‘He tried to kill Isla,’ he kept repeating.
And now he took her hand in his. ‘Tell me. All the things you tried to tell me before about Nick, about what he was doing to you and Isla.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t listen.’
Maggie took him through everything Nick had done since her arrival at Sunnyside.
‘He’s clever,’ Maggie finished. ‘Apart from that time when he didn’t know Yvonne was in the room, there was no evidence I could bring you of what he was doing.’
‘But I should have listened to you.’
‘Aye, well, ideally. But you thought it was my old problems coming back to bite me, making me paranoid. So . . .’ She shrugged.
‘The day you heard him on the baby monitor,’ said Duncan slowly. ‘The school said he’d been there all day, but I wonder if that’s true? What day was it? What day of the week?’
Maggie frowned. ‘I think it was a Tuesday.’
‘Okay. Tuesday. Nick has a double period of PE just before lunch on a Tuesday, and sometimes they do cross-country running. He could have –’ He stopped. Closed his eyes. ‘God, I can’t believe I’m saying this. Nick. Nick!’
‘Started the run with the rest of them, taking off ahead of everyone else as usual,’ Maggie filled in for him. ‘Doubled back to the pavilion, biked it back here, maybe, or got a taxi, eh? When the other kids and the teacher got back to the pavilion, they’d have thought Nick had already showered and gone to lunch. And then after lunch, he’d have been back at school for his first lesson like he’d never been off the premises.’
Duncan just nodded. And then, after a long silence: ‘But Dean . . . what you’re suggesting is so cold-blooded – that Nick killed that boy to get you banged up for murder?’
‘And it wasn’t cold-blooded the way he came back here from school to hurt Isla? Set himself up with an alibi for that too, didn’t he? Took some planning. As did pushing her pram into the path of a fucking lorry!’ Maggie got up from the bed as the anger washed through her. She paced to a window. ‘This hasn’t come out of nowhere, Duncan. No way. No way can Nick have been the wee paragon you’ve been making him out to be. I don’t buy it. Didn’t you used to call him King of the Wild Things when he was a kid? Must have been a reason for that.’
Duncan lifted his arms in a helpless gesture, and just for a moment, Maggie felt her anger turn on him. The stupid bastard! Yvonne was right. Duncan wanted to be Nick’s friend, so discipline had evidently gone out the window. Maybe if he’d laid down the law to the wee shit more often, they wouldn’t be in this mess.
Nick had wanted to come on the honeymoon cruise with them – and, unbelievably, Duncan had wanted that too. He’d broached the subject while they were at the booking stage. ‘Nick’s keen to come along,’ Duncan had muttered, not looking at her, as they sat side by side in the travel agent’s.
‘Aw Jesus no,’ had been out her mouth before she could stop it.
She’d expected Duncan to try to persuade her to let Nick come along, because she’d known that Nick had been a daddy’s boy even before Kathleen’s death. Duncan had told her that, as a toddler, Nick had always wanted to go with Duncan when he left for work, and once he’d managed it by hiding in the back of the car. Kathleen had been going mental looking for him. It wasn’t until Duncan had arrived in Langholm that wee Nick had pounced on him from his hiding place in the footwell of the back seat, wrapping his arms round Duncan’s neck and saying, ‘We’re going to work!’ And Duncan hadn’t had the heart to take him back home, and had phoned Kathleen to say Nick could stay with him for the day.
So she’d been surprised and secretly delighted when Duncan had grimaced, and pulled another brochure towards them, and said, ‘But he’ll be absolutely fine staying with Yvonne and Michael for two weeks,’ making out like this had been the plan all along, when Maggie knew fine well that he’d only decided this after seeing her reaction.
‘There must have been problems,’ she insisted now.
‘Nick was a . . . challenging little boy, yes. Very boisterous.’
‘In other words, a fucking nightmare.’
‘No! He could be so sweet, so funny. He just . . . he’s always had problems fitting in with his peers. Playing nicely.’
‘You mean he went for the other kids.’
Duncan closed his eyes, breathed deeply, opened them again. ‘I suppose so. He was banned from the local nursery group for hitting and biting, and didn’t get invited to birthday parties because he was too “disruptive”. Kathleen wanted to take him to a child psychologist, but I – I thought people were just overreacting to normal, boisterous little boy behaviour.’ He swallowed. ‘I thought he was just frustrated because the other kids were so far behind him, developmentally, and . . . and I didn’t agree to it. I talked Kathleen out of it. I accused her of being too hard on him. Oh Christ, Maggie, this is all my fault.’
Aye, maybe it was. She wasn’t going to say it wasn’t.