Past lying, p.39
Past Lying, page 39
He was, she hoped, an interregnum. Someone else would touch her heart; she believed that now in a way she hadn’t when she took up with Hamish. He’d filled a space and they’d had a lot of fun. And that was no small thing.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her phone. She saw Jason’s number and felt the cold hand of fear crush her heart. ‘Jason,’ she said.
‘She’s away,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘Twenty past four.’ He sniffed.
‘I’m heart-sorry, Jason.’
‘I know, boss. She thought a lot of you.’
‘It was mutual. She’s going to leave a big hole in your life.’
‘I’ve got to live up to what she wanted me to be.’ A sob caught in his throat.
‘It’s going to be tough. But you can do it. If there’s anything I can do to help, with the arrangements, or anything else, let me know. I mean it.’
Now he was crying, his sentences coming in broken phrases. ‘We cannae even have a proper funeral. No chance to celebrate her. To swap stories.’
‘Soon as we can, we’ll do that, Jason. I promise. We’ll give Sandra the send-off she deserves.’
‘I better go. I’ve to let people know what’s happened. I’ll not be at my work for a few days, sorry.’
‘Take as long as you need. Oh, and Jason? Those images you tracked down? They did the trick. Sandra would have been proud.’ A pause. ‘And so would Phil. Be kind to yourself. We’ll talk soon.’
Karen felt the weight of loss. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. She knew from bitter experience that she’d get past this. She had friends. She had a job that mattered to her. She had come to love her adopted city, with all its subterranean problems. But right now, she just wanted to close her own front door and sleep. Sandra Murray had been a good woman, a woman with a big heart and a genuine warmth. How many more Sandra Murrays was this fucking virus going to take? Would there be enough left to pick up the burdens?
The prospect of rest receded even further as Ruth Wardlaw emerged from the police station, unhooking her mask. Karen stood up to greet her. ‘How’s it looking?’ she asked.
Ruth grinned. ‘I think you’re over the line. I’m going to recommend the full slate of charges. Your team’s done a good job.’
‘Not bad, considering they tried to tell us it wasn’t historic yet.’
‘Well, I reckon it’ll be a historic victory in due course. You’re going to get an absolute shedload of publicity on this one.’ She pulled a face. ‘And somebody’s bound to publish poor Lara Hardie’s novel now.’
‘The National Short Story Award people have already presented her parents with the trophy that should have been hers. It’s not much of a consolation, but I think it’s been a wee bit of a help, especially to her sister.’
‘Don’t underestimate the power of consolation.’
Karen shook her head, ‘Ross McEwen, with his sense of entitlement. What a trail of pain he’s left in his wake. And what about Rosalind Harris? What are you going to do with her?’
Ruth sighed. ‘I want to go with art and part. The law’s clear enough. “Any person who aids, abets, counsels, procures or incites any other person to commit an offence against the provisions of any enactment shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable to the same punishment.” I think I can make it stick. Whether a jury will feel the same, who knows? All we can do is the best we can do, Karen.’
Karen nodded. ‘Aye. All we can ever do is the best we can do.’
Epilogue
September 2021
Karen stood on the Royal Mile outside the High Court, letting the sun spill down on her face. In front of her, set in the cobbles, the mosaic Heart of Midlothian marked the Old Tolbooth, where countless judgements and executions had taken place over the centuries. Today’s judgement would have a different ending, but not one that was necessarily easier. Ross McEwen would be an old man before he’d be eligible to be released on licence. Rosalind Harris would serve only a few years, but that would be enough to take her life from her.
For the Hardie family, hunched together on the public seats, a different kind of life sentence lay ahead. Every milestone Emma clocked up – graduation, first job, love, maybe children – would be matched by the grief of never seeing Lara on the same road. At every family occasion, there would be an absence that shouted louder than any celebratory words. Karen didn’t think the punishment meted out to the pair in the dock would feel like justice to the Hardies, but then, nothing could.
There had been times when she had wondered whether they would ever reach this point. Lockdowns, restrictions on public places, her own unpleasant experience of COVID, delays in the criminal justice system that brought home painfully the adage that justice delayed was justice denied – they’d all conspired to make this an even tougher wait than usual.
She felt a touch on her arm, and there was Jason. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, leading the way down the Royal Mile towards the bridges. It had been a strange time for Jason too. The whole shape of his life had changed; his mother’s death had brought many aspects of it into sharp relief. He loved his brother but without his mother’s love to intervene between them, he’d finally realised he couldn’t trust him. He’d thought he loved Eilidh, but lockdown and crisis had combined to force a realisation that when the going got tough, she didn’t know how to handle it. She’d tried to brush off Sandra’s death as something they ‘just had to accept’, but Jason had realised what he just had to accept was that she was never going to be there for him. As he’d said to Daisy, ‘When you realise you’ve got more support from your boss than your fiancée, you know something’s not right.’
But recently, he seemed to have turned a corner. The grief was less insistent. He’d decided to try for sergeant, because Sandra would have wanted him to. And he’d been out on a couple of dates with Meera Reddy from the National Library. Just a movie, and dinner at that nice Italian in Leith. But it had been good fun. And she liked football too. Although he wasn’t sure he could work up the same enthusiasm for the women’s game, he was open to conversion.
The truly good news for all of them was that Ann Markie had departed. She’d taken up the reins as chief constable at a small force in the South of England. ‘It’s the obvious next step on the road to world domination,’ Daisy had said in the pub on the night they’d gone out to celebrate the news. The new ACC (Crime) hadn’t been appointed yet; Jimmy Hutton had heard on the grapevine that it was going to be a proper copper who’d had boots on the ground in the recent past. At least, thought Karen, they wouldn’t have any personal beef with her.
Daisy had surprised them all by installing herself not in her own flat in Glenrothes but in the Bruntsfield flat of a teacher Karen had yet to meet. She was still reticent about her private life but lockdown romance, love on the Zoom, seemed to have worked for Daisy.
Life without Hamish was going just fine for Karen. At the end of the first lockdown, Daisy and Karen moved out of his flat. It had felt like a good decision at the start of lockdown, but she’d felt a genuine sense of relief to close the door on his home for the last time. Only when she returned to her own flat did she realise the weight of being under someone else’s roof, even so luxurious a roof as Hamish’s. She still stopped in at his coffee shops if she was passing and needed a caffeine fix, but so far, their paths hadn’t crossed.
Six months after the terrible night at the breakwater, a letter had arrived at Karen’s flat. It was postmarked Montreal and the handwriting seemed familiar. She turned it over and saw the return address: Yasin, Prince Arthur Est, Plateau Mont Royal, Montreal.
After the end of the lockdown, when Aleppo reopened, Karen had sat down with Miran. He explained that one of their group knew a crew member on a container ship about to unload in Grangemouth. He’d managed to persuade the captain they needed a doctor on board – ‘a nod and a wink, I think you say, Karen’ – and Rafiq had found a berth. Miran assured her he’d be safe and she almost believed him.
And then out of the blue, a letter. She’d ripped it open and read it with an eagerness that took her by surprise. He’d travelled from Grangemouth to Antwerp. From there, he’d found a place on a container ship bound for the Port of Montreal. Within a month he’d been on Canadian soil. As soon as he’d arrived in Montreal, he’d claimed asylum. Because his life was in danger if he’d returned to Syria, his claim had been accepted. They welcome refugees here, his letter said. They treat us like human beings, not animals or prisoners. I feel safe here.
More than that, he’d been placed on a programme that would ultimately restore his professional life to him. Within the year, he hoped he’d be back in the operating theatre, doing what he did best. And he was writing to thank her and to hope that they would meet again. His email address had been at the bottom of the letter.
It had taken her three days to reply, mostly because she didn’t know why it had so unsettled her to hear from a man she’d spent such a small amount of time with. A man she thought was gone from her life. But she had replied, and somehow they’d found a way to cross the distances between their experiences.
It would be a while yet before Rafiq would be able to get a passport. But she had amassed plenty of holiday leave over the past couple of years. And she’d promised that, as soon as the McEwen trial was over, she’d book a slab of leave and visit Montreal. After all, she’d grown up to the sound of her father playing Leonard Cohen albums; she always thought he was more sexy than miserable, and she’d always fancied visiting his home town. There must be somewhere she could sit down with Rafiq and enjoy tea and oranges while they watched the sun pour down on Our Lady of the Harbour.
Acknowledgments
Past Lying is set in the lockdown world of April 2020, but I needed some clear blue water between then and now so I could write about those frightening and constantly changing days.
I wrote this novel in 2023 in New Zealand, where I spent four months thanks to the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin. Huge thanks to my boss, Professor Liam McIlvanney, whose conversation and friendship helped the book on its way.
Thanks too to our landlady Jill for providing a home from home at the top of the hill!
Tania Mackenzie-Cooke organised an amazing book tour round both islands in the excellent company of Michael ‘Screamer’ Robotham and Josh Pomare; thanks, Tans, to you and the family for lending us your home. We loved our first Christmas at the poolside!
Amina Shah, National Librarian and Chief Executive of the ever-helpful National Library of Scotland, was generous with her knowledge and experience and will forgive me, I hope, for playing fast and loose with their facilities.
As always, I’m indebted to my forensic friends. My dear pal Sue Black, who now has so many honorifics I don’t quite know how to address her formally, provided invaluable help – blame her for the human soup – and Professor Lucina Hackman of Dundee University also offered her assistance.
My team at Little, Brown saw Past Lying through the editorial process and beyond – thanks in particular to Lucy Malagoni and Cal Kenny. Lizzy Kremer and Stephanie Glencross at DHA added their valuable voices to the mix, as did Amy Hundley at Grove Atlantic. Anne O’Brien and Laura Sherlock both hoisted me over the finishing line – I couldn’t have seen the wood for the trees without you two!
To my writing friends, I tip my hat. You bring me endless pleasure and marvellous fun. None of the fictional characters in Past Lying is based in any respect on real writers, living or dead. Cross my heart and hope to die!
And finally, to Jo. Thanks to you, I’m living my best life. You always have my back, and you mix the best cocktails. Here’s tae a’ oor lucky puckies; I’d raither be here than gaitherin’ buckies.
Val McDermid, Past Lying
