Hilary Bonner - When the Dead Cry Out

“It’s possible. I need to ask you a few questions. Can you remember where you bought the watch?”

“Of course. I don’t spend that sort of money on gifts very often. I am Scots, you know!”

It wasn’t the first time she had heard Mac joke his way through various events surrounding his daughter’s disappearance. It was his major defence mechanism, Karen thought. She waited.

“I bought it in Inverness. There was a famous old jewellers’ there, Gavin of Inverness. Closed down about twelve years ago when old Gavin retired. It was an 18-carat Rolex Oyster. They told me it was the best ladies’ watch money could buy. It certainly should have been. Over five hundred pounds back in 1965. I believe they’re around seven thousand now...”

His voice tailed off.

“Thanks, Mac. We may well be able to prove quite quickly that the watch is the one you bought and gave to Clara.”

“Can you really do that?”

“With a bit of luck,” said Karen, and she explained to him about the previous Rolex watch murder, about case numbers and service records.

“We’ll get on to Mr. Gavin, too,” she said. “In case by any miracle he still has any records.”

“Right,” said Mac. “And if you do prove that it’s Clara, will that be enough to go after Marshall? Will you be able to get him at last?”

“I don’t know yet, Mac. But I’ll give it my best shot, I promise you that.”

“I know you will, lassie.” Mac paused again. “I’m coming down,” he continued. “I’ll get a flight first thing tomorrow. I want to be there. And, and... I want to see her, I want to see my daughter...”

“That’s up to you, Mac. I’d never dream of stopping you. But we are talking about a skeleton that’s been underwater for nearly three decades, if indeed it really does turn out to be Clara—”

Mac interrupted again. “It’s her. I know it’s her, lass. So do you, I reckon. You can feel it, just like I can.”

As he spoke Karen realized that the Scotsman was quite right. She did feel that it was Clara who had been found. She had from the start. Even before she knew that the skeleton was female. It could be just a kind of wishful thinking, though, and she certainly wasn’t going to respond to Mac’s statement.

“Either way,” she continued, still gently but firmly. “It’s not a pretty sight and, well, it’s not intact. I’ve told you.”

“You half-told me, lassie. The head’s missing, I presume.” It was Mac’s turn to make his voice gentle now.

Karen grunted, a muttered affirmative.

“And was it removed before or after her death?”

“Can’t say for sure yet, but we think afterwards and we don’t reckon that had anything to do with cause of death. Almost certainly the sea and all the life it contains was responsible for the disposal of the head.”

“I see.” Mac sounded dispassionate enough. Karen supposed that over the years he had become hardened to whatever eventualities there might be. Probably he just wanted to know. Knowledge can be strangely comforting, even when it is unwelcome. Knowledge can at least give some rest to a tortured soul. And there are few more tortured than the loved ones of someone who seems just to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

Karen was wrong about Sean MacDonald. As he put down the phone he was aware of his whole body trembling. He tried to collect his thoughts. It wasn’t easy. He was, in many ways, no better prepared for learning that his daughter’s body may have been found than he had been when he first realized what may have happened to her. He was not at all dispassionate. If anything the loss of his daughter and grandchildren had grown more difficult rather than easier to bear as the years had passed. The pain had increased rather than lessened.

For almost three decades he had craved news, wanted desperately to know exactly what had happened to Clara. And for many years now he had indeed sometimes kidded himself that even to know that she was dead would be a relief, her and those two lovely little girls, but it wasn’t a relief at all.

Karen’s phone call had been devastating, and no less so because of the passage of time.

Mac was an old man now, into his early eighties. His once-handsome features bore deeply etched lines, and it was not ageing alone that had been responsible for that. He lowered his head into his hands, closing his fingers over his ears. The wild shock of hair that had not thinned with the years but merely turned totally white fell forward almost like a screen. He might have been grateful for that had there been anyone else in the house to see his face. But there wasn’t. There wasn’t really anybody else left in the world for Sean MacDonald anymore.

He could feel the tears welling up, and he was not a man who wept easily. Indeed, he was the sort who still didn’t really think that men should cry. Inside his head he could still hear Karen Meadows’ words.

“It’s not a pretty sight, it’s not intact, we have yet to find any teeth.”

The picture this conjured up was a vivid one for Sean MacDonald. He had last seen his only daughter almost a year before her disappearance and he remembered it only too well.

Clara had wanted money. Officially to bail out the hotel again. In practice, Mac had been sure, to pay off whatever debts her husband had accumulated in whatever was his latest madcap scheme.

Mac had never liked Richard Marshall. And when he’d found out that he had been a bigamist and a fraudster he had liked him even less. Clara, however, would never hear a word against the man she had married.

“You don’t understand, Dad,” she told him. “Richard’s first wife was a monster. And he never really committed fraud. He always intended to sort out those Spanish time-share deals. He was just juggling money to keep his business afloat. Then he got desperate, that’s all.”

Clara had always had an answer for everything as far as her husband was concerned. The result had been a terrible row, the worst there had ever been between this father and daughter. Indeed, possibly the only proper row they’d ever had — which had made it worse, much worse, and probably accounted for the consequences being so serious and long-term.

Clara had travelled to Scotland specifically in order to acquire money from her father, Mac had felt back then, adding to his distress and his determination not to comply. Not that time. Not again. Rather pettily, he now thought, he had resented the fact that he never seemed to see his only daughter unless she wanted something.

“I’ll not give another penny to that waster you’ve wed, to that smooth-talking conman you can’t see through. Though it grieves me more than you’ll ever know, Clara, there’ll never be another penny from me for you or my grandchildren unless you leave that man. Then, I promise you, you’ll never want for anything.”

Mac had known as he spoke that he had made a mistake, that he had handled it badly. He had known, too, that if his wife, Clara’s mother, had still been alive, she would have steered him clear of out-and-out confrontation. Sally MacDonald had been a calm, sensible woman with an inner strength you just never quarrelled with. She had been a natural mediator, a peace-keeper.

Mac was different. He was a man of unswerving loyalty and devotion to those close to him, a man who loved fiercely, who cared deeply, and who had little leaning towards compromise in such matters. His words had come from the heart, his intention had been to help, not to hurt. The result had, however, been inevitable.

Clara had been her father’s daughter. She didn’t take kindly to being threatened.

Her response had been swift and every bit as uncompromising as her father’s.

“If you turn your back on my husband, then you turn your back on me, Dad,” she had told him. “I’m going home to Torquay now, and I promise you one thing. You will never see me or your granddaughters ever again.”