanya
laughs bitterly, ‘I didn’t, but I was over-ruled. Seems you have friends in
high places.’

I
shrug. If Marcus can arrange for me to have surgery in the mortuary of
Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary then it stands to reason Gus McEwan could pull
strings to get me into this clinic.

Tanya
continues: ‘Normally I would have advised some counselling, possibly over a
period of time, so that both parties had realistic expectations for the outcome
of this meeting. I was over-ruled on that, too.’ She mutters tartly. ‘Your
father, for example, thought he could carry on where you both had left off.’

I
close my eyes and am back inside the hall cupboard, banging on the door with my
fists to be let out. The door opens a fraction and Dad’s angry face looms in:
‘Fucksake Davy,’ he hisses, ‘keep quiet!’ I try to remind him I’m scared of the
dark but he slams the door anyway.

‘The
last time I saw him he pushed me into a cupboard,’ I say honestly, ‘why the
hell would I want to pick up from there?’

‘Did
you ask him about that?’ Tanya questions, ‘Is that why he became agitated?’

‘No,’
I say truthfully, ‘I was trying to make some sense of the murder.’

Tanya
sighs. ‘You can’t apply logic to someone else’s actions, she says firmly.

‘Certainly
not after the fact. In your father’s case he reacted to what he saw as a
threatening situation – the woman he loved ending their relationship.’ I flinch
at her reference to Dad’s relationship with this woman as love, but then what
could I possibly know about that time? I was a small child growing up with
mismatched parents; maybe he’d found someone that made him happy.

Tanya
continues: ‘In many ways your father’s act could be described as a classic
crime of passion, one where feelings are heightened to such an extent the
killer fails to think or care about the consequence of their actions.’

‘But
why was he sent here? Why is he a
patient,
rather than a lifer at
Saughton or

Barlinnie?’

Tanya
studies me for a moment. ‘Do you really not remember what happened?’ She asks
gently.

‘Should
I?’ I ask, baffled.

It’s
Tanya’s turn to nod.

‘You
should,’ she says carefully, ‘You were there.’

‘Your
father suffered a psychotic episode.’ Tanya explains, ‘In his case it was an isolated
fit of rage that he never experienced again and has little recollection of. He
went literally out of his mind with anger.’

We’re
sitting in her consulting room, either side of the round table and the solitary
box of tissues. I think she feels sorry for me, she’s offered me water and tea
but both times I refuse, all I really want is to burrow into the pile of
cushions opposite and never emerge again.

‘He’s
never denied his guilt,’ Tanya has a file open in front of her – Dad’s patient
records I imagine – and consults it occasionally as she speaks. ‘However, he
refuses point blank to discuss what triggered his rage.’

I’m
still looking at the cushions, imagining a world with no hard edges and I close
my eyes as her words drift over me: ‘Clearly, the end of the affair was his
tipping point, and what happened after that will never be entirely clear – I
mean in terms of the order of things – other than what the post mortem and forensic
evidence at the scene could prove.’

I’m
back inside the dark cupboard again. I hear voices this time, raised, just
beyond the door. There’s a scuffle, I hear swearing and the smack of fist
against skin. More voices, urgent this time. Someone turns the door handle. My
eyes snap open.

‘Where
was I found?’ I demand.

Tanya
consults her notes. After sixteen years the file is several inches thick and
she uses both hands to work her way through her typed up reports.

She
looks at me. ‘Police found you in a storage cupboard under the stairs.’

I
nod. ‘I remember being lifted out.’ I tell her. ‘The shouting had stopped.’ I
force my memory to stay in that room, to try and put an image to the fear that
has gnawed at me ever since and been the cause of countless nightmares and one
failed attempt at suicide. I rub my fingers over the scars on my wrist as
though a genie will appear if I’m firm enough.

‘Dad
was in a state,’ I say in surprise, ‘I’d never seen him like that before.’

‘That
was probably the start of his breakdown,’ Tanya says authoritatively, ‘reality
starting to return and with that came the comprehension of what he’d done, and
what he was about to do.’

‘What
do you mean?’

Tanya
hesitates. She removes her glasses before rubbing her eyelids with the heel of
her palm. ‘There was no lock on the outside of the cupboard, Davy.’

‘So?’

‘So
your father hadn’t locked you in,’ she says simply, ‘Can’t you see? You’d gone
in there to hide.’

‘You
mean he was going to kill me too?’

‘That’s
what witness statements confirm at the time.’ She says gently.

‘What
witnesses?’ I demand.

Tanya
replaces her glasses, continuing to skim read the reports until she finds what
she is looking for. ‘Emergency personnel first on the scene.’ She reads aloud.

Something
niggles at the base of my skull but I can’t quite locate it. What Tanya is
telling me doesn’t make sense. Dad was an angry man, yes, I remember that, but
however foul his temper there was no way I’d run and hide in a confined space,
not after that first time he’d shoved me in a cupboard for punishment, I’d have
been too terrified to consider it.

‘I
thought I was suffocating,’ I say quietly, recalling that first time, ‘I could
make out shapes in the dark, like there was something in there with me. I kept
calling out for Mum, kept banging on the door telling him I needed the toilet
but that made him madder. When Mum came home she went ballistic, screamed blue
murder at him, threatened him with all sorts…’ I look at Tanya, ‘See, that’s
what hurt so much that second time, that he’d do it again when he knew how
scared I’d be.’ It barely mattered that the door couldn’t lock, I remind
myself; I was hardly in a position to defy my father.

‘Tell
me about the first time he scared you?’ Tanya regards me curiously. ‘Where were
you?’

‘At
home,’ I tell her, ‘Mum was working.’

‘Was
there a lock on that door?’

I
nod. ‘He used to hide his knock-off in there; there was a padlock on it in case
we got burgled. He was more bothered about his counterfeit cigs than he would
have been if the telly or stereo got nicked.’

This
seems to satisfy Tanya, for when she speaks next it’s as though she’s proving
her point:

‘You
weren’t at home on this occasion, Davy,’ she says carefully, ‘You remember that
don’t you?’

I
look at her, confused. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask sharply.

‘He’d
taken you with him,’ Tanya explains, ‘to his girlfriend’s home.’

I
feel as though I’ve been jolted by an electrical charge as something I’d
previously been unable to fathom slips effortlessly into place. I remember my
confusion as I was carried out to the waiting police car. The décor was
different yet the room shapes were the same. I’d never given it much thought
before.

‘She
must’ve lived on the estate, then.’ I say aloud. ‘That would explain why the
house was similar to ours.’

‘It’s
possible,’ Tanya agrees, ‘I don’t have the address of where the murder took
place but I’m sure it won’t be difficult to find.’ She gives me a sidelong
glance, ‘What with your contacts and all.’

‘What
was the woman’s name?’ I ask. Even though I’d skim read articles on the
internet only last night I’m shocked by how little I can remember. It’s as
though my brain has gone on strike, refusing to take in any information it
can’t handle. Tanya mutters as she consults her notes. ‘Ah, here it is…..Sonia
Reevie.’ She reads aloud.

The
name means nothing to me. At the time I’d have known her only in the context of
her job: The lady in the betting shop.

‘So
I was his cover when he took me out at the weekend then?’

Tanya
looks at me quizzically. ‘He used tae tell Mum he was taking me out for an ice
cream, and instead we’d either go tae the bookies or from what you’re telling
me slope off to this Reevie woman’s house when her fella was out of the way.’

Tanya
doesn’t reply. She’s in professional mode, sitting quietly, studying me,
waiting for me to say something further. I’ve a feeling I know what she’s
waiting for but I can’t say it yet, not until I work it out for myself.

‘Do
you have a picture of her?’ I ask. The on-line articles I’d read had pictures
of Dad being led out of the sheriff’s court in handcuffs or being taken, head
stooped, into the Orchard Clinic. I couldn’t find any pictures relating to his
victim. These days there’s Facebook or Instagram to find out what someone looks
like, back then it was whatever photo the victim’s family were willing to
provide.

Tanya
hesitates. ‘C’mon,’ I cajole her, ‘It might help jog my memory.’ Tanya sighs,
sifting through the file papers until she finds a brown envelope. Upending it
she lifts out a sheet of photobooth pictures and holds it out to me. There are
eight identical photos in total, two large ones and two rows of passport size
photos, three pictures in each row. Sonia, Dad’s girlfriend-cum-victim is sat
on his knee, smiling, she leans into him as he rests his chin on her shoulder.
I feel the breath leave my body as I look up at Tanya in alarm.

‘I
remember her alright!’ I say, shocked, ‘She taught me the fuckin’ times table.’
I conjure an image of her up in my mind. She was always smiling, even seemed to
like me tagging along. I didn’t realise then that I was a gooseberry.

‘She
used tae give me a pad and a pen and ask me tae do sums for her: how many hours
in a week, how many seconds in a day, even showed me how tae work out what tae
pay out on bets that had been placed on the horses. Then she and my Dad would
go into the other room.’ I’m embarrassed by how sordid it sounds, but at the
time I was used to adults going into other rooms whenever I was around.

I
hold the photos closer to take in every detail: Sonia’s hair was blonde,
reaching down to her shoulders but for the photo she’d tucked it behind her
ears. Her face was oval with a strong jaw, large blue eyes dancing for the
camera. She wasn’t attractive – in my view anyway, her nose was too pointy and
her lips too thin for that - but she was fun, I remember that, and the laughter
in Dad’s eyes says it all. I’d never seen him look so happy.

‘Davy?’
Tanya leans forward and takes the photos from me. ‘We found it in your father’s
belongings,’ she explains, ‘only it didn’t seem appropriate, for his recovery,
to have a picture of his victim in his cell so I removed it for safekeeping. No
one else has seen this.’ she adds, as though for my benefit.

I
say nothing; I’m still trying to get to grips with what my eyes are telling me:
two people in love posing for the camera. It’s the kind of thing I’d do with
Candy, if I ever get the chance. But still, is it wrong to resent a dead woman?
I mean, I always knew I disappointed him in some way or other and now I knew
why: I wasn’t hers.

I
stand abruptly, making Tanya jump. ‘I’ve got to go.’ I tell her. There’s an
urgency about me that doesn’t leave room for argument, she simply nods, closing
Dad’s file as I rush out of the room.

Ken’s
eyes widen as I approach the cab. He says something to Brad who had been
napping in the passenger seat beside him and both men regard me cautiously as I
open the car door.

One
look at my face and Ken, who spends all day reading passengers’ moods, starts
the engine; Brad who doesn’t share the same subtlety gives me the thumbs up
sign. ‘How did it go then?’ he asks, looking behind me as though I’d maybe
brought Dad to the car to make their acquaintance.

‘Like
watching your family home burn down.’ I tell him truthfully. I lean against the
window, letting the glass cool my head which is bursting with unwanted
thoughts. Brad shoots me a puzzled look and is about to ask me something else
when I catch Ken glaring at him, making a slashing motion with his hand in
front of his neck.

‘What?’
Brad demands, to be met with Ken muttering ‘Fucksake, Numbnuts,’ under his
breath.

‘It
was shite, OK?’ I say to them both, ‘Now leave it.’

Ken
drives us back to the hideout at York Place and switches off the Skoda’s
engine. ‘You go on up, Davy,’ he instructs, looking at me in his rear view
mirror, ‘Einstein here can stay at mine tonight.’

‘I
am fuckin’ ‘ere ye know,’ Brad moans, but neither of us is listening.

‘De
ye mind?’ I say to Ken gratefully. He waves away my concern with his hands. ‘Och,
the Missus loves having company,’ he lies kindly, before looking at Brad, ‘an’
I daresay you’d pass as company in a dark enough room.’

Brad
scowls, forcing Ken to offer a dealbreaker: ‘It’s stovies tonight,’ he says
proudly, ‘ye’ll be glad of something home-cooked, will ye no’?’

‘Mebbe,’
Brad says non-committedly, hurt at being left out of the decision making
process.

They
wait while I climb out of the car, checking no one is watching as I let myself
into the building. I want to say more, to confide in Ken and ask his advice, to
relate the story of my betrayal with the anger and pain churning inside me.
Instead, I lean back against the wall, close my eyes and wait miserably for the
onslaught of my own tangled, unavoidable thoughts.