‘Okay,’ said Yvonne, as Duncan shot a wee look at Maggie. ‘Who wants a drink?’
‘I’m sorry,’ went Maggie and Duncan at the exact same time, and this at least raised smiles, as Duncan got up and pulled her into his arms. ‘I’m so sorry, Maggie.’
‘Aye, well, Yvonne here has read me the riot act. Of course you couldn’t get your head round Nick being . . . well. The way he is. It was only natural.’
‘You knew,’ said Duncan, turning to Yvonne, who was handing round brandies. ‘I thought your coldness towards Nick was just down to your not liking kids. But you saw . . . you saw . . .’
‘No. I was in denial too, Dunc.’ Yvonne flopped into a chair. ‘When he was a little kid, I kept thinking he’d grow out of it. Most kids are cruel little buggers, aren’t they, given half the chance? And you were so soft with him.’
Duncan sat back down, and Maggie perched on the arm of his chair.
‘He’s obsessed with you, you know,’ Yvonne went on. ‘In his eyes, anyone who gets close to you is a threat to the father-son bond. Maggie, Isla. Maybe even Kathleen.’
Duncan’s face was pure white.
Yvonne leant forward and eyeballed her brother. ‘I’ve never told anyone this, and I never thought I would, but . . . a few weeks before her death, Kathleen confessed to me that she was sometimes scared of Nick. Her own son. She made me promise to say nothing to you. After she died, I told the police, in confidence, what she’d said, but I’m not sure they believed me. They certainly didn’t follow it up.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Duncan. ‘Yvonne. No.’
Maggie put a hand on Duncan’s shoulder. ‘Where was Nick when Kathleen died?’
‘He said he was in his room,’ said Duncan in a flat voice. ‘He found her body. Called 999. Forensics indicated she’d been dead a couple of hours by that time.’
Silence filled the room as, Maggie was sure, each one of them played out an alternative scenario – Nick pushing Kathleen over the bannisters, watching her plummet to the tiles, standing there watching the blood pool under her . . . and going back up to his room for two hours before calling the police.
Now Duncan was up on his feet. He strode to the door and left the room but then he was back, pacing to the bay window, to the fireplace, like he didn’t know what to do with himself. ‘I used to think Kathleen was so hard on him. I used to think she was all wrong, that he responded better to – to a more positive approach.’ He clutched at the hair on either side of his head. ‘How could I have got it all so wrong! It’s my job to rehabilitate troubled youngsters, to spot signs of trouble –’
‘It’s completely different when it’s your own kid,’ said Yvonne. ‘It’s not your fault. People like Nick are born that way.’
‘People like Nick?’ Duncan choked. ‘You’re saying – what? That he’s . . . got some kind of – syndrome? Some kind of –’
For the first time, Michael spoke. ‘Yvonne means he’s a psychopath.’
Duncan’s face collapsed.
Maggie stood; went to him. There was nothing she could say to make it better, so she just put her arms round him and held him while he cried.
Michael and Yvonne left after midnight. Duncan had been hitting the brandy hard and had eventually fallen asleep in his chair, so Maggie showed them out. As they stood on the gravel by Michael’s Land Rover, no one speaking, Yvonne, to Maggie’s surprise, pulled her into a brief hug.
‘They’re surely not going to give him bail,’ Yvonne said. ‘He’ll be remanded in custody, and then he’ll be put away for murdering that boy; for trying to murder Isla. You don’t have to worry about Nick any more.’
As Maggie slowly made her way back to the front door, she looked in at the lighted windows of the drawing room, at the scene that might have come straight out a period drama – a handsome man sleeping in a big fancy chair in a posh room. Just went to show you never could tell. A couple of lines came into her head from somewhere, maybe something she’d learned at school or more likely seen on telly:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
17
Lulu - June 2019
PCs Melissa Jackson and Iain Mair refused Lulu’s offer of tea or coffee and got straight down to business, sitting at the kitchen table, the two of them opposite Nick and Lulu. PC Jackson took out her phone and asked if they minded if she recorded the conversation, while PC Mair, an older, jowly man with cropped grey hair, got out a notebook.