CHAPTER 18
Memories are like landmines. You never know which one will blow up in your face. You can be mugged by your memories when you least expect it. I was shaving one time, drawing the blade across my cheek when a memory leapt into my head.
Menorca. 1996. The image of Sarah at a restaurant table with the biggest ice cream you’ve ever seen matched only by the size of the grin on her face. She thought she was the luckiest girl in the world. She was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with a vivid orange sunburst on it, her blonde hair pulled behind her in a ponytail. A sliver of ice cream slipped from her mouth and trickled down her chin. She laughed till she nearly wet herself. All three of us laughed so much that people turned to look at us.
I remembered that and stared at myself in the mirror. I had the sudden urge to gouge my face with the razor. To bite it deep into my cheek and twist it till it tore a chunk of skin and cheek. I stood and stared at myself as my hand and my mind battled over the grip of the razor.
I didn’t do it.
I did try not to let it linger but sometimes the thought would slip under my guard. To meet up with her again. Not to wait. To make it happen. To catch her up before the smell of her left me. Before I couldn’t conjure up her face in an instant.
Movies portray sudden flashbacks of memory with bursts of light and images exploding in your head. I used to think that was just bollocks but it is precisely how it happens. For me at any rate.
You can be driving, talking, walking, in mid sentence or mid bite when you are jumped by your past. The memories are always there, lurking, waiting.
Sometimes I had to shake my head to stop them, to clear them out of my mind. Then there was guilt at doing that. For not enduring them. For not putting up with the pain of the memories the way a proper father would.
I’d hear her voice too. Not voices like killers heard, nothing crazy. Just her voice, finishing sentences for me and sometimes telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing. Her being silly or laughing or saying how she loved this film or that food. I’d find myself nodding and saying, ‘I know. I know, sweetheart.’
Guilt came at you just as often as memories did. Just as random, just as unexpected, just as deadly. Guilt at what you had done and what you hadn’t. Guilt for breaking the biggest promise of all. The one that every father makes to their child. To look after them. To protect them. No matter what.
Sometimes I lay awake wondering what I wouldn’t do to have her back. To have her back for good or for five minutes. To have her back in the world even if she wasn’t with us. To have her laughing and running. Growing, working, playing. Smiling or crying. Happy or sad. Good times and bad. Just to have her back.
The answer was anything. Anything and more.
Kill? Obviously so. The question was how many and I didn’t have an answer that didn’t scare me.
The darkness of the night and the blackness of my soul were strange and dangerous places to consider such things. Maybe that was when I descended into insanity but more likely it was desperation. I would try anything, do anything, think anything, hope for anything.
In the early days, the black, black days, I would hold my breath. I’d convince myself that if I closed my eyes and didn’t breathe for a full minute then when I opened them again it would be back to the time when everything was alright. It never worked but I’d try it again and again. I’d screw my eyes so tight it would hurt but it would never work.
I’d make mental pacts. If I did this or that then time would turn.
I’d give up everything I owned. That was easy. Every penny I had or would ever have. My house, my health. I’d give my life, of course I would.
I tried to wish myself dead. I tried to make deals with the God I didn’t believe in. With any God, with any Devil. I’d scream within myself, demanding that someone listened. Take me. Bring her back.
The things I’d promise would get darker and worse. They had to because the first lot didn’t change anything.
If giving up my life wouldn’t do it then I’d offer up the lives of others. If wishing someone dead would change things then I’d wish it. Instantly.
One person. Two. Ten. A village. A city. A country.
There wasn’t a limit. How could there be? What kind of father could draw a line and say I’d do this or that for my daughter but no more? There is nothing that a father wouldn’t do.
I’d imagine a tsunami was summoned up by the God that I didn’t recognize and was about to flood the entire eastern seaboard of the United States. The God would say to me that I could halt it with a single word and save the lives of millions. Or I could have five minutes with the girl that was taken away from me. No contest.
In the middle of the night it is easy to wish away the lives of millions of people. You close your eyes as tight as you can and condemn them to death and hope beyond hope that when you open them again everything will be alright. But no matter how many you kill with your mind it is always the same.
You begin to wonder if one actual death would do more than millions of pretend ones. Maybe if it was the middle of the day rather than the depths of night then you’d dismiss the idea. Maybe if you weren’t driven to distraction by the unbearable awfulness of being alive. Maybe if you weren’t me.
Otherwise you grab at any straw, any hope, any chance. You know, of course, that it won’t change things. Time cannot turn. You are not stupid, you know that. Yet you try, you have no choice, your mind demands it.
One death. It’s not much. Not for a life. Not for her life. A bargain.
Then you may wonder about more than one killing. You may wonder about how much revenge would be worth in a pact with the God or the Devil. You offer up the lives of others and you promise retribution. Surely either would do. Both would be a guarantee.
It becomes an easy decision to make. You promise to do something that suddenly seems easy and right in return for the one thing that you want above all else. Who wouldn’t do that for the person that means more to them than any other? Not you. Not me. Definitely not me.
What sort of father wouldn’t do anything for his daughter?
CHAPTER 19
Same anonymous envelope, same procedure. Once the police found Wallace Ogilvie’s body then they’d be expecting it. There would be an expectant queue at Rachel Narey’s desk awaiting the post.
But the finger went to Keith Imrie at the Daily Record. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be expecting what was going to land on his desk. I just hoped that after shitting himself that he would be able to find out what he needed to know.
I couldn’t be sure from his stories if he was up to it or not. Much of the stuff he had written up till then had been crap. But he was getting the scoop of his life dropped in his grubby lap and all he needed to do was make a few phone calls. These guys had contacts, all he had to do was use them. Just in case, I gave him a helping hand as well as the finger. I included a printed slip of paper with five names on it. DS Rachel Narey.
Jonathan Carr.
Billy Hutchison.
Thomas Tierney.
Wallace Ogilvie.
A finger and five names. Nothing else. I didn’t want to join the dots completely for him. Four unsolved murders. One cop. One severed finger. One big fat scoop. Work it out Imrie. Come on. You can do it.
Phone Rachel. Phone the cops that take your back handers, the cops that let you buy them drinks, the cops that take used cash for information. Get off your lazy arse and do the work.
Imrie didn’t let me down. The headline in the Record screamed ‘Jock the Ripper’. Above it a strapline roared ‘Serial killer stalks Glasgow. Four dead’. In full glorious and gory colour, across the front page was a huge picture of
