My Last Confession (17 page)

‘HAMISH McGIVERN,’ I had written on my
blackboard
. ‘Employed, married …’ Then this girl comes along, I pondered, and churns everything up.

He was a teacher, Amanda had told me. A burnt-out chemistry teacher in a posh private school outside Stirling. He spent his weekends with mates, and his weeks working towards the grades the school insisted on. An okay life, but maybe just okay.

‘He was playing golf,’ Amanda said, when I rang her at 11 p.m. to talk to her about Hamish. ‘There are four men who testify to it. He wouldn’t have done it. He’s a good guy, and he loved her, and you have to stop. You’re going crazy. Please don’t call me again.’

Did he love her? Could he, when tragedy marked the beginning for them, and the end? Did he love that she closed her eyes sometimes and imagined him different?

Okay, I thought to myself, he was playing golf, and that was that. As much as he might have wanted to, he hadn’t. I crossed him off, had a ciggie and one last wee drop, and then I began to wonder … Amanda. Why was she so defensive? So odd? Why would she want me to stop helping? Why would she get angry when the love of her life could be behind bars for life? Laughing when she shouldn’t be laughing. Telling me all about Jeremy killing Bella in our second interview, to plant it. Not telling the
police about the affair. Not trying hard enough to
persuade
Jeremy’s mother to tell the truth about his whereabouts. Had she tried at all? She never said she had.

She’d thought of nothing else all her life. Wanted this person, this great Disneyland that was hers but not hers, dreamt of the meeting, of the special understandings, of the shared sorrow and emptiness, and then she finds her, and it’s not good. In fact it’s disturbing. Is it?

Even though genetic sexual attraction seemed to be quite common, the more I thought about it on the
window
sill that night, the more I doubted Amanda.

Had she harboured resentment against her mother since discovering she was adopted? Had she always wanted revenge? Had she planned it all? The sexual
relationship
, the murder?

‘The Amanda complex,’ I wrote under her name on the blackboard. I stared at it for a while, then underlined it deliberately with my red chalk. As I did this one of my freshly tended nails broke, which was annoying at first, and then, as I bit the rest off, it hit me.

After leaving Robbie with Mum and Dad, I dropped by Amanda’s salon on the way to work.

‘Oh God,’ she sighed. ‘What now?’

‘Nothing. I want to apologise,’ I said, checking to see where she had left her brown leather manicure set. It was on her wee table.

‘Fine,’ said Amanda, turning to escort me to the door. With her back in front of me, I grabbed the manicure set from her table and hid it in my bag.

‘Sorry, Amanda,’ I said, heading out the door she held open. ‘I’ll try not to bother you again.’

A few minutes later I ran into an office, where Jeremy’s solicitor sat at his ostentatious desk sipping very good coffee.

I thumped the manicure set on the desk.

‘Put a glove on!’ I said, and he did, before unzipping it.

‘Toe clippers?’

‘And all sorts of nail equipment. Amanda does it for a living, and she used this particular set on her nearest and dearest.’

‘I’m not following.’

‘The DNA! She did Jeremy’s nails on the sofa all the time, and she told me she did Bridget’s that weekend. That might be why Jeremy’s DNA is under Bridget’s nails.’

The solicitor looked up at me. ‘Maybe, but it’s a long shot.’

I drove wildly to the prison, secret-agent style. My heart was thumping with excitement, but I wanted to keep my cool, get as much information as I could from as many sources as possible. Most importantly, I didn’t want to get his hopes up, not yet.

As I walked past the first few interview rooms, I
spotted
James Marney. He was in with the prison housing officer, who gestured for me to come in.

How are you?’ I asked, desperate to get out of there as fast as possible, to see Jeremy.

‘The police have okayed a flat in the Gorbals,’ said the housing officer, a woman too young and too pretty to work in a prison. ‘And Mr Marney wanted to say something to you, didn’t you James?’

Oh God, I fidgeted. There’d be no getting away for a few minutes at least. I had to sit down and listen to the guy.

‘I’m sorry about Mum and Dad’s,’ he said, his hands shaking so hard he clutched the side of the desk to try and stop them. ‘I love my kids more than anything. They’ve already lost their mum. I just don’t want them to lose their dad as well. I’ve told my parents I did do it.’

‘And what did you do, Mr Marney?’ I wanted to hear him say it.

‘I masturbated to pornography in front of them and made them touch me on the penis, first James junior, then little Robert.’

I coughed. Oh God.

He gulped, looking almost as ill as I felt. ‘My parents
understand now that I can’t see them without
supervision
. Please don’t make me live my life without them.’

He went on and on. Apologetic, remorseful, willing to co-operate with anything so he could see them, desperate to try to make amends for the terrible offences he’d
committed
against them.

I told him I’d get in touch with the relevant authorities to see if supervised access might be possible. I didn’t shake his hand, but I have to admit I felt a bit sorry for him as I left the room. His mouth had been so dry while he spoke it had made an awful clicking noise.

‘I’ll see you in the next couple of days, okay?’ I said, leaving the room to talk to Jeremy, who was ready and waiting two doors down.

‘Jeremy, I want to talk to you about Amanda,’ I said. We sat in the same positions as last time, and by now all thoughts of him being a murderer were gone. He was broken, sadness oozed from every section of him, and I gave him a soft smile that was not a social-worker smile, but the smile of a friend.

‘Aren’t you angry with her?’ I asked him. ‘For not telling them about the … affair? It could have changed things?’

He was silent for a moment, and then he said it very quietly.

‘I am angry, but not because she hasn’t got me out of here. That’s up to the lawyers. But she kissed her own mother, slept with her own mother. How can I get my head around that? I can’t. But you know, Krissie, it’s the betrayal that makes me angry most of all. I thought she was mine. I thought we were for ever.’

Once, when I was tiny, I felt this kind of connection with someone: the same thoughts, the same feelings, at the same time as me. It was my friend Sarah, we were only wee, and it only happened for the briefest of times, but I still remembered it. Sarah, the beautiful friend I’d lost two years back. The words that had come from her mouth as we played with her doll in my garden had been my words, as were Jeremy’s now, and I felt right into him, and he into me.

Shit, I was crying. I was apologising and telling him that Chas had left me. I was sitting with a remand
prisoner
in Sandhill crying, and before I knew it Jeremy was holding my hand and looking into my eyes and saying thank you, thank you, for being the only one he could talk to, be with.

‘And don’t worry about Billy Mullen,’ he said. ‘That’s all sorted out now. Just hold on to the stuff for a while and I’ll let you know what to do with it.’

And when I finally stopped my tears, he added, ‘But I do wonder why no one saw her on that train.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Amanda. She drops off her hire car in Oban and then gets the train to Glasgow. She does this four-hour trip, walks home, and no one sees her. It’s just strange.’

Amanda Amanda Amanda Amanda,
I thought as I drove back to work.

She’d done it.

She’d sought out the woman who abandoned her, angry. Seduced her, took her to the hills and killed her. She’d even managed to set up her poor husband, transferring his nail gunk from the manicure tools to Bridget’s nails.

By the time I found a parking place outside my building, I had devised a very clever plan. I was going to use an unorthodox ingenious method that may one day be labelled the Donald Technique.

But not yet. The office was buzzing with emergencies. I started to realise criminal-justice social work was easily as stressful as child care. Deadlines and angry men weighed on me constantly. I rarely saw my colleagues, or my boss. New cases and new reports appeared in my pigeonhole each morning and I fumbled through each day the best I could.

After an afternoon of such fumbling, I walked into the Pine Tree Unisex Hairdressing Salon to confront Amanda.

‘Did you kill Bridget?’

This was my ploy, an underused one I considered: to get to know the suspect very well, then look them
directly
in the eye and ask them.

Unfortunately, Amanda had just sipped an over-boiled Costa latte, which sprayed me in the face and really hurt.

‘Get out! Get the fuck out of here!’

Her boss joined in. ‘You’re crazy! Get out!’

I backed out of the salon, Amanda following me angrily.

‘Do you know what happened to her?’ she yelled as I retreated, embarrassed and ashamed, to my car.

‘It was a fucking monster.’ Amanda’s voice began to soften. She leant against the window of the salon and slid down it, crying. ‘A monster.’

All right, I thought, squatting down beside her, my hand on her shoulder. So maybe she didn’t do it, and maybe she’d already gone through all this with the police, but why had no one seen her on the train?

‘Why did no one see you on the train?’ I asked (unable to let go of the ridiculous Donald Technique idea above).

‘I told you,’ she said, blowing her nose. ‘I cried in the loo the entire time.’

‘But you bought a ticket?’

‘There was no one at the station, and like I said, I sat in the loo. I didn’t not buy one deliberately; I just couldn’t get myself out of that space.’

‘But you did eventually, at Central station.’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, someone must have seen you, going home, or when you got there?’

‘Why am I fucking talking to you?’ She flicked my hand from her shoulder and stood up, angry again. ‘Why won’t you go away? I was distraught. I walked home, snuck in the back door, and slept all day. Well, I didn’t sleep, I lay there and cried.’

‘I’m sorry for upsetting you,’ I said, standing up. ‘I
know I’m a bit weird. I just want to be logical. I want to help Jeremy.’

‘Why are you so interested in Jeremy? Why are you spending so much time asking me questions when you should be trying to fix your own life?’

‘CCTV,’ I said. One of my probationers had been done for police assault in Central Station. Swore blind he didn’t do it, till he saw himself on camera kicking the
plain-clothed
cop in the head, four times. ‘Did they check for you?’

‘No, because I’m not a fucking suspect. You’re the only idiot who seems to think I am.’

‘Just a little favour?’ I said to Bond, whose direct line I was phoning yet again, and I realised that I was getting the hang of this job, that this was the way it worked. Be nice to people, get their numbers, talk, tell them stuff, the more information the better. It could really come in handy, and it had, because now he was going to do something for me.

‘You shouldn’t be asking me this,’ he said.

‘I can bring biscuits,’ I begged.

‘Ice cream,’ he said, so I made my way over to the
station
via the Derby Café.

We hadn’t finished our oyster wafers with raspberry sauce when she came out of the 0830 from Oban clear as day. Red eyes, forlorn and exhausted, dragging her small backpack alongside her and slipping past the turnstile while the ticket inspectors were looking the other way.

‘She didn’t pay!’ said Bond.

‘So nail the bitch!’ I said, tossing the remains of my ice cream into the bin.

I felt bad when I rang Amanda. She had been my friend, as much as I knew she shouldn’t have been, and yet I had suspected her. But not any more. She was already on the train when Bridget died at 0900.

‘I know I was on the fucking train,’ Amanda said, and hung up.

On the way home, I dropped in on Mrs Bagshaw. She let me in, and returned to the half-smoked cigarette on the table. At least fifty butts indicated she’d been sitting in that position for some time, looking at the river, waiting.

‘Have one,’ she said, and over the next hour I realised that this was a woman who had both dosh and arrogance, who did not answer questions just because they were asked. She told me nothing. She didn’t know Amanda, had only met her once, hadn’t seen her in Glasgow because she’d wanted it that way, a secret. Yes, that’s Bella, in the garden at Oxford. She’d be
twenty-four
tomorrow.

I’d come to beg her to tell the truth about Jeremy’s whereabouts on the night of the murder.

‘He was with you, wasn’t he?’ I prompted.

Mrs Bagshaw was silent for a while, and then threw me a cold stare that made me shiver.

‘I am almost ready to forgive him,’ she said.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

I collected Robbie, went home, and soaked him in for a while. As he laughed at the video he was watching, I found myself marvelling at his simplicity, and praying that he would grow up to be happier than me.

I was desperately sad. I missed Chas. I wanted him. Where the hell was he?

With Robbie in bed, I couldn’t help reaching for the bottle of wine that I couldn’t help buying on the way home from work.

I wiped the blackboard clean and poured another glass. The Hamish column, the Kelly one, the Amanda one, the Jeremy one, then the Rachel one, which was the only column with nothing in it. I stopped myself. Rachel.

‘Rachel McGivern,’ I said to the duty social worker in Stirling first thing Monday morning. I’d had no sleep that weekend and no quality time with Robbie. It was a shit time, wishing Chas would phone me or turn up, putting my boy in front of too many videos while I drank either red wine or soluble Anadin.

‘She’s eighteen, not sure of her birthday,’ said the duty social worker.

‘Oh aye, here she is …’ She tapped on the computer. ‘Not allocated, but there was a report once, to the children’s hearing. Let me see. A fight with another girl. She
was fifteen, had a knife, outside the school. There was no further action. The case was closed.’

‘Could you fax me the report?’ I asked.

‘Sure.’

Everyone was in the office. Robert, who was reading out bits of the report he was writing …

‘When asked if he had molested her on the train,’ he read, ‘Mr Jones replied that he had merely attempted to disembark … “I tried to get aff, but she was a fat
bastard
!” he informed the writer.’

Penny didn’t laugh, being on the large and bastardy side herself.

But Danny did, and I saw this momentary lapse in shut-off-ness as an opportunity to apologise, at last.

‘I am so sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘Interfering with you.’

‘That’s all right. Jesus, how much did you have?’

‘A couple of bottles of this and that. I hadn’t really had any for two years, shouldn’t have. Do I have an alcohol problem, do you think? Am I one of the social-work casualties?’

‘If I said to you that you can’t have one tonight would you feel panicky?’

‘No.’

‘Then you don’t.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you do.’

‘I’m not going to have one tonight.’

‘Good idea.’

I sighed, panicky already, and then walked to the fax machine.

On the way, I spotted the elusive Hilary, finally back at work. She was in her office, looking deadly serious as she spoke on the phone.

The report slid out of the fax machine and I devoured it in reception. Rachel McGivern, truant, offender. Ran away from home continually in early teens, mother reported drinking episodes and anger problems. Rachel herself argued simply that her mother didn’t care, that she was obsessed with work and other things. The report concluded that it was attention-seeking behaviour, that there was enough openness, support and determination to resolve matters, and that statutory measures were not required.

Nothing new. Except that Rachel was always an angry, jealous girl who craved her mother’s attention, who had carried an offensive weapon before, and who had a
history
of violence.