‘This is all wrong,’ went Maggie.
‘It’s okay.’ Duncan’s gaze bounced from Nick to Maggie. ‘I haven’t done anything. Dean’s been murdered, and they think I had something to do with it because yesterday we had a massive row in the High Street. He went for me and I had to defend myself. I didn’t tell you . . .’ He took a shuddering breath. ‘Didn’t want you to worry about it. It’s the blackmail thing. They think I –’
‘Okay, sir, let’s go.’ The big cop eased Duncan into the back of the car and shut the door on him.
‘But this is ridiculous!’ Nick yelled, struggling in the arms of the other cop. ‘Dad would never hurt anyone! What about her?’ He pointed at Maggie. ‘She’s a headcase. She’s been in prison for assault. Where’s she been tonight?’
Maggie rapped back: ‘In the coffee shop, as you know fine well. Yvonne, could you . . .’ She handed a grizzling Isla over to Yvonne, who carried her back inside. Maggie held the big cop’s gaze, willing him to see sense. ‘You need to look at this one,’ she went in a low voice, not wanting to add to Duncan’s trauma, as she indicated Nick. ‘He’s the one who’s psychotic! You need to process him, get forensics onto him. There’ll be traces on him. He did it. He killed that boy. I want to make a statement.’
‘So do I!’ yelled Nick.
Twenty-four hours later, Maggie and Yvonne sat at the kitchen table, Isla cosy in her carry cot by Maggie’s chair with Bunny tucked in beside her. There was no way Maggie was letting Isla out her sight. After they’d got back from the police station last night, Maggie had gone her dinger at Nick. ‘You’d better not come near me or Isla, or I will use a knife on you, you psychotic little fucker!’
‘Piss off!’ Nick had screamed at her. ‘Piss off, Mags!’ And he’d run off inside. She hadn’t seen him since. If he was going to stay in his room the whole time, that was fine by her.
‘Thanks for staying,’ she said now to Yvonne. ‘I wouldn’t feel safe on my own with him.’
Yvonne waved her thanks away.
After Nick and Maggie’s allegations against each other, they had both undergone fingerprinting and forensic examinations and the clothes they were wearing had been taken away. Nick had been wearing his school uniform. Maggie had told the police he could have changed, after the murder, into a fresh set of school clothes and disposed of the ones he’d been wearing, and they should check the bins between The Phoenix Centre and the school.
‘I don’t think they took it seriously,’ went Maggie now. ‘The possibility that Nick could have done it.’
‘They were so intent on charging Duncan,’ Yvonne agreed.
Maggie had told Yvonne everything. She didn’t know why. She didn’t even like the woman, but she trusted her. Maybe it was the fact that Yvonne reminded her in some ways of Duncan. She had the same straightforwardness about her.
‘We’ve got to break Nick’s alibi,’ went Maggie.
‘But how?’
He had a cast-iron alibi. The police had established that he hadn’t left the school play rehearsal, and there were folk who could vouch for that. He’d either been on stage or in the wings with the other actors and teachers, apart from a twenty-minute break when he’d gone outside for a fag – alone, but one of the other kids had joined him after ten minutes, which wasn’t even close to being enough time for him to have got to The Phoenix Centre, murdered Dean, and got back to the school.
Maggie sighed. ‘How can it be possible to tell whether he sneaked off for a bit?’
‘But it would have taken him what, half an hour at least to run across town, kill the boy, run back . . . call you to lure you to the Centre. He had the main part in the play. Oberon. Surely he’d have been missed? No. I think he must have got someone else to do it and set up an alibi for himself, so he’d be in the clear.’
‘But who?’
‘Could he have something on one of the kids in the programme? Could he have blackmailed them into doing it?’ Yvonne grimaced. ‘At least your alibi is holding up.’
Aye, right enough, that was the only ray of hope in this whole mess. Pam and Liam said their police interviews had been very short. The cops obviously weren’t seriously looking at Maggie.
Because they were convinced they had their man.
Duncan’s altercation with Dean had been in the most public place possible, outside the newsagent on the High Street with about twenty folk watching. There had been a scuffle. Dean had howled about how Duncan was attacking him ‘again’ and had appealed to passers-by for help.
Open and shut case.
Duncan had been charged with murder and remanded in custody awaiting trial.
9
Lulu - January 2019
Lulu had been dozing in the passenger seat, on and off, all the way from London. Nick had insisted on driving all the way to give her a chance to catch up on some sleep. She was now down to one zolpidem every four days and was finding it pretty hard going. And when she did manage to fall asleep, often the dream would come. The dream where she was hugging Milo, and then tying the blue twine round her neck, pulling a chair under the big old hook in the ceiling . . . Sometimes she tied twine round Milo’s neck too.
Don’t think about it.
Don’t think about Milo.
They were travelling, now, through a secret valley, an idyll of green fields and woods hidden amongst the desolate hills of the Scottish Borders.
‘You wouldn’t think, to look at it now, that it was such a hotbed of anarchy, would you?’ Nick smiled. ‘Cattle reivers and outlaws and running battles between the Scots and the English.’