He smiled sadly.
‘Broke my heart. Her mother’s too. Tore me up inside. My wee girl.’
‘She was always that wee girl in your head all those years, wasn’t she? In the picture in your head she was still sixteen.’
‘Yes.’
‘Hardly surprising that you didn’t recognize the woman that she’d become.’
McCullough’s face crumbled and the shake of the head was of a man lost.
‘When you scoured the streets for Oonagh after she left, you went down to the red-light district to look for her, didn’t you? Knowing that a lot of lost souls end up down there.’
He nodded, his eyes still on his daughter but now welling up with tears.
‘I suppose you needed some kind of comfort,’ Narey continued, her voice soft. ‘Maybe an escape. They tell me that you can get a taste for it. Is that how it was with you?’
The man gave a shrug and she nodded thoughtfully at him in return.
‘I was wondering, there’s so many girls working out there. Do you think maybe that you picked “Melanie” because, possibly subconsciously, she reminded you a bit of Oonagh?’
McCullough’s eyes fired red at the suggestion but the flames quickly died and she could see in his face that he was considering that it might be true.
‘Oh God. Oh God.’
‘At what point did you realize that it was actually Oonagh? Not at first obviously. Not in the dark, not with all that make-up on and with that platinum-blonde hair.’
‘I was drunk. I wouldn’t have gone down there otherwise. I always felt disgusted with myself when I sobered up. I was drunk.’
There were tears streaming down the man’s face.
‘So when did you realize it was Oonagh?’ Narey repeated.
McCullough was shaking his head from side to side and beginning to tremble.
‘When I woke on the Monday morning, I’d convinced myself it wasn’t her. That I’d got it wrong. Even coming in here I wanted it not to be her. Not my Oonagh.’
‘But you knew, Mr McCullough. Didn’t you? Was it when you climaxed?’
The man suddenly bent double, his stomach retching and his hand going to his mouth. He didn’t vomit but it must have been close.
‘Yes,’ he whimpered as he stood upright again.
‘I really was drunk and it was so dark, especially down the lane. And she didn’t know who I was, she was so out of her head on whatever she’d taken. We… well, I did what I did. The business. But when I
… finished… it was like something cleared in my head and I saw her. Oonagh. I’d looked for her for so long but… not like that, not like that. I tried to rub off that hideous make-up. Tried to see if she was still underneath it. I’d never have… you know, if I’d known. You’ve got to believe that.’
Narey ignored his plea.
‘What happened?’ she demanded of him.
His eyes fell to the floor.
‘I just lost it. I was… disgusted. At me. And at her. I was furious. It was like I was angry at her for having made me do what I did. At her for what she was doing. I strangled her. My hands were on her neck before I knew what I was doing and… and she fell to the ground.’
Narey let the silence echo round the sterile environs of the mortuary.
‘You killed her.’
‘Yes.’
‘You strangled her and smacked her head off a metal door.’
‘Yes.’
‘And then you stuck your wee girl behind a bin.’
He looked at her, his eyes desperately pleading for understanding that he was never going to receive.
‘I panicked. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I lost control and I just wanted out of there. I hid her and I got out of there.’
‘Yes,’ she snarled at him. ‘You got out of there so quickly that you just took off the condom and threw it away without a thought to what you were leaving behind.’
McCullough’s face fell, realization dawning on him.
‘You couldn’t even cover her up?’ she challenged him. ‘You left her with her fucking knickers round her ankles!’
The man gulped awkwardly twice and turned away from them, bending over and throwing up onto the polished marble floor of the morgue. Narey didn’t offer a flicker of sympathy although Corrieri looked like she might follow suit.
‘How could you do that to any human being?’ Narey demanded. ‘Never mind your own flesh and blood.’
McCullough wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, wild-eyed and fraught. His self-control and military bearing had disappeared.
‘I didn’t know what I was doing. I think maybe I thought that if I just got away then no one would know. Maybe no one would even find out who she was and then her mother wouldn’t need to know…’
McCullough broke off, a desperate thought interrupting his confession.
‘She doesn’t need to know, does she? Not about what happened, I mean. But about what I… I…’
Narey shook her head at him, a mixture of disgust and wonder.
‘Of course she will need to know. There’s no way round that. You can explain it to her yourself.’
A pitiful wail came from the man then suddenly his hands flew to his face and he began to claw at himself, digging his fingers feverishly at his skin and eyes. His nails drew blood on his distorted features and he howled like an animal.
Narey directed Corrieri towards the door with an abrupt nod of her head and the DC went to bring in the two uniformed constables who were waiting outside. Narey could have restrained the man while she awaited their arrival but she didn’t.
The PCs burst in at a trot and quickly pinned McCullough’s arms to his sides. Blood leaked from the corner of one eye and vivid scratches marked his cheeks as his head lolled from side to side.
‘Your own flesh and blood,’ Narey rebuked him. ‘And that’s what you left behind. In every sense of the words. The science team were confused by the DNA that was retrieved from that condom you threw away. It was so similar a match to Oonagh’s that they thought they’d perhaps made a mistake and mixed up samples. But they hadn’t, had they, Mr McCullough?’
‘I will kill myself in prison. You do know that?’
Narey just looked at him.
‘That’s someone else’s problem, Mr McCullough. Not mine. Take him away.’
Corrieri led the officers to the door as they half pulled, half carried McCullough to it and on to the waiting police van.
Narey watched them leave then turned back to the body of Oonagh McCullough, standing over her for just long enough to wonder how the young woman had made the journey from Giffnock to the streets and to the morgue. She gently eased the cover back over Oonagh’s head and wished her a silent goodbye before switching off the light and returning the room to darkness.
He was standing outside the mortuary room, with his back leaning against the wall. When Narey came out, he raised his eyebrows by way of a question.
She looked around before shaking her head ruefully in reluctant agreement.
‘You’ve got two minutes, Tony, but if you get caught then as far as I’m concerned, you broke in here and you’re getting nicked.’
Winter’s eyes fell to his camera where they dallied in thought before he lifted his head again and studied the pain etched on Rachel’s face. It was his turn to shake his head.
‘No, you’re right. There will be other times and other photographs. Glasgow isn’t going to turn into Disneyland overnight. That girl deserves some peace. Come on, I want you to come with me.’
‘Where to? I’ve got to deal with McCullough.’
