Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

‘Oh yes, they’re doing vital work here right enough,’ he goes in what he thinks is his posh voice. He flips a limp wrist at Ryan. ‘Fucking wee poofs.’

When he’s gone I’m like that: ‘Connor son, get us some cold beers, aye? Should be some wee packets of crisps and that an’ all in the cupboard.’

Connor gives me evils. He stands up and wipes his hands on his jeans. ‘And take my time about it, aye? Dinnae worry Maw, I’m no wanting to hear it. I’m no fucking wanting to hear it.’

‘Is that right?’ Ryan’s got a smile on his face. He’s taking hisself for a wee stroll in Connor’s direction. ‘Is that right, Wee Man?’

Connor’s backing up.

‘You no wanting to hear it?’ Ryan’s all conversational. ‘You no wanting that? Cannae have the Wee Man hearing something he’s no gonnae like, eh? I cannae provide the sand, but there’s some nice earth there, look, if you’re wanting to bury your fucking head in it. You’re happy enough taking a wee road trip to Peebles or St Andrews and sitting round drinking tea and eating fucking crumpets, you’re happy enough on the fucking net getting us shite, long as some other fucker’s doing the dirty work, eh? Long as you dinnae have to hear it?’ Ryan’s in his face. ‘Do me a favour, aye, and spare me the fucking hypocrisy?’

Connor’s eyeballing me.

‘Okay boys, play nice. Get us those beers, son.’

Connor goes to Ryan, ‘Aye, Mair had it coming right enough, but this guy… There could’ve been some other way, aye?’

‘Oh is that right? Like what?’

Connor’s shaking his head. ‘Could’ve just snatched her.’

‘And how long before the polis would be on our tail? Christ! Just as well mastermind here isnae calling the shots, eh Maw?’

‘Aye son,’ I goes. ‘Snatching her, that’s straight out your Da’s book of shite.’

And that’s Connor’s arse out the windae, and Ryan’s patting his cheeks and going ‘Dinnae have a cow, Wee Man,’ and Connor’s heading off inside. ‘We’re cool, aye?’ Ryan goes, and Connor’s like that: ‘Aye Ryan, no worries.’

I cannae lie, they two are my favourite weans and I’m no happy when they’re butting heads. Ryan takes a seat at the table under the parasol, and I go and join him. ‘He doesnae mean nothing by it.’

‘Thinks I’m a fucking psycho like Da?’ Ryan’s rattled so he is.

‘Naw son. Naw.’

‘It’s no like I was thinking Barry, I’m gonnae top this fucker – it’s no like I got any fucking pleasure out it, eh? No like Da would’ve.’

‘Naw son. Naw.’ I push the pay-as-you-go across the table at him. ‘Let’s us make that wee call, eh, then I’m outta here. Wannae do it?’

Ryan calls 101 and when he’s put through to the right fucker he goes, ‘The woman that got murdered in Haghill, aye? I’m no wanting to leave my name or nothing, I’ve got a wee shop on the street and I’m no wanting involved, I’m no wanting reprisals, get me?… Aye, I’ve got information that’s maybe pertinent. Saw someone acting suspicious right when it must have happened.’

After we topped Mair, we staked out the entrance to the close in the motor, in the bit where the boys knackered they CCTV cameras. Clocked Flora arriving. Then here she’s coming out ‘disguised’ in a hoodie, the daft bint.

‘We’ve been getting hassle with shoplifters and that.’ Ryan’s winking at me. ‘All of us with shops on the street have been getting hassle, so we all try to keep an eye out, eh, coordinate our response? And this woman walking by the windae, she was acting suspicious so she was, so I tells the wife, “Gonnae go and check that bitch out,” and she goes and follows the bitch… Eh? Aye, she was a fat bitch in a hoodie, a grey hoodie, pulled right up over her face and she’s got her head bent over while she’s walking, right, like she’s no wanting seen?… Aye… About average height for a woman. Fat aye, but no massive… About the wife’s size, size sixteen maybe? Think her hair was maybe light brown? She goes round the corner of Quarryfield Lane and she gets in a car – red Ford Ka, wife got the registration number if you’re wanting it?’ He tells them Flora’s number. ‘We didnae think it was relevant, eh, when yous had arrested the neighbour, but now he’s been released without charge we’re like that: Let’s us do our civic duty and call it in… Aye… Naw, have you got cloth ears by the way? I said I’m no giving my fucking name cos they fuckers round here are mental, aye? It gets out I’ve called yous and I’m fucking dead.’ And he ends the call.

Connor’s back with the beers. ‘Looking good, eh?’ he goes, sitting back admiring the wee border they’ve been planting up.

‘Aye, magic,’ goes Ryan. ‘Magic.’

‘Just through here, Flora.’ Sue opened the door to a bland, pale blue interview room. ‘The DI will be with us shortly. Can I get you a tea or coffee?’

‘Thanks, a coffee would be good. Sue – how long is this going to take? I need to be with Beckie.’

‘It shouldn’t take long. There’s just a few things the DI wants to go over with you.’

That was what Lara, the family liaison officer, had said too. ‘Just a few things.’ But Flora, left alone in the bare little room, wasn’t sure she could do this. Giving her statement yesterday had been hard enough.

She didn’t seem able to get enough air into her lungs. Was there even any ventilation in here? But she told herself that it didn’t matter that she was breathing as if she’d just run a marathon, that her hands were sweating, that she couldn’t sit still.

It wasn’t as if they could charge her with ‘looking guilty.’

Sue came back with the coffee and two men in suits with ID cards round their necks on blue lanyards, who introduced themselves without smiling. DI McLean was a big man with a shaved head. Like Kojak. His suit was well cut and looked expensive, and he was carrying a laptop. DI Murray, in contrast, was a ’70s throwback in a worn suit and beige tie, grey hair straggling over his collar. He slumped down on one of the chairs.

Two DIs, just to ask her ‘a few things’? Did she need a lawyer?

But to request one would probably look really suspicious.

When she was only three years older than Beckie, she had had to sit in an interview room just like this in Peebles police station with Mum and two policemen. Only no one had had a laptop, and the walls there had been grey. And everything anyone said, everything she said, had had to push its way through the scream inside her: I killed Tricia, I killed Tricia, I killed Tricia .

And she had found herself saying it out loud:

‘ I killed Tricia! ’

And the grey walls had come in on her, blotting out the policemen’s blank faces, Mum’s mouth open in a huge O, voices receding suddenly until there had been nothing at all but grey.

She was an adult now, though. An adult with a daughter who was depending on her to get through this. There was no reason to think the police had penetrated her identity as Ruth Innes.

Their fake identities, hers and Mum’s, had been set up for them by the fraudster father of one of the girls she’d got to know in the Young Offenders’ Institution. For a price. Back then, before electronic records, it had been relatively straightforward. He’d found a family of ‘ghosts’, as he’d called them: the Innes family, who’d died in a house fire in Melrose. He’d chosen them because the mother and daughter were the right ages, and the mother had the same Christian names as Mum – Elizabeth Susan. And he’d somehow been able to discover that the mother had never had a National Insurance Number, as she’d never either been employed or claimed benefits – she’d married her husband straight out of school and had her family very quickly, so she’d spent her short adult life as what had, in those days, been termed a housewife.