Of course, now that they’d identified the first three images as being drawn by Rory Robertson, and were as nearly positive as they could be that the one left at the scene was also drawn by him, Gus had dismissed that thought. Rory Robertson may be their artist, but there was no way he could be their killer.
Chapter 17
Bradford
The dead of the night. Silence, except for the erratic snoring from Fergus, that sounded like a malfunctioning pneumatic drill filled the house. In the dimly lit kitchen, Corrine McGuire cinched the ties of her silk dressing gown tighter round her waist, then picked up her mug once more, cradling it in both hands. In the time she’d been sitting here, with only the light from the hallway and her dogs to keep her company, the drink had gone cold. Still she held it. It comforted her to smell its chocolatey aroma. Reminded her of when Angus and Katie had been children. When they’d been happy.
Sighing, she considered how easy everything had been then. Their little family of four cocooned in love and happiness, her secrets not allowed to taint their lives at all. Had she been wrong? Should she have spoken to her children about her past? She lowered her hand and patted Heather on the head. His soulful brown eyes looked up at her, offering solace from her pain. She smiled. ‘Mama’s OK, Heather, Mama’s OK.’
She brushed away the tear that rolled down her cheek and plopped on the table where a small pool of earlier tears still remained. Heather whined and nuzzled her leg. If only people were as easy to deal with as dogs. There had never been a good time to tell her children. When they were little, they were too young to understand racism and killing and why anyone would ever want to discard their mother like a piece of rubbish. Then, when they were older, they had exams and pressures of their own … then they were adults … and still she’d baulked at raking it all up again. The most traumatic experiences of her life happened before she met Fergus – before she became a happy, successful woman with her own beautiful family. That dark part of her life, she kept locked up in a dark closet at the back of her mind and, the truth was, she didn’t want to ever have to open it up.
Although the sweat that had covered her body when she awakened from the dream had long since dried to a salty slick, the hazy memory of it still plagued her. It had been years since she’d had that dream – or any of the multitude of variations of it, but the arrival of those sketches had put paid to that. She remembered Rory, her foster brother. She’d been so enthralled with his skill. The way, in a few pencil strokes, he could transform a blank page to something living. The way he could capture the essence of everything around him.
Although she remembered him, there were many things, before and after they were separated, that she couldn’t remember. Not clearly. She didn’t need to be a genius to realise her mind had closed down, had thrust traumatic experiences to the back of her mind. That was why, so the social workers from her youth said, she didn’t talk for years. But Corrine knew that the reason she remained silent was because she couldn’t remember and the reason she couldn’t remember was because the things she’d experienced were too awful to relive.
But that was before those damn drawings started arriving. She’d kept the arrival of the first drawing, the one of her classmates, to herself. She’d almost managed to convince herself that it was innocent – nonthreatening. That Rory was reaching out to her. Yet, she knew he couldn’t be. She’d seen the lurid headlines in the Daily Record fifteen years ago. She’d read them, followed the case closely, Fergus her only confidante to her mixed emotions, when he’d been found guilty through insanity of killing his beautiful wife.
So, when the second picture arrived, she had no choice but to tell her husband. How could she not? They shared everything. He was her rock and this second sketch had rattled her. So, similar in skill to the ones she’d seen him draw as a child after that event. For hours she’d watched him draw the same image again and again as if it was ingrained on his mind, neither of them speaking. Neither of them able to make sense of what had happened and then the final hurt – she’d been taken away – back into foster care, because Rory’s family were too grief-stricken to look after her … an outsider in their small community – a little darkie girl who never spoke and peed the bed.
She and Fergus had debated what to do. Of course, they’d considered telling Angus, but had decided to do a little investigating on their own. That, in hindsight, had been their mistake. She should have told Angus then … it wouldn’t have appeared so threatening … and he’d have had a chance to do his own investigation, before that poor woman had been killed. It was her fault that girl was dead … and her unborn baby. If she’d just spoken out earlier. Instead she and Fergus had done what they thought at the time was best. They’d consulted the only person they knew who was in the police force in Scotland and that person had agreed to look into it for them.
Standing up and tipping her undrunk cocoa into the sink, Corrine acknowledged that that might have been a move too far for Angus to ever understand. Especially when he found out
